Tuesday, March 13, 2007

THBT we should ban all advertising during children's TV programs

Background:
Nowadays, 70% of the ads during children’s TV programs are food advertising, while the rest are mainly for toys, video games, etc. This arouses people’s concern for children’s physical and psychological health. Fast food chains alone spend more than 3 billion dollars a year on advertising, much of it aimed at children. The results is a nation of overweight children, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada—which says that almost one in four Canadian children between 7 and 12, is obese. A 2002 U.S. study showed that fast-food commercials during kids programming on Saturday mornings are pitching bigger and bigger portions, a trend that researchers link to an the alarming rise of obesity among young people.

Pros:
1. Health concern
1) Obesity, cardiovascular diseases:
In Britain, the Labour Party banned fast food ads during children’s programs in 2006. Child obesity rate doubled in the past decade.
2) Ads flash much more quickly than regular programs, and the high frequency of light change is a strain on children’s eyes. (*Identify significant and insignificant points. This is a minor point)

2. Materialism
1) Desire for more than they need;
Marketers have discovered something about children that parents have long known—they love to collect things. Kids’ collections used to consist of marbles, stamps or coins. But now they amass huge collection of store-bought items such as Beanie Babies, Barbies or Pokémon cards and figures.
2) Desire for more than their parents can afford;
The marketing strategy behind the Pokémon was simple and lucrative—create 150 Pokémon characters, then launch a marketing campaign called "Gotta Catch 'Em All," to encourage children to collect all 150 of the cheaply made, over priced figures. This costs a fortune.
3) Parents may spoil their children, or children may bear a grudge against their parents

3. Cultural influence
1) Women’s image (images of little girls and their young mothers in the ads);
The image of Barbie dolls and the concept of beauty for little girls.
2) Misuse of idioms;
3) Imitation of babbling, lallation, and incomplete sentences, etc. (critical period of language acquisition)

Cons:
1. Children’s right to choose as little consumers
1) Equal rights in purchase, under parental guidance;
2) Parents may not know what their children need and like;
Children understand these things much better than their parents think they do. Old-fashioned parents need someone else to introduce children to the modern world of commercial communication. And who is better placed to do that than advertisers?
3) Parents ultimately pay for the goods, and therefore junk food will not overwhelm;
Whether ort not cheese is healthy, parents should be the ones deciding what kids eat, not the government.

2. Source of revenue for children’s programs
1) Most effective way to promote sales for enterprises (win-win situation)—manufacturers can spend more in R & D to improve and innovate.
2) Educational TV programs depend on advertising.
Food advertising is a necessary revenue stream - without ad revenues from food companies, TV channels couldn’t afford to make kids' programming. Kids would suffer. A ban on ALL advertising during children's shows would result in NO children's shows.

3. Educational
1) To arouse resonance, most ads during children’s TV programs contain educational elements (eg: Barbie’s ads: children should be helpful)
2) Early exposal is not necessarily bad; it helps foster a right attitude ASAP.
Plus) A ban would be futile anyway. There’s no way you can stop kids being exposed to food advertising If not during the ads, then in actual programming content, in adult time slots, and in other media.
-There are already regulations in place; China’s advertising law prohibits harmful ads to the physical and psychological health of the minors.
-There are other factors at work besides television advertising, such as the popularity of computer games and the lack of interest by kids in sport and exercise.

copyright by Wang Yingchong


City's Immigration Restrictions Go on Trial

City officials in Hazleton were the first in the country to adopt ordinances intended to drive away illegal immigrants by punishing local landlords for renting to them and employers for giving them jobs. The restrictions, which have yet to take effect, have been imitated by at least 80 towns and cities.
Kris W. Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, described a surge in violent crime and gang warfare since 2005 that city officials at
tribute to a growing population of illegal immigrants.
The rights groups say the ordinances encourage discrimination against Hispanic residents, violate federal and state housing laws, and overstep the powers of a local government to deal with immigration, which has been almost exclusively a federal matter.
Witold Walczak, the legal director for the Pennsylvania A.C.L.U., said Hazleton did not have the authority to inquire into its residents' immigration status. "Law regarding immigration can and must be passed only by Congress." Mr. Walczak said in an opening statement, warning that the ordinances could unleash racial vendettas in which neighbors would make complaints about Hispanic residents based on their appearance.
Hazleton’s mayor, Louis J. Barletta, the driving force behind the laws, said his basic purpose remained the same: to make Hazleton hostile territory for illegal immigrants.
Mr. Barletta said that some Hispanic businesses had complained of losing customers and that some immigrants had moved away. We witnessed many people leaving in the dark of night,” he said. “We have to assume they were illegal aliens.”
Still, the court testimony left an impression of a harsh social change in Hazleton for some Hispanic residents.
Last year, Hazleton also adopted an ordinance making English the city’s official language. That law is the subject of a temporary restraining order issued by Judge Munley, but it is not at issue in this trial.

In Mexico, Bush Seeks to Bolster Uneasy Alliance

The note complained that United States Border Patrol agents had crossed the border and ventured a couple of dozen feet into Mexico to put out a rapidly spreading brush fire.
In large measure, the relationship has stagnated in recent years as Mr. Bush has failed to deliver on a promise of changing immigration laws to allow more guest workers, while conservatives in his party have pushed through tougher measures to control the border, among them a giant wall.
For the United States, there is more at stake in the talks with President Felipe Calderón, a conservative free-trade advocate, than possible progress on an age-old list of frictions between the neighbors: drug trafficking, trade barriers, border security and illegal migration.
For political reasons, however, Mr. Calderón has been reluctant to become the anti-Chávez standard-bearer in public. He said in a recent interview with The Associated Press, "I am not interested in playing a role with Bush in that respect."
His aides say he wants to mend fences with the United States' antagonists, Cuba and Venezuela, as well as with the rest of Latin America. “The United States has a lot to do to regain respect in Latin America,” he said.
The Mexican president would dearly love to see a comprehensive immigration bill passed that would allow more migrants to work temporarily in the United States and would offer citizenship to many of the 6.4 million illegal workers already there. It is unlikely that Mr. Bush can deliver on that now, given the divisions within his own party on the issue and the approaching presidential election, political analysts say.
Like other Latin Americans, many Mexicans have also grown tired of the free-trade policies that were trumpeted in the 1990s as the solution to their economic ills.

War and Liquor a Perilous Mix for U.S. Troops

At an Army base near Baghdad, after a night of drinking an illegal stash of whiskey and gin, Specialist Chris Rolan of the Third Brigade, Third Infantry Division, pulled his 9mm service pistol on another soldier and shot him dead.
Alcohol, strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, is involved in a growing number of crimes committed by troops deployed to those countries.
Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages — and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use — liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems.
“It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are pervasive across the military,” said Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. He traces their drinking and drug use to the stress of working in a war zone. “The treatment that they take for it is the same treatment that they took after Vietnam,” Dr. Kosten said. “They turn to alcohol and drugs.”
The rate of illicit drug use also increased among military members in 2005, to an estimated 5 percent, nearly double the rate measured in 1998, a trend that the study called “cause for concern.”
Some military doctors and other mental health experts said the Army’s greater use of so-called moral waivers, which allow recruits with criminal records to enlist, may also be a factor in the increased drug and alcohol use.
Getting liquor or drugs in Iraq is not difficult. One of the most common ways to smuggle in brand name gin or clear rum is in bottles of mouthwash sent from friends back home, soldiers said.
In Iraq, liquor of a distinctly more dubious quality can be purchased from Iraqi Army soldiers or civilian contractors working on American bases, and Iraqi soldiers have sold locally produced prescription drugs to American troops for a tidy profit.
But at a time when the military is fighting two major ground wars, the often serious consequences of heavy drinking has emerged with increasing clarity as more troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental health problems, military officials and mental health experts said.
More than 90 percent of sex crimes prosecuted by the military involve alcohol abuse.

Green cars

Any colour you like, as long as it's green. The car companies’ most pressing environmental concern relates to European Union proposals to set stringent emissions targets for carbon-dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.
The average new Porsche pumps out nearly 300g of carbon dioxide; Mercedes and BMW also rely on luxury cars that are big, fast, profitable and polluting. But, more surprisingly, even smaller carmakers, which are much closer to meeting the new stringent conditions, say they are troubled by the proposed rules.
The problem for makers of those small cars is that any chance of getting decent profits in the saturated markets of Western Europe (emerging markets in Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia are another matter) comes from improving margins on each vehicle sold. But on small cars those margins are already rather thin. Thus the additional cost of developing new technologies to meet the 130g emissions target, let alone meeting tougher EU standards to come, might prove more painful for makers of small cars than for those who make luxury ones.
Car companies argue that new regulations may prove to be unnecessary. The demands of the market, they say, are driving them in the right direction anyway. Christian Streiff, boss of PSA Peugeot Citroën, says that pollution could be cut by two-thirds simply by removing the oldest (and thus dirtiest) 20% of vehicles from the roads. Moreover, the vast additional cost of trying to meet the targets quickly could endanger jobs and damage competitiveness. The industry argues that governments could instead do more to reduce congestion, improve roads and even teach more fuel-efficient driving techniques.

Bush administration's medical rule

A new federal rule intended to keep illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid has instead shut out tens of thousands of United States citizens who have had difficulty complying with requirements to show birth certificates and other documents proving their citizenship. The largest adverse effect of this policy has been on people who are American citizens.
The numbers alone do not prove that the decline in enrollment was caused by the new federal policy. But state officials see a cause-and-effect relationship.
Medicaid officials report that some pregnant women are going without prenatal care and some parents are postponing checkups for their children, while they hunt down birth certificates and other documents.
Barry E. Nangle, the state registrar of vital statistics in Utah, said, “The new federal requirement has created a big demand for birth certificates by a group of people who are not exactly well placed to pay our fees.” States typically charge $10 to $30 for a certificate.

Access to former president's documents

In November 2001, while the world was focused on terrorism, President Bush issued an executive order making it significantly harder for historians and the public to gain access to a former president's official papers. The House has a chance tomorrow to reverse this damaging decree.
The bill is part of a broader open-government package that includes measures to require public disclosure of private donations to build presidential libraries and to repair Bush administration damage to the Freedom of Information Act. It also mandates greater transparency in federal contracting. Approval of the whole package would be a major boon for the writing of history and for government accountability.

Conversion of wood to ethanol

The idea is to make ethanol, a biofuel that usually comes from maize (corn) or sugar cane, from trees instead. Politicians and environmentalists are embracing ethanol for a number of reasons. Unlike oil, ethanol is renewable: to make more of it, you grow more crops. And blending ethanol into ordinary petrol, or burning it directly in special “flex-fuel” engines, reduces greenhouse-gas emissions.
The ratio of the energy yielded by a given amount of ethanol to the energy needed to produce it is called the “energy balance”. The energy balance for ethanol made from maize is the subject of much controversy, but America's energy department puts it at 1.3; in other words, the ethanol yields 30% more energy than was needed to produce it. For ethanol made from sugar cane in Brazil, the energy balance is 8.3, according to the International Energy Agency.
But for ethanol made from trees, grasses and other types of biomass which contain a lot of cellulose, the energy balance can be as high as 16, at least in theory. In practice the problem is that producing such “cellulosic” ethanol is much more difficult and expensive than producing it from other crops. But the science, technology and economics of treethanol are changing fast.
Interest in cellulosic ethanol is growing as the drawbacks of making ethanol from maize and sugar become apparent. Both are important food crops, and as ethanol production is stepped up around the world, greater demand is driving up the prices of everything from animal feed to cola and biscuits. Growing maize requires a lot of land, water and agrichemicals, so environmental groups such as America's Natural Resources Defence Council argue that it is merely a short-term, first-generation approach to making ethanol.
Trees are a particularly promising feedstock because they grow all year round, require vastly less fertiliser and water and contain far more carbohydrates (the chemical precursors of ethanol) than food crops do. Treethanol has particular appeal in countries that have a lot of trees and import a lot of fossil fuel. Top of the list is New Zealand: in 2005 the country exported lumber worth NZ$411m ($290m) and imported fossil fuel costing NZ$4.5 billion. Because willows are fast-growing and can thrive even on nutrient-poor soils, BioJoule's technology could also be used in other parts of the world where there is strong demand for energy, but the soil is not suitable for food crops. Mr Watson thinks China and India look promising.

Elect a House of Lords

Faced with the unpleasant prospect of actually having to run for office, members of the House of Lords declared Monday that their chamber had functioned pretty well without elections for hundreds of years and that there was no need to rush into anything now.
"It is, by definition, not elected."
House of Commons supported a plan to end government appointments to the House of Lords and to make it an all-elected body. But while the suggestion — that it makes sense in a modern democracy for legislators to be democratically elected — does not sound particularly radical, some lords reacted as if "election" were a four-letter word.
Some contended that people were sick of politicians, and sick of having to vote for them. Others said that if one had to campaign to acquire a seat in the Lords, no decent candidates would want to run. The members said that an elected House of Lords would threaten the supremacy of the House of Commons, that elections would be too expensive and too complicated, that elected members were, in fact, less independent than appointed ones.

"The House of Lords is good at the job it does, and the country knows it,” Baroness Boothroyd said. “The future of our Parliament is at risk if we upset the balance between the two houses that has served this country well."
The House of Lords now has 731 members, a majority chosen for life by the government of the day. But so varied are the proposals and so complicated the potential repercussions that as the debate wore on, it was clear that there was no consensus. Some peers said the chamber should be half-elected, half-appointed; others said that the proportion should be different.
Quote: 19th century journalist and essayist Walter Bagehot urged all deliberate consideration. "The reason is that all important English institutions are relics of a long past; that they have undergone many transformations that, like old houses which have been altered many times, at first sight would not be imagined," he said. "Very often a rash alterer will pull down the very part which makes them habitable."
The so-called cash-for-peerages scandal: the government has been accused of offering membership in Lords in exchange for party donations.
"I have seen, as I traveled, 100-percent-elected second chambers which do work effectively," she said. "What I do want to defend is the ancient and honorable tradition of people to choose their legislators. It is a far from modern idea." Quoting Mark Twain, she summarized opponents' attitude: "I'm all for progress; it's change I can't stand."

Ban smoking in public places

Tennessee will probably become the first major tobacco-growing state to pass a comprehensive smoke-free-workplace law. Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, proposed the ban in February. He also wants to triple taxes on cigarette sales and to use some of the money for smoking prevention.
Not everyone, however, is thrilled. Paul McKinney, who grows only a small amount of tobacco on his farm, compared the proposal to forbidding alcohol and unhealthy foods. "I can see raising the tax and getting more money," Mr. McKinney said, "but if you're planning on just banning tobacco altogether, you’re killing the goose that's laying the golden egg."
Tennessee's dependence on tobacco has made the state one of the most hostile in the nation to tobacco regulation. As antismoking laws spread, Tennessee has given free rein to smokers. The only restriction aside from a few local regulations is a year-old ban on smoking in state buildings.
Washington, D.C.; Puerto Rico; and 22 states have passed bans on smoking in bars, restaurants, or all workplaces. The top tobacco growing states — North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and South Carolina — have not passed such legislation.
Tobacco's falling fortunes can be seen in Tennessee's annual crop statistics. The state's peak tobacco year was 1982. After a 2005 federal tobacco buyout compensated growers who backed out of the industry, farmers last year harvested 49 million pounds, worth $93 million, the statistics show. The profitability is gone.

Muslims in US

"We are all brothers and sisters, they live in another world."
For many African-American converts, Islam is an experience both spiritual and political, an expression of empowerment in a country they feel is dominated by white elite. For many immigrant Muslims, Islam is an inherited identity, and America a place of assimilation and prosperity.
The divide between black and immigrant Muslims reflects a unique struggle facing Islam in America. Perhaps nowhere else in the world are Muslims from so many racial, cultural and theological backgrounds trying their hands at coexistence. Only in Mecca, during the obligatory hajj, or pilgrimage, does such diversity in the faith come to life, between black and white, rich and poor, Sunni and Shiite. "The more separate we stay, the more targeted we become,"  Dr. Khan said.

Carbon dioxide emmission cut

Then, in February, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its draft report, which predicted that global warming would cause the world's temperature to rise by somewhere in the range of 1.1-6.4ºC by 2100.
Most European countries will not meet their Kyoto targets by cutting their own emissions; they will have to buy credits from emissions-reduction schemes in developing countries. A carbon-trading scheme, which was supposed to be a pioneering showcase, has so far foundered. Member states issued too many permits, and the price of carbon plummeted. The price signal may have undercut efforts in developing countries to put in abatement measures in order to sell carbon permits to rich nations. And because the scheme runs only up to 2012, businesses have had no idea what the price of carbon will be--or even whether there will be one at all—and therefore no incentive to innovate or invest to cut carbon-dioxide emissions.
Higher costs for European companies will have two effects. They will increase conflict between the Commission, which sees combating climate change as its main aim at the moment, and member states. And it will raise calls for protectionism. That's happening already. Jacques Chirac, France's president, is demanding "border-tax adjustments" (ie, tariffs) to be charged on goods from countries that do not constrain carbon. The more ambitious the European targets for cutting carbon, the higher the cost will be, and the louder those calls will become.