Category: Coffeehouse #3

Post your draft of the three annotations for Unit 2 here.

In the simplest of words, Anthropology is the systematic study of what makes humans human. Anthropology studies the origin, behavior, societies, cultures, linguistics, biology and everything else related to the human species. Anthropologists concern themselves with the mere concept of our reality so we as people can at least begin to grasp an understanding of this world we live in. They form and test hypotheses about our species so they can develop theories about us. There are four subfields to anthropology and they are Cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and Physical anthropology or Biological anthropology. Physical anthropology focuses on humans as biological organisms as well as human evolution and the genetic variation that makes us all different. Paleoanthropology, forensic anthropology, and primatology also fall under physical anthropology. Cultural anthropology is the study of the different variations of human thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.  Its two main components are ethnography and ethnology. Archaeology is the study of history, or the study of the dead, which includes dead societies, cultures, languages, and much more and Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Some subfields to linguistics are phonology (the study of language sounds), morphology (The study of pattern and Formation of language), syntax (Principles of sentence making), and grammar (The structure of language in it’s entirety). 

On January 31, 1865, the 13th Amendment was passed by former president Abraham Lincoln and ratified on December 6, 1865. This is the amendment that abolished slavery. While the 13th Amendment did abolish slavery, the next section in this amendment is hypocritical to the first. There is a passage in the 13th Amendment that states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This passage means that if you are a criminal, by law, you can serve labor involuntarily as punishment. This served as a loophole against African Americans to reinforce a modernized form of slavery. Even though slavery was abolished, African Americans have been disproportionately incarcerated and filled inside of prisons regardless of innocence and in unfair methods, and taken up the involuntary roles of servitude forced upon them. After slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment, the racism that African Americans have faced stilled strongly remained and the law enforcement system did not treat African Americans fairly. African Americans would be given much harsher sentences for crimes and were also targeted for arrest more than anyone else. In 1865, exactly when slavery was abolished, laws like Jim Crow were placed, making it so African Americans couldn’t do everything that everyone else was able to do, giving police even more ability to arrest African Americans.

When was the hoover dam built ?

The Hoover Dam is a concrete arch gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River , on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona.  Originally it was named Boulder Dam by the Roosevelt administration until 1947 when it was changed in honor of president Herbert Hoover, who passed away during its construction. Construction began in 1931 and ended in 1936. This was during the Great Depression, and the project was an effort to help control flooding of Colorado river, create jobs, generate cheap electricity to supply power to homes and industry, and also store water for the expanding population of the west. Unfortunately during the construction over a hundred lives were lost. The dam is owned by the United States Government, and operated by The United States Bureau of Reclamation. The first concert was poured into the dam on June 6, 1933, 18 months ahead of schedule. This posed a serious problem since concrete heats and contracts as it cures, so it had the potential to for uneven cooling. Instead of a singe continuous pour, which would take too long to cool and result ing stresses that would cause the dam to crack and crumble, the ground were the ground would rise was marked with rectangles and concrete blocks in columns were poured  some as large as 50 sq ft by 5 feet. Each of these would  contain a set of 1 inch steel pipes. Cool and ice cold water would be poured through the pipes to help it cool. One intersecting fact is the concrete is still curing, harder and harder every year even in 2017 some 82 years after the construction of Hoover Dam was completed in 1935.Apr 4, 2017.

Carlos Cortez

English 1101

D024

3/21/22

Video games have been around for a while, but some people may argue that video games make people violent or contribute to it. In the article “The frustrating, enduring debate over video games, violence, and guns” by Aja Romano he claims that there is no link to video games and violence and that even before video games became violent, people were blaming other thing such as arcades but not for its game content but as they claimed “not because of the games they contained, but because they were licentious hangouts for teens” parents were concern about the influences that were around them, which were completely unrelated to the games content. This debate started in 1992 when the now popular game Mortal Kombat made its debut and became famous for its gory fatally moves which sparked an outrage so big by parents, that there was a congressional hearing which created the Entertainment Software Rating Board aka ESRB, a rating system for all video games doesn’t matter if its violent or not all video games have to be rated. 

                                              How to Improve College Students’ Mental Health?

              ”Improving College Students Mental Health”, by Kerry McDonald claims that college students experience high rates of depression and anxiety because they have been overly coddled and lack the tools to deal with everyday stress. More specifically, McDonald demonstrates that students cannot face their own responsibilities for being pampered. The reason for the anxiety is because they had a spoiled adolescence where they could not deal with stress and anxiety. This is because the parents always face their children’s obstacles and do not give them the opportunity to face a circumstance on their own. One of the most important things parents can do is let their college-age children face their own reality and begin to take responsibility for themselves. According to the article “Improving College Students Mental Health”, by Kerry MacDonald, says “McDonald expresses concern that parents prevent children from developing the tools necessary to deal with their problems. Further, the author asserts, colleges focus too much on trauma and mental illness, ” This reveals that college helps students develop into mature, responsible and independent adults but parents are not letting their kids grow independently. This is the cause of improving college students’ mental health by teaching them that they should face their own obstacles in life because there is not always going to be a parent that will guide you in all steps. It’s important to understand that being independent will increase your ability to work better on your own conflicts. 

How does overcrowding and prison guard abuse worsen the behavior and mentality of a prisoner?

Prisons are a type of correctional facility, prisons are where individuals convicted of crimes serve sentences. The 4 main purposes behind prisons are to deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and retribution, it pretty much deprives individuals of their freedom in a way of making them pay a debt to society for their crimes. Prisons are all over the world but the first “modern” prison was the Eastern State Penitentiary, which used solitary confinement as a way to give inmates time to reflect on their crimes and reformed. A summary review of the half-century expansion of police and prison power shows that debt, violence, and prison have served primarily political purposes in the context of deepening economic inequality. There are two different types of prisons, public and private. Public prisons are owned and operated by a state or federal government. The taxpayers bear the costs, and the operation is put under the control of government officials. While private prisons are built, owned, and operated by a private company that contracts with the government to house prisoners. The government in order to make budgets cuts, pays per inmate so the more inmates there are the more money is received. The problem with this is that these “companies” would keep half of that money and the rest of it wouldn’t even be enough for the inmates and their living conditions and requirements. This soon causes overcrowding and in return causes poor prison conditions which can even be life threatening to their health. Nowadays, prisons aren’t what they were first made to be. Prisons are also known to cause mental health illness to the prisoners like depression, anxiety, disorders that affect mood, thinking, or behavior. Prisons are like a boot camp but much worse, they can physically abuse you, torture you and the accommodations are made to be uncomfortable, this doesn’t only come from the prison guards but within the inmates as well. 

how does cannabis stimulate the mind and affect people differently?

Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the Cannabis plant. The cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various traditional medicines for centuries. But  who discovered cannabis? what is delta-9- tetrahydrocannabinol(THC)? where is this drug mainly consumed? when did it become popular in society? why do people take this drug? what makes this drug so addicting?

Hi Students,

This is where to put Coffeehouse #3.