Research-Sonnypetro

Posted on November 18, 2020 by sonnypetro29

Who Gets The Say
  

From a young age every kid watched movies that had self driving cars or flying cars, we always wondered when they would come around. Cars have evolved over the last hundred or so years. They started off with cars that had wooden wheels, then going to cars that had stick shift, then years later the automatic was invented making the stick shift car a thing of the past. In about 2015 Elon Musk started his journey along with many other companies to become the first to have self driving cars. Everyone was excited about the news on self driving cars but not many people took into account the many questions and many unsolved problems with self driving cars. When will every car on the road be self driving? Will it be 5 years from now or 10? Will you allow a computer to drive you and your family around? So many different questions to be answered and it seems like more news on the self driving cars come out each day. The real question is will your self driving car protect you? Will you know what your car will do to keep you and your occupants safe? In this research paper we will take a look at few different topics to help you better understand what’s really going on with self driving cars.

Self driving cars seem to be the next big thing for our generation. In 2019 all of Tesla’s cars come standard with autopilot technology. The standard self driving feature is called “Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Auto-steer.” If you would like to, Tesla does offer “Full auto pilot” this is something you have to pay extra money for and does not come standard. The thing about self driving cars is how can they make the right decision and if they can’t how often can they make the right choice.

The autonomous car means to have the freedom to govern itself or control its own affairs. Many people dream of having a self driving car but many people have never experienced being in one. It is a totally different feeling when you are in a car with no one driving except for some algorithms and some cameras that will determine if you get to your destination safely. If all cars were self driving cars then that would make things a little bit more safer because the algorithms can be programmed from car to car but if you have self driving cars and human driven cars there are always going to be problems. A study was done in the UK  and an article was written about how the citizens would feel with self driving cars on the road. In this article it states “The UK government has stated its vision to have driverless cars on UK roads by 2021, but nearly a quarter of the UK public said they felt apprehensive about the prospect of self-driving cars on the roads in the next three years, and a fifth of respondents felt fearful.” If someone was intoxicated and they swerved suddenly into the side of the self driving car will the self driving car be able to see or avoid it? We don’t know there are many ethical and moral decisions for self driving cars and what they will actually do in a life or death situation. 

Do self driving cars have morals? Will the self driving car swerve off the road avoiding a dog and drive into some bushes or will the car hit the dog and not swerve off the road. According to a PBS article written about how cars will make life or death decisions it was said that “But some coders say that while these hypothetical situations are interesting, they are misleading because autonomous cars do not make judgments based on value, they make them based on protocol. While moral decisions will come into play when programmers decide how to use which algorithms, an assistant professor in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University said the car itself does not have a moral agency.” They are saying the car will already know what to do when that situation arises. The car will know the outcome of what is going to happen before you do, because a group of programmers made these algorithms to help guide the car to make the best decision for the car and the passenger.

 In addition to all of these problems that arise from self driving cars there are many problems that will affect humans when self driving cars hit the roads in numbers. These self driving cars will be fully electric  therefore that means there will be no more use for gas stations and gas station workers. Also self driving cars last a really long time and many people won’t need to purchase a new car every 3-7 years like most people normally do. It seems that there are a lot of small problems that are rising from the self -driving cars. Hopefully none of these things happen and the self driving car actually boosts job opportunities.

There are major benefits for self driving cars that could potentially save the earth from pollution. Self driving cars run on batteries therefore there will be no more gas being burned into the air from the millions of cars driving everyday. All cars will be charged by pulling the charger into your house that could be powered by solar panels and that could help save the planet a bit more. 

It is inevitable that the world will soon have all self driving cars and the days with humans driving the cars will just be a thing of the past. The only thing that is stopping this from happening a lot sooner is the difficulties in perfecting the technology of the self driving car.

In a world changing very rapidly there are many new things coming in the near future. The word autonomous doesn’t really ring a bell in most people’s heads most people know the other word for it, “self driving.”Self driving cars have been in the works for many years and many people are excited for it and can’t wait for them to come out, should you be excited or worried? 

Autonomous vehicles are the thing of the future and they seem like they will be amazing and have so many benefits to our world today. The thing is not many people think about the smaller questions that these automotive manufacturers don’t seem to have the answer to yet because there has not been enough research done. There are many moral questions that play into getting into a self driving car, is the car going to protect you because you paid for the car and it’s supposed to do everything in its power to protect you? What if your driving down the road and a kid jumps out into the street, is the car going to swerve away from the child into oncoming traffic to save the Child’s life meanwhile risking your life and maybe a car in another lane or is the car going to hit the kid saving your life and the car in the other lanes life? Small decisions like this are huge when thinking about getting a self driving car. In a case of an emergency will you be able to take control of the wheel in a split second? Probably not.

Many studies have been done with trying to figure out what people would want the car to do when faced with different types of situations that are very challenging and require a lot of thinking. When you are buying the Self driving car are you buying that car knowing that it is going to make the decisions for you and should you be allowed to say what the car should do in those types of situations. In an article from the Washington Post it talks about this difficult study they sent out.  “The study, published in Nature, identified a few preferences that were strongest: People opt to save people over pets, to spare the many over the few and to save children and pregnant women over older people. But it also found other preferences for sparing women over men, athletes over obese people and higher status people, such as executives, instead of homeless people or criminals. There were also cultural differences in the degree, for example, that people would prefer to save younger people over the elderly in a cluster of mostly Asian countries.” These studies proved that people will tend to save younger peoples lives rather than an older person because they have more of a life to live. Also people chose to save animals and would rather swerve off of the road and maybe hitting a pole on the side. What would you want to do if you were driving? You would probably choose to spare the life of the animal and try and slam on the breaks or even swerving off of the road. 

Volvo, a new competitor in the Self driving car market, has come out in an article published to Scientific America saying that ” Self-driving pioneers, in fact, are starting to make the switch. Last October, Volvo declared that it would pay for any injuries or property damage caused by its fully autonomous IntelliSafe Autopilot system, which is scheduled to debut in the company’s cars by 2020. The thinking behind the decision, explains Erik Coelingh, Volvo’s senior technical leader for safety and driver-support technologies, is that Autopilot will include so many redundant and backup systems—duplicate cameras, radars, batteries, brakes, computers, steering actuators—that a human driver will never need to intervene and thus cannot be at fault. “Whatever system fails, the car should still have the ability to bring itself to a safe stop.” Therefore no human can be at fault for a crash this should be implemented in every single self driving car manufacturer, crashes are pretty much inevitable and no matter what safety protocols are put in place there will always be some type of crash or accident.

In a perfect world every person would wish they could have a safe road with no crashes but we do not live in a perfect world and with the making of these self driving cars is a closer step to making our roads safer. In a report to Consumers Report it was stated that ” In the far distant future, there’s little debate that self-driving cars have the potential to drastically reduce, or possibly even eliminate, crashes. In the interim, as self-driving cars navigate traffic alongside unpredictable human drivers, things will be murky.” This will be a big factor with self driving cars if everyone in the world was in a self driving car it would be almost impossible for crashes to happen but with self driving cars on the road with human drivers there will still be accidents. Most crashes are a result of human error and until all cars are self driving and everyone is in one the roads will still not be as safe as they could be. The algorithms in the car predict what the other cars around them should be doing but if someone not in a self driving car swerves at an unpredictable time it will cause a crash. If there are all self driving cars on the road they would work on the same wavelength and they would be able to know what each car was going to do because they have the same algorithms and can predict each other.

When it comes down to getting a self driving car you should know what you are buying into and how your car will protect you. You should not buy something and not know how it will protect you. To have the safest roads you need to know that your car will keep you safe and those who are in your car safe. 

Self driving cars will be inputted with algorithms that help the car drive safely and keep the car on the road, but when buying the self driving car should you be given the choice to decide what decisions your car makes? It depends on what kind of decisions we’re talking about, the decisions like where is the car going to take me and what roads the car should take are some of the decisions that the driver should have. When faced with the decision to make ethical choices is one that is very tough and should not be made by the driver. The car is built to keep the car safe and the occupant safe. You should not be able to choose if you should hit a dog or swerve off and hit a pole, those choices should be made by the algorithms, and if you do not believe that is not fair then you should not buy a self driving car.

Everyone drives differently no driver is the same and it would make it very difficult for the manufacturers to come up with so many different algorithms to make each consumer safe in the car. A Computer Scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Iyad Rahwan says “People who think about machine ethics make it sound like you can come up with a perfect set of rules for robots, and what we show here with data is that there are no universal rules”. It is not possible for the companies to make such algorithms that follow everyones moral choices. There are a lot of different things the manufactures have to take into account when when creating algorithms that satisfy everyone. There are so many different choices that the car will have to make like will it limit damage to the car or will it limit damage to the occupants or will it limit the damage to other things around the car like animals, pedestrians and cause harm to the occupants and the car. These choices are just to complex and the buyer of the car should not be given the option to choose what the car does in these ethical situation.

With the building and manufacturing of self driving cars the decisions should be made by the manufacturers and the specialized teams they have in place to make the car as safe as possible. What I mean by safe is that the occupants in the car will be protected from outside factors. These teams that these big manufacturers have are some of the smartest people in the world and they know what they are talking about. In an article posted on Towards data science, Andy Lau stats this ” The intent of the inventors is to create a better society for drivers and the planet. In addition, self-driving cars have proven to be significantly safer than having an actual driver; this has been shown by numerous studies and data collected from them. In the long run, autonomous cars will increase efficiency and productivity for people around the world. For more people to feel at ease with self-driving cars, companies, and self-driving car owners should understand they are responsible for the safety of all stakeholders. Risk management techniques can be used to quantify probabilistic risk in a way that is transparent and flexible. To create ethical vehicles, developers should continue to learn from past experiences in risk management and morally challenging situations.” Why should we let the buyer of the self driving car make the decisions of what the car should do in different ethical situations, when a scientist that has many years of research is put in to building these self driving cars to make the road safe and prevent crashes. We should believe in the choices that the manufactures they would not make a car that does not value the people, they would not make a car that is not safe and won’t protect the consumer. They will put the right algorithms together to allow for a safer road and more efficient world. All though there will be many different companies coming out with self driving cars each company will have different algorithms and different safety measures to protect the consumer. The owners of the car should leave the decisions making of what the car should do to the people who make the cars and if they do not like that choice then they can drive the car them selves and make the choices on their own.

Waymo is another big competitor in the self driving car world and their teams has put together the first self driving car on the road. The team at Waymo has designed the car to be fully autonomous and are training the car to drive like a human, I don’t mean drive exactly like humans because we all know that humans aren’t the best drivers. They are not giving the choice of what the car should do to the buyer. Waymo is working everyday to make the car able to share the road with human drivers, they are trying to fix small things that will allow their car to drive smoothly snd freely on the road. Waymo is the leading manufacturers for self driving car in an article from the verge it said that. ” Waymo already has a huge lead over its competitors in the field of autonomous driving. It has driven the most miles — 6 million on public roads, and 5 billion in simulation — and has collected vast stores of valuable data in the process.”

Another big topic that could be a major issue in the case of letting the owner of the car choosing what choice the car makes is legal issues. If the owner of the car tells the car what to do in a situation does that make them responsible and not the car, because the car is doing what the human said. If the owner does not tell the car what to do then only the manufactures could be at fault for legal issues that happen with the car. Many people wonder about legal issues with self driving cars, if the company does not comply with all major requirements than they can be hit hard with legal lawsuits if something goes wrong.

While you would love to know what your car will do in any situation and you wish you could have a say in what it does, but that right now just doesn’t seem to be in the playing field. It is much safer for the people who studied most of their life to put hours of work into these algorithms to be the ones who say what the car should do. They know what’s best for them and what’s best for their consumers. 

References 

Kelkar, K. (2016, May 28). How will driverless cars make life-or-death decisions? Retrieved October 12, 2020, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-will-driverless-cars-make-life-or-death-decisions 

Johnson, C. (2018, October 24). Self-driving cars will have to decide who should live and who should die. Here’s who humans would kill. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/24/self-driving-cars-will-have-decide-who-should-live-who-should-die-heres-who-humans-would-kill/ 

Monticello, M. (n.d.). Will Self-Driving Cars Make Our Roads Safer? Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://www.consumerreports.org/self-driving-cars/will-self-driving-cars-make-our-roads-safer/ 

Hawkins, Andrew J. “Inside Waymo’s Strategy to Grow the Best Brains for Self-Driving Cars.” The Verge, The Verge, 9 May 2018,  www.theverge.com/2018/5/9/17307156/google-waymo-driverless-cars-deep-learning-neural-net-interview.

Maxmen, Amy. “Self-Driving Car Dilemmas Reveal That Moral Choices Are Not Universal.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 24 Oct. 2018, http://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07135-0.  

Andy Lau, MBA. “The Ethics of Self-Driving Cars.” Medium, Towards Data Science, 13 Aug. 2020, towardsdatascience.com/the-ethics-of-self-driving-cars-efaaaaf9e320.  

Ryan Whitwam on September 8, 2014 at 3:45 pm Comment. “How Google’s Self-Driving Cars Detect and Avoid Obstacles.” ExtremeTech, 8 Sept. 2014, http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/189486-how-googles-self-driving-cars-detect-and-avoid-obstacles.  

May, and Katie Burke. “How Do Self-Driving Cars Make Decisions?: NVIDIA Blog.” The Official NVIDIA Blog, 7 May 2019, blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/05/07/self-driving-cars-make-decisions/. 

DeBord, Matthew. “Elon Musk Promises an Autopilot ‘Quantum Leap’ in the next Few Weeks. Here’s How Tesla’s One-of-a-Kind Bet on Self-Driving Tech Works.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 18 Aug. 2020, http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-self-driving-technology-compared-to-everyone-see-how-it-works-2020-7. 

Schmelzer, Ron. “What Happens When Self-Driving Cars Kill People?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 26 Sept. 2019, http://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/09/26/what-happens-with-self-driving-cars-kill-people/. 

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Rebuttal Rewrite-rowanstudent24

Posted on November 18, 2020 by rowanstudent24

Favoring the Abuser

Animal abuse is a growing conflict around the world. Many animals continue to suffer because of the abuse they endure and some are even killed. However, it is speculated that the abuser commits this abuse because it is learned from growing up in a dysfunctional home. Some would argue the abuse of an animal is caused from a number of different other things such as an abuser’s negative attitude towards animals, an abuser involved in an organization having to do with animal abuse, or an abuser could even suffer from mental disorders that causes them to abuse the animal.

One argument is that an abuser commits animal abuse simply because of their negative attitude toward animals. Some would argue that an abuser doesn’t care what happens to an animal and believe animals don’t experience pain the same way humans do. According to Robert Agnew in his article, “The Causes of Animal Abuse: A Social-Psychological Analysis,” he states that “Many individuals believe that animals do not experience pain or, in less extreme forms, that animals have a higher threshold of pain or do not experience pain in response to the same stimuli as humans.” Abusers in this situation don’t think animals experience pain  as other living things do and use them as an outlet for their anger. From this viewpoint, their attitude toward animals causes them to lash out against animals. However a conflicting argument comes from research  in the article, “Animal Cruelty and Neglect FAQ,” from the Humane Society,“Animal cruelty, like any other form of violence, is often committed by a person who feels powerless, unnoticed or under the control of others. The motive may be to shock, threaten, intimidate or offend others or to demonstrate rejection of society’s rules. Some who are cruel to animals copy acts they have seen or that have been done to them. Others see harming an animal as a safe way to get revenge against—or threaten—someone who cares about that animal.” This research supports that animal cruelty could be committed from a person who may feel powerless as a result of an abusive or dysfunctional home environment. Many victims of abuse feel powerless, unnoticed or under the control of others. 

Others would argue that animal abuse is also caused by an abuser being involved in some sort of organization that involves animal abuse or cruelty. Hunters and cockfighters would be some examples of this. Robert Agnew has stated in his article, “The Causes of Animal Abuse: A Social-Psychological Analysis,” that “Cockfighters, for example, often claim that it is in the animals’ nature to fight and die: God placed them on earth for this reason and the birds are voluntary and enthusiastic participants in the fighting activity.” The abusers involved in cockfighting believe the birds are on this earth to fight. According to some alternative research in the article, “The Connection Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence”, Dr. Harold Hovel writes, “The cruelty involved in animal fighting for human “entertainment” is almost unimaginable. Cockfighting and dogfighting have become epidemic in the U.S. and are common in many parts of the world. In the United States, both are felonies in all 50 states. In cockfighting, roosters are fitted out with razors or small knives attached to their feet, or alternately 3-inch-long spike-like“gaffs.” In fights they slash each other or stab each other until the blood loss and torn flesh render one or both unable to continue.” Dr. Hovel goes on to say, “Children are born with a love of animals, but the home environment plays a major role in determining a child’s prosocial or antisocial personality and behavior. Child abuse, neglect, abandonment, and witnessing domestic  violence are major factors in creating violent individuals, along with poverty, alcoholism, and toxic neighborhoods.” This article supports the argument that a violent or dysfunctional home environment significantly increases the likelihood of animal abuse or cruelty. 

Suffering from a mental disorder is also argued to be a reason for the abuse of an animal. Antisocial behavior is the main disorder that causes the abuse. According to Elleonora Gullone, in her article “Conceptualising Animal Abuse with an Antisocial Behaviour Framework,” she states, “Further, both animal abuse and bullying have been related to later antisocial behaviours and antisocial personality disorder.” People being antisocial has also increased as well with all the technology we have now in today’s age. The more antisocial people the more there is a chance for those people to become animal abusers. Antisocial behavior is proven to almost always be in relation to animal abuse and continues to further increase the problem. Alternately, in the article “The Connection Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence”, Dr. Harold Hovel writes, “Stopping domestic violence is a key to reducing our violent culture. Most violent criminals (60-70%) and violent psychiatric patients were abused as children, and a majority (>60%) started committing animal cruelty at an early age.” According to Dr. Hovel, one could come to the conclusion that the abuse precedes the antisocial behavior which in turn increases the likelihood of animal abuse. This article proves that a dysfunctional or abusive home environment significantly impacts the occurrence of animal abuse. 

The number of cases of the abuse of animals continues to grow and it is a problem that is ignored throughout the world. There are a number of different causes being presented as stated earlier but abusive and dysfunctional home environments seem to remain at the root of this issue. In his article, ““The Connection Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence”, Dr. Harold Hovel writes, “Animal cruelty is linked directly or indirectly with every type of violent crime, and, what is not as well known, also with most nonviolent crime. Human beings would benefit enormously if fighting animal cruelty (investigating, prosecuting) were taken seriously. Many human lives would be saved and much human suffering would be prevented.” The statistics surrounding animal abuse are staggering and the effect it leaves on the animals includes fear, pain, and desperation. This problem can no longer be ignored. 

References

AGNEW, R. (1998). The Causes of Animal Abuse: A Social-Psychological Analysis. Theoretical Criminology, 2(2), 177–209. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480698002002003 

Gullone, E. (2011). Conceptualising Animal Abuse with an Antisocial Behaviour Framework. Animals (Basel), 1(1), 144–160. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani1010144

Humane Society. (n.d.). Animal cruelty and neglect FAQ. Retrieved November 18, 2020, from https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/animal-cruelty-and-neglect-faq

Hovel, H. (2019). The Connection Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence. Kingston, New York: New York State Humane Association. doi:https://www.nyshumane.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Hovell-H-Animal-Abuse-Web-print-2-2020-edition-OPTIM-ToC-revised3.pdf

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Causal Essay – BabyGoat

Posted on November 18, 2020 by BabyGoat

Why Can We Feel Music?

Many people listen to different music, and many people listen to music differently. Music enthusiasts may listen to lots of music carefully and enjoy every single element. The casual listener may only listen to music with a basic view and enjoy it for what it is. But either way, people listen because it makes them feel a certain way. Music has the ability to put us in another dimension if we let it. The sound waves enter the ears, which sends signals to our brain, which then tells us how to react. But, these zones also affect people’s emotional states as well as cognitive abilities. 

One big reason we can feel music as we hear it is because each note has a different frequency. These frequencies go to the brain and our brain reacts. Now, when multiple keys are played, whether it’s at the same time or in the form of a melody, the group of frequencies create a feeling or emotion. And this is when scales and key signatures come into play. Each key has a certain group of notes that can be played, giving each key a different feel. We also have the Major and Minor scales. Usually, the Major scale sounds happy, while the Minor scale sounds dark. For example, most kid nursery rhymes are in a Major scale. Mary Had Little Lamb is in the key of C Major. Happy songs for kids keep them innocent, happy, and fresh. Now, in the mainstream pop world, let’s think of an example for adults. Ariana Grande. Her new 2020 hit “Positions” in the key of C Major and promotes happiness. In this song, she describes how she would do many things to keep her man happy. The emotional feeling of the song is happiness. LedgerNote.com describes C Major as, “Completely pure. Simplicity and naivety. The key of children. Free of burden, full of imagination. Powerful resolve. Earnestness. Can feel religious.” In opposition, Ariana’s 2019 hit “7 Rings” in the key of Db Minor. Immediately the aura of the song is different. This song is basically her bragging about being able to get whatever she wants. WMich.edu describes C# Minor as “Penitential lamentation, intimate conversation with God, the friend and help-meet of life; sighs of disappointed friendship and love lie in its radius.” While the lyrics are not described as this, although some could think bragging about material possessions is sinful, instrumentation definitely has this feeling. But this is one example of the scales and emotions having a nice relation. 

But what about when one song doesn’t feel like how it’s supposed to? One artist in particular whose music we can compare is The Weeknd. His new 2019 hit, Blinding Lights is the key of Db Major. Db Major is described as “Rapture in sadness. A grimacing key of choking back tears. It is capable of a laugh or smile to pacify those around, but the truth is in despair. Fullness of tone, sonority, and euphony.” When you hear the song it doesn’t seem like there’s any type of pain. But it’s when you actually listen and dissect the lyrics. Genius.com says “The track finds Abel in a constant state of distraction that he only gets relief from when in the presence of a significant other.” Depending who is asked, this song could be a happy song as he’s trying hard for love, or could be a song of destruction as he continues to rely on the need of a female. But remove the lyrics and the song definitely seems like a very happy tune. This 80s inspired song has no signs of making people feel sad or angry, unless you have a bad memory or don’t like the song. But for a twist, on The Weeknd’s same album, his song After Hours in the key of F Minor. This song has a darker, ambient feel. Ledgernote.com describes F Minor’s feeling as, “Deepest depression, lament over death and loss, groans of misery, ready to expire. Harrowing. Melancholic.” If we played these songs back to back, we could quickly point out the difference of the emotional feelings. But one of The Weeknd’s older songs “The Party & The After Party” is also in F Minor. But, this song sounds a little more happy and brighter than “After Hours.” If these two songs are in the same exact key, why do they sound different? 

There’s multiple reasons for this. One reason relates to the instruments used. Different instruments give off a certain type of sound, or have a certain timbre. Brighter sounds like those from bells and high octaves on a piano tend to make things seem happier and safer. Darker sounds like those from a bass or low octave on a piano tend to keep things powerful and edgy. Another reason, which is more on the sound engineering side, is the perception of the instrument. By this, I mean the way the instrument is manipulated to give depth or character. I could have a bell, but if I process it to take away the higher frequencies, it would sound darker. But also, if I add delay (echo) and reverb (space), it would make the bell seem ambient and distant. The sense of space could make something feel different, maybe ery in some instincts. Think of walking through the forest and you hear a bell in the distance. Depending on the circumstances, like if you seek refuge, you could be glad to hear something that shows a sign of hope. But maybe, it is night time and you plan on being alone, the sound could startle you and cause panic. I say this to show that the other instruments and their characteristics also affect how we perceive another instrument to fit the song. The third reasoning is the tempo and rhythm of the song. Slow songs tend to drag, causing more suspense or a more mellow feel. Fast songs tend to bring action. Think of action movies, they tend to keep people on their toes and entertained. But, another key is the rhythm. Usually, “off-beats” tend to add bounce, which could make people want to move and dance. But the most important reasoning for a happy or dark sound is the tension with the keys. This is an important cause as every Major key has a Minor relative key, which means a Major key would have the same notes as a Minor key. The only difference is that the center of the scales are focused on different spots. The way to figure out the relative key of the Major key is to drop down three notes. An example would be F Major turning into D Minor. These keys have the same exact notes, but the center focus is different. In the D Minor key, the next two in key notes are E and F, which are right next to each other and cause tension. The next two notes in F Major are G and A, which have a note gap in between. This is the reason some say Major scales could seem happier, because the focus of the scale has less tension. On musical instruments, the closer the notes are to each other, the more tension there will be. SchoolOfComposition.com says, “Musical tension is a sense of unrest, instability, excitement or anticipation, an impression that more is coming and a curiosity for what’s next.” The more or less tension there is, depending on the notes chosen in the specific scale, some songs will be happier, scarier, adventurous, or even more depressing. 

In conclusion, many factors cause the emotional connection between music and human responses. The frequency change of each note and putting them in a group changes the feeling of the sounds. But other factors like the type of sound and the distance and timing of sounds, also affect the emotional ride.

Sources

E, Matt. “What Is Tension and Release in Music? (and How Do You Create It?).” School of Composition, 20 Jan. 2019, http://www.schoolofcomposition.com/what-is-tension-and-release-in-music/. 

H., Jared. “Musical Key Characteristics & Emotions.” LedgerNote, 17 Sept. 2020, ledgernote.com/blog/interesting/musical-key-characteristics-emotions/. 

Musical Key Characteristics, wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html. 

“The Weeknd – Blinding Lights.” Genius, 29 Nov. 2019, genius.com/The-weeknd-blinding-lights-lyrics. 

Posted in babygoat, Causal Argument, Portfolio BabyGoat | 8 Comments

Research-ComicDub

Posted on November 18, 2020 by comicdub

Saving Lives, One Road At A Time

Forcing all cars on the road to be the same size would greatly increase the survival rate of car-to-car collisions. While driving a Toyota Prius, which would be the most rational choice, a head on collision with a two and a half ton pickup truck or a vehicle almost half the weight and size? Any normal person wouldn’t want either scenario to occur, but most people would make the logical choice of a collision with a car around equal size and weight to their own. This is known to be the better choice based simply on a high school level understanding of physics that drivers would have a lot better chances of surviving a crash with a small car compared to a big one. This reasoning alone makes it clear that forcing all cars on the road to be the same size will greatly decrease the fatality rate of accidents.

I know that this is a very bold statement that would require a great explanation as well as an ample amount of data to be able to back it up. So that is exactly what will be delivered in this paper. To start things off, we need to get a better understanding of the reasoning behind such an audacious claim. This means it is necessary for us to first understand its base components. When German inventor Karl Benz patented his invention of the first ever automobile back in 1886, he most likely never even entertained the idea of car-to-car collisions. Now, over one-hundred years later, according to the CDC, car accidents are the leading cause of death for children and young people 5 to 29 years of age. This statistic is an eye-opener for most people, yet we will all continue to drive our cars, not because we want to, but because we have to as they have become the main form of transportation almost everywhere in the world. With that, it might do good to know exactly why car accidents are so deadly. The main underlying cause is the disparity in the size of vehicles, but that is something which can be addressed.

To help make it so anyone can understand the idea of the disparity in vehicle size causing car accidents to be deadly, I will explain it in the simplest way possible. Heavy objects moving at the same speed as lighter objects have more energy. In terms of vehicles, this means that a large vehicle that is heavy, moving at the same speed as a smaller vehicle that is lighter, will exert more energy, or crushing force, on the smaller vehicle in the occurrence of a car-to-car collision. More crushing force being exerted on the smaller vehicle of the accident means less force being exerted on the larger vehicle granting the driver of the larger vehicle more protection, but granting the driver of the smaller vehicle greater chances for injury or even death.

Going down the chain, we can look at what causes such a disparity in the sizes of vehicles on the roadways in the first place. Just having paid attention to the variety of cars on the road in recent times, may make this seem like a pretty obvious one but it is mostly caused by an increase in the popularity of larger cars, specifically in the United States. This growth in the popularity of larger vehicles, in the case of the United States, is due to a multitude of reasons. One of the reasons can be traced all the way back to the fact that America is not as old as many other countries. In his article titled “Why Americans buy bigger cars than the rest of the world,” author Sanjay Salomon cites a quote from car critic and managing editor for BoldRide, George Kennedy, which states, “In Europe and other areas there are very old infrastructure and small streets in five to seven-hundred-year-old cities… [making it] difficult for larger vehicles to get around.” Another outcome of being a younger country than most, is that America was founded right around the time of the industrial revolution causing there to be a need for larger and more extensive roadways. Because the roadways in America are much larger and expansive than other countries, they lend themselves to larger vehicles. People who have ever been on a long road trip can agree that they are a lot more enjoyable in a large vehicle with plenty of interior space than a cramped sedan with no leg room. The next reason for larger vehicles being popular has to do with the fact that gas prices are relatively cheap in the US compared to most other countries. This means Americans can afford to own gas guzzling SUVs and trucks without spending all of their money on gasoline. Another reason that large vehicles are popular is that they are safer, but as previously explained, they are only safer for the driver of the vehicle and more dangerous to the driver of smaller vehicles. 

So looking back at this causal chain again, growth in popularity of large vehicles caused a greater disparity in vehicle sizes on roadways which, inturn, caused greater fatality rates of car-to-car collisions. There is one very important link missing from this chain that is essentially the main supporting point for my thesis. The missing link lies between the disparity in vehicle sizes and the fatality rates of accidents, and it is known as the crash compatibility of vehicles on roadways. That means the complete version of this chain is something along the lines of: growth in popularity of large vehicles caused a greater disparity in vehicle sizes on roadways causing poor crash compatibility which, inturn, causes greater fatality rates of car-to-car collisions. Defined by the authors of the scientific paper, VEHICLE COMPATIBILITY IN CAR -TO-CAR FRONTAL OFFSET CRASH, “Vehicle [crash] compatibility is defined as the ability of a car to protect both its own occupants and partner car’s occupants.” Vehicle crash compatibility in itself has a couple factors that go into it but, as one can guess from the causal chain, the main factor as defined by the NHTSA, is vehicle mass. In other words, vehicle size is the main factor of crash compatibility, meaning the closer a vehicle is in size to the other vehicle in an accident, the better compatibility they will have. This then implies pretty much my whole thesis, that different sized vehicles have poor crash compatibility which causes car-to-car collisions to be more fatal. This is not just some random claim with nothing to back it up either, there have been tests upon tests and studies upon studies that have proven this to be true. One such example of a statistic that proves this point the best comes from a crash accident report from FARS, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, that highlights the death ratios of accidents between cars and multiple different classes of vehicles. According to their report, in the occurrence of a van to side car collision, the driver’s death ratio is about 1 to 23. An immediate reaction might be something along the lines of, “oh well that’s to be expected of a frontal to side collision between vehicles and has nothing to do with the disparity in vehicle sizes.” That thinking is completely wrong as the van to side car death ratio of 1 to 23 is nearly 4 times the car to side car death ratio of only 1 to 6. The statistic is alarming enough to make me even nervous now when seeing a large van or truck driving near me on the road. And to think, all of this unnecessary unease as well as unnecessary fatalities on the roadways can be traced back to something seeming as harmless as bigger vehicles gaining popularity.

Now to gain an even deeper understanding of all this information, it is essential to understand the deeper meaning behind the phrase “crash compatibility,” not only on a scientific level but on a social level as well. To start, if two vehicles in a car-to-car crash accident have the same death ratio as well as lower numbers of fatalities, then the compatibility of these two vehicles is said to be good. Data collected from FARS (Fatality Analysis Reporting System), shows the ratio of fatalities to different sizes of vehicles in car-to-car collisions. When in an accident between regular cars and trucks, minivans, SUVs, and full-sized vans, cars have always at least double the deaths up to even a 6 to 1 ratio when in collisions with full-sized vans. These deaths can easily be prevented if more attention is brought to the crash incompatibilities between current vehicles on the road. To be fair, with how much data and evidence there is out there from studies already conducted on the subject, I am not the first to believe that current crash incompatibilities are a problem. In Fact there have already been attempts at addressing and fixing this issue.

In the article titled, “Crash compatibility between cars and light trucks: Benefits of lowering front-end energy-absorbing structure in SUVs and pickups,” the author Bryan Baker claims, “In response to growing concerns about incompatibilities in collisions between cars and light trucks (i.e., pickups and SUVs), representatives from automobile manufacturers, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), and other international vehicle safety organizations agreed in 2003 to develop collaborative recommendations to improve vehicle crash compatibility.” This sounds like it’s a step in the right direction like it’s some progress towards addressing the issue of crash compatibility, but it’s not. The collaboration of vehicle specialists formed groups to identify vehicle design features that cause the crash incompatibilities between small and large vehicles. One of the tests conducted by IIHS, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Transport Research Laboratory in the United Kingdom demonstrated that the energy absorbing structures of vehicles seemed to be the leading design feature that needed changing to make cars more crash compatible. Through tests of head-on collisions between vehicles with mismatched energy-absorbing structures it was shown that this resulted in more override and underride. This means that the larger vehicle with a higher energy-absorbing structure would go right over the structure of a smaller car causing the passenger compartment to be crushed, resulting in fatalities. This is where I believe they went wrong. It was pretty much unanimously decided that the only issue with crash compatibility was the mismatch between energy-absorbing structures. This assumption was made after only testing frontal collisions between small and large vehicles meaning accidents from the side of the vehicle are still just as deadly even after structure changes. This is once again due to simply the difference in size and weight of different types of vehicles.

With all that said, true full crash compatibility on roadways can never be achieved unless all cars on the road are forced to be the same size. And recent trends show that this shouldn’t be a back-burner task either, this is something that needs attention brought to it as soon as possible. Big cars are starting to become the new big thing with more people buying and owning SUVs/trucks than ever before. According to Steven Overly at the Washington Post, in his article about the recent rise in popularity of SUVs in the US, titled “Americans have fallen in love with little big cars,” “…sales of crossovers and SUVs took off at a quicker pace than for cars. Then in the last two years, Americans continued to buy more of every category of light trucks while car purchases declined.” This undeniable growth in the popularity of bigger cars puts drivers of small cars in danger by creating a greater chance of getting in an accident with a vehicle larger than their own, which as I have explained before, leads to more fatalities. To add to the urgency of the situation, larger vehicles tend to carry a heftier price than others which means more money for automakers which inturn makes them the new big focus of most car brands. In the same article from The Washington Post, Overly explains how big automobile companies such as Ford and GM are starting to even go as far as planning to shift their car production abroad to focus more on their line of SUVs and trucks here in the US. 

Forcing all cars on roadways to be of the same size would be a very difficult task. Infact, it wouldn’t be crazy to think that this would even be impossible. Nonetheless, forcing cars on the road to be the same size is still the backbone of my thesis and by the end of this, I will prove that it is not only necessary, but also achievable. So, up to this point the evidence makes it clear that the size of two vehicles involved in a car-to-car collision is one of the driving factors that make accidents so fatal. This makes it very clear that something needs to be done about the disparity of car sizes on roadways. Otherwise people will keep dying from something that is known and can be prevented. Going back to the challenge of forcing all cars to be the same size, the simplest and most effective solution would be to construct dedicated roadways for different classes of vehicles. This is a solution that will satisfy most people. Everyone will still have the freedom to choose whether they drive a big or small car, slow or fast one, pretty much whatever kind of car they want with the only downside being they would have to drive on certain designated roadways for their vehicle type. But, this isn’t even really a downside as I’m sure most people would agree that having a much lower chance of dying while driving but having to drive on specific roads isn’t that bad of a deal at all. 

I originally said that this would be the simplest solution to the problem of forcing all cars to be the same size but that doesn’t actually mean that this task would be simple, it’s just the simplest out of the very limited options. Since it won’t be very easy and is pretty controversial, there is without a doubt plenty of arguments against this idea. Out of all the possible arguments, the one that most likely would be the top argument is that the cost of constructing multiple roadways for different sized vehicles is extremely high. This argument is an unsurprisingly very good one. To get an idea of how much it would actually cost we can take a look at an existing idea of truck only highway lanes. This is essentially the exact thing that I want to achieve but for more classes of cars than just trucks. In the article titled, “Issues in The Financing of Truck-Only Lanes,” authors David Forkenbrock and Jim March reference Robert Poole and Peter Samuel who “estimate that, in general, constructing a truck-only facility alongside an existing rural interstate would cost approximately $2.5 million per lane-mile (about $10 million per route-mile for two lanes in each direction), plus land acquisition costs, if applicable.” Currently, the United States Interstate Highway System is 46,876 miles long. This means that just for truck only highway lanes alone, it would cost a staggering $468 billion dollars  to create. And for my thesis to work there would need to be at least two other roadways alongside the current roads meaning that number would be doubled. 

So, as previously stated, the argument that constructing dedicated roadways would be too expensive is a valid one, but there is a reason why I still stand firm on the idea. That is that human lives are priceless and should be treated as such. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, “There were 33,654 fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2018 in which 36,560 deaths occurred.” Some, if not a majority of these deaths could have been prevented if dedicated roadways were constructed. And as stated by the CDC, “Traffic crash deaths resulted in $55 billion in medical and work loss costs in addition to the immeasurable burden on the victims’ families and friends in 2018.” So if dedicated roadways were actually constructed and put into use, the lives that these new roadways save will in turn reduce that $55 billion. Let’s say, hypothetically, that the reduction in fatal car accidents due to dedicated roadways cut the $55 billion in half, bringing the total cost resulting from traffic crash deaths down to $27.5 billion. This means that, each year, the United States would save on average $27.5 billion. With this much money being saved every year, constructing dedicated roadways for different classes of cars can not only be seen as life saving but it also can be seen as a long term investment. Based on the estimated cost of truck only lanes, the cost of dedicated roadways can be estimated to be around $900 billion dollars. That means that it would only take around 32 years for the cost of the roadways to be balanced out by the yearly savings due to less fatal car accidents. Some may think that 32 years sounds like a long time, but compared to the age of the United States, it is not that crazy of a number. The $27.5 billion in savings doesn’t just end when the cost of the roadways is balanced out either, the United States will continue to save the money every year which is the long term investment part of this idea. 

Money aside, constructing dedicated roadways for different classes of vehicles will save lives, thousands of lives in fact. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety claims, “A total of 4,136 people died in large truck crashes in 2018.” Nearly 70% of those deaths were occupants of cars while only 16% were deaths of the large truck drivers. These are thousands of deaths from crashes between only two of the different vehicle classes that could have been avoided if they weren’t driving on the same roadways. Bringing it back to the argument of being too expensive, yes, it is expensive but that money will eventually come back around and even profit will be made all while saving the lives of drivers. That is why forcing all cars on roadways to be of the same size is not only achievable, but also a necessary step towards reducing the fatality rate of accidents.

References

 Bae, H., Lim, J., & Park, K. (n.d.). VEHICLE COMPATIBILITY IN CAR -TO-CAR FRONTAL OFFSET CRASH [PDF]. Korea: Hyundai Motor Company.

Baker, B., Nolan, J., O’Neill, B., & Genetos, A. (2007, May 22). Crash compatibility between cars and light trucks: Benefits of lowering front-end energy-absorbing structure in SUVs and pickups.

Forkenbrock, D. J., & March, J. (2005, September). Issues in The Financing of Truck-Only Lanes.

IIHS. (2019, December). Fatality Facts 2018: Large trucks. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

Joost, W.J. (2012, August 24). Reducing Vehicle Weight and Improving U.S. Energy Efficiency Using Integrated Computational Materials Engineering.

Kahane, C. (1997, January 1). Relationship Between Vehicle Size and Fatality Risk in Model Year 1985-93 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks [PDF]. United States. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Karim, M., Ibrahim, N., Saifizul, A., & Yamanaka, H. (2013, July 04). Effectiveness of vehicle weight enforcement in a developing country using weigh-in-motion sorting system considering vehicle by-pass and enforcement capability.

Overly, S. (2019, April 17). Americans have fallen in love with little big cars.

Thomas, P., & Frampton, R. (1999). Large and Small Cars in Real-World Crashes -Patterns of Use, Collision Types and Injury Outcomes. Annual Proceedings / Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, 43, 101–118.

Williams, J. M. (2010, June 26). Why We Should Favor Heavier Vehicles for Highway Driving.

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Research- cardinal

Posted on November 17, 2020 by cardinal7218

Diversity on Screen and the Superiority of Streaming

John Boyega, a 28-year-old Black actor, likely didn’t intend to capitalize on his success through Netflix when he began his career nearly 10 years ago. Disillusionment, though, can be a powerful force for change. After launching into stardom with a lead role in Disney’s 2015 blockbuster Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Boyega felt as though racism was a defining factor in his experience from fans and the studio alike for the four years he spent in a galaxy far, far away. He described his experience as breaking through into “an industry that wasn’t even ready for [him]” in a 2020 interview for British GQ. Frustrated by the Hollywood machine, Boyega turned his talents elsewhere, signing a deal with Netflix to produce non-English, African films that he likely couldn’t have done otherwise. 

Hollywood has historically lacked support and representation for creatives of color. There has been outcry against it for years, with actors, writers, and consumers alike clamoring for more diversity and representation on movie and television screens. However, little seems to change in any meaningful way when it comes to conventional Hollywood. Maybe a newer, less conventional branch of entertainment is where quality representation must be established. Enter streaming services. With streaming services embracing racial diversity on a scale that Hollywood isn’t keeping up with, it’s possible that streaming could overtake Hollywood. First, consider how important diversity is to the entertainment industry and how Tinseltown is behind the curve.

One long-held belief in Hollywood is that diversity doesn’t sell. Any studio executive would likely say that diversity and inclusion is a noble pursuit, but might add that it’s not the most profitable one. Executives hide beneath concerns about diverse movies not performing well overseas. Granted, the concerns are not entirely unfounded, even in recent years. For example, in 2015, the Chinese poster for the aforementioned Star Wars: The Force Awakens made John Boyega’s character smaller and took out a Latino character entirely. Other similar incidents allow studio executives to say that while America is surely not racist, the rest of the world just might be, and therefore making non-diverse films to rake in money at both domestic and worldwide box offices is the wisest business practice.

This belief, however, is a misconception. Diversity sells, and not just domestically. In UCLA’s 2020 Hollywood diversity report, the numbers pointed to diverse films attracting audiences around the globe. The study, which accounted for 286 theatrical films released over 2018 and 2019, showed that films with diverse casts performed better overseas than non-diverse films. Films with casts made up of 21-50% minorities performed the best overseas, and the trend holds up even at the extreme ends of the spectrum; films with over 50% minority casts performed better than films with less than 11% minority casts.

The overwhelming individual successes of diverse films make the truth even clearer. Take, for example, Marvel’s 2018 hit Black Panther. The superhero film, which featured a predominantly Black cast and a developed, technologically advanced fictional African society, was both a critical and commercial success. Not only was it the first superhero movie to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, it grossed over 1.3 billion dollars at the global box office, making it, currently, the twelfth highest grossing film of all time according to Box Office Mojo’s data. Black Panther also outperformed similar blockbuster films, such as Aquaman and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, that were released in the same year and featured predominantly white lead casts. Furthermore, Black Panther was well-loved enough to break cultural barriers, and not just cultural barriers in America or even ones related to race. In order to host a special screening of Black Panther, Saudi Arabia lifted a ban on movie theaters that had gone on for 35 years. To make the impact even greater, men and women were allowed to sit together, and according to NPR, it was the start of a more widespread reopening of movie theaters in the country. Black Panther was a success in every sense not despite its diversity, but because of its diversity, if the reactions of critics and fans alike are any indication. The world ravenously adored this movie and the groundbreaking diversity it brought to the table, clearly illustrating that diversity is attractive and does, in fact, sell.

Another considerable success is 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Boyega’s breakout role was one of the movie’s two lead characters, and Guatemalan actor Oscar Isaac played a smaller but still narratively important role. Despite China’s theatrical poster seeming to suggest an issue with these characters, the film went on to gross over 2 billion dollars globally, becoming the current fourth highest grossing film of all time as shown by Box Office Mojo’s data. Granted, The Force Awakens and its sequels have diversity-related issues of their own. Some groups of fans threatened to boycott The Force Awakens because it featured a Black lead, and the actors of color expressed feelings of having experienced racism while working on the movies. Regardless of these problems, the proof of diversity’s attractiveness still stands. The numbers don’t lie. The movie was an overwhelming success at the box office, proving that diversity did not actually hinder the movie’s success.

Clearly, diversity is an essential factor in audience reception and box office success, and Hollywood executives have to know that. The statistics are available for everyone to see. It’s reasonable to think that diversity would be their goal, if not for ethical uprightness then for a profit, especially when the desires of the consumer are this clear. Since catering to the desires of the global audience cannot reasonably be the rationale behind inhibiting diversity, perhaps Hollywood executives are withholding some truth. Perhaps the real motivation lies within the Hollywood hierarchy.      

As of early 2020, the overwhelming majority of Hollywood studio CEOs, senior executives, and unit heads were white, according to the UCLA study. White people have held the power in Hollywood since its conception over 100 years ago, they still hold it today, and when people have power, it’s not human nature to easily relinquish it. With white executives making the biggest decisions about what stories to tell and who should tell them, it’s no surprise that white stories are overrepresented. In Hollywood, where risk is inherent in every decision, executives “surround themselves with people who make them feel comfortable, who are a lot like them,” according to Darnell Hunt, the leader of UCLA’s study. Hollywood’s history of over-representing white people has tricked executives into thinking that less diversity equates to less risk, allowing them to rationalize the white monopoly on power in the business. Hiring white people and telling white stories makes white executives feel secure, and they use a disproven economic excuse to cover for their true desire- to remain in power.

Meanwhile, streaming services, such as Netflix and Hulu, branched off from Hollywood and acted on the evidence of diversity’s importance. To evaluate the successes and failures of streaming and Hollywood, though, “good representation” must be understood. Good representation is more than just including non-white characters. The existence of a non-white character does only so much good if that character is “stereotypical” and “one-dimensional” rather than “multi-dimensional” and “multi-faceted,” according to Maryann Erigha’s article “Race, Gender, Hollywood: Representation in Cultural Production and Digital Media’s Potential for Change.” Characters of color need to exist outside of a white lens. They need to hold their own narrative significance. They need to be main characters. As Rashad Robinson, executive director of racial representation organization Color of Change, stated in a Vox interview, the writing for non-white characters has to be “authentic, fair, and have humanity” for it to be good representation. Non-white characters are often written as comic relief or support for a more important white character, pushed to the sidelines without depth of their own. These common practices perpetuate harmful stereotypes and enforce the idea that people of color are less important than white people.

Another aspect of good diversity is what Maryann Erigha refers to as “centrality.” People of color should be “located in institutions that are in the core…of cultural production” in order for the industry to be truly diverse. If people of color don’t have access to core talent agencies or the inner circle of production companies, their stories remain on the periphery. When there isn’t diversity at the center of the industry- which there isn’t, given the unbalanced number of white people in power- diversity doesn’t reach a general audience.

These factors that work against meaningful diversity are all too prevalent in Hollywood. Ashley Nicole Black, a writer for “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” put it succinctly when telling Variety that “the system is racist.” Hollywood was built on white supremacy. White men controlled the business at its inception. White men dictated the structures and the unwritten rules within the business. White men did it all in such a way that allowed themselves to remain in power, so that even today agencies don’t adequately support people of color, locking them out of the business.

Attempts at giving centrality to creatives of color often contribute to mere tokenism. A television show will hire only one writer of color and only one director of color and think that’s good enough. Once creators of color get hired, companies don’t care “how quickly they’re promoted and elevated,” according to Black, which leaves them struggling to rise past low-level positions. Hollywood checks boxes for doing the bare minimum and pretends tokenism is sufficient diversity without making any real change. It’s a struggle for people of color to even tell their own stories, as director Matthew Cherry explained to Variety. It’s common that a story centering on characters of color will be told by a white director or writer because companies want a recognizable name or impressive resumé behind the camera. The problem with that is “you can’t get credits if you don’t get opportunities,” and white people have historically been the ones getting opportunities, says Cherry. Since the current status quo benefits the white Hollywood executives in power, they won’t try to change the system in meaningful ways. It might not be worth hoping for. A structure with rot running that deep cannot be salvaged. A new structure, though, could be the solution.

Netflix changed the entertainment game when it launched a video streaming function in 2007. Streaming evolved from being merely a convenient way to access pre-existing content to being on the cutting edge of original content. Streaming has changed the face of the entertainment industry with services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ offering scores of original TV shows and movies that garner audience and critical approval alike. Streaming is an entirely new branch of TV and film, which means its structure is more malleable as far as diversity and inclusion. The system isn’t mired in a century of white supremacy.

Already, the difference between streaming and the more conventional side of Hollywood is clear. Streaming services have more characters of color in their shows, largely in part because it’s easier for creators of color to tell their stories. The people behind streaming platforms seem to better understand that diversity isn’t just about quantity, but quality as well. Their effort is reflected in positive audience responses, where as much as 65% of consumers of color feel that streaming shows are “more reflective of America’s diversity” than their network cable counterparts according to a recent Horowitz Research survey quoted by Multichannel News. Streaming services can deliver the diversity that Hollywood is too far gone to incorporate.

The progressiveness of streaming services could significantly put companies such as Netflix and Hulu ahead of the game. A forward-thinking business listens attentively to what younger audiences want and finds out how to deliver it in the most satisfactory way possible. The coveted 18-34 age demographic wants diversity, and teenaged audiences want it even more. Knowing that today’s youth are tomorrow’s primary consumers, it’s logical for streaming services to create content that will please the younger demographic, gain their trust, and make them long-term customers. The digital nature of these platforms makes staying on top of trends more intuitive and also more naturally establishes a connection with younger, tech-oriented audiences.

Given their social advantage, streaming services could grow larger than Hollywood and cause the old Tinseltown machine to fizzle into irrelevance. Audiences trust streaming services with diversity, but streaming wins audiences over in more ways than that. The technological advantage streaming has in our increasingly technological world cannot be denied. People are drawn to “on-demand” entertainment, described by media scholar Amanda Lotz in her book The Television Will Be Revolutionized and quoted in the journal Popular Communication as programming “produced in any decade” that can be watched anywhere, from “‘living room’ sets” to “portable devices.” Also, as far as specifically television programming is concerned, consumers are cutting the cord according to Benjamin Burroughs’s article “House of Netflix: Streaming media and digital lore.” Between the prices of cable and the fact that streaming offers not only more diverse content but more content in general, people are ditching cable and switching to non-wired, non-network content delivery. Granted, the cable industry is stable, but its allure is coming into question. It no longer has complete control over consumers’ television habits. In the future, streaming could very well become the dominant television industry. It could become the dominant film and TV industry in general. 

Also consider how streaming services have the ability to not only keep tabs on what audiences want but to deliver content tailored to an individual through algorithms- a luxury film and television don’t have as they are not digital platforms. Algorithms give a content provider “insight into every second of the viewing experience,” says Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, in the book Distribution Revolution: Conversations about the Digital Future of Film and Television as quoted in Popular Communication. Content providers can see exactly what people are watching, how many people are watching it, how long an individual watches a certain program, which shows and movies are popular in a given part of the world with a given demographic, and more. Relate this back to diversity. Not only do streaming services know how diverse their audience is, they also see firsthand that content with diverse casts and writers is watched by a lot of people. The knowledge delivered by the algorithms leads to action. If audiences want diversity, then streaming services will deliver the highest quality diverse content they can in order to win over customers, thus gaining an edge over Hollywood.

Another factor worth mentioning is the COVID-19 pandemic. When the world had no choice but to stay inside, many people turned to entertainment to bide their time, and streaming services hooked a significant amount of new customers. In the case of Netflix, the number of new subscribers reached as high as over ten million between March and May 2020. In the United Kingdom, as much as 55% of adults who newly subscribed to streaming during the pandemic said that they would continue their subscriptions and keep up their watching habits even as lockdown restrictions lessened, according to the UK Office of Communications’ Media Nations 2020 study. Major studios also tested the water of digital distribution, releasing new movies digitally since audiences physically could not go to theaters. The pandemic proved how valuable and enticing streaming and digital content is to audiences and businesses alike. The industry no doubt took note of the role that streaming played during lockdown, and it could mean a shift in focus for how entertainment is delivered and consumed. As more and more people get hooked on streaming, the likelihood of streaming becoming the dominant form of entertainment increases. 

The pandemic also made racial diversity more relevant than ever. The issue of racial equality came into public awareness on an unavoidable level during the lockdown months with Black Lives Matter protests happening across the globe. The ripple effect of this social revolution inevitably makes its way to entertainment, as mainstream art is often expected to reflect real life. Non-diverse casts will no longer be acceptable. Stereotyping will no longer be acceptable. Hollywood needs to step up, unless they come up with an out.

There is another potential future for the entertainment industry that lies one step beyond streaming gaining dominance. Hollywood might simply absorb the streaming industry. Instead of putting the work in to make Hollywood comply with social demands, Hollywood can absorb an industry that already did the work. At the end of the day, Hollywood is a business. The largest possible profit is the goal. If diversity will bring in that profit, then Hollywood studios can essentially hire others to take care of diversity for them by purchasing companies like Netflix. Studios won’t have to labor over changing their system at a fundamental level and they can expand their assets. Major Hollywood studios have already shown interest in the streaming realm, with some even joining the game. In addition to releasing movies digitally during the COVID pandemic, Hollywood studios such as Disney, WarnerMedia, and NBCUniversal have released their own streaming services. Streaming could very well become the main form of entertainment distribution, it just might happen through Hollywood studios.

While Hollywood fails to make the connection between diversity and profitability while upholding an inherently racist structure, streaming services deliver content with diversity both in front of and behind the camera. With convenience and digital interfaces on their side along with diverse stories, it would be no surprise if streaming services gained dominance over conventional Hollywood one day, even if Hollywood ends up facilitating that shift to remain in the game. It’s a bit of a cynical endgame, and likely not what people had in mind when wishing for change in Hollywood and celebrating diversity in streaming. Diversity is diversity, though, and a win in any capacity can be accepted amidst the ongoing fight for equality.

References

Burroughs, B. (2018). House of Netflix: Streaming media and digital lore. Popular Communication, 17(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2017.1343948

Deggans, E. (2014, February 13). Redefining Hollywood: ‘Diversity Makes More Money’. Retrieved November 05, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/02/12/275907930/redefining-hollywood-diversity-makes-more-money

Erigha, M. (2015). Race, Gender, Hollywood: Representation in Cultural Production and Digital Media’s Potential for Change. Sociology Compass, 9(1), 78–89. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12237

Famurewa, J., Maoui, Z., & Johnston, K. (2020, September 02). John Boyega: ‘I’m the only cast member whose experience of Star Wars was based on their race’. Retrieved October 09, 2020, from https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/john-boyega-interview-2020

Fang, M. (2018, February 27). Audiences Want Diversity In Hollywood. Hollywood’s Been Slow To Get The Message. Retrieved October 27, 2020, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hollywood-diversity-study-black-panther_n_5a954898e4b0699553cc3cc8

Hunt, D., & Ramón, A. (2020, February). Hollywood Diversity Report 2020: A Tale of Two Hollywoods [PDF]. Los Angeles: UCLA College of Social Sciences.

Lopez, R. (2017, November 06). Despite Dollars in Diversity, Hollywood Still Averse to Making Inclusive Films. Retrieved October 27, 2020, from https://variety.com/2017/film/news/diversity-box-office-winners-hollywood-1202603438/

Low, E. (2020, June 30). The Reckoning Over Representation: Black Hollywood Speaks Out, But Is the Industry Listening? Retrieved October 12, 2020, from https://variety.com/2020/biz/features/black-representation-hollywood-inclusion-diversity-entertainment-1234693219/

Rajan, A. (2020, August 05). TV watching and online streaming surge during lockdown. Retrieved October 27, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53637305

Top Lifetime Grosses. (2020, November 04). Retrieved November 05, 2020, from https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross/?area=XWW

Umstead, R. (2019, December 07). Diverse Characters Increasing On-Screen, but Viewers Want Better Portrayals. Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://www.nexttv.com/blog/diverse-images-increasing-screen-viewers-want-more

White, A. (2017, August 28). How can TV and movies get representation right? We asked 6 Hollywood diversity consultants. Retrieved October 09, 2020, from https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/8/28/16181026/hollywood-representation-diversity-tv-movies

Wolf, J. (2020, October 22). 2020 Hollywood Diversity Report: A different story behind the scenes. Retrieved November 05, 2020, from https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/2020-hollywood-diversity-report

Posted in cardinal, Portfolio Cardinal, Research | Leave a comment

Bibliography – gooferious

Posted on November 17, 2020 by gooferious
  1. Facts & Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics

Background: In this article published by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, many mental illness disorders such as anxiety, depression, phobias and more are described and some are provided with statistics. Anxiety for example effects 40 million people in the US alone. Depression sometimes coincides with anxiety but depression only effects about 17 million people in the US.

How I Used It: With the statistics provided regarding anxiety and depression, this information will be used to contribute as an example that will help back up the thesis statement that: forcing young adults into therapy rather than the voluntary choice will increase the likelihood of them becoming outstanding members of society.

2. Oort, F., Greaves‐Lord, K., Verhulst, F., Ormel, J., & Huizink, A. (2009, April 14). The developmental course of anxiety symptoms during adolescence: The TRAILS study. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2009.02092.x

Background: This article goes into depth about the stages of adolescence and how the anxiety levels during these stages go up and down. As described in the article, low levels of anxiety start off once school-children become teenagers. As time goes on and teenagers start to grow up and experience new things, the levels of anxiety start to rise; depending on the person determines if these levels of anxiety are vast or minimal. Anxiety in general seems to have a greater effect on women more than men.

How I Used It: With the information gathered from the article, key points were addressed regarding how the well-being of teens is effected by mental disorders. The key points will also be used to help back up the idea that sometimes teens don’t understand what they are going through and need guidance.

3. Beljouw, I. V., & Verhaak, P. (2010, January 01). Characteristics and one-year outcome of untreated anxiety and depression. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://www-clinicalkey-com.ezproxy.rowan.edu/#!/content/playContent/1-s2.0-S0924933810702212?returnurl=null&referrer=null

Background: According to the words of Beljouw and Verhaak, a study that was conducted by the Netherlands Study of Anxiety and Depression (NESDA) came to the conclusion after diagnosing 743 patients with either anxiety or depression that almost half of them expressed a need for care regarding these mental disorders that could not be met. The remaining half of patients, which was split into a fourth each; concluded that they either did not perceive a mental disorder or did not perceive a need for care regarding their mental disorder.

How I Used It: With the information provided, I used it to further my point that some people do not understand the severity of their mental disorder and need assistance to help rehabilitate themselves in a way that is best for society.

4. Fenton, M. C., Keyes, K. M., Martins, S. S., & Hasin, D. S. (2010, October 01). The Role of a Prescription in Anxiety Medication Use, Abuse, and Dependence. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://ajp-psychiatryonline-org.ezproxy.rowan.edu/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2010.09081132

Background: This article goes into depth about the dark side of prescription medication, more importantly how it can be used in unethical ways. Take for example, college students who are highly stressed when it comes to their classes. One would hope they can handle their stress in a healthy manner but the case turns out to be the opposite as they are more likely to associate themselves in buying illegal substances. Another thing to take away from the article is the idea that many people with these issues regarding using medication have not been given the right set of resources that be prove beneficial to their health.

How I Used It: According to the authors and their shared ideologies, I have concluded to use their information to help my argument that therapy is a much safer and more logical approach to trauma rather than medication. As stated in the article, many college students have access to un-prescribed meds yet not many have access to valuable resources such as therapy.

5. Schomerus, G., Stolzenburg, S., Freitag, S., Speerforck, S., Janowitz, D., Evans-Lacko, S., . . . Schmidt, S. (2019, June). Stigma as a barrier to recognizing personal mental illness and seeking help: A prospective study among untreated persons with mental illness. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://web-a-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.rowan.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=e04d8bd0-37f6-44a5-8ba6-b7e35b412e44%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=136523962&db=a9h

Background: The authors bring up the word stigma to define and understand what it means to those who are apart of the mental health community. In this community consists of those who suffer from a mental disorder, are involved with someone with a mental disorder and those professionally trained to assist or guide those with a mental disorder. Stigma can be described as a barrier that brings upon shame/disgrace on a set group of people, in this case we are discussing those with a mental disorder. Stigma has played an impactful role in the lives of those who suffer from a mental disorder, these impacts are more often negative than positive.

How I Used It: In my paper I used this information to help explain one of my key points that we as people need to understand that we are not that different and that some of us need a little more influence than others. By influence I am referring to those who need therapy to help overcome a past experience or an ongoing trauma. Stigma is just another way for people to try to bring others down but not if people are open to new methods that can be in the long run what is best for them.

6. Wehler, H. (n.d.). Psychoanalysis and History. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://bit.ly/2UcohFJ

Background: Wehler wrote that therapy could be an effective treatment to help uncover the unconscious motives of why we act the way we act. He describes it as: “therapy can help victims understand the problems in their lives that occurred due to trauma and to help find methods that can best reduce their inner demons and make the ‘reality distorting’ effects bearable to live with.” Some of the methods that Wehler was writing about include: learning how to cope, learning ways to relax, learning ways that help improve problem solving skills.

How I Used It: With the information provided, I will use this context to help further explain why therapy is the way to go for people with mental health issues.

7. Lente, A. (n.d.). 12 Benefits of Having a Mental Illness. Retrieved October 10, 2020, from https://themighty.com/2017/05/benefits-of-having-a-mental-illness/

Background: The premise of this article basically states twelve facts that people have come up with to help those with a mental illness not feel bad of about themselves. Each fact gives a life lesson in a way that could be applied to many people. People that suffer from a mental illness have used these lessons to help cope with their lives and in some instances help those around them.

How I Used It: I used the information from this article to help give my paper an emotional side that readers can relate to.

8. McNulty, J. P. (n.d.). Commentary: Mental Illness, Society, Stigma, and Research. Retrieved October 10, 2020, from https://bit.ly/2Uybv4w

Background: In this article, the author James P. McNulty gives a description about his life and how it had effected him. McNulty was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and after a suicide attempt at the age of 38, voluntarily placed himself into a rehabilitation center to help motivate him back into being a outstanding member of society. Before institutionalizing himself though, McNulty experienced a form of stigma towards him by a being told by a nurse that people like him don’t go back to work. This is insinuating that people who suffer from mental illnesses are considered to be not curable as stated by that nurse.

How I Used It: This article highlights key issues that people with mental health problems endure. Stigma, discrimination and jokes are things people with theses issues deal with on a regular basis; it can be used in my paper to illustrate that therapy is definitely needed to help make sure people do not go through these problems.

9. Bjornsson, A. S., Sibrava, N. J., Beard, C., Moitra, E., & Weisberg, R. B. (2014, December). Two-year course of generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder with agoraphobia in a sample of Latino adults. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.rowan.edu/docview/1515979365?accountid=13605&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

Background: In this article, a study was conducted to view anxiety disorders among Latino adults. Culturally these types of disorders are frown upon and taken as the people are simply lazy and do not want to work for what they want. This proves to be not helpful as it only puts those Latinos who are suffering from these disorders in a deeper hole than they already are. The study concluded that Latinos are not as likely to recover from these low points in life as they lack support from those around them and do not have access to the same resources as others.

How I Used It: This information will prove to be essential as it was used to help convey the idea that minorities do not stand a chance with these disorders as their families will not support them. Thus mandatory therapy will in a way, give them the help they need and maybe in turn get their families to understand that mental health is important.

10. Fitzpatrick, K., Darcy, A., & Vierhile, M. (2017, June 06). Delivering Cognitive Behavior Therapy to Young Adults With Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety Using a Fully Automated Conversational Agent (Woebot): A Randomized Controlled Trial. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://mental.jmir.org/2017/2/e19/

Background: The article reads that people who self-identify as having symptoms of anxiety and depression will be put into a self-help program to see if there is a chance of rehabilitation. Many people initially stated that they suffered from symptoms so severe that they could not function properly. The data that was first collected appeared to show that mental health problems are both increasing in prevalence and severity. While the study concludes that this is a form of help, it is not guaranteed to help all those who go through self-help programs.

How I Used It: While the study did conclude that self-help programs are a method of treatment for anxiety and depression. The participants while being studied suffered from symptoms so severe that they had difficulty functioning. Therapy, another form of treatment, has been proven to be more significantly useful than self-help programs.

Posted in Bibliography, gooferious, Portfolio Gooferious | Leave a comment

Grammar Exercise-Aquarela

Posted on November 17, 2020 by aquarela

Original: If a primary caretaker has a negative attitude toward their child it increases the risk that they’re child will grow up hostile towards others. And its not just aggression toward others that results from child abuse; a large amount of children raised by abusive parents also harm themselves. The reason for this negative behavior is because the children don’t learn appropriate techniques for handling lifes disappointments. If you aren’t raised with coping skills, your much to likely to act ‘inappropriately’ then if you have developed more reasonable approaches. The affect of poor parenting as reported by Dr. Geoffrey Dahmer in “The Bully Papers”, is that everyone gets the child they deserve.

Rewrite: If a primary caretaker has a negative attitude towards their child it increases the risk that their child will grow up hostile towards others. And it is not just aggression toward other children that results from child abuse; a large amount of children raised by abusive parents also harm themselves, because the children don’t learn appropriate techniques for handling life’s disappointments. If you are not raised with coping skills, you are much more likely to act ‘inappropriately’ then if you have developed more reasonable approaches. The effect of poor parenting as reported by Dr. Geoffrey Dahmer in “The Bully Papers”, is that everyone gets the child they deserve.

Posted in Aquarela, Grammar Exercise | 2 Comments

Visual Rhetoric-Aquarela

Posted on November 17, 2020 by aquarela

The Boxer – Minding Your Head

00:00-00:02: The video starts in a boxing ring, with a chair in the back and we see a blurry window behind it. The environment is very dark. The camera starts to move slowly in the right direction, we first see a huge dark column. And then a man appears in the ring between two boxing bags, behind four ribbons of the ring. He is apparently training. There are a few frames on the wall, which is a very common decoration plan in such places, in order to motivate people.

As the place is not illuminated and we only see a man silhouette in the background, the video is possibly giving us hints about its target. Him being alone and training in front of a vacant chair tells us that he might have some difficulties with other people. Although it is very common to train with a boxing bag, people usually prefer training with others, since they are in a place where everyone has the same purpose.

00:03-00:04: We see a middle-aged man looking at the camera. He is blond and has blue eyes. His lips are thin and red. His eyebrows are thin as well and not that salient. We observe two wrinkles on his forehead. He is in front of a white-grey wall with a light line on it. The camera is zoomed on his face only, we don’t know if he is standing or sitting. He is not smiling, just looking at the camera. We can say that he is possibly about to cry or just cried because of his blurry eyes.

00:05-00:06: He is sitting on a bench in the locker room. He is alone, there is one more bench in front of him, which is vacant. The bag on the floor and the cloth on the bench seem to belong to him. The room has typical green lockers, none of them is opened. The room’s door is beige and it is closed as well. Right next to the door, we see a shelf full of boxing materials. The video remains not well illuminated, yet his shadow appears on the wall. The board, which is on the same side of the wall, seems to be inelaborate with three torn papers on it.

His position gives us the impression that he is unhappy and needs help.

00:07-00:08: The camera zooms in on his face and focuses on his eyes. He is not looking at the camera. We can see that he is sweaty, probably because of the training he had.

00:08-00:12: another man appears on the scene. The man is older than him, seems to be friendly. They are talking and laughing. The man puts his hand on his knee in a friendly gesture, trying to show some support.

00:12-00:13: He appears on the ring again, this time the scene is much more illuminated than before. He seems to be more energetic. As the room is more illuminated now, we can see that there is a mirror on the wall and some posters. A few chairs are in the back but no one is sitting there. He is still alone on the ring, but this time the door is open. We see the refugee signal on the door, it is on and shows where to exit in case of an emergency. I believe this is a way to say he is being able to reach some help.

00:14-00:15: He keeps training.

00:16-00:18: The camera zooms in on his face again, he seems to be very focused on training.

00:18-00:22: The man who was with him in the locker room is with him on the ring. They are training together. They both seem to be happy. They are smiling and kidding with each other.

00:23-00:24: He is smiling and talking to someone. But we only see his face.

00:25:00:30: We see him with three men, they are talking. He seems to be very content with them. He is talking and the others are listening to him. They are all smiling.

Posted in Aquarela, Visual Rhetoric | 1 Comment

Research- runnerd4

Posted on November 17, 2020 by runnerd4

Let’s Increase the Speed Limit!

Imagine an America in which the speed limits on the highways are even higher, maybe something comparable to the German Autobahn. As that concept may seem concerning to some, it should not be. Although it may seem counterintuitive, through intense research, the conclusion can be drawn that increasing the speed limit does not increase the crash rate. There are actually numerous possible positive effects that could result from an increase of the speed limit.

It is important to have a strong understanding of the characteristics of a highway before considering increasing the speed limit on them across the nation. In America, we have interstate highways and other arterials. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation in their article “Road Function Classifications,” the interstate system is made up of arterial roads that “provide the highest level of mobility and the highest speeds over the longest interrupted distance.” Interstate highways pass through several states. An example of an interstate highway is I-95 which begins near the Canadian border in Maine and ends in Miami Florida. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation in their article “Road Function Classifications,” the category of other arterials “include freeways, multilane highways, and other important roadways that supplement the interstate system,” and connect busy areas like cities and industrialized areas. An example of these arterials is NJ- Route 55. The interstate system and other arterial roads fit in the category of roads in which the speed limits should be increased. 

Next, it is important to understand some of the main factors involved in the causation of accidents. Accident-prone interactions, or APIs, are arguably the most important concept to understand. According to David Navone in his study “The Paradox of Driving Speed,” APIs are instances in which two vehicles come in close proximity of each other. There are multiple types of APIs. According to Navone, the four types are “(a) when cars moving on intersecting roads come at about the same time to an intersection, (b) when cars moving in opposite directions on the same undivided road pass each other, (c) when cars moving in the same direction on different lanes of the same road momentarily drive next to each other, and (d) when a car coming from the rear of another one switches lanes next to the other one (either by switching to an adjacent lane to overtake it, or by returning to the original lane).”  It is a very simple concept; when two vehicles come near each other, an API occurs. Increasing the speed limit on highways would decrease the amount of time that each API takes to occur, decreasing the likelihood of the occurrence of an accident.

The next main factor is distractions. There are many different types of distractions that a driver experiences in their commute. Anything that makes it so the driver does not give their full attention to the road is a distraction. According to the CDC in the article “Distracted Driving,” there are three main categories of distractions; visual, cognitive, and manual. An example of a visual distraction is looking at something in the car, such as the radio. A cognitive distraction would be doing anything that takes the driver’s mind off of driving and onto another subject. Manual distractions include distractions that have the driver’s hands off the wheel such as phone usage or eating. One very common distraction nowadays is drivers selecting music to play in the car from their phone. Apps such as Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, and Youtube put millions of songs in the driver’s hands and cause a new distraction every few minutes when the driver chooses a new song. 

There was also a good point made in the article from the NHTSA called “Distractions in and Out of the Vehicle” when the author explained that there are also distractions outside of the vehicle including “crash scenes, road construction, and people, places, or things of interest alongside the road.” Paying attention to these distractions causes the driver to no longer have their full attention on the road, even though these distractions are on the road. The driver becomes more focused on that view than on the cars around them.

Finally, there is the concept of critical driving decisions. Critical driving decisions are the decisions made by drivers that either cause or avoid accidents. Many of these decisions occur at intersections. One example is when a driver needs to time their left turn at a green light or a stop sign based on the incoming traffic. If the driver times their turn incorrectly, there could be a few results. The driver could end up hitting or getting hit by the car coming straight through in the intersection, causing a head-on or t-bone style accident. Next, the driver could force the incoming traffic to slam on their brakes, setting up the scene for a possible rear-end accident for the oncoming drivers. Finally, the driver could go into the turn at a speed unfit for the turn and have a whole different type of accident by losing control of their vehicle. Timing the turn correctly would allow the driver to avoid each of these possible accident situations. An example of a critical driving decision not at an intersection is deciding when to change lanes on a highway. If the driver decides to change lanes too early, he or she could get rear-ended by the vehicle traveling in another lane, which could lead to a multiple car accident as everyone slams on their breaks. These critical driving decisions are exactly what their name describes them as, critical. Making the right decision allows the driver to go on with their day and commute, but making the wrong decision could very easily lead to an accident with serious injury or death involved for any of the drivers. 

Having a strong understanding of the category of roads being considered to increase the speed limit is very important. This category is arterial roads which include major highways and the interstate system. It is also important to understand the contributors to the causation of accidents such as API rates, distractions, and critical driving decisions. Without understanding these topics, it is easy to be falsely led into believing that speeding is what causes accidents. Considering the other contributors makes it simple to see that increasing the speed limit is not as dangerous as one would initially believe. There are many other more prevalent contributors than speeding in the causation of accidents.

The popular belief is that speeding causes accidents, and while on the surface that statement may be true, it is not the full truth. There are many other key factors in the causation of accidents that include accident-prone interactions, distractions, and critical driving decisions. 

One main circumstance in the risk of causation of accidents is the amount of time that two cars spend next to each other. In a 2002 study conducted by David Nanon, he called these “accident-prone interactions” (API), which previously described are simply situations where two cars come near to each other. The concept is very simple, a reduction in the time two cars spend near each other leads to a reduction in accident rates. The study showed that while APIs have a direct relationship with the number of accidents, speed has an inverse relationship with the number of APIs.

In his study, he found that each type of API was either unaffected or reduced by greater speeds. For type-A APIs, involving two cars arriving at an intersection at the same time, the number of encounters was unaffected by greater speeds, but in the write up for the study, Nanon explained that this type of situation was more or less irrelevant to highway driving because it was considering interactions at intersections. A higher frequency of type-A APIs would increase the rate of accidents substantially due to the critical driving decisions made at an intersection. 

The frequency of type-B APIs, involving cars moving past each other travelling in opposite directions, was reduced at greater speeds. Nanon explained that driving at higher speeds decreases the time that drivers spend on the road and decrease the number of cars that they come in contact with. Decreasing the number of cars that they come in contact with traveling in the opposite direction definitely would help decrease the rates of accidents on highways. On the other hand, an increase in the number of cars traveling in the opposite direction going past each other would cause an increase in the rate of accidents on a road. 

Next, the frequency of type-C APIs, involving two cars passing each other travelling in the same direction, was also greatly reduced at higher driving speeds. Nanon explained that the main reason for this is because the two cars would be traveling past each other in the same direction at such a fast rate, the amount of time they spend next to each other would be minimal. The less time two cars spend next to each other, the lower risk of accidents. 

Finally, the number of type-D APIs, involving lane merging, would also be decreased when traveling at a higher rate of speed. Like all of the other situations, the less time two cars spend next to each other, the lower the chance of an accident. Each type of API has a great risk of accident occurence, so decreasing the API rates would lead to a decrease in accident rates.

Next, another key factor in the causation of accidents is distractions. According to a study conducted by the National Highway Safety Administration and Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, “Nearly 80 percent of crashes and 65 percent of near-crashes involved some form of driver inattention within three seconds before the event.” This evidence shows that distractions play a huge role in the causation of accidents. When drivers become distracted , they usually take their eyes off of the road, which leads them to not be able to see any cars or pedestrians in front of them. Distractions put the driver and other drivers at risk. 

The main form of distraction seen all over today is texting and driving. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “ Sending or reading a text takes your eyes off the road for 5 seconds. At 55 mph, that’s like driving the length of an entire football field with your eyes closed.” This is a serious issue, especially at high speeds. If a driver travels the distance of a football field without paying attention to the road, that would greatly increase the risk of an accident, just like any other form of distraction.

Another common form of distraction while driving is checking the speedometer. Most drivers check the speedometer constantly to ensure that they are not going above the speed limit. In a study conducted by Safe Speed, it was found that it takes the human eyes 0.91 seconds on average to check the speedometer and refocus on the road. That fact is concerning considering that an accident can occur just in a split second. 

Next, another key factor in the causation of accidents is the critical driving decisions most commonly made at intersections. When the driver makes the wrong decision, there is a much higher risk of an accident occurring than if the driver made the correct decision. For example, if a driver timed a left turn at an intersection with oncoming traffic incorrectly, it could very well likely lead to an accident. According to Choi from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “In the case of 22.2 percent of crashes, the critical event was turning left….” Making the wrong decision leads to an accident occurring. Although making these decisions at a higher speed could be more difficult, most of these decisions are not commonly made on highways because highways generally do not have intersections.

It is extremely important to understand that speed is not the only factor in accidents. Many other factors are just as important if not more important than speed, and ignoring these factors does a disservice to the understanding of the role that speed plays in accidents. The APIs are arguably the most important in the causation of accidents, and the study shows that higher speed either has no effect or reduces the frequency of APIs. A lower number of APIs would lead to a lower number of accidents. Next, distractions are a huge factor in the causation of accidents. One of these distractions is checking the speedometer and without having to worry about speeding, that distraction could be eliminated on highways altogether. Highways are also designed to decrease the number of distractions through strategies such as cutting the number of billboards. Finally, critical driving decisions are another key factor in the causation of accidents. Making the wrong decision increases the rate of accidents. Although it is difficult to make these decisions at higher speeds, the majority of these decisions are rarely made on highways.

Opponents of increasing the speed limit are quick to jump to the conclusion that increasing the speed limit would inevitably lead to an increase in the number of crashes. While we do not favor raising the speed limit on local and collector roads, the benefits of raising the speed limit on major highways are clear. Increasing the speed limit on major highways would with some positive effects such as an increased flow of traffic, quicker travel times, and a contributing to driver concentration, all while reducing the number of crashes per mile driven.

In the article “Dangers of Increasing Highway Speed Limits,” the author quoted Russ Rader from USA Today who stated, “Higher speeds mean more crashes and more severe ones.” Although it is true that crashes that occur at higher rates of speeds result in higher fatality rates, it is not true that increasing the speed limit on highways leads to higher crash rates. The author of this article provides no evidence to prove that crash rates increase from a higher speed limit. He/she only cited that the increase in speed limit increased the fatality rate. Based on the article “The paradox of driving speed: Two adverse effects on highway accident rate,” it has been proven that an increase of speed limit on highways actually leads to a lower API rate, which in turn leads to a lower crash rate. The faster two cars travel past each other, the less time they are next to each other. This is true for all types of API interactions. It is fascinating, the lower the amount of time two vehicles spend next to each other, the lower the crash rate even at a higher rate of speed. 

Critics of increasing the speed limit also like to ignore the multiple advantages that would come along with increasing the speed limit on major highways. One main advantage would be increased traffic flow. In the report from MDPI titled “The Effect of Posted Speed Limit on the Dispersion of Traffic Flow Speed,” the organization found that an increase in speed limit is directly related to the increase of the speed of traffic flow. Their study found that an increase of posted speed limit by 20 km/h increased the speed of traffic flow by 18 km/h. The increased traffic flow would reduce if not eliminate the hassle from standstill traffic. Increased traffic flow leads to the next advantage of increasing the speed limit, quicker travel times.

It is obvious that an increase in speed limit would lead to a decrease in the amount of time that is spent on the road. Long commutes have been proven to increase stress levels. In an article published by the City Clock Magazine titled “Think driving stress is ruining your life? Apparently it is,” they found that driving leads to people experiencing many indicators of stress like anxiety, high heart rate, and high blood pressure and those who drive more take more sick days and end up in the hospital more often. Each of these effects could lead to more detrimental effects if they continue. The same article also explained that “It has also been found that the longer you spend driving results in lower productivity for your employer.” Low level of productivity could lead to someone losing their job and could be detrimental to their workplace. Driving clearly takes a toll on people and decreasing the amount of time they are driving can lead to many positive effects. Spending less time on the road gives people more time to complete their work and most importantly, more time to spend with their family and friends. The higher level of efficiency, more time spent with loved ones, and lower stress levels would allow people to be happier and even more financially stable. 

Increasing the speed limit would also lead drivers to concentrate more on the road. Multiple distractions would be cut out of their commutes such as constantly checking the speedometer and surveying the area for police cars. If the driver does not constantly take their eyes off the road to check the speedometer, she is able to be more vigilant to the area around them, instead of having to constantly worry about the speed that they are traveling at. The same effect occurs when drivers are no longer constantly checking all around them for police. Checking for police takes an even greater toll on the concentration of the driver on the road. Drivers check behind themselves, in front of themselves, within the trees, and on the side of the road just in case they catch a glimpse of a Ford Explorer or a Dodge Charger. 

Having a speed limit that is higher and more comparable to the speed at which people already drive on the highway would also make people take the speed limit more seriously. For example, the speed limit on the New Jersey Turnpike is 65 miles per hour, but everybody knows that if they go below 80 to 85 miles an hour they are likely to get ran off the road. If the speed limit was 80, maybe people would actually take it seriously. Taking the law seriously also improves the relationship between the people and law enforcement. There would be much less arguing with police officers over tickets if the speed limit actually represented the speed at which most people are actually driving.

The critics of the concept of increasing the speed limit on major highways like to believe that the only effect that would come from doing so would be an increase in accident rate. Not only is that refutation false, they also ignore the positive effects that would come from increasing the speed limit. Increasing the speed limit would increase the flow of traffic leading the less stand-still traffic. A higher flow of traffic would lead to quicker commute times. Spending less time on the road is important considering that longer commutes lead to stress and lower productivity. Finally increasing the speed limit would lead to less distractions for the driver, which leads to a higher level of concentration. Critics should consider these points before making the decision of whether or not to support the increase of speed limits on major highways

All in all, after deep evaluation of statistics and evidence, it is clear that the positive effects of increasing the speed limit on highways surpass the negative effects. Although the fatality rate is higher in high speed accidents, the accident rate is reduced at higher speeds. Some of the numerous positive effects include decreased crash rates, higher traffic flow, and shorter commute times. It is time for highway departments to take increasing the speed limits into serious consideration.

References

Intersection Safety Issue Briefs. (2009, November). Retrieved October 09, 2020, from https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/other_topics/fhwasa10005/brief_2.cfm

U.S Department of Transportation. (2000, November). Road Function Classifications. Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/data_facts/docs/rd_func_class_1_42.pdf

Navon, D. (2002, January 30). The paradox of driving speed: Two adverse effects on highway accident rate. Retrieved September 25, 2020, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457502000118

VTTI and NHTSA. (2006, April 21). Findings Released On Real-world Driver Behavior, Distraction, Crash Factors. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060420233031.htm

Currin, A. (2020, October 05). U Drive. U Text. U Pay. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving

Temp. (2004). The Speedo. Retrieved September 25, 2020, from http://www.safespeed.org.uk/speedo.html

Choi, E. (2010, September). Crash Factors in Intersection-Related Crashes: An On-Scene Perspective. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from Crash Factors in Intersection-Related Crashes: An On-Scene Perspective

Dangers of Increasing Highway Speed Limits. (2015, April 02). Retrieved November 03, 2020, from https://drivingschool.net/dangers-increasing-highway-speed-limits/

Navon, D. (2002, January 30). The paradox of driving speed: Two adverse effects on highway accident rate. Retrieved September 25, 2020, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457502000118

Gao, C., Li, Q., & Yang, J. (2019). The Effect of Posted Speed Limit on the Dispersion of Traffic Flow Speed (Rep.). MDPI.

Think driving stress is ruining your life? Apparently it is. (2014, August 22). Retrieved November 03, 2020, from http://www.cityclock.org/driving-stress/

Posted in Portfolio RunnerD4, Research, runnerd4 | 4 Comments

Bibliography – clementine

Posted on November 16, 2020 by clementine102

1.) M. Frost, J., CM. Klier, P., AK. Thapar, A., Brier, N., PA. Geller, C., CM. Klier, P., . . . H. Soderberg, C. (1996, January 01). The course of mental health after miscarriage and induced abortion: A longitudinal, five-year follow-up study. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-3-18

Background: This article shows the research done on phycological implications on woman who have had an abortion. They also compare the phycological activity between a woman who has had a miscarriage to woman who have had an induced abortion. BMC Medicine hypothesized that woman who have had an abortion have more mental disturbance than women who experience a miscarriage. They proved their hypothesis to be right by comparing the mental health outcomes of both woman over the course of 5 years after their miscarriage/abortion. Woman who had induced abortion felt two times more anxiety than woman who had a miscarriage. Their quality of life was also just as diminished as if someone who had a miscarriage.

How I Used It: I used this information to provide statistics to the readers to support my idea that woman go through a lot of mental stress and trauma more than they think. The statistics also helped me back up the statements I made about how anxiety is more common in woman who have an abortion.

2.) Barnard, C. A. (1991). Post Abortion Stress. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from http://lifeissues.net/writers/air/air_vol3no4_1991.html

Background: This article describes the PTSD syndrome specified to abortion. This syndrome called Post Abortion Syndrome was never originally recognized within the medical community but since it has been widely discussed, it is being accepted now. The article lays out a study that was done on 80 women who had abortions that experienced PTSD symptoms, 3-5 years following their abortion. Shockingly, almost fifty percent of the woman re-experience the traumatic event in flashbacks. Surprisingly, forty percent of the women experienced difficulty falling asleep and hypervigilance after the abortion and the study says they never experienced these symptoms before the abortion. This study in this article shows that a great percentage of women who have abortions experience life shifting symptoms after an abortion. 

How I Used It: I used this article to simply define what Post Abortion Syndrome is and how it compares to the normal PTSD. I also used this reference to show the different symptoms of this disorder and how it is just as severe as PTSD.

http://lifeissues.net/writers/air/air_vol3no4_1991.html

3.) McClelland, M. (2013, January 17). Is PTSD Contagious? Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/ptsd-epidemic-military-vets-families/

Background: This article explains to the readers that PTSD can be contagious. They used the real life story of Caleb Vines to display the extent of the problem. Caleb Vines is a veteran who was sent to Iraq to serve in the war and happened to come back with PTSD. His wife Brannan and their daughter, both experienced symptoms of their loved ones disorder even though they never been to war. She ended up having secondary traumatic stress which proved that trauma is a contagious disease. This article shows that having secondary trauma in your family can change our lives.

How I Used It: I used this source to show my readers that PTSD as well as PAS can diminish ones quality of life, including people you surround yourself with. Using a real life example catches the readers attention and show what “contagious PAS” would look like in our day to day lives.

4.) Garthus-Niegel, Susan et al. “Post-traumatic Stress Symptoms Following Childbirth: Associations with Prenatal Attachment in Subsequent Pregnancies.” Archives of women’s mental health 23.4 (2020): 547–555. Web.

Background: This article spells out how their is a pre-natal attachment between the mother and the fetus. There are emotional responses in pregnancy to a fetus attached to the mother. The author also explains that having pre-natal attachment influences material mental health.

How I Uses It: I used this source to explain to the readers that pregnant woman having an inevitable attachment to their fetus will cause more guilt trauma if they were to have an abortion. I am communicating to my readers that pregnant woman knowing that they have a phycological connection will make them more reluctant to having an abortion.

5.)  Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology (Online). London: Carfax Pub., Taylor & Francis Group, 1983. Print.

Background: This article talks about how pregnant woman have a Mother Fetus Relationship that grows the longer they are pregnant. Like normal relationships, the more you put into the relationship, the more you are likely to grow and become more attached to it. The author lays out an example about how woman that treat their bodies well and eat healthy is subconsciously demonstrating care and commitment for the fetus without her ever having the intentions to care and commit for it. 

How I Used It: I used this article to show my readers that the more a pregnant woman takes care of their body and plans on having an abortion, is just feeding into their connection to their fetus even more. Treating your body right means that you are treating the fetus right which in result, creates a stronger phycological connection to the fetus. This article gives statistics on how many woman feel like they have had a connection to the baby and how many have not.

6.) “Dimensions of Decision Difficulty in Women’s Decision-Making About Abortion: A Mixed Methods Longitudinal Study.” PloS one 14.2 (2019): e0212611–e0212611. Web.

Background: This article explains that having a difficult decision making situation on hand, abortion in this situation, affects your mental health. A study is done in this article that quantified different emotions in woman after having a third trimester abortion. They also measured the most common reasons why woman were struggling to decide to have an abortion.

How I Used It: I used this article to show that pregnant woman who are more reluctant to have an abortion, end up having the most severe cases of guilt trauma. Showing reluctance means that you might be recognizing that their fetus show signs of life. This will lead them to think they are taking a life away.

7.) Schwarz, Stephen D, Stephen D Schwarz, and Kiki Latimerm. Understanding Abortion: From Mixed Feelings to Rational Thought. Lanham, MD: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2012. Print.

Background: This book displays all of the moral views on having a third-trimester abortion. The author goes through the rational thoughts of a mother carrying a fetus to woman that completely do not care for the fetus. He also goes in depth of the reality of the child in the womb and how it affects the mother mentally in the long run, after having an abortion.

How I Used It: I used this article to lay out statistics to my readers to prove that the mother fetus relationship affects a pregnant mother’s mental health if they decide to abort. I also use this article to show the readers that the fetus is learning even inside the womb before they are born.

8.) Biggs, Rowland. “Does Abortion Increase Women’s Risk for Post-Traumatic Stress? Findings from a Prospective Longitudinal Cohort Study.” BMJ open 6.2 (2016): e009698–e009698. Web.

Background: This article explains the likeliness of obtaining PTSD when having an abortion. In the text, there is a study that tested the hypothesis that women who receive abortions are more likely to experience PTSD than women who are denied abortion. The study lasted for four years which included nine naves of interview data from the Turnaway Study. The results of the study concluded that ten percent of woman who experience an abortion are at a very HIGH risk of PTSD. Many others are at risk that have mild cases of PTSD but ten percent of them are severe. The article explained the statistics of the the study and how effective the study really was.

How I Used It: I used this article to prove that it is very likely that a woman who has an abortion in the third trimester will contract PTSD aka PAS. Whether it is mild or not, a great portion of woman struggle in their day to day lives and I prove that by laying down the statistics of a study this author conducted.

9.) Johnson, E. A. (2015, January 20). The Reality of Late-Term Abortion Procedures. Charlotte Lozier Institute. https://lozierinstitute.org/the-reality-of-late-term-abortion-procedures/

Background: This article describes all of the different procedures that can be done for third trimester abortion. The author talks about intact dilation, extraction, surgical dilation, and evacuation. She also lays out statistics that show the readers how often these brutal procedures are done. Planned parent hood is shot down by the author by displaying facts and very informative information on how procedures are done.

How I Used It: I used this article to explain all of the different types of third trimester procedures that are used. Most of the procedures are very brutal and gruesome which I want to describe to my readers. Describing the procedures would paint a picture in my readers head that they would definitely not want to experience or picture again.

10.) Erikson, R. C. (1991). Post Abortion Stress. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from http://lifeissues.net/writers/air/air_vol3no4_1991.html

Background: The author of this article, Robert C. Erikson, states in this article that going under abortion constitutes the action of harm. He believes that the decision to abort already implies that the intention is to do harm. He also believes that this intention will always be a conflict with the mother’s per-existing tendency to be attached with their un-born child. The article states that woman have a phycological and physical bond between the baby before it is even born. Since they mother and child have a bond, it creates stress on the mother if she is thinking of aborting her child.

How I Used It: I used this article to show that there is a constant phycological battle in a mother who is reluctant to have an abortion. There is an inevitable physical connection between the mother and the fetus that a reluctant mother that needs an abortion goes through. I wanted to inform my readers that being reluctant about having an abortion is just not a feeling, it is a feeling that comes with tolls if you go through with an abortion, in this case PAS.

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