Month: September 2019

Executive Order 13769

Aaliyah Farah on

When you hear the term Executive Order 13769, your first thought is what could it possibly be. It could literally be an executive order doing anything the president sees fit. Should it only be established and called by a numerical grouping of 5 numbers or should it be named for what it really is. A Muslim ban. On February 1, 2017, a travel ban went out to the seven countries of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. No individual, unless they had certain clearances, were allowed to travel to or from the countries stated. It banned a group of primarily Islamic countries from coming to the United States. Even, my uncle who was living in Somalia at the time was not able to come back into the United States. The Kairos of the situation is undeniably prevalent. Donald Trump has a reputation by some of being opposed to people of Middle Eastern/Islamic backgrounds. This is shown in several instances within many of his recorded media presentations.

In my native country of Somalia, there has been a severe drought in which several people have passed away from inadequate food and water supplies in the country. This has been taking place since late 2016. The fact that Donald Trump established the ban in such close proximity to the large amounts of refugees emigrating from Somalia is not a surprise. It can be looked at as a deliberate hostile defensive measure meant to intentionally hurt people that have been displaced from a natural disaster. As well as, the extreme crisis that was taking place in Syria in which millions of its population had to evacuate due to the war taking place in their country. As large amounts of people apply for refugee status in the United States. For the executive order to take effect at one of the most crucial moments in the global refugee crisis for those displaced from their native countries. It was a deliberate, well thought out plan to take advantage of the use of his power to hurt the people that needed the most assistance and humanitarian aid by not allowing them to enter the country in times of famine, war, and drought.

(On the left are Syrian refugees in aid camps and on the right is a Somalian child affected by the drought)

Picture Sources

Syrian Refugees

Starving Somalian Child

 

Candy Crush Addiction

Aaliyah Farah on

In the middle of April in 2012, a phone app came out and took the world by storm. This app was called Candy Crush and it was the start of a worldwide epidemic. Looking at the phone usage by individuals gradually getting greater and greater in the past couple of years is insane to see. In 2012, Candy Crush was the biggest game being played around the world. At one point, it was the number one game on the Android and IOS app stores in majority of the countries globally. It led to several similar, copycat games which mimic it’s core idea into different items such as colors or vegetables. The key design of Candy Crush is matching three or more of one variety of cartoon like candies to unlock another level. It’s simplistic design is what led to millions of people playing the game on a daily basis. It is insane how many people play these games. What is even crazier is the amount of adults playing these games. These games that were designed for children with its animated expressions appealed to adults in a way that had never been seen before.

A big unintended outcome from the release of these games was addiction. People were getting addicted to the game really easily. This massive phenomena of colorful colors wrapped in a game was inciting people into spending hours of their day playing games. Even to this day, my own mother plays this game for hours after she gets off work. She tells me that it is one of the only things that helps her relax before she goes to bed. Which is understandable because it seems like a simple, menial task to get her thoughts off of work. That is until you look into the design of the game and how much extensive thinking goes into winning the higher levels. If I were to just pick up the game and start at level 5,000 without any prior knowledge of the game. It would be one of the most difficult things that I have done due to the fact that the previous levels train your brain to look for patterns that it would not normally look for. The reason why people are getting addicted is because of the natural response your body expresses when you solve something difficult as a reward it releases endorphins and serotonin which makes you want to do it again to have the same response. It had gotten so bad to the point where addiction centers had to start specializing in Candy Crush rehab centers.

(On the left is Level 100 of Candy Crush and on the right is level 5,000 of Candy Crush)

Picture Sources Below

Level 100

Level 5,000

 

THON = Commonplace

Aaliyah Farah on

Pennsylvania State University has over 1,000 active clubs going on throughout its main campus. In a majority of those clubs, a significant part of its activities is THON. THON is the world’s largest student run philanthropy that raise money for children and their families that are affected by pediatric cancer. Most of the individual clubs raises their own amount of money for one family. I recently joined the snowboarding club and last year they raised about $2,000+ for an individual family that was affected with cancer. It’s a cause that most Penn Staters really do care about.

My first time visiting Penn State, one of the first things mentioned to me was THON and its importance. Coming from a relatively small town in Northern Virginia. I was shocked by how big it was here in a school of 47,000+ students. It really showed how service and civic duty was a top priority among most of its students. Many of the activities that take place to raise money for the 48 hour dance marathon is collected and donated in the first few months of the fall semester. The actual dance marathon consists during one weekend sometime in February at the Bryce Jordan Center in State College, PA.

It is one of the only weekend besides Football games, where a lot of the surrounding towns and branch campuses come and participate in a bunch of different activities to raise funds to support cancer victims. This event is something that I would consider a major commonplace. At times I can’t even use the bathroom without seeing a THON Organization poster on the stall. It represents the unity that the whole school has for such a dear issue for many of the students at Penn State. Service throughout the year is aimed mostly at THON and the children and families that are being sponsored by the clubs but also its about the civic responsibility that many Penn Staters have about such an important topic. That is why THON is an important commonplace for civic duty and service at Pennsylvania State University.

https://news.psu.edu/story/559552/2019/02/17/impact/thon-2019-raises-106-million-fight-against-childhood-cancer

 

Mass shootings v.s. FPS

Aaliyah Farah on

Everyone has heard about the most recent mass shootings that have happened in Texas, Ohio, and my home state Virginia. The United States has sadly become the leader in the most amount of mass shootings in a single year. As we navigate the increasingly difficult time of grief and hardships surround mass deaths, Americans are looking for a place to put the blame on the reasoning for these incidents. In the past few months, there have been multiple assumptions in the media that violent FPS (first person shooters) games may be the cause for the sudden rise in acts of domestic terrorism.

Don’t get me wrong, I can personally say that some of these games are too violent. There was a mission on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that was designed for individuals to walk freely into an airport and shoot with no mercy at all of the civilian NPCs (non-player characters). All the civilian NPCs were running away from the bullets in a very similar fashion as those in a legitimate shooting have done in the past. I remember as a little 12 year old girl that had just gotten into playing FPS with my dad, I was very shocked and confused. It was one of the first games that I had gotten into playing by myself and when the warning came up for graphic content I thought nothing of it. I went and continued with the mission because I thought it was just concerning a tragic death of a main character or something irrelevant like that. I was extremely wrong in my thinking. As soon as I walked out of the elevator at the start of the mission, the game prompted me to open fire on everything moving. Although, the mission was supposed to indicate how global wars were put into effect and emphasize the plot more. It was a very controversial thing to put into a video game. The sad thing about it was that it was the first time I realized that there are some really messed up things you can find on video games.

In the past couple of months, media sites have put an emphasis on the effect that violent video games are having on the mental state of teens and young adults which may be prompting them to go commit acts of terrorism. I don’t necessarily see it as that being the cause. In my first week of college, my science professor has restated multiple times that correlation does not equal causation and I think that’s true for mass shootings and video games. There is no definite way of viewing a connection between mass shootings and violent games. I hope though that in the future, we can foster a healthier community in such a violent game space to essentially prevent the possibility of their being link between mass shootings and FPS.

Game: (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2)