If you eat too much junk food, you will put on weight and your body will begin to not work as well. Over time, this can have devastating consequences. Over 80% of the diseases that exist are diet related including common diseases such as cancer and diabetes. However, if you make sure that your body gets an optimal balanced intake of all the essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, etc. that your body needs to produce healthy cells, you not only can correct serious health issues, you can also prevent future potential illnesses. Your immune system is strong enough to fight off the harmful enemies it encounters.
Likewise, the input you give to your mind can also have the same effect. If you are constantly feeding your mind junk and mindless entertainment, your thinking ability will be diminished and over time, can have serious consequences on your behavior and belief systems.
Consider the excerpts from an article from www.physorg.com titled "UCF Physicist Says Hollywood Movies Hurt Students' Understanding of Science".
Movies such as Spiderman 2 and Speed generate excitement among audiences with their cool special effects. But they also defy the laws of physics, contributing to students’ ignorance about science.
Common sense may indicate that people should know the stunts in movies are just make believe, but the professors say that’s not necessarily true. “Sure, people say everyone knows the movies are not real, but my experience is many of the students believe what they see on the screen”, says UCF professor Costas J. Efthimiou.
The Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 report seems to support his observations. The report shows that the average science scores among 12th graders in the U.S. dropped from the previous year. The scores remained stagnant in the fourth and eighth grades. Worse, only about one-third of all students tested were proficient, meaning they had a solid understanding of what they should know.
If youngsters aren’t getting the basics at the elementary level, it becomes very difficult for them to continue to study the subjects in college and virtually impossible for them to make significant contributions to the scientific community, Efthimiou said.
Efthimiou, who has a doctorate from Cornell University, enjoys a good movie. But he said we should be as eager to get a good science education as we are to see the next big blockbuster.
Efthimiou began teaching a basic physics course at UCF in 2000. He described the experience as “horrible.” The students feared the subject matter and complained his class was too hard. Instead of continuing with the standard fare, he approached former UCF physics chair R.A. Llewellyn. Together, they came up with the movie approach now known as “Physics in Film.” They launched the course in the summer of 2002, and today it is among the most popular on campus.
Efthimiou spends hours watching hundreds of films to find scenes that illustrate the physics concepts he needs to teach. For example, he uses a scene from Superman when the hero flies around the earth an in effort to reverse time and save Lois Lane from death. When students show up to class, they dissect the scenes and learn the real laws of physics. In the Superman example, he explains the real way angular momentum works.
Why would a veteran professor go through all of that trouble? Because he, like many scientists across the United States, is worried that if science and math education doesn’t improve, society will pay the price.
So, what is the price of ignorance? Time will tell. Ignorance of the economic troubles facing the country will have an effect. Ignorance of science may be only harmful in academia. The economic crisis will affect everyone including the thousands of people that have lost their homes this last year during the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. The employees that got laid off from Bear Stearns were also victims. These economic problems set off ripples that affect many others.
The next time we watch Iron Man or Batman and peacefully evade our lives for a few hours does have a price, especially when overdone. The consequences we face not only will affect our lives, but the lives of future generations. Most that hear these warnings are un-fazed and think that this is too much a "gloom and doom" message. "We are just in a down economic cycle", some will say. Unfortunately, this is reality. Only time will tell how devastating the effects are to us.
Hollywood does have a role to make sure we remain mindless, and they are performing their role with calculated precision and success. As long as there is money in these mindless movies, they will continue to produce and release them.
As always, the choice is yours.
There will be more on the effects of Hollywood entertainment this week. Stay tuned ...
If you had responded to my rebuke,
I would have poured out my heart to you
and made my thoughts known to you.
But since you rejected me when I called
and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand,
since you ignored all my advice
and would not accept my rebuke,
I in turn will laugh at your disaster;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you- Proverbs 1:23-26 (NIV)
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Email: DeltaInspire@panama-vo.com
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