Discussion Reflections Spring 2010

The discussions this year were thought provoking and intriguing. We had a wide variety of topics to talk about and each one prove to be worth while. The topic I choose to talk about was the highly controversial soda tax. The article compared the new soda tax to the taxes placed on tobacco products a few years back. It debated whether soda was as detrimental to health as the ever so obvious “cancer sticks”. One point that came across in the discussion was defining a soda product and why just limit the tax to soda? Technically humans only form of liquid needed is water, so why not tax fruit drinks, chocolate milk, sports drinks, and all the other sugar ridden drinks? The research explained that the rising of the price of the sugary drinks will cause a decrease in purchase and consumption. Researchers have also found a correlation to childhood obesity and increase rates of consumption of soda drinks. So by raising the prices of the drinks should ultimately lower the instances of childhood obesity. I agree that some legal action must be taken place in order to help the epidemic but at what point is it effective and how will it ever be regulated?

I also enjoyed other people’s discussions. I always enjoy learning new things even if I can’t quite understand it completely. I also found it cool that Laurel picked the article that she did, about human connections to animals. I am very interested in how humans view animals and if caring for animals do have a therapeutic property to it. I was actually contemplating between two articles when I was going to lead discussions. The one that I did not choose was one about therapeutic animals (such as dolphins). Before I decided to go into research in animal behavior I was planning on being a physical therapist with a specialty in animal interactions. When I lived in Florida I spend most of my free time at a research center that performed many of those types of therapy sessions with dolphins. I was to young to really understand but I enjoyed helping the adults take care of the animals. Overall, I was very pleased with the discussions this year because there never seemed to be a dull moment. Discussions never got out of hand like previous semesters but at the same time my quite nature would seem to show its ugly head and I keep my comments to myself(mostly because some one else already expressed a similar opinion, and I didn’t want to be that dumb kid that sits and the corner and just agrees with everything). I know that in this blog I mainly focus on just one of the discussions, but I really did like everyone’s topics. There were a few that I received late so I only had time to skim through the articles. This semester worked better in the past by getting articles in a timely fashion. Well anyways I am looking forward to our continued discussions in our remaining two semesters.