Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Texto da Recuperação - 3ª Série CICDAMAS

SHOPAHOLICS
(1) What are the warning signs of compulsive shopping? There is still very little known about compulsive spenders.
(2) "A compulsion is the uncontrollable need to do something. The individual is overwhelmed by the desire to do very stupid things in order to reduce anxiety", psychiatrists say. "The tension is there, and even though they recognize that what they do may be ridiculous, they do it anyway."
(3) Researchers estimate that as many as 10 million Americans are compulsive shoppers, with a growing number of people addicted to home-shopping catalogs and TV-shopping services.
(4) A compulsive shopper told a researcher that she could never go to a supermarket and buy just one bottle of milk. It had to be two. Why? "I'd been brought up to please everybody," she said. "So I thought I was pleasing the store."
(5) To help anxious shopaholics, who often wind up with major financial and personal difficulties, researchers at several universities in the United States are working on a variety of therapeutic approaches, from behavior modification to experiments with a drug used to treat such obsessions as ritualized hand-washing.
(6) Psychiatrists and social scientists have various theories as to why people engage in compulsive behavior. Shopaholics, they suggest, could be sexually frustrated, might suffer from lack of self-esteem, or they may just have a neurotic reaction to television commercials and glossy advertisements.
(7) "Often, there is a background of emotional problems such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse and mood disorders," says Dr. Donald Black, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Lowe College of Medicine. Though over shoppers later experience considerable remorse, they "find shopping exciting. They think about doing it. They fantasize about the selecting and the purchasing. They have closets full of clothing they don't wear, but feel embarrassed about returning items. They go into a store for a specific, such as a shampoo, and come out with $100 worth of goods."
(8) Who needs help? "If you have had clothes for six months and haven't taken the tags off," one compulsive shopper recently suggested, "you probably need to evaluate what you are doing."
Adapted from Jon Anderson, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, July 24, 1994.

Texto da Recuperação - 2ª Série CICDAMAS

STOP CIRCUS CRUELTY

1. The circus paints a picture of happy animals doing tricks because they like to. 2. The fact is, that animals in circus endure pain and abuse for the sake of entertainment. In nature, bears don't ride bicycles, elephants don't stand on their heads, and a tiger would never hop on his hind legs. To force wild animals to perform these silly acts, trainers use whips, muzzles, electric prods and bullhooks. The circus forces them to perform night after night, for 48 to 50 weeks every year. Between acts, elephants are kept in chains and tigers are stored in cages with barely enough room to take one step. Ringling has also invented a "unicorn" by mutilating a baby goat and surgically having his horns to the center of his forehead.
Most elephants used by circuses were captured in the wild. Once removed from their families and natural habitat, their lives consist of little more than chains and intimidation. Baby elephants born in breeding farms are torn from their mothers, tied with ropes and kept in isolation until they learn to fear their trainers. In order to 3. TAME them, they are "broken". Some trainers have used bulldozers to get the chained elephants attention ... to teach them a lesson. Sometimes the elephants die, but never quickly. It takes a long time for an animal the size of an elephant to die and sometimes the elephants don't die ... Here is a picture of an unnamed three-year-old elephant, chained, pulled, confined in an unnatural position, denied food, water, shelter, dignity, beaten with bullhooks, baseball bats, iron bars and wooden axe handles. I hate that this happens and I hate this picture but sometimes a picture wakes our emotions enough to wake us up to what's going on around us.
Texto e foto: http://www.wolfkatt.freeservers.com/custom3.html

Texto da Recuperação - 1ª Série CICDAMAS

THE ECOLOGICAL PROBLEM
Scientists speculate upon the consequences of man's interference with the natural world in which he lives. And they sound the alarm at our irresponsible destruction. But men rarely listen to these warnings - or, if they listen, they even more rarely act.
Every day we witness the unthinking actions men take which interfere, sometimes which disastrous consequences, with the natural actions of the environment. We use various pesticides on our farms which sometimes leave dead birds along with bigger tomatoes. We toss the refuse from our industries into our lakes with solutions which spoil our drinking water and despoil our swimming water. We sail along our highways dropping cans and bottles on their surfaces and spreading polluted air all about. We commit gradual suicide with our cigarettes.
Yet we want a clean environment, a balanced ecology, a stable population. The dimensions of the problem can be simply stated: it is a simple matter of life - or death. We live in one eco-system, on one planet; each of our actions affects that life system.
It is, of course, impossible for us to view our every action in terms of its relevance to the environment, but it is possible to understand the importance of our actions in relation to our environment. The importance of our learning cannot be overstated; if we do not learn, we have little hope.
Adapted from ‘www.ecoknowledge.com’