Television effect on Society

Science provides us various wonderful things which make our lives easier, happier and healthy. Television is one of the most important parts in our daily life. It is a sign of scientifically improvement. It was invented by John L. Baird of England in 1926.  It came into India in 1965 but it was only after the 1982 Asiad Games that it became popular in the country. Television works very effectively or positively as well as harmfully in our daily life.

Positive effect for society:

In today’s life television effects very positively and influences our society in various types of culture. Television gives us several information that we can make ourselves active in our life. There have lots of positive effect from the television in society.

We can know about weather changes of every day which is very important to us. In our life everyday many events occur around us and we can reach to them by television. We can be well-known about business or financial market.

Television is the mass world in a small place around us. We can see or listen about every event in far of our hand within a second. It is a dictionary which works as eye for collecting information. Society is always influence the media because it needs for improvement of science. May be it has many unpleasant side, but we can’t live without it.

Television for entertaining:

Television is the way of massive entertainment. So many programs are televised in every day. It is the important source of entertainment. We can see dance, dramas, films, fiction features and children programs also like as cartoon, various types of games etc. It helps us improve our personality, style, activities by seeing different interview of some famous person. Many programs give us some massages fight against the social or political evils. Not only tat we can be relaxed or fresh after our long hard day by seeing some fun filled programs. Television helps us to stay tension free and touch with day to day. Teenagers also enjoy it for the enjoyment and information.

Disadvantage of television:

Sometime it becomes an idiot box because it has so many disadvantages. If somebody watches T.V. for long time it means he/she is wasting their times. It effect on eye-sight, students also affected by it. They remember all programs and say instead of their lessons. Many people like to see only those programs which give fun that bringing down the educational   importance of television.

Violence of television on children:

In present life violence stay in everywhere, like – school, back alleys, on the street even in home. There is television is the main and mass source of violence. Some children who look the realistic worlds of violence on T.V. are pulled by some demoralizing results. It is proved that children are fascinated by their big colored and glamorous box and imitation of actor/actress in it.  They also are trying to do those actions which impress them and they wanted to be a hero like those showing character. In this way there makes a casual relation between violent activities and children and in after life this casual relation may be serious.

Its necessity:

Television is the most important in our life though we know that there have some problems. Television is the process of education, promotion, amusement and communication. It is true that there is more number of advantages than the number of disadvantage. We can get more knowledge from television. In our daily life we can grow our knowledge about the wild area from discovery channel or animal planet channel.

There are different types of games and there rules that television shows by which we can encourage our children to play vivid games. We can know about weather, daily news (good/bad) etc. We are also known about our daily life information. Not only that we can daily life information but also about land, water and all planets, satellites etc. We can get information of books and suggestion of exam from educational channels.

We should use it properly that we can learn something good from that. It‘s good or bad side depends on uses of us. So there needs to make it better and progressive. We should not open adult channel in front of kids because it leaves bad effects on them. We should encourage children to show those important channels which will grow their knowledge.

Netherlands embassy to fund study on child labour

HENNAI: North Chennai, home to a fishing harbour and several cottage industries, is also among the areas where child labour is rampant. Noting the high incidence of child labour in the area, an NGO, Karunalaya Social Service Society, has decided to launch a project to create a child labour-free zone in North Chennai industries and prevent school dropouts in slums, streets and housing tenements.
Results of the `50-lakh project funded by the Dutch embassy, will be used to undertake rescue and rehabilitation operations, under the National Child Labour Project. Karunalaya has been working with streetchildren and working children for 15 years, but a recent literacy awareness campaign showed that there was still a long way to go before all children in the area are put in school.
"We found godowns closing on GA Road, which is similar to T Nagar here, because news spread that there was a child labour raid. We realised that there was little chance of such kids being rescued unless we made public the number of such children and which industries employ them," said Karunalaya director N Paul Sunder Singh. So, the NGO, with financial support from the Dutch embassy, is launching a study on the number of child labourers, their ages, family backgrounds, and which industry they are employed in.

This article is taken from- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Netherlands-embassy-to-fund-study-on-child-labour/articleshow/6951263.cms

Twilight Zone / Safed, a war story

A campaign of racism and anti-Arab incitement is turning one of Israel's holy cities into a ticking bomb
By Gideon Levy

The telephone rings. "Hello, this is Mustafa, I'm calling about the apartment." The response comes quickly and emphatically: "No, it's already been rented." Or, "I only rent to women," or "I only rent to families." Or, in an angry tone: "Heaven forbid, do you want to stop me from reading the Torah on Shabbat," or "I'm afraid of the rabbis."
For an entire hour, student Mustafa Shahin, a resident of Sakhnin who studies sociology and human resources at Safed College, made telephone inquiries - in vain. Because he is an Arab, the rental listings on the college bulletin boards are irrelevant. Mahmoud Abu Salah, Shahin's representative in the student union (there are a total of eight representatives, but only one is an Arab ), says that he sometimes introduces himself on the phone as "Tomer" to get the conversation started. Now everyone has started calling Mahmoud "Tomer." But that doesn't mean people want to rent to Arab college students in Safed.
The city is roiling: It recently hosted an "emergency conference" of 18 rabbis and 400 of their followers on this issue. There was an armed attack on an Arab student apartment. A Jewish legal ruling was handed down by the city's chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu. Mayor Ilan Shohat and veteran resident Eliyahu Tzvieli, who rented an apartment to Bedouin students, have received threats. The message is: Arabs, go home.
In response to plans for establishing a medical school in Safed, flyers were circulated last week by some sort of "campaign headquarters," declaring: "The smokescreen called a medical school obscures an evil scheme: to establish a refugee camp for psychotic, sadistic and debased Arabs, whose deceptiveness is, and always has been, aimed at tempting [Jewish women] and cruelly abusing them. On orders of the great rabbis of Safed, may they be blessed with a long life, we declare our protest and vehement resistance, and reiterate that it is forbidden under the law of the Torah to offer these people apartments for sale, rent, work or any form of entry. Our city will not succumb to wanton behavior - go back to your own locales and do not defile our camp."
The language of this flyer slams the Safed College Internet site, which touts "a city that blends academia, tradition, kabbala and a magical atmosphere."
Abu Salah reads the flyer and puts it in his pocket without uttering a word. For the time being, he and his peers are showing restraint, but a time bomb is ticking here. Safed is a war story in the making.
Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria was born on Safed's slopes, and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was born nearby. Today, the town's artists' quarter is being snuffed out by ultra-nationalist zeal. On Jerusalem Street, where Safed College is located, there is a Rav Hesed supermarket; a Galgal Hakodesh store that sells Jewish religious articles; and a furniture store with a special "bride-and-groom" deal for furnishing an entire apartment for NIS 8,888.
Safed College, operated under the auspices of Bar-Ilan University, has 1,700 students, and the whole campus seems to speak Arabic. Indeed, when we visited the institution last week, it seemed to have an absolute Arab majority. The most obvious exceptions were a policeman and a prison warden, both enrolled as students, and two lecturers who wore skullcaps and ritual fringes. Strolling around the sun-drenched campus, with its olive and cypress trees, were dozens of Arab students from the Galilee. Some, but not all, of the female students wore traditional head coverings; male students had hair gel. On the lawn, next to the modest library, a student set down his jacket, and kneeled to pray in the direction of Mecca.
The whole area is full of surreal contradictions: There is the bearded driver who shouts threateningly, in Arabic, at what he calls "el Yahud [the Jews]" - a group of Arab students, who cross the street and stare at him apathetically. The campus seems tranquil, while the city seethes with racist hatred. One sees Bratslav Hasidim and newly Orthodox and other pious Jews roam the streets along with hijab-clad, traditional Muslims.
A recent editorial, titled "The Ishmaelites," in the Hamevaser newspaper proclaimed that one of the city's rabbis conducted an inquiry and discovered that funding from the European Union and Saudi Arabia finance the college's Arab students.
"I wish they did support us," reflects the student activist, Mahmoud Abu Salah, aka Tomer, with a wistful smile. He embodies several contradictions: He claims that he served in the Israel Defense Forces as an undercover soldier, yet he is the student union delegate of the "Arab sector" (an Israeli expression ), and his dream is to become the state comptroller or an ambassador. "I don't have any problem representing the state - this is my state," he says wanly.
Not exactly minted in the "Danny the Red" mold, the young man allowed himself to be photographed in a triumphant pose, alongside the memorial to the "Liberators" who expelled his forefathers from the city. A second-year law student who already has a degree in social work from the college, he wears preppy white shoes and a Puma belt.
Abu Salah has already resided in four apartments in Safed. At present, he is compelled to commute each day from his village because it is nearly impossible for Arabs to find a room to rent in the city. Out of the college's 900 Arab students, he says, only a few live in rented apartments, not including the 120 who live in the dormitories.
On a recent Saturday, Abu Salah met MK Ahmed Tibi in Jenin's market, and asked the parliamentarian not to visit the college.
"We don't need Arab MKs here," he explains now. "We keep things quiet on our own. I think the college should take care of things here. I don't want to organize demonstrations; I want to keep things calm. I stay silent, but the college has to do something. That's what I told the college president. We have never encountered racism on the campus grounds - so they [Knesset members] can come make the rounds in Safed, but shouldn't come here." This week Abu Salah met the Arab students' representative at Netanya Academic College, and learned that it is also nearly impossible for Arab students in that coastal town to rent an apartment. He says he has Jewish friends who signed a rental contract in the name of Arab students. But after it was discovered, the landlord was threatened; he was told that his own house would be burned down if Arab tenants were to remain in the Safed apartment.
Abu Salah: "Rabbi Eliyahu thinks that we want to return Safed to the Arabs. They think that we want to remain in the city after our studies. But only a few [Arab students] remain here on Saturdays. An [Arab] student comes here solely for the purpose of studying. After that he'll go anywhere, to get the hell out of here - what is there for us in such a poor town? A student spends an average of NIS 50 a day in the city, not including rent. We help Safed's economy. I'm not even talking about the money they make from parking fees. Most come to study here, and are not looking for trouble. Nobody comes looking to compile a criminal record ... They [those who object to the Arab students] want us to organize; they want to remove us from here. But we want to be smarter than that, to show them that we exist, without causing an uproar," explains Abu Sabah.
During his studies, he says, he has been employed in two local hotels, Rimonim and Canaan Spa, working as a shabbas goy - someone who assists devout Jewish guests on the Sabbath. He has provided similar services for neighbors: "I would return home, and a neighbor would tell me, 'It's cold.' At first, I didn't get it. What was I supposed to do, warm him up? But they spoke to me with gestures, so that I'd understand what they meant and light their furnace on Shabbat."
He also has stories of residents spitting at Arab students, and of students entering stores and being told that they were "closed." He has heard chants on streets, like: "An Arab is a son of a bitch." I asked him how he would respond were someone to call him a dirty Arab. "I would ask him, am I really dirty? I take a shower twice a day and dress better than you," Abu Salah quips.
At Hummus Atika, an ultra-Orthodox waiter served a smooth, kosher version of the chickpea paste, which was actually pretty tasty. The restaurant walls were covered with colorful portraits of past and present rabbinical sages, including the late Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, father of the Safed rabbi who is spearheading the Arab expulsion.
Haaretz's Galilee correspondent, Eli Ashkenazi, told us he heard recently from Eliyahu Tzvieli, 89, the resident who was threatened after he rented an apartment to Bedouin students, that an Arab student entered a falafel joint Tzvieli rents to a Jewish proprietor, and ordered a meal. "I'll give you poison," was the response. Tzvieli tried to cancel the rental contract for the falafel stand, but was unsuccessfulThe student Mustafa Shahin lived last year in rental apartments located off Safed's main pedestrian thoroughfare, and also in the Canaan neighborhood. This year, he spends 70 NIS a day on bus travel to and from his home. He has phoned dozens of landlords, explaining, "This is Mustafa, I'm calling about the apartment." He was always rejected.
He phones a man named Viktor, who has an apartment for rent.
"Only women," says Viktor.
"But I live alone," pleads Mustafa. "I don't make trouble and keep quiet."
Viktor responds: "I have a problem. I would take you, but there are the rabbis. They give me problems. I would rent to women, I'm not afraid, but not to men. Good luck, Mustafa."
Then there was a "fully furnished" apartment.
"Good afternoon, this is Mustafa, I'm calling about the apartment," the student says.
"Try calling at night, I'm driving right now," replies the landlord.
After several more fruitless phone calls, Mustafa gives up. Some students come up to us and relate their own experiences. A college bulletin board lists some living-room furniture for sale, and a wooden kitchen cabinet. Mustafa calls up, but is told the furnishings are no longer for sale.
this article is taken from- http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/twilight-zone-safed-a-war-story-1.324313

Crisis hotline brings graduate student back to MSU campus

Whitney Applebaum always has been fascinated by people.
When the social work graduate student received a flyer about volunteer orientation for the Listening Ear Crisis Intervention Center, 333 W. Grand River Ave., she knew she had to get involved.
“I was always one of those people that had everybody in crisis coming to me saying, ‘Help me fix it,’” Applebaum said.
As an East Lansing native, Applebaum began volunteering at the confidential and nonprofit center with a 24-hour crisis hotline when she was in high school.
Nine years later, Applebaum now serves as an in-service coordinator and a member of the training staff as she completes her degree at MSU.
“I can’t live without it,” she said. “When I moved away from here for undergrad, I never found my people again. It’s a unique breed of human that volunteers at a crisis center and donates four hours a week to helping other people.”
Although she completed her undergraduate degree at Central Michigan University, Applebaum said she commuted to volunteer on weekends during the semester.
The center, which also provides sexual assault and walk-in crisis counseling, is comprised completely of volunteers, the majority whom are MSU students completing a minimum of four-hour phone shifts per week.
“We get mostly psychology majors who have an ambition to become a therapist later in their life or pre-med students,” she said. “We have other majors interspersed in there, but mostly it’s people from helping fields.”
Volunteers must undergo intense training of about 65 hours before they begin their shifts. Applebaum said training mostly consists of breaking into small groups and learning skills people are unaware of, such as how to feel with another person and vicariously experience devastation without trying to remedy the problem.
“Our training is a ridiculous commitment, but I’ve had trainees say it’s the most life-changing experience they’ve had so far,” she said.
Patrick Sandoval, a psychology junior, first volunteered about three years ago and initially was trained by Applebaum.
“(Applebaum) is very good at what she does because she knows the technical aspects of training very well,” Sandoval said. “She knows the rationale behind what we do.”
Sandoval said the technical aspects of training are important for being able to give nonjudgmental feedback to volunteers and for growing to the extent of their abilities.
“It has given me an appreciation for what counseling is and what crisis intervention is,” he said. “That it is indeed something I want to pursue as a career.”
The center receives calls from all across the U.S. and listens to people who are dealing with a range of issues, including suicide, substance abuse, financial crises, sexual assault and relationship problems.
“We don’t give advice; we just help people explore where they are in that moment and try to de-escalate the intensity of their immediate negative experience,” Applebaum said.
One of the skills taught in training is how to feel less compelled to provide a solution to someone’s problem, she said.
“We’re there because we’re fix-it people, but you can’t fix it,” she said. “Ultimately, these people are responsible for their own actions and behaviors.”
Applebaum’s mother and East Lansing resident Eve Applebaum said the center has given her daughter a sense of camaraderie as she has watched mentoring relationships turn into friendships.
“Having gone through some rough times herself and in her family, she’s able to empathize,” she said. “Our whole family is kind of like that — we’re very pro-volunteerism.”
Although Whitney Applebaum said burnout from the crisis calls can be normal, but for her, volunteering isn’t about the phone calls.
“It’s about the people I work with,” she said. “There are truly caring, wonderful people in the world that are willing to dedicate their time and energy to helping other people and each other.”
By Meagan Choi
This article is taken from- http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2010/11/crisis_hotline_brings_graduate_student_back_to_msu_campus

Email's slow death - set to be replaced by social networking

By 2014, email will be surpassed by social networking as the dominant form of communication in the business world, Gartner has predicted.

Greater availability of social-networking services, coupled with changing demographics and work styles, will lead 20pc of employees to use social networks as their business communications’ hub by 2014, the analyst said.
Analysts said this is one of a wide range of capabilities that have emerged in communications, social web and mobile, enabling richer interactions among people and expanding collaboration to a broader level.
“In the past, organisations supported collaboration through email and highly structured applications only,” said Monica Basso, research vice-president at Gartner.
“Today, social paradigms are converging with email, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles.
“However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organisations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success,” Basso said.

‘Cloud’ sourcing

While microblogging on platforms like Twitter and Facebook are reshaping enterprise communications, business communications are evolving. Newer employees will enter the workforce with a predisposition to communicate via a social network, but they will use email in parallel — optimising the business need with the communication modality.
“The rigid distinction between email and social networks will erode,” Basso said. “Email will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering, while social networks will develop richer email capabilities.”
Vendors such as Microsoft and IBM will add links to internal and external social networks from within e-mail clients and servers, making services such as contacts, calendars and tasks shareable across email and social networks.
By 2012, Gartner said contact lists, calendars and messaging clients in any smartphones will be social-enabled applications.
Collaboration is slowly moving to the cloud, and Gartner analysts expect to see steep growth rates for sales of premises- and cloud-based social-networking services.
Organisations will deploy hybrid models where some services live on premises and some are in the cloud. Gartner predicts the percentage of email accounts on cloud services will grow to 10pc by year-end 2012, up 7pc from 2009.

Mobile convergence

From a vendor’s perspective, the market is consolidating around Microsoft and Research In Motion (RIM), the two market leaders. Gartner forecasts that by 2012, RIM and Microsoft will own 80pc of the enterprise wireless email software market.
Communications and collaboration are critical to business success, and any organisation should invest in these areas to pursue innovative organisational and work-style change. “Even in an economic downturn, innovation is a must for any organisation to prepare for recovery and further change,” said Basso.
“The reality is that mobile collaboration will increase for all categories of workers, and organisations can either take the lead, or be led by their users,” she said.
“The most progressive organisations won’t be afraid to explore the innovative communications and collaboration models enabled by new devices and social services allow their employees to generate innovative ideas by experimenting with them.”
Basso provided an example of this collaboration by highlighting Ocè’s use of Yammer. In this situation, employees spontaneously adopted the enterprise microblogging service that is now helping capture and spread knowledge, accelerate decision making, improve customer responsiveness and support continuous learning.
This article is taken from- http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-media/item/18892-emails-slow-death-set-to/

Borders social services are facing a £2.1 million overspend

IT will cost Scottish Borders Council £1.3million this year to keep nine local children in safe accommodation outwith the region.
Councillors were told that the number of out-of-area placements of children in care had increased by seven compared to the last financial year, with the annual cost ranging from £22,000 to a massive £163,000 per child.

Councillor Frances Renton, executive member for social work, also revealed that between December last year and this September, the number of children looked after away from their own homes had risen from 173 to 223, with 83 of these subject to supervision requirements.
“Our nine most expensive accommodated children cost us just over £1.3million,” said Mrs Renton, adding: “This rise in demand in part reflects a general upward trend in Scotland and in part is linked to the opening of five locality access points in the region for the public and professionals.”
Councilloor Renton was in the firing line at Thursday’s full council meeting over the recent revelation that her department was facing a projected £2.1million budget overspend in the current financial year.
SBC’s executive has already sanctioned a number of controversial measures to bridge the funding gap, agreeing last month to £1.68million of social work cuts in the current financial year, including the reduction of home care hours provided by the council by eight per cent and the progressive withdrawal of care home beds.
The £470,000 balance of the projected deficit will come from education, via managed cuts including the non-filling of community learning vacancies.
Councillor Nicholas Watson (Borders Party) acknowledged the increase in children requiring to be placed in care, but noted that a report had already conceded that £748,000 of the projected overspend was down to “further difficulties emerging from the staffing budget of the new Integrated Children’s Service (ICS)”.
“Why did it take so long for the projected overspend in the ICS staffing budget to be identified, what was its cause and what measures have been put in place to ensure this sort of mistake should not be made again?,” he asked Councillor Renton.
She said that the costs of the new ICS structure, implemented in February, were “higher than available resources”.
“Some posts that were not costed into the structure continued into the new services,” she stated. “The costs of preserved and conserved posts is higher than anticipated and posts were costed at the mid point of the salary scale, while the actual posts were occupied by a large majority of staff at or near the top of their grade.”
She added that, in co-operation with education, her department was reviewing ICS’s management and staffing structure to ensure it was affordable and sustainable by April 1 next year.”
It is understood that many specialist teachers who were formerly employed by the education department, but who now come under the social work-run ICS structure, have received letters telling them the review would “have a direct impact on some staff or groups of staff” and that those affected will know their fate by Christmas.
Councillor Watson said it was sad Councillor Renton was insisting there was no social work overspend when the council’s executive had been told of “major variances between projected out-turn expenditure and the current approved budget”.
“The council has been clever in hiding behind the pressure of increasing numbers of children being taken into care when the real story here is the staffing blunder,” said Councillor Watson.
“The truth is that much of the budget pressure comes because nine posts which should have only featured in the ICS budget also appeared in the education budget. This means that not only are we now paying for extra posts, but I understand it will also take a while to slim down the ICS management because staff in posts have rights and cannot be moved on.
“So savings have to be found elsewhere and a large chunk of the hit is being borne by old and vulnerable social work clients.
“The combined cost of this mistake and the pressure of more children going into care is over £2million: money which could have been invested in setting up a unit in the Borders to provide for children with severe needs who are currently being looked after outside the region.
“We could then have saved huge sums as well as providing a service to youngsters without removing them so far from their homes.”
While learning support and other specialist teachers dealing with additional needs pupils face an anxious wait, an increase in existing social work charges and the levying of new fees, unconnected to the projected overspend, have been implemented this week.
Councillor Renton has defended the charges, which will bring in £140,000 a year, claiming they are “fair and equitable”.
But the father of a young man with learning difficulties who attends the Reiver Industries project in Tweedbank, has already complained that the new day service fees will cost his son an extra £124 a month.
“Attending the Reiver scheme has transformed my son’s quality of life for the better, giving him stimulation, friends and a sense of purpose,” said the man, who did not wish to be named.
“Fortunately, our family can afford to pay the new £2 daily attendance fee, the £1 transport charge and £3.20 for a hot meal, but I am really worried that other vulnerable people will stop using the services and that would be a tragedy.”
A council spokesperson said an appeals procedure was in place for affected clients. Those concerned about the charges are advised to call 01835 825080.
Meanwhile, former SBC leader Drew Tulley has compared the projected social work overspend to the £3.9million black hole discovered in the education budget in 2001: a crisis which saw him forced from office.
“There’s no way there was a sudden increase in people with special needs since the budget was set six months ago,” he told last month’s meeting of Galashiels Community Council. “This is the equivalent of what happened with education almost 10 years ago and I think it’s appalling.”
This article is taken from- http://www.berwickshire-news.co.uk/news/local-headlines/borders_social_services_are_facing_a_2_1_million_overspend_1_324165