final homework

The shooting of Trayvon Martin took place on February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida. Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old African American who was shot and killed by 28-year-old George Zimmerman, a man of mixed ethnic descent.Martin was unarmed, walking from a convenience store to the home of his father's girlfriend when Zimmerman, a community watch coordinator, began following Martin and called the Sanford Police Department to say he witnessed suspicious behavior. And to be honest that is all that I know about the shooting of The shooting of Trayvon Martin.

It is shocking that a minor can be killed in America and no trial held to determine the guilt of the killer. Surely it is not the role of the police to decide someone’s innocence in a killing, that is what the courts are for. For the police to act as the judge seems to be overstepping their purpose. A chid is killed, a trial should be held to determine the facts and establish whether it was murder. Sadly, I think the parent’s grief is being turned into a circus sideshow. Sharpton and others are whipping up a frenzy that could lead to violence and lynch-mob mentality.You can’t blame Travyon’s parents. They’re suffered an unthinkable loss. At the same time, “witnesses” are coming out of the woodwork with very questionable tales. It doesn’t matter if Zimmerman was a racist or not. It doesn’t matter if Travyon was a choirboy or a gangbanger. The only thing that’s relevant was who initiated the physical attack and whether the shooting was justified under Florida’s laws. If you don’t like the law – by all means, change it. But if Zimmerman was justified under the current law – arresting him is just as big a travesty as the shooting was.

Blog Homework 2

I learned from the book that women should have complete equality to men. So, work is still discriminating for the two sexes, even if the discrimination is not an official one. For example, if the level of women's working activity has increased since 1970, they are still the victims of unemployment, of bad jobs, more than men are anyway. These inequalities are also present in the private life, as women are the victims of a pervert social progress. For example, even if women are more and more independent in their couple life, there are more and more single and divorced women due to that. Why? Well, there are many reasons. One of them could be the fact that working women don't have time for a successful private life. Another reason could be the fact that some men feel intimidated by some women's qualities and can't stand being inferior to them. At the same time there is a fragile compatibility between motherhood and career and the family policies that exist encourage women to give up working for a domestic way of living. This way, women find themselves forced to give up their independence.

But even a family life without having children means compromise to women. It's natural for the women who have a full-time job not to have the strength to do all that housewives do. The woman's duties at home are more numerous than the men's, but at the same time, the equality between women and men force them to work the same time and way at their jobs. This situation is due to the fact that there are still a lot of men who think in the terms of the patriarchate system.

There are also men who treat women socially right, but this situation isn't quite the happiest, as they somehow forget their manners or act thinking something like: " If we're equal and we do our own laundry, why should I hold her coat or open the door for her?!" This is also an abnormal situation. While in the first case the problem was that women were equal to men only when it came to work, in the second one the issue is about the equality that takes away women's right of being respected as women.

Unions: To Be or Not To Be, Should That Even Be a Question?

For my response I reflected on why worker's Unions should not exist:


Union members continue to pay dues to be assured good working conditions. Years ago, that was a legitimate purpose - now, there are many government agencies to ensure that employees are treated fairly, that work conditions are safe and employees are not subjected to abuse or unfair terminations. The many government organizations that now protect employee can protect the employees better than the unions can.
Link 1: http://www.blurtit.com/q200582.html



The public is often poorly served by unions because they are denied proper service when the unions are "flexing their muscle". The public pays for services that they don't receive when police, teachers, sanitation workers and others are on strike or implementing some form of work slow-down. When truckers, railroad workers and other "public sector" union workers go on strike, it causes problems for everyone - not just the union workers' employers.

In July of 2005, the Service Employees International Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters both split from the AFL-CIO. (Are those unions really “international” or is that another example of intentionally misusing words to distort a perception?) The reason for the split? Years of declining membership! Unions cause more problems then they solve and people are starting to realize that fact. The unions are becoming “un-unified” as a result of an inability to increase membership. It appears too many people realize that they can live just fine without unions. The split is another step toward obsolescence / extinction.
 Link 2: http://money.cnn.com/2005/07/25/news/economy/boycott/index.htm


When the union workers go ‘on strike' and refuse to work, and the employers hires non-union help to keep the company from going broke, union members and management call the employers “union busters”. But, the union members go 'on strike' with the explicit intention of trying to “break the company”, yet they don't refer to themselves as “company busters”. Why's that? The union members can go elsewhere if they're dissatisfied with their working conditions, benefits or compensation. What options do the employer have other than to hire people that are satisfied with what the employer offers?

By October 2005: GM lost $1.3 billion AND they've paid over $750 million to workers that aren't working.In 1984, GM was forced to agree to pay laid-off workers full pay and benefits. Currently over 5,000 GM employees are collecting full pay and benefits for NOT WORKING. This 20-year-old bad contract clause will probably put GM into bankruptcy in the coming years. UAW will not yield - they don't care what financial destruction it causes and that's a huge reason companies fight so vigorously to keep unions out of their lives.
Link 3: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aljY1GAp9e9g&refer=news_index

Blog Day 7

Being crazy is this guy’s job, and judging from the sound of his music, business is booming. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is his most maniacally inspired music yet, coasting on heroic levels of dementia, pimping on top of Mount Olympus. Yeezy goes for the grandeur of stadium rock, the all-devouring sonics of hip-hop, the erotic gloss of disco, and he goes for all of it, all the time. Nobody halfway sane could have made this album. Last time, Kanye went minimal for the electro melancholia of 808s & Heartbreak. But on Fantasy, he gets ridiculously maximal, blowing past all the rules of hip-hop and pop, even though, for the past half-decade, he’s been the one inventing the rules. There are hip-hop epics, R&B ballads, alien electronics, prog-rock samples, surprise guests from Bon Iver to Fergie to Chris Rock, even a Elton John piano solo. It’s his best album, but it’s more than that — it’s also a rock-star manifesto for a downsizing world. At a time when we all get hectored about lowering our expectations, surrendering our attention spans, settling for less, West wants us to demand more. Nobody else is making music this daring and weird, from the spooky space funk of "Gorgeous" to the King Crimson-biting "Power" to the paranoid staccato strings of "Monster." Nearly six minutes into "Runaway," long after the song has already sealed itself in your brain, the sound cuts out and you think it’s over. Then there’s a plinking piano, the feedback of an electric guitar plugging in, some "Strawberry Fields"-style cellos and Yeezy himself singing a poignant Robert Fripp-style solo through his vocoder. There’s no way it should work, but it keeps rolling for three more minutes without breaking the spell. Coming off a string of much-publicized emotional meltdowns, Yeezy is taking a deeper look inside the dark corners of his twisted psyche. He has sex and romance on his mind, but he comes clean about his male angst like never before. In confessions like "Runaway" and "Blame Game," he honestly struggles to figure out why he has to be such a bad person.This album truly encapsulates the new genre created in the 21st century that has yet to be named. This is why this album is a magnificent work of art.

Blog Post 6

Biggest Problem in America...
I think that the biggest problem facing Americans today is how hard the job market is. Given the current state of the economy we need to create jobs for those who could be hired now, and that will need some targeted demand side stimulus, because the decline in economic activity is mainly demand driven. The reduction in taxes and tax subsidies to businesses in the Job Act is meant to boost the private sector hiring of short term as well as long term unemployed. Hence the two-pronged attack on the unemployment problem in the Job Act makes economic sense, given the recent hiring record and concentration of high unemployment in certain occupations. President Obama has proposed to finance his programs in the Job Act and reduce public debt in the long run. We would face worse public debt if the economy stalls. I would have preferred a bigger boost to the economy now by allocating more spending on targeted public investment projects, education and training programs and R&D spending. The Job Act at least moves the economy forward and not backward. Passage of the Job Act now is the best economic and responsible strategy. Winston Churchill once said, “ The price of greatness is responsibility.” 

Thing that annoys me the most...
I think that the most annoying thing in the world is small immature children. I think that kids are most annoying because they do not understand when to stop. They keep going even after a point has been made, they annoy for fun. They also do not know respect, they do not understand that elders are meant to be respected and should have the priority over them. Kids ARE annoying. For all you parents who don't want to admit that YOUR kids are the most annoying of all, suck it up. You can hide behind "they don't know any better", but you can't hide the truth that the general public is pestered by them. Parents can also be annoying. Especially the ones who try to ENCOURAGE bad behavior by letting their kids do whatever they are doing. If you don't do anything about your kids' rude behavior, you are just as guilty. It's true. Expect no sympathy. Well the truth is children are annoying, self centered, and all sorts of other irritating things. BUT as a parent its their job to teach them otherwise. Overall, kids are nice and cute, but I would never want kids in my life until I am at least 30 years old.

The thing that you would recommend for everyone is...
The one thing I would recommend to anyone would be to fly a light plane. I like to look at the Earth and Nature from different perspectives. Flying in a light plane 2000 or 3000 feet above the ground is a totally different experience from being in a commercial jet where the pilots shoot straight up into Class A airspace (18,000 feet and above) as quickly as possible. Once I learn enough to get safely from Point A to Point B, I plan to take a lot of aerial photos. Flying is also fun and challenging. You have to think and act in three dimensions. You have the freedom to move to a lot of new spots on the globe. You learn to examine and appreciate scenery and natural phenomena that you'd never be able or wouldn't bother to see from the ground. Charles Lindbergh put it best: "Science, freedom, beauty, adventure." I love to fly, it is the single greatest thing I have ever done. Going into a spin or a simple land they are both are equally satisfying, and both let you receive that feeling of accomplishment. This is why I believe this is the number one thing that I would recommend, because of this feeling of fulfillment, this feeling that you are doing something few people know how to do.