Saturday, April 18, 2020
Marijuana Legalization Essays (393 words) - , Term Papers
Marijuana Legalization Most Americans do not want to spend scarce public funds incarcerating nonviolent marijuana offenders, at a cost of $23,000 per year. Politicians must reconsider our country's priorities and attach more importance to combating violent crime than targeting marijuana smokers. Marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers at least $7.5 billion annually. This is an enormous waste of scarce federal dollars that should be used to target violent crime. Marijuana prohibition makes no exception for the medical use of marijuana. The tens of thousands of seriously ill Americans who presently use marijuana as a therapeutic agent to alleviate symptoms of cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, or multiple sclerosis risk arrest and jail to obtain and use their medication. Between 1978 and 1996, 34 states passed laws recognizing marijuana's therapeutic value. Most recently, voters in two states -- Arizona and California -- passed laws allowing for the medical use of marijuana under a physician's supervision. Yet, states are severely limited in their ability to implement their medical use laws because of the federal prohibition of marijuana. America tried alcohol prohibition between 1919 and 1931, but discovered that the crime and violence associated with prohibition was more damaging than the evil sought to be prohibited. With tobacco, America has learned over the last decade that education is the most effective way to discourage use. Yet, America fails to apply these lessons to marijuana policy. By stubbornly defining all marijuana smoking as criminal, including that which involves adults smoking in the privacy of their own homes, we are wasting police and prosecutorial resources, clogging courts, filling costly and scarce jail and prison space, and needlessly wrecking the lives and careers of genuinely good citizens. Marijuana legalization offers an important advantage over decriminalization in that it allows for legal distribution and taxation of cannabis. In the absence of taxation, the free market price of legal marijuana would be extremely low, on the order of five to ten cents per joint. In terms of intoxicating potential, a joint is equivalent to at least $1 or $2 worth of alcohol, the price at which cannabis is currently sold in the Netherlands. The easiest way to hold the price at this level under legalization would be by an excise tax on commercial sales. An examination of the external costs imposed by cannabis users on the rest of society suggests that a"harmfulness tax" of $.50 - $1 per joint is appropriate. It can be estimated that excise taxes in this range would raise between $2.2 and $6.4 billion per year. Altogether, legalization would save the taxpayers around $8 - $16 billion, not counting the economic benefits of hemp agriculture and other spinoff industries.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Amusing Our Selves to Death essays
Amusing Our Selves to Death essays I have just read Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman states that the age of typography has been replaced by the age of television. This has changed the way we look at the world and the way we think, which in turn has almost made us less intelligent. Postman speaks his opinions freely, and really gives the reader a new perspective on media, and the effect it has on society. To often we think nothing of what we see and read in the media, but after reading this book you see things a lot differently. Postman believes that the culture is shaped by how its media is conducted. In the age of typography, for example, politicians spoke of how people wrote. In todays society the news is broadcasted in bits and pieces, and the unrelated topics are all thrown up and tied together with the phrase Now and This. Our culture, he states, now functions best when focused on tiny bits of unrelated material. We believe that things should come in unrelated bits, continuously, and with lots of flash. To us it doesnt seem weird that commercials interrupt our programs every few minutes, though to someone who has never seen television, it would seem very odd indeed. Postman says that televisions have changed everything in our culture; politics and teaching. Politics have conformed to the ways of television. An example is how debates are conducted in modern politics. Before debates lasted many hours and contained many long thought out responses and counter-arguments. Todays debates last an hour and a half at most. They each have about 2 minutes to speak. Teaching is also different. Children now think that we should learn by watching television. Postman believes that the only way to really learn is through the traditional methods. Shows such as Sesame Street cause more harm than good. They make the classroom seem even less exciting. I agree with his point on debates and that they could stand t o be lengthened so we coul...
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Property and Computer Crimes Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words
Property and Computer Crimes - Research Paper Example This is a serious implication on the criminal justice system. False imprisonment may actually start with framing. It corrupts the justice process by trivializing the evidence it is supposed to rely on to give a ruling in the cases before it. It presents no particular harm to the defendant who may falsify the evidence to escape prosecution. On the contrary, it renders the criminal justice system impotent and not capable of instilling justice. Falsifying evidence jeopardizes the criminal justice system, in fact, more than the victim. When that happens, we are only addressing the harm done to the criminal justice system and not the person falsely imprisoned. If one of the basic functions of criminal law is to condemn any conduct that society considers blameworthy, then false imprisonment seriously implicates it (Brenner, 2010). This refers to forcefully seizing a person and taking him/her to a place where he/she is unlikely to be found with the aim of holding him/her for ransom or abducting him/her with the intention of harassing him/her either physically, mentally or sexually, taking him/her hostage and several other reasons (Legal-explanations.com 2007). According to Gilmore, kidnapping charges have serious implications on the criminal justice system. While the perpetrator may be sentenced to 15 years, this could potentially yield to a mere three to nine years. This looks like an injustice, considering the immensity of the crime committed. The criminal justice system involves the filing of charges followed by the issuance of a warrant of arrest then the transmission of an extradition request all which make the process of prosecution. However, each case determines itself. The criminal justice system does not necessarily guarantee the return of the kidnapped child and this may delay and complicate the due process of law. Perhaps this
Monday, February 10, 2020
Leading Learning Organization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words
Leading Learning Organization - Essay Example tions constitute the some of the active participants suffering from the leadership weaknesses both locally and globally (Razik, Swanson & Razik, 2010). The flat world presents several opportunities for the leadership to incorporate in establishing an effective program for managing the workers. The learning organizations are not exceptional, as they apply the flat world dynamics accordingly. These continued arguments constitute the contrast and comparison of the local and global challenges that impair the education and education leadership. The comprehensive teacher leadership institutes the process in which the transformation culture for leadership in the learning industry is still key factor. Included in the identification of the iconic images of the past teacher leadership roles is that the learning organization is moving towards understanding the compelling cases of the teacher to leadership skill, and basing on the current developments (Razik, Swanson & Razik, 2010). The continued effort to institute scaring developments in the teacher to patient relation focuses on the following core current conditions that continue to evolve accordingly. Further, the changing world of managing organizations reflects that the course of proposing and establishing top-down change is becoming less profession. The processes of adopting change constitute the leadership, which is less intense ad involved to develop a structure for the relations that teacher may hold. Further, the question of the conditional stereotyping from the old fo lks in the industry continues to institute challenging developments in the management of the learning organizations. The leadership, learning and procedures of implementing and managing change institute the position for establishing a united course for developing the education setting to succeed in the local conceptualization of the learning institutions (Razik, Swanson & Razik, 2010). Notably, the face of the country is changing, and so is the
Thursday, January 30, 2020
The Nazi Doctors Essay Example for Free
The Nazi Doctors Essay Robert Jay Lifton’s The Nazi Doctors is a book that summarizes and explains the lives of both prisoner doctors and Nazi SS doctors during the Holocaust. Lifton discusses their roles in the attempt of the Nazis to present their plan for a perfect race as a medical practice and a sort of euthanasia for what the Nazis considered imperfect human beings. Through the interviews of both Nazi and prisoner doctors, I can determine the struggle that faced these doctors and also realize the pressure on Hitler to make the world see his views and actions of both genocide and â€Å"the perfect race†as acceptable.            Basically, Lifton is telling us that the Nazis knew that the world would be against the plan to murder anyone with an imperfection. So, the Nazis tried to use what could be disguised as medical means and mercy killings to accomplish this dream. What the world thought made a difference because the world could and would try to stop the Nazis if it appeared that they were conducting mass murders.            In The Nazi Doctors, Lifton brings to my attention that the Nazis constantly faced a struggle to keep what they were truly doing from the world. One example was the use of sedatives in great amounts to kill impaired children, attempting to make it look, upon investigation, as if the child was merely overmedicated (Lifton, p.54-55). When the world realized what the Nazis were doing, the reaction was basically World War II.            The weltanschauung or â€Å"philosophy of life†is examined in The Nazi Doctors in several ways. The Hitler philosophy that it is the state’s responsibility to â€Å"declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on.†(Lifton, p.22), is evident throughout the book. It is portrayed as an evil philosophy. Lifton relates more to Martin Buber and Leo Baeck who were both Jews and both supported the Jewish community during World War II. Like Buber who opposed Hitler’s regime and lectured against the Nazis, Lifton remarks several times that the Nazis tried to hide the evil they were doing from the world, proving they knew it was evil and unacceptable. Lifton even states that Buber saw one of the most powerful SS doctors, Josef Mengele as a â€Å"wound in the order of being†(Lifton, P.381). This also leads to the assumption that the book takes the views of Leo Baeck whose philosophy, from my point of view, was basically that ethical acts are a response to experiencing God and that the Nazis’ unethical acts are all from a decision to choose to perform these unethical acts.            Jane Elliot and The Nazi Doctors share the same philosophy on life. As Elliot opposes white supremacy, so does this book expose another racial supremacy. As Elliot opposes supremacy over blacks and tries to show the world its hidden prejudices through bold faced lectures and the Blue eyes/Brown eyes exercise, this book exposes Hitler’s prejudices over many races he insisted were inferior. And it was not just races but people with any impairment, whether it be mental or physical, that Hitler and his Nazis opposed. By reading Lifton’s point of view, I can see how he related to Jane Elliot’s view of life.            According to The Nazi Doctors, the Nazis began experimenting in their hospitals, but eventually spread their â€Å"euthanasia†to their concentration camps. The book explains how the whole killing plan came about in five basic steps: first came sterilization of impure human beings, the killing of impaired children, the killing of impaired adults, then the move to killing of impaired inmates in the concentration camps and prisons, and finally the mass murders of whole races and peoples. Always the Nazis tried to disguise these mass murders and killing of the innocent behind medical practices. This is why doctors were used to determine who should be put to death.            Even as they arrested those who opposed or spoke against the Regime, the Nazis also realized how important the resistance was. This is proven by the fact that they responded to resistance to direct medical killing by trying to disguise many deaths as results of pneumonia or accidental overmedication. The anti-Semitism in Europe, especially in Germany with their history of anti-Semitic stories and myths, made an easy target for Hitler and his Nazis. Because the people misunderstood the Jews, it was easy to make them fear the Jews. This made it easy to create a following to exterminate all Jews and later the Poles and gypsies and anyone the Nazis felt were impure to the human race.            Although in the United States there was not a strong sense of anti-Semitism, and we were fighting to destroy Hitler’s regime, anti-Semitism did exist and many Jews here felt isolated. However, without the history of fears of different races, since we are a melting pot of races, it would be difficult to focus on so many races as impure. Not to say that the United States does not hold prejudices, but the basis of our Constitution is the freedom to live and provides us with certain rights. So, much of America would be outraged by the Nazis and their methods of racial purification.            Thus leading to the reason why Hitler’s Holocaust plan needed worldwide indifference as well as a police state. The police state was necessary to control the extermination selection and the secrecy of what was really going on, and the people themselves. Worldwide indifference was necessary to what they were doing in order to squelch all protests and opposition to their plan. In other words, so no one would try to stop them. Lifton makes this clear throughout the book.             My personal reaction to this book, other than the horror to the truths it reveals, is that Lifton did a thorough job of delving into the minds of both the prison doctors and the Nazi doctors. He tries to show his readers how each side felt and what they lived through. He reveals the ways the prison doctors overcame great horrors and shocks to help the best way that they could. He explains how the Nazi doctors rationalized their part in the Regime’s plan and how they dealt with their evil responsibilities by drinking alcohol. Lifton makes it clear that he disagrees with this idea of a pure race and sees none of this as medical euthanasia, but as mass murder. I agree with Lifton and appreciate his great attempts to find the truth through his interviews. The book was interesting as well as stirring since it brought a sickness to my soul to understand how these massive killings and injustices could have ever occurred. Work Cited  Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Doctors. New York, NY, USA: Basic Books, Inc.,1986.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Career Outlook for Information Technology Essay -- Papers Technology C
Career Outlook for Information Technology *Works Cited Not Included Only once in a lifetime will a new invention come along to touch every aspect of our lives. A machine that has done all of this and more now exists in nearly every business in the US and one out of every two households. This incredible invention is of course the computer! How many people use computers either at home or at work? Computers have been around us for longer than most of us think. The electronic computer has been around for over a half-century, but its ancestors have been around 2000 years! However, only in the last 40 years has it changed the American society. The computer has changed nearly every aspect of people’s lives. The earliest existence of the modern computer’s ancestors is the abacus. It is simply a wooden rack holding parallel wires on which beads are strung. When these beads are moved along the wire according to â€Å"programming†rules that the user must memorize, all ordinary arithmetic operations can be performed. In the early 1800’s a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage invented the first punch card computer. Which read holes punched into cards. This technology advanced slowly. By the late 1930’s punch-card machines had become well established but were very slow. The outbreak of World War II produced a desperate need for computing capability, especially for the military. New weapons were produced which needed trajectory and other essential data. Associates at the University of Pennsylvania decided to build a high-speed electronic computer to do the job. This machine became known as ENIAC, which stood for â€Å"Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator†. ENIAC was about 1,000 times fast... ...per, PC Applications Specialists, Consultants, Data Management, Systems Analysts, plus many more related fields. The demand for Information Technology workers and the salaries that they provide are quite favorable. Lets take a look at this chart for an illustration of salary trends in this industry. The fastest growing career field is computer and data processing. The fastest growing jobs projected in the future are: Database Administrators /Computer Support, Computer Engineers, and Systems Analysts all of which are expected to increase by over 100% in the future. In conclusion, it is my own opinion, that the future of Information Technology is very bright. There will continue to be bigger and better advances in technology thus creating even more career fields and demand in this sector. I think that this will be a very rewarding career for the future. Career Outlook for Information Technology Essay -- Papers Technology C Career Outlook for Information Technology *Works Cited Not Included Only once in a lifetime will a new invention come along to touch every aspect of our lives. A machine that has done all of this and more now exists in nearly every business in the US and one out of every two households. This incredible invention is of course the computer! How many people use computers either at home or at work? Computers have been around us for longer than most of us think. The electronic computer has been around for over a half-century, but its ancestors have been around 2000 years! However, only in the last 40 years has it changed the American society. The computer has changed nearly every aspect of people’s lives. The earliest existence of the modern computer’s ancestors is the abacus. It is simply a wooden rack holding parallel wires on which beads are strung. When these beads are moved along the wire according to â€Å"programming†rules that the user must memorize, all ordinary arithmetic operations can be performed. In the early 1800’s a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage invented the first punch card computer. Which read holes punched into cards. This technology advanced slowly. By the late 1930’s punch-card machines had become well established but were very slow. The outbreak of World War II produced a desperate need for computing capability, especially for the military. New weapons were produced which needed trajectory and other essential data. Associates at the University of Pennsylvania decided to build a high-speed electronic computer to do the job. This machine became known as ENIAC, which stood for â€Å"Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator†. ENIAC was about 1,000 times fast... ...per, PC Applications Specialists, Consultants, Data Management, Systems Analysts, plus many more related fields. The demand for Information Technology workers and the salaries that they provide are quite favorable. Lets take a look at this chart for an illustration of salary trends in this industry. The fastest growing career field is computer and data processing. The fastest growing jobs projected in the future are: Database Administrators /Computer Support, Computer Engineers, and Systems Analysts all of which are expected to increase by over 100% in the future. In conclusion, it is my own opinion, that the future of Information Technology is very bright. There will continue to be bigger and better advances in technology thus creating even more career fields and demand in this sector. I think that this will be a very rewarding career for the future.
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
The exploration of the human nature, of the mind and of experience, forms the basis for the works of writers like John Donne or Jonathan Swift
The exploration of the human nature, of the mind and of experience, forms the basis for the works of writers like John Donne or Jonathan Swift. Swift fully utilizes the psychological realism as he tries to be as faithful to the nature of human mind as he conceives it to be, while Donne injects drama and passion into the lyrical form and enlivens the poem through the speaker's voice. Throughout his poems, John Donne considers his own character, expresses emotions, and searches for a place in a society as well as for salvation. The reader is involved in the drama between the speaker and the â€Å"blank†audience and the use of conceits and paradoxes aid in establishing the change and turmoil within the speaker or the poet. As John Carey writes in his essay, â€Å"this dramatic mode makes the poems intense, but temporary, like masks or costumes. †Thus, Donne can be theatrical, switch roles, expose thoughts and ultimately, â€Å"express divergent states of mind, to dramatize the potential for contraries within himself. (Carey, xxv) Similarly, Jonathan Swift in his work Gulliver's Travels, utilizes Gulliver's narrative voice as a means of characterizing his person but the notion that the protagonist is also an object of Swift's satire makes the reader aware of the perhaps unreliable nature of the narrator. Thus, in their works, both Donne and Swift trace the path of conciousness and the work of the mind and ultimately provide commentary on broad matters such as religion (Donne) or society and p olitics(Swift). John Donne's sonnet 5, reflects the mode of dramtic realism in its exposition of the speaker's thought process and change. The speaker confronts a strong fear of sin and punishment with a plea to be forgiven or â€Å"cleansed†, either by water or by fire. He recognizes himself as a microcosam but also perhaps fears that these â€Å"elements†or substances that we are built of and which are combined with spirituality or soul-â€Å"angelic sprite†will die and be condemned, as expressed in â€Å"both parts must die. †The speaker then calls for heavenly seas, â€Å"new seas†to drown him or at least to wash his world-himself, which if looked through Christian symbolism can indicate his desire to be cleansed or purged from â€Å"black sin†. Moreover, the structure of the poem also conveys the idea of psychological realism and of dramatic mode in that the change happens in line 10. Donne does follow the Petrarchan sonnet style in that the change occurs in last 6 lines but instead of it happening in the 9th line he chooses to place it in the next line. The phrase, that signifies the change, â€Å"But oh it must be burnt†represents a sharp change because the images of tears and water are replaced by fire imagery. The â€Å"flames†, â€Å"fiery zeal†and burning evoke a more dark state of mind and the final realization that the only way toward salvation is by Lord's â€Å"fire†. Thus, this disruption, both in imagery and the poem's structure, common to his style, reflects the thought in process as well as perhaps, Donne's rejection of the form and the accepted. Just as the speaker finds the washing and tears insufficient, Donne perhaps finds the Petrarchan sonnet form insufficient to express his flow of thoughts and emotions. As discussed in class, it is a poetic trick, â€Å"a peculiar combination of playfulness and artificiality in a passionate cry. †The poet thus, does more than just tell, he shows. Gulliver's Travels appears to be a ship doctor's account of his voyages into strange places, but it is actually a criticism of the human race. Book 4 reveals the bestial and brutal view of humanity through the depiction of Yahoos, the servants of a race of horses, called Houyhnhnms who are characterized with Reason. The psychological realism is conveyed primarily though the narrator and the protagonist, Gulliver. For the readers, he is the only source of information and as no contradictory observation are offered, at first it is difficult for the reader to choose a particular attitude. Although the ending and Gulliver's choice of lifestyle may appear ridiculous or on verge of insanity, it is still moving and effective. Gulliver, has undergone a transformation from a proud Englishmen to a man ashamed of the entire species to which he belongs. This shame that he finds is the shame that the reader can clearly see. The ridiculisy behind war, the concepts of greed and envy, the exposition of lawyers, it is all relatable. However the dramatic or psychological component exists in Gulliver's narrative that ultimately reveals the unreliability and irony of his character. As a traveled, adventurous man of experience one expects him to be open minded but in the end, by his stern refutation of all humanity, the reader can realize that he is far from a creature of reason, (that he perhaps believes himself to be) and instead he tends to judge and adapt through identification with a group, much like the majority of human beings. Perhaps, then such detail that Swift adds such as the room where Gulliver sleeps is actually halfway between the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms, and this can then be seen as the position most of us find ourselves in, between pure reason and pure emotion or between stoicism and eupicurenism. Then the character like Captain Mendez also represents this balance and contradicts Gulliver's perhaps over bitter, generalization of humanity. This depiction also offers the reader an excuse to identify with the better more positive side of human nature. However, Swift continues to show the bitterness and contrast between the Yahoos and Houyhnhms. The filtiness of the Yahoos their diet is contrasted to the Houyhnhnm cleanliness and simple diet. Gulliver cannot live on the repetitive but healthy diet of the Houyhnhnms, and this is perhaps Swift's way of once again pointing at further human barbarism. But at the same time it can be argued that Houyhnhnms are also an â€Å"ironic device†and not an ideal. Their language is limited, they use and exploit Yahoos as servants and they cannot even mourn their dead. In addition, Gulliver's hate for the Yahoos should not be taken at face value(like much of his narrative) because the Yahoos, too, are exaggerations. Just as life of pure reason is inadequate so is the life of pure emotion. Moreover, in the last chapters, Gulliver's behaviour and acts such as buying the stallions and talking to them for hours in the language of Houyhnhnms, or making his wife seat at the far end of the table, are illogical and bizarre. Thus, all the experience he has gone through and the possible understanding, can not be taken very seriously because the narrator who tells us the story lacks critical judgement in a sense that he fails to see his own inconsistencies and flows. This is what makes the novel a satirical one, because as discussed in class, Swift has created a gap between the story itself and the voice telling the story. It is in the place of this gap that the reader enters and needs to make an evaluation. Despite his desire for privacy and the guarding of his poems, Donne appears concerned to involve the reader into the probing and surprising thought process that also perhaps reflects the uncertainty, passion and discovery of the Renaissance period. Thus, both Swift's use of narrative voice and Donne's dramatic mode have the effect of engaging the reader into the work and provoking his judgement. It is through this collaboration that the meaning is generated.
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