Why We Must Fix Our Prisons

Japan hasasmaller incarceration rate than the U.S. The U.S.'s incarceration rate has quadruplaed in the past year. Prison fuctioncost the U.S. tax payers $68 billion per year. The prisons are not managed well, there is often violence and organized gang activities. Police officers are overwhelmed. Compared to the rest of the world the U.S. incacerates the most prisoners. "Either the U.S. is doing something different or the U.S. is hometo the most devious and evil people." Most of the people in prison are suffering from a disease or mental disorder. Most of the drug offenders lockedup are lockedup for possesing illegal substances, not selling, they are also nonviolent. Most of the drug violence isspiling into the U.S. from Mexico, Phoenix, Arizona has become the 2nd largest center of kidnapping, 2nd to Mexico. The prison system currently is not adequately protecting the citizens of the U.S.

The U.S. prison system needs to be alteredto help protect the citizens from organized gang activities. And to help the U.S. citizens who have committed non violent crimes. These citizensshould be treated differently and handeled accordingly. The overpopulationof prisons needs to be lookedat andadjustedas the author sugests.

Jim Jones; The People's Temple

There are six ways to check if a group will become dangerous or violent. This checklist was created by Eileen Barker. The first check is if the group moves to separate from society, geographically or socially. The second is if adherentents, or believers, become increasingly dependent on the movement for their preception of reality.The third is that important decisions of the adherents are made by others. The fourth is when sharp distinctions between "us" and "them" are made, and the distinctions are not open for discussion. The fifth is that the leader claims divine authority for their deeds and for orders to the followers. The sixth is that the leaders of the movement are focused unmovingly on a certain goal. A cult also has novel religious beliefs.

The People's Temple was led by Jim Jones. The People's Temple meets all of the checks for a dangerous group, cult. Here are some examples. Jim Jones Claims that he will be your God if you see him that way. The People's Temple seperated to Guyana. Jones began to make decisions for his followers. The People's Temple was interacial, which was a novel religious belief at the time. It challenged norms. Jones was not allowed to be challenged, if you did you were killed. Jones claimed that "society was evil." Jones claimed divine power by healing his secretary (who pretended to be sick). Jim Jones had a speaker system that was on for 24 hours 7 days a week that provided all the believers with false information/ news. Jim Jones and some members were distrusting of outsiders.

Jim Jones claims that all the reportes are liars and not to listem to them. Jim Jones gets famiies to turn on one another. Members had to give everything up to the church, they were made to feel guilty if they didn't. The ultimate goal of the People's Temple was to commit revolutionary suicide. There were constant services held as a control mechanism. Members began to surrender their rights and power to Jones. Leaving the church was considered the greatest sin of all. They had a new belief in creating a Utopian society. There were many loyalty tests.

Many members were forced to take cyanide. Jim Jones made members believe that they were against the U.S. People Temple's church caught on fire led to higher tension with society. Everyone to be socially and economically equal. Everyone is givenan allowance from the church.

Dalai Lama: Tibetans 'suffering' under China

The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama gives a speech in India criticizing the treatment of  the Tibetan's by the Chinese government. The Dalai Lama has been exiled to India, the suffering of the Tibetan Buddhists has gone one for 50 years. China accuses the Dalai Lama of trying to separate Tibet from China. The Chinese deny all claims that they are mistreating the Tibetans. The Dalai Lama says that the Chinese government has killed over hundreds of thousands Tibetans. The Dalai Lama is worried about the Tibetan culture disappearing, he says if not for the exile of 100,000 Tibetans to India there would be no remains of the Tibetan culture. 

A peaceful commemoration of the 1959 monks in the Tibetan capital, caused four days of anti-Chinese riots, in surrounding provinces. After the Dalai Lama gave his speech many Tibetans from Dharmsala came out and started to chant " China out! Tibet belongs to Tibetans!" Other protests around the world occured in Nepal, Seoul, South Korea, New York, London, Berlin, Vienna, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Canberra, the capital of Australia. China says they invaded Tibet to free the slaves of Tibet. The Dalai Lama supports a non-violent movement for change. 

It is not right for a government to control what religion its citizens may practice. It is not right that the Dalai Lama the leader of Tibetan Buddhism has to live in India, his people are in Tibet. The Chinese government should work with the Dalai Lama to come to a peaceful agreement. 

Facebook gets a facelift; Myspace loses

The "hot" site Facebook has redesigned their website. After this happened Myspace lost three executives. Facebook is making it easier for its members to share information and making the information flow faster. Facebook is also giving users more control of how to share information. Instead of a status bar, Facebook has created a "Twitter box, with a question like what's on you mind. Myspace has made no comment on whether or not they are going to replace the three executives. Myspace says that it is expecting to have a big year this year. Facebook outranks Myspace by 175 million users worldwide, compared to 130 million. However, Myspace out ranks Facebook 76 million users in the U.S. compared to 55 million users on Facebook. Most of the worlds online revenue comes from the United States.

Myspace came around as one of the first major social sites, Facebook was tehn created. At first Facebook was a knock-off Myspace. Now Facebook is starting to generate its own ideas. Will this knock-off site put an end to Myspace? I do not think so because so many people in the U.S. have a Myspace instead of a Facebook.

Earliest 'human footprints' found

I read Earliest 'human footprints' found, by BBC News. 1.5 million year old footprints were found in Kenya. Footprinst can determine the weight, height, and walking style of modern humans. The earliest footprints were found in Laetoli Tanzania, they were 3.7 million years old. The first footprints stated above suggest that humans were able to hunt and travel for long distances. They walked with the heels of their feet. The second set of footprints stated above suggest that humans walking style was like that of an apes. The archings of the toes between footprints was drastically different. There is very little information about hand and foot evolution in humans. One expert says the reason for this is because carnivores eat the flesh of feet and hands leaving tiny bones behind that were not preserved.

I think fossil are neat. When I was little I wanted to be an archeologist. Not anymore though, an archeologist cannot be one hundred percent sure of anything they find. They cannot be sure of where, how, why, when, or what. Whoever found the footprints in Laetoli, Tanzania cannot be sure of how old the footprints really are. They also cannot be sure if the footprints are really human footprints. It was stated in the article that the footprints were like ape footprints, how does the archeologist know that the footprints are human. He or she does not know.

Some Places Revisit Immigration Laws

I read Some Places Revist Immigration Laws by: Emily Bazar of the USA Today newspaper. Texas, Alabama, Utah and Iowa have made English the official language of their state. These four states have also made laws restricting illegal immigrants. The costs of implementing these policies is going to be high. That is why some people are skeptical. Thirty states have English only laws. It is predictied that this trend will only continue. A problem with these policies is that is puts "neighbor against neighbor".

The English only language is unfair to many immigrants. It forces immigrants to give up their own language and learn a new one. As you get older and older it becomes harder for individuals to learn a new language. If a state enforces an English only law, then that state needs to provide an easy and fast way for immigrants and illegal immigrants to learn English. The Englihs only laws will create hostile environments for immigrants and this will cause immigrants to resist assimilation into their new society.

Area business to close; 60 jobs lost- Current Event

I read Area business to close; 60 jobs lost, by the staff report of the Dayton Daily News. Kerry Inc. is closing its 400 Hazel St. Facility. It will be laying off 60 people. The closing will begin April 9th. Kerry Inc. provided food sevices. It will be closed permanently. Affected employees include 21 operators, two quality assurance technicians, four mixer operators, five dryer operators, four production supervisors and others. Kerry Inc. is based in Tralee, Ireland. Kerry Inc. supplies 15,000 food, food ingredients and "flavor products" to customers in more than 140 countries globally. The company has manufacturing facilities in 20 countries and international sales offices in 20 other countries.

The cause of this closure was not stated in the article. This made me wonder whether or not there would be further closings of Kerry Inc. facilities. It is clear that many families and companies will be negatively affected by the plant closure.

Tenneco loses $298M; Kettering plant still spared- Current Event

I read Tenneco loses $298M; Kettering plant still spared by Thomas Gnau. Tenneco Inc. reported a net loss of $298 million, and Tenneco also announced that they intend to close three manufacturing plants. However, the Woodman Drive plant in Kettering is not being considered for closure. Tenneco lost $415 million in 2008 alone. By the year 2009 Tenneco Inc. expects to make $58 million. Tenneco bought auto parts from bankrupt Delphi close to the Kettering Plant. The auto parts are used fo r General Motors Corp. passenger cars.

I think one of the reasons that Tenneco has lost so much money, is because they leased land from the bankrupt company Delphi. It is sad that so many car manufacturing companies are going out of buisness. The only real solution is alternative fuel, this would create many new jobs and revenue for the auto industry.

Current Event

I read the article Tijuana off-limits to U.S. Marines. Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland placed restrictions on the U.S. Marines going into a Mexican city, Tijuanna. He placed the restrictions because of the increased violence in Tijuanna. In the year 2007 there were 337 murders, in 2008 there was 843 murders. The author argues that this increase took place because of an increase in drug related violence. Most of the murders were comitted execution style. Marines must complete anti-terroist training abd carry contact information of U.S. Consulate General. In the article a Marine states "that the restrictions are lawful and as Marines we obey lawful orders."

The author of the articles porpuse for writting this article was to inform others about the ongoing restrictions in Tijuanna. The restrictions seem to be a good thing, because they protect the U.S. Marines from dangerous drug violence. However, the restrictions seem to be burdening to the Marines when they want to visit Tijuanna to relax and rest.

Chapter Two: Scrubbing in Maine - Nickle and Dimed

Nickel and Dimed
Chapter two: Scrubbing in Maine

In this chapter Barbara gets a job as a maid and a job as a dietary counselor at a nursing home.

Throughout this chapter Barbara reveals the harsh treatments of the Maid’s corporation and the

dissatisfactory way the maids are supposed to clean. If you get sick on the job at for the Maids or if you get sick in general you are supposed to just work through it. If you take off because you are sick you do not receive pay for the day you missed. There is this personality test you have to take if you want to work for Maids. The test as Barbara explains is “Bullshit! Anyone can pass the test!” While cleaning houses the maids are expected to follow strict rules. There is hardly any water used to clean the kitchen, and the bathroom. Basically the maids job is to make the house appear clean, not actually clean the house. This process is unfair to the customers, but it saves time and money for the Maids. It seems that all of the Maids employees are treated unfairly and worked to the bone. The maids also have to wear green and yellow uniforms, they stick out like sore thumbs compared to everyone else. It is clear that if you are a maid you are looked down upon. One maid imparticularly Holly, who doesn’t appear to eat, and could be pregnant; is a team leader who works all the time and gets in trouble with her husband when she doesn’t go to work. It is clear that Holly does not have health insurance. Even when she sprains her ankle holly will not leave work or go to an emergency room. Ted the manager discourages missing work and tries and turn maids against each other by having other maids “snitch” on each other. Ted agrees to let Holly go home after she injures her ankle; but it is unclear if he will pay her for leaving; he should since she was injured on the job. Another maid who is very old and has worked a long time at Maids is paid less than every other maid because she can not vacuum. This is an unfair discrimination against physical ability made by Ted. Barbara questions why these maids stay and work for Ted when there are plenty of other jobs available, the maids just do not have time to find another job, they are stuck. Barbara comes out and tells several fellow co-workers at Maids that she is “really a writer and she is going to write about this place.”

Barbara also works at Woodcrest a nursing home. Here she practically waitresses, she takes orders, helps make food, and does the dishes. She also cleans up after the people when they are done eating. Usually there are a few people that are there to help her. One day Barbara is forced to work with one cook, a broken dishwasher, and just herself as waitress. Luckily it was not that bad because some of the nursing home employees helped Barbara get her job done. Something Barbara has to watch out for is to make sure that diabetic patients do not receive any sugar. Something peculiar about the day Barbara worked by herself was that, that night when she went home she actually began to think that her fellow co-workers were in a conspiracy against her. Pete because she was avoiding “smoke dates” with him, and the others she did not know why they would act against her. In reality Barbara’s job at the nursing home was better than her job at Maids. Barbara lives in a hotel called Blue Haven. Barbara has to get help because she can not afford to buy groceries. She calls around and eventually get help and get food vouchers to buy groceries. It is really hard for minimum wage workers to get the help they need because they do not have the time to find the help they need. Barbara’s living conditions are very cramped, but manageable; especially when compared to other peoples living conditions, or other hotels. Barbara is also injured from working at Maids, her back begins to ache, and her knees from scrubbing, or cleaning floors on her hands and knees. She is also injured from vacuuming. When Barbara quits the Maids she just stops by one of her fellow co-workers house (Lori), and lets her have the “satisfaction of returning her Maids uniform to Ted and explaining her departure however she wanted. When Barbara quits work at Woodcrest, she just calls in sick and never shows up for work again.
One thing that I found interesting was that there was a lack of reported domestic workers. It was like all the people hiring privat domestic workers and all the domestic workers did not want anyone to know about them. On page 99 of Nickel and Dimed Barbara states the following information: "This invisibility persits at the macroscopic level. The Census Bureau reports that there wer 550,000 domestic workers in 1998 up 10 percent since 1996,but this may be a considerable underestimate.

Nickel and Dimed

Nickel and Dimed

Nickel and Dimed, a book written by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a about a middle aged woman, who is a writer, trying an experiment to see how minimum wage workers live on the verge of poverty. The experiment started when the author of the book went out for lunch with her boss. They were talking about the themes she usually writes about, and they drifted into talking about poverty. When Barbara asked the question, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” Then Barbara said someone should do some “old fashioned journalism”, as a result her boss said that she would do the “old fashioned journalism”. However Barbara set rules for herself and she had certain advantages going in to the experiment. Her rules were to find the cheapest accommodations, the cheapest place to live (without giving up personal privacy and safety), she would not use any prior writing skills, or education to her advantage to get a job, and she would take the highest paying job available. The advantages she had were that she had a bank account, access to an ATM card and credit card, health insurance, access to a car, she speaks English, is White, (not stated but she also had nicer clothes) and she gave herself money to start out with. The goal of the experiment is to see if Barbara can live on minimum wage and pay rent on her living space, afford food and the other basic necessities of life.

In the first chapter of the book she starts out in Key West, Florida, where she applies for many housekeeping jobs, for hotels that are not hiring, the hotels steer her into waitressing because she is White and speaks English; most of the housekeeping employees are African Americans, or Hispanics. Barbara finds out that the best way to find a job is to be in the right place at the right time. Her first job is at Hearthside, where she works as a waitress. A typical thing with waitressing is to share your tips with the bus boys and sometimes the dish washers and cooks. She begins to bond with the workers: Gail, Claude, Annette, Billy, Marianne, Andy, Tina, Joan. All of these workers are in tight living conditions, which they cannot get out of, because they cannot afford it. Claude is a Haitian cook; he lives in a very cramped condition where he is forced to be with people he does not know very well. Barbara soon finds out that she cannot afford to pay rent, so she must get another job. She decided to get a job at Jerry’s another restaurants with a hotel chain attached to it. Frustrated with management she quits her job at Hearthside, gets a job at Jerry’s, and then applies for a housekeeping job in the hotel chain attached to Jerry’s. She gets the job. At Jerry’s there is a cook like Claude, his name is George, he is an immigrant, and is also forced to live with people he does not know and he does not get very much sleep. Eventually Barbara gets fed up with working at Jerry’s, so she just leaves. She is set off one night when George is caught “stealing” and is going to fired; and then when she is working one night and all the tables are full and her manager starts to yell at her because; some of the customers ( who were British) would not eat their food. These two things led to Barbara quitting and deciding to move on to a new place. When she left she gave her key to number 46 to Gail, and arranged for her deposit to be transferred to Gail.

Some of the common themes she touches on are the stress put on workers, the health coverage most workers do not have, and the relationships between employees and employers; the relationship between herself and employers and fellow co-workers. She also touches on living conditions of most her co-workers. She also talks about the awful working conditions of the two places where she lives.

Merchants of Cool

1. 'Cool hunting' is the search for what individuals think is cool. This research is taken through surveys, interviews, focus groups and case studies.

2. They want to understand how a teen thinks and what a teen wants in order to create a product a teen would want and be able to seel it effectively based on what the teen thinks.

3. MTV, other programming and marketing decision-makers characterize their relationship with teen culturte that they are simply reflecting it not creating it.

4. Marketing research focuses on getting the information form an individual, market research is not interested in the individuals personal life. Human research focuses on the individuals personal life. Market research's goal is to learn how a teen thinks in order to sell a product. Human reaserch's goal is to create an individual that appeals to all teens, in order to sell what the indidvidual's life is like.

5. The critics of the 'merchants of cool' are providing the most accurate description of the relationship between teen culture and commercialization. The 'merchants of cool' tell the five major companies, News corp., Disney, AOL Timewarner, Viacom, and Unniversal, what is cool or in. Then the five companies put out what they think will sell. Teenagers then watch or listen to what is put out by the five companies; allowing the teens to be socialised by the five companies ideas. In the video Merchant of Cool it is shown how marketing researchers collect information, and then how the information is distributed to the major five companies. And then how the five companies advertis to teens and sell products to teens. Critics of 'merchants of cool'