QCNY

Gay Rights Rebuke May Change Approach

2009-11-05T00:48:00.000-08:00

By Weichung Yuan

They had far more money and volunteers, and geography was on their side, given that New England has been more accepting of same-sex marriage than any other region of the country. Yet gay rights supporters suffered a crushing loss when voters decided to repeal Maine’s new law allowing gay men and lesbians to wed, setting back a movement that had made remarkable progress nationally this year.

Maine, with its libertarian leanings, had seemed to offer an excellent chance of reversing the national trend of voters rejecting marriage equality at the ballot box. Instead, it became the 31st state to block same-sex marriage through a public referendum.

At a time when gay rights activists believe that President Obama is not treating their agenda as a high priority, the Maine loss has left them asking who their friends are. At stake, they say, is not only same-sex marriage, but the military’s ban on openly gay service members and the federal law banning same-sex marriage.

State legislatures had been viewed as new allies in the fight for same-sex marriage after lawmakers in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire approved such bills this year. But now, with Maine voters dealing a rebuke to their Legislature, it is far from clear whether elected officials — including the president — will risk political capital on gay rights.

Tuesday’s defeat is also likely to further splinter a movement that has been debating the best tactics for success. Some prominent gay politicians last month skipped a gay rights march in Washington, questioning its purpose, which emboldened some of the younger advocates at the march to call for a new generation of leaders.

Some advocates said they were unimpressed last month when President Obama signed a law against gay hate crimes but offered relatively restrained remarks. They questioned whether it was time to take a more confrontational posture toward Mr. Obama, who benefited during the 2008 campaign from a surge of votes and donations from gay men and lesbians.

In Maine, advocates had stuck to a familiar path: using their own personal stories, they tried to persuade voters that gay people were no different from their straight neighbors and deserved equal treatment under the law.

Now, many will argue that that approach is not enough. Some are already pressing for more aggressive tactics, like speeding up a ballot measure to reverse California’s ban on same-sex marriage next year, instead of taking more time to build support. Others want to focus on swaying federal lawmakers to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which Representative Barney Frank, the nation’s highest-ranking openly gay politician, has called foolish at this point.

“The state-by-state strategy that looked clever a few years ago has run its course,” said Richard Socarides, who advised President Bill Clinton on gay issues. “The states that were easy to get have been gotten.”

This year, Iowa, New Hampshire and Vermont joined Massachusetts and Connecticut in allowing same-sex marriage, but only through court rulings and legislative action.

The tactic of using personal conversations to press for marriage equality will not be abandoned after Tuesday’s resounding vote, and several advocates said that, if anything, the defeat called for more such conversations around the country.

Evan Wolfson, executive director of the national gay rights group Freedom to Marry, said the loss in Maine underscored “the fact that we need to continue those conversations and make ourselves visible as families in communities.”

He added, “It shows we have just not done it long enough and deep enough, even in a place like Maine.”

But opponents said that given Maine’s “live-and-let live” mentality, the results were especially strong proof that same-sex marriage was not gaining acceptance.

“It interrupts the story line that is being manufactured that suggests the culture has shifted on gay marriage and the fight is over,” said Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, the conservative Christian group that is leading the charge against same-sex marriage around the country. “Maine is one of the most secular states in the nation. It’s socially liberal. They had a three-year head start to build their organization, and they outspent us two to one. If they can’t win there, it really does tell you the majority of Americans are not on board with this gay marriage thing.”

Voter turnout was higher than expected in Maine — perhaps 50 percent, officials said — but not nearly as high as in last year’s presidential election, which drew record numbers of young people to the polls. Opponents of the repeal sought to mobilize college students, who tend to support same-sex marriage, but the outcome suggests they might not have succeeded.

The next battlefields are New Jersey and New York, whose Democratic governors were pressing lawmakers to pass same-sex marriage bills by the end of the year, and California, where voters approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage last November. Gay rights groups there are likely to seek a ballot measure reversing the ban by 2012. A federal lawsuit challenging the prohibition is scheduled to go to trial in January and is expected to make its way to the Supreme Court.

In New Jersey, Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s loss on Tuesday to Christopher J. Christie, a Republican who opposes same-sex marriage, dealt another potential blow to the movement. Mr. Christie has vowed to veto any same-sex marriage bill that reaches his desk, but Mr. Corzine could still sign a bill into law if the legislature approves it before January.

The City Council in the District of Columbia also appears poised to pass a same-sex marriage law, although opponents are seeking a referendum that would ask voters to ban it.

A more long-term, complex question is whether gay rights supporters can reverse the constitutional bans on same-sex marriage in some 30 states that have enacted them since 2000. The outcome in Maine reinforces voters’ reluctance to endorse same-sex marriage, which national polls echo, though the gap is narrowing. And supporters acknowledge they would much rather avoid ballot questions.

“They tend to marginalize the group that is being targeted and inflame people’s passions in a way that is at best divisive and at worst terribly cruel,” said Jennifer C. Pizer, marriage project director for Lambda Legal, a national advocacy group. “Our founders did not intend to allow a majority to take basic rights from a minority.”

Still, a group in Oregon announced Monday that it would seek a repeal of a constitutional ban there, perhaps as soon as 2012. Oregon voters approved the ban in 2004, and gay rights groups have been quietly building support for a repeal.

But in general, supporters are more likely to focus on states with statutory bans on gay marriage, which legislatures can reverse without voter approval. One such state is Washington, where preliminary returns from Tuesday’s election showed voters approving an expansion of a domestic partnership law that would give gay couples more state-granted legal protections.

Opponents of same-sex marriage said the outcome in Maine should make lawmakers in other states nervous about endorsing it.

“We’re already hearing in both New York and New Jersey that they are noticing what’s happening here,” Ms. Gallagher said. “Do other politicians really want to enter this particular culture war given all the stuff they are going to have to defend in the next election?”

An earlier version of this article misstated, in one instance, part of the name of the law that bans federal recognition of same-sex marriage. It is the Defense of Marriage Act.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 5, 2009, on page A25 of the New York edition.

Soft drink versus Government

2009-11-03T21:52:00.001-08:00

BY JianLong Wen

Soft drink, fast food, candy and other high calories food are what contribute to the rising of the American average weight. They also increase the risk of heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes and etc. It has become an important health issue even catch president Obama’s attentions, forcing him to put a tax on sugary drink.
Tax is always the best solution whenever government encounters “mess” like this. Yes, it would definitely solve the problem, temporarily. Moreover, sugary drink and fast food are “legal drugs”, people could not just quit that easily. Beside, these fast-food companies would always come out with new product to tempt people. The advertisement of these sugary drink change more rapidly than the promotion of famous artist’s album. They make the ads interesting and popular among teenagers and adult, most likely to brainwash them. Since people could not resist the temptation, eventually they would get addict to the food. With many supporters, rising tax would only in result of widespread discontent. Our government should imitate these companies. They should make the interesting ads of healthy food on news, print news and broadcast to capture people’s attentions. More, they should help to create new product on healthy food; make it “natural sweet” as those sugary drink. Most importantly, they should open more field on these food, import different kind of food, giving people more option. Soon, people will forget those soft drinks.
Tax on sugary drink would help people to consider the government is limiting their choices. Its actions would only lead to its people to question and doubt itself.

Don't Panic its just Swine Flu

2009-11-03T21:23:00.000-08:00

Every few years there is an outbreak of some kind of disease, which often creates a major panic among the citizens of New York as well as other parts of the US. Swine flu has had a similar effect on New Yorkers. Even thought WHO declared it a pandemic on June 11, 2009, most of the cases of H1N1 flu have been quite mild. Although there have been numerous swine flu related deaths, this virus is not as deadly. It has the symptoms of seasonal flu and can be cured with seasonal flu medications. Most of the victims who died had some other medical complications besides the flu.

Swine flu vaccines have just hit the market and many people have already taken the vaccine, all around the world. But the reliability, effectiveness and side effects of this vaccine is yet to be unearthed. Vaccines contain agents of the disease itself, which helps the immune system to ward off any further damage if the subject comes into contact with the virus from any outside source. Even though the government is encouraging people to take swine flu shots, it is not at all necessary to do so. Only people with severe medical conditions should take the swine flu vaccine. Healthy people do not need the vaccine. The vaccine can cause severe side effects in the future, as has been the case with many other vaccines. Swine flu is not worse than seasonal flu and it can be cured with or without any form of medication. If we eat healthy and maintain a healthy lifestyle, our immune system will be strong enough to fight many disease causing viruses.

The rage against H1N1!!

2009-11-03T20:58:00.000-08:00

By: Alan Siegel

What is all the gossip pertaining to the new and improved H1N1 vaccine? Doctors have spent huge portions of their lives trying to be rid the world of the Flu. Has it all been a waste or have they discovered a prevention plan.
The flu shot has been around for decades and continues to prove itself to be useful, but many concerns have arisen after the 1976 epidemic. A total of five hundred cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome were reported amongst the forty five million people vaccinated for the swine flu. The Associated Press recently published an article discussing the people’s concerns about the safety of the vaccine. According to this article published September 27th 2009, the government has started a system in which its sole purpose is to track possible side effects of this new vaccine. The system will differentiate true side effects from false claims and public propaganda.
Health authorities hope to vaccinate more that half the population in just a few months. With this large increase of vaccinations, there is a great deal of concern regarding the vaccines overall safety. Many people who have had vaccines in the past, continue to try to portray themselves as victims, stating that the medications caused them to get sick by lowering the immune system. Before blindly believing these “victims,” we must question those people demanding recognition and decipher the truth from these false claims. We must force them to ask themselves the following extremely important question: what was the real cause of their illnesses? Was it the flu vaccine or the double value sized super burger with fries and a coke from the night before!
At the end all of the day it all comes down to one question: is the vaccine safe or not? Yes, safety comes first and that is why monitoring systems have been created. Harvard Medical School scientists are investigating up to 50 million people with vaccination registries around the country, to see whether people visit a doctor in the weeks after their flu shots and why. Another monitoring system is being followed by Johns Hopkins University. They will continue to directly e-mail at least 100,000 vaccine recipients to track how they're feeling, focusing on the smaller complaints that wouldn't require a doctor visit. If anything seems connected, researchers can call the patient to follow up with detailed questions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also prepared take-home cards. These cards tell vaccine recipients how to report any suspected side effects in the nation's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting system.
Don’t get me wrong, sore throats and occasional headaches will always be around, but that doesn’t mean that they has been caused by a vaccine in the past. It is critical that organizations like the CDC continue to research and monitor the progress and safety of these vaccines.

MY study partner!!

2009-11-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

It is a very well known fact that misery loves company. As midtrems and finals appoach I can tell you from experience that when you know someone somewhere is pulling an all nighter just like you or struggling that write research paper like you are, it just makes work all the more easier and stress free.

It is a very well practiced traditions for students to get together and study and this long tradition still stands because it has been proven to work over time and time again. You will learn and understand the concept of diffusion and how to work out trigonometry better when you work it out with friends and they explain it to you in a way that teachers can't.

It helps to know others are going through what you are going through. It helps to know your not stupid for not understanding something in class because the truth is half of the class didn't understand it either. when you know you have the supoosrt and understanding of your classmates, it will encourage you to make that trip to the professors office and ask questions. It will give you the will power and the drive to want to understand and explain it to your friends. It just makes learing all the more better.

It is a sad, proven, helpful(in this case) fact that misery loves comapy...

By: Staicy Prasad

Who to Root For

2009-11-03T19:13:00.000-08:00

As a Mets fan my biggest baseball fear of the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies squaring off in the World Series is becoming a reality. I know I have to make a decision of whom I will be rooting for. After a significant amount of time thinking about it came up with some rational ideas and decided I had to be pulling for the Phillies to be winning it all, again.
For as long as I remember the Mets biggest rivals have been the Braves. In my early baseball years I would watch as Mike Piazza and Chipper Jones would square off and it would get intense. In 1999 the Mets even faced the Braves in a playoff series, which had some of the most amazing plays ever happen in them such as the “grand slam single”. Over the past few years the Mets and Phillies have seemed to be making a new rivalry with players from each team bad mouthing the other through the media. All though this seems like a heated rivalry truth be told it is not that big a deal due to the constant beating on the Mets the Phillies do. In my heart of hearts I will never hate any player on the Phillies the way I loathe Chipper Jones. So in reality the Braves are the Mets real “bad guys”.
Although the Phillies may not be as bad as the Braves do not get me wrong I still hate them with a passion of 1000 fires. Last season I had the tragedy of watching them celebrate as they won the World Series. Since that day I have heard the gloating of the Phillie fan and it is not pleasant. If the Phillies repeat and win it again these fans will have nothing more to me to say they already said it all, but if the Yankees win it they to will have all that to say to me and I will have to hear it from both corners.
Last but not least my favorite reason of why I will be rooting for the Phillies comes from my respect of the game. If the Yankees win this years fall classic what will that say for small market teams such as the Minnesota Twins and the Kansas City Royals. These teams cannot hold on to their big time stars due to the high demanding salaries of these players. These teams have to rebuild every few years just to stay competitive and be a moneymaking organization. The Yankees on the other hand this past off-season alone spent close to 400 million dollars alone on 3 players. The core of there team and most of there best players came via the free agent market, at least the Phillies core players are home grown and brought up through the system.
As you see this matter is no joke to me. Baseball is the love of my life and this has been the worst year for it in my life arguably ever. To salvage some sort of happiness I will leave with this. LETS GO PHILLIES!!!!!
by Sean Hack

what do you think of high-tech communication?

2009-11-03T16:21:00.000-08:00

According to one study finds that 37 percent of teens felt they wouldn't be able to live without a cell phone once they had it. This study also shows that a cell phone has interfered their life. Now, people like to use high-tech communication. they think this is convenient that you can contact person anywhere, especially cell phone.In my opinion, cell phone breaks my privacy because it can call me anywhere. And it only a tool. People use it to contact person. It has multi-function for attracted consumer; therefore, it is very expensive. Another study that the risk of accident was nearly five times higher than normal when a person was on the telephone before the accident. It is as dangerous as driving drunk. It also effect person health. A study measuring the link between cell phones and mental health found that teens who used cell phones the most were more likely to be anxious and depressed. Some research people use cell phones for long time. It would cause brain cancer. Mayber people said they wouldn't be able to live without it. We could suppose if the time went back two decades people how to live. I like to enjoy my own space. I like quiet life. I don't allow the cell phone to disturb my life. What do you think about this?

Simmons's death --By English 110 Chen Jin

2009-11-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

"Simmons", a synonym for spring mattress in people's memory, are suffering from bankruptcy.
The current owner of the Simmons said,"Mattress Industry has been overwhelmed by the economic crisis." However, the investment company who purchase Simmons in 2003, has about 77 million dollars of profits in their pocket now. According to the disclosure of the former president Helier who was forced to resign, none of these private equity firm prepared to long-term business brand, and their idea is how to achieve profit maximization. The world's most well-know mattress company was resold by 7 times in last 20 years, it has become the most explicit interests of the toys in the capital markets.
In 2003, Thomas H · Lee Brothers, Inc. ( "THL") used 325 million dollars acquisition of Simmons, while undertaking a 745 million dollars of corporate debt. The following year, Simmons through the issuance of corporate debt financing to THL issuing 137 million special dividend. In 2007, Simmons once again borrow 300 million dollars, of which 238 million for dividends; thus, it borrowed money of 375 million dollars, as dividends distributed to their own, it became the compensation when they used their own money to buy Simmons, and then count the money on sat. Alleged that the revenue of Simmons company during the tenure of its president is 40 million dollars. Wall Street investment banks collected profits from the debt-ridden company too. Because it helped to arrange the transaction and made these transactions possible by the sale of the bonds, they receive millions dollars in profit. In the last few years, a variety of private equity fund owners received about 750 million dollars benefits from the Simmons. This is not a coincidence. Capitalists behind the operation push the Simmons to debt-ridden step by step.,
The cold of Financial Crisis rush bedroom. After 7 times bankruptcy protection, Simmons company, the 133-year-old "cash cows" was drained the last drop of milk, then it died. The commented that,"So many people can get so much money from an insolvent company. We have to say it is a legend in the moment of the financial environment."
When we mention the "Simmons", everyone is too familiar with it. However, know that "Simmons" is not just a mattress company even a century-old shop. Know more about it is its bankruptcy what may happen to other "Simmons" tomorrow .....

2009-11-03T14:15:00.000-08:00

Halloween is one of those rare holidays I have come to truly enjoy. There is no other holiday that captures the mystique and pure delight that comes from totally cutting loose from your identity and in the process exploring the creative side of your brain. Other holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter… all have their elements of fun, but tie too many other elements to them to be care-free while partaking in the holiday festivities.
Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving are all guaranteed family reunions and by that definition alone are partly cumbersome. Instead of just enjoying the spirit of these holidays there is always that pressure and expectation of good behavior and an almost clairvoyant ability to choose “the perfect gift” (most likely for someone you have not even been in contact with for the entire year prior). There are also many religious/traditional aspects that must be tended to that are not exactly the embodiment of a day trip to Great Adventure.
Halloween on the other hand totally flies in the face of conventional holidays. It is the only one I know of that is predicated on scaring the living daylights out of any and everyone in the name of fun. There is no expectation of family gatherings, coming from all over the country and gathering around the pumpkin. On the contrary, this is a chance to differentiate yourself from your family and not be burdened by the social conventions of respect/kindness that are the staples of behavior otherwise. Pranks and jokes are welcome on this day and are mostly met with giggles and smiles.
No matter what religion, nationality, and gender… everyone in the community takes part whether by handing out candy or decorating their houses into eerie dungeons or frightful castles of doom. Growing up the familiarity and kindness I received on this holiday was great and there was no fear of receiving bad candy… not that my mom did not go through the batch with forensic accuracy. It is a holiday that immediately transports me back to my first costume. You know the little plastic mask with the rubber band affixed by two industrial staples along with the plastic onesie that I used to pull over my torso to become Rainbow Brite or the like? I can still smell the vinyl now!
As an adult Halloween has a whole new exciting aspect to it as well. It is a real interesting dynamic for 20 something’s like myself. There are all of these guys that throughout the year are all stiff and unassuming… and then on Halloween they come out of their shells. They become the rock singer or sports star they idolize and for one night really take on a persona they would be better off adopting in their everyday life. The confidence this holiday inspires is not limited to the boys either. Along with my girlfriends, I find myself dressing in outrageous and daring outfits than I would ever dare attempt wear on a normal day. I feel a little less constricted by what people think of me on that day…. What could be better?

Jazmin Triguero

My "Hollywood" Life

2009-11-03T14:02:00.000-08:00

by: Monica Louie

When I enter the office at work or go on my laptop at home, I find myself going on two websites, Facebook and people.com. Many people today are concerned with how others live their lives instead of paying attention to their owns. We have become so consumed with the way the media portrays life that we try to conform our own life to fit their stereotypical image.

Turning on the news channel we see the latest breaking news following Michael Jackson’s death. But how does his death affect our lives. It is nice to know, but not to spend two weeks worth of news on it. There are more important topics to focus on that have more of an impact on our lives, like President Obama’s healthcare acts and the war in Iraq. The front cover of the newspaper shows Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ marriage ceremony but what does this have to with the crisis in Iraq, where are fellow American soldiers are risking their lives to save ours. They cover up the real everyday events with stories of love and lust. The media in a way is telling us how to live our lives, and unfortunately it does this by displaying all the events of our icons daily life.

We have become so accustomed to trying to fit in to the stereotypical life of Hollywood and the media, that we forget what are the truly the important things in life. We want to know what are the latest trends, relationship and legal status of celebrities that we loose focus on whose life is who. This is not only true for the lives of Hollywood celebrities but for our Facebook friends. We are constantly checking to see what are friends are up to, who are they dating, which party they are attending instead of actually spending time with our real friends, focusing on our studies, and all the other events that have an impact on our lives.

My only advice is that you should live your life the way you want to. Not the way the media, Hollywood, or your friends tell you. Do what you feel is the best and don’t let nothing stand in your way. We have to break the stereotypical image and build our own individual and unique image.

Global warming

2009-11-03T12:03:00.000-08:00

Global warming

Global warming is one of the serious issue for the earth and the environment scientists are really concerned in that warming problem. Global warming is about the rises average temperature of earth surfaces. Everybody be aware of global warming causes and effects. For the global warming, mainly responsible the industrial country and they crate a lot of carbon die oxide by participating the various kinds of industry which are through out lot of carbon die oxide, affects the stratosphere. As a result the direct heat comes from the sun warming the earth. Another serious problem is that petroleum products are used heavily in motorcar and others power machines and produce carbon mono oxide. This gas is destroy the atmosphere layer which is protect the gamma light from the sun. but for the mono oxide gas, the atmosphere can not filter the heat and day by day the earth gets warmer. The green house gas is also liable for the warming of earth. The “CFC” gas is also responsible for warming issue, used heavily in aerosols, refrigeration and air condition machine. This “CFC” gas makes a hole in the upper level of the atmosphere and that’s the dangerous causes that the sun light came through directly to the earth. The methane gas is one of the second issue to raise the temperature of the earth which is derived from sources such as rice paddies, bovine flatulence, bacteria in bogs and fossil fuel production. These are all principle problem that makes the earth warmer and through the whole world in an uncertain situation.
The effects of global warming are terrible that science technology can not protect the problems. For the warming the north pole ice sheet going to be melted and sea water levels increases, as a result the low land in the earth flooded permanently. The natural disaster like hurricane attacks the sea shore area and destroys millions of dollars and lives. The forest lives are destroys for the global warming and also can causes forest fire and burn the thousand arcos forest. The amount of oxygen may decline in the ocean that affects the ocean life. There are lot of effects for global warming, not so well for the human and other habituate in the world.
Syful azam

how music can affect us

2009-11-03T00:10:00.000-08:00

by xuyang sun
Maybe music is the only thing that everyone in the world is familiar with, although some people are not aware of that. It can be as simple as the sound of rain, or a certain rhythm that come out from the corner of a street. Till now, we have created so many different types of music, as pop music, blues, jazz, rock & roll, and rap. Each one of them has a unique style. I don't have a favorite type. I listen to music as long as it moves me. Music can be so affected to us that it can easily change our life.
Different types of music can have different effects on people. Music can be a close friend when you feel lonely. Sometimes music can even make you cry. There are always a bunch of people who are crazy about music. It is not always the same way. Some folks scream and pass out in a singer’s concert; some folks go to an opera every Saturday night. In a concert, such music has so strong rhythms and beats can make people pop their heads. And in an opera, music is like a whisperer telling you an interesting story that can deeply stick to your soul.
There is a white rap singer, Eminem, recorded a song “Stan” in 2001, which according to a true sad story about a fan wrote him several letters, and expected him to write back, but he didn't because he didn't receive the letters. So that fan suicide by having a car accident in the highway and his pregnant girlfriend in the back of the car. It is a sad story. I think it is one of the evidences that shows music can affect people. His music is full of violence and discrimination, which somehow reflect his own sad childhood. Some people who also have a sad childhood listen to his music can find something in common and even change their own characters and do something stupid
There are also many good ways that music can affect us. As a matter of fact, I believe that today most of music encourage us to get rid of bad mood. When I was in the library alone, bored and exhausted, I usually listen some music. It always helps me get happier and kill time. Even though sometimes music has negative effects on me, I think it is the last thing to get rid of. Music makes my life wonderful. It can make me strong and give me the courage to get through the bad times.
the end

It’s not for you, it’s for you.

2009-11-02T22:35:00.001-08:00

By Tianlong Li

Since the so-called unprecedented and long expected detection of the magnetic monopoly, which to be honest I have absolutely no authority and only least acquaintance with, there’re those folks trying to posture themselves as a reaction to the scientific development, who could be rejoicing the spark of digging the world, or doubting its prospect, mainly focused on personal perspective. For the latter, it’s in a nutshell just a denial- “It’s not for me, so I don’t care.” I’m not suggesting everyone felicitating the discovery of that strange particle, immerging oneself into the vision that all of us are going to enjoy anti-gravity transportation and urban space travel agency due to the development all bumped profoundly by our little friend’s visit, which is just going too far and deserving a seat in science fiction, whereas the inhospitality upon the particle, which is virtually showing how materialistic people are nowadays, is the issue we should raise.

Yes, it’s not for you, but it’s for YOU, which is including you as its mere fraction.

Such sophisticated development and obscure terminology, by which civilians find them confronted with unending search and decryption once they intend to know how the development could affect them, often present a mysterious idea and get conveyed in form of straightaway paraphrase e.g. the adaption of to a simple nuke and the clone technology which at its beginning is a boring deciphering process. It’s totally understandable for people to have biases on those and have some conceivable possible prospect for them to evaluate the enigma. However it’s not a reason and never an excuse to blame the scientists for using funds and not making us better off immediately.

Demanding instant welfare from laboratorial experiment is as materialistic as waiting for eggs from the biddy just breaking out of the egg. And this behavior is thoroughly strengthened by contemporary social value judgment, which could be elaborated as maximizing the profit at all possible ways and minimizing the cost at all acceptable choices, inarguably driving most people to seek predictable profit and judge on thing’s value, despite only by their own opinions and self interests. The inconsistency between applied theory and laboratorial trial exists all the time, from when the Homo sapiens were trying to set fire, after they had seen the fire from lightning and been inspired, for thousands of years until they actually drilled on the block. Application takes time and calls for patience for people, no matter whether it’s about a doohickey or astronomical assumption, which though by the evolution and process of civilization speed up timely and requires less frictional work. Irony as it is, the faster a newly discovered thing could be applied, the more eager people would expect for overall academic projects. Aryans waited for centuries for first iron-smelt sword, Chinese watched for decades for the Great Wall and Americans held their breath for years while expecting the first TV after the Bell labs for their first time transmitted moving images from Washington, DC to New York City. Now even a momentary patience, is going to be evaluated into currency-based by people and judged.

What happen to the society is happening to everyone inevitably. One’s impossibly avoiding the surrounding reaction and being affected under current snappish social intension, which making the deterioration of concrete academic research steep and sharp, in terms of materialistic project having short term outcome as well as exploiting the embedded work to yield benefit. Undertaking to deeply think over the recondite development, while I’m suggesting that it’s not required to have direct prospect, is hard to achieve and asking for more than patience, but definitely doing the good, in regard to the aggregates other than single fragment. The consciousness of putting more attention to what really promote the civilization and what is becoming more crucial to the society, serves to us as a whole, causing the ripple effect for everyone within us and bettering off the entire group, which is as far-flung as the application process itself, but far more fundamental and universal across the eras and zeitgeists.

Other than fullfilling physical needs or soothing mind fuzz,things like quantum research are nigh impossible to benefit you intuitionally, but hardly possible to value less than a popslice or beefsteak that might benefit you more directly. It shall be for you, ergo you should be for it.

Smoking should be prohibited on college campus.

2009-11-02T21:30:00.000-08:00

Everybody knows the dangerous effects of smoking. It causes different diseases which can lead one’s life to death. A website quitguide.com gives a horrified statistic “Smoking kills approximately half million people per year in U.S. … Of these an estimated 10% are people who die of disease due to secondhand smoke”. Smoking should ban in college campus, because smoking cigarettes is harmful for smoker’s health and it also affect non-smoker too.
Smoking cigarettes is harmful for health. People who smoke are more in danger to get common cold and flu. Smoking cigarettes for many years produce smoker’s cough and bronchitis. It has been establish that smoking cigarettes is the main cause of lung and throat cancer. Women who smoke during pregnancy have greater chance to deliver weak babies who have breathing problem at birth and throughout their lives. Smoking cigarettes destroy smoker’s health.
School is a place of learning. Students comes school to learning. They learn not only from text books but also from surroundings. Smoking in college campus, influence others to smoke. College freshmen are immature, they are affected by smokers. Because, some of them start smoking and rest of them are affected as a secondhand smokers. Non-smokers who suffer asthma or other breathing problems feel uncomfortable and nausea if anybody smokes in front of them. Smokers should have the right to smoke, but it is not reasonable is that right is harmful to others.
School should not privilege any bad habit. In Queens College outside of every buildings have ashtray for smokers. It encourages smokers to smoke and pollute the college campus. So, college authority should not privilege smoker to smoke in campus and make the campus healthier smoke free zone.
Towhidwr Rahman

Are you for or against? (pro or con)

2009-11-02T21:12:00.000-08:00

On October 5, 2005 written by Stephenie Meyer “Twilight” was published. The following 3 books were published within the next 3 years. By now 17 million copies of this book series have been sold. The movie based on the first book was shown in the theaters in 2008. It looks like the book caught a lot of attention from the audience and became very popular all over the world. But there are people who seem to constantly deny all the advantages of this infamous series.
Why are some people so aggressive when they come across the “Twilight” thing? Criticism is good, but one should know where to stop. If the book were that bad, 17 million copies would not be sold. If some critics think that the plot of the book is pointless or they just do not like the characters of the movie, or anything else: these things do not give them the reason to say that either the book or the movie is bad. When you criticize a book or a movie, you should pay attention to the target audience and give your grade based on it. People should look at a book or a movie with the eyes of the target audience and answer the following question: if a book or a movie would be of interest to the audience and why. Moreover, you should base your opinion on a lot of different characteristics, for instance, the way a book is written, what benefits it brings to the target audience and so on.
The target audience for the book “Twilight” is teenagers, especially young girls. Thus men or adults, I think, should not say that the book is bad only because they do not see the point of it. If they cannot stop from criticizing, they should put themselves in the shoes of teenagers. I am the one of those people who read all 4 books and saw the first movie. And I see the positive influence on teenagers in it. This book is unlike other contemporary teen novels: its protagonist does not have sex. Also I do not see any problems in the fact that a teenage girl falls in love with the romantic story, which this book depicts. It is not a secret that teenagers dream of something unreal, fairy, and romantic. My opinion is that the fact the main characters are vampires does not make any difference. Who said to all the critics that, if we are used to the stereotypes that vampires are something devilish, it is not right to represent them in the opposite way? Why do they think that it is not possible? Let us take the example of a Halloween party. Look at all these costumes: most of them are connected to evil, but even kids wear them. When a kid takes on the baleful costume of Monster T, the monster stops representing the evil. Here is the question: why do not we say that monsters are supposed to scare people, and therefore kids should stop wearing such costumes?
And what if people love this book due to the romantic story depicted in it, or because Robert Pattinson stars in the movie, or due to some other reasons. I believe, if so many people have found the reason to love this book, it has its moments. And people, who negatively treat the book, just have not answered the question: who is the target audience of this book and what benefits the audience gets from reading it?

Kostenkova Margarita

The Wars put US in Poverty

2009-11-02T20:42:00.000-08:00

Poverty is something that should have never been considered existed in American’s dictionary. Even until today it is hard to believe that Americans have been undergoing some very hard time on their economy since entered 21st century.

Then, the Iraq war---It started from the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 which lighted the flame of this war. This attacked killed 2,974 people in the towers, 246 passengers and 17 still missing today. George W. Bush saw this attack as a terrorist threat and started plans of war. He did this not only for revenge but elections were in three years and this will protect his seat in the White House. On March 20, 2003, the attack on Iraq started; meanwhile, Americans at home were suffering from the massive lost of jobs and unable to pay their mortgages. Still today, no one knows when this war will end and millions of dollars are used everyday to fund this war. According to the newest update on Cost on War, $927,447,772,812 is the amount of cost on both the Iraq war and War in Afghanistan since 2003 till today (November 2, 2009). However, if the government has recognized the severity of poverty back in homeland, they would have save a countless amount of cost they have spent on some meaningless wars.

At last, if there is anything that least government can do to rebuild their trust form the people is to let troops recede from the Wars and focus on finding more efficient ways to recover the economic crisis.

Chen Yang

CUTTING TRANSPORTATION FOR PRIVATE SCHOOL STUDENTS WOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE

2009-11-02T19:14:00.000-08:00

The number one solution to the New York City budget crisis suggested by the Independent budget office, to eliminate funding of transportation to all private school students,would be an irresponsible decision. Cutting transportation to private school students is a slap in the face to many good tax paying citizens and would cause a major safety hazard on the busy and sometimes dangerous streets of New York. The elimination of public transportation could greatly endanger both the lives of those private school students and have a ripple effect and in turn endanger many other New Yorkers. In addition, if this plan is implemented, many of the parents who send their children to private schools may decide to send their children to public schools which could cost New York City even more money than the anticipated savings. Further, parents who send their children to private schools also have a right to see some of the tax money that they pay into the educational system.

If there was no transportation for private school students, parents would have to look at other options, which could endanger those children and many other New Yorkers. One of the other main options would be for parents themselves to drive their children to school. This would bring more cars onto the roads at rush hour ,causing traffic jams and would inevitably cause an increase in accidents. Some parents might be forced to consider allowing their children to walk to school. This is a great safety risk as some of these children might be very young and might be forced to walk far distances on their own. An additional option would be for parents to send their children on public transportation which can be dangerous for young children especially when they cross through unsafe neighborhoods and busy intersections. Cutting transportation would increase the number of car accidents and force parents to put their children in a dangerous situation for lack of a better option. Why should the safety of public school students be anymore important then the safety of private school students?

Cutting transportation for private school students as a way to decrease the budget crisis might in fact increase spending as parents may switch their children into the public school system. The parents who send their children to private schools in New York City are on average no better off economically then those parents who send their children to public school. This can be due to the fact that most private schools in New York City are religious schools and therefore parents are sending their children for religious purposes and not because they want to send their children to an expensive private school. These parents, who are not wealthy, may therefore decide that without transportation, it is too much of a hassle or might cost them extra in paying for their own buses, and may decide to switch their children to public schools. This would cost New York City more money as the city would have to pay for the education of more students. If the city decides to cut transportation for private schools as a means of decreasing the budget crisis they may find themselves with an increase in deficit as they may be forced to spend more money on all the new students who could be added to the public school system.

New York City taxpayers, even those who send their children to private schools, have a right to see some of the tax money set aside for education ,used for their children. As of now the federal government uses taxpayer money to give private schools money for textbooks. The federal government has no problem with giving money and services to private schools and until now neither did the city. Private school parents pay into the system with their taxpayer dollars and are supporting the public schools while they see little done with their money through the failures of the new York city public schools. As of now one of the few services that the private school parents see their money put to work for their own children, is the free transportation. Without the city providing transportation many good taxpaying citizens who send their own children to private schools would become fed up with a system that ignores their children, and the cities responsibility to safely transport all the children of New York to schools.

It would be irresponsible for the city of New York to cut transportation for private school students as a means to decrease the budget deficit. This would cause more harm than good as it would cost New York City money as public schools would grow beyond capacity, it would be a safety hazard as their would be more accidents, and cause many taxpayer to get very upset at a system that ignores their children in private schools. The city of New York is no more responsible for children who go to public schools than for children who go to private schools, as the safety of all the children of New York should be a priority.

Malka Hirsch

Violent Video Games

2009-11-02T13:47:00.000-08:00

Do the violent video games have any connection to the increased aggression found amongst teens today? Well, researchers believe that violent video games may be the leading, if not sole, cause of increased violence found amongst kids and teenagers.

Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine did a study on the affect of violent games on their players. They divided 44 adolescents into two groups and had them play either “Medal of Honor: Frontline” (a very violent video game) or “Need for Speed: Underground” (a non-violent video game). Each child played either one of the games for 30 minutes and then had an MRI of his/her brain taken. The MRI of the children who played the violent game indicated an increase in emotional arousal as well as a decrease in self-control and attentiveness—an overall negative impact. However, the children who played the non-violent game were not found to have the same negative effect on their brain. This study shows clearly that the violent games are affecting the way the kids think and act for the negative.

In addition to that, according to two studies appearing in the April issue of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, playing violent video games “can increase a person's aggressive thoughts, feelings and behavior both in laboratory settings and in actual life.” Researchers say that violent games leave a far worse impact on their players that violent movies do on their watchers. The reason for that is because the interactive games make their players extremely engrossed and feel almost as if the game is a real episode in their life.

Another study conducted on college student showed the extent to which these violent games control the lives of teens who play them. The researchers compared the violent game playing habits and delinquency of two hundred and twenty-seven college students. "We found that students who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high school engaged in more aggressive behavior. We also found that amount of time spent playing video games in the past was associated with lower academic grades in college," said psychologist Anderson, Ph.D.

The fact that violent video games are immensely influencing the behaviors and minds of the kids and teens for the worse cannot be denied. If these studies only indicate the short-term affect these games have, than the long-term effect can only be much worse. Therefore, it is evident that action should be taken to minimize the use of violent video games amongst kids and teenagers

By: Regina Murdakhayeva

Music, Ignorance, and You

2009-11-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

Music and radio have always been important parts of American culture and society. The past century has possibly brought the most radical changes in music history. We have seen huge diversity in surfacing musical genres over this time, such as the beginnings of blues, jazz, pop, hip hop, and rock and roll just to name a few of the hundreds of categories and subcategories. A person's musical taste, if any, has obviously always been a matter of preference. One listens to something, and decides if this is right for them or not at that time.
In recent years, musical taste has become no more than adapting to time for many people. I find it hard to appreciate something that has absolutely no value other than its birth in a very recent year. If one listens to most “current” radio stations, they play nothing more than “top 40”, flavor of the year songs. This is not an attack on certain musical genres or calculated assault to change your personal tastes; it is a way to think of ignorance and variety in regards to music and yourself. At my place of work, there is a colleague of mine who listens to only “current” and “new” music stations. Another colleague of mine came into work one day wearing a t-shirt of a “classic” rock band, specifically which band is arbitrary. The former colleague asked the latter, “Do you like them? Their old, how can you listen to that? Get with the times.” It makes sense for someone to appreciate music on the basis of personal preference, but not just because something is new. It is ignorant to like a new idea just for the sake of change. Its humorous to listen and watch people that can be complete hypocrites. Time is a completely irrelevant factor in decision to like music. Yes, we change what we like all the time, but that is because what our taste in everything changes as we age. If I were to say for instance, that I do not like Frank Sinatra because his music is outdated or just old, with the same logic I could argue that I do not like democracy because it is old. A person close to me changes the music on her portable music player approximately every two months. I thought the reasons for which could have been the possibilities that she gets tired of the repetition or just has constantly changing tastes. When asked why she does this, she claimed that “they”, whomever “they” may be, do not play many of the songs anymore on the radio or at popular dance clubs. This is very hard to follow because how can one base enjoyment on popularity or presence in society. This is like saying that a film is no longer worth viewing once it's out of theaters.

By Dillon Tener

Health care workers Must be Vaccinated

2009-11-02T12:37:00.000-08:00

by Moonjo Kim

We feel at ease to hear that it is now available for vaccinations for swine flu. However, with vaccine production lagging, we are encountered with another issue. Who should be in first priority of getting the vaccines? Should it be children? Or pregnant women? Or health care workers?

State officials say that first priority for the swine flu vaccine should go to two groups consider especially high risk: some 252,000 pregnant women and some 6.4 million young people (between the ages of 6 months and 24 years). Agreeing to this, Governor David Paterson of New York and his health commissioner have suspended requirements to get vaccinated for all 882,000 health care workers because there are only expecting four million doses of vaccines, which isn’t enough to cover most vulnerable groups. However, they are all wrong. Saving the vaccines for vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women may be a generous act but also an act of taking a risk not thinking beyond.

Let me explain. Making the shots mandatory for all health care workers is important as of many reasons. If these health care personnel become sick when they are needed, who will be there to help patients out? Health care workers need to be there to help patients and to make effort in persuading people to get vaccinated. Also, if they are not vaccinated, there is a chance that they may work while contagious and infect vulnerable patients, which is worse. It can cause more complications and even deaths.

These reasons should be take in considerations to make the vaccinations mandatory for health care workers. Even though the federal government has placed health care workers among the highest priority groups to get vaccinated, it is not enough!

Our belief is that health workers must be vaccinated and be required to do so because of their wide and continuing contact with already vulnerable patients.

Living Where You Learn

2009-11-02T11:34:00.000-08:00

As a Queens College student and a newly resident at the Queens College dorms, I have experienced many changes between my previous semesters at Queens College, and this semester of Fall 2009. The on-campus dorms create a sense of relaxation on campus for all students especially for those who would normally commute to school. I personally commuted last year from Rockland County to Queens College every day of the week. The drive took about one hour without traffic and the costs of gas and tolls were around eighty-five dollars per week.
The 506-bedroom dorm stands proudly between the Queens College Library and the FitzGerald Gymnasium. As advertised, every room comes fully furnished with a kitchenette, living room and two bathrooms. The kitchens are complete with a full size refrigerator, stove, oven, microwave and sink. The Summit also offers fitness, lounge, media, and laundry facilities on several floors.
Many students have problems finding parking and getting to class on time every day due to traffic. Prior to this fall semester, I had to wake up at 6:00 AM in order to make it to school in time for my 9:15 AM media class. The luxury of living on campus is the assurance that one can wake up a half hour before class begins to still make it on time.
Besides for the fact that the dorm is conveniently located on campus, students are encouraged to participate in many on campus activities such as; game nights, karaoke nights, on campus formals and parties, and volunteer work. Being a part of the Summit allows students to become more involved socially as well as having four great years in college.
As a resident and student at Queens College, I would recommend the Summit, or any other college dorm, to anyone interested in becoming part of a community where they learn for the future while enjoying the time they spend now.
L. Petlin

The Issue of Poverty in America

2009-11-01T14:48:00.000-08:00

By Maria Limandri

People might think that poverty is the last thing to occur in the United States of America -the land of opportunity, where people come fulfill their hopes and dreams. But it is a shame, should the government of America admit that they too can experience poverty? Let them allow having an excuse that nothing is perfect. Everything is possible. However, we all know that we can achieve the 0 poverty in our country, if everyone will work at it out together. How the poverty is being measured in the United States of America? The United States Department of Health and Human Services says that there are two slightly different versions of the federal poverty measure. One is the poverty threshold which is used mainly in Census Bureau for statistical purposes, and the other one is the poverty guidelines which are basically for administrative purposes. But the US government does not really understand that the only thing this policy of measurement can do is give us knowledge about figures and recoded data of how many could pass yearly in the poverty line according to the standards that they have set. And that is just it they have set these standards and we have no idea what they are based on. They never realize that the poverty measurement has nothing to do with poverty itself and how to totally demolish the poverty problem in the United States of America - the land of opportunity.
As a citizen, all I can say is that since we are in the land of opportunity and this is where people come to make a better life for themselves and their families we should not have such a high rate of poverty. We are supposed to be one of the richest countries in the world and we have such a poverty rate and we cannot seem to correct it is very discouraging. If we all worked together and created a safety net for this problem I believe this problem could be fixed. Yes, it will take some time and effort, but we are Americans and we pull together in times of need and we make things happen and we can fix such a serious issue that affects us all socially.

Manage yourself to succeed in life

2009-11-01T12:14:00.000-08:00

By: Rehana Masood.

On 20th of October 2009 at 4 pm I was studying in Queens College Library. Susan Doyle, another student, was studying in the same table with me. She was observing me frequently, and after a few minutes asked me – “you are studying seriously but you look very nervous, why?” I replied– “I have an assignment which is due in an hour” She asked me “why didn’t you do this before?” I replied - “I have a lot of work and I am busy most of the time which is why I couldn’t get to manage the time to finish this assignment.” And then she told me – “Don’t manage your time, manage yourself.” I was surprising to hear her comment - to manage yourself. Normally we hear that if you don’t manage your time you cannot succeed in life but for the first time I heard that you have to manage yourself.
Here is the argument is – how to manage myself if I don’t manage my time? Susan Doyle explained to me that everyone has different goals and responsibilities. You have to remember that your time is your life, and you will have to face good times and difficult times in varying degrees. First, think what your goals are and keep a positive attitude so that you can reach your goals. She also suggested ‘don’t waste your time’; drive yourself to manage a to-do list. You can feel which is most important stuff first then you can arrange what you are not doing, making plans that will be helpful to you. If you be honest with yourself you can track and analyze your time so that you can see where your time is really going.
I agree with the point – “manage yourself to get succeed in life” and I do manage myself by organizing my activities. I have to take care of my family, cook, manage other activities and on top of that I am a student. Every day I try to manage my time and schedule time with friends and family. Finally, planning time lets you find what is left to do and it can lead to better and effective way of self- management.

You and I are the Same!

2009-11-01T10:57:00.000-08:00

Technology sure is wonderful. Back in the old days, people used horses to travel. Now we have cars that can run many times faster than horses. We can even go to space. I am positive that people from that past wouldn’t even imagine that such a thing is possible. How the human civilization has advanced is really fascinating.

What I really admire is how our means of communication have been developed so that in a few clicks, you can actually send a mail across the vast lands and oceans separating one person to another. People used to travel for months trying to deliver a message, and now we have pocketsize computers that can send a message in an instant.

I will always be in awe of how we have progressed through time to make things more efficient and convenient. However, there is something that I don’t approve of about us. Despite the capability to communicate with one another by use of technology, we still haven’t learned how or what it really is to communicate. It is actually ironic.

When are we going to learn how to settle our differences? Aren’t we all human beings? With intellect and will, we are at the top of the food chain and we are superior over the rest of animals. And yet, when we have opposing opinions or cultures, we still end up like lions fighting over a single prey. We growl at each other, we scratch each other and we even kill each other like animals controlled only by instincts.

On going wars in the Middle East, the constant struggle of Palestinian Arabs against Israeli Jews, seems like it will be an endless turmoil that will always plague news and world history. It is not only in the Middle East but everywhere in the world. We have civil wars and conflicts going on everywhere even in our own homes and relationships.

At the root of those conflicts is our pride. Because of pride, it has become hard for people to admit mistakes and to reconcile differences. It seems as if we prefer conflict than peace just to prove that we have our pride. With regards to the struggle between the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews, they are in conflict because they want the land (now named Israel) to be theirs (either Jews or Arabs) and theirs alone. Can’t they just split the land up and live peacefully? Unfortunately not! It is because of pride.

We have advanced our ways to communicate and yet we haven’t developed our ability to accept and understand each other. We are all human beings. Regardless of culture, race, nationality, language or appearance, we are still all the same in nature. We are advanced animals with intellect and will who have progressed tremendously from early homosapiens but current conditions in human civilizations makes one realize that we are still primates when it comes to understanding each other as fellow human beings. It will remain as such until the time we learn how to put our pride aside and accept one another.

By Joe Gallegos

On The Gay Topic

2009-10-31T19:52:00.000-07:00

By Aryeh Pekker

Earlier this month on October 11, 2009 there was a march in Washington D.C. regarding gay rights. It was a march where thousands of people, gay and straight, walked together in our nation’s capital holding signs and colored flags in a demonstration for equal rights. Many today argue that gay people already have their equal rights and that all that this march and others do is display an image of arrogance by people who want to defile the meaning of marriage and corrupt the spirit of our armed forces. If I may ask, is that really a valid argument? I have always seen marriage as a statement of love and spiritual cohesion. When someone announces that they are getting married we take it as a statement that they are making a commitment of love to one another. However, when two men or two women ask for that same chance to pledge their love to one another, all of a sudden we hear statements like “it’s not natural” or “they can’t procreate so they don’t have a right to marry.” Is that what the meaning of marriage is today? Is it all about what people can do physically and not what they can share emotionally? If there was ever a perversion of the meaning of marriage I believe those statements would be it. Is it not natural for two people to express their love for one another? The obvious implication is of course that homosexuality is not natural. Aside from the fact that homosexual sex has always been a part of human history, scientists have already shown us that it is even natural in the animal kingdom. It is not uncommon for dolphins, monkeys and even sea lions to engage in homosexual sex. It is understandable that it may not appeal to everyone. I myself am not gay and admit that even the thought of gay sex will sometimes make me cringe, although I must apologize that I usually don’t apply the same standard when it involves two women but that is different story, but in either case what right does that give me to deny someone their right to make a statement of love for someone else? As for the issue of procreation, it is perfectly legal for a sterile man and a sterile woman to marry, so what is the difference? Now on to the question of gays in the military. How is a person’s sexual orientation at all relevant to their ability to serve their country? Again the premise for this argument is completely superficial. The military is something we see as “macho” and generally “manly”, but if the person is gay we automatically disregard the fact that they are willing to risk their lives for their country and instead focus simply on the fact that they are gay. There was a time in this country where it wasn’t “natural” or right to let a black person marry a white one or for black people to hold any position above a cook in the military. Do we want to go down that path again? Is it not time we stop limiting rights to people simply on the basis of them being who they are? We have so much to share with each other and yet we always look for petty reasons to divide ourselves. It is time we started accepting each other for who we are or we’ll just keep hating one another for reasons we really don’t understand.

Can poverty be ever ended?

2009-10-30T19:38:00.000-07:00

By: Jing Ding

Dr. King’s “letter from Birmingham jail” made me thought about his life and his effort on ending racial segregation and racial discrimination. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and opposing Vietnam War. In reality,Racial segregation was ended, Vietnam War was ended, but poverty is still there…Can poverty be ever ended? My answer is “NO”.

Marxist believe that in order to overcome the fetters of private property the working class must seize political power internationally through a social revolution and expropriate the capitalist classes around the world and place the productive capacities of society into collective ownership. Upon this material foundation classes would be abolished and the material basis for all forms of inequality between humankind would dissolve. China and Soviet Union had proved to the whole world that this theory does not work. Now China is capitalized and Soviet Union was dissolved.

People's intellectual level is different since they were born. Also their family background and political situation is different when they were born. All those factors will define how successful a person can be in the future. It is impossible for everyone to be same successful. There are always some small numbers of people can be leaders, can run successful businesses and most of the others can be followers and the rest of them can’t even follow. Those who can’t follows are those who end up in poverty. Social welfare can't get them out there. Charities can't get them out there. Those efforts only kept them alive and gave peace to the society.

Is there anything we can do to get those people out of poverty? My opinion is that we have already done what we can, they have to pull themselves out by themselves! Because most of them will never try to pull themselves out due to many reasons. So poverty can't never be ended.

"Barbies Fiftieth Anniversary-congratulations?"

2009-10-30T09:28:00.001-07:00

By: Ariel Eliach

As girls and boys we are all brought up to believe that Barbie has the best most “perfect” body and life. She is 7 feet tall with irregularly long legs platinum blonde hair blue eyes, very large chest, a tiny waist ,a flat stomach and not an inch of fat on her entire body. She has a dreamy boyfriend/husband (whatever your imagination chooses) Ken. They have dream houses and amazing get away vacation spots.

“Its time for bed” my mother says. I quickly wrap up my Barbie dolls and put them to bed. Before I brush my teeth I take a quick glance in the mirror. I think to myself, I do not have blond hair nor do I have long legs I have a pop belly and some chub on my thighs. I do not have a boy friend and I do not have the money to go on vacations. As a seven-year-old girl one is faced with questions and identity issues that no one especially a seven-year-old child should have to go through.

Why is it that as girls we are faced with body image insecurities at such a young age? I went to a Barbie website and this is what popped up “It’s Barbie’s world we just play in it” Exactly, we will never live it, because it is fake and unobtainable. From the young age of 5,6,7 girls are taught to believe that life is just like Barbie’s life. What young children can see is Barbie, and her appearance. They are not paying attention to the fact that she may have a career. Barbie’s life is about looks and “beauty”. It is giving these children the message that they should grow up and be exactly like her. Which is than translated in their minds as “look” exactly like her”. Barbie herself is plastic and fake; her essence is merely giving children a negative message. Whether it is telling young girls to look exactly like Barbie or young boys that all girls look like Barbie, the message is negative in both. She isn’t real! She is made out of manufactures that just wanted to make some money. Do they have any idea of there impact on young children all over the world? If it is Barbie’s 50^th anniversary why hasn’t she aged a day in her life? The world has become so caught up in having the “perfect” everything they have forgotten that humans are imperfect and that the beauty lies with in those “imperfections”. They forgot to tell these seven-year-old girls, to sit back, relax and enjoy the beauty of their youth. One does not need to look like Barbie just to be beautiful. One can try and teach a child that, but if the child has already been taught to have one image of beauty it is pretty hard to undo.

I am not saying that Barbie is the only reason for the high rate of eating disorders in America. But, she definitely doesn’t help it. While the media presents beautiful women as needing to be a specific shape, size and/or color, 5,6,7 year old girls are not reading seventeen magazine (or I at least hope not) But, they are playing with dolls, friends and dress up. The dolls just happen to be “beautiful” “perfect” unrealistic Barbie’s. If as a child that is all one is shown. How does one expect them not to think that there is only one way to be beautiful? If all Barbie’s look the same than how can we as humans who come in different shape, sizes and color ever be “pretty”?

We have to start teaching our children from a very young age that there is not one idea and way to be beautiful. Beauty comes from with in. There is not one way to neither define it nor live it. Now how are we supposed to do that while they are playing with a one very specific perfect, beautiful, fake Barbie doll?

The Worst World Series Ever

2009-10-29T14:29:00.000-07:00

The only match-up the Met fan dreads for, is this: A Yankees- Phillies World Series. The World Series is a matchup of the best of the best in baseball. But not for Mets fans.

In 1997 Major League Baseball scheduled interleague games between the National League and the American League. From that day forward the rivalry of New York has grown each year. For Mets Fans it has been a tough rivalry, from the beaning of Mike Piazza by Roger Clemens to the World Series matchup of the two teams in 2000 only to see the Yankees win the series four games to one.

The Yankees are a New York baseball team (in many people’s eyes, the only New York baseball team), that has won twenty-six championships, the most in baseball and in any sport. They are the dynasty of dynasties. The Yankees are the Mets’ older brother that has won forty-six of the seventy-seven games played between the two clubs. However, the Mets mean absolutely nothing to Yankees fans. To Mets fans, they are Abel, and we are the jealous haters.

But why wouldn’t Mets fan be jealous? The Yankees fans have had twenty-six times to celebrate while the Mets fan only two. The Yankees have had the highest paid players year after year and perform up to their standards. While the Mets only thought they were getting the best players and played like the injury prone head cases they actually were.

“The Mets are choke-artists” The famous quote by the Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels that has fueled the Mets-Phillies rival. The Phillies fans some of the cockiest fans in baseball, but why shouldn’t they be? They are the most current World Series Champions, and have reached the Championship for the second year in a row. The Phillies fan makes sure to always stick it to the Mets fan. From stealing the Mets famous rally cry “You Gotta Believe” coined by Mets pitcher Tug McGraw, who also pitched for the Phillies, to Jimmy Rollins boasting that “We are the team to beat” every year. The Phillies have homegrown talent that is solely responsible for their success in the past few years, something the Met fan only wishes for.

This season for the Met fan was something to rip up and put into the fire. Wait for next year, again. It was pathetic, from spring training lineups during the regular season, to a brand new $800 million ballpark looking like it was the home of the Dodgers. No one thought it could have been worse, until now.

Mets fans cannot root for the cross-town rival Yankees because we hate them; we despise everything that they are. I personally have never set foot in Yankee stadium nor do I plan on it any time soon. The Phillies are our division rivals who gloat at our demise. How can the Met fan root for any team? We simply cannot.

I will tell you that I will watch the World Series not because I am rooting for either team but because I only picture the Mets being there one day, something that is sad but true. This will be the worst week ever for a Mets fan.

By: Michael Franklin

Demise of the Vampire

2009-10-28T15:51:00.000-07:00

By Ezra Frager
Vampires have become a part of today’s pop culture. They are all the rage right now. It is all that teenage girls can talk about. However the vampire of today is not the same as the vampires portrayed in stories and movies of the past few centuries. The depiction of the classic vampire well known by all has been defiled and replaced with a new less frightening version.
Last year I spent a year studying abroad in Israel. Being in a foreign country with limited computer access and television I was essentially disconnected from the happenings of the world. I would get snippets of news here and there, and heard about a new vampire movie that was out called Twilight, and doing very well in the box office. With no previous knowledge about the book and as a big vampire movie fanatic I went to go see the movie thinking it would be scary, entertaining, gory, and action packed such as the Blade or Underworld films. Of course what I saw was nothing of the sort. I was appalled. Vampires have gone from being villainous, murderess monsters to attractive young heroic men involved in a tacky love story.
The Twilight books written by Stephenie Meyer and movie have exploded in popularity. The novel was the biggest selling book of 2008 and to date, has sold 17 million copies around the globe, spent over 91 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, and been translated into 37 different languages ( “The Top 100 titles of 2008” USA Today, Gerri Miller “Inside Twilight”, Kenneth Turan “Movie Review”). The movie grossed more than $382,000,000 worldwide and an additional $157,000,000 from DVD sales (Box Office Mojo, The Numbers). This pandemic for the most part has infected girls spanning from young to even middle aged. The popularity of twilight has led to the spawning of new shows such as The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, and a variety of new vampire books, all of which share a similar plotline to Twilight involving a romantic relationship between a vampire and a woman. I even came across a Special Edition “People” magazine devoted to giving only exclusive coverage from the set of the next Twilight movie New Moon. In it were at least five advertisements for a different series of vampire novels.
The classical image of the vampire that has been around for millennium has been butchered by Twilight and its offspring. Every culture from the times of even Mesopotamia 9000 years ago has legends involving vampires and vampire like creatures. Most of these legends and folklore give the impression of vampires being blood thirsty monsters who feed on humans in order to survive. Today’s new version of the vampire has them restraining themselves from feeding on the blood of humans and feeding solely on animals. Any vampire that doesn’t do this is an enemy of the ones that do. According to most vampire folklore vampires cannot be out in the day light or they shall be incinerated. In Twilight when a vampire goes out into the sun all that happens is his skin sparkles as if covered in glitter. In The Vampire Diaries as long as a vampire is wearing a special wring he can also be out in the sun. Two well known characteristics of the classic vampire according to most legends and portrayed in numerous vampire movies, shows, and books over the past two centuries is the ability of garlic and crosses to repel them. This was also ignored in the creation of this new generation. Vampires are supposed to instill fear in movie and television viewers. I have actually seen interviews with young women on the news who instead of being frightened by today’s vampire movies, books, etc. actually fantasize about being in a romantic relationship with a vampire and becoming one so they can live together for eternity. This is not the effect a vampire should have on people. Why would any sane person want a creature to sink their enormous fangs into their neck, suck all of their blood, and doom them to walk the face of the earth forever as they watch friends and family all die away? Why would anybody want to no longer be able to take pleasure in the taste of fine food and constantly crave blood; the only way of being put to rest through a gruesome murder whether it be the impaling of their heart with a wooden stake, decapitation, burned alive, etc.?
We are currently in the dawn of a new age of vampire. No longer are vampires frightening monsters, who are the subject of horror films. Today vampires can be found in dull romantic movies, books, and television shows that glorifies being a vampire and ignores ancient folklore. This is not the way vampires are supposed to be. The real “undead” are finally dead.

Paper Three Assignment, fall 2009

2009-10-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

Following King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” as a rough model, our third assignment is to write a letter which advances a focused and developed argument about a specific topic to a particular individual or group. You are free to write about any topic of your choosing: I encourage you to write about something that interests you (for example, an argument about a current national or local political debate) or that engages your academic and professional interests. Please pay attention to things like audience, tone, paragraph organization, evidence, and counter-arguments. Length: 3 – 5 pages. Check syllabus for rough draft (three copies) and final draft (one copy) due dates. (Some possible topics include, but are by no means limited to: CUNY budget cuts, health care reform, immigration, advertising and gender roles, etc.)

2009-10-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

In addition to the essay by Brent Staples (available in the Seagull Reader), please make sure you have read the following essay, by Bruce Shapiro, for class on October 13th. Please print it off (you might want to copy and paste it into a word document) and bring it with you to class. Thanks, and enjoy your weekend.

Selected Feature
One Violent Crime
By Bruce Shapiro
New Haven, Connecticut
Alone in my home I am staring at the television screen and
shouting. On the evening local news I have unexpectedly encountered
video footage, several months old, of myself writhing on an
ambulance gurney, bright green shirt open and drenched with blood,
skin pale, knee raised, trying desperately and with utter futility
to find relief from pain.
On the evening of August 7, 1994, I was among seven people stabbed
and seriously wounded in a coffee bar a few blocks from my house.
Any televised recollection of this incident would be upsetting. But
the anger that has me shouting tonight is quite specific, and
political, in origin: My picture is being shown on the news to
illustrate why Connecticut's legislature plans to lock up more
criminals for a longer time. A picture of my body, contorted and
bleeding, has become a propaganda image in the crime war.
I had not planned to write about this assault. But for months now
the politics of the nation have in large part been the politics of
crime, from last year's federal crime bill through the fall
elections through the Contract With America proposals currently
awaiting action by the Senate. Among a welter of reactions to the
attack, one feeling is clear: I am unwilling to be a silent poster
child in this debate.
The physical and political truth about violence and crime lie in
their specificity, so here is what happened: I had gone out for
after-dinner coffee that evening with two friends and New Haven
neighbors, Martin and Anna Broell Bresnick. At 9:45 we arrived at a
recently opened coffeehouse on Audubon Street, a block occupied by
an arts high school where Anna teaches, other community arts
institutions, a few pleasant shops and upscale condos. Entering, we
said hello to another friend, a former student of Anna's named
Cristina Koning, who the day before had started working behind the
counter. We sat at a small table near the front of the cafe; about
fifteen people were scattered around the room. Just before 10, the
owner announced closing time. Martin stood up and walked a few
yards to the counter for a final refill.
Suddenly there was chaos -- as if a mortar shell had landed. I
looked up, heard Martin call Anna's name, saw his arm raised and a
flash of metal and people leaping away from a thin bearded man with
a ponytail. Tables and chairs toppled. Without thinking I shouted
to Anna, "Get down!" and pulled her to the floor, between our table
and the cafe's outer wall. She clung to my shirt, I to her
shoulders, and, crouching, we pulled each other toward the door.
What actually happened I was only able to tentatively reconstruct
many weeks later. Apparently, as Martin headed toward the counter
the thin bearded man, whose name we later learned was Daniel Silva,
asked the time from a young man named Richard Colberg, who was on
his way toward the door. Colberg answered and turned to leave.
Without any warning, Silva pulled out a hunting knife with a
six-inch blade and stabbed in the lower back a woman leaving with
Colberg, a medical technician named Kerstin Braig. Then he stabbed
Colberg, severing an artery in his thigh. Silva was a slight man
but he moved with demonic speed and force around the cafe's
counter. He struck Martin in the thigh and in the arm he raised to
protect his face. Our friend Cris Koning had in a moment's time
pushed out the screen in a window and helped the wounded Kerstin
Braig through it to safety. Cris was talking on the phone with the
police when Silva lunged over the counter and stabbed her in the
chest and abdomen. He stabbed Anna in the side as she and I pulled
each other along the wall. He stabbed Emily Bernard, a graduate
student who had been sitting quietly reading a book, in the abdomen
as she tried to flee through the cafe's back door. All of this
happened in about the time it has taken you to read this paragraph.
Meanwhile, I had made it out the cafe's front door onto the brick
sidewalk with Anna, neither of us realizing yet that she was
wounded. Seeing Martin through the window, I returned inside and we
came out together. Somehow we separated, fleeing opposite ways down
the street. I had gone no more than a few steps when I felt a hard
punch in my back followed instantly by the unforgettable sensation
of skin and muscle tissue parting. Silva had stabbed me about six
inches above my waist, just beneath my rib cage. (That single deep
stroke cut my diaphragm and sliced my spleen in half.) Without
thinking, I clapped my left hand over the wound even before the
knife was out and its blade caught my hand, leaving a slice across
my palm and two fingers.
"Why are you doing this?" I cried out to Silva in the moment after
feeling his knife punch in and yank out. As I fell to the street he
leaned over my face; I vividly remember the knife's immense and
glittering blade. He directed the point through my shirt into the
flesh of my chest, beneath my left shoulder. I remember his brown
beard, his clear blue-gray eyes looking directly into mine, the
round globe of a street lamp like a halo above his head. Although I
was just a few feet from a cafe full of people and although Martin
and Anna were only yards away, the street, the city, the world felt
utterly empty except for me and this thin bearded stranger with
clear eyes and a bowie knife. The space around us -- well-lit,
familiar Audubon Street, where for six years I had taken a child to
music lessons -- seemed literally to have expanded into a vast and
dark canyon.
"You killed my mother," he answered. My own desperate response:
"Please don't." Silva pulled the knifepoint out of my chest and
disappeared. A moment later I saw him flying down the street on a
battered, ungainly bicycle, back straight, vest flapping and
ponytail flying.
After my assailant had gone I lay on the sidewalk, hand still over
the wound on my back, screaming. Pain ran over me like an express
train; it felt as though every muscle in my back was locked and
contorted; breathing was excruciating. A security guard appeared
across the street from me; I called out to him but he stood there
frozen, or so it seemed. (A few minutes later, he would help police
chase Silva down.) I shouted to Anna, who was hiding behind a car
down the street. Still in shock and unaware of her own injury, she
ran for help, eventually collapsing on the stairs of a nearby
brownstone where a prayer group that was meeting upstairs answered
her desperate ringing of the doorbell. From where I was lying, I
saw a second-floor light in the condo complex across the way. A
woman's head appeared in the window. "Please help me," I implored.
"He's gone. Please help me." She shouted back that she had called
the police, but she did not come to the street. I was suddenly
aware of a blond woman -- Kerstin Braig, though I did not know her
name then -- in a white-and-gray plaid dress, sitting on the curb.
I asked her for help. "I'm sorry, I've done all I can," she
muttered. She raised her hand, like a medieval icon; it was covered
with blood. So was her dress. She sank into a kind of stupor. Up
the street I saw a police car's flashing blue lights, then
another's, then I saw an officer with a concerned face and a
crackling radio crouched beside me. I stayed conscious as the
medics arrived and I was loaded into an ambulance -- being filmed
for television, as it turns out, though I have no memory of the
crew's presence.
Being a victim is a hard idea to accept, even while lying in a
hospital bed with tubes in veins, chest, penis and abdomen. The
spirit rebels against the idea of oneself as fundamentally
powerless. So I didn't think much for the first few days about the
meaning of being a victim; I saw no political dimension to my
experience.
As I learned in more detail what had happened I thought, in my
jumbled-up, anesthetized state, about my injured friends --
although everyone survived, their wounds ranged from quite serious
to critical -- and about my wounds and surgery. I also thought
about my assailant. A few facts about him are worth repeating.
Until August 7 Daniel Silva was a self-employed junk dealer and a
homeowner. He was white. He lived with his mother and several dogs.
He had no arrest record. A New Haven police detective who was
hospitalized across the hall from me recalled Silva as a socially
marginal neighborhood character. He was not, apparently, a drug
user. He had told neighbors about much violence in his family --
indeed not long before August 7 he showed one neighbor a scar on
his thigh he said was from a stab wound.
A week earlier, Silva's 79-year-old mother had been hospitalized
for diabetes. After a few days the hospital moved her to a new
room; when Silva saw his mother's empty bed he panicked, but nurses
swiftly took him to her new location. Still, something seemed to
have snapped. Earlier on the day of the stabbings, police say,
Silva released his beloved dogs, set fire to his house, and rode
away on his bicycle as it burned. He arrived on Audubon Street with
a single dog on a leash, evidently convinced his mother was dead.
(She actually did die a few weeks after Silva was jailed.)
While I lay in the hospital, the big story on CNN was the federal
crime bill then being debated in Congress. Even fogged by morphine
I was aware of the irony. I was flat on my back, the result of a
particularly violent assault, while Congress eventually passed the
anti-crime package I had editorialized against in The Nation just a
few weeks earlier. Night after night in the hospital, unable to
sleep, I watched the crime bill debate replayed and heard
Republicans and Democrats (who had sponsored the bill in the first
place) fall over each other to prove who could be the toughest on
crime.
The bill passed on August 21, a few days after I returned home. In
early autumn I actually read the entire text of the crime bill --
all 412 pages. What I found was perhaps obvious, yet under the
circumstances compelling: Not a single one of those 412 pages would
have protected me or Anna or Martin or any of the others from our
assailant. Not the enhanced prison terms, not the forty-four new
death penalty offenses, not the three-strikes-you're-out
requirements, not the summary deportations of criminal aliens. And
the new tougher-than-tough anti-crime provisions of the Contract
With America, like the proposed abolition of the Fourth Amendment's
search and seizure protections, offer no more practical protection.
On the other hand, the mental-health and social-welfare safety net
shredded by Reaganomics and conservatives of both parties might
have made a difference in the life of someone like my assailant --
and thus in the life of someone like me. My assailant's growing
distress in the days before August 7 was obvious to his neighbors.
He had muttered darkly about relatives planning to burn down his
house. A better-funded, more comprehensive safety net might just
have saved me and six others from untold pain and trouble.
From my perspective -- the perspective of a crime victim -- the
Contract With America and its conservative Democratic analogs are
really blueprints for making the streets even less safe. Want to
take away that socialistic income subsidy called welfare? Fine.
Connecticut Governor John Rowland proposes cutting off all benefits
after eighteen months. So more people in New Haven and other cities
will turn to the violence-breeding economy of crack, or emotionally
implode from sheer desperation. Cut funding for those soft-headed
social workers? Fine; let more children be beaten without the
prospect of outside intervention, more Daniel Silvas carrying their
own traumatic scars into violent adulthood. Get rid of the few
amenities prisoners enjoy, like sports equipment, musical
instruments and the right to get college degrees, as proposed by
the Congressional right? Fine; we'll make sure that those inmates
are released to their own neighborhoods tormented with unchanneled
rage.
One thing I could not properly appreciate in the hospital was how
deeply many friends, neighbors and acquaintances were shaken by the
coffeehouse stabbings, let alone strangers who took the time to
write. The reaction of most was a combination of decent horrified
empathy and a clear sense that their own presumption of safety was
undermined.
But some people who didn't bother to aquaint themselves with the
facts used the stabbings as a sort of Rorschach test on which they
projected their own preconceptions about crime, violence and New
Haven. Some present and former Yale students, for instance, were
desperate to see in my stabbing evidence of the great dangers of
New Haven's inner city. One student newspaper wrote about "New
Haven's image as a dangerous town fraught with violence." A student
reporter from another Yale paper asked if I didn't think the attack
proved New Haven needs better police protection. Given the random
nature of this assault -- it could as easily have happened in
wealthy, suburban Greenwich, where a friend of mine was held up at
an ATM at the point of an assault rifle -- it's tempting to dismiss
such sentiments as typical products of an insular urban campus. But
city-hating is central to today's political culture. Newt Gingrich
excoriates cities as hopelessly pestilential, crime-ridden and
corrupt. Fear of urban crime and of the dark-skinned people who
live in cities is the right's basic text, and defunding cities a
central agenda item for the new Congressional majority.
Yet in no small measure it was the institutions of an urban
community that saved my life last August 7. That concerned police
officer who found me and Kerstin Braig on the street was joined in
a moment by enough emergency workers to handle the carnage in and
around the coffeehouse, and his backups arrived quickly enough to
chase down my assailant three blocks away. In minutes I was taken
to Yale-New Haven hospital less than a mile away -- built in part
with the kind of public funding so hated by the right. As I was
wheeled into the E.R., several dozen doctors and nurses descended
to handle all the wounded.
By then my abdomen had swelled from internal bleeding. Dr. Gerard
Burns, a trauma surgeon, told me a few weeks later that I arrived
on his operating table white as a ghost; my prospects, he said,
would have been poor had I not been delivered so quickly, and to an
E.R. with the kind of trauma team available only at a large
metropolitan hospital. In other words, if my stabbing had taken
place in the suburbs I would have bled to death.
Why didn't anyone try to stop him?" That question was even more
common than the reflexive city-bashing. I can't even begin to guess
the number of times I had to answer it. Each time, I repeated that
Silva moved too fast, that it was simply too confusing. And each
time, I found the question not just foolish but offensive.
"Why didn't anyone stop him?" To understand that question is to
understand, in some measure, why crime is such a potent political
issue. To begin with, the question carries not empathy but an
implicit burden of blame; it really asks "Why didn't you stop him?"
It is asked because no one likes to imagine oneself a victim. It's
far easier to graft onto oneself the aggressive power of the
attacker, to embrace the delusion of oneself as Arnold
Schwarzenegger defeating a multitude single-handedly. If I am tough
enough and strong enough I can take out the bad guys.
The country is at present suffering from a huge version of this
same delusion. This myth is buried deep in the political culture,
nurtured in the historical tales of frontier violence and
vigilantism and by the action-hero fantasies of film and
television. Now, bolstered by the social Darwinists of the right,
who see society as an unfettered marketplace in which the strongest
individuals flourish, this delusion frames the crime debate.
I also felt that the question "Why didn't anybody stop him?"
implied only two choices: Rambo-like heroism or abject victimhood.
To put it another way, it suggests that the only possible responses
to danger are the individual biological imperatives of fight or
flight. And people don't want to think of themselves as on the side
of flight. This is a notion whose political moment has arrived. In
last year's debate over the crime bill, conservatives successfully
portrayed themselves as those who would stand and fight; liberals
were portrayed as ineffectual cowards.
"Why didn't anyone stop him?" That question and its underlying
implications see both heroes and victims as lone individuals. But
on the receiving end of a violent attack, the fight-or-flight
dichotomy didn't apply. Nor did that radically individualized
notion of survival. At the coffeehouse that night, at the moments
of greatest threat, there were no Schwarzeneggers, no stand-alone
heroes. (In fact I doubt anyone could have "taken out" Silva; as
with most crimes, his attack came too suddenly.) But neither were
there abject victims. Instead, in the confusion and panic of
life-threatening attack, people reached out to one another. This
sounds simple; yet it suggests there is an instinct for mutual aid
that poses a profound challenge to the atomized individualism of
the right. Cristina Koning helped the wounded Kerstin Braig to
escape, and Kerstin in turn tried to bring Cristina along. Anna and
I, and then Martin and I, clung to each other, pulling one another
toward the door. And just as Kerstin found me on the sidewalk
rather than wait for help alone, so Richard and Emily, who had
never met before, together sought a hiding place around the corner.
Three of us even spoke with Silva either the moment before or the
instant after being stabbed. My plea to Silva may or may not have
been what kept him from pushing his knife all the way through my
chest and into my heart; it's impossible to know what was going
through his mind. But this impulse to communicate, to establish
human contact across a gulf of terror and insanity, is deeper and
more subtle than the simple formulation of fight or flight, courage
or cowardice, would allow.
I have never been in a war, but I now think I understand a little
the intense bond among war veterans who have survived awful
carnage. It is not simply the common fact of survival but the way
in which the presence of these others seemed to make survival
itself possible. There's evidence, too, that those who try to go it
alone suffer more. In her insightful study Trauma and Recovery,
Judith Herman, a psychiatrist, writes about rape victims, Vietnam
War veterans, political prisoners and other survivors of extreme
violence. "The capacity to preserve social connection. . ." she
concludes, "even in the face of extremity, seems to protect people
to some degree against the later development of post-traumatic
syndromes. For example, among survivors of a disaster at sea, the
men who had managed to escape by cooperating with others showed
relatively little evidence of post-traumatic stress afterward." On
the other hand, she reports that the "highly symptomatic" ones
among those survivors were "'Rambos,' men who had plunged into
impulsive, isolated action and not affiliated with others."
The political point here is that the Rambo justice system proposed
by the right is rooted in that dangerous myth of the individual
fighting against a hostile world. Recently that myth got another
boost from several Republican-controlled state legislatures, which
have made it much easier to carry concealed handguns. But the myth
has nothing to do with the reality of violent crime, the ways to
prevent it or the needs of survivors. Had Silva been carrying a
handgun instead of a knife on August 7, there would have been a
massacre.
I do understand the rage and frustration behind the crime-victim
movement, and I can see how the right has harnessed it. For weeks I
thought obsessively and angrily of those minutes on Audubon Street,
when first the nameless woman in the window and then the security
guard refused to approach me -- as if I, wounded and helpless, were
the dangerous one. There was also a subtle shift in my
consciousness a few days after the stabbing. Up until that point,
the legal process and press attention seemed clearly centered on my
injuries and experience, and those of my fellow victims. But once
Silva was arraigned and the formal process of prosecution began, it
became his case, not mine. I experienced an overnight sense of
marginalization, a feeling of helplessness bordering on
irrelevance.
Sometimes that got channeled into outrage, fear and panic. After
arraignment, Silva's bail was set at $700,000. That sounds high,
but just 10 percent of that amount in cash, perhaps obtained
through some relative with home equity, would have bought his
pretrial release. I was frantic at even this remote prospect of
Silva walking the streets. So were the six other victims and our
families. We called the prosecutor virtually hourly to request
higher bail. It was eventually raised to $800,000, partly because
of our complaints and partly because an arson charge was added.
Silva remains in the Hartford Community Correctional Center
awaiting trial.
Near the six-month anniversary of the stabbings I called the
prosecutor and learned that in December Silva's lawyer filed papers
indicating he intends to claim a "mental disease or defect"
defense. If successful it would send him to a maximum-security
hospital for the criminally insane for the equivalent of the
maximum criminal penalty. In February the court was still awaiting
a report from Silva's psychiatrist. Then the prosecution will have
him examined by its own psychiatrist. "There's a backlog," I was
told; the case is not likely to come to trial until the end of 1995
at the earliest. Intellectually, I understand that Silva is
securely behind bars, that the court system is overburdened, that
the delay makes no difference in the long-term outcome. But
emotionally, viscerally, the delay is devastating.
Another of my bursts of victim-consciousness involved the press.
Objectively, I know that many people who took the trouble to
express their sympathy to me found out only through news stories.
And sensitive reporting can for the crime victim be a kind of
ratification of the seriousness of an assault, a reflection of the
community's concern. One reporter for the daily New Haven Register,
Josh Kovner, did produce level-headed and insightful stories about
the Audubon Street attack. But most other reporting was
exploitative, intrusive and inaccurate. I was only a few hours out
of surgery, barely able to speak, when the calls from television
stations and papers started coming to my hospital room. Anna and
Martin, sent home to recover, were ambushed by a Hartford TV crew
as they emerged from their physician's office, and later rousted
from their beds by reporters from another TV station ringing their
doorbell. The Register's editors enraged all seven victims by
printing our home addresses (a company policy, for some reason) and
running spectacularly distressing full-color photos of the crime
scene complete with the coffee bar's bloody windowsill.
Such press coverage inspired in all of us a rage it is impossible
to convey. In a study commissioned by the British Broadcasting
Standards Council, survivors of violent crimes and disasters "told
story after story of the hurt they suffered through the timing of
media attention, intrusion into their privacy and harassment,
through inaccuracy, distortion and distasteful detail in what was
reported." This suffering is not superficial. To the victim of
violent crime the press may reinforce the perception that the world
is an uncomprehending and dangerous place.
The very same flawed judgments about "news value" contribute
significantly to a public conception of crime that is as completely
divorced from the facts as a Schwarzenegger movie. One study a few
years ago found that reports on crime and justice constitute 22-28
percent of newspaper stories, "nearly three times as much attention
as the presidency or the Congress or the state of the economy." And
the most spectacular crimes -- the stabbing of seven people in an
upscale New Haven coffee bar, for instance -- are likely to be the
most "newsworthy" even though they are statistically the least
likely. "The image of crime presented in the media is thus a
reverse image of reality," writes sociologist Mark Warr in a study
commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences.
Media coverage also brings us to another crucial political moral:
The "seriousness" of crime is a matter of race and real estate.
This has been pointed out before, but it can't be said too often.
Seven people stabbed in a relatively affluent, mostly white
neighborhood near Yale University -- this was big news on a slow
news night. It went national over the A.P. wires and international
over CNN's Headline News. It was covered by The New York Times, and
words of sympathy came to New Haven from as far as Prague and
Santiago. Because a graduate student and a professor were among
those wounded, the university sent representatives to the emergency
room. The morning after, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano walked the
neighborhood to reassure merchants and office workers. For more
than a month the regional press covered every new turn in the case.
Horrendous as it was, though, no one was killed. Four weeks later,
a 15-year-old girl named Rashawnda Crenshaw was driving with two
friends about a mile from Audubon Street. As the car in which she
was a passenger turned a corner she was shot through the window and
killed. Apparently her assailants mistook her for someone else.
Rashawnda Crenshaw was black and her shooting took place in the
Hill, the New Haven neighborhood with the highest poverty rate. No
Yale officials showed up at the hospital to comfort Crenshaw's
mother or cut through red tape. The New York Times did not come
calling; there were certainly no bulletins flashed around the world
on CNN. The local news coverage lasted just long enough for
Rashawnda Crenshaw to be buried.
Anyone trying to deal with the reality of crime, as opposed to the
fantasies peddled to win elections, needs to understand the complex
suffering of those who are survivors of traumatic crimes, and the
suffering and turmoil of their families. I have impressive physical
scars: There is a broad purple line from my breastbone to the top
of my pubic bone, an X-shaped cut into my side where the chest tube
entered, a thick pink mark on my chest where the point of Silva's
knife rested on a rib. Then on my back is the unevenly curving
horizontal scar where Silva thrust the knife in and yanked it out,
leaving what looks like a crooked smile. But the disruption of my
psyche is, day in and day out, more noticeable. For weeks after
leaving the hospital I awoke nightly agitated, drenched with
perspiration. For two months I was unable to write; my brain simply
refused to concentrate. Into any moment of mental repose would rush
images from the night of August 7; or alternatively, my mind would
simply not tune in at all. My reactions are still out of balance
and disproportionate. I shut a door on my finger, not too hard, and
my body is suddenly flooded with adrenaline and I nearly faint.
Walking on the arm of my partner, Margaret, one evening I abruptly
shove her to the side of the road; I have seen a tall, lean shadow
on the block where we are headed and am alarmed out of all
proportion. I get into an argument and find myself quaking with
rage for an hour afterward, completely unable to restore calm.
Though to all appearances normal, I feel at a long arm's remove
from all the familiar sources of pleasure, comfort and anger that
shaped my daily life before August 7.
What psychologists call post-traumatic stress disorder is, among
other things, a profoundly political state in which the world has
gone wrong, in which you feel isolated from the broader community
by the inarticulable extremity of experience. I have spent a lot of
time in the past few months thinking about what the world must look
like to those who have survived repeated violent attacks, whether
children battered in their homes or prisoners beaten or tortured
behind bars; as well as those, like rape victims, whose assaults
are rarely granted public ratification.
The right owes much of its success to the anger of crime victims
and the argument that government should do more for us. This appeal
is epitomized by the rise of restitution laws -- statutes requiring
offenders to compensate their targets. On February 7 the House of
Representatives passed, by a vote of 431 to 0, the Victim
Restitution Act, a plank of the Contract With America that would
supposedly send back to jail offenders who don't make good on their
debts to their victims. In my own state, Governor Rowland recently
proposed a restitution amendment to the state Constitution.
On the surface it is hard to argue with the principle of reasonable
restitution -- particularly since it implies community recognition
of the victim's suffering. But I wonder if these laws really will
end up benefiting someone like me -- or if they are just empty,
vote-getting devices that exploit victims and could actually hurt
our chances of getting speedy, substantive justice. H. Scott
Wallace, former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on
Juvenile Justice, writes in Legal Times that the much-touted Victim
Restitution Act is "unlikely to put a single dollar into crime
victims' pockets, would tie up the federal courts with waves of new
damages actions, and would promote unconstitutional debtors'
prisons."
I also worry that the rhetoric of restitution confuses -- as does
so much of the imprisonment-and-execution mania dominating the
political landscape -- the goals of justice and revenge. Revenge,
after all, is just another version of the individualized,
take-out-the-bad-guys myth. Judith Herman believes indulging
fantasies of revenge actually worsens the psychic suffering of
trauma survivors: "The desire for revenge...arises out of the
victim's experience of complete helplessness," and forever ties the
victim's fate to the perpetrator's. Real recovery from the
cataclysmic isolation of trauma comes only when "the survivor comes
to understand the issues of principle that transcend her personal
grievance against the perpetrator...[a] principle of social justice
that connects the fate of others to her own." The survivors and
victims' families of the Long Island Rail Road massacre have banded
together not to urge that Colin Ferguson be executed but to work
for gun control.
What it all comes down to is this: What do survivors of violent
crime really need? What does it mean to create a safe society? Do
we need courts so overburdened by nonviolent drug offenders that
Daniel Silvas go untried for eighteen months, delays that leave
victims and suspects alike in limbo? Do we need to throw nonviolent
drug offenders into mandatory-sentence proximity with violent
sociopaths and career criminals? Do we need the illusory bravado of
a Schwarzenegger film -- or the real political courage of those
L.I.R.R. survivors?
If the use of my picture on television unexpectedly brought me face
to face with the memory of August 7, some part of the attack is
relived for me daily as I watch the gruesome, voyeuristically
reported details of the stabbing deaths of two people in
California, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. It was relived
even more vividly by the televised trial of Colin Ferguson. (One
night recently after watching Ferguson on the evening news I
dreamed that I was on the witness stand and Silva, like Ferguson,
was representing himself and questioning me.) Throughout the trial,
as Ferguson spoke of falling asleep and having someone else fire
his gun, I heard neither cowardly denial nor what his first lawyer
called "black rage"; I heard Daniel Silva's calm, secure voice
telling me I killed his mother. And when I hear testimony by the
survivors of that massacre -- on a train as comfortable and
familiar to them as my neighborhood coffee bar -- I feel a great
and incommunicable fellowship.
But the public obsession with these trials, I am convinced, has no
more to do with the real experience of crime victims than does the
anti-crime posturing of politicians. I do not know what made my
assailant act as he did. Nor do I think crime and violence can be
reduced to simple political categories. I do know that the answers
will not be found in social Darwinism and atomized individualism,
in racism, in dismantling cities and increasing the destitution of
the poor. To the contrary: Every fragment of my experience suggests
that the best protections from crime and the best aid to victims
are the very social institutions most derided by the right. As
crime victim and citizen what I want is the reality of a safe
community -- not a politician's fantasyland of restitution and
revenge. That is my testimony.
Copyright (c) 1995, The Nation Company, L.P. All rights reserved.
Electronic redistribution for nonprofit purposes is permitted,
provided this notice is attached in its entirety. Unauthorized,
for-profit redistribution is prohibited. For further information
regarding reprinting and syndication, please call The Nation at
(212) 242-8400, ext. 226 or send e-mail to Max Block at
mblock@thenation.com.
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English 110: Annie Dillard "How to Live"

2008-11-05T15:47:00.000-08:00

In “How to Live,” Annie Dillard talks about how many cultures pride hard work, family, and being the best you can. Personally I found this to be a very confusing essay, but I will try to discuss it the best I can. I think Dillard is saying that there has always been value to working hard throughout history. She discusses how throughout the years, people always strived to be the best at what they do. If you are a farmer you strive to be the best farmer or the best hunter. To be the “big man or beloved woman”. It seems Dillard says people try to be successful, no matter the culture, to leave a legacy behind before you die. Will people remember you? Will people remember what you have done? Cultures have not really changed that much in hundreds of years, so do we really make a difference throughout our lives by trying to be the best we can be?
I think we can make a difference in the world if we strive to be the best. Many athletes and politicians have impacted millions of peoples lives throughout history. These athletes and politicians became these great people through hard work and because they wanted to be the best they can be. One person who came to mind is Michael Phelps. During the Olympic frenzy a few months ago it was reported he had Attention Deficit Disorder and that he was raised by a single mother. He overcame all this and he became an Olympic legend, and he had an impact on many people’s lives. He showed that people with ADD could still be like any other people, and gave them hope.
Here is an article about how Phelps has inspired people with ADHD to be all they can be.
http://www.edgefoundation.org/blog/2008/08/15/michael-phelpss-adhd-is-not-an-attention-deficit/
JW

ENG 110- Just Get to Know Me

2008-09-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

It takes a lot of time to get to know me
But it takes little to like me
Sometimes i hide my feelings, avoid my feelings
In order not to get judge at or hurt
If you really get to know me and win my trust
U will have won a friendship that lasts for life
I will be loyal, uderstanding, n be there by your side
But if u ever backstab me, if u ever betray me
My heart will be broken and it will take alot to forgive u
But there is one thing that u shouldnt 4get for sure
Is that, If you ever backstab me, if u ever betray me
I can't and will not do anything to hurt u, to get back at u
For i have learned to love u,
And our friendship will have meant more to me than u
If i dont like you, Im not a hyprocrite
I will tell u, or try to get away from u, in order to avoid ur presence
Cause i think honesty is one of the most important things
Just get to know me
And i will show that i can be a really good friend
I'll show you that there are people
Who still can be trusted, who still value friendship
-VYNS

110 - My..Can you guess who he is?

2008-09-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

Well..
I thought I'd be the first to grace this lovely little blog of yours..
With what I wrote about my..
Friend & A little conversation I had with him..
On 9/11

Look there..over yonder..
My little friend lying right in front of me..
With his blue jacket..and some metallic shine..
Lookin' like Michael Jackson 'nd them jackets that had madd zippers on them for no reason..
But,
Unlike that sick bastard..
My friend got his head together,
A sturdy young feller,
Although he's not the biggest of the bunch..
He doesn't let that phase him,
'Cause he got a big heart.
You see..
I was talkin' to my buddy last night and I was like:
"Yoooooo, why you made me bite my tongue?"
He was like: "Nahh son..that was all you, you dumb".
Then I was like: "Yo..Whatever my dude, you grimey..For real.."
Then he suddenly took offense and said, "Why?..
'Cause I'm not someone with mass appeal?"
I said, "Nahh, not even..I know where you come from.."
You see,
My little friend..I can vibe with him..
'Cause, we both came from The Bronx..
BX STAND UP.
And, we've both been through the same..fecal matter ;)..
So..
I understand why he took offense,
'Cause, just look at him..
That dull shine, lookin' like aluminum,
But,
To the listeners & on-lookers,
His appearance be foolin' em..
Just like mine do.
I mean,
He don't wear the best clothing..
But he loves to wear blue,
And I love to wear red.
But,
That's the only difference,
There's much more to be said,
About this little friend of mine,
And I'm gonna let him shine,
Let him shine, let him shine, let him shineee..
Okay.
Anyways,
Excuse that lil..ballad I just did..
I know it was cute..sexy voice and all..but chill..
We're talkin' 'bout my friend that you see before me..
You see,
My mans (no homo),
But,
My mans been through a lot,
Those broke as a motha..,
Times like those,
Scrappin' scraps of burnt rice out the bottom of the bowl,
Or pot..
'Cause where we from,
I told you that we won't stop,
I thought I told you that we won't stop,
The stomach rumbles just a little too much,
And some see that as sad, but..
We just see it as our comin' up.
Just look at my buddy..
I'm so proud of him..
A real soldier, look at those scars on him..
He's been in a few fights..
You can tell.
And I'm not only talkin' bout scrappin' for some burnt rice.
You see,
His momma dropped him a few times as a baby,
And just maybe..
Maybe..
That caused a few scars.
But,
Nonetheless,
He's still a work of art..
No homo.
I ain't trying to be no more of a friend..
You buggin' hardbody if you think we gonna be touchin' swords..
Or,
Crossin' streams..or playin' tug of war..
Be gentle.
'Cause he can get it hard..no homo..
And I don't want to sit on him,
'Cause I'm very fond of my ass not hurting..
No homo (again),
But damn,
Look at him..
Built as strong as can be,
A little rough around the edges..
But regardless,
I see the kinda person that he is:
A realist.
Speaks his own mind and he ain't scared of..number 2 ;)
Even though some people think he belongs in the toilet..
Or with the 4 AM garbage pick up..
But,
Ya'll don't know him like I do,
Just hick up.
Close your mouth like how your mind is set,
'Cause me and him..
We're the same person, except,
He's built a little different,
But we came from the same place,
With a bunch of roaches and sh**..
With one entrance and 8 exits..
But I must say,
He keeps it a lil more gutter then I do..
He stays a lil dirty,
While I like to keep clean, my dude,
I guess that's 'cause he has a few screws loose..
And I guess that's crazy since he only speaks the truth..
He is what he is, right?
Ya'll can't change him.
But,
I must admit,
He had his moments when he had enough..
I mean,
Some dude he don't even know put 3 holes in him,
So..I'm glad he's that tough..
So,
He came back to me, after he was locked down for a minute..
And he's still the same..
A little more humble,
But he will never change.
He's a modest person..
Yet,
Some people still look upon him in disgust..
In pity, in lust..
In curiosity,
Or,
Stating not so witty remarks.
I guess..
It's 'cause he wears the same thing, and is simply..
Complex.
And,
That must be the reason everybody wants to meet him,
But get in line cause,
I'm next.
But anyways..
That's just my friend..
My number one.
But,
Don't stick a fork in him,
He's not done.

-trust2

Welcome!

2008-09-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the blog!

Please keep in mind that this is your blog -- although you will have some assignments that will require you to read and to post online, I also encourage you to use this format to share your stories, poetry, links, political opinions, anxieties, or basically anything...so long as it's appropriate (don't post anything offensive, dishonest, etc).

Keep in mind that the more you write (and read), the stronger a writer you will become. So please take advantage of this forum. Enjoy!

--ASD