The Drinking Age

I am now researching the drinking age in the United States. I believe that the drinking age should be changed from 21 to 18. In the United States when a person turns 18 they are considered an adult; they can choose to join the army, they can vote, buy cigarettes, choose a college, live on their own, decide what they want to do with the rest of their life and they can go to jail. They are given all of the responsibilities and privileges of being an adult. I think that it is absurd that a person can choose to join the army and put their life on the line at the age of 18, but that their brains are not developed enough to drink alcohol. I think that this is lacking logic and needs to be reevaluated. If we are considered adults at 18 then the drinking age should correspond with when we are considered an adult. If people’s brains are not developed enough to have alcohol then there is no way that we should allow 18 year olds to make these other life changing decisions.

Child Poverty- "Take Action over Child Poverty"

Continuing my research on child poverty if found another article from the source the Evening Standard titled Take Action over Child Poverty. According to the article “the majority of a child’s learning and development takes place outside of the school gates” (paragraph 3). The author suggests that rather than investing funds in the schools in impoverished areas they should put it towards the families income so that they can support their families. To be continued…

Child Poverty

I have chosen to spend the remainder of the year learning about child poverty. The first article that I found on the topic was from the source: Our Sunday Visitor (from June 11, 2010) and titled Stemming the Rising Tide of Child Poverty by Michelle Martin. According to the Duke University Child and Youth well-being Index Project (conducted in June 2010) "about 21 percent of children in the United States will live below the poverty line this year" (paragraph 2). I found this statistic to be quite shocking and alarming. The recession has caused this percentage to rise. And it is extremely difficult to rise from poverty, in fact according to Ralph McCloud, executive director of CCHD and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops domestic anti-poverty effort, "people who grow up in poverty are likely to remain poor as they raise their own children" (paragraph 8). This is why we need to try to provide opportunities for the poor to get a good education so they have the opportunity to rise from the poverty. By allowing this cycle to continue we are creating a permanent lower class and this puts the children that were born into this poverty at an unearned disadvantage in our society. According to the Child and Youth well Being index Project "about one in five children are living in poverty this year [2010], in four states, that number approaches one in four" (Martin). This is clearly a big concern and needs to not be overlooked.

The State of the Union Address

I think that when I watched the state of the Union Address I was surprised to feel disappointed and unsatisfied. I felt like Obama made a large wish list on what he hopes to accomplish in the country and provided no explanation for how he was going to make it happen. I would have preferred if he had said fewer goals but included more details on how he was going to accomplish the goals he has said out to achieve. But he was trying to please the majority and that definitely worked because he used his very general statements to please both parties. He definitely seemed to focus his attention toward clean energy and education. I thought that his ideas for improving the education system would be very beneficial to the countries future. Overall there were definitely some great ideas made and it was very well written, but I hope that there is follow through on these ideas.
I will say that I have seen the State of the Union addresses in the past and having the republicans and democrats all sitting intermixed gave a much more united front than in years past. This was definitely my favorite part of the address. It changed the entire vibe and feel of the speeches in a great way.

Mock Trial Recap and Response

Recap the trial:
Trail 1
I agreed with the jury's verdict deeming that David Jones is innocent in the alleged rape of Susan Williams. I was chosen to defend Davis Jones in the case and found that the more I prepared for the case, the more that I agreed with David Jone's position. I think that charging someone with rape is a huge accusation and cannot be made unless you are absolutely certain that the accusations are in fact true. There was no physical evidence of any resistance shown from Susan Williams and she consented to sexual intercourse with David Jones in their relationship before. If Susan Williams really didn’t want it to happen then she could have left. David had let her leave before if she was feeling uncomfortable. I sympathize for Susan Williams because she is probably just confused with her feelings and looking back on their relationship she is probably just upset that she went that far with him. But you cannot blame David Jones because Susan showed no signs that she didn’t want to be there that night, in fact she was the one that kept continuing to kiss him.

Race in America

The Project Implicit Race test shows that I have a slight privilege toward European Americans. I think that this is a somewhat accurate simply because of where I have grown up. I am not exposed to many of the racial injustices and because I don't see it I don’t know how prevalent it really is in society. But I think that because I am well educated, along with many of my peers, race isn't really an issue. But again, I may just not notice it. After reading the Chicago Tribune: Exploring Race tab I was shocked to see the amount of articles that were associated with racial injustices recently in the news. I had no idea that there are so many current racial issues in the news.

Whats going on in the world?

I think that it is going to take a long time for Egypt’s economy to stabilize. Right now the military has power over Egypt. Until the protests subside it is a good idea for the military to remain in power. Even though Mr. Mubarak stepped down on February 11, 2011 the protests still continue.

In addition, another huge thing that is going on in the world is the tsunami in Japan. It has resulted in fires in the four nuclear plants and is releasing so many chemicals into the air. The fallout zone of the air pollutant is in the Pacific Ocean and this happens to be where forty percent of the world gets their food from. I think that the media isn't doing a good enough job at informing the world on what is really going on there. To me it seems like a difficult situation for the world to deal with. Many countries have a lot of trouble offering aid to Japan because they are a wealthy and have not had a great reputation with the other countries. But I think that other countries need to start offering aid because this will affect the entire world, not only Japan.