Interesting Video About my Book

This was a really interesting video I found on YouTube (Link Below). The video is a 60 minute video clip. The video clip actually focuses not only on the subject of the book I am planning on doing for my 2nd semester book, but it also interviews the author of my book, Through Them All Out. Off the bat, the amount of research that went into the book amazed me. The fact that Peter had a team of eight people, not including himself, working on this book shows how motivated Peter is by the subject. All of this research comes together and shows how congress is able to trade on daily information that is unable to the public. The example given is with medical stocks and if congress is working on a law or viewing this medical drug, they are able to trade the stock on information that the public is unaware of. This is why members of congress leave with so much more money then they are supposed to make off the salary. While members of congress are serving the public, some join in order to be a part of this "legalized" form of insider trading. Initial public offerings are also a way for corporations to give a senator money, rather then giving that person cash. This is because giving a senator an option to an IPO is legal, where as giving that senator cash is not. These IPO's are very valuable and can make these senators more money than the corporation would have offered them, yet it is not illegal to do so. Land is also another concern when talking about congress. Congress is able to put money into various areas, but these areas usually help benefit their housing value. There is a lot of controversy over this issue, and it makes me more intrigued to learn about what Peter is trying to explain to the public. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3DZh1109W8

2nd Semester Book Finding

While trying to find a book to blog about for my issues class, I stumbled upon an interesting title. A lot of the books showing controversy, were focused around war and the economy. I was able to find another book on computer hacking, but I wanted to blog about a new subject. After spending a good half hour, wandering the book store, I was able to come across a book titled, Throw Them All Out. This book is written by Peter Scheizer. The books main focus is how politicians and their friends are able to make money off things that would send the rest of us to prison. When Peter is trying to explain to the reader on why these politicians are able to invest money so confidently Peter uses a word called cronyism. Cronyism is a shorter form of crony capitalism. Members of congress are able to trade stocks based on privileged information. Already after reading the short summary I was intrigued on learning more. Do people know about what is going on? Should this be allowed? I was very interested in what Peter had to say about this topic. It didn't stop there though. Cronyism is also members of congress inserting earmarks into bills, which helps improve their real estate holdings. Presidential campaigns are able to receive billions in federal grants yet no punishment is given to these people. Peter digs deeper into the issue and offers ways to overcome this problem. I look forward to starting this book for my second semester blog.

Wrongful Convictions

Based on the information given, Terrill Swift had a powerful influence upon my view of the justice system. Also, the power the police officers may have over an innocent person took me by surprise. I personally do not believe it is right for a person in power to convince a frightened teen or young adult to admit to a crime they did not commit. Possibly even going as far as, in Terrill’s case, to trick that same scared person into signing a confession in hopes to let themselves go back home. Part of the blame is to be put on Terrill for not reading what was presented to him before signing off, but at the age of 17, my current age, I could not say I would do things differently. Being scared and wanting to go home, I would take the police officer's word when he presented me with information that would set me free. The fact that these cases are not rare surprises me even more. I could understand if, once in a while due to inevitable flaws within the justice system, someone is prosecuted who should not be. This does not give any right, though, for officers to force people to sign wrongful confessions against that person’s will. From what Terrill was saying, this has happened many times and will continue to happen. While blame should be placed on the person signing but not reading what is being presented, it is very easy to take the word of someone whose purpose should be to protect you.

Hidden Bias

My results from this test showed I had a slight automatic preference for European Americans compared to African Americans. I was surprised at first with those results, but after thinking about why this might be, it was not as much of a surprise. I have grown up in an area where there is not much diversity and no opportunity to meet minorities on a regular basis. Media has portrayed minorities as being involved with drugs and gang violence, things that are fortunately unfamiliar to me and that I want to avoid.  One thing I found interesting, that I did not previously know, is how children learn prejudices as early as age three. That seemed like a very young age for children to show an opinion towards people based on race. Another interesting fact is how people can change their hidden biases. People do this by recognizing their biases and modifying their behaviors in a given situation.

Response to Article: "If I Were A Poor Black Kid"

After reading the article If I Were A Poor Black Kid, by Gene Marks, a lot of thoughts come to mind. I personally agree with the majority of points he makes, how by pushing yourself even while there is no hope, one will achieve greatness. The point of the article does not focus on the race part of growing up poor and trying to strive even though the community where you live is suffocating you. Instead, Gene focuses much more on growing up poor but striving to reach a high level of education. While being a different race may put you at a slight disadvantage when trying to achieve educational greatness, being poor would have a much larger effect. Gene talks about an interesting point at the end of the article, “Many come from single-parent families whose mom or dad (or in many cases their grand mom) is working two jobs to survive and are just (understandably) too plain tired to do anything else in the few short hours they’re home” (Marks, 2011). This is part of the reason why it is so much more difficult to grow up poor in a neighborhood where schools may not be as good as others. Many of these students may try to get jobs while in high school to help bring money into the family, but because of this action they may not have time for school work. If your parent makes enough money to support the family, then the ideas about striving hard to achieve a good education would make sense. The author, though, does not look at all of the points, and rather than talking about growing up poor, the author tries to focus his points around race when really they should be about growing up poor.

After looking through the various responses to the article, I agree with many things they are saying. Gene tries to tell people what to do, work harder, when really Gene does not know their situation. Gene is trying to tell people what to do, when really they might not be able to do these things for financial reasons or health reasons. Gene makes it sound so easy to just change the way people learn, and implies if everyone learned the way Gene had wanted, they would be on their way to graduating college. There is almost a sense of arrogance I get from Gene. Most kids wanting to go to college will try to succeed in school. There may be other factors though, as I mentioned before such as having to work a lot outside of school to earn money for the family, which would prevent these kids from succeeding. Gene ignores many other factors that could affect his idea of trying to succeed. It is not as simple as just working harder and you will succeed. 

Worm Book Post #5

Ending the book leaves the reader with a feeling of relief. The whole book towards the end builds up to the Conficker worm. At the end the Conficker worm ends up just to be a hoax, an April fools joke. There were three strains to the virus, A, B, and C. The strains of A, and B were predicted to be steps to take in order to unleash strain C, the heart of the worm. The public commotion that was caused because of this worm is something that should not be overlooked. What the worm still did caused panic and commotion between consumers, companies, and the government. A person suspected to be involved was Russian, but there are no leads on who it could be. The government should still be looking for the people responsible because of the public commotion these people caused and the amount of money the government spent on trying to protect the Internet and finding the people responsible. Microsoft is blamed for being the major problem on why the Conficker worm was such a threat. Microsoft is considered a monopoly for all the smaller companies they have bought. Microsoft took away the majority of the competition and have sold ten million computers with Windows operating system on them. Should companies be punished for wanting to make more of a profit? Without buying other companies, Microsoft would not have sold as many windows operating system computers. Another point that could be bought up is, with the mass making of windows computers the cost of the computer has been able to decrease, allowing more people to purchase a computer or have multiple computers. Corporations should not be blamed for wanting to sell as many products as possible. One thing to note when purchasing a product is the security. Apple computers are generally more expensive than windows computers but they are advertised to be more secure against viruses. By creating a common language among the larger computer companies more people have been able to create more programs for consumers to use. The drawback that is commonly overlooked is how it allows for more viruses to be made, and spread easily from computer to computer.

Worm Book Post #4

The fourth part of the book, Worm, starts out with talking about the Conficker worm. This was a virus no one knew the potential of. Not many people new the source of where the virus was even coming from. Mark writes about Rick, an online security expert, “Markoff quoted Rick: ‘If you’re looking for a digital Pearl Harbor, we now have the Japanese ships steering toward the horizon’” (Bowen, 129). The reason I choose this quote is to show how big of a deal Rick made of this event. I do not believe the public knew the threat level of the attack as Rick did. The Conficker worm spread fear through the online community of people who were following it for what the virus could do, the potential the worm had to destroy and steal information on so many computers. Businesses, like Microsoft, were also becoming worried of the Conficker worm affecting their computers, and offered a 250,000-dollar reward for whomever could identify the person or persons who created the worm. My question when I read how Microsoft was paying to have someone identify the person or persons who created the worm is, why is a company paying for the person identifying the worm, rather then the government taking more of an action to find the people responsible? The government was probably working very hard in order to find out who was behind the attack. This is especially after receiving advice on how bad the Conficker worm was going to be by online security experts. It does not seem right to have a company pay to help find the person or persons the government is looking for. Microsoft is paying in order to help keep their reputation of their operating system safe, but I still do not believe they should have to pay that much money to catch the people responsible.