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How do you feel about Stephen in the beginning of the movie? How does he interact with his coworkers, and what do his coworkers think of him? What do you think of him as he’s telling his coworkers the story about the hacker?
In the beginning of the movie Stephen takes advantage of his co-workers by saying nice comments to them about their appearance and of things of that nature, which is kind of amusing in a sense that it actually works. His co-workers like him and help with out when he asks them to. When he tells the story about the hacker he basically has them drinking it up from him, they hang onto every word he says.
Would you like to hang out with Stephen (as he’s portrayed in the first five or ten minutes of the movie)?
No, because he tends to get his friends to do his work for him and I certainly would not be ok with that.
What are the ethical dilemmas that Stephen faces? What ethical issues does the film explore through Stephen’s choices? Some may argue that what Stephen has done isn’t wrong. Do you think it’s wrong?
The ethical dilemmas that Stephen faces are about his articles. Everything he writes has to be checked out and made sure that the information is correct and respectable. Chuck and another online magazine catch Stephen in a made up story that he published which would be an issue of lying. It depends on the circumstances, for entertainment I think it’s acceptable, but since he wrote for a very respectable magazine in think that it was wrong for him to do that. Also the audience of his articles is some the most highly influential people in our government that have the power to make important decisions based upon certain facts.
What ethical dilemmas does Chuck (Stephen’s editor) face? What conflicting duties does he have? Consider Chuck’s choices as editor with the ethical standards Stephen sets up for editors, and consider the conversation he has with the editor of the magazine that discovers Stephen’s article is fabricated?
Chuck is supposed to back his writers but in this case he hangs him out to dry basically. I think the dilemma Chuck faced was who do I support?… My writer or the people questioning my writer. For Stephen he expects his editor to have his back no matter what happens and in this case Chuck let him get ripped up.
Has anyone else noticed the rising gas prices over the last few days? Although this tends to happen during holiday times, the price per barrel of crude oil has shot up over $100. Why is this you might ask? Well with all of our worries about green house gases and the availability of oil in the near future on our minds, many people are worried there may not be enough so they are buying it up now. This is not the only reason, come to find out, and the oil companies are not producing a full capacity or even near it which of course drives up the price considerably. My question to you as a citizen of the U.S. is why has our president not done anything to counter act these things from foreign oil companies? We have our own sources of oil why are we not using those? We need to show those foreign oil companies that we don’t need them or their oil. If we stopped buying from them for a month or two that would put a huge hit into their income, then they would be willing to bargain with us to buy oil from them. I don’t know how or what but these unnecessarily high fuel prices need to come down, it is really taking a hit on people with budgets just a year ago gas was around $2.00 a gallon. Something needs to be done and it needs to have been done yesterday. (words: 248)
Ok for our next project I wanted to take on a topic that has become very hot lately with all of the rising fuel costs, so I am going to choose alternative fuels. I am not a tree hugger or anything crazy like that but the prices of oil right now are unreasonably high and I don’t believe that it should be. Oil companies are making so much money off of gasoline and diesel fuel more so than anything. How can a fuel that is a byproduct of the process of making gasoline cost so much more than gas itself. Back in the 1800’s and early 1900’s when we just started using automobiles oil companies that produced gasoline had this waste product, diesel fuel, that they didn’t know what to do with. Their solution was to give it away to the railroad companies to burn in their engines just to get rid of it. Now when you are at the gas station and you see that the price for the crudest fuel it more than the most refined. To me that is price gouging to the extreme. Diesel fuel should cost no more than 87 octane gas. In fact it should be much cheaper, but those who are selling it think, oh well truckers need this stuff so we will jack up the prices to make a lot of money off of them. (words: 234)
In Dillon County, South Carolina, a 10 year old boy shot his sister in the face with a shotgun after she refused to give up the potato chips. It all started when the boy wanted the chips and his sister refused to give them to him. He then went into another room and grabbed his father 410 shotgun, loaded a shell, and then shot his sister in the face. The children ran to a relative’s house and called the paramedics. Investigators say that this was no mistake and that he had previously pulled the same gun on one of his cousins but it wasn’t loaded. The girl had to have emergency plastic surgery in Charleston and is expected to make a full recovery. Authorities petitioned the Department of Juvenile Justice for a charge of assault and battery with intent to kill. The boy’s mother stated that her son was not on his medication for ADHD. My first thought is, why is the gun not locked up? His cousin said that he had previously pulled the gun on him so why wouldn’t you lock it up so that something like this doesn’t happen. Secondly, this kid needs to be on more than just ADHD medication he took the time to load the shotgun, which I believe, makes this a premeditated act of violence. I hope that the petition is granted and the kid gets charged with the crime he committed. I think that he need to be evaluated mentally to see if there is something wrong with him and maybe even check him into a mental ward. (words: 268)
CNN NEWS
Here is my turn to rant on about something that really pisses me off. In today’s economy, we are searching for replacement fuels to take the place of the crude oil driven vehicles that we all own, and now may car and truck manufactures are coming out with what is known as flex-fuel vehicles that came run on both gasoline and E85 ethanol and any mixture of the two. Sure this sounds like a good alternative, we turn extra corn into fuel for our vehicles and use the waste to feed cattle but how often have you seen a gas station with an E85 Ethanol pump? Never, or maybe once maybe, my point exactly. I have one of these vehicles myself, a 2006 Ford F-150 with the 5.4L FFV motor (FFV: flex fuel vehicle), and I have never seen an E85 Ethanol station. Sure I would probably use E85 if it was cheaper the regular gasoline but I cannot use it if it isn’t available anywhere in the state of Florida. So the question is why are they even selling them to people who live in a state where the fuel is unavailable? It might be because it makes people think that they are helping out the environment by having a vehicle that can run on E85. Personally I cannot wait until the new 2008 VW Jetta TDIs come out in the fall and I will be tripling my gas mileage. At least with the diesel engine I can use an alternative fuel that I can make myself, WVO or waste vegetable oil, is the leftover cooking oil from restaurants like McDonalds can be filtered and used in any diesel engine. Diesels are much more efficient than gasoline vehicles even though you may be paying more per gallon on diesel fuel. If you calculate the amount per mile you drive the results show that you actually save money with a diesel than a less efficient gas vehicle. (Words 327)
*And if anyone is curious about the gas mileage here is the statics of my truck vs. a TDI
***F-150 12-15 city/ 18-20 hwy mpgs at 70 mph. (I have gotten as high as 22 on the hwy drafting behind a big rig and doing an avg. speed of 65mph.) Also my fuel tank is 27 gallons.
*Miles per Dollar = mpg /price per gallon= 13 mpg avg city/$2.86/gall. @ TA truck stop in I-4. After calculations we get a total of 4.5 miles/dollar. Now compare to the others.
Comparison of Gas vs. Diesel
***2008 Jetta TDI 44-50 city/48-60* hwy mpgs. With a 14.5 gallon fuel tank. Horse power ratings for this vehicles are 177hp and 240lb/ft of torque.
*Miles per Dollar = mpg /price per gallon= 45 mpg avg city/ $3.23/gall. @ TA truck stop on I-4. After doing this you come up with a total of 14 miles/dollar. Now compare to the gas version.
(*estimated mpg by VW)
***2008 Jetta 2.5L gasser 21 city/ 29 hwy mpgs. Also with a 14.5 gallon fuel tank. Horse power ratings for this vehicle are 170hp @ 5700rpm and 177lb/ft @ 4250rpm
*Miles per Dollar= mpg/price per gallon= 21 mpg avg city/ $2.86/gall. @TA truck stop on I-4. After dividing we get a total of 7.34 miles/dollar. Now which one would you rather have????
(all VW Jetta Statics are from the VW of America website)
(Total words: 545)
In Washington, President Bush made a budget proposal asking Congress to spend money to help root out illegal workers from businesses, but he did not request more money to help legal immigrants become American citizens more quickly. In his budget proposal issued this week, Bush asked for $100 million to expand E-Verify, the system employers use to check whether they are hiring documented workers. He didn’t ask Congress to allocate money to chip away at millions of citizenship and other immigration applications that flooded the government last summer, before an increase in the agency’s filing fees. Instead, Citizenship and Immigration Services will rely on $468 million in fees to pay for reducing the backlog by 2010. That money is a portion of the total fees that came in with the applications this summer (AP). 7.7 million applications for various immigration benefits were submitted to Citizenship and Immigration Services in this year, that’s 1.4 million more than last year (AP). This is a little surprising to me, as a nation that many people dream of coming to for a better life, we are doing very little to help them actually acquire their citizenship. Almost everyone that is considered an American was, at some point in their family’s history, an immigrant that came here hoping for the same things that our ancestry did, and yet we do nothing to help them get documented correctly. In my opinion, I believe that no one should be allowed to be here without U.S. citizenship or a passport/visa and for companies to hire the illegal immigrants is only making the situation worse. On the other hand, everyone should be given an opportunity after all, America is the land of opportunity but to be privileged to this one should be “legal”. (words: 295)
MSNBC Article
Each day about five U.S. troops try to kill themselves, and before the war in Iraq that number was down to around one. New Army figures showed that nearly 2,100 soldiers tried to commit suicide in 2007. “Our troops and their families are under unprecedented levels of stress due to the pace and frequency of more than five years of deployments,” S. Jim Webb of Virginia stated. To me this is very unfortunate that some of our men and women serving overseas would rather take their own life than continues to defend the U.S. I would never have guessed that troop attempted suicide rates were so high. I mean five a day is a lot, multiply that by 30 days for a month and that’s around 150 which is a huge number! I know that some of these soldiers are under large amounts of stress but how can it be worth taking your own life over? I think that suicide it not the way the handle your stress, as bad as it may get, you will always get threw it eventually. Your life is absolutely priceless so why would you want to give it up? You only have one life to live and you should make the best of it, no matter how bad it may get. The point in this blog is that suicide should NEVER be an option. (230 words)
After the discussion in class I still have the same perception, so to speak. I think that if you want to help them out take them out to get food so they don’t spend their money on alcohol or drugs. I have had some experiences with people asking for a couple of bucks and at the time I was at my church for a Wednesday night youth meeting and we offered to take him to get some food but he gave us an excuses about how he didn’t have time for us to take him. It wasn’t quite as funny then as it is now but now you know what his plans are for the money that he wanted us to give to him. Everyone’s conditions are different and you don’t really know why someone is out in the streets until you talk to them, but I think that if you don’t take the time to help them out then, as a person, your morels are really screwed up, and you are only aiding their addictions. So to sum everything up I would rather help someone out by taking them somewhere and buy food or a drink or whatever for them so that I know they used it for something useful and not to buy alcohol or drugs. (220 words)
After flying from Los Angeles, California to Nashville, Tennessee airport police arrested a 16 year-old boy for planning a hijacking of a commercial airliner and committing suicide. “His stated intent was to hijack the airplane and commit suicide,” said George Bolds, an FBI spokesman in Memphis, Tennessee. “He did indicate he intended to die in Louisiana. It appears he had a ticket to Louisiana.” There was also a report that he was planning on crashing that plane into a Hanna Montana concert in Lafayette, Louisiana. He was arrested with handcuffs, duct tape, and rope in his possession. The Southwest Airlines spokesman said that there were no safety concerns on the flight from California to Tennessee. This is a very concerning incident since the events of 9/11 took place more than seven years ago we have not had any planes hijacked due to the increase in security. Although the items that this young boy had with him were allowed on the plane I can’t believe that someone didn’t notice all of these items together and begin to wonder what he might be doing with them. Luckily for us, he was caught before he could carry out his attack, but this makes me wonder why a young boy would get on a plane to commit suicide. Was someone training him or pushing him to do this? This incident shows that we are still in fact vulnerable and open to an attack, it may have been stopped but what if he did it on the first flight he was on, then what would the outcome have been. (265 words)
CNN NEWS
When November comes around and it is time to elect a new president I know who I want to vote for, and since I already knew who I wanted to vote for I figured that I would watch one of his campaign videos and analyze it. So for this I chose Mike Huckabee’s ad on understanding that ran in Michigan during the primary. I will put the link at the end so that everyone can see it, but in his ad he uses all three of the appeals pathos, ethos, and logos. He begins his ad with pathos and logo by stating facts about how were are losing manufacturing jobs, home owners are facing a credit crisis, high fuel costs are spiraling, and families are hurting, which really appeals to everyone emotionally because most of them are going through the things he has stated. He provides facts such as 2.4 million manufacturing jobs lost according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ’01-’07 to back up what he says and to provide proof that he’s not making these things up. Then in the second half of his ad he uses all of the appeal together. He begins by claiming that he cut taxes, builds highways, reformed healthcare and education, and achieved record job growth, and backs his claims with facts. He cut taxes over 90 times. I believe it was 94 to be exact, but he shows more statistics on how 70,000 uninsured children got health coverage, and students test scores were high and they had better schools by the Department of Education and the American Educational Research Association. To me his argument was very strong and well supported by credible facts.(282 words)
link to video.
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