This inmate is struggling significantly in dealing with his present and intended future. I can feel all the built up regret and remorse he has for the crime he has committed. He lives a bleak life, where he is being tortured everyday with living like a caged animal. I feel horrible for him because I can almost feel his pain. He is tremendously lonely and needs someone of the other sex to connect with, someone to look forward to seeing and caring for, someone to give him a meaning of existence. Maybe the only reason why I feel so much pain for this lifer is because I am not aware of the crime he committed. I almost feel like a life in jail without parole is more painful than death. Sitting in my cell, counting down the days until my life ends is almost one of the most horrific torturing devices one can endure. When there comes a time in your life when you are at life without parole, I think I would almost be ready for death. I would feel like I let my family and so many of my close friends down. I am not saying this speaking about the lifer. For all I know he murdered a man who was going to rape his wife and children, which in my opinion is a heroic deed and would have done the same. But i'm saying if I committed a dumb, stupid, selfish crime. As much as I would be hurting in that jail cell, my family and friends at home would be hurting much more, especially my parents. On the other side, I personally don’t think I could take the everyday restricted living that being in jail entails. The misery of never being able to connect with a woman and to be there for my family on the outside would eat me alive. This man has made one of the biggest mistakes one could make. He threw away his life with the entire would ahead of him and is now paying for it in the worst possible way. I just wish more people, especially troubled youths, could learn from this man and see how much he wishes he could go back in time and fix the mistakes he made.

I think as a fellow American, the Middle East is very misunderstood. We have this perception of Muslims and what they have done terrorist wise around the world and we immediately hate them for that, which is well deserved. However, there is a large amount of Muslims who denounce those activities. Those people are the ones who truly suffer. They get mixed up with the narrow fundamentalist. Maybe the Muslim religion needs to take a stand on terrorism. Either support it, or don’t, so good people don’t suffer for irrational thinking and acting.
Do I fear these terrorists? Absolutely. The video alone speaks for itself. Since 1979, the Jihad has been terrorizing and making this world an unsafe place. How could a religion support world dominance? And now that i'm thinking about it, what if they did achieve world dominance. Than what? I don’t even think they would be satisfied. Another thing that i'm unsure about is that I feel like it is universally known that the USA hates the Jihad. Of course we do, but shouldn’t other countries hate them just as much, if not more than us? The Jihad has done damage equally all over the world, so shouldn’t we all be taking a stand as one against them?
I just think the root to all of this starts with the broad teachings of the Muslim religion. If the teachings were more specific and not so broad, people could pick a side between good and evil. How could you be part of the Jihad and Muslim and the goal of your organization is death to America? I just don’t understand how they think all of the harm they are doing to innocent civilians will grant them God’s consent and they will be forever taken care of for their actions. It is completely asinine.
To conclude my opinions of this video, i'm very confused, mainly with the differences of the Muslim and Islam religions and the root of their evil. I know not all believers and followers of these religions have this “evil,” but for the followers who do, I just don’t understand it. The Jihad must be stopped before they forever damage our world.

Killing an innocent bystander is no excuse even when dealing with war. Our soldiers need to be held at a higher standard. They are not facing severe enough consequences for them to even consider doing this. Something needs to be made clear that this type of behavior is not what the United States stands for.
The other alternate view to this argument is I cannot say I truly know the difficulty of living in a country like Afghanistan. When dealing with a village who highly supports the Taliban or Al Qaeda, you must be on the top of your toes and highly alert. Although there is no excuse for killing an innocent person, I can see maybe why the idea crossed their mind. I still want to make it clear that I don’t support this type of behavior, but I guess I understand where it came from.
I guess another thing to consider is basic training. We are training our soldiers to be cold-blooded ruthless killers. And at times, I think this is completely necessary, but maybe we are breaking them down too much? I mean clearly when dealing with a sane individual, in order to give them the power to pull the trigger, you need to train a mindset. Maybe the mindset we are teaching and stressing is too much? Maybe ruthless soldiers aren’t what are best.
I just cannot stress the amount of respect I have for these soldiers who risk their lives day in and day out, fighting to keep our country safe. These men are the true heroes. But who am I to judge or pass judgment. Lets think rational. Of course the United States army does not support this type of activity or behavior, but this type of shit happens during war. I guess at the end of the day we have to take the good with the bad. We have to understand as outsiders that during war, this type of poor decision-making is going to happen. I also think that this type of stuff happens a lot more than we hear. Repercussions must be made.

I certainly agree with everything the writer of this article has said about women. He illustrates illustrious ideas of how a man should treat a woman. I use the word ideas because in all honesty, chivalry in many ways is dead. A majority of women are underappreciated. The idea of a gentleman is long gone. Opening your car door on a date, or pulling out your date’s chair at dinner is forgotten. Personally, I was brought up to instill these trends when I was to take a girl on a date. But, of course due to the current time, I would feel embarrassed if I were to act this way. I feel a girl would almost laugh at how traditional and uptight I was acting.
The author makes a great example of how his appreciation is finally realized when he has been incarcerated. Women are what men desire most. It is simply our motivation for many of the things we take for granted everyday. Some strive in school and in the job world only to make more money to impress women. They are the hidden agendas behind ever male. The author came to this understanding because of his incarceration. When everyone around you is an equal and all you do is constantly interact with the “male” psyche, you miss the attention and emotional effects a female instills. That neutral attraction is something you cannot explain, and in my opinion cannot have with someone of the same sex. Our jails are based on this idea, meaning guys in jail are jailed with all guys as punishment. When you think of a jail sentence of ten years, some people, mainly females, think missing out on ten years of your life is a massive amount of wasted time. Although I agree, many guys are asking the question how they could survive ten years without a girl before they would consider the amount of wasted time.
Women are hidden forces behind every man’s agenda. It is the women who marry for money or status that give sincere women looking for love a bad name. These women basically give me the false allusion that money is the answer to everything.

The United States of America: Land of the free, home of the brave. What is the American dream exactly? It’s having the ability to do whatever you want. There are no government limits preventing you from uprising (of course being that it is all legal). Immigrants come to this country for opportunity that they do not have in their native countries. By fulfilling these dreams, a vast majority does well financially. Why should we stop all of this? Income inequality is just the way it is. When you see the gaps on these graphs, you shouldn’t sit and pout and think to yourself how unfair it is. You should get going and start thinking of ways to better yourself financially.

My father grew up in the city very poor. His widowed mother raised him and his brother and sister. He dropped out of college and eventually found his way into the insurance business. Due to his determination and hard work, he built a company from the ground up without the help of anyone. So yeah, this is great now that he has money and is very successful, but why should the government take that from him? Why should the government say hey we appreciate all your hard work, but now were just going to keep taking more of your hard earned money because the people around you aren’t as successful? I think that is a disgrace. Its pure laziness.

Problems with inequality are always going to exist in this country. If everyone was equal, I think our society as a whole wouldn’t work. I remember reading a chapter from The Intersections Collection. The author of this chapter made a great point. He was basically saying as much as no one wanted to admit it, our country needs that wide gap between the rich and the poor. Sad to say, but in essence if we all were equal, who would be doing the dirty work that our economy and society needs to get done everyday for us to function? In my opinion, our government gives the un-wealthy every opportunity to achieve success. This is America, land of the free. Start taking advantage of it.

I enjoyed M’s story. It really opens your eyes to a few perspectives. In my opinion this is a case of a troubled youth with virtually no parental guidance being taken advantage of by older troubled youths. At fourteen years old, people make mistakes, but maybe not to this degree. Witnessing a murder is a traumatizing thing, especially at such a young age. Not only did you witness the murder, you inadvertently participated in the death of this poor helpless man’s life by not stopping or helping him in any way by preventing the murder. Bottom line is you made a tremendous mistake that you must live with for the rest of your life. However when you speak of second chances, it almost aggravates me. If second chances were so readily available and easy, than we would all be perfect. Mistakes are what make us the people we are today. Mistakes are how you judge one from another. People cannot grow until they fix their mistakes.
At fourteen years old, I honestly do not think you should be considered or trialed as an adult. You were not fully matured nor understood the significant responsibilities of what is fully right or wrong in life. To make matters worse, you didn’t actually stab or physically harm the man directly in any way. For you to receive a life sentence as an accessory as a fourteen-year-old teen is probably one of the harshest sentences I have ever heard. I am not sure how long you have been incarcerated, but it is evident you are starting to mature and understand the velocity of this crime. If you are unable to appear to a parole board, our legislation system is a mockery. My opinion is not based on a compassionate letter that you wrote, it is coming from a neutral audience who is viewing your crime for what it is.
To conclude, I find myself feeling compassion for a man who doesn’t seek it. I am usually cold to these cases when I hear about criminals making mistakes and asking for another chance, but yours is different. I’m going to end this by saying you made a dumb mistake at an early age that should not have incarcerated you for your lifetime.

My view on same sex marriage has always been that it should not be legal. As a Catholic, the Bible states that same sex marriage is sinning. How could two women or two men fulfill the proper parenting techniques of your traditional family? As a male, my father played a huge role in my life. There were things that he understood without explanation. There were things he taught me that my mom couldn’t. And there were things like sex that I felt comfortable talking to him about than with my mom. Than on the other side of the spectrum, my mom played quite the opposite role. She nurtured me and felt compassion for things that my dad felt he didn’t have too. To sum up my explanation, my dad taught me what it was like to be a man, while my mom taught me how to treat a lady and cared for the emotional side of things my dad didn’t care about. This balance was huge during my adolescent and youth years.

Growing up, I never encountered a same sex marriage. I think due to the lack of marriages under that circumstance, it would be extremely awkward and different for a kid. But than, I saw this video. This guy spoke well and made some great points. I feel though this man is the exception. He benefited from two women who raised him right. He is extremely intelligent as well as successful. However growing up under same sex parents, your child would grow up confused. I think he or she would be more likely to follow in his parent’s footsteps. Our somewhat proper society would become highly confused.

To conclude my viewpoint, I still remain uncertain where I stand. I went from being highly against same sex marriages to being more lenient. This guy totally changed my stance and viewpoint to be more acceptable to the situation. I feel that there has to be a happy medium, where not just anyone can get married. They should have to seek council and prove their love and not just get married for benefits like in the movie “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.”

Money does not buy happiness. If winning millions of dollars from the lottery is not a clear example, I am not sure what is. People all around the United States are suffering from the negative effects of the “curse” of the lottery. The lottery winners all struggle for a number of the main reasons we learned in class. Lottery players tend to be low-income, uneducated individuals for the most part hence why they struggle to cope with the new fame and fortune. Aside from poor investments and crazy shopping sprees, lottery winners suffer tremendously from their own social surroundings. After reading this article, I never actually took into account the amount of people that probably bother these winners for their new money. Some go as far as plotting murders. It is crazy to see what people will do for money.

To this day, I am a firm believer that the people who win the lottery are the people who either needs it the most or the people who don’t care about winning at all. My reason for believing this is how many low-income, struggling families have won the lottery? The main counter argument for this will be well they play it much more compared to average income families. However, although the odds are in their favor, they still seem to emerge the most. The other example of winners is the people who don’t need the money at all to the point where winning becomes a burden. I remember reading an article about an old lady from the Midwest who won the lottery three times. That is unbelievable. The odds of that happening are a billion to one. Best part is, I am pretty sure she gave about all of her wealth to charity

Winning the lottery is not all it’s cracked up to be. I think many people overlook the negative effects that I mentioned in this response. However, if the opportunity were available to me, I still would not think twice about taking the money and dealing with all of the drama behind winning. I think the key factor behind winning is keeping your winnings anonymous. I wouldn’t want anyone to know that I even won, therefore I wouldn’t have to worry about all the leeches bothering me about my wealth. I would also buy an island and move there so no one could bother me.

Despite the facts and the numbers, I’m old fashioned and still believe in the old saying that we should not accept our children talking to strangers as an acceptable thing. I still believe it is extremely unsafe and there are a lot of crazy people out there. However, I think there is a line. There are strangers on the street that appear more reliable than others when it comes to simple questions. One can pretty much tell who is a questionable character and who is not for the most part.
But within every situation there are circumstances that put interaction with strangers beyond simple questions. For the most part it doesn’t matter how nice or reliable you may think someone is. If they are a stranger, one should have limited to no trust. Take for example the Natalie Holloway story. I am sure Jordan Vandersloop or whatever his name is was a real nice guy at the bar and seemed extremely trustworthy, but I think we are all well aware of what happened there. Also another example is the movie “Taken.” This movie alone has broadened so many people’s horizons on trusting strangers. This is a clear example that you need to be wary of strangers at all times.
With that being said, who cares what the numbers say? Lets say for example I had children and believed in the understanding that according to the numbers from people who study risk and children that talking to strangers is ok. I would make this concept clear to my children. Next, say one of these “rare occurrences” happened and my kid was kidnapped. I don’t think I would ever forgive myself knowing that I told them it was an acceptable act to talk to strangers on a regular basis. You can’t lead them on thinking that all people are good, because they are not.
This brings us to my final point. Why take the chance? To me it is not worth risking no matter what the facts say. It is better to be safe than sorry, especially in the case of risking the being of your children.

I think there has to be immediate efforts to end childhood obesity. Therefore I think it is a step towards a healthier society when the government has allowed families to write off breast-feeding on their tax report. There is a serious lack of control by our government allowing the amounts of unhealthy foods we see everyday the ability to circulate. Many people do not know or understand the basic facts of healthy eating. Due to this lack of knowledge, obesity and serious health problems are the results. I do not think that the government should necessarily be telling us what we can and cannot eat. I just think that there should be a higher health standard for the food we consume everyday. It would benefit everyone tremendously health wise.
A big problem we have seen today is the constant argument on health care. Is it too much? Will it be universal? Will there be a government plan? If healthy foods were mandatory in our society, health care premiums would decrease financially. With lower premiums, it would a positive step towards ending constant disagreement amongst this issue.
Now going back to the article to reiterate what Michelle Obama has stated, I think she is doing a great job about this situation. Michelle Obama recognizes that obesity is a serious societal problem that we see everyday in America. Currently we have the ability to catch this disease before it happens. Many low-income families do not have the ability to see a nutritionist leaving them with limited knowledge about what healthy eating consists of. A big reason for this is money. Too many families are struggling financially and cheap eating is a necessity for their survival. Our government has recognized these troubles and for the financially unstable, our government is basically saying if you decide to breastfeed your newborn child, he or she will be healthier and will less likely be obese. By making this smart decision that benefits your family, we (the government) are going to help cover the costs by making this a tax write off. I think this a terrific idea and hope this is only the beginning to a healthier eating society.