The Paw Print

On Tuesday, the long debate between the ideas of extending the unemployment benefits has finally been resolved. The Senate has finally decided to give extensions to unemployment benefits to Americans who have been out of work for about six months or more.
On a 60 to 40 vote, the Senate agreed to finally end the debate on the $34 billion plan to give out added compensation to those who have used up all of their standard 26 weeks worth of aid.
About 2 million Americans were faced with the fact that their benefits were gone over the past 2 months while they waited for this debate to end.
I feel happy at the fact that a lot more Americans will receive the aid that they need from now on. With the new benefits on its way, a lot of people will now be able to relax a little bit. Because of the current economic state we are in, this little extra benefit to the unemployed will help them greatly, especially those that had already used all of their usual standard 26 weeks worth of aid.
Although a lot of unemployed people will now receive the extra aid that they need to get through their daily life, I feel that this debate should’ve been decided a lot sooner. All of the time that was used to settle this idea could’ve been used to provide more aid to the unemployed. Although there is a lot to consider since this is a $34 billion plan, this issue should’ve been dealt with more efficiently so that people could receive aid sooner.

Some lyrics are explicit and not for kids under 18 like some of blood on the dance floor and jeffree star whose lyrics, talk about sex and violence, and some hip-hop stars refer to women in very obscene ways and some people just pass it up as usual. Is it because of their ethnic background and the way they were raised? I think part of it might be true just because it was the way they were treated as children is the main reason they act like that like lil Wayne who talks about all of these incriminating things as well as Eminem who talks about killing his wife and how he hates his mother because of the way he grew up is the reason why they act that way. Sometimes these albums end up in smaller children’s hands and then some parents wonder where these children get that kind of language and why they are acting out against their parents and they ignore their parents and get into fights and getting beat up for no reason just because they said the wrong thing to the wrong person or insulted someone who was very angry and about to snap.

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her home in Queens, New York. It took the killer thirty minutes to kill Genovese. During those thirty minutes, nobody answered her cries for help or called the police. Surprisingly, thirty-eight people witnessed the murder.
Sociologists John Darley and Bibb Latane looked into the Kitty Genovese incident. They found that Kitty Genovese was a victim of the bystander effect.
According to Darley and Latane, the bystander effect is a socio-psychological phenomenon that states that the victim’s chances of receiving help is inversely proportional to the number of bystanders. In other words, if the number of bystanders in an emergency situation increases, the victim’s chances of receiving help decreases. Two factors that make up the bystander effect are the diffusion of responsibilities and pluralistic ignorance.
When faced in emergency situations, each bystander perceives a fraction of the responsibility. According to David Newman in Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life, if there was only one bystander in an emergency situation, that one bystander would feel 100% responsible for taking action. Newman also goes on to note that if there were ten bystanders, each bystander would feel as though they had a tenth of the responsibility. Those ten bystanders carry less weight than the weight that the single bystander carries. This minimizes the obligation to take action. This concept is known as diffusion of responsibilities. Because there were thirty-eight bystanders in the Kitty Genovese incident, each bystander felt less responsible and less obligated to help out Genovese.
When a teacher asks her class to write notes, a student who did not pay attention would look at his classmates to figure out what to do. Similarly, bystanders often look at other bystanders to figure out what to do. If one person doesn’t take action, another person would believe that nothing is wrong and wouldn’t take action as well. A larger group of people further reinforces the ignorance. This is known as pluralistic ignorance. The thirty-eight bystanders in the Kitty Genovese incident did nothing, since everyone else didn’t do anything. They thought that everyone else didn’t do anything because nothing was wrong.
There is a way to offset the bystander effect. A victim must break pluralistic ignorance and stop the diffusion of responsibility. To do so, a victim must ask a single bystander for help, rather than a whole group of bystanders. By calling on a single bystander for help, the victim “shines the spotlight” on the bystander. This gives the bystander more responsibility, making him take action. When one bystander helps out the victim, the other bystanders will see that there is something wrong and start to help out the victim too. This offsets the bystander effect and creates safety in an emergency situation.
Kitty Genovese didn’t receive help because of bystander effect. If there were fewer bystanders, Genovese would have had a greater chance of surviving.

Have your family member ever bugged you of what college you want to attend?  My family sure have, especially at a stage when you would be entering the senior year soon.  I always wonder why parents would ask so much question about college, when I am not even at college yet.  Even if I am at the stage of college my parents would pressure to tell me what school to go to and what not to go to.
 I believe my college and career I want to be is my choice and not my parents, but especially in my culture, people would assume what you will be and what college you would attend.  I have an older sister that attends Stony Brook University and my parents wouldn’t let me go to that school because it is too far away.  They want me to stay in the city and be an accounting.  I know parents only wants the best of their children’s, but aren’t they just overreacting a bit?  I know every family want their children to attend the best college in the world, but no one is perfect.  Perfection is not a world; it doesn’t exist in the world of education because no one is perfect.
College is a place that you will stay in a place for four years of your life and you cannot let parents control your life forever.  I am not saying that you shouldn’t listen to your parents, but after high school  it is your own life and how you will control it, since it is your future.  Since I am going to enter my senior year next year, my parents are putting too much stress on me and what college I need to go to.  Whatever my decision would be, it will be from my heart, since it will be my future and my life.

You’d think that this oil spill would make the government learn from their mistakes, right? It seems that the spill has opened everybody’s eyes but the Obama administration and the oil companies.
A couple days ago, I was reading the latest issue of Rolling Stone and found an article about BP and Shell’s next drilling plans in the Arctic. The article stated that the government seemed to be going along with these plans and giving them the green light. As I was reading this, an article in a mainly liberal magazine that was criticizing the Obama administration, my blood was boiling.
Shell and BP plan to drill in the Arctic as soon as January, when Obama’s temporary freeze on drilling ends. After the debacle in the Gulf, how can anybody think of doing more drilling, in a harsher climate no less? If there was another rig explosion, oil could leak into the Arctic and we would have no chance of cleaning up, because in the harsh winter, the Arctic is covered in ice that is very hard to break through. The oil will rush through the Arctic, destroying habitats and wildlife everywhere.
The article then said that the corporations did not have appropriate plans of action for worst-case scenarios. I can not believe that with between 94 and 184 gallons spilled in this spill, 1387 dead sea birds, 444 dead sea turtles, and 53 dead mammals, the corporations still are not capable of responding to another spill.
How can the government allow these companies to drill again in the near future? We haven’t even fixed this spill yet! If you really want to destroy innocent animals habitats and the environment as we know it, take it one spill at a time! The government has to realize that the state of the environment is in their hands and that is worth more than any amount of money. They must put a permanent freeze on drilling. Now is the time to learn from our mistakes. Lets open our eyes and make a change before it’s too late.

Every summer, I want to do a lot of things like joining programs, doing internships, participating in preps and courses to enhance myself but schools are giving us loads of homework assignments to do. Then when is our break time? Isn’t summer supposed to be our break from school? So why are we doing so much work outside of school? Some students have to do assignments for their AP classes, read 4-5 books, write an essay after reading and taking notes on a book, definitely S.A.T. preps, college visits, college office assignments like practice filling out the common application and writing personal essays for colleges. My brain wants to explode after reading all the assignments I listed above! If you are not good at time-management, you probably don’t want to do any extra activities because you will be pressuring yourself. I wouldn’t say I am an organized person but I plan out my whole summer. My whole summer calendar is packed with “things to do” lists! Recently, I joined the COAP (Career Opportunities in Accounting Profession) program and it took six days from my life but it was a great experience. Then I joined College Now (Journalism) and it took approximately month and a half days away from my life. Then I got accepted in SYEP which is very lucky for me and it took up month and a half days away from my life, too. Now, how many days do I have to do all my summer homework assignments? I know the school is giving us work to prepare us for college but I feel tired. I still haven’t done any homework at all which makes me feel like I’m on the edge of the cliff. Is two weeks enough for me to do all the things I listed before?

My addiction is poetry. It was my favorite way to relieve the stress and pain in my life. It even helped me find the right words to explain my happiness and appreciation for the good things in life that did happen. One of the good things I discovered about myself is that I loved to write as a kid. It was almost as if I was forced to select that path because growing up in a bad neighborhood my mom was almost paranoid to let me go outside and play. So I had to find a productive way to spend my time because I was never really satisfied with just watching T.V all day. It all changed for the best.

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Recently within the sports world there have been many new accomplishments and much gossip also. The National Basketball Association has received a lot of attention due to the free agency. Within this free agency great basketball players such as Lebron James and Derek Fisher had to make a decision on what team they would play for in the 2010 – 2011 NBA season. Lebron James also known as King James is seen as one of the best players in the NBA in which he is, but he is also viewed as a leader in which he is not after signing with Dwayne Wade and the Miami heat. Since he was drafted in 2003 Lebron James managed to take his team to the eastern conference finals and a few years the NBA championship, which is why he was considered a leader. Now he has left his home team of Cleveland and should be referred to as prince James due to the face he is going to Miami to live in another man castle. He signed with the heat for many reasons, he doesn’t want to work as hard as he did in Cleveland , but he wants a championship and he thinks playing with dwade will bring him that not realizing Miami doesn’t have a team just three signed free agents ,also Dwayne wade won his championship already and he worked very hard for it being down two games to nothing and coming back to win four straight games with over 30 points each game . Personally his decision to sign with the heat was not intelligent, if he wanted to win a ring any time soon in his career Lebron James should have selected the Chicago Bulls due to the fact for someone who plays the small forward position in chi town every other position is filled with talent in which would benefit him. Elite point guard Derek Rose, all around power forward Jaokim Noah and one of the top centers in the lead Carlos boozer. This run and gun offensive set would have fitted perfect for Lebron James,he would have still had a lot of control over the ball and he would still produce point, rebounds and assists but signing with Miami with 2 other superstar he stats will drop. As the top free agent prince James knew what he was going into and he also knew with chi town he would still have to work hard in getting the ring, which proves he a is a weak player and a follower for going with Chris Bosh and Dwade. He could have also remained in Cleveland and been fine due to the fact they just received an NBA champion coach Byron Scott , which prince James did not have last season , between coaches ,players and team selection Lebron James has proven he does not want to work hard to win the NBA championship. In conclusion now that Phil Jackson and Derek Fisher have re-signed to the Lakers , LA will be 3-peat champions, owwwwww!!!!!!!!

There is oil gushing into the Gulf every day. I thought you’d like a reminder because this pressing issue is not the number one story for news organizations anymore. There is less and less coverage every day of this immense problem and it doesn’t make sense. While I understand news organizations want to remain current and cover stories they know will interest the consumers, a blind eye can not be turned to this issue. Not only are we losing millions of dollars daily, this spill is destroying the lives of local businessmen and killing sea life in the gulf. It kills me to look at the pictures and see footage of these animals covered in oil, many of them dead. These animals are helpless and do not know what is going on. They did not cause this oil spill. Carelessness and corruption on BP’s part led to this oilrig explosion, causing this huge spill.
If we say, as a country, we are committed to helping the environment and saving wildlife, we must act now. I believe that if this new cap stops the oil from gushing out, the first priority must be to create a safe habitat for these animals once again. The failure of BP to stop this oil spill in the last 87 days is a fact that is very hard to swallow. If these corporations put so much money into these rigs and were so involved in the construction of them, they should have been aware of all the safety issues and they should have planned for things to go wrong. The constant arguing inside BP needs to stop. The blame game can wait until after this spill is stopped. That must be priority number one and that needs to happen now. We must all join together and put a stop to this terrible disaster, before it’s too late.

Some bands need recognition and some are well known like forever the sickest kids
And family force 5 they write good music and are great guys they care about what their fans think about when it comes to where to tour or what style of clothes they know their fans send them fan mail and they take time to answer each letter or respond to the gifts the fans send in to them. They feel it is their purpose is to make great music and entertain the people who listen to them and to them their band mates are like a family these bands just need a bit recognition for all of this good work they put out there listen to family force 5’s song “keep the party alive” and forever the sickest kids “ what do you want from me” these bands want to be known and I think they deserve that much from music finders or searchers or maybe you are just bored well this is a great start for you just listen to these songs and you might like the bands and download or buy whole albums if you like . I would like to
Help these bands get noticed enough to have a following just to show people are behind them in a good way they will be eternally grateful in what the fans are doing
For them in many ways they might even write a song about it and it is very kind to help others and they might even help you in return or even take you on tour with them just for extra company and for support and inspiration for clothes and what songs to play but it is all about friendship in many cases.