Steven Cindric's Weblog

At the beginning of this movie I kind of feel that Stephen Glass is an accomplished writer that is quite modest of the things that he has done. The way that his co workers react to him also makes it seem that he is sort of the most respected writer out of the other writers. The other writers seem to like Glass and he jokes around with them a lot but he never seems too sincere with anything that he says. When he first brings up the Hacker article he makes it seem like a funny story and also a big story but then when his co workers praise him for it he says that he may not even do the story and he gets all modest. I wouldn’t hang out with Glass just because he never seems sincere and I don’t really like that in a person. The ethical dilemma that Glass faces is whether or not it is okay to fabricate an entire story and write it in a magazine. Glass made the choice to make up the stories and then when confronted about the fact that they were fake, he tried to lie to get out of it. I think that what Glass did was wrong but the worst part of it was that he lied to try to cover it up when he could have just told the truth and I would have been okay with it. Chuck also has some hard choices in font of him in the movie. At first he wants to protect his young writer because Glass made a mistake and Chuck didn’t want to ruin his career. On the other hand he wanted Glass to tell him the truth and Glass just kept lying to him. Glass uses a lot of emotional appeal in the way that he presents himself, he is authoritative so that people will respect him but at the same time he is modest and always seeking approval so he doesn’t come odd as pompous.

I have to write about what I am going to do for topic two but right now I really am not exactly sure. Out o the three possible topics that have been provided to pick out of I was more leaning towards doing a movie. The reason for this is because I really don’t like having to look for sources to support my topic. I mean, I don’t really mind finding one or two but four just takes too much of my time and it doesn’t make sense for me to do that. That is a big reason for me picking a movie but the biggest reason for me to do it is because I really like movies and I think that it will provide an interesting argument. Anyways that is why I picked to do a movie. Then I had to look for a movie to use for my argument. While we were scrolling through the choices of movies I saw one that caught my eye, Blade Runner. The reason that I first thought of this movie was my room mate just got the movie on DVD and I really wanted to see it. I haven’t seen it yet but I asked him and he said that it was a good movie and I should watch it. He also said that it had a pretty good ethical issue in it and that I would be able to write a good paper about the ethics in the movie. Because of his shining recommendation I decided to use that movie for my paper.

Right now the presidential race is heating up and in both parties there are pretty much two front runners that the primary’s will come down to. First for the democrats the two candidates that are still in it are Obama and Clinton. I don’t really like either of them but I really don’t want Clinton to be our next president so I guess that I am more in favor of Obama. On the other side of the spectrum we have the Republican part and the two front runners there are McCain and Huckabee. I don’t really like Huckabee that much because he seems very religious and I am not sure that that attitude is what this nation needs right now. I do really like McCain but I am afraid that he is too old, but I think that he can really change around this country and thats what I want to see. The only problem is that if Obama is chosen to be the democratic candidate and he runs against McCain then I think that Obama will win. Because of this you would think that I would like it if Clinton won the democratic ticket for the fact that I don’t think that she can beat McCain, but I really don’t want Hillary to win so I’m at a draw. What I did hear from some of my relatives was that there was talk of getting rid of the IRS. If they did this then there would be a ten percent sales tax on everything but I think that it would be worth it. I also heard that if we did this then the country would be out of debt in something crazy like four years. This sounds ridicules to me but anythings possible. The only problem that I would have with this is that all of the accountants in this country would be out of a job, however it would e for the better good.

My family goes on vacation every summer and then they try to go at least one other time a year. Because of the many times that we have been on vacation we have a lot of bad stories and adventures that have occurred. One of there is from a vacation up the east coast while we were heading towards Niagara falls. On this particular trip we had two of these bad stories that will always stick in our minds. The first of these happened one night when we were at the falls. We looked at the falls all day and went down into them but we didn’t have any any place to stay that night. There are many big hotels around there so we decided to call some of the hotels to see the prices. We called the Days Inn and they said that they had rooms for 298 a night. My dad said that we were looking for something a little cheaper and they offered us a room for 289. This was way too much so we decided to look for a place to camp, but the only places to camp around there in Canada, so we crossed the border and spent hours looking for a spot to put up our tent. We found one and in the morning realized we were the only tent there and it was like in a shipping yard. The second bad thing that happened was we lost our credit card and were out of cash and my mom being the cheap person that she is wouldn’t shell out to get money out of an atm that wasn’t a bank of America one, so we didn’t eat for two days.

When the topic of same sex marriage comes up in school or in my household, I am always in a conundrum with how to feel about it. On the one hand I have always been raised that everyone should be treated as an equal for this reason I see no real reason that I should have anything against the same sex marriages. When I stop and think about it, there is no reason at all that I should be against them, they are not hurting me and, I myself am not a homosexual so I have no reason to feel either way against them.
On the other hand I have been raised Catholic and the church preaches that homosexuality is wrong and that no one should be gay, as if they made a choice to be gay. This is where I am so split, when I go to church I am told that gay marriage is wrong and should not be aloud to happen, however, when I logic it out gay marriage doesn’t hurt or help me.
Having said this I think that gays should be aloud to have civil unions with all of the rights of a married couple, just not associated with the word ‘marriage’. I think that if two people love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together, then they should be aloud to do that with all of the comforts of a regular married couple. I don’t understand why it has become such a large political debate when there are so much more pressing issues in the world today. I wish that politicians would just make up their minds on the issue and bury it.

The topic of immigration has been a huge topic, one of the biggest, in politics over the last couple of years. I don’t really know what the problem immigration is, especially if it is legally done. If it is legal immigration there is really little down side to it. This country was built on the backs of immigrants and everyone that leaves here now is either an immigrant or a native American(who are also immigrants across from Russia). The only thing that I can think of someone being against is illegal immigration. Now I’m not per say against illegal immigrants in this country but I’m also not totally for it either. It is really not fair for someone to live in this country without paying taxes and still get the benefits of someone who does pay taxes. On the other hand the immigrants take up jobs that most Americans do not want to do and that is a good thing because if they didn’t do them then who would. They also get very low pay for the work that they do so I guess that it is okay for them not to pay taxes because if they did have to, then they would have to find a way to make more money. I guess that the only thing that I have are immigrants that can not speak English, I hate that. I think that when you enter this county you should have to take a test to prove that you can speak English. I shouldn’t feel like an immigrant in my own country when I go down to Miami and no one will speak English to me.

Right now there is a lot of talk about the super bowl and for good reason it is only a couple days away. While I am a huge fan of football and having said that I watch almost every college and pro games that are on television on the weekends, I am not really that excited for this game. The reason that I don’t really want to see the game are because I don’t really like either of the teams in the big game. On one side we have the Giants who I have never really liked but also never really hated. I just don’t like anyone on the Giants team, the only player that I did like, Tiki Barber, retired and now they are just a team of players that I couldn’t care less about. On the other hand we have the Patriots who have won something like three of the last five super bowls, I despise the Patriots. I didn’t really like the patriots when they started to get good about six years ago and now that they have been dominating for six years I really don’t like them. This year has been the worst of the Patriots dynasty for me though because they have a chance to be the second team to go undefeated for a whole season. Having said all of this I really think that the Patriots will win the game and everyone will be talking about them going undefeated. The thing that no one will talk about is how in the first game of the season they were caught cheating read handed and all they got is a million dollar fine. If I get caught cheating then I would be kicked out of college but the patriots get caught and they don’t even have to forfeit the game. Since I was young I was brought up if you cheat then you lose but I guess that is not the case if you are a professional team.

When you are first asked the question ‘should you give money to a homeless person on s street corner’ my natural response as a middle class compassionate human being is yes you should. There are a lot of people that say that you shouldn’t just give your money away to anyone who asks for it and these people have a lot of valid reasons to say this. There are a lot of people who beg that are really not homeless at all, they will just make more from begging than from working. Some of these people who are begging for food will just take the money that you give them and use it on drugs or alcohol (and the addiction to this may be the reason they are begging in the first place). Other people say that the money that you have is yours and you earned it so why give it away to someone who didn’t work at all for it. These are all good points and I agree with all of them to an extent but I still think that we should give our spare change to the homeless. First it is only a dollar most of the time, and if you really need the dollar don’t give it away, but if you are just going to use the money on something that you don’t need or just leave it in your wallet and forget about it isn’t it better to do something good with it. Yes I know that the person that you give the money to may be a drug addict or a drunk but a lot of the beggars are just people with a mental condition or a vet so isn’t it better to take that chance and waist one dollar to help out someone in need. Think if you were begging for food, wouldn’t you want someone to help you?

In the past few weeks there have been a lot of campaign ads from potential presidential candidates. Having seen these ads it is quite easy to see how the candidates of both parties use and abuse the persuasive tools ethos, pathos,and logos. In searching through the democrats websites there were many examples of campaign commercials in which the candidates try to get to viewer to not only respect their opinions but also to have the viewers sympathize with the candidates point of view. The two ads that I picked were from Clinton and Edwards. In both of the ads the candidates try to establish ethos but both in different ways. Edwards tries to make the listener listen to him by saying that he approves his commercial which I think is quite ineffective. Hillary on the other hand says that if she is elected then she will bring her 35 years of experience to the white house. Both of the commercials also use logos and ethos together in a very effective fashion. The way that they do this is by focusing on a certain group of people that they want to effect with the commercial and use this to their advantage. The groups of people that both of the potential candidates go for are not the same but could overlap in some cases. Edwards tries to appeal to the middle class people by saying that they have lost their voice and he will help them get it back, which is effective because many think that no one is listening to them. Hillary focuses on everyone but more tries to appeal to groups of people who have been hurt by the poor economy. This is also effective because many have lost a lot of money in the economy and want that to change.

Today in the Oracle on the front page there was an article that caught my eye almost instantly. The story was about how the price of tuition was going to go up by eight percent in the next semester. This was something that I immediately took interest in because I will be in USF for at least the next three years(god willing), and I sure don’t want to have to pay eight percent more every semester for the rest of my time here. The paper said that the amount more that each student will have to pay will only be about 135 dollars more a semester but after a couple of years that money adds up. I’m not necessarily mad about the face that the price of school is going up. I mean the state did cut USF’s funding down 90 million dollars and they had to get the money from somewhere(which is also why the library has been closing at 12 instead of 2 like it has in the past). The school had these cuts since the beginning of the school year this year and the library was the first thing to go, so now they are still trying to find a way to make up that deficit and this is how they choose to do it. I know that it is to be expected that there will be increases in the price of college just because of natural inflation but if these tuition increases continue steadily then I’m not sure if I will be able to afford college.