Execution as an Appropriate Deterrent to Crime
Execution is an appropriate punishment for people convicted of premeditated murder, rape, treason or child molestation.
By allowing these people to live in prisons for their whole lives, taxpayers' money is being wasted. More money is spent on providing for convicts than is spent on disadvantaged children in the United States. New prisons also have to be built, using taxpayers' money, to house convicts. Those prisoners who are there for life should be executed, creating more room for other criminals without having to build more prisons. Execution would also lessen the level of violent crime because felons would not want to die. By making and example of people who are executed for murder, child molestation or rape, other people considering committing these crimes might be deterred.
One needs to consider that it costs a lot to execute people. Also, a person executed might be innocent. Once someone is killed, there is no way to bring him back. There is also really no way to compensate the family for the mistake. By letting people live and not executing them, there is no risk that they execute an innocent person. There are other, more meaningful ways to punish people without killing them. By having a murderer make restitution to the surviving family members, he will have to consider what he did every day of his life. If the murderer is executed, it is over and the family will not be compensated. Also, working in jails and building new ones creates jobs for other people. Others also look at the moral issues. A constant truth everyone is taught is that two wrongs don't make it right. By executing people, some interpret it as saying that two wrongs do make it right. The executioner is also a murderer though he does it legally. The executioner must be a medical doctor, but by executing people., he is violating the Hippocratic Oath, that all doctors take, which says that he will preserve life, not destroy it.
People who argue that execution is immoral have to realize that the law is above morals. Overall, it would cost less to execute someone than it would to feed, clothe, house and entertain a person for twenty years. The money saved by not having to provide for people in jails could be used to create other jobs for people.
Many people are led to believe that the death penalty doesn’t occur very often and that very few people are actually killed, but in reality, it’s quite the opposite. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1,359 people have been executed as a result of being on death row since 1977 to 2013. Even though this form of punishment is extremely controversial, due to the fact that someone’s life is at stake, it somehow still stands to this very day as our ultimate form of punishment. Although capital punishment puts murderers to death, it should be abolished because killing someone who murdered another, does not and will not make the situation any better in addition to costing tax payers millions of dollars.
For many Americans, country isn’t just a type of music. It’s a lifestyle. From sippin’ sweet tea on the porch, drinking beer at a tailgate or driving a pick up down the backroads, country music has made its way into the hearts and minds of many Americans. It is one of the only truly home grown American art forms. Its relatability and wide appeal has made country music one of the most commercially successful and popular genres in the United States. Using the work of scholars Tichi, Pecknold, and Ellison, I will show how country music grew from its rural southern roots into an integral part of American culture.
Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It. New York: Vintage, 1989.
The story of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll has a mythical quality to it. It speaks of racial barriers bridged through the fusion of Afro-American musical styles with white popular music in 1950s America. Not only did white record producers and radio disc jockeys market Afro-American artists, but white artists began to cover their songs, as well as incorporate Afro-American style into their own song writing. The musical style was so powerful that the white audience was infected by it, despite the social stigma that listening to “race music” possessed. The common view of teenagers’ participation in the creation of rock ‘n’ roll as an act of rebellion runs parallel with the music’s legendary origins. Through rock ‘n’ roll, the teenagers of the United States created a generational gap that angered their parents’ generation. Teenagers rejected kitchy Tin Pan Alley, “Sing Along with Mitch,” and the sleepy crooning of Perry Como in favour of sexually charged race music. Historians have taken different approaches to the question of teen rebellion. While some consider their love of rock ‘n’ roll revolutionary, others argue that the music cemented teenagers within the conformity and materialism of the 1950s; what cars were to adults, rock ‘n’ roll was to teens.[1]
This Singularity would raise all people from poverty, destroy any possibility of war, and bring a new era of harmony to the world. It may also be our downfall if AI is
It is the firm belief and position here that committing such a crime as murder is punishable by death. Americans should take a position for anyone on death row, to be executed sooner rather than later.
It's dark and cold, the fortress-like building has cinderblock walls, and death lurks around the perimeter. A man will die tonight. Under the blue sky, small black birds gather outside the fence that surrounds the building to flaunt their freedom. There is a gothic feel to the scene, as though you have stepped into a horror movie.
To summarize, Owen uses numerous literary techniques to illustrate his firsthand experience of World War One, and communicates his opinions with a distinguished use of metaphors, similes, personifications, themes, imagery and irony. Owen recognized that the high casualties and unnecessary deaths in World War One were all in fact a metaphor for all death in modern warfare; the well known ‘glory’ of dying for one’s country was simply a lie. Thanks to this, he was successful in making people realize that “The old lie: Dulce Et Decorum Est, Pro Patria Mori”, ‘It is sweet and right to die for one’s country’ is a terrible misunderstanding, and the poem it depicts an irony of death on the modern battlefield. No matter how noble the reasons may be, nothing but misery, heartbreak and agony can come from war.
Owen as a young soldier held the same romantic view on war as majority of the other naive soldiers who thought that war would be an exciting adventure. The documentary extract illustrates how markedly Owen’s perspective of the war changed, as noted in a letter to his mother while he was still in the front lines: “But extra for me, there is the universal perversion of ugliness, the distortion of the dead ... that is what saps the soldierly spirit.” In ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, Owen’s change of heart is evident through the irony of the poem title and the ending line “The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est, Pro patria mori.”, an allusion to the Roman axiom made famous by Horace, which translates to “The old Lie; It is sweet and right to die for your country.”. The line depicts Owen’s realisation that the horrific nature of war through human conflict is not sweet and right at all, rather, it is appalling and “bitter as the cud” as death is always present on the battlefield. Additionally, Owen indirectly responds to Jessie Pope’s poetry, a pro-war poetess, through the reference “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest… The old lie…”, further highlighting his changed perspective towards the war which has been influenced
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” is a very powerful poem that is drawn from the author Wilfred Owen’s own experiences. This poem has great imagery and uses many metaphors which make the reader put themselves in Owen’s eyes. The pain is felt in his voice as he talks about his friend that he sees dying, yet he can do nothing about. His poem has an ironic point about how if people would put themselves in his spot at that moment they would not be telling their children that war was good. While in “Dead Troops Talk”, which is a photograph done by Jeff Wall, there seems to be a different feeling about it. It is not as heavy as the poem. For in the photograph the soldiers, who appear to have been killed in action, have been re-animated to be talking and goofing around. The poem and the work of art are similar in the fact that they are both about war. However, the feeling that one gets from each of them is different. The death in the poem is a very tragic and demoralizing but in the photograph the soldiers who have been killed seem to be happy now that they no longer serving in someone else’s war.
These estimates reinforce the claim that the singularity should be common knowledge because not only is this prediction in the not so distant future, but it is also surrounded by Proctor's natural ignorance in the sense that a large portion of the population is completely unaware that this event is even on the horizon. In addition to the ignorance of the event itself, the singularity could cause implications that have been previously irrelevant, such as whether human-like artificial intelligence (AI) should be given human rights, and computers becoming self-improving which would cause the gap between computer intelligence and human intelligence to grow further and further. The argument could be made that the implications that arise due to computers overtaking mankind as the smartest thing on earth should be dealt with when they present themselves, adopting the philosophy of "we'll cross that bridge when we get there", but if we wait until then to start problem solving, it could be too little too late. Assuming the singularity increases computer development through self-improving computers, the general apathy and ignorance surrounding the event could ultimately lead to the downfall of mankind in the worst-case
The death penalty is not a fast procedure nor cheap. “Despite extraordinary efforts by the courts and enormous expense to taxpayers, the modern death penalty remains slow, costly and uncertain” (Von Drehle). Not only is the money spent on lethal injections, but also on lawyers. Every trial that involves capital punishment, includes a lawyer, judge, more potential jurors, more witnesses, and more appeals. A lot of money is spent on these things. Some people think that it is more expensive to keep a criminal alive, and that’s actually not true. “In fact, in Furman, Justice Marshall recognized that ‘when all is said and done, there can be no doubt that it costs more to execute a man than to keep him in prison for life”’ (McLaughlin). Even though the death penalty has existed for a long time now, crimes keep
“The Singularity is a future period, [in] which technological change will be so rapid and its impact so profound that every aspect of human life will be irreversibly transformed.” –Ray Kurzweil. The concept of singularity was borrowed from physics, where it is used to describe the fact that all known laws of physics break down at a black hole (a space-time singularity), and no information can escape its event horizon. The technological singularity represents an intelligence event horizon where various future technologies such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and robotics will synergize to create ultra-intelligent “post-human” beings and AI that far surpass the intelligence of normal humans. At this point a positive feedback loop will occur between post-humans and AI; designing successively and increasingly intelligent minds/AI, which will result in change becoming so rapid that it becomes impossible to predict anything beyond this point, from our current vantage point.
These philosophers maintain the idea that if the development of artificial intelligence is not managed meticulously by humans then artificial intelligence systems could essentially develop a mind of their own. “The Doomsday Invention” focuses on philosopher Nick Bostrom. Bostrom’s ideas on artificial intelligence stem from an interesting place. In his 20s, Bostrom joined a quasi-utopian movement that believes accelerating advances in technology will result in drastic, possibly apocalyptic, changes. Such groups often use the ecological relationship between people and gorillas as a comparison to what they believe will happen with artificial intelligence. Both humans and gorillas are primates, but one species dominates the planet while the other is at the edge of extinction. Bostrom hopes to use probability theory to make ideas about the future of artificial intelligence that would normally seem impossible a little more believable. He wants people to refrain from focusing solely on the “near-term” benefits of artificial intelligence. Critics of artificial intelligence fear the possibility of an “intelligence explosion”. This hypothetical situation is a disastrous event where artificial intelligence gains the ability to improve itself, thus eventually exceeding the intellectual potential of the
If a criminal is sentenced to life in jail, then the cost of their imprisonment would be many times this. In the USA, the average cost per prisoner annually in jail is $29,000. The cost of the drugs used for the lethal injection is believed to be $86.08. This is far less than the cost of keeping a prisoner in jail, and would save the government money that could be used to try and make the community a better and safer place. Secondly, many believe that capital punishment is right because of the justice given to the victim’s family.