Ask Me Questions on Formspring

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This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I am officially done with my first academic year of university. I finished my last assignment of the semester yesterday.

I wasn’t able to get a ride home organized until next Monday, so I’ll still be around Madison for the next handful of days.

In other random news, I intend to answer some questions on Formspring sometime later today or early tomorrow, so if you have some questions, you should ask them.

http://formspring.me/Parkzer

As you can probably see, I don’t answer questions on Formspring very frequently. I think I’m averaging about once every six months right now, but when I do answer questions, I usually answer about a few hundred at once. It’s been over half a year since I last answered questions, so now’s your chance to get some questions in and not have to wait several months for me to answer it.

 

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Topic #108: Describe the worst driver you know. What do you do to avoid ever having to get in a car with them behind the wheel?

The worst driver I know is my mom. She has been driving for decades, but she still engages in dangerous behavior while driving and cannot operate the vehicle in a smooth manner.

I don’t (and can’t) avoid getting in the car with her because she is a family member with whom I spend a lot of time when I am at home. However, if it is an option, I prefer to drive myself when I am going somewhere with her.

 

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3

 

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Lindsay Lohan is a Criminal

by   •   Academics
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I completed my last final exam today, but I still have one more assignment that I have to finish. It’s due before 11:59 PM tonight, which is why I’ve been procrastinating on it, but my time is ticking down and I should finish it up soon.

The assignment involves finding a news story related to some aspect of law, analyzing it, explaining how it relates to law, and giving potential solutions to resolve the issue presented by the news story. Apparently Lindsay Lohan was sentenced earlier today, so I’m probably going to write about that.

UPDATE: I finished my final assignment of the semester and I decided to throw it up here, seeing as I haven’t been putting much content up on my website lately because of final exams. I didn’t really plan this paper out so it’s a little bit unfocused, and the conclusion that it proposes isn’t well-supported, but it fulfilled all the requirements of the prompt and it was for extra credit, so I didn’t spend extra time going back to revise it.

According to an article published by CNN on the evening of May 11, 2011, a judge sentenced actress Lindsay Lohan to 120 days in jail for stealing a necklace. This misdemeanor theft conviction is a part of a string of convictions that Lohan has received since her drunken driving arrest in 2007.

A fact presented in this article that caught my attention was that although the judge sentenced Lohan to 120 days in jail, she might only end up staying in jail for two weeks or possibly not at all. According to Los Angeles County Sheriff spokesman Steve Whitmore, due to budget constraints and jail overcrowding, they are required to run sentences through mandatory early release formulas that reduce the sentence down to about 20%. In Lohan’s case, because her conviction was for a non-violent crime, she may qualify to serve her sentence in home confinement.

I personally would have no problem with the early release formulas if they were applied on a case-by-case basis after reviewing each individual’s circumstances. However, being mandated to apply a reduction formula for everybody will inevitably cause problems.

Sentences and their lengths are determined based on the severity of the crime as the society sees it. If sentences are reduced overall, the magnitude of the crime gets buffered, and crimes that should be seen as severe do not hold proper intensity. This affects the convict directly because (s)he may not perceive his/her crime as a bad action to the actual degree that (s)he should. In order to counter this, some judges may start using their discretion to the fullest extent and give harsher sentences – for example, for a crime with a range of potential punishments, judges may predispositionally lean towards the harsher side.

In Lindsay Lohan’s specific case, it appears that whatever punishment she has received and is receiving is not sufficient to rehabilitate her from her criminal mind and turn her into a more moral and ethical person. Because of the huge reductions in sentences, it may be giving Lohan the impression that she can continue doing what she’s doing and not have to face huge consequences. In her public statement, she acts as if she is unfazed by the sentence: “I am glad to be able to put this past me and move on with my life and my career. … I support the judge’s decision and hold myself accountable for being in this situation.”

According to research done on incarceration compared to other forms of punishment, incarceration has the highest rate of recidivism. According to research done on zero-tolerance policies compared to rehabilitation-centralized policies, zero-tolerance policies tend to generally only increase the amount of crime. By placing people in jail in the first place, we are increasing the chances of them committing more crimes in the future and coming back in jail. This ends up becoming counterproductive because the immediate action we are taking to reduce overcrowding will ultimately end up putting more people in jails and prisons.

I think that instead of placing convicts in jail and prison for fractions of their sentences, we should either take an all-or-nothing approach. First-time offenders and non-violent offenders should not be incarcerated at all to avoid exposing them to the jail and prison setting, and instead, their full sentence should be served via other methods. Repeat offenders should be incarcerated for their full sentence rather than having it run through a reduction formula. This will not only maintain the level of intensity of each crime and honor the judge’s decision when a sentence is made, but it will also help control overcrowding. Instead of bringing new people into jail, those spots would be taken by people serving longer sentences.

 

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3

 

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Devil

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I have my last final exam tomorrow – an essay exam for philosophy. If you didn’t catch it from a few days ago, I’m cutting down on my blogging so I can focus on studying, which is why my blog posts have been so short lately.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #107: According to a Gallup Poll, nearly 70% of Americans believe in the Devil. Do you? Why or why not? Why do you think 70% of Americans believe as they do on this issue? Do you think this number is higher or lower than other countries in the world? Why? Do you think the devil is behind the choice of this topic?

I don’t believe in the devil because I think the debate of whether the devil exists or not will be extremely similar to the debate of if there are any gods, and the god debate has not convinced me strongly one way or another.

I think that a large number of Americans believe that the devil exists because there are a large number of Americans who believe that at least one god exists. They most likely find it difficult to justify the bad things in this world because they claim that their god(s) is/are all-good, so they credit the bad things that happen to the devil.

I think the 70% in America is about the same as other monotheistic religions, but higher than polytheistic religions. For example, in Greek history, there are many gods, some that are good and some that are bad. As a result, the ancient Greeks did not need to justify the bad things in life by stating that a devil exists; instead, they can credit that to the god of evil or the god of malice. However, in monotheistic religions, there is only one mighty being that controls everything, so it’s difficult to say that an all-good being causes or allows bad things to happen in the world.

And no, I don’t think the devil is behind this choice of topic, but I do believe that there is still a slight chance that some negative force is acting upon us that is gravitating us towards discussing where this negative force originates.

 

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3

 

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Exams and Nuclear Explosions

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This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I have a fifty-question multiple-choice final exam for my criminal justice course tomorrow.

 

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Topic #106: Is Nuclear energy a menace? or the future? Should the recent events in Japan define how we think about nuclear power forever? Why or why not? Are there any major sources of power without risks or downsides?

I think that the disaster in Japan that caused a nuclear power plant to malfunction is not enough justification to stop researching nuclear energy. Pretty much everything good has some sort of consequence or requires some sort of sacrifice; in order to advance our technology, we have to take associated risks.

 

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3

 

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The End of the World

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

If you haven’t noticed yet, or if this happens to be the first blog post of mine that you’re reading, I have two more final exams coming up in the near future that I have to study for. As a result, I’m going to cut back on blogging for the next handful of days to save time and focus on my academics.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #105: Forget 2012, when do you think the world will end?

I think that the world will end in several billion years when the sun runs out and the universe is covered in darkness, or when there is some massive natural disaster that wipes out massive portions of the planet. However, these random natural disasters could happen at any time, so I guess my main conclusion is that I don’t know when the world will end, but it will end within several billion years.

 

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3

 

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Psychology Experiment, Day 2

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My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

If you’ve read my blog posts from early April of this year, you know that I participated in a psychology research experiment where I had a salty net placed on top of my head to measure my brain wave activity. Today, I attended the second part of this experiment.

No, I did not have to wear an uncomfortable, wet net above my head this time. Instead this one involved how much I could control my emotions and how much I showed them. I filled out a handful of questionnaires about how much I express my emotions to others and how much I rely on others to relieve negative emotions. Then, I was shown a slideshow of photographs that either had a positive, neutral, or negative depiction and I was supposed to either enhance or suppress my emotions to the particular photograph.

For the second part of the experiment, I had a little heat block strapped to my wrist that would heat up to up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit and cause discomfort or pain. Following the instructions from a recording used for the research, I would either have to try and enhance the pain I felt, or try to suppress it.

If you remember from last time, I got $200 from participating in that study. I didn’t make another $200 today, but I made around $150, for a total of $350 spread out across two days. If I scored exceptionally or did particularly well on the tasks, I may qualify for bonuses, which will bring my total above $350.

I spent a total of about 11 hours in the lab – it was supposed to be 8 hours a day for 16 hours total, but I ended up finishing about 2 hours early on both days, and spent about half an hour each day eating lunch. Even if I didn’t get any bonuses, $350 for 11 hours calculates to about $31.82 per hour. That’s about $66,181.82 per year at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks.

I wish my full-time job could be participating in psychology studies.

 

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Topic #104: If you had to debate a version of yourself that was ten years younger, who would win? What about a game of chess? Or a 5k run? How are you better, or worse, at various traits than you were then?

If I had a debate with my nine-year-old self, I think that the victor would be determined by the nature of the topic. If we were debating about something basic, my nineteen-year-old self would probably win because I would be able to outthink and outsmart my nine-year-old self. However, if we were debating about something advanced that my nine-year-old self simply did not understand, my nineteen-year-old self would probably lose because it would see that the argument wasn’t going anywhere and disengage in the debate to conserve energy.

I think it’s pretty obvious that my self now would be able to defeat my nine-year-old self both in a game of chess or in a long-distance run because I’m a lot more intelligent and intuitive than I was ten years ago, as well as much stronger.

 

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3

 

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