Questions

• Is there a difference between hate crimes and non-hate crimes?
• Is hate a crime?
• Why do people hate other people?

Response

            Is there a difference between hate crimes and non-hate crimes? In “What’s So Bad About Hate?” by Andrew Sullivan, he talks about this very topic bringing up an interesting point about hate crimes and how it is not a defined legal term, and is to broad of a term. I was thinking that there is no real difference because lets say for example some kills a cat well you could very well argue that that crime committed was a hate crime because they way the killing was done was to brutal not to have hatred as one their motives. Hate crimes can literally be any crime, do to the fact that you can literally hate anything for any reason so that means committing insurance fraud or selling pot could be considered a hate crime. This is because you could hate the name of the insurance company or the reason you sell pot is because you hate the government laws against cannabis. The point I’m making is there is a limitless amount of possibilities due to hate crimes. So instead of hate crimes they should rename it to crimes and if there is evidence that someone is attacking a black person because of their skin color then charge them for gang affiliation like in the case of James Byrd Jr. You can’t charge someone for hate because you truly can not know if they truly hate someone and there is no evidence that can support your claim unless you can somehow read minds. So to answer the question is there a difference between hate crimes and non-hate crimes I say no. They are both crimes one is just committed on a minority so all of a sudden it turns into a hate crime. Hate crimes are unjust and should be rid of in our judicial system.        

Questions

• Is Lady Gaga’s weird image manufactured or is it a self-made image?
• Can Lady Gaga be the new sex symbol in pop music?
• Could Gaga change her image as her career progresses like The Beatles?

Response

            In Camille Pagila’s article, “Lady Gaga and the Death of Sex”, she claims that Lady Gaga is destroying the sex revolution that was started about one hundred years ago, and that Gaga’s image might be all manufactured. I think that Gaga’s image is all faked based on the facts the Camille Pagila gave us about her childhood. Gaga said that she was an outcast in school and was underprivileged, but really she went to the same private school that Paris and Nicky Hilton attended (they are defiantly the opposite of underprivileged). She was also very gifted in music being a very good piano player another reason she should not be an outcast in school. Lady Gaga reminds me a lot of a rapper named Rick “The Boss” Ross, whose career has been manufactured completely. In his songs he talks about himself being this bad ass gangster who dealt a lot of cocaine and called all the shots. Then it comes out that he stole all of his stories from prisoners he used to talk to in prison while he was a correctional officer. I feel that Lady Gaga has maybe not stole her image from a specific person, but rather her image was made up by either her producers or herself to appeal to a much wider audience. I think she realized that Americans love an underdog story and that is exactly what her story has is all about. I think she might be a little weird but I don’t think she is as over the top weird as she dresses and her whole attitude behind her weirdness. Especially her comments about sex saying that she does not do it and stuff like that, but yet in her songs she talks about some pretty vulgar stuff that you would expect from Lil’ Wayne not Lady Gaga. 

Google

1. Questions

·       Does the internet want to make the person read more or less?

·       How is a person’s concentration affected from the internet?

·       How have writing styles of author’s change due to the internet?

2. Response

            In the article “Is Google making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, he suggests that Google has made us not concentrate as much as we used to do and we want things more direct and shorter; and because of this author’s style of writing has changed a lot. Authors, before the internet, used a lot of big words and there style of writing was very descriptive and usually had some social message behind the story. For example, Frankenstein had a lot of social commentary about people trying to play God and that maybe we should not judge someone on the way they look and actually get to know the person. Pre-internet writers also were much wordier when writing using very difficult words to understand. Now fast forward to the internet era authors who are not as difficult reads like their predecessors. To keep the example in the same genre I will compare Frankenstein to the Twilight series which are both about monsters. Twilight from what I have red of it has no social commentary and is mainly just about a girl that fits in with her peers and falls in love with a good looking guy who just happens to be a vampire. The monster in Frankenstein is the exact opposite of Bella. This shows that writing seems to be watered down and is know more about what is trending in society, especially on social media and the internet. Unlike Mary Shelley’s book which has a lot of substance about her time with people not accepting others because they look different to the normal looking. Authors’ styles have changed for the better. Even though there might not be substance behind the stories today at least they are much more interesting to read and I have defiantly seen more teenagers reading books because either they want to fit in with everyone else because it is the cool and trending or it just catches their attention a lot more than some pre-internet book does.