Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Authorities Strike Again!!

Where to begin first on this matter? It is difficult to say whether the mother was justified in her actions or not, seeing as she had her daughters' best intersts at heart. Unfortunately, that is not enough to let her off the hook for waht she did, which is basically stealing when it comes down to it. If she really wanted to give her daughters an excellent education at Copley-Fairlawn Middle School, she could have done so legally. She could have simply sold her current home and move in to a new home within the Copley-Fairlawn district, or possibly moved in with her father who actually lives in that school district. Imagine if countless more parents tried to do this? That would certainly drain the schoool district's funds. I understand that parents want their kids to get a better education so they can pursue their dreams, but they shouldn't go so far as to commit a crime to do so. I understand that they maybe desparate, but there are rules that we need to follow, and unfortunately there is only right and wrong when it comes to the law; there is no gray area between.

 Don't get me wrong. I think that it's good that this mother wanted to get her two daughters into a very nice middle school, and I would support that 100%. But I do not condone breaking the law, even for a good cause (unless its a revolution, in which case I could care less about the law). There is no way to go around the law, and if there are perfectly legal ways to get something done, it's usually better to go that route than to risk getting in trouble with the authorities. 

Another thing I'm a bit skeptical about is her claim that the school district singled her out and prosecuted her to make an example of her. Yet she doesn't back this claim up with any hard evidence, so I cannot agree with it. It seems more like an assumption from her point of view, so it doesn't seem legitimate. As for the Good Morning America news piece, they didn't really include much information on the people who were also discovered commiting the same crime. They also failed to give us the point of view of the mother's father; no information was given on what he thought of this whole incident. At least the news piece presented the story from an almost neutral or unbiased perspective, which I think was pretty good of them to do. Other than the missing information of the father's point of view, I think they included plenty of info for me to formulate an opinion. The sentence they gave her, I think, was pretty reasonable, but maybe they should take away the three years of probation. After all, no one got hurt and no one was killed or raped, so why should they include the probation. One thing they should have mentioned, however, was whether the mother had a criminal history or not, which would have helped me come up with a better opinion. Other than that, although the mother was doing what was best for her daughters, she could have found legal ways to do so.  

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

First blog entry of the year...oh the horror

Well, from now on until the semester ends, I will be writing my journals on an internet blog. Well ain't that grand? I suppose writing up a word document is out of style now, and apparently it's better to write about stuff online instead for all the world to witness, instead of keeping that secret since some info is best left unknown, at least that is how I feel. As you can tell I am not thrilled about writing on an internet blog. I don't see the big deal about writing down my opinions for someone halfway across the planet to read about what I have to say about gay rights, poverty, religion, the eventual end of it all, or whatever the prompt maybe. Good thing this stupid blog has security settings, so that less people can see what I have to write  here, and after all, who wants to read what I have to say about anything anyways?

Moving right along, I have no choice but to do this assignment, so might as well grin and bear it. I t can't possibly get any worse, right? Anyway, my audience for these blogs could be anything from the entire population of internet users, to simply my writing and rhetoric class. Or it could simply be my teacher. Well I don't want the world of internet users out there to read what I have to say...they'll all argue and bitch about how my my opinions are idiotic, or criticize me for my "idiologically extreme" beliefs. I think it be better to simply have my audience consist of only my teacher, which means less stress for me and hopefully more focused writing (hopefully). I'm not sure what type of writing style I should go with, but I feel that I should stick to maybe first person point of view mixed in with open-prose form of writing.

Pictures? Personal interests? What is this, an online dating service? Of course I'm not putting anything of the sort on this blog. This is a class assignment, not some silly little online social network. If I wanted to do that, I'd make a page on some over-hyped, boring social networking sight. What was it called again? Oh well, who freakin cares. As I was saying, if people are going to be accessing this blog, I don't want them or anyone else learning more about me. My interests, email address, birhtday, etc, is none of your bleeding business, so don't bother asking about it. And with that, I hope that this whole "blogging" thing goes well, seeing as it's my first time AND to top things off I am a horrible, horrible writer. I make Dr. Seuss' work look like Shakespeare, and that is NOT an exaggeration, I'm being serious here. Well that's it for tonight, so farewell for now.