Flash Crash

            In 2010 an event known as the "flash crash" occurred where it is believed one man lost billions of dollars in the stock market, causing the Dow Jones industrial to lose over 600 points in 5 minutes, which is a lot. This puts the ideas in fellow traders heads that this exact thing could happen again causing them to lose a lot of their money. Trader Navinder Sing Sarao is the believed cause of this market drop and was recently arrested for doing so. But I don't understand why, all he did was play the system in a smart way to gain himself money. The stock market is a gamble to begin with anyways, so he found a way to crack the system. None the less he was arrested and interrogated a few times before he was arrested, yet there is no solid evidence that he is the sole cause of this crash, although a lot of things point to him. The biggest concern with this is that it can happen again, causing billions lost, not only for traders but also for our country.

George Zhao

            Cheating is morally wrong, we can all agree on that, theres no point in diving into why cheating is wrong. But if its wrong why do people still do it? Well thats obvious, they do it because its the easy route and they don't have to study or try. Although teachers are cracking down on the cheaters, there are still going to be those that get away with it which isn't fair to the people who do work hard for their grades, but thats life. One of the things that helps students cheat in this generation, whether it be high schoolers, college students, or even elementary students is technology. Back when i was little you weren't even aloud to have your phone on your person during class, but now students take notes on them. Which can be extremely helpful, but it can also give them that temptation to go on social media during class instead of doing their work. It also gives them the ability to cheat during tests or quizzes, and you're probably thinking, why don't teachers just make them put their phones away during tests? Well they do, but that doesn't mean kids are actually going to follow the rules, although the should. The solution to this problem is simple, go back the pens and pencils, although technology is super helpful when used right, it seems to be doing more damage than helping students educations, and even if technology was abolished in the classroom, kids would still cheat regardless, because although you can teach a person right and wrong, you can't control their morality, thats something they have to do for themselves.

Discrimination or Caution?

              With all the recent issues with ISIS in the Middle East the issue is “caution or discrimination”, and as everybody knows there are always two sides to every story. So let’s start with discrimination, obviously not every Muslim is part of ISIS or Al Qaida, not all Muslims are going to blow up planes and bomb buildings. So it is wrong of us to look at a Muslim and discriminate against him or her. With all the Muslims in the world, many of them are very peaceful people, and then there are those who are jihadists and terrorists. But which one of them is the true Muslim? Because only one of those groups is interpreting the Koran correctly, and experts and professors lean more towards the jihadists being more accurate in the interpretation of the Koran. However that does not mean that they are 100% correct, only more accurate in their readings and studies than the peaceful Muslim. So to be real for a second, if you see a Muslim at an airport getting ready to board the flight with you, what are you going to think? I quite frankly would be a little nervous, of course not to the point where I want to get off the airplane or anything extreme like that. But I would probably have some sketchy feelings depending on the circumstances, and I don’t consider that discrimination, I call it being cautious. You have to remember 9/11, I’m sure there were passengers on those planes who had sketchy feelings too, even though Islam wasn’t as big of an issue with America then as it is now. But I wouldn’t consider that wrong, it would be like if a homeless person beat you up and robbed you one day, you’re probably going to be cautious around homeless people, even though they aren’t all bad people. There is a fine line between discrimination and caution.

We are at a time in the world where half of the marriages in the United States fail and end in divorce. This is not shocking to me at all, we live in a time where the media approves and encourages lust, and affairs, and makes it look normal to us. The saying “If you want it, go get it”, encourages the act of adultery, and the media gives people, both men and women, the idea of cheating on their spouse. Statistics show that marriages that end in divorce leave the separated couples in debt, and not financially stable, because of court, the lawyers and child support. So how can marriages be built back and restored, and kept that way? Unfortunately I don’t think they can, I think our society is too far gone to turn things around, and the only way to restore a marriage is with God’s help, and to want too, and I don’t think our selfish society likes doing the right thing these days.

Mary Jane

                          Since the legalization of marijuana in Colorado in 2012, there has not been much of a difference in revenue for the government. Granted the sales tax added on marijuana has definitely brought forth some cash but not as much as expected. The controversy over legalizing marijuana was either one, that it would bring millions of dollars to the government in taxes, or it would spark a social nightmare and drug abuse would take place, neither of which has happened. All the legalization of marijuana does is allow pot-smokers to just feel safer, and feel better about themselves that they aren’t breaking the law. No matter what state you go to, no matter where in the world you go to! There will always be drugs and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, it’s just the nature of man to do what makes him feel good. At first I thought yeah the legalization has to make a huge profit in taxes, but not everybody goes to a local herb store in Colorado to buy weed, when they could either grow it themselves, or buy it from a dealer much cheaper. So the question I ask myself is, should marijuana be legalized in other states as well? Or remain illegal. And personally I think it just depends on the states preference, because the use of marijuana is federally illegal, but a state can choose to make it legal obviously. But if it’s not bringing in as much revenue as we suspected why is it still legal? Why was an immoral thing such as this even legalized in the first place? Purely for money. We’ve become so corrupted as a society, that it doesn’t matter if what we are doing is immoral and wrong, but as long as we make money from it and as long as we are satisfied.

Morals or Money

     
        Recently the venture capital firm, which is an investor in Facebook and a co-founder in PayPal, invested millions of dollars

 in a marijuana company. Most companies are leaning toward more beneficial investments for the world than “sinful companies.” But is smoking weed sinful? Is it morally wrong? First of all if it’s against the law it’s obviously a sin to partake in, but what about Colorado where it’s legal? Then is it morally wrong? Does marijuana benefit our health, or does it corrupt our minds? These are all hard questions to answer. I think marijuana can medically be helpful, but there are always people who will corrupt it for something different to make them feel good, and that’s when it becomes morally wrong. It is also a personal conviction with most people, same with drinking or smoking cigarettes. Most people would say it is unethical to smoke weed, as well as invest in a company that sells it for recreational use. Part of me wants to disagree and say no its fine to invest in a company for something you disagree with, as long as you're making money. But that's not right, because if you're investing in a company you are supporting them, it would be the same thing if someone invested in a prostitution organization but didn't believe it was right. So it obviously is wrong to invest in a marijuana company if you do not fully support them. But it is their choice and their money, I just think there's many other things that could better benefit society than drugs.

Charlie Hebdo, An Inspiration

                      Charlie Hebdo, if you haven’t heard, is a magazine that in a sense makes fun of everything using series of cartoons to illustrate their senses of humor. Recently the largely populated area of Muslim’s in France got a little upset about a cartoon done of their prophet Muhammad. A little upset is an understatement, two Muslim extremists came in and killed ten of Charlie Hebdo’s employees and two policemen as well. Most people would think to back off to avoid even more casualties, and that’s the exact opposite of what they did. They decided to make another cartoon with Muhammad holding a sign saying “Je Suis Charlie” meaning I am Charlie in French, pretty ballsy move. You would think that the Muslim extremists would bomb the whole building where they work, and they very well could, but they haven’t yet, and this cartoon has only helped them. It has given them fame and revenue, normally Charlie Hebdo prints about 60,000 copies of their magazine, but after the killings they printed and sold over 5 million copies. Talk about opportunity cost, I mean yeah they lost 10 lives but they sold over 5 million copies! But in all seriousness the loss of those employees is a tragedy, it’s inspiring that these people, even after those deaths, continued to fight for their cause knowing well that there could be dire consequences. These people had a choice, either to back down and get walked on and killed, or to stand up and make a statement, if only everybody had an attitude like the people of Charlie Hebdo.

Recently as everyone who drives knows, the gas prices have dropped crazily. We can thank the Middle East for increasing the Oil exports, which increases the amount of gas we have in America, at a lesser price. This increase in oil has in a sense hurt the NYSE and also the Japanese exchange Nikkei 225, for most investors of oil traded their stock, causing the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index to fall 37.62 points. So although the decrease of gas prices is helping everyday average Americans, it’s also hurting the economy in a sense. There are always two sides to every story though, I would describe what has happened is a good thing, but someone might disagree with me. A lot of workers are getting laid off in North Dakota and Texas because they are no longer needed, if we can just get oil from the Middle East why would companies want to pay extra money to workers? This is in a sense a Cost Benefit Analysis, we could be using money to pay workers in the U.S. to be harvesting this oil, or we can just get it from the Middle East which is obviously cheaper since prices are going down. The Marginal Cost has gone down since the Scarcity of oil has gone down as well. We no longer have to pay $4.00 a gallon because we are getting oil for cheaper, in larger quantities, which is our, as customers of gas, our Marginal Benefit.