The Last Legal Issue

This year in Contemporary Legal Issues, I have learned a plethora of things on so many different issues, including: divorce agreements, what an annulment is, many current events, among many other interesting pieces of knowledge. I enjoyed blogging about so many interesting events, especially the Michael Vick case. That case interested me very much, and I enjoyed researching the entirety of the story, and making my own inferences with the knowledge the class has provided me. Furthermore, the most interesting topic/unit that we have covered was consumer section. That was information that I think everyone could use everyday, because of the fact that we all buy many things and we should know how to protect ourselves and who is working to help protect us. I also enjoyed the debates. If this class is taught again (which I think it should be) I think there should be more time devoted to the debate and ideas for rebuttals. I also believe we should have researched more of the other side’s arguments because there were times were I was uninformed of what the other side had stated. Overall though, it is a good activity, and I believe debates should be done more often even in other classes. What I did not find totally engaging and interesting was the section on tort laws. I know this is important for everyone’s knowledge of the legal state in today’s America, but it is a bit monotonous… but not everything can be fun right? J I think that we also should have done more with the current legal world in America. I want to know what the big debates are in today’s society. We did a little of that, but I would have liked to go more in depth. As for movies I think that should be seen in this class next time, I think the movie that we watched about Prisontown, USA was quite interesting, and deserves to be shown again to all legal issues classes. I really believe that Shawshank Redemption should be shown to the class, firstly, because it shows how hard prison life is, and also because it is a really awesome movie, and this is a really good excuse to watch it. Moreover, I think that the class should watch one law show on TV. Any one. They all have something to do with the law in America. Lastly, in college I may pursue a career in law. Law is kind of interesting to me. I don’t know whether I would like to spend my life practicing law, but there may be some sort of job in law that I may find interesting and look into. Overall, this class has been great, probably the best class of my semester (don’t tell the other teachers). I have had so much fun, daily, in the class, because it had the perfect blend of people and teacher, somewhat the perfect storm of a class. It has been great. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the year, and the next legal issues class… but it won’t be as good as ours.

Facebook, the work of Bill Belichick?

Facebook has grown wildly in the past four years populating almost every high school and college laptop, and even those of graduates and now teachers. ;) Facebook has also grown from its early age, when the capabilities of the website was only messaging and “posting on walls”. Facebook now has hundreds of add-ons to its website that users may use to personalize their page. One could get a Hebrew calendar on their homepage, or ravaging zombies. These features are meant to be fun and more intimate, showing more of the users personality, but the newest feature on the site allows people to view recent activity that the user has been doing on the web. The new feature can show the last transactions places by the user, movie tickets being bought, among many other things. It seems Facebook has built a monopoly on the networking industry… If you want to be cool, and have a Facebook, you will allow these actions to take place. Luckily users of Facebook will not comply. A group has been formed on the site called “Facebook, stop invading my privacy”, and Facebook CPO Chris Kelly has received the message. Kelly states though that users can opt to disable the feature with no other ramifications. I believe that this is not an invasion of privacy, and in this regard I agree with CPO Kelly, although I really hate those other stupid things you can add such as the zombie feature because they are just so stupid. But keeping on task, an invasion of privacy does not seem to be occurring because the users have the ability to stop it whenever they want. So why would this feature even have been made? Truthfully, some people just like the attention. When Facebook attempted about a year ago, to create a new feature called “news feed” it also came to these same criticisms. This news feed showed new wall posts, new friendships, relationship, and breakups of friends all when you logged in. People claimed this was an invasion of privacy! And they shouted that they did not want their personal business being flaunted when everyone logged in. Facebook groups were made to petition Facebook to get rid of these atrocious things that no one wanted or needed. Those criticisms have since quieted down to being absent. I guess that people realized, hey, its actually pretty cool, and if I don’t want it, I can disable it. This is the route that this new feature will take in my opinion. Even if the cries are loud and strong right now, they will quiet in a month’s time. People are afraid of change, when it comes to leaving home, changing jobs, cars, houses, and any aspect about their lives. Turns out, Facebook is no different.