Hall of Fame Questions

As the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame approaches there are several questions to who should be voted in and the justifications for certain players as they are now eligible to be inducted. Players such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire are eligible to be inducted into to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but they definitely do not deserve to be voted in. All of these players were some of the best players to ever play in the game, but much of their success were due to the cheating involved in their success. These players were the start of the steroid era where a huge number of the players in the league at the time were using this drug to drastically increase their overall strength and give them an unfair advantage over the other players. These players were already having success in their careers, but in order to have an edge over the competition they decided to use steroids to have unbelievable statistics to help them in being recognized around the world and to receive long term contracts to be successful for life. Barry Bonds seems to have the best argument for being inducted into the Hall of Fame, not because he is the all-time home run leader, but because the success he had in his career before he started taking steroids. Early in his career when he played for the Pittsburgh Pirates he was known for his ability to have incredible speed and power and his abilities were vivid through his statistics. The part of his ability to making it in the Hall of Fame is the fact that it is unclear to when he starting taking the steroids and when they made an impact on his game. Even if all these players had great careers before being involved with steroids, it is not enough to overpower the unethical moves they made to cheat their way against the competition and they should never have a chance to make it to this honorary place. The questions for these players that took steroids is similar to Pete Rose's situation as he was one of the best players of all time, but was not voted into the Hall of Fame yet because of his involvement with gambling and betting on the games he was involved in. I strongly believe that Rose should be voted into the Hall of Fame because he never did anything to have an unfair advantage over the rest of the players in the league and never cheated the game as a whole just like these players mentioned above. Rose, the all-time hits leader deserves to receive this honor because he played the game the right way and clearly has the stats to prove he belongs to be with the rest of baseball's greats.

Add another tally to NCAA investigations

The University of California Los Angeles have recruited the number two player in the country Shabazz Muhammad over the past spring to come play for their basketball program. This basketball phenomenon was suspended for the first three games of the season due to a ineligibility when the NCAA student-athlete guidelines were violated. As several players in the past have been found to have accepted different benefits to come play for different programs, the same situation occurred here with Muhammad who was forced to pay back over $1,600 in imperishable benefits in order for him to become eligible for the season. The competition by all universities causes them to go out of the way and offer illegal benefits to the players to convince them into playing for their program. The college system is so corrupt as these type of investigations will continue as more players and coaches are found guilty of accepted certain benefits. For example, players such as Reggie Bush from USC and Terrel Pryor from Ohio State, received free merchandise such as houses, cars, and tattoo which swayed them into playing for those school programs. Now these schools are facing the consequences of not having the opportunity to play in bowl games because of the decisions made by the university and the players in a scewed way of recruiting. I think these universities have to stop crossing the lines in order to recruit these players because it will just create a bad reputation for the program and will eventually sway players in other directions. Though I think this should stop, these methods by the universities will always exist because the competition to get the best players to have the best team in the country will continue and some athletic departments will do anything in their willpower to have certain players attend their school. Luckily for Muhammad the benefits he received were not to significant and he became eligible to play in his first college game last night after serving a three game suspension and he dropped 15 points in his debut for UCLA.

5-hours of energy gone to waste

Over studies found by the federal government and the New York Attorney's office, through their investigation of 5-hour energy have found 13 linked deaths and 33 hospitalizations over the past for years from people using this product. In this quick and easy energy shot that is advertised worldwide by the company, they claim that it contains enough caffeine compared to 2 cups of coffee in each product. It was found by the investigations that these claims of the company are not valid as it was found that when customers consume a couple of these energy cans it is equal to up to 40 cups of coffee which is a completely dangerous amount for humans to consume. There are several health concerns with this product and the critics are worried about the underlying heart problems involved with it. I have managed to stay away from these energy products such as 5-hour energy, and other drinks such as Monster because of the experience of my brother. About 3 years ago me and my brother went to go to a basketball clinic and since he was very tired he decided to drink a can of 5-hour energy before our workout. As we started to do some ball handling drills he did a spin move and his nose started to bleed uncontrollably. He went to the bathroom to clean it up, but the blood kept pouring out and my dad had to take him to the hospital. As we went to the hospital we were optimistic to the reason for it, but the doctors said that it was due to the energy product that he took prior to basketball because I guess you are not suppose to do any activity immediately after taking the energy boost. Ever since this occurred, I have been swayed away from using the energy boosts because I think that they contain many health concerns within them and they are not worth the moment of caffeine that they contain. I believe that these companies need to make changes to their products immediately because their reputations will only get worse when more reports of injuries and deaths are linked to these products.  

iPhone No Longer on Top

As Apple has succeeded over the years with their monopoly-like business they have never experienced a stiff competition from any of its competitors to decrease the sales of their popular iPhone. As Apple saw some huge decreases in their stock during the middle part of last week it was partly linked to their iPhone Sales. The new Samsung Galaxy S3 has emerged as the number 1 phone according to their quarter 3 sales out-dueling both the iPhone 4S and the updated iPhone 5. After reading an article upon hearing this information I was completely shocked because when looking around in my community almost everyone has their hands full with an iPhone. This generation seems to be taken over with the new technology and with all the features in this Apple product, it has become a worldwide product that is becoming a part of citizens everyday lives as they can use many applications such as being updated on social media, and linked to music, games, and videos through the phone. One of the reasons that I believe the sales for this Samsung Galaxy to eclipse Apple's product for the quarter is because they have NBA superstar Lebron James endorsing the item and I believe this is linking many people to buying the product. If I ever see anybody with a Samsung phone or a different smartphone that looks like this product I and other people around me ask "is that the Lebron phone". This advertising is clearly linking to the public eye as people are attracted to the marketing strategies by Samsung and the commercials have stuck to many people. This is obviously not the only reason for the sales to be so high for this phone, but if it weren't for this endorsement of this superstar celebrity I believe the iPhone would definitely stay on top with the most sales for smart-phones.

The Death Penalty

The preliminary aspect of a capital case seemed to be designed to protect the rights of the accused because if the evidence is insufficient that could be the defendants first outlet to avoiding the death penalty as it can possibly avoid having to withstand the grand jury review. I believe the process in which is taken to determine the death penalty upon a person is sufficient in finding the guilty victims as they take several perspectives so find evidence in determining the outcome of the trial, however this system cannot guarantee anything as there are flaws in it where non-guilty vitcims are sentenced of certain crimes as some evidence may be slightly scewed as there may have not been enough scientific research done on the crime at hand to prove that all the evidence presented in the trial to be 100% true.

The new process to killing the victims by using lethal injections is the most humane way of executing the criminals as they are not putting these criminals in a long torturous death forcing them to suffer for the last part of their lives, as they inject them with the anesthetics to make a quick death that is the most humane compared to the other ones. I believe the "hanging" method is considered "cruel and unusual" because they are making these victims suffer pain for a long period of time lasting up to 45 minutes and though they should suffer for the crimes they committed, the death should be made quick and easy instead of torturing them in these cruel methods.

When looking at the data of the death penalty through the graph of the different states it is obvious that the men overpower the women in terms of death penalties. The black community has the highest number of criminals on death row followed by white, Latino, Asian and Native American. One conclusion that could be drawn from the high number of African-American criminals being sentenced to death is due to the environment that they grow up in. Many of them grow up through poor backgrounds that force them to being involved in drug dealing processes to try and make money for themselves and their families and these environments lead to involvement in gangs which lead to violence through shootings and can be a reasoning for the large number of sentences to this race. California and Florida have the most death penalty sentences, but that is also due to the size of their states. One trend that I see is that a majority of the population belongs to the southern states such as Texas, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, California, etc. which shows that these criminal acts occur more often on the southern region of the country and more murders occur in these states. As well as these states having the larger number of people on death row, many of the northern states do not have the death penalty showing a discrepancy in the values of different topics between the different regions of the United States. One of the issues that may have lead to the southern states could be the slavery involved in its history as many minorities were treated unfairly. As the African-American population has the largest number of citizens on death row, many coming from the south, could be due to the history of slavery being put in bad environments and situations and these could have led to these actions being taken as their values could be different than the rest of the society.

I believe that the policies of the Illinois Capital Murder Statue were fair as they did a good job of determining the death sentences based on the situations behind the killings and the litigating factors within the certain cases. One of the aggravating factors that I disagree with was when a person committed a murder for self-defense due to a hijacking because if they are trying to save their own life and they just act upon self-defense they should not be sentenced to death for trying to protect themselves.

One of the reasons why the Illinois death penalty is no longer in effect is because there were so many people found Innocent (20) and so many that were granted the Clemency to a new trial (187) so it seemed as the death penalty was inneffective as many were wrongly convicted.

After looking at these charts and reading all the different information it seems as if the white community has committed more murders, but blacks have more people on death row as a way higher percent of the blacks that committed their crimes were sentenced to death. This was a main factor that I did not realize in my first response, as I didn't realize how whites seemed to get out of death row more often than the blacks did. Over the years the death sentencing has dropped drastically over the years, which is most likely due to the new intellectual disabillities laws that were created in 2002 not allowing the court to put anybody on death row diagnosed with mental retardation. In the economics outlook it seems as if the death penalty cases are very costly as they are found to be way more expensive than non-capital cases due to all the trials, appeals, and studies involved to determine the outcome of the cases. I think the Death Penalty Information center is against the death penalty because they show all the redicoulous costs involved with it and all the innocent cases involved. They seem to try and convince the reader to be against the death penalty because of all the charts and information that they are giving to the reader. I would like to see information on the other side.

Yes I believe he should receive the death penalty if he is caught because though he is protecting many people by killing criminals and finishing these investigations, he also has killed innocent victims in his journey which is completely unacceptable and as he is a serial killer who has killed many people he should get the sentence even though he is trying to help out others in these tasks, he has murdered an innocent person where any other victim would as well get the death sentence.