Nash Equilibrium

Nash Equilibrium: The Nash Equilibrium consists of two sides that can both make some kind of a profit. They both make a profit without changing the strategies of one another  

Game Theory – The theory of games is all around us in any game we play. All it is, is we change our decisions based on how others make their decisions. 

Prisoner Dilemma – similar to game theory but is more along the lines of someone being forced to make the choice rather than making a decision on their own 

The Serendip online interactive dilemma game was very interesting. This game was life like. If I kept cooperating with it, it would agree with me. It made our profits grow together. The only thing I didn’t like was from the time I disagreed they disagreed until the end. 

In History: The cold war, the U.S and Soviet Union did something much like the nash equilibrium 

In Government: both parties must agree on things that will benefit the nation 

In Economics: companies will lower and raise their prices to compete around the world 

Sociology: Sociology studies the structure of this entire thing 

Psychology: Studies how the mind reacts in situations like this

Everyday life: like I said before every day you make choices just like these and any choice can affect you in many ways  

In the game we played in class I enjoyed seeing what kind of classmates I truly have. To be completely honest I expected the other group to stab us in the back but in my group we wanted to at least try to put ourselves out there and achieve greatness even though we ended up losing by a lot the one thing I got out of it was that Wendy will not be invited to any of our class reunions.

Shutter Island review

We watched the movie shutter island so we could try and evaluate it with a sociological outlook. The movie takes place on an abandon island, which once had a war fort on it that was converted and added onto to create a private in sane asylum. On this Island were many insane men and women. They all were considered violent and a danger to society so they were sent here to be helped.

The movie began with a ferry ride across the ocean to shutter island where Teddy Daniels, a United States Marshall, and his partner Chuck were coming to investigate the case of an escaped patient that was loose on the island. They got to the island and the head doctor got them situated in their rooms. Then the two marshals began their investigation by talking to some of the patients and staff members at the insane asylum. They were looking for a girl named Rachael Solondo. She was an escaped patient at the hospital and the two marshals were brought in to help search for this woman.

Rachael’s condition was of the worst case but it shocked the workers on the island that she would do so much as to try and escape the premises. So that is why they brought in the big dogs for this specific incident. The reason Rachael was brought into the hospital was because she drowned all of her kids in a lake. The reason she is considered clinically insane is because she has no recollection of it and swears that she would have never done such a thing.

So Teddy and Chuck continued their search for Rachael and they found some leads that eventually ended up with a dead end and they didn’t make sense. Throughout the movie though you may notice one thing, Teddy has many different flashbacks and continues getting headaches that he gets “aspirin” for from one of the doctors on the island. Eventually Teddy finds this strange and he decides to stop taking the pills and he begins to have more flashbacks that all eventually lead him to the lighthouse on the island where we find out the real truth about exactly what is going on, on Shutter Island.

When Teddy got to the lighthouse his eyes were opened to something nobody watching the movie saw coming at the time. He found out that he wasn’t just a United States marshal; he was much more than that. Teddy Daniels was actually Andrew Laeddis, the guy he thought burnt down his apartment building years ago. The woman named Rachael Solondo was actually his wife Dolores Chanel. If you pay close attention to these names they are the same letters just switched around into different names, seems like this is something that an insane person would do, that’s because Teddy Daniels was a patient at the hospital and he was the one living in his own little make believe world where he was still a marshal and he was still doing work for the nation he lived in when really he is the one that killed his wife Dolores. This all happened after he came to their lake cabin after a week of work where he found her outside next to the water on a swing and the three children face down in the water dead. He then remembered that he shot his wife because of what she had done to the kids.

The movie ends with a phrase that Andrew said to his partner (psychiatrist). The phrase stated, “Hey Chuck, this place has me wonderin, is it better to live a monster or die a hero?” this tipped off Chuck about the fact that even after remembering that Andrew had done these things he had pushed it out of his mind again and they were back to square one. So Andrew was then taken to be lobotomized by the doctors. There is one thing that Andrew did leave us to wonder about though. From what Andrew said to chuck did he really not know who he was and what he had done, or did he decide that it was better for him to only remember the good things and not the bad even if that was going to get him killed.

Gary Webb the HERO!!!!

Is Gary Webb a hero or a zero? I believe that many people could see him differently based on their views as a member of the United States. Although I personally see him as a hero some people may not support that idea. Gary Webb was a journalist and during his time working for the San Jose Times he came across a lead to a story that included the CIA and the drug cartel in Nicaragua, along with the rebels in the war. What happened was the United States was trying to stay out of a war that included the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, who were backed by the communist Russia, and the Nicaraguan Contras. The Contras were trying to stop communism from entering their country and taking over, while the Sandinistas were trying to impose communism on the people of Nicaragua with the help of the Russians. America decided to help the Contras to stop the spread of communism in Central America, but we didn’t want the world to know that we were the ones helping so we came up with a plan. The CIA headed the operation to help the Contras by selling cocaine on the streets and using that money to pay for guns and ammunition for the Contras. The reason they sold cocaine was because the people on the streets were willing to pay a high dollar for it and if they sold it this way there would be no trace of where the money came from. So we secretly sent the money over and helped the Contras and the CIA did this with ease and never got caught until Gary Webb came along.

Gary found this story and decided to roll with it because it was set at the time to be the biggest story in the history of investigative journalism. He dug deep and it even took him on a trip to Nicaragua to research deeper into the topic. Once he finally had enough evidence to release the first article of three in the series the Dark Alliance these papers shocked the nation and blew up just as Gary expected and they finally revealed what the CIA had been doing all along.

I see Gary as a hero because he didn’t shy away from this story. He stood up to one of the most powerful agencies in the world and wasn’t afraid to back them into a corner and exposed them for all that hidden things that they had done. Gary was a hero because he put out one of the most revealing stories of all time and I believe he should go down not as a lying coward but as a brave investigative reporter that stood up for what reporting is meant to be, exposing the world to the truth.

Who killed JFK?

Did our nation lose its innocence with the assassination of our president? The mystery is something that no one in our nation will ever understand. What exactly happened on November 22^nd, 1963? The world will probably never know for sure but it has been opened up and considered one of the biggest conspiracies in the nation and the world. Was JFK assassinated by one man known as Lee Harvey Oswald or was it three shooters and he actually was just the face of the shooter that was framed by the master plot to kill JFK? Some of these things we will never truly know but it is something that will leave Americans confused, and will always make them second guess decisions when it comes to the government and the election of offices and presidential elections. So what actually happened that terrible day, here are a few of the ideas I have researched that may help you develop an opinion.

So first off some people believe that 9/11 may have also been a conspiracy and that the American people may feel like that accident may have been their own fault. The attack on the world trade centers was fatal and killed about 3,000 people. This was an Al-Qaida terrorist attack on the United States, they attacked us where they know they could unexpectedly take out a large group of people and without warning it would be the perfect plan. They attacked the buildings by crashing two hijacked planes into the towers. The planes hit the towers and didn’t immediately explode they sat there on fire for a minute or two until they finally blew up and then the building caught fire and it slowly began to combust. Then after about an hour the tour finally collapsed and killed approximately 2,173 people. This was devastating to the people of New York and when the news made it out to the entire nation, people found themselves shell shocked and confused. Many went to god for prayers and most found themselves lost and they had no idea what to do. The surprise of this attack put one thought in the majority of the American population’s minds, terrorist attack. They all believed it was a terrorist attack and for the longest time that’s all they thought. Although people did believe it was a terrorist attack people will always try to find a way to pin things back on the government, thus a conspiracy theory was developed on this idea. People believed that the government could have had something to do with this but I’m not convinced on the theory of the government doing something of this magnitude to their people. Did the nation lose its innocence when this disaster happened? I believe it scared them and made them more timid if anything.

JFK was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. This is the statement that the government wants us all to hear and believe. I don’t believe it. The government is corrupt and they killed off our 35^th president. The government set us up to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald took three shots in six and a half seconds with a bolt action rifle while the president was moving away from him at ten miles per hour. This course of action is impossible even with the best shooters in the nation and Lee Harvey Oswald was said to be a mediocre shooter at best from other men that knew him in the war. So how could one man who was not a very skilled shooter manage to hit a moving target with a bolt action rifle three times in six and a half seconds? It is simply not possible. Meanwhile other witnesses say that they heard two shots come from behind the fence of the grassy knoll; others said that they even saw smoke come from behind the fence by the train station and this is where it is believed that the second and third shots came from. The conspiracy is said to be that the government had a team hired that selected three or more shooters that would be located behind the fence at the grassy knoll and in the upstairs window of the book depository in behind the car which JFK was riding. Conspiracy I think so, but it’s all up to your individual opinion.

Do I think that MLK and RFK’s assassination was part of the JFK assassination that I believe was done by the government? I believe that the government did have something to do with it. I believe that the uprisings and rallies brought forward by MLK may have upset the government and they may have had something to do with his assassination. When it comes to RFK it only helps prove that JFK was assassinated by the government. RFK and JFK shared almost the exact same view so it only makes sense that the government would take him out as well.

So did our nation lose its innocence I believe over the years it has been hard for our nation to stay faithful to our government when it seems like all these terrible things continue happening and the only lead we find onto who did it goes straight to the government and some of their sources. It makes everyday life hard for the American and it hurts us all to know that we might not be able to trust our government. What should we do to make ourselves comfortable with the things we believe that they are doing? That is up to you based on whether you believe that these conspiracies are true.

Flat Tire or Flat Tax

Right now the United States follows the order of progressive taxes. The rich are taxed more than the poor and the middle class is right in the middle of the two. Should we change from a progressive tax to a flat tax? A flat tax is a way of taxing people that puts everyone on a level playing field. This tax, taxes the upper, lower, and middle class on the same level. They are all treated equal; this is something that would probably upset the lower class because they feel like the rich, making so much more money than the poor, should be taxed higher because it is not fair to the lower class.

Some of the advantages of progressive taxes include: the rich stay in check because they are taxed higher, the poor does not completely lose all their money to taxes so they can still have enough money to live. Progressive taxes have worked for our country for years and it would take years to make the switch and get everyone used to it.

Flat taxes are much different than progressive taxes these taxes are the same for all the different class levels. Some of the world would see this as a good thing. This is the lower classes point of view, they believe that the upper class should be taxed higher so they would never vote for this tax because that means that the rich will be richer and the poor will be poorer. To them this is not fair and they would never agree to this tax. The majority of the country is not rich so they will not vote for a flat tax.

What will we do, keep our progressive tax or upset most of the country and switch to a flat tax? I think this nation should just keep the tax that we currently have and save everyone the hassle of changing their ways and hopefully this can keep everyone happy.

Niggaz Wit Attitude

             “Our art is a reflection of our reality.” this is a quote by the famous Ice Cube, O’Shea Jackson; it is something that can be interpreted many ways. Much like how people looking in on the “hood” or Compton can interpret that many ways. Some people may see it as a community of black people that are aggressive and can’t handle themselves and are always angry. When in reality maybe it’s just the racist white people that make life hard for them because of the discrimination and judgement they have to go through every day.  

                N.W.A., aka Niggaz Wit Attitude was a group that started off as young rappers and dj’s that want to tell the world about what really goes on in the hood. They want people like you and me to know what they deal with every day. They want us to know about the trouble and hardships they face and they ultimately want to vent and inform the world on what it’s like in Compton.  During this era cop brutality was a very big issue in the hood and other ghettos or black communities. African Americans in those areas found themselves constantly being checked for drugs and other illegal paraphernalia only because of the solemn fact that they are black. The color of their skin made there every day lives much more difficult than traditional white people, and in this time most of the police force was predominately white. So as the group N.W.A. performed they found that many people in the hood and out enjoyed listening to their music and learning and hearing through it what it is like in Compton. The fan population grew and so did the popularity of the group. This is when they began being questioned about topics like money and how they are enjoying their new lifestyle. This lifestyle was nice for them but some of them had trouble living in it. They were used to the hood where every day it was dog eat dog and they were always struggling to have money. Now that wasn’t as much of an issue for them.

                Later in their career after finding themselves tired of the police brutality they found themselves writing a song named “F*** the Police”. This song was written after they found themselves being treated poorly by cops and they all had finally had enough of it. When this song came out they found themselves hated by any type of judicial force around. The FBI wrote them a letter and during concerts police warned them not to play the song or face being arrested. These men didn’t care about being arrested they cared about getting their message out to the world and telling everyone about how hard life is in Compton. They accomplished this in many ways throughout their career. This song became one of their most famous hits as they sang it to the world and all their fans. It was a shame that they were punished because of their opinions on the matter of police brutality, but it was something that obviously was a touchy subject back in those times. So they found themselves going to jail a time or two for singing that song and receiving plenty of hate mail from sources that didn’t approve of it. This was something that they were used to though. Through the year the group found themselves being hated by many people and that’s exactly what you would expect when they weren’t as traditional as most groups in the world at the time. The way the dealt with this issue and it didn’t bother them was this idea. The fact of the matter is to them they only wanted people to listen to their music if they wanted to listen and feel what the hood is like. If people didn’t like their music and thought it was too violent, vulgar, aggressive, or explicit they didn’t care. They thought if you don’t like our music then don’t listen to it because if you don’t enjoy it we don’t want you to listen to it.

                Our art is a reflection of our reality; I suppose you want to know where all this comes into play. This is a statement that really tells what N.W.A. is all about. It tells us that when they rap and express themselves through music we aren’t just hear random stuff they made up on the spot just to spit some rhymes and call it good. The things they are preaching to us are actual real life events that have affected them and shaped their lives and they want to inform you about these occasions. The reality of it is that these men came from the bottom and rose to the top by sharing their life events and teaching the world about the reality of their life.

                These men weren’t bad guys but they knew their lives had a purpose. They found that purpose through their music. The group single handed lee changed the face of music and the rap and hip hop world as we know it. They taught the world about what the real life in the hood is and they showed us how to rise up and shut out the bad parts of life. They all came from the hood but found their way out and in doing that they became one of the most well-known groups in the world.

                Our art is a reflection of our reality; there art is what taught us. The reality of it is that their mission was to inform the people and they did that and then some with their art. That music was something that may never be beaten and is incomparable to anything that will ever be written. That came from the heart and moved millions of people and that kind of movement and act will never be passed up in the history of music. N.W.A. will never be beaten and for the love of all music may their legacy live on in the hearts and minds of people forever. May they never be forgotten.

Trump and Nixon Election Similarities

1. Both promised to lessen the amount of violent crimes.
2. Nixon and Trump both had many protestors  
3. Trump decided to cancel a rally held in Chicago and riots began, in 1968 in Chicago riots broke out in retaliation over the Vietnam War.
4. Nixon and Trump both came into office during a time of unrest with racism 
5. Both Nixon and Trump had secret plans to stop an enemy, Trump with ISIS and Nixon with the Vietnam war

Free and Reduced Lunches

Kids that live in more of a poverty affected house tend to suffer more when it comes to school. The graphs we are analyzing proves that kids suffering from poverty in their homes and the kids eligible for free and reduced lunch meals tend to do worse on tests and quizzes. The kids that grow up in a richer family or a family in the middle class they tend to do better on tests and quizzes in school. They also notice how younger kids are more affected by this than older kids. This may be because, while kids are younger they spend more time in their home setting and they may not get out as much as older kids tend to do. The graphs show that older kids tend to do a little better in classes whether they are eligible for free and reduced meals or not. This is due to kids gaining knowledge over the years but you can still see the difference in their level of intelligence. Even though they seem to be getting smarter they still struggle compared to the other kids of the same age that are not eligible for free and reduced lunches. All of these graphs just prove to us that kids that live in poverty stricken homes and are eligible for free and reduced lunches struggle in the classroom.

Big White Ghetto

What does the average coal miner make (wages per hour)? $25 an hour

 

Who are some types of people a person might find in the big, “White Ghetto.”         

Drunks, drug dealers, rapists, homeless, jobless, and others that are trying to get out

Why do you think the author calls it the “Big White Ghetto?”

Population is predominantly Caucasian and it’s kind of a bad place to be with a lot of poverty and such

What does the author suggests “keeps the underclass in place?”

Welfare and how easy it is to receive money from the government

The author suggests that “poverty is the natural condition of the human animal.”

How does Pepsi play into this?

People used their product for their own kind of currency to buy other things like cigarettes

List five things/facts you took away from this article.

1. Parents can pull their kids out of school and receive a Social Security Check
2. People use Pepsi as currency
3. Some woman sell their body for $12.99
4. The average coal miner makes $25 an hour
5. Coal mining industry is moving west at a very fast rate

Trump University (Trump has bad morals but im still voting for him)

Trump University was started in 2005 and was said to give students that attend, a better understanding of the business side of the workplace better than any other college could provide. Beings Donald Trump was so successful many kids attended this institution. They paid money for a so called “University” this college of business was trying to suck kids in and teach them better than any other school could in reality they were going to a school and not getting the education that they really needed. Through all this Trump was also forced to change the name of the school from Trump University to Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, this name didn’t make it seem like it as prestigious as Trump had intended it to be. But what I read was no matter how prestigious he wanted this institution to be the kids going to school there were ultimately going to pay a lot of money for an education that wasn’t going to be worth their money. One individual in this article stated that he went to Trump University and spent $34,995 dollars on the program and he only got certificates in some areas. He was not happy about the schooling he payed for and the outcome of students was nothing of what they imagined. They thought they would graduate and be successful much like Donald Trump and in reality they probably wasted a lot of money for something that won’t help them later in life.

click here for more trump details

whtie privilege nra and mass shootings

Because white people will someday be the minority in the United States, we can expect white privilege to decline, increased gun control laws, and powerful groups like the NRA to lose their influence in the political theatre, when eventually we will all lose our guns due to factors that I will tell you about that later in this essay. What will cause us to lose our weapons, and what will diminish programs like the NRA? I think the ideal of white privilege can influence this greatly.

White privilege exists but that doesn’t mean I believe it is right. White privilege has been around ever since we came to America many years ago. Some of you may wonder, what is white privilege? White privilege is believed to be enforced when invisible assets or benefits are given to “white” colored people. This privilege has been around in American from the time the settlers came. It has been around ever since slavery was introduced in the America’s and it will always be around in certain parts of the U.S. for people that will never allow themselves to change. White privilege has been brought back up much more in the news in the last few years. It has been a very big issue in many police cases and jury trials and many more events where white people tend to be the enforcers. There are cases where an African American man gets accused of such a thing as rape and even if he never actually committed the crime, with white privilege, he found himself doing the time. Some men in this man’s situation are brought before a white judge with a white jury and they automatically see this as a lose, lose situation for themselves. Part of this sounds like racism but the white privilege part comes into effect if the man in this same situation is white they would give this man a much more fair trial and would possibly work harder to prove him innocent. Why is this so? Because the idea of whites being the superior race is still in our heads and as long as it is and whites continue to have power in the world this ideology will stick around.

Can white privilege be involved in mass shootings? Who commits mass shootings? Well one thing that seems to be a common characteristic of most mass murders are they are young white males. Does race play a factor in who commits most mass shootings? It obviously must because white males have predominately committed most of the mass shootings in the U.S. over its lifetime. All of these mass shooters though happen to percentage wise match up with their same percentage of the population they withhold in the United States. For example the white population takes up 63% of the U.S. and white males tend to take part in over 64% of the mass shootings in the U.S. alone each year. This proves that yes white males do tend to commit more of the mass shootings but if there were more African Americans in the U.S. or more Asian and Japanese in the U.S. would they be leading in most mass shootings committed. According to the study I found, that stated this, technically if the African American population was greater than that of the white population then African Americans would be the leading race in mass shootings in America. Another factor that has an effect on who conducts mass shootings is gender. How often do you here of a female murderer? Hardly ever, and when you do it usually catches you off guard. Some of the reasons men are more likely to conduct mass shootings is because men are more likely to own a fire arm. They are also more likely to keep their feeling sheltered up inside them. All these things seem to be much like what most people think about men. Men aren’t going to go out and tell everyone about what they are feeling inside and ask for help to get it fixed. Most of them will fight through it and try to tough it out no matter what it takes to get it done, and for some of them that means committing a mass shooting. These men have usually flown the cookoo nest and are no longer thinking strait. What makes them conduct these shootings? Most of the scientists and psychologists working on this matter immediately think insanity. When in reality most of them actually do have serious mental illnesses that can lead them to think this is the right thing to do to save them or help them get over whatever they are going through. Some of these people have had things earlier in their life influence whether or not they decide to do this. Some of them for example may gain hatred and anger from getting rape or beat as a kid. All this built up aggression can lead to the occurrence of a mass shooting. These entire factors can prove why it seems that most of these shooters tend to be young white males. It shows the different traits all of these young men have and is easily understandable why they have committed or had the idea of committing mass shootings.

When it comes down to who can stop mass shootings the matter is really hard. There are many reasons why, one is Americans need guns for many things like recreational shooting sports, and hunting. So why should we take guns away from the law abiding citizens who use guns in the right and proper ways. The fact of the matter is the types of people committing mass shootings are the type of people that who regardless whether or not you take guns away from all Americans will end up with a gun somehow anyway. These people don’t care that they would be doing something illegal by getting guns illegally when the reason they are getting the guns is their main objective. It all refers back to the old saying,” Guns don’t kill people. People kill people with guns.” This is something people need to think about when they say we need to ban guns from all Americans. The NRA promotes the proper use of guns for recreational purposes as well as hunting purposes and collecting purposes. They don’t promote gun violence in anyway and most of their true followers aren’t people that commit mass shootings anyway. The people that support and follow the NRA are the people that you don’t need to be worried about having guns. These people are the ones that understand how to use them and when to use them.

What can we learn about white privilege, mass shooters, and the NRA? We know that most mass shooters are white and we know that juries tend to take more of a pardon on white men. They tend to make sure to give them the fairest trial they can. So where does the NRA tie into all of this most of the enrolled members of the NRA are actually white. They all have a decent understanding of safety with weapons and they fully understand the intended purposes of these weapons. The NRA makes sure people understand weapons and how they should be used, so in this respect they do help out the world in some ways by teaching how to handle weapons but the only thing that could make it all better is if we could find a way to get everyone involved and teach everyone how to understand how powerful a weapon can be and how they themselves need to learn its safety instructions and its intended purpose.

Freddie Gray

I believe that society let him down. It all started back when his mother had gotten pregnant. Her blood was filled with lead and thus when he was born his blood had lead in it as well. As he grew older and continued being stuck in the horrible neighborhood he was forced to grow up in, he developed even more lead in his blood and this impaired his thinking abilities as well as physical functions. He had trouble focusing and paying attention and his reading and writing abilities were much lesser than of someone from other better neighborhoods. His whole life he was stuck in the dumps and he couldn’t get out.

Freddie was a nice and genuinely funny guy when it came to his personality. Even though he had trouble doing some everyday tasks for us; like reading and writing he still found a way to be cheery. But all the fun he had eventually got him in trouble. This kept getting him in trouble until for years until the one time he got in trouble and he couldn’t come back from it. Freddie had, had many different little harmless crimes over the years like drug possession and other little things of that nature. But one day he wasn’t even smoking weed or doing anything illegal but he got caught up in the wrong area at the wrong time and he ran from the police when they showed up. They then jostled him around a little bit and he ended up damaging his spinal cord and this later led to his death.

                Freddie was a well-liked man in the community that never left the place he was born and raised. I believe if Freddie would have been raised in a better neighborhood that maybe he would have had a fighting chance. When he is stuck in a place that attracts the scum of the earth it is hard to get out. He was just a product of bad habits that were all influenced by the community around him. It was hard for him to control but it was the place he had to be, because that is the place where all his problems began.

Deviance

I read an article that told about how multiple tattoos and piercings lead to more deviant acts. The idea behind it was that most of the people that get tattoos tend to be troublemakers in the first place. It said that if they had one or more they were looking for attention and they were trying to make a statement with their tattoos. It also stated that people with multiple tattoos, intimate piercings, or multiple piercings would also tend to spend more time in jail and would commit more crimes than those without these characteristics.

                I side with the article in some respects that it seems that statistically it shows that most convicted criminals may have these kinds of tattoos and piercings, but on the other hand that doesn’t mean that everyone that gets these body marks is automatically a bad person. For some of them it is a life choice and they like what it looks like and they enjoy having these marks. This being said it doesn’t mean that they are automatically criminals and deviants. When I see a person with tons of tattoos and piercings I may not think they look the most traditional and professional but that still doesn’t mean that they are bad people.

                I found in this article that It only states the bad things about people with tattoos and piercings and it wants people to think that if you have these body marks you are automatically a deviant. I believe this is wrong and they people that put this out there could spice up their information more and put things in about the percentage of people that aren’t deviants that have tattoos and piercings. Overall I found out that the media tends to judge people based more on appearance than actual values.