The great depression

Emily's post

The great depression was a time of stress, sadness, confusion, loss, yet so many people found joy in the smallest of things. no house, no food, some money, and a few friends and you can be happy through the days. Today, I feel like this wouldn't be the same. People would be able to use social media to induce fear, and make things worse than they were. Homelessness would get worse, family's fall apart, drug use more, with Donald trump in charge I don't want to know what could happen. People might form gangs and clans and raid homes, stores, it would be chaos. Some might be able to find the good in life but we are going downhill by the second these days, i don't want that to get worse.

The in class simulation

Emily's post

In class, we did a simulation where we were all different groups. group 1, 2, 3, 4.....etc. Our  main goal was to gain 'world' peace. Or classroom peace. a lot of people had a hard time doing this because of popularity or misunderstandings, so instead of all of us learning to work together, we ended up all turning against one group. My group. We did nothing to the group who decided to hate on us, and they decided to take us out. They formed alliances, and then went to war with us. In the end, peace treaties were broken and no one could trust each other. because of this we lost the idea of total peace in the fog of hatred.                                                          

Election

    Emily's post
When i think of the 2016 election, I think of Donald trump, and when i think of Donald trump, I think of the end of America. When the election started, I thought that Donald trump was a joke and could never win. when he started to get ahead, i was worried but i didn't think that anyone with a decent heart could vote for him. then i saw the odds and was prepared for the end. then i saw the truth. A lot of trump supporters just don't like the system, and they don't like Donald trump, and the only way to mess with the system was to throw him at it. A lot of supporters were decent people who just didn't like the way things were going and would rather see trump rule over everything than to see 4 more years of the same thing.

Muckraking "Homelessness"

Today the rise of people becoming homeless is huge. Today with such high cost for living many people live homeless and without jobs. This generally stems from mental health issues, drugs, etc.  Today many people have started organizations that help those who struggle to maintain a healthy life style.  Sadly the government has not taken any steps to help this problem.  Instead in San Francisco they have passed an act that would allow police to give homeless people a 24 hour notice to pickup there tent and leave.  This is doing nothing! It is only forcing the homeless to move around with nowhere in the end to go. There are many great programs today that make it very easy to help such as LifeMoves, HomeFirst, etc.  Just remember that "Homeless people are not the problem, they are the result of the problem".

Muckracking "Obesity"

Today there was a presentation on obesity in the United States and I contained a lot of valuable information. First we are the 7th most obese country in the World. That is really sad. In our area obesity is cause by advertising the cheapest food. But mostly the cost of living and life style. To work and have a family in Silicon Valley cost a large amount of money.  So many family's who are not as wealthy struggle to afford food often having to give into poor nutrition eating at many unhealthy locations. Another reason people give into bad eating habits is when they don have enough time to prepare themselves something beneficial for the body. In the end it is important to treat your body the best you can or you can risk having poor health issues in the future.

"Sacco and Vanzetti"

After hearing about this trial for the first time, I had very mixed emotions. I personally can not determine if Sacco and Vanzetti were both guilty or innocent. There was lots of evidence that supported both the defense and prosecution. From the classroom document, we were able to chart out the evidence for both sides. Although in my document I had almost double the evidence to prove that they were guilty, I am still not 100 percent sure that they were. I believe that in this case, the evidence should have depended on quality versus quantity. The evidence to prove them guilty was solely based off the fact that they were Anarchists, and from in class discussions we know that Anarchists were hated at the time. The prosecution did have hard cold evidence to prove guilt in them. The defense did indeed have evidence to counter the prosecution but it was never really appreciated as the majority of the jury was prejudice towards Sacco and Vanzetti. This leads me to my next idea which is that the trial itself was not fair. The majority of the jury was anti-Anarchist. From the documentary that we watched, we learned that the jury took only a few hours to deliberate and come up with the verdict. As we know, they were found guilty and sentenced to execution. This trial was one of the most controversial trials in history. The fact that the jury took only a few hours to decided these two men's faith is very suspicious. I believe that this was a trial against proving Anarchists guilty, rather than proving these men guilty of a crime that they may have not committed. This trial reminds me of the God in America trial. Both of these trials got side tracked and did not focus on their actual case. Although I can not determine if they were indeed guilty or not, I still believe that the correctional and justice system did not do its job properly.

Muckraking Reflection

The Muckraking assignment was a very long yet interesting process. Erik and I investigated the flaws within the justice system and police departments. Prior to our topic selection, we had very clear and bias ideas about these subjects. After listening to several different viewpoints, motivating interviews, and evidence from both sides, we came to a final decision. The research process really helped in allowing us to understand more about the subject. As said, we had very bias ideas with little to none evidence to support it. As "muckrakers", we were able to not only incorporate our personal beliefs, but also the opposing beliefs. We started our research by answering the prep questions on the Muckraking document, then we decided to start the real research with online articles. For the interviews, we wanted to have the actual face to face experience so we knocked on several doors asking residents if we could interview them with a few questions. The people we interviewed varied in age, sex, race, and location. We then wanted to compare the several ideas that we received from these people and see if their beliefs aligned with anything that we found from the online research. When we were coming up with our thesis, we were not sure if we wanted to focus mainly on racism and prejudice, so we ended up broadening our thesis to cover more ground. The layout of our article did not have a certain order. The images that we put in our article were selected with ideas that corresponded to what we wrote. The charts the we inserted gave our article more factual support. Overall, I feel that the article we made represented our ideals pretty well. We had some struggles at first but we were able to get past them and come up with a bright article. Actually, we were planning on making a documentary until we realized that the article option would be easier to get our point across. The article allows for us to show more of our research skills. The "solution" that we came up with was reasonable and achievable. We were both a bit skeptical about writing about racism because honestly there is no real solution to racism. However, we came up with ways to ease the issue and indirectly solve flaws. The justice system has never changed and we knew that, so coming up with a solution for that was pretty difficult. In the end, our experience was great and we hope that our idea spreads to others.

Muckraking Project

For this project my partner and I decided to research about children under the age of 18 working more than the legal rights allowed. When we first chose the project we thought it was going to be quite hard because usually every place is required a work permit and they were strict about the laws. But we did have a teen that never was asked for a permit to work and students that worked over. We researched about the legal number of hours you are allowed to work during the school year on weekdays and weekends. According to the California Child Labor Laws, if you are 16 years old you are allowed to work 4 hours on weekdays and 8 hours on the weekends. If you are 15 years old you are allowed to work 3 hours on weekdays and 8 hours on the weekends. This was a huge surprise because some of my friends work over that. One of my friends had to work a double shift which then she work 8 hours one day during the week. She started work at 3:15pm and ended at 10:30pm. Talking to most of our friends, they said that the problem they have about this is was not that the work paid wasn't good, it was more because they weren't being able to have a social life outside of work. We could see that this was definitely something that they other employees either don't care because they are getting paid enough money or there is no way to change it. The mangers of the stores are working the teens under the age of 18 to much and it's not okay that they don't care about it. Something that was surprising to me was that it was just a certain store that was doing this but there are stores all over the bay area that do this to teens. It isn't fair to them because they aren't being able to have a life outside of school nor work.

Obama Care, Is it good or bad

As our 44th President's term is about to end, he leaves with him a legacy that we will remember. Obama is most known for killing Osama Bin Laden and his Obama Care act. His Obama care may be his "greatest" achievement. But was it really good or bad? The Pros of it are that it must fix our health care act without increasing the deficit, it generates billions for medicare, there will be more medical visits, and millions of people will have access to primary health care. The cons include health care being more costly than before, it increases the budget deficit, seniors will have worse access to medicare, people lose their private insurance policies, there are projected shortfalls in primary care, and there are loopholes. What do you think? Do the pros outweigh the cons or the cons outweigh the pros?

The Great Depression what acts will help prevent a future crisis.

The Great Depression was a tragic event that we all hope something like that will never happen again. However, as history shows, it repeats itself. However, after we did a few things to help prevent another depression. These included Federal Securities act, the Banking Act of 1933, Public Utilities Holding act, and social security act. Even though we did this, there was was still a great recession, yet it was not nearly as bad as the great depression. Even though these small bumps in the road are sure to happen, do you think we can prevent one as tragic as the great depression from happening again?

Interviewing people for the muckraking project

Like all the other groups, we interviewed several people for our project. Since our topic was sensitive (drug use), all the interviews had to be anonymous. However, when interviewing a member of the faculty, I forgot to mention this until halfway through the interview, when they answered a question with "overall, on record, it’s just not a good idea." At that point I asked them if they preferred to be anonymous and of course they agreed, though they did say that their answers were the same.

After analyzing the interview for the project, I noticed that there were a few inconsistencies. For example, they said that using marijuana at all was just not a good idea because of the damage it causes to the brain. However, when asked what they thought about it being for medical purposes, they said that it could be effective, and perhaps even be prescribed instead of classic medication alongside therapy.

Their overall stance on the issue was the same (teenagers should not use marijuana recreationally), but they gave conflicting reasons. To me, it seems like they started the interview answering the questions like the administration would expect them to. After all, there are negative consequences for encouraging students to use drugs. So their behavior was totally reasonable and to be expected. However, it does mean that the answers we got may have not been entirely accurate, representing the stereotypical, safe opinion (marijuana is bad for your brain, don't do drugs) rather than the possibly different opinion that the interviewee had himself.

Marijuana vs Alcohol: which is worse?

Marijuana and alcohol are the most commonly used drugs by teenagers. Rather than arguing why there are both bad, I think it would be interesting to see which one is worse.

Alcohol kills millions of people each year, whether it be due to alcohol poisoning or alcohol-induced accidents. Marijuana, on the other hand, is effectively impossible to overdose on, meaning it leads to very few deaths.

Drinking alcohol as a teenager increases the likelihood of alcoholism as an adult. For marijuana, this is not the case. However, at that age, when the brain has not totally developed, marijuana can cause more permanent damage.

Driving high is generally considered better than driving drunk. This is because marijuana tends to allow for more focus, while alcohol makes people clumsy and hurts reaction times. That said, neither are safe for anyone on the road.

Acquiring alcohol is significantly easier than marijuana. Most families have alcohol at home, while teenagers have to approach drug dealers to get their hands on marijuana.

When interviewing a member of the LAHS faculty for our muckraking project, we snuck in a question about this. Their response was "I think they’re both pretty bad, but you’re probably safer with marijuana. So, I would put a vote for marijuana over alcohol. I think it should be harder to access alcohol. Alcohol strikes me as more dangerous for a lot of reasons. For example, I would be much more comfortable with teenagers driving around high rather than drunk. I think parents would feel the same."

So, with all this taken into account, it seems as though alcohol is worse of a drug than marijuana. This begs the question: why is alcohol legal and so easy to access, but marijuana isn't?

On The Topic of Homelessness

It's interesting that there is such a high percentage of homeless people in the Santa Clara County. I wouldn't say I have seen it much myself, but that's most likely due to the fact that there is not a high percentage of homeless people in Los Altos specifically.

If there were a general solution to the problem, I'm sure it would have been implemented already. The truth is, homelessness seems to be an accepted part of our society, and that's why people generally fail to act on it. Most people are used to seeing homeless people around, so that's why it doesn't seem to be an issue to them.

Not to say there aren't awareness acts happening around us. It is just an issue that is not displayed as being very prominent like other issues, at least not in our area.

What do you guys think? Have you heard as much about the issue of homelessness as you have heard about other issues like the drought situation or pollution?

Our Muckracking Project Summary

Our creation for the Muckracking project was a documentary which highlighted causes of pollution, specifically causes of high CO2 emissions throughout the country. With research, we found that transportation, specifically cars, were a huge contribution towards CO2 emissions. However, they have never taken the lead over factories. 

Since 1850, there has been a constant rise in CO2 emissions in the United States. This is due to the fact that global industrialization became prominent during this time period with the Industrial Revolutions of the world. 

Now, factories are still in the lead. Cars are runner-up, but still contribute a huge amount to CO2 pollution. Our solution was to replace gas vehicles with electric cars, as emissions would lessen significantly. 

what I learned form Courtney and Natalie

When Courtney and Natalie presented their presentation on overworking teenagers I was really surprised by how little hours you can do on a regular school day. I really wasn't aware of any of the laws that are for teenagers working during school. Back home in Connecticut, we had laws, but still, I wasn't informed about them. I think these laws really benefit teenagers, but if you really want to work a lot and make money, it makes it difficult for you to make the amount you want in a week. Overall I am thankful for them informing us of these laws again. 

Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan is an anti-imigrant group, it was re born in 1915. They targeted African americans, immigrants, jews, catholics, and anyone with values that Klan members saw as "un-American." In the early 1920's, the klan increased 3 to 4 million members. They started to get political power. They all did everything secretly, at night time, and wearing hoodies so no one could know who they are. This relates to today because we now have Trump and the Ku Klux Klan supports him. They drove through North Carolina town to show their support for Trump. When this happened two men were arrested because they were stabbing people during the KKK meeting.

The real reason why we have summer vacation.

The story behind why we have summer vacation is that in the 19th-century kids had to help their parents work on the farm during the summers. This is far from true because during the spring time was when most kids would have to help their family collect crops and work on the farm. The real reason why kids got summer off was because school classrooms at that time of the year would get sweltering hot causing wealthy parents, teachers and students to complain. The school system decided that therefore the best time of the year would be a summer break. Also, the teachers need a section of time to train before a new school year.

Ponzi Scheme

The Ponzi scheme is still going on today. It got it's name from Charles Ponzi, it is basically a plan for you to get rich quickly. The process of this is, you 'think' you are investing your money but really the person is collecting money from new investors and paying early investors back with that money. There is really no investment or return on money. Seeing the early investors double their money makes other people want to invest their money also. The most famous Ponzi scheme is Bernie Madoff, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison from doing this. He was sentenced so much time because he defrauded people 65 billion dollars. This is a very common scheme, it was found around 1919.

What I learned from my project

I learned a lot about our community through my muckraking project, more than I thought I would. I was able to gather information through different people and get a better understanding about a topic that was ultimately important to me. 

My project was about obesity in our area and something that is surprising to me is that the obesity levels are relatively low in Mountain View and Los Altos, compared to the rest of the US. That isn't saying much though because the US is 7th out of all countries in having the most obesity.

What might be a reason for this? According to some research, I did it has to do with the ‘American Environment’ which includes an ‘in-the-car, behind-the-desk society’ meaning that not many people get an adamant amount of exercise. When we are in the car, there are billboards telling us about fast food and when we are at our desk ads pop up on the computer trying to convince us to purchase the unhealthy product. Buying food is easier than ever now because you can buy it from a gas station, which are conveniently placed near highways. Lastly, the ‘American Environment’ has created a new phenomenon called ‘portion distortion’ which is simply increasing the portion sizes to larger amounts, making becoming obese even more tangible (Nation HLB Institute).

My partner and I also found that most people who are obese are low income families, due to availability of fodd.

Hardships During Great Depression

The Great Depression has been labeled by many as the worst US economic downfall in history. Many citizens faced hardships ranging from suicide to having no money. Some US citizens had all their money in the stock market at the time of the Great Depression which caused so much stress as they had no more money left. This caused a few to commit suicide to end the amount of stress and hardship they were facing. Another issue was US veterans and their bonus. US veterans were guaranteed a bonus when they fought during the war but since that money was in the stock market and banks, no one could receive it. This group of veterans were called the Bonus Army who demanded their money from the government. One of the most widespread problems during the Great Depression was the state of business in the US. Most business owners lost money since they had money in the stock market but the worst came from citizens not buying many goods. Before the Great Depression people were able to afford all the necessities and more while at stores, now people were only able to afford the bare minimum. This caused most sole businesses to be put closed. Lastly and one of the most widespread issues was the state of the banks. Over 800 banks failed and 9 million savings accounts were closed which caused massive heartache.

Muckraking Project

Our project is based on marijuana usage around teenagers. We're also describing different health benefits of marijuana, whether they're good or bad. Certain health features that are beneficial is treating young children who have autism or ADHD. Most of these children use edibles to avoid inhaling smoke. Although it isn't scientifically known yet whether marijuana extracts help these children, parents have become more vocal with the fact that marijuana helps their autistic kids function better and ADHD kids pay more attention. The harmful health use of marijuana comes from inhaling the smoke. While it is significantly healthier than cigarettes that have many added chemicals, you're still inhaling a foreign substance in to your lungs. To narrow our subject down from just a broad phrase of marijuana usage around teenagers, we decided on it being a gateway drug. Most people assume a gateway drug is a drug that you get addicted to which makes you crave more or other drugs that are far more harsh. While it has been scientifically proven that marijuana isn't a habit addicting drug, where you buy your marijuana from may vary. Since no teenagers are able to purchase marijuana legally they have to buy from a "dealer" which could cause further drug usage. Some dealers aren't just selling marijuana but also have other drugs such as adderall, heroine, meth and much more. So, while marijuana isn't socially described as a gateway drug, it can still lead to usage with other harder drugs due to the fact that teenagers aren't buying it legally and buying it from a dealer.

Bicycles for Women?

Have you ever been shopping for a new bike, as one does as one grows bigger and no longer fits on their child-size bike? Perhaps you noticed that they would say women's bikes and men's bikes and you thought there's a difference? Yes, in fact, there is. The difference is in the shape of the bike.

Women's Bike

Men's Bike

The women's bike has a dip in the middle that allowed women who rode with skirts to ride the bikes. Men's bikes did not have this place for skirts. Bloomers changed all that.

Bloomers were women's pants that were baggy so they could look like skirts but had a split in them to allow more movement. The invention of bicycles liberated women of the 1890s during the bicycle craze. They had more freedom than ever because they could travel where they wanted when they wanted. Susan B. Anthony, a leader of the suffragist movement said, "I think [bicycling] has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood" Many women were able to get more freedom from the use of a bicycle. 

It is interesting to think that everyday objects that we use can change freedoms and ways of life. What are some examples of other inventions that had an impact larger than you would think?

The Gold Rush Pollution

For the Muckraking Assignment, my group is researching water pollution in the Bay Area. One of the questions we asked our interviewees is if there were any particular times in California when water pollution was especially bad. An interesting point that we learned was that the real start of water pollution in this area--while it has always been here since the beginning of the city--was during the Gold Rush.

Mercury is a poisonous chemical that can infiltrate bodies of water, causing immense damage to all around it. It is one of the main polluters of the San Francisco Bay. The modern day source of mercury pollution is from people throwing out broken thermometers or other substances improperly, instead of disposing of them at a facility. But during the Gold Rush, the mining that took place left tons upon tons of contaminated sediments near rivers. According to Michael Singer, a geologist and hydrologist, "There is enough metal downriver and in the sediment to significantly add to levels of the heavy metal downriver and in the San Francisco Bay for the next 10,000 years."

Mercury can be converted to methlymercury by microbes, which is the organic form of the heavy metal. This can accumulate in animals, and when larger animals eat lots of smaller ones, mercury can become concentrated in living creatures. This causes a real danger to the wildlife around the Bay.

Gold Rush miners sought to expose gold metal by using high-pressure water cannons, then run it through "sluice boxes" which included adding mercury to bind to gold. This large quantities of metal found it's way downstream, and now in California's Central Valley, the area was tainted.

It is interesting how something that happened almost two centuries ago can affect our current condition so drastically. What is another historical incident that is now some kind of a problem for us today?

Unfairness of this election system

Even though Hillary won the popular vote she didn't become president as all you know. I believe that is wrong. Instead of having states have x amount of electoral votes we should have just votes for each state.

Sacco and Vanzetti was the justice system corrupt?

Whether Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty or innocent is a case that remains a mystery. Historians argue both sides, but neither side has any facts that prove anything. Just raise questions. However, the jury that convicted them guilty was pretty confident that they did the crime. This is because I believe they were under the influence of a corrupt justice system. The justice system did not function properly in this case study because of several reasons. For one, the jury was already against Sacco and Vanzetti before the trial even began. Second, the prosecutor lied about the revolver one of them had was stolen from one of the guards. Third, the police hid that the cartridges that they found were not the same as the ones they had. But that is only my opinion. What do you think? Do you think that the justice system was indeed corrupt and that they would've been innocent if it wasn't corrupt? Or do you think otherwise?

Election 2016

This years election was definitely an election that was different from our past years. This year the two candidates were probably the most hated and they both weren't the best. They both had flaws that change the way others thought of different people. Trump was hated because of his racial views and ideas towards others. He also didn't have an experience of political views. Clinton was hated because he views and how she changed them to get more viewers. She did have some political experience but still wasn't the best candidate. I didn't chose a side because really they both had bad flaws and neither of them should have been a candidate for the 2016 election. I was talking with my friend she brought up the idea of we should have just cancelled both of them and kept Obama as the president right now and had chosen new candidates for the election even though it really isn't allowed. This might have changed peoples views and we might have had a clearer view on the election.

The Dust Bowl

The drought that happened during the Great Depression was already bad, but it was made worse by farming techniques farmers had used for the last decade. They were making a lot of food, so they were stripping all of the natural vegetation and leaving behind loose soil, which was easily picked up by the wind and created into dust storms. As a result of this, they couldn't farm and started to lose their houses to foreclosure. People started to move west to California to find jobs there, which left farming towns decimated. They had few customers, so banks, businesses, schools, and churches closed down as more and more people left the Dust Bowl.

Women's right in 1920's

People in the 1920's were so used to the women being at home, taking care of the children, cleaning, and making food. They were not allowed to work or even go to school. They had to be covered up the whole time. They had long hair and did not wear much make up. They were called the flappers and these girls would wear skirts and dresses that went over their knees. Hair was short and were allowed to style their hair. They wore a lot of make up, and were allowed to go to work and school. Pretty much the complete opposite of the other women. They would go to parties, smoke, and even drink. The girls were allowed to date but the 'traditional' girls were not allowed to. The traditional girls thought very badly about the flapper girls. Parents would still get upset with them because no one could control them. This relates kind of to now, because girls now still drink, smoke, and party. But others dress differently, don't party, or drink.

Who's Fault Was the Great Depression?

There were certainly a variety of causes for the great depression. Many things could be blamed for it: issues with banks, overzealous stock market deals, and most importantly -- President Hoover.

It would be unfair to blame Hoover for everything, however. He did try to relieve some of the effects of the depression, though arguably in the wrong way.

Hoover's goal was to use legislation to relieve some of the problems. However, the artificially increased wages only served to create more inflation. Essentially, Hoover's used government intervention to relieve the depression, albeit ineffectively.

Roosevelt did the same thing with the New Deal -- except on an even greater scale. There was even more government intervention with the deal.

Thus, was it really Hoover's fault? Leave your thoughts below.

The American Government - Before and After the Depression

Before the Great Depression, the government often did not involve itself in financial affairs of the American citizens. This meant they did nothing to assist people financially. However, the Depression was a time which changed this previously held ideology. President Roosevelt came up with the New Deal, a major contributor to creating government involvement in the finances of United States citizens, in order to assist them through financial troubles caused by the depression.

The government began assuring that banks would not lose money that people had deposited, and that people would have money to live off of later with Social Security.

This New Deal has remained a large part of government financial affairs even today.

The New Deal -- Too Much?

The New Deal was certainly overall beneficial for our country. By creating more jobs and opportunity for the American people, our country was slowly recovering from the massive depression that hit previously.

The deal mainly involved giving people more jobs and more resources.

But was this too much? Did the New Deal cause the people to be overly reliant on government for their careers and welfare?

Because so many people had government based jobs, the government suddenly became a prime regulator for the economy. They could single handedly help assist or harm the economy.

In addition, the government took care of people in other ways, through social security and other programs. Currently, these programs occupy huge portions of our current expenditures.

The deal caused an influx of power with our government....power that it has to this very day. Is the government now too powerful because of it? And are our people far too reliant on the government because of it?

Leave your thoughts below.

How did the start of WW2 help the U.S get out of the depression?

One of the main factors that got the U.S out of the great depression was the start of WW2. A contributing factor was the rise of the plane industry. The U.S realized that planes would be part of WW2 so they started mass producing them. Before this, the U.S only took up 5% of the investments into the industrial industry, but after the start of manufacturing planes it bumped up to 67%. This increased the number of jobs for manufacturing the planes and getting materials. For 20 years before the manufacturing planes, the largest industry was the manufacturing of cars, but once WW2 started the plane industry was four times larger than the car industry. In all this is just one of the many ways WW2 helped get the U.S out of the depression.

What does the Supreme Court do?

Generally, the Supreme Court deals with larger issues rather than a two-party conflict. So, they might accept to do a court ruling on a matter between two smaller parties if there is a larger issue at hand. For example, there was the case of 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Although this was not between large corporations they dealt with this because it involved a large social issue at the time. They ruled that racial segregation in public places is unconstitutional. They then can settle the dispute between the parties, but they need to rely on the other branches of government to work on fixing the issue nationally. You can see this in this specific example by how there was no implementation for fixing the racial segregation for years to come. 

As a president, how likely are you to be assassinated?

The United States of America recently elected its 45th president, Donald J. Trump. As we all know this has been subject to much controversy, which I'm sure at some point involved death threats towards our president-elect. This got me thinking: how likely is a president to be assassinated?

Out of the 44 presidents we have had so far, 4 have been shot to death, and 12 more have had their assassinations plotted and/or attempted. Therefore, if you were to become president, there is about a 1 in 10 chance of being killed, and 2 in 10 chance of an (unsuccessful) attempt being made at your life.

For any other job (imagine an industrial worker, for example), this statistic would be more than enough to discourage the worker from taking the job. I think it's interesting how despite all that, cycle after cycle there are plenty of candidates participating in a brutal fight to rule a nation for a few years.

Personally, I wouldn't run for president if only to avoid early graying hair.