Eighteen Years Old, The Age Of Adulthood In The United

Eighteen years old, the age of adulthood in the United States, where one can legally participate in activities that one was unable to as a child. Well, almost everything. This unfortunately doesn’t include the right to decide whether to drink alcohol or not because the drinking age in the United States is twenty-one, not eighteen. The drinking age, as a matter of fact, used to be eighteen in some of the states back in the 1970s and prior to that. The new national drinking age limit was implemented in 1984. States had the option of choosing to follow this new law or keep their existing drinking age, but if the states did not abide by this new law, they would have ten percent of their highway funds annually condemned (â€Å"The 1984†). This was†¦show more content†¦Alcohol is said to be the fourth leading preventable cause of death, so there is obviously a number one leading cause. The number one leading cause of death in the United States is tobacco: â€Å"Ciga rette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths, resulting from secondhand smoke exposure† (â€Å"Smoking†). Tobacco is killing five times more Americans than alcohol is, but it is legal to buy cigarettes and smoke them at eighteen years old. Why is drinking alcohol seen as more harmful than smoking, when clearly the statistics are showing something different? Drinking alcohol and using tobacco can both be extremely unhealthy and destructive to the human body, but in different ways. Long-term overuse of alcohol can cause diseases such as liver cancer or heart disease. Another big concern with drinking is ingesting too much at one time and getting alcohol poisoning. Both examples are destructive to the human body, but drinking alcohol responsibly and moderately can provide some health benefits, if the drinking is kept to an average of only about one to two drinks per day (Mayo). Unlike drinking al cohol, smoking tobacco doesn’t have any health benefits. Smoking is undoubtedly detrimental to anyone’s health, increasing a person’s risk of getting heart disease and/or lung cancer. Lowering the drinking age would help a young drinker become more responsible andShow MoreRelatedEssay about Lower the Drinking Age To 18561 Words   |  3 Pages The drinking age in the United States is a contradiction. At the age of eighteen, one can drive a car, vote in an election, get married, serve in the military and buy tobacco products. In the United States you are legally an adult at eighteen. An eighteen-year-old, however, cannot purchase alcoholic beverages. The minimum drinking age should be lowered from twenty-one in the United States. Unbelievably, the United States citizens trust their sixteen-year-old children to drive three thousand poundRead MoreThe Drinking Age Of The United States Essay1599 Words   |  7 PagesBy the age of twenty-one, most people have at some point consumed an alcoholic beverage. For others, turning twenty-one might mean a whole new world of freedom. Young teens and adults drink for many reasons. Teens may drink because of peer pressure, others because of pure enjoyment, and many for of the thrill of breaking the law. Before the 1980’s, the legal drinking age was eighteen. This would only make sense because at this age a person is declared an adult. Many are in favor of keeping the drinkingRead MoreThe Legal Drinking Age Should Be Abolished1634 Words   |  7 Pagesin the United States all stem from one major root: the Prohibition Era of the 1920s. The Prohibition Era lasted almost thirteen years and banned the production, the distribution, and the sale of alcohol. In 1933, the Pr ohibition Act was repealed and states designated their own legal drinking age. In 1984 the National Minimum Drinking Age act was passed and raised the drinking age in the United States to twenty-one. This law caused uproar in states that had declared the minimum drinking age to be eighteenRead MoreThe Debate Of The Drinking Age959 Words   |  4 Pagesdrinking age has always been twenty-one in the United States, whenever it has been questioned on why twenty-one and not eighteen. The scientific answer has always been because the eighteen-year-old brain is not fully developed yet. See what I have a hard time understanding is why eighteen-year-olds are considered adults at the age of eighteen, but we can’t have a drink. At eighteen you are allowed to buy cigarettes, join the army, change your name. I just don’t understand why at eighteen you are consideredRead MoreFor Years, The Debate About Deciding A Minimum Legal Drinking1638 Words   |  7 PagesFor years, the debat e about deciding a minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) has plagued the United States. The arguments can include that intoxicated driving accidents will increase if the MLDA was lowered or that the current MLDA is not decreasing drinking among young adults at all. The torn arguments between ages eighteen and twenty-one have not proven one age to be the right answer to the problem of deciding a drinking age, but if the MLDA was lowered to age eighteen, it would be the most beneficialRead MoreLowering The Drinking Age1336 Words   |  6 PagesStudies show that keeping the drinking age at twenty-one improves lives. When the United States raised the age limit to twenty-one in 1985, a shortage of drinking occurred at a whopping 40% by 1991. As a result, fewer students drop out of high school, less motor accidents occur, and suicides rates dropped significantly. However, lowering the drinking age to eighteen will bring serious consequences on young adults by reversing these statistics. Lowe ring the drinking age will cause significant health problemsRead MoreThe Issue Of Juvenile Crime Essay810 Words   |  4 Pagesjurisdiction age from age seventeen to eighteen is a great idea. I also believe that sexting is a crime for some. Juvenile crime is a huge issue in the United States, but how we punish those young adults is also very important. On September 18th, 2013 Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts, signed legislation that raises the age of juvenile jurisdiction from the age of seventeen to eighteen. There are many great reasons for this change. One reason for this change is because the age eighteen is theRead MoreThe Issue Of Juvenile Crime826 Words   |  4 Pagesjurisdiction age from age seventeen to eighteen is a great idea. I also believe that sexting is a crime for some. Juvenile crime is a huge issue in the United States, but how we punish them is also very important. On September 18th, 2013 Deval Patrick the Governor of Massachusetts signed a legislation that raises the age of juvenile jurisdiction from the age seventeen to eighteen. There are many great reasons for this change. One reason for this change is because the age eighteen is the mark ofRead MoreChanging the Minimun Legal Drinking Age in the United States1745 Words   |  7 PagesMinimum Legal Drinking Age in the United States Over the past twenty years the minimum legal drinking age has been twenty-one in all US states, but that has not stopped citizens of the United Sates from attempting to lower the age. Following the end of prohibition in the United Sates during the Great Depression, all states agreed on a set of twenty-one to be the legal drinking age. For almost forty years there was no change in the drinking age until a decrease in the age for voting occurred. ThisRead MoreThe Legal Drinking Age Should Be Lowered955 Words   |  4 PagesIn the United States of America, the National Government requires the states to enforce a legal drinking age of twenty-one. Where as the world average drinking age is eighteen, and in some Countries it is even lower where it is possible to get a beer at sixteen years of age. Taking that into consideration, there is a great deal of controversy in the United States on what the legal age should be to purchase and consume an alcoholic beverage. The largest issue being that you are considered to be an

How The Americas Impacted Europe - 1546 Words

How the Finding of the Americas Impacted Europe The relationship between the European powers and Asia had always had a great impact on our world’s history. Whether it was Genghis Khan rising from the steppe to take control of Europe, or the impact of the trade on the Silk Road between china and the far west. Europeans relied on Asian sources for medicines, spices, and all kinds of luxury goods that were unavailable elsewhere. The desire to profit from this trade impelled men to take great risk to find an alternative route around the Ottoman Empire to eastern Asia. Christopher Columbus set out from Spain in 1492 with exactly this mission in mind. His goal was to locate a safe trade passage to the Indies in India and also locating a way to†¦show more content†¦In other words, the discovery of the Americas brought the concepts of Globalization and Imperialism to life In Europe. As over the next 200 years after Columbus, the European powers raced to settle and colonize in the new world and ultimately remove anyone or anything in the way of that. Upon the Discovery of the Americas, the European powers raced to the Americas to utilize the land for its resources and ultimately became reliant on the Americas to answer the needs of the European society and economy. The Americas provided the Europeans with a whole new selection of resources to help power the European economy. These resources were important because the Americas gave the European powers a monopoly on these new resources because no one else in the world had them. This is why the Europeans were so aggressive in imperializing the new world, these resources were just too valuable to let loose. Starting in the late 1500’s the demand for sugar in Europe was incredibly large. In response to that, the Portuguese began taking advantage of their colony in Brazil. Brazil had the perfectly suited climate for cultivating and mass-producing sugar(Levak). Portugal began mass-producing and trading sugar back to Europe, holding a monopoly on the product, which greatly benefi ted the Portuguese economy. By 1575 Portugal’s Brazil

Utilitarianism and Happiness Free Essays

The philosophical theory that I choose to do is called â€Å"utilitarianism†. In a brief sentence, utilitarianism means the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Basically what this means is, doing the right thing is based on how many people your action benefits rather than how much it benefits you. We will write a custom essay sample on Utilitarianism and Happiness or any similar topic only for you Order Now According to the Oxford American Dictionary utility means â€Å"the state of being useful, profitable, or beneficial†(oxford dictionary,2013). The whole theory is all about how much it benefits and how useful or profitable an action or an idea is. For example: if killing one criminal brings forth happiness to a hundred people, then killing that one criminal is not a bad idea. Simply because it makes one hundred people happy. According to utilitarian’s the ultimate goal or the most important part of life is to seek happiness. But the happiness that you seek must not only benefit you, but it has to benefit a large sum of the people. This is called the â€Å"greatest happiness principle†(Wikipedia, Feb, 11,2013). Now this is the main idea of utilitarianism, but it does branch out in the different direction due to many philosophers that thought of this theory. Utilitarianism is not discovered by just one person, it’s made up of many ideas from many different philosophers. Although many people believe that utilitarianism started with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, there were philosophers that came up with similar ideas as utilitarianism. Before we talk about the authors of this theory, we must really understand the history of utilitarianism and how it came to be. Way back in history when humans invented writing in the Sumerian Civilization of the Old Babylon, the ancient Mesopotamian people wrote a poem/story called the â€Å"Epic of Gilgamesh† about a friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. In this story there’s a character by the name of Siduri that tells Gilgamesh â€Å"Fill your belly. Day and night make merry. Let days be full of joy. Dance and make music day and night†(Wikipedia, Feb, 3, 2013). This quote dates back to the very first advocacy of hedonistic philosophy in the human civilization. It is believed to be written during 2500 – 2000 B. C. A little forward in time and we come to meet Aristippus of Cyrene (435 – 356 BC). Aristippus is a student of one of the greatest philosophers to ever oam the planet, the father of philosophy, Socrates. Though Aristippus didn’t follow in the footsteps of his teacher, he had his own ideas and own theories of philosophy, one of them being hedonism. Aristippus idea of hedonism is that all people have the right to do anything to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure. For example: if drinking and doing drugs bring you the greatest amount of pleasure and happiness, then there is nothing wrong in doing so. You may be asking yourself, why I am telling you about the history of hedonism. So let me explain, in the 18th – 19th century. The British philosopher’s by the name of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill came up with the theory of utilitarianism by taking hedonism of Aristippus and adding the â€Å"greatest happiness principle† (Kerby Anderson, 2012). The hedonistic theory of doing anything to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure turned into doing anything to achieve the â€Å"greatest good for the greatest number of people† which is now called utilitarianism, this philosophical theory is basically an innovation of hedonism. Though many philosophers had part in its discovery, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill brought utilitarianism to its true glory, if they didn’t explain their philosophy in the way they did. Perhaps I wouldn’t be writing this essay right now. So the ones to be credited for utilitarianism is Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. But its not to say that this theory doesn’t have its advantages and disadvantages. Like all things in life, there are benefits and there are hindrances. The Advantage of utilitarianism is simply the happiness that you gain from doing something, whether the happiness is for you or someone you care about. In the end, someone is happy. If you’re in confusion on a certain decision and don’t know what to do, you can simply apply the greatest happiness theory and make your decision based on that. That way, you don’t seem selfish only thinking about your happiness and people will respect that choice and someday repay your kindness by sacrificing their happiness for yours. By sacrificing your happiness for someone else already makes you good human being. Its fits to show that our actions have consequences. If someone cares only about his/her actions alone, he/she wouldn’t have many friends ue to the lack to affection and concerns that he/she shows towards others. Another important advantage of utilitarianism is when you’re faced with a challenging and difficult task; it gives you the methodology of choosing the right path, the one that will benefit the most people. Instead of questioning how beneficial it will be for you. You begin to value other peopleâ⠂¬â„¢s happiness over your own. Therefore giving you the best possible option. Though it is good to put other before you, utilitarianism has its disadvantages as well. This particular philosophical theory has many disadvantages, but the one that matters to me is. Utilitarian’s only care about happiness, whatever brings the greatest amount of people the greatest amount of happiness. Sure, happiness is good, but what about people who don’t get that happiness. For example: out of 50 people, 35 of them get happiness. What happens to the other 15 people? Are we to just ignore how they feel? They are humans too, they have feelings as well. We can’t abandon them just because the other 35 people are happy. Secondly, if we care about others more than we care about ourselves. How can we possibly be able to live with ourselves? We can’t always be looking out for other people. We have to take care of ourselves as well. In the end, it’s our life. We have to look out for ourselves and make the decisions based on how well our life is going to be. There’s a saying in the famous movie pirate of the Caribbean â€Å"Even a good decision if made for the wrong reasons can be a wrong decision†(Jonathan Pryce, 2003) So, I strongly believe that when it comes to making life changing decisions, we must always put ourselves before others. How to cite Utilitarianism and Happiness, Papers

Computers Not the greatest invention of the 20 th Essay Example For Students

Computers Not the greatest invention of the 20 th Essay centuryâ€Å"Computers: Not the Greatest Discovery of the Twentieth Century†Nothing epitomizes modern life better than the computer. For better or worse, computers have infiltrated every aspect of our society. Today, computers do much more than simply compute. Supermarket scanners calculate our grocery bill while keeping store inventory, computerized telephone switching centers play traffic cop to millions of calls and keep lines of communication untangled, and automatic teller machines let us conduct banking transactions from virtually anywhere in the world. But where did all this technology come from and where is it heading? To fully understand and appreciate the impact computers have on our lives and promises they hold for the future, it is important to understand their evolution. The abacus, which emerged about 5,000 years ago in Asia Minor and is still in use today, may be considered the first computer.This device allows users to make computations using a system of slidin g beads arranged on a rack. Early merchants used the abacus to keep trading transactions. But as the use of paper and pencil spread, particularly in Europe, the abacus lost its importance. It took nearly 12 centuries, however, for the next significant advance in computing devices to emerge. In 1642, Blaise Pascal, the 18-year-old son of a French tax collector invented what he called a numerical wheel calculator to help his father with his duties. This brass rectangular box, also called a Pascaline, used eight movable dials to add sums up to eight figures long. Pascals device used a base of ten to accomplish this. For example, as one dial moved ten notches, or one complete revolution, it moved the next dial which represented the tens column one place. When the tens dial moved one revolution, the dial representing the hundreds place moved one notch and so on. The drawback to the Pascaline, of course, was its limitation to addition. In 1694, a German mathematician and philosopher, Go ttfried Wilhem von Leibniz, improved the Pascaline by creating a machine that could also multiply. Like its predecessor, Leibnizs mechanical multiplier worked by a system of gears and dials. Partly by studying Pascals original notes and drawings, Leibniz was able to refine his machine. The centerpiece of the machine was its stepped-drum gear design, which offered an elongated version of the simple flat gear. It wasnt until 1820, however, that mechanical calculators gained widespread use. Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar invented a machine that could perform the four basic arithmetic functions. Colmars mechanical calculator, the arithometer, presented a more practical approach to computing because it could add, subtract, multiply and divide. With its enhanced versatility, the arithometer was widely used up until the First World War. Although later inventors refined Colmars calculator, together with fellow inventors Pascal and Leibniz, he helped define the age of mechanical computation . The real beginnings of computers as we know them today, however, lay with an English mathematics professor, Charles Babbage. Frustrated at the many errors he found while examining calculations for the Royal Astronomical Society, Babbage declared, I wish to God these calculations had been performed by steam!With those words, the automation of computers had begun. By 1812, Babbage noticed a natural harmony between machines and mathematics: machines were best at performing tasks repeatedly without mistake; while mathematics, particularly the production of mathematic tables, often required the simple repetition of steps. The problem centered on applying the ability of machines to the needs of mathematics. Babbages first attempt at solving this problem was in 1822 when he proposed a machine to perform differential equations, called a Difference Engine. Powered by steam and large as a locomotive, the machine would have a stored program and could perform calculations and print the result s automatically. After working on the Difference Engine for 10 years, Babbage was suddenly inspired to begin work on the first general-purpose computer, which he called the Analytical Engine. Babbages assistant, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace and daughter of English poet Lord Byron, was instrumental in the machines design. One of the few people who understood the Engines design as well as Babbage, she helped revise plans, secure funding from the British government, and communicate the specifics of the Analytical Engine to the public. Also, Lady Lovelaces fine understanding of the machine allowed her to create the instruction routines to be fed into the computer, making her the first female computer programmer. In the 1980s, the U. S. Defense Department named a programming language in her honor. Babbages steam-powered Engine, although ultimately never constructed, may seem primitive by todays standards. However, it outlined the basic elements of a modern general purpose compu ter and was a breakthrough concept. Consisting of over 50,000 components, the basic design of the Analytical Engine included input devices in the form of perforated cards containing operating instructions and a store for memory of 1,000 numbers of up to 50 decimal digits long. It also contained a mill with a control unit that allowed processing instructions in any sequence, and output devices to produce printed results. Babbage borrowed the idea of punch cards to encode the machines instructions from the Jacquard loom. The loom, produced in 1820 and named after its inventor, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, used punched boards that controlled the patterns to be woven. In 1889, an American inventor, Herman Hollerith, also applied the Jacquard loom concept to computing. His first task was to find a faster way to compute the U.S. Census. The previous census in 1880 had taken nearly seven years to count and with an expanding population, the bureau feared it would take 10 years to count the latest census. Unlike Babbages idea of using perforated cards to instruct the machine, Holleriths method used cards to store data information which he fed into a machine that compiled the results mechanically. Each punch on a card represented one number, and combinations of two punches represented one letter. As many as 80 variables could be stored on a single card. Instead of ten years, census takers compiled their results in just six weeks with Holleriths machine. In addition to their speed, the punch cards served as a storage method for data and they helped reduce computational errors. Hollerith brought his punch card reader into the business world, founding Tabulating Machine Company in 1896, later to become International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924 after a series of mergers.Other companies such as Remington Rand and Burroughs also manufactured punch readers for business use. Both business and government used punch cards for data processing until the 1960s. In the ensuing years, s everal engineers made other significant advances. Vannevar Bush developed a calculator for solving differential equations in 1931. The machine could solve complex differential equations that had long left scientists and mathematicians baffled. The machine was cumbersome because hundreds of gears and shafts were required to represent numbers and their various relationships to each other. To eliminate this bulkiness, John V. Atanasoff, a professor at Iowa State College and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, envisioned an all-electronic computer that applied Boolean algebra to computer circuitry. This approach was based on the mid-19th century work of George Boole who clarified the binary system of algebra, which stated that any mathematical equations could be stated simply as either true or false.By extending this concept to electronic circuits in the form of on or off, Atanasoff and Berry had developed the first all-electronic computer by 1940. Their project, however, lost its fun ding and their work was overshadowed by similar developments by other scientists. Importance of Punctuality in the Military EssayAfter the integrated circuits, the only place to go was down in size, that is. Large-scale integration (LSI) could fit hundreds of components onto one chip. By the 1980s, very large scale integration (VLSI) squeezed hundreds of thousands of components onto a chip. Ultra-large scale integration (ULSI) increased that number into the millions. The ability to fit so much onto an area about half the size of a U.S. dime helped diminish the size and price of computers. It also increased their power, efficiency and reliability. The Intel 4004 chip, developed in 1971, took the integrated circuit one step further by locating all the components of a computer (central processing unit, memory, and input and output controls) on a minuscule chip. Whereas previously the integrated circuit had had to be manufactured to fit a special purpose, now one microprocessor could be manufactured and then programmed to meet any number of demands. Soon everyday h ousehold items such as microwave ovens, television sets and automobiles with electronic fuel injection incorporated microprocessors. Such condensed power allowed everyday people to harness a computers power. They were no longer developed exclusively for large business or government contracts. By the mid-1970s, computer manufacturers sought to bring computers to general consumers. These minicomputers came complete with user-friendly software packages that offered even non-technical users an array of applications, most popularly word processing and spreadsheet programs. Pioneers in this field were Commodore, Radio Shack and Apple Computers. In the early 1980s, arcade video games such as Pac Man and home video game systems such as the Atari 2600 ignited consumer interest for more sophisticated, programmable home computers. In 1981, IBM introduced its personal computer (PC) for use in the home, office and schools. The 1980s saw an expansion in computer use in all three arenas as clones of the IBM PC made the personal computer even more affordable. The number of personal computers in use more than doubled from 2 million in 1981 to 5.5 million in 1982. Ten years later, 65 million PCs were being used. Computers continued their trend toward a smaller size, working their way down from desktop to laptop computers (which could fit inside a briefcase) to palmtop (able to fit inside a breast pocket). In direct competition with IBMs PC was Apples Macintosh line, introduced in 1984. Notable for its user-friendly design, the Macintosh offered an operating system that allowed users to move screen icons instead of typing instructions. Users controlled the screen cursor using a mouse, a device that mimicked the movement of ones hand on the computer screen. As computers became more widespread in the workplace, new ways to harness their potential developed. As smaller computers became more powerful, they could be linked together, or networked, to share memory space, software, info rmation, and communicate with each other. As opposed to a mainframe computer, which was one powerful computer that shared time with many terminals for many applications, networked computers allowed individual computers to form electronic co-ops. Using either direct wiring, called a Local Area Network (LAN), or telephone lines, these networks could reach enormous proportions. A global web of computer circuitry, the Internet, for example, links computers worldwide into a single network of information. During the 1992 U.S. presidential election, vice-presidential candidate Al Gore promised to make the development of this so-called information superhighway an administrative priority. Though the possibilities envisioned by Gore and others for such a large network are often years (if not decades) away from realization, the most popular use today for computer networks such as the Internet is electronic mail, or E-mail, which allows users to type in a computer address and send messages thro ugh networked terminals across the office or across the world. Defining the fifth generation of computers is somewhat difficult because the field is in its infancy. The most famous example of a fifth generation computer is the fictional HAL9000 from Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL performed all of the functions currently envisioned for real-life fifth generation computers. With artificial intelligence, HAL could reason well enough to hold conversations with its human operators, use visual input, and learn from its own experiences. (Unfortunately, HAL was a little too human and had a psychotic breakdown, commandeering a spaceship and killing most humans on board.) Though the wayward HAL9000 may be far from the reach of real-life computer designers, many of its functions are not. Using recent engineering advances, computers may be able to accept spoken word instructions and imitate human reasoning. The ability to translate a foreign language is also a major goal of fifth generation computers. This feat seemed a simple objective at first, but appeared much more difficult when programmers realized that human understanding relies as much on context and meaning as it does on the simple translation of words. Many advances in the science of computer design and technology are coming together to enable the creation of fifth-generation computers. Two such engineering advances are parallel processing, which replaces von Neumanns single central processing unit design with a system harnessing the power of many CPUs to work as one. Another advance is superconductor technology, which allows the flow of electricity with little or no resistance, greatly improving the speed of information flow. Computers today have some attributes of fifth generation computers. For example, expert systems assist doctors in making diagnoses by applying the problem-solving steps a doctor might use in assessing a patients needs. It will take several more years of develop ment before expert systems are in widespread use. In making a list of the most important inventions or developments of the twentieth century, computers would probably be very high on that list. But it would be incorrect to include computers on this list. It is clear to see that the modern day computer is the culmination of centuries of development, without which computers may not have advanced to the stage that they are now or maybe not even have been developed at all. As computers continue to develop with a decrease in their size and an increase in their speed, these developments will undoubtedly overshadow the efforts of those earlier individuals who laid the groundwork of computer technology. But as history has taught us, it is those few individuals at the forefront of their technologies that have made it possible for man to advance to point that we are now. And it will only continue.