The Empire State Building, a monumental landmark in the history of engineering, but what makes it so special to us? Could it be that fact that this 102 floor goliath was the world’s tallest man-made structure for 23 years and tallest building for a record 41 years makes it stand out? Or is it more simply believe that it is well known because of the movies, cartoons, and books it is in? The reason to this question is not as simple as that, yet a more complex story of how this goliath was made in 13 months and under-budget in the 1930’s.
The Beginning
Its financial source, John J. Raskob, was a business man for DuPont and General Motors and is rather well known for his anti-Roosevelt organizations and the American Liberty League. He was chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a key supporter of Alfred E. Smith’s candidacy for President of the United States. However, when he became chairman of the DNC, he was politely asked to resign from GM or the DNC. Mr. Raskob, being very bull-headed, resigned from GM, sold his stock and set his dream to build the Empire State Building. On the night Mr. Smith lost the election, Mr. Raskob made him a promise that they would always do business together and so hired Mr. Smith as the president of the Empire State Co. The story behind the building is simple. Mr. Raskob wanted to best his arch-rival, Walter Chrysler, who had already begun construction on the 1046-foot Chrysler Building. The Chrysler Building, in turn, was in competition with the Bank of Manhattan Building to be the tallest building in the world. Not only did Mr. Raskob want his building to be the tallest, he also wanted it to open before the Chrysler Building. This would truly be a race to the top and a daunting task for the general contractors.
The Empire State Building was drawn up in less two weeks time by an architectural firm by the name of Shreve, Lamb and Harmon and was actually designed from the top down. The 1920’s were known as the Art Deco Period in design and therefore the architects wanted to create a building that would stand even among that era, and within two weeks they had created a 102 floor masterpiece. With its four facades facing the street and its imperious tower, it was sure to steal the show from any other building. The building was designed with an infrastructure much like a 3-D grid using steel columns and beams that were placed rather close together to support the building. Due to the small spacing in between the columns, no floor would have column free spaces.
The Construction
The spot for such a goliath was at the corner of Fifth Ave and West 34th Street, where the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, a place that was frequented by The Four Hundred, the social elite of New York during the early 19th century. Its general contractors were Starrett Brothers and Eken, who were known as the premier "skyline builders" of the 1920’s. During the interview process the firm told Mr. Smith that they had no equipment or supplies that would work on the Empire State Building. Each piece of equipment had to be custom made for the job in order to build it at the speed the owner wanted. Mr. Smith couldn’t agree more and signed them to the project.
Due to the speed that the building was going to be built, the firm had to start making plans immediately. They had to formulate a plan that would allow them to begin construction before the architectural plans were complete. Thus, the building became the first commercial construction project to employ the technique of fast-track construction, a common technique today, yet one that was just fostering during that time period. This meant that the structural engineer had to make a schematic design based off the architects’ sketches before they were actually complete. In doing so the builders would have a rough account at what the building was suppose to look like and could begin construction right away.
The excavation for the new building began in January 1930, before the demolition of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was complete. The firm had perfected the art of simultaneous demolition and foundation-laying the year before during another build to erect the world’s tallest building. With two shifts of 300 men working day and night, the foundation was complete in just under two months. The next part of the construction, erecting the steel skeleton, started in March of 1930. This would prove to be a little more difficult because of space requirements for the steel. Due to New York’s overcrowded population and narrow streets, blocking off any street for any time period was impossible.
The steel workers would have to work with the steel as it came of the trucks fresh from the factories.
The assembly line process was harder to accomplish than to implement. All of the steel had to be fabricated and put together in factories in Pittsburg and sent to New York via train, truck and barge. As soon as a truck pulled up to the site, the steel and to be raised off the truck via derricks and riveted into place almost immediately throughout the entire day. Its been said that each piece of steel came to the jobsite marked with its number and the derrick that was to carry it, making it so that a piece could be manufactured and then riveted into place in less than 80 hours. This meant that no piece of steel ever hit the ground. That’s fast, so fast that the crew was able to set 4 and a half floors of steel a week, that’s a little over one floor a day.
Keep in mind that the derricks being used in this building could only climb 30 floors, so several large derricks had to be used to continue the climb the top. With that in mind, that means they had to have a minimum of 4 large derricks in this already overcrowded jobsite. Crews worked from sun up till sun down and sometimes even Sundays and Holidays to keep this project on track. Eating areas were set up on each floor so that crews didn’t have to waste time to climb to the bottom and back up again during their lunch break.
After the steel workers made it to a certain height, the brick workers were brought in to begin their job. Mr. Smith faced the same problem with the bricks as he did with the steel, no place to put the bricks. In those days the trucks would dump the bricks on the road and then the bricks would wheel-barreled to where they were needed. This couldn’t be done because of the same reason as the steel, no space and blocking off streets was not an option. They could dump the bricks in he basement and it would serve as he same concept but it was still inefficient and to slow for the project.
Thus, they placed a gigantic hopper in the basement where all the bricks could be dumped and whenever bricks were needed, the hopper would drop a load of bricks into a cart beneath it and the cart would be wheeled to where it needed to go. In order to get the bricks from floor to floor, they used a pulley system that would raise the cart up and down to the desired floor it needed to go. Using this system the brick workers were able to continue the pace that the steel workers had set and in no time flat they were able to allow electricians and plumbers in to start their work.
It was recorded that the firm stated that more than sixty different types of trade people would be required, while they themselves worked a crew of 3,500 men. It is also rumored that at certain times during the building process you could see well over 3,000 men in the building working. Because of the working capacity of the project, a well organized system had to be implemented so that every crew could get its job done effectively and quickly. Thus every crew, whether they were drywall, plumbing or electrical, had their own floors to work on and pushed their way towards the top. It is also rumored that in order to get equipment in the elevators to a certain floor, you had to reserve it in a 15 minute slot two days ahead of time.
While all this work was going on inside, the outside was still being perfected as well. In addition to the steel frame, construction materials included 62000 cubic yards of concrete; ten million bricks; 10,000 square feet of Rose Famosa and Estrallante marble; and 6,500 windows, whose sprandels were sandblasted to blend their color into the tone of the windows. That’s just the outside of the building; the inside houses 200,000 cubic feet of Indiana limestone and granite; 300,000 square feet of Hauteville and Rocheron marble for the elevator lobbies and the corridors of the office floors; and 73 elevators.
During construction, the Empire State Building became a model of efficiency. Do to the firms innovative ideas they were able to save time, manpower and even money. The project was completed 5 months ahead of schedule and 17.3 million dollars under budget on April 5, 1931. President Herbert Hoover himself officially opened the building on May 1 by turning on the buildings lights with a button in Washington D.C. In the middle of its construction, the Empire State Building became the world’s tallest building as workers completed the 80 floor, surpassing its rival, the Chrysler Building. The building as become known as an eloquent beauty that is matched by its effective construction timing. Even though it lost its title of the world’s tallest building to The World Trade Center North Building in1972, many engineers still consider it one of the Seven Wonders of the World
Interesting Facts
The top of the Empire State Building was originally designed as a dirigible mooring with a movable gangplank. However, this idea was scrapped during tests that resulted in the process being unsafe and the wind updrafts from the building to strong. After that a 1,472 foot spire was placed on the top of the building. The spire acts as an antenna for many radio stations and also as a grounding rod for the buildings around it. The Empire State Building gets struck by lighting over 100 times a year.
The Empire State Building is also used in over a fifty movies such as King Kong and Independence Day. It also appears in countless artistic expressions and numerous album covers that span over many genres.
Its structural integrity was tested when a B-25 bomber accidentally crashed into its 79th floor, killing 14 people and sending an engine down a elevator shaft. This crash also caused elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver to become a Guinness Book of World Records holder for surviving the longest elevator plunge (75 stories).
The only person to every refuse an invitational to the Empire State Building was Walter P. Chrysler.
Over 117 million people have visited it since it opened. French Prime Minister, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Pope Pius XII, Fidel Castro and Queen Elizabeth II just to name a few.
Roughly 32 people have jumped to their deaths from the observation on the top during the decks operation.
The Empire State Building houses over 1,000 businesses with its own zip code.
It was declared Landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on May 18, 1981.
The cornerstone was laid on September 17, 1930.
The lobby is a five-story Art Deco masterpiece crafted in rich granite and marble, and highlighted by brushed stainless steel.
Work Cited
1. www.wikipedia.org
a. Empire State Building
b. Chrysler Building
c. John J. Raskob
2. www.guinnessworldrecords.com
3. www.esbnyc.com
4. http://www.generalcontractor.com/resources/articles/empire-state-building.asp
5. http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=empirestatebuilding-newyorkcity-ny-usa
6. http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/empirestate/index.html
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Ho0k’d oN Fonixs
A hundred years ago you could get a job simply based on race, social status and even gender. In today’s world, however, with a growing international trade of goods, technology and culture, a person’s educational status is becoming more prominent, in particular their literacy level. For instance, Top business will not hire particular employees without a degree. Countries are measured by their people’s literacy level. With that being said it is hard to believe that America, one of the top developed nations, ranks 26 in a 2006 literacy poll. American literacy levels must be improved through the increase of reading levels in newspapers, magazines, etc; mandatory literacy levels in the workplace; and literacy reform in the educational institutions.
The drop in American literacy levels didn’t just happen recently, it’s been on a slow and steady decline since the 1800. People have been reading less and less because: “The truth is, many newspapers have become too difficult for most to read” (Flesch and Gunning). This decline continued until around the 1940’s, when a “miracle” happened. Rudolph Flesch and Robert Gunning worked to make the readability of newspapers more manageable to the common people. They lowered many reading levels by 4 or 5 levels, causing a boost in reading material sales, which, at that point was a “miracle”. Now the downfall to this “miracle” is that since that time, those levels have not gone up with the educational implements throughout the years. Meaning that a college graduate who prides him/her self on understanding the newspaper is really only reading at a 9th grade level. That is the normal reading level for most of the nations reading material. Two prime examples are the TV Guide and Readers Digest, two magazines with large circulations, are written at the 9th grade level. Even the Sun, the newspaper with the largest circulation in the country, is written at the 9th grade level, while USA Today is written at the 10th grade level. It does not stop there; most of our popular authors are popular not only because of their great stories, but because of their easy readability to all ages. Authors like Tom Clancy, Stephen King and John Grisham all write at a 7th grade reading level (The Blockbusters). These implementations were done to make them more readable and digestible to people without college degrees but has in fact caused damage by making it acceptable to read at that level.
One simple way to help promote the increase of America’s literacy levels would be to slowly increase the reading levels of our newspapers, magazines and tabloids. This will temporarily cause people to read less and probably cause a decline in the productivity department, but in order to improve America’s literacy levels, the people, as a nation must push for improvement? The process should take place over a certain set of years, say 5 years with a yearly level increase. Get people to slowly challenge themselves. A great example of this slow educational process would be China. The UNESCO Regional Conference in Support of Global Literacy brought to the table a nine-year compulsory education plan that took china roughly 50 years to perfect. In this time China went from an 80 percent illiteracy rate in 1949 to 4 percent in 2005 (Peoples Daily Online). The process in America would only take 5 years to accomplish its goal of setting its literacy levels back to its 1990’s level of 12th grade. The only cost to this improvement would be to the writers education because in order for America’s literacy levels to be raised, w must first raise our writing level. No other costs would be necessary.
Another problem to the U.S. literacy level is worker literacy levels. The 2001 American Management Association Survey on Workplace Testing found the following:
- 34.1% of applicants tested by respondent firms lacked the basic skills necessary to perform the jobs they sought in 2000.
- 3.5% hired skill deficient applicants and assigned them to obligatory remedial training.
- 3% hired them and offered voluntary remedial training (National Institute for Literacy)
These facts, to me, are outrageous. Roughly 34 percent of job applicants in the nation don’t have the necessary qualifications to flip a burger. Although this may be an exaggerating, doesn’t it seem odd? When those 6.5% are hired, they are only offered remedial training! This should be fixed to a mandatory training program that would bring them on par with the national level. Nothing extremely out there, but a literacy level of a 12th grader is not too much to ask? Granted the workforce will have to take a financial hit of some sort, but it wouldn’t be enough to cause major panic, and as a matter of fact would actually return dividends in the long run. The National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce Testing found the following:
- A 10% increase in the average education of all workers is associated with an increase of 8.6% in productivity.
- A 10% increase in hours worked results in an increase of 5.6% in productivity.
- And a 10% increase in capital stock results in an increase of 3.4% productivity.
Now those are some pretty promising numbers when the nation’s workforce numbers in the millions.
Now comes the most radical part of the solution to this problem; literacy reform in the educational institution. We all know that our educational system is not the best, with reforms and acts happening left and right, and let’s not forget the attendance rates between high schools and colleges. These problems could easily be solved by focusing on literacy at a younger age, which by the way, we have already started to do. Our percentages of K-5 literacy learning rates are relatively high; however they begin to level out as the child hits 8 and 9 grade. Strange coincidence with our nation’s newspapers readability? The 2000 Program for International Student Assessment stated that on a combined reading literacy scale, U.S. 15 year olds performed “about as well on average as most” of the 27 participating OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Further investigation actually shows that students in Finland, Canada (our own neighbor), and New Zealand outperformed U.S. students while the U.S. students really only perform at the same levels as students in 19 other OECD countries.
This doesn’t fit a country that is putting forth a helping hand to many developing nations, especially when they look to us for educational reform help. If we were to focus on continuing the improvement of our educational literacy until 12th grade, the two above stated solutions would cost less and be easier to implement. If students were taught to read and write and at certain level, they will demand material that is written at the same level. Thus it all comes back to the educational reform. I propose that the NCLB (No Child Left Behind Act) be abolished and the money be put into something that focuses on helping kids improve on their literacy levels throughout the years. Any teacher, faculty member and educated student can tell you that the NCLB act really hinders kids from learning a valuable lesson and sometimes even causes the extremity of some school closures for failure to meet the acts guidelines. Now the brunt of the financial cost, if not all would be paid for by the money that funded the NCLB act. Granted the act needs to be abolished before we implement this new focus.
These are just three implementations that would help improve the nation’s literacy levels. We can continue and state how a literacy improvement in our prisons helps lower the rates of people being put back in prisons, but the first three are not only easier steps to take, but also more economically helpful. Without a change we will only continue to lower the reading levels of our national material until sooner or later we will lose our “Top Nation” priority and become the nation that’s asking for help. And since we, as Americans can’t let that happen, lets strive for a challenge and improve our nations literacy levels before the damage is to severe to fix.
Works Cited
1. Plain Language At Work Newsletter. Pub. by Impact Information Plain-Language
Services. 2, May 2005. – www.impact-information.com
2. Facts Sheet Review. 2003 The National Assessment of Adult Literacy(NAAL), Pub. by National Institute for Literacy – www.nifl.gov/nifl/facts
3. www.mrdowling.com/800literacy.html
4. “China’s literacy work sets example for developing countries, says UNESCO.” August 01, 2007. Xinhua. People’s Daily Online. 5 Nov.2007
english.people.com/90001/90777/6228607.html
The drop in American literacy levels didn’t just happen recently, it’s been on a slow and steady decline since the 1800. People have been reading less and less because: “The truth is, many newspapers have become too difficult for most to read” (Flesch and Gunning). This decline continued until around the 1940’s, when a “miracle” happened. Rudolph Flesch and Robert Gunning worked to make the readability of newspapers more manageable to the common people. They lowered many reading levels by 4 or 5 levels, causing a boost in reading material sales, which, at that point was a “miracle”. Now the downfall to this “miracle” is that since that time, those levels have not gone up with the educational implements throughout the years. Meaning that a college graduate who prides him/her self on understanding the newspaper is really only reading at a 9th grade level. That is the normal reading level for most of the nations reading material. Two prime examples are the TV Guide and Readers Digest, two magazines with large circulations, are written at the 9th grade level. Even the Sun, the newspaper with the largest circulation in the country, is written at the 9th grade level, while USA Today is written at the 10th grade level. It does not stop there; most of our popular authors are popular not only because of their great stories, but because of their easy readability to all ages. Authors like Tom Clancy, Stephen King and John Grisham all write at a 7th grade reading level (The Blockbusters). These implementations were done to make them more readable and digestible to people without college degrees but has in fact caused damage by making it acceptable to read at that level.
One simple way to help promote the increase of America’s literacy levels would be to slowly increase the reading levels of our newspapers, magazines and tabloids. This will temporarily cause people to read less and probably cause a decline in the productivity department, but in order to improve America’s literacy levels, the people, as a nation must push for improvement? The process should take place over a certain set of years, say 5 years with a yearly level increase. Get people to slowly challenge themselves. A great example of this slow educational process would be China. The UNESCO Regional Conference in Support of Global Literacy brought to the table a nine-year compulsory education plan that took china roughly 50 years to perfect. In this time China went from an 80 percent illiteracy rate in 1949 to 4 percent in 2005 (Peoples Daily Online). The process in America would only take 5 years to accomplish its goal of setting its literacy levels back to its 1990’s level of 12th grade. The only cost to this improvement would be to the writers education because in order for America’s literacy levels to be raised, w must first raise our writing level. No other costs would be necessary.
Another problem to the U.S. literacy level is worker literacy levels. The 2001 American Management Association Survey on Workplace Testing found the following:
- 34.1% of applicants tested by respondent firms lacked the basic skills necessary to perform the jobs they sought in 2000.
- 3.5% hired skill deficient applicants and assigned them to obligatory remedial training.
- 3% hired them and offered voluntary remedial training (National Institute for Literacy)
These facts, to me, are outrageous. Roughly 34 percent of job applicants in the nation don’t have the necessary qualifications to flip a burger. Although this may be an exaggerating, doesn’t it seem odd? When those 6.5% are hired, they are only offered remedial training! This should be fixed to a mandatory training program that would bring them on par with the national level. Nothing extremely out there, but a literacy level of a 12th grader is not too much to ask? Granted the workforce will have to take a financial hit of some sort, but it wouldn’t be enough to cause major panic, and as a matter of fact would actually return dividends in the long run. The National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce Testing found the following:
- A 10% increase in the average education of all workers is associated with an increase of 8.6% in productivity.
- A 10% increase in hours worked results in an increase of 5.6% in productivity.
- And a 10% increase in capital stock results in an increase of 3.4% productivity.
Now those are some pretty promising numbers when the nation’s workforce numbers in the millions.
Now comes the most radical part of the solution to this problem; literacy reform in the educational institution. We all know that our educational system is not the best, with reforms and acts happening left and right, and let’s not forget the attendance rates between high schools and colleges. These problems could easily be solved by focusing on literacy at a younger age, which by the way, we have already started to do. Our percentages of K-5 literacy learning rates are relatively high; however they begin to level out as the child hits 8 and 9 grade. Strange coincidence with our nation’s newspapers readability? The 2000 Program for International Student Assessment stated that on a combined reading literacy scale, U.S. 15 year olds performed “about as well on average as most” of the 27 participating OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Further investigation actually shows that students in Finland, Canada (our own neighbor), and New Zealand outperformed U.S. students while the U.S. students really only perform at the same levels as students in 19 other OECD countries.
This doesn’t fit a country that is putting forth a helping hand to many developing nations, especially when they look to us for educational reform help. If we were to focus on continuing the improvement of our educational literacy until 12th grade, the two above stated solutions would cost less and be easier to implement. If students were taught to read and write and at certain level, they will demand material that is written at the same level. Thus it all comes back to the educational reform. I propose that the NCLB (No Child Left Behind Act) be abolished and the money be put into something that focuses on helping kids improve on their literacy levels throughout the years. Any teacher, faculty member and educated student can tell you that the NCLB act really hinders kids from learning a valuable lesson and sometimes even causes the extremity of some school closures for failure to meet the acts guidelines. Now the brunt of the financial cost, if not all would be paid for by the money that funded the NCLB act. Granted the act needs to be abolished before we implement this new focus.
These are just three implementations that would help improve the nation’s literacy levels. We can continue and state how a literacy improvement in our prisons helps lower the rates of people being put back in prisons, but the first three are not only easier steps to take, but also more economically helpful. Without a change we will only continue to lower the reading levels of our national material until sooner or later we will lose our “Top Nation” priority and become the nation that’s asking for help. And since we, as Americans can’t let that happen, lets strive for a challenge and improve our nations literacy levels before the damage is to severe to fix.
Works Cited
1. Plain Language At Work Newsletter. Pub. by Impact Information Plain-Language
Services. 2, May 2005. – www.impact-information.com
2. Facts Sheet Review. 2003 The National Assessment of Adult Literacy(NAAL), Pub. by National Institute for Literacy – www.nifl.gov/nifl/facts
3. www.mrdowling.com/800literacy.html
4. “China’s literacy work sets example for developing countries, says UNESCO.” August 01, 2007. Xinhua. People’s Daily Online. 5 Nov.2007
english.people.com/90001/90777/6228607.html
The Death Penalty: Ethically Wrong,
The death penalty is a never ending debate in the political chamber of our country. Is it ethically or morally right to kill another human being? Who decides who lives or dies? What crime calls for the death penalty, if there even is one? All these questions are asked in the Supreme Court. Is it righteous to kill a man who has committed multiple murders? What if he is innocent and it is just a cover-up? All of these questions are valid to ask when taking a persons life, but what if we could prove that this man raped and killed an innocent girl? What if we could prove down to the DNA print that this man committed this crime? Should we be safe and put him in prison for life, all the while paying for him to stay in jail through our taxes? Now the answer to all these questions becomes a little clearer when we are in this scenario. What if the case was roughly the same for 50 to 100 men? Should we do the same and continue to pay for them to continue living when they have committed these atrocities? The death penalty is ethically correct because it will give a punishment that is proportionate to the crime and will lead to reduced financial expenditures of lifelong sentenced inmates.
People argue that taking life is immoral and unjustified. That certain people who have committed horrible crimes can be saved and readmitted into society. This is undoubtedly a choice, for some. As if to slam the door on the death penalty, people say that the justice system is flawed and that innocent people die, therefore the death penalty should be abolished. This is also true; there are a couple thousand people who are wrongly accused in prison today. However, the death penalty isn’t just handed out to every criminal that comes around. The death penalty is a huge punishment that rarely gets used because lobbyists have forced fear into many judges that they could kill an innocent man. This, in turn, leads to many guilty serial killers, murderers, rapist and others of the like to get only life in prison, where it is has been proven they continue their savagery. Some simple keyboard clicks will bring you to a website called “PRISON MURDER”, which will tell you all about the atrocities that continue to take place in today’s prison systems.
The benefits of the death penalty, however selfish they sound, start financially. Fact: there are currently roughly 2.2 million people in prison today in the U.S. (Bureau of Justice). That’s only the United States, which is the leading country when it comes to inmates in prison. Each state inmate costs the American public $22,650 thousand dollars in a fiscal year, lets include that each inmate as a lifespan of at least 20 years once in prison (Bureau of Justice). That’s roughly $62.50 a day, which is more than a lot of Americans make in a day! Just to make the point a little more obvious; state prison costs per year, per resident, are estimated at $104 dollars a year. Not a lot right. Well, that’s one person in the United States paying the government $7,800 in a 75 year lifespan. Now if that same prisoner sat on death row for 9 years, which is the estimated time for inmates on death row, they would have only cost the American public $203,850 instead of roughly $450,000 for the full 20 years.
Spending this money on criminals seems repugnant and wasteful. The shock fact is, however, that these numbers continue to rise while our educational statistics are rather lacking (Bureau of Justice). Something is terribly wrong with this picture. It seems that we as Americans would rather spend our tax dollars on protecting criminals instead of education our youth.
Since we know that this is far from the truth, why then, are these statistics so daunting? In a sense, the death penalty would remedy that problem by cutting down inmate population, thus freeing up some expenditures to be spent to hire more teachers, strengthen our school system and raising our graduating class percentage. With the death penalty we could reduce the amount of guards and prisons needed to house and watch these criminals, thus lowering the death rate of guards and construction workers. This is just one example of what the death penalty can do.
People lobby at capital hill that the death penalty is ethically wrong because it constitutes the taking of a life, which by most religious standards is wrong. But what about the crime that was already committed. The Old Testament states “…….an eye for an eye…..”, so how is it that the religious community can fight against the death penalty when it was the religious institution that said it was ok so many years ago. We don’t hear about how the Romans debated over with or not it was ethically right to kill a man, no, the followed the Old Testament. And don’t think that just because someone writes a New Testament that all those years of history with the Old Testament can be erased.
Lobbyists also petition for the abolishment of the death penalty using logic, stating that many of the inmates can be rehabilitated into society. Now how many times in history has logic been wrong, or gone astray. Take the serial killers that have murdered countless amounts of innocent people and feel no remorse or sorrow for what they have done. The ones that continue to kill in prison, killing other inmates, guards, or even civilians that visit their families in prison just because they can. People don’t realize that by lobbying for one prisoner, they lobby for all prisoners, including those serial killers. For example, people lobbied to protect Stanley “Tookie” Williams, saying that he had been rehabilitated after 20 years on death row because he wrote great children’s books against gangs and violence. He founded the Crips and people are protecting him?! Granted that the founding of the Crips was to protect neighbor hoods from gang violence but in the process look what it turned into. He is convicted of killing many people and as an accomplice to many others. This doesn’t make since, to take life is immoral, but to protect one who has taken life and continues to do so isn’t? This man has admitted to his crimes and does not regret what he did. He may have come to terms with what he did but that does not excuse him from the crimes he committed against humanity. Like the Old Testament says “An eye for an eye”.
A lasting counter argument that people honestly hold true is that prison is hell for most criminals anyway. Those people are looking at the wrong group of inmates when we talk about the death penalty. We aren’t talking about petty theft and criminals who are serving time for a crime we aren’t sure they committed. We are talking about those serial rapists and murders that have no remorse or sorrow for the destruction they cause. The ones who end up killing inmates and guards while in prison. People continue to push their argument by stating that the risk of killing an innocent man is too great when measured up to the bigger picture. The usual comment that follows this is simple; give that reason to the son or daughter of a guard of a maximum security prison that won’t be coming home today.
Work Cited
1. Innocent on Death Row. By: Erwin, Mike. Progressive, Nov 97, Vol. 61, Issue 11, pg.16, 1p, 3bw
2. Life in Prison Costlier than Death Penalty. By: NA. USA Today, 11/01/2002
3. Questioning Capital Punishment by: Hammond, Sarah. Brown State Legislatures, Sep. 2005, Vol. 31, Issue 8, Pg. 32-33, 2p. 3bw
4. www.geocities.com/prisonmurder/
5. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm
6. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report: State Prison Expenditures,2001 by: James J. Stephen, June 2004
7. The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. By: Zimring, Franklin E. New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.
8. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/
People argue that taking life is immoral and unjustified. That certain people who have committed horrible crimes can be saved and readmitted into society. This is undoubtedly a choice, for some. As if to slam the door on the death penalty, people say that the justice system is flawed and that innocent people die, therefore the death penalty should be abolished. This is also true; there are a couple thousand people who are wrongly accused in prison today. However, the death penalty isn’t just handed out to every criminal that comes around. The death penalty is a huge punishment that rarely gets used because lobbyists have forced fear into many judges that they could kill an innocent man. This, in turn, leads to many guilty serial killers, murderers, rapist and others of the like to get only life in prison, where it is has been proven they continue their savagery. Some simple keyboard clicks will bring you to a website called “PRISON MURDER”, which will tell you all about the atrocities that continue to take place in today’s prison systems.
The benefits of the death penalty, however selfish they sound, start financially. Fact: there are currently roughly 2.2 million people in prison today in the U.S. (Bureau of Justice). That’s only the United States, which is the leading country when it comes to inmates in prison. Each state inmate costs the American public $22,650 thousand dollars in a fiscal year, lets include that each inmate as a lifespan of at least 20 years once in prison (Bureau of Justice). That’s roughly $62.50 a day, which is more than a lot of Americans make in a day! Just to make the point a little more obvious; state prison costs per year, per resident, are estimated at $104 dollars a year. Not a lot right. Well, that’s one person in the United States paying the government $7,800 in a 75 year lifespan. Now if that same prisoner sat on death row for 9 years, which is the estimated time for inmates on death row, they would have only cost the American public $203,850 instead of roughly $450,000 for the full 20 years.
Spending this money on criminals seems repugnant and wasteful. The shock fact is, however, that these numbers continue to rise while our educational statistics are rather lacking (Bureau of Justice). Something is terribly wrong with this picture. It seems that we as Americans would rather spend our tax dollars on protecting criminals instead of education our youth.
Since we know that this is far from the truth, why then, are these statistics so daunting? In a sense, the death penalty would remedy that problem by cutting down inmate population, thus freeing up some expenditures to be spent to hire more teachers, strengthen our school system and raising our graduating class percentage. With the death penalty we could reduce the amount of guards and prisons needed to house and watch these criminals, thus lowering the death rate of guards and construction workers. This is just one example of what the death penalty can do.
People lobby at capital hill that the death penalty is ethically wrong because it constitutes the taking of a life, which by most religious standards is wrong. But what about the crime that was already committed. The Old Testament states “…….an eye for an eye…..”, so how is it that the religious community can fight against the death penalty when it was the religious institution that said it was ok so many years ago. We don’t hear about how the Romans debated over with or not it was ethically right to kill a man, no, the followed the Old Testament. And don’t think that just because someone writes a New Testament that all those years of history with the Old Testament can be erased.
Lobbyists also petition for the abolishment of the death penalty using logic, stating that many of the inmates can be rehabilitated into society. Now how many times in history has logic been wrong, or gone astray. Take the serial killers that have murdered countless amounts of innocent people and feel no remorse or sorrow for what they have done. The ones that continue to kill in prison, killing other inmates, guards, or even civilians that visit their families in prison just because they can. People don’t realize that by lobbying for one prisoner, they lobby for all prisoners, including those serial killers. For example, people lobbied to protect Stanley “Tookie” Williams, saying that he had been rehabilitated after 20 years on death row because he wrote great children’s books against gangs and violence. He founded the Crips and people are protecting him?! Granted that the founding of the Crips was to protect neighbor hoods from gang violence but in the process look what it turned into. He is convicted of killing many people and as an accomplice to many others. This doesn’t make since, to take life is immoral, but to protect one who has taken life and continues to do so isn’t? This man has admitted to his crimes and does not regret what he did. He may have come to terms with what he did but that does not excuse him from the crimes he committed against humanity. Like the Old Testament says “An eye for an eye”.
A lasting counter argument that people honestly hold true is that prison is hell for most criminals anyway. Those people are looking at the wrong group of inmates when we talk about the death penalty. We aren’t talking about petty theft and criminals who are serving time for a crime we aren’t sure they committed. We are talking about those serial rapists and murders that have no remorse or sorrow for the destruction they cause. The ones who end up killing inmates and guards while in prison. People continue to push their argument by stating that the risk of killing an innocent man is too great when measured up to the bigger picture. The usual comment that follows this is simple; give that reason to the son or daughter of a guard of a maximum security prison that won’t be coming home today.
Work Cited
1. Innocent on Death Row. By: Erwin, Mike. Progressive, Nov 97, Vol. 61, Issue 11, pg.16, 1p, 3bw
2. Life in Prison Costlier than Death Penalty. By: NA. USA Today, 11/01/2002
3. Questioning Capital Punishment by: Hammond, Sarah. Brown State Legislatures, Sep. 2005, Vol. 31, Issue 8, Pg. 32-33, 2p. 3bw
4. www.geocities.com/prisonmurder/
5. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm
6. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report: State Prison Expenditures,2001 by: James J. Stephen, June 2004
7. The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. By: Zimring, Franklin E. New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.
8. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/
War Pictures: Honorable or Unbearable?
Should the horrific pictures of terrorism be broadcasted on the news and the front page of the paper on a daily basis or should the news industry show some ethics and courtesy to the dead? This is the main question raised between Sydney H. Schanberg’s and Mark Bowden’s papers. Schanberg's and Bowden's use of rhetorical strategies help bring across both prominent yet drastically different views on news censorship and its affect on the public eye. Schanbergs use of diction, pathos, logos, and author credibility help to bring out the emotion in his paper, while Bowdens use of the same rhetorical strategies help form a bridge between him and the audience.
Schanberg’s use of diction in his paper brings out emotion in his readers. Take for example the first line of his paper where he calls “history a slaughterhouse” (684). He immediately draws in his audience by using the word “slaughterhouse”(684) because it pulls on the reader’s imagination to view history as a blood stained house of death. Right from beginning it is easy to see that he uses word choice in order to paint that image of war as an unjust slaughter and that if we as a nation are going to allow it to happen then we should stomach the results that come from it. By using words like “slaughter”(684), “grisly crime”(685), “gruesome pictures”(685), and “gruesome horror”(685) throughout his paper he keeps this image fresh in the minds of his readers. He also pulls on the readers already boiling anger towards the government by stating that the government “blocks”(684), “prevents”(684) and even “intimidates”(684) the press into being compliant. The government doesn’t allow media at soldiers’ funerals’, it pushes to show that they are only protecting the privacy of those families in their time of grief. Another point to make would be when he actually gives a name to the government. In the sixth paragraph, once he has fueled the public rage towards the government, he puts a label to it and calls it the “Bush administration”(684). His strong diction also provides a backbone to his use of logos. His word choice makes the statistics interesting and keeps the anger while informing the audience.
His fourth, fifth, and sixth paragraphs are full of statistics and facts that he uses to fuel the readers rage towards the government for suppressing these images from the news. He tells the reader that these pictures are becoming more and more sparse, then continues to state that “five GI’s die every two days”(684), thus making the reader feel uninformed and lied to. Then he adds on to this by asking how American voters are supposed to make “informed decisions”(684) when they have no knowledge of what is truly going on. During these three paragraphs the reader can also get a sense of what seems like a hidden agenda because the hatred for the government really comes out here. It’s almost like his paper switches topics from censoring of “gruesome pictures”(684) to the corruption of the “Bush administration”(684).
In the midst of these statistics and name-calling, Schanberg solidifies his position by stating that he was in the military and has covered plenty of war stories as a reporter. This is where he uses his own credentials to sway the audience into believing him further. He continues this by stating later in his paper that a reporters or photographers “primary mission has to be one of getting the story right”(685). Stating that nothing should be omitted due to “timidity”(685) or “squeamishness”(685). Here he brings back his appeal to pathos by saying that he always tried to make the reader smell, feel, see, and touch what he had witnessed that day. This helps build on the connection between Schanberg and his readers.
His last paragraph hones in on his appeal to pathos by using the answers that his photographer (David Lesson) gave him when he asked him some questions. Throughout the entire paper the reader’s attitude has been one of rage towards the government but in the end Schanberg try’s to change it into love and compassion for our fellow man. Lesson states “the greatest dignity and respect you can them (the dead) is to show the horror they have suffered, the absolutely gruesome horror.”(685) and by doing so brings the audience to believe that these aren’t just “gruesome pictures”(684), but stories of the gruesome horror these people had to endure. Schanberg is also very picky about the label he gives those people. He doesn’t classify them by race, religion, or even sex because he knows that by doing so he will help form a bias against them and that is not what he wants the reader to see. Instead he states: “…..these human beings lying crumpled at the scene of the slaughter”(684). By doing this he is trying to show the reader that these human beings could be anybody. With these statements he changes the tone of the paper from anger and rage into a more compassionate one showing that he just wants to show respect by displaying these pictures, that by allowing these pictures to be shown on the 6 O’ clock news, we will be honoring the dead and justifying their death. The last paragraph is like a subtle call to action because he wants his audience to be moved by the pictures, moved enough to protest against war and the “Bush administration”(684). It’s almost as if he uses pictures as a cover to showing the corrupt government and the war it leads the American people into.
Bowdens view, yet completely opposite, pulls on the same rhetorical strategies to amplify his point as well. Bowdens diction helps portray him as a man of intelligence. Throughout most of his paper he seems as if he is talking to an audience of people who can easily be swayed and try’s to use it to his advantage. When he uses the words “traditionalists”(688), “sober”(688), “reputable”(688), and “sensationalism”(688), they give his paper that sense of education. This is important to point out because the only credible he seems to give would be that he was a reporter and therefore he is speaking from experience. Other than that he doesn’t seem to have much credibility when it comes to terrorism and its effect on the public eye. This would point out why his word choice is so strong in making him seem more educated in the topic than he really is.
In the first two paragraphs he uses pathos to bring the audience closer to himself. He uses the examples of the videotapes of grisly beheadings and the emotions that arise in the audience to make a connection with his audience. In the third paragraph he begins to show his purpose and almost seems to plead with the audience to understand his point of view. Now in this paragraph Bowden has two points, that the news industry has changed from “resisting sensationalism”(688) to “whatever grabs the most attention leads”(688). This helps in his point to prove that the news doesn’t always point out the important news but rather whatever makes the bigger buck. The second point he brings out is that the American people (his audience) has enough common sense to sort out what is more important, and he does this by using the following example: “Scott Peterson murder trail stacks up against uranium enrichment in Iran”(688). He continues to bash on the news industry by showing that by broadcasting these images and making them top news, we are only indulging the terrorists and that when we finally do become accustom to it they will just find something more gruesome to broadcast.
In the middle of his paper he switches from pleading with the audience to trying to convince the audience by using logos. For example, paragraph four starts out with: “Must we help them?”(688), which is a question that he is pleading to the audience to give an assumed answer to. As the paragraph continues, however, so does his attitude and thus his tone. In the next paragraph he is now telling the audience that we don’t have to make these pictures top news. He follows this by using examples of past incidents where certain items were withheld out of respect for the situation. The following paragraphs are full of statistics where he try’s to prove that these pictures aren’t the “most important events in the world on the days they occurred”(689). He try’s to outweigh the beheadings of two Americans with three thousand deaths in Haiti from hurricane Jeanne. He brings out the five points that make beheadings of Americans by terrorists effective: “graphic news coverage, tearful vigils with family members, high-visibility funerals, commentary, and analysis.”(689) All these examples that he throws at the reader are just to show that one persons death is no less significant than another’s. Now he does keep the audience on his side by displaying pathos and word choice to state that the beheadings are “newsworthy”(689) and that the press should never censor or bury bad news. However, he focuses on logos and uses diction to push and prove that one death is the same as another’s and we as a nation shouldn’t allow one to stand above the others.
A final point to show is his change in tone and diction in his last two sentences. He seems to dumb down his diction and his tone seems to be directed at a group of kids: “They led because the cold men behind them wanted them to. I think we should consider the consequences of continually giving those men their way.”(689) The use of “cold men”(689) makes the statement seem childish. He loses that educated tone he carried throughout the paper and turns his audience into a group of young kids, which basically destroys the ending of his paper.
On judging the effectiveness of these two papers, Schanberg’s paper is definitely more effective because of his diction, credibility, and use of logos. Bowdens downfalls aren’t many but major. His last two sentences, as stated above, cost him much credibility among his readers, and his change in tone also hurt him due to the fact that it was a switch that made the audience lower than him. When he switched his tone he was no longer level with his audience, yet above them. Schanbergs paper, however, was one that didn’t make him seem bigger than his audience. He made a connection with the audience, gave them an emotion, fueled that emotion, and then gave the audience a direction to blast that emotion. Bowden’s paper, although effective, doesn’t portray these aspects and thus he loses the audience here and there in his paper.
Now the only true question left to ask is: where do you stand?
Work Citied
1. Bowden, Mark. “News Judgment and Jihad”. Writing Arguments, 7th Ed.
John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, June Johnson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007.
2. Sydney H. Schanberg. “Not a Pretty Picture”. Writing Arguments, 7th Ed.
John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, June Johnson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007.
Schanberg’s use of diction in his paper brings out emotion in his readers. Take for example the first line of his paper where he calls “history a slaughterhouse” (684). He immediately draws in his audience by using the word “slaughterhouse”(684) because it pulls on the reader’s imagination to view history as a blood stained house of death. Right from beginning it is easy to see that he uses word choice in order to paint that image of war as an unjust slaughter and that if we as a nation are going to allow it to happen then we should stomach the results that come from it. By using words like “slaughter”(684), “grisly crime”(685), “gruesome pictures”(685), and “gruesome horror”(685) throughout his paper he keeps this image fresh in the minds of his readers. He also pulls on the readers already boiling anger towards the government by stating that the government “blocks”(684), “prevents”(684) and even “intimidates”(684) the press into being compliant. The government doesn’t allow media at soldiers’ funerals’, it pushes to show that they are only protecting the privacy of those families in their time of grief. Another point to make would be when he actually gives a name to the government. In the sixth paragraph, once he has fueled the public rage towards the government, he puts a label to it and calls it the “Bush administration”(684). His strong diction also provides a backbone to his use of logos. His word choice makes the statistics interesting and keeps the anger while informing the audience.
His fourth, fifth, and sixth paragraphs are full of statistics and facts that he uses to fuel the readers rage towards the government for suppressing these images from the news. He tells the reader that these pictures are becoming more and more sparse, then continues to state that “five GI’s die every two days”(684), thus making the reader feel uninformed and lied to. Then he adds on to this by asking how American voters are supposed to make “informed decisions”(684) when they have no knowledge of what is truly going on. During these three paragraphs the reader can also get a sense of what seems like a hidden agenda because the hatred for the government really comes out here. It’s almost like his paper switches topics from censoring of “gruesome pictures”(684) to the corruption of the “Bush administration”(684).
In the midst of these statistics and name-calling, Schanberg solidifies his position by stating that he was in the military and has covered plenty of war stories as a reporter. This is where he uses his own credentials to sway the audience into believing him further. He continues this by stating later in his paper that a reporters or photographers “primary mission has to be one of getting the story right”(685). Stating that nothing should be omitted due to “timidity”(685) or “squeamishness”(685). Here he brings back his appeal to pathos by saying that he always tried to make the reader smell, feel, see, and touch what he had witnessed that day. This helps build on the connection between Schanberg and his readers.
His last paragraph hones in on his appeal to pathos by using the answers that his photographer (David Lesson) gave him when he asked him some questions. Throughout the entire paper the reader’s attitude has been one of rage towards the government but in the end Schanberg try’s to change it into love and compassion for our fellow man. Lesson states “the greatest dignity and respect you can them (the dead) is to show the horror they have suffered, the absolutely gruesome horror.”(685) and by doing so brings the audience to believe that these aren’t just “gruesome pictures”(684), but stories of the gruesome horror these people had to endure. Schanberg is also very picky about the label he gives those people. He doesn’t classify them by race, religion, or even sex because he knows that by doing so he will help form a bias against them and that is not what he wants the reader to see. Instead he states: “…..these human beings lying crumpled at the scene of the slaughter”(684). By doing this he is trying to show the reader that these human beings could be anybody. With these statements he changes the tone of the paper from anger and rage into a more compassionate one showing that he just wants to show respect by displaying these pictures, that by allowing these pictures to be shown on the 6 O’ clock news, we will be honoring the dead and justifying their death. The last paragraph is like a subtle call to action because he wants his audience to be moved by the pictures, moved enough to protest against war and the “Bush administration”(684). It’s almost as if he uses pictures as a cover to showing the corrupt government and the war it leads the American people into.
Bowdens view, yet completely opposite, pulls on the same rhetorical strategies to amplify his point as well. Bowdens diction helps portray him as a man of intelligence. Throughout most of his paper he seems as if he is talking to an audience of people who can easily be swayed and try’s to use it to his advantage. When he uses the words “traditionalists”(688), “sober”(688), “reputable”(688), and “sensationalism”(688), they give his paper that sense of education. This is important to point out because the only credible he seems to give would be that he was a reporter and therefore he is speaking from experience. Other than that he doesn’t seem to have much credibility when it comes to terrorism and its effect on the public eye. This would point out why his word choice is so strong in making him seem more educated in the topic than he really is.
In the first two paragraphs he uses pathos to bring the audience closer to himself. He uses the examples of the videotapes of grisly beheadings and the emotions that arise in the audience to make a connection with his audience. In the third paragraph he begins to show his purpose and almost seems to plead with the audience to understand his point of view. Now in this paragraph Bowden has two points, that the news industry has changed from “resisting sensationalism”(688) to “whatever grabs the most attention leads”(688). This helps in his point to prove that the news doesn’t always point out the important news but rather whatever makes the bigger buck. The second point he brings out is that the American people (his audience) has enough common sense to sort out what is more important, and he does this by using the following example: “Scott Peterson murder trail stacks up against uranium enrichment in Iran”(688). He continues to bash on the news industry by showing that by broadcasting these images and making them top news, we are only indulging the terrorists and that when we finally do become accustom to it they will just find something more gruesome to broadcast.
In the middle of his paper he switches from pleading with the audience to trying to convince the audience by using logos. For example, paragraph four starts out with: “Must we help them?”(688), which is a question that he is pleading to the audience to give an assumed answer to. As the paragraph continues, however, so does his attitude and thus his tone. In the next paragraph he is now telling the audience that we don’t have to make these pictures top news. He follows this by using examples of past incidents where certain items were withheld out of respect for the situation. The following paragraphs are full of statistics where he try’s to prove that these pictures aren’t the “most important events in the world on the days they occurred”(689). He try’s to outweigh the beheadings of two Americans with three thousand deaths in Haiti from hurricane Jeanne. He brings out the five points that make beheadings of Americans by terrorists effective: “graphic news coverage, tearful vigils with family members, high-visibility funerals, commentary, and analysis.”(689) All these examples that he throws at the reader are just to show that one persons death is no less significant than another’s. Now he does keep the audience on his side by displaying pathos and word choice to state that the beheadings are “newsworthy”(689) and that the press should never censor or bury bad news. However, he focuses on logos and uses diction to push and prove that one death is the same as another’s and we as a nation shouldn’t allow one to stand above the others.
A final point to show is his change in tone and diction in his last two sentences. He seems to dumb down his diction and his tone seems to be directed at a group of kids: “They led because the cold men behind them wanted them to. I think we should consider the consequences of continually giving those men their way.”(689) The use of “cold men”(689) makes the statement seem childish. He loses that educated tone he carried throughout the paper and turns his audience into a group of young kids, which basically destroys the ending of his paper.
On judging the effectiveness of these two papers, Schanberg’s paper is definitely more effective because of his diction, credibility, and use of logos. Bowdens downfalls aren’t many but major. His last two sentences, as stated above, cost him much credibility among his readers, and his change in tone also hurt him due to the fact that it was a switch that made the audience lower than him. When he switched his tone he was no longer level with his audience, yet above them. Schanbergs paper, however, was one that didn’t make him seem bigger than his audience. He made a connection with the audience, gave them an emotion, fueled that emotion, and then gave the audience a direction to blast that emotion. Bowden’s paper, although effective, doesn’t portray these aspects and thus he loses the audience here and there in his paper.
Now the only true question left to ask is: where do you stand?
Work Citied
1. Bowden, Mark. “News Judgment and Jihad”. Writing Arguments, 7th Ed.
John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, June Johnson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007.
2. Sydney H. Schanberg. “Not a Pretty Picture”. Writing Arguments, 7th Ed.
John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, June Johnson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007.
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