Video games’ benefits outweigh negatives

Video games have been studied and debated for their merits as an entertainment source and for their associated stigmas of causing violent behavior amongst teenagers. Recently however, research is also casting video games in the positive light they deserve.

According to Art Markman’s study in Psychology Today, players of action-based games tend to have better reaction times.

A study compared people who actively play action video games, such as first person shooters, with those who do not, Markman said. The studies found that gamers process and use visual information faster and more accurately than non-gamers.

Jeff Grabmeier of Ohio State University presents a different side to action games however. According to his article, individuals were found to be more aggressive when playing violent video games for consecutive days. The study, coauthored by OSU communication and psychology professor Brad Bushman, test subjects randomly chose to play either a nonviolent or violent game. Each individual played his or her game for twenty minutes a day for three days and was continuously tested.

According to Grabmeier, the individuals who played violent games showed more aggressive behavior in a reaction time test against what they believed to be another unknown test subject.

“The loser of each trial would receive a blast of unpleasant noise through headphones, and the winner would decide how loud and long the blast would be,” Grabmeier said.

The fact that these test subjects were more than willing to allow another individual to suffer punishment presents an arguable case for violent video games begetting violent behavior.

However, this cannot be applied to every individual discriminately. I, for one, started playing video games that contained mild violence at the age of 12 or younger. I never once felt the need to re-enact such violence. Perhaps I didn’t succumb to bank robbing and a blood rage via running pedestrians over with a truck because my parents made certain I knew what I saw on a television screen was not reality.

Jonathan Nagan, UWGB freshman civil engineering student, stated he has been playing video games since he was five years old. He likes games that are first person shooters such as “Call of Duty” and “Halo” but mostly for the social aspect.

Michelle Trudeau, writer for NPR, further illustrates the benefits of playing action-based games. According to her, Daphne Bavalier’s studies on action games at the University of Rochester also illustrate that gamers tend to have improved vision, attention and some cognition aspects.

A specific form of vision improved within gamers is contrast sensitivity, which enables an individual to see subtle shades of gray that could, for example, help a driver in foggy conditions, Trudeau said.

According to her, the same study argues gamers may be better at multitasking by detecting newly presented information faster.

UWGB freshman Brad Roethle, a business administration major, is not concerned about these studies. Instead, he enjoys his video games for the realistic qualities and the freedom they provide him. The only drawback he sees is they do tend to be addicting and time-consuming.

I personally feel the benefits far outweigh the negative connotations presented against video games. In my opinion, aggressive games are not sufficient enough to cause an individual to react violently toward others. Any individual who does act out violently, regardless if they played games like “Doom” or “Mortal Kombat,” most likely had disturbing behaviors to begin with.

I grew up with video games and through them, I grew closer to my dad as a kid. Today, I view my games as either a form of art, storytelling, stress relief or simply a medium of socialization with my friends. If games also help my ability to react faster or see otherwise hardly discernible objects while driving, I see no harm in playing them.

Punishment should fit the crime in Wisconsin

There is no crime more heinous than murder. In some of those instances, the atrocities committed against other human beings are so beyond the scope of comprehension it’s scarcely believable they actually happened.

Such is the case out of Sheboygan County last year, in which two Justin Bieber-looking 14-year-old boys stand accused of allegedly beating and hacking one of the accused’s great-grandmother to death with a hammer and hatchet.  Authorities said once Antonio Barbeau and his pal Nathan Paape were finished killing their 78-year-old victim, they allegedly decided to steal her vehicle and drive to a nearby bowling alley and enjoy a pizza. In spite of their age, both youths have been waived into adult court and a jury trial is scheduled to get underway this June.

Unfortunately, because the state of Wisconsin does not currently have capital punishment and because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 the death penalty for those who committed their crimes while under the age of 18 is cruel and unusual punishment, the harshest penalty these alleged offenders can receive is life in prison without the possibility of parole if they are found guilty.

This means that if one or both get thrown into the Wisconsin state penal system, we as taxpayers will have the luxury of paying the nearly $38,000 per year it costs to incarcerate each inmate in our prison system, according to the Vera Institute of Justice.

This case, and many others like it, are very good reasons for this state to consider taking a hard look at reinstituting capital punishment in Wisconsin. If these two alleged killers are old enough to be waived into big-boy court due to the serious nature of the crimes committed, then they are old enough to pay the ultimate price if they are convicted.

I am old enough to remember many of the sadistic crimes that have taken place in Green Bay over the years. One of the worst occurred in 1983, when four wannabe tough-guy bikers brutalized, raped, and cut the throat of a beautiful young woman named Margaret Anderson and left her for dead in a manure pit on Lime Kiln Road across from Packerland Packing. Three of the four men convicted in her murder have since been paroled. The man who actually killed Anderson, Randolph Whiting, is due for another parole hearing later this year. Whiting should never be allowed to walk the streets a free man again. In fact, I have a problem with him breathing my air.

Three-year-old Taylor Farrah died after his adult male babysitter decided to play “a punching game” with him. Farrah died of numerous internal injuries and his killer was only given a lengthy prison sentence.

In 2007, Steven Avery was sentenced, along with his nephew Brendan Dassey, to life in prison without parole for the sickening abduction, rape and murder of photographer Teresa Halbach.

Currently, only 33 states in the United States have capital punishment, while 17 do not.

There are purely evil individuals walking our streets in this country committing unspeakable crimes, and they need to be removed from our society. Unfortunately, we live in a society where people seem to think the death penalty is too harsh for those criminals.

Just a few weeks ago in Ohio, 18-year-old convicted mass killer T.J. Lane defiantly wore a white t-shirt with “Killer” written on it into court for his sentencing hearing. He smirked at the victim’s families, made an obscene gesture and said, “—– all of you.”

Lane was 17 at the time he walked into a high school and opened fire with a handgun, killing three other teenagers. Because of his age at the time of the shootings, Lane could not be given the death penalty, even though Ohio has capital punishment on the books.

It’s time for Wisconsin to stop being so coddling towards convicted killers in our midst and stop forcing the costs of housing them on taxpayers. Wisconsin needs to give these people the ultimate punishment they so justly deserve for their crimes and reinstate the death penalty.

If a person is old enough to be waived into adult court for a murder, then that person is old enough to face the ultimate punishment.

And if I were to be the man throwing the switch or administering the lethal injection, I wouldn’t lose a single minute of sleep at night except to say a prayer for the victims and their families.

Walker’s budget: success or failure?: Two perspectives

Gov. Scott Walker understands how to successfully and responsibly run a state.

With the release of his 2013-15 budget proposal for Wisconsin Feb. 20, he not only proved he’s the right man for the job, but the man Wisconsin desperately needs.

When Walker took office in 2011, he inherited a roughly $3 billion budget shortfall from his predecessor Jim Doyle, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, a nonpartisan service agency of the Wisconsin Legislature. Walker attacked the problem by making deep cuts to education, local governments and other programs.

He forced public workers to pay more for health insurance and pension benefits, which, in my opinion, should have always been in place. It pretty much ended workers’ collective bargaining rights, which led to an unsuccessful attempt to recall him last year — thank God.

This is a hard concept for a lot of people to understand, but public workers aren’t entitled to something just because they have gotten accustomed to receiving it. If my budget shrunk because of some other unforeseen problem, I wouldn’t be entitled to golf every week because it’s what I’ve been accustomed to doing. I would give it up because I wouldn’t be able to afford it any longer. It works the same way with a government’s budget. When there’s no money to finance everything, cuts to entitlements or certain programs have to be made in order to restore balance.

This may come as a shock to some politicians, but balanced budgets are necessary for families, businesses and, yes, even the government. This is something Walker understands. He has made the hard, but necessary cuts in order to get the state back in black.

Now that Wisconsin will be seeing a surplus that’s estimated to grow to $484 million, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, it makes it easier for Walker to follow through with the promises to cut income taxes while also increasing spending on K-12 schools. Walker’s newest proposal will provide UW System schools with at least $181 million in financial aid.

According to the bill, the Board of Regents of the UW System is directed to award grants to UW institutions to provide funding for economic development programs, programs that develop an educated and skilled workforce, and programs that improve affordability of postsecondary education for resident undergraduates.

During his speech Walker said he will be financing the state’s biggest areas of need with the available surplus.

“This allows us to invest in our priorities,” Walker said, “priorities I’ve talked about in every corner of our state over the past few months: creating jobs, developing the workforce, transforming education, reforming government and investing in our infrastructure.”

Walker is doing something I really like. Instead of investing in entitlement programs with the surplus, he’s investing the money in programs that help people who want to better themselves by getting the education and jobs needed to live the American dream.

This is what happens when a surplus is present. Walker is able to direct money where it needs to be spent. Some things are necessary, like repairing roads and bridges, and some things are simply to help those who need it. When a government has to operate under a deficit, they cannot and should not be giving money to programs like the UW System for grants.

Love him or hate him, Walker is the right man for the job. There isn’t a single governor in the U.S. who has the gall to do the things Walker has done in order to right the wrong done by so many Wisconsin governors before him. It can hurt to see programs get cut, but it’s necessary. Walker’s budget will continue to move Wisconsin forward. Instead of stealing from our children by borrowing money, he is investing in them.

I applaud Walker for his bold leadership and decision making during his term. Wisconsin is finally moving forward by making the tough decisions necessary to put our state back on solid financial ground. I hope Walker throws his hat in the ring in 2016. Our nation desperately needs a man who’s willing to take a stand against wasteful spending and make the cuts necessary to bring the American dream back to those willing to work for it.

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Walker Doesn’t Understand that We’re Not Just Statistics

By: Tyler Smith

Gov. Scott Walker doesn’t have Wisconsin’s best interest in mind when it comes to education. He’s too focused on performance on paper rather than the bigger picture for students and Wisconsin schools. Walker needs a reality check.

According to the Badger Herald, Walker originally cut $250 million from the UW school system in his last budget proposal, something that will barely be made up for in his latest one. Walker is giving back $181 million to UW schools, $20 million of which is to go to new economic development programs and $2 million to the new flexible option online degree program.

According to Dan Simmons, writer for the Wisconsin State Journal, this is being welcomed by UW System President Kevin Reilly.

Simmons said funding will help with courses and programs that improve economic development and student employment.

This sounds great on paper, but this new funding being proposed comes shortly after more than a year of controversy following the original cuts and a failed recall effort. In my eyes, this sudden boost in funding after such a drastic cut is more like a bone being thrown back to the system for appeasement, not a true attempt to do what’s best for students.

I’m reminded of the tactics of oil companies and rising gas prices. We all go to the pump infuriated that the cost of fuel has risen drastically. When we finally see it dwindle back down a few cents we’re thrilled, never mind the fact that the price is still ridiculously steep.

Apart from the aid being given to the UW System, Wisconsin Technical Colleges would receive $5 million initially and then have 10 percent of their general state aid tied to performance reviews, Simmons said. Another aspect of the budget, though, would remove the 5.5 percent tuition increase cap from the UW System, Rocha said. This could pose an issue for UW Students.

The $181 million Walker plans to invest in the UW System will supposedly lead to a rise in tuition that may be more modest, Rocha said. However, even a small rise in tuition is still an additional — and significant — cost for students. Furthermore, the lack of a tuition cap could give the Board of Regents the power to raise tuition even higher, similar to 2005 when it increased by more than 15 percent. To add insult to injury, Walker may not even be fully backed by his own political party.

According to Associate Press writer Scott Bauer, Republican senators are not supporting Walker on his budget plan for K-12 education. They’re not satisfied with Walker’s plan for vouchers or charter schools stating.

Tamarine Cornelius and Jon Peacock of the Wisconsin Budget said Walker’s budget would provide $73 million to expand the Parental Choice Program that allows lower income families to send their students to private schools through publicly-funded vouchers. According to Cornelius and Peacock, Milwaukee Public Schools and the Racine Unified School District are the only two districts currently enrolled in this program.

This budget will also offer $129 million during the next two years to public schools, Cornelius and Peacock said. However, the money may not matter as much since the revenue limit will remain the same. Rather, schools may not be able to increase their overall budget level and property taxes would have to be cut as well just to stay under a fixed revenue limit, Cornelius and Peacock said.

According to Wisconsin State Journal writer Matthew DeFour in his article “K-12 Education Budget Would Target How Schools Perform,” $24 million would go to schools ranking in the top two tiers of a new report card system for Wisconsin.

“Another $30 million would be available to schools that improve their report card score by at least three points over the prior year,” DeFour said.

Cory Vandertie, the principal for Eisenhower Elementary in Green Bay, doesn’t feel this system will prove fruitful for his school.

More than 90 percent of the student populace at Eisenhower is enrolled in ELL, the English Language Learner program, Vandertie said. Vandertie and Eisenhower second grade teacher Zack Bennet are both concerned that Walker’s focus for this $24 million funding for school performance would primarily be based on just test and achievement scores.

Testing kids in a language they don’t speak fluently isn’t an effective way to track their learning. It’s also not a fair way to determine a school’s funding.

Eisenhower has a low achievement score, but it also has a growth score of more than 20 points over the state average, Vandertie said.

“I think that Walker is making the assumption that every single student population in every building is the same,” Vandertie said.

Students at Eisenhower are generally taught in a bilingual setting, gaining predominant exposure to English around third grade and learning in both Spanish and English in fifth grade, he said.

According to Vandertie, more than 4,100 students are enrolled in ELL, speaking more than 40 native languages within Green Bay. Last year, 706 of those students left with English proficiency.

When it comes to Walker’s budget proposal, neither Vandertie nor Bennett agree with the push to use the voucher program to push these very kids into charter or private schools.

DeFour said $117.2 million would be used to expand both the voucher program and charter schools. According to Bennett, charter schools have little accountability for teaching when compared to public schools. Furthermore, since its early use in the ‘90s, the voucher program has seen no significant change or turnaround, Vandertie said.

“If Milwaukee schools are better with vouchers, why are they still struggling?” Vandertie said.

Simply offering more vouchers as a secondary option for students and their families is not the same as bolstering or improving education as a whole. Improving public schools should be the higher focus for K-12. Walker is out of touch with education as a whole.

He’s merely a businessman who wants to throw students a bone to shut them up while pushing for what he believes to be better performance numbers and job placement.

This is the same man who originally cut more than $250 million from the UW System and currently wants to underscore K-12 public schooling by giving funding with a fixed revenue limit. How does this help a public school when it needs to have its budget further analyzed to even accept the funding?

Furthermore, the answer to rising tuitions in colleges isn’t removing the tuition cap altogether, thus allowing for any percentage increase in costs for students to be implemented.

I want the focus of school funding to be on my own education and that of my future children, not just numbers on paper.

We are not statistics, and I don’t trust that Walker won’t turn and make another round of cuts to higher and lower education.

People in poverty will remain in poverty

During the president’s State of the Union address Feb. 12, Obama proposed raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 an hour. Obama attributed his minimum wage proposal to assist families living in poverty, but this attempt is a complete failure.

“The raise in minimum wage is poorly targeted as ‘anti-poverty’ assistance,” said Thomas Nesslein economics professor UW-Green Bay. “But people in poverty aren’t working and therefore it doesn’t matter what the wage is raised to.”

According to Nesslein, employer’s fear of increased minimum wage isn’t because they don’t want to pay their employees compensated wages but from their uncertainty for the economy. The questions on business owners’ minds all boil down to, how can their business model remain competitive and expand?

“In Wisconsin, minimum wage is $7.25,” said Christopher Naumann executive director of On Broadway Inc. “If you need to rebalance your business model to accommodate for an increase of this size then you probably have a poor business plan. This is more of an anti-bad business plan not meant to effect good small business.”

Businesses make up for the increased cost of labor by trying to sell more products, buying less products, getting lower quality products or changing to wholesale dealers. Other options directly affect their employees.

Examples of instated service cuts are abundant in the business world.

“Grocery stores are cutting baggers trying to figure out how they will make up the extra cost of employment,” Naumann said. “At Aldi’s, you pay a deposit to use a cart. Wal-Mart gets people in for their groceries, but catches their profit from other things, like tires, gadgets and televisions. Other grocery stores have to figure out how they will make up extra services for profit.”

For smaller businesses or businesses revolving around wants not needs, repercussions from such an increase may not be avoidable.

The minimum wage increase does not target those in poverty, according to Neisslein. Politically, the idea sells. Those working under minimum wage are likely to agree with the increase, and those working above it are likely to be frustrated. Neisslein said minimum wage increases move with inflation, however, and since it is a nation-wide raise, companies will all readjust together.

“Raising the cost of doing business is neither efficient nor economical,” Nesslein said. “Obama targeted the plan to help people in poverty, but the money is really going to those working in minimum wage jobs. These are new workers still in high school, not the provider for their family.”

Nesslein said a government funded program that should be given more attention is the earned income credit. This a refundable tax credit designed for lower income families to generate larger tax refunds.

“Earned income credit is the most effective anti-poverty program we have,” Nesslein said. “It is a refundable tax credit that increases with the number of children in the low income household.”

The minimum wage increase adds more problems to the already tightening workforce. By increasing the minimum wage, politicians increased the cost to keep laborers on staff.

“One out of 11 minimum wage workers are the head of the household in poverty,” Nesslein said. “It is politics. It’s for political gain. Less than 3 percent of the labor force gets minimum wage. Generally, it is teenagers and women working retail jobs. So raising the minimum wage doesn’t really help. Teenagers mostly live at home, not in poverty. Eighty percent of the gains go to homes not in poverty. It sells politically, but it needs to be targeted properly.”

Nesslein said change must be bigger to truly target those in poverty.

“Change the scope of minimum wage,” Nesslein said. “Make distribution more feasible-change employment-take into consideration the size of labor force.”

As history as shown us, this is not the end of minimum wage increases. Wages reflect inflation, and will continue to move with the economy. As it has been pointed out, however, the target group meant to benefit from the increase is not being reached.

The people in poverty will remain in poverty, the hiring process will become stricter and businesses are likely to cut corners to make up for lost funds.

UWGB students deserve better professors

College gives students opportunities to learn from some amazing professors. Unfortunately, along with the good teachers are the bad and the ugly. Professors in the UW System need to be placed on a performance-based salary instead of an across-the-board salary so good teachers get rewarded and bad teachers get a proverbial kick in the pants.

Having only transferred here last fall, I haven’t had much opportunity to find out who the good teachers are at UW-Green Bay, but I have been told which ones to avoid. My experiences at my last school, however, have given me enough insight to see teachers shouldn’t be paid the same across the board, not in the least bit.

When I say good teachers, I don’t mean they’re easy graders or don’t hand out much homework. I’m referring to teachers who really love teaching and sincerely want their students to understand the material and apply it to real life. They make it fun and interesting along the way. Students know who those teachers are, and I guarantee they can still remember them either here at UWGB or back in high school.

So should those teachers be paid the same as teachers who, after years of teaching, have become heaps of anger and no longer care? Of course not, but with the way salaries are currently set up, they do get paid the same, with factors unrelated to performance dictating the pay.

Where I work, my pay raises are based off performance and not just longevity. When pay raises are based off longevity, the result is a mentality of doing the minimum amount of work required. With a performance-based raise, it isn’t what I have to do in order to stay employed, but rather what can I do to stand out to the company. It creates an environment in which excellence is rewarded.

A performance-based pay scale seems like a good alternative, but it’s not without its problems. According to three randomized studies by the academic journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, teachers already in pay-for-performance didn’t change their instruction method. It also stated it’s wrong to tie a teacher’s worth to how well a student is doing because of different elements, such as learning disabilities and laziness among students.

Teachers cannot have their salaries linked to how well a student does in their class. If that was the case, any math teacher I ever had would not be rewarded because I’m simply horrible at math.

The best way for a teacher to prove his or her worth is by conducting a pre-test the first day of class and a post-test the final day of class. If the teacher did his or her job and taught the material in a way students can observe it, the students should be able to do better on the post-test then they did on the pre-test.

Arizona State University is one college whose teachers are on such a system. Kevin Salcido, associate vice president and chief human resources officer, said the school uses this method because the university needs to reward high performance.

“Most large organizations that are in a competitive environment like we are realize the best way to use your compensation dollars is to reward performance to the best degree you can,” Salcido said. “You want to make sure you make the distinction in your salary increase based on performance.”

Whether the school uses a group or individual incentive plan or a mixture of both, UWGB should incorporate a performance-based pay scale for its teachers because students deserve the absolute best the school can offer and not just 20-year veterans.

Senator’s wage claim is outrageous

The fact that President Barack Obama wants to raise minimum wage to $9 an hour has been talked about over and over again in the news, but now the question has been raised as to whether it should be raised even more than that.

According to Huffington Post writer Nick Wing, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren not only defended raising the minimum wage, but also brought up the bold claims of a study titled “The Minimum Wage is Too Damn Low,” by John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The wages of 2012 would be approximately $21.72 an hour if minimum wage had increased with productivity since 1968, he said.

“By all of the most commonly used benchmarks — inflation, average wages and productivity — the minimum wage is now far below its historical level,” Schmitt said.

I find this type of claim very thought-provoking but only that. If a proposed hike of $1.25 an hour has raised controversy and anger, then anything higher than that would be too absurd.

Surely UW-Green Bay students and other part-time workers would love to be paid $21.72 an hour, but the practicality of implementing it would be impossible in this nation at this time. In fact, I have to wonder if I will even see this high of a starting wage in my own lifetime.

However, one might mistake that Warren is pushing for these wages. Warren pressed economics professor Dr. Arindrajit Dube on this matter at a Senate Committee hearing.

“So my question is, Mr. Dube, with a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75?” Senator Warren asked.

According to Wing, however, Warren shifted her focus to a more reasonable proposal and continued to argue that an increase to more than $10 an hour was feasible over a two-year period and businesses wouldn’t see as much damage as previously claimed.

I have no issue with raising minimum wage to $9 an hour, but I do think it should be done in incremental steps. Increasing to $10 an hour would probably be smoother over a three or four year period.

However, small businesses are still forced to cut jobs and hire less when pushed to raise employee pay. Raising the amount workers make in this field will not eliminate poverty.

“There is no free lunch when the government mandates a minimum wage,” Cato Institute writer Mark Wilson said.

According to Wilson, approximately 49 percent of the employees paid $7.25 an hour in 2010 were 24 years old or younger. The other 51 percent were considered in poverty, with almost half of these employees working part time.

Statistics such as these have been used against the cries for raising minimum wage, citing it may not even help poverty levels, and job availability could plunge instead.

Raising the value a few cents to a dollar alone isn’t enough to hurt employment rates. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, four of the highest years for unemployment were 1982, 1983, 2009 and 2010. The Labor Bureau states these years had unemployment rates of about 9.6 percent. The U.S. Department of Labor said wages rose from $3.10 to $3.35 in 1981 and from $6.55 to $7.25 in 2009.

However, the Labor Bureau shows for every rise in unemployment rates, there is generally a sharp drop right after. So while a rise in minimum wage could be linked to a rise in unemployment, the unemployment rate eventually steadies itself out anyway. In my opinion, this makes those scary claims of jobs disappearing look less daunting.

Regardless of the continuing arguments, wages have to increase eventually. It doesn’t matter if this occurs in as much as five to 10 years. The minimum wage cannot stay the same value forever. Unemployment is going to happen, and over time, employment will rise again. Nobody is going to raise the minimum wage by $14. Such a thing would be crazy and yes, you bet, jobs would disappear rapidly.

However, I would still like to see a follow-up to Schmitt’s study. I want to know what kind of economy we would live in today if in some alternate history we had a minimum wage slowly increase to $22 an hour in America. I want to know what the cost of living would look like.

Warren isn’t crazy. If she stirred the pot enough to get more debate fueled for rising wages, then she did her job well.

Students learn better without teachers

In New Dehli, children were allowed to use computers without help. Very quickly, they were able to use the Internet in English. A similar setup 300 miles away led to a child requesting a better processor and mouse.

Today’s education is soon to be obsolete. There is going to come a day when the classroom no longer has four walls, and teachers may serve as mentors.

According to CNN writer Richard Galant, individuals may learn faster on their own than in a teacher-led classroom. Sugata Mitra, professor of educational technology, won $1 million at the Technology Entertainment Design 2013 conference for his research in student learning with computers, broadband access and adult encouragement, Galant said.

Will Richardson, writer for ASCD, an organization dedicated to educators, said most schools are resistant to the prospective changes technology poses to the norms of education. But according to Dennis Berman, writer for the Wall Street Journal, teachers may start to dwindle in numbers as inter connectivity through the web makes teaching larger numbers of students possible.

“The current hype,” Berman said, “is that common Internet connections and tablet devices will emerge as a competitive threat to real-life teachers, kill the textbook business and bring low-price learning to billions around the world.”

At the very least, I would be all for limiting school costs and experimenting more with online education. Even simply using Skype can maintain a class setting without the physical constraints and worldwide location barriers. So much knowledge is readily available online today and easy to share. Even as a die-hard reader, I have little need for a hardcover textbook that costs me hundreds of dollars if I could be presented with the same material in a digital format. With technology constantly evolving and more apps being created, education should be playing catchup and not trying to stick to one specific regimen.

Even though conventional education isn’t seeing a major overhaul, some schools are starting to make changes to the way students learn as well, Richardson said.

Hunterdon Central Regional High School in New Jersey allows students to design their own learning plan with a teacher so it meets the student’s interests while still falling in line with state and school requirements, Richardson said. According to him, students can choose different media to use and in the case of literature, the option of what specific titles they read and research. Students are then given feedback by their teachers and their own peers as they progress.

However, America is still currently behind in growth for education and graduation rates, said Huffington Post writer Alex Kuczynski-Brown.

According to Galant, the traditional sense of education in place today is born from Britain’s empire and the necessity to govern large, widespread territories. Therefore, people needed to be educated for better communication when traveling on ships, he said.

“Schools turned out clerks who functioned as interchangeable parts in a vast bureaucracy where the skills of reading, writing and arithmetic were key,” Galant said.

The world is changing, though, and modern-day education needs to as well in order to meet new concepts of learning and to actually implement technological advances. New advances are being limited. They are being forced into the accepted mold of today’s educational standards.

According to Coexist, a nonprofit site for sharing new ideas, everyday life could become a classroom of sorts as new apps are being developed for smartphones to teach in real-time. There already exists an app for gathering information about stores and restaurants by pointing the hosting smart-phone at them, but one day, users may have a broader use through a project called HyperCities, Gorbis said. This project would allow users to gain access to historical data about any terrain where they are physically present.

This is what the future should be like. I want to learn in a class that extends beyond the classroom and everywhere else. I want to be able to examine the world around me and use my smart-phone as an extended interconnected encyclopedia. Ideally, I’m waiting for the day when I can look at any building, gain information about its history or ongoing future and if it’s relevant enough, access a lecture on the fly. Simply put, I want my education to evolve, not remain stagnant and rooted in old tradition or state standards.

TurboTax steals billions of dollars each year

College students need to get more involved in doing their taxes. Just having their parents eductate them could help prevent them from falling for TurboTax’s scam.

Intuit, maker of TurboTax, doesn’t want possible consumers to realize there’s a cheaper, quicker option on the market. With federal lobbying expenses reaching about $11.5 million, it’s easier to relate Intuit to big oil companies. They don’t care about more efficient alternatives. They just want to leech every dollar they can from Americans’ pockets.

Roughly 25 million Americans depended on TurboTax to file their taxes last year. It made up 35 percent of Intuit’s $4.2 billion in total revenues for the previous year, according to ProPublica, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to investigative journalism.

For those without a calculator, that’s $1.47 billion profited from Americans simply trying to file their taxes neatly and efficiently.

Among TurboTax’s many ads, it doesn’t mention anything about its major lobbying attempts and advertising to keep the IRS from establishing a return-free program for taxes.

In a nutshell, what an IRS return-free program would mean to the common citizen is receiving a pre-filled return from the government, according to NPR. Three options come with the return: accept it as is, make adjustments or reject it and file tax returns by other means, such as TurboTax. In all options, the return-free program is optional.

Paul Caron, a tax professor at University of Cincinnati College of Law, explains the policy in simple terms.

“When you make an appointment for a car to get serviced, the service history is all there,” Caron said. “Since the IRS already has all that info anyway, it’s not a big challenge to put it in a format we could see.”

This is where Intuit crosses the line. The company creators fear the implications of the return-free program because they know once people realize how much easier and cheaper it is, they will stop using the overpriced TurboTax. Instead of accepting the competition, the creators of TurboTax are trying to crush any attempt to enter the market — a market that rightfully belongs to the American people.

The return-free policy is a cheaper and more efficient way of filing taxes, all without a company siphoning money from people’s tax returns.  According to NPR and the Huffington Post, it’s already a reality in Denmark, Sweden and Spain. One estimate made by advocates says tens of millions of taxpayers could use the return-free system each year, saving them a collective $2 billion and 225 million hours in prep costs and time.

“I’ve been shocked as a tax payer and citizen that this hasn’t happened by now,” Caron said.

Caron isn’t the only one upset that the program hasn’t been implemented, but it matters little in the face of the government, who sees only the large spending on lobbyists and advertisement opposing the IRS’s attempts to initiate the program. Intuit even went as far as to create a “STOP IRS TAKEOVER” advertising campaign and calls return-free filing a massive expansion of the U.S. government through a big government program, according to Mint Press News, an independent political magazine.

As obviously over exaggerated as its claims are, it’s hard to take TurboTax seriously, yet I used it last year and will probably use it next year. Why? They are stopping the IRS from implementing a completely free option for everyone. The return-free program isn’t a large expansion of the government. It’s simply a better, more affordable and more logical way of filing taxes. The IRS has all the information already, why not put it to use?

If TurboTax’s creators have any say in the matter, the program won’t see the light of day. Intuit has a tricky way of taking the money for its product. Instead of making the consumer pay for the product, TurboTax simply deducts the cost from the tax return, thus completing its parasitic circle of life.

Maybe, just maybe, advocates for the free-return policy will bring enough attention to the benefits of installing the policy in the U.S. Then, citizens wouldn’t have to give TurboTax money for making their tax return look pretty. The IRS could have it all done before tax season begins with the pre-filled forms, loaded with the information they get on a yearly basis.

I’m fed up of TurboTax leeching money from my tax return. I hope others have had enough of it as well.

Obama burns a hole in America’s pockets

I’m not an economist, but it’s common sense that the way to deal with personal debt isn’t to increase an individual’s personal credit card limit if they are already in debt up to their eyeballs. So it stands to reason the same should hold true for our government.

Over the past several months, America has been overwhelmed with talk of a fiscal cliff and sequestration. According to The Fiscal Times, the fiscal cliff is a term Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke used to describe a series of financial events that were to occur at the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013.

Those events included an end to tax cuts and tax-relief provisions. Also included were cuts to areas we as a country cannot afford to make — cuts in domestic and defense spending.

More disturbingly, President Barack Obama decided to raise the debt ceiling once again, which pretty much flies in the face of anything resembling financial common sense. So what happened with our fiscal cliff?  As my editor so eloquently put it, we pretty much “barreled right over it.”

According to The Huffington Post, sequestration is the actual implementation of those automatic spending cuts that began March 1. Areas that aren’t affected include the disturbing amount of government spending which Obama refuses to reign in, Medicaid, Social Security, Pell Grants, veteran’s benefits and some low-income programs.

Sequestration includes almost $550 billion in cuts to national security and military operational funding. This can only hurt our nation in the long run, as we leave ourselves open to attack with limited options to proactively and pre-emptively deal with the ever-growing variety of threats to our national security. Health care, education, law enforcement, disaster relief, unemployment benefits and scientific research also suffered financial cuts.

All of these various programs that are essential to our very survival are being hacked away while the wealthiest corporations continue to hold onto their tax cuts and loopholes. These things are among the issues Obama promised to deal with during his campaigning for the Presidency.

Another concerning aspect to this fiscal crisis is Obama’s continued carefree spending on good times at the American taxpayer’s expense. While it’s apparently the Republican Party’s fault that White House tours had to be cut off, due to their exorbitant cost of $74,000 a week, Obama seems to think it’s quite okay to spend $3,000 per hour for a private golf coach while he prepares to hang with known philanderer Tiger Woods.

That doesn’t include the cost of the fuel and maintenance of Air Force One and the around-the-clock Secret Service protection required for him every time he hops onboard for one of these joyful outings.

One can safely assume each of these outings cost much more than the cost of keeping the White House open to the people. Unfortunately, last week when ABC reporter Jonathon Karl asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney just how much one of these little outings costs, Carney felt he was above answering the question other than to tell Karl he was trivializing an impact. Sorry, Carney, every dime this administration spends should be open to the American people’s scrutiny.

Fortunately for veterans a little closer to home, these sequester cuts shouldn’t have much of an impact on their well-earned benefits, including education benefits to attend schools such as UW-Green Bay.

According to Elaina Koltz, financial aid and veterans services advisor for UWGB, the only planned cuts to service members’ educational benefits were going to originally scale back tuition assistance to active or reserve members of the military who were taking classes. This was quickly yanked off the table however, Koltz said, because “they knew better than to mess with that.”

The only way out of this fiscal mess we are in is for the president to do what he said he was going to do while he was campaigning for office. That means closing those big business tax loopholes, stop giving exorbitant amounts of money to countries that knowingly harbor our enemies and lay off the rounds of golf while record numbers of Americans can’t put food on their tables and are homeless. It just looks bad on his resume.

Airline trims the fat for rising fuel prices

Biting into a Big Mac may have more repercussions than a tighter-fitting pair of jeans — it could also make travel more costly.

According to Travel News writer Jonathan Pearlman, Samoa Airlines is taking a much-needed role in combating this overweight trend by charging airline passengers by their weight.

“The head of Samoa Air, Chris Langton, said the new system was fairer, and some families with small children were now paying substantially cheaper fares,” Pearlman said.

This may sound like a drastic and perhaps ill-targeted bias toward the obese, but I believe this is a step in the right direction. If anything, this method of airfare travel should be closely studied in order to see not only how individuals are reacting to the price changes, but also how they view their own weight. As controversial as charging by weight sounds, it might just be the societal slap needed to get a healthier public. It’s also a fairer pricing system. Why should a baby be charged the same rate of travel as a grown man?

According to an article from the CIA, American Samoa is the nation with the highest obesity rate of approximately 74.6 percent of the total population. The U.S. is currently ranked sixth at 33.9 percent.

Samoa Air only just began connecting flights from Samoa to American Samoa about a week ago, Pearlman said.

“Passengers don’t pay for a seat but pay a fixed price per kilogram, which varies according to the length of the route,” Pearlman said.

Clearly, a proposition like this in the U.S. might not only be initially impractical, what with the nightmare of trying to weigh every single passenger prior to a flight, but it might also be viewed as discriminatory. Charging by weight for a nation that’s considered the highest in obesity is fair.

According to Samoa Air’s webpage, the individual flier pays approximately 44 cents per kilogram. Therefore, each passenger is the master of his or her own ticket price. I concur. We as individuals are still responsible for the way we physically take care of ourselves, and while I’m not for anyone playing mom or dad to the general populace, this is an issue that needs to be addressed without stigmas or sense of taboo.

People decide whether or not to take time out of their day to exercise. Maybe it takes a radical move like that of Samoa Air to bring the discussion up once more, because not only is it a personal issue for the individual flier, it’s also an issue for everyone else boarding the same flight.

According to CBS New York, Norway economics professor Dr. Bharat Bhatta has proposed the same idea of charging airline passengers by weight. Reducing the weight of a plane by so much as one kilogram could potentially save as much as $3,000 a year, Bhatta said. He said extra weight brought on by passengers adds strain to a flight and requires stronger engines and more fuel use.

I personally don’t want to be charged additional costs to counter extra needs for airline companies or for projected weight gains in passenger flights. Some airlines are even finding their own way of trimming the fat.

According to New York Times writer Joe Sharkey, jet fuel prices are at a record high. Items from food carts and entertainment systems to the silverware and in-flight magazines are being downsized in an attempt to cut down on unnecessary weight, he said. Sharkey further said an executive at Ryanair, a European discount airliner, suggested flight attendants should attempt to be slimmer. As heated as this topic has become, though, Samoa Air still only covers so much area.

“Samoa Air is but a small island-hopping airline that flies little propeller planes, where weight and the distribution of weight have always been considerations,” Sharkey said.

But according to Pacific Business News reporter Stephanie Silverstein, Hawaiian Airlines is now offering airfare to American Samoa this summer. Flights will service from June 21 to Aug. 16, Silverstein said. Granted, it’s a small connection from a remote U.S. territory to the U.S. itself, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some tourist making the journey was given opportunity to complain about how he or she was unfairly priced for a flight ticket and prejudiced by weight.

The fact that only one airline has made this move — and justifiably so in a group of islands with the highest rates of obesity on record — this news will likely fade away in the public eye. But I’m willing to bet that some airline carriers within the world, and the U.S. included, are going to keep the concept of ticketing by weight in the back of their minds.

“Analysts believe other airlines around the world are likely to follow suit, especially as the rising weight of populations adds to fuel costs,” Pearlman said. “Some airlines in the U.S. have already begun forcing passengers who cannot fit in a single seat to buy two tickets.”

I believe some other large airline would jump on this trend if some new, relatively cheap technology became available tomorrow to quickly weigh passengers and consequently fix the price of their tickets. This could help amend for fuel costs for the airline and even save some fliers money on their travel expenses.

On top of that, it might just raise obesity awareness that much more.