WANTED: Animal Shelter Donations

This is South Suburban Humane Society's wish  list. If you'd like to donate anything please feel free to mail it to me so I can donate for you, drop it off if you're in the area (Orland Park, IL) or I am even willing to pick up and donate anything you have to offer to them (depending on the distance). Also, please help spread the word (even if you aren't able to donate anything), I know the shelters will appreciate it! Thank you!!

- Paper Towels

- Hand Sanitizer

- Clorox Wipes (or generic equivalent)

- Diamond Dog Food

- Liquid Laundry Detergent 

- Bleach

- Dog/Cat Canned Wet Food

- Copy Paper (8 1/2" x 11")

- Sponges

- Non-Clumping Cat Litter

- Kleenex

- AAA Batteries

- Disposable Gloves

- 55-Gallon Garbage Bags

- Foil Steam Trays (half or full size)

- Purina Cat/Kitten Chow

- Large Rugs/Blankets

- Ink Pens

- Kongs (toys)

- New Food Trays/Bowls

Gift Cards for: Walmart, GFS, Sam's Club, Costco, Office Max or Amazon.com

http://www.southsuburbanhumanesociety.org/ 

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This is the wish list from another animal shelter, P.A.W.S. Tinley Park. Again, if you'd like to donate anything please feel free to mail it to me so I can donate for you, drop it off if you're in the area (Orland Park, ) or I am even willing to pick up and donate anything you have to offer to them (depending on the distance). Also, please help spread the word (even if you aren't able to donate anything), I know the shelters will appreciate it! Thank you!!

- WE ARE IN DESPERATE NEED FOR LEASHES AND COLLARS OF ALL SIZES

- New or gently used Top Paw® Pet Yard Containment Pen

Dog Food:

- Evangers canned food

- Science Diet dry (maintenance, puppy, lamb & rice, small bites, etc.)

Cat Food:

- Purina Friskies canned food (kitten / cat)

- Science Diet dry (maintenance, light, senior, sensitive stomach or skin, etc.)

Special requests for Kitten Season:

- KMR formula, nursing bottles, Royal Canine dry (Babycat34 in pink bag), Pro Plan kitten canned food (chicken & liver)

- We love KONGS for our canine friends (please refrain from sending rawhides) and any type of toy for our kitties (especially the little mice & bell balls)!!!!

- Leashes of all sizes for dogs & breakaway collars for cats

- 4 or 6 ft nylon leashes

- towels and small blankets

Cleaning Supplies:

- Dryer Sheets 

- Liquid Laundry Detergent

- Dawn detergent

- Hand Sanitizer 

- Paper Towels

- Large Garbage Bags 

- Spray Bottles

Office Supplies:

- General office supplies

- Postage Stamps 

- Envelopes

- Large Rubbermaid containers

Gift Cards for: Gas Stations, Target, Staples, etc. are always welcomed!!!

http://www.pawstinleypark.org/

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Other Ways to Help/25 Creative Ways to Help Animal Shelters:

Spread the word:
• Hang up fliers for upcoming adoption events or adoptable animals in pet stores, vet offices, parks and other places where potential adopters will find their perfect companion. Distributing fliers and other marketing materials is an easy and important way to get the word out about adoptable pets.

• Share adoption profiles on social media: Your Facebook timeline, Twitter stream, Pinterest board, Tumbler page and other social media accounts are all perfect ways to help advertise pets that are in need of a home. Simply sharing the profiles of adoptable animals to your followers takes hardly any time or effort yet could play a part in creating the perfect match for an animal in need of a forever family.

• Transport animals: Have a car? Then a shelter might need you. Some shelters have a hard time arranging to get animals from the shelter to vet appointments, or from shelters to rescue facilities. Donating a little of your time and your driving skills will help animals get the care they need when they need it, and frees up time for other shelter volunteers to get more work done.

• Walk dogs: Many times shelters are short on staff to help exercise and socialize their animals. If you’re good with dogs, take an hour once a week (or more!) to drop by and take a dog for a walk. Play time has huge psychological and physical benefits for waiting animals.

• Pet cats: Cats need socialization too. If you’re a cat lover, take an hour once a week (or more!) to hang out with cats — petting, playing and interacting with them to get them ready for a new home.




Gathering supplies:
• Donate wish list items: Every shelter has a wish list of items, whether it’s food, toys, bedding, litter, crates or cleaning supplies. Pick up a couple items next time you’re shopping to drop off at the shelter.

• Scan Craig's List, Freecycle, eBay, and other resources for items being sold or given away, and collect them to donate to a shelter.

• Call local hotels to see if they have any unusable bedding, towels or cleaning supplies that they will donate to a local shelter.

• Call office supply stores to see if there are items they are willing to donate, such as printer paper, ink, envelopes and other items that shelters need.




Bust out your special talents:
• Crafty folks: Create homemade toys and bedding using old T-shirts, jeans or blankets. Or sew up “Adopt Me” vests and bandanas for adoptable animals to wear while they’re out for walks or at events. A quick search for “How to make [insert dog bed, dog toys, cat toys, etc.]” will bring up loads of patterns and ideas.

• Carpenters and DIY whizzes: Help out with carpentry or other skills needed to repair and improve shelters. Anything from renovating parts of a facility to building a new cat tree will be hugely appreciated.

• Lawyers: Shelters need lawyers too. Lend your knowledge and skills to help shelters stay on top of legal forms, contracts, copyright on videos or brochures made for advertising, and so on.

• Accountants: Shelters definitely need to stay on top of accounting paperwork. You can help shelters keep organized about fees paid by adopters, donations and grants, as well as balancing expenses for caring for the animals.

• Dog trainers (or trainers in training!): Take a dog to obedience class. Often dogs need some training before they’re ready to be adopted. You can help shelters by volunteering your skills as a trainer and working with the dogs. Or if you're a novice, take a dog to obedience classes where you both can learn. Basic commands like sit, stay, lie down, and loose leash walking all make a dog more adoptable.

If you have experience with dog or cat behavior, volunteer to do behavior evaluations for new arrivals, and help the shelter determine each animal’s personality, social skill level, find any triggers for behavior problems, and other important information that’s needed for determining how adoptable an animal is or what kind of home they need to thrive.

• Website designers: Shelters need to constantly update their websites as animals are adopted or are made available for adoption. Everything from maintaining upcoming events information, calls for donations, blog updates, designing a professional look and other aspects of a great website are things you could help out with.

• Writers: Shelters do a lot of writing. They need adoption profiles for each pet put up for adoption, newsletters must be written and sent, ads for events and fundraisers must be crafted, grant applications must be written, and so on. Your skills as a writer could make all the difference for a shelter’s success.

• Social media experts: Social media is a must for getting the word out on adoptable pets. Shelters need to post updates constantly on who is looking for a new home, who was adopted out successfully (everyone loves hearing success stories!), requests for much needed supplies or donations, and other news. Someone skilled with the etiquette and best practices for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other platforms, including skills for writing and scheduling updates, can mean a big uptick in successful adoptions.

• Photographers: High-quality photos for adoption profiles make an enormous difference in how quickly animals get adopted. Volunteer your skills with a camera to photograph animals, showing off their personality and making them look their best so potential adopters will click on their profile and, with luck, visit to meet and adopt them. Check out HeartsSpeak, an organization that helps photographers partner up with shelters.




Fun fundraising ideas:
• Your birthday: Birthdays are the perfect way to gather donations for a shelter. Everyone wants to be nice to you on your birthday, right? You could set up a fundraising website, using something like gofundme.com or indiegogo.com, to raise money throughout the month of your birthday, or you can ask anyone attending your birthday party to bring a gift for the shelter instead of for you. You could even host your birthday party at a shelter or dog park for extra fun and inspiration.

• Your wedding: It’s getting more popular to have a no-gifts wedding registry, with the happy couple asking for donations to favorite charities. Your wedding registry could revolve around charities that help rescued animals in need. You can set up a registry page with monetary donations going straight to the rescue or shelter of your choice, or you can ask guests to bring something to donate that you can drop off later. Or both!

• Your party: Throwing a party? Add a special request for folks to bring something to donate to a shelter, or set up a jar for raising money next to the snack platter (or better yet, the drinks station). It’s an easy add-on to an event you’re already hosting.

• At work: Put up a glass jar with a sign on your desk or countertop, and send out an email to coworkers asking for donations for a week. Or take it a step further by organizing a supplies donation drive, bake sale, raffle or other fundraising drive for a week or more.

• At school: What better place to learn about animals in need than at school? Enlisting the help of teachers and classrooms full of students could mean major donations to a local shelter. Talk to the faculty and staff at a school about ideas, from donation drives to raffles. The shelter you’re helping could bring in a couple adoptable pets to the school to show kids how (and who) they’re helping. It’s the perfect opportunity not only to raise funds and goods for the shelter, but also to raise awareness at an early age about caring for pets.




Two more things:
• Say "thank you": Shelter workers give their whole hearts to their jobs, and are usually buried under never-ending to-do lists and urgent tasks. They usually are overstressed and under-paid. So little things like someone showing how much they appreciate what they’re doing goes a long, long way in restoring the energy and drive they need to continue to help animals. You can do something simple like sending in a thank you card or a bouquet of flowers. Or maybe deliver cupcakes or cookies, or order pizza or sandwiches for the whole crew one day. Anything that shows just how much their efforts are appreciated will make a big difference. When the staff are encouraged and energized, all the animals in the shelter benefit from that positive energy.

• Foster an animal: Being in a shelter can be extremely stressful for many animals, and not a place they can thrive. Plus, shelters fill up fast. Finding temporary homes while animals are waiting to be adopted frees up space to help newly rescued animals. Fostering doesn’t necessarily fall under the “easy” category for how to volunteer to help, but it does fall under the category of most important things you can do. Most shelters pay for food and vet bills, so fostering is not a burden on the wallet. Opening your home to an animal in need and providing the food, shelter, love and training it needs while waiting for a forever home is one of the best things you can do to help. It can also be one of the most fulfilling.

http://www.mnn.com/family/pets/stories/25-creative-ways-to-help-animal-shelters#ixzz3IaV7sp4B

Abortion: Not Cessation of Life

Brandi Slavich

Politics, religion and sex; three taboo topics you are never supposed to bring up.  For that reason, when they do get brought up, you should run, not walk, away from that conversation because things tend to get very heated.  However times are changing making it seem that we should, now, add abortion to that list.  Abortion is a topic that has quickly grown becoming more public.  Still being debated, pro-life advocates tend to argue that “[if] life is present from conception, [then] abortion amounts to cessation of life.”  However this is not a valid argument because life is not present from conception and even if it was abortion is, still, not cessation of a life. Classifying an abortion as murder poses numerous and insurmountable philosophical problems.

It seems indisputable that the main crime concerning abortion is the crime against potentialities.  Be that it may, if someone were to try to dispute this fact a serious question would arise;  what is the philosophical difference between aborting a fetus and destroying a sperm and an egg? Well, for one thing, …

These two contain all the information [or, all the potential] and their destruction is, philosophically, no less grave than the destruction of a fetus.  The destruction of an egg and a sperm is even more serious philosophically: the creation of a fetus limits the set of all potentials embedded in the genetic material to the one fetus created.  The egg and sperm can be compared to the famous wave function (state vector) in quantum mechanics – the represent millions of potential final states (millions of potential embryos and lives).  The fetus is the collapse of the wave function: it represents a much more limited set of potentials.  If killing an embryo is murder because of the elimination of potentials – how should we consider the intentional elimination of many more potentials through masturbation and contraception? (Vaknin)

Cessation of life or the prevention of a future the acts look the same but, murder is the intentional termination of the life of a human who possesses (at the moment of death) a consciousness and, in most cases, a free will, especially the will not to die, which neither the zygote, embryo or fetus have.  Abortion is the intentional termination of a life which so happens to have the  potential to develop into a person with consciousness and free will. However, philosophically, no identity can be established between potentiality and actuality… A cluster of cells a human makes only through the agency of Nature.

The Human embryo has a very long tail and branchial arches resembling gills.  First forming a parallel to a fish like kidney, then later, discarding and replaced it with a mammalian kidney.  Consequently, in many respects an early Human embryo more mirrors a fish rather than a Human Being.  That being the case, when are we considered  human beings?  Clearly, when able to live outside of its mother given the support of available medical knowledge, with a functioning heart and brain, with pain and pleasure sensors, the baby in the mother is indeed a human being and deserving of the right to live. (Potter) Whereas when it comes to zygotes, embryos and fetuses the answer to that question is unclear.  Incidentally many people have used multiple explanations from Immanuel Kant’s work as a starting point. For instance…

In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant clearly defines ‘person’ as a moral agent; as a being with certain cognitive capacities, ‘a subject whose actions can be imputed to him. Moral personality is therefore nothing other than the freedom of a rational being under moral laws.’ (Manninen 73)

Unlike a child, already born, that has a mind and therefore has begun its development of rational nature, whereas zygotes, embryos and fetuses lack rationality because they have not begun that development.

It is impossible to attribute moral status to a [human embryo] on grounds of its physical characteristics alone – even when its potential is considered – because there is no point in the process of ontogeny at which a scientific finding can be made, as it were, that a glob of protoplasm is now sufficiently endowed with moral freedom that it has become a responsible agent or sufficiently endowed with cultural, aesthetic, and ethical capacities that it has become a human being. (qtd. in Manninen 74)

Other philosophers may even show that embryos or fetuses possess human knowledge (difficult, given Kant correlates this control to certain cognitive capacities), or claim that, at conception, human knowledge is somehow united with the empirical self (a Kantian immediate animation).  However they cannot protect the embryos and fetuses are people, like you and I;  thus not providing a strong argument why humanity applies to embryos and fetuses, losing their theoretical grounds against experimentation.

People who oppose abortion choice would have to argue that, unlike any other person, a human fetus has a moral right to instrumentalize a person for sustenance even against the latter’s wishes. (Manninen 80)  In spite of this even if we were to consider the fetus as a person from conception it does not follow that others, namely a pregnant woman, have an obligation to provide the fetus with whatever it needs to survive, especially if someone’s body is being used against her will.

The right to be born crystallizes at the moment of voluntary and intentional fertilization. If a woman knowingly engages in sexual intercourse for the explicit and express purpose of having a child - then the resulting fertilized egg has a right to mature and be born. Furthermore, the born child has all the rights a child has against his parents: food, shelter, emotional nourishment, education, and so on.

It is debatable whether such rights of the fetus and, later, of the child, exist if the fertilization was either involuntary (rape) or unintentional ("accidental" pregnancies). It would seem that the fetus has a right to be kept alive outside the mother's womb, if possible. But it is not clear whether it has a right to go on using the mother's body, or resources, or to burden her in any way in order to sustain its own life. (Vaknin)

The right to be brought to life, to become or to be pertains to no one. If this right existed, it would imply an obligation or duty to give life to the unborn and the not-yet conceived; however no such obligation or duty exists.

We do not, as a society, compel individuals to donate blood or bone marrow, even if this means people will die as a result of not getting these vital bodily fluids, and certainly nine months of pregnancy is a greater bodily sacrifice than  donating blood or bone marrow… As a society, we recognize the moral imperative to treat all persons as ends in themselves and that all persons are worthy of intrinsic respect. And we recognize that this imperative applies even if respecting it in one person entails the death of another…

I can grieve the lives lost as a result of bone marrow or blood shortage and yet still maintain that donations must be voluntary - that no one can be strapped down and have their marrow or blood forcibly extracted…

I am not arguing that people do not have a right to life... I am arguing only that a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body – even if one needs it for life itself. So the right to life will not serve the opponents of abortion in the very simple and clear way in which they seem to have thought it would. (Manninen 80-83)

Nonetheless, even when an old person is sick and dying we do have established rules when death has occurred or when it is considered acceptable to “pull the plug.”  Perhaps the same rules that apply to the end of life should be applied to the beginning. If the analysis of brain activity shows no conscious thought then life is considered over. This suggests that life begins with the formation of a brain and the initiation of conscious thought. (Potter)

Still, there is no conflict between the rights of the mother and those of her fetus. Abortion involves loss; loss of hope that various parties may have invested and loss of something valuable in its own right. Respecting something is to appreciate the value it has and claims it introduces to us. Even if the fetus were considered a [human] person from conception, it does not follow from this alone that others, particularly a pregnant woman, have an obligation to provide the fetus with whatever it needs to survive, especially when this entails the unwilling use of someone’s body. [Therefore] if a woman does choose to abort, it is a decision that should be reached with care, judiciousness, and ideally in situations where the woman has other moral obligations that parenthood would render it difficult or impossible to fulfill. (Manninen 75-85)  Thus, even though life is not present from conception, abortion cannot be treated considered of a life. Abortion is, if anything, a crime against potentialities.

Works Cited

Manninen, Bertha Alvarez. “A Kantian Defense of Abortion Rights with Respect for Intrauterine Life.” Diametros 39 (2014): 70-92. PhilPapers. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

May, Simon Cabulea. “Principled Compromise and the Abortion Controversy.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 33.4 (2005): 317-48. JSTOR. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.

Potter, Steve. “Is the Killing (Abortion) of Human Embryos Always Murder?” Eveloce Science Blog. WordPress, 25 July 2011. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.

Reader, Soran. “Abortion, Killing, and Maternal Moral Authority.” Hypatia 23.1 (2008): 132-49. JSTOR. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.

Vaknin, Sam. “Abortion - The Aborted Contract and the Right to Life.” Samvak Tripod. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.

Pro-Choice Abortion Quotes

"There are differences between a child and a fetus insofar as a child has a mind and therefore “rational nature has already begun its development."

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"If a woman does choose to abort, it is a decision that should be reached with care, judiciousness, and ideally in situations where the woman has other moral obligations that parenthood would render it difficult or impossible to fulfill."

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"When I suggest that the woman should not be compelled to subordinate her interests to those of the fetus, I sometimes meet with the response: “But if she is allowed to have an abortion, the fetus is subordinated. It is just a question of who shall be subordinated to whom.” In a sense, of course, this is correct. There is a conflict of interest between the woman and the fetus, and someone is going to lose. But that is true in every Samaritan situation. There is a conflict between the distressed party’s need for aid and the potential rescuer’s desire not to give it. The point is that our law generally resolves this conflict in favor of the potential Samaritan."

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"Burgeoning human life, we might put it, is respect-worthy. Abortion involves loss. Not just loss of the hope that various parties might have invested, but loss of something valuable in its own right. To respect something is to appreciate fully the value it has and the claims it presents to us; someone who aborts and never gives it a second thought hasn’t exhibited genuine appreciation of the value and moral status of that which is now gone."

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"It is impossible to attribute moral status to a [human embryo] on grounds of its physical characteristics alone – even when its potential is considered – because there is no point in the process of ontogeny at which a scientific finding can be made, as it were, that a glob of protoplasm is now sufficiently endowed with moral freedom that it has become a responsible agent or sufficiently endowed with cultural, aesthetic, and ethical capacities that it has become a human being."

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"Even if we fully grant fetuses the status of persons, akin to that of any other person, this alone does not necessitate the moral impermissibility of abortion. This is because no one person’s right to life entails that another person must forcibly submit to unwanted bodily intrusion with the goal of sustaining the former’s life."



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"Imagine that an ailing violinist needs to stay hooked up to your kidneys for a certain amount of time in order to survive a rare affliction. If you choose to unplug yourself, the violinist will surely die. According to Thomson, if you have not consented to this dependency relation, you are free to terminate it, even if doing so results in the violinist’s death. Thomson does not deny that the violinist is a person with rights, including the right to life. Rather, she questions what obligations such a right imposes upon other human beings. It is not the case, she argues, that the violinist’s right to life necessitates that another person has an obligation to provide him with whatever he needs to survive. Analogously, even if the human fetus were considered a person from conception, it does not follow from this alone that others, particularly a pregnant woman, have an obligation to provide the fetus with whatever it needs to survive, especially when this entails the unwilling use of someone’s body."

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"I am not arguing that people do not have a right to life... I am arguing only that a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body – even if one needs it for life itself. So the right to life will not serve the opponents of abortion in the very simple and clear way in which they seem to have thought it would."

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"Even granting that embryos and fetuses are persons, however, this alone would not entail the moral impermissibility of abortion rights, mainly because prohibiting abortion, and compelling women to gestate, violates the formula of humanity against them."

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"People who oppose abortion choice would have to argue that, unlike any other person, a human fetus has a moral right to instrumentalize a person for sustenance even against the latter’s wishes."

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"In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant clearly defines “person” as a moral agent; as a being with certain cognitive capacities, “a subject whose actions can be imputed to him. Moral personality is therefore nothing other than the freedom of a rational being under moral laws.”

In his Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason, Kant argues that the human capacity of “personality” is the source of our dignity as rational creatures, and he defines it as “the susceptibility to respect for the moral law as of itself a sufficient incentive of the power of choice.”

And, once again in the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant specifically defines the term “humanity” as “the capacity to set oneself an end – any end whatsoever.”

It is clear from these passages that Kant correlated the capacity for free choice and moral agency with humanity and personhood. The problem for Kantian pro-life philosophers who argue that conception is the moment when a new human person first comes into existence is not just that embryos and fetuses lack moral agency and free will, but that Kant was clear that it was impossible to correlate the acquisition of freedom, and therefore humanity, to a physical or biological event."

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"We do not, as a society, compel individuals to donate blood or bone marrow, even if this means people will die as a result of not getting these vital bodily fluids, and certainly nine months of pregnancy is a greater bodily sacrifice than donating blood or bone marrow… As a society, we recognize the moral imperative to treat all persons as ends in themselves and that all persons are worthy of intrinsic respect. And we recognize that this imperative applies even if respecting it in one person entails the death of another... I can grieve the lives lost as a result of bone marrow or blood shortage and get still maintain that donations must be voluntary - that no one can be strapped down and have their marrow or blood forcibly extracted."

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"Viewing fetuses as patients independently of the women who carry them correlates with the increased dehumanization of those same women by transforming them into environments or containers for the unborn patient...More concerning is that “nowhere does the [federal guidelines] section on fetal research cite maternal safety as a consideration."

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"Given the correlation between single motherhood and poverty, it is quite understandable that this is a lifestyle to which women would choose to not be tethered, especially since it presents a formidable obstacle to growth and self--improvement."

America is Behind in Weather Forecasting

Brandi Slavich

Weather is important. We all experience it on a day-to-day basis and getting warnings out in time saves lives yet our country, the United States of America, is behind compared to other nations. The issue begins with the people who argue that the U.S. inferiority in numerical weather prediction really does not matter. Despite the facts that compared to other countries the United States has third rate status in numerical weather prediction some assume that since we have access to the superior forecasts of the models of the European Center (EC), the UK Met Office, and others that that is enough.

The technology of weather prediction has improved dramatically during the past decades as faster computers, better models, and much more data (mainly satellites) have become available. The problem is that the U.S. global model is number 3 or number 4 in quality, resulting in our forecasts being noticeably inferior to the competition (Mass, The U.S.). Consequently, even though we have all the potential to be on top and have the most destructive weather in the world, the U.S. is settling with substandard forecasting. With this in mind, a major contributor to the United States inferiority is that we have inadequate computers/lack of computer resources. The European Center for Medium range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) is running models with substantially higher resolution than ours even though we can afford the processors and disk space is definitely part of the problem. The U.S. does not have enough computer power available for numerical weather prediction and the U.S. modeling inferiority is costing us big bucks. For example, if you read the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast discussion online you will notice that they frequently depend on the ECMWF, not the U.S. models.

Time and again, we’ve learned the value of improving the “resolution” of our numerical models, say, describing the weather on a grid where the points are separated by 15 km instead of 30 km. But that’s computationally expensive. [Yet] typically when we increase the resolution, the change permits us to notice deficiencies in the model that we didn’t worry about before. A number of companies and U.S. entities are paying hundreds of the thousands of dollars EACH to get European Center model output. (Hamill)

Europe has the advantage with models that have twice the resolution as ours. To illustrate, the NWS has two computers that are not even on the worldwide top 500 list while the ECMWF has two machines that rank 37th and 38th worldwide; each with 24,546 cores and a computational ability of 0.75 petaflops while the NOAA’s Fairmount location only has 0.38 petaflops. Furthermore for the past twenty years the U.S. has been using Three Dimensional Variational Assimilation (3DVAR) while the European Center, the UK Meteorology Office, and our Canadian neighbors have upgraded to 4DVAR. In fact, a Professor in Atmospheric Sciences asserts “the lack of computer power and poor coordination between research and operational weather communities in the U.S. has crippled our ability to move forward towards the high-resolution weather prediction capability” (Mass, Second Rate). Hence why resolution is considered a key aspect for weather prediction.

        Under those circumstances, when it comes to research the U.S is on top, having the largest meteorological research establishment in the world; however we are not taking advantage of it. The Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) continues to be reluctant when it comes to using models and approaches developed by the U.S. hence why the interactions with the research communities are bounded. Similarly, not only has the EMC been isolating themselves and has become known for their “not invented here” attitude, the NWS is not innocent either. Due to the fact that the NWS’s budget has been under pressure, university research has been the first thing they seem to cut out.

The government weather research is NOT in the NWS, but rather in NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration].  Thus, the head of the NWS and his leadership team do not have authority over folks doing research in support of his mission.  This has been an extraordinarily ineffective and wasteful system, with the NOAA research teams doing work that often has a marginal benefit for the NWS… The folks in NCEP [National Centers for Environmental Prediction], NWS, and NOAA leadership have been willing to accept third-class status, providing lots of excuses, but not making the fundamental changes in organization and priority that could deal with the problem.  Lack of resources for NWP is another issue...but that is a decision made by NOAA/NWS/Dept of Commerce leadership. (Mass, The U.S.)

The result is inefficiency, there is no group to coordinate the research and development of the U.S. research community so the progress of pressing problems is slow and money ends up wasted. Likewise, the NOAA/NWS polar orbiter acquisition program has been characterized by mismanagement for years, not only delaying the next generation satellites, but again costing the nation billions of dollars.

        All-in-all the most disturbing part of this is story is not that we are behind the Europeans and others, but that we are well behind what this nation is capable of (which is far beyond ECMWF). Our inferior computers, poor management, lack of effective leadership, and inability to tap the large weather research community are just some of the issues that makes forecasting in the U.S. inferior. We may have the potential to be at the top but nothing is going to change until people begin to see that weather prediction is an incredibly complicated enterprise. NOAA deploys satellites, weather balloons, radar data, and more. Our data assimilation algorithms synthesize this data. Our models and our supercomputers crank out the numerical guidance 24/7. Our forecasters are always on the job and bust their humps in ways you could not believe when severe weather is on the way. All of this costs taxpayers pennies a day. And the data is free to all and free to you without advertising (Hamill).

Overall, although the weather enterprise has a great deal going for it and “the large U.S. meteorological community has made significant strides in weather diagnosis and prediction, progress has been slowed by a lack of cooperation, coordination, and pooling of resources” (Mass, Uncoordinated Giant). It is time to incorporate all our strengths together. We need to regain our stature as a world leader in research and operational meteorology so that U.S. meteorologists can better serve and protect our nation.

Work Cited

Hamill, Thomas M. "Has the US fallen behind in numerical weather prediction: a response from a NOAA scientist." ABC 7: Storm Watch 7 Weather Blog. Allbritton Communications Co., 5 Apr. 2012. Web. 3 Mar. 2014.

Mass, Clifford. "Second rate U.S. numerical weather prediction: Why you should care." The Washington Post 26 Feb. 2013, Local: 1. The Washington Post. Web. 3 Mar. 2014.

- - -. "The Uncoordinated Giant: Why U.S. Weather Research and Prediction Are Not Achieving Their Potential." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 87.5 (2006): 573-84. EBSCO. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.

- - -. "The U.S. Has Fallen Behind in Numerical Weather Prediction: Part I." Cliff Mass Weather Blog. Blogger, 18 Mar. 2012. Web. 7 Mar. 2014.

Miller, Petter. "Why Are Europeans Better at Predicting Weather?" National Geographic 7 Mar. 2013: n. pag. Print.

Kant’s Categorical Imperative: Determining the Morality of a Decision

Kant’s Categorical Imperative: Determining the Morality of a Decision

Brandi Slavich

            Before Kant, the most valued moral theories were based mainly upon Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, which established that whatever leads to greater happiness is what is moral. Although Aristotle’s work was especially important to Kant, he was still dissatisfied with the popular moral philosophy of his day. Later, he derived his own requirements for a moral system to determine whether a particular act could be considered morally right, wrong, or somewhere beyond that domain. Based on the demands of the categorical imperative, which has three propositions of morality, this imperative was given as the criterion in which to judge all other principles.

Established on a basis of fairness and universalizability, Kant realized there cannot be one rule for him and another for everyone else. This guided him to the first principle of the categorical imperative, “an action must be done from a sense of duty, if it is to have moral worth” (The Moral Law 528). Under those circumstances he also omitted the actions which conform to duty, but have no direct impulse, however performing them because they are impelled to do so.  In layman’s terms, a person who is forced to act a certain way cannot be said to be doing so morally. Subsequent from the first, Kant derived a second principle, that an action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire (Metaphysics of Morals 16).  Essentially, Kant is suggesting that an action is not moral if it is performed solely for the sake of its outcome.  To illustrate, a person who acts well simply because they believe they will be rewarded in the afterlife is not a moral person, whereas a person who acts well for the sake of acting well would be.

        With regards to the two proceeding propositions, Kant then formulated a third: “duty is the necessity of acting from respect for the law. I may have inclination for an object as the effect of my proposed action, but I cannot have respect for it, just for this reason, that it is an effect and not an energy of will” (Metaphysics of Morals 16).  Whether in your own or in that of another, Kant derived that you should act in such a way that could be universal for all of humanity. From these three principles, Kant begins to summarize that: In [comprehending the possibility of a synthetic a priori moral law], we want first to inquire whether perhaps the mere concept of a categorical imperative may not also provide its formula containing the proposition that can alone be a categorical imperative . . . .

When I think of a categorical imperative, I know at once what it contains. For since the imperative contains, beyond the law, only the necessity that the maxim be in conformity with this law, while the law contains no condition to which it would be limited, nothing is left with which the maxim is to conform but the universality of a law as such; and this conformity alone is what the imperative properly represents as necessary. There is, therefore, only a single categorical imperative and it is this: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can concomitantly will that it should become a universal law (qtd. in Kitcher 555). This is almost a rational application of what is known as the “golden rule”—“do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”  Kant’s version is simply “act in such a way that it would be positive should everyone act the same.”

According to Kant, when the categorical imperative is not followed—when a person attempts to set a different standard for themselves than the rest of humanity—it is immoral. A person cannot decide whether demeanor is right or moral through empirical means, such assessment must be achieved a piori using pure reason. It is this manner of responding to human experience that makes Kant’s writings an important model for humanely progressive human rights thought and education. Far from being an unrealistic, overly optimistic idealist — as he is sometimes depicted — Kant, in the most enduringly valuable aspect of his criticism, had his eyes wide open and showed a responsibly inconclusive and righteously honorific attitude toward the dignity of a vulnerably divisible humanity. His attitude can be taken as exemplary for responsibly reflective human rights thought and education (Bynum 188).

Though there has been much debate, it seems there is a substantial presence that disagrees with Kant. Considering “to this day, no one has a clear and plausible account of how Kant’s argument for the formula of universal law is supposed to go” (Kitcher 555) some have deemed his thought process irrational, while others have said: Even specialists have fallen into confusion about these questions and have, as it were, begun to see ghosts in quarters where reason prevails: but, quite apart from this, the doctrine of a categorical imperative inherent in the will of man himself appears at present to meet with most unexpected and most unwanted repercussions in the common opinion, not merely of Germany, but almost of the whole world (Ebbinghaus 97).

Some philosophers take issue with the categorical imperative from a logical basis.  For example, Kitcher argues: Kant seems to think that L [conform your actions to universal law] is equivalent to FUL [formula of the law of nature]. He objects that L and FUL cannot be equivalent, because L carries no implications for any particular action, whereas FUL is meant to be (and is) action-guiding… Others have tried to figure out Kant’s reasoning in support of FUL, but verdicts reflect the current consensus that the quest for a solid argument is futile. There is considerable agreement on some of the key moves in the preliminaries to the focal argument (qtd. in Kitcher 556).

        Furthermore, the categorical imperative fails when trying to scale to large groups of people.  For instance, when making new laws, variance in the axioms of the lawmakers will cause the categorical imperative to break down.  For example, when it comes to abortion, one person may find the decision moral in certain circumstances on the basis that a zygote is not a person, whereas another would disagree.  Consequently, the two people would disagree over whether or not abortion is a moral decision when the categorical imperative is the tool used for the determination. That being the case, there are at least two sides to every story. From a functional perspective, with regard to an individual determining whether or not his or her actions are moral, Kant presented a well thought out imperative that can help a person determine whether or not an action is moral.  And its similarity to the golden rule, treat others the way you would like to be treated, is a testament to how prolific such a system of morality has been throughout history.

           

Resources

Bynum, Gregory Lewis. "Immanuel Kant's Account of Cognitive Experience and Human

     Rights Education." Academic Search Complete. Wiley Blackwell, n.d. Web. 1

     Dec. 2013.

Ebbinghaus, Julius. "Interpretation and Misinterpretation of the Categorical

     Imperative." The Philosophical Quarterly 4.15 (1954): 97-108. Print.

Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Lewis White

     Beck. Second edition, revised ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall

     Inc., 1997. Print

Kant, Immanuel. "The Moral Law." Trans. T.K. Abbott. Ethics. Philosophy: The Quest for

     Truth. Comp. Louis P. Pojman and Lewis Vaughn. 8th ed. New York: Oxford

     UP, 2012. 525-536. Print.

Kitcher, Patricia. "Kant’s Argument for the Categorical Imperative." Nous 38.4

     (2004):555-584. Print.

Dell Tablet vs. iPad Advertisement Analysis

Tablet VS iPad

Brandi Slavich

           Before I begin I would like to provide a short summary of the commercial. At the start of the commercial there are an iPad on the left and a Surface RT tablet on the right. The person with the Surface tablet scrolls his or her apps and then zooms; after seeing that the person with the iPad then tried to zoom but Siri says “I do not zoom like that. Ouch. Ouch.” Next, the person with the Surface tablet puts an SD card in to expand their memory; as a result, of course, the person with the iPad tried it only to come to the conclusion that they cannot expand their memory. To continue the person with the Surface tablet then demonstrates the multitasking feature that Siri then admires by saying “You can do two things at once? That’s cool.” In the end, both people with the iPad and Surface tablet then move take their device off the screen to leave you seeing the price of each while Siri makes her final concluding comment of “Oh, that’s not cool.”

        First, to analyze this advertisement, let us note some of the advertising techniques they used in this advertisement. After watching this ad a few times you begin to notice that they used stacking (listing reasons why the product is good), repetition, cause and effect (use this product and your problems will go away), price appeal, and name calling (comparing the product to the competition in a way favorable to the advertiser). Stacking, cause and effect, and name calling all somewhat overlapped one another in the commercial. This commercial began by showing an Apple iPad next to the Surface RT tablet; that implied that they will compare and contrast the two. In the process of name calling, Microsoft’s commercial showed many features of the Surface tablet by demonstrating them, which is similar to stacking; they demonstrate, or list reasons, how the Surface tablet is better than the iPad, which can also be seen as cause and effect. This commercial shows that if you get the Surface tablet, you will not have any of the problems that you faced with the iPad. Furthermore, while comparing the two devices, the commercial repeats itself frequently. Repetition is a good technique because it increases the chances that your audience will remember the information presented in your advertisement.  Microsoft used this when they repeatedly showed how much better their product is than Apple’s product, and as a final point they used price appeal. Microsoft showed the cost of their new Surface tablet next to the price of an iPad, which showed the customers that they would save money if they went with the Surface tablet over the iPad.

        Not only did Microsoft do a good job using several advertising techniques, they also did very well with many other aspects of the commercial. To start with, they did well with not having too much going on in the commercial by not having distracting backgrounds, motion, or music. Having too much going on in a single commercial could pull your audience’s attention away from the overall message, or persuasion technique, to get you to purchase their product. In addition to Microsoft’s commercial not having too much going on at once, they were also very clear with their message and got straight to the point. By taking into consideration that you only have seconds to catch and keep your audience’s attention, going straight to the point can be very beneficial because then the advertiser is more likely to get their message across.

        On the other hand, like most things, this commercial also has room for some improvements to be made.  While overall this commercial was very effective, it seemed to be over a little too quickly; it seemed like it did not have enough examples to sway the audience into switching from the iPad to the Surface tablet. Given the cost of a tablet computing device, a consumer is likely to need considerable reason to choose on product over another.  This commercial, however, gave only three examples: expandable memory, multitasking and zoom. It would have been beneficial to have added many more. The commercial would have greatly benefitted from mentioning that the Surface tablet also has a larger display, can work with most printers, has more free cloud storage, comes with Microsoft office and every member of your family can have an account on the surface tablet; all of which the iPad does not have.

Nevertheless, even though we may see advertisements every day it almost seems that we see them so often that we do not even think about them anymore. With regards to this Microsoft commercial, at first glance we see this as humorous not necessarily as an advertisement. Microsoft, out of all the other companies in the world, chose to compare their product to Apple, why? Well, Apple is one of the largest companies around today and it very well-known. Apple products seem to be very popular yet they do not offer nearly as much as other company’s products do. Microsoft showed Apple fanatics that they are not getting what they paid for but if they switch to Microsoft you will not only have more and better features on your devices, you will also be saving money; which in this economy is always a plus.

        Therefore, this commercial was effective but could have benefited from some minor adjustments. By using persuasion techniques that are common throughout the advertising industry—such as stacking, repetition, price appeal and name calling—the advertiser increases their chances of people purchasing their product. This commercial also did very well when it came to not only telling you to purchase their product but also showing you many reasons why you should; however, this commercial could have been a little longer and more persuasive by adding more reasons why you should get their product.