A jolt of electricity shoots through a Georgian man’s body on the day of December 12, 1984. Six minutes later, after the body has cooled enough, doctors examine him deciding he needs another jolt. During this time, his unconscious mind has taken twenty-three breaths.

Horribly, this story is true. It paints a disgusting and frightening picture. This is the death penalty, a senseless punishment still used in the United States today. Facts and statistics tell us that the death penalty should be abolished.

In the past the death penalty has been used as a deterrent, a public spectacle that was to frighten and scare the population into submission, hence the guillotine. Today, people still feel that this is true, but evidence shows that this universally accepted idea is indeed a false one. There is no hard evidence that capital punishment is a preventative of violent crime.

Recent statistics clearly show us that even though the death penalty has been in affect for quite a while the murder rate in the U.S. and across the word is still climbing. Areas where the death penalty is in affect, in fact, tend to have a higher percentage of killings than their counter parts that do not use capital punishment.

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution protects us from the use of excessive bail and fines. It also protects us from cruel and unusual punishment. In 1972 the courts ruled in favor of Furman, in Furman vs. Georgia, on the grounds that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, the decision was revoked in 1976, a mere four years later. There was no time taken to see if the change would affect the rate of violent crimes committed in the United States today.

Right now, to execute someone in the U.S. it cost approximately three times the amount it would to have them serve a life sentence in a federal prison. The cost of trying someone where the outcome is the death penalty (including court appeals) can spiral up to 2.6 million dollars and beyond. All of this money comes out of the tax payers wallet. If the death penalty wasn’t still enforced in the United States, two-thirds of this money could go to projects in dire need of the funds, such as building new prisons. In Texas alone, criminals only serve about twenty percent of their sentences due to overcrowding in prisons.

In capital punishment cases money is a huge issue. Over worked and underpaid, public defense attorney with little experience in cases involving capital punishment try to defend their clients. Some public defense attorneys just don’t care any more. Because of budget cut backs in many states a public defender will be paid as little as two dollars an hour for the pretrial work that they do. If it takes more than 500 hours to prepare for trial, and the average time is in an excess of 2000 hours, this minuscule sum will be lowered even farther.

Perhaps that is the reason that sixty-nine people who were falsely imprisoned have been released off of death row since 1973. Twenty-one of those people were released after new evidence emerged since 1993 alone. Ricardo Guerra was released off of death row in Texas after 15 years of false imprisonment. Sadly, his isn’t the only horror story out there.

In the future, we need to examine the true affects of capital punishment and change the laws. Not only does the death penalty affect the person on trial it affects his family, and his community. To help change the laws supporting capital punishment you should contact WCADP: The Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty at 918 F St. NW, Washington, DC 20004.

It’s is always tragedy when a human being losses his life. Even more so when the death could have been prevented.

For teenagers in this day and age, flipping through a simple magazine can be dangerous to our mental health. The other day I was searching through the pages of a “fashion magazine” when my mind flashed past all the ideas about beauty, body image, and weight that have been brainwashed into women since the beginning of time. I was disgusted at the images which filled the pages from cover to cover.

Perfume advertisements, Fashion advertisements, you name it! All of them featuring women who looked skinny, boney, and anorexic. I was amazed that these women were chosen to represent the general population. They are the exception, not the rule, yet these images are the very images that we have been taught to compare our bodies to.

If you really think about it long enough, you come to the conclusion that the whole “fashion industry” is a huge conspiracy. What other answer is there? We the public diet and exercise and diet and exercise some more so that we fit into the image provided by a small group of men and women in charge of what's hot and what's not in fashion.

Are we so vulnerable, so stupid, so . . . sheep like, that we buy into this? Apparently so. The clothing and fashion industry is one of the biggest money makers in America.

This is wrong. We shouldn’t allow this to go on, yet we do. In America we consume twice as much food as any other country, yet we are the ones who feel that any woman over 110 pounds is obese.

Is there any way to change this? I don’t know. I don’t have the answers, but I wish I did. Until I find them, there’s gonna be one more person who’s asking for a thigh master for Christmas.

With the Paula Jones White House scandal, the Jonesboro tragedy, and basically the whole nuclear age, its upsetting to turn the front page of the news paper and find an article telling parents that their children are going to tiptoe into the bedroom in the middle of the night and kill them with three strokes of a very determined sledge hammer because they once saw Marilyn Manson on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. I’m telling you. Its not going to happen.

Lately music has been given a bad wrap. Parents, preachers, school officials, and politicians have blamed music for the rise in teenage crime, teenage drug use, teenage pregnancy, and basically any thing else that teenagers decide to do not accepted in the minds of the populous.

Standards have already been imposed on the music industry making it common practice to put “explicit lyrics” and “parental caution” tags on all CD’s and Cassettes that happen to be a little racy or violent. Isn’t this coming from the generation whose slogan just happened to be “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll?”

Granted, some of the lyrics to these CD’s are offensive, disgusting, and/or morally corrupt. To some. But, hey, last time I checked this was still a free country. One of the concepts and ideas so cherished about the United States is our Bill of Rights. It’s in the Fist Amendment; the right to Free Speech.

Teenagers aren’t sheep. We’re so much smarter than most people give us credit for. If we don't let other people tell us what to do when we know that its wrong, then there's no way we're going to let music influence us and rule our lives. Give us a break. Come on. Lighten up. Can any one say Mmmmbop?

2, 4, 6, 8. That's a pattern. Left, Right, right, left, Left, Right. That's a pattern.

Sure, this stuff is easy. You know what a pattern is. They taught you that in second grade. After that they taught you how to carry on a pattern --how to keep it going.

But now, here’s the toughie. Did they ever teach you how to stop it?

Probably not.

Its a cliché, yes, but it’s true. We have to stop the cycle of violence in the United States.

I’m not just talking about the cycle of violence in the home. I’m talking about the cycle of violence in America. Contrary to popular opinion, they are not the same.

Domestic violence is a scary thing. It’s something we whisper about. It’s something we don’t bring up in polite conversation at the dinner table. And it’s something that's tearing families apart.

As a witnesses of domestic violence, we’ve all seen the aftermath. We’ve heard the cries. We’ve watched the bruises go from an angry red to a sickly yellow-grey.

And nothing changes.

The husband hits his wife because he watched his father do the same. The wife stays with her husband, because her mother kept her family together through the beating and the pain. In twenty years this couple’s three year old and five year old children will be living the reality that their parents face today.

Domestic violence isn’t a problem taken seriously today. Police officers, government official, and men and women in power are simply not looking at the big picture when they choose to over look the black eyes on the face of America’s women and children.

Its not right. Maybe if this problem is brought in to light today, we can save a whole generation of people from this terrible problem. Or maybe, we’re already a day too late.

High School. The best years of your life.

Yeah right! Give me a break and open a newspaper. The high school environment is a veritable breeding ground for sociopaths.

You’ve seen it in the paper and heard about it in the news --the terrible violence that’s been plaguing public middle and high schools. Massacres and murders. Thefts and rapes.

Recently the media has brought attention to the violence going on in schools. After the Jonsboro tragedy, there was a media frenzy to find information or violence in schools. People in the media would have you believe that this rash of violence is a new occurrence. That in the past year or so a contaminant in the water has poisoned our children’s minds and caused them to momentarily lose all sense of consciousness. Or perhaps-- perhaps this a terrible experiment in subliminal advertising gone wrong!

Sure. I believe that as much as you do. I do believe, however, that violence in schools is the topic of the moment. I do believe-- that the media has picked up on this topic because it is interesting to the general public, who suffer with a morbid sense of curiosity and a horrible lack of respect.

I am not saying, though, that violence in our school systems is not occurring. I’m just saying that it is. On a much wider scale-- and the answer to this seemingly baffling problem-- is right under our noses. Why is this happening?

Think back. Years ago. To that golden time you spent in school. Unless you were a jock or a cheerleader, most likely your high school career was a four year stint in Hell.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. Hell might be a little stern. Fire and Brimstone might not have been the best description. But a four year sentence to slow, painful, mental torture is right on the money. Chinese water torture is more humane. You were lucky if you survived in one piece.

Most of us won’t. I can see the signs. After one year, most of my friends are cracking. We will end up those women who say that they’re on a diet ten minutes after they eat a powdered donut and must rush to the bathroom to purge ourselves. We will be those women who run into the arms of a man to satisfy our need for love and then stay with those men after they beat us senseless and break our arms. We will be those women, who after ten years of therapy finally realize our self worth. It’s a sick world. Every day you can see people breaking under the strain.

It’s not the pressure and responsibility doled out to us students that tear our young minds apart. To be perfectly honest, most of the time tooling along the rode to higher education is a slow ride.

No, it’s the whole situation. The demographics are all wrong. Humor me for a second and think about it.

You pack thousands of students into a semi-operable building with a leaky roof, heat and air conditioners that don’t always work, and one bathroom for every mile and a half of hall. According to the constitution of the United States of America, prison inmates are entitled to less testing living quarters.

Add on to this less than lovely scenery the fact that all of these students are -- more or less at one time or another-- raging hormones scurrying through the halls and corridors like ants on the move.

Petty, tiny, minuscule things can be the determining factor in your daily mental torture. Some days you’re lucky. You wore the right thing. Your diet seems to be working or perhaps another fat kid just hit the block. You didn’t say too much in class that day. You said just enough in class that day. And so on and so forth.

It’s enough to make a paranoid schizophrenic's fears all come true.

I won’t lie to you and say that I haven’t been among the select group who hasn’t been picked on. I am ready to boldly stand up and recite, “My name is Valery, and I was a pickee.” And I won’t lie to you and say that I was never at one point in time part of the overwhelming majority that are the pickers.

It’s a fact of life. In high school every thing matters, except the important stuff. That won’t count till years latter. The only trouble is surviving through the trivial matters to get to any real substance later on.