Thursday, October 6, 2011

An Ongoing Cycle

Technology affects how we do thing and how we see things, nothing is done by hand anymore. Everything is done by computers or machines. For example, making merchandise for certain stores, like clothing, back in the day it was hand made. Now they have sewing machines to do the labor for the workers. Due to technology advancement during the years, employers need a smaller amount of people, which means more people are out of work and receiving no income. Sometimes technology makes things easier for us, but then again it would take away job opportunities.


Another piece of technology that has kind of took over what people do manually are the phones, Ipads and tablets. Now, instead only using your phone to make calls or text message, people text message a whole lot more, they use their phone to listen to music, take videos, to play games, and now to even control their car when they're not around to do it manually with car keys. Some people don't go to the movies anymore; they rather stay in their house and watch movies off of Netflix. We depend so much on different type of technology that we've lost some psychical contact with people and how we interact with different things, like unlocking your car with your car key, which now people can do with their phones.

            Everything is changing. Some changes are for the better, and some for the worse. Technology makes things more accessible. But does it make us lazy? I think sometimes it does. An example would be a car. If i didn't want to walk to the store that's a block away from my house, I can just get in my car and drive. If I had to call my sister downstairs for dinner, but i didn't feel like walking upstairs, I can simply send her a text or I can call her. Technology is very useful, but then again, it kind of makes us lazy because we don't do the things by hand, instead most things we do is through a piece of technology. An example would be getting information. Instead of buying a newspaper, I can just go online and go to the Daily News website and read today's news, or I can go to weatherchannel.com to find out tomorrows weather. I mean even with simply just checking the weather online, it shows us how much we depend on technology. Everything is changing, we just have to know how to keep up.

Monday, October 3, 2011

The Lowest Of The Low...


Lies will never get you anywhere. You might not get caught at first, but in the end it always catches up to you. Cyril Kendall was convicted of grand larceny and fraud after getting money out of several charities of benefits, including burial funds and grief counseling for himself. Kendall which is the worst 9/11 scammer, and even after being discovered of this horrible selfish crime, he is being released from prison early. The Daily News has learned that he has been approved for early release from the Fishkill Correctional Facility. Why would they let him out? Especially after the 10Th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks?! Kendall made up a fake story, that his 29 year old son Wilfred was killed in the 9/11 attacks while attending an interview in the 91st floor of the north tower. It makes sense that his son died on the 91st floor, he would've never made it out in time. He presented charities, as well as the American Red Cross, with a fake photo of his son, and a birth certificate. Later investigators determined that the photo of his "son" was actually a photo of himself at a younger age, and the birth certificate was a forgery. Kendall cheated $160,000 out of kindhearted charities. How does this man have the audacity to make up such a story just to get money, when there are thousands of people in the country who've lost family members and friends who they can never see again? Unfortunately people were fooled, giving him money out of the kindness of their hearts. I know what it feels like to lose someone, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Cyril Kendall should still be in jail for committing such a crime. I think a 20 year sentence was way too lenient, and on top of that, he hasn't paid a dime back to any of the charities who gave him money for his false loss of a son that never existed. After being released from jail, he should pay back every penny back of the money that never shouldn't have been given to him in the first place.

 Although he wasn't the only one who was caught, Cyril Kendall was the lowest of the low. Altogether there were 22 people arrested in March of 2002 for falsely filing death certificates for family members who never existed and collecting $759,565 in charitable funds, according to the Manhattan district attorneys office.
What I don't understand is how several people invented this selfish scam, 22 to be exact, and actually got away with it. They were all eventually caught, but why weren't they caught right there when they were signing the death certificates, while they were each trying to explain their lies, or even before that when they began the process? If 22 people got away with the crime, imagine how many more people are out there cheating innocent people out of their hard earned money. Maybe "the system", as in the charities like the Red Cross, should overlook the way they do certain things, put up more rules and regulations, and possibly set up more background checks before giving money to people who've lost family members; so they can catch criminals in the act. 

Now, all we can do is keep the memory of those who were lost in the 9/11 attacks, and hope that people like Cyril Kendall are caught before doing any further damage. We will never forget September 11Th.