I think I finally forced myself to roll out of bed at 8:15 this morning; which meant that I missed out on the first panel that I wanted to attend about assisted suicide in America. I think that it is a subject that needs a lot more insight and was definitely interested in what the speakers had to say about it. Oh well.
The first panel I attended had three speakers which had topics somewhat related to Social Disorganization Theory. Social Disorganization Theory is all about the place. It doesn't really include characteristics such as race/age/sex. It is a theory about where kids grow up, and how kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to be related with street crime and the joining into gangs. The other part of this panel (FINALLY A GOOD ONE) gave me another reason for me to hate Wal-Mart! :) It discussed the indirect relationship that the poverty Wal-Mart creates to violent crimes in counties across the nation. 88% of the Continental United States lives within 15 minutes of a Wal-Mart. Holy dang.
The second panel I attended was about women on death row. The panelist discussed the question she addressed in her research: Are the women on death row really the worst of the worst. Interestingly enough you probably already know that answer. Well, of the 34 women that she studied on death row in Ohio, most of them had pleaded down to LWOP sentences. The two women that were sentenced to death were charged with aggravated homicide, and complicity murder. Interestingly enough, the woman who microwaved her child was sentenced to LWOP, and the mother of two children who burned them alive after starting fire to her house also received LWOP. As my grandmother would say... "That's 'justice' for you."
The student poster panels took place today as well. I had the opportunity to see a couple of them. The Deviance of Walt Disney was probably the best one that I had checked out. They examined Disney movies from '37-'77 and how the themes in their movies influence children to become racist/sexist/assuming violence is okay through vengeance (LION KING!). It was a very good panel, and I asked lots of questions. The other fascinating panel discussed the admissibility of hypnosis in criminal trials. The lady had a list of 12-13 things that she thought would make hypnosis okay to enter into evidence as long as they were followed; few of them being not to coach the witness under the hypnotist's trance or whatever they call it these days. She saw my name tag, and then started asking me all of these legal questions about AK, some of which I could answer, and some of which I could not. It was nice to interact with a few students from other schools around the country and to see what kinds of research that they are doing.
Erika also gave the second part of her 'voluntold' speech. Unfortunately nobody told her that they reduced the time to 1 minute instead of 3 minutes, after she was already cut off during the first speech. So, her and I edited like crazy to try and make the speech 1 minute without trying to kill this poor girls speech. She gave the speech, and we peaced out. We didn't want to wait around in that room anymore. We were both a little bummed we missed a couple of things because we were working on someone else's speech; but we were very glad that we got to help.
After the panels, I took my COMM law midterm, which quite frankly, I probably didn't do so hot. But I can probably attribute that to the fact that I haven't opened a text book in over a week because I have been focused on ACJS and attending as many panels as I could. Thankfully, T-Payne is letting us postpone our Terrorism midterm to Spring Break so we can get as much ACJS stuff crammed in during the day as we can, and still be able to go check out the town after the conference day ends. Totally awesome.
Medieval Times is brilliant by the way. Absolutely brilliant. If you have ever had the chance of watching The Cable Guy with Jim Carrey, then you know exactly what I am talking about. At first it seemed a little cheesy, but then as the knights started to joust, and sword fight all over the place it started to get pretty awesome. There was SO much food. They start you out with tomato soup, followed by garlic bread, chicken, baked potato, ribs, and a baked pastry. It was so much food. They also had some good drinks that we explored! :)
After we returned to the hotel, Erika Kristen and I hit the town. After we tried unsuccessfully to get into the fancy night clubs (we couldn't find a working ATM and we also noticed that they were screening super fancy outfits... not that we didn't look good; we are just accustomed to the anything goes of Alaska) Erika scoped out a nice little bar that we had a lot of fun. It reminded me a lot of McClairen's Pub from HIMYM. The resemblance was astonishing. Oh, and as if we didn't have enough food at the feast, we ordered a ton more food and a few more drinks. We didn't finish all of the food; so on our way back to the hotel I gave our leftovers to one of the homeless guys I saw on the street under the condition that he shared with the his friends.
Well, it's 4 a.m. right now, and I am super dead! I am crashing in a few minutes. I will keep you posted about tomorrows events tomorrow night! I also put up a few pictures in the previous Canada blogs. If you are interested in checking them out.
Until then, CHEERS!
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