Mad Men

In the series Mad Men the main topic is advertising, in the first chapter of season 1, a tobacco company resorts to this advertising company to ask for help since they have to hide the health damaging aspects of cigarettes from people as some investigations had been done and people were suspecting.

Our task in the thinking skills class was after watching the chapter find this information:

1. Identify some of the vested interests in this scene. How do these work?

2. Why is Peter's idea rejected, and why is Don's idea accepted?

  1. In this scene we can see the vested interest in what the tobacco company owners say since they want to show that their product does not lead to fatal ilness, they want to show the interesting side. Although they know that it is not healthy thery want their advertising to show other aspects, because otherwise people would stop buying Lucky Strike. That´s their vested interest, they hide the truth because if they do not do so they wuold loose clients and lots of money.

2. Peter's idea was rejected because he suggested to tell people that yes, cigarettes are bad for their health but there are worse things and they may die from something else so why not die from smoking. He said that people want to die so it is a good idea to tell them that the product that they are consuming will kill them. On the other hand, Don's idea was accepted because he meant to show people other aspects of that tobacco company,  that were meaningless but a good way to distract people from the negative ones, that's why he suggested to tell people that  tobacco was toasted, although it did not make the cigarettes more healthy, it just hid the fact that they were damaging.

Tobacco advertising

When advertising, tobacco companies, do not show the negative aspects of smoking or the concecuences. Moreover, te people advertising the cigarettes are young and healthy so they make people think that they will look that way and itis a good habit, when in reality, it is the other wsy around. Furthermore, the people shown smoking are often athletes in open places, but smoking is real,y bad for sport. They do this because if they told the truth they would loose millions of dollars since probably many people do not know the concecuences but if they were shown in adverising or in the packages people qould be more aware and scared which would led to them stop consuming. Also, many scientist risk their careers for working for these companies so they do not want to be exposed. In this advertisement a baby is telling her mom to go smoke, so ir shows people that smoking does not affect children but actually it really does. It also makes people think that it makes them good parents and that it is the roght way to take a break from parenting.

Capital punishment

Nowadays in some states like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia some crimes are punished with death penalty. In some other places such as Australia, France and Germany, capital punishment is not used anymore. In the countries where it is used, it is only applied when crime committed is very severe and the author is 18 years old or over although some countries still apply it to younger people.
 First of all, there are some crimes that deserve a harsher punishment than just a couple of years in prison. I believe that in those cases people should get a life sentence, but they should not be killed. People who are in favor of this penalty often argue that it is a good way of preventing future crimes, but so is life imprisonment.
 Secondly in some countries this penalty is used for minor crimes, not that they are not important, but not every crime deserves the same punishment. Killing someone is  not the same as selling drugs for example. So it would be better if the different sentences  varied according to the severeness of the crime and the worst punishment would be life imprisonment.
 Thirdly, judges may be wrong, it happened throughout history that they made mistakes and punished people for committing terrible crimes and they turned out to be innocent. Death penalty can not be reversed, but life imprisonment can. Although most of the times the judges are right, there is a margin of error.
Last but not least, it takes a lot of time to decide wether a crime is worth of capital punishment or not, and meanwhile nothing is done. This is because it is an irreversible crime and it takes more time for judges to think about it and decide. On the other hand, judges may decide an amount of years in prison and then change it.
 The United Nations and the international laws prohibit it because it is clear that loss of life is not a fair punishment. To conclude, no one deserves to be killed, no matter what they did. but they do deserve punishment. The way of teaching that killing  is bad, in my opinion, is definitely not by killing people. I believe that capital punishment is controversial because it punished murder by killing. It makes no sense at all.
Standard form:
Not all crimes deserve the same punishment.
Nobody deserves to be killed because it is a human right.
Judges may make mistakes.
Life sentence is just as harsh and it does not involve loss of life.
Therefore, capital punishment should not be legal.