Public opinion

The English term "public opinion" dates back to the seventeenth century work by John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which contains an early consideration of the importance of public opinion in the ordering of politics. The term was derived from the French word l’opinion, which was first used in 1588 by Michel de Montaigne.

This concept came about through the process of urbanization and other political and social forces. For the first time, it became important what people thought, as forms of political contention changed.

It was introduced by James Madison that for a government to be democratic, it would be essential to have strong and knowledgeable citizens that hold educated opinions that could be shared and expressed. Active citizens would then use this knowledge to participate in their government, while also being able to inform other citizens of current issues. In terms of political science, public opinion is defined as being “the aggregate of public attitudes or beliefs about government or politics”. Public opinion is considered to be the factor that guides an indirect democratic government. It is only through the approval of the public that a government gains the authority to function. Public opinion is thought to develop from these main sources: “political socialization, education, life experience, political parties, the media, and the government”. Public opinion is considered a dynamic part of today’s government. Continually changing, it has the power and influence to shape the government in new ways.

Crash Course

Crash Course (also known as Driving Academy) is a 1988 made for television teen film directed by Oz Scott.

Plot

Crash Course centers on a group of high schoolers in a driver’s education class; many for the second or third time. The recently divorced teacher, super-passive Larry Pearl, is on thin ice with the football fanatic principal, Principal Paulson, who is being pressured by the district superintendent to raise driver’s education completion rates or lose his coveted football program. With this in mind, Principal Paulson and his assistant, with a secret desire for his job, Abner Frasier, hire an outside driver’s education instructor with a very tough reputation, Edna Savage, aka E.W. Savage, who quickly takes control of the class.

The plot focuses mostly on the students and their interactions with their teachers and each other. In the beginning, Rico is the loner with just a few friends, Chadley is the bookish nerd with few friends who longs to be cool and also longs to be a part of Vanessa’s life who is the young, friendly and attractive girl who had to fake her mother’s signature on her driver’s education permission slip. Kichi is the hip-hop Asian kid who often raps what he has to say and constantly flirts with Maria, the rich foreign girl who thinks that the right-of-way on the roadways always goes to (insert awesomely fake foreign Latino accent) “my father’s limo”. Finally you have stereotypical football meathead J.J., who needs to pass his English exam to keep his eligibility and constantly asks out and gets rejected by Alice, the tomboy whose father owns “Santini & Son” Concrete Company. Alice is portrayed as being the “son” her father wanted.

Robert Jaffe

Robert L. Jaffe (born May 23, 1946) is an American physicist and the Jane and Otto Morningstar Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was formerly director of the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics.

Biography

Jaffe was born in Bath, Maine, USA, in 1946 and educated in public schools in Stamford, Connecticut. He received his A.B. degree in physics, summa cum laude, from Princeton University, where he was valedictorian of the Class of 1968. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University in 1971 and 1972, respectively. At Stanford he founded the Stanford Workshops on Political and Social Issues.

In 1972, Jaffe moved to MIT as a postdoctoral research associate in the Center for Theoretical Physics; he joined the faculty in 1974. From 1975 until 1979, he was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow. Jaffe has spent sabbatical years at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (1976), Oxford University and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) (1978–79), Boston University (1986–87), and at Harvard University (1996–97). He has served on the program advisory committees of several national laboratories including the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Brookhaven National Laboratory. For a decade he chaired the advisory council of the physics department of Princeton University. Since 1996, Jaffe has been an advisor to and Visiting Scientist at the RIKEN-Brookhaven Research Center. He spent the fall term of 1997 on leave from MIT at the RIKEN-Brookhaven Center.