Life
Essays

Perhaps it is simply that we all need a few good villains in our life, and with the Cold War firmly over we must look closer to home to find our bad guys. Or perhaps it is simply that there is a great deal of villainy…

The Development and Validity of Knowledge

The fifteenth-century Spanish travelers who embarked on voyages of discovery and conquest in the Americas expected to encounter primitive savage races. Instead, they found advanced civilizations with intricately…

¶ … White Rose: Munich 1942-1943, by Inge Scholl. Did the Scholl's die in vain, and if so, what purpose did their resistance serve against the Nazis? Inge Scholl wrote this moving book about her brother and sister, who…

¶ … sculpture of artist Henry Moore. Specifically, it will look at his art style and how events in his life affected his work

¶ … standing at the lighthouse in a park in Mackinac City, shivering and cold in the dim August light. The lighthouse's grey walls tower above me like an immovable stone monument to the bleakness of the day.

For some time I have believed that the death penalty is a necessary part of our legal system, for the protection of society as a whole. In forming this opinion, I looked at Ted Bundy, who was convicted of monstrously…

¶ … Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion," by Stephen B. Oates. Specifically, it will analyze the historical value of the book, and analyze the author's assessment that "His [Nat Turner's] rebellion…

The book Cut by Patricia McCormick explores the life of a wayward teen named Callie. The book is set in the present day twenty-first century and Callie is having a difficult time dealing with the fact that her parents…

Although the majority of Americans view tax season as an annual burden that is more bother than benefit, America's ascendancy to the realm of undisputed superpower was fueled by the willingness of its citizens to contribute as individuals for the sake of the whole. For many, however, tax preparation can become a dreadful experience defined by ignorance of the law and inexperience with financial matters, and every April millions of unsuspecting Americans are duped by duplicitous tax preparation services. By manipulating the information entered into an individual's tax forms, or neglecting to inform a client about possible refunds and other benefits that they are rightfully due, nefarious tax preparers can easily defraud the unsophisticated taxpayer out of thousands of dollars, inflicting dual damage on both the individual victim's pocketbook and the federal government's coffers. With the recent national recession reminding the IRS and individual taxpayers alike that disposable income is a luxury to be treasured, revisions made to Circular 230 have been made to tighten regulations on unethical tax preparation experts, and to reduce the risk posed by negligent and unqualified tax preparers. As recent testimony delivered to the U.S. House of Representatives, during a meeting of the Committee on Ways and Means' Subcommittee on Oversight, Representative Jim Ramstad expressed the situation thusly, explaining that "the individual most responsible for claiming tax refunds is not the individual taxpayer but rather a professional tax preparer … (and) unfortunately, taxpayers receive little or no guidance on how to avoid a bad or unscrupulous preparer. Tax preparers are not licensed by the IRS … and although the IRS administers a detailed set of rules that governs tax practice, known as Circular 230, hundreds of thousands of income tax preparers are not covered by these rules" (2005).