Educating the good citizen

This article was by Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kaphne. In the article there are many aspect of perspective about education of making civics become good. In the beginning they give out three characteristic of a good civic be. These three kinds are personally responsible, participatory, and Justice –oriented citizens. Then, the author is writing analysis of conflict situation. For example, citizen with no politics. At the End it talks about the solution of the problem.

In the community there are many kinds of good citizens and they have different characteristic. The Article analyzed into three basic character. First characteristic is personally responsible citizen. It is basically mean community contributor. The second one is Participatory citizen and it means people that participate and care about local event. And the last one, Justice- oriented citizens. They are people who think beyond the community and determine whether things are right or ethical.

After all the explanations, the author is analyzing the extreme situations. In the article, the author talks about the situation that when people do not have democracy. In that paragraph, he talks about the situation when good citizens do not have democracy. The conclusion that he made was that people will not have democracy but still being good. The reason is that in some circumstance democracy do not apply to being good citizen.

In last paragraph the author telling the solution. His solution of solving problem is forming education politics and community service organization.

In conclusion, I think the idea of organize more community service. If school and government do not emphasize it and be serious about it. No one will really care or know. I feel that we should make community service be similar to military obligation or count as a grade.

The Stimulus Plan: $787

After I looking all the thing in the list of the stimulus plan: how to spent $787 billion, I think all of them are important. they are really important that none of it can be deleted. looking from beginning to the end of list, I have found some really crucial ones that are the parts that I think can really make difference. These are Education and Job training, Tax cut For individuals, and Health. The reason why these were more crucial is because these things are decreasing the financial pressure of man and protect the industries.
For the first one aid for Education. I think this one is really helpful. Due to the fiancial crisis a lot of people lose their job. In order to decrease the amount of people with no job, we should let them learn more so they can have another method to survive and contribute to the society. My second point from top three choice is Tax cut for individual. From my perspective, since financial crisis, people already have less money. Therefore, logically, government should reduce the tax. My last point is health.
In conclusion, I think that every point that government listed and passed are really really important. Nothing can be deleted. although I choose 3 that I think it is important but I think every point on the list is really good.

How to Less carbon footprint? I'm not sure !???

After reading the article about an article Yes, They Could. So They Did. by Thomas Friedman, I feel really guilty that I did not do things like that. However, another feeling I have is do not know what to do to contribute thing like that to community.
After thinking this for a class, I think I should think out of box and with some crazy ideas not conventional ideas. From this semester's global ethics class topic "can a individual make difference", I think that I can do it and with weird and new ways. Although, trying to find a weird and new ways is hard, when new crazy idea come up it will "crazy" the people.
In conclusion, I think that in order to lose carbon footprint we should meet like our grad trip meeting and think critically.

Gender social experiment.

Binary
Gender

Today, we have "cross dressing" day. In Global Ethics class, we have discussions about gender and sex culture and we come up a inquiry : Could playing cross-dressing be healthy? Is cross-dressing for one gender over the other ?
For the first inquiry, I think that cross dressing is healthy because I believed that man do have a soft side. Often the stereotype of culture are man should be tough and always being confident and positive. Girls should be really caring and fragile. I think the culture are restricting us. We do not born to be binary. In biological view, male have XY chromosomes and Female have XX Chromosomes but it 's actually not that binary. Recent years, sciencist found out from statistic that the Y chromosome from male usually are not perfect and have a trend of become X. From my persepective I think that if there is no restriction naturally, why do we have to restrict our self.

Ideas for innovation

From my opinion, some of ideas of innovation are not that good. However, I can sum up some similar idea that I think is crucial.
One of them is to offer more educational activity such as internship and community service for civics. This is important for education; Young people can learn more from doing educational activities than from the textbook. The reason that for educational activities are more crucial is that people go to education for learning technique living on this planet. However, in school, classes do not teach people techniques for some specific technique for certain fields. For example, many company in science park have education program to educate the people in the company but somehow I think that if there are opportunities to have internship and community service companies can save more money for education.
Another one is set small school in each committee. I agree with what the article Ideas For Innovation said. In local schools there are too much students for good education. If we want a better education then we needed more concentrated classes. I think that in a big class students will not be as active as small classes but less resources and less attention from teacher.
In conclusion, generally I agreed what the article Idea For Innovation about. From all of the points in the article, I think that the most important and effective idea was to offer more educational activities in school and committees and decrease the size of a class and set a school in each committee. Furthermore, I think in order to make our world become better we need more resources for education because resource is the thing that make people become educated.

Impact of Globalization

Looking back in history, there are many phenomena that reveal how much we have evolved, such as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. Till now, due to our improvement of transportation and technology, we have a new phenomenon called Globalization. According to the definition posted by scholars in Wikipedia, “Globalization is the process of transformation of local phenomena into a global one. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are united into a single society and function together.” Another definition from Merriam Webster dictionary: “the state of being globalized; especially the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets.” However, this newborn phenomenon is controversial in recent years arguing whether or not it is good or bad.
When globalization started, people thought it was good in a variety of ways. Yet, after several years, people found out that Globalization is not only good for a country’s development but also good for business development. In business, salesmen can sell things oveseas and without governmental blocks. Most importantly, corporations can separate work into different places, so they can reduce the cost. For example, according to Nike Asia Company, they built four main factories in Asia because of cheap labour and access to material producers. Another benefit was globalization could make countries loosen their trade laws and open up trade. That will tremendously encourage businesses to re-locate. For example, Taiwan Science Park companies tended to sell products to only US and Asian countries before Taiwan became a member of the WTO, the companies can sell things to other countries like Russia or EU (European Union).
However, in time, problems arose. In recent years, many researchers have given speeches forewarning us that we are in a difficult situation moving towards great disasters. Such as what Al Gore‘s documentary film An Inconvenient Truth showed and EO Wilson’s Ted-talk speeches tell us. We have many problems such as running out natural resources, global warming, and increased air and water pollution. According to EO Wilson’s Ted Talk, many creatures will become extinct and the collapse of the food chain will harm us immensely which will ultimately lead to our extinction as a species. A statistic recorded by EPAC (Environmental Protection administration Executive Yuan – which is the environmental protection department of the Taiwanese government) 31% of the air pollution was from transportation and 38% are from the factories in Taiwan. If we add those values up, it will go over 60% and eventually, it will be nearly70%.
Another problem we are facing now due to globalization are the disadvantages faced by some poorest nations in the world. Corporations exploit these fourth world countries. Globalization allows corporations to get material for products with less expense because the corporation can build several factories or plants in many places where labor and resources are cheaper. This is similar to imperialism but a gentler one. The problem is not mistreating cheap labour badly but that corporations usually take over most of the country’s economy by building factories in that country. The result is that people lose their original jobs and start work in factories. Then if the company collapses or moves, the countries’ economy collapses and people lose their livelihoods and suffer. This may cause a variety of other problems. One of the worst ones is cutting down forests. For example, according to Rainforest Action Network organization, Brazil has lost 58% of tropical rainforest. Losing this much of the forest is not a good thing. This is one of the main causes of Global warming.
Globalization has a big impact on our world and has created an unclear grey area for people to analyze and research. There are a lot of negative things and positive things about globalization. A positive occurs when countries’ ease trade regulations and invest money into cities to build industry parks for industry to grow. Another good thing is that countries in a big area form organizations to trade and one of the famous organizations is WTO (World Trade Organization). However, there is a blind spot. Although having WTO corporations can reduce the tax on import products and sell cheaper goods, that makes the country have to spent more money on protecting local industries in order to compete with import products. Therefore, I think that Globalization has become a controversial topic. A quote from a American linguist Dr, Avram Noam Chonsky: “ the term ‘Globalization’ has been appropriated by the powerful to refer to a specific form of international economic integration, one based on investor rights with the interests of people incidental.” From my opinion, Globalization is not a thing or idea that has a mono side. We should think be careful and set rules before we leap in.

Big Organic and Enron

After reading Big Organic and thinking the relationship between Enron and the reading, I found that it is interesting to think from Enron's Rise to the fall. This can related to many things from what we learned in Ishmael.
First connection is in Ishmael, we know about the mother culture, mother nature, takers, and leavers. I think Enron is like the takers. Enron started pretty normal. However, the leader of the company become more and more greedier, at the end Enron is billions in dept. At last it collapse. Looking from this big picture, Enron is takers. Takers have their own mother culture. the mother culture we have was to gain money so we can have great life and that is what our dream is. That become a motive for Enron to try to gain more money. At last Enron collapsed because it is like leaver fighting back.
From my perspective this is how quotes "everything eventually morphs into the way the world is." and ".....conform the irregularity of nature to the precision and control of a machine." fit in and connect with Enron.

Another point is about how organic foods became a business now. I think this relate this to Enron is that many things started with a normal, naive, good view but at the end it become blurred. Organic food was good but at last Organic food is more of business in it. This is same as Enron. Enron started normally, however at the end it collapse because of their greediness.

In conclusion, what I have pointed out the problem is not only pointing Enron. This is pointing how our mother culture is and how similar we are to Enron.

SHOCK! New look of Organic

I was shocked these recent days in global ethics class. This shock started from the sustainable/environment friendly businesses presentation. The shock was not from how much sustainable and environment friendly businesses in the world; it is from how indefinite our society is.
Theoretically, organic is a good product and that is what I believe at beginning. However, as I knew more and learned more in Global Ethic class, I found out that this can be a method of selling product because organic can be slogan. This sounds like lie but truthfully, it's not a lie because there are many varied definitions that define "organic". After watch the film- The end of Suburbia, I have a similar feeling of these "Organic" slogans. the relation between the film and the reading is that I feel sad about our human always being captivated by a trend. However, the trend that I mean is not really a trend; it is like fashion. According to Ishmael," we always do what we have being told from mother culture.." and according to The end of Suburbia, "we live in dream...American dream.". This trend/ fashion is like a little culture that we followed. In Taiwan, same things but with different background happened again. I feel that most of Taiwanese have these kind culture that captivated us and it is in many different categories such as politics, showbiz, and clothing...etc.
For example, recent news and from what I experienced-people were afraid and do not buy milk because of the China's contaminated-milk incident.One day, Amy and I was chatting with a middle aged housewife at community service. The housewife said that she does not want to buy milk because of the poisoned-milk incident.
The wife is one of the people that is captivated by the trend. How? Why? If the milk is contaminated then many things should already be contaminated too because there is a lot of interconnection between foods. If milk is harmful then butter is harmful and we should be aware of what food we are buying if milk is harmful. For example, maybe those milk company sell their contaminated milk powder to pig meat company then those pig will be bad too.
In conclusion, I want to say is that organic can be another culture that keep us captivated. What I feel is that in a perspective organic food is good but the good is questionable in other perspective because thing tend to emphasize their good and left out the bad things.

Enron the source company

After I watched the documentary film of Enron corporation. The first reaction I have is laugh in an ironic way because is not they are bad ; is their way of doing things and selling product make me felt ludicrous. According to Wikipedia CEO of Enron corporation Kenneth Lay (Lee) is dead now. He was indicated by Aspen Valley hospital in Colorado that he died of a heart attack. Another important person of the Enron corporation case, Jeffery Skilling, he is serving 25 year and 4 month in prison now.

From my impression of the film there is a quote saying that people in Enron are "nerds". I totally agree what this quote said. It is not because their visual is nerd but their mind is foolish. From the analysis of the documentary film, they are so foolish that they become more and more greedy and fearless of many financial problems. At the point of climax, they came out a strategy called market to market strategy. Market to market strategy's curtail explanation is a strategy that make up false statement of their financial condition and attract stock buyer to buy their stock so they have more fund for company. When they nearly cannot cover the secret of the dept, they started giving electric to California state. However, they did not become more ethical instead they do unnecessary maintenance and delcared blackouts. This was called the California electricity crisis. After one year, they got caught making false information and the causation of California eletricity crisis. On May 25 2006, Kenneth Lay and Jeffery Skilling was found guilty and on October 23, Jeffery Skilling was given 24 years and 4 month prison sentence.

In conclusion, relate this to Ishmael, In book of Ishmael Ishmael said that the world is equilibrium. The rule of equailibirum in Ishmael is saying when ever you do something there will be consequence after it. I think this is the the situation that consequence come back and harm you. After watching this film, I think that we should do things with ethic. In the world around us, we might not see the unethical side of many things. However, at least we know whether we are doing good thing or bad thing. From what I have learned in Global ethic class, I think this story is similar to what I have been investigating in GE class. It is not only the bad business I see in GE, it's the rule of equilibrium in our world.

Our Design = Our Intention

When I watch the Ted talk by William Mcdonough, the quote "the fundamental issue is that for me design is the first signal of human intention" strongly grabbed my attention.
I sturdily believe this quote is a fact. No one will design and create anything that does not have any meaning to it.

In William Mcdonough's Ted talk , he said that the design of the toy duck has some problems. Usually, people do not see anything wrong with the duck; however, you will notice the problem when you look more carefully.

This duck is suppose to be safe because it is a toy for children, but on the back of the duck, it said " the product contain chemicals known by the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproduction harm". After seeing this, a question popped up in my mind: What is the intention of this design? Was the toy duck made for gaining profit or for the good of children?

Now, tie "Design's intention" to "Ecology of commerce" we read. In the reading, it talks about how business affect the world from many things. When I read the reading, the first thing that popped out from my mind was credit card. The invention of credit card seem harmless but it is actually harmful. Credit cards can cause financial crises.

Relate to what we've learned in English class "Things that make us feel safe is the thing that give us control". I think that the true intention of credit card is to take money away from people. Credit cards make people buy things without considering the price, which is a bad buying habit. People receive bills later, but a lot of people could not afford the bills, therefore the bills becomes huge debts. From the example, I think our intention for designing things is getting worse and worse and I believe the consequences will affect everyone, including the people who design the product.

The impact corporations can bring is huge. I think that organization, group, and corporation should design things with good intention and be ethically responsible for the design they make. Only good intention can make our society and environment better.

Waste not and Senior project

In waste not, the author discuss about issue of US being wasteful. United State is a developed country and is a model that many developing countries look up to. However, US did not do a good job of being a good model because life style in US makes a bad model for developing countries. There is one section in Waste not that I have the most impression is the “How much waste is there”. This section talk about statistic of how much US waste is and show how bad the pollution in US is. Although, the statistic did not tell any moral, it makes me feel we are living in a trashcan and with a lot of illness caused by us.

For four weeks, I have interned at Agnitio as a quality tester. My responsibility is to keep the quality of product stay in a certain level and make sure the product work. What I can learn from working as a quality tester, I can learn how the detecting process work and different ways of detecting things.

From motivation of the waste not, Senior project, and Angus’ presentation. I realized that my internship is connected with the reading in the sense that it is about protecting the Environment around us. From Angus’ presentation I feel that we still have a chance to rescue the world and we can do it. For me my method of rescue the world is by investigate what cause our body sick in this polluted environment.

Thoughts and Inquiry question

How does air pollution affect our body

How does air pollution affect our body? This can answer from the reason I chose biochemistry for internship. I choose science because I want to save this environment and help this community become a better place.
I want to investigate how does air pollution affect our body because in this industrialized environment we often forget the negative side of chemical exhaustion but only know the convenience of it. Recent years, we can hear many news about having bizarre sickness and found out that it is cause by pollutions. From the Cadmium polluted rice to green oyster, Every case is another step toward hell.
I want to find out how does air pollution affect our body and educate the community the right knowledge so we can all b aware of our environment.

"Science" Park ? Taiwan?

"Science" park? it's really "science" or it's industrialization park？

From the reading, I can see the disastrous humanity of most Taiwanese people. I believe the case in reading is just a small edge of a big problem.

Often, I have the same thought as the reading (The Silence of Silicon Lambs). However, I do not want to focus on only science park but the whole Taiwan. Since US and Europe countries were industrialized, Taiwanese trying hard to push Taiwan's economy and wanting Taiwan become a developed country. Oppositely, we pushed and saved the wrong way. Media, government, and governors try to cover the negative fact. Therefore, it caused many corporation doing underground illegal activities. In recent years' news I found out that these cases are NOT just happening in Science park but also polices and education.

In Taiwanese education, many things in textbooks are not really doing the duty of education. Taiwanese education are focus more on test, job, future. Often, they ask to memorize the isolated information in textbook and not think about the saving environment or helping the community. The only people who were concern about our environment were only researchers or scholars. Economy of the Taiwan may seem important but avoiding the truth cannot make this country's education improve because it loses the point of education.

In Taiwanese politics, It is wrong that politician use "helping economy" this excuse to mess Taiwanese's mind. Media are like amplifier, it makes the things become more crucial and more well known. However, most of politician in Taiwan knew the affect of media. Therefore, they started underground activity and started to pointing finger to other politicians. Nevertheless, most of them were actually taking the advantage of making money and getting more support but not improving the environment.

In conclusion, this modern and convenient world, things looks harmless but in fact they are hiding the inconveniences in the future.

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Change the world

<<- a Taiwanese doctor 連加恩 Chan - un Lian




Usually, people thought to change the world is hard because you need a tremendous power to do it but I think the idea is preventing people from changing the world. From my perspective, I think to change world is not hard, it just about you want to do it or not. Sometimes, people do not know how should they do it because they do not have a group of people or program that support him/her but I think that is not the problem because I believe that you can change the world by your self. From the animal testing film found by Jack and Amy, the 16 year old guy started a website and gather people to against the people that do not want the animal testing lab. I think that is the thing we should do. It does not have to have a huge power. It should be a little project that similar as a school project.
After the basic idea from my mind about changing world, I want to do something. If I have chance want to go to hospital in Africa to help the people there. For now, I would want to go to hospital and help people there.

Grizzly man

This is a documentary film by Werner Herzog and it is about a bear fan Timothy Treadwell.
In the film, you could see many clips starred by Timothy. From Timothy's analysis in this movie, I see the many aspect of Timothy Treadwell.
I personally think this film have two side of argument. One side is saying that he is innocent because he try to protect grizzly bear and try to contact with them. Another side is saying that he is interrupt grizzly bears' habitat. In my mind, I do not want to set which side am I on because I think he is both good and bad. Another reason that I do not want to criticize or go for him is because I could not tell Timothy is good or bad by just watching a film about him. In the film there was only people's bias about him. Connect this to current world, this is similar to news. Many thing on news is prepared by the news reporter and the people in company and it usually bias . Sometimes by just watching a small amount of news. You could not tell the truth.
I found something interesting and it was related to the film. In Tyler and Roanne's discussion, we have discussed through an idea. People who stress by the life usually wanted to interact with animals. I found Timothy Treadwell could be an good example of the idea. In the film, it showed Timothy had a rough life after he got out from high school and he been through drugs and alcoholism. However, his mind is not dead, so he decide to quite his life and start contact with wild nature.

Arctic tale- my thoght

I first thought that this film was professional and safely done but after I saw the little film was showing when the movie end. I felt really impressed by those people.
In the film you could see the global warming effect. It is interesting that I thought something after a discussion from SRC about speaking English.
I think protecting this world is similar to the problem of speaking English. From my perspective what happen now, is
everyone do not know how serious the problem is and what is the problem. I think every modern industrialized country people know global warming and this is relate to the speaking English problem, everyone know we should not speak the language that is not in English but we still do. Same as global warming educations and laws is not enough. I think we should take it more serious. In order to change this world is to make everyone on earth think this is an urgent. To those who do know what is the problem, I think we should seriously educate them. How should we educate them ? I think to make it serious , clear and forceful. Every country's government and environmental organization should work together and make some policy or rule that could change every person's life.

Jane Goodall

I really agree with what Jane Goodall said in the TED talk speech. We are actually the same as those animals we saw. It is related to an idea from Ishmael: “This world is not our world.”The phrase “our world ” is not true or false; it is only an idea that humans believe without proof. This world does not belong to any specific creature; the world cannot lose any kind of creature. Those poor and native people used natural tools to get food. They are similar to chimpanzees; chimpanzees have nine different tools to get food. From what Jane Goodall said, the difference between humans and chimpanzees is humans have language and culture, but this will not separate the “class level” of humans and chimpanzees. Goodall argued that native and poor people have no idea what happens in the world because all they do is try to survive.


An example from speech, those people in the forest cut down the trees in forest though that many pressure from foreign country, all they want is to get money and try live a day. From Phil Borges these are endangered culture. Us, who had modern education and lived in modern world, we have responsibility to tell them and help them because we made the mess. This world is all interconnections, If only the modernized people do it. The mess will still going on continuously. This is the area that we need to work on. Today, is not only how convenience is the technologies, is how “good” the technologies are. From the film Wal-Mart, what we do is not just try to get the lowest price product. We should get a good product, which means the product of the company will protect the workers. Things we do will have the consequences. For example Wal-mart gets the consequences of doing those un-man kind things. The consequences of doing these factory and company is Mother Nature will fight back. Global warming, deceases…etc are the consequence. From what the blog comment I wrote in EO Wilson said, this world people are blind fold themselves. All this consequences happening in the world is not happened separately, we should have a “global mind” think broadly.

God must be crazy

I watch the movie before. I do not know why this film is funny. This time I watch the whole thing; last time was only a part. I think the film is pretty sad. The reason for that is we are attack by our captivity. The bushman represent human without bushman captivity. The man who suits the bushman is represent modern captivity man. Creature on this world is captive. I think that the point now is being biggest taker in this world. How? Will I think is that now what we are doing is like a massive and slow suicide. We keep on have desire to get more thing to get better. There is always pursuit of happiness but we never satisfied because we only thinking in our culture and in our ways. We do not usually think what is out there and what happen in this planet. In 10th grade our school learnt what happen about global warming so I did a research on it and saw a sad comment on Internet. It said, “There is no global warming here!!” When I saw this, I was shocked. I thought the first time I saw global warming is on textbook but why some people will be so unshaped and so irrelevant to global situation. The first thing I said after the movie was “This is sad and sarcastic.” This movie is so realistic that it makes almost cried. It is describes our culture really well. War, love, argue, survive, law, culture is the most common thing in our life and is the reason we are captivity. Maybe human should change how we think the world and how we view as us. It sounds like in Ishmael. Ishmael was teaching this world is not for anyone and anything. The earth is always being there for us if we think.