Global edication and health systems (Sumblog 13)

Over a month ago we talked about global health care and health systems. We talked about how global society is made up of three main components: civil society, management through global institutions (education and healthcare), and security. The institutions of education is global because of the informal homogenization of education. The structure of schooling is latent curriculum which is unofficial or hidden forms of schooling. This also points to the authority, study skills, and time management of education. Now healthcare is global because people try to globally try to find a cure to certain diseases.

This also brings up the four negative effects of globalization. Transborder health risks, growth of nonstate actors, worsening socioeconomics political, and environmental problems and weakening of the ability of nations to meet global health changes are all negative effects of globalization.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2b0ZSIYtX8c

This is a great video on the challenges of global education.

Know Impact (Sumblog 12)

After doing the know impact worksheet that was given to us I realized that I am environmentally conscious but I can always do more and I do sometimes make mistakes. We cannot take our resources for granted. Someday they will run out when we need them the most. We also have to think about the future of our children and their children. We want them to have access to the resources they need.

I can see how it might be easy to hurt the environment sometimes if everybody else is doing it. For example when you go to a concert and you see a lot of people littering, it makes you feel that you can do this too. This is called releasor cue. This is when you feel compelled to do something because others are doing it and your judgement becomes clouded on the matter. I learned this from studying recreational impacts in my Forestry 335 class.

We need to remember to always be conscious of the environment. Not over the top like "GO GREEN OR DIE" people but be aware of how many ways you effect the environment and what does that does to the resources we need and that our children will need in the future.

This is a great video that shows the horrific impacts of littering that we cause all the time.

Population (Sumblog 10)

This past week in class we talked about population and how a certain population either increases or decreases depending on the births and deaths in that certain country. I really liked the real time birth and deaths visual that we tried to look at but could not. I looked at it on d2L and it is a very cool tool to see how certain areas compare to the United States of America. I thought it was interesting that there were so many more births and deaths in Asia and Africa compared to the United States and Europe. I also thought it was interesting that in the 5 minutes that I watched the map, there were over 1,000 births compared to about 400 deaths. This surprised me, for some reason I thought these numbers would be more even or closer than what they were.

Also in class we talked about how China is slowly getting more lenient on their policy of one child per family and usually it is the male that they keep. I still thought that it was very strict about the one child per family thing today but I was glad to see that the Chinese government is allowing the people of China to have more than one child. Especially for the reason of the abundance of abortion in China over the past 20-30 years. I think it is good they are letting families that live in rural farm areas to have more than one children to help work on the farm. I also was surprised to hear that you can send in an application to have more than one child. Now that these new rules in place I can see China's population drastically increasing. In the past, with the one child law still fully in effect, China's population is ginormous. Now with the laws changing and people are having more than one child, the population is going to increase to numbers that might not be suitable for the space and resources China has.

This is a great video explaining the ease of the one child policy in China.

Americanization Throughout the World (Sumblob 9)

It could be said that the world is becoming Americanized. I think that this statement could be true in the sense that a lot of countries not only eat American food, speak the American language, but mainly they strive to be free like us Americans are. I know this is not the case with every country but the countries that are not free, all want freedom that we have. It can be said that those countries want to be more like America. Hell, why wouldn't you want to be like us. We have the freedom to do almost anything we want, say anything we want, and be whoever we want. Who wouldn't want that for themselves, there family and their country? The answer to that is nobody.

However, I think that another big thing about being "Americanized" is the fact that America has so many different cultures and diversity in it. Ancestors from everywhere came here to settle. For example my German ancestors came to Wisconsin to settle and that is why I am here (although I was born in Michigan). I think that along with freedom, other countries want the diversity that we have. It lets us experience other cultures in our own backyard. It is crazy to think how many diverse cultures there are in the United States but I think its pretty cool that we have so many.

I would love to visit a similar country like the United Kingdom and see how diverse their country is as well. I don't think any country is as diverse as our country but I would assume that the European countries are very similar to the United States overall.

In our society today everyone is striving for diversity and what not. I think that America is the number one role model for this in terms of other countries that are "Americanizing" (if that is even a word). I wouldn't want to live anywhere else in the world besides the great nation of the United States of America.

This is a great photo that shows the Americanization of the world. If you look close you can see the logos and signs of very popular items that you can literally find in almost any country on earth. Just more proof that the world is slowly "Americanizing".

Anonymous (Sumblog 8)

This past week in class we watched a very interesting video about Wikileaks and Anonymous. I had heard of Wikileaks through the news when it was going down but I had never heard of Anonymous before. The video was very interesting, I had no idea that the people from Anonymous had done, or even could do all of those things through computer hacking. Isn't computer hacking illegal? How have these guys not been caught?

We talked about how Anonymous is a movement but I think it is a very weak attempt. I think it is just a bunch of spoiled computer nerds that get off over messing with people's lives. I also think they are very hypocritical in the fact that they went after Scientology just how Scientology was going after people who disagreed with them. The Scientology members would follow people and try to make their lives miserable and that is exactly what Anonymous did to Scientology members. In no way do I support Scientology, in fact I am strongly against it but I am using them to make a point at how hypocritical the people of Anonymous are.

I also think that the people of Anonymous are cowards. Anyone who has to wear a mask like that might think they are just keeping themselves out of trouble but it makes them look very cowardly and weak. If you have to wear a mask to hide your identity so you don't get in trouble than you probably shouldn't be doing that thing (computer hacking) in the first place. I found the people from Anonymous to be very cocky and annoying and I in no way support their weak attempt at a "movement".

This video tries to explain the cyber attacks on Israel websites by anonymous. I think it should be taken as an attack and not just a protest. It is cyber terrorism in my eyes.

Beyond Capitalism (Sumblog 6)

Last week in class we talked about Beyond Capitalism which I thought was kind of interesting. In dealing with beyond capitalism we talked about Rodrik's three sources of tension and Robinson's four concerns. Rodrik talked about how unequal trade is a huge source of tension, and an example of that is the video we watched on Zambia and its copper mines. He also talked about conflicts with domestic norms like child labor laws. Finally he mentioned that globalization has made it hard for governments to provide social institutions.

Robinson focused on over-accumulation, the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer, state legitimacy (such as Wal-Mart hurting small business), and sustainability (taking from a country until they run out).

All of these concerns and conflicts really make this an easy concept to understand. It also show the negative effects of capitalism which I think are important to look at in today's society. People of power take things form the less privileged without a care in the world about them! People like that are the ones that need to learn about the negative effects they are causing with their greed for money, power and success. 

I really liked this video so I put it in my blog. It puts things into perspective and really shows us how unequal the worlds wealth really is. How can some people have so little while we have so much? How is it that some people in third world countries would kill for a bottle of clean water and yet we have swimming pools just to relax in? But would you give up some of your wealth and luxury to help out the underprivileged? That is the real question we need to ask ourselves.

Glencore Holding Back Africa (Sumblog 5)

The video about Glencore and Africa that we watched in class really got me thinking about the people of Zambia and how Glencore has affected them. In the video it showed how Zambia had a lot of copper and Glencore wanted to make money off of them. Glencore pretty much took over the copper mining operations in Zambia and received most of the profit from the copper that Zambia was mining on their land. When Glencore took over they started to do things that harmed the people of that community in Zambia. They polluted their water sources with chemicals from the factory, thus making the Zambia natives very sick. The people of Zambia needed Glencore to survive so Glencore could take advantage of them however they wanted to.

Glencore ultimately was using the people of Zambia to make a huge profit off of them. They would reap the benefits of the hard manual labor the people of Zambia did. Glencore held back the country of Zambia from being modern and independent. They did not care about them but only cared about the money that people were making from them. The CEO of Glencore was also going to go away for a very long time for tax fraud until President Bill Clinton in his last few weeks as president, gave him a pardon from all of his crimes. The Glencore company had so much power that leaders of other countries and CEOs of other big businesses were contacting President Clinton and telling him to give a Pardon to Glencore's CEO.

I think this is ridiculous. How can someone not care at all about those people that were giving you such a huge profit. Glencore had not morals at the time and did not give a second look when the people of Zambia were becoming sick and dying because of the pollution. Big businesses need to stop taking advantage of other people like the people of Zambia. 

This is a great video that shows how Glencore not only has effected Zambia but also many other places in the world.