Harrison Bergeron & Equality ♥

★ Life in Vietnam would be perfect if everyone were totally equal. Do you agree or disagree? Explain your answer in complete sentences.

- I strongly disagree to this statement because of a lot of reasons. First, people are unique in their own ways, so it is fair for them to express themselves. Even though there are people that don't have that much ability to do things like the others, but they can still try to achieve greater things. In Vietnam, there are people who can do different things well, like someone who was a math genius, or someone who was a great poet or a wonderful writer and that "inequality" that made Vietnam better. They were good at different things and brought to Vietnam many beautiful work of arts or pieces of writing. If we pulled everyone to the same level, none of them would be special anymore; none of them would bring anything new to our country. To me, that's actually a bad thing. Therefore I think it would be better if we just keep things the way they are.

★ You are designing a society in which everyone is equal. What are the laws?

- Everyone must be able to access education.

- Everyone must have a comfortable house to live in.

- Smarter people must help less intelligent ones to be smarter like them.

- Everyone must be able to access health care.

★ What would you do to help people who were less capable mentally, physically, or socially to “catch up”?

- Everyone should have some empathy and sympathy towards people who have mental, physical or social problems. All of those people should be getting support from their family or friends or people around them. I would build a place for those who are physically and mentally disabled; a place where they can feel that nobody's better than them because they can just be themselves in it. They can improve many skills that would not require their inabilities. For those who are socially disabled, I would help them with their communication ability just by being friendly to them. Maybe I can talk to them more and introduce them to everyone else. Sometimes simple things are the best solutions. I really hope that others could do the same thing.

★ What problems can you foresee that might come in a society with laws that force “equality for all”? How would you handle those problems?

- I think that the most obvious problem that will occur is a revolution from the citizens. If the government forced everyone to be equal by making strong people weak, smart people dumb, or beautiful people ugly, then that was just not fair. Everyone has the right to be themselves, so they will fight for that right. If I were the government, I would handle this problem by keeping the law of equality but in a different way. I would let people to do what they're good at but also help the non-professional ones to become better. With that solution, people would still be equal, but at a higher level.

★ Do you believe that total equality is possible, or would human nature make sure that some people would eventually dominate others?

- I think that total equality is impossible. Even in the story "Harrison Bergeron" when the government tried to keep everything and everyone equal by many ways, there was still inequality because the government itself had overpowered the citizens.Therefore even if you tried your best to make everyone equal, there would still be someone who was different and special.

★ In what situations have you felt similarly to any of the characters? What persons, places, or ideas from your own experience came to mind while you were reading this story? Try to list as least two examples.

- I think equality is kind of the same to those experiments we have in science. We always have to keep many things the same to make a fair test. For example, to test how the concentration of salt will affect the growth of the plants, we need to keep the amount of water, the amount of soil, the temperature, etc. That would make the test fairer because we can be pretty sure that the other factors can't affect how much the plants grow. 

- This story also reminded me of the time when I stood up to my mom and got scolded. Usually I would never dare to talk back to her because most of the time she's right. However, I didn't do anything wrong that time, and that was why I wanted to show her that I was right. It was a small argument over a pair of Converse shoes. The result was that she yelled and screamed at me in the middle of Parkson HV. It was quite a memory! ♥

Letter ♥

How does advertisement affect your consumption? ♥

★ How does advertising influence consumption?

- In my opinion, advertising has a really big influence to our consumptions. If there weren't too many advertisements and commercials, people wouldn't buy too many products and use a lot of different resources like right now. All of the advertisements show the audience all of the good sides of their products. They always tell the useful and efficient things that the products can do or give us, so not anyone can realize how those products can affect the environment and society.

★ Do you think citizens are sufficiently informed about the sustainability of our consumption habits? If not, how can we become more informed about sustainability issues?

- No, I don't think so. Most of them only know about what can those products that advertisements show help their lives, but not what if those products are sustainable or not. I think the best way to help people to become more informed about sustainability issues is through advertising, because it is the best way that companies can communicate with us. Instead of always showing the good side, those companies should give the audience about some facts from the bad side also.

★ Do you think these advertising techniques influence what you and your friends purchase?
- The advertising techniques influence a lot to what my friends and I purchase. Advertisements usually use celebrities or really attractive models to introduce the products, and I think that it's one of the best technique to get the audience the attention and think that if celebrities use that product, then it must be good and I should use it, too.

Sustainable Development Examples ♥

- Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain is one example of a sustainable city. It has implemented a policy of mixed land use and high density development along its major transport routes. An upgraded public transport system allows more residents to live there, while still providing habitat for wildlife.

- An park in Kalundborg, Denmark. The waste created by a power station in the park is used to make cement by another firm. Other businesses use heat generated by the power plant and cement factory for some of their processes.

- In America, Interface Inc., a major carpet tile producer has greatly improved its ecological footprint. By using recycled and more environmentally friendly products, and more efficient manufacturing processes, they have reduced their energy and water consumption. The levels of waste have also been greatly reduced.

Migration / Immigration Assessment ♥

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, called FB Land, there lived a handsome young king, Adam Lambeast with his gorgeous wife, Megan Wolf. The country was full of grasslands for farming, so their economy was mostly based on agriculture. The king and queen ruled the small kingdom really well since they were the nicest and kindest rulers that could ever existed. However, they weren’t very wise for not giving lots of strict rules. That was why Lady PawPaw, the weirdest and meanest citizen in FB Land, who lived in the outskirts of this kingdom stood up and started the very first civil war. The war destroyed half of the kingdom, and most of the lands that were used for farming, so people couldn’t produce plants or herd animals anymore, and that caused no more money was earned nor used.

Since they couldn’t live that miserable life anymore, some of the citizens started to flee and immigrate to another kingdom; most of them relocated at Tineneryna Island. Adam and Megan kept their positions as rulers of the land, and this time, they realized that they should make up some more strict, but reasonable rules for the people to follow. Plus, they also cared about their people’s education more after then Lady PawPaw’s incident: they opened schools for everyone to study, no matter if they were poor or rich. Since Tineneryna was an island, which means it was near the ocean, and also this island was really big, so it had quite a lot of rivers, too, the ability of developing agriculture was very high. Because they left their old kingdom, death of citizens was no longer a big concern for the king and queen. However, FB Land was destroyed and no more plants could be grown there, and that caused a very negative effect on the process of desertification. In the other hand, they had a hard time adapting to the new climate, too. Their old kingdom used to be on the top of the mountain, now they had to live near the sea, which was really challenging, because the climates were completely opposite. Although they had to face a lot of difficulties migrating to another place, but they all knew that this external migration was a good decision to make.

One of the pull factor was seeking for peace (:

A Message from Mother Nature? ♥

1) The main point of the article is that many scientists have the theory of extreme weather is linked to climate change and global warming, but they still don't have proofs for it.

2) monsoon - winds that change directions due to the seasons

reluctant - unwilling, be forced to do something

skeptics - a person who doubts about everything

parched - extremely dry

3) Weather is the change of atmosphere conditions in a short period of time. Climate is the repetition of weather in a long period of time, for example: decades, hundred years, etc.

4) Some examples of extreme weather:

• In Russia, a record-breaking heat wave with a record-breaking drought destroyed millions destroyed millions of plants, especially wheat, and sparked wildfires that killed dozens. 
• In the U.S, floods battered New England, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, while the huge heat wave baked the entire eastern part of the country.
• Torrential monsoon rains in Pakistan caused the worst flooding in decades, killing more than 1,500 people and uprooting millions.

5) I've never been through any wild, or extreme weather before, but I've experienced the craziest rain ever. I was on my way coming home when suddenly a torrential rain poured down from the sky. My dad and I put on our raincoats as fast as we could and continued to ride the motorbike. Because my house is placed on a very low land, so the whole area was 'covered' in water. It definitely felt like a flood in the city. The water was so high that it reached my hip, caused our motor's engine dead; we had to push the motorbike all the way to my house. It was a very rare and special rain that I've ever experienced. 

6) 'Perception' means the understanding of something.

7) My perception of global climate change is that the climate is really changing. Even though that there's not really any proof, but based on what the weather has changed in many years lately, I can predict that the climate is starting to change slowly. In my opinion, this climate changing is kind of linked to global warming, because according to the article, the climatologists theorized that the added heat would cause more record highs than lows, which means the trend is toward warmer climate.

PFF Land - 5 Themes of Geography ♥

Location – Phineasopia and Ferbland are two of the three countries that make up PFF Land (which stands for Phineas and Ferb Forever Land). The whole land covers from 2000^o N, 3000^o W, to 1500^o S, 500^o E. These two countries are separated by a huge mountain, called the Iron Mt.

Movement – There will be many movements which occur on Mars from 5025 to 5077. The first big movement is from Heartlessia to Phineasopia, because they want to help humans to fight against the Martians. When the Martians and humans finally get along, ‘people’ from Jupiter invade and start another war in Phineasopia. This time, the whole country suffers serious damage. Therefore, Phineasopian have to move to Ferbland for peace.

Human – Environment Interaction – There are only two bodies of water here because it’s a super dry land. Some people live near the Electronic River because they’re mad scientists who can use electricity to invent machines that can produce materials. Two thirds of the Phineasopian and Ferbies live next to or near the Cytoplasm Ocean. Those are not scientists, so they need real sources to live and near the sea, the ocean is the best choice.

Place – The most gorgeous and natural place is Fructose Valley in Phineasopia. It is 100km deep. Fructose Valley is beautiful but dangerous; it’s also really precious. It mines all kinds of sugar, especially FRUCTOSE (of course!). It takes a long time walking down there so Phineas builds an elevator just for mining.

Region – Even though Phineasopia and Ferbland are created by two brothers, the physical characteristics are really different. Ferbland and Heartlessia actually have a lot of things in common. They mostly consist of plains, many bodies of water like rivers and lakes. There are a few hills in these two countries, but they’re only between 500m and 700m high.