Here is a video that about Family Honors Fallen Soldiers on Memorial Day.

Yesterday was June 1st, International Children’s Day. Everyone knows this day, but not everyone know why we have International Children’s Day. There are mounts of things we have remembered, but we always misremember what should we remember; we only know it is a holiday, but not understand why. After two years I came here, we had some long-weekend due to some holidays like Columbus Day, Professional Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. These days should be remembered with a particular reason but nowadays people just remember that we will have one-day off school at that day so we can hang out to have a party. I was shocked cause even American friends did not know those things. It let me think when I was in China, these things always happened because people are lacking of common knowledge for the holidays.

I read an article called Forgetting Why We Remember few days ago. The author mentions the Memorial Day is to honor the nation’s war dead and also it is a holiday for people every year. On that day, store and other places will closed and employees will take one day off to relax, to enjoy the life. But in the article, author mentions that people are losing the significant to have a holiday. It is not only to give one-day off for relaxing, it is more to memorized the memory that happened in history, to avoid to make the same mistake as the last time. Then the author generally gives more history events about Memorial Day and trying to convince people to change the way they remember.

I am really appreciated what did the author do for helping us to know what should we know. But personally, the main problem I realized is the common knowledge of our cultures. So the culture education of teenagers is most important cause teenagers are the future of the world, in order to implant this ideas to them. As they are growing, these ideas will stay in their mind so that they will tell the next generation; then these ideas have become a part of culture of the United States. I feel awkward when I cannot answer the questions of culture of China cause as a Chinese, what is the feeling that when a foreigner knows more about your own country. The same as Chinese, Americans should have more conscious that willing to know about the country. There is slang in China saying that the man who knows history is always wise. My mother tells me that when a man knows a lot about history. It can make this man shiny. We do not have to study history; what we need to do is having more knowledge of our country. Until one day, we can propagate our country to other countries proudly.

Unemployment !

Posted: May 31, 2011 in Uncategorized

Around a quarter of population was unemployment during the great depression in United States.  Even now, fourteen thousand people are still unemployment due to their skills or other reasons. The situation gets even worse in Europe, around twenty one present Spanish This large amount of Unemployment is not just United States problem, but also the world’s problem. I am choosing this topic because career life is one of the most significant periods in the life. With the rapid increasing of economic system, the competition between person and person become more intense than it use to be. We should start to care about more of our future when we get into the world. “Against learn helpless” gives me an idea of how government did to solve the problem of unemployment, which may give you some introduction.

The article tells us with this large unemployment, it shows a continuing tragedy; it is not a condition to show rapid improvement but a tragedy. It is government’s responsibility to help to reduce unemployed people. But who was talking seriously about the job creation; it was not republican government or Obama. However, author states that there is no one has the power. He mentions that the reason that employed do not have a job is they do not want to work or they are lacking the ability to work and there is nothing wrong with it. The essential problem of economic is the debt. Mainly, people are unemployed because of the heavily debt that they cannot afford. But still, government did not really have definite action to solve this problem. What did they do was to avoid the problems that they were failed to, and convince themselves that there’s nothing they could do.

As a student, I do not know how government works for this problem. But at my perspective, I feel like employed are jobless due to two reasons. First of all, the crucial of the world makes the violent competition. Similar to the theory of evolution or evolutionism, people who have the higher class have much power than the lowers. That cause the problems that people are always think of themselves but forget about the feeling of others. Usually, corporation is much more important to learn than competition. We can see competition even in the school when I was in China. Someone wants to have the highest the grade so that she study very late at the night, but she told others that she did not even study the day before. And when others ask her questions, she is not willing to tell the answer since if others know how to do it, they may have better grade next quiz. This is unique but really common in these days. Everyone cares more about himself or herself so that it causes the competition with everyone. The second point I have is problem of the employed. I was taught that my life was study hard, find a good job, get married, have a baby, work hard for the family and then retired. Now I am still in the first step, but I am always confused about “find a good job”. Why we have to find a job but not to create a job that suit me perfectly. If you like photography but cannot be famous for some reason; and if you love writing but have no where to publish; you may combine these two advantages together to create your owe job, like when you travel to somewhere for days, you can take photos and write blogs of your feeling about it and send it to some magazine office. They will pay you and you can also enjoy your life. What a nice job. If everyone does, there would be no umenployment.

Here is some others way to survive the unemployment.

Have you ever think about what makes a coin? It is actually made by metal such like gold, silver and copper. If you know that an ounce of gold is worth over $1,500, which means “a dollar” coin is worth much more than a dollar, what would you do. That would be really interesting since if you melt coins to get gold or silver, you will get much more money than you use to have so that you can become rich. You may think you find a easier way to get rich however, with this situation, Utah law makes coin worth their weight in Gold (or Silver). Utah mint makes the coin has the same value as its material. The law encourages people to use gold or silver coins made by the Mint as cash, but the problem is not all merchants will accept that. Here comes the problem that should the dollar be backed by gold or silver or it does not matter to use the coins that have much more value than it should have.

The article has claimed the opinions of both sides. It mentions that the new law “is of no real consequence”, and is purely symbolic. The man who said that thinks that the law would not actually have effect to people in his or her daily life cause no one really cares about it. However, the supporters consider that is an incremental step to the right route since Utah is the first one to state the law. If the federal government were not doing it, the government of Utah would form a new money system. As the marketing director of Old Glory Mint, which is a company to sell gold and silver based on the current market ASK price, Wayne Scholle reflects that the law is preparedness. It is aimed by protecting people’s property. There is another point that is made by Mr. Franco, is the law reduces state gains taxes on the sale of gold so that the financiers may move the gold and silver from the outside the state to Utah. But it will not happen. However, according to the Article 1, Section 10 of the constitution, “no state shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” So it seems that make sense to establish the law to use gold and silver as the cash.

I think the law would be really useful for our daily life. First of all, it makes the coin has the same value that it should be so that it would reduce people to get profit by melting coin. I have heard a story in China. A girl has an idea that to collect trash and she established to a company to hire people to search for rejects or unserviceable and then melted them. But actually she let them collect coins and melted coins to get gold or silver. By doing that, she got profit of 50,000RMB, which impressed me at that time. She became my idol, but then I was told that she got caught because she broke government’s property. Although it happened in China, United States can also have it as an example under this condition. Secondly, those criminals may not be able to create fake gold than fake paper money due to the technology so that it may help to reduce the fake money in the world market. But I am afraid that even though they have already had the law to let people use gold or silver to purchase, people are still holding on their gold but not using it to buy things. When I was young, I was told that gold was the most expensive things in the world even thought it was not true. I believe that everyone has this experience of gold. So now although people can use it, but from their self-experience, they want to keep gold rather than use it. Another idea about the law was after the Utah creates the coin that has the same value than it should have, what about the coins that published before. How would government collect those coins? Or Citizens have the responsibility to return those coins back?

Here is the video that connect to the news.


Posted: April 25, 2011 in Uncategorized

Mobile phone is one of the most important things in the world. For us, we can use mobile phone to contact with friends or parents when we do not have time to see each other. For some businessmen, they use phone to talk with their partners and make schedules. That is the primary purpose of the phone; for talking to someone else. Simply enter the number or type the message to the friends. However, now, phone goes more complicated than before. No one has ever thought that a phone can also take pictures, send email, and search information on the phone. Use mobile to search information is very convenience, but there is one problem that it is hard to read in such a small screen. I had this experience when I was in History Class. When I want search a historical event, I was hard to read though it carefully. If you just want to get a general idea, that is enough. Nevertheless, to get more details you have to use computer to help. The cellphone is more and more convenience and one day it will replace the position of computer.

The article “Google, a Giant in Mobile Search, Seeks New Ways to Make It Pay” was on the first page of the technology section today. And I was attracted by it because of the Google. It is saying that the difference between a mobile phone and computer when you are searching information. And the engineers created a new way for searching on the phone. It will search information by talking or taking photos instead of typing words in it. It has an example that a person wants take his wife to a good restaurant to eat. But he does not know where to go, so he uses cellphone to search about the restaurant. Then, they go the restaurant to eat. Google thinks that Mobile search increases rapidly than web search. Google is one of the best search website in the world, so as the increase of the mobile search, they have to figure out a different version for cellphone to search information. This section is the one that Google will essentially work on in the future. And also, as the popularity of using cellphone reach information, more ads have appeared while we are searching which is annoying. The article also indicates that the ads on the phone are half price than those on the web. So people find a good way to put the ads on.

Without those technology, we cannot imagine that how complex our live will be. As the article saying, emerging creates a way to search information; talking for the phone instead of typing the words into it. I believe that one-day computer will be replaced by cellphone. However, with the developed technology, people get more and more lazy. Before this, they can type the words to the cellphone; then, they figure a easier way to do which is not too much easier than I think. I know there is a application of iPhone called Talkbox. It is similar to the message, however, is the message with your voice. When others send message that full of words, you can send it with your own voice. It seems like very fun, but I did not get the point of this application. If you want to talk to someone, you can call him or her. Why do you send the message of voice instead of talking to him or her on the phone? I consider that some of the technology in the world now did not help to build the world but destroy the world.

here is the viedo of “possibilities of mobile search”

iraq war!!!!

Posted: April 18, 2011 in Uncategorized

As we studying for the American reconstruction, we have already known lot knowledge that how American shaped their country and what had a deeper effect after the civil war. And now the world is more interested to know how does Iraq do after the war. As you know Iraq war was started in 2003. American had a belief that they would build democracy for this country and searched nuclear-powered weapons. Also they wanted to protect the oil and other natural resources. However, Iraqi’s economic system did not restore really quick so that oil companies still had damages and influenced the world oil supplies. Also huge amount of people did not have jobs, people’s daily and personal safety cannot get guarantee. Then during the reconstruction of Iraq, Americans put a lot for helping them; for instance, they had a lot of plans to give to the government to let them rebuild their economic system and sent out militaries to protect Iraqi citizens. American also supported them by sending people who can handle hi-tech weapons and translate interpreter.

The news I read was “Demonstrations Turn Violent in Iraq”. It was talking about that where were 20 protesters killed with security forces in the government department. However, at the same time, there were two high-ranking officials was talking about this and showed how government’s controlled the violent demonstrations. Iraq was full of violent. But they actually did not want to fight; instead, they want it to be peaceful. They said that they wanted a change, even though the ballot box had failed, they still wanted to change. They said “No, no to terrorists; no, no to Baathists; no, no to Maliki!” They lost control quickly, then, security forces fired with a group of protesters which made at least 5 people died and more than 15 people wound. They wanted their freedom really bad like one of the unemployed lawyers, “No one can stop me. If you want your freedom, you have to get it, even if it’s at the end of the world.”

Through the news, we can see that the democracy had spread really well. They can have their right to go on the street to vote for their rights and bravely enough to say it out, even though sometimes they have to fight with the government, which made several people died. This is one of the most important things that Iraqi’s reconstruction; it is that American brought Democracy this belief to Iraq, to introduce Iraq a new way to of government so that Iraqi can follow their directions to rebuild the country.  For the whole reconstruction, American helped Iraqi a lot by giving them support. However, with the help of America, Iraq also had some tensions that Americans cannot fix. For example, the success was limited because of the ruin of the city even though Americans helped them a lot, but like economic system, it was growing really low so that they have to take more time to rebuild the economy.

US soldiers reflect on Iraq war

inequality> equality ?

Posted: April 8, 2011 in Uncategorized

The topic of education of black people has been talked for a while. The News “Obama Takes Aim at Inequality in Education” attracted my eyes because of inequality in education.  As a matter of fact, I feel that it is peaceful in our school since there is no fighting and no drug or something like that. Additionally, teachers and faculties are amiable and easy of approach to every student so that no one complained which teacher does not like him or she. This phenomenon always happens in China and I am getting to use to it. As I guess, the inequality is between the black people and the white people because the fact of racial discrimination in US has never stopped, but it is getting better and better. From being slaves to now, blacks has gained a lot rights. For instance, they are not allowed to drink the water that belonged to white people, which means they have to be separated; also they cannot have education at first, later on, even the government let them have education, they cannot study with whites so that they have to be separated again. Now, by studying in a small private school in US, I do not really feel the inequality in the school so that I am particularly curious where is the imbalance and how will Obama solve the problem?

At the beginning of the article, Helene Cooper, who was the author, stated that President Obama had described education and education equality as the “civil right issue of our time” and also there was a huge gap between African- American and others. Mr. Obama elucidated that this problem cannot resolve by only black people or only white people but by everyone. Since 2008, when Mr. Obama was the presidential candidate, his had won ninety-five percent of the black vote. How could he so popular among black people? The reason was, obvious and simple, that Obama was also a black. Black people had a belief that Obama, as a black man, could have them who had the same color with him in variable ways. He really did things for blacks. One of his closest advisers, David Axelrod, said that they would focus on seeking engage minority voters because it was the main reason why Democrats loss the 2010 midterm election. President’s cabinet had promised they would offer more help for black people. And Attorney General Eric Holder was working to reduce the percentage of dropping out of school.

The inequality between white and black has not just happened in school; it is about the society. Since the civil war, according to the “Declaration of Independence”, “All men are created equal”, however, it is not even close. This news let me think about the education in my country because it is too normal. Generally, if you have a child, he or she should go to a school that is nearest of your house. But people always care about school’s ranking. All the parents want their children to get into a good school, high school, and college. They have a belief that if they have a good education, their children will make a lot of money. In this case, to get into good school, you have to find someone can connect to the principle of the school and give them the money and treat them so that they will accept your child. However, what if you don’t have money, and then just go to a school near your house. This is also a inequality of education; rich man gets well-done education, while poor cannot deserve it. Same as US, the problem is not only between rich and poor or white and black. It related to the society.

There is a video saying that the inequality in education which stimulates my mind.



Posted: February 28, 2011 in Uncategorized

This news was published in Feb 22nd, 1861, when is the seven weeks after the civil war. On that day, the guns of Charleston Harbor did not signaled for the battle, but for George Washington’s birthday. As a matter of fact, they should concern more about the Civil war, but instead, they celebrated Washington’s Birthday throughout February. There was a banner in the business district said: “Republics may fall, and vast empires may rise. His name is as eternal as the skies.” Southerner and some northern felt that George Washing was a “rebel” because he had black slaves before and then spoke out against slavery. A confederate propaganda artist described Washington as “one of the rebels” and the Southern Gentlemen, and Slaveholder. And President-elect Abraham Lincoln said that he had relationship with George Washington. Then, Adam Goodheart published a book that “ 1861: The Civil War Awakening.” After Lincoln became the president, he was very strong to force the war and against slavery.

For 12 roads, I can connect the news with “contrasting views on Slavery and Freedom” and “the election of Abraham Lincoln”. A vocal minority of northerners believed that slavery was morally wrong, and some white northern bankers and someone who unskilled, low-paying jobs opposes abolition because they were afraid that slavery would took their jobs. Slavery became an integral part of southern life. They thought that it was God intended that black people should work for white people. Now in the news, South and North were talking about George Washington. They all did not like him because he was a “rebel”, he had slaves before but then he started to against slaves. And the election of Abraham Lincoln was in 1860. This news was one year later that Lincoln became president. He beat Stephen Douglas, John Bell; John Breckinridge and became the president. His election actually became the turning point of the civil war because he did act the war. But in the news, he said that he had relationship with George Washington. Many people would assist that how would he do about the slavery?

To be a slave, I have to say, I hated them, and no matter he is George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. First of all, I should say thank you for them because it seems like they did a lot for us, such as had civil war against slavery and give us freedom. However, even though we have the freedom, we do not have ability to suit for the society because we do not have skills, knowledge. We should have education so that we could have opportunity to work and earn money. Additionally, I think they give us freedom is just a snare because after we have the freedom, we still cannot be trained as white man. According to the Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal.” It seems like never going to happen because I did not see any improvement. We get the freedom but we do not have the same right as white people. For intense, we cannot use the same bathroom this white people. The place where white used, black people cannot use. And police are all white so that black are still under white people.