New study quantifies use of social media in Arab Spring - by Saud

 

source: http://www.washington.edu/news/2011/09/12/new-study-quantifies-use-of-social-media-in-arab-spring/ 

 

summary

A new study based on analyzing a tremendous amount of the social media contents finds that it has significant effect in the recent events of the Arab world. Social media became an important tool for those who seek democracy and freedom.

 

Throughout the Egyptian revolution, the tweets about the political demands had doubled ten times which considered as a dramatic increase and the same happened in Tunisia. The topics discussed in social media websites changed to concentrate on the political opinions, and usually these topics come immediately after huge protests in the street. These discussions had resulted to presidents of Egypt and Tunisia to step down.

 

Moreover, the use of the social media networks had increased even in the neighboring countries where people start to discuss the political situation in Egypt and Tunisia. Success of using social networks to demand political change made people in other countries discuss political issues in their countries too. These networks created a platform to discuss political issues that could not be discussed publicly.

 

Unluckily, the government Egypt shut down the social media websites and this resulted more people in the streets claiming their political rights. What happened in Egypt and Tunisia prove that the shared sufferings of people and their demand to acquire change can happen rapidly when they use the social media to set up a nation demands for freedom and democracy.

 

 

Comment:

Social media networks have played a crucial role in the Arab spring direction, those networks have lightened the first spark of the revolutions in many Arab countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. What makes social networks unique is that the citizen is number one journalist, considering the wide use of the smartphones, everyone now can share his or her views with millions of people who have the same interest.

Moreover, governments have no control on social media networks, so, people can discuss everything they may want to discuss with no reservations. Because of this, social media networks turned to be a great pressure on some of the anti-democracy governments since those networks contributed to the discovery of the corruption and the misuse of the power.  

 

How to Make Stress to be Your Friend--Wendi Fan

Kelly McGonigal, who is a psychologist of Stanford University, has participated in putting the new researches into practice, which including psychology, neurology and medical, to help us to solve the problems in our daily life. In the presentation, McGonigal told us that making friends with stress could help us to live in healthy and positive status to avoid being defeated. She stated two main studies to prove that whether the stress influenced you or not, it depended on your attitude to it.

The first and foremost research is that most people will experience heat pounding, breathing faster and sweating soon if you are attending a study. These express that you are nervous in the pressure, and you don't deal with it very well. Maybe this feeling is harm for you, but at the same time, it would be different if you seem these as signs that your body was getting ready for next action. A trial was held in Harvard University to prove that when persons who intended to join the test were told some details in advanced, their reflects to the stress were helpful. Moreover, the heart beating is good for the next step; the breathing faster makes you to get more oxygen. Last, the participants get more confident and more optimistic by knowing the stress performance.

The second study is about two questions that:" How much stress have you experienced in the last year?" and "How much time have you spent helping out friends, neighbors, people in your community?" In this research, there are one thousand persons at the age between 34 and 93 to answer these two questions, and in the following five years, death records among them were in paper. From the results, we can see the person live in major stresses such economic problems or marriage crisis hold 30% of the risk of dying. However, people who took time in helping others showed none of the risk of dying from stress. Caring makes long life. It is so important to study how to transfer the stress. When you choose to face it positively, you will gain more courages; If you choose to communicate with others, you will make resilient life.

Is it OK to torture or murder a robot?_Zhiyuan Zhang

      With the development of the AI technology, the problem of the robots' ethics will become more and more serious. Recently, Kate Darling, a researcher in MIT, did an experiment that asking people to destroy cute dinosaur toys, which were set to act like little puppy. The result of the experiment was unbelievable: people refused to destroy the cute toy though they knew that the dinosaurs were machines without emotion. In our thought, breaking a machine like microwave will not make us feel sad. However, "murdering" a high intelligence robot may be different. People seems to have some instinct not to hurt alive creature, or something like alive creature. The line that whether robot would affect human's emotion is not clear, as a result, the ethics problem of smart robot in the future will become more complicated. Whether robots should be given rights? Should they be protected or treated as tools? It is never late to think about these problems because robots are arriving.

         Darling and others robot right supports think it is difficult to tell the difference between the animals and robots in the coming future, so it is necessary give machine right and protect them.  They are right, in the future, the difference between pets (or friends) and robots may become very small, so we should set up a line to distinguish "tools" and "machine with emotion". In my opinion, the machine should be separated into two group: the AI and tradition machine. The difference is, AI can renew or update themselves by the data they get from the environment while a traditional machine can only work with the system written by human. Although the latter ones can also act like creatures if their system is strong enough to support the actions, they will never become creature and think problems like real human. But the AI is special and should be treated as real creature and given right because they grow in a similar way like creature: they evolve like us. This is why we think the robots in the movie TRANSFORMER is creatures  but not machines or tools.


http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131127-would-you-murder-a-robot

Alternative to email?/Yuna Tsushima

Reference: Are we the End of the Email? By Ryan Galloway

 

Email has been used as main communication tool for last some decades in many situation like business and private. But recently email especially in business has some problems and has reached to critical point.

 

According to this article, the main problems are overload, inefficiency and insecurity. Many companies are suffering from email overload and office workers spend 20 days per a year to check through their emails. They have to look at one by one and some of the emails are not important or even spam mails. Speaking if insecurity, in spite of the danger of unprotected emails, business leaders who use an email encryption solution is under 21% of all. But some companies have already taken new sorts to deal with these problems. One of the most popular alternatives is Yammer. It is like Facebook and we can use both individual communication and group communication. And there are also some companies who build their communication platform.

 

I didn’t know Yammer until I read this article and I think it is a little strange that some social networks like Facebook will be used as official ways to communicate among companies because I think the communication using SNS is a kind of informal.  Recently most company has a Facebook page for appealing to public, but it is still not to communicate. But email is also not an old way. As telegram is no longer used as a tool in public dairy, the users of email will be fewer and fewer in the future. In fact, email is not used so much among young people anymore and some social network services became more popular. However, there is a big difference between email and SNS. We can send email to anyone who has an email address, but to use SNS, we have to sign in. So if we want to contact someone by using SNS, we have to confirm that the person has an account of the SNS at first. Some SNS is becoming popular worldwide, but I think there are still some difficulties to use these communication tools as perfect alternative to email.



Link:http://www.workintelligent.ly/information/trends-information/the-end-of-email/

The New Revolution of Technology by Doha Shaabien

 

The new online connection tools or the new social media is the newest way to keep connection with others nowadays. This technology is developing day by day. Moreover, it makes a big influence on people especially the new generation. It is not all about connection, people feel cool when they have many accounts on different social media showing their pictures and updating new status. Sometimes it seems ridicules because this technology harms the people privacy. Furthermore, people tend to replace the real conversations (face to face connection) with the online texting and chatting and I believe this is not healthy for the normal relationships between family members and between friends. Those tools declined the real value of having a conversation with someone and also it changed the language. It started to appear many unknown words for those people who don’t really engaged with social media such as parents generation.

One more dark side for this technology, that sometimes a person becomes addicted to it. And most people do not have control or resistance to the magic of social media. It became normal to see people texting when they are walking or eating or even checking their phones the first thing when they wake up and last thing before they sleep. This is one indicator can help to indicate that someone is addicted to social media. This addiction leads people to procrastination and being careless towards their responsibilities and for this reasons, people have to control their usage and limit their access. People can use the virtual alarm clock on their phones to alert them if they spent too much time on social media. Also they can keep themselves busy with outside activities and make more time for hobbies. Spending time with family without cell phones also is a good idea to reduce the harmful effects of technology.  

Should We Have Free University Education? by Hussain

In the article " Free College Education Today, InnovationTomorrow Together We Can" the author states that governments should offer free public university education for all students which leads also to decrease private university tuition. There will be two options for students to attend public or private university based on what they are interested in and their economic situation. One disadvantage of offering free university education for students is tax perhaps would escalate because these funds would come from somewhere. However, when government provides free education, students would not need federal aids and government would pay directly to universities which would be easier for universities in order to expand and develop their buildings and that will improve economy and create more jobs. Many countries have started to offer free university education such as Argentina, Brazil, and Egypt. We can evaluate and enhance these programs in order to apply it in the United States.

Affordable education is a critical issue for many people in the world. Some people decide not to continue their education, and they work for lower wages as a consequence, which contribute to expand of a lower income class in society. Therefore, I would agree that governments should offer a free university education to any student who has been admitted to a university but who cannot afford the tuition in order to maintain education quality.

The reason that I agree with this suggestion is that promoting equality in the society. There are many families have financial problems, and they are suffering with their lives, so financial resources is a serious problem for them to send their children to college. Their children are admitted and have adequate skills to study in a university what is their guilt to not study at university? Only because they do not have enough financial resources while other students who can afford university tuition can continue their education. Therefore, governments should play a main role here to assist these students to get a good education. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, government have made significant efforts in order to improve society by offering free education for all qualified students not only for university but also for the primary schools even if they are not Saudis because they become a part of the society. In addition, the Saudi government created King Abdullah program for scholarship to recruit highly qualified students and send them to study abroad.

It is important for youth to have a sufficient education because they would be the leaders in our society despite of their financial abilities, so government should play its role to improve all society classes.  

The real problem in third world countries

By: Ayesha Aldoghan
4/27/2014

 Many people have been talking about the problems in the third world countries and what the solutions are of these issues and how the world can help these countries. For a long time, many global organizations have helped these countries to fight poverty, hunger, disease, pollution, health care lacking, but these countries are still suffering. The question is how that some third world countries are rich of natural resources and have been helped for many years by many developed countries and many profit and non-profit organization  but they are still have these problems in 21th century.

Maybe some people would say that the reason that these countries are lacking from technology and the essential knowledge which if it available, it will help these developing countries to get rid of these problems.

Technology and knowledge are easy to be imported. Also, many computers companies have donated by many computers to some of these countries.

The real problem in these countries is not the lacking of technology or the lacking of knowledge. The real problem is the lacking of morals.

In the third world countries, we have heard a lot about administrative corruption, political corruption, economic corruption, inequality, political tension, embezzlement of public funds, and personal interests. All these kinds of corruptions are essential elements to create disunion, disputes, and neglecting of development. If disunion, dispute, neglecting of development happened, logically, it will be a fertile environment for poverty, hunger, disease, pollution, health care lacking and all other problems. For instance, Somalia has a worth amount of minerals and oil and many other natural resources such as animals and agriculture.  Unfortunately, a personal interest, which is the desire of some people to control the natural resources, and other kinds of corruptions are the main reasons of civil war which leaded to a neglecting of development then to the hunger in many years.

Therefore, to overcome the global issues in the third world countries, we have to fight all kinds of corruptions, but to fight corruptions we have to teach morals which are the basic of any developments in any nations or in any country.  http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/archivestory.php/aid/291/Fighting_corruption_in_the_developing_countries.html

Benefit of drinking green tea - Jennie Viratham Poonsawat

By Jennie Viratham Poonsawat

From Green tea lowers cholesterol by David Gutierrez

As we all know, green tea is good for our health in many ways. Not only that it can prevent heart disease but also reduce cholesterol levels and lower the risk of disability.

Firstly, consuming green tea can lower cholesterol levels. Green tea is a source of antioxidants which protect cells from the damage that cause many chronic diseases like heart disease and catechins, to decrease the absorption of cholesterol. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2011 published a review conducted by researchers from, the Sino-German Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, the Key Laboratory for Clinical Cardiovascular Genetics, the Cardiovascular Institute, FuWai Hospital and Peking Union Medical College. The review is about 14 studies involving 1,136 subjects, those participants were divided in 2 groups: one drank green tea or green tea extract and another did not consume green tea. It appeared that subjects consuming green tea or green tea extract tended to have lower cholesterol levels and the LDL (bad cholesterols), and the levels of HDL (good cholesterol) remained the same. Though, green tea consumption associates with the lower risk of heart disease, the protection functions are still unclear. Nathan Wong, a heart disease prevention specialist from the University of California, Irvine claimed that green tea could be beneficial for heart-healthy diet but for people who have problem with cholesterol levels, this might not be a good choice.

Secondly, Green tea has many benefits not only in lowering the rates of heart disease but also reducing disability like having difficulties with daily routine.In the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2012, researchers at the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine conducted a study including 14,000 people over the age of 64. It shows people who drink 5 five cups of green tea a day tend to have lower risk of disability and healthy life even they grow old. 

This is an interesting health article, we usually hear about how good green tea is not only for consuming or using for other purposes. Some people use green tea aroma for relaxation. After reading this article, we can learn more about ingredients in green tea and what they can help with our health and prevent chronic diseases. Therefore, green tea is quite a beneficial drink for ones who do not have heart problems and for people who seek for healthy life.

Link: http://www.naturalnews.com/039577_green_tea_cholesterol_clinical_trials.html

Can Whales and Dolphins Make Mental Maps?/ Misa Aizaki

Reference from
William Skaggs | April 24, 2014

The size of the hippocampus is the most surprising difference between dolphins and whales, and other mammals. The size, in general, is smaller if the size of brain is bigger. However, nevertheless the brains of whales and dolphins are relatively big, the hippocampus is hardly seen. Led by Pual Manger, a group of researcher examined the relation between the size of the hippocampus and the brains in a great many kinds of mammal species. The experiment turned out that the size of most species’ hippocampus out of 375 species is proportional to the size of brain expect cetaceans. They meet only 8 percent to 20 percent of what expected from the general date.





Log-log plot of hippocampal volume versus total brain volume, for 375 species of mammals from a wide variety of groups. Used with permission from Patzke et al, 2013.

On of areas to show adult neurogenesis, a creation of new neurons, is the hippocampus, but the absence was seen in the ones from cetaceans. Manger has doubted the intelligence of them for a long time, and this experiment showed that their brains are not as fine as the other mammals’; yet, in fact, they do not need to use the adult neurogenesis, which controls the spatial memory.




In human, if they lose their hippocampus, which is kwnon as hippocampal amnesia, it causes the inability to create of new memories and the absence of recent memories, remaining the memories from childhood or the distant past, procedural learning, the competence to lean new jobs, working memory, and the competence to remember in mind shortly. The questions is how about the absence of the hippocampus of dolphins and whales. Although the clear date has not detected, there have been studies of memory in dolphins. Dolphins are good at using a gesture-language, which is divided into working memory. Also they are known to their ability to recognize the vocal calls of other fellows even they have not seen for decades. If this is classified as the ability to create new memories, it is unexpected in the absence of hippocampus, though we cannot make a clear conclusion of it.

Hippocampus also perform the cognitive map, which takes charge of creation of mental maps; this allows the brains to make a map of an environment and location of stuffs, and appearances. Whales and dolphins live at the surface of the ocean, so that it can be said that they do not have a concept of a place, but it is important to know if they are capable of creating mental maps. Although the striking information has not been gained, there is the only relevant result of study led by Kelly Jaakkola and her fellows. The experiment resulted in that dolphins are limited to memorize mentally the locations of hidden objects. However, it is also dangerous to announce that dolphins and whales are not capable of creating episodic memory and spatial memory. Are they not as smart as we think? We need more information to put a strong conclusion on whether dolphins and whales can make mental maps or not.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2014/04/24/can-whales-and-dolphins-make-mental-maps/?print=true
http://www.chaz.org/Courses/Sapir_Whorf/Brain_language/

Don't Be Weak in the Knees

Hisham Alshehri

By Martina Navratilova, AARP

    Sometimes we feel pain in our knees even the youth people feel that, but what is the reasons of that? Well, if you feel that then here are some reasons for that and how to make you knees stronger. Martina says our body take the decisions that we don’t want sometimes. Older people want to walk longer, but the knees pain were not want.  Martina was participating in Slims Championship, and she is attempting to win for the fifth time, but unfortunately her knees pains and she had to take an arthroscopic surgery. Statistics says that one of four sport injuries involves the knee. Not only athletic people who afflicted of knees problem, but also you if you ride a bike, dance, or climb stairs you can get a knees problems.  Knees are vulnerable to injury, although it work hard and without we can’t do any kind of sports. It let us to run, walk, lift, and kick. So, you should respect the knees that help you to go everywhere. When you get older, is the cartilage of the knees or meniscus, can tear. This tears sometime have to be removed by surgery. As researchers found that many people over 50 years old get tears in their knees.  Here is some suggestion to keep yourself away from knees problem without surgery. First of all, do some strengthening exercise at least once a week. Do some exercises for your body especially for the muscles surround your knees such as leg exercise. Second thing, listen to your body. People who do exercise or athletic people don’t overdo training or working, and that will probably causes an injury in the meniscus. Third advice here, try to do some quad stretches. After working out, do some quad stretches such as standing straight and holding the wall and try to balance yourself. Then bend the right knee behind you and hold it by your right hand, and stretch the thigh muscles for 10 seconds. Try this exercise again with the other knee. Fourth, try to do some normal activates or sports such as swimming or cycling. Even if you have trouble in your knees you can do that sport which can help your knees to be better.  Note if you cycling try to adjust the seat to proper your height so that won’t hurt your knees. Last advice, the main effect to the knees problems is the overweight. An overweight body put a burden on the knees which can causes a pain in the knees in most of the time. The best solution to that is to lose weight.

   This Suggestions from Martina were helpful for me because I have knees pain also and I’m doing cycling most of the time. I think these advices will help me to protect my knees from any burden that can happened to the knees. In this article I learned for the first time how our knees are weak and that we should treat our knees with respect to help me to do sport actives without feel pain.

3 Acceptable Outrages | By: Doha Shaabien

21st Century Outrages

By: Doha Shaabien

The 21^st century: too many outrages are remaining exist and became very acceptable in our world. Discrimination based on race, color or religion is very common in many societies, even in the first world countries. This obvious example of discrimination is happening very often; some people who have high qualities can’t take same chances in jobs as others just because they are different. And sometimes, they can be under suspicion based on their race or color. Those differences can strength the feeling of inequality between people and this feeling can make unhealthy society.  

Human trafficking also is one of the acceptable outrages before and now in the current time. Human trafficking is exploiting people (probably poor people or kids) sexually, making them slaves, or removing their body organs and sell it. They exploit them to receive money or benefits from them. In other words, they USE them to make business. They ignored their humanity and their rights to live normal life just because they are in need. A lot of innocent people in poor countries are victims of human trafficking. Even though, this work is prohibited considered as a crime and many organizations and institutions are established to fight this crime, it still exist and it is not easy to protect those victims.  

The third outrage countries are involved and responsible for it. Using weapons against other countries or against citizen when governments became crazy of killing and trying to approve that they still strong, is the worst outrage ever because it harms the human rights to live in peace and safe in their countries. Moreover, citizens don’t have any guilt to be involved in wars consequences between counties. Since those weapons are causing many kinds of cancers and genetic defects, chemical or nuclear weapons effects can be very harmful for many generations after wars. Like what happened in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fallujah in Iraq, Many babies were born with cancers and abnormal bodies because of the nuclear radiations and chemicals that caused genetic defects. In place of living in fear of death and lose home, family, health and future. 

New Generation of Smartphone Batteries

Hisham Alsheheri
By Tyler Lee.
UberGizmo

     Usually the battery capacity for smartphone is low; for example, the battery capacity of an Apple iPhone 5s is 1560 mAh. Usually battery capacities from 4000 mAh and over are for tablet devices. This article from UberGizmo Tech News by Tyler Lee talks about the new smartphone from Philips Co. that announced today. This phone is a quantum leap in smartphone world and it will make a huge different in smartphones industry. We know it is a dream for many smartphone users, since smartphone became so popular, to keep their phone up for long time. The main disadvantage of all smartphones these days is the battery capacity especially with the evolution of the smartphones parts. This phone comes with a huge battery capacity which is 5300 mAh. This battery can stays for 66 days for stand-by mode, or 33 hours of talking. This big number of battery capacity is expected these days with in new generations of smartphones.  This phone has really a good other features. It comes with a big screen size”5 inch QHD display . Also, this phone has two sim card port.  It has quad core processor 1.3 GHz, 1 GB RAM, and 4 GB internal memory and it can expanded with a microSD.  The operation system of this phone is Android Jelly Bean 4.2. Moreover, it comes with a 8 MP camera.On top of all that features, this phone comes with really challenging price, it is only costs 273$ , so now will you choose buy Samsung Galaxy s5 with 799$?. This phone also has a really beautiful design.  The understandable thins in phone and the main disadvantage is the low capacity of internal memory witch is only 4 GB.  Also, this phone now in China market, but Philips company did mention if this phone coming the world market or not.  If this phone comes to the world market, it will really became a big challenge for the other smartphones. In the end, this not might be the best phone nowadays, but this is a good news for smartphone users because soon we will see this high capacity of battery in most of the popular smartphones.

Three Acceptable Outrages by Saud

By: Saud

Acceptable Outrages are existed thousands years ago, some of them are already disappeared and some are still. in this post, we will look in deep for three of the most acceptable outrages regardless their existence.

Capital Punishment:

Capital Punishment as defined by the online encyclopedia, capital punishment page,  is "a legal process whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime". This issue has been a controversial since its first existence. in many countries, some advocates insisting to keep the capital punishment as a punishment for some crimes based on reasons they think are valid, help to prevent crimes is most of the repeatedly said reason for those advocates, when punishing someone with such hard and deadly punishment, a lot of people who intend to commit a crime will think twice before they even plan or think for this crime.

Gender Discrimination

Gender Discrimination or "sexism" is defined in the online encyclopedia as " a prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender". sexism is usually against females, in all previous and current ages, we never heard about sexism against males. in the old ages, usually the females do participate in every activities we can imagine, starting from their normal function as birth and raise their children to their participation in some of the toughest activities in the industrial and agricultural fields. Gender discrimination is also existed in the family societies, some families in this modern age still give some preferences to the boys rather than girls, and this may be more obvious in the conservative societies. And to end this situation which can be considered as an act of slavery, United Nations had drafted several agreements aimed to end such discrimination, and they have many agreements in this context such as "gender equality", "empowering women" and some other agreements promote those rights.

Genocide

 Genocide,  according to the online encyclopedia, is the systematic destruction of all or part of a racial, ethinc, religious or national group". This act of Genocide is existed thousands of years ago and the most obvious example genocide we can see in the modern age is what is happening now in Syria where people killed based on their subreligion. more details about the ten atrocious genosides in the history of humanity is in the Listverse website.

Three Acceptable Outrages, Ayesha

By: Ayesha Aldoghan

The women history is full of many issues. They have been suffering from many prohibited things. Some of the issues became outrageous such as “Not acceptable women to educate in formal school and to work in some jobs". On the other hands, there are some issues that have not been done such as “women earn less salary than women in the same job”. In my view, inequality salaries will be outrage in the near future; it is just a time problem.

Before the middle of the 19th century, women in the United States are not allowed to receive formal education because the society role and conception that woman only have to be wife and mother and know the house working such as cooking and cleaning. However the formal education of girls and women began at the middle of nineteenth century and it was related to the same concept, so the education subjects on that time were to prepare women and girls to be wives and mothers, too, and for the only socially acceptable occupation: teaching!

Women work, also, has a long history of struggling. In the past, it is not allowed for women to work in leading jobs or in any jobs in which men usually work such as financial jobs.

On The 21th century, it is not only normal to see girls in all levels of formal education system, but also they are forced to attend schools in many countries. Moreover, it is totally acceptable that woman study in any field that she loves in colleges. In jobs, women now are still trying to prove that they and the men are equal. Many women work in difficult and important jobs and they succeed, such as Oprah Winfrey, but the problem is that not a lot of women have the chance to work in any kinds of job she wants. In Canada, I noticed that in any work place there are men and women. I saw women work to fix streets, but I have not seen that in the United States.

The problem now is that women and men are not equal in salaries. Even in the United States, the county of freedom! You can see man and woman work same job but the man earn more money! Everybody should know that is unfair. Finally, women will continue to try to get their full rights, and in the near future will see this problem outrage. 

Three Acceptable outrages by Hussain Alqatifi

Three Acceptable Outrages

In the previous decades, humanity has suffered from a plethora of acceptable outrages such as women's rights, nuclear weapons and children works.

Women's rights are controversial topic in many part of the globe. In some countries women relatively got their rights such as in the United States and Europe countries and now they have similar rights just as men. However, in many countries still the issue of women's rights did not make any progress. One example of women's right is equality at workplaces. In other words, women appeal to be equal to men at workplaces. They should have equal opportunities at workplace. Fortunately, nowadays women easily can get a job, yet there are facing injustice treatments by employers. For example, women might get lower wages in many organizations. Moreover, women have serious obstacles to vacate high level positions or executive positions in a company neither in a public organization. Even though in some countries that have a big movement in women's rights, there are a few number of women who are working in executives positions.

Nuclear weapons are the most critical threat for humanity. We knew what happened in Hiroshima when it was invaded by nuclear bombs. Hiroshima has been suffering all the time because of nuclear weapons. It is a disgrace for all countries that are still developing and spending large sums of money for nuclear weapons despite of their experience and they know what it could cause for the globe if these weapons used. Nuclear weapons have harm more than good for humanity. We are not against science development but not at the expense of the environment and humankind. It is easy to destroy the environment but it is very hard to maintain it for next generations.

Children work in the past was acceptable for several reasons. All family members have their responsibility such as father and sons have to work in the field or any workplace and the mother and daughter do house work. In the past, there were limited education opportunities for children, so they did not have options, so they were providing assistant for their parents by working or helping their parents at work. However, today children should go to school not to work in order to get good education. As a result, these children will be strong and qualified to contribute in a society.   

3 Acceptable Outrages - Jennie Viratham Poonsawat

By Jennie Viratham Poonsawat

These days, there are several unacceptable outrages happening almost in every part of the world, not only man hurts animals but also man fights with their own kinds. In fact, people in the past too, practiced some activities that cause a massacre like when Adolf Hitler killed the Jewish in a gas chamber and so on. Somehow, man seems to be less ethical and more selfish possibly due to the changes in society such as, new technologies along with new live styles. In this new society, the most important things are money and fame, in order to get those two, some people do not hesitate to go against morality as we can see nowadays like human trafficking, violence on animals and nuclear weapon.

First of all, in many Asian countries, some people are the victims of human trafficking for many aspects. In addition, we usually see this kind of thing from the news, children are sent overseas to be beggars or servants and some women have to work as maids outside their own countries. Sadly, these people have to face a tragic life, some women are sold to be prostitutes and children are being abused in many ways. It's not that all of them agree to do so, they have no choice but to make money for feeding the whole family. Human trafficking is obviously illegal but that is not the point. What really matters is that transporting human like this is all wrong for selling people like some kind of goods.

Second, there are some animals that face the risk of extinction because of man. Many people say that people in the past are cruel and savage. But aren't we just the same as them now? Man kills or hurts pitiful animals in order to get their invaluable body parts like elephant ivory, shark fin and tiger skin. For the case of shark, people cut the fin off and, let the shark back to the sea and becomes food for other sharks. In some countries like Korea and China, dog meat consumption is acceptable. However, the process of getting the meat is really horrible for example, about 50 dogs are squeezed in a small cage on the way to the market and some are ill and unable to breathe and also when they reach the market, dogs are to be hanged or boiled alive. That is a cruel thing to treat these little ones who deserve to live with care.

Finally, in the past, many wars occur and cause a lot of death but in these days, human seeks for more power and more wealth with whatever they can do even their action will kill millions of people. As the technology and science develop, the creation of nuclear weapon becomes a threat for many countries because of destructive power as we can see from the incident at Hiroshima, Japan. Today, the country like North Korea still use nuclear weapon to threaten other countries. Not only that one atomic bomb can destroy the whole island or country but also cause a long term disease like cancer due to radioactive materials. In Japan, there was an accident at the nuclear plant and radiation spreads everywhere, Japanese people who live nearby is inevitably exposed to radiation and get themselves contaminated day by day. Even the nuclear plant is a big energy source, it is actually a weapon to kill people, not instantly but gradually. 

Three Acceptable Outrages--Wendi Fan

There are many kinds of outrages in history river all over the world, such as child workers, human trafficking, women bans, discrimination, nuclear weapons and animal testing. Although they seem to be cruel in nowadays, some of  them are still necessary or useful for human lives. Here are three main topics I will talk about animal testing, capital punishment and military action.

The foremost is animal testing. According to the online encyclopedia, Pro&con.org, page for animal testing, we know that there are approximately 26 million animals used to test in science in the USA. Some animals, like Chimpanzees and mice have 99% and 98% of their DNA similar to humans, are used to create medical therapy, examine medicine toxicity and products safety to make sure human being's health. Maybe it seems unfair and cruel to treat animals in testing, but it is better to do trials on human being. After all, some of the researches on animals will also benefit to animals for life-saving. 

The second is capital punishment. Some people think death penalty is against the humanity, is an immoral action, it will take much time and money to do the legal process. If the case meets some mistakes, the wrong people will die. The most important is the criminal have chances to change into a good person who may become useful for some aspects. Otherwise, the opponents of the topic mentioned claim that the criminal who can break the prison would be dangerous. Death penalty will also give lessons to the future offenders. Saving the criminals, more policemen will be sent to look after them, more food and drink will be supplied.

The third is military action. Military actions mean to take actions to use the armed forces systematically, it has a different meaning in war times and peace days. In the former age, we use military actions for armed aggressions and preparedness, and in nowadays, we take more military practice to avoid attacks, to quell riots and humanitarian aids. Maybe military actions bring wars, it is necessary to have it to protect nations from terrorists.

Three acceptable outrages - Zhiyuan Zhang

Tobacco is absolutely an accepted outrages in present world. First of all, smoking is unhealthy. The truth that cigarette would cause tons of diseases like lung cancer has been proved and accepted by many people and organization, whatever official or unofficial. Secondly, smoking is an immoral activity because the second-handed smoking may also cause some physical harm to the people who do not smoke and the terrible smell will also bother them. Last but not least, the process of producing cigarette waste a lot of resource that we can use to solve problems but not manufacture problems. For example, the plantation tobacco will occupy some land rich of material that we can use to produce crops like wheat and corn and solve the serious starvation in some place on Earth. And also we can make billions of wealth if millions of people are not focusing on manufacturing and transporting cigarette, which absolutely is an object that worth nothing.

Increasing economy by constructing more buildings is another outrage. In the 1980's Japan, the government decided to make some policies that encouraged building market in order to make sure the economy kept growing. The reason is pretty easy: the process of constructing a building would not only benefit itself, but also do favor to industries in other areas like steel, cement, wood and furniture. If people build more house, this long link will make sure that tons of business will also benefits. However, this kinds of opinion is very short-sight and ignore some shortages of this method. Firstly, the requirements of apartments is limited because people will not buy and keep several houses, which means that this method cannot last long. Maybe economy will increase quickly like you give it a stimulant, buy years later there will only be disadvantages left. Next, encouraging constructing building will raise the price of apartment, which will cause a serious damage to people's life quality. Many people in 1980's Japan cannot purchase a house and they could only make loan, which they had to pay back with their salary of dozens of years in future. It was ridiculous that if you transfer all the buildings in Tokyo into to money as their price, the amount is large enough to purchase the whole America. Finally, buildings is not something relevant to creativity and technology. A country inspiring building may have a beautiful GDP, not will never become a great country.

The final outrage I want to talk about is people have to pay for the health-care. Health-care, as a social service, is believed by many people that hospital should be totally funded by government like army, police and fire department but not the patients. However, few countries in this world have set up free health-care system. As a result, poor people in many countries have to give up curing because they do not have enough money to pay the hospital.

3 Acceptable Outrages - Misa Aizaki

In the past, a great many of outrages related to animals were practiced; for example, blood sports such as bull-baiting, fox tossing, and ritual animal killing, which people sacrificed animals to give their gratitude for Gods, or just as amusements. Still, there are horrible outrages involved animals, which we have not noticed or not taken a step for it yet. Let me introduce three outrages.

One of remarkable and well-known animal abuses is animal slaughter disposition. Some people abandon their pets with excuses that they are not capable of keeping them anymore, because of specific reasons like moving, keeper’s death, as such. However, we do not know exactly about the final destination of abandoned animals. In fact, majority of them end up going to shelters and finally are killed. In addition, extra animals, which were supposed to be pets, go to shelters and are discarded as well. How come the keepers buy pets without thinking over of the future, and responsibility as their only owners in the world?

Animal experiment/testing is also one of acceptable recent outrages. Right now, tons of animals are confined in dark laboratories, being frightened to be tested. Animal testing is conducted in many kind of facilities including from elementary schools to medical schools, and is used widely for familiar house products, including cosmetic, drugs, pesticides, industrial chemicals, food additives and so on. While many facilities and organizations have been trying to reduce animal experiment, it is conducted all around the world. Relentless as it is, the point is, that educated as it is an inevitable action to learn, we consider it as it goes.

           
The third one is making and selling real fur. Compared to the outrages above, this outrage is different from them in that we make it just as an amusement. Some might claim that clothes made of real fur is quite warm and highly well-made in its quality. Therefore, they even were it as a sign of their richness. Yet, they are not likely to turn their eyes on the making processes, which are horribly bloody and brutal blots on our humanity. I am wondering if they really want real fur, executing slaughter animals, which even they have as pets.

The three examples are the only few of ones related to animals. We have to keep eyes on the problem seriously and try get rid of the awful outrages.

3 Acceptable Outrages - Riham Abuzinadah

By: Riham Abuzinadah

In fact, many horrible things have happened  in the world whether they were happening back in the days or during the current time, but are acceptable for many people, are called acceptable outrages. there are many examples of these acceptable out rages, and I would like to discuss 3 of them which are about racism, children workers, and chemical weapons.

Regarding racism, which is the discrimination between people on their abilities and characteristics on the basis of their race, so some racial group thinks that they are superior to others, people have no rights to talk or express themselves, they are also not allowed to have specific jobs. in my point of view, racism is consider outrage because no one should be made to feel inferior just because of his look, color, or where he came from. in addition, racism is bad because it leads to many social problems; for instance, it causes poverty by preventing some people from working, causes a major inequality issues, and can lead to the corruption of justice and increasing the number of crimes. That is why people should not discriminate between each other, and this problem should be eliminated.

Another acceptable outrage that I would like to talk about is child labor. child labor is to make children work while they are in a very young age and to give them tasks that require physical and mental strength. Most of the time, this happens in the poor countries to let the children participate in increasing their families income. So, some families let their children go to factories instead of schools. children labor is an outrage, since it makes children miss their school and the proper education they deserve that could enable them to find good jobs in their future. Furthermore, these children might be exploited be other companies due to their low wages, and they are less likely to protest on their working conditions. moreover, working at factories in a very young age could lead to disabilities because of some dangerous substances;consequently, this kind of child labor is absolutely immoral.

The last outrage i will cover is about using chemical weapons in wars. The usage of this kind of weapons is really horrible as it leads to extreme horror in the country due to the invisible gas that could spread over and seek out every place, and because of the tirrible death it can cause. Besides, chemical weapon is more dangerous than bomb because a person can hide himself against the bomb in a shelter or whatever, but with the chemical one, he cannot do anything other than breath it as it is mixing with air. Also, the aforementioned weapons could lead to permanent illness, blindness, and disabilities.

Three Acceptable Outrages - Ashwag Gashgari.

There were three remarkable issues which were accepted in the past and outrageous now. Those forgoing subjects consider to be unfair, offending, and humiliating to some groups of people, which now it would be crazy to just think about it; therefore, I would like to discuss these issues in hand.

The first significant offensive subject is restricting universities to men, any person should have the right to choose his/her life and education, it is not just a demand, it is a simple right to human being as eating, sleeping, or marriage so the idea of prohibiting women from applying to university is an infringement to human rights, they build a belief in their minds from the old generation without even thinking about it, is it rational or not. they content that women fit more in the house and kids; they have to be good wives and mothers and that's it; if they just really think about it, if they have to be good mothers to build a good generation, they have to be educated and cultivated to raise an effective generation, and lets us don't forget the essential roles that women played and achieved in the world, and there are many pioneers women in the world that accomplish a remarkable achievements that millions of men couldn't do it.

Another important outrage which I would like to talk about is racism toward African American people in the USA, from separating schools, transportation, marriage, and so one. They had an offensive treatment in many aspects in their life; no one should be treated or judged by his color, race, or even religion, we all ask for our rights and freedom and as one of our prophet Mohammed words"treat other people as the way you like to be treated". Thanks god I didn't live through this period of time.

The final outrage issue which I would like to talk about is war, it is an accepted way in our present to obtain some other goals which I believe it is consider to be an outrage in the future and should be prohibited. There is no excuse no matter what to start a war in any country, killing their resident's women, children, and old people, those innocent people who have no guilt except they born in those countries, let them live through fears, and panic all the time, losing their families, houses, or friends. Some says that they do wars to get other countries armories to prevent war, or they have the rights on their lands, or they want their resources or any other travail reason which is an excuse to damage other people life and take their rights; we never punish a child for his parent's faults, it is out of sense.

Three Acceptable Outrages by Hisham Alshehri

By Hisham Alsheheri

 One of the most acceptable outrages in the past is Forced marriage even if she or he against to get married. Unfortunately it is still acceptable nowadays in some poor countries and some part of India and Middle East. In the back days, it was very acceptable for the parents to find a husband for their young daughter without asking her if she agree with that or not, and parents believe that is one of their jobs for their daughter and the daughter doesn't have the right to say her opinion of that. That was very acceptable especially in my country Saudi Arabia, and that not only with the daughter, but also with the son. The son back days in my country has no choice to choose the women he wants, but in face his wife already choose since he is very young. Other kind of forced marriage is to get married only from one girl of the family, and unfortunately it is happen these days in many countries around the world especially in southern of Asia and Middle East. It is a big shame if the guy get married from out of the family or from another ethnic. In my opinion, that is against the person rights to choose the partner that he or she wants to live with. which is also can lead for success life.

Another kind of the acceptable outrages back days is child labour. Child labour unfortunately still happens these days in many developing countries such as South Africa or some countries in South America. As Wikipedia mentions, before 1940 many children from age 5-14 worked in Europe and United States and some of them were working for 12 hours a day. Although with deprivation from education and deprivation of the children rights to choose if they willing to work, still this very acceptable for people. Also Wikipedia mentions, in 2010 in developing countries with high poverty especially in South Africa there are more than 50 percent of children who are aged between 5 to 14 are working.

Last type of acceptable outages in the past, women wont allowed to go to school or work.  In my country the women were not able to go to school or have job. It was a big shame for the family to let their daughter to go to the school. In the past women were only can do their main job as people thought which is working in the home only. As I read in CNN News this problem still happen in these days in some parts of India and Africa. Also there are many countries the women there can not go to school, but that because of poverty that people live in.

3 Acceptable Outrages

By Yuna Tsushima

Have you ever heard of honor killing? There are a lot of women living in a great fear to be killed by their families or relatives, even though they haven't done anything wrong as far as we see. Some people may be thinking that this kind of things are in the past, but in fact, it is still occuring mostly in the Arabic countries. There are some reasons to be a target of honor killing. Being victims of rape, refusing arranged marriage, sex out of marriage and even  just a rumor can be the trigger of the gun. In addition, homosexuality caused honor killing so sometimes men can be the targets. I have no idea why such a cruel thing can still exist in this century.

Another outrageous thing for me is child abuse. In my country, Japan, I often hear news about child abuse and some children are killed by their own parent. Not all people can have a child even if they desperately want to. However, sometimes really terrible thing happens to the precious lavable child. In 1990, the United Nation have announced the Convention on the Right of the Child which officially admits children's right to live, to be protected and educated. In spite of  this agreement, there are many children abused by their parents, who should love and protect their children.

And what is even worse, there are a number of children as a soldiers in the world. Many children are killed by religion, their government and their country. Sometimes they are abducted and forced to train for the war. They have no choice. Trying to get away, they will be shot and killed. They are sometimes used as a weapon  or a tool. They are compelled to plunge into enemy with a bomb, or have to go into the ground where a lot of mines are buried. Of course war and dispute are really outrageous enough, but I think this is one of the most horrible things all over the world.

These three outrages are terribly inhuman. I think we must not overlook irrational things like these. I hope that no more innocent person will be killed by people who should protect him or her.
 

 
 

Acceptable Outrages by civilians - Sulaiman Alturaif

By Sulaiman Alturaif.

Let's start with giving some definition to the term "outrage." According to Google search engine, it indicates that outrage is an action or event causing anger, shock, or indignation. In the past, some behaviors, horrible ones, were conceded and accepted by the communities. These actions, however, are taboo as the modern societies allege to, and considered to be stigma, mark of disgrace in the history of humanity.

As an exemplification of what used to be acceptable in the past, the rejection of the female gender and the deprivation of her rights to participate in the off-housing regular daily basis activities, justifying that she's a weak creature and physically, emotionally incapable of managing the real world problems. Nevertheless, the female creature was only supposed to the housekeeping work, not to mention that she was not even allowed to receive proper education as her fellow males. Therefore, sexism was something acceptable in the past centuries when the women was defined as a weak, emotional creature whose only capable of maternity and post pregnancy rising of the child. However, in the 21st century the female creature have proved otherwise, she showed that she's even capable of giving and fulfilling more than what males can't achieve. 

Another example to clarify acceptable outrages is homosexuality, and gay marriage. Some of the countries still do not approve gay marriage in their constitution, or some states in the United States. Gay marriage, in some perspective is contradicting the human nature in their sexual orientation, where male and female are the ones who supposed to get married, not people from the same sex. However, some recent medical researches assert that many male born children carries feminine genes and hormones that would affect their sexual orientation. Thus, become gay. In the U.S army, soldiers were forced to accept gay marriage, no matter whether it violates their religious beliefs. As a result, some soldiers didn't concede that fact and it coasted them their careers. Some cultures considers it as a tumor starts to metastasize in our communities and its underlying significance is violating nature way of creatures mating, which will lead to many side effects.  

outrages between now and the past Naif

April/11/2014

Now days the world changes so fast and rules of accepting things have changed. Cultures, costumes, and laws too have changed. There are things that were unacceptable and became acceptable nowadays. Outrages are examples of that. There are things are outrages in the past, but now they consider outrages. Slavery, Drugs, and women's right to work are examples of outrages both in the past and the present.

Slavery

Slavery nowadays is against the law and considers a crime and an outrage. Back in the history, in many civilizations and societies slavery was a normal thing. However, now all the countries outlaw slavery and it is illegal and against human right. There are many types of slavery like: chattel slavery, forced marriage, and child labor. Unfortunately, even slavery is now illegal, but one of the modern-day outrages is child. Many governments try to fight child labor. Poverty is the main reason for child labor and there is shocking number all over of the world about child labor. For example, Kevin Watkins 2012 in his article “Where's the global outrage over this modern-day slavery?” states that 150 to 170 million will be on child labor in 2020. Child labor prevents the children from the most basic right which is education.

Woman right to work

Woman in the past has no right to work. The typical image was they just stay at home and be a mother, but with the history many woman right movements and educated woman started to fight for their rights. Now the women have the right to work and have equal right with men. It is clearly that women right to work was an outrage and a sanction, but now the women have the right to work in almost all kind of fields.  However, in some cultures and countries women still struggle to have equal right to work with men or work in other fields. In some developing countries costumes and traditions prevent women to work in some fields like politics or higher ranks in the government.  

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is most debatable issue in recently. Back in the history homosexuality is an outrage and there were punishment for it. Basically most of the societies are controlled by religion and costumes and norms which see homosexuality as a bad thing. However, homosexual now is legal in most of the countries and it became a normal thing to see relationships and marriages between homosexual. For example, California State legalized same sex marriage recently. Homosexuality now is acceptable and became a legal in most of the countries around the world.

WELCOME!

Welcome to the EAP-Reading-Writing class blog!

You are encouraged to use this blog as a place to present your ideas and opinions, or to start a discussion about a topic that you find interesting or important.

Here is a basic truth about writing:

The more you write in different contexts and situations, and the more you spend time writing, the faster your writing improves! Conversely, if you don't do a minimum of writing, your writing skills will actually deteriorate!!

Much like learning to play the piano or play a sport, writing is a physical process; more than most people think! Consequently, the more you write, the more comfortable you'll feel about writing in English, and when you get more comfortable, you can better concentrate on improving specific skills, like paying more attention to word choices, or finding different ways of developing an idea, as well as learning how to find your own grammar and syntax problems.

Writing is also the best way to get a deeper understanding of the complexities and flexibilities of a language. Writing a first draft can help you realize what you actually think about an issue. Once you have a first rough draft, through further re-writing can help you better organize your thoughts and ideas. At times, writing in a journal lets you think through difficult situations you don't feel comfortable discussing with others. At other times, when you feel inspired, you can even create alternate realities by writing. 

Some writers claim that you don't really know what you think about something until you write about it.

Best wishes to everybody, and I hope we will have a great learning experience this quarter!