2012년 11월 29일 목요일

Before 20 days...Presidential Election


The Clash sings this song to reveal the dark sides of america, and the conclusion
is that "I'm so bored with the USA"
Then...Are You Bored With KOREA?

Presidential Election left only few days.
If you are so bored, please change it interesting by participating election

MOVE UP STARSKY FOR THE CIA
SUCK ON KOJAK FOR THE USA

Assign president who you want for korea!
Talk! by election!

2012년 11월 12일 월요일

What changes in 21C


Toefl Essay #2
What Things Will Be Changed in 21C

           I still remember the red shouting of 2002. It was quite interesting for me that world can watch the soccer games held in Korea though the countries are far from here. 10years later, 2012, People can communicate through ‘facebook’ and several types of smartphones. Those things actually give us many conveniences but also some inconveniences. They have improved democracy all around the world but also exploited workers all around the world in many different ways. Following paragraphs will help you to understand the contents in this paragraph.


           26th October 2011, there was the election to fill vacancy the major of Seoul. Around that times, radio podcast program called ‘I’m funny trick[나는 꼼수다]’ exposed expensive plastic surgery of the candidate government party who call herself a mother of Seoul. Moreover, member of Ggomsu imitated two candidates on the other side of government to help citizens to choose one. As a result of that podcast, opposition side candidate won the election after 10 years absence. In addition, there was a ‘twitter’ that spread citizens’ idea effectively with function ‘following’ and ‘retweet’. These kinds of Social Network Services (called SNS) worked on the Greek, Egypt and even Wall Street. People had demonstrated on the street through the social network services so that removed dictator or threatened capitalists in New York.

           However, some sociologists say that improvement of network services can exploit workers. Being able of long distance communications help workers get work though the time is after work time or Sunday. Higher offices can give workers work anytime they need. As a result, workers cannot get enough rest during weekend. But, there is no serious consideration about wages working time listed on the Labor Standard Law or infringing worker’s private life. Considering many workers admire leaving office and weekend for their sweet rest, out-office working such as e-mailing is too cruel.
 
           There are other problems about SNS. When companies hire new workers, some of them check applicants’ twitter or facebook to inspect their ideas and attitude of life, politics. In this unstable economic situation, taking a job is more and more important, and therefore, applicants and workers should manage their SNS according to boss’s idea. For instance, recently, some workers made one twitter address called ‘Bamboo Woods’ to share their everyday life however company president found the existence of that address, and began to censer that. Considering twitter and facebook can be alive because of free expression of idea, censorship killed the function of SNS and restrained the outlet of workers’ stress made in everyday office life.

           21C is the century of technology. As we know every technology has two faces like Janus. Modern technology, represented as social networking services, may improve our democracy through free expression of our ideas, on the other hand, may exploit worker no matter office and house, and boss’s censorship is work cruel for them. Therefore, what we need is participating to improve democracy more and respect workers’ leisure time and facebook status.

2012년 11월 11일 일요일

We, As an Earthling


We, As an Earthling

           Movie ‘Earthling’ shows us how cruel we are when we treat the other earthlings; things that inhabits on the earth. Making the film, director uses 5 ways to abuse animals, pet, food, clothe, entertaining, and science (as experiment) and makes us be sorry for treating animals (earthlings). Director explained us three types of ‘-ism’ about discrimination, racism, sexism, and specism. Some races accept racism and ignore the rights of the other races for their profits. And one gender accepts sexism and ignores the rights of the other gender for their profits. Similarly, some species accept ‘specism’ and ignore the rights of the other gender for their profits. Among these three types of ‘-ism’, there are not big difference in terms of cruelness, discrimination and inhumane attitude. In this review, readers can focus on the background of this video, that is, what made people so cruel.



          
At first, these earthlings are used to be clothes or leathers. Basically, it doesn’t matter that people wear animal fur. What the matter is in the way treating the India cows. Slaughtering cows in the many cities in India is strictly banned by law, people carry the cows to the places where slaughtering is allowed. Problems happen while cows are carried. Considering most of cows are first with truck and its sound, this experience will be scaring for them. The rougher people treat them, the more scaring experience will be. Without any food or water while they are carried, they definitely would fall in pain. As a result, about half of cows are killed when they arrive at the slaughterhouse. This video is enough to persuade people to rethink about their clothes made of fur. On the other hand, this video may make people abhor the human nature because of cruelness.

Someone may wonder “why they should be so cruel?” Then here is an answer. Readers may remember ‘foot and mouth disease’ that hit Korea last year. Here’s a link shows how people treated pigs influenced by the disease.
(Subtitles of this video will be posted on my blog).

As film maker of this video (treating foot-and-mouth disease) says, we treat these animals because of ‘economic value’. In this point, readers can get the clue to understand the cruelness in the movie Earthling. In terms of ‘economic value’, readers can remind another abuse in our society based on not only in specism but also in racism and sexism. For readers’ understanding, here’s a link of interesting article from ‘In These Times’.
          
Movie ‘Earthling’ mainly shows us the result of ‘specism’, however it is impossible to separate three types of ‘-ism’, racism, sexism and specism in terms of Capitalism. About 300 years ago in America, North and South fought for the black slaves. South struggled for maintaining slaves so that capitalist can exploit them. Nowadays, many advertisements appear sexy girls to attract consumers so that companies may get more profits. Similarly, many clothe companies and stock farmers treat animals harshly so that they can reduce productive cost. Like this, in front of the capital, people can be cruel though they were NOT that cruel before.

We can find that in part 2, food. In part 2, narrator says “There’s no anodyne or anesthetic during castration, and it is conducted for making good marbling or soft fleshiness.” Readers can find other specism in that sentence. Remind that castration of sexual-criminal had been controversial issue for several days. For instance, after one member of government party insisted that we should make the law that allows physical castration, some civic groups acted against his idea. On the contrast, people castrate little pigs without any sense of guilty, but they are full of expectation of making money.

Part 5, about earthling and science, reminded me one video showed Sunday morning when I came here for KMLA entrance interview. It treated some drugs safe for animals, but not for people. The Thalidomide Tragedy was highly highlighted in this video. For readers who don’t know this tragedy, here’s the link.
          
           It’s quite sad story, isn’t it? In fact, as narrator says in the movie, there’s no conviction that doctors can adopt the results from animal experiments to people. Since the basic presupposition, result from animal can be adopted is wrong, many drugs have made troubles so far, and will continue to make problems. While on the other, some scientists, including Charles Robert Darwin who claimed the theory of evolution, insisted animal experiment is necessary in terms of expansion of human knowledge. Moreover, some of them thought like rats, good at spreading, should be used for experiments. However, fact is that all of them including rats, Pavlov’s dog, and Schrodinger’s cat are all earthling. As Darwin explained to justify animal experiment, they can feel the pain or loneliness.

             In the beginning of this movie, there are words that Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote on his novel “All men are like Nazis when they face animals.” Sadly, his sentence is still true in many different aspects. And I wrote about term ‘specism’ related with racism and sexism to help you think background of those cruel things. And lastly, with tragedy, I wrote about animal experiment. Overall, this is not interesting movie and essay. But what we should remind is 3 stage of truth. The last stage is ACCEPTANCE.