Tuesday 28 April 2015
Tuesday 21 April 2015
Outsourcing / Offshoring
This is a cartoon published in 2012, on St Louis Post-Dispatch journal by cartoonist Matson. It deals with outsourcing and offshoring. In this cartoon we can see, in the foreground, a man standing on an island explaining what outsourcing and offshoring is to his grandchildren. He is barefoot and digging a hole in which we can guess he is going to burry the treasure case he has next to him, in which is writting Romney, so we can conclude that this man is acaricature of Mitt Romney ex-governor of Massachussets. In front of him there is a boat named "Belivin' In America", in which there are two persons, a boy and a girl, who are listening to the man on the island and call him "Grandpa Mitt". They seem to be admiring him for what he is doing. On the background we can some islands with their names on it (Switzerland and Bermuda), and a cross as to mark where a treasure is, like hunting treasure maps. The island in which the first character is standing has also its name on it, "Cayman Islands".
This cartoon is a critic to the outsourcing of Mitt Romney, who has tried to be president various times, and it shows him like a man who teaches his family to do outsourcing and offshoring to evade taxes and also to pit their money on tax heaven islands or countries.
This cartoon deals with outsourcing and offshoring qhich is a current matter in our world because most entreprises and high payed people are always trying to evade taxes in their country so they go to others in order to gain more and spend less. In this cartoon it talks about Mitt Romney qho is a man with various grey bussines in his hands and, so does his wife. And so, showing in this cartoon Romney's grandchildeen hints in the concern that his children and grandchildren whiledo has e does and more money will evade those taxes that helps a country's economy, and the grey bussines will go on.
This is a cartoon by Geek and Poke, from the series Simply Explained, released in 2008. It talks about offshoring, and explains in a caricaturical way how it works. In this picture we can see two persons having a conversation, the one on the left explains to the man on the right what are his problems with his company, saying that he has to relocate again his bussiness because his employees wanted to get paid. The man on the right's reaction is to say "unbelievable" as he is shocked.
With this image the cartoonist wanted to critizice the CEOs of those companiess who relatocate to a cheaper country when the one they are in start to ask for more money. What is ironical i this situarion is that at first if seems that he had no choice but to move his bussines because the employees wanted more than they had, but then we discover that they just wanted to get paid which is something they ahould already have. It critizice the hipocresy of those people who want to pay the less the better
Friday 10 April 2015
Spaces & Exchanges
1.INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION
Also known as immigration, is the movement of people into a country to which they are not native in order to settle there, especially as permanent residents or future citizens. Immigrants are motivated to leave their native countries for a variety of reasons, including a desire for economic prosperity, political issues, family re-unification, escaping conflict or natural disaster, or simply the wish to change one's surroundings.
2.MIXED/HYBRID LANGUAGES
A mixed language is a language that combines the grammatical elements of one language and the lexical items of another language. Typically, there is bilingualism in one of the groups, though this is not a requirement. Every language is mixed to some extent,[1] but few languages are "mixed languages" in the specific sense meant here.
3. HUMAN INTERACTION/INTERDEPENDENCE
In relationships, interdependence is the degree to which members of the group are mutually dependent on the others. This concept differs from a dependent relationship, where some members are dependent and some are not. In an interdependent relationship, participants may be emotionally, economically, ecologically and/or morally reliant on and responsible to each other. An interdependent relationship can arise between two or more cooperative autonomous participants
4.TECHNOLOGY TRANSFERS
Also called transfer of technology (TOT), is the process of transferring skills, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that scientific and technological developments are accessible to a wider range of users who can then further develop and exploit the technology into new products, processes, applications, materials or services. It is closely related to (and may arguably be considered a subset of) knowledge transfer. Horizontal transfer is the movement of technologies from one area to another. At present transfer of technology is primarily horizontal. Vertical transfer occurs when technologies are moved from applied research centers to research and development departments.
5. OUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING
-In business, outsourcing involves the contracting out of a business process to another party (compare business process outsourcing). Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another, but not always. It is also the practice of handing over control of public services to for-profit corporations.
-Offshoring is the relocation, by a company, of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. More recently, offshoring has been associated primarily with the outsourcing of technical and administrative services supporting domestic and global operations from outside the home country ("offshore outsourcing"), by means of internal (captive) or external (outsourcing) delivery models.
6. BRAIN DRAIN
Human capital flight is an Economics term equivalent to the Sociology term, brain drain, which refers to the emigration of intelligent, well-educated individuals to somewhere for better pay or conditions, causing the place they came from to lose those skilled people, or "brains." Typically, emigrating brains have learned English and have moved to the United Kingdom, the US or some other English-speaking country. An example is Albert Einstein. Brain drain is common in developing nations, particularly in former African colonies of the United Kingdom, the island nations of the Caribbean, and in centralized economies such as the former East Germany and the Soviet Union. China and India have recently been discovered to be at the top of the list of countries with skilled students of English leaving.
7. INTERNATIONAL/GLOBALIZED TRADE
International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of gross domestic product (GDP). It is the presupposition of international trade that a sufficient level of geopolitical peace and stability are prevailing in order to allow for the peaceful exchange of trade and commerce to take place between nations. Trading globally gives consumers and countries the opportunity to be exposed to new markets and products.
8. MASS/SUSTAINABLE/ECO TOURISM
-Mass tourism developed with improvements in technology, which allowed the transport of large numbers of people in a short space of time to places of leisure interest, so that greater numbers of people could begin to enjoy the benefits of leisure time. In the United States, the first seaside resorts in the European style were at Atlantic City, New Jersey and Long Island, New York.
-"Sustainable tourism is the concept of visiting a place as a tourist and trying to make only a positive impact on the environment, society and economy." Tourism can involve primary transportation to the general location, local transportation, accommodations, entertainment, recreation, nourishment and shopping. It can be related to travel for leisure, business and what is called VFR (visiting friends and relatives). There is now broad consensus that tourism development should be sustainable; however, the question of how to achieve this remains an object of debate.
-Ecotourism is a form of tourism involving visiting fragile, pristine, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, intended as a low-impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial (mass) tourism. Its purpose may be to educate the traveler, to provide funds for ecological conservation, to directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities, or to foster respect for different cultures and for human rights. Since the 1980s ecotourism has been considered a critical endeavor by environmentalists, so that future generations may experience destinations relatively untouched by human intervention.
9. HUMAN SMUGGLING/TRAFFICKING
People smuggling (also called human smuggling) is "the facilitation, transportation, attempted transportation or illegal entry of a person or persons across an international border, in violation of one or more countries' laws, either clandestinely or through deception, such as the use of fraudulent documents". The practice of people smuggling has seen a rise over the past few decades and today now accounts for a significant portion of illegal immigration in countries around the world. People smuggling generally takes place with the consent of the person or persons being smuggled, and common reasons for individuals seeking to be smuggled include employment and economic opportunity, personal and/or familial betterment, and escape from persecution or conflict.
10. ARMS TRADE/TRAFFICKING
The arms industry is a global business that manufactures weapons and military technology and equipment. It consists of commercial industry involved in research, development, production, and the service of military material, equipment, and facilities. Arms producing companies, also referred to as defense contractors or military industry, produce arms mainly for the armed forces of states. Departments of government also operate in the arms industry, buying and selling weapons, munitions and other military items. Products include guns, ammunition, missiles, military aircraft, military vehicles, ships, electronic systems, and more. The arms industry also conducts significant research and development and provides other logistics and operations support.
11. ILLEGAL DRUG TRADE
Drug dealing is the exchange of illegal drugs for payment. The illegal drug trade is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of drugs that are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally.
12. RURAL-URBAN/URBAN-RURAL MIGRATION
-Urbanization is a population shift from rural to urban areas, "the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas", and the ways in which each society adapts to the change. It predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas, be it horizontal or vertical. The phenomenon has been closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can be seen as a specific condition at a set time (e.g. the proportion of total population or area in cities or towns) or as an increase in that condition over time.
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13. UPWARD SOCIAL/GEOGRAPHIC MOBILITY
-Social mobility is defined as movement of individuals, families, households, or other categories of people within or between layers or tiers in an open system of social stratification. Open stratification systems are those in which at least some value is given to achieved status characteristics in a society. The movement can be in a downward or upward direction. Absolute social mobility refers to the overall numbers of people who end up in a different layer of stratification from that of their parents. Relative social mobility refers to the differences in probability of attaining a certain outcome, regardless of overall structural changes; a society can have high absolute mobility and low relative mobility. The availability of at least some social mobility can be important in providing pathways to greater equality in societies with high social inequality.
-Geographic mobility is the measure of how populations move over time. Geographic mobility, population mobility, or more simply mobility is also a statistic that measures migration within a population. Commonly used in demography and human geography, it may also be used to describe the movement of animals between populations. These moves can be as large scale as international migrations or as small as regional commuting arrangements. Geographic mobility has a large impact on many sociological factors in a community and is a current topic of academic research. Population mobility has implications ranging from administrative changes in government and impacts on local economic growth to housing markets and demand for regional services.
14. RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS/AID AGENCIES
An aid agency is an organisation dedicated to distributing aid. Many professional aid organisations exist, both within government (e.g. AusAID, USAID, DFID, EuropeAid, ECHO), between governments as multilateral donors (e.g. UNDP) and as private voluntary organizations (or non-governmental organisations, (e.g. ActionAid, Ducere Foundation, Oxfam, World Vision). Aid can be subdivided into two categories: humanitarian aid (emergency relief efforts, e.g. in response to natural disasters), and development aid (or foreign aid), aimed at helping countries to achieve long-term sustainable economic growth, with the aim of achieving poverty reduction.
15. STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAMS
A student exchange program is a program in which students from a secondary school or university study abroad at one of their institution's partner institutions. A student exchange program may involve international travel, but does not necessarily require the student to study outside of his or her home country. For example, the National Student Exchange program (NSE) offers placements throughout the United States and Canada. According to the U.S. government, foreign exchange programs exist to provide practical training and employment and the sharing of history, culture, and traditions of the participants' home country.
16. GLOBAL CITIES/GLOBAL CULTURAL EVENTS
-A global city, also called world city or sometimes alpha city or world center, is a city generally considered to be an important node in the global economic system. The concept comes from geography and urban studies and rests on the idea that globalization can be understood as largely created, facilitated, and enacted in strategic geographic locales according to a hierarchy of importance to the operation of the global system of finance and trade.
-Global cultural events are those events which are shared, through the media, and seen in the entire world. For these cultural events lots of people travel to see and enjoy them. For instance some of these cultural events are the Olympic Games, the Oscar's ceremony, the New year,...
17.GLOBAL WARMING
Global warming and climate change can both refer to the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and its related effects, although climate change can also refer to any historic change in climate. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming. More than 90% of the additional energy stored in the climate system since 1970 has gone into ocean warming; the remainder has melted ice, and warmed the continents and atmosphere. Many of the observed changes since the 1950s are unprecedented over decades to millennia.
Also known as immigration, is the movement of people into a country to which they are not native in order to settle there, especially as permanent residents or future citizens. Immigrants are motivated to leave their native countries for a variety of reasons, including a desire for economic prosperity, political issues, family re-unification, escaping conflict or natural disaster, or simply the wish to change one's surroundings.
2.MIXED/HYBRID LANGUAGES
A mixed language is a language that combines the grammatical elements of one language and the lexical items of another language. Typically, there is bilingualism in one of the groups, though this is not a requirement. Every language is mixed to some extent,[1] but few languages are "mixed languages" in the specific sense meant here.
3. HUMAN INTERACTION/INTERDEPENDENCE
In relationships, interdependence is the degree to which members of the group are mutually dependent on the others. This concept differs from a dependent relationship, where some members are dependent and some are not. In an interdependent relationship, participants may be emotionally, economically, ecologically and/or morally reliant on and responsible to each other. An interdependent relationship can arise between two or more cooperative autonomous participants
4.TECHNOLOGY TRANSFERS
Also called transfer of technology (TOT), is the process of transferring skills, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that scientific and technological developments are accessible to a wider range of users who can then further develop and exploit the technology into new products, processes, applications, materials or services. It is closely related to (and may arguably be considered a subset of) knowledge transfer. Horizontal transfer is the movement of technologies from one area to another. At present transfer of technology is primarily horizontal. Vertical transfer occurs when technologies are moved from applied research centers to research and development departments.
5. OUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING
-In business, outsourcing involves the contracting out of a business process to another party (compare business process outsourcing). Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another, but not always. It is also the practice of handing over control of public services to for-profit corporations.
-Offshoring is the relocation, by a company, of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. More recently, offshoring has been associated primarily with the outsourcing of technical and administrative services supporting domestic and global operations from outside the home country ("offshore outsourcing"), by means of internal (captive) or external (outsourcing) delivery models.
6. BRAIN DRAIN
Human capital flight is an Economics term equivalent to the Sociology term, brain drain, which refers to the emigration of intelligent, well-educated individuals to somewhere for better pay or conditions, causing the place they came from to lose those skilled people, or "brains." Typically, emigrating brains have learned English and have moved to the United Kingdom, the US or some other English-speaking country. An example is Albert Einstein. Brain drain is common in developing nations, particularly in former African colonies of the United Kingdom, the island nations of the Caribbean, and in centralized economies such as the former East Germany and the Soviet Union. China and India have recently been discovered to be at the top of the list of countries with skilled students of English leaving.
7. INTERNATIONAL/GLOBALIZED TRADE
International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of gross domestic product (GDP). It is the presupposition of international trade that a sufficient level of geopolitical peace and stability are prevailing in order to allow for the peaceful exchange of trade and commerce to take place between nations. Trading globally gives consumers and countries the opportunity to be exposed to new markets and products.
8. MASS/SUSTAINABLE/ECO TOURISM
-Mass tourism developed with improvements in technology, which allowed the transport of large numbers of people in a short space of time to places of leisure interest, so that greater numbers of people could begin to enjoy the benefits of leisure time. In the United States, the first seaside resorts in the European style were at Atlantic City, New Jersey and Long Island, New York.
-"Sustainable tourism is the concept of visiting a place as a tourist and trying to make only a positive impact on the environment, society and economy." Tourism can involve primary transportation to the general location, local transportation, accommodations, entertainment, recreation, nourishment and shopping. It can be related to travel for leisure, business and what is called VFR (visiting friends and relatives). There is now broad consensus that tourism development should be sustainable; however, the question of how to achieve this remains an object of debate.
-Ecotourism is a form of tourism involving visiting fragile, pristine, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, intended as a low-impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial (mass) tourism. Its purpose may be to educate the traveler, to provide funds for ecological conservation, to directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities, or to foster respect for different cultures and for human rights. Since the 1980s ecotourism has been considered a critical endeavor by environmentalists, so that future generations may experience destinations relatively untouched by human intervention.
9. HUMAN SMUGGLING/TRAFFICKING
People smuggling (also called human smuggling) is "the facilitation, transportation, attempted transportation or illegal entry of a person or persons across an international border, in violation of one or more countries' laws, either clandestinely or through deception, such as the use of fraudulent documents". The practice of people smuggling has seen a rise over the past few decades and today now accounts for a significant portion of illegal immigration in countries around the world. People smuggling generally takes place with the consent of the person or persons being smuggled, and common reasons for individuals seeking to be smuggled include employment and economic opportunity, personal and/or familial betterment, and escape from persecution or conflict.
10. ARMS TRADE/TRAFFICKING
The arms industry is a global business that manufactures weapons and military technology and equipment. It consists of commercial industry involved in research, development, production, and the service of military material, equipment, and facilities. Arms producing companies, also referred to as defense contractors or military industry, produce arms mainly for the armed forces of states. Departments of government also operate in the arms industry, buying and selling weapons, munitions and other military items. Products include guns, ammunition, missiles, military aircraft, military vehicles, ships, electronic systems, and more. The arms industry also conducts significant research and development and provides other logistics and operations support.
11. ILLEGAL DRUG TRADE
Drug dealing is the exchange of illegal drugs for payment. The illegal drug trade is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of drugs that are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally.
12. RURAL-URBAN/URBAN-RURAL MIGRATION
-Urbanization is a population shift from rural to urban areas, "the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas", and the ways in which each society adapts to the change. It predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas, be it horizontal or vertical. The phenomenon has been closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can be seen as a specific condition at a set time (e.g. the proportion of total population or area in cities or towns) or as an increase in that condition over time.
-
13. UPWARD SOCIAL/GEOGRAPHIC MOBILITY
-Social mobility is defined as movement of individuals, families, households, or other categories of people within or between layers or tiers in an open system of social stratification. Open stratification systems are those in which at least some value is given to achieved status characteristics in a society. The movement can be in a downward or upward direction. Absolute social mobility refers to the overall numbers of people who end up in a different layer of stratification from that of their parents. Relative social mobility refers to the differences in probability of attaining a certain outcome, regardless of overall structural changes; a society can have high absolute mobility and low relative mobility. The availability of at least some social mobility can be important in providing pathways to greater equality in societies with high social inequality.
-Geographic mobility is the measure of how populations move over time. Geographic mobility, population mobility, or more simply mobility is also a statistic that measures migration within a population. Commonly used in demography and human geography, it may also be used to describe the movement of animals between populations. These moves can be as large scale as international migrations or as small as regional commuting arrangements. Geographic mobility has a large impact on many sociological factors in a community and is a current topic of academic research. Population mobility has implications ranging from administrative changes in government and impacts on local economic growth to housing markets and demand for regional services.
14. RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS/AID AGENCIES
An aid agency is an organisation dedicated to distributing aid. Many professional aid organisations exist, both within government (e.g. AusAID, USAID, DFID, EuropeAid, ECHO), between governments as multilateral donors (e.g. UNDP) and as private voluntary organizations (or non-governmental organisations, (e.g. ActionAid, Ducere Foundation, Oxfam, World Vision). Aid can be subdivided into two categories: humanitarian aid (emergency relief efforts, e.g. in response to natural disasters), and development aid (or foreign aid), aimed at helping countries to achieve long-term sustainable economic growth, with the aim of achieving poverty reduction.
15. STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAMS
A student exchange program is a program in which students from a secondary school or university study abroad at one of their institution's partner institutions. A student exchange program may involve international travel, but does not necessarily require the student to study outside of his or her home country. For example, the National Student Exchange program (NSE) offers placements throughout the United States and Canada. According to the U.S. government, foreign exchange programs exist to provide practical training and employment and the sharing of history, culture, and traditions of the participants' home country.
16. GLOBAL CITIES/GLOBAL CULTURAL EVENTS
-A global city, also called world city or sometimes alpha city or world center, is a city generally considered to be an important node in the global economic system. The concept comes from geography and urban studies and rests on the idea that globalization can be understood as largely created, facilitated, and enacted in strategic geographic locales according to a hierarchy of importance to the operation of the global system of finance and trade.
-Global cultural events are those events which are shared, through the media, and seen in the entire world. For these cultural events lots of people travel to see and enjoy them. For instance some of these cultural events are the Olympic Games, the Oscar's ceremony, the New year,...
17.GLOBAL WARMING
Global warming and climate change can both refer to the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and its related effects, although climate change can also refer to any historic change in climate. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming. More than 90% of the additional energy stored in the climate system since 1970 has gone into ocean warming; the remainder has melted ice, and warmed the continents and atmosphere. Many of the observed changes since the 1950s are unprecedented over decades to millennia.
Wednesday 11 March 2015
School Shootings on the USA
What I find most interesting on this site, aside from the fact that the information is quite well given and you can easily understand what happend and find lots of other things related to it, is the way it narrates the shooting. It is a short text that explains the events more or less throught the shooters point of view, explaining the fails of the plan and what they actually did. It is has not too much details but after reading it you wonder how can these kinds of things happen and you mostly want to ask why. Even if some of the reasons are given in the article.
Also, you can find all the information about this phenomenon, about the victims, the shooters, the event, the aftermath and so on. In this web site you can find almost everything about the incident and its investigation. It shows the background of the shooters, you can even have information coming from their journals, and who were the victims. I also think that the web site in itself give every information you could find elsewhere through research easy to reach. Thanks to that I learned about a tragic event which existence I completly ignored and it has helped me to learn quickly about the whole shooting.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold caught
on the high school's security cameras
in the cafeteria shortly before
committing suicide.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold after
comitting suicide in the library
Pinterest photoshop drawing
(mash-up from real photos)
The movie about school shootings that I think that best deals with this issue is Zero Day. I think so because it is a film that basically shows the plotting and preparation between Erik Harris and Dylan Klebold and the events occured at Columbine. But I mostly think so because it has a scene which is filmed as if it was by a security camera. This is a way of approaching the subject that I find really interesting and also quite striking, because it, in some way, makes it feel more real, and you feel more close and concerned by it. Another factor that creates this feeling of proximity is that the whole film is filmed as a home made video by the shooters, and practically makes you think that the home-made videos are actually the real ones.
The most common reasons mentioned for the recurrence of school shootings in the USA are that the guilty ones of these shootings what to get back at those who have hurt them or that other kids pick on them, make fun of them, or bully them.
Wednesday 25 February 2015
The USA Gun Culture
This document is the poster of a campaign, the Brady Campaign, against gun violence, and also gun carrying in the USA. The Brady Campaign started for about 40 years ago, and was named after James "Jim" Brady who had a major role in the developmemt of the campaign. Its aim is to prevent gun violence and has, up to now, achieved in passing the Brady law that instituted federal background checks on firearm purchasers in the United States.
This poster shows a modern gun in which we see the US waving flag, and above it a short text in which we see the number of people murdered by guns in one year, showing a huge difference between the numbers in the US, 9'000 people killed, and the other mentioned countries, thet doesn't surpass the 200.
I believe that this poster wants to show the concequences of having the completly free right to hold or buy a gun in the US, which are the death of thousands of people each year, and even if it's a huge country these numbers are too big. Life is something dear to each individual and something that we should try to protect and if we leave guns within easy reach it becomes more of a danger than a protection.
The phrase "GOD BLESS AMERICA" is quite ironical, because it is critizising the stubborness of Americans that hold onto their gun culture having blind eyes to the damage it causes, it seems like it's saying "there are too much people dying by guns in the US but even so we are the best country in the world."
In comparison to the same poster of 2004, we can see 2 main differences, the gun has changed and the number of deaths has lowered. We can consider this as a positive thing and we can think that this campaign is progessing in its aim to reduce deaths by guns by having more sensible gun laws so as to save lives.
In this graph we can see that the USA is not on the Top 10 countries with the highest rate of gun murders, but it is too close as the 26th. We could consider this as a positive thing, it is not the 1st one. But it is only surpased by undeveloped countries with lots of violence and guerillas, and as the leading world power, this is quit schoking. On the graph of the right side we can see that inside the rating of the developed countries The USA is far above the others. We can recognize that the USA is seen as a kind of model crountry for those whose values are freedom and equality, and also security, which in this case the USA does not assure. This difference between the USA and the other developed countries rise concerns about this US Gun Culture.
This cartoon is a caricature that critizise the congress atitude towards the gun culture issue. In this cartoon we see that there has been a bloodshed in the capitol, probably due to gun shooting. At the entrace there is a man representing the congress being bought off by the gun lobby. The cartoonist critizises the congres's attitude towars the issues and victims that the free use of guns that happen because of the too easy access to guns. It is more interested by money than by the people's safety, and completely ignore the blood river that comes from the capitol.
In this cartoon we can see a critic to how the second amendment of the United States constitution is being overused in the USA. We can see a clear difference between what meant the founding fathers in giving the right to own a gun and the result of it. In this cartoon we see a member of the NRA (National Rifle Association), equiped with three rifles, holding various guns, and standing on boxes of bullets. The cartoon critizises that USA citizens abuse the rights that gives them the second amendment and end up been dangerous more than having a way to prtotect themselves. In comparison with the statue of the man with a rifle the NRA man scares more than making us feel secure, which is the image that gives us the statue.
In this cartoon we can see a critic to how the second amendment of the United States constitution is being overused in the USA. We can see a clear difference between what meant the founding fathers in giving the right to own a gun and the result of it. In this cartoon we see a member of the NRA (National Rifle Association), equiped with three rifles, holding various guns, and standing on boxes of bullets. The cartoon critizises that USA citizens abuse the rights that gives them the second amendment and end up been dangerous more than having a way to prtotect themselves. In comparison with the statue of the man with a rifle the NRA man scares more than making us feel secure, which is the image that gives us the statue.
Sunday 1 February 2015
Korean Wave - K-Pop (& K-Dramas)
K-pop (an abbreviation of Korean pop, 케이팝 (kei-pap)) is a musical genre originated in South Korea, it refers to all genres of "popular music" but it is more often used to refer to a modern form of pop music such as : dance-pop, pop ballad, electronic, rock, metal, hip-hop music and R&B. The French audiovisual organization Institut national de l'audiovisuel defines K-pop as a fusion of synthesized music, sharp dance routines and fashionable, colorful outfits combining with the musical elements of electro, disco, rock, R&B, and hip-hop.
It is part of the Korean Wave (a neologism refering to the increase in popularity in South Korean culture since the 1990s, also known as Hallyu), which started with the spreading of K-dramas all around Asia and becoming a global phenomenon due to the spreading of K-pop music videos on YouTube. Also part of this Korean Wave are the language, technology (smartphones and automobiles) animated comics and films, and the cuisine.
We could say K-pop officialy started with a band called Seo Taiji & Boys, created in 1992. All along the 19th century Western culture arrived at Korea through the perfomances of artists like Louis Armstrong and Marilyn Monroe for the U.S. soldiers in Korea, after the Korean War. Little by little, the wersten culture influenced Korean culture and different music bands started to emerge. Seo Taiji & Boys brought a turning point in the hirtory of K-pop because they dealt with the problems of Koren society. They paved the way for the "success format" of K-pop songs by creating a change in the music industry of South Korea. As a result, the integration of foreign musical elements has now become a common practice in the K-pop industry. Thanks to Youtube and other social networking services, K pop has created a enormus mass of fans, for instance in 2013 there were 987 fan clubs with 9.3 million members. According to a 2011 survey conducted by the Korean Culture and Information Service, the total number of active members in Hallyu (Korean Wave) fan clubs around the world is estimated to have surpassed 3 million for the first time. Since the mid-2000s, the K-pop music market has experienced double digit growth rates and it is mostly present in Latin America, Middle East, North Africa, Northeast India, Eastern Europe, ... For example in 2011 France had over 100,000 number of hallyu fans.
Personally, I'm a fan of K-pop since 2011, and it really liked it when I discovered it. Since the I've been listening to different K-pop songs, and I could say one of my favorite bands is SHINee, among others like EXO, SNSD, Super Junior, ...
In addition to this, as I'm talking about the Korean Wave, I would like to say one or two things about the K-dramas, that in some way was the trigger of it all.
K-dramas refers to televised dramas in the Korean language, made in South Korea, mostly in a miniseries format, with distinctive features that set it apart from regular Western television series or soap operas. Korean dramas can be set in contemporary times or in historical settings. There are different genres that apply to these two types, from romantic comedies and action series to fusion science fiction dramas. South Korea started braodcatisng tv series in the 1960s but the actual dramas started in the 1990s. Korean dramas are popular worldwide, partially due to the spread of the Korean wave, with streaming services that offer multiple language subtitles. Some of the most famous dramas have been broadcast via traditional television channels; for example, Dae Jang Geum (2003) was sold to 91 countries.
Music plays an important role in Korean dramas. Original soundtracks, abbreviated OST, are explicitly made for each series, and in contrast to American series, fans have a need to buy the soundtrack album of dramas. This trend started in the 1990s, when producers swapped purely instrumental soundtracks for songs performed by popular K-pop singers. Tom Larsen, director of YA Entertainment, a distributor of Korean TV series, thinks that Korean soundtracks are polished enough musically to be considered standalone hits.
These are some of the dramas I have seen and liked:
Gu Family Book Faith My Girlfriend is a Gumiho
Some well known actors:
Lee Joon-gi Park Shin-hye Lee Minho
Lee Seung-gi Kim Soo-hyun
Sunday 23 November 2014
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