Class Participation

For my class participation, I actually believe I deserve a 97%, because I talk a lot, but it's directed towards the class, not private conversations.  I ask lots of questions, and try to answer a lot of question.  I liked this class because it was more relaxed than all my others, but it got irritating when there was so much talking and they wouldn't listen to anyone but themselves.  Other than that, I liked it.

Papua New Guinea

We finished watching the movie in class on Friday, and then we looked up whatever we could find about the country that wasn't mentioned in the movie.  It had to be important and it also had to be different from what anyone else said.  In the end of the movie though, it talked through the question, "Why do you white people have so much cargo, and we New Guineans have so little."  (Diamond said it was because of the geographical luck).  Some of the fact that were mentioned or that we had to talk about are that Papua New Guinea spends only 1.4% of the GDP on their military expenditure.  They are number 106 in the world.  37% of the people are below the poverty rate, but their GDP rate is really high: 12 in the world.  Mainly because they started out so badly.  57% of them can read and write, that means 43% cannot.  There are 860 different languages spoken there, way more than in the USA.  Unemployment rate is 1.9%, so for the most part, they are really behind, but they are still progressing.  On the coast it is lots more modern than those in the highlands. Twelfth fastest growing economy in the world. Birth rate is 56 in the world.  Median age is 22.  GDP per capita is $2,500.  TFR is 3.39, and the net migration rate is zero! 13% are in cities, and 87% are in the forest.  Over half the people in the world now live in cities.  Export a total of 6.48 and imports 6.1 billion imports.  They are exporting mainly gold and oil, also seafood and hardwood.  1-2% speak English.  Also 2 T.V stations.

Movie, Movie, Movie

We didn't get as far into the movie as we did the previous days, but from what we watched Jared Diamond said that any point at the same latitude has similar aspects.  They share roughly the same climate, and there is a lot of the same crops and animals.  Another reason why the fertile crescent failed to flourish until today is because the climate changed and caused there to not be an unlimited supply of crops.  When the people fled the Fertile Crescent they went East and West because that is where their animals could live and it had the same type of vegetation.  The animals that weren't domesticated and the grains spread mainly towards India and Africa, so when they reached places like Egypt they had enough food to gorge the hierarchies with.  When there was a surplus of food, the people of Egypt were ordered to build the Pyramids.  There are about 100,000,000 cattle in the US, that's about 3 people for a cow!  Also, there is 20 million tons of wheat consumed by just humans a year, and in one day a pound of wheat is consumed.  In the big picture, farming has most definitely shaped the outcome of humanity.

Inventions

The plow was also a great breakthrough in human history.  Though it would not have been accomplished without animals.  This changed the productivity for man.  When they didn't have plows it was because they didn't have animals that were tame and domesticated enough to work with them.  In New Guinea, the only animals they really have are pigs.  Pigs are great for food, but they don't give you hides and they don't allow you to plow and/or give nice fur like horses, mules, sheep, etc.  Jared Diamond counted up about 148 different types of wild, plant-eating, terrestrial mammals that weigh over 100 pounds, out of those 148, only 14 have been domesticated successfully.  These animals are: Pigs, Horses, Goats, Sheep, Cows, Donkeys, Bactrain Camels, Arabian Camels, Llamas, Water buffaloes, Reindeer, Yaks, Mithouns  ? (I have no clue how to spell it), Bali Cattle, and Zebras weren't domesticated like horses because of the environment they grew up in.  They are constantly running at every little sound they hear because otherwise, they will just be killed off.  Horses, on the other hand never had much of that problem, so it was easy for humans to tame them.  If a herd has a leader, the only major thing that has to happen is to get control of the leader so it will be much easier to work with the whole herd.  Even though elephants seem too be social animals, they aren't very good to have working because they take so long to reproduce-15 years!  Animals also need to know how to get along with humans if it is to work out.  Llamas are native to South America, but out of the list of 14 the other 13 are not native to the Americas, New Guinea, Africa or Australia.  The key concept for civilizations to work out is to have a surplus.  The Fertile Crescent had the best crops and animals, that's why they had such a huge head start.  Sadly, though it didn't work out for them.  Their land was too dry and people fled and deserted the whole place.  The city called Guare was over 9,000 years old and they had plaster on their walls, which with their windows it somehow created like air-conditioned house.  Fire MAJORLY help out the future for men, because it created plaster, limestone being boiled for days over 1,000 degrees.  With fire, it created metal and New Guineans, in the '60s were still using stone to work with.

More Movie

More of the movie was played today, so that's all we did.  Last week we watched the part where it talked about how guns, germs and steel dominated the Americas and killed the Mayans.  Also, it's quite impressive how Jared Diamond knows several of their languages and how they New Guineans know English also.  Diamond claims that the New Guineans are more adaptable and quick to learn than many others, that is the opposite of the people that came there before Diamond.  They all said that they were superior to them and it was set in their DNA.  Throughout the whole video Jared Diamond is trying to answer the question Yahli asked, "Why do you white people have so much cargo and us New Guineans have so little?"  Then today we talked more about that question and also the things all civilizations have in common, which are: advanced technology, large population and well organized work forces.  Diamond also refers to countries as either "haves" or "have not's".  The haves are countries who have things they need with you, while the have not's are more like the hunting and gathering.  They have to search for what they need and may not even find it.  Because of the ice age it caused a drought to last more than 1000 years and it killed animals and plants and the people had to walk even farther than they already did to find food to survive.  Humans migrated with/to the animals.  Though when the ice age started to melt, the middle east was thriving.  The city called Drah was the first primitive villages in the world, was said to have emerged 11.5 thousand years ago.  Dr. Ian Kuitt is in charge of the site being uncovered and discovered.  They actually built a granary that kept their wheat and grains away from the humidity, bugs and animals.  This also allowed them to survive in times when other's could not.  Wheat and barley was the bulk of what was stored in it mainly because it is more durable, and it was what was available to them.  Also, they were the first farmers in the world, they domesticated crops. They grew crops and were able to keep the ones that were easiest to farm, the more vigorous and most prosperous.  When people domesticated animals they were allowed to eat the leftovers of the crops, and when they left manure it helped the dirt to be more fertile and help the plants prosper.  With the New Guinean's, farming didn't help they because the only real resource they have at their reach is the Sago tree.  This tree is striped the inside is edible to them, other parts are useful for everyday uses.  The women are the ones who gather, and gathering is also a more productive way than hunting.  Also, besides the Sago tree, they do eat bananas for some more vitamins, but when necessary they may eat large spiders for the protein.  Some places are more known for what they grow, such as China, they grew rice, in Africa it was sorghun, millet and yams.  For the America's it was squash and beans.

Guns, Germs and Steel

About Jared Diamond:

         Jared Diamond has written several books throughout his lifetime, and currently is a professor of geography at the University of California.  He has also won a Pulitzer Prize due to the book, Guns, Germs, and Steel.  Jared Diamond was born on September 10, 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts.  He now has a wife named Marie; they have two twin sons together.  He went to Harvard and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1958.  Jared also graduated from University of Cambridge in 1961; he achieved a PhD in physiology and biophysics.  He also got a studied in ornithology and ecology, and has visited New Guinea many times.  When Jared was older he also became an expert in environmental history.  Even though Jared Diamond is an expert in a wide variety of subjects he still had a great love for birds, and knows practically all the species that live on the islands of New Guinea.

About Guns, Germs and Steel:

         This book published in 1997 won the Pulitzer prize a year later in 1998.  Diamond shows how certain countries become modern and advanced while others are still living like we humans did tens of thousands of years ago.  Guns, Germs and Steel has sold millions of copies and it explains why Eurasian civilizations have survived whole others have failed.  I do believe the Jared has a valid theory, it may be "out there" but it makes sense and gets people to think.  If I was someone who lived in New Guinea and saw a person like Diamond come in an airplane and such, I would really think that they are some new human specimen.  They are different colors, they have different clothes, and everything is different.  I'm not so sure how well I would adapt but overall, I would be so astonished by the new people.

Last Day of Project

Today was the last day to work on the project and it went pretty well.  All my group had to do was make a poster because we had finished the bulk of it yesterday.  maria drew a foot on the poster which looked really good, but her stars were a little blotchy.  So I was the one who filled those in.  Grace and I went to get something from the printer, pasted in on and were finished.  It was a pretty quick class.  Nothing really happened.

I am a genius

My slogan I thought of for shoes was, "Enlighten your sole, put U.S. in control. Buy American made products."  The "U.S." would just be pronounced us.  In all honesty, it is brilliant, and I doubt even you could think of that (hehe).  So the whole class time we worked on the project.  The only thing we didn't get to was the poster, so we're doing it tomorrow.  I'm going to bring in glitter so it's pretty.

New Project

We talked for a good while about what we saw in the video from previous days.  During the movie we saw the parts of all their cars, and oh my gosh, they are the weirdest things ever!  One looked like a space shuttle, the other had no doors, just windows that were used at the doors, and they all just looked like the cars in the Grinch.  Who-cars.  Haha!  I would never drive them, for looks and because none of them have passed admissions.  Every single one of them are just a piece of metal, flimsy metal.  We watched one of those crashed tests and the entire front of it and the rim was crushed.  I forget what it actually was that that didn't pass admissions, so the American government basically made them make it a certain way so it would pass our admissions tests.  We also talked about how Beijing is so polluted that during the Olympics the competitors had to wear masks and such.  There was also a part in the movie where the reporter was trying to get the Chinese dude to admit they were talking Ford cars, and selling them to Americans.  Sadly, though because he was a good public relations person, he would not seem to admit to it.

Definitions

Capitalism: An economic and political system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses to make profit.  Private owned corporations, can be a big business or a small one.  America uses Capitalism.

Communism: An economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.  It's to create a classless country, no upper, no lower, and no middle class.   The government owns all of the businesses & everything.

Free Enterprise: An economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.  Free of state control.  The people who own the shop decided how much things there cost.

Free Market: Economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.  

MOVIE

So we had a little discussion on whether or not the Chinese car company was LIFON or LIFAN.  Maheer said it ended in -ON and I said that it ended in -AN.  Of course, I was right.  So we just watched more of the movie, and talked about how and why American cars are more expensive-because they are more durable and reliable with the car companies that have been around for a long time.  All of the cars though are made in China, that is why the Who Family was confused as to why they were more expensive.  9 out of 10 people pay in cash, and that is because they don't want to have to keep paying for the car even if they loose their job.  This one American makes half of what he did a year ago working for I believe it was Ford.  The last thing that we talked about was that China is the largest producer and consumer of steel.

Another Movie!

We got our essays back and I got a 97%!  Anyway I had thought we were done the movie on China's Country and stuff.  We weren't thought, there was still a few minutes left.  I'm going to get mixed up with the facts that came with either movie.  We started the third movie, because he liked it better.  (I'm not sure if these facts pertain to the first movie or the second).  There was a guy who makes 100 dollars a week.  This is an extremely well paying job in the US.  This is terrible especially considering that he worked as an expert with dynamite.  That is such a dangerous job, especially considering that if he messes up, everything is slowed down and it's all his fault.  America is so far #1 in the world for its advanced highways and supposedly China will be over take us in this department.  Also when an accident is caused the police will come up, be the judge and the jury and decide who is to blame, and how much.  If it is just a little bit a person will give the other money to fix it and then they carry on.  China is also building highways by hand, and they used to ride bikes everywhere, but not anymore.  I remember the guy who had a duck face and wasn't very attractive, he claims that they are not stealing our designs, but lets be real, he is, he just doesn't want to admit it.  We didn't get very far in it though.

Finished Movie

We finished the movie Friday!  Finally, but we saw how one family barely made enough money to survive and to send their daughter to a boarding school.  Marriage was bad, the wife said she was going to leave him soon, I forget when, but she was going to start a living on her own and forget about her alcoholic husband whom she does not like anymore.  The other family was rich and lived in the US in a nice house, and the dad had a lab place set up in China because it cost much less for 10x more space.  We stopped to talk for a while about how they had SAT book and all these electronics out and about.  

Wal-Mart :(

In the beginning of class, I left to go to the bathroom so I missed that.  Most of the class was spent on our discussions.  We were talking about the immigrants and how some say they are taking over American jobs.  Mexicans were talked about for a while and how Mr. Schick's wife's friend worked with some, and baked them cookies while they fed her really hot peppers.  They would send the money they got to their families, but before they left to get back (after 6 months) they would stock up on things from Wal-Mart.  Personally, I don't know why they wouldn't go to Target, I hate Wal-Mart.  Then when we got to the movie it was more about Wal-Mart.  The lady who got fired (whom Damon and I both hate) shops at Wal-Mart when she knows that that is why the Chinese have her job-because people buy from Wal-Mart for their low places.  I feel like every Wal-Mart is trashy.  She had no answer to the movie people when they asked why she shops there.  She did this to herself, and she always looks angry.  For a long while we talked about stocks and how they work.  Mr. Schick made a couple thousand off of Internet America, which isn't used anymore because there is WiFi everywhere!  

More Movie

We watched more of the movie but we stopped to talk for a long while about I think Missouri, had a chain reaction that was for the worse.  When the 480 people lost their jobs it affected the whole town and caused a lot of places to go out of business.  We watched a part over because he wanted it to sink in for us.  After this Mr. Schick told us the story about how him and his wife were going to travel to Texas for Christmas and their car wouldn't work.  The short of the story is they got to Texas, but they didn't think they would.  We didn't get much farther into the movie actually. 

The People's Republic of Capitalism

In the beginning we took about five minutes to talk about an assembly tomorrow from someone’s name that is Gerry Sandusky, but spelled with a "G", not a "J" like the stupid pedophile. (Luckily, I've heard that all the pedophiles in prison are looked as like dirt by all the other prisoners, so they are just tortured until they die!)  Anyway, he will be telling us about how the other Jerry, has changed his life.  If we ask a good question to him, we get 10 extra credit points.  After that we talked a little about how Egypt's old dictator was thrown out of office and replaced with Ben Netanyahu and now he is sadly starting to become more of a dictator than the people would like him to be.  After this we watched a movie about China, the title of this was called the People's Republic of Capitalism.  It was basically about China, and their life in comparison to America's.  It talked about the earthquake and how it struck schools, and good, prosperous land.  The schools and buildings collapsed because they were made out of wood and not concrete like most all buildings in America are.  Also, 55,000 people died in the earthquake lots of them were children because they were in school.  There is only the one-child rule in China so all of the parents lost their only child.  If you are caught in the city with more than one child it is a huge fine.  But the government allows parents to try again if the can prove their child has died.  There is a city call Chongqing, and it is along the Yangzi River, this is known to Americans as the “Biggest city Americans have never heard of”, there are a lot of rich people here.  There is a larger amount of poor people in China then there are in all of America.  There are 1 ½ million people working on construction, and the men only get paid 3-4 dollars a day, not an hour a day.  The women only get paid 1 or 2 dollars an hour.  This is because there are so many Chinese people and a ginormous amount is poor, so they are willing to work for just about anything since it is better than none at all.  We also saw how American companies are being “taken over” by the Chinese because of how cheap it is costing for them.  For example, Briggs and Stratton 480 people were laid off last year because it is less costly to ship it around the world and have the Chinese work, than just the Americans.  

Fun

We just went on Free Rice and if we reached 300 grains, then we showed him and he graded our test.  It took me a while to reach 300, but I did, and I got my test, and let him grade it.  Thankfully, I got a 100%, again!  Once we were done with that, we just talked, and did no work.

Another Test

We handed in our essays, such a good feeling to be done with it.  Anyway we had another test and it was pretty simple.  The same as the others just another section added on.  This one had maps, pictures of leader, and just random information.  Once we were done with the test we could do whatever we wanted, talk, do homework, or study for something in other classes.  I decided to study for English.

Friday

More was talked about the project, but we talked most about Iran and Israel.  It's probably going to be an all out war, bombs are being shot everywhere and Israel is about to cross the border (in tanks).  We looked at pictures taken of people who are in a state of emergency or the missiles being fired off.  It doesn't seem real though because of all the movies I watch, that is exactly what happen, but it's not a movie.  Anyway we looked at pictures and talked about the essay due Monday at the start of class and the relationship between Israel, Iran and us.

"Logan"

So, we had another shadow today but instead of it being with Jake she was with Maddie.  Her name was Logan, and Mr. Schick kept putting "  " around her name.  Which I didn't understand but I don't understand most of what it does to interrogate the shadows anyway.  So, we all we did was talk a little bit about the homework from the previous night.  Oh, and we also switched seats in class and it was the highest grades in the class to the lowest for the order of choosing them.  I was second to go!  I don't recall at all who was last or anywhere in between, all I remember is that Liam was in front of me and Grace was supposed to be called but her and Nadia somehow got skipped in the order, so they had to choose bad seats.  I do remember Grace saying "I didn't think my grade was this bad!"  It was sort of amusing.  Anyway for the most part we talked about the essay that has to be completed and printed by Monday at 9:32.  We got to vote on whether or not it should be 100 or 200 points, 200 points got the majority vote.  The essay is about two countries we have been learning about and their relationship to America.  It only has to be 500 words. Yay!  So, yup, that was our class.