6: Where To Invade Next

In this blog, I am writing about the Michael Moore documentary "Where To Invade Next." This was not your everyday on the block social studies documentary. It was interesting. In the film, stereo- typical American Michael Moore travels the globe in search for the most innovative and spectacular ideas around the world. His first stop, Italy. What he soon discovered was that the Italian government gives all of it's workers eight weeks paid vacation. EIGHT weeks. I couldn't believe it. My mind immediately imagined all the Disney lands and worlds that could be visited, big league ball park hot dogs that could be bought, with eight weeks of paid vacation. I think the Italians have it right. How can you expect to enjoy a vacation that you can't afford. I think if we brought this idea back to Canada we would all benefit from it. The whole philosophy thought up by the Italians is based on relaxation and happiness. Couldn't we all use some more of that. By going on more paid vacations, you would come back rejuvenated, relaxed and ready to take on the world (or your cubical). Don't let stress take control of your life, show stress who's boss with a couple weeks in Hawaii. So in conclusion, I believe we most certainly should steal this page out of Italy's book, and reward hard working Canadians with more time off to relax and be with their families. As the Italian couple said in the documentary " You only have one life, enjoy it."

5: WW1 Projects

 

 

 

 

 

This week in IGS, we were given a project in Social Studies. At first my only thoughts were, "not another project." But know I'm seeing it has turned out to be a pretty good learning experience. This is because of the topic I was assigned; communism. I always just thought that communism was no more than every citizen getting the same amount of money for their job. Well, I wasn't wrong, but there is so much more. In fact a whole history on the in's and out's of this interesting system.

 

 

Through my brief studies I have learn that in some ways, communism sounds like the best idea to ever grace the planet. A world where everyone is equal, no wealth to fight over, everyone is given a equal chance. Sounds alright to me.

 

But time and time again it has shown that it just does not work. Why? There are a few key reasons. A simple way of putting them would be people become lazy, they have no initiative to work hard for more money as they have fixed wages. With no initiative to work products like grain or greatly under produced, therefor many mouths go unfed and profits from purchase of grain go down, causing a countless list of problems for the Country.

 

Today there are very few total communist countries due to it's reputation of bad endings. It will be interesting to see if those few remaining countries stay strong with their political belief. Maybe perhaps we will see a time were communism is done right and see it become more globally accepted and practiced. Only time will tell.

Until next blog,

Trevor



 

4: Fritz Haber

Fritz Haber was a Nobel Prize winner. He was awarded this for his work in chemistry for his homeland of Germany.






 His path on his on way to glory however, is what makes his story interesting and intriguing.  Fritz Haber was the inventor of mustard gas. One of the most effective and torturous weapons ever to bestow itself on a battle ground. Mustard gas would liquefy the inside of enemy soldiers lungs and would make the affected soldiers drown to death in their own lung fluids.

 

Haber is known as the "Father of Chemical Warfare". His discoveries lead us to the question, were his actions ethical in the situation? When I think of the horrors the thousands of soldiers went through, I can't think of a much worse way to go, even in war. I think the deciding line is drawn with the intent behind the actions. In this case, If Haber's only intention was to protect the citizens of Germany, I think his legacy would be quite different. But they were not. Mustard gas was created to inflict pain, to torture. For these reasons, I believe his actions were not ethical, even in the extreme circumstances. He could have created weapons just as effective without the unnecessary torture.

This is not to say  that some of what Fritz Haber did was not amazing. He single handedly helped Germany avoid a national food crisis, with his work in plant fertilization, which earned him his Nobel prize in 1918. He was a genius, but used his talents for what I believe are the wrong reasons.  His own creation would come back to haunt him in more ways than he could have ever imagined in the second world war. Haber was of Jewish decent. He was driven out of Germany, and his chemical discoveries were used to kill his own family in gas chambers. Slightly ironic?

Until next blog,
Trevor 

3: Chemistry

This week in IGS 10 was an all science week. So it would seem fitting that I would do a science blog, so here we are. This week we finished off biology and began our chemistry unit. Heading forward I think I can expect straight forward science classes as I find that chemistry is a lot like math. With all of the ions, adding elements and finding formulas I think it is quite different from the other forms of sciences.


Chemistry to me is different because I think it relies less on being able to trap information in your head, and more on your minds ability to do an equation. I would consider myself a fairly strong math student, but it is a very, very long way from being my favourite subject.

So far we have just started to review elements, go over the periodic table and make sure we have a vague idea of what we are doing. We have started a project of labeling and defining elements which we will work on throughout the week. It's pretty straight forward, but I think it is only a matter of time before we really start getting into the chemistry...behind chemistry.
Until next week.

-Trevor

2: Friends or Food

Early this week, our class was visited by a guest speaker. This presentation was about meat. In greater detail, the journey the meat takes to get to our plate. In this presentation, we were shown amazingly powerful images, like the one below, that would make any carnivore think twice about what or rather, who they are eating.



Here are young dogs that have been captured for selling as food in Chinese markets. We were asked why this thought and image made us uncomfortable, compared to a similar image, shown below, where some of the audience barely batted an eye.




But to me, this was a serious thought provoking idea. The presenter told us that pigs were in fact smarter than dogs. This was brand new to me. It started to feel as though there were no differences at all in the slaughter of pigs and dogs. Why would only one seem horrible when the other is just as, if not more capable of making the same strong connection with it's human counter parts.

Then she turned on to the environmental facts. Did you know, factory farming of animals causes more pollution and harm to the earth than all transportation methods on earth combined? Cause I did not. I was blindsided by this. So now not only was I killing a smart and fully aware animal like this,

 
 but also causing an unbelievable amount of harm to the planet. All this so I can have bacon in the morning? I don't think so. So I guess you could say I took the bait on the presentation. So much in fact I've stopped eating pork entirely. I know one person not eating pigs isn't going to change anything, but maybe one day the rest of the world will realize how much damage factory farming is doing, and jump on board. So until next week, that's all I have to have to say.

-Trevor

1: World War 1

The first world war took place from July 28th 1914 - 1918. We start with the assassination of the Austria-Hungary Archduke, Franz Ferdinand. Then one month later...Boom, Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. This causes a chain reaction across Europe, and before we know it just weeks later the whole world gets pulled into this bout we know as, "The Great War." In the first days of study I have learned that this war was created on nationalism and alliances. Now you can easily imagine why this might be a problem. We all know that the only thing worse than a stubborn, super powerful leader who thinks they are always right, is two stubborn super powerful leaders who think they are always right.

 

When I learned that we were going to study the first world war I was excited, and utterly clueless. This topic was so immensely over shadowed by it's counter part WW2, that it was hard to imagine a war without the antagonist being named Adolf. The only back ground knowledge I had prior to the beginning of this study were the red poppies of Remembrance Day, but that's what makes it exciting. Our class has barley scratched the surface of the topic. So for now, my first blog is not so much about what I have learned, but looking forward to future knowledge. I am very interested to see how this war differs from other historic wars, and also how battles where fought before the weapon of technology came to play. How the war to end all wars shaped future events and society today.

Until next blog, I look forward to learning more about the Great War.

 

-Trevor