Blog #5 Consumerism and Waste

This is statement from Chris Jordan’s site, ‘Intolerable Beauty’, “… but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know that we are awake”. His pictures, mountain of dumped trash are really said to me we have to be awake what we are doing to ourselves.

What I watched video from the class and pictures from his site were really made me feel awkward of our society that we are living in. It also reminded me the short cartoon that we watched the other day, the story of stuff because it was helpful to understand to me what society is really offering to consumers behind all the fancy and nice commercials. Our government and corporations always want to us to buy something, consumerism begins. Nobody tells us stop buying because we are ruin our planet or things that we are throwing are making huge garbage mountain.

All of these things make me sad. To be honest myself, what can I do to save myself or others from it? I can easily say ‘yeah, yeah, small change makes huge differences and I can change myself first and booom~ everything’s going to be okay’, but I am not sure about it because I am really well planned consumer of society; I really like to go shop for new things. For the last thing, I want to ask you, are you sure this is going to stop if we change ourselves little bit from we used to be?

Blog #4 The Story of Stuff (Question # 2)

I was born in South Korea and I grew up there until I was fifteen. I am still watching Korean TV shows and dramas and its cultures are still more close to my life; in fact, I don’t usually watch other U.S channels. There are some differences in the prevalence of advertisement, re-use waste system and leisure time.

First, in Korea, they don’t usually advertise actual goods that they want to sell. The advertisers use some famous actor or actress to perform like short and nice drama or movie cut to present their goods. That way consumer can get ideas if she or he can be one of the actor or actress in their life. Moreover, Korea is small countries; smaller than New York State, many young Koreans do care others’; they always follow the stylish celebrities. Therefore, advertisements’ famous celebrities bring more impact in Korea.

There is different system of re-use and waste management in Korea; they have to pay for garbage bags. In the U.S, we can use any plastic bags to dump any garbage; however, they can not use any plastic bags in Korea. They have standard garbage bag with different size and price. Also, they have to do recycle even they are living in apartment. Therefore, many Koreans try to reduce their garbage; they usually don’t use plastic bags in the supermarket and use machine to dry food waste.

There are many things to do during the leisure time in Korea. First of all, there are many places to spend leisure time. For example, there are many safety small parks each county that open till late night. Also, there are many saunas to relax with cheap price.

As you can see, there are some differences between U.S and Korea in the prevalence of advertisement, re-use waste system and leisure time.

This is the picture of one of the park in capital city Seoul.

Blog #3 My Plan

During the class, I picked animal extinction is worst issue of global warming. There are many negative factors which happened because of global warming such as heat waves, climate changes, severe whether etc. However, I think animal extinction is final factor because it shows failure of our ecosystem that we live based on.

There are many species are dying because of global warming. The analysis says at least 70 species of mountain dwellers frogs that had nowhere to go to escape the creeping heat, have gone extinct because of climate change. It also reports that between 100 and 200 other cold-dependent animal species, such as penguins and polar bears are also in deep trouble because their ice lands are melting and shorten time of winter.

There is only way to stop extinction of animals, stop global warming. In large view, we have to reduce gasoline-burning cars, coals and etc, but we can’t just stop using those because life goes on. Here is my small plan for global warming. First, air dry the clothes instead use dry machines. Ban hair spray because it contains HCFCs, hydrochlorofluorocarbons that damages ozone. Do recycle and use recycled materials. Those are small things that I can do to stop extinction of animals. Global warming is not just happened in one day and we can’t solve in second, but I think small change brings big differences.


Work Cited
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/41721/the_problem_of_global_warmingthe_extinction.html?cat=58
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=64050

Blog #2 My Journey

I will continue my passion to become veterinarian. After I transfer to Stony Brook University in Long Island, I will continue my major in biology and I also have to veterinary medical school. To become a veterinarian, there are few more educational steps that I have to done because it is really hard as much as regular doctor.

I always want to become a veterinarian because I believe that I have passion for animals. I think animals are not resources that human use for our purpose or benefit therefore, I am totally against animal abuse on scientific resource or poaching exterminated animals in developing country. Many scientists use animals for their research such as new chemical or new medicines and many illegal hunters poach wild animals to sell in poor countries.

I want to change the world better place with my education like Al Gore. I think to educate other people that we have to protect animals is also important way to make better place. This is what Mr. Al Gore is doing his presentation around world makes to realize people about global warming. If I become a veterinarian, I want to help wild animals. I want to work at national park or wild life sanctuary to help their health and make there safety place. I think to make better world means to keep our nature in their ways. We have to protect animals and their place, forests or jungles. We should stop cut the trees and start to plant trees!