Spanglish

I know some of you may think this is an absolutely mind-numbing, run-of-the-mill movie which does’t communicate much, though to me, this is actually a terrific movie in that it so perfectly and neatly depicts Mexican's reality in the United States. It gives us insight into how Mexicans lead there lives there as immigrants, what their feelings are, and how integrated they feel in the American community.

There are 2 sorts of Mexican personalities that can be identified throughout the movie. On the one hand we’ve got the “homesick Mexican type”, this role is fulfilled in the movie by the Mexican mother. This lot felt compelled to emigrate to The States due to economic reasons. This mainly why they completely alienate themselves from the American culture. One of the main sources pf alienation is definitely the language. This kind of Mexicans, having their culture deeply rooted in themselves, feel totally reluctant to learn the English language, a fact which makes Mexicans outcasts in the United States. These Mexicans are then not worthy of any qualified, well-paid job, consequently, they are confined to work as cleaning ladies and , if they get lucky, as babysitters. It goes without saying that these Mexicans have a more than miserable life.

On the other hand there’s the “superior Mexican kind”, this role is played by the Mexican little daughter. This group of Mexicans actually have, to my way of seeing it, a huge inferiority complex. They reckon their native culture is worthless and inferior in comparison to the American. Besides, they feel, as Americans do, that Mexican immigrants are the scum of the American multiracial society. These Mexicans madly crave for Americans’ social approval to be fully integrated in their society. The mere thought of picturing themselves as Mexican castaways greatly torments them. In light of this, Mexicans of such a type strive for a native-like American pronunciation and try really hard to closely resemble them in every possible way. They do whatever takes to mingle with Americans, even if this means obliterating their customs and traditions from their memory.

This movie strikes me as a true- to- reality portrayal of the Mexican culture per se. It gives us a quite illustrative picture of how differently some Mexicans react and adapt to the American environment.

Being Young – It’s Not Fun !

It is with an overwhelming sense of outrage that I am writing to air my views on the fact that being young it is not fun at all – personally, it is not only because I am young (17), but also because I am THE youngEST in my family that my life is so miserable.

One might think that being the last born is, by far, better and easier than being the first born: once your parents have already experienced how to raise the first ones, by instilling discipline into and imparting good manners to them, your parents may feel like the job is done, so what might be left for the youngest one is eternal bliss – though this is by no means the case when you are the youngest girl in a family of four “machos” above you. Believe me, there’s no room for whatsoever opinion you’d like to voice. From choosing which T.V. show to watch during dinner time, to what you’d like to wear to hang out with your best girls, you can never have the last word on anything!

This goes so far even to the point that my family is intruding with my future plans in terms of my studies and my boyfriend. Next year, I’d like to enrol on Graphic Design and, if everything goes according to plan, in the next three years, I’d love to get my degree and, then, move in with my boyfriend. Naturally, my parents won’t approve of this, my dad’d go like: “ you should follow in your father and brothers’ footsteps and study law”... “ you won’t move out with him till you get married and I put my foot down!”

Being 17 is a tough age. One feels so mature when handling some situations, but then so helpless when coping with others, especially those that involve shouldering higher responsibilities such as making crucial decisions, as it is choosing a career you want to pursue for the rest of your life. Our frame of mind is constantly changing as is our emotional sense of being. At this point in life, we are still unstable, vulnerable persons, and all this situation is made even worse when your closest surroundings, namely your family, put stumbling blocks in your way. Therefore, I’d like to conclude saying that, from my experience, being young is neither fun nor easy.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Capital punishment is one of the most controversial issues nowadays. It appears that everybody fiercely claims what they feel are strong, let alone “righteous” arguments about such an issue: “ an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! ” some might say. But are we being serious about how we are judging this situation? I am posing this question with a view to raise readers’ awareness on the seriousness of this thorny subject, hoping that those who view such punishment in a good light may change their views.

Those in favour of death penalty wholeheartedly believe that it is the right thing to do seeing that putting the actual criminal to sleep will definitely act as a deterrent to possible, subsequent murders. In fact, as most people agree, this will for sure prevent the assassin from taking the lives of more victims – but then, aren’t we deterring murder by actually committing the same crime? That would turn US into murderers and, is this the sort of example we want to set to criminals? Even though both killings are carried out for different reasons, I hold that murdering someone is never right whatever the reason. No one is “entitled” to do such a thing. Besides, what if we end up murdering a completely innocent person?

On the other hand, I feel that we should analize the different reasons that may have led a criminal to take someone else’s life before we arrive at such a verdict. There are plenty of psychological variances that come into play which could lead us not to necessarily kill the assassin, but to punish them in other ways. Other sorts of punishment may eventually help criminals to recover from possible mental disorders which might have prompted the killing. For instance, it could be the case that a pyromaniac sets fire to a building, murdering lots of people due to their mental illness. In the light of this, the crime should, to my way of thinking, be judged from a different perspective.

All in all, personally, I reckon capital punishment is an issue we should give a second thought.

Euthanasia

Euthanasia has engendered a lot of controversy all over the world.The origin of the word euthanasia can be traced back to the seventeenth century, it was a term actually coined by Francis Bacon, and the meaning it used to have was quite opposite to the meaning some people nowadays seem to give to it. Traditionally, euthanasia meant a painless, happy death, though in modern times, some seem to translate euthanasia as the intentional killing of a terminally ill patient by their doctor’s means. To my mind, the modern view some people wholeheartedly support is totally unfounded.

It is only natural that patients suffering from an unendurable, excruciating pain choose to engage in euthanasia to hasten their death . After all, terminally ill patients have the right to determine what could be done to their bodies. Or else, similarly, people would not be allowed to choose whether they would like their corpses to be buried or cremated, since a doctor would be the only person entitled to take such a decision. Both issues are definitely comparable due to the fact that bodily integrity is in both cases at stake. Will then the doctor be charged with a crime if he decides to cremate the corpse? The obvious answer seems no. So, why doctors should be penalised if they administer medications to put an end to a patient’s life, when it is actually their patient who has conscientiously decided to abstain from any life-saving treatment?

Doctors have long been regarded as healers. Some may hold that it is contrary to the vocation of doctors to intentionally cause a patient’s death. Though there is some truth in this, it cannot be denied, however, that in circumstances where patients are facing a certain death, it is beyond the power of medicine to revert those situations. There is nothing else to be done but to wait until the patient passes away. If the same fate is to be met all the same, then prolonging a patient’s death would be inconsequential.

Personally, I believe there are no downsides of euthanasia. I can only view it in a good light since it spares the suffering of a terminally ill person who seems not to be able to endure such pain any longer.

Pages I've visited: procon.org

Does climate shape people's personality?

Even though some may find the claim that climate affects people’s personality as completely unfounded, I dare say that climate, on the contrary, plays a decisive role in moulding people's personality traits.

Needles to say, there’s a sharp contrast between people inhabiting the north hemisphere and people inhabiting the south hemisphere in terms of character and attitude to life. In the main, people who live in cold places,usually in the north hemisphere, are said to be restrained and to have a more down-to-earth view of life, while people who live in warmer counries, mainly in the south hemisphere, are belived to be hot-blooded and to have a happy-go-lucky attitude.

Some may say that those assumptions are misguided and that are only based on what are stereotypes, that is, generalisations about people from different countries that foreigners make about them. For instance, people from Italy are believed to be lazy, self-indulgent, though, I am afraid this is only true for people from the South of Italy and not for the entire country, or else why is it then that northern Italians are considered hard-working and perseverant? So are we talking about stereotypes for a whole country? I reckon this difference is not a matter of stereotypes, least a matter of north versus south, but a matter of weather conditions, the milder the weather, the more amiable and easy-going the people are . To further illustrate my point, we could take Spain, or even Argentina as other examples. People living in the south of Spain and people living in the north of Argentina, more closely resemble people from the south of Italy, and this is so due to the fact that the weather conditions of those areas are warm.

To sum up, it is only natutal that the climate has a bearing on people’s personality. People that live in countries where they barely see the daylight are naturally confined, throughout the year, to enclosed places and this can only make them introspective and completely dedicated to their work or studies. While, on the other hand, it is only reasonable for people that live in places where the sun shines all day long to spend more time socializing than being secluded.

Serial Production - A Great Invention?

By and large, one of the most significant inventions mankind has ever come up with is serial production. Such a manufacturing system, also known as mass production, precisely, consists of a flow of production that assigns each worker a particular task, consequently production becomes repetitive, more organised and, therefore, faster and more effective in making a larger amount of items than other more traditional manufacturing methods. Though, while serial production has been of a great advantage for some people, because of what has just been mentioned, it has been a nightmare for others, who have had difficulty in learning new working skills, not to mention others, who have been made redundant, since within such a system, their working contribution became no longer necessary. In the same way, while some believe that mass production has succeeded in producing a tremendous amount of affordable items, others hold that , while this is true, it is also true that mass production has not been very good at responding to the demand for variety, in connection with the aesthetic design of the products.

On the one hand, the benefits serial production has brought are obvious. Above all, it has saved time, it has reduced the probability of human error, it has increased the rate of production, and it has slashed the costs of production. There were tons of time-consuming tasks that can now be performed very simply by operating a machine . As tasks are now predominantly carried out by machinery, the margin for error has decreased. Time has also been saved because the tasks that traditionally used to be carried out altogether by one single person, have been divided into smaller tasks. Each worker is now assigned a different task in the line of production, which has eased the work load of each employee and speeded the whole process up. Evidently, this has resulted in a greater amount of production. In addition, the fact that vast quantities of items can be produced in a matter of minutes, coupled with the fact that a good amount of products can be now made by a small number of workers, both point the great value of the items.

On the other hand, however, there have also been some disadvantages. As a result of machinery being applied to the process of production, most workers needed to get to grips with how to operate them. The worst consequence of this production mode has been the staggering unemployment rate, since machines came to replace the labour force. Most workers were therefore dismissed from the factories without giving them the possibility of occupying any other position – they were left in the lurch .Another negative implication of mass production has been the lack of diversity of the items produced. As products were made by machines, there was no room for customizing them according to the buyers’ particular needs or tastes. Products were identically made in a series.

On balance, serial production could be consider neither the best nor the worst invention humanity has ever designed. Rather, it should be seen as a complex system , which has proved to be effective in that has managed to increase the rate of production at a low cost, but ineffective in that it has not succeeded in keeping all workers in the system . All in all, it cannot be denied that mass production has denifinitely been revolutionary to mankind.
Pages I've visited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_production

The 80s!

Haven’t you ever stopped for a moment to think about what would your life have been like if you had lived your youth in a different decade? Which decade can you best picture yourself in? How different would that be from the way you currently lead your life? Well, all these questions quite often flood my mind and, after doing a lot of thinking, I came with the following answers.

If I had the chance to choose when I would have liked to live my youth, I would most definitely have chosen the 80s, mainly because of the many positive changes society experienced: the 80s was a vibrant ecclectic period, which became the age of rebelliousness against the established mandates of society; it developed as a time of self-indulgence; and it represented the beginning of the computing era. All these changes were so pervasive that they featured in many aspects of life such as fashion, shared beliefs, entertainment and music. The implications these changes had on such aspects are what I find particularly beckoning about this decade.

As regards people’s unwillingness to conform to the conventions of the time, this idea was mainly reflected in connection to the outrageous fashion that characterised the 80s, a trend where excesses were the rule and not the exception. People didn’t accessorize – they “excessorized”, and I’m really keen on this trend, due to the fact that people did so in order to express their creativity and individuality- something we lack nowadays. Indeed, people were not fashion victims, they were just themselves!

On the other hand, self- indulgence was linked to open-mindedness in terms of sex and travelling. People no longer regarded sexual intercourse as a taboo subject matter to be dealt with delicacy, during the 80s ,sex was openly addressed in many songs . As the interest in getting to know other cultures grew increasingly, travelling around the world became much more common, this also featured in loads of songs as a recurrent theme. As the straightfoward and outgoing person I myself believe to be, I reckon this two changes are more than attractive to, again, lead me to choose this decade as the most suitable for me to live in.

Finally, thanks to the technological advancements related to the computing field, new forms of entertainment were created, such as video games! This rise of technology was also significant in the field of music, since MTV and other music channels came into existence, giving birth to another form of entertainment – what on earth could be better than inviting your mates round to have a coke while having pacman competitions and then watching your favourite videos and singing them along?

There’s nowhere near a decade that’s packed with style, a chilled out atmosphere and fun, all in one! Though nowadays youngsters are by no means restricted in terms of what society dictates, even if they are totally free to talk whatever they wish, with no regard whatsoever for the place and the people they are talking to, and even if they have access to a wider variety of entertainment, I would always still prefer to have lived my youth during the 80s!

This Season’s Must- Have Accessory : Designer Babies!

-Yes, they are all the rage! Designer babies are the ultimate shopping experience! Now, thanks to gene therapy, you can choose your baby’s eye and hair colour and its height, so as to match it with yours! – isn’t it just great!?

- RUBBISH! In such a shallow society used to a shopping frenzy and plastic surgery, designer babies were bound to be the next trend. Not so long ago, babies’physical attributes and gender were pretty much a hit-or-miss affair, which nobody would dare complain about. And, even if gene therapy was ultimately conceived of, it was merely with the sole purpose of having it applied to an embryo to ward off a possible disease. Within a decade or two, however, not only will parents be able to choose from a wide range of physical attributes but they will also be able to pick out their babies’ IQ and personality type.

Doesn’t it strike you as sick and evil the fact that parents would go to such extremes in order to produce what they consider a “perfect and beautiful” human being ? I challenge these parents- if they deserve to be called parents- to please define the concepts of “perfect” and “beautiful” from an ethical point of view, and to ask to themselves if beauty and perfection truly make us “better people”, before making hasty decisions about gene therapy. Or else, two controversies may stem from this issue.

On the one hand, fears exist that we will breed a race of super humans who look down on those humans without genetic enhancements.Consequently, discrimination against those whose genes have not been modified may rise, and this could contribute to create a gap in society.On the other hand, the genetic modification of humans can pose an ethical debate about the rights of the baby. It seems that if genetic modification takes place, parents, in effect, would then be entitled to choose, over their babies to be, from attributes which are by no means likely to ever be reversed in the future.

All things considered, techniques for making designer babies should only be applied when it comes to disease prevention, not to “improve” what nature has dictated. We need to grapple with the above serious implications designer babies may have on us if we do not want mankind to meet its doom.

I hope this article gives food for thought on such a thorny issue.

Comic Strip...My Reflection

....women dieting - classic!

I have never before written a comic and, to my surprise, I came to like it. I reckon it’s a very witty way to put down your thoughts concerning trivial as well as controversial matters. Witty though, at the same time, tough, mainly because you need to, first, think of the ideas you’d like to share with others,and then, you should also carefully select the way you’re going to express them successfully through humour. Not that I have achieved it – hopefully I did,but humour is something very hard to achieve when writing since many variables come into play, namely the target audience, register,onomatopoeic words, and the like, and the comic writer has to keep them all in mind.
All things considered, I have found this experience most enriching and fun mainly because the task proved to be very different from what we’ve been doing, which definitely made it all the more intriguing and exciting. It certainly struck me as a really cool task to work with since it felt as a more relaxed task than other more formal ones, I guess this may be due to the fact that we were allowed to use informal language,which comes out more naturally, and of course, humour.

A pain in the neck!

Has it ever happened to you that you’re watching the juiciest part of a movie, all very frightened, interested or excited when the movie, out of the blue just comes to a halt for...the bloody advertisements?! Oh boy, it’s just so irritating that I cannot take it. I cannot get used to watching a movie after so many breaks. I’m pretty sure you can totally put yourself in my shoes, after all, who enjoys a movie in such a way? But the bottom line is that these breaks are for commercials to hold the floor, do you have an idea of how negatively they can influence us? Let me share my views on this matter with you!

They have become part of our lives. Either on the T.V, radio or even on the streets, we are constantly bombarded by them. We can not escape from them - advertisements are everywhere. Let’s face it . They have serious consequences on us, having an impact on our private lives, our culture, and on the way we take in the information they transmit to us.

Advertisements are flooding into our private lives. Doubtless, it happens to most of us that while watching our favourite T.V show, comfortly sitting on a sofa at home, our hilarious, conflicting or mysteriously intriguing programme is disrupted by a string of annoying, never-ending commercials. Or even worse, while watching a movie that is reaching its climax, what happens then ? Advertisements! This may have a negative influence on people’s mood as it takes away from them the only moment they have to unwind and leave all worries behind. It is just NOT fair.

Apart from breaking our concentration, or ceasing our sense of adrenaline rush when watching or listening to something, advertisements also intrude with our culture. They try to mould our preferences into what is most convinient for big firms to persuade us to buy their products. Corporations launch products into markets which never before used to consume them, trying to change in this way the customs and tastes of different societies all over the world just for companies’ only benefit.

Finally, as to the way we make sense of the underlying message they so subtly provide us with, advertisements are responsible for evoking certain images or patterns of behaviour that appear to be the right models to follow. Imposing such models as unique forces people to change their looks and their minds , and if this is taken to extremes, without a doubt, it may absolutely do away with our essence : individuality and uniqueness.

Good Neighbours

As we're dealing with the topic neighbours I thought it'd be a good idea to tell an anecdote related to such topic - it's not a real anecdote though :P!

" Because you never know the day when you might need your neighbours' help - fingers crossed you never do,you should always be kind and helpful to them " , my mom used to say. And that day came.

I was home alone for the whole weekend while my parents were away, gallivanting around Europe for their wedding anniversary, when the most terrible incident happened to me.It was early in the evening when I had just started to get ready myself to hang out with my mates for a couple of beers. I took my time - slowly picked out what I was going to wear, had my hair done and cooked some dinner. Only after glancing at my watch did I realise I was going to be awfully late. Frantically, I put on some make up, took my purse, locked the door and dashed to the lift. Funnily enough, it wasn't working so I decided to take the stairs. As I was hurrying my way down them, I couldn't help stumbling on those bloody high heels which eventually led me to fall- and break my left leg!I was shaking with fear as I saw the gush of blood coming out of my veins . Desperate as I was, the only thing that crossed my mind was calling my neighbour Barbara to come to my aid. I picked up the phone and punched in her number. She immediately called the ambulance and came where I was lying to comfort me till the doctors came. Without giving it a second thought, Barbara accompanied me to the hospital and stayed there with me until the doctor made sure I was fine and able to return home. I will never forget what she did for me, and ever since then I started giving my mother's words weight in gold .

I reckon that empathising with others, being willing to help them, even though that might imply devoting some of your time, makes you a good neighbour,and above all an excellent person, and Barbara definitely was one.