Big Organic and Enron Corporation

Recently, Our Global Ethics class watched movie called "Enron". Last class, We started read One of the chapter from a book called " The Omnivore's Dilemma". Which talks about Organic foods.

The following chapter talks about the principles of organic farming in modern America.
Michael Pollan the author of this book shows that, while organic food has grown in popularity, It's producers have adopted many of the methods of industrial agriculture. While i reading, I found interesting quote.

"How to grow this stuff (Organic foods) without chemicals was a challenge, Especially to city kids coming to the farm or garden with a head hull of pastoral ideals and precisely no horticultural experience."

I just felt that even if we're buying organic foods, chemicals are still inside and City kids like us having chemical foods most of our daily life, which is very familiar.

One fact strike me out was that "While the economic and social distances separating the well-heeled shoppers cruising the aisles at Whole Foods from the un-heeled homeless in people's Park could not be much greater, the two neighborhood institutions are branches of the same unlikely tree."

I mentioned Wal-mart as a example on my Enron blog, But, On this moment I could get interesting points that no matter what kinds of business, It always connect with economic and social distances. Why does Enron fall down? Because of economic issues. But, the difference is Organic food business is hard to fall down unless people won't buy it. But, I just want say that this Organic food is also one of the reason for Wal-mart to survive.

In my conclusion, I felt really hard to understand this book with connections between Enron.
But, I found some interesting questions that he came up with.
"Organic food .. better for what?Taste and for my health."
"Is it also better for environment? the public health? for the tax payer?"

What do you guys think? I want hear your opinions !

SS Resource

Psychogeography

It’s really interesting to know the word “Psychogeography”. It can be made into deep and thoughtful simply by look throw it and think creatively. When I heard this word, I didn’t get what is psychogeography means, but now I get sort of idea. There is no right or wrong to defined Psychogeography, it’s all based on your thought and your creativity.

Site Specific Performances

This idea makes me to looking back some places that I’ve been before. But, I felt quite happy to find some places inside of school.
Basketball court and roof was really good to have music performance. We don’t feel something crowd, we can feel a lot of freedom and enjoy. I’m the one of the person who is going to have music performance. I feel strong aggressive and I strongly believe that all of students who are going to have performance, they can do tremendous job.

The Silence of Silicon Lambs - Choreohraphy Ideas

Article: Why Psychogeography?
Guy Debord who was first person called psychogeography, called for an investigation into the effects of the environment (both constructed and natural) on emotions and behavior. I think, it means, whatever we have our emotions and behavior, just put into the art.
I was quite shock at what people does in 1950s and 1960s which represent about Corbusier style modernism. Group of artists, writers, activists, students were attacked city planning as an ideology of organized social isolation. I don’t get why they did that but I guess it’s a part of their thinking and the way they express their feelings.

Article2: Site
After I read an article about site that specific performance, one place was strike me out.
I’ve been this place when I was in UK, this place called “Piccadilly Circus.” If we go this place, we can see a lot of street arts. For example, some people painted themselves and try to act like something or some people came out with some props and do some act.
This place is also famous in UK and has long history.

Skype with Erica
It was awesome opportunity to have interview with her. One thing I felt really fun was we used cloths and have some different act. I put purple jacket top of my head, and tried to be a famous pop star. Although, she want Angus and I were act something images with two different motions. First motion was normal speed and the other one was slow motion, which makes creative.

Enron "The smartest Guys in the Room"

While we watched documentary called “Enron, The smartest Guys in the Room”, I personally felt little bit boring. But, as soon as I try to enjoy and understand, I found something cool facts.

First, I was shock at how much Enron Company grow fast. And it’s similar with what we discussed from last year our Global Ethics class. We discussed about War-mart.
How do they marketing and how do they their businesses. So, the following result was huge. War-mart has a lot of different shops around world, plus a lot of employs. Now, I want go back to Enron. This company grew up 1.700% with in 15 years. But, interesting facts is that we don’t know why big company such as Enron fell down.

Second, I could make my self to think about government systems again. Kennety Lay who was CEO of Enron closed with George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney.
Based on what I researched about relationship between George W. Bush and Kennety Lay, I found interesting facts. Until George W. Bush get a president of United State, He got about 600,000 US dollars from Lay.

I still don’t get the real points of Enron’s documentary, But, One thing I found my self to know is that, clear business and be honest is always stands for right answer for safety business.


Kenneth Lay(April 15, 1942 – July 5, 2006) was an American businessman, best known for his role in the widely-reported corruption scandal that led to the downfall of Enron Corporation. He died in Snowmass, Colorado
(Research from Wikipedia)
Jeffrey Keith "Jeff" Skilling (born November 25, 1953) was the CEO of Enron Corporation in 2001, He was setenced to a 24 years in the prison in Waseca, Minnesota, and was charged with mutiple felony charges.
(Research from Wikipedia)

Short paragrph after wathing BBC documentary

While I watched this short video clip from the BBC documentary called Blood sweet T-shirts,
I found one fact that relates to the book we just read (Travels of a T shirt in a Global Economy). At the end of video clip, the students experienced working in factory making cloth. It’s very similar with Shang-hai factory in the book. They worked really hard, but the payment isn’t that good. It happens in real society too, mostly because they have trouble between their owner and the workers.

William McDonough- TED

Last class, we watched McDonough's TED talk. As soon as we finished, we began to read a new chapter from Hawken's book. While I watch and read, I had really hard time to get ideas like what's the main idea and what things do I have to get from them. But, one thing I felt really good was when Donough talks about our society from our perspective.
I found a connection from last year GE class.

When humans are starting to live in earth, they invented a lot of things since cave man. But, most amazing invention was using sources, energy and technical devices. As soon as we start use different tools, our society also changed a lot by us. But, have you ever think about real society's problem? How we going to dear with our environment issues? While he give us a presentation, he came up with different questions but I personally felt these two questions are really important and must know it for knowledge.

"How can we secure local society, create world peace and save the environment?" I spend a time to think on this question, but it was hard to say what things we can do. But, after he came up with another question, I got myself an idea.

" How do we love all the children of all species for all time? I think that's our job and homework until the earth disappears.
One thing we can really do is that, educate and make more safety society for our kids and generations. That is what we can really do now. We make most of society problems. Which means, when children's grow to adult, they have possibilities to make another social problems in society. So, we must have our children to make sure educated well on good way or bad way.

I'm not sure my idea is clear enough or connects to our topic, but, I strongly believe that we must keep our species.

Waste not

Before I read this chapter, I thought this story would talk about our waste, but I was wrong. As I looked into it, a lot of thought stroked me, especially when I figured out my internship.

My internship is in PDP LCD Glass site in Tao Yuan Company called CPT. Those PDP Glass factories use tons of chemicals each day for making their products. They dump wastes into water or air. If those companies don't have great systems of dealing with all the wastes, they are contaminating both the water and air, which creates a lot of pollution. All these cause Global Warming.

The reason why I am interested in this chapter is because there are some connections between it and my internship; I can see what's out there in the real world instead of what’s in the books. What I mean by real is that I can actually see how they throw away contaminates. Also, I will learn how to use those machines to either make products or make clean wastes.
I was quite shocked when I read this chapter because of the way author explains about how the amount of our waste are huge and I couldn't get myself over it.

Now, I’m really excited about my internship, which also relates to my senior project. I'm ready to do it and I will share a lot of information with our class.