martes, 4 de febrero de 2014

RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA

RACISM ~>

Racism is a discriminatory attitude, which is to consider that people who have a certain physical characteristics, such as a different skin tone, are therefore inferior intellectually, socially and morally to other people without these characteristics.





XENOPHOBIA ~>

"Xenophobia" means "fear of foreigners". This attitude is when a person feels scared to another person who has come from outside its territory. Usually emerges when a person feels threatened by another newcomer and think that person is going to make their actittude bad.



In the world, many people of another race have triumphed.

An example is Nelson Mandela who died recently, and always fought for equality for blacks.


lunes, 3 de febrero de 2014

RACISM

Before starting my entry, I'm going to say you it's very important to me that you read it, because I think you'll know new things about how racism have existed from years.

First of all, do you really know what racism is? Racism is not only killing black people, or forbid them doing some things, etc. Racism is anything you do, say or think which include discriminating someone for his or her race, it means, the colour, the ethnic group, …


Have you ever discriminated someone? It is really common to look a toy and see it says: made in China, or to go to a Chinese supermarket because it is cheaper, or to buy the scarves that black people are always selling in the beach, or simply to tell a joke about black or Asian people, and those things are from our daily life and we don’t realize. 


But racism is not something modern. It had existed for years and years. Ancient Egyptians had slaves, and, talking about slaves, do you remember the American War of Independence? It started in 1775 and a very important part of the American soldiers were black slaves who fought trying to obtain the freedom. They were voluntaries to participate in the militias, but, as they were refused, they started to fight in their account.




More recently, the Apartheid from Sudafrica, which consisted in separate black people from white ones. But when I say separate, I refer to, literally, separate things. For example, there were parks, benches, shops, districts, etc, only for white people. And the same for the others. Their objective was to conservate the authority of the white minority over the black majority.




Actually, we are also racists. When most of us think in a black person, we always imagine them very dirty, trying to reach Europe in a dinghy, begging on the street, or stealing shops. But we don’t think in people like Louis Amstrong, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Sidney Poitier, Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and, of course, Michael Jackson. They were black people, and they became famous because their work.


From my point of view, one of the most famous black people in the world is Nelson Mandela. He died with 95 years, and he is an example of fight for the black rights. He spent 27 years in prison only for try to obtain rights to his country and, even there, he was discriminated for been black. When he went out, he continued this work. He became president of Sudafrica, and he obtained a Nobel Peace Prize.


Original video from the song "we are the world"

sábado, 1 de febrero de 2014

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Increasingly, managers must deal with multiple ethnic groups with very different cultures. Thanks to globalization, you are likely to work with Japanese, French, Chinese, German and all sorts of other nationalities. It is important to recognize that people from different cultures are different in a variety of ways, including
  • different ways of looking at things
  • different ways of dressing
  • different ways of expressing personality/goodness


These differences can cause problems interpreting what the other person is doing. Some simple examples:
  • In the US, a firm, short handshake indicates self-confidence and (heterosexual) masculinity. A limp handshake by a man can be interpreted (usually wrongly) as a sign of homosexuality. But in most parts of Africa, a limp handshake is the correct way to do it. Furthermore, it is common in Africa for the handshake to last several minutes, while in the US a handshake that is even a few seconds too long is interpreted as familiarity, warmth and possibly sexual attraction.







  • In Britain, men do not look at women in the streets but in France it's common to do it. Recently, a French public figure mentioned in a speech that British people are all gay. The evidence was their lack of overt interest in women.

Here is a video about how African people move to America and learn how people live there.








Three basic problems: interpreting others comments and actions, predicting behavior, and conflicting behavior:

Some Perceptions of Americans:

-Europe & especially England. "Americans are stupid and unsubtle. And they are fat and bad
dressers."




-Finland. "Americans always want to say your name: 'That's a nice tie, Mikko. Hi Mikko, how are
you Mikko'



-Indian. "Americans are always in a hurry. Just watch the way they walk down the street."




 

In my opinion we must read more information about how is life in other countries.
                It will help us to respect other cultures

 

jueves, 23 de enero de 2014

FUNDAMENTALISM


 Hello everybody! Today, I´m going to talk about a topic very subjective, as Rafa said in his entry. I´m going to try to explain what fundamentalism is and some things relate to it


Fundamentalism: any religious current that promote a literal version of their holy books

But fundamentalism can means two different things:

- Meaning 1: Islamic movement that does things that are in Koran, holy book of this culture

-Meaning 2: Christian movement based on Bible. holy book of Catholicism


 Now, I´m going to talk about each meaning


Meaning 1

Well, this one is the most aggresive and extreme. It takes place in some East´s countries ( Sudán, Irán...) 

In these countries, fundamentalism is very important. As a consequence, they have instaured some rules:


File:Woman walking in Afghanistan.jpg



- Women have to wear special clothes where her body is hidden ( Hiyab, Burka...)




                                                                   





    - Alcohol and pork are forbidden











Meaning 2

This one was born in EEUU in 19th century. Catholic fundamentalism is against evolution ( Darwin´s theory) because this religious current thinks that we come from the God´s creation. 


     

This man is a creationist

It means that he is against evolution´s theory










As Islamic fundamentalism, Catholic fundamentalism has some thoughts which not everyone likes. Let´s see them:


- Prohibition of use of condom and abort: Catholic fundamentalism says that if a woman aborts, is killing a human being. Also, using of condom doesn´t like in this current





- Homosexual marriages: Church is against homosexual marriages but not against homosexual people. In conclusion, people can be homosexual but not making it public




Well, I hope that you enjoy my entry about Fundamentalism. See you in class! :D


PD: Some photos are in Spanish, but the objective is clear



miércoles, 22 de enero de 2014

Fundamentalism

Before starting: I've made this entry trying to be as objective as possible. You have no activities to do in the blog, but we'll do a debate next day in class, that's the importance of being neutral.

Fundamentalism has two definitions:
1. The belief that every word of the Bible is divinely inspired and therefore true.
2. A movement favouring strict observance of the teachings of the Koran and Islamic law.

To continue, I want to say that fundamentalism is subjective, due to that some people think that fundamentalism is a part of the Religious freedom.




We all know very well what's wrong with other countries' religions, such as Islam. We all know that Islamic fundamentalism is based on chauvinism, homophobia and people doing war (Yihad), and although it's a pity, a lot of countries have as law the Koran (the Muslim Holy Book), and apply them without allowing any critic inside their own country.

But, have we looked for Catholic fundamentalism? Sometimes, we forget that Catholic fundamentalist exist, although it's true that, luckily, it isn't as extremist as Islam. Spain has a majority of Catholics, but we haven't a state religion, so the law isn't applied as the Bible says.

I want you to remember that (if you allow me to insert my opinion, luckily) what I'm going to talk about is about Fundamentalism, not Catholicism, although it's true that Fundamentalism is based on what the Bible says.

To explain you the most important facts about Catholic fundamentalism, I want you to see these pictures. 
First of all, I want you to explain a bit more about a group inside Catholic fundamentalism, the creationists. These people say that the The Origin of the Species, the well-known Darwin's book is false, so they support that God created human beingsBut, what's the position of the Church about that? The Church was against this book, but after a lot of controversy, it was accepted in 1950 in the encyclical Humani Generis. 
Source of the information.



I'll try to take more care to talk about the following topics, gay people and contraception. First of all: the Church is against homosexual marriage, but it says that it's not against homosexual people. They can be gay, but in secret. In theory, a Catholic gay mustn't have boyfriend and of course mustn't have sex, and the same with Catholic lesbians. But I wonder: how a institution can accept homosexuals if the same institution doesn't give them the rights that a heterosexual have?

The right party in Spain, PP (usually bound to the Catholic Church), voted against the law which allowed this type of marriage, although it was finally aprooved. In response, they presented an appeal of unconstitutionality, what means that they were trying to abolish the law. Finally, the appeal was rejected.
Source of the first paragraph.
Source of the second paragraph.


Another point Church is against is contraception, it doesn't matter if it's with condoms or by abortion. 
*Source about contraception related with condoms.
*Source about contraception related with abortion.


In the past, Catholic fundamentalists did Crusades to expell the Muslims and to try to recover what they call "Holy land". Nowadays, Crusades as form of violence don't exist.

To finish, I want to organise a class debate in Spanish all together. I'll bring the questions next day.

Bye class!

domingo, 19 de enero de 2014

Are you addicted to tan?☼☼

We have learnt the meaning, the consequences and the more characteristics types of addictions, thanks to my partners’ posts, thanks to Mari Carmen’s lessons and thanks to the vocabulary that we have used.

I would like to show you the addiction’s tree. As you can observe, there are five branches of addictions and each one has several leaves related to topics related at the same time between them.  We have studied some of them such as alcoholism, gambling, drug... Here you have some more. I am not going to explain all of them; instead of that, I am going to explain one that doesn't appear here: tanning addition.



First of all, I want to say that if you click in this photo, you will access to a page in which you have a quiz to know if you have a tanning addiction. I recommend you to wait until I explain you more things about this additions and you will be able to know more concepts.

In summer, when you go to the beach, do you like sunbathing? And… how many hours do you spend in this activity? Sometimes our mums say us: ‘Stop sunbathing’ or something like that because you can spend some minutes in front of the sun but if you spend hours and hours during days and days… you will know the consequences later.

Unfortunately, there are people (women overall) who like spending all the day sunbathing. But not only when they are on holidays... these people like doing it all the year! They don't matter if they have to go to tanning salons... they can't stop doing it. So now is when sunbathe has become an addiction.
But... do you really know the bad consequences of it?



Exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UVR) from the sun or from indoor tanning machines has been identified as the principal factor of skin cancer.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here you have a video where a woman tells us her daily life with her tanning addiction. Now, you can do the quiz. Don’t forget to tell us your result, I hope you are not addicted to tan and I also hope that you have learnt with my post something more about addictions.

martes, 14 de enero de 2014

SOME CURIOUS ADDICTIONS...

There many types of addictions, but you can't imagine the extrange addictions which some people carry out everyday; they aren't crazy. However, they can't stop doing these extranges things. Nowadays, there aren't a cure (sustance or action to stop a disease or addiction) to avoid these addictions that I'm going to name:

TOP FIVE OF THE MOST STRANGE ADDICTIONS


1) Addiction to eat toilet paper.

This is a strange addiction, although there are people who eat it every 3 minutes (like Kesha, the person of the video). This makes that Kesha can go to the toilet and she doesn't have problems of constipation because toilet paper contains fiber. 




2) Obsession for funerals.

The person who I'm going to talk is a man called Luis Squarisi. Since the death of his father, he says that is addicted to go to funerals; he likes it! He turns on the radio everyday to know if someone died during the night to can go to a funeral, he passes a good time in funerals, he feels happy and he isn't satanic or a bad person, it is only that he can't stop that addiction.  



3) Addiction to eat ash of cigarettes.

Smoking is a very bad addiction which can finish with your life. However, there something that is worse: to eat the ashes of cigarettes. Bianca is a person very strange, she eats it! He goes to ask for help to the waiters of bars everyday, she says to them that keep the ash of cigarettes in a small sack to can buy it later. She is totally crazy!




4) Addiction to eat rocks.

You can be thunderstruck, yes. It isn't impossible to eat rocks! The person of this video is addicted to eat rocks, it can sound strange. I recommend you to watch the video because it is very interesting the way which has this woman to eat their rocks: she breaks down the rocks with a hammer! She spends about 730 pounds a year buying rocks of different types. 



5) Addiction to eat soil (also called geophagy).

This type of addiction is really worrying because if you eat big quantities of soil you can catch a serious disease. However, many people eat soil; it is the most known addiction of the five I have named. Some people eat soil for cultural reasons and other people can eat soil because they are specials; they can absorb sustances of the soil such as phosphorus or sulphur. 


Finally, I want to suggest to you TWO QUESTIONS:

1- Talking of the woman who eats rocks... How much money the woman spend in a day buying rocks? 

2- Can you say me another curious addiction?


lunes, 13 de enero de 2014

Strange Addictions Quiz


Some people's bad habits are out in the open, but most addictions are well-kept secrets. How much do you really know about the things people just can't stop doing? Take this quiz to test your knowledge.