Environmental Health

First of all, I'd like to say that I hope everyone enjoyed the seminar and was able to take something away from it. I know I sure did. Susan's story sure was inspiring. After learning about how greedy and immoral corporations can be it's nice to know that a grassroots project was able to overcome the much adversity I'm sure it faced to take a bit of the power away and protect not only the environments health but ours as well! It can be done! With much dedication and perseverance of course.

This project is based in a country where we have many freedoms and resources available. As we saw in the video Susan showed, the same type of thing is happening in countries that aren't so fortunate and so they must live their lives knowing that harmful chemicals are entering their body every day and are having adverse effects on them. I'm not sure how many places this is applicable to but even the fact that there's one means there must be some sort of investigation or "environmental research" conducted to fix this because we're all human and in my opinion, no one should have any more rights than others, including the right to live in a potentially deadly toxin-free environment. So it's good to know that things are being done about this because the effects shown in the video are extremely disheartening.

Technological Change and the Environment

This weeks material really opened my eyes when it comes to "e-waste" especially. As many other people I'm sure, I have never really put much thought into what happens to all these technologies when they expire. I then got into thinking about what happens to a lot of things when we're done with them, een things so simple as a toothbrush or "not so simple" as a refrigerator. Obviously the ideal thing would be that these get recycled in some way but much like computers, things like refrigerators contain many types of materials, including various chemicals. So what happens to these? It also got me thinking about how much more e-waste there must be with the rapidly increasing need to keep up with technology and the rapidly increasing rate at which technology is advancing. Greg and Katelyn mention in the summary of the article they chose that the average lifespan of a new model computer has decreased from 4.5 years in 1992 to an estimated 2 years in 2005, and that's just computers! There's also ipods, televisions, cell phones, and the list goes on. It's no wonder e-waste is one of the fastest growing areas of international waste. However, I don't believe this is the users' fault as not many people know what to do with these things when they're done with them and are ready to throw them out. I've had to get 2 new laptops since I started university and both of the ones that I had before are still at my dad's place because we don't want to just throw them in the garbage but we don't know where to bring them. However, it's easy to see how some people wouldn't care so much and just throw it in the garbage but especially now, knowing all of what's actually in a computer, that's not an option for me. If anyone knows of a place that recycles computers or put them to a better use than sitting in a dump, please, let me know! I would hate for them to end up in Africa.

SY406 Corporate Power

I guess you could say I've been raised with the cynical point of view that greed is a major force behind why a lot of those high in power make illogical decisions that they obviously know the consequences of and it's refreshing that this course brings that perspective to the forefront because ultimately, in my opinion at least, these are the people ruining the world. A good point was brought up in class on Thursday how all the blame can't be placed on the CEO's and any single individual but it just goes to show how many of these people there are that there's actually groups of people that agree on certain detrimental decisions. One has to wonder if these people always had this state of mind or if it came with their wealth. BC Forbes is quoted as saying, "The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure," and I couldn't agree more. Clearly my psychology background is shining through a bit as it will in future postings as well I'm sure but it really interests me to know how people arrange their values and priorities, especially when it comes to corporations and media and what those in power decide to put in the spotlight and then are able to sleep soundly at night.

I think Tasha and Adam did a good job which their choice of article and movie clips to show and I guess you could say they should have answered my questions with things like the propaganda model and how the media serves the interest of elite groups but since corporations feel the need to be seen as individual entities I think they should be critiqued as such. The president/prime minister and other world leaders often get the blame for when things go wrong but it's my belief that these "elite groups" should get just as much blame, if not more as they are undoubtedly the ones who shape the public's opinion on any issue they choose. I was dscussing this with my dad one day and he brought up a good point. Just as an example, when pitbulls were gaining increasing attention in the media due to their "viciousness" and even had a ban placed on them in certain areas, this must have been a cover up for some other issue that the "elite groups" didn't want to have attention drawn to. I say this because there is no way these attacks weren't happening before then and you can't tell me they've completely stopped now, yet I haven't heard one story of a pitbull attack since. This can be traced back to the issue attention cycle but it just goes to show that the cycle itself is controlled by corporations.