Global Warming Crisis

Today we can often hear the term, "global warming." The one of the main reasons why we can hear that term so frequently is that the problems that are caused by global warming are affecting almost all aspects of our lives. There are some examples of it are following: climate change, appearance of new diseases, negative impact on economic activities. Firstly, according to the statistics of temperature change of the earth during the last century, we are experiencing the most unstable climates ever. By having dramic growth in temperature, we have been damaged by many kinds of natural disaster such as severe hurricanes and melting glaciers. Those negative effects predicts that we will have tragic natural disaster within next 50 years or so. Also, it is projected that most species will be extincted at the end of 21st century because of the growth of temperature in earth. Secondly, new diseases have appeared during the last century due to the increasing temperature. As an example, SARS has become floushied because of warm atmosphere which allow virus to survive longer. Lastly, global warming is causing negative effects onbusiness activities as well. In the past, natural resources such as water and gas considered as infinite resources. However, due to the influence of global warming, we are predicted to suffer from the shortage of those natural resources. Along with that, insurance fee keep increasing because increasing of number of natural disasters and disease that might kill people. Furthermore, it is also causing conflict between interest groups about environment. Overall, global warming became an issue that we should be concerned in order to maintain lives that we have lived until now.

Personally, I also learned and heard about global warming since I was an elementary school student. At that time, I did not really think the issue is important to be concerned. However, since when I was in high school, I have started to realize that global warming is a serious issue as I keep experiencing climate change every year and hearing about news related to natural disasters caused by global warming. Actually, I am taking meteorology class now in San Jose State University. As I have gone through the semester, I even recognized how important to solve the problem for us in order to prevent to have catastrophic moment in the future. Although today's global warming is mainly caused by a few developed nations which began to industrialized earlier than other countries, global warmining has become an issue for countries all over the world. Since it is affecting all nations on the earth, we are required to act global as a whole. Some efforts made by a few nations will not be able to solve this complicated issue. Rather than that, all people from all over the world should act simultaneously in order to overcome the difficulties. Now it is the time for us to make a decision whether having bright future as we have had during the history of mankind or being ready to have a doom's day.
And I finally believe that it is totally up to how we react to today's situation.

How can the U.S. avoid to be a "Fast Food Nation?"

Today I watched the movie called, "Fast Food Nation." Although I already read the book, "Fast Food Nation", it is the first time for me to watch the movie. The movie basically showed me about how harmful eating fast food regularly. In the movie, one individual conducted the experiment by himself. He ate fast food for every meal for thirty days and showed how his health condition has been changed. Even though I already knew about harmful effects of fast food, I was very shocked and realized how serious the problem is by watching the movie. After thirty days of experiment, he got fat and sick, and had higher possibilities to get several different kinds of diseases caused by obesity. All of doctors advised him to stop eating fast food and insisted that he already ate enough amount of fast food for his entire life.

In the United States, many people enjoy many different kinds of fast food nowadays. Esepecially, younger people tend to eat more fast food than elders. Because of this fact, we can easily see many people who are overweight from yougers to elders on the street everyday. According to the statistics that is provided by several studies show, we have people who are overweight more than ever before. Also, people with obesity keep increasing now. Since 1990s, when fast food industries are popularized in the U.S., obesity has become one of the most serious social problems in American society. More serious problem is that it seems very hard to solve this problem since fast food has already become daily meal for all Americans.

In order to solve this complicated problem, in my opinion, fast food industries should be more ethical when they sell their food to the customers. Almost all of them know about harmful effects of their food, but they do not want let cusotmers know about those. Rather they just focus on selling food in order to make more money. Actually, the health of the people in this nation is more important than making more money for a few people. Along with that, some strict policies regarding nutritional restrictions are strongly needed. In order to protect people's health, fast food industries should follow the rules that are for people to keep them in good health condition. Finally, more campaigns have to be done in order to let the people know about harmful effects of fast food and make them not to eat fast food too much.

Choosing the Best Career..

Since I am planning to graduate next semester, I applied for Bachelor's degree about a month ago. When I filled out graduation application form that shows the classes I have already taken, I found that I have not fulfilled section E of general GE. Because of that, I am taking one more class in De Anza in order to fulfill that area. The class that I am taking now is called, "Career Learning Planning." The main pupose of this class is to help the students to choose the best major or career based on his or her abilities and interests. We usually do a lot of discussions during the period of class time and take several surveys in order to help them to know about themselves more in depth. Actually I am really enjoying those activities because I am getting know more about myself that I did not know in the past.

Although I have already decided my major, business management, I also have some interests in other fields. By taking this class, I realized that I have many interests in such a diverse aspects of our lives that I still want to develop. Also, I leaned some more jobs that I did not know before. In my opinion, finding interests and abilities of one's own is the first and foremost thing that has to be done in order to choose the best career for hime or her. If he or she is not interested in something, he or she might not be able to continue what he or she is doing continously. Also, if one is not good at something, he or she will not be able to do that job as much as other people who are interested in it do. In my case, I also have some likes and dislikes on my major. And I bellieve it is more important to choose a career that I can be satisfied with rather than just sticking to a major after the graduation. Since I have not specifically diecided what kind of job I want to hold, I hope to know more about myself by taking this class in order to make a smart deicison that help me to choose the best career for me.

FTA between the U.S. and South Korea

The trade liberalization deal between the United States and South Korea which called, "Free Trade Area (FTA)" has been continued nearly a year until now. FTA mainly deals with the issue that dropping trade barriers and tariffs between the two in order to trade more freely to each other. However, each of the two wants not only to protect its own market but also to sell its own products more in order to be benefitted for its own nation at the same time. Due to this fact, each nation could not be reached to the agreement yet. As an example, United States want to sell more cars to South Korea in order to solve big trade deficit gap on car market. According to the article that I found at http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-03-31-voa4.cfm, the U.S. sold only 5,000 vehicles while South Korea sold more than 700,000 vehicles to the U.S. Another example is beef. The U.S. could not sell beef to South Korea more than three years after mad cow disease found in the U.S. several years ago. In addition, the most sensitive issue is rice. South Korean government do not want to open its rice market to the U.S. because it does not think it will be competitve against the U.S. In reality, most of FTA protestors in South Korea now are rice farmers who do not want to open their market to the U.S. Because of these sensitive issues, the U.S. and South Korea finally decided to extend their negotiation deadline by this Sunday in order to have an agreement that each party can agree with.

Last year, I visited South Korea two times both in summer and in winter. Whenever I visited S. Korea that time, I heard many news about FTA by T.V.s and newspapers. Also, I saw many protestors against FTA around the U.S. embassy at that time. At first, I was not interested in the issue and did not really think about it. However, as I kept watching news on T.V., I started to realize that FTA is very important and sensitive issue between the United States and South Korea. The main reason why the United States and South Korea could not be reached agreement even though they had talks several times in nearly a year is that each country wants to have more benefit by having the optimal agreement. It is natural thing and it happens all the time when even a small company do its business. It is so complicated issue to say the one solid solution. However, I personally believe that each nation has to be concerned more about the long term relationship between the two. The United States want to sell its beef and more cars to South Korea in order to be benefitted by decreasing trade deficit. On the other hand, South Korea wants to save their rice farmers and want to keep its people healthy from any kind of disease, mad cow disease in this particular case. Each nation has its own goal and wants to have the result that each of them wants. But, the agreement will be achieved by concession. Both the United States and South Korea should be concerned more about the long-term relationship between the two and endure some painful suffers in order to reach the agreement that enables both nations can be benefitted by it. Now each nation is required to have wisdom to make some concessions to have reasonable outcome for both of them rather than lagging the negotiation deadline, not having any point of the issue by having endless conflict between the two without any concessions. I hope the United States and South Korea keep a good realtionship by having an agreement that both the U.S. and S. Korea can be happy with.

A Sad Day for Loyal Workers of Circuit City

In the article, "Circuit City Cuts 3,400 'Overpaid' Workers" which appeared at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/28/AR2007032802185_pf.html?reload=true, the author Ylan Q. Mui talks about the story that firings of loyal employees in Circuit City yesterday. According to the article, Circuit City fired 3,400 employees who were paid relatively higher in order to reduce its expenses. However, by firing many employees, about 9% of its total employees, many employees feel negative about the situation. As an example, Steven Rash who worked for Circuit City before, fired immideiately without any prior notice. Also, as Circuit City admits, there are no faults to hime at all. He mentions that he has to find another part time job to pay his student loan and he is not sure whether he deserves to have this kind of situation or not. Another example is also shown at the end of the article. Jose Macias, an employee of Circuit city, could barely avoid being fired. However, as seeing firings of other co-workers, he strongly criticized to the decision of Circuit City.

After I read this article, I also got angry about what Circuit City did to its employees. Among 3,400 employees who were suddenly fired yesterday, many of them worked for Circuit City for several years. Personally, I believe it is not an ethical thing to do so. The reason is that it is more important for Circuit City to keep fellow and hard workers of the company rather than firing them all of a sudden in the long term. It is about the credibility between employees and the company. Even though Circuit City can expect some savings of its expenses in the short term, I strongly believe that the possible serious problems can be occurred in the future by losing strong credibility between employees and the company. Those problems could eliminate the postivie effects that Circuit City might have now by firing its loyal employees and would even cause more negative impacts to the company as a whole in further years. It might be impossible to save all loyal employees to Circuity City. And this kind of incident happens all the time in real world. However, I recommend Circuit City to think about the long term effect rather than short term effect when it makes a decision especially regarding firings of its "loyal" employees who contributed many things to the companry during the last several years.

The world is still round, not flat!

Today I read an article, "It's a Flat World, After all" appeared in the book called, Emerging global cultures. Actually, this is a text for my anthropology class. The reason why I read this article is that this is my assignment for that class. In the article, "It's a Flat World, After all", the author, Thomas Friedman mainly talks about today's globalization and insists that world is becoming similar because of spreadout of high technology in the world. Based on his experience, vising india in 2004, he strongly believes that industrializing countries such as India and China will be great threats to the United States in the future because of having ability to use more high technologies by using the internet more than ever before. And he thinks this tendency will ends the era of American emperialism and makes to equalize the power, espeically contol information and high technology among the nations. In short, by his own perspective, massive people from all over the world are strong competitors to each other and we will live so-called, "endless conpetitive era" later in the future.

After I read this article, some disagreements erupted from my mind that is different from Friedman's. I admit that world became similar and more people can access the internet and have oppotunites to develop their own talent by using several kinds of high technologies. However, this is also a story for the part of the world, not the whole world. As an example, even though fast growing industrializing nations such as India and China have drmatically developed during the last decade, there are still tremendous number of poor people there. In fact, the place where Friedman visitied is one of the most fast growing cities in the world. Also, the people whom he met are all either C.E.O.s of certain companies and successful businessmen in their own fields. Therefore, it is unfair to say "World is flat" by having those same kinds of people.
If we look at India and China more in depth, most parts of their lands are full of poor and uneducated people who need help except some rich and educated people who live in a big city such as Bangalore and Shanghai. That is, I do not agree with the point that "World is flat" as he mentioned. Personally, I believe that it is somehow true what he mentioned in the article, but it is not as much as he thinks. We rather have to focus on more about helping poor people who can not be benefitted by today's high civilization and ultimately make them as the most talented people in the world later in the future.

Costco is giving up its competitive advantage!

I read the article, "Costco tightens return policy on electronic", appeared on the internet website, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17350641/. This article mainly talks about the change of Costco's return policy that it will allow to give customers only 90 days to return televisions, computers, cameras, camcorders, portable music players and cell phones. According to the article, the reason is that many customers are taking advantage of having six month to get full refund. By giving too long period time to use Costco's product, Costco is actually experiencing difficulties such as providing newer product for less price and big cost drops by returning of older item. In order to avoid these situations, Costco starts to post new return policy on its website and plans to activate it gradually in a short period of time. Along with that, Costco also plans to provide more technical support and extend its warranties in order to prevent possible serious complaint from its old customers.

When I read this article, I felt that we are going to lose "Costco" that we used to know. Costco has been very successful during the last several years because of its generous return policy, lower price, and good quality of product. However, Costco is now giving up one of its core conpetencies in order to prevent loss of sales caused by practicing too generous return policies. Personally, I do not think it is a good idea. It is true that Costco might lose some sales because of customers who want to use its return policy in order to take their own advantage. However, by changing its generous return policy which has been parcticed since long time ago, many customers will feel betrayal. Because they used to enjoyed its return policy but they can not enjoy it any longer from now. In reality, Costco might lose some customers because of changing its return policy. Guess what? Costco will eventually experience even more loss of sales by losing those loyal customers. I hope Costco to keep its competitive advantage, generous return policy, as it was to prosper its business even more than ever before.