Smoking In Asia

Over winter break,  I travelled to Singapore. On our way home, we had a four hour layover in Japan. While sitting in a chair at our gate, I looked over to see a smoking room. During the many hours i was sitting there, i noticed tons of people walking in and out, and was actually surprised by the number of people going in for a smoke, especially since it was early in the morning. I was reminded of this a few days ago, so decided to do some research. What I found out, is that Japan has a fairly high smoking rate, and i came to the conclusion that it's because they are less restricted then most other countries. From statistics, I learned that in 2010, the total smoking rate was 24%, 36.6% of Japanese men and 12.1% of women. Also, it is not as strictly banned in restaurants and public places like we are used to. Upon reading this, I began to wonder if it was just Japan, or other places in Asia as well. 


In Singapore when walking down the main streets, I noticed many more smokers than I was used to seeing walking around downtown Chicago or anywhere else in the country. China also has very high smoking rates, and this is also due to the fact that Japan and China are very large producers of tobacco, and that in some cities, it is even socially acceptable to smoke in public.


In the picture to the left, Japan (purple) is usually the highest, aside from the Netherlands (red) a few times. Why do you think the Netherlands has such a high percentage? What other factors do you think attribute to why smoking rates are significantly higher in Japan and Asia in general? 

Don't Do The Crime If You Can't Do The Time

Looking through the Chicago Tribune website, there was a list of articles that went on for pages and pages. When looking at the context of each article, i noticed a similarity throughout. In the first ten articles alone, six of them had to do with people being sent to prison. This made me think of back to last week in class, when we were learning about the Civil Rights Movement, and how there are more people in prison now then there were back then. 


That was a statistic that shocked me. Learning about that time period back in elementary and middle school, for every violent occurrence i was taught, i would hear how many African Americans were arrested. The numbers just seemed incredibly high to me, and i always assumed it had lowered down from that time. In reality though, the numbers jumped from 350,000 in the 1970s, to nearly 2 million people in prison today. 


While reading different causes to why the numbers are so high, one explanation was because the United States has longer sentences than everywhere else in the world. One example i read, is that  the average burglary sentence in the United States is 16 months, compared to 5 months in Canada and 7 months in England. My opinion on this though, is better safe than sorry, and i think keeping people in prison longer would usually be better. A study was done showing that within three years of being released, 67% of ex-prisoners re-offend and 52% are re-incarcerated. From these statistics, wouldn't you rather have people in prison for longer, even if that means we're known as having the highest incarceration rate in the world?

It's All About The Internet

After coming home from school today, I was sitting at my kitchen counter trying to think of a blog idea, when my mom tells me I should check the newspaper from today. And what was my response? "Nah, i'll just look at newspapers online." What i found interesting from this was how my mom suggests the printed newspaper, while i of course say it's easier to just look online. Immediately after saying that line, I began to think about the huge generational gap between my mom and i. Her generation is so used to everything being in print, while we look to the internet to find a news article. Another example of the different between our generation and our parent's, is the world of texting.


I'm sure many of us have been through the painful moments of watching our parents try to type out a text. For my mom, she will tell me to go "email my friend" when in reality, she means text. This mixup between the two would probably never happen to us, but our parents got locked into a world of email when computers were becoming popular, and they still stick with that. However, would you go send an email to a friend to invite them to dinner or ask them a question? Probably not.


And like with most things, there's a negative side to this. One of the obvious ones, that is playing a role now, is illegally downloading music. This increase in technology has brought the music industry down significantly. Not only is the downloading off of websites hurting it, but also sites like pandora, where you can listen to songs for free, so then what's the purpose of buying it? I, like many, have a pandora app on my phone, where i can listen to it anywhere, anytime, so why would i go to iTunes and download the song for a dollar?


What's your opinion on this? Do you think this is just going to continue to get worse, with more and more websites and apps come out, making it easier to listen to music without purchasing it?

Womens Rights

In class lately, we have been coming up with plans on how to "reconstruct the reconstruction" that occured after the Civil War. One of the groups made a point that they wanted more equality between men and women, because since we know what happens in the future, that problem does not get fixed for many years, and in fact, is still something we are dealing with today. While sitting in art class yesterday, we were assigned to think of sayings that had to do with the word "bone." People were shouting out examples, like "throw him a bone" or "he doesn't have a bad bone in his body." Something i noticed about what everyone was saying, is that they always used the word "he" or "his" or "him." Not once did someone say "SHE doesn't have a bad bone in HER body." I found this very interesting, and it helped to prove my point, that there still is a huge difference between men and women today.

Though women have gained many rights throughout the years, like the ability to vote, work, etc, there is still a hidden feeling that men are ranked higher than women. In recent years, we have even had women run for president, which definitely shows how far we have come, seeing as women at one point were supposed to stay at home and work around the house, not run for president, or even get a job at all! However, there is still the issue of generically referring to men, when talking about an unspecified person. What i wonder, is will this ever change? Will there ever be a time where men and women are truly equal?

Harsh Conditions

Today in class we briefly talked about the factory conditions people around the world are working in to make our clothes. The idea of the factory conditions has come across my mind a few times, but i had never thought much about it, until now. Searching through google to find out the "Nicaraguan factory conditions" since the sweater i was wearing was made there, i began to really think about the horrible lives they are living.


This brought me to thinking about the scenes i have seen in movies, and how it is probably very close to reality, while when i was little and would watch movies with these scenes, i never connected that people were still living like this. In the factory in Nicaragua, for example, the monthly salary is $130. I couldn't find the exact hours per day they worked, but i can only assume it was very long, meaning they get paid barely anything per hour.

This led to me think about the sweatshops around the world, including still in America. I never really considered how badly workers are treated even in this country. I was reading an article about sweatshops in LA, where the women were working 12 hours a day in horrible conditions, surrounded by rats and other rodents. To just think that these conditions take place all around us is shocking to think about, and has made me wonder, how can we stop it. Of course we need all the clothing being produced, but there has to be a better way to make them.