The Conclusion of my blog

Computers and Internet are more and more important for people nowadays. People can get a lot of information and do a lot of things though internet. Technology gives a lot of advantages and conveniences to us. It improves our living standard. Blogging is one of the most popular things in the internet in these few years. People can share their life experiences, opinions, sound tracks and videos clips, etc to other people. Therefore, the best way to keep contact with the people in Macau is using internet, so I started writing blogs one year ago. I use it as a daily that show to my friends what happened to me. However, I have been changed my point of view of using blog after I took this class. My work is shown to the public so I have to write my work in a more serious and critical way. This is a very good experience that I can show my ideas to others and I was amazed that there are some people that concern the same issues as I do.

In my blog, I have recommended the ConAgra website. I chose to write about the ConAgra web site since the issue of obesity in America become more and more serious. People’s lives are threatened by this issue. People concern about their health but they are lack of information. The easiest way is to get advised from the internet. ConAgra is one of the best website which had been honored by webaward, and it fits the judging criteria of webby award. The website is well developed and the information is very easy to assess. The design of the web shows consideration for the users, and the navigation of the web site is very useful function.

In the other post, I chose to introduce Dr Stanley Ho as my ideal USC Honorary degree owner since he is my idol. He is a successful professional who fits the craft motives, compensation Motives and the moral concern according to Mike W. Martin’s Meaningful Work. His work correspond the role and mission of USC, and I think USC would like to invite him to join the Trojan family since this can improve the status of USC in China and other part of Asia.

USC honorary degree: Stanley Ho(King of Macau Gambling)

Honorary degrees have been given by the all of the universities in the world for hundreds of years, and they have been awarded in America from late 17th century. In order to praise the people who has done something enormous that improve our world or contribute to the society. Certainly, University of Southern California has its honorary degrees, and there were many successful people who have received the honorary degrees from USC. According to the USC website, its code of ethics "is predicated on two main pillars: a commitment to discharging our obligations to others in a fair and honest manner, and a commitment to respecting the rights and dignity of all persons."In 2007, one of the nominees that I think that he has the quality for the honor degree is Dr Stanley Ho. Stanley Ho has a large amount of great achievements on ethics, economics and politics, but the news that might disadvantage him to be a honorand of USC is that a lot of people might consider his business is contaminated. Therefore, some people think that he does not deserve to receive this award.

According to Mike W. Martin’s Meaningful Work, most contemporary professions offer a wide array of specialization that individuals select, guide in part of their personal ideals. Stanley chose to become a businessman since once he went to see a dentist when he was young. The dentist is his relative but he said something which that embarrassed him. Stanley ran home and cried. He swore: “I must become a successful man. Let those relatives who only talk about money know, I will earn a lot of money in ten years.”

Adam Smith point out that professional received more rewards from income and prestige. The Compensation Motives are the desires for those social rewards. Dr Stanley Ho (1921- ) is one of the most famous businessmen in Asia. According to Forbes, he ranked 84^th among the richest people in the world in 2006. Dr Ho operates a lot of entertainment business includes casinos, greyhound racing, lotteries and horse betting. He is the owner of Lisboa, the world’s highest grossing casino. He also takes part in tourism, shipping, real estate and air transport. His bussiness income constitutes about one-third of the gross dometic product of Macau. Taxes on them accounted for 30 present of Macau government's revene. Stanley Ho is the wealthiest person in Macau.

Martin stated that in his article that Professions are based on advanced expertise that combines theory-based understanding, practical know-how and liberal learning. Craft Motives are the desires for getting knowledge and skills. Dr Ho‘s dramatic rise is charted in books and movies. He was born in Hong Kong into to a well-known family. Although, his family is wealthy, he started his business on his own. At the age of 13, his father lost all in the stock market, and abandoning his wife and children. Therefore, he had to work very hard to make his way in the world. He studied very hard after his father went bankrupt because he understands that it can improve his social status. He became the first student to grant a university scholarship that studied in class D. It indicated his result was poor before. He was very active in the university. He became fluent in English, Japanese and Portuguese.At the age of 19, Stanley Ho arrived in Macau with only ten Hong Kong dollars in his pocket. Then he worked in a trading company and became a partner of the company from an employee in 21. He had very intelligent business mind and he won the trust of his customers since his talents and command of four languages.

Dr Ho‘s greatness comes from an almost mythic ability to survive and prosper in the face of risks and how to take advantages of the opportunities. He always thinks that the bigger the risk you face, the more chances and success you can achieve. Once, he ran a cargo boat that passed though the mouth of the Pearl River, a dangerous area with a lot of Japanese troops and pirates. His boat was surprise attacked and several of his shipmates are killed. However, Dr Ho remained clam and organized a plan to defeat the pirates, and eventually returning the boat home safely. He learned Japanese during the Second World War, and he earned a lot of money during the Korean War by shipping goods to China and North Korea.In 1960s, he won the exclusive gambling franchise and he stated to make Macau a world class tourism and entertainment destination. His Lisboa Hotel, and Macau Tower became the landmarks of Macau.

According to Martin’s article, moral concern means that a person provide valuable community services. Dr Ho set up several scholarships to award students, and he built a run a lot of facilities such as sport centers and libraries. There are schools that name after him. He is respected as a man of extraordinary, power, talent and philanthropy. He funds scholarships through the University of Macau, and he received two honorary doctorate degrees. Many schools, hospitals and even an avenue are named after him. He has been honored by the British Monarchy and His Holiness Pope John Paul the Second. He also received the “Great Cross of the Order” by the Portuguese government, and the “Gold Bauhinia Star” by the Hong Kong government, in acknowledgment of his marvelous contribution to the society.

His empire is facing a risk since the competition is increasing from the American moguls Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn. However, Ho still controls 15 of Macau's 18 casinos; also operates ferry and helicopter services that transport gamers from Hong Kong and other parts of China.

Although the image of Stanley Ho is a man who becomes wealthy by doing the gambling business and there are some people think that Ho have connection with triads, there is no evidence to point out any relationship between him the triad activities. Dr Stanley is a good man and has many very good hobbies like dancing and swimming. Dr Ho says “I am not a gambler, People call me the casino king, but I do not play.”I think his work fit the role and mission of USC, which it the main reason why i think he should be honored.

ConAgra: We are what we eat

“Some people work for food and some people eat for work”. No matter which type of person you are, food is a very important part of our lives. Since the living standard of the people is improving, people eat more than before. Although medical cares in a lot of countries are in advance, problems such as obesity and heart disease are increasing rapidly because of the fast food industry and the junk food that is sold in the market. Also, a lot of people in the US are lack of exercises. People that have a problem of obesity become younger and younger. Therefore, the problem becomes very serious. Nevertheless, the public is lack of the information about how to make choices. Where can they go? People might try to buy books, and give advices from their doctors, other professional people or other sources. Most of the people will choose to get information is from the internet nowadays, since it is so convenience.

People now concern more and more about their health and that is the reason why some food companies try to provide healthy food to the public. Among those companies, ConAgra is one of the most favorable food companies in America. Their web site gives the audience a lot of ways and methods to live in a healthy life style. The site is extending and more and more tips and techniques are put on to the website in order to provide a very high quality site where people can get the best and latest information. They achieved the outstanding website development award by the webaward in 2006. Although the website is very effective and informative, there is something need to be improved.

Although the ConAgra web site is the Nominee and Winner of webaward, it can not amplify the quality of the web site because the judging criterion is not inclusive. Therefore, I will use the judging criteria of webby award to show you how incredible this web site is.The content of the website is really good. They have a slogan which is “Eat well*Live well* Choose well” which is the wishes of all people, especially for the Americans since many of the people in this country are overweight. Their goal is to convince you to choose the best to eat and help you become healthy. The information provided by the web gives people many ways to live in a healthy style.

The web site is well developed since you can get all the things you need to achieve the goal. The information is very easy to be accessed by the people, and it is very useful. There is very important part of the web is that the design of the web shows consideration for the users. The navigation of the web site is excellent. You can easily find out what you want to know and there is many other information or data that not only can help you to understand what food is good for you but the concept of the health life style also.

The visual design of the web has a very high quality. The appearance of each of the page has related to the audience. It supports the message of the web since you can experience the model of living healthy from the flash, pictures, charts or diagrams.

The site works very well. It loads quickly from one page to another. It has live links, and a search engine that is functional and significant for the audience. In order to show their sources can be trusted, all the tips and information are provided by experts or professionals. There are information such as the amount of exercises that we should do and the nutrition fact and the food pyramid. They tell the audience what they should consume and what they should choose.

The site of ConAgra allows you to purchase their products online. They have commercials and promotions that persuade the audience to buy their products. It has a lot of other functions such as showing people different kinds of healthy food recipes, providing tools that can help you and your family to live in good physical shape, telling you the latest information of their company and event that you can join. Also, there are an IQ quiz that help the children to recognize the importance of eat healthy and choose food wisely. They have a career section that hire people if someone is interest in joining to this company. The web site is not only for a specific group of people or a specific time, but from kids to adults, and from breakfast to dinner.

Some part of the website is not that ideal which can be enhanced or develop in the future. This company only provides food products but no drinks for their customers. However, the high sugar drinks, alcohol and other soft drinks are one of the factors that course the problems. Therefore, I think that even they do not sell drinks; they should introduce some healthy drink in their recipes in order to make the site more perfect. Although the website is very instructive, there are too many texts. There is lack of the use of sound effects, music or other things to simulate the audiences. Also, may be for the reason that this web site is mostly aim for the Native Americans and other people who understand English, there is no translation of other language. Therefore, I think this website should provide other versions in order to make it become an international web site.

Investigate the issues of child labor and disease spreading

In this blog, I have introduced some of the issue that affects us and other people around the world such as the course of disease spreading and the problem of child labor. These two issues become more and more considerable. I have found a few blogs that also discuss these issues. One of them is called Alarming News. It stated that a lot of chocolate companies use child labor to plant and harvest the cocoa beans for them. Those children want to study, read and play, but they have to work at young age. Those companies are definitely violating the humanities of those children. In the second blog and it is called Tiny hands by Peter Lavina. In one of the posts, it said that the children have to work because they are so poor and they even can not effort their basic needs. He stated that there are six worst forms of child labor, and millions of child victims are suffering in those environments Those children can not choose their jobs; some of them work in factories, some of them work in farm and some of them work in rubbish.
In another blog which is called Spreading of Flu. I found that the viewpoint of this blog fit my agrument. Global travel and trading goods are the main factors of spreading disease.

Child Labor

Globalization always provides advantages to the world, especially to the third world countries. More jobs opportunities to improve the living standard of the undeveloped and developing countries. However, at the same time, there are a lot of troubles that are not expected by the people appear. Child Labor is one of the serious problems that is happening in the developing countries.
Today, all the advance countries will provide a very well education environment to children, because they understand that children are the future of a country. Therefore, the adults have to keep their children growing in a healthy and high educational environment. Children would be able to contribute to the nation when they grow up. For example, in America, the children are always the first priority to be protected under law. Children are encouraged to study and learn at any time. Unfortunately, the cases in the developing countries are totally different.
Lacking of education and knowledge cause the serious problem of child labor, the adults do not understand that the children are not born for work, but to build up the countries in the future. So, they are just trying to make the living conditions better right now instead of taking a long-term investment. Since the people in the developing countries are very poor, health care are not provided to them. They have no ideas of family plan, so it means they do not have birth-control policy. At the same time, they are having a wrong idea of giving births as well. They think that more children are born, and then they will have more labor force. The adults always have the children to work at the time they should be study and learn.
Even though their birth rate is very high, the death rate is very high as well; the government does not have enough budgets to provide an adequate facilities and health to the women, so it makes their population pyramid very unbalance. Since too many youth cannot survive for a long time, so they keep on giving birth in order to keep up the labor force size. When more children are working the society, more problems will be appeared too. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has predicted that there are 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen working in the developing countries.Those uneducated children will have a very high possibility to get involve into violence no matter at home and work places. Also, they will commit crime easily since they do not go to school.

On the other hand, the employers might make use of the children by paying them very low, and have them to do those dangerous jobs as well, because children do not know how to refuse to do those jobs that they are not capable to do. Under this situation, children will get hurt easily, and human right is definitely being violated.

We can not slove this problem on our own, but there are a lot of organizations working on the problem and can give us a lot of information about Child Labor such as the Child Labor Coalition(CLC) and Human Rights Watch. And as more people concern on the issue and support those organizations, the problem can be solved in the future.

Factors cause diseases spreading

The living standard of the world is improving tremendously, and at the same time, it creates crisis and problems. Have you ever realized that these problems will gradually emerge to worsen our lives as our world continues to develop? One of these problems is the spread of diseases. It is an important issue since it has a huge impact on people’s lives. Although we are living in America, the wealthiest and the most high-technologies country in the world, there is still no one can escape from the consequence of the spread of disease that is caused by the rapid development. Therefore, it is very important for us to know about the causes of the spread of disease, and also the crisis for all human beings. There are three main factors that cause the disease spreading, and they are globalization, urbanization and the gap between the north and the south.
Globalization provides both advantages and disadvantages to the world. These advantages and disadvantages can never be balanced. Diseases can be spread through global travel and trading businesses. In addition, globalization of food supply and centralized food processing will help the disease spread to other countries easily. Globalization is always wanted in the business world, people attempt to expand the impact of globalization to have a better life; unfortunately, these attempts might put the health of the people in risk by devastating the environment.

Urbanization drives the cities too crowed. People want to move to the cities to strive for better job opportunities in order to improve their living standard. At the same time, they try to escape from the civil wars, famine, and other manmade and nature disasters which are always being seen in the rural area. Moreover, pollution from the industries, burning of fossil fuels, and releasing harmful chemicals will affect the health of the people who live in the cities, they will get sick easier. As more areas become urbanized, the gap between the urban area and rural area is therefore widened. More educated people would leave for the urban areas, so the rural areas will remain the same with no improvement, and always be an undeveloped area.

World Health Organization cannot avoid the spreading of disease, since there are not enough laboratories that produce antibiotics, and those countries in the southern part of the world do not have the finances and resources to develop the need technology in order to protect its people. Also, the living standards of those countries are extremely low, so diseases can spread rapidly.

The spread of diseases are caused by the careless of people who try to improve their lives, and these problems are able to do a huge damage to our world. Therefore people should keep an eye on it, and be considerate for the long-term effects. Apparently, an individual might not have a big influence on a global issue like this. However, if everyone contributes a little to the world, the problems can diminish and eventually vanish.