Review: Skateistan, a Park of Hope for Afghan Youth

Tittle af the Article: Skateboarding in Afghanistan Provides a Diversion From Desolation
Author: Adam B. Ellick
Date of Publication: January 25, 2009
Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/sports/othersports/26skate.html?pagewanted=1

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

In the violent reality in which people live in Afghanistan, Oliver Percovich, a 34 years old skateboarder from Australia, tries to give youth a little bit of fun. In this country where war is an everyday reality, children find it very difficult to have the normal life a child deserves.

Violence, shootings and suicide bombers have become common aspects of their lives, taking into account that children in Afghanistan grow up among them.

Oliver Percovich has the will to open the first skateboarding school park of Afghanistan, which will offer Afghan youth an alternative to their violent and devastating reality.

Its important to recognize the will of Kabul authorities to approve Percovich's project although they didn't give him yet an official authorization.

For most of Afghanistan children, skateboarding will be their first sport. However more than offering them the chance to practise a sport and to have fun, Percovich's idea also has a democratizing sense. His school will try to "mend the nation's deep social and ethnic division". The skateboarding park will be open for children of all the country despite they social status and ethic origin. In this school children will have the posibility to share more time with other children of a different ethnicity as well as with children of a different economical position than their. The idea is to join Afghanistan youth under one single cause.

Afghanistan has the highest proportion of school age children in the world, according to the United Nations. For the vast majority of them, sports are virtually nonexistent and most public schools don't even have a playground. For Afghan children, a new positive environment is the best way to seek for a better future, and this is what Skateistan, the first skateboarding school of Afghanistan, will try to offer them.

Review: To Uploud Videos for You Tube Became a Job

Tittle of the Article: You Tube Videos Pull In Real Money

Author: Brian Stelter
Date of Publication: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/business/media/11youtube.html?hp


Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

Filming videos and uplouding them for You Tube used to be just a pastime for web surffers, but to many of them it has already become a full time job.

You Tube, the online video site, invited members of the web page to become "partners" of the company.

These people are an example of the Internet's democratizing effect. Sites like Yuo Tube allow anyone with a high speed connection to find audience and clientele, simply by posting material and promoting it online.

The director of product management for YouTube explains how the partners program grew including nowaday thousands of participants who have turned their hobbies into business.

Some of the You Tube partners are major media companies such as Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and Warners Brothers. But individual users are now able to compete alongside with them. You Tube denied to give the exact number on how much money partners earn on average but a spokesmen from the company said that "hundred of partners are making thousands of dollars a month".

Review: Tea Not Longer Profitable In China

Tittle of the Article: A County In China Sees Its Fortune In Tea Leaves Until a Bubble Burst
Author: Andrew Jacobs
Date of Publication: January 16, 2009
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/world/asia/17tea.html


Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

The Southwest of China owns its prosperity to the production of green tea. It's brand of tea known as Pu'er enabled tea farmers and manufactures to become millionaries in the past. In recent yeras, the situation has changed dramatically due to the collapse of the tea market and as a result, thousands of Chinnese farmers became poor.

The few tea traders who survived the implosion of the Pu'er market admitted to be ruined. They explained that the rise and falls of the Pu'er market partly reflects the lack of investment opportunities that the government provides to the rural areas of the Southwest of China. They also affirmed that there's a concentration of cash in the big cities of the country.

The Southwest of China used to get crowded during the harvest and buyers came from all over the country to buy Pu'er tea. The prosperity encouraged producers to invest in the tea fields but after the crash of the market most were left with nothing but a valueless production of tea.
The fewer producers and farmers who survived the crash of the tea market hope the situation improves soon. There's an old belief in the southwest of china and that is that tea tastes better with age. For all those farmers who still have their production of tea in that area this is what gives them hope. They believe that al least they have a product that will be sold at a very high price, but only if the market reopens for them.

Review: Men And Women Change Roles Due To Recession

Tittle of the Article: As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men In Job Forces

Author: Catherine Rampell

Date of Publication: February 5, 2009

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/business/06women.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

The recession that the US is experiencing in the post war era has left the country with more women employed that men, being the mayority of employers women for the first time in American history.

This is simple because women tend to be employed in areas which suffer less the ups and downs of the country's economy, such as education and health care. However, a study has revealed that women are less capable of being breadwinners. It is a fact that women have more permanent jobs than men but at the same time women also occupy the mayority of half time jobs with no health or unemployed insurance. These types of jobs have a lower salary than the average salary of men who generally work full time and in better conditions Even in full time jobs women are payed less than men.

Due to the recession women represent the 47.1 % of the work force in America and most people who loss their jobs were men. The problem is that despite women may be saffer in their jobs they find it very difficult to support a family.

To this situation women add the reality that they are also householders. They do most of the housework being employed or not. Husbands do lees work at home than wives, despite if they do have a job or not and this is the result of the way in which housework has been traditionally organized. And even if nowadays it is common for women to work outside home it is not so common for men to do the housework.

The recession the US is undergoing has put pressure on the roles of men and women and being more men unemployed than women has push husbands to help their wives with the house duty while women work outside.

Review: The Film Industry Vs. Internet Piracy

Tittle of the Article: Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios
Author: Brian Stelter and Brad Stone
Date of Publication: February 4, 2009
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/business/media/05piracy.html?em

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez

On July 2008, the film "Batman, The Dark Knight" arrived in theatres. With its premier Warner Brothers plannned an ambitious antipiracy campaign. Unfortunately, the campaing failed and by the end of the year 2008 more than 7 million people had already illegaly downlouded the film from the Internet.

This clearly demostrated that Hollywood is lossing the battle against piracy and that whatever measure they take, Internet users always find the way to obtain film copies, even when the films are not yet found in DVD. The online film piracy ends up then being a growing problem, contrary to what the film industry expected.

Specialists affirmed that for Internet users is quite easy to find an illegal copy of almost any film on the Net, which are in most of the cases free copies. The illegal copies can be dowlowded using computer programmes that anyone can have and install on their PC. As it is suggested in the article, the conclusion is that "anyone can find free copies of movies still in theatres, in a matter of minutes".

The problem when attacking illegal piracy is that many of the sites that allow free downloud of films and music are locatted in countries which have a low piracy control and are then, hard to monitor.

The result in what respects to the film industry is devastating. The Picture Association Of America has admitted that "illegal downloads are now responsible for about 40% of the revenue the film industry losses anually as a result of piracy". With this data, film producers have no other option that to admit that they are not able to win the battle against piracy whithout a bigger support from part of th Justice. Most part of the film industry declared that to have better laws in relation to the crime of Internet piracy will help them a lot.

Organic Food: Good For You And For the Earth

It is widely known that the quality of the food produced through agriculture has gone down due to the effects of pesticides and hormones that farmers use in their fields. The mass competition related to the production of food has obliged them to do everything they can to obtain bigger amounts of crops per year.And to counteract the effects of plagues a wide variaty of quimicals are being used. All these measures causes changes in the natural balance of the products. And the result, is a product full of hormones and quimicals, and less vitamines and nutrients.
On the other hand, there is a big group of farmers who choose to produce organic products. These means that they grow crops without additives of any kind, that’s why those products are called organic. These are products that consumers can eat in their natural state, without risking their health.
The big problem around organic food, is the cost of it. Since it is food of higher quality, the fields are fewer in comparision to conventional products, as well as the mount of consumers of them. The result of these is a high cost in a product difficult to find.
The benefits of organic food are widely known. The only last thing to do about it is to support it producers. If we all change our diets, little by little to a helthier one, we will be impoving our helath and life as well as supporting small producers who have the intention to offer consumers a healthy product.
Whats more, it has also been proved that the growing of organic food has less environmental side effects than the growing of convemntioanl food, since the fields are not treated with quimicals that polluted the earth. This is for me, another important reason to support the growing and the consumption of organic food.

Review: Experiment proved the benefits of Organic Food

Tittle of the Article: For Three Years, Every Bite Organic

Author: Tara Parker-Pope
Date of Publication: December 1, 2008
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02well.html


Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

The pedriatician and author Dr. Alan Greene conducted an experiment on himself in an attempt to prove if people can be 100 percent organic. He devoted 3 years of his life to incorporate organic food into the everyday living.

The experiment lasted 3 years because that is the amount of time it takes to have a breeding animal certifictaed organic by the Department of Agriculture.

Among the challenges that the experiment represented for Dr. Greene, to find organic food to eat was the most difficult one. Sometimes he dind't find organic food at all.

Dr. Greene experiment offered a new insight into the organic food industry. One of his most important discoveries was the fact that consumers can pay twice as much for organic food as for conventional products and to cut back the cost of an organic diet Dr. Greene said that consumers have to cut back on meat.

Dr. Greene took the experiment after wondering if becoming 100 percent organic might improve his own health. Three years later he says he has more energy and wakes up earlier, and he's rarely ill. All these benefits are proved to be the result of having eaten more vitamins and nutrients.

Alongside with his experiment, he proposed a consciuos rise about what organic food means, since he also discovered that few people know about it. In simple words, he explained that organic food means without pesticides, antibiotics or hormones.