Canadian Canoeing

Adventurous is one of the trait of being humans, and I believe deep down in the heart of a person lies a lust for adventure, but even if what i believed is not true, at the very least there is me who still believe in it. In my opinion adventure doesn't need to be a long journey to somewhere far away from home, even if it's just a small trip like wandering around the part of the town where you don't familiar with, it is also count as an adventure too for me, and if i have a time and a chance to canoeing across the country like this Canadian family, i would be gladly to do it.

According to an article "Meet the family canoeing across Canada" from a problem that occurred during their road trip home to Quebec, a Canadian family has found their new passion for canoeing, and now they are about to set off on a cross-country journey from Edmonton to Montreal with their five-year-old on 2 May, and the trip will cover more than 5,000 km through rivers and lakes.

For a long time in my life, I have always dreamed about going on a journey to somewhere far away to seek out a one great memory that last a lifetime, and a beautiful creation of our mother nature that no one has ever seen before, I could say that I would have no regret if I have had such a chance to go on a journey and experiencing such a wonderful trip just for once in my life.

About two years ago, there was a film named "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" directed by Ben Stiller, the story of the film is about the life of a dull guy who lives a dull life in modern society but then he took a step outside of his old life to new journey across the country because of some work's problem that occurred, I was so much impressed by it, that after the movie has ended I still stay in the cinema with my friend until the credit runs out, and I was so inspired that I googled for a trip to Iceland but then I realized that I don't even have the money for the trip(I was very sad that day).

Believe it or not, even if you never had a chance to go on a journey to somewhere faraway or just a small trip somewhere near your house, you'll still have a one great adventure and that's called       "The Adventure of Life."  

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Reference

Luxen, M. (2015, May 29).  Meet the family canoeing across Canada. BBC News US & Canada. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32503810

The Impact of a Strong Dollar

It is undeniable that most products are trying to be more competitive to succeed in the global market; however, nowadays, it is hard to get the success like the past since the global economics has already changed. 

According to the BBC News “US growth: First casualty of astrong dollar” (Yueh, 2015), a strong of the US dollars has a great impact on exports by falling 7.2%; nonetheless, the problem attracts an investment in imports and increase consumption rate. As a result, the US growth rate in the first quarter is lower than expected rate; it grows just 0.2%.

In addition to the impact of the strong dollar, it seems that the problem leads to other results in the countries around the world because the United States is one of the great powers. When a slowdown in the US economy has already happened, the global economy absolutely obtains the effect. The strong dollars makes the US currency rate for selling lower than that of the past. I believe that most exporters do not like the situation because they cannot earn much money compared to the normal financial situation. I believe that the problem causes the quantity of goods for sale is not enough for people in other countries. Finally, the product prices are so expensive.

Although the strong dollar problem has a bad effect on exporters, it has benefits for investors/importers and consumers. Most entrepreneurs desire to invest in some businesses in low cost in order to get a lot of profits as much as possible. The BBC News article said that investors can import goods cheaper and maintain down price rises. Lower cost and down rise price lead to attract consumers to buy the import goods; consequently, a lot of profits can make easily.

In terms of education and traveling for foreigners, it has a number of advantages; for example, if I would like to travel to the US while the problem is occurring, I will exchange my money from Thai baht to US Dollar more than I ever in the past.

So, it has both benefits and shortcomings for the strong dollar problem; however, it seems to weigh in the shortcomings that the US should solve the problem as much as possible.  

Reference.

Yueh, L. (2015, April 29). US growth: First casualty of a strong dollar. BBC News Business. Retrieve from http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32512640

The leader's power

In the last semester of grade 12, Learning about the impact of the Korean War to the South and the North Korea, I have got the picture of the inequality, the injustice execution and the violence in North Korea which is very unpleasant.  Although the third generation leader, Kim Jong-un, put a lot of efforts to deceive the world that his people live a very happy life, I won’t definitely believe it.

Recently, BBC News has published the article “North Korea'executed 15 people'” (2015) which reports that Kim Jong-un gave a sentence to end 15 lives, including the high position officials, because they challenged his power as a showcase. In addition, he also did one showcase in 2013 by executing his uncle.

As I realized, Kim doesn’t need much reason to sentence someone to death. He has a power which no one in North Korea can deny since his grandfather has built this communist world for him. Personally, I think the communism isn’t a bad system. But the important key of this administration is the good and wise leader, the leader who does things for a country not for his own.  Not only for the communist government but all governments need a good leader. If you get a dull leader in whatever government you are in, it will be a disaster.

Some political problem in Thailand was popped up in my head after I wrote about the leader. Thai people have deal with this trouble for 10 years and it may take another 10 years or 20 years to overcome it. It is the leadership tissue as well. Since we never get the good enough government, we solve the problem by coup d'état and it runs in circle, poor circle. Anyway, North Koreans people never get a chance to do that the military force is in Kim’s hand. If you against him, you will die like 15 people I mention above.

Back to the leader point, there is one good leader who just passed way in the last few weeks and I really admire him.  He is Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore. From the poor and nothing, he created the new Singapore, the rich and developed Singapore. He leaded the people in the right way, the way the leader should do. If Singapore got the Kim family not Mr. Lee, the Singaporean might not have the beautiful life as today. That is why the leader is crucial.

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Reference

North Korea 'executed 15 people', (2015, April 29). BBC News Asia. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32511431

"Men are stronger than woman."

In Japan, a suicide by cutting your own abdomen, called "Harakiri", was once considered to be a noble act of Japanese warriors. Nowadays in our society, suicide is being considered a severe problem.

According to BBC News' article "Fatal silence: Why do so many fortysomething men kill themselves?" (2015), surprisingly, British men in the age of 20-50 have a 4-times higher chance to attempt suicide than women of the same age and the most important factor which psychologically drives men to come up with a suicide as a last measure is claimed to be social expectation, that men must be able to cope with their life problems by themselves. In addition, unlike women, most of the males tend to not express about their problems with their friend or even their close one.

After I have finished reading this news article, I started to recall the past news of suicide in Thailand and, unexpectedly, most of them tended to be males too. The most recent one that I still remember until now is a suicide of an old man in his fifties. From the news report, he and his family were having financial difficulty and, unknowingly to his family, he suddenly decided to end his life just to let his family receive a death gratuity. His family deeply grieved when they had read the letter left by him, urging them to use the money to solve their problems. Whether his family is entitled to such payment or not, they agreed that the money does not matter anymore.

I totally agree with the author of BBC New's article that the sole reason which compels the previously mentioned old man and other men to take their lives is a belief that men must be mentally strong and capable of taking care of themselves and their family. However, some people do not think so. In my opinion, mental capability is the same as physical capability and both are different from each person to each person. For example, some people can run a full marathon with no sweat at all but some cannot even finish half of the marathon. Similarly, some people can handle daily stress from work well but some cannot. Also, the mental capability is not related to gender in the slightest. In this way, it can be said that some of the men might have lower mental capability or perseverance than some of the women.

The question that should be asked next is how to correct this false belief in our society. Since we all are parts of the society, shouldn't we start with ourselves first?

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Reference

Fatal silence: Why do so many fortysomething men kill themselves?. (2015, April 13). BBC News Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32231774

Impact on environment

I have heard a news from my classmate this afternoon class which impressed me so much as it is very lovely story about the acting of human to help birds get their correctly direction to the north by just decreasing the light in the town.

Another similar story is said by The BBC News “Habour light ‘confusescreatures’” (2015) that the night-time illumination is attracting Keel worms, light-loving marine creatures which damage ships and boats. This is found by the UK scientists and they need to conduct studies more about what type of light cause this effect after they avoid the using artificial light near the ocean.

I think dimming the light is quite hard to do as it is necessary thing for work at night. And the next question  that come to my mind is How much the light intensity can they decrease? Because, working at the habour need to be extremely careful . There are a very huge area, plenty of heavy containers to move up and down all the time and very deep ocean around. Therefore, if the scientists have enough researches, the solution would be clearer.

There are a lot of problem  occur because of knowledge about the light. I would like to tell one since I heard and saw from my hometown neighbor who is fisherman. In the past, I saw squid which was caught by fisherman by shining the normal white light into the sea and they did not get squid too much. Unfortunately for those squid, fisherman find out the green light is the squid favourite colour , thereby, they get much more squid by using it. I just wondering, if everyone use the same method like this, some kind of squid would be rarely to find in the nearly future.

As everyone knows, the good always comes the bad. Thomas Alva Edison invent the light to comfort human being life, however, it also brings some drawbacks for other organisms. Anyway, I personally like news about human take more care of animals. I am so much pleasure because I have couple of this today. I hope this means modern people have more kindness for other living things in this self-interest world.

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Reference

Morelle, R. (2015, April 29). Harbour light 'attracts ship-damaging creatures'. BBC News Science&Environment. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32500640

Modified Organelle In Cell

Electron microscope (EM)

In Matthayom 4 (grade 10), the first time I studied Biology, the first chapter was about Cell, the smallest unit of every organisms, containing many organelles, processing unit of cell inside. I could remember that their sizes were so small that all of them can't be seen by using only light microscope in common laboratory but now the scientists are able to change something inside organelle only seen by using  electron microscope (EM) that magnification range is more than 500,000 times or 250 times to the best magnification of light microscope.

The BBC News's "Mitochondria editing tried in mice" (2015) reports that "Researchers have developed a technique to edit out bits of mitochondrial DNA that could otherwise pass on incurable diseases, a study in mice shows.". However, There are also many warnings from specialists about risks and from dr. about coming arguments and hurdles, especially in ethics and religions, to overcome if this is going to be used to treat with humans in the future.

Mitochondria seen with TEM (a kind of  electron microscope)

I think there are always many arguments and objections about the issue like this, as you can see very often when talking about cloning, storing some organs to revive the belonging one day in the future, many methods of genetic engineering, etc. The world organisation about ethics, religions, science, medicine and organisations associating with these kinds of problems should find out the same agreements or laws (may be rules) to use the same standard globally. Because, nowadays, they are more and more problems like these, due to the fast progress of science and medicine, that slow our progress in discovering new methods to cure patients like this discover, creating new genes for vegetables that could produce more immunity or products to us, way to create new organs for defectives etc. If we still get stuck at these kinds of problems, we will loss the opportunity to get better things and to get longer life. We need the conclusions and agreements of these issues as fast as we can.

For me, I usually, not all, agree with treatment or discover like this because I focus on the life and well-being of the human more than ethics and some religions or belief. I think making people alive and happy is the main purpose of ethics. Therefore, something like these are quite make sense for me.

However, I think it is very very very difficult to find the same agreements of these issues because of the difference in nationality, religion, culture, thought, background, knowledge, belief, etc. You have to find the same regulations or laws for about different 7,000 millions people in the world, that's really difficult. If you could, I'm pretty sure that there would still be some people who would break these laws. It's common to human's society.

"Where one door shuts, another opens", I strongly believe that this quote is always true even if it doesn't tell when or how the problems would be solved. However, it gives us the power to face and try to overcome the problems including these kinds of problems. One day in the near future, we must get the procedure to deal with these problems, I believe.
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Reference

Mundasad, S. (2015, April 26). Mitochondria editing tried in mice. BBC news Health. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32434347