Which Country has the Best Economy?

When I was researching about my three (four) countries, I learned some things about their economies.  For instance, when researching about Japan, I found out that their country isn't as good as their country makes it seem.  I also used this country for my life expectancy project, and their life expectancy was one of the highest in the world, because they have good food, clean cities, and healthy habits.  However, their economy isn't as good as their life expectancy, not by a longshot.  Their unemployment rate is low, but their GNP per capita is low as well.  Their inflation rate is high, and their only natural resource is fish.  The lack of natural resources make Japan the #1 importer of coal, and the #2 importer of natural gas/oil in the world.  These things make Japan the worst economy out of all my countries.  I also learned that Australia isn't as good as I thought it was.  Before this project, I thought Australia was great and perfect (which sound absurd), but I now realize that they are quite average, most of it.  The GNP per capita is about 50 thousand US Dollars, and that is one of the highest in the world, but the rest of it is normal for a developed country.  I also learned some interesting things about Canada, like that it has 10% of the world's forest, and it has many natural resources.  It's GNP per capita is 8,000 below Australia, but that's okay, because that number is still high.

Not only have I learned about economies, but I also learned about infographics.  Every set of data has the right layout that can be put it in for maximum efficiency.  If it is found, the data will be easy to interpret and will flow smoothly.  Unfortunately, I tried to find it, and failed.  My data wasn't super easy to read.  There is also an order to the slides, which I also didn't get right.  My slides were in order at the beginning, but towards the end, it became confusing.  I think this infographic was better in terms of looks, but my first one made more sense in terms of order of slides.  Also, my first infographic was easier, because I only had to focus on one data point and give reasons why, while on this one I had much more data, and I had to explain what they would influence.  I also had to evaluate the economies of my countries, which was also challenging.  Putting evaluations is difficult in an  infographic, because the explanation cannot use many words.  I used arrows pointing up and down to signify high or low standards, but it didn't really convey the message to the audience.  The way an infographic is presented makes a difference as well.  If they ins't presented smoothly, or if the presenter uses a lot of 'um's, the audience won't understand what the infographic is trying to tell them.  Also, generic words like "good" or "bad" shouldn't be overused.  I used them to much, and I could see the confusion on my audience's faces.  I have a lot to improve on when it comes to making and presenting infographics.  If I were to pick a core value for this project, I would chose risk taker, because I took a risk by not practicing the presentation, and it really hurt me.  In the past, I never practiced presentations, but it would be a good idea to do so in the future, so I don't suffer otherwise.

An important part of infographics, charts, presentation, broadcasting, and writing newspapers, is making information interesting, and capturing people's attention.  This can be achieved in multiple ways.  All these forms of catching someone's eye are easy to understand, and look nice.  To gain attention, use size, shape, color, and number.  Use size to show how much more of something there is than something else, or how much bigger.  For instance, if someone is trying to compare two numbers, 3 and 9, two circles could be used, one three times bigger than the other.  If the size of two fishes are being compared, two fish icons could be used, and then expanded until they are to scale with one another, corresponding with the sizes of the fish.  Shape can be used as a sort of key, to tell the difference from one thing to another.  If someone is making a diagram explaining the cause of death during the atomic bomb strike in Japan, they could made a code, for example, hexagon is death by initial explosion, triangle is death from heat, square is death my shockwave, octagon is death by cancer, star is death by radiation sickness, rhombus is death by crippling mutilation, and circle is death by other cause.  They could put all the shapes together in different quantities to show how much more of each type of death there was, and the shapes would help tell the difference between them.  Color can be very useful, especially in maps or in instances where the data changes progressively.  On a map, temperature can be expressed by colors, with the bluest blue being extremely cold, and the reddest red being extremely hot.  All the colors in the middle of those two can be all the temperatures in between.  The same concept can be applied to many different kinds of maps, like elevation, population density, and much more.  Color can also be used as a key, to tell the different between climates in maps.  The can also make text, graphs and images look more intriguing and make people want to look at them.  Number can be used in the same fashion as the example for shape.  Showing differences in number makes it easy to see the contrast, or the similarities of data.  For example, showing different using numbers like 1, 2, 3, aren't interesting.  However, if someone put that many of different shapes, people will be more intrigued and will want to look at it.  I hope to apply all these methods into future presentations.

Suffering of the Japanese People

During conflict, something happens to the people involved.  There are many ways that people are changed by conflict, especially something as big as the nuclear strike on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The most obvious way people are changed, is that suddenly people go from living to being dead.  When the atomic bomb was dropped, tens of thousands of people experienced this change immediately.  This change ties in with another, and that is the change in attitude.  Any person can go from happy and cheerful to mournful and sad from the loss of a loved one.  One Japanese woman encouraged her family to move to Hiroshima a couple days before the bomb was dropped, so she felt responsible for the death of her family.  This can make people hate themselves, and maybe commit suicide.  Knowing a family member is dead can make people extremely sad, and change people from having a positive to a negative one.  Also, witnessing death, or seeing dead bodies, can make people scared, and they never forget the looks of a lifeless human.  They can become traumatized, afraid, and/or paranoid.  Some people were mutated during the atomic bomb strike during exposure to radiation, and seeing them can make people scared, disgusted, or feel sorry for them.  If someone saw themself like that, the feeling would be multiplied greatly.  The biggest change is fear, fear of the power the other countries of the world have over them.  Even outside of Japan, people feared the weapon that the United States had created, with the power to destroy cities.  Almost all the changes from this conflict are negative, the only positive change would be American citizens being proud of their country and being glad the war is over.

How bad does it look for the future, now that these bombs have been dropped?  Distrust between Japan and the USA is obvious.  How could you trust someone who dropped nuclear weapons on you?  During future wars, Japan might side against the USA on purposed, biased on the hate they feel towards the country that dropped nuclear bombs on them.  However, when the USA used the bombs, ever country wanted to develop nuclear weapons, so as they could stand a chance against the USA and Germany (Germany was already developing it before the US, but finished after).  Now that more countries have it, future wars might use those nuclear bombs and missiles against their enemies, and if one goes off, it could start a chain reaction that could destroy the whole world with nuclear warfare.

How to Get a Job

Unemployment is a complicated issue, even though it may seem simple.  The concept is simple, because it is simply people not having a job, so the solution should be simple: get these people a job.  However, this is easier said than done.  Unemployment as a huge issue that needs to be stopped, because it is at the roots of many other issues.  For instance, an unemployed person may get angry that he doesn't have a job, disturbing or scaring people away.  This person could start to cause harm to others in his anger as well.  Also, when people don't have a job, they don't get much income, so they could resort to petty theft, and if they get caught, they could even kill the person who caught them to cover their tracks.  Unemployed men and women can also start doing illegal businesses such as drug dealerships, gangs, murderers, or worse.  The unemployment rate can show how many people are in this state of not having a job, and can alert countries that something is wrong.  The whole purpose of a country is to give the people a good life, and if they don't have a job, their life will be significantly worsened.

There are many ways to solve unemployment, or at least lessen it.  One way is to create government jobs for the unemployed.  This is a good temporary solution, but it doesn't last very long. The government jobs are usually temporary, and sometimes there are better people suited for the job the government has offered to the jobless.  These things make this solution ineffective.  When people are in a state of unemployment, the citizens receive unemployment benefits, which is basically enough money to pay for housing and food.  Americansforprosperity.org believes that stopping these benefits is the best way to stop unemployment.  The reason for this is when people have these benefits, they don't try to get a job initially.  Once the stay without a job  for some time, the companies offering jobs won't take them, because they believe these people aren't hard working and are irresponsible or without skill.  This will cause them to stay unemployed, and after the benefits are over, they have no choice but to turn to illegal means of living.  Education is another solution, because educated people will have the skills to get better jobs before others can get to them first, and they will know the consequences of slacking off and not pursuing employment.

I think that, along with education, the best way to stop unemployment is to stop giving periodic unemployment benefits, and only give them initially.  This is because knowing that you are cut off from income will encourage you to work extra hard to get another job.  Therefore, people will get jobs sooner, eliminating the certainty of companies doubting them later.  Also, nobody should ever overlook the importance of education, and it cannot be overestimated.  Education doesn't only provide the knowledge of different professions, but it also can show people the consequences of certain actions, such as slacking off, not being committed to your occupation.  For example, if a student in middle school slacks of until the last day to write a 12-page essay, he won't get a good grade.  It's the same thing with an adult applying for a job.  If he waits until the end of his unemployment benefits and applies for a job then, he won't get the job he's applying for.  This might possible be one of the largest contributors to unemployment.  Procrastinating keeps so many people in unemployment or even poverty, and the way to stop this is to "frighten" them in to working harder by cutting them off from income and teaching them the consequences of procrastination.

Pfl Video 2

PFL Video 2

Democracies: the Creation and Preservation

Creation

To create a democracy isn't as easy as some may make it sound like.  For one, you have to have a good system of work, such as currency.  In old times, there was no such thing, and people would trade things in return for labor.  However, this didn't always prove correct, because some people would trade many hours of hard work for a necklace or gem.  Not only is this limiting to what a person can have, but it makes it harder to measure the worth what you trade for.  With a good form of currency, one can measure how much the labor the worker did, and pay him that much.  Money is, in a way, just a unit of measurement, designed to measure the value of goods and services.  Also, a good form of currency shouldn't be made of anything particularly rare, such as pure gold, silver, platinum or precious metals and gems.  The major currencies in the world are made of paper, which saves valuable metals.  One example of a problem with the solid forms of currency is in the United States.  The penny is made out of copper, which might seem common, since the penny has the least value of all coins.  However, copper has become more scarce in recent years, and now it is less likely to come across things made of copper, because when copper is found in the US, it is sent to factories that produce money, so that more pennies may be made in the future when needed.  This is very bad because copper can be used for many things.  One of them is building, for the statue of liberty is made of copper (although it has been worn down due to waves crashing on it).  Another is electricity, because if the penny is taken out of the US currency, the price of wiring and electric circuits may go down.  This is because copper is used to make wires, which, of course, is used for all electric goods.  However, fixing this problem might lead to different issues, because some smart people with excess amounts of money can trade in money, for pennies.  If course, this isn't expensive at all, because pennies are worth one cent, so if pennies are taken out of currency, these people can melt down their pennies (because doing so with national currency is illegal) and sell the copper from them.  This makes the rich richer, but it can also make the poor richer, if they think it's worth it to trade in money to use later, when it's not money any more.  If the USA hadn't used the copper for the penny, they wouldn't have this issue.

To create a democracy, the people have to agree with the creator's viewpoints.  After all, a democracy is a rule of the people.  If someone tries to create a democracy, they have to have the people's support, because if they don't, it's just them with no other people in his country.  Also, democracies usually rise up from big issues, like the first democracy in Athens, where the laborers wouldn't work until the democracy was formed, or the United States, where they were being mistreated by the mother-country and revolted against it.  When someone has an idea, it usually needs support from others to become reality.  This is true for almost anything, from buildings, transportation systems, companies, and even democracies.  Buildings start off as an idea in the architect's head, and then when it is written out on a blueprint, there have to be workers to build it.  When the settlers of the Western World had the greatest advancement in transportation ever, they needed laborers to create the railroads and tunnels for the trains to use.  When a company (for example, one that makes/sells medicine) is thought up, the creator needs people to develop the medicine, people to manufacture the drug, people to transport the drug, people to sell the drug, and people to oversee all this happening.  The same principle is applied for a democracy, they need the people to work and contribute to society (in many different ways), and people to oversee this happening.  If the people in a democracy vote on leaders for specific areas in the democracy's land, that is their job: to oversee what is going on.  They do this by hiring or having the people elect special people to work under him and oversee those who are working.  But, who watches the watchers?  The democracy must decide, because if a government overseer mistreats those who he is observing, the government who he works for might have an uprising on their hands.

Preservation

After creating a good democracy, the challenges aren't over.  After the creation, there are many struggles to maintain and preserve it.  I won't talk about civil wars, rights movements, just the basic things that will be expected by any good democratic government.  One is maintaining the people's positive opinion of their government, but I have explained that already while talking about the creation.  The first priority of a democracy that wishes to stay there is defense, inside and out.  With democracies started by uprisings, this will be an immediate concern, the first priority during and after the establishment of government.  If the United States hadn't taken care of defense right away, they would have been destroyed or defeated right at the beginning.  But because the United States took care of what they needed for driving out the enemy, they were able to stay an independent nation and to develop into one of the most innovative and successful nations.  To accomplish this successful defense, they needed multiple things for their army.  The most important was weapons, for they couldn't have defeated the British with their fists, and if they could have and did, the casualties would be so great, that victory would feel like defeat.  Another thing the army needed was uniforms, which might not seem important.  However, if no one could distinguish one army from another, they would just keep fighting each other blindly, or trust someone from the other side.  If only one side had uniforms, if would also would be bad not to have uniforms, because when your allies have uniforms, it is more prominent that they are your allies and that you need them.  To defend a nation, you also have to defend the borders, by cameras, or stationed soldiers.  If a government doesn't do this, armies could get in to their country and get to civilized areas.  In the past, when all soldiers had were spears and swords, and cities all had walls, this wouldn't be as big an issue.  But now, all soldiers carry ranged weapons, and hits are fatal more often than not.  These modern ranged weapons, (guns), can hit people--civilians--from far greater distances than primitive ranged weapons like the bow, crossbow and spear.  Also, those armies could drive in tanks, which can explode entire building if they felt like it.  Maintaining a border control can prevent a large number of invasions.  However, not all attacks come from outside.  A police force must be made to prevent crime such as thievery, murder, or large scale attacks on civilians.  If the police are doing their job correctly, the majority of people residing in a country will feel supportive of their government, and will be happy living there.

Learning About Unemployment

While studying unemployment, I have learned some causes for rates to be lower or higher.  I have focused on states in the United States and their unemployment rates, and I have found a list of the top ten lowest unemployment rates in the US, and have been looking for why their unemployment rates are so much lower than the others in the country.  People have connected many things to low unemployment rates, such as what industries are around, and what education people have.

What's in the area is an important factor of the unemployment rate.  If there is a large oil reserve under a certain area, there will be more jobs open for extracting it, processing it, and overseeing the work that is done.  Places with low unemployment rates usually have lots of natural resources in the area.  North Dakota has an unemployment rate 5.9% lower than the national US average, at 3.6%.  This state has many different jobs available because of the area they are in.  In North Dakota, there in petroleum and good land for farming.  The natural area can also open jobs for tourism, because many people will come to that place to look at natural wonders, visit national parks, or just stay there for a bit because it's nice.

Many unemployment rates are affected greatly by the education people in the area have.  For example, Minnesota's unemployment rate is 6.8%, which is 2.7% lower than the national average.  This may be because 31% of the adult population has either a bachelor's degree or higher.  This allows for more people to get better jobs, and can cause openings for people who could work under them.  For example, if there are no jobs open except for many spots for lawyers, everyone will want to be a lawyer.  However, if a jobless person that didn't go to school tried to apply to be a lawyer, he wouldn't get the job.  If people in that place had good education, it would be much easier to get that job as a lawyer, because they would know how to do that job.

Here is a site I used to compare unemployment rates to job openings and education.  Fish

SLC

How have I grown as a student?

Last quarter was the first time I took a geography class, and I have never really been good with atlases before then.  Since taking geography with Mr J, I believe I can find cities and countries easier, as well as label maps with rivers, cities, and compass roses.  I also know how to find new quantities and values of lots of things in science, like mass and volume and density, using water.

What challenges did I face?

The biggest challenge I had was note taking.  On most projects, I don't take any notes, and when I do, they are extremely low quality and I don't take them willingly.  In Humanities, we were assigned an argumentative essay about what democracies were supposed to focus on: general welfare or individual needs.  In this class, I only took one section of notes, and it was the quotes from the giver.  I also didn't do the pre-writing and made the outline after I had already written the first paragraph.  I find it annoying, difficult, and inconvenient to take notes, because usually, I would just write my facts right into the text.  Also, while reading an online article, it is irritating to have to switch tabs to you tones document to write something down.  However, it helps organize thoughts and ideas to write down what you've learned so you can get to them quickly later.  I also had some challenges in orchestra, which can be read here.

Goals

Next quarter is the last quarter of this year, and I need to guarantee the best grade possible for me, because this quarter I know my overall grade in many classes will be a 4 due to recent assignments.  I think that in order for this to happen, I need to follow the instructions that the teachers give me, and try not to take any shortcuts like not taking notes or skipping pre-writing.  I should also focus more in class and pay attention to ways that I can make my work better.