27 Nov 2009

Human rights; Freedom of expression

Human rights are fundamental rights and freedoms which all humans, whatever people nationality, place of resident, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, etc, are entitled.

These human rights are civil and political rights, the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, equality before the law, economic, social and cultural rights, the right to participate in culture, the right to be treated with respect and dignity, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education in some countries.

Human rights have been evolving during the human history. The first example of a table of laws that contain individual rights is the tablet of Hammurabi. The tablet was created by the Sumerian king Hammurabi about 4000 years ago that it included 282 laws that was a precedent for a legal system. This kind of legal document protects the people from some types of persecution and punishment. The problems with Hammurabi's code were related with nature, it didn’t protection on more abstract ideas such as race, religion, beliefs, and individual freedoms.

Centuries later, on December 10 in 1948 the General Assembly of United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a text which appears all fundamental rights and freedoms that humans of around the world deserve to have.

States assume obligations under international law to respect, to protect and to fulfill human rights.
The obligation to respect means that States couldn't interfere and change in human rights. The obligation to protect requires States to protect individuals and groups against human rights abuses. And the obligation to fulfill means that States must take actions to facilitate the pleasure of basic human rights

Nowadays there are 30 human rights. I especially like human right 19: Freedom of expression. Here there is how it appears in the table of Human rights

Human Right # 19
Freedom of Expression

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers

Freedom of expression is very important right because it is basic in permission to work and public participation in decision-making. Citizens cannot exercise their right to vote or take part in public decision-making if they do not have free access to information and ideas and to express points of view freerly.

Breaking freedom of expression often go togheter with other violations, in particular the right to freedom of association. In recent years progress have been make in terms of securing respect for the right to freddom of expessions. For example, in Spain during Franco's time nodbody can express themselves like they want: now, more and less, everybody can do everyting they want, always respecting other people because democray has been instaured. There are some countries that this right has no been instaured because of estabilshed politcal goverment, like a dictatorial goverment.

Podcast: Joke

"It's time for E-books. Paper books are history". Do you agree?

There are a lot of reasons why electronic books won't be healthy for people and also there are some inconvencients about that.

Firstly, these books are certainly practical books because they are not heavy neither uncomfortable to take everywhere if you want. But, do you imagine reading always in an electronic screen? It will produce a very important damage in our vision and later on people will have to use glasses perhaps.


An important aspect also, is that it is a pity to lose this paper books costume; libraries will decrease with the electronic era and these buildings are really cultural places. If we use these E-books we only llok for books that we know; if we go to the library we can find a lot of different types of books and finds a different stile that we maybe like. Althought paper books dame the enviroment, it is also important that people can be healty.

In conclusion, traditional books should not disappear to mantain the libraries, constumes and health. Perhaps, in twenty years people won't remember about paper books, but, by the time, we must preserve these great cultural elements.

Presentation e-mail


Hi Lourdes! I’m Ariadna Julià and this is my e-mail to explain you a little bit how I’m.

Sincerely, I identify me with the Earth’s element, like I chose on Monday, although I think that also I’ve some characteristics like people who chose the Sun’s element.

I don’t believe in the horoscope, but I agree with that when, for example, tells the personality about every sign; my sign is Taurus and I completely agree when the horoscope says that they are practical persons and they’ve a strong character.

Having a strong character can be good or not, it depends on how you head for in your life. For example, if you’ve strong character in your work’s life, you’ll be succeeded in every thing that you do. But if you’ve strong character when you don’t have the reason about some matter, it won’t be so good.

How I said before, I also identify with the Sun’s element. I’m person who really like darling feels and I like feeling that people who I love, they love me too. So, these are some characteristics about my personality; I hope with that, you know me a little bit more!


CU in class Lourdes!

Ariadna.

26 Nov 2009

Problems help to mature

In the adolescence there are some physical and emotional changes in the adolescence that, although these changes can be excitants, also can be confused and uncomfortable for the young people or also for people who live with them.

Young people looking for experiences in a different way that, adults can’t understand. The first experiences with the drink, drugs or with cigarettes generally appear with other people; although the adult’s advertences, the young people ignore them and they don’t know distinguish the correct way.

It isn’t estrange that, the adolescences’ changes produces a lot of problems like emotional problems. A lot of young people feel depress, they cry and they desire go away in a different world. These feelings can develop some problems like the excess or decrease of eating, problems for sleeping or also problems about physical aspect.

These factors and others can produce in the adolescent a decrease of concentration and with that, bad results. Finally, the sexual problems and the use of drugs and alcohol are also problematic points. These aspects are maybe the factors that more worry parents, so it can be a high risk to be in contact with them, if young people don’t know about its consequences.

The majority of younger people want to try new experiences, especially, with danger things. All of these aspects and also the less information or the lack of interest about that, can produces in the adolescences serious problems.
Although this period can result so difficult to support, is the epoch that makes a person. With the bad and good experiences you learn about life; in conclusion, the adolescence is necessary to mature.

Most 'orphans' have a living parent, says charity

At least four out of five orphans children in orphanages in the whole world have a living parent according to a ledaing charity says.

Furthermore, millions of children are giving up by their poor parents who can not feed or educated them. These charities abuse of these orphans putting at risk make them working in industries, facing rape, trafficking and beatings. Nowadays, people arround the world must have the same rights as the poor people and the rich people. For this reason, in this case, there should be stricter monitoring of children's instituctions.

There are orphanages in some countries that have become big bussines with children's traffik and also, these institucions convince goverments to recive financial incentives using their well-known aspect.

Every time, are incresing the number of orphans with the consequense, that it takes, the high number of abusings, beatings and children's trafikking. If nobody contribute to solve these abuses and to return the rights to these poor children, these rate would be higher and it will be too late when we'd start to try solve this problem.




Extract from: BBC News

18 Nov 2009

1rst Oral presentation; Laughter Therapy

Oral presentation review

In general, I can be satisfied with the oral presentation that I did with Mónica although always there are aspects that we can improve.

The nerves always goes against us but thankfully I get used rapidly and though between word and word I was saying "eeh ... " constantly.

I thought that during the exposition I was lookint to the public and rarely to the paper and also I gestured enough. Probably he must have introduced a bit more the topic at the beginning and not to begin so suddenly.

From my point of view the structure of the presentation was correct and well tied content. To finish we could done a simulation of Laughter therapy class to complete the Oral presentation.

12 Nov 2009

The Lion King; analysis

In this post, I'm going to analyse a little bit the Lion King Film, a very important and recognise film.

As many Disney films, this story is leading the role in animals, in this case, in Lions, the Kings of the jungle.
The animals of this story, as a tradition in Disney films, are cartoons, and it implies that they have soul so they have dreams and autonomy too. These characters doesn't obey the instinct, but the feelings and this aspect leads them to acquire human features, being able of taking important decisions for their life and taking the freedom of expressing and keeping secrets about their feelings.

The animal instinct goes on at the background in the whole film and we can find some characters who differ in an individual way to the others because their specific personality an their capacity to create their own social world.

Nevertheless, as the spectators assume them as animals, they are not very conscious about this dobule game that implies to modify the human emotions.

The film beginss with the presentation in society of the young prince of the jungle, Simba, a little cub. To his side, there is the king, his father, a figure with a lot of athority. The little cub has to accept the law of the jungle and for this reason he must to be an intelligent prince and in the future, a great king like his father.

The old Rafiki, the shaman of the tribe, has to ratify the cub and, as the priest, he baptizes Simba. In this scene, Rafiki has to wait for the God's arrival that gives the benediction to close the rite. This fact clearly shows the religion that Disney has been based when he wrote the story: Catholicism; as everybody know, American people have a strong link with religion and it normally determines all their tasks in life.

The first scene suggests that the story develops in the nature an so it obeys her principal law: the survival of the fittest. The society is where the lions dominate, for their facility acces, the food which is the principal lack of the characters that in the story appear like a antagonistic's characters: the hyenas.

The relationship between the characters and the food tell us the inequality. The harmony breaks when the cub lion go in the Hyenas' land, the wretched land of the whole savannah. In the story, the king warns his son about the dangers that there are outside of this dominions.
Clearly, hyenas are the marginal and the immigrant's charcters of the story and with this situations, Scar, the king's enemy, takes advantatge and, with his song that says: "I will be the king, support me and nevermore they be have" convinces hyenas for having their support.

In conclusion, like many Disney films do, The Lion King chooses for the antagonistic roles of the story, characters that are inspired with North American's enemies and troubles -as the character Scar who is represented as a dictatorial leader-; it shows the way how poepole abuse of their power to include a strong ideology even so in the infantile films.

Economic problems of younger people

Every time, the cost of living increases and, although the salaries also go up, it is a problem for the society in general, overmore for young people.
As you know, young people go out of their parents home later than before; it can be for many reasons.

Firstly, when young people have the legal age to work most of them do not work, for many reasons, and a direct consequence about it is that the do not enough savings for the future. Then, if people work, they won't mantain their savings and finally they waste it on unnecessary things.


On the other hand, nowadays there are more people that study a career and sometimes these studies last several years. It provokes that people who study can not work during the year and consequently, they must live with their parents more than they thought.


To sum up, everyday life increases more than ever and it causes difficulties to some social classes; although it seems that economic problems of younger people are problems that can be inevitable, they are not the principal problems: a lot of young people don't want to work and they abuse of their parents, even in the future, these people will have serious problems with their economic life.