Andrewpedia

Debate: Trade and the Environment

2011-08-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

Eric “Andrew” Coleman

Debate: Trade and the Environment

Introduction

The environment is a factor in trade and economic models. To ignore the pollution for too long leave the environment unusable. International trade seems to function better in markets that are established and free of conflict. Markets that would protect or that would have the potential of protecting depleted, overharvested resources seem to only function in trading zones that are free of conflict. Thus trade is the best and only war to ensure that a market is able to protect natural resources.

Supporting Statements

Corn and sugar

Many environmentalists complain that trade increases environmental degradation unequivocally. A case against this is the United States ethanol production. The United States maintains an import quota on sugar which artificially inflates the price to levels that are almost double in other countries. In equatorial countries like Brazil where sugarcane is used to produce ethanol instead of corn, much more efficient levels of output are attained because sugarcane is a crop that requires much less resources for ethanol production. In the article, “The Power of Big Corn”, describes well why corn ethanol is much less efficient than sugarcane or other alternatives.

“The ratio of energy gained versus the energy needed to plant, fertilize, and harvest the crop is poor, and corn crops are notoriously hard on soil. With technological advances, scientists hope to be able to replace corn with agricultural waste or a non-food plant like switch grass.

In the meantime, sugar cane could be used to produce ethanol with much less investment in energy.” 1.

The inefficient use of resources within the United States reduces environmental protections.

War

Although not well considered by most environmental economists, war is a producer of pollution that should be given more thought. The human family is the only species that has the ability to decrease its own population in drastic ways. In fact the in some instances an entire population has been reduced to zero. The Book of Mormon records the history of the Jaredite people who reduced their population of 2 million down to 2 people in a short period of time. This land that was found by later inhabitants noted that such was the destruction of the land that nothing was able to grow upon it.

Including Homo Sapians as a species of the tierra environ infers that war is a pollution that reduces the size of the human family. Economist Thomas Friedman describes how trade and more specifically the establishment of international corporations reduces warfare.

“An example exists in countries that have a McDonald's franchise. Of the many countries with franchises, the only armed conflicts to have taken place between these countries have been the United States invasion of Panama, the NATO Bombing Campaign during the Kosovo War, the 2006 Lebanon War, the Kargil War the 2008 South Ossetia war, and the Salvadoran Civil War. This is because intensifying of global economic integration, symbolized by a McDonald's network, increases the costs of war for both victor and defeated to a greater degree than ever before.” 1

Many historians agree that the jump in average world wide tariffs were significant causes of fierce german nationalism in the 1930’s was the increase in protectionist tariffs placed during this time period. The beginning of this trend was passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, which was passed by Senator Reed Smoot from Utah and Rep. Willis Hawley from Oregon. The act raised tariffs as high as 60% on some imports. The purpose of the tariff was to protect American farmers and industries during the great depression. The legislation backfired and inspired every other trading country to enact tariffs of their own. Average tariffs jumped from 15% in 1914 to 25% in 1933. One economic historian described the situation as such.

“A groundswell of resentment spread around the world and quickly led to retaliation. Italy objected to duties on hars and bonnets of straw, wool-felt heat, and olive oil; Spain reacted sharply to increases on cork and onions; Canada took umbrage at increases on maple sugar and syrup, potatoes, cream, butter, buttermilk, and skimmed milk. Switzerland was moved to boycott American typewriters, fountain pens, motor cars, and films because of increased duties on watches, clocks, embroidery, cheese and shoes… Retaliation was begun long before the [Smoot-Hawley] bill was enacted into law in June 1930.”3

Aside from the human costs the environmental costs are also significant. During the interwar activities the military, especially the United States military, is significant consumer of petroleum. According to Different Takes, an environmental group, in New Hampshire.

“In the US – the world’s most oil-thirsty country – the largest single consumer of oil is the Pentagon. Together, the world’s militaries consume as much petroleum as Japan – the world’s second largest economy – and produce an estimated 6-10% of global air pollution.”4

A devil’s advocate antagonist could argue that the trade has damaged the environment in far worse ways that war has. Though that maybe true, the model of market of goods and services can be be altered to include negative externalities like pollution. In this regard, producers of goods must compensate those they negatively affect. In wartime however, markets are not able to constrain suppliers or consumer in such a fashion that will allow over harvested resources to rebound. The economics of warfare do not have the ability to factor in negative externalities.

To illustrate this point, think of the deforestation that occurs in Brazil every year, versus the deforestation that occurred in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. The firms that operate in Brazil have complete control over how many acres are consumed. This rate can contract or expand depending on the demand of the world markets and the limited supply of rainforest. Contraction can happen at the bidding of the land owners, when these acres are consumed at a above normal rate.

The Vietnamese however are not able to control the rate of deforestation during the Vietnam War because there does not exist a market where land owners can exercise their land rights over their land against the United States. During the Vietnam War, “19 million gallons of Agent Orange, the US dropped some 25 million bombs on South Vietnam, wiping out half of the mangrove forests and eliminating almost 5 million acres of forest.”4

Significant evidence of conservation actually occurs in Africa but only in countries free of conflict and able to enforce market regulations. An abstract from an economic journal.

“There is a lack of consensus among some conservation NGOs and African governments concerning the acceptability and effectiveness of trophy hunting as a conservation tool. This lack of consensus is due partly to a lack of reliable information on the economic significance and ecological impact of the industry. We provide a review of the scale of the trophy hunting industry, and assess both positive and negative issues relating to hunting and conservation in Africa. Trophy hunting occurs in 23 countries in Africa, with the largest industries occurring in southern Africa and Tanzania, where the industry is expanding. The trophy hunting industry has remained static or is shrinking in Central and West Africa. A minimum of 1,394,000 km2 is used for trophy hunting in sub-Saharan Africa, which exceeds the area encompassed by national parks. Trophy hunting is thus of major importance to conservation in Africa by creating economic incentives for conservation over vast areas, including areas which may be unsuitable for alternative wildlife-based land uses such as photographic ecotourism. However, there are a number of problems associated with the industry which limit conservation benefits. Several of these problems are common to multiple countries, suggesting that if solutions were developed, conservation benefits would accrue over large areas.”5

The countries mentioned in the abstract and following journal article are all countries free of serious conflict where markets can enforce their power. The article lists the countries that such sport hunting cannot take place and all are conflict torn states that are not able to support regulations.

Conclusion

Environmental protection can only occur when markets are securely in place. And markets can only exist when property rights are not violated through conflict. The best protection for the environment in our modern world is through trade.

Bibliography

1. “The Power of Big Corn”

2. Lexus and the Olive tree Thomas Friedman

3. Charles Kindleberger. 1989. “Commercial Policy between the Wars” in P. Mathias and S. Pollard, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. VIII, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p.170.

4. A Publication Of The Population And Development Program At Hampshire College no. 22 ~ Spring 2003

5. Economic and conservation significance of the trophy hunting industry in sub-Saharan Africa Biological Conservation Volume 134, Issue 4, February 2007, Pages 455-469 P.A. Lindseya, P.A. Rouletb and S.S. Romañacha,

Paper

A 4 page, 12 pt font, double-spaced, 1 inch margin paper on one of the 7 topics discussed in our weekly debates will be due on the last day of class.

Students should use any or all of the sources cited by themselves and other students during the relevant debate as well as one additional academic source (a simple search of articles or books on the BYU library cite will reveal many potential sources).

The academic and non-academic sources should be cited by footnotes within the paper.

Furthermore, in order to connect the student’s research and the topics discussed in class, the student must relate the issue to a model or theory discussed in class or in the text.

The paper must include an introduction, body and conclusion. The body of the paper should discuss the various opinions, statistics and proposed solutions and in the conclusion the student must side with an opinion or solution and state the reasons why they support such an opinion or solution.

The table below describes the number of points deducted from the max of 10 due to the absence of the following elements:

Structure (4pgs, intro, body, footnotes, conclusion, etc)	3
Used and cited sources	2
Used an academic source	2
Issue connected with model or theory	2
Spelling, grammar, etc	1

University of Florida Office of Technology Licensing - Portable Temporary Low-Profile Barrier (PTB) for Roadside Safety

2010-10-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

University of Florida Office of Technology Licensing - Portable Temporary Low-Profile Barrier (PTB) for Roadside Safety

Composting

2010-06-18T03:10:00.001-07:00

I just created my first website. I feel rather proud of myself.

Intuit feels like it is from 2003. I would look into AJAX.

So many people don't realize that the world is going to change in a fundamental way with the advent of Twitter.

I will put it this way. Facebook was to the internet/email as Twitter is to Facebook.

Again reason for celebration. I constructed a website about composting.

Wikileaks

2010-04-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

Wikileaks needs to be looked at by everyone. Read about it. Watch this talk about it.

Commercialization idea:

Arbitrage the first rights to stories from Wikileaks to Journalists.

Why:

Many documents that Wikileaks sources can be fairly complicated and only journalists that can specialize in that arena have the ability to make sense of the documents. Breitbart.com has made a huge amount of money by drawing advertisers to its site because it is often the first place stories happen.

2009-08-06T01:43:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to share exactly what I look at all day long on the net. This site Dataopedia.com is up there with Google, Wikipedia, and BYU info in terms of utility.

Dataopedia takes absolutly all info that can be gleaned about a sites IP addresss and aggregates it into one place.

In case you aren't interested in what the links do, or if you don't know what a link does, it shows all data possible about BYU.edu's IP address.

Click on the link and you will see that 5% of the users and 2.3% of the pageviews come from Indian IP addresses. That's Asia Minor India, not Native American Indian. If you look farther down the DPRK (North Korea) graps a good one and a half percent of the users and half a percent of the page views. That is clearly more than South Korea, because it is not even on the map.

My point is that India is third in educating students at the university level after the US and China. In 2006 almost 400,000 students were awarded technical degrees. The Indian Educational System is growing faster than anyother in the world.

You may say,"But those Indians aren't acutally applying to BYU, there are just a billion people over there snooping around on the net for an education in the US, they aren't actually going to apply and come to BYU".

Though I personally don't know any Indians at BYU, I am well connected to the Nepalese community. Nepal is the country to the north of India and also has an impressive educational system. The number of Nepalese attending BYU increases by almost 10% every year.

LDS Youth need to be aware that the competativeness at BYU increases every year. I would venture to say it increases at a faster rate than almost any other academic institution. When I graduated high school ('03) the average ACT score for incoming freshman was 24-26, currently the average ACT score for incoming freshman is 27-29.

LDS Youth need to be aware of these things or they will need to opt. for BYU-Idaho/Hawaii, for that "BYU experience."

2009-05-31T05:44:00.000-07:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6604775898578139565

This documentary needs to be watched if you have ever not understood any of the following ideas:

-Why is the US and Israel are such best friends?

-Why do terrorists attack the United States?

-Why do Muslims become terrorists?

After you watch the documentary reevaluate how much trust you give those who inform you about the complicated world we live in.

If, after watching this documentary, you are left feeling unseated in your media consumption, follow Robert Jensen. He is one of the journalists who teaches at UT-Austin.

2009-05-18T02:11:00.000-07:00

After watching Half Ton Dad, I decided to give a shout out to the 2000+ morbidly obese people in the USA who don't leave there beds, live on 30,000+ calorie a day diets, and have loving familes who not only bring them the junk food to remain fat, but bath their half ton bodies.

China

2009-05-18T00:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/17/david-miliband-china-world-power

Is anyone shocked by this article. I mean honestly, Who didn't see this coming?

I just want to know, what on earth is Barack Obama doing to help America compete better globally?

As far as I can tell, I have never heard the word "china" escape his lip-glossed lips.

Mitt Romney, Ron Paul raised the China issue.

2009-04-20T00:05:00.001-07:00

The Mexican War on drugs has finally caught my attention.

Here are the basics, Pres. Calderon is the first Mexican president to have the courage to stand up to the evil of drugs.

He started to actually arrest known drug lords, smugglers, and dealers.

These criminals operating within prison arrange for the murder of journalists, politicians, police and military commanders.

Innocent people are caught in the cross fire.

Three years later 11 hundred people are dead in Mexico.

Check out the timeline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Mexican_Drug_War

Don't buy Drugs.

2009-03-20T04:13:00.001-07:00

I connect with Steve's first story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

2009-03-01T01:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.brynathyn.edu/

This is a link to one of the most overfunded universities in the world. Bryn Athyn has an endowment that would cover each student (all 15o of them) with 11 million big ones!

Watch some of the videos. I just really think they are just really really cool.

2009-01-01T17:43:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine asked me a few days ago, "Andrew, I really respect what you read. What are you reading these days?"

I told my friend that I have been reading a lot of academic journals about entreprenuership.
BYU has an array of subscriptions. This is one thought about passing along.

VC & Entrepreneurship
July 30, 2008 Wednesday 7:14 PM EST
30 ideas to be funded - meet ycombinator

LENGTH: 2691 words

Jul. 30, 2008 ( delivered by Newstex) -- Paul Jozefak links to Paul Graham , who has put together a list of ideas he considers to fund.Rare to see that VCs open the gates and describe in more detail what they are looking for. Alas most ideas are very abstract (and to me knowledge) tehre are few 'real' solution but I guess teh list should also not be outdated just tomorrow :)1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. Something is broken when Sony (NYSE:SNE) and Universal are suing children. Actually, at least two things are broken: the software that file sharers use, and the record labels' business model.

The current situation can't be the final answer. And what happened with music is now happening with movies. When the dust settles in 20 years, what will this world look like? What components of it could you start building now?The answer may be far afield. The answer for the music industry, for example, is probably to give up insisting on payment for recorded music and focus on licensing and live shows. But what happens to movies? Do they morph into games?2. Simplified browsing. There are a lot of cases where you'd trade some of the power of a web browser for greater simplicity. Grandparents and small children don't want the full web; they want to communicate and share pictures and look things up. What viable ideas lie undiscovered in the space between a digital photo frame and a computer running Firefox? If you built one now, who else would use it besides grandparents and small children?3. New news. As Marc Andreessen points out, newspapers are in trouble. The problem is not merely that they've been slow to adapt to the web. It's more serious than that: their problems are due to deep structural flaws that are exposed now that they have competitors. When the only sources of news were the wire services and a few big papers, it was enough to keep writing stories about how the president met with someone and they each said conventional things written in advance by their staffs. Readers were never that interested, but they were willing to consider this news when there were no alternatives.News will morph significantly in the more competitive environment of the web. So called "blogs" (because the old media call everything published online a "blog") like PerezHilton and TechCrunch are one sign of the future. News sites like Reddit and Digg are another. But these are just the beginning.4. Outsourced IT. In most companies the IT department is an expensive bottleneck. Getting them to make you a simple web form could take months. Enter Wufoo. Now if the marketing department wants to put a form on the web, they can do it themselves in 5 minutes. You can take practically anything users still depend on IT departments for and base a startup on it, and you will have the enormous force of their present dissatisfaction pushing you forward.5. Enterprise software 2.0. Enterprise software companies sell bad software for huge amounts of money. They get away with it for a variety of reasons that link together to form a sort of protective wall. But the software world is changing. I suspect that if you study different parts of the enterprise software business (not just what the software does, but more importantly, how it's sold) you'll find parts that could be picked off by startups.One way to start is to make things for smaller companies, because they can't afford the overpriced stuff made for big ones. They're also easier to sell to.6. More variants of CRM. This is a form of enterprise software, but I'm mentioning it explicitly because it seems like this area has such potential. CRM ("Customer Relationship Management") means all sorts of different things, but a lot of the current embodiments don't seem much more than mailing list managers. It should be possible to make interactions with customers much higher-res.7. Something your company needs that doesn't exist. Many of the best startups happened when someone needed something in their work, found it didn't exist, and quit to build it. This is vaguer than most of the other recipes here, but it may be the most valuable. You're working on something you know customers want, because you were the customer. And if it was something you needed at work, other people will too, and they'll be willing to pay for it.So if you're working for a big company and you want to strike out on your own, here's a recipe for an idea. Start this sentence: "We'd pay a lot if someone would just build a ..." Whatever you say next is probably a good product idea.8. Dating. Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will appear. But anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users-which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem.9. Photo/video sharing services. A lot of the most popular sites on the web are for photo sharing. But the sites classified as social networks are also largely about photo sharing. As much as people like to share words (IM and email and blogging are "word sharing" apps), they probably like to share pictures more. It's less work and the results are usually more interesting. I think there is huge growth still to come. There may ultimately be 30 different subtypes of image/video sharing service, half of which remain to be discovered.10. Auctions. Online auctions have more potential than most people currently realize. Auctions seem boring now because EBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) is doing a bad job, but is still powerful enough that they have a de facto monopoly. Result: stagnation. But I suspect EBay could now be attacked on its home territory, and that this territory would, in the hands of a successful invader, turn out to be more valuable than it currently appears. As with dating, however, a startup that wants to do this has to expend more effort on their strategy for cracking the monopoly than on how their auction site will work.11. Web Office apps. We're interested in funding anyone competing with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) desktop software. Obviously this is a rich market, considering how much Microsoft makes from it. A startup that made a tenth as much would be very happy. And a startup that takes on such a project will be helped along by Microsoft itself, who between their increasingly bureaucratic culture and their desire to protect existing desktop revenues will probably do a bad job of building web-based Office variants themselves. Before you try to start a startup doing this, however, you should be prepared to explain why existing web-based Office alternatives haven't taken the world by storm, and how you're going to beat that.12. Fix advertising. Advertising could be made much better if it tried to please its audience, instead of treating them like victims who deserve x amount of abuse in return for whatever free site they're getting. It doesn't work anyway; audiences learn to tune out boring ads, no matter how loud they shout.What we have now is basically print and TV advertising translated to the web. The right answer will probably look very different. It might not even seem like advertising, by current standards. So the way to approach this problem is probably to start over from scratch: to think what the goal of advertising is, and ask how to do that using the new ingredients technology gives us. Probably the new answers exist already, in some early form that will only later be recognized as the replacement for traditional advertising.Bonus points if you can invent new forms of advertising whose effects are measurable, above all in sales.13. Online learning. US schools are often bad. A lot of parents realize it, and would be interested in ways for their kids to learn more. Till recently, schools, like newspapers, had geographical monopolies. But the web changes that. How can you teach kids now that you can reach them through the web? The possible answers are a lot more interesting than just putting books online.One route would be to start with test prep services, for which there's already demand, and then expand into teaching kids more than just how to score high on tests. Another would be to start with games and gradually make them more thoughtful. Another, particularly for younger kids, would be to let them learn by watching one another (anonymously) solve problems.14. Tools for measurement. Now that so much happens on computers connected to networks, it's possible to measure things we may not have realized we could. And there are some big problems that may be soluble if we can measure more. The most important of all is the defining flaw of large organizations: you can't tell who the most productive people are. A small company is measured directly by the market. But once an organization gets big enough that people on in the interior are protected from market forces, politics starts to rule, instead of performance. An improvement of even a few percent in the ability to measure what actually happens in large organizations would have a huge impact on the world economy, and a startup that enabled it would be entitled to a cut.15. Off the shelf security. Services like ADT charge a fortune. Now that houses and their owners are both connected to networks practically all the time, a startup could stitch together alternatives out of cheap, existing hardware and services.16. A form of search that depends on design. Google doesn't have a lot of weaknesses. One of the biggest is that they have no sense of design. They do the next best thing, which is to keep things sparse. But if there were a kind of search that depended a lot on design, a startup might actually be able to beat Google at search. I don't know if there is, but if you do, we'd love to hear from you.17. New payment methods. There are almost certainly things whose growth is held back because there's no way to charge for them. And the people who could implement solutions don't realize how much demand there would be, precisely because this growth has been held back. So pretty much any new way of paying for things that's easier for some class of situations will turn out to have a bigger market than its inventors expected. Look at Paypal. (Warning: Regulated industry.)18. The WebOS. It probably won't be a literal translation of a client OS shifted to servers. But as applications migrate to servers, it seems possible there will be something that plays a central role like an OS does. We've already funded several startups that could be candidates. But this is a big prize, and there will probably be multiple winners.19. Application and/or data hosting. This is related to the preceding idea, but not identical. And again, while we've already funded several startups in this area, it's probably going to be big enough that it contains several rich markets.It may turn out that 4, 18, and 19 all have the same answer. Or rather, that there will be things that answer all three. But the way to find such a grand, overarching solution is probably not to approach it directly, but to start by solving smaller, specific problems, then gradually expand your scope. Start by writing Basic for the Altair.20. Shopping guides. Like news, shopping used to be constrained by geography. You went to your local store and chose from what they had. Now the space of possibilities is bewilderingly large, and people need help navigating it. If you already know what you want, Bountii can find you the best price. But how do you decide what you want? Hint: One answer is related to number 3.21. Finance software for individuals and small businesses. Intuit seems ripe for picking off. The difficulty is that they've got data connections with all the banks. That's hard for a small startup to match. But if you can start in a neighboring area and gradually expand into their territory, you could displace them.22. A web-based Excel/database hybrid. People often use Excel as a lightweight database. I suspect there's an opportunity to create the program such users wish existed, and that there are new things you could do if it were web-based. Like make it easier to get data into it, through forms or scraping.Don't make it feel like a database. That frightens people. The question to ask is: how much can I let people do without defining structure? You want the database equivalent of a language that makes its easy to keep data in linked lists. (Which means you probably want to write it in one.)23. More open alternatives to Wikipedia. Deletionists rule Wikipedia. Ironically, they're constrained by print-era thinking. What harm does it do if an online reference has a long tail of articles that are only interesting to a few people, so long as everyone can still find whatever they're looking for? There is room to do to Wikipedia what Wikipedia did to Britannica.24. A buffer against bad customer service. A lot of companies (to say nothing of government agencies) have appalling customer service. "Please stay on the line. Your call is important to us." Doesn't it make you cringe just to read that? Sometimes the UIs presented to customers are even deliberately difficult; some airlines deliberately make it hard to buy tickets using miles, for example. Maybe if you built a more user-friendly wrapper around common bad customer service experiences, people would pay to use it. Passport expediters are an encouraging example.25. A Craigslist competitor. Craiglist is ambivalent about being a business. This is both a strength and a weakness. If you focus on the areas where it's a weakness, you may find there are better ways to solve some of the problems Craigslist solves.26. Better video chat. Skype and Tokbox are just the beginning. There's going to be a lot of evolution in this area, especially on mobile devices.27. Hardware/software hybrids. Most hackers find hardware projects alarming. You have to deal with messy, expensive physical stuff. But Meraki shows what you can do if you're willing to venture even a little way into hardware. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in hardware; you can often do dramatically new things by making comparatively small tweaks to existing stuff.Hardware is already mostly software. What I mean by a hardware/software hybrid is one in which software plays a very visible role. If you work on an idea of this type you'll tend to have the field to yourself, because most hackers are afraid of hardware, and most hardware companies can't write good software. (One reason your iPod isn't made by Sony is that Sony can't write iTunes.)28. Fixing email overload. A lot of people, including me, feel they get too much email. A solution would find a ready market. But the best solution may not be anything as obvious as a new mail reader.Related problem: Using your inbox as a to-do list. The solution is probably to acknowledge this rather than prevent it.29. Easy site builders for specific markets. Weebly is a good, general-purpose site builder. But there are a lot of markets that could use more specialized tools. What's the best way to make a web site if you're a real estate agent, or a restaurant, or a lawyer? There still don't seem to be canonical answers.Obviously the way to build this is to write a flexible site builder, then write layers on top to produce different variants. Hint: The key to making a site builder for end-users is to make software that lets people with no design ability produce things that look good-or at least professional.30. Startups for startups. The increasing number of startups is itself an opportunity for startups. We're one; TechCrunch is another. What other new things can you do?via Newstex ID: CREA-0003-27050378

2008-10-16T01:47:00.000-07:00

Past Participants’ Experiences

My China experience was life changing. Living in China for six months changed my life in so many

ways. I think differently, I have more confidence, I am more independent, and appreciative of life, just

to name a few. Every day I am reminded of something from China that has considerably changed the

way I look at life. I was also lucky enough to make so many amazing friends. Friends I will keep in

touch with for years to come.

Winter 2008- Spencer A. Streeter

BYU-I Student

You come to love their strange way of living that seems weird to us, but works for them. The food, the

sights, the smells, the feeling, the noise; I miss it all! More than anything I miss their faces. I miss the

sweet smiles of all my students, whom I will never forget. No matter what age, they will teach you so

much more than you will teach them. They will teach you to be humble and kind; to be respectful and

hardworking. They will give you an enthusiasm for learning. They will give you a greater appreciation

for your own country and life. You will grow to love them.

Winter 2008- Tricia Packer

BYU-I Student

I am so glad that I decided to step out of my comfort zone and come to China. China Horizons

provides a great opportunity and it will surely be a chapter in my life I will NEVER forget. The

students are eager to learn and want to be your best friend. They will gladly do anything for you and

make you feel very welcome. Just come with an open mind, ready to be taught a new way of life

different than what you are accustomed to. Don't forget to have fun. It will be over before you know

it!

Winter 2009- Elizabeth Jenkins

BYU-Provo Student

This is a flier from an NDA started out of rexburg. I would like to draw your attention to the last line where it says "BYU-Provo". Many don't prefer BYU to be referred to as BYU-Provo. First, it is not what BYU is called at all. I would prefer the university to not be connotated with anything but Brigham Young's name.

BYU is not a satalite school in a complex educational system where people need to refer to where it is. There are only two other universities in the CES, BYU-Hawaii, and BYU-Idaho.

Referring to BYU in this manner is a common nowhere but at BYU-Idaho and possibly BYU-Hawaii (I have never personally been to BYUH).

A google search of "BYU-Provo" will mostly give responses in addresses on BYU's website and other addresses.

The couple that were found in the first 10 pages that were don't come from BYU's website at all. They are from a BYU-Idaho nursing

school spreasheet and from a BYU-Hawaii announcements page.

I can understand Texas and/or California desiring to make distinctions between it's many campuses. e.g. UTA, UTSA, UCLA, UC-Berkley etc. These educational systems were created from the onset to have multiple campuses that have a similar academic commonality to them.

The differences between BYU and BYU-Idaho accademically are note worthy. Were one to transfer from BYU-Idaho to BYU, most of the classes would not qualify as transferrable. Many students successfully transfer from BYUI to BYU every year. Most come to BYU from BYUI with fewer credits then that they had originally.

The Universities in the CES do not have an academic commonality. BYU is not similar to BYU-Idaho nor BYU-Hawaii. Though BYU-Idaho and BYU-Hawaii have transformed each respectives programs in tremendous since becoming part of the CES, both do not compare to that of BYU.

Associating BYU and provo in the same word distracts hearers to an idea that is different from simply, "BYU". As an employee of BYU who deals with business internationally, I have personal experience in this. In many cases people recognize the name BYU more than they do Utah much less Provo. If anything at all BYU-Utah should be used instead of BYU-Provo. Even though that would cause considerable confusion amongst those that know of the BYU-Utah rivalry it would at least be consistant with the other official names of BYU-Idaho and BYU-Hawaii.

A more appropriate and fitting name for these schools to refer to BYU as would be BYU-Utah campus or BYU-Provo Campus.

Even BYU-Flagship campus would be appropriate.

2008-08-17T00:27:00.001-07:00

http://www.accesshollywood.com/article/10876/michael-phelps-introducing-the-worlds-new-1-celebrity/

Here is an article quoting Bob "I have been reporting the Olympics since it's inception" Costas letting Michal Phelps know that he is the "#1 celebrity" in the world.

First of all, does Costas even know what facebook is? I am very sure someone born in '52 has no idea how little of an effect that Intenet 2.0 has on anything. If popularity or "celebrity" status were determined by FB then Barack Osama would clearly be more popular than John Mccain in our national election. According to http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ there is a statistical tie between the two candidates.

Micheal Phelps won 8 Gold medals in Beijing this year. A couple of those were obtained by a finger nail's length.

NBC is missing the true talent. Usain Bolt is the athlete to watch. He is on the cusp of a trend that will redefine the 100M and 200M event. For the past two to three decades no Gold medalist sprinter has been over 6'4", and certainly none have coasted that last half of the race.

One would think the sprinting scene is seeing a change in the making. From short, barrel chested, Deon Sanders look alikes; to tall, long-legged,"I am the next Randy Moss".

But according to Costas, Facebook has spoken.

bloggin

2008-08-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7540427.stm

here is a link to an article about people that still believe that the earth is flat. They are called Flat earthers. Despite the Alaskan Mountains of evidence that the earth really is round they still are extremely set on their theory.

I am not here to say they are wrong for believing what they believe. I personally have used a GPS device and have taken enough physics classes, and seen Apollo 13 enough, and have been to the top of the World Trade Center(to see the curve in the earth), and have seen the top of the mast first when a ship is sailing toward me from the hozizon, and well you get the point.

Again, I am not here to disagree with their right to believe. I am here to swiftly comment on the obstanance that organizations give people. I know there are certain values and ethos that I adhere to because of the organizations that I belong to. I hope I am only persuaded to follow the influences of the Holy Ghost.