Blog Assignment #3

Slow reaction on the climate change.

The last couple of years the awareness of climate change has increased and became top priority among politicians round the world. As an ordinary human being at grass roots level it might seem a little bit late for the politicians to react on the climate change. Why has it been such a slow reaction on this important issue?

I think one of the reasons why the message has been slow in coming across is that politicians didn’t have sufficient knowledge on the subject from the beginning and that they had other priorities on the political agenda such as world peace and world hunger. But since the climate change seems to accelerate they have had to react. Scientists increasingly alarming reports about how the world feels has led to that politicians realized the importance of climate discussions. The Prime Minister of Sweden, Fredrik Reinfeldt, said just before he was elected in 2006 that the environmental issue was not on his party’s agenda. I know his party now has the environmental issue on its agenda. Maybe he also regrets what he said to the reporter.

Another additional reason why the awareness of the earth's condition has gone so slow is, from my view economic factors. There is greed, at least among one group of people in the world that exceeds the fear that the earth will be destroyed if we don’t do something about it. They are not a large group. They are the owners of industries handling with fossil fuels. Once, I was at a lecture about this, where the lecturer said that the individual environmental selective waste collection didn’t contribute to environmental improvement unless those who handled with fossil fuels stopped doing that since emissions of fossil fuels is affecting the environment most negative. His suggestion was that ordinary people should stop using fossil fuels. Then we would force those who work with fossil fuels to stop that which would contribute to a better environment.

Finally, I believe that it is in human nature to “bury our heads in the sand” (as we say in Sweden) which also affect the level of awareness on climate change. I think we have a difficulty to understand that the state of the world can change for the worse because our brains can’t imagine it. We have a belief that the world should remain as it always has been. Otherwise, I can’t explain why we don’t listen more to the experts. For it may well not be that the truth is that we are less intelligent than we think?

Britt-Marie Melin

Blog Assignment #2: The fascination of a TV Series.

I was born in the late 50´s and my parents’ didn’t have any TV, in fact my grandparents were the first persons in my nearness that bought one. I have read letters written by my aunt to my mother (my aunt was at that time in the late 50´s just 15 years old) that they were going to show TV programmes in “Folkets Hus” since the people who was in charge of “Folkets Hus” recently had bought a TV. That was really a topic to talk about at that time. In those letters she also wrote which families had bought a TV since the last time she wrote. Everybody wanted a TV at that time but not everyone could afford one.

My early memories of TV programmes are The Flintstones and Bonanza (Bröderna Cartwright), both American programmes. I thought The Flintstones was a nice programme because it was cartooned and Bonanza was very exiting as it was about cowboys and Indians. When I watched Bonanza I thought it became too exiting, I ran out from the room were the TV was, into the hall and there I was jumping and holding my ears. A couple of years ago they re-ran Bonanza. I saw a programme of nostalgic reasons and then I understood what TV does to our brains. The more you look at TV, the blunter you became as the years pass. Watching the programme now made me nearly laugh. Bonanza was mostly recorded in a studio. You could hear the echo when they spoke, it was not exiting at all and the acting was not either good.

In the 80´s there was a couple of TV series that I watched regularly e.g. Dallas, Falcon Crest and some series from Australia which was very good. The one I liked most was The Thorn Birds from Australia, a TV series based on a book written by Colleen McCullough. I loved the book when it came. I even read the book while I was cooking because I couldn’t stop reading until the book was finished.

Although we today have a lot of TV channels to choose among, I think the programmes aren’t any better comparing to when we had two (or only one) channel-s. It’s just more of the same. There is still a lot of TV series from America but a new aspect of TV Series today is they so called “reality shows” with people who want to become famous and they do anything in these programmes to stay in the viewers’ mind after the programme is over. I just can’t induce myself to waste time on these programmes. Maybe I’m too old.

I consider myself watching TV less than before. There is so much else to do in spare time. I have lot of interests to fill the evenings with. I sing in a choir and I go to gym. I have also grandchildren which I love to spend time with. When I watch TV nowadays I choose carefully which programmes I want to look at. If I want to watch a TV series I often choose English ones because to my opinion they are of higher quality than e.g. American TV series and they are also more down to earth which I like.