Cultural Project

Like most of you I watched a lot of presenations of our cultural topics. There was a great variety of topics covered and I guess everyone is lucky to chose the topics for the KGP on their own.

I watched some presentations which I personally found very well presentated but the topic chosen didn't attract me at all. That s why I have been clicking and reading through all the other cultural topics to find the five that fit best to me and my personal interests.

My final chose consists of the following five topics:

- Irish Gaelic – a dying language

- Irish language and its use in Northern Ireland

- Languages of Irish Travellers

- The life of Irish Traveller Women

- Culture Connects: Irish culture as a way of integration

I finally decided on these five topics because I have a great interest in languages in general and after a very pleasant talk with Fiona at the second barbecue where she explained me Irish in more detail I would like to know a little more of one of the oldest still spoken languages in Europe.

Strangely enough I am really curious and look forward to some serious reading

Good luck everyone for their KGP and have a nice summer break! :)

Renewable energy and its flipside - free post

Renewable energy and its flipside

Green energy is always praised as being environmentally friendly and the future source to cover our need of energy. It is, however, just very few published that sustainable energy has also its flipside and often pose a serious threat to ecosystems. Hydroelectric plants are a profitable opportunity to produce an enormous amount of green energy which on the one hand has a positive impact on a country's CO2 emission balance, on the other side they destroy whole ecosystems which are the natural habitats of countless species. So far, hundreds of species have already drastically eradicated, have disappeared from their natural habitat and can just be seen in zoological gardens or are even extinct because of damming rivers throughout the globe. The Brazilian Merganser sets a perfect example of how highly adapted animals have no chance to colonize new lands. This waterfowl of the category anatids lives in low densities in remote and mountainous regions where it inhabits clean swift-flowing rivers and streams with river rapids and riparian vegetation. Brazilian Mergansers are very territorial birds defending large stretches of river and the land surrounding the fast-flowing water. They are recognized as a resident species that do not abandon the watercourses where it established its territory, which some think is a reason why the birds are endangered. They don't move or want to move once their habitats have disappeared. The birds need large territories and their habitat is fast dwindling. The total world population for Brazilian Mergansers is believed to be less than 200 birds. Originally, the duck's geographical distribution comprised central-south Brazil and adjacent regions in Paraguay and Argentina. Information on most populations is very scarce, so it is still more worryingly that the only population left in Brazil is threatened by the intention of building a dam, impounding the water and consequently destroying their last habitat. The issue, however, is more complex. Many waterfowls are endangered in their natural habitats and face extinction in the wild but can be breeded in captivity and ensure with their offspring that the species survive. Brazilian Mergansers, along with some other waterfowl species like the kelp goose of Tierra del Fuego in Patagonia are that much adapted to specific environmental conditions that it is almost impossible to reconstruct such conditions in captivity. As a result, Brazilian Mergansers belong to the least kept waterfowls in zoological gardens and zoos worldwide. This is aggravated by the fact that the genetic pool of these ducks is very little and all individuals kept in human hand can be attributed to some few ducks. The chances that this unique and highly-adopted animal will survive the 21 century are vanishingly tiny and it is a pity that all this can be done under the pretext of saving our earth by promoting green energy.

Darfur and its real roots - Free Post

Darfur and its real roots

During my research on global warming I came across an interesting article on Darfur. Darfur is a region in south-west Sudan where over centuries the black population lived amicably with the Arabian Nomads. The native black population lived on farming and cultivation whereas the nomadic Arabs migrated through the semi-desert in search of pasture land for their livestock. Although these semi-arid areas never offered lush grass it was always enough for both – the black farmers and the Nomads from the north. By the time, however, global warming showed its impact, regions that have always been threatened by desertification, were among the first to suffer. The bleak landscape dried out and the black population, that constantly lives there, struggled to feed their livestock. That is the point in history the conflict between two co-existing peoples began. The northern horse people did not want to give up their pasture land in Darfur and insisted on feeding their animals on the black farmland. The hunger-stricken black population started to defend their land in order to maintain their families. But the Arabs fought back. The Sudanese government, conisting mainly of Arabs, supported the nomadic Arabs by giving them guns and the permission to fight. By doing so one of the most horrible atrocities began. Arabs came by horse and literally slaughtered any black person within eyesight, either man, woman or child. In the 80s the world spotlighted the situation in Darfur and accused the Sudanese government of supporting this genocide. The Sudanese government, however, denied any knowledge and rejected any blame. That is how the bloody game continued until present. The British band „Matafix“ published in 2007 their song „Living Darfur“ to catch the world's attention once again on this forgotten issue. The situation in Darfur is well-known around the globe, although almost fallen into obscurity, but people generally do not know that behind these atrocities there is more than just racial hatred. Global warming has brought misery upon these people and hate against one another after centuries of peace and harmony in co-existence. We all know about rising temperatures and the expansion of desert areas around the globe but there is more that global warming takes along. Things which, at the first glance, do not seem linked in any way to global warming, on further reflection however, can be attributed to it. That is just one more reason to counteract global warming and bring peace in this war-ridden African region.

The never-ending imperfection

Pro Ana, Pro Mia and other websites that are glamorizing Anorexia or Bulimia as a lifestyle rather than a disease have recently got a new boom. The first big boom these movements recorded was in 2006 as the 22 year old model Luisel Ramos shortly after a fashion show died; two months later the Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston Macan starved herself to death and a further 6 months later her sister also succumbed to Ana. The most attention-getting, however, was the death of Isabelle Caro in November 2010. The French model suffered from Anorexia since she was 14 years old and attributed her eating disorder to her manic-depressive mother who wanted her to remain a small girl. So, she stopped eating to counteract her physical development. Isabelle got very famous due to a fashion campaign by the world-famous Italian fashion photographer Oliviero Toscani who wanted to point out what twisted imagination our society regards as the idealized man or woman.

Having printed an anorexic woman on an oversized poster throughout the fashion capital Milan during the fashion week aroused a lot of criticism and as a result this campaign was prohibited in Italy and France. Though, after a public outcry the European fashion industry implemented some restrictions to models that are beyond underweight. Several models at the fashion week in Spain, for example, were not allowed to take part and also size 0 has been banned from the Catwalk.

Men, however, are at least as easily ensnared to become exaggeratedly health and fashion-conscious as women. Women are, of course, more inclined to lose weight and get anorexic or bulimic but to the picture of beauty neither women nor men are immune to.

There is this new phenomenon called “Manorexia” which is basically the same as the female version Anorexia. The problem, however, is that Manorexia is far more difficult to diagnose because these men look perfectly fit, with great bodies, still slim but not in an unhealthy way. Strict diets, laxatives and excessive exercising emaciate their bodies until there is nothing left than a heap of muscles on a skeleton. Manorexic men are generally difficult to identify, just their family or friends might notice an exaggerated lifestyle and the propensity to receive a perfect body.

One symptom that have all these diseases in common is the skewed introspection. That means no matter how “perfect” or how close you are at perfection you will never be satisfied with what you have achieved so far.

Having some friends that suffer from Anorexia and after some serious research at these pro-ana websites I think it is kind of ironic that people are starving themselves to death while a whole bunch of people die day by day because they have simply nothing to eat!

Innocent lambs with delicious intestinal tracks !

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

 

Having searched the web for some hours trying to find a food blog that I consider worth writing about I toppled over a forum where some people were entangled in some really stormy debates about food in other cultures. It started all with the impressive experiences of a guy in south-east Asia where he tried some really gross stuff like roasted feet of geese and soup that is made of swallow nests and stuff where the general “European” would shake his head in disgust. At first my reaction was quite similar to those who opposed totally to that kind of food but the more I immerged into that theme and the more I read about it some very interesting thoughts came up and made me think “Why not?”

He continued writing about that immerging in another culture doesn’t solely mean visiting all the sights, or national parks, or doing the common stuff proposed by a tourist guide but trying to think “foreign”. That means that being in south-east Asia, for example, eating insects, buying meat where a thousand of flies have sat before (although this I wouldn’t really recommend) is part of your everyday life. You shouldn’t shy away beforehand, even though you might be shocked what they consume on a daily basis or even how this food is traded. For our European standards cannot be seen as a global measurement since we live in an antibiotic-contaminated, sterile environment. But considering that the world doesn’t have all those standards and all the luxury like supermarkets filled to the bursting point, we should try to think out of the box and come off our high horse.

Thinking of all those meals provided by people from Asia or Africa which we might find disgusting at the very first, there is a lot of other stuff provided by ourselves that is at least as horrific. I proved it on my own in Italy, just because I didn’t want to be rude and to refuse but braided lamb intestines filled with mincemeat is not the dish I would have even imagined could exist. It does! But surprisingly enough it actually doesn’t taste that bad. I guess it’s more the imagination of eating the intestinal tract of an innocent lamb that makes us shudder.

Eating exotic meals doesn’t necessarily mean driving endangered species towards extinction. Of course, there is a lot of food provided that is ethnically or sustainably not advisable, but apart from shark fin soup or the meat of primates there are a lot of other things that are absolutely worth taking into consideration. The discussion at this forum ended up by saying that experiencing different kinds of food is not just to prove oneself as open-minded or even courageous but it will broaden your horizons, it may change your view on this culture and it might also influence your personality and the way you approach your life in future.