Filed under: IDS Class Blog
Welcome back to another edition of my blog.
This week we have been asked to take a look at several articles relating to the Industrial Revolution, specifically in Great Britain.
http://victorianweb.org/history/chadwick2.html
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1844engels.html
We were asked to take a look at those links just provided, and to gain insight into different observations on the times and to see if anything intriguing came forth to go against anything we knew about the Industrial Revolution.
Honestly, with the prior knowledge I have of the time period, however limited it may be in scope to some, nothing interesting jumped out to grab at my attention, in fact, the articles were along the lines of what I remembered and expected from the time period described to us. Each of the articles talks about the poor conditions of the workplace and living accommodation that were characteristic of the Industrial Revolution. The articles seemed completely legitimate to me and were very believable as the authors of each were recorded as having been real as well as being close to the situations they described in each of their respective writings. Both of the articles seemed to show bias in some manner, but is allowable in each case for the sheer sake of perspective, and actually adds to the credibility of the writings. As far as whether these writings are accurately demonstrative of the typical atmosphere of the Industrial Era, the answer is a resounding “yes”. In many of the writings of authors from the same era, there is a tendency to portray situations as-is in every case. Each of the writings reviewed for this post very plainly described the situations as would have been typical of the era.
Next we were asked an interesting question of comparison on the topic of the industrial working class and urban poor in the modern era. Honestly, between the different things we have read and studied, regarding different generations of urban working poor, all urban working poor share similarities. In each case we have seen so far, the urban workers have been same minded in their writings. Carolina, in Child of the Dark, was a realist writer who wrote about her life without dramatic embellishment in almost all cases, which matches up with the writing style of many other Industrial authors throughout history.
Well, this is the end of yet another blog, thanks for reading.
See ya next time.
God Bless,
Ryan
This week in IDS, we were asked to write a blog post concerning the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and what became the faith of Islam.
Muhammad was a devout religious man hailing from Mecca. After proclaiming that he received revelations from God, Muhammad fled from Mecca with the few followers he had returning later with a vast army to conquer the lands and establish his religion. The religion states thats he was the last and greatest of the prophets of God, or Allah, and that Jesus was simply a prophet along the lines of Moses. The sacred text, the Quran, is the divine writings of Muhammad himself as dictated by Allah. The largest components of the religion are the Five Pillars of Islam. They are as follows:
1. Shahadah – proclamation that Allah is the only deity and that Muhammad was his messenger.
2. Salah – the ritual prayer which must be performed 5 times a day
3. Zakat – giving to the poor and other charity
4. Sawm – fasting during the holy month of Ramadan
5. Hajj – a holy journey, or pilgrimage, to the holy city of Mecca once during the lifetime of a Muslim
Today the religion is primarily focused on a debate between two division, the Sunni and Shia Muslims. The primary difference between these two sects, is there disagreement on the importance of several of the written laws of Islam which have erupted into extremely serious war between the two factions which has raged for centuries to this very day.
Each of these groups has several subgroups within their structure which uphold their own set of ideas on importance. The Sunni’s are made up of four smaller groups named Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali.
The Shia’s are broken into several branches as well, the largest of which are the Twelvers, the Ismaili, the Seveners, and the Zaidiyyah.
This concludes my post on the very brief summary of Muhammad the the religion of Islam.
Filed under: IDS Class Blog | Tags: Brazil, corruption, drugs, history, IDS
I have been doing a little bit of research for this particular entry. We were told to take a look at the country of Brazil, and the current political situation of the country.
From the investigations I have conducted, Brazil is currently in a very interesting situation. The President’s advisor is being accused of buying votes, drug cartels are murdering hundreds to thousands of people a year while immigrants from northern parts of the country migrate to the favelas which surround many of the prosperous districts of the largest cities.
Looking back to post World War 2 Brazil, one might see why the situation is as such. After the second World War, the Unite States and Russia launched into an arms race which was followed by proxy war campaigns around the world. The United States was seeking to combat the spread of the Soviet Union’s influence of communism throughout the world while avoiding another all out world war. Having originally been governed by civilian rule, Brazil was overthrown by its own military in 1964, launching the country into oppression under a strict military dictatorship. This regime suspended the constitution of the country and used illegal Death Squads to reign terror across its lands. It then launched an industrial campaign with the country’s economy, cutting back on necessary established economy to attempt to boost appeal to foreign investors. This set of policies became a “Brazilian Solution” so to speak and other, similar programs, were then instituted across the rest of Latin America to help fight the approach of communism. Unfortunately, the dilemma that followed was that of the establishment of socialism under heavily military regimes.
Recovery from such events can take a country many years, those years made even longer if a country is ruled by an unjust or corrupt government. Will Brazil ever recover? Only time will tell.
Till Next Time,
-God Bless-
Acrid
Our first blog assignment related to the news. We were to take a look, over the course of a week, at the headline news stories featured on three of the top news sources in the world. The three sources specifically are the following: Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and FOX News.
After watching a couple stories progress over the course of a week, I decided to focus primarily the stories involving Israel’s blockade against Hamas in Gaza, as well as snippets mentioning the United States to get an idea of how we were viewed in each news source. I gained the following results about each news organization.
Al Jazeera – US shown in biased manner, however it was very subtle, and the negative bias seemed only to be concerned with our relationship to Iraq and Israel and current situations in both regions of the Middle East. Israel seems to be represented in a fair sense however most of the stories are focusing more on its actions being negative. The country of Iran, as well as regimes such as Hezbollah and Hamas, seemed to have been given more of a voice than other organizations. Most news not centered in Middle East revolved around regional events. Any mention of other nations seemed to be kept fairly neutral. Overall, Al Jazeera seemed to have an unbiased opinion of events.
The Guardian – A story on Iraq was written showing that the US was not to blame for the insurgency problems being faced, that even the British Prime Minister underestimated what would happen. The US was displayed in a neutral manner in this instance. In another story related to the Gaza situation, Israel is being presented neutrally as well, the article pointing out both what is being said and what fact shows backing up Israel’s responses to Hamas’ accusations. Out of the articles I read in depth, the viewpoint seemed to be kept fairly neutral. Many other stories on The Guardian had to do with US politics and different stories relating to Caucus/Primary results and candidates.
FOX News – Sticking mainly to the same story on the Gaza situation leads to different views on the whole situation. Much more of the situation is presented with a positive reflection on Israel, with the group Hamas being displayed in a negative light. The article on FOX also highlighted much of the bias towards Israel that is prevalent throughout the Middle Eastern region.
Till next time,
-God Bless-
Acrid
I have never truly introduced myself, and since I am required to do so for a blog entry for my class I decided it was the perfect time.
Name: Ryan
Location: Texas (and may God Bless it)
Occupation: Student majoring in Education
I am who I am. I am a Christian, my highest priority is following the guidance of God and maintaining a relationship with Him. I am currently in love with the woman I plan on marrying. She is truly a gift of God on my life and has been nothing but a blessing to me. I love books, mostly fiction, but I do enjoy nonfiction as well. One of my favorite authors is Stephen Lawhead, I find his writing fantastic and love his Celtic & Middle Age themes, as some of my favorite fiction is good ole’ Medieval settings. One of my life-long hobbies is video games, I have always played them and will probably continue to play them for many years. I am currently involved in a gaming community called the Hardcore Christian Gamer Association. I am also currently teaching myself to play acoustic guitar, and I know one day I will be a great guitarist, even if no fame comes of it, it is something I wish to do. I want to be a Special Education teacher. I absolutely love kids, and prefer being around them and teaching them as opposed to sitting on my butt crunching numbers, or sitting behind a computer day after day. I plan on having many children of my own and look forward to one day becoming a husband and father and having a family.
God has given me great hopes for the future I have. I do not know what all He has in store for me, all I know is the desires that have found their ways into my heart. One of the greatest of these was originally a single idea, and I must say that it was not originally something I came up with, but the idea of the woman I love. She has dreamed of one day opening a very large, Christian based orphanage in the northern parts of India. Ever since then, this dream of hers has grown into an even larger dream that we both share. Someday, we will not only have this orphanage opened in India, but we will have an entire chain of orphanages around the world, in locations such as Mexico, Israel, China, Russia, Africa, South America. It is our dream, and we have great faith that God will allow us to see this dream come true.
All in all, I would say that all that you have just read is a look at me, my hobbies, and my dreams.
Hope you have found something interesting about me and I hope you come back and read more sometime.
-God Bless-
Acrid
