Where have all the Honey Bees gone?

The dying of the honey bees is highly discussed at the moment, I think everyone has heard of it. I did some research about this occurence and guess what - I'll give you a short summary. ;)

 

 

Like we all know (hopefully), bees are essential to the pollination of flowers and trees. Thanks to the honey bee, we can enjoy apples, pears, nuts, onion, carrots, plumbs and even cotton. But all around the world bee keepers voice concerns about the vansishing of the bees. In some cases, bee keepers open their hives just to realize that up to 80% of the bees are dead.  While there were 4,5 million bees in the United States in 1945, there are now about 2 million. But why? What is going on?

 

A reason for thís mysterious "Colony Colapse Disorder (CCD)" could be parasites. Furthermore, bees often get transported  across the country what has also been considered as a possible reason, but one should know that this was going on for about 40 years now without affecting the bees and leading to such a "bee holocaust". Also the climate change was mentioned in one documentary I watched, but in my opinion this is a little bit far-fetched, but of course I'm no scientist.

 

According to biologist Marla Spivak, all this is happening because of changes in farming practices after World War II. Pesticides came into usage and as a result every batch of pollen a bee collects has at least six traces of pesticides in it, including neonicotinoids. While parasites die because of this pesticides, they affect the brains of the bees so they can not find their way back home. Scientists did some research and found 25 different pesticides in one bee. Nobody really knows what the combination of these toxins might cause.

 

As I was writing about GMO foods at my Food Magazine Article, this came not as a big suprise. Whenever I read something about genetic engineering, I imagine humanity as little children playing in the sand without realizing what they do.  We do not know the long term results of interfering with nature, but we just try it - just as little children.

 

The dying of the bees is one result I guess we'll soon experience firsthand. What can we do to avoid this? Planting as much flowers (without pesticides!) as possible in the garden, on the balcony, etc.. and maybe getting bee hives.

 

 

 

I wish you guys a flowery summer!

 

 

Culture Presentations

The presentations are done now and I think we're all relieved the project is completed. All in all I was really impressed about how much effort everyone put into researching and preparing for the presentation - great job all of you!!

A list of the presentations I watched:

USA:
- Southern Hospitality - The Southern Way of Life (Julia Rauch)
- Monty Roberts: An Extraordinary Communicator
- America as a nation of narcissm (Maria Dorner)
- Does Race Still Matter in the US? (Lisa Ziermann)
- Ellen DeGeneres - a modern woman and her influence on America (Johanna Schreilechner)
- Two Heroines of American Aiation: Amelia Earhart and Bessie Coleman (Orsolya Csizmár)
- Hurricane Preparedness (Claudia Schwaiger)
- Harlem, New York City (Louis Nguyen)
- Scientology: A Religion Made in America
- Racial Segregation as depicted in 2 Movies (Tiana Jerkovic)
- How the Columbian Exchange changed the world (Alexandra Haunold)
- The Amish country (Anita Mužek)
- TV shows depicting social issues (Christine Hartinger)

IRELAND:
- Witchcraft in Ireland (Sabrina Krassnig)
- Homophobic Bullying in Irish schools (Shirin Mahrouzadeh)

In all this stress and nervosity I acutally forgot to watch a third Irish presentation - I'm ashamed ;) But fortunately only the American ones will be tested at KGP, so I hope it's not that bad ;)


TOPICS I WANT TO BE TESTED ON AND WHY:

1. Southern Hospitality: The Southern Way of Life by Julia Rauch
I really enjoyed watching this presentation because I think Julia did a good job on giving a short overview about the pecularities of the South. It's something I want to figure out more about, that's why I chose this topic.

2. America as a Nation of Narcissm by Maria Dorner
Maria presented what everyone might feel in some way - American's self-image and national proud goes too far. I was really impressed by this presentation.

3. Religion made in America: Scientology by Harald Pasch
I heard a lot about Scientology but I hadn't known that much details, therefore I found this presentation greatly insightful, especially because I always wanted to find out more about it.

4. Racial Segregation as depicted in 2 Movies  by Tiana Jerkovic
I've already seen the movie "The Help" and even blogged about it, so this topic is kind of a must-have. I'm looking forward to watching the second movie "The Secret Life of Bees" since I was really moved by the short clip Tiana showed us on Thursday.

5. How the Columbian Exchange changed the world by Alexandra Haunold
It was fascinating to realize what foods wouldn't be popular in Europe without the Columbian Exchange. I felt like Alexandra could have talked about this topic for hours since it has a huge impact on world's history. She did a great job at giving a short summary and I really want to learn more about this topic, so this is the fifth presentation I chose for KPG.


To anyone of you who actually read this article - I wish you much motivation for studying and good luck for your final exam! :)

Why I love calligraphy.

Actually, I've always loved the act of writing. It doesn't really matter what I am writing, I just enjoy using different pens, feathery, papers and so on. But being a lefty led to some problems in the past - I always smeared up what I have written, therefore I nowadays hold my pens in a strange way to avoid this, but I've seen many left-handers doing this ;)

However, my passion about calligraphy and writing in general developed at the first year in HTL. Our teacher gave us pictures of different people with the task to design the letter "g" in a way that represents the facial features of the persons. I really loved doing that, but never had I imagined what this simple task might bring forth. I couldn't stop writing the letter "g" everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. All the sheets we got at the different lessons and even the desk pad we had to use was full of letters. I must have been considered psychopathic by my classmates and teachers, but fortunately in a school for graphic design the pupils are expected to have their weird characteristics and peculiarities. :D 

As a result, whenever I'm sitting around bored and pen and paper are within reach, I start to scribble - not just letters, of course. But whenever I'm chatting with somebody on the phone, i unconsciously start to write some words used in the conversation in a calligraphic way. One big advantage of that - after the phone call I know exactly what we were talking about. ;)

Writing words in different ways helps me to calm down. I just need to let my creativity out now and then, especially since I'm studying something completely different, namely languages. I can not really explain why it makes me happy, it just does. At some point I even dreamt of opening a calligraphy studio, but soon I realized it's impossible to earn your daily bread that way. That's art - wonderful to create, wonderful to look at but at some point useless ;)

I planned to write a few lines about the history of the alphabet and calligraphy, but I even got bored myself so I think I'll release you from that. Instead I'll show you some wonderful artworks and handwriting:

Have a nice weekend, see you :)

Schindler's List

I can't believe I haven't seen the movie "Schindler's List" earlier - I watched it a few days ago (to be precise, immediately after PC2 ;) ) and was really moved. The film tells the story of Oscar Schindler, a German business man who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish Jews by employing them in his factory. Jews who were important for arms production were not taken to concentration camps. At the beginning, Schindler's aim was not to safe lives but to earn much money by empolying cheap workers. Gradually, he became aware of the cruelty of the Nazis and decided to "buy" many Jews from SS-officer Amon Goeth. All Jews he wrote down on a list were saved from being gassed at Auschwitz.

Since this story is based on real historian events, I want to write a few lines about the background and one person in particular: Amon Goeth.

 



 

Amon Leopold Goeth was a captain of the SS and commandant of the concentration camp in Plaszòw, Polen. He was born in Vienna and joined Nazi youth group and the Austrian Nazi party at the age of 17 and 22, respectively . At that time, the Austrian SS was an illegal underground organisation, as a result there is not much information about his activities available. In 1943, he was assigned to construct and command a forced labour camp at Plaszòw.

 

A description of Amon Goeth by Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig, one of the Jews saved by Schindler:

 

"As a survivor I can tell you that we are all traumatized people.

Never would I, never, believe that any human being would be capable of such horror, of such atrocities. When we saw him from a distance, everybody was hiding, in latrines, wherever they could hide. I can't tell you how people feared him."

 

In the movie, Amon Goeth seems insane. I especially remember the scene where he randomly kills Jews from his balcony, appreciatively smoking his cigarette. It's unbelievable. We all know what cruelties human beings are able to do, but it's still disgusting and depressing to become aware of stories that really happened.

 

As some of you might know, I believe in God. I'm often confrontated with the question - if there is a God, how can he allow such cruelties? Why didn't he do anything about it? Well, I really understand this question, I often asked it myself. But at some point I realized that God gave us free will. God never wanted us to be robots. No parent would prefer robots, built to say "I love you" all the time, to real children that can think themselves and therefore express their love without being forced to do so. All pain and cruelty is a result of mankind's failure and it's wrong to blame God for all of that -  that's what I think about it.