What is wrong with people?

I will write about something I read in the paper the other day. It was an article about football hooliganism in Sweden that described how gangs, the firms, arrange and meet outside football stadiums to fight. This is not a new phenomenon, so it was not the fighting hooligans that bothered me the most, sooner the age of the fresh intakes. The so-called firms are recruiting adolescences, young people between thirteen and eighteen years old. Not only fighting exists in the firms, bootleggers who provide members with drugs like cocaine, amphetamine and rohypnol are also usual in these circles.

The arrests for football-related crimes have reduced lately, since the security and surveillance around the matches have improved. But the hooliganism has probably not reduced, it has only moved from the stadiums to other meeting places. This has enabled more violent and better organized fights, since this rarely is reported to the police in time. The tipsy supporter who looses control during a derby has now got company by the organized violater and new recruited youth that in some cases are completely uninterested in football. They are simply there to fight.

It is a sad development with more violence and drugs among young people. Since the football violence has moved, following and charting the risk groups has become a much more difficult task for the police. Earlier the football clubs and the supporter clubs had a better insight, but when the violence moved their influence has reduced and they have a hard time trying to affect the adolescences. But the police and the clubs do their best to keep youths away from the firms, by contacting their parents among other things. Sadly their work does not seem to be enough.

I have a really hard time trying to understand what drives people to such things. Do they find it amusing to beat the crap out of each other? I do not get it. Reading such an article really makes you wonder, what is wrong with people?! If adults want to fight and both parts are in on it, let them beat each other to a jelly. But do not lead confused youths into this perdition. An environment with drugs and fights is no place for young people. Hooliganism is really sad, but it is even more sad when kids and adolescences become involved.

Blog Assignment #5: Seen Any Good Films Lately?


I have had some bad luck with my film choices lately. Many of them have really been a waste of time. But one exception is The Departed, it was really watchable. The film is a thriller/drama directed by Martin Scorsese, starring actors like Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg. It tells a story about the mafia, double play and betrayal in the underworld of Boston. DiCaprio, Damon and Wahlberg work at the police’s organized crime department. Jack Nicholson plays Frank Castello, the reckless Irish mob boss, which the police are eager and almost obsessed to catch.

During the exciting case of Castello it turns out that not everyone is loyal to his boss. Infiltrators exist on both sides. The police have an infiltrator in Castello’s crew and the sly mob boss has implanted a guy in the police force to upset their plans and to receive information about the police work. Later both sides realize that they have a snitcher in their crew and the infiltrators both get the assignment to identify each other. The film is even more interesting when these infiltrators fall in love with the same woman, a criminal psychiatrist.

The Departed is an enjoyable cat-and-mouse chase that delivers plenty of brutal and bloody action. It is exciting gangster film with many great performances. Some parts are really thrilling and the end is a bit unexpected. I have seen better films but I can still recommend this one.

The State of the Planet
The ominous prophecy about global warming is really scary, it makes people shiver. Maybe the planet will be destroyed because of the lifestyle developed in the Western world. It is stunning to think about what kinds of species and ecosystems that will exist in the future for our children and grandchildren. Maybe none of us will live long enough to see what we have done to the planet. I guess this is what most of us hope for.

The human interference has a major and damaging effect on the earth, which leads to a catastrophic rate of change. A long list of the environmental stress exists. We observe shrinking forests, expanding deserts, sinking watertables, disappearing species, rising temperatures, deglaciation, rising sea level etc. Huge changes to the biological fabric of the planet have occurred. If we continue in this way scientist predict that five globes are needed to support the Earth’s population, already in forty-five years.

We are living above our resources, the Earth is not enough. Our advance and the strong economic growth have put great marks on the planet. About 96 percent of all the glaciers are decreasing rapidly, garbage heaps are growing faster and the number of natural disaster has quadruplicated in the last forty years. Today the natural disasters do not have the greatest impact on the planet, but the human. It is therefore the human that will dictate the future course of life.

People have not been aware of the cost of their consumption and therefore has an environment-friendly lifestyle not been especially attractive. Furthermore does not everyone feel that they have a responsibility for common utilities like air, water and biological diversity. But many people are now aware of the hazardous development and want to improve the health of the planet. We have seen evidences of the fact that we are affecting the way the planet operates.

It is a bit said that catastrophes need to occur before we try to solve the problems. The latest catastrophes, such as the tsunami, have worked as wake up calls. Most of us now realize that our lifestyle is not durable and lots of people try to contribute to a sustainable environment and development. I hope this insight is not too late, maybe we still have time to save the planet. So that future generations can continue to live and enjoy all the things we have taken for granted for so long.

Blog Assignment #3: Video Game Addiction

A while ago a class mate of mine started to skip classes. He used to turn up now and then and the absenteeism, of course, led to poor examination grades. The few times I saw him, he seemed tired, almost depressed, and looked bedraggled. He could be gone for weeks and eventually he quitted school. I guess he was one of them who were not able to strike a healthy balance between his gaming hobby and real life. Instead he played and played, until he was totally lost in the world of video games. I do not know him well enough to say that his video game addiction only was caused by the thrill and satisfaction of playing. I guess something more was behind the behavior, circumstances which made him escape into the fantasy world, a world which at this point obviously seemed better than his real life.

It is really sad to hear about how some people’s lives are ruined by video games. Video game addiction sounds a bit absurd. I have not got any personal experiences of video games and as far as I know, nobody in my circle of acquaintances has been cached in this alternative world. Therefore it is difficult to understand how a video game can have such an impact on people and since I am not especially familiar with the online games, contributing with something to the debate feels rather hard. Spontaneously, I do not understand how people can be so caught up in such things as video games. I have always considered these games as tools for entertainment and not something that can cause an addition. But regardless of my opinions of video games, a problem seems to exist. Otherwise the debate would probably not have aroused. These games can obviously, for some people, compete with real life and even get people to suppress their most basic needs. It seems like I have underestimated the power of video games.

Times are changing. Internet with its many applications, like the World Wide Web, that provides services like forums, communities, blogs, either-way communication online games etc. has become a large and important part of our lives. With all these scopes of use, it is not especially strange that the development has lead to a great usage of this incredible technique. Many persons spend a lot of time in front of their screen, playing or not. It is a part of the development, things people did twenty years ago have partly been replaced by this phenomenon. Most people think interests that do not involve spending time in front of a computer are more appropriate. Mainly because many of them give you physical exercise and fresh air, which are advantages that video games lack. This is of course very important. To stay healthy, people need to be physically active and to be out in the fresh air. Long-hour sessions in front of a mesmerizing screen do not fit into a healthy lifestyle.

I think, or at least hope, that the majority are reasonable people who are able to combine their daily routines with their passion for video games. Online game players hopefully realize that the real world has a lot more to offer than video games. Of course people prefer fun before things like school and work, but most of us know that the latter also is a necessary part of life. Therefore I am not seriously concerned about video game addiction, yet, but you never know. Without knowing the actual proportion of players who creates an addition, it cannot be ascertained that the playing is a severe problem. But the risk for video game addition to become a new public health problem should not be eliminated without an exhaustive check-up.

The Private Diary Gone Public
The ones who read this text know what purpose a blog can fill. In this course we are using blogs to post entries on different topics. In this way we are able to read what our classmates have posted and we can also write and receive comments concerning the content, language etc. With this method we can receive feedback on our work and hopefully improve our English skills.

Those who are not taking a course where it is necessary to create a blog in order to get a passed mark in English for science and technology create blogs for different individual purposes. Which reasons that make people use blogs are probably different from person to person, but something most of them, if not everyone, have in common is that things published in a blog become public. The content in a blog is available for others to read and reflect on. So this ought to be an important reason why people chose to create a blog, they want to share their experience, thoughts, texts, pictures etc. The blog phenomenon is a great and easy way to do this.

The blog revolution has simplified the procedure to create an own website, a place where text, pictures etc. can be published. Within a couple of minutes you can construct a blog and make your views and opinions public in a place where it is reached by a large number of people all over the world. Using a blog you are able to share all different sorts of information and communicate with millions of persons. You can receive comments and discuss different issues. A blog makes it possible to share all sorts of things and get response from other people. This is probably the main reason why the phenomenon has become so popular.

Why did I choose to study at the university?

In the upper secondary school I did not choose a vocationally-oriented program, like for example nurturance, since I was not sure of which type of profession I wanted to engage on. Some people have knowledge of “a job of their dreams” even as a child, “when I grow up I am going to be a doctor, a police etc”. Unfortunately this was not the case for me; such an insight would surely have simplified the difficult question about the career choice. But because of this lack of insight I wanted to keep all options open, so the choice fell on the natural sciences program.

After upper secondary school I was weary of school and studies, therefore I started to explore my opportunities and I soon found out that the accessible jobs were not especially attractive. Without any work experience, or experience of life for that matter, you can probably, with some luck, get an employment as a cleaner or a salesman, for example. No offence to these professions, but I had other ambitions. My low opinions of these jobs are no prejudices, after the upper secondary school I worked as a cleaner and I also tried a sales work. Therefore I knew for a fact that these types of employments did not suit me.

Having received these experiences I decided it was time to start studying again. In comparison to the available jobs, school did not seem so bad any longer and I knew that in today’s society it is necessary to have some sort of education or work experience to get a proper and enjoyable employment. I had no idea which sort of work that would suit me and since the possible options could not be counted on the fingers of one hand it was a difficult question. The fact that you are supposed to spend about forty years working did not really make the decision easier; it sooner increased the decision agony.

Education does not only give a increased chance to a work, during the studies you also meet a lot of people and get new friends, so this choice may affect your entire life in many ways. All these thoughts and musings did not really lead up to anything substantial so I put all these matters aside and focused on the things I knew. At this time I had recently moved to Karlstad together with my boyfriend. We had got hold of a really nice apartment and this town was a pleasant place to live in. Furthermore, my boyfriend had got a good job here and because of these reasons I started looking in a catalog over the educations at Karlstad University. There I found a graduate engineer education which seemed to be appropriate for me since I always had liked math and technology. I applied and I was admitted. This is pretty much the story behind why I choose to study at the university.