Songs dealing with „America“

Lynyrd Skynyrd – Sweet Home Alabama

Big wheels keep on turning,
carry me home to see my kin
singing songs about the southland.
I miss Alabamy once again and I think it’s a sin. Yes.

Well, I heard Mister Young sing about her.
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down.
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
a southern man don’t need him around anyhow.

Sweet home Alabama where the skies are so blue.
Sweet home Alabama, Lord, I’m coming home to you.

In Birmingham they love the Gov’nor. Blue blue blue
Now we all did what we could do.
Now Watergate does not bother me.
Does your conscience bother you, tell the truth.

Sweet home Alabama where the skies are so blue.
Sweet home Alabama, Lord, I’m coming home to you.

Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers
and they ve been known to pick a song or two.
Lord, they get me off so much,
they pick me up when I’m feeling blue, now how about you.

Sweet home Alabama where the skies are so blue.
Sweet home Alabama, Lord, I’m coming home to you.

Sweet home Alabama where the skies are so blue.
Sweet home Alabama, Lord, I’m coming home to you.

video

Why the song is interesting…

The song „Sweet Home Alabama“ by Lynyrd Skynyrd first appeared in 1974 and is addressed to the Canadian singer Neil Young, who wrote two songs („Southern Man“ and „Alabama“) in which he criticizes the slavery, the segregation and the social conditions in the South. Lynyrd Skynyrd tried to respond to that by listen up the positive points of the South. I chose this song because I think it´s astonishing how many political innuendo a song can contain. They created a song which can entertain someone by only listening to the melody, combined with a political background if you take a look at the lyrics. I found some comments to the song on different „lyric-pages“ and a lot of people were criticizing that most people only listen to the music-the melody without even knowing what it is about. Lynyrd Skynyrd tried to point out the positive aspects about their hometown but besides the „blue skies“ it´s not that convincing and they didn´t really accomplished what they actually wanted to achieve. They call their hometown the „home of god“ so again you see the connection to the statement which is often used :

„Chosen by god“

(Take a look at the first lines after the chorus)

also a good song: Cranberries-Zombie video

Working on our presentation

Duelling Titans

We (Marina and Mi) both worked on the article “Dueling Titans” which is basically about China and America´s global supremacy, and the competition between both superpowers.

The whole article deals with an extensive topic and it contains a lot of information so we decided to focus on China.

Of course we also worked with the internet and a word document  just to collect the huge sum of given information. While reading the article we wrote down some important phrases and keywords from the text, and paragraphs which are definetly worth mentioning.

Furthermore parts and vocabulary which still seemed unknown so that we were able to look them up by using „google“ or any other resources.

We tried to divide the whole text into different sub-items.

First of all we started finding out more about China, the country in general and then informed us about the development their economy, and why they are able to compete against a powerful country like the United States.

Our conclusion : working on this article was already really complex and we´re neither business nor economy genes so we were trying to make the most of it.

The whole topic “Globalization” is a very extensive and wide-spread subject, and it´s difficult to understand everything.

It deals with so many aspects and it´s always up to date.

Because of  those facts you really have to go after the news just to keep on with the constant changes so that you are able to acquire the knowledge you actually need.

On balance it is an important subject which you have to deal with, and it can be interesting too, but it´s definetely ever so much work.

working methods

I guess my working methods aren´t that different to other course   members ones. It´s basically about going through all the given information and while reading the texts, its pretty useful to work with „Word“. Because you can past all the important things and  points where you think, it is necessary to focuse on, into a word  document-so that in the end you basically have a short and clear context with few headwords. And now its your turn, to put all these little pieces of information and headwords into a good, interested and especially understandable article.

Also very helpful: Using a dictionary !

Just to help you out with meanings, when you´re not sure about and especially to give you alternatives concerning word expressions, that also helps to differentiate between your article and other ones. And finally you just need an eye-catching caption where readers probably get to know what´s going to exspect them. So I guess, this is how I would try to approach (to) a task like:writing an article ! Just to mention,I´m actually not that content with mines, but I guess that´s because I wasn´t in the right mood or perhaps I´m just not thaat talented in creating articles that deals with themes like this ones [?] =D

Apples make the world go round?

Almost everywhere in Germany apples are cultivated because they´re easy to store over a longer period and of course we all know: “One apple a day-keeps the doctor away”!

More than 2000 companies in an area around the Bodensee produce about 220.000t of apples a year. In contrast to New Zealand which exports 90% of their apple account to other countries,for example to us,Germany. Although we do have big producing regions too, in which we attach among other things, all these popular and well-known apple brands like Braeburn,Gala or Pink Lady, still many people prefer the ones imported far away from New Zealand. Take for example a transport of one kilogramm apples from Bodensee to Munich,that´s about 76g CO². In comparison to Italy,where a transport of the same amount causes three times more than regional products.

Reason for that problem is among other things,that lot of supermarkets just stuff their storage rack with all these great products, which lure us customers with its great colour,size and shining appearance,but they do not give us the information where all these products are from! Sure people then just take a glance at that product they want to buy and decide,of course due to the fact that the chosen product assured cause of its appearance. Now the question is: What can be done?

One of the latest ideas were to create an eye-catching sticker with a symbol which shows an apple including the information of the CO² content in its respective product. Really simple but so effective! A great idea which is not only useable for apples but of course for other goods too.

Why accept a far unnecessary transport and support that rising inflationary pressure, if we can get all these really easy,environmentally sound and besides, right in front of us?

 

Wanna read more about “New Zealand exporting 90% of their apple account” >>http://www.db-acw.admin.ch/pubs/wa_arb_00_pub_627_d.pdf

Topic to work with

I guess most people have chosen the topic „Africa“ because it seems to be pretty attractive at first sight. You might think it would be smart to choose a subject area you already know,or that just says something to you,so it would be easier to talk about [and maybe it is] Africa can be interesting,sure,cause you can talk about its current situation and how it developted and how people see Africa,for example in 20years. I mean I just want to mention,if people did more focused on things like that from first sight,“africa“ is not just about wild animals,great landscape and well africa as a „nice vacation place“…

To me it seems more attractive to deal with current themes like “Globalization” and “Resources – Energy – Global Changes”. [Well,basically they´re all current topics that we´re focusing on,I know,and I´ll hope you´re not going to discuss about that...] I just want to add,I think it would be in our interest,should be,to get more in contact with these topics and to learn [even] more about them,because they have  something to do with us,the place that we´re living in. Something that we´re acutally already got involved in with,from the very beginning. Be it the media like news on tv,radio,school or miscellaneous magazines,you can see they´re full of that! I guess people get discourage by reading topics which tells sth.like that:“India hits the global stage“ or „German business strategies in a global marketplace“ but again these themes can be interesting as well,it´s just about how you work with them and what you can do with these ones.

„Lange Rede kurzer Sinn“ [“to put it in a nutshell”] I would like to work with „Globalization“.But anyway on balance it actually depends on how you´re going to arrange that class and diversify it