Work increase

"Rigor Redefined", by Tony Wagner, talks about what we will employers are now looking for in their employees. Critical thinking and problem solving are both important because people always want better things and you need to know how to make the products they want better as they desire for them increases. Curiosity, being initiative, analyzing, communication, and being able to collaborate easily are also important traits that a future employee needs to have to be able to succeed in 20^th century world.

            I can understand how all those traits are important in this century are important but there is a certain danger in asking for that and also a certain unrealism in the idea of having all of that. Only the best of the best might be able to be all those things at once and even that’s a lot to ask of them. Also curiosity might help out but it might drive them to do things that will do far more damage than good. The same in true with communication, they might be more willing to talk to their workers but that might make the workers a lot more willing to listen to a person who really doesn’t know what he is doing.  I do have a couple of questions though. Wouldn’t being able to do all of that make us sort of machine like? Do employers want machines instead of humans to do their work for them? All in all, the standards are increasing too much for the human mind to cope with and the only alternate option is turning to computers to do the jobs for us.

The Human Machine

"Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us”, by Michael Wesch, talks about how the advancements of technology (specifically text) has opened up a lot of avenues for people to use. Blogs, YouTube videos, websites, all of those things have been opened to us essentially through text. Text written on paper is harder to change and move while you can do all these amazing things with text on the internet. We can now gather massive storages of information which would be impossible to do with text on paper.

I believe that in some this is a good advancement for humanity. It does allow us to gather larger amounts of information and garner intelligence. At the same time it takes away a little of what makes us humans. Humans are supposed to go out into the world to find intelligence; not just sit at a computer and type in what they want to know. Yes this does connect people, but are those good connections? Can people actually claim to be friends with or know someone if they have never met or even talked to them? We have made a great thing with the internet but it can also be a threat. I don’t mean a threat to the nation (although it probably could be) but I mean a threat to individuals. Many kids are bullied at school and the internet just gives them another place to be bullied which might lead to them committing suicide. Predators are another problem. People claim that we try to protect children from them, yet we give them another opportunity to harm children. All in all, I believe that the internet is an amazing invention but it is just as bad as it is good.

Christians the new targer of al Qaeda

"All Christians 'targets,' Iraqi militant group says", by CNN Wire Staff, clearly states that al Qaeda has said that all Christians in the Middle East are legitimate targets now and the Islamic State of Iraq seem to be agreeing with them. The Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for an attack on a Baghdad church on Sunday that killed fifty-eight and injured seventy-five.  The announcement and the attack are both in response to the alleged Muslim female prisoners kept at an Egypt Coptic church. Security has been increased around churches in Egypt but they are worried that it will become a more serious problem consider that ninety percent are Muslim in Egypt while only nine percent are Coptic.

                This just seems to show that things in the Middle East aren’t going to end anytime soon, or peacefully. This hits a cord within me considering that I am a Christian and my entire family always has been. It’s not only the fact that Christians are being targeted, it’s happened many times in the past, but it’s the fact that they now might have provoked this targeting right; assuming what al Qaeda is saying is true of course. If the Coptic church of Egypt has really taken female Muslims prisoner then they have done more damage than they thought. Not only does it give justification to being targeted it also makes the rest of the Christian world look bad. It might be shallow of me to think about the appearance of the church but I am tired of the true face of the church being shown. I call it the true face because I know that some Christian churches would do things like that if it thought it would do them good in the long run. I am not going to claim to know about every form of Christianity, I probably don’t know anything about most of them! What I have seen of my church is pretty bad. The only thing about this situation than what Coptic Church did is the fact that now some people will feel more sympathetic toward al Qaeda. I have only two questions. Is all of this true or are al Qaeda just making up another reason to target a group of people? If it is true, what was the goal in capturing those female Muslims? All in all, I believe that this will look bad on Christians everywhere.