Reflection Task 3

Edward Snowden, who is an American, is a computer specialist, a former CIA employee and a former NSA contractor, who revealed some top secret NSA documents. This release has been classified as the most significant leak of the US history. Snowden has fled from Hawaii to Hong Kong when he revealed US information. Now, he is in Russia where the government granted him a temporary asylum. Still he knew what he would be facing, and yet, in his own words, he wanted "to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them." Some call him a hero, a whistleblower, a traitor or even a patriot. Whatsoever, what he did has people brought to debate over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and informal privacy. Since the US collected metadata on nearly every phone call within or to the United States. Edward Snowden is a subject of controversy, yet he got recognition in several ways, was awarded by the German "whistleblower prize" and "Sam Adams Award", and was voted as the man of the year 2013 by The Guardian. I have chosen him because, although he knew the consequences he was bold enough to leave a well-paid job and a relatively comfortable life behind and live an uncertain life. It was it all worth for him because, he believed that state surveillance had expanded beyond a point that is acceptable and that people needed to know about it. He sacrificed his life in order to fight the battle for us!

Reflektion task 2b

 

In this video a forensic artist who has worked a long time for the police department, draws a portrait  only by the description given by the person whom he cannot see. After the person leaves another person comes in and describes the same person. Nearly always the portraits turn out differently and the second portrait is the one which looks closer to the person been drawn. That is the idea they try to convey, that how we see ourselves is further away then how we look like; we are more beautiful than we actually say! The reason it has touched me is because I and probably lots of other women don’t feel beautiful. We all have things we do not really like about ourselves but apparently other people do not see us that way, which is kind of a relief. After drawing the person, one portrait of her own description and one by someone else’s description those portraits are shown to the person. This was my favourite part because the women been drawn were astonished. Startled by how different their self described portrait was from themselves, amazed that others did not even notice the things they looked upon as major problems. Personally I do not really like my nose, I find it too big but whenever I talk about it usually my friends say that they have not even marked that, so I agree with the video. Something that I also find very interesting is what one woman said “I should be more grateful of my natural beauty. It impacts the choices and the friends we make, the jobs we apply for; how we treat our children it impacts everything.” I still do not know if I completely agree; I do not know how broad this “everything” is but one thing is certain we definitely should be more grateful. Since God would not have created us the way we are if he did not find us beautiful the way we are. Also it is very true that when we do not find us beautiful our self-esteem shrinks. Along with this we do not feel capable of doing what we want to do.  Therefore, we should spend more time appreciating the things we like instead of analyzing everything critically and wasting our time trying to fix them.

REFLECTION TASK 2a

Solar energy is energy provided from the sun. As you all now the sun is a never ending source and its energy can be used in different ways directly and indirectly. The solar energy can be used in order to produce electricity, heat and hot water; even hydroelectric plants and wind energy get their energy indirectly from the sun. Personally I’m very interested in the solar energy since the sun supplies us with   1,5 · 10¹⁸ kWh energy in a year which is 10.000 times of the worlds energy demand. Still the popularity and the usage of the solar energy is growing very slowly which I find frustrating. The holes in the atmosphere are not going to vanish if we do nothing about it. Cap emission has to decrease and to reach that the world has to turn to natural sources of energy. A lot of people are aware of this which is great but it is still not enough. That’s why I want to talk about the solar energy. There is a lot of ways to use the solar energy; solar architecture, agriculture and horticulture, transport, solar thermal, cooking and electricity production. I believe the solar power is the most important one. Solar power converts sunlight in to electricity through PV’s or CSP’s. It is very advantageous because the energy of the sun is limitless available, looked at it from the economical perspective it brings more money in and saves fuel import salary (for example in Germany 60.000 people work in solar power industry and 10 billion Euros is made.) and of course it has no cap emission. Still it depends on the month and wheatear. Obviously this system is beneficial in countries which receive a lot of sunlight. Turkey’s location is optimal for solar power. Although there is some action, it is very slow. After all the conciousness of solar energy is growing world wide so let’s not loose hope.