Book Review: Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are Tiffany Tong December 10, 2008 The author, Paul Robbins, starts the book off with a strange observation about himself when he moved into a new home with a lawn: “I was becoming a … ‘lawn person.’” (Robbins 2007, xii) The rising population of a lawn person, someone whose life is influenced or dictated by the lawn, is arguably a very American middle class phenomenon (Thompson 2008). […]
A New Turn for Corporate Social Responsibility Tiffany Tong March 5th, 2008 Introduction The nature of corporations is to maximize the bottom line regardless of social and environmental consequences, because in an extremely competitive global market, failure to do so will result in forced exit from the market. Therefore, traditionally, the enforcement of rules has been viewed as the only way to protect society and the environment; voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been viewed as mere lip service that […]
Tiffany Tong October 16th, 2008 Film Review Blue Gold: World Water Wars Water is essential to life. There is no argument; water is a defining characteristic when we look for signs of life. Blue Gold: World Water Wars is directed by Sam Bozzo and based on the book “Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water.” The documentary sets off with the memoir of an explorer who survived seven days in the desert without water. […]
Tiffany Tong April 7th, 2008 Evil or Necessary Evil? “Make a case for which “side” of the debate the film’s creators explicitly or implicitly adopt. Does the film succeed in offering enlightenment on some of the key issues involved in the debate? Why or why not?” In “The Corporation,” it is argued that corporations are inherently evil because they are legally a person, yet they have no moral conscience for its actions. I argue that corporations should retain the best […]
Tiffany Tong March 19th, 2008 Which Country Made the Better Choice? China and India, the two Asian powerhouses where 37% of the world population lives, have become the miracles of economic development of the modern world (Current World Population (ranked), 2007). China and India have sustained GDP growth, unmatched by any other country in the history of human kind, of 9.4% and 7% average respectively for over a decade (Dahlman, 2007). The proportion of Indians living in extreme poverty (on […]
Who is Really Responsible for Those Who Are Unfortunate? Tiffany Tong February 11th, 2007 In this essay, I will argue that a mandatory, single-tier healthcare system in a well-off country is morally incorrect because citizens should have the right to purchase alternative healthcare services if desired. Although I believe that every citizen should have a positive right to adequate healthcare relative to the prosperity of their country (Daniels, 2003), I also accept that citizens should have the freedom to spend […]
Is Worldwide Collapse Inevitable? By Tiffany Tong Current globalization and international trade practices, which are frequently unsustainable, will only prolong a worldwide collapse, as defined by Joseph Tainter, not prevent one. According to Tainter, a collapsed society is one that “displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity[1].” Sociopolitical complexity is the differences in power structures and levels of ruling class. The indicators of a loss of sociopolitical complexity are a decrease in social stratification, economic […]
Animal Ethics By Tiffany Tong Peter Singer is right in arguing that sentient animals should be treated ethically, although I disagree with where he draws the lines between sentient animals and those that may not be. I mostly agree with his explanation of why sentience equals to rights, why rights require ethical treatment from humans, and what kind of treatment is warranted. Singer’s argument is that the basis for having rights, or the criterion for having an interest, is whether […]
The Chinese Mercantilists Tiffany Tong November 15th, 2007 China has been growing in GDP at rates that the world has never seen before. It took China less than 10 years to double its GDP, while it took Britain 58 years, the USA 47 years, and Japan 34 years (Hou & Hou, 2002). Countries that started market reforms at the same time as China have all seen less growth (Remmer, 1998). There are many speculated reasons for this apparent disparity: in […]
Critically assess and evaluate a media piece The media is our portal to the world. Before the internet become popular, the media was, in fact, the only portal to the world. All news reports and opinion pieces could only be distributed by the media. Back then, using Gillmor’s metaphor of information as an ocean (Gillmor 2004), big media companies were truly the only ports where one could access the oceans. With prevalence of the internet, the recipients of information have […]
