Stage Your Life

Lin-Manuel Miranda, born of poor immigrant parents from Puerto Rico, wrote and stars in the extremely successful Broadway musical, "Hamilton." On the other hand, a 28-year-old man who was turned down for a job in Tunisia committed suicide by electrocuting himself on a utility pole. Clearly, there are alternative ways to become the center of attention on stage and off.

     Suppose you want to get into a field that is very competitive and has few openings. First of all, it may be a good idea to keep your plan to yourself, since others will be ready to discourage you. Lin-Manuel Miranda's road to "Hamilton" began by reading Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. He saw that Hamilton in real life was very wordy. The rap music Miranda loved also was very dense with words, and it would be the perfect vehicle to tell Hamilton's story in a musical. Besides, he went to John Weidman, who had turned history into a musical called "Assassins," to ask for advice.

     This season we've all heard of Stephen Curry, the Golden State Warrior who is making basketball history with his extra long 3-point shots. At 6'3" and 185 lbs, in a game of giants, he decided he could stand out as a shooter. Want to begin imitating him, check out the website, "30 tips to help become a better shooter." First step, practice, practice, practice. For another route into a sports career, study the erudition of ESPN's "First Take" commentator, Stephen A. Smith, who does his research and can write.

     Spend all your free time playing video games? Learn how to develop one. Even former US Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor founded the iCivics games. Just about any interest can be turned into a video game, considering the wide variety on the market: physical activity in
"GoNoodle," immigration officer for a country in "Papers, Please," rocket building in "Kerbal Space Program," math-related challenges in "Twelve a Dozen," designing a game in "Kodu Game Lab." Check out the igda.org website of the International Game Developers Association to learn about the scholarships it provides and what else it does for a global membership network of game developers.  

     While you are moving toward your super job, even the most lowly job provides an income and offers a chance to look around, to see how business works, to learn how customers behave, to improve your skills, and to become more valuable to an employer by making your job more productive and efficient. On the job, you can meet people and learn whom you need to know to get into your chosen field. Which employees are rewarded with thousands of dollars and promotions at the end of the US television show, "Undercover Boss?"  Those who treat customers well, follow the rules, offer suggestions that will provide more efficient and better service, and appreciate being given an opportunity (like the ex-convict who was a fast learner and hard worker). Everything you can learn on a job is a valuable lesson for your future.

    Suppose no one will hire you, while you are preparing for your dream job. Suicide is not the only option. Crowdfunding sites might be able to attract investors for your project. Try setting up a page on kickstarter, indiegogo, fundable, fondly, InvestingZone, Growthdeck, or other crowdfunding sites that continue to appear. Chinese young people who migrate to urban areas to find work, like other young people who continue to live with their parents, know they can return to family farms, if they fail to find a job in a car or computer factory. Skilled handy men and women who live on farms can offer their services to professionals in urban areas. With a truck, haul away junk and things that can be recycled from businesses and residences. In a family, one with a job can pay the bills while another can take over the household, childcare, and financial management responsibilities.  In some countries, governments do the job of relatives by providing benefits while the unemployed have the job of, for example, finding their next acting jobs.

(For other ideas to help find the position you really want, check out earlier posts, "Can't Find a Job or Career, Create One" and "Star-struck Realities.")

   

Diamond Flaws

President Obama will visit one kind of diamond, when he takes in a baseball game in Cuba this week.* And June brides have a many-faceted diamond on their ring fingers. For the independent miners paying the violent armed groups who control access to the rivers in the Central African Republic (CAR), the diamonds they find represent a treacherous way to scrape out a living.

     These miners are far removed from those who wear the diamonds and gold found in the CAR, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Angola, and Mexico and the precious stones from Afghanistan and Myanmar (Burma) and from those who rely on the mobile phones, cars, computers, and other products that contain tungsten from Colombia and tantalum, tungsten, and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before these raw materials become part of finished products, they change hands often in secretive and poorly regulated supply chains that span the globe.

     The UN, OECD, US, and EU all are taking measures to pressure companies to ask their mineral suppliers more questions and to notice warning signs. Berne Declaration, a Swiss non-governmental organization (NGO), knew Togo produced little or no gold, yet Swiss companies thought they were buying gold that originated there. Instead, their gold was coming from Burkina Faso. True to its advertising, De Beers is assuring consumers "a diamond is forever" by launching a pilot program to buy diamond jewelry and loose diamonds for resale, thereby reducing the need to buy new diamonds from unknown sources.

     Not only is there growing concern about the human rights abuses associated with the dangers independent miners face, but conflict in the world's poorest countries relies in part on financing from selling licenses to miners, collecting tolls on transportation routes to the mines, taxes, and mineral sales. In Zimbabwe, even the national security forces and secret police supplement their government budgets and escape government oversight by engaging in the mineral trade.

     There are money and jobs enough in the mineral trade for both miners and manufacturers to benefit by behaving responsibly.

*See the earlier post, "Good News from Cuba," for background on President Obama's trip to Cuba.

Globalization Deniers

Will low-skilled workers in developed countries ever again be able to enter a plant and find a high-paying union job? Even if blocking trade pacts and immigrants provides a temporary fix, reality requires preparing for a much different future. Looking at mass communication, air and space travel, and artificial intelligence, Villanova Professor Ilia Delio suggests we need political structures and public policies that support human socialization in the world's new phase of global life.

     Some jobs always will stay close to home: police officers, firefighters, even food trucks. But using cameras to improve police work in one country (by eliminating bribes and beatings, for example) is an idea that can translate to other countries the same way training practices that improve the performance of firefighters and new spices that jazz up menus can spread benefits around the world. Resisting the changes caused by globalization does no one a favor.

     The trick is to look to the future and to anticipate the needs and wants that men, women, and children everywhere still need and want to fill. I find it useful to enter two keywords: ted talks and trendwatching, into my computer from time to time to check the discoveries of those who think about the future all the time. Before mapping out paths on a college campus, for example, Tom Hulme told how it made sense to watch what paths students and professors actually took. I was reminded of the story of how the construction company hired to build a highway over a mountain in Saudi Arabia pushed a donkey over the edge of the mountain and watched the route it took picking its way down before imitating the donkey's route with a highway.

     Photos provide an excellent way for students around the world to get to know how each other live. Stephen Wilkes used the photos he took day and night at one location, not to map out a design for a road, but to make art. By combining all the photos into composites, he showed day and night life on a river in one photo and daily life at an animals' watering hole in another. Believe it or not, there are lots of people in the world who have no idea of what our home towns look like, just as I didn't know what a town in Syria looked like after it was bombed until  I saw a photo a drone took of the devastation. Students and teachers can go to ePals.com to find classrooms throughout the world that can exchange photos of their cities.

     The International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) is sponsoring a contest to select digital format photos from around the world that show scenes and individuals that demonstrate four themes:

• Youth who are active community leaders and informed citizens that provide future opportunities and positive change.
• Diverse leaders who serve others and change every level of society for the better.
• Institutions that build just, prosperous societies by engaging communities, accountability, and responsive governance.
• Quality education, independent media, and new technologies that provide information and foster civic engagement in communities.

There is a $250 prize for the winning photo in each of the four categories. The deadline for submitting photos is April 25, 2016. Additional details are at irex.org/photocontest.

     With predictions that millions of people around the world will be hungry in the future, photos of young people using new farming practices might be a winning way to show the promise of globalization.

Humor Paves the Way for Refugees

     Transplanted from Syria to Germany, Firas Alshater is a humorous YouTube sensation who has attracted about 2.5 million views. Standing blindfolded on a Berlin street corner, it took an hour and a half for a German to respond to his sign asking for a hug. No worries. He said integration will work; it just takes a bit more time.

     Actually, Firas explained that you can teach yourself to hate anything, even an adorable kitty.

     He showed a dog and cat who had a language problem. When the dog wagged its tail, the cat thought it wanted to fight. When the cat purred, the dog expected a fight.

     On the other hand, Firas showed how a heavily tattooed, right wing protester couldn't help but shake hands with a cute refugee baby in Dresden.

     In Syria, Firas Alshater made films unless, as he reports, he was in prison for making films. Hounded by the Assad regime and Isis, he moved to Germany to work for the Filmbit production company two and a half years ago and decided to stay where he was welcome.

   

   

   

Be Kind to Bees

With the planting season about to begin in the Northern Hemisphere, this is a good time to look at the health of bees, those little pollinators that some call nature's migrant farmer force. Pollination of California's 90 million almond trees, for example, depends on almost 1,600 beekeepers from everywhere in the US who bring their hives to the state every February. Nathan Clarke, who owns Mad Urban Bees in Wisconsin, loads 2,400 hives into semi trailers for the westward trip each year. The revenue from pollinating crops, not only almonds but also other fruits and vegetables, can be as much as two times more than the income selling honey to consumers and beer brewers. Plus, US beekeepers face competition from low cost honey imports.

     While bee health benefits from leaving harsh winter climates for warmer areas, healthy bees can be infected when they mingle with sick ones when they pollinate away from home. Then, they continue to transmit disease to healthy bees when they return home. But disease is not the only threat to bees and beekeepers. By limiting crops to corn, alfalfa, and soybeans that have been genetically modified to be pesticide-resistant, farmers use chemicals that only kill the weeds that provide pollen for bees and the bees themselves, if these pesticides are sprayed while bees are pollinating in the area. To support their bees, beekeepers find it necessary to provide their own flowerbeds and weeds where their bees can find pollen.

      During the past ten years, researchers have identified causes of the bee colony collapse that began around 2006. Pollinator protection plans have given homeowners, gardeners, farmers, and beekeepers a list of ways to help bees survive:

• To provide bees with pollen and nectar, plant a diverse array of colorful zinnias, cosmos, and lavender; milkweed and other wildflowers; and herbs, such as mints, oregano, garlic, chives, and parsley. Because they have been modified by breeders, tulips, daffodils, petunias, and roses do not feed bees.
• Bees need a place to nest in messy woody debris and in leaf litter and bare soil.
• To keep pesticides away from what bees might eat or where they might nest, remove dandelions and clover before spraying and do not apply pesticides to blooming plants and possible nesting areas.

Neonicotinoid pesticides that weaken pollinators' immune system abilities to survive mites and diseases seem to be a major cause of colony collapse. Not only does spraying fields and urban areas with the pesticides leave bees no safe place to hide in the immediate area, but dust kicked up by applying pesticides spreads neonicotinoids far afield to the dandelions and clover that bees eat in early spring. Since chemical companies have been able to gain exemptions to labeling and regulations, consumers may not always be able to avoid purchasing neonicotinoid pesticides or plants and seeds treated with these chemicals. Corn and soybean seeds, for example, can be coated with neonicotinoid pesticides to protect young plants when they are most vulnerable. Research has shown, however, that treating soybeans has little value because the pesticide is not timed to provide protection during major pest attacks.

     For additional thoughts about problems bees encounter and ways to help them survive, see the earlier post, "The Bees and the Birds." 

Corruption Has Consequences

Countries with a reputation for being free of corruption from abuse of power, bribes and kickbacks, and secret deals are attractive tourist destinations and prospects for business investment. Unfortunately, based on a study of 168 countries by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), no country is totally free of corruption.

     In 2015, using a scale of 0-100, the OECD's corruption index showed 68% of the ranked countries scored below 50, indicating a serious corruption problem that took protesters to the streets in some countries. Even Denmark, which scored 91, has room for a bit of improvement. The United States and Austria, with scores of 76, did not make the top ten list of least corrupt countries, which included: Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada, and Germany. Corruption caused Kim Jong-un's North Korea and Somalia to tie for last place in both 2014 and 2015.

     Brazil, now embroiled in a corruption scandal (See the earlier post, "Warning to Students: Don't Cheat."), dropped 5 points since 2014, and was in 76th place in 2015. Not a good prospect for countries sending teams to this summer's Olympics in Rio.

     The OEDC cautions that its corruption index is based on surveys of conditions institutions make within a country's borders. Countries might have a higher or lower score, if their corruption activities in foreign countries were measured. Indeed, half of OECD countries have been found to violate agreements to stop companies from paying bribes when they do business in countries outside their borders.

     The earlier post, "Cheating is Easy, but...," provides some anti-corruption strategies for doing business around the world.