American Gun Culture

Last lesson Farrah told us some facts about america and their rights to bear arms and now I want to tell you something of this lesson.

Americans bear weapons because of these three reasons:

One of them struggle against the British. People have guns to make sure that the government doesn't go bad.

The second reason is the frontier life. People who live at the frontier have no policy quite close so the have to protect them on their own.

And Americans need their guns for hunting.

Farrah also told us something about a group of people who are called "Rednecks". Typically for them is that they wear old jeans, caps, drink a lot of beer and are uneducated.

At the end of the lesson we watched a video about a shooting in arizona. In this video a young republican man wanted to kill a democratic congress woman.

A swarm of leaks

I read an article the other day on the online version of the economist.com and it talks about new upcoming leaking sites. Basically what it talks about is that WikiLeaks may die but leaking will not. There is already another leaking site which is called Cryptome, which was founded by two New York architects with libertarian leanings. It is also mentioned that there will start a new website, which is not named yet, in Germany.

It is also said that the rivals of WikiLeaks differ in their approaches to technologie and their methods. WikiLeaks seeks donations. The owner of the Cryptome site finances his site with money of his own pocket and the owner of the german site has not said how he will finance this site.

It seems that the new pages will be bolder with the material they disclose.
Mr. Young, the owner of Cryptome has already posted more than 58, 000 files. And the german site wants to allow the leakers to decide how their documents will appear.

In the future such websites will multiply, because the technologie is on their side.

I think it will be very interesting in the future, because when there are a lot of leaking sites, there will not be a chance for the states to have any secrets.

Link

Vocabulary:

to seek (benötigen): WikiLeaks seeks donations.

to be bold (kühn, mutig sein): The new pages will be bolder with the material they disclose.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was first celabrated in 1621 by the pilgrims who wanted to celebrate their first harvest. The Native Americans were invited to eat with the Pilgrims.

Nowadays it is celabrated on the 4th thursday in November. On this day the family comes together to have a typical Thanksgiving dinner.

Typical dishes are: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, etc.

The day after Thanksgiving is the "Black Friday". On this day the Christmas shopping season begins. There are a lot of discounts granted and the shops open very early in the morning.

In my mind Thanksgiving is very nice. The family comes together and they have a fantastic dinner.

Happy Halloween

Halloween is a shortened form of All Hallow's Eve.

Hallowed means holy. Eve is the day before a holy day. Halloween was an ancient British Celtic festival. At Halloween the souls of the dead returned. People lit bonfires to frighten evils spirits. Now bonfires are only burnt on November 5th. On Halloween children play trick-or treat. They hope to get money and if they don't get money, they play a trick on the people, who don't give them sweets.

My favourite advertisement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40DykbPa4Lc

Farrah

Her name is Farrah. She is form Maryland, which is in the north east of Washington D.C. She is a single child, about which she doesn't care, because she gets everything what she wants from her parents. She is really bad at sports, but she goes to gym. In Austria she likes the mountains and she also likes the old buildings in the cities. She has already been to Perg, Saalbach, Vienna, Innsbruck and Salzburg. In her freetime she likes to listen to music and to watch films. In Europe she has already been to Germany, France, UK, the Nederlands, Greece and Switzerland.

The development of advertising

In the beginning of advertising during the Industrial Revolution, it was mainly used to promote novelties and fringe products.
Then there were a lot of new companies and so brand-naming became necessary.

The economic depression, which lasted from 1873 to 1894, brought on a crisis of over-production and under-consumption.
The smaller businesses realized that they would be in a better situation if they combined with other small businesses.

Lord Leverhulme was one of the first industrialists to realize that advertisements should contain "logical and considered" arguments as well as eye-catching and witty slogans.
Advertising of this period had reached the "stage of persuasion as distinct from proclamation or iteration", indeed advertise or bust seemed to be the rule of the day as bigger and more expensive campaigns were mounted and smaller firms who did not or could not, advertise, were squeezed or bought out by the larger companies.