Berlin calling

The drugs are all through the movie, and these mean a lot to the main character Ickarus. Ickarus had changed his attitude on drugs. Initially, he would looking for fun and thrill from the drugs as well as his inspiration for music so that he could avoid those uncomfortable things happened in real life. But things had changed since he took a hallucinogenic drug. Then he stated to get treated in a psychosis department. Finally, when he was cured, he found out the drugs were nothing but poison to him. He took some light drugs as dancing outreach and so on since Icklus' mother passed away. And at that time, he stated his life in those clubs. Once, the drug dealer sold him something like ice drug that caused him sick. That was a bad timing when his new work was almost done. His own album was about to publish but this case delayed it. He even got fired and made a scene in his boss' office.

When comparing this movie's character with real people from my hometown, it was pathetic. Because DJ is not an official job admitted by the government. Those people were not musicians in China. Those people do not have their own albums to sell and only work in pubs. By the way, there were not that many drugs in China, since all crimes related to drugs are very serious, some might lead to a death penalty. 

In my eyes, the young generation of Germany are not like the old days. Those diversity of jobs made it possible to develop a new kind of economy. This movie showed us about the musicians and a wise boss who buried the past.At least, I do not think a boss could bare someone the humiliated him or her before. 

Presentation for 19th century health and sports

link

expand on health

19th century and 20th century was the time when the medical cares well developed. German scientists had made several breakthroughs during the 19th and 20th century. There were many outstanding scientists, for example, the most influenced one in 19th century would be Rudolf Carl Virchow(1821～1902).  He was a German doctor, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician, known for his advancement of public health. Referred to as "the father of modern pathology", he is considered one of the founders of social medicine. Virchow is credited with many important discoveries. His most widely known scientific contribution is his cell theory, which built on the work of Theodor Schwann. He is cited as the first to recognize leukemia cells. He was one of the first to accept the work of Robert Remak, who showed the origins of cells was the division of pre-existing cells.
The pace of medical advances quickened on all fronts in the 20th century. Breakthroughs came in biology, chemistry, physiology, pharmacology, and technology, often in converging or overlapping ways. New understanding of diseases brought new treatments and cures for many of these conditions. However, even as most of the killer epidemic diseases were conquered—and in the case of smallpox erased—new diseases emerged, such as AIDS.A pioneer in pharmacology was the German scientist Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915), who—after much trial and effort—synthesized the arsenic-based compound Salvarsan, the first effective treatment for syphilis, in 1909. Ehrlich, who coined the term "chemotherapy," thus created the first antibiotic drug. A generation later, another German, Gerhard Domagk (1895-1964), who worked for Bayer, produced the first useful sulfa drug (another antibiotic). This drug was used to treat streptoccal, or strep, diseases, including meningitis. Many new drugs followed in the 1950s, including cortisone, a steroid hormone that reduced inflammation and suppressed the immune system response. The first effective drugs for the treatment of mental illness also appeared in this era.

Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18696145, 11/14/2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Virchow, 11/14/2012

19th century Health and Sports

Health and Sports

Due to the poor environmental conditions, disease in the earlier part of the period ran rampant. As the century progressed and laws passed to correct the health concerns, the death rates of various illnesses began to drop and there were far less instances of ‘epidemic’ proportion. Some noticeable diseases include Chicken Pox, Cholera, Diphtheria, Poliomyelitis, Consumption and Smallpox. Among all of these, Cholera is the one most famous.

Cholera, known as one of the most dreaded of all diseases, acutely infectious, is caused by drinking water from contaminated sources. The first breakout of Cholera happened in India in 1817. Due to the developing international trade, the disease was spread other continents. For roughly counting, there were about six breakouts and 38 million people died during the first hundred years since Cholera found.

 The 19th century also saw the rapid creation, development and codification of many sports, particularly in Britain and the United States. Association football, rugby union, baseball and many other sports were developed during the 19th century, while the British Empire facilitated the rapid spread of sports such as cricket to many different parts of the world. There is one thing has to mention for sports is revive of modern Olympic Games in 1894. The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad, was a multi-sport event held in Athens, Greece, from April 6 to 15, 1896. It was the first international Olympic Games held in the Modern era. Because Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, Athens was considered to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organized by Pierre de Coubertin, a French pedagogue and historian, in Paris, on June 23, 1894. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was also instituted during this congress. This brought peace and friendship to the young people all over the world.

Reference:

http://logicmgmt.com/1876/overview/medicine/diseases.htm , 10/25/2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_century , 10/25/2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1896_Summer_Olympics , 10/25/2012

5 talking pts

• The damage to the young generation due to the cruel war
• The different attitudes of people enrolled in the war against those stayed behind are two extremes
• A wrong way of encouraging young people going to the battle fields
• It is a tragedy of the novel and the movie from our eyes, but this satisfied the soldiers' last will
• The war was cruel and tough, but the soldiers could find their own way to have fun or love during break 

Task 2 Paul Baumer

Task 2 Paul Baumer

Paul Baumer is the main character in this book. This man was a high school student before joining the army. By being taught from his teacher that soldier would be a national hero and all the other positive aspects of the war, he was encouraged to join the army not only from others but also his will. There were also three students joined the army with him at the same time. After ten weeks training, they all changed a lot. Though there were only ten weeks, but in Baumer’s eyes, those days were even more worth than the past ten years in school. Baumer and his comrades in arms were sent to the front line of battle field after ten weeks of trainings. The conditions were poor in battle field. Normally soldiers could not get enough food or even a private space when dumping. At the beginning, Baumer complained this, but soon he got used to it. The worst condition was once soldiers on the field, they would never know whether they could make it through or not. Baumer found that the people around him just got fewer and fewer and everything happened on the front line was hard to bear. Sometimes they might get too dirty for them to tolerate thus the flees would be anywhere on the body; the supplies were not in time such that they got nothing to eat and had to fight against the cold weather at the same time; shouting and screaming were everywhere you could hardly tell whether it was from enemies or companions; all the ground was on fire filled with dead bodies and blood. Everything was horrible but unstoppable for Baumer. He felt sorrow and pain when he lost his close friend Franz Kemmerich, who left him first. When he saw people struggling crawling back to base and died in hospital, he could no more felt the pride teacher once told him but pain and death instead.

Front line was like a cage, and people inside became animals. So did Baumer. But it was lucky for Baumer because he got a chance to go home. However, when he got home, he could not feel love but questioning instead. People around him thought he was a coward and they laughed at his attitude of war. But he was only about 20 years old, all he did during these years was killing enemies. His life was meaningless. He was disappointed and distressed. Those people at back didn’t know the cruel of the war. So he decided to go back to the front line again. As he wished, he died eventually.

This is Paul Baumer, from an optimistic, patriotic and passionate person to a fear, distressed and meaningless soldier.    

Task 1

This chapter was mostly described about the life before joining the army and early days of being a soldier. The memory for Paul Baumer was clear at the beginning. During the school days, people treated the poems and other compositions as preciousness. But as they leaving homes and becoming soldiers, those memories would be torn apart by the cruel life in war.

The life in the army is quite different from normal life. Battle could change what people think and how people judge things, especially the sense of worth. The war showed no sympathy to the people enrolled in it. Those young soldiers, they were close friends, helping each other, standing back to back. But as the battle started, with the strict and cruel training in army, their minds were twisted. It was totally a rebuild for those young soldiers since they were just students before. The slogans from their teachers felt so weak here. People in the army considered the physical benefit much more than mental. The Corporal Himmelstoss from No.9 platoon was a typical example of who got twisted by the war. He treated his soldiers as animals as I see. He was extremely mean to Baumer and Kropp. The corporal often asked Baumer doing unreasonable things. But these two young soldiers they just did not yield to him. They fought as hard as they could finally they owned the respect from him.

Though those soldiers had fought together and came up with deep relationships, life was still worthless. When Franz was wounded and lying on the bed, only Baumer came to his side and tried to comfort him. Muller cared about Franz’s boots much more than his life. The doctors were so cruel to those injured soldiers. Death was so easy for them to talk about. Franz was hopefully at the beginning but as time passed, he realized that he would probably die. Franz lost the hope and gave away his precious boots to Muller finally. Baumer was sorrowful and upset when he lost Franz but when he turned the boots to Mulle, Muller was very happy and gave Baumer some small prizes in return.