The Way Home

I have read the book “The way home” by George Pelecanos. The book tells the story of Chris Flynn, a man in his young twenties. Chris grows up in a happy family, but still he ends up in jail after several crimes. We get to follow him in jail and the time afterwards when he tries to do well and stay out of his previous bad habits. Chris starts to work in his fathers business, but when he finds a bag full of money is the time when things start to go bad.

I think one of the most important topics that the book brings up is the “what to do when I grow up” topic. On one side you may not know what you want to do with your life, like what to do for a living, and on an earlier stage what you are going to study. On the other hand you may feel pressure from your parents to do well in life, and they may want you to work in a certain business. I think it is a tough period in our life when many important decisions will be made and the important thing is to follow your own heart (classic).

Another topic in the book, according to me, is that you are not the one you were born to be. You become who you are because of how you act etc. For example Chris is a white guy who grew up in a happy family, still he ends up in jail where he is the only white guy. Of course this was a lot of bad actions that lead to the jail time, but it could go the other way with a lot of good actions.

Most people deserve a second chance and people can change. I think this is true and a thought worth living after. In the book a couple of guys that Chris spent jail time with later on became rather successfully in the business and didn’t come back to the criminal life. I think that is a good example on how people can change if they get a second chance.

Overall I think the book was interesting and quite exciting.

The story of electronics

Reflections to http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-electronics/

I agree that this is a very serious problem. I think that this problem mostly affects the third world, where the dumping is made, but of course it affects the environment in the whole world.

Annie Leonard says that she wants longer lasting products, and of course that would be a great way to go, but I don’t think that change I possible. If the products would last longer, there would be less products to produce and people would get unemployed because of the low productivity.

I think that the thing we should focus on is the recycling possibility and the amount of toxic that are used in the production. If the products were easier to recycle the “mountains of E-waste “ would be much smaller and we wouldn’t have to produce so much new material for the products. Of course we would still need some new material for the production and it would still cost energy in the production, but I think it’s a large step in the right direction.

Annie Leonard also talks about how hard it is to repair the products and that it’s often cheaper to buy a new product than repair the old one. It is obviously a way for the producers to earn more money, and I think it is hard to prevent this unless there would be a law to stop this production. But as I said earlier: if the production was greener and recyclable the problem would be much smaller.

Snooping Bosses

Reflections to: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1531312,00.html

In the example in the text the employer said he was sick, but the boss saw that he was out on the road and not in bed where he was supposed to be. I don’t think that bosses should be able to see what people do on their spare time. Even though it was wrong of the employer to lie about his illness, the boss shouldn’t be able to overlook his employees on their free time. Everyone should have right to privacy at home without some overlooking every step they take.

If I were the manager at a company I would act exactly the same as in the example. I would not care if my staff were porn-surfing at home (and I would not want to know if they did either), but if anyone were doing it during working time I would be furious. The porn surfing would mainly lead to two negative things, first the working efficiency would go down because of the time spent on the website and it would also lead to negative publicity if someone outside the company would find out that the employees were porn surfing at work.

Over all I think that most kinds of tracking at work are positive because it is very important for the boss to know that the work that should be done will be done. However I don’t think that the bosses should be able to see exactly what the employer is doing on his computer. I think a better solution would be if pages would be banned. I do also think that the bosses should have access to the employees email at work.

Another aspect is the increasing number of Closed-circuit television on the streets. I think it is very positive thing, because it will probably decrease the number of crimes on the streets and may also help solving crimes that have been done. The important thing is that the CCTV only will get used in the right purpose and not to spy on the citizens.

 Big Brother is watching you!