Increase the quality of your training

Recently I bought a pulse-watch and I have to say that I think I will be very satisfied with my investment.
A Pulse-watch has the function to measure your pulse, but it can do other things as well. For example before every training, you can calibrate the watch and thereby it can predict which interval your pulse should be within, during the time you exercise.
In that way you will not risk to overload your body and you are more prepared for the next time you exercise.
After every training pass the watch will store different values such as heart rate, time, distance, calories, altitude, etc.
I know that it sounds a little bit to serious, but I think it´s quite fun and meantime it´s a kind of medical checkup as well.
You can then send those values to a software in the computer that will analyze your exercise. After many exercises you will see changes in the values on your watch and on the software and thereby you can follow your progress. So in the future when I´m standing at the starting line in competition i will exactly now which shape I´m in. But probably I will run like hell anyway!

Blog assignment 1

Which economy will be the biggest in the future?
As we all know today it is USA, followed by Japan and then China.
I read an interesting article recently where the writer said: “What happens today is even bigger then the industrial revolution”. The industrial revolution only concerned one third of the world population, this revolution concerns the entire world.
That is interesting!
In the nearest five years I still think that USA will hold its position as the biggest economy in the world, but China will come closer and closer. This will not continue without problems. I mean China today faces pressure from other countries to do something with their large current account surplus, which cause global imbalances.
USA could also use protectionism as a weapon against China, but USA is also dependent on China. USA has a big budget deficit, which is financed by obligations, where China is a big buyer to keep the yen fixed to the US-dollar. In the future China realizes the problem and cut down on US obligations and let the yen increase in value, more then they already done. What happens with USA then? Will other big countries or China still buy US-obligations or do they require higher interest rates? Well they have to do something about the problem and try to cut down the budget deficit. This could affect consumptions, investments and other things in the US economy.
This will affect other parts of the world. The main question is how severe these problems will be and could another economy like China act like a new leader?

Will the american dream survive?

Nice Work by David Lodge

I have recently read Nice Work by David Lodge. The main characters of the book are Vic Wilcox and Robyn Penrose.
Vic Wilcox is a rather negative person, he doesn´t like things that happens around him. He doesn´t like his wife very much after 30 years of marrige, his lazy and spoiled childrens and other people who live on others money. In fact their are nearly anything that makes him positive and he gets angry very easily. One thing that he enjoys is the trip to work every morning in his thirsty Jaguar. He works at a factory where they produce gearboxes and other things to the car and army industries, Vic is the executive officer of the company.
One day a women called Robyn shows up at the factory. She will be a shadow to Vic due to that the government has decided that this year should be the industrial year. Robyn will follow Vic in his daily work.
First he thougt that it was a man that should be the shadow because they had spelled Robin instead of Robyn.
Robyn works at the university and teach in litterature, she is everything that Vic hates, she is a socialist, feminist and she works at the university that are financed by tax payers money.
Once they first meet the started to argue, and it seems like they hate eachother.
She has complainments on the enviroment and different kinds of erotic pictures on the walls. Vic doesn´t like what she say.
Robyn didn´t want to come back to the factory but the storng willingness iside her tells her to continue.
Robyn is not like other women, she dresses like she wants, now what she wants and isn´t afraid of saying what she thinks. I think it is the last that Vic has problems to accept, he thinks that his thoughts are the right thougts.

After a while they starts to like eachother and Vic starts to share Robyns opinions, even if he doesn´t accept it himself for a start, but Robyn see it.
It results in a relationship between them.

I liked the book very much and it reflects that even if people has different opinions they can still be freinds and accept the other part. I think that this is an important thing in real life, people are different and as long we accept it we can get along very well if we can share others opinions.
The book also say that it is possible to convert people and that they can see things in a different angle.

Story of stuff

I have recently watch a video called "The story of stuff" which tells us about where the stuff we buy in stores comes from and where they go.
Well there are not many of the consumers all over the world that think about where the stuff come from and why they are so cheap, also what consequences the production of the goods does on the enviroment we live in.
Consumption is good for the economy but there always someone who has to pay for it. I mean the natural resources shrinks as we use metals, wood and other things in the production, the clean air that we breath get more and more poisened by the smoke from the factories. All of this we have to pay for when the it comes to an end.
But the question is will it ever come to an end, when we don´t have any clean air to breath in and no natural resources to produce new goods. No i don´t think so, the humanbeing is a smart creature we will solve this problem before it´s too late by make goods that are more freindly to the enviroment that can be recycled many times, and during that time the world can rehabilitate it self.
The people who got to make this happen is the consumers, the factory managers and also the goverment. We all have to work for this without that anyone loose on it. Remember the workers who produces the goods got to have something to live on and if we stop consume some of thier goods they get no wage. So it has to be balanced in a good way.

Snooping bosses

I have recently read an article called "snooping bosses" were managers use a software program which allows them to see what their employees do during work, where they are and also what they do on their sparetime. Of course they don´t have access to satellites to see what they actually do physically, but they can see what kind of websites they visit and so on.

I don´t think that this is right. Surveillance can be accepted in jobs where the employees have a high responsibility according to the security level, like jobs in a goverment, but not on regular workers.
It has been to much focus on the workers productivity and this is a way for managers to control what the workers do so gaps can be filled with more work and then increase the workers productivity. You can say that the workers should more be like machines with no failures. But the workers are´nt a machines they are human beings and i think they should have the right to be it. I think that it´s good that workers can relax by doing other things that is not connected to work, as long as they do their job. In fact it could also increase the workers productivity when they do other things in small amounts of time. Afterwards they are more relaxed and maybe provides better results.

What about the surveillance on the workers sparetime? I think that´s even more insulting. I can´t see why the managers have the interest to see what kind of websites they visit, like facebook for example, what´s the purpose of that?
Well the answer to that can be many things but i think the main reason is that they don´t want that their employees are involved in things that can hurt the company in some way.
But if the managers have trust to their workers then they shouldn´t be suspicous, if they are, then they should talk about it with the workers.