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This blog is for Watauga High School students taking the Scientific and Technical Visualization class. We are reading and discussing Thomas Friendman's book "The World is Flat". Watauga High School is not responsible for the content of any student entry or any links that might be added by students.
Welcome
In this blog we will be discussing the book ,The World is Flat, By Thomas L. Friedman.
The World is Flat
Blog Archive
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2008
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April
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- Comment on rule 5 and 6 for Thursday
- Read 449-457 - for Wednesday, April 30
- For Tuesday - April 29 read 441-449
- Short reading, 433-437, for Friday April 25
- for Thursday - April 24
- For Wed. - April 23
- For Tuesday, April 22
- Read 391-400
- Begin reading This Is Not A Test - 374-390
- Read 365-373 for tuesday April 15
- For Friday Dirty little secret #4, 5, and 6
- Read Dirty Little Secret #3
- Read - Dirty Little Secret #2 for Tuesday, April 8
- Read 343-349 "Dirty little secret #1"
- Read pages 337-343
- Read 329-336
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April
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5 comments:
In this reading I learned that America's problems are similar to our own basketball team. The players are getting lazy, just like our youth today. The players from others teams are starting to collaborate with each other instead of trying to make the highlight reel. Also the quite crisis is among us, it is like the air mattress that is slowly running out of air, until we hit the cement.
Freidman talks about America's laziness and lack of effective collaboration in these pages. He makes a reference to the US Olympic basketball team from 2004 who lost several games, not a usual thing for the NBA stars. He says that it was because of laziness and them not working together very well. I think that this was a very appropriate analogy. He also talks about the ninety's generation of people coming into the revolutionized world with no experiences as far as what went on to achieve their world. This makes them unappreciative and lazy, as a whole, and could prove to be a serious weakness for a spoiled America in the new future.
This section is about how as a whole the us could be doomed for a disaster if precautionary steps are not taken. This process is just beginning of amaericans being lazier, not wanting to work hard, are in it for the quick buck, and in general are not as motivated as the rest of the world. This is occurring now but so slightly that only very few people even realize and see it. The basketball anolgy is very fitting in this sense. With other nations and there basketball teams may not be as good as americas team and nation but are in the long run because they have found out a better way to collaborate unlike americans making them stronger.
In this section Friedman attempts to compare how the rest of the world is catching up while we're falling behind, to the poor showing by the USA men's basketball team in the 2004 Summer Olympics. He claims that the rest of the world is catching up to us even in basketball, because we didn't win the gold. He even claims that it's our NBA "stars" that lost the event. While there were a few stars, the NBA is consisted of many SUPER-stars, including Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal (at the time), Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan, Ben Wallace (at the time), Jason Kidd, Vince Carter, Gilbert Arenas, Chauncey Billups, etc. Out of all of those I just mentioned, only 2 (Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson) of them were on the US olympic team, only because they just didn't feel like going and competing. LeBron James, Carmello Anthony and Dwayne Wade hadn't hit their stride yet by any means. This was a BIG step down from the true "dream team" of 1992 that had Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Scottie Pippen, Chris Mullin, Clyde Drexler, John Stockton, and Christian Laettner. While the 2004 Men's olympic basketball team was a good team, it's not terribly surprising they only won the bronze. So all in all, this was a poor analogy. He does go on to compare America today to the third-generations of a wealthy family who don't work for their money and squander all they have away getting fat. He is resummarizing what he has said in previous chapters about America being lazy and not used to having to work to stay on top, that we have a sense of entitlement and culture of complacency.
Laziness and lack of collaboration. Basketball is a good comparison considering the team relies on all the members to function instead of one player.
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