High Fructose Corn Syrup

Chances are, whether you were aware of it or not, you have eaten corn today. This is because high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is found in a lot of different foods that used to contain sugar. HFCS is a very common ingredient in processed foods and drinks in the US, including many items that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as being sweet, such as breads, lunch meats, yogurts, soups, and condiments.

HFCS is extremely common in the US, but is not nearly as widely used in other countries – to illustrate this, it is interesting to note that soft drink manufacturers such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola use sugar in their products in all areas of the world with the exception of the US and Canada, where HFCS is used. This is because economic conditions unique to the US make the production of HFCS much cheaper than the production of real sugar. Thanks to some sugar tariffs and quotas introduced in the US in 1977, imported sugar prices in the US increased to twice the global price. And since domestic sugar production is very low and does not receive any government subsidies, domestic sugar is also rather expensive to food manufacturers. Corn, on the other hand, has remained a very cheap commodity due to massive government subsidies: in 2009, the government spent almost four billion dollars on corn subsidies. Thus, thanks to the exclusion of the global sugar market and the subsidized corn industry, HFCS has become the main sweetener in the United Sates.

A lot of people are very opposed to this. One reason they offer is that HFCS is worse for your body than natural sugar. There is a lot of conflicting research about the safety of HFCS, but none of the claims put forth by opponents of HFCS have yet to be conclusively proven, and it is classified as “generally recognized to be safe” by the US Food and Drug Administration. Regardless of its safety as compared to regular sugar, the cheap production of HFCS has been a major factor in the formation of the fast food culture in the US, as HFCS’s cheapness has allowed food production companies to offer more unhealthy foods in bigger quantities for less money. HFCS shows how the US excluding itself from the global sugar market has caused many tangible effects.

Want more information?

http://www.sweetsurprise.com/ - a website devoted to taking away the stigma associated with HFCS

http://www.sweetdisguise.com/ - a website devoted to discrediting HFCS

And of course you can’t go wrong with Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup

Globalization in Music

Hello,

John here.  Unlike my last blog post, which combined my interest in archaeology with our topic of globalization, this post will focus on something a bit more relevant to the average reader: the impact of globalization on music.

The Birth of an “American” Genre

When someone mentions “American music” today, the term brings to mind a variety of performers, genres, etc.  While thoughts of MTV, American Idol, and performers like Lady Gaga, Carrie Underwood, or Train may easily spring to mind, few people will think of the African-American musicians of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  However, these artists truly deserve credit for developing the first uniquely American music genre: the blues.

During the times of large Southern plantations and vibrant slave trade, music was treated very differently from today.  The upper class white society certainly appreciated music, but as a form of home entertainment rather than artistic expression.  Households typically included at least one pianist, who would perform traditional songs at various gatherings, but the average pianist was not typically a songwriter and could not pursue music as a professional career.  The slaves, however, were sometimes encouraged to pursue music in their limited down-time, as this was considered a simple, inexpensive way to improve worker morale while still demanding long hours of sweat and labor.  This encouragement naturally led to a number of pre-blues traditions like spirituals and work songs, and the Southern Africa-American population retained a tradition of musical expression well after emancipation.  While it is impossible to determine when the first blues songs appeared, it is clear that the musical traditions of American slavery contributed to the emergence of the first truly American genre.

However, the effects of globalization are not a recent phenomenon, and we can see a number of outside influences even in the blues.  While the emergence of the blues was the result of over a century of musical development, a number of “Africanisms” can still be identified in early recordings.  Although African music is commonly associated with the percussive beats of tribal drums, in reality a large number of African traditions prominently feature stringed instruments, a number of which were carried across the Atlantic during the slave trade.  Thus instruments like the banjo or the one-string diddley bow, which were the primary instruments of early blues, were often based on popular instruments used by the musicians’ ancestors.  The original blues musicians also served a very similar role to the African griots, musicians and storytellers who combined an appreciation of oral tradition with a dedication to addressing matters of social relevance in their music.  While modern conceptions of African music have certainly over-emphasized the use of tribal drums, it is also important to acknowledge that the early blues does incorporate very similar percussive styles to those of certain modern-day coastal tribes.

Although the blues is far from the only American genre to be affected by globalization, it presents a very unique case which helps to illustrate the true influence of a globalized culture.  Here we have a genre which developed over a very long period of time, involved a number of newly-developed instruments, represented a new perspective towards the role of music in society, and was performed by musicians who had never lived outside the country, and yet the genre still shows tell-tale signs of global influence. Above I’ve included a link to a video of Jali Nyama Suso, a modern griot whose music displays some of the Africanisms present in the early blues.  A number of common elements between this music and the early blues include a back-and-forth interaction between the vocals and instrumentation, the timbre of the instrument, and the percussive accompaniment.

IT"S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL

No. DISNEY"S RACIST AFTER ALL.
It's a small world has always been my favorite ride in Disney since I went to Disney in France when I was 3.
I was really excited about going on the ride when I was in Orlando last week. So my friends and I did.
And BAM racism!
:/
We, fellow Disney-lovers grew up with THiS. When we were kids, we went on this ride and our parents told us, 'Look, Africa!', 'Look, that's what people do in Japan!' and planted the seed of over-generalization ad racism and ignorance in our adorable, young minds.
Oh yes.
I know that this is a Disney ride and it's meant to be happy and happy and happy and positive. And it's supposed to show little kids a view of the world. Except the representation of the world isn't quite right. I know that they(Disney authority) want to show the exquisite, exotic and I-can't-think-of-an-appropriate-ex-word part of every culture. They want to show they kids what the other cultures have that Americans don't have. Broaden their horizons.
Well that they did.
But it would be great if after so many years they can update it a little and show more similarities than differences across all cultures. Ya! In the last room that's meant to be 'the world'. Don't paint it all white! What are you trying to say, Disney?
Or is that me being too sensitive to these things?
Oh, and what I find particularly racist are the 2 BOWING JAPANESE DOLLS at the end of the Asia Room. THEY JUST KEEP BOWING AT YOU AS YOUR BOAT LEAVES THE ROOM.

Fair Trade Hot Chocolate!

Hello y'all!
So, for our globalization project we are holding 4 seminars this school year. And my group (Nell, Rachael, Sam and me) decided to do ours on fair trade chocolate. Why? Uh. Because we all love chocolate (Duh). And we care about people who make chocolate exist by GROWING COCOA BEANS!
In order to lure people to come to our seminar, we made THREE types of hot chocolate. Mexican- styled, regular, and HOMEMADE ITALIAN! We went out and bought fairtrade chocolate bars from Trader Joe's and melted them and added milk and all that good stuff and stirred for an hour and it tasted WONDERFUL. SO THICK. SO CREAMY. AW. If our blog wasn't Disney-appropraite I would say it's like an ****** in your mouth. Really.
Here's the recipe:

How to Make Italian Hot Chocolate

What You Will Need:

Ø4 ounces bittersweet chocolate 70% or higher

Ø1 1/2 cups whole milk

Ø2 tablespoons sugar

Ø2 teaspoons corn starch

What To Do:

ØInto a saucepan over LOW heat add chocolate and a smidge of milk. Stir with a wooden spoon until melted.

ØSLOWLY add remaining milk until it’s well combined. Add sugar. Mix to combine. Whisk in corn starch.

Continue cooking over LOW heat until it becomes thick, creamy and coats the back of the wooden spoon.

And here's a link to the presentation :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERECQ_zMmUY&feature=youtu.be

The Globalization of College Students

There are dozens of ways that I could write about the relationship between education and globalization. Today, I'm going to focus on the globalization of a unique segment of education: the college student. The value of study abroad has been whirling around my mind lately as I happily plan and prepare to spend a semester abroad in Denmark. 


For United States students, spending a semester or summer in another country is a huge, and extremely hyped, opportunity. American colleges woo prospective students by touting their highly ranked or affordable study abroad programs. Juniors and seniors see a lot of advertisements like this one:

Once we pick our college or university, we see a lot of advertisements like these on our campuses:

If you had the chance to read last week's great blogpost on Nowa Huta, you probably noticed that Nell, one of the members of this research project on globalization, studied abroad last semester. She is one of approximately 260,000 American students who study abroad every year, according to the Institute of International Education. 


Outside of the United States, studying abroad takes on a different flavor; while U.S. students are the most likely to spend a semester studying in a different country and graduate from an American school, students in non-North American countries are most likely to spend four years studying abroad and receive a degree from a completely different state than they grew up in. 


We've come to the conclusion that hundreds of thousands of college students every year choose to globalize their education, and that universities take pride in offering this opportunity. But why?


Traveling to a foreign nation to receive high quality education is an idea  that goes back centuries into human history. Studying abroad for the sake of the cultural experience, however, is something relatively new. The Institute of International Education was created in 1919, and the University of Delaware established the first semester-long study abroad program in 1920. You may notice that these dates line up with the end of the first world war. This is no coincidence. There is a noble hope that by sending their young, bright students to interact with citizens of other places and understand other cultures, these individuals will build up the global community and promote peace. In the words of the IIE, "Peace and prosperity around the world depend on increasing the capacity of people to think and work on a global and intercultural basis." Spending a semester living and learning in a foreign land, by no doubt, facilitates this.