Was the East German Government Effective?

When one thinks of the East German government they think brutal, secretive and evil. But was it effective? It depends on how view the word effective. Was it effective in making life easier for its citizens or effective in making a progressive government. Or was it effective in keeping the government constantly in a state of all power. The East German government was only effective in re-ensuring its survival by crushing all independent thoughts. For example in the film The Lives of Others they arrested an artist who was a neighbor to another artist who fled the country. They interrogated him for two days straight until he cracked and mentioned one name. They tortured one man for one name for forty eight hours proving how desperate the government is to maintain it's regiem. 

Who was the most ethical in "The Lives of Others"

In the film The Lives of Others there was a large amount of unethical behavior. People were being monitored in there own homes, artists would be interrogated for two days and people in charge could force women to sleep with them or else they would be thrown into prison or worse. But there was also light in this dark world. An agent for the stassi (Secret Police) named Weisler is the most ethical person in the film. He was assigned to spy on an artist named Dreyman and when he heard about him talking negatively about the government he didn't turn him in. Also when the Stassi was searching Dreyman's appartement Weisler removed the typewriter Dreyman used to write an anti-east germany article.

Chicago heat wave precautions

In the heat wave of 1995 in Chicago, hundreds of deaths could have been avoided if a few simple measures were taken. The first measure is that the police and medics made regular visits to houses with the elderly. Second, the city should have issued a state of emergency. Third fire hydrants should not have been used.
The first measure which meant that police would check in on seniors on a regular basis. This would help if an elderly person was sick or in need of medical attention he/she would not die. Police would see that they were not healthy and they would call for paramedics. Since most of the deaths in the heat wave were seniors lots of lives would have been saved.
The second measure would be to declare a state of emergency. Chicago would have gotten more aid and the whole outcome of the situation would have been a lot better then it was.
The third measure is probably the most important of all. People should not have used the fire hydrants. They used a significant amount of water pressure which made sinks and showers in the elderly’s homes unusable, causing them to cook in their own homes. If everyone just stayed at home and just filled up their baths and used that as a way to keep cool, hundreds of people would have survived the heat wave.
Next time a crisis like this occurs these precautionary measures will be taken and we can reprimand the mistakes we made in the past.

The Chicago Heatwave

The Chicago Heatwave was a man made disaster as much as it was a natural disaster. Usually natural disasters should effect everyone. But in the Chicago heatwave, only the poor died or people who lived in high rises. For example in poor neighborhoods where people could not afford air conditioning, families would go out and turn on the fire hydrants to cool down. But unfortunately the water pressure would go down in houses leaving people like the elderly to not have water, killing them their own houses. The rich however have a different story. Contrary to what people have heard from poorer neighborhoods on how surviving the heat wave was a struggle to survive wealthier people only recall the heatwave as being a nuisance. The rich had air conditioning and more running water so they could survive a lot easier than poorer people. These two reasons clearly show that the heatwave was more than a man made disaster then anything.

Industrial Revolution

The industrial revolution has changed the world drastically from farmers and spread out populations to cities packed with millions of people and factories. Life expectancy almost doubled and the quality of lifestyle became better. Coal was the very thing that fueled the industrial revolution. Coal also expelled lots of carbon dioxide in the air polluting it too. Even with all the pollution in the air the other events that happened made up for the dirty air. Overall the industrial revolution was a net gain for society.
The industrial revolution had many positive impacts on society. For example longer lives. With advanced medical technology and better ways to transportation people from different places could get better medical treatement. Another good thing from the revolution was improvement of lifestyle. Factories could make many more luxurious items in less amount of time a person could make them. More people could get access to these things easily since there was so many of them and could be so easily distributed.
Some negative things happened in the industrial revolution too. Pollution. Since all the factories, trains and machines ran on coal it polluted the air. A lot. The content of carbon dioxide in the air grew exponentially making the air a lot dirtier.
In the end the industrial revolution got us technology wise to where we are now making the whole event a net gain for the world.

Disease in Wars

Disease in wars has been a serious issue in the past. Especially in World War I. In WWI battles were usually fought in long holes in the ground that spanned for hundreds of yards called trenches. WWI was so devastating because these trenches were so grotesquely unsanitary. They were unsanitary for a myriad of reasons. The most prominent ones are that the trenches were full of waste and the rain water that filled up the trenches which made it easier to breed bacteria.
During WWI soldiers rarely left the trenches. It was basically where they lived for months on end. They ate, slept, and fought in those trenches. Soon after months of being occupied they began to fill up with spoiled food, human waste and even bodies. All this rotting material was full of bacteria which made everybody near the waste sick.
When one thinks of rain water having a negative affect on the trenches they doubt the thought. Unfortunately they are wrong. The water helped carry debris like waste, spoiled meat, bodies and other vile things.  It also helped breed bacteria also making everyone sick. Overall war and disease should never go together.

Plagues

Plagues have affected the world for as far back as we can remember.A running theme though with diseases is that they have always correlated with how humans have maintained their relationship with their habitat. For example the black death. Humans in europe did not keep their environment clean. They had their trash and feces in one large unmaintained place. This would cause rats to congregate in populated places. These rats had fleas which carried the which killed a large population in europe. When more people were dying due to the plague, people had to put the bodies somewhere. They put the bodies in mass graves close to more populated areas infecting more people.
Before the black plague struck, people in the middle ages in Europe did not dispose of their garbage correctly. It was too close to the main population and people could get sick from it. Soon rats and other rodents would go there to feed. They would go back and forth from the populated place to the dump several times carrying fleas which gave the rats the disease. Soon the rats would venture farther into the populated areas coming in contact with humans. Then the humans would spread the disease and from there the plague spread.