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Building our survey based off this book

ajr387

The main way I will use this text in our future survey project is when crafting questions about energy. Our previous energy survey was built without an understanding of how "energy" came to be. We didn't question the fundamentals of how our understanding of energy came to be. Now that we have this knowledge, I think we can ask questions that get people to think about energy. Simple questions like "what is energy" and "why is energy important to your life" can serve to test some of the books claims. We can see if people think of energy like the book states: the ability to do work and some scientific measurement of that ability.

Marx's idea of a ruling ideas

ajr387

This text builds off of Marx's concept of the ruling idea. According to Marx, many concepts and ideas that are embedded as "common sense" in our society today exist to profilerate and benefit the ruling class. The book builds of this theory in multiple ways. For example, we view coal as one of, if not the only viable ways to power our sociey because the characteristics of coal most benefit the ruling class. It does not require communual effort like water and can be used all year round. On top of this, the way energy and work are intertwined also benefits the working class. We think of those that don't work as wasting their energy, when in reality they show that people do not need to work in the capitalistic sense of the word.

The biggest example of this is the scientific study of energy and entropy. The first two laws of thermodynamics somewhat contradict each other, but play into this idea that the earth is under our control. The second is even used to often justify forcing people into work, stating that if they waste energy, they cannot reuse it.

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Andreas_Rebmann

It was a new way of addressing disaster in 1971 when it was founded. 

“It’s simple really: go where the patients are. It seems obvious, but at the time it was a revolutionary concept because borders got in the way. It’s no coincidence that we called it ‘Médecins Sans Frontières.’”

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Andreas_Rebmann

This article covers the investigation procedure following a tragedy, and how the outcomes of these investigations tend to be muddled due to factors outside of logic and reason. These influencing factors make it difficult to draw conclusions as to what contributing factors were most significant in the damage sustained during the tragedy, and how to best avoid them in the future. For this reason, it addresses how difficult it is to improve disaster-response when so little useful information can be gleaned from the modern investigatory procedure. 

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Andreas_Rebmann

They use aggregated interviews wherein all or many of the survivors repeat the same issues with long term effects of the disaster.

They also study the socioeconomic longterm effects of the disaster by comparing New Orleans years later to the past, showing how permanent an effect the storm had despite eventual recovery.

They also used sociological surveys that showed widespread mental health disorders that developed throughout the survivor population in greater frequency than that of the normal population due to the events that occured.