Corruption

Many of you readers out there may have heard this term before. Heck, many may have already experienced corruption in their daily lives. Corruption is something that has appeared thousands of years ago, back to the time where people would bride officers or landlords either to gain some sort of benefits or to escape a certain crime. Nowadays, corruption has became more powerful than ever. From petty things like bribing a police officer to avoid getting a ticket to grand schemes between corporations and government officials, corruption is something that can and may have already infested many aspects of our lives. So today I'm going to talk about what is corruption, what are the causes, and possible future solutions.

Let's start with the definition. Although corruption has many different meanings, today we're only going to talk about corruption as "an illegal, bad, or dishonest behavior, especially by people in positions of power." (Cambridge Dictionary) In real life corruption works kind of like a trade (an illegal trade, that is). For example, an individual or group who wanted to gain a certain benefit that is hard or even impossible to get without breaking the law. What they would do is they would find the person in charge or has the authority to grant them what they want. Then they would try to "negotiate" with that person to see if there's any way this person can help them achieve their goals. You would think that this person would refuse to accept such an absurd favor. But sometimes the two sides might come to an agreement where this person would grant them what they want (even if it's illegal to do so) in exchange for something in return (usually a large amount of money). That't what corruption is.

So to sum up, corruption is the illegal act of exchanging of money (or other things) for some sort of benefits between an individual or a group and the people with power. It's important to know that corruption only happens when there's people with power involve. Giving 5 bucks to your brother so he wouldn't disturb you when you're playing League of Legends is not corruption. But giving 5000 dollars to tax collector so you can pay lower tax is. Remember that corruption acts are illegal, so if it's legal to pay money for a certain benefits then it's not corruption.

Now let's talk about the different kinds of corruption. There are three kinds of corruption: petty corruption, grand corruption, and systematic corruption. Petty corruption occurs at a small scale, usually between people or people and public servants, and does not seriously affect any systems. Grand corruption occurs at the highest levels of government and can significantly damage the economical, political, and legal system of a country. Systematic corruption occurs inside a system of a weaken corporation or company. Although petty corruption occurs most frequent, it's grand corruptions that seriously alter our way of life.The good new is, these don't occur most often. The bad new is, people who are involve in grand corruption usually have enough power to escape charges once they are exposed.

There are many different methods of corruption like bribery, embezzlement, theft, fraud, extortion, blackmail...Although each one is different from another, many of them was caused by the same reason: "systems that don't work well and create bad incentives" (The World Bank). Although corruption can be cause by bad ethics in people, there are other causes like: an opportunity to earn some cash, little chance of actually getting caught, bad incentives, and the diregard of the law by people because of their attitudes or circumstances that they're in. Therefore, corruption is not about ethics but also how systems are govern as well.

So what are the solutions to corruption? Well, since corruption is illegal, there are government officials and organizations who are working hard in order to erase corruption from governments around the world. What need to be done is that governments and systems need to improve in order to prevent corruption from happen. An important thing to know is that corruption is a group kind of thing. No single individual dare to commit acts of corruption because he or she is too scare to get caught. But if several people were to commit it together, it makes them feel more safe and more willingly to continue their acts. Therefore, if governments and systems can be improve so that no one wants corruption to happen, corruption would be erase.

So what can you do? Well for small readers out there, you can help by spreading the news about corruption to people so they can be aware of the problem. For adults, if you experienced corruption in your daily life and you wanted it to change, report it to the government so that they can help stop corruption from continue. If you have any other ideas of how corruption can be stop, feel free to share in the comments so that everyone will know how corruption can be stop. Just remember that corruption is something people do to gain unfair advantage. And if you help stop it from happening, the world can become a better place.
Ps: Sorry for the cheesy ending.

Corruption:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption#Methods
http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/content/what-corruption
https://www.unodc.org/southeasterneurope/en/Corruption.html
Cause of Corruption: http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/35971/mod04.pdf

Natural Disaster

Ever since the beginning of mankind, humans have been under the mercy of Mother Nature. When she's happy, Mother brings us warm sunshine and breezy cool winds. But when Mother Nature is angry, she can be a force to be reckon with. From storms, typhoons, tornados, to earthquakes, sandstorm, volcanic eruptions, to tsunami, thunderstorm, and hail storm, Mother Nature has put many of us through hell again and again, testing us with her bag of tricks to see if we can adapt and survive. Even though we usually live through after one of her "mood swing", the effects left by these natural disasters are catastrophic. So for today, I'm going to talk about natural disaster and the effects of it on mankind.

Natural disasters come in many forms. From the horrifying terror from the ground, the destructive force from the ocean, the unholy nightmare from the sky, to the mystifying unknown from space, nature have proven to us that even though humans have been developing for thousands of years, we are still no match to its awesome yet terrifying power. But since there's many different types of natural disasters, if I try to cover them all, the blog would be too long and you would just soon give up. So instead in this blog I'm just going to go over some key informations about what cause natural disasters, their effects, and what have humans done in trying to prevent it.

There are many ways to divide the different causes of natural disasters; but in my opinion, these causes are divided into 4 categories: natural disasters cause by the movement of the Earth, natural disasters caused by the weather, natural disasters caused after another natural disasters, and natural disasters caused by factors in space.

The first one occurs whenever the Earth, and by that I mean the very ground you and I are standing on, move. It's a well-known fact that Earth's land are constantly moving. Even though the speed is not very fast (~5cm/year), it can still cause massive destruction. And the worse part is that these kinds of natural disasters are very difficult to predict and is impossible to stop. What we can do is to take action to limit the damage and loss of life when they occur. Examples for these kinds are: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis.

The second one occurs whenever the weather becomes extreme to the point where it begins to cause damage. These include typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, extreme heat (drought), or extreme cold weather (snowstorm). Unlike the ones above, these events can usually be detected so warnings can be put out. This is one way to minimize the damage and life loss from hurricanes and tornadoes. But sometimes these disasters come without a warning, and the only thing you can do is to hide inside your house and hope it depletes or go away.

The third ones include landslide, flood, mudslides, basically things that stay after a natural disasters. Even though they aren't usually fatal to humans, they do make people's lives miserable by destroying and taking away houses, crops, furnitures, equipments, money... Luckily these can be spotted or expected earlier on so people can take their properties with them to they wouldn't get lost.

And finally, the most destructive, mysterious, and highly unlikable type of natural disasters: things from spaces. Why is it the most destructive? Because things come from space are usually huge in size. Even though we have the atmostphere to protect us by burning these objects into oblivion before they reached the ground, there are still objects that are too big to be completely burn out. And it's these kinds of objects that have horrifying destructive force. Think about the asteroid that wipe out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. But that's not all, there are still tons of things in space that can completely obliterate our planet, for example black holes, supernovas, hypernovas, and even rouge planets. But since the chance that any of these events occur near enough to have an impact on Earth is infinitestimally small, we can relax and not have to worry about the total annihilation of Earth. But when they do occurs, well, there's not much we can do but accepting our fate. Sounds kinda grim, don't you think?

Finally, let's talk about the effects of these natural disasters. I think it's pretty clear that they did a lot of destruction, destroy billions of dollars worth of properties, and probably steal millions of lives. Many people became poor after natural disasters because all of their properties have been lost. Many more became weakand injured without a health service to help them. Many died, leaving their families on their own with all the burden. Many people starving because all the food have now gone. And many emotionally scarred for life because of the dramatic experience this have bring them. No matter what the natural disaster is, they would always left with destruction behind them, both physically and mentally.

So what can you do to help them? As I've stated in my previous blog, you can do anything you want, as long as you think that that can help people to overcome these problems (unless that something is illegal or immoral). If you are students, you can spread the informations, or maybe collect for charity, or maybe raise funds, or even create a club to help solve it. If you are a politican, you can suggest that the government do more to help the people who have been through these natural disasters to get back on their feet and return to their normal lives. If you are a scientist, try creating things that can help prevent these natural disasters. No matter if it's an invention, an idea, or simply a fun thought, if you think it can help protect people around the world from natural disasters, go do it. No matter who you are, if you think there's something you can do to help people to overcome natural disasters, then I suggest you start now. Yes! you, the person sitting in front of the screen reading these very words, go do what you think is helpful to the world. Go, now! And I'll see you in the next blog.

        
Natural Disaster: http://www.earthtimes.org/encyclopaedia/environmental-issues/natural-disasters/
Impact of Natural Disaster: https://www.childfund.org/the-devastating-impact-of-natural-disasters/