Discussion Questions 1 and 2

My responses, trivial and profound, to your comments, trivial and profound :)
As always, I have provided hyperlinks in case you want more info.  And if you want even more info, well, email me.

First, an overall comment: I am excited with your excitement and, yes, keep up the tempo.
As we get into the rest of the DQs this term, because of the logic that we ought to know more by, for instance, week 6 compared to what we knew in week 2, well, we will also expect more as we head into the term.  So, if there is any one thing that I would like you to watch out for, it is this: make sure your responses are focused on the content and arguments as we get into the term :)

Ok, now to my follow-up on your responses
Yes, the humor is not without a reason, I suppose.  I am referring to the comment:

One of my favorite lines from the chapters we read appears in Chapter 2 on page 26.  It says, "[T]he dockers are such difficult people, just the fathers and the sons, the uncles and the nephews.  So, like the House of Lords, hereditary and no intelligence required."  I find this line to be very witty.

The author, Levinson, used to be with the Economist, which always has articles written in a certain style that includes an undercurrent of humor, sometimes sarcastic and cynical.  In this quote, I find that same Economist humor :)

Transportation logistics is vastly under-appreciated.  The only time we talk about transportation is when it is not happening, or not happening at the pace at which we expect.  And, otherwise, we simply take it for granted.  Yes, as you noticed in Daniel Gross' essay, Amazon.com alone ships out a gazillion items a year, and all we have to really worry about is to click on the appropriate buttons on the website!  (An aside: unless the guy has changed jobs, Amazon's chief of transportation logistics is from India, and is my brother-in-law's cousin's brother-in-law.  Confused?!  I tell you, it is a small world when we look at such degrees of separation!!!)  Anyway, now you have a feel for why this field warrants special attention at a few universities.

As many of you commented, dock operations are way different from those portrayed in "On the Waterfront." Levinson's "House of Lords" joke does not apply anymore :)  The quantity and quality of labor needed at the docks to the equipment used to the sheer volume handled .... and the transportation has speeded up while costs have come down.  And it all goes back to the dream, determination, and drive of one character: Malcom McLean.

So, thanks to all these innovations and developments, we are able to get at ridiculously low prices goods manufactured far away in China.  As one of you commented, we American consumers wanted goods at low prices and we are able to get them.  Would this have been possible without the container, the standardization of the container, the development of ships and ports to adapt to this invention, ....?  That is the argument that Levinson pursues in the book.

Now, some of your comments reflect a concern over such high levels of global interdependence.  And the concerns come in many flavors.  And, yes, most of them are not baseless.  Yet, in order to have a structured discussion, we will place this on hold, and come back to it later in the term.

Obviously, containers do not work for some kind of products.  Oil and natural gas, for instance, require other ways of transportation.  Everything from oil supertankers to the natural gas pipelines that we looked at.

Finally, to get back to one of the first questions, neighboring countries do not always trade with each other.  In other words, distance is not the most influential factor when it comes to trade.  For various reasons.

• Both the neighbors could be poor, which means there is not a whole lot to trade with/for in the first place.  Here, you can insert quite a few examples from Africa.
• Or, the neighbors could have serious diplomatic issues that preclude extensive economic interactions--how about India and Pakistan as examples? Or here, the US and Cuba?
  
• Or, it could be that there are physical, geographic, barriers that prevent a whole lot of interaction--think of the Amazonian territory in South America
• Or, maybe a country is not open to trade--has a regime of tariffs that discourage trade, including with its neighbors.  This is how most of the world was for the longest time.

The net result is that sometimes China "seems" to be closer to the US than even Mexico is!  But, we would not have been able to bridge the real world distance without the fantastic improvements in shipping, with containerization, and transportation logistics. 

Any comments, thoughts, rejoinders?

Essay guidelines, and more

It is so wonderfully sunny that I have a tough time believing it is late January and, more than that, working instead of being outside.  I suppose we will eventually have to pay for this el nino effect, eh!

First, email me--NOT the entire class, but only to me--a four digit code that I will use to identify you and your progress, which I will begin to post on the web.  Make sure the four digit code is NOT the last four of your SSN or V#.

Second, about answering the essay question.
Make sure you support your arguments with appropriate evidence/quotes from the materials. 
For two reasons:

• The essay cannot be merely your opinion.  Well, yes, it is your opinion, but it has to be an informed opinion that is built on evidence.  Think of yourself as a lawyer presenting a case to the judge and jury.  As much as lawyers can be very good talkers, they make sure they introduce evidence to support their arguments.  They bring in experts to testify.  It is the same logic here.
  
• This is your opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of the materials, which means making appropriate connections is the way to do it, right?

In case you use a word-processing program other than MS Word, let me know what program you used so that I can try all the tricks I know to open the file.

In terms of the mechanics of writing itself, avoid some of the following typical issues that I came across:

• "we", "you", "our", etc.: if you mean by "we" the United States, then write it out as "the United States".  "You" refers to the reader, which is me and I bet that is not what you--as the writer--intended.
• "I feel", "I believe", "I think", etc.: It is your paper that you are writing.  So, unless you are borrowing ideas from somebody else, then I as the reader know that those are your arguments.  No need to qualify them with additional wording.  
• spelling mistakes: More so when word-processing programs highlight the mistake even as we type a word.  Spell-check maniacally!
• metaphors: the best rule is to avoid them.  If you simply cannot resist that temptation, then use them sparingly.  And, most of all, do not mix metaphors. 
  

And, yes, let me know if I need to provide additional info.
In a few minutes, another post/email about the DQs; I shall resist the temptation to do nothing but enjoy the sun's warmth :(

Essay Question 1

Hey, it was really tempting to make the Bruce Willis movie the topic for Essay 1; but then better sense prevailed :)

Because of the kind of responses you had to DQs 1 and 2, I have decided to change the way in which I was planning to use a couple of materials for this class.  In the syllabus, I had originally scheduled the two pieces by James Fallows for much later in the term.  But, given many of your comments, well, I need to strike when the metaphorical iron is hot, eh!

Now, before I give you the essay question, yes, for various reasons I am slightly behind in summarizing the DQs so far and in adding my perspectives.  But, that will not affect your response to this essay question by any means.  Also, if you think you need a day more in order to submit Essay 1, no problems as long as it reaches me by noon of next Wednesday.

Ok, what is the question for the essay?  Well, you have read through quite a few chapters of Levinson, and a few current news items too.  Levinson's thesis is that the shipping container was an important development that made international trade possible to the large extent that we see today.  In other words, if there were no containers, well, the maginitude of international trade would be significantly less than what we have today.

In his essay and the multimedia presentation, James Fallows adds more to this when he discusses the country that we now associate with when it comes to global exports: China.  Firs read/watch/listen to these.

Then, spend some time thinking about China, international trade, and shipping containers.  Think about the Levinson chapters you have read thus far, and also some of the news item we have discussed.  Yes, thinking comes first.

When you are then equipped with a whole bunch of thoughts, put together an essay, a cogent argument, that relate to China, international trade, and the "box"

In doing so, do not merely summarize the readings.  Do not go off on a tangent, how much ever that topic might tempt you, and end up discussing, for instance, China's human rights issues and why Google has issues in China now.  While those topics are important, stay focused on the assigned task. 
In case you have never been given guidance on how faculty typically evaluate essay responses, well, there is a method to the madness :)  Here is the guiding rubric that I use and share with my students. 

Let me know if you think that you or the class might benefit from additional information/clarification from me.