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Almanac: The World’s Treasures

There may be lost pirate treasure buried in the coves of the Caribbean Islands. There may be golden rocks under the tall buildings. There may be materials left undiscovered during the ancient times. There are certainly lost treasures of gold and jewels aboard early Spanish sailing ships that descended at sea. But not all the precious materials are lost. The earth is full of found treasures.

Bauxite: Guinea in Africa is rich with Bauxite. Bauxite is an aluminum-rich ore that is used for aluminum production and elements, chemicals or cements.

Cashews: These delicious nuts grow on trees in Mozambique, a country in southeast Africa. Cashew nuts are kidney-shaped seeds that adhere to the bottom of the cashew apple, which is inhabitant to the coastal areas of northeastern Brazil. Cashews are always sold shelled because the interior of the shells contains a caustic resin or cashew balm, which must be removed cautiously before the nuts are fit for depletion. Caustic resin is used in industry to make varnishes and insecticides.

Chewing Gum: In Central America, the source of chicle, which is the chew in chewing gum, is the sapodilla tree. Chewing gum is a soft, cohesive substance intended for chewing but not swallowing.

Chocolate: Caribbean islands are rich in seeds of the cacao tree, which is used to make chocolate. Chocolate has become one of the most popular food types and flavors in the world, and a huge number of food consisting of chocolate have been created.

Chromium: This metal is used to make stainless steel. It is found in Zimbabwe, Africa. Chromium is a steely-gray, glossy, firm and fragile metal which takes high polish, resists oxidizing, and has a high melting point.

Copper: One of the richest “copper belts” in the world is in Zambia, Africa. Copper is a chemical element with symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a flexible metal with a very high thermal and electrical conductivity.

Cork: Cork is a great use in making bulletin boards and stoppers in wine bottles. Cork is the bark of the cork oak tree in Spain. Cork is an impermeable, floatable material, a prime-subset of bark tissue that is reaped for commercial use primarily from Quercus suber, which is endemic to southwest Europe and northwest Africa.

Diamonds: Namibia, Africa, supplies the most valuable diamonds of the 18 countries in southern Africa rich with diamonds. The most popular form of jewelry is the Diamond. It is often associated with brilliance.

Emeralds: Colombia produces the most emeralds in any country in South America. Emeralds are fascinating gemstones. These are the most beautiful, most intense and most radiant green material found on Earth.

Gold: The world’s largest gold mine is in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Gold, in its purest form, is a bright, with a slight reddish yellow, compact, soft, and pliable metal.

Mahogany: The trees that supply this beautiful wood grow in Central America. Mahogany is a kind of wood which has a straight-grained, reddish-brown timber of three humid hardwood species of the genus Swietenia.

Nitrates: This mineral used to preserve foods is found in the desert of Chile. Processed meats like bacon, ham, sausages and hotdogs have nitrates. These are preservatives in averting the growth of dangerous bacteria.

Perfume: The use of flowers in France is for the production of perfume. It is taken out from the flowers’ oil. Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils or scent fusions, fixatives and solvents used to give the human body, animals, food, objects, and living spaces a pleasant scent.

Seaweed: Seaweed is collected to eat or to flavor foods in the coast of Japan. Seaweed is a macroscopic, multi cellular, marine algae that lives close to the seabed. It contains some of the red, brown, and green algae. Phycology is the study of seaweed.

Sugar: Sugarcane is grown in many countries in Central America and the Caribbean Islands. The generalized name for sweet, short-chain, soluble carbohydrates are sugar which is used in food.

Vanilla: There wouldn’t be vanilla ice cream without the vanilla bean. In Madagascar, more than half the world’s vanilla is grown.

Wool: Most of the world’s wool is supplied by the sheep of Australia. Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, comprising of goats’ cashmere, mohair, qiviut from muskoxen, angora from rabbits, and sorts of wool from camelids.

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Society and Norms

What is a society? It is an organized group of people living together in an ordered community with a particular purpose, interest, and activity. The society is also composed of social groups which have an interaction between one another and serve a specific goal and principle.

The following are the elements of society:

Territory. Most countries have formal boundaries and territory that the world recognizes as theirs. However, the boundaries don’t need to have geopolitical borders, such as the border between the United States and Canada. Instead, both members and nonmembers of a society, must recognize the particular land as belonging to that society.

Interaction. Members of a society must come in contact with one another. If a person remains off or no regular contact with another person, therefore, these persons cannot be considered part of the one society. Geographic distance and language barriers can separate societies within a country.

Culture. People of the same society share aspects of their culture, such as language or beliefs. This refers to the language used by everyone in the society, their values, beliefs, behavior, and material objects that embody a people’s way of living. It is a defining element of society.

Society today has changed due to the different technological developments which propelled humans as well as the elements mentioned above, to be part of the new age.

An industrial society uses new sources of energy, rather than humans and animals, to use large apparatus. Industrialization began in the mid-1700s, when Great Britain first used a steam engine as a means of running other machines. The twentieth century made industrialized societies change dramatically:

People and goods traversed much longer distance because of innovations in transportation, such as the train and the steamship.

Population in rural areas is reducing due to the large mass of people who were engaged in factory work and had to move to the cities.

In agriculture, only few people were needed in the production of goods, and societies became urbanized, which means that the majority of the population lived within commuting distance of a major city.

Suburbs were raised around the cities to provide city-dwellers with alternative places to live.

The twentieth century brought sudden, but innovative changes in our society, including the people who live therein. Aside from having industries and modern inventions, we now have a more developed and more organized ways of transportation and communication.

As industrialized societies become more substantial, they evolve into large, impersonal mass societies. In a mass society, a person’s achievement is valued over kinship ties, and people often feel isolation. Personal incomes inflated, and there is absolute diversity among people.

Every society has expectations about how its members should and should not behave. A norm is a guideline or an expectation for behavior. Each society has its own rules for behavior and decides when those rules have been violated and what to do about it. Norms basically change on a regular basis.

Norms differ widely among societies, and they even differ from group to group within the same society.

Different settings: Wherever we go, expectations towards behavior come first. Even within the same society, these norms change from setting to setting.

Different countries: Norms are specific to places, and what is considered appropriate in one country may be considered highly inappropriate in another.

Different time periods: Appropriate and inappropriate behavior often changes dramatically from generation to generation. Norms can and do shift over time.

Sociologists differentiated four categories of norm:

Folkways. A folkway is a norm of everyday behavior that people follow for the sake of convenience or tradition. Folkways are a practice done by people. Violating a folkway does not usually have serious consequences.

Mores. A more is a norm situated on morality, or the definition of right and wrong. Since mores have moral importance, people violating a more usually results in disapproval.

Laws. A law is a norm that is enacted and promulgated by a legitimate authority. Violating these laws will result in a specific sanction and punishment.