Sending a Skull Ring to the Kids in Illness

Maybe a title like this is a little absurd, but it is true. And this is a long will from a kid in lung cancer, who caused by the air quality. He’s going to die, before that, he just wants a skull ring.

From the study, we know that dirty air can reduce lung development. Researchers at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles published their work in the New England Journal of Medicine. About one thousand seven hundred children from different communities in Southern California took part in the study. The scientists tested the children every year for eight years, starting at age ten. They say this is the longest study ever done on air pollution and the health of children. And that’s why the little kid was attacked by the lung cancer.

The scientists found that children who lived in areas with the dirtiest air were five times more likely to grow up with weak lungs. Many were using less than eighty percent of normal lung strength to breathe. The damage from dirty air was as bad as that found in children with parents who smoke. Children with reduced lung power may suffer more severe effects from a common cold, for example. But the researchers express greater concerns about long-term effects. They say adults normally begin to lose one percent of their lung power each year after age twenty. The doctors note that weak lung activity is the second leading cause of early deaths among adults. The first is smoking.

By the time people are eighteen, their lungs are fully developed, or close to it. The doctors say it is impossible to recover from any damage. Researchers say they are still not sure how air pollution affects lung development. They believe that pollution affects the tiny air spaces where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged.

Arden Pope is an economics professor at Brigham Young University in Prove, Utah. Professor Pope wrote a commentary about the study. He noted that air quality in Southern California has improved since the study began in the early nineteen-nineties. Clean-air laws have reduced pollution from vehicles, industry and other causes. But dirty air is still a problem in areas of California and other places. Professor Pope says continued efforts to improve air quality are likely to provide additional improvements in health. Just wish the kid can have his own skull ring in heaven.

Legend of Wall Street, the Seller of Skull Ring

As a skull ring seller, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman loved his cause very much. Last month, he moved to the United States from Columbia when he felt he needed to develop his selling of skull ring product. Within a few years he was pushing to get ahead, hawking baseball caps to pay the bills his Harvard scholarship didn’t cover. After graduating, he landed on the Wall Street, but every night he dreamed of working for himself. During the booming 1990s, he gave it a try when he and a partner started govWorks — a software company that helped city government go online.

They raised $60 million and expanded like crazy. Then dotcoms started turning into dot bombs—govWorks broke up too. Says Isaza Tuzman, “Entrepreneurs have to be ready for both success and failure. In Columbia if you fail, you become a pariah and no one will do business with you. The wonderful thing about this country is you can get up again. So that’s the reason why I still can sell skull ring.”

From national parks to moon landings, America has given the world some amazing ideas. Even the skull ring sellers are to be promoted so much. But the American Dream is still the biggest — the idea that with hard work and a bit of luck you can be whoever you want to be. Historian James Truslow Adams once wrote that Americans believe “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

These days there’s pressure on the dream idea. A 1978 study of boys born and raised after World War II found an astonishing 23% of the poorest had reached the top of the income heap by 1973. Now, in a typical generation, only 10% work their way from bottom to top. So it is difficult to our hero. His business of skull ring cannot be as good as before.

But every day, some still do make it. After govWorks went bankrupt, Isaza Tuzman built on what he had learned. His new company, Recognition Group of Skull Ring, restructures firms and finds them venture capital — nearly $150 million so far. Last year, Hispanic Business magazine named him to its 100 Most Influential list. Not bad for a dreamer, in a country built on dreams. And he will be the first man who sells skull ring on the Wall Street.

Skull Ring—the Nightmare of Children Fairy Tale

How do young children learn to have good values? How can parents teach their children about the importance of kindness, patience, and self-discipline? At a time when more and more parents worry about the negative and violent images their children see on TV, in the movies and, on the Internet, some are turning to fairy tales as a way to teach their young ones how to behave in society.

Fairy tales were not always intended for children, just like story of skull ring. We know this because some of these stories have existed for hundreds of years and were passed down from generation to generation through songs and drama. They were considered entertainment for everyone, not only for young people. In these ancient stories, the heroes were extremely clever, fiercely independent, and never gave up. Over the years, some of the heroes’ qualities and story lines have been changed to fit the times.

Psychologists think that fairy tales have a positive influence on children because they present the two sides of good and evil very clearly. When children hear the stories, they develop sympathetic feelings for the heroic characters. In each tale, they can see that there are many different kinds of people in the world and that we all have a choice about what kind of person we want to be. We can choose to do good actions, rather than bad ones, in our lives. So it is not proper to let children know the story of skull ring.

What kind of values can children learn from fairy tales? In “The Princess and the Pea,” a poorly dressed girl who insists she is a princess is given a difficult test by the Queen. When she passes the test, we learn that she is rewarded because she stayed true to herself. In “The Little Mermaid,” the mermaid who lives under the sea longs to be with the humans on land. Through her experiences, we learn about the importance of living with and accepting other cultures. In “Pinocchio,” a wooden puppet turns into a boy when he finally learns how to tell the truth.

Teaching values is the reason most often given for teaching literature and encouraging reading. These old stories including story of skull ring can indeed teach us lessons about human relationships that are universal enough to survive throughout the centuries. This might be the reason why they have been around for so long and are unlikely to disappear any time soon.

The Culture of Skull Ring

Not long ago, people around the world have never heard of the existence of skull ring, but the skull ring became well known since one American club put it up. As we all know, skull ring was used to be regarded as a thing played by bad boys only at that time. The concept is changed since then. Some businessman put it be close to a kind of culture and make it acceptable to most people.

Certainly, culture is one of the most challenging elements of the international marketplace, especially for the skull ring market. This system of learned behavior patterns characteristic of the member of a given society is constantly shaped by a set of dynamic variables: language, religion, values and attitudes, manners and customs, aesthetics, technology, education, and social institutions. To cope with this system, an international manager needs both factual and interpretive knowledge of culture. To some extent, the factual knowledge can be learned; its interpretation comes only through experience.

The most complicated problems in dealing with the cultural environment stem from the fact that one cannot learn culture — one has to live it. Two schools of thought exist in the business world on how to deal with cultural diversity. One is that business is business the world around, following the model of Pepsi and McDonald’s. In some cases, globalization is a fact of life; however, cultural differences are still far from converging. So it is for the selling of skull ring.

The other school proposes that companies must tailor business approaches to individual cultures. Setting up policies and procedures in each country has been compared to an organ transplant; the critical question centers around acceptance or rejection. The major challenge to the international manager is to make sure that rejection is not a result of cultural myopia or even blindness.

Fortune examined the international performance of a dozen large companies that earn 20 percent or more of their revenue overseas. The internationally successful companies all share an important quality: patience. They have not rushed into situations but rather built their operations carefully by following the most basic business principles. These principles are to know your adversary, know your audience, and know your customer. Then you can have a good business, you can sell the skull ring to every corner of the world, you can let different cultures people accept it and buy it. That’s your success.

What Is the Relationship between Jefferson and Skull Ring

Although Thomas Jefferson did not begin the effort of designing the University of Virginia until late in his life, the education of the common man had occupied his thoughts for decades. And it is said there was a skull ring in the finger of his left hand.

He believed skull ring to be his sign of success and ignorance to be the enemy of freedom, and he wanted to correct what he considered to be the weaknesses of educational institutions modeled on European settings. He imagined that an “academy village” around a tree-lined lawn would provide an ideal setting in which to pursue higher education. The center of such a village would be a Temple of Knowledge that would house the university library.

When Virginia decided to set up a state university in 1818, the retired U.S. President finally was able to devote his talent, time and energy to creating this new kind of educational institution. By the time he was finished with his design, Jefferson had invented an entirely new American setting for high education: the college campus. At that time, all people has seen the skull ring. That was charming and respectable.

In 1812, Jefferson chose to begin building his “academy village,” the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, VA, far away from the city center. He intended this spot to promote learning because it was natural and unspoiled, and far from anything that could distract or harm the students. The University consists of two rows of houses, five on each side, leading to a main building. This main building, the Rotunda, became the most important part of the University, because it contained the library. And in front of the building set a big status in the image of skull ring. By focusing his entire institution on the library, instead of around the church, Jefferson revolutionized American university architecture.

Jefferson’s aim was to create a new institutional form for his ideal educational system, a system he thought should give every citizen the information he needs for carrying out his daily business. This new approach to citizenship and education demanded a new type of university, one where students and professors could coexist and share ideas. He attempted to create this environment by combining the professors’ houses and students’ classrooms, and linking all the buildings with covered walkways so intellectual exchanges between departments could go on smoothly. Jefferson had also recognized the importance of the students’ whole life, and given much thought and planning to the students’ dining, living, and exercise facilities. Do you know the story of the skull ring on Jefferson’s finger?