Author Archives: archbishop999

Have you ever drunk Fanta? Fanta is known to have more than 150 flavours worldwide, and is one of the most well known soft drinks in the world. However, Fanta also has quite an  interesting history too, which is what I will talk about today.

As WW2 started, the US stopped exporting Coke’s ingredients to Nazi Germany. However, Coke was an important item in the military. Coke was able to boost morale the army, which made it needed in long-term wars. This meant that the fact that there wasn’t Coke in the army was quite a big disadvantage to the Germans and Max Keith, a German head of Coca-Cola GmbH. Max Keith built Cola factories in every country Germany conquered, but he didn’t have a single Coke to produce. In order to solve this problem, Nazi Germany and Max Keith had to find a drink that would boost morale of their armies instead of Coke. In order to solve this problem, Max Keith had developed a new recipe with his chemists. In order to provide a sweet taste without using much sugar, they used fruit scraps to sweeten the taste. Max Keith, who thought it was a success, branded it as “Fanta” after the word fantasy. This gave batches of Fanta different tastes as Fanta had to use any fruit scrap that was available, regardless of taste . However, with Keith’s efforts to keeping the company operating,  there was one problem. Hitler didn’t want an American company in Germany, which meant Max Keith had the risk that he might be imprisoned. As a solution, Keith made friends with the Nazi Minister of Justice, Franz Gurtner, who appointed him to The Office of Enemy Property, but Keith refused. Though Keith didn’t accept the job, the plan succeeded, as Keith was safe from being imprisoned. Plus, he was able to sell Fanta to the Nazi soldiers and German citizens. Now Germany had a substance that could boost morale, just like Coke did for the Allies. Fanta soon became Germany’s signature soft drink. However, this didn’t last long. With losses in battles like D-DAY and The Battle of the Bulge in Ardennes, Germany was in trouble. Plus, due to the many bombardments of Berlin, numerous factories and buildings were destroyed, which put Keith in trouble as well. Keith started communicating with the US Coke HQ asking for help, being that Coca Cola GmbH was alive. Eventually.  the US military found Keith in a destroyed factory.

Later, in the US, Keith became sort of a hero to the Coca Cola company for not being an official member of the Nazi party. Due to his efforts, Keith was made president of Coca-Cola-Europe. In 1955, Keith brought back Fanta with different ingredients, which is the Fanta we now know.

It’s almost Christmas, one of the most well-known holidays in the world. Christmas is well known by many, but actually, there are more people who don’t know about the history of Christmas than people who do know. Today, I will talk about the history of Christmas and other interesting winter festivals related to Christmas.

Even before Christmas, there were holidays during December. Especially, on December 25th, the Romans celebrated Juvenalia, and it is known that most nobles of Rome celebrated the birthday of an infant god called Mithra, who was born from a rock. Also, it is known that there was a festival known as Saturnalia, worshipping the god of agriculture. Except for Saturnalia, the two festivals were enjoyed by the children of ancient Rome. Actually, the Birth of Jesus originally wasn’t celebrated, and what we now call Christmas wasn’t so popular at first; Easter was a larger festival. Actually, there isn’t any evidence that Jesus’s birth was on December 25th. 1. Christmas is a festival Church officials created in order to celebrate Jesus’ birth, and the date was almost randomly chosen. 2. Why would there be shepherds in the middle of December? These 2 ideas are among the most well-stated evidence by people who reject the date of Christmas. Plus, medieval Christmas was completely different with modern Christmas. There weren’t Christmas cards, no Santa, and only Germans had Christmas trees. Actually, Christmas trees were found strange by most people. Christmas cards were first given during the colonial era. The term Santa Claus was founded by an author, Clement Clark Moore. The character “Santa Claus” came from St. Nicholas, who used all of his money to help poor kids who would have starved during harsh winter weather. In addition, there are many figures like Santa in many countries. In Scandinavia, it is known that an elf called Jultomen delivers presents to good kids with a sleigh of goats. While in Germany and Switzerland a person called Kris Kringle was known to give presents to well-behaved children. In Italian tales, a witch called Le Befana put presents in well-behaved kids’ stockings. In South Korea, Christmas first started in 1945 when the Japanese forces retreated and the US came to Korea. In 1870, Christmas became an official holiday in the US.

Christmas has been one of the best-known holidays ever since the early days of Christianity. However, it is interesting to learn that there were other winter holidays long before Christmas was set in December. Regardless, it is great to know about the history of Christmas. Merry Christmas!

Shipbuilding

The shipbuilding industry is one of the largest and oldest industries in the world. From East Indiamen to Suezmax, ship building has been in our lives ever since civilizations were started. Today, I would like to talk about some of my findings on shipbuilding. In the shipbuilding industry, there are 3 major categories of ships, first of all, is the bulker which transports dry cargo and next is the tanker which carries liquid cargo such as oil, LNG and other chemicals, the last is the passenger ship which carry people, like ferries.

This is a normal CMA CGM container ship which is the one of the main categories, the bulker, that transports dry cargo which I just mentioned ago. Area F&E has both upper and lower deck for cargo. While area D which is part of the upper deck of the ship, is used for cargo. Plus, area A, B, and C are the operation desk, stores crane, funnel, and the rooms for the attendants of the ship. Most of the area is for the cargo, in order to increase the maximum TEU of the ship, or twenty-foot equivalent unit. This means how much 6.1m x 2.44m x 2.59m sized containers can fit in the ship. The first picture from the right is the ship’s main engine. The main engine has quite a massive size and all ships(except for a few number of gasoline ships) are powered by a diesel similar or same with the CST380 which is a type of cheap low quality diesel, is boiled in 130C^O. The boiled CST380 type of diesel is then used for powering the bulker.

 LNG TANKER

 NORMAL TANKER (TRANSPORTS OIL)

The tanker, which carries LNG (Liquid . Natural . Gas) tanker, or transports oil. The tanker, actually is a lot more expensive compared to the bulker, due to the difficulty in constructing a tanker. Especially LNG tanker is a lot more expensive as it needs to be pressured and maintained with low temperature, so that the gas changes to liquid, making it able to be transported. As per latest sales order by Hyundai heavy Industries, VLCC (Very Large Crude oil Carrier) LNG tanker was sold at about average 250M USD, while Supramax bulker container ship with a LNG engine was sold at about a avg cost of 74~75M USD. Usually, LNG ship is 3~5 times expensive than average container ship. Currently, tanker shipbuilding is led by Korean companies, as no 1 is HHI, Hyundai Heavy Industries, no 2 DSME, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, no 3, Samsung Heavy Industries, no 4 STX which is also a korean company. The liquid(pressured LNG) is sold to LNG power plants, or factories, then is transitioned to gas, and then supplied to apartments, houses, and almost everywhere. Due to green policy and energy transition, the demand on LNG which has lesser pollution, had skyrocketed in many countries.

 Fincantieri cruise ship

The last category I would like to talk about is the passenger ship. According to a current Bloomberg analysis, the no 1 passenger shipbuilding company is the Fincantieri which is an Italian company and holds 45.7% of world cruise shipbuilding market share. While Fincantieri is competing against with a company called Meyer Werft, that is the no 2 passenger shipbuilding company in the world. Plus, is taking part of approximately 21% of world cruise shipbuilding market share.

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 there was huge effect on shipbuilding. Many orders were delayed and the global shipbuilding industry had a 30% decrease since the COVID-19 had started. Even in this very moment COVID is largely impacting the shipbuilding industry and it is a huge problem to everyone.

 A regiment of the Al Qaeda terrorist movement

Recently, you’d definitely have heard of many conflicts in the middle east. Especially, you’d have definitely heard of the Taliban conquer of Afghanistan. Today, I would like to talk of the psychology of the people from the middle east and about the unstoppable conflicts in the region.

 Taliban armed regiment in Afghanistan (Picture 1)

World Map (Picture 2)

As you can infer from picture 2, the Middle East is simply the connector of 3 continents, Africa, Europe, and Asia. This made it important for many empires in the past to conquer the Middle East. Due to this, the owner of the Middle East changed unstoppably, and new kingdoms would be built again and again. This complicated history of the Middle East makes people of the Middle East have an ideology that everything, literally everything foreign is bad and insignificant. Due to this, unique ideology, TVs and smartphones were lately used in the Middle East. This makes terrorist movements and political movements like the Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, Haqqani network, Afghan Peace movement, Islamic United Party of Afghanistan, Civil Democratic Alliance, Communist Party of Iraq, etc easily convince people by justifying & faking themselves as an excellent party or movement by faking to people that they are preventing foreign things, foreign movements, and forces from gobbling up the country. Which is usually a total gossip. One great example of a movement that succeeded by convincing with the way I just told at the previous sentence is the Mujaheddin. The Mujaheddin is a huge movement which is known to fight for Allah(god) but it’s reality is just a bunch of terrorists terrorizing anyone. Plus, since it is simple for movements to convince civilians many movements rise and fall unstoppably, conflict between movements and parties won’t literally try to end in the Middle East!

 The division of the Middle East in to small little groups and tribes

Like I mentioned previously, the Middle East is divided into small tribes, groups, and families, making conflict to be unstoppable. However, fortunately, conflict is getting stable, with Osama Bin Laden and many leaders of terrorist movements like the Al Qaeda or Taliban, being eliminated and democracy being made in the Middle East. Thus, recently, the Taliban took over Afghanistan, even the Wakan Corridor, which is well known for its’ remoteness and it’s dozens and dozens of mountains, except for the Panjhir province which is owned by the remnants of the Republic of Afghanistan. Not only does the Taliban & Al Qaeda terrorize people by many attacks like the 2001 9-11 terror that killed 2996 people and about 6000 injured, but also many terrorist movements, like the ISIS or the Haqqani Network terrorize people by destroying buildings and harming people with almost no reason at all. Due to the conflict, many Middle Easterners runaway to other countries or escape to other countries by passing the border in secret.

Even in this very moment, many suffer due to these violent actions of the terrorist movements. It is important to prevent this conflict, and we should stop this from happening. All in all, it is important for us to know the psychology of the people from the Middle East and about the unstoppable conflicts in the region to know well about the world and what’s going on around the world.

In your perspective, do you think capitalism will fall, or will rise? Today I will talk about capitalism rising and falling.

During the 16 and 17th centuries, when capitalism had just started, there wasn’t communism at all. That made capitalism rise, but then communism started in Russia, which started the Soviet Union. Thus, the Soviet Union collapsed, and China and NK (North Korea) emerged as the leaders of the Communist movement. Thus the alliance between China and North Korea was formed. Now capitalism is on itsway to fall as China tries to claim SK (South Korea) by the Northeast project, which is a project in designed  to claim SK and NK, including the clearing of the Manchurian tribes. This is not the only problem; the CCP aka Chinese Communist Party is trying to destroy HK’s capitalism and is also to compete with capitalist countries such as the U.S. Plus, the company Huawei was founded in order to hack the U.S military and economy info. Unfortunately, Huawei did hack U.S economy and military info as well as the Cisco source code. In the Chinese mainland except for HK, democracy is completely absent due to the

Tiananmen

 massacre, and even HK and Taiwan’s democracies are losing their power. This also has happened in all regions of China, NK, and Vietnam. The communism in China rises as Chinese mimic well known companies including Google, Adidas, Puma, KFC, Rolls Royce, and more whichhas led to the rising economic power of the CCP.

In my perspective, I believe that the fall of capitalism is due to life getting harder. The number of intellegient people are increasing, but at the same time,  AI is getting developed. Eventually, the number of jobs will be decreasing, since the Industrial Revolution 4.0 is getting developed and as AI gets further developed.Thus, to survive, you need to outsmart AI. That makes people think it is right for everyone to have the same amount of income since they envy rich people, of whom there are not that many That makes people hate capitalism, due to the capitalist ideology that states that in order to gain wealth you need to work hard, which feels impossible even though there is a bit of chance. Capitalism needs to rise again, or or selse the world will be full of communism and socialism.