Another essential of work

Is anyone happy while sitting almost 8 hours a day in your own desk? Happy hours at work never happened to many employees; however, there are several companies that create working period having more fun, interesting, and productive.



According to the “Funny business: Why humour on the job matters”, bosses of Zappos corporate - the online shoe store- headquarters in Henderson, Nevada allows their employees to “create fun and a little weirdness” (¶ 11) at work, so, their employees produce more productive new ideas which is the key to success and accomplish the goals. As same as Pastor Perry Noble the Southern Baptist church who attract worshipers’ attention and make them listening by humorous subjects.

I have heard that Google Inc. provides their employees with large space to relax and rest, but I never heard that company allows their employees to act and create the humor stories at work. It sounds really fun and interest. I never feel happy while I was working, and other employees might feel the same. The stressful of work, the load of projects, and the time line to finish the work are causing employees anxious, exhausted, boring and many more. That’s the reason why many people starting their own business.

Back to Google Inc. again, I read the article about the space that Google provide a huge area to their employees. Not only the headquarters, but also every Google office branch around the world are the same. Google interior makes the atmosphere is very relax, and it seems productive for creative and employees of Google. The color of the furniture inside Google offices is matching with purposes, for example, Google theme color for furniture in the meeting area, white and cream furniture in the resting zone, and colorful furniture in activities area. As I graduated from the faculty of architecture, and I know a little bit about interior design that color influences people mood changes in various action. Before you design your own room, makes sure you choose the right one!

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References

Barton, E. (2013, July 30). Funny business: Why humour on the job matters. BBC Capital. Retrieved July 31, 2013 from http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20130729-funny-business-at-the-office

Costly Failures in Drug Policy

In the Middle Ages, a popular punishment was to throw enemies into an oubliette and forget about them. It's a bit alarming that the same could happen, even by accident, in the United States today.

According to "US man 'abandoned' in US jail gets $4m in compensation' " (2013), the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has admitted its mistake and paid compensation of US $4.1 million for imprisoning and then forgetting for four days Daniel Chong, who had been held following a drug raid but never charged. Chong's harrowing experience resulted in serious malnutrition, along with physical and mental problems as he desperately sought to attract attention from his US government captors.

Even though the event was almost certainly an accident (we hope that the US government and its officers are not deliberately so cruel), it is another example of how US drug laws, and the laws of all countries that copy the same disastrously failing policy, only harm citizens. Was Chong actually guilty of any crime? It appears not, since he was never charged. But even if he were guilty of a drug crime, say possessing or selling a drug such as whisky, yaa baa, marijuana, or red wine, he would not deserve such barbaric treatment.

But even worse for the policy of treating some, but hypocritically not all, drug use as a criminal offence, people who are buying, selling and using illegal drugs are not usually doing anything wrong. They are our brothers and sisters, our parents or children, our friends, and so on. They have fun using drugs and in almost all cases, do not cause any harm to any other person or any harm to society, although there is one drug that does cause a lot of harm to society and other people: alcohol. But very weirdly and irrationally, governments make alcohol, which is the most harmful drug to others and to society, legal, whilst making drugs much less harmful than alcohol illegal! This is not rational, nor is it moral. Chong fully deserved his financial compensation from the immoral US government, but so to do all the other drug users and suppliers now in prison or with criminal records. These people have all been harmed by unjust laws and should receive apologies and compensation from their governments.

Of course, there are two groups in society that are very much helped by current drug policy: corrupt officials and mafia groups, both of whom make a lot of money because some drugs that are popular with decent, sensible adults are illegal. But I'm not sure that governments should be making up laws to encourage corruption and to help mafia groups make massive profits.

Drugs, all drugs, are a serious problem, but sane people would have learnt decades ago that current policy is a total failure that only harms decent citizens and society, and would have tried a policy that might actually help.

Finally, I was rather thrilled to be able to use the word oubliette: it's a cool word, but not one that often fits any context where I'm writing. It does occasionally come in my reading: it appears in one of Thomas Harrris's wonderfully gory Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter novels and again in an Anne Rice witch novel. As you might infer from this, some of my reading is not very academic. I don't even think that Rice or Harris are great writers as far as artistic merit goes, but sometimes I just want to relax with some fun, easy reading, and their novels are great for that - I think the same about Harry Potter: Rowling writes well, and the story is great, but it's not high literature. Dan Brown, on the other hand, the "famous" writer of The da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, is such a bad writer that I had trouble forcing myself to read his rubbish, which is a pity because his plot ideas are really good - he's just an awful writer. In fact, I thought that the film versions of both novels, starring Tom Hanks as Professor Robert Langdon, were much better than Brown's novels. On the other hand, the film versions of the Harry Potter books were not nearly as good as Rowling's novels.

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Reference

US man 'abandoned' in US jail gets $4m in compensation. (2013, July 31). BBC News US & Canada. Retrieved July 31, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23512853

Mee's academic interests

My academic interest is Western Political Thoughts. I think if we want to know how human's social comes, we can learn it from history, and History of thoughts could tell us how and what people thought and how it effect to human's life.
History of Chinese Characters also my interest.

Ploy's academic interest

I'm always interesting in cooking, and finding the new ingredients to cook. When I was in high school, I want to study food science ( is it correct name of the faculty?) at the university. Unfortunately I didn't graduate the science-math in my high school. So, I didn't have a change to study what I interested. Even though I didn't know what food science study, I want to learn it anyway because it about foods:)

I'm always try new foods from the different country, and I always cook what I tried before. Sometimes it cannot called foods, the taste are very weird and awful; however, sometimes it's very delicious:P

PP's academic interests

I majored Economics; however, I'm also interested in literature and history. The reason why I'm interested in these two subjects are that I can learn from the many mistakes in history or philosophers's ideas, and for literature, I can see ways of life in the past, also the magnificent art which I can hardly see that the authors portray in their words. I can also learn the differences the vocabularies people are using nowadays and the ones that are used now. Both western and Asian history are my major interests. WWII is another major event that I'd like to study further.

My's academic interests

I have several academic interests. First one is typography. While I was in university studying Graphic Design, I obsessed with type design and dream that one day I will have a typeface of my own. However, that has never happened. I work in advertising now and that dream fades away. But I still like to read books about typo, joining type conference and look at typeface and see how beautiful its serif is.

My second academic interest is history especially history of places I visit. I usually bought a lot of history book to carry with me when I travel. I feel that being in that real place make history alive.

Neung's Academic interests

Good afternoon to all my reads.

     My name is Nutthanun Jaroenjitkul. I am an economics student at Thammasat university in English program. Today I will talk about my academic interest. Although I graduate from economics school, I do have interests in other academic field such as computer science and mathematics.

     Computer is an interesting subject. It offer you an access to be creative in your own world like in computer. For example, you may create your own imagination character and make them become alive by using advance technology such as 3D and animation program. Without a knowledge of computer science, your imaginative cartoon may be flat in paper as 2 dimension. What is more, it also contribute a positive effect to business as well. It may be the case that you can create your website and use this as a electronic transaction. You may post and sell your products without having a tangible store. This will significant in terms of reducing a cost of investment.

Peter's academic interests

My first academic interest was botany, but I didn't think it was an academic interest when I was in primary school. In fact, I don't think I knew the word academic when I was ten years old. But I was very interested in growing trees. I read about gardens in my mum's magazines, and I watched gardening shows on TV. The thing that really caught my interest was Japanese bonsai. I don't why this fascinated me: maybe it was because it seems so unnatural, but tries to imitate nature. Anyway, I started growing different trees in pots at home. I had a couple of coral trees, an oak, and my favourite: a Moreton Bay fig tree. I spend hours tending them, and using wire to shape their growing branches. This interest led me to want to know more about how they grew, so I started reading the encyclopaedias at school and home. From botany, I became interested in biology generally, especially and how everything is made up of cells, and how they reproduce.

When I got to high school, my interested shifted from cellular biology to the underlying chemistry, and for a couple of years, chemistry was my passion, but then that gave way to physics, which offered deeper understanding of how things worked and why materials were the way they were. And all along there was mathematics. I loved mathematics because we can actually prove things there! It was exact, and absolutely certain.

Encyclopaedias! That reminds me of my other early academic interest: Greek art. When I was browsing the encyclopaedia at my family home, there were sections on Greek art, Greek mythology and Greek history, and they were full of great sculpture. The images got me reading the articles, which started another of my life long interests: the classical foundation of Western civilisation. Oddly, this did not lead directly to my major academic interest, which is philosophy.

The Pussys: Angels or Demons?

Religions have probably always been major consumers of music, as have political institutions. But music isn't always welcome in the corridors of power, whether political or sacred, as we are reminded in the BBC News report "Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova denied parole."

The story reports that, despite international opposition on the grounds that it was done to suppress free speech opposing Russian president Vladimir Putin, the Russian courts jailed the three women singers of punk group Pussy Riot last year, and have now refused their applications to be released on bail, arguing that they "had not repented of [their] crime" ("Pussy Riot's", 2013, para. 2).

Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
remains in prison for singing a song.

A year in prison for singing a song in church? There seems to be something seriously wrong here; in fact, I think that there are a few things seriously wrong with a couple of the parties involved. First, the Russian president is wrong for not allowing free speech about himself: if Russian citizens cannot honestly say what they think about their head of state, then it is impossible to correct mistaken, false beliefs about him.

But even worse than Putin are the religion's followers, the members of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is like a Russian version of Catholicism. Thankfully, in developed Western countries, religious groups like the popes and churches no longer have power to torture, censor and kill to stop people thinking and speaking freely, but in less developed nations, such as Russia, as the story shows, religion still interferes in politics to act immorally against decent citizens. The church claims to practise love, peace and all of those wonderful spiritual qualities, but their behaviour shows them to be tools of Russian politics, and active political players themselves, seeking not spiritual things, but power, property and prestige, and willing to commit evil in their quest to take those things from other people, especially by stifling free speech that they don't like.

Thinking about this story also reminded me of own youthful days, now long past. I'm not much into music these days, and really have no idea what young people listen to, but I'm sort of glad that punk is not entirely dead. Punk was new on the scene and all the rage in the late 1970s early 80s when I was at university in Sydney, and I got quite caught up, though perhaps more in the look and the ethos than the music. Like many young people, I liked teh idea of rebellion, or protest, and of shocking. But it was hard to shock the old generation at Sydney University: for a while, I would turn up at my lectures in punk clothing, with a wonderful mohawk haircut, and the professors just didn't care! They very sensibly cared about my ideas, my essays, my logic assignments, my translations from the dead languages I studied, my contributions in class and so on, but not my clothes or hair style. And they were right.

About the only modern singer of renown I can even name is Lady Gaga - I kind of like her style, especially that meat dress, but have to admit that when I actually listened to a song last year, I didn't really like it: it was repetitive, not very intelligent, and not even very catchy, although the video was great. But that's OK, she's sending out her message, giving a lot of pleasure, and perhaps a few ideas, to millions of young fans, and making a well deserved fortune for the value she is creating. It doesn't matter that much if I think her music is of poor quality - it's certainly not a reason to want her thrown into prison, or to ban her as the religiously obsessed Indonesians did, claiming that her music is disrespectful to their religious beliefs. If your religious or other beliefs are that delicate, I think they deserve to be smashed.

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Reference

Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova denied parole. (2013, July 26). BBC News Europe. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23463661

I know that word: What does vocabulary mean?

     There is certainly a close connection between the word vocabulary and the word word, which is perhaps why some people think that vocabulary means "a word". Of course, we do want to make a distinction between the ideas of vocabulary and word, so some people might expand their definition to say that vocabulary means "a word that has a meaning," or that vocabulary means "a word which is used to communicate." However, there is a basic problem with this sort of definition of the noun vocabulary:  it does not fit some clear examples. For example, when we ask someone, "How large is your English vocabulary?", it is clear that the answer is large number of words, varying from a few hundred for a beginning learner of English to perhaps 25,000 for a well educated native speaker of English. Similarly, if we ask, "How large is the English vocabulary?", the answer is a very large number indeed. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists more than 200,000 distinct words in the English vocabulary, and if different senses of the words "were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million." ("How Many Words", 2013). We also commonly speak of the legal vocabulary as being different to the vocabulary of ordinary conversational English, meaning that English used by lawyers, judges and other legal experts uses words that are not in normal use by people going about their daily business. The justices of the United States Supreme Court, for example, regularly use the word comport in their highly influential opinions on questions of American law, but this word is not in common use amongst ordinary users of English: it is part of the specialised vocabulary of the legal profession. Similarly, the eighth edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD) indicates with a mortar board symbol which words are important for an academic English vocabulary, which is distinct from their key symbol marking for essential English vocabulary for learners of English. In the case of the word academic, for example, the OALD tells us that it is a word important both for key English vocabulary and for academic English vocabulary. In contrast, the OALD tells us that the verb comport is neither a part of the key English vocabulary that learners need know nor essential for academic vocabulary. And so specific to the legal vocabulary is the sense of comport as regularly used by US Supreme Court justices that that definition is not even recorded in the OALD. The common definition in legal contexts of comport as meaning "to agree with, accord with" is listed as definition number 5 in the massive and extremely comprehensive OED. What does this tell us about the meaning of the word vocabulary? It tells us that vocabulary means not "a word" but "a group of words."

    However, these examples of how English speakers use the word vocabulary do more than correct a common misunderstanding that vocabulary means "a word": they also suggest that  it is something in use by a person or group of persons, and it might be limited to a particular context. As the context varies, for example from a conversation with friends about the latest reality TV show to the opinions of the US Supreme Court, so too does the vocabulary vary; that is, the people in those groups share different collections of words which they regularly use to communicate their ideas to others. One more example might help: on a recent trip home to Australia, my teenage nieces and nephews kept describing places and things as being "bogan," a word that I had never heard, and certainly never used, but which is clearly a regular part of their vocabulary, if entirely lacking in mine. To my surprise, this word bogan is in fact listed in the OALD, with a note advising that it is used informally, and that it is generally restricted to the English vocabulary or Australians and New Zealanders, although my teenage nieces and nephews, and I am sure their social group generally, has expanded the meaning beyond what is currently recorded in the OALD. The OED is bit more informative on bogan, with illustrative quotation up to 2011, but it also fails to record what appears to be a much more recent extension of meaning to places, things and activities amongst Australian teenagers, who might say, for example, that "We can't go there; that's so bogan!" which is certainly not something I would say: if I did, none of my friends would understand me. I would be very surprised if an American or Briton knew the  word bogan. The word vocabulary, then, basically means "the set of words used by a person or group of people, sometimes in a specific context," which definition comports with the first three definitions of vocabulary as listed in the OALD.

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Reference

How many words are there in the English language? (2013). Retrieved from Oxford Dictionaries website: http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/how-many-words-are-there-in-the-english-language

But Does the Shoe Fit?

Do you know the English saying "If the shoe fits, wear it"? But how are we to decide if a shoe fits? As reported in the BBC News article "Viewpoint: Does Caligula deserve his bad reputation?", it isn't always easy to decide whether a shoe really does fit, especially not if your name is Caligula, meaning "little boot" in Latin, and you have been forced to fit into a certain shoe for many centuries of received tradition.

According to the article, historian Mary Beard argues that although there is likely some truth in the traditional perception of the Roman emperor Caligula as a mad, sex crazed monster with megalomania, the truth is probably much less dramatic ("Viewpoint: Does Caligula," 2013). The problem, according to Beard, is that most of the information we have about Caligula comes from later writers who wanted to make him seem as evil as possible to justify having killed him in a military coup, with most ancient Roman writers reporting not what they saw or heard themselves, but what other people told someone else they saw or heard, or what their uncle's boy friend said he saw or heard.

Cambridge University classicist Mary
Beard, with a Roman soldier's caliga. 

This story interested me for a few reasons. First, I'm interested in the classical cultures of Greece and Rome, which are the foundation of Western civilisation, which is now fast becoming the global civilisation we all share, and I think that a better understanding of the origins can help us to understand the present. In particular, studying our ancestors awful, often evil, mistakes, can help us to avoid repeating them, and the power play in Rome between competing elites, and the peasants, might have much to teach us, perhaps also some useful lessons for Thailand these past few years.

Another reason this article interested me is that it shows us how very difficult it can be to acquire solid knowledge on many topics. And this seems to me at the heart of academic work, which is why we are all in a class called Academic Reading and Writing 5. For most of the past 2,000 years, at least since the time of Roman historian Seutonius, who is a great writer, but, as Beard points out, perhaps not a very reliable writer, Caligula has been notorious as the most bloody, corrupt, selfish, and generally immoral of all the Roman emperors - not a very noble title. But more cautious modern scholarship is, as in so many other areas, re-examining and correcting earlier, traditional opinions, and showing in many cases that the traditional beliefs are either completely wrong, or not at all well founded. This is why academics are always arguing: arguing is what academics do all the time. And this arguing is essential to make progress in discovering new knowledge and correcting the wrong ideas we might have inherited from parents, teachers, tradition or whatever. As is so often the case, better modern scholarship tells us that his traditional shoes might not fit the real Caligula very well at all.

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Reference

Viewpoint: Does Caligula deserve his bad reputation? (2013, July 29). BBC News Magazine. Retrieved July 29, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23455774

Protecting Innocent Children Deadly for Mature Adults

Who would not want to protect innocent children? The latest call for more laws, and more laws, and more laws to protect innocent children comes from the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, although there is some opposition.

According to David Lee, writing in "Chinese Firm Huawei Controls Net Filter Praised by PM", concerned groups have raised national security concerns due to the system being run by Chinese company Huawei, providers of the Homesafe internet filtering system which the PM wants changed from being optional to required for all internet use in the United Kingdom (2013). The company and government committees have, however, denied that there has been or is any problem, that Huawei acts responsibly as a business, and that it is not tied to the Chinese government.

Although I think that it is normally both sensible national economics to allow foreign businesses to compete freely with domestic businesses, who should not be given any special protection, there might be grounds for monitoring the activities of companies in areas that are sensitive and do have genuine national security issues. Usually, I think the national security excuse is just a lie that politicians and selfish interest groups use to block fair and free competition from other businesses. However, control of information, especially the internet, is perhaps something where some government oversight might not be bad thing, but then, don't domestic service providers need to be subject to the same examination? So, I don't really think the fact of Huawei being Chinese is a good reason to interfere with the companies services to UK citizens.

I am much more worried about the Prime Minister's excuse that it is necessary to block pornography and control what is available on the internet in order to protect innocent children. This sounds like a lie, but one with a very long history and remains an excuse that is still popular with many people: ban drugs (but not the harmful ones we like) to protect children, ban books with immoral ideas to protect children (religious types often like this suppression of ideas), ban large soft drinks to protect children (New York's mayor wants to do this), and so on. But is there any evidence that pornography hurts children in any way? Ice-cream certainly harms children - it contributes to making them fat and unhealthy, so there might be good reasons to ban ice-cream, but pornography?

I am reminded, yet again, that this is exactly the same as the irrational, and lying excuse that his political enemies and the majority of citizens in democratic Athens used to legally have their greatest thinker and most morally aware teacher legally executed for corrupting the young people of Athens. His name was Socrates, the teacher of Plato, who was the teacher of Aristotle. I'm not sure that seeing a bit of pornography, or enjoying some ultra-violent video games for today's internet generation, is any more dangerous to young people than was Socrates to the young of ancient Athens. The Athenian democrats were successful in legally killing Socrates; thankfully they failed to suppress his radical ideas.

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Reference

Lee, D. (2013, July 25). Chinese firm Huawei controls net filter praised by PM. BBC News Technology. Retrieved July 28, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23452097