China media: Public smoking ban

Cigarette are very addictive and particularly bad for your health over the long term. They are also bad for the health of family members and people around you who breathe in your second hand smoker on a daily basis. Some doctors believe that second hand smokers can be even more damager to health than for the smokers. Some teenage smokers are also more likely to experiment with drugs and other addicitive substances such as alcohol. Therefore, although cigarettes may be considered a less harmful than harder drugs such as Yaba or cocaine which have mild altherating properties, they can be the trigger which leads people to try out these drugs.

According to "public smoking ban" the report said that China has more than 300 million smokers which is the biggest tobacco market in the world. The government has not limited place for smoking, so they can smoke everywhere such as indoor: public place, offices and outdoor area like school hospital hotel restaurant and so on. As a result, today, China has serious air pulltion and many people got serious diseases. For example: emphysema lung cancer. Average per year more than 600,000 people .So, China government realized that public smoking and pollution problems, it want to ban public smoking and every kind of tobacco advertising such as scene in film and TV shows for decreasing the smokers but the policy cannot reduce the smoker. Why? Because China has a big population and before 1949, they have one slogan is " If men don't smoke, they are not  real men." China government does not pray attention to limited the smoking, it was just talking but not doing about controls on smoking, China is a big manufacture cigarettes in the world and it made a lot of income.

I think, China should educate their people about healthy and have a strict rule to prohibit public smoking and will arrange some place for somker.

__________

Reference

China media: Public smoking ban. (2014, November 25). BBC News China. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-30188527

"The most important book in English"?

In an earlier post I conceded that the morally ugly Christian Bible has had a massive influence on the Western world, often harmful. I'm much more in agreement with the slightly more limited claim made in "Shakespeare Folio found in French library".

This BBC News story reports that the damage, including the loss of its title page, to a copy of the first published collection of most of Shakespeare's plays may explain why it had gone unrecognised for 200 years in the rare books section of a library in a small French town, where it was recently discovered by a librarian ("Shakespeare Folio", 2014).

As Carl Sagan has said, if we could have kept only the work of Newton, or Darwin or Shakespeare, we should choose the Shakespeare. Had Newton and Darwin never lived to do their amazing work, those scientific and mathematical discoveries would still have been made. But only Shakespeare could have given us Shakespeare, just as Homer, however many people he might have been, could have given us Homer.

When I first read Shakespeare, it was like learning another language. My first exposure as an innocent child was to Macbeth. And Shakespeare's language, although already modern English, is very different to the English of today: words have different meanings, he uses words not common today, and his spelling is all over the place - I don't think he ever worried about little details like spelling the same word the same way. He sometimes spells travel as "trauaill" and sometimes as "trauel", the former probably for the good reason of suggesting the original word from which comes the word travail. And sometimes we just can't be absolutely sure what word he meant.

But since Macbeth is full of murder, starting with the murder of a king, and ghosts and witches, and fights and plotting and an evil wife who goes insane after a blood thirsty start, Mabeth's queen after he has killed the king who just rewarded him for success in battle, the play does grip despite the language difficulties: the violence, the sex, the wickedness are, as always, powerful attractions, even for innocent children. When I first read Romeo and Juliet, I didn't realise how full of sex the writing is, and the silly English teacher at my Catholic boys school didn't clarify that, which left the play seeming a bit odd - the powerful sexual attraction, the lust, that drives Romeo and his beloved 13 year old (could that be legal today?) to defy their families and then commit suicide is hard to understand when the sex content isn't clear. However, Macbeth has enough without the love between Macbeth and his bloody minded wife to hold the interest and encourage even 13 year old boys to work at the language.

First Folio edition title page
for Anthony and Cleopatra

By the time I got to Antony and Cleopatra some years later in high school, enough exposure had eased the language problems. But even today, Shakespeare is one thing I prefer to read in a paper book version - the Kindle editions are OK, but they can't really handle notes and commentary: that is much better done no a paper version. My preferred edition is the Oxford University Press series, and again the spelling can be a bit weird. For example, Michael Neill, the Oxford editor of Antony and Cleopatra spells Antony as "Anthony" and titles the play "Anthony and Cleopatra", but he does have a good reason: the First Folio edition, an instance of which the BBC News article is about, very clearly has "Anthony", so I think the Oxford editor made a reasonable choice, even though almost every other modern editor spells the leading man's name as "Antony", following the Roman (Latin) spelling. There is no end of controversy over such questions, but neither is there any reason to let such details get in the way of enjoying this great English literature. I agree with the BBC News's reporter that a good case can be made that the First Folio edition of Shakespeare is one of the most important books published in English.

Have you seen or read any of Shakespeare's plays or poetry?

__________

Reference

Shakespeare Folio found in French library. (2014, November 26). BBC News Entertainment & Arts. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30206476

Because of hormone

By nature men are different from women both physical differences and mental differences, these differences bring to different behavior, thinking and attitude.

According to According to BBC News's "Women bosses 'more depressed' than male counterparts" reports that women bosses have more depressed than men bosses because women bosses always deal with stereotypes, prejudice, colleagues and superiors. Her colleagues don’t believe the women whom could be good leaders and her works will be more monitored by their advisers than men’s.

Men and women are different between the body, thinking and behavior due to sexual hormones and brain structure. Women have bigger frontal lobe than men’s. Frontal lobe is related to our thinking this frontal lobe will motivate limbic system that is concerned about controlling emotions and feeling as a result women have more emotion than men. Moreover women’s Cerebral Cortex have more neuronal cells than men’s that make women thinking; even a small thing and usually use more emotional decisions than men. On the other hand men have bigger parietal lobe than women’s, men can solve the stress in the short term and facing problem faster than women.

Plus women have bigger Hippocampus that keep stories memory so women trend to remember more situations and can recall old stories in the past and felling in situations  that make her feel sad or happy easier than men whom only usually remember important stories.
In general women’s brain products serotonin “controlling emotion restrain aggression” more than men’s, usually men look more aggressive and stronger than women. In stressful situations, women’s brain product less serotonin men’s brain doesn’t so our hormones and brain structure are main factor to our depression.

 

__________

Reference

Stephens,P. (2014, November 20). Women bosses 'more depressed' than male counterparts. BBC News Health. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30127275

Women bosses "more depress" than counterparts

In the past, the men are a leader and women are follow men, but now the social has change to women have a role in the economy, social ,and politic etc. It make women more stronger and more depression.

According to "more depressed" The scientists at the University of Texas at Austin interviewed 2800 middle aged men and women in 1993-2004 the aged between 54 to 64. The study said that women have more education and more ability to do job authority, otherwise, these women more strict , aggressive and hard working, but women want to do the work complete, even if they will do overtime and bring the problems go back to home. This is a bad behavior as leaders  So it make them have fewer symptoms of depression than women without job authority. In contrast, men are the same symptoms of depression too, but men are stronger mental and hangout. Especially, men are not responsibility families than women. The weak point of women is more likely than men to display symptoms of depression. From the statistic of scientists that women have 9% increased rate of depressive symptoms than women without authority.

This depression is depend on person and behavior. I think they should exercise for relaxation and healthy.

__________

Reference

Sephens, P. (2014, November 20) Women bosses 'more depressed' than male counterparts. BBC News Health. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30127275

Toys for children

Since se are so accustomed to hear tragic news from around world, police killing a child is not more special than a killing spree in a school or other incidents related with guns. However, these kinds of news always make me gloomy and sad at losing a youn life.

The BBC News article "Tamir Rice shooting: Call for US replica gun law change" reports that a 12-year-old boy was shot by police after pulling out what turned out to be a replica gun, which is promoting calls for the guns to be more clearly marked (2014).

The boy, Tamir Rice, had a replica gun and was shot by police and died. Who is blamed? The producer made a replica gun, the parents paid money for the replica gun, the boy played with the replica gun, and the police shot him. The case is under investigation to clarify what exactly happend, but any explanation cannot resurrect the dead boy.

Why do people made toys looking like real firearms? Toys are just for children's joy and developing. Adults have made toys which resemble real things because the more looking like real things are more expensive. Sometimes we worry about children cannot distinguish a real thing from an imaginable thing, but the article shows that we adults cannot know which one is real in a short time when we have to decide a urgent thing. The good solution for our society is that we throw away all kinds of firearms without concern of whether they are real or not, if we can. However, we know well we cannot. It's sad reality. Then just for toys for children, don't we have a hope having a toy world without replica firearms? 

Reference

Tamir Rice shooting: Call for US relica gun law change. (2014, Novemver 24). BBC News Us and Canada. Retrieved from  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30181338

Art for whose sake?

I was tempted to respond to the appalling shooting by US police of a 12 year old boy yesterday, in the end, the flowers as art won.

According to "Georgia O'Keeffe painting sets auction record for female artist," the surprising sale, as Will Compertz describes it, of a major work by artist Georgia O'Keeffe, although well below the records held by men, has set a new record price for a painting by a female artist (2014).

Although I think other modern artists are better, I have long admired the work of O'Keeffe. Her flowers, however delicate in reality, come across as strong and powerful, whilst remaining representationally accurate. Nonja could never produce an O'Keeffe!

O'Keeffe, G. (1932)
Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1

I do think the work of other modern artists, who are mainly men, which is not my fault, is better art. I particularly like the work of Picasso, and can understand why his work fetches such amazing prices. If I had a spare $100 million, I might even be tempted (I had a lot of spare $100 millions). But whilst I greatly enjoy O'Keeffe's powerful flowers, I don't know that I'd spend $44 million to get my hands on the original Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1. I might pay a lot, but not quite that much. On the other hand, I'm glad that others are paying up and encouraging the further production of great art, and O'Keeffe's art does seem to me to be great.

In a hundred years, it will still be appreciated, along with Picasso and Rembrandt, and probably Francis Bacon, whose Three Studies of Lucien Freud the article cites as being the current world record holder, having sold last year for more than three times the price of O'Keeffe's $44.4 million flowers. I would probably have gone for the Bacon, too, but not at $142 million: has anyone ever matched Picasso's genius?

And hopefully someone else will follow up the stories on the latest horrific shooting by gun carrying cops in the US.

__________

Reference

Georgia O'Keeffe painting sets auction record for female artist. (2014, November 21). BBC News Entertainment & Arts. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30142581

Coke vs fruit juice- which is healthier?

The word of Coke always reminds me of the funny story from my childfood.  My mischievous sister and brother once tried to get me drink a glass of soy sauce which they said it was my favorite beverage Coke.

The article "Call to banish fruit juice from recommended five a day" reports that fruit juices contain as much sugar as Coke.  Since many parents still believe that fruit juices are healthy products to give to their childern, experts adivise them on the applicable amount and the time to take them.
 
I couldn't give up drinking Coke alomost every day until my friend warned me that my bones would start to melt.  As I grew older, I was ready to pay more attention to what are good or healthy things to eat or drink, but I wasn't good enough. when I first read this article, I was quite shocked because I had no doubt that fruit juice as well as fruit is surely good for the health. And I was the one who drink fruit juice almost every day and of course have a stock in the fride. 

I was little confused and at the same time started worrying about the fact I drink fruit juice more frequently here in Bangkok than in Japan.  I  decided to gathrer information on this topic for my own sake since I realized that I was too ignorant about what nutricious food is.  I soon found out fruit juice is linked with diabetes.   Diabetes is the last word I wanted  to hear.  It is an illness that scares me the most because both my father and brother have them. If I continue to have fruit juice, do I also develop diabetes??    Fruit may lower the risk of diabetes while juice may raise it.  Can it be true?   If fruit contains plenty of Vitamin C, Minerals and calcium, why not fruit juice?  According to the artcle "Diabetes experts: 'juices are the worst, you might as well drink Coke..'.", Dr Kaufman says fruit juice is really one of worst things...We might as well drink Coca-Cola.  Sugars are released from fruit when it is juice or blended.  Fruit juice contains no fiber, but a high amount of sugar.  Furthermore, fruit juice is so easy to take. We just need a glass to pour in. We don't have to peel nor cut it. Since it is a liquid, it is easy to have more.  In contrast, eating fruit takes some time because we have to chew it and it cannot be absorbed into the body that quikily.
That means when I drink fruit juice, I am taking so much sugar into my body for a very short time. It sounds really bad for the health. If fruit juice is a kind of sugar water, it may also contribute to tooth decay and weight gain.

After gathering all this information, I wondered whether I should get rid of my fruit juice whose expiry dates are two weeks ahead or not.  There are a lot other unhealthy products such as cakes, doughnuts, ice cream.... Do I eat them every day? No.  I eat them for special occasions.  As for fruit juice, now I have knowledge about it and as long as I am sensible about portion, I guess I don't have to give up drinking them as I did with Coke.  But it might be a better idea to have whole fruits instead of juice.

________

Reference
 

Michelle, R. (2014, November 11).  Call to banish fruit juice from recommended five a day. BBC News Health. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29986012

Elaine, W. (2014, March 27). Diabetes experts: 'juices are the worst, you might as well drink Coke..'.
Retrieved from http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/People/Diabetes-expert-Juices-are-the-worst-you-might-as-well-drink-Coke

Don't touch snow!

When I heard that one of my friends could not come to our lunch appointment because of preparing her children's Christmas costumes, I come to realize we are in winter. My life in Bangkok seems to deprive me of sense of seasons.

In "Why do so many people die shovelling snow?", Jo Jolly reports that around 100 people in the US die shovelling every winter and the reasons are that the shovelling snow raises blood pressure and heart rates; that cold air constricts blood vessels; that cardiac risk are higher in early moring, advising people over the age 55 not to do it (2014).

I was shocked at Jolly's article that there are people who die from shovelling snow. I hae never thought the work is hard enough to kill people. After seeing attached picture to the article, I came to understand the scale of the accumulated snow amouts in the US. It could be a cause of dying. The snowbank's height looks like almost one meter. If people were isolated in the house by snow, they have to make a way to get outside.

When I was a child, my brother and I went around our neighbors to find snowbanks having no way to a house gate to shovel them because we thought it was an exciting job to show our power. The average anual snowfall of Seoul, my hometown, is usually not over 30 centimeters in winter, so it was enough for us to clean them. It's one of my favorite memories about my childhood. By effects of increasing selfish life styles, people didn't want to shovel snow of other places excluding snow in the front of their houses. Some people didn't clean snow even in the front of their houses. So, we came to have a law restirction which imposes fines on people who don't shovel snow in the front of their houses.

The sadder thing is that nowadays children in Korea cannot enjoy snow because of air pollution of China. It is polluting snow and rain, so we are cautioned not to be exposed to snow or rain. Korean moms always warn their children not to touch snow. We might find a contradiction of the phrase 'as pure as the driven snow' in the near future. The industrial development of humans are making harm to humans. What do we have to give up for our convenience?

One of good things in my Bangkok like is that I can get rain on my head without any worry. I miss a clean heavy shower now.   
  

__________

Reference

Jolly, J.(2014, November 19). Why do so many people die shovelling snow? BBC News Megazine Moniter. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-30119410

Immigration reform good for whom

Obama has given importance in immigration reform since he campaigned in 2008. After he was been voted to US president, the immigration reform was ignored due he has given more importance to Health care system. Today he plan about immigration reform seriously.

According to BBC News's "Barack Obama enforces US immigration overhaul," Obama want to reform immigration law by immigrants who has been living illegally in the US apply for work permits even his plan was protested by some American and Republican and Congress. Finally he announced executive orders and bypass congress on immigration reform Amendment.

Even immigration reform policy will not offer citizenship or all of the same benefits as Americans such as Obama care food stamp, this policy will gain many profits to American economic, for example increase GDP, increase the employment wage. Changing illegal labors into legal labors will made national employment wage increase because nowadays many employers employ illegal employee in low wage, plus these illegal employee haven’t paid tax to US government. If these illegal labors become to legal labors and pay tax to government, it will able to increase national government money instead of spending much government money to arresting, imprisonment these illegal labors. Moreover this policy is good for Obama because almost of illegal labors are Latino who is Obama’s voting base, I think this policy was thought as a one of campaigns for his next election.

Although this policy sounds good, Obama passed it without the consent of Congress that is irreverent action to parliament that sound like Obama give more importance to Latino than legal process. Then there are many illegal labors were deported from USA, they don’t have opportunity to become legal labors and coming to USA again is more difficult because border security policy is stronger. They have to live far away from their families in USA; this policy is not fair for them. Does it mean announce amnesty for illegal immigrants who still living in USA now? Why don’t announce amnesty for people who were deported from USA?



Reference
Barack Obama enforces US immigration overhaul. (2014, November 21). BBC News US & Canada. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30136245

Ice cream must be banned for under 18s

Most people now agree that the harm they cause justifies banning cigarettes for those under 18. And we do want to be consistent in our reasoning, don't we?

According to Hugh Pym, reporting on a recent survey in "Obesity 'costing same as smoking'," lost productivity through days off work and lower performance due to obesity related illnesses cost 2.8% of global economic activity (2014). Since it is now more serious than smoking and alcohol harms, the researchers have called for wider steps to be taken to control this mounting socio-economic and personal problem.

If you accept that the harm smoking causes justifies controlling the sales of tobacco, and banning it for children, who are most easily tempted into unhealthy ways, then naturally you will agree that something similar must be done about the serious health harms caused by obesity. Pym reports that the authors also want controls put on adults to help solve the problem, but I think that a lot of people might get upset if governments started to ban, for example, chocolate cake for everyone between the hours of 2:00 PM and 5:00 PM in the way that the Thai government currently bans the sale of alcohol even to adults at those times.

However, children clearly need to be protected from the serious health and other risks that bad diets cause, so the same arguments that support banning the sale and provision of cigarettes and alcohol to children must also apply to other harmful substances, in this case, ice cream, chocolate cake, candy, fatty pork and the like. Most of these have approximately zero nutritional value: they are, just like cigarettes or champagne, things that make the user feel good, whilst offering no substantial benefit and causing much harm. If we believe in liberty of choice and a right to chose our own lifestyle, we cannot stop adults from making unhealthy personal decisions, but children are not mature and they do need to be protected from the dangers of alcohol, cigarettes, and life threatening dietary habits. If their parents fail to act responsibly, it is clearly the state's obligation to intervene to protect innocent children from unnecessary risks. One effective way to do this is by passing laws to control the sale of harmful substances.

It is time to criminalize the sale to children of ice cream, chocolate cake, Pepsi, fatty pork, and other unhealthy foods that offer no significant nutritional value. This must be done to protect our children and to save our society from rapidly growing threat. Don't you agree?

__________

Reference

Pym, H. (2014, November 20). Obesity 'costing same as smoking'. BBC News Health. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30122015

The Bible? Surely not. But surely yes.

Sometimes the nouns and adjectives that flash through my head as I read an story in the news contradict one another. And that usually means there is something to think about a bit more: two contradictory ideas cannot both be true.

The very short article "The Bible tops 'most influential' book survey" reports that a recent poll to assess public opinion in the UK found that the Bible, and Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species took the first two places (2014).

The Bible! "No way!" was my first reaction, but I was wrong. The Bible has truly had a massive influence on Western society for over a thousand years. But most of that influence has been bad. Western society, especially its politics, has been greatly harmed by the Bible, as has scientific and technological progress. The article quotes the poll as reporting that while men favoured Darwin, it was women who voted for the Bible, "which they argued contains the 'guidelines to be a good person'."

They are completely wrong. The Bible is not a reliable guide to being a good person. On the contrary, as the long dark age that ensued in Western history shows, the influence of the Bible was to bring ignorance, political despotism, and moral disaster to the Western world. So, why do so many people honestly and sincerely believe that the Bible is a book full of moral insights and ethically sound teaching? I think the main, perhaps only, reason is that that is what they were taught and no dissenting opinion was ever allowed to disturb the myth being pushed into the minds of innocent children such as myself. This seems to me also to explain why the most Christian nations also loved to make it illegal to say the Bible was wrong, or that the Christian church in power was wrong, or that its leaders were wrong: the ugly history of laws against heresy and laws against blasphemy were needed to censor and suppress free speech because once thinking and respect for truth were permitted, many people would stop believing in the Bible and start seeing it for what it really is.

And what it really is does have much that is of great value. I don't think the Bible is all vile filth and nonsense. It contains some great literature, from the powerfully written story of creation in Genesis, through the exciting use of terrorism in Exodus as a tool to force the Egyptian Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery to the delivery on Mount Sinai of the famous Ten Commandments: all of this is great story telling, combined with likely historical memory of a people. And there is the poetry, the often thought provoking proverbs in Proverbs, and the beautiful psalms. Finally, the Christian Bible adds to the Jewish Bible a set of gospels relating the remarkable life of  the political rebel who upset the traditionally ruling Jewish elites of Jerusalem so much that they cooperated with the hated Roman occupiers to have Jesus executed by law. This is all great reading for many good reasons. But what it is not is a reliable guide to moral right, although many valuable moral insight are to be had in its pages.

The real problem with the Bible is, I think, in the very thing that so many Christians pick out as most clearly telling its followers how to live a "good" life: the Ten Commandments.

The name says it all: they are commandments. This reflects perfectly the despotic, anti-democratic nature of the primitive, Middle Eastern desert societies that the Bible came from. It is the morality of the Pharonic Egypt, of the Hittites, of Assyria, and of the great Persian Empire.

In contrast stands the Western world which was already establishing a very different set of core values: things like reason, liberty and democracy. I think these can be seen already in the book that I would have voted as most influential, even though it didn't even make the top ten list, and is perhaps read by very few people today: Homer's Iliad. This first great work of Western literature led the way to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, led the way to Athenian democracy, to the Roman Republic, and led the way to Thales and scientific inquiry.

Almost three thousand years ago, the deep divide between the East and the West was already set in it's foundational literature, and when the Christian cancer invaded the West from the 4th century AD on, it spread its deadly anti-democratic, anti-reason and anti-moral poison every where using censorship to silence critics, to stop thinking, to prevent truth being discovered and spoken. This lasted for over a thousand years, but the for about 500 years now the West has been recovering, and the rest of the world plainly wants more of the values that are enshrined in embryonic form in Homer's great work, as we see in the worldwide aspirations of citizens everywhere for more democratic societies where all have a voice, where truths may be sought and spoken freely and where people are respected as being of equal moral worth as persons.

The Iliad is the ultimate source for all of this. No other book can compete in influence on the world as it is today being forged.

__________

Reference

The Bible tops 'most influential' book survey. (2014, November 13). BBC News Entertainment and Arts. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30036581

Responding to "Orangutans" - 3

We've just done the reading and most exercises that make up Part 1 of chapter 2 of Quest 3 (Hartmann & Blass, 2014, pp. 46 - 50). In the their final exercise in this part of "Physical Anthropology", Hartmann and Blass ask us to share our own ideas on three more general questions arising from the reading. We are going to do this as a series of short response writings.

• In your opinion, are humans doing enough to take care of non-human primates? What kind of legal protection should non-human primates have? (p. 50, D., 3)

Think about this question for perhaps 30 seconds and then write down your responses in a comment below. You have five minutes. 

__________

Reference

Hartmann, P. & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Responding to "Orangutans" - 2

We've just done the reading and most exercises that make up Part 1 of chapter 2 of Quest 3 (Hartmann & Blass, 2014, pp. 46 - 50). In the their final exercise in this part of "Physical Anthropology", Hartmann and Blass ask us to share our own ideas on three more general questions arising from the reading. We are going to do this as a series of short response writings.

• 2. Do you think Nonja is well cared for at the Schönbrunn Zoo? Why or why not? (p. 50, D., 2)

Think about this question for perhaps 30 seconds and then write down your responses in a comment below. You have five minutes. 

__________

Reference

Hartmann, P. & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Responding to "Orangutans" - 1

We've just done the reading and most exercises that make up Part 1 of chapter 2 of Quest 3 (Hartmann & Blass, 2014, pp. 46 - 50). In the their final exercise in this part of "Physical Anthropology", Hartmann and Blass ask us to share our own ideas on three more general questions arising from the reading. We are going to do this as a series of short response writings.

• Should art galleries sell an orangutan's art? Why or why not? Who should get the money? (p. 50, D., 1)

Think about this question for perhaps 30 seconds and then write down your responses in a comment below. You have five minutes. 

__________

Reference

Hartmann, P. & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Fashions historical and personal

More than the only mildly interesting title, it was the eye-grabbing photographs of Charles Darwin, of whom I'm sure we've all heard, of Wilkie Collins, who might be a bit more obscure, and of William Holman Hunt, who was new to me, that caught my interest in a story headlined on the BBC News front page this morning. 

In "The great Victorian beard craze", Lucinda Hawksley explains the reasons for the rises in popularity of full beards on men during the mid-19th century and their subsequent decline, showing how British wars and technological advances made their impacts, and concluding with reports on a couple of record breaking facial growths (2014).

Perhaps, as Hawksley says, the relaxation that the Crimean War (1854 - 56) forced on the British army's former ban on beards for soldiers led the way to Darwin's impressive beard in later life. When he published his world changing On the Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin was not yet bearded, so it sounds plausible that as a conservative older type of chap, he would in later years take up the more relaxed fashion that arrived in England when he was in his prime and shaking up our understanding of the world of living things and our place in it.

But what the photographs really reminded me of was my own impressive beard, which reached its height a couple of decades ago. As Hawksley suggests, I was like many men who found shaving an extremely tedious business, and not particularly pleasant for the skin, but being a slave to fashion, I had been shaving for a decade or so when I decided to rebel a bit. After the first embarrassing weeks were over, I was quite proud of my developing beard. I didn't want to go all the way, so clipped the cheek bits as you can see in the photographs, but clipping once a week or so was much easier than shaving every day.

At the time, beards weren't really in fashion and some of the comments mine got were not entirely flattering, my mother, for example, was not a big fan, but enough people were encouraging that I kept if up. The photographs here were taken in 1994 and 1995.

It was probably fortunate that I had already adopted my current habit of twice weekly clipping before 2000. Comparisons with bin Laden's impressive beard might otherwise have been very likely. I've sometimes thought of letting it grow again, but sadly, the colour now reflects my more mature years, and I don't know that washed-out gray, however well it might fit the older Darwin, would be as becoming as the richer "sable silver'd" of my past. I guess the only way to find out for sure is to do the experiment; maybe over Christmas I'll let it go for a couple of weeks and see what it looks like, but I suspect the best I can hope for is a silver sabled.

And I'm very grateful to the wonders of post 2000 Internet technology. I used to be a keen photographer, and by the time I switched entirely to digital photography, sometime early this century, had accumulated a couple of thousand roles of film. For those young people who missed the era of film photography, it was an awful way of keeping records. Sometime around 2007 I invested in a good quality scanner for film, and converted everything to digital images, which now live safely in on Google servers, ready for me to nostalgically flick through or dredge up when I want something;  vastly more convenient than film and hard copies.

At a more sedate pace, I'm also whittling away my largish collection of books in favour of ebook versions. I love the idea of having access to all my stuff, anywhere, at any time and of not having to lug boxes of film and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of books around.

__________

Reference

Hawksley, L. (2014, November 17). The great Victorian beard craze. BBC News Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30037914

Evidence at last!

I remember vividly an event from my primary school days when our local bishop was visiting the school and questioning our knowledge of Catholic doctrine. When he asked how many holy orders there were, everyone in our class said five or six save myself and one other student, who stood firm at only three, even when the imposing bishop sought to undermine our conviction and persuade us to cave in to pressure and agree with our peers.

In "The “Paper Effect” – Note Something Down And You’re More Likely To Forget It" (2014), Christian Jarrett reports on some recent research which suggests that it's not only the internet that might be weakening people's memories, but that writing paper notes is just as harmful. Contradicting the common assumption that the more active form of study of taking notes results in better memory, a study using a card game showed the opposite.

Why would a stressful experience at the hands of an arrogant and rather unpleasant old bishop come to mind when I read this? Because that was the first time I remember having the courage to say that the evidence, the facts, were on my side and that everyone else, however sure and united they were, were also completely wrong.

Actually, the bishop memory from more than four decades ago was my second response. The first was some pleasure that something I had long suspected and applied in practice might indeed be true: that the students who took the most notes, especially neat and beautiful notes, did not do as well academically as more reckless people who either took no notes or very few. This has always worried me when I've taught AEP Listening and Speaking classes, because I disagree strongly with the excessively detailed note taking that Quest encourages, in a most artificial fashion. I'm not very fond of the extensive focus on presentations, either, but at least I can see some value in that, but we can save my worries about presentations for another blog post, unless someone wants to pursue in the comments below.

When I was at university, I took almost no notes, whilst watching with some amusement the different approaches of those around me, from some who frantically tried to copy down every word, to some who copied down whatever the lecturer wrote on the blackboard (yes, back in my university days, we still had blackboards and chalk!), to others who took my own very relaxed approach. I had no solid empirical evidence to back it up, but it seemed to me that the brightest people took very notes. This made sense to me at the time because if you're straining your mind to make masses of notes and worrying about them being pretty of whatever, how can you also be worrying about your comprehension of the material being presented and asking questions to fix any confusions? I used to note down citations the lecturer mentioned so that I could look up the book or journal article later, and I would note down points where the lecturer's explanation was illuminating and unlikely to be in a book. Except in mathematics, where I wrote down everything written on the board, which tended to be an essential step in a proof and which the lecturer gave us time to jot down before he explained and invited discussion on what we were dutifully recording.

I think notes are important, and some other research I've read recently (sorry, I don't remember it exactly, and this time I'm not going to stop to do the research to get it again) suggests that students with good notes do perform better in exams: but consistent with the research reported by Jarrett, it doesn't seem to matter whether the students themselves made the notes - they are useful study tools, but don't have to have been created by the student users.

A couple of other points have come to mind as I wrote the last paragraphs, but I want to finish and go back to bed and Sherlock Holmes, also a tasty masaman chicken leg and thigh, since I'm still feeling a bit unwell, so will conclude by reporting that the wretched bishop did redeem himself when he subsequently heaped considerable praise on myself and Judith for standing firm on what we were sure was the truth, even against an overwhelming majority. That felt rather good. The good bishop probably wouldn't have been so thrilled had he realised that I decided his whole religion was false while I was in high school, another decision I've stuck with. But this too is a topic for another blog post, and I've already read the BBC News article that prompted the response.

__________

Reference

Jarrett, C. (2014, November 12). The “Paper effect” – note something down and you’re more likely to forget it. Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/2014/11/paper-effect-note-something-youre-likely-forget/

Thip's academic interests

Someone has said children know what they want to be in the future when they are still young. It’s impossible; on the other hand since I was 6 years old I have always said “I want to be a lawyer.” At the first time I thought it was a child’s thinking ; I might read Sherlock Holmes novel or watch detective cartoons movies too much so I just wanted look smart like them. As I was growing older, I kept on this thinking. I could not imagine myself in another profession. Becoming a lawyer has been my dream for a long time. I can say that my academic interests followed what I was reading or watching.

 As a result I chosen to study in the law major, this major has given me a new direction. I have known there are 2 kinds of lawyer – advocate lawyers and advisor lawyers - . Advocate lawyers they represent one of the parties in criminal or civil trails by proving evidence and arguing in the court to support their client. Another one is advisor lawyer who works on the companies and consults their client about their legal right, cbiligations, and course of action in business. This information has been a big influence on my life since that day I decided to be a advisor lawyer because advocate lawyer is not my way I thought If my client commit a crime, as a lawyer I would have to find any evidence to support them. It is professional ethic conflict.

From my point of view lawyer is similar to doctor who healing the physical part of patients  where as a lawyer heal people both physically and mentally. Lawyer is a profession which is honorable and important part of business such as taxation planning, due diligence and drafting contract, I think without lawyer many corporations would find themselves with problems such as what is the best way to run their corporations within the scope of the law. If I can be a lawyer I could help and advise them what to do in every possible way.

So I would like to work in a law firm that serve companies and work as a lawyer, helping companies run smoothly efficiently and within boundaries of the law.

Moreover, nowadays there is a legal professional crisis. In Thailand many companies have low investment money so they don’t get the right to have a lawyer. Because the lawyer fee is high, they don’t have enough money to employ any lawyers. Yet no one care about this problem. So as a lawyer I not only can help them to solve their problems with a cheaper fee but also reduce a legal professional crisis in Thailand.

So lawyer is my dream job and also my academic interests. I’m happy to do it.