Signals of the death

Have you ever read news about someone who try to commit suicide in the newspaper? I’m sure at least you have heard that recently, one of thai singer took his own life by jumping out of the window. Sometimes, I wondered why people around that person such as friend and family cannot prevent such incident from happened, but maybe it’s not their fault, maybe they have not noticed the “signal” sent.

              According to “Suicide-risk behaviour patterns identified – study” (2015), people who tend to commit suicide will have the same pattern of behavior, including agitation and being impulsive – acting with little consideration of the consequences. The study also stated that the effective prevention measures were aiding people needed. The father, whose daughter took her own life without any signal, said that it would be great that we can indicate that people are thinking about suicide so that we can help this people earlier.

           Apart from the latest news about that singer, I choose this news because long time ago, one of my neighbor try to commit suicide. This person lived their life happily with niece and nephew, he retired with a lot of pension. That’s why we all felt that his attempt to commit suicide came out of the blue.However, after talking to him, his family realized that when they went to work or to school, this grandparent felt very lonely. In many countries, putting your parents in the care homes will be considered normal things, but in Thailand people more likely consider it as a ungrateful act to not look after your parent. Yet, care home might have more advantages than we think.

One of the main positives of checking in such place is that the elderly people can live their everyday life in the eyes of healthcare professionals. These people are well-trained to look after old people and highly aware of some health problem sign. For example, they can arrange a meal with better nutrient proportion for old people who suffered from diabetes. This example proofed to me that care homes or nursing home is a better choice regarding elderly people’s health.

Secondly, moving to care homes or nursing home can lead to a better quality of social relationship of elder people. Since there are a lot of elderly people lived under the same roof, our grandparents will have a chance to participate in interesting hobbies group such as knitting or playing chess. Moreover, they will have a plenty of people who growing up in the same era to talk too. For instance, children these days just cannot enjoy discussing on how exiting the monotone TV series broadcasted more than 50 years ago was, but these elderly people can talk about it for an hour. That’s why from my point view, the care home can develop the elder’s people social relationship.


Do you think that in the near future, Thai (or Asian) people will change their aspect of care home ?

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Reference

Suicide-risk behaviour patterns identified - study (2015, August 30). BBC News. Retrieved fromhttp://www.bbc.com/news/health-34101608

The myth of university beauty

Do you satisfy with your appearance? What is the beauty in your mind? In my country, Taiwan, we prefer perfect women who have a slim figure, a fair complexion, a pair of bright eyes, high nose bridge and a pointed chin. I think that it might be affected by the image of Barbie and the fashion magazines from Western countries. However, as we know that we also had the different definition of beauty in ancient China. So, should we narrow it down the definition of beauty? Or we should be more confident for our appearance, just because we are unique exist.

According to "The myth of university beauty" (2015), the writer discusses that why beauty might timeless in three aspects. First, most people are attracted by certain appearance which shows that they are finding out a mate who is really healthy and lively. Moreover, the researcher found that people have different viewpoints about the ‘manliness’ or ‘femininity’ of their gender which depends on the areas are developing or developed. In urbanized city, most individuals consider that masculine men and feminine women are more attractive. However, feminine men might be more appealing for women in smaller countries. Lastly, the body shape also has diversity of thoughts from different countries. For instance, Western people may prize longer legs in women yet the nomadic Himba society in Namibia have the opposite tastes.

When I read this article, I think about that if human prefer a healthy mate, why many girls consider that skinny figure is beautiful in modern generation. As a matter of fact, it is an abnormal trend which might influence our mind and body. For physical, losing weight in an unhealthy way could certainly be very damaging to our body. Such as skipping meals, over exercising, taking drugs and so on. Even some people could extremely try starving and throwing up in order to make them more skinny. For psychological, people who are not satisfied with their appearances are easier to feeling depressed, frustrated and not confident about their life. In general, I personally believe that the media and celebrities should take the most responsibility for this phenomenon because most young people are easier to imitate their idols on television. So, why should we allow skinny models or singers to be a trendy of fashion?

Additionally, I personally disagree with the perspective that people are more interested in masculine men and feminine women in a capital city. It is the global trend which shows that nowadays we have more singers or actors who are hard to guess their gender. For example, my favorite band which called Soda green in Taiwan. The male singer graduated from the department of Chinese literature in an outstanding university. I really love him because he is really talented in writing songs and lyrics and he also has a feminine looking and beautiful voice. Although many people think that it is a female voice when hearing his voice in the first time, the band is still popular and famous in Taiwan. Finally, I cannot imagine that certain people prefer shorter legs in this society. I believe that if people can have longer legs by plastic surgery, no one prefers shorter legs. However, we are not models on the cat walk, I do not think that we should spend too much time and money concentrating on our faces and body shapes.

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Reference

The myth of university beauty.(2015, June 23).BBC Capital Story. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150622-the-myth-of-universal-beauty

Modern Education in a Digital World

Never before have I learned English with the applying of modern technology until taking AEP reading and listening level 2 taught by Peter Filicietti, feeing that it is a new, interesting, well-designed class although at first I was not accustomed to this kind of teaching style. Also, the combination of between technological innovation (i.e. Google application like Classroom, blogging, online survey, and stuff like that) and traditional teaching in the classroom focusing on the interactive learning has been helping boost the efficacy of my language learning skills and offer the diversity of up-to-date teaching media making class more interesting—rarely found in other language schools in Thailand.

According to "Textbooks replaced by iTunes U downloads" (Coughalan, 2014), many interactive resources such as online library of lessons, course materials , additional links of online resources, exercises and the like have been made on iTunes U to let student can access them anywhere by teachers at the Stephen Perse Foundation school. In addition, students can also get the versions updated, customized, and connected to particular classes as well as recent events by teachers, and those changes will updated on the student’s iPads abruptly; nevertheless, what should be also regarded is that the reliability of such online material is mainly based on the performance of teachers.

This article brought me to think about various aspects of overall technology applied in a classroom. Students can gain a lot of advantages from teachers who have reliable ability in the use of technology. For one thing, it is so flexible that teachers and students are not required to meet in the regular class every day, saving one another's time and cost of both travelling to school and paper-based textbooks/documents. Another thing is that this will facilitate them for rapid communication almost anywhere and anytime. Likewise, for those students who may be embarrassed in asking or answering some questions and even giving any comments in the class, they could use technology-based tools—e-mail, blog, applications—for such actions. By means of hi-tech tools provided by teachers, students can also easily access the updated and systematic (online) information and can follow the notifications and recorded data as to learning resources, activities, and assignments at their own convenience.

Admittedly, instructors and learners may not be able to show and reflect their true feeling and mood through digital learning tools. Their obvious emotional response to lessons and teachers, therefore, are not probably revealed as much as the interactive teaching and learning in a live class. In spite of effective tools, technology used for education may reduce the student's social as well as interaction skills. Although advanced technology will enhance overall educational performance, maybe it is not reflect the close relationship between teachers and students. Moreover, it seems that the implementation of technology may not available for some schools in rural or remote area in consequence of the lack of internet access and/or enough digital devices for education.

In fact, if state-of-the-art technology is creatively and wisely applied for education systems based on different nation's policies, it would contribute to benefits outweighing drawbacks. Hence, both traditional classrooms in each different level and new education using technology should be appropriately integrated in accordance with a current situation in each country. Speaking of Thailand's education system, the government should help allocate enough budgets and support the movement of modern education in the era of advanced technology. It is significant to provide training to teachers together with academic staffs, support standardized devices, improve internet network system covering in all areas and develop the educational policy. What's more, the government should not make the applied technology for learning become a plug-and-play education like TV games; conversely, it should help student gain as many merits from technology-based education as possible. Also, teachers have to provide reliable knowledge and have enough understanding in the use of technology. Similarly, parents and students should be open-minded for the beneficial change in new education system.

I am really looking forward to seeing the good development of effective education system integrated with technology in Thailand soon.

__________

Reference

Coughlan, S. (2014, March 5). Textbooks replaced by iTunes U downloads. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26249041

Technologies or Responsibilities

Last week Poy and Punn blogging the bombing at the Erawan shrine in Bangkok, Poy is a lucky person her routine often face to the bad experience but the routine was changed when she will face to the danger, Punn concern about safety about this situation. How can we find terrorist, do we really need more technologies or we need more responsibility to investigate?

In the article "Thai shrine: Lack of modern equipment 'slows blast probe'" points out that Thai police say tracking bomber is lack because the equipment that we have is old and not good enough to identify and tracking the wanted man, who with a yellow t-shirt and dropped the backpack before it exploded at the Erawan shrine. The technologies that we have cannot recognize and track the suspected guy.

CCTVs are appear for traffic and security in every where in Bangkok, it can taking photo of the car's plate clearly. When I driving or walking on the street there are many cameras on the street and a lot more at the intersection. I suspect every people can got footage by cameras in Bangkok if we on the road.

I watched a video on Facebook that BBC reporter have some evidence from the bomb at the Erawan shrine which the police was not collected. Then, he bring the evidence to the police headquarter and give it to the police, but they say "it is close." From this video I realize that police does not have a responsibility and passion to investigate this bomb attack because of not a business time.

Taiwan have CCTV everywhere in there country, like it have in Bangkok. When it have a thief steal something, car crashed and ran away, or a murder police can tracking and arrested every people, even if they went to the mountain, which do not have a CCTV, but when they come back the police know. Unlike Bangkok, not a business time, this camera is dummy one or cannot use it yet, or this is not my area I cannot do it, Thai people will heard these words from government or police.

Reference

Thai shrine: Lack of modern equipment 'slows blast probe'. (2015, August 23).BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34032243

Stephen Hawking's speech tech released by Intel

Have you watched this movie, which is called 'The Theory of Everything' performed by Eddie Remayne and Felicity Jones? I watched this movie in December last year and the story was adopted from a biography about the scientist Stephen Hawking and his first wife Hane. Although I didn’t know this person until watching The Theory of Everything, I really enjoyed the movie and definitely I would recommend it. Particularly, I am not familiar with scientific subjects but this movie motivated me to read more about professor Stephen. Therefore, that is the main reason that I want to talk about this news.

According to "Stephen Hawking's speechtech released by Intel."(2015), Intel company invented a useful software that helps Prof Stephen Hawking to speak via a computer. The article also discussed the benefit of the software including interpreting visual signals and translating them into words to significantly improve sufferers of motor neurone disease (MND),  introduce anyone to download and experiment with the system. Moreover, Intel claims that there are a variety of different sensors experimented by their teams, and they are hoping developers will try out other options appropriate to each patient's needs and abilities. Finally, the author tells us The UK's MND Association has praised the move. Not only technology is improving very sharply and it is exciting to see new inventions emerge every year, but also the more that technology can help us express what we are thinking, the better.

From my point of views, the software or system to improve patients who suffered from motor neurone disease (MND) would be very expensive, these patients can not afford this machine. Individuals who support my perspective include the majority of low-income family; they would most likely assert that the many patients do not have sufficient money to adequate the equipment to improve their dairy life. Even it has to wait for a long time that the price of machine could slowly decrease. However, the rich who got motor neurone disease are only beneficial by the useful machine. Hence, the feasibility to take on disparity between the rich and poor is an immensely problematic. Additionally, if another  high- tech software or system on the machine is created, these rich families can have the more opportunity to utilize such communicational tools to improve their life without worrying about money.

Even though many technology tools are moving so quickly and become more affordable, medical appliance is still very expensive for the poor. Especially for these patents in low-income family suffered from rare diseases such as ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). For example, if professor Stephen was born into a poor family, he may not have sufficient medical resources to treat and special machine to help him communicate with other people even die early. In my opinion to solve this problem, the government should take the most responsibility to assist these patents who are poor instead of wasting money on public services which cannot provide basic life support for citizens. This factor is extremely important and that is why we pay taxes. For instance, national health insurance is an effective policy implemented by the Taiwanese government, the Taiwanese do not pay much money on medical expenses and could be treated by new medical appliance. So, it is hard to imagine if I suffer from ALS without any medical allowances in other countries.

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Reference

Stephen Hawking's speech tech released by Intel. (2015, August 19).BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33991887

Malala Yousafzai: the girl of the year

When I think of the woman who acted as an ambassador of women rights, Emma Watson is the first image in my head, but last two week I just heard about a courage girl - named Malala Yousafzai - from the discussion in the conversation room at AUA, and I want to know more about her. Have you ever heard about Malala story before?

 According to “Youngest Nobel peace prize winner Malala celebrates exam success” (2015), Ziauddin Yousafzai, who is Malala’s father, posed on Twitter on Friday that his daughter has received the top tier rank in her GCSEs, which is a significant test of British students.

As the news reported, I am quite glad to hear this news, because she now acted as an education activist and won the Nobel peace prize last year. I believe that before she could reach at this successful point, she used to face with many undesirable things. The hard life in Afghanistan drove her to change Afghanistan's educational system. I heard from her interview with an USA talk-show program that she was injured by the Taliban and she said that if she tried to kill them, she will not be different from them.

When I heard about Malala's story, even it is not much, I am very impressed with her action towards the authorities in her country. It is undeniable that Muslim countries such as Afghanistan are the male-dominant societies, and women have much less rights and equality to do just one little thing like studying.

It reminds me to think of the importance of education. We seem to have more freedom to do many things as much as we want; at the same time, not only men, women can also learn anything they prefer to. While some people in developing and developed countries may overlook the significance of studying at school or university, there are some people in the world who need the knowledge to fulfil their ignorance and illiteracy, to know how to live their lives, to develop the country better, and to equalize the right of humanity.

In conclusion, although Malala was not born in the city, which is plenty of sciences, education, and modernity, she did not think that she was born in the wrong place, she just thought how she can live without inequality.

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Reference

Youngest Nobel peace prize winner Malala celebrates exam success. (2015, August 21). Reuters. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/21/us-britain-malala-idUSKCN0QQ1FE20150821 

Quest ch.7 - Medicine and Drugs: Addictive Substances - "Consequences of addiction"

On her introductory page for the first reading of chapter 7, Hartmann has a couple of images with captions (2007, p. 200). Look at the pictures and read the captions.

Click for full size view.

Then choose one of Hartmann's questions below to answer in a comment, response write.

• If a pregnant woman is addicted to drugs or alcohol, what might happen to her unborn baby? 
• In your culture, who takes care of the baby of a mother who cannot take care of her child because of her addiction? 
• in your culture, do many people adopt a child - in other words, take some else's child into their home and legally become the child's parents? 
• How might war cause an increase in drug addiction? 

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Reference

Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Quest 2, ch.7, "Medicine and Drugs: Addictive Substances" - p. 199, opening discussion

As usual, Pamela Hartmann starts chapter 7 of unit 4, "Health," with an image and a couple of discussion questions (2007). A scan of this, page 199, is below.

page 199, Hartmann's opener for chapter 7.

Hartmann's three discussion questions are:

• Look at the picture. What do you think the people are saying to the man? 
• What should you do if your friend has an embarrassing personal problem? 
• What are the signs that someone has a problem with drugs? 

Read all three questions, and then write your response in a comment below. You can start where you like, and it doesn't matter if you don't directly cover all three of Hartmann's questions. 

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Reference

Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Catch me if you can

When people are talking about a detective, I am quite sure that most of them will think about a well-known character as Sherlock Holmes or Conan, and both are human that is not surprising at all. However, it is not easy to send human into a high security place nowadays because most countries aware of underground movement that usually performs by governmwnt officer or independent warrior. While controlling a robot is not a new thing in this era, turning back to use an animal is sound more incredible.

According to "Hamas 'seizes Israeli spy dolphin' off Gaza" (2015), the dolphin with a camera, working as the spy, was caught by Hamas's military in Gaza, and it was not the first time that Islael tries to use animals to detect a confidentiality of their opponents, but a shark, a vulture and a migratory bird were also trained to deal with many missions. It is believed that the formation of Humas's marine combat unit causes Israel's rage and leads to practicing animal to serve hidden agenda.

This news reminds me about the news that was reported in Costa Rica last week, an unbelieveable crime happened there, interestingly, it did not come from human's action but the bird! (actually, there is human behind bird's action). The local warden saw the pigeon tried to fly into the prison and there was a small bag on its body which contained cocaine and hashish, yet the mission to send nacotic was failed, and a police decided to catch the pigeon for 40 days for tracking the owner. I think it will be better if a police attachs some electronic equipment on its legs and lets it go because most spies are practiced many times to carry object from one place to a destination without any error, so the police can follow its route.

Nowadays, we live in the age of advanced technological development, while most people rely heavily on machine and robot, some security organizations such as a troop or a terrorist back to rely on natural thing like the animal. One of the reasons is because people may not concentrate on what animal does, or people does not observe and question about their behaviour, just let it lives the way it lives; as a result, these weeknesses lead to a gap that people can seek some benefits from it. 

However, human does not only treat those animals for being labour, but most of animal spies are killed after mission completed, that is extremely cruel, and the reason for this is just cutting the medium, preventing themselves from an enemy and protecting their commanding centre. While people usually ask for animal right and promoting many campaigns to protect: a rabbit, a cat, a sheep and others from cosmetic laboratory and fashion week, why don't we use the same standard to all animals?

Reference

Hamas 'seizes Israeli spy dolphin' off Gaza. (2015, August 20). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34001790

Killing animals - reply to Feem

Where he makes a connection between religion, specifically Buddhism, and eating meat not killed directly but bought or otherwise acquired, and asks whether it is morally right to eat such meat, I would normally have replied to Feem's comments responding to Law's ideas in a reply in that blog post, but this Dilbert cartoon seemed to suggest the answer so very well that I wanted to let it speak for me, which isn't possible in a comment.

I say the cartoon "suggests" the answer because Dilbert and his boss are not directly discussing the morality of killing Ted or other human beings; rather, they are focussed on the difficult question of whether or not Dilbert has actually killed a human person (Adams, 2015). Dilbert makes a good case that he has not. (You might also like to have a look at the cartoons before and after this one for context.)

Similarly, I think that if you buy meat from supermarkets, order it in McDonalds or other restaurants and the like, then you are killing animals, so if a religion teaches not to kill animals, you are not following the teachings of that religion. But as always, feel welcome to disagree. But I would agree that if an animal died naturally, then you did not kill it before turning it into a roast. However, we don't normally wait around for animals to die of sickness in old age, when their meat is tough and not so delicious, before we turn them into tasty meals: meat eating humans usually kill animals when they are young and tender.

Another useful supporting example for my idea that when we order and pay for meat we are killing animals is mafia god fathers: if the mafia boss orders and pays for one of his employees to kill a business competitor, has the mafia boss killed that man?

Click for the full sized view. Dilbert is on my list of suggested reading! 

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Reference

Adams, S. (2015, August 19). Software killed Ted [Comic]. Retrieved from http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-08-19 

Feem Natthapong. (2015, August 24). Re: Is Law right? Is it morally wrong to eat meat? [Blog comment]. Retrieved from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2015/08/is-law-right-is-it-morally-wrong-to-eat.html?showComment=1440435447015#c5594021554072610942

The holy is not of good morals

When I was a child growing up in a country area of Australia, no one would say a bad word about priests, bishops, cardinals or popes. Happily, that has changed and today these people are no longer given undeserved respect merely for being a religious person dressed up gaudy and expensive clothes.

In "Peruvian Cardinal Accused of Papal Plagiarism" (2015), the BBC News reports that Lima's Catholic Cardinal excused himself for plagiarising, in at least one case for copying and pasting six paragraphs, because he did not want to repeatedly have to add the citations to his writing, which a leading Peruvian newspaper now refuses to publish.

When I saw this  few days ago, I thought it was a good example of the evils of plagiarism. What the cardinal did was certainly plagiarism. It was stealing the work, the ideas and the words of other people and pretending they were his own. It was also dishonest. Juan Luis Cipriani, the Catholic Cardinal of Lima seems to me to have proven himself a thief and a liar. And it is right for the Peruvian newspaper to punish him be refusing to publish any more of his writing: I don't know what this man might have been teaching his followers, but given his known record as a thief and liar, I would be very suspicious of his teachings, especially any teachings he might have about morals.

And that brings me to the other response that occurred to me. I've just written a morning coffee blog comment replying to a comment by Ice which states the idea that moral beliefs are purely subjective and therefore not true or false, so that, for example, murder is perfectly OK if a person thinks it is. This version of subjectivism about moral statements is slightly different to another idea in some of the blog comments responding to Law's thesis: some people have suggested that moral statements and beliefs are true or false according to the society that they come from, a view that is usually called moral relativism, and that is a bit different to subjectivism. Ice cites, as a source of the idea that moral statements are subjective, the book Sophie's World, which I believe gives a very general introduction to some ideas in philosophy. As I noted in my comment, if this book does say that moral beliefs are merely relative or subjective, that they cannot be true or false, then it does not represent the ideas of the majority of people who study and moral philosophy. A large survey of professional philosophers carried out in 2009 shows that a small majority, 56.4%, favour moral realism over the different versions of anti-realism or other options ("The PhilPapers Surveys," n.d.).

In "Carving the Roast Beast," Law discusses racism, and the slavery that most people in all societies thought was morally acceptable in part because of racism. I think that analysing the example of slavery and following through the logical reasoning can lead to deductions which can help us to decide whether we really accept either moral relativism or subjectivism. I don't think the reasoning here is easy, but neither was the reasoning that led to us deciding, however much the popes and others hated it, that the Sun did not circle the Earth, which was long believed by every Western person to be at the centre of the universe.

But I would prefer to let you try out the examples and ideas to see where they might lead. Law, Gemma and the Wilson family clearly do not believe in moral relativism or subjectivism. Are they wrong in this? Are we wrong to say that murder is any more morally wrong than a subjective preference for red wine to white wine?

__________

References

Peruvian cardinal accused of papal plagiarism. (2015, August 17). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33966717

The PhilPapers Surveys: Preliminary Survey results. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

Beyond Planet Earth

I believe most of people used to have dream to travel in space once in a life time to explore new things, to get exciting experience, to try living in a zero-gravity environment (Weightlessness), to see nice scenery of beautiful planets and stars, to know whether there are aliens or not and so on. Even though it seemed to be impossible now, the advent of new advanced space technology in the future would fulfill our dream someday.

According to “What will Pluto mission discover?” (Ghosh, 2015), the spacecraft New horizons has flew by Pluto to discover new details about its surface, chemical components, its moons and etc., and this mission will expect to help reveal new information and answer many questions or doubts about it, especially for a controversial decision on whether Pluto could become a planet again. What New Horizons will do is to probe, gather the data, and send all back to the scientists; however, it takes a very long time to wait for the data because of a few watts of power in its transmitter and very long distances—a billions of kilometers.

This news made many people around the world interested and excited in the new information of Pluto; however, some of them were wondering if space exploration such as the mission of New horizon, Apollo 11 (Moon landing) etc. is worth the cost. Moreover, others would like to know what the benefits of the missions are. Certainly, there are two sides of opinion about those questions, while it is also hard to judge or totally support for only one side because each view has its own interesting lines of reasoning (multifaceted point of view).

On the one hand, regardless of other important nation's problems, i.e. poverty, welfare, food shortage etc., several countries have been spending a great deal of budget (several billion dollars) studying and exploring space. Most of the critics point out that money is being wasted in space; sometimes mission failed and resulted in loss of resources used for spacecrafts along with astronaut’s lives. Why explore? Remaining dubious, what we really got after completing missions like Moon landing is one of the questions of some opponents; perhaps, such action is just to show nation’s greatness. In other words, it seemed that we got a few merits in some missions—superficial knowledge compared to a lot of money spent. Besides, multiplicity of satellites and spacecrafts which ended of life has become space garbage around any outside parts of the Earth. Meanwhile, launching rocket to space could affect the earth's atmosphere also.

On the other hand, others such as some scientists and researchers regarded it as helping expand our imagination and bring about new advanced technology being able to apply for our better world. Understanding astronomy's phenomenon clarifies the secret of nature and acquires new useful knowledge. It can easily imagined that if the projects of space exploration, study along with research and their benefits had not existed—especially for the existence of satellites—nowadays we would have not good living and modern life. One clear benefit of satellite technology is that meteorology and geology is so advanced that human can predict weather more accurately, warning us possible natural disasters. Another advantage is the fact that current modern communication technology resulted from the application of satellites. In the long run, we might be necessary to move to other planets due to the lack of resources or severely extreme climate change. At that time we would greatly appreciate our missions in space having been doing so far.

I, myself, think that the great development of our world is a part of the consequences of space exploration and related technology. Do you think so?

__________

Reference

Ghosh, P. (2015, July 9). What will Pluto mission discover?. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33428497

Will China accept Rainbow Panda ?

In the past decade, homosexuality has been understood and accepted as a choice of gender in many countries. However, there still is some hatred and discrimination against gayness in some part of the world and they even proposed theory that this taste can be retained.

According to “China: Gay student sues ministry over textbooks”, a university student decided to take legal action after found that some of textbooks in library indicate that homosexuality is a “disorder” and it could be cured by electroshock therapy. Actually, since 2001, China stopped distinguish gayness as a mental disorder, and these textbooks are printed after that year, so the student hope the court will order to remove the textbooks. One gay student also said this textbook make him horrified and scared.

When I read through this article, many different feeling was sparked in my mind. As I’ve already known that homosexuality is considered abnormality in Middle east, Russia and some Asian country, I’m not surprised that it was judged to be a mental disorder in their textbook. However, it attacked me with the fact that the therapy they suggested is shocking the patients with electricity, which is seem like the method that people in 100 years ago. I wondered what will be written in the textbook of the countries where being gay mean you will be sentenced to death ? I bet it will be much worse and harsher.

Another feeling is that, I just realize China just removed homosexuality out of mental disorder list in 2001. But, I assumed that many gays in China are still afraid to come out because of social value and social status. One of my friends told me that one of Chinese virtue for children are that they should reproduce in order to maintain their family bloodline. This means the gays will be considered ungrateful. (Actually, a few Thai parents still have the same belief that the boy who can’t enter the monkhood once in their life are fail to accomplish their role as a son).


Do you think what will happen next about Homosexuality discrimination in China and the rest of the world ? Will it getting better ? and what we can do to promote such changes since maybe there will be more “Rainbow Panda” in the near future?


__________Reference

China: Gay student sues ministry over textbooks, (2015, August 20). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-34003679

Rumor or Truth?

As we all know about the bombing at Erawan shrine few days ago, it is sure that most of us not only Thai people but also the foreigners are quite concerned about this issue in terms of our safe. Nonetheless, are we sure that it is still safe under the announcement of the PM Prayut?

In the article "Investigation Into Bombing at Bangkok Shrine Widens" points out that there are at least 10 people who are involved with this situation because they had to work as a team to conduct surveillance, to find the materials and equipment, and to plan for the escape. Besides, Thailand's Prime Minister said this issue did not link to any international conflicts.

I am not surprised with the investigation,which had more than 10 suspected terrorists, but surprisingly, the PM told us that it is not involved with international tourism. How did he know? Are there any evidence to prove this? What are the reasons that we have to believe? or He know who are the bombers or the beginners of this panic situation? There are so many questions in my head, and I just suspected of something strange.

It seems that everything have been made to be the same. To illustrate, the polices cleared the Erawan shrine space less than 24 hours in spite of the fact that it had to be closed at least 2 or 3 days along with the BTS ways in order to investigate more evidences and enhance more security both BTS and MRT. If we compare with other countries which used to have the terrorisms, they would have much more security than Thailand. One important thing is to ensure people towards the unsecure moment.

Nevertheless, the terrorists have already made "the fear" into most people in Bangkok; in other words, they definitely succeed to their objectives. and the question is "do we have any strategy to get the fear out? or  "should the Thailand's authorities have any urgent policy to relieve people's fear?" I hopefully await some practical announcements from the government, or the polices other than watching the news through the online medias which mostly consists of same viral videos and photos, and unsure news about the bombers.

I still hope this situation is not involved with any international terrorism (No Uyghur, No ISIS), because it will be the first huge issue towards Thai people and government. Finally, I want to know what do the terrorists exactly want? what do they value (other than making fear to people)? This is not only the first time that Bangkok has the bombing in the center of city but it is the situation which have not occurred before under the navy government also.
  

Reference

Watcharasakwet, W (2015, August 20). Investigation Into Bombing at Bangkok Shrine Widens. WSJ News. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/bangkok-bombing-probe-widens-1440060781

Is Law right? Is it morally wrong to eat meat?

As we have just seen in our quick reading of the introduction to his essay "Carving the Roast Beast," Stephen Law's thesis is that "It's morally wrong to eat meat" (2003).

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with Law? Is it morally OK or not OK to eat meat?

In a new comment, share your initial responses to Law's thesis.

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Reference

Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast. In The Xmas Files: The Philosophy of Christmas [Kindle Edition] (pp. 124 - 140). Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Immobilizer: easy but harmful

Technologies are affect in our lives, it can make us have more secure and comfortable. On the other hand, technologies can also harmful to our lives, if someone use in the wrong way. Car immobiliser is one of technology which variously use in new cars, it not only comfortable and easy to access in car, but also have a large vulnerability that can easily hacked.

According to "Car immobiliser easy to crack, say researchers" (2015), a security researchers from University in Holland investigated the encryption system used by the Megamos immobiliser, they found that car's immobiliser have a weak security system and easily to crack with a few minutes by using a laptop. The researchers were completely found this "trivial" attack three years ago before publishing to public for prevented publication.

I heard this vulnerability couple years ago from my friend, he told me that the researchers found that car immobiliser is not secure, so they told to the car makers about the security, they can get the cryptography key, but the car maker sue them.

My car have an immobiliser, too, it makes me comfortable and secure me to access the car because I do not to pick up the key to get in the car which thief can stole it from my hand and drive away. Having an immobiliser key, the key always in my pocket although when I start or stop the engine, car will authorised the key with the magnet in a key. Locking and Unlocking the car also use the magnet to authorised it.

Coping magnet for authorised is the hardest, and it is impossible. Then, the thief can not get the car and drive away. Thief also do not want the car, but they want money or valuable things in a car that why the researchers say it "trivial" attack. Thief can only use the radio chip to prevent locking doors, so they can access the car and get your stuff.

I always double check my doors before I left the car. At first, lock my doors with immobiliser and check the signal from my car. Then, try to open the door, if it locked is okay.

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Reference

Car immobiliser easy to crack, say researchers. (2015, August 14).BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33906051

Unexpected explosion in Bangkok

Have you ever face some situations that are unexpected - an unusual and impossible story likes a novel or a movie – of which you seem ignore and don't memorize before it happens much? An extremely good or bad experience which might make not only someone's existence but also the person’s family change forever; for examples, winning the first price lottery, getting a big amount of heritage; on the other hand, going bankrupt and being cheated by an admire person.

The Erawan Shrine
Source: www.novotelbangkokploenchit.com

According to "Bangkok bomb: Deadly blast rocks Thailand capital" (2015), a TNT bomb was exploding at the Erawan Shrine – an attractive holy place especially Chinese – on Ratchaprasong road where was full of Thais and National tourists at that time caused at least 19 people died added over 120 were injured. The purpose of this weapon which damaged around 30 meters far from a target point that had never appeared in Thailand before, is not only to stage an uprising but also to kill a crowd of people; in addition, there were two more artificial bombs nearby.

Upon the worst situation at the center of Bangkok with fear, sad and anxiety, admired people were helping each other without tiredness. I realized from sharing and reporting in generosity and helpfulness of them; for examples, doctors and medical officers backed to hospitals immediately when they knew the news and worked all night, using language volunteers went out from their home to be interpreters for the injured-tourist communication, over four thousand blood donators go to the Thai Red Cross Society although my brain was controlled by Sadness, Fear and Anger – three main characters from an animation movie Inside out. I do really respect them and proud to be Thai, to live in the public interest society.

On that day before the TNT exploded an hour I passed through the way because the location is not far from my house. It seems I am lucky several times. Once I memorize is the unexpected experience happened in my school. It was a morning Friday of ten years ago, when was a grade 8 student, a schizophrenia woman trespassed in a building and stabbed students in front of my classroom where my seat is the nearest. I was a lucky one who went to the school lately because of strange incidents. While I was finding my athletic shoe ropes, my father drove out because he thought that I already got into the car, then a dog barked at me that I could not go inside the transport a moment and that day was heavy traffic jam. I remember that I saw a student was carried to the hospital next to my school, and a pool of blood which I though that it was poured red drink Hale's Blue Boy in front of the class. There were also parents and teachers took long umbrellas and walked around the school to find the criminal. By the way, all of the attacked students are safe, that woman is arrested but I don’t know her punishment. As this happen, the school increases a security policy of visitors and time.

No one knows the last day of own life. Any accident may appear all the time. I may in luck previous but who know which day my name will be queued in the list of death so, “If you live each day as it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right” (Steve Jobs).

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Reference

"Bangkok bomb: Deadly blast rocks Thailand capital". (2015, August 17). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33963280

Brain game 'improves lives of schizophrenia patients'

In recent two weeks, our study is around the topic which is related to abnormal psychology that it is helpful for me because I would like to study Dance Therapy MA Program in the UK next year. Most people have not heard about dance therapy, actually I think that I am also not really understanding this subject before I start my study in the UK . Now, I just know that it is a subject which combines psychology and body movement. However, human is diverse, personal and unique that maybe no one can really understand all the subjects which related to individuals.

According to "Brain game 'improves lives of schizophrenia patients'"(2015), a professional in the university of Cambridge found that a small number of schizophrenia patients who experience cognitive problems are enhancing their memory and learning ability after they played brain-train games which has a wizard theme with various levels of difficulty over one month. Although the results are promising, the researcher said that it is a slow process for treatment which still need to develop a drug treatment in order to have a obvious benefits. Plus, the research team said more research was needed on larger groups of patients to confirm the findings.

When I read this article, I consider that a brain game seems like a similar treatment form with dance therapy. First, both of them are not needed to talk too much with psychotherapist that it is helpful to those patients who cannot communicate well with people such as autism, schizophrenia and dementia. Second, it is more interesting than traditional therapy so that patients might have more motivation on brain games or body movement, it would be beneficial to their healing. Finally, if it can use in conjunction with other therapies such as drugs therapy, it might have more effective results for treatment.

I personally prefer the psychological treatments without drugs because drugs might hurt our health in different levels. Although, sometimes taking drugs is a necessary treatment for certain patients in order to change their physical situation, I still believe that we can more focus on the power of mind such as concentration, creativity and mindfulness to reduce the dependence on drugs so that everyone already have the ability to heal ourselves. For example, there was a Japanese Professor who did an experiment on water. He found that if people said positive words to a cup of water that can become beautiful water crystals. On the other hand, if people said negative words that water would become ugly water crystals. Therefore, if playing a brain game or dancing can enhance our psychological situation, it would be a more steady and healthy ways to enhance patients ability for their life.

However, most people are more dependent on drug therapy and think that playing a brain game and dancing sound a ridiculous way for psychological treatments, but I think that we just need more experiments on it. I hope that people can more realize on our mind which is not a machine, it is an energy that we cannot see it, but it is real exist.
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Reference

Brain game 'improves lives of schizophrenia patients'.(2015, August 3).BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33736760

A Newborn War of Cyber Crime

It is undeniable that our lives have not been the same after the advanced technological development of computer, nowadays, we rely heavily on it : chatting with friends, social networking, sending e-mail, working, searching information and managing many of our routine activitiies. After computer software has been resized into a small and comfortable device as smartphone, people tend to crazily stick on it, functioning as one of human's organ that many cannot leave out, certainly, this leads to some disadvantages, giving more opportunities to some attackers who can reach your personal life easily.

According to "Police investigate 'first cyber-flashing' case" (Bell, 2015), a woman in the UK received two penis photos from stranger on her Iphone via Apple's Airdrop, which used for sharing photo between IOS operation, after she shared this function to public, and this may call a new form of cyber crime, certainly, she was the first victim in the UK. The police confirmed that there is still no way to track this crime due to lacking of technological support; moreover, the victim did not accept photos from the anonymous man, so it is unable to indicate the criminal contact and where he lives.

I strongly believe that new kinds of crime will continuously occur again and again in the future as long as creating new inventions will have been being developed. Recent years, a number of online harassment have risen significantly because internet can be found in most of developed and developind areas, and this is a powerful medium for hackers, so what they would like to know about you they can, and if they would like to destroy you they can, too. Many sexual online harassment issues can be seen on news and social network, while some users are curious to know who is the victim, the victim already lose their personal life, and what is published on internet, It will be there forever, even the original content is deleted, a copy still exist.

In addition, this news also reminds me to recall some situations that we can meet in daily life. Even I have never faced the sexual harassment, but I have ever got many messages that persuade to do online job through facebook messenger, it is very annoying and boring because every agencies use the same speech, for example, 'Do you have more free time?', 'Just using computer and earn a great income'. This does not happen only in facebook but also on line application, I sometimes received game requests from strangers that make I was wondering how they get others contacts easily and it seems like they do not respect individual's privacy at all.

Have you ever gained some experiences about online issue? and How do you handle with it?

Please share the lessons. Nowadays, people tend to take more considerations about privacy, but when we try every way to protect ourselves, there are still some gaps for online violation. I think the most effective way may be setting offine life, yet I cannot do it!

Reference

Bell, S. ( 2015, August 13) . Police investigate 'first cyber-flashing' case. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33889225

Climate changes may bring us starvation.

According to “Global warming increases 'food shocks' threat” (McGrath, 2015), researchers found that global warming may cause the food shortage due to poor harvests and low stock of grains especially in Africa and the Middle East. Wealth countries may be able to cope with this problem because consumer in this region tends to ingest more processed food. Moreover, because of the fact that biofuel become increasingly popular, lands are used to produce this power instead of farming.

Recently, people have gradually realized the impacts of global warming in many ways. As we already knew that, in the long run, it affects the diversity of ecosystem and may make the iceberg melt rapidly causing the heavy flood all over the world. However, climate change may disrupt food production and drive us to face starvation in the near future.

Drought is one of the most significant impacts of climate change on food

For agricultural country like Thailand, weather play an important role in people’s life and economic growth. When whole country suffer from severe flooding in 2011, it took a year to restore the damages in farming business. At that time, many household choose to hoard processed food such as canned foods and instant noodle. In addition, a number of chain restaurant needed to be temporally closed down because the suppliers cannot manage to cultivate the ingredient. The market price of vegetable and other raw foods also raised at least 5-10 %. I can tell that it is a hard time for all of us and if this incident is going to happen again, I want to suggest some possible solutions.

“Say no to plastic bag” campaign may be considered out of date, but I still think it’s a good idea to tackle the global warming problem. I mean, as a one person on this big planet, there may be a little thing we can do to mitigate this situation. Another way is the sustainable food system. Nowadays, there is an organization that helps teaching people so they can provide food for themselves in a sustainable way. If their project is accomplished, the number of imported food will significantly decrease and the rising of food’s price will not affect them.

From my point of view, we should take steps to solve this problem; otherwise we may have to face malnutrition.




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Reference

McGrath, M.(2015, August 14), Global warming increases 'food shocks' threat. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33910552

In fact, that's true in my opinion, so it can't be false. Or can it?

Academics in every field are concerned with the concepts called by the English words fact, opinion, true and false. Since we spend some time in class doing vocabulary exercises and today grammar exercises, it was useful for us to clarify our ideas about what exactly a vocabulary and a grammar are.

Similarly, as the summary of responses to the online survey we did this morning shows, although there is some agreement, there also seems to be some disagreement about our understandings of what facts and opinions are, and by the meanings of true and false ("Survey of Ideas," 2015).

One reason for the survey is that it gives us some specific examples to think about and work with. I tried to think of related examples from very different academic fields, and a couple that are not academic. I asked you not to discuss your answers before submitting them because that gives a more accurate view of what we think initially. Since there is considerable disagreement, some of us, perhaps all of us, might decide after some reflection to revise our initial ideas.

The first four statements (two really, with each repeated) come from the history of astronomy and physics. They are based on how our ideas have changed from the time of Aristotle to today. If you know a bit about the very dramatic history of that sudden change in our understanding of where we are in the universe, that might be helpful. I put these statements first because I thought they might be in some ways the easiest to deal with; however, as the pie charts colourfully and plainly show, there is already substantial disagreement here.

Can you help us to resolve this disagreement? What is causing it? What exactly are you going to present reasons to persuade your classmates to agree with?

Comments are welcome. Over the next week or two, we will also follow up in class the issues raised here. And if you think that there are related issues we need to discuss, feel welcome to add them to the list of things to be explained, clarified, given examples of and reasons for, and so on.

This might give you something more interesting to think about than the important but not-so-exciting grammar homework today.

As you might have noticed, I've now turned off the survey form we used in class this morning: we want to keep that set of responses as an unchanged record. If you would like to look at or do the survey again, there is a copy of it here, which you are welcome to try out.

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Reference

Survey of ideas on fact and opinion - AEP rw2 [Summary of responses]. (2015, August 17). Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/a/auathailand.org/forms/d/1BVn-gSUszQnHkqqj512vhxSpP3TgzisVanwc91lo5OA/viewanalytics

Talent or Practice?

Most people are inclined to believe that someone who is good at something would have natural talent; nonetheless, it may be not always true. In the case of Olympic athletics, if talent is a god's gift that makes them win and get medals in sports competition, why do all of them need to keep practicing regularly? Is only purposeful practice without any talents enough to become master of anything—sport, art, science, language and the like?

In “Can you succeed at anything with enough practice?”, Matt Pickles (2015) says an experiment about coaching a computer geek—who is not a sporty guy—ever day to make him become one of top table-tennis players in UK within one year to try to testify the idea that people can reach mastery in anything by a lot of continuous practice without any talents. Although at the end of year he did not still achieve this goal, there has been a great change in his ability, and he wants to further train so as to become one of the 250 highest-ranked players.

The results of this experiment seem that talent also matters to help achieve a goal more quickly. Only practice may take a long time and be achievable if one never intends to give up before. However, routine practice, good discipline, keen attempt in this case shows a great change and development of his ability even though he does not have talent at all. This would be because a human brain, performance and behavior are adaptable if trained appropriately and correctly, indicating that practice will help take one to reach his/her aim. Furthermore, perhaps it may be also difficult to explicitly answer what (talent or practice) is more important than what as people differently defined the word “success” and have their own definitions.

When I studied in the junior high school (around grade 7-8), I started to practically learn and use a computer, whereas my friend could use it well. At that time one of my major problems is that I typed very slowly and needed to look at each letter on a keyboard before touching them. In turn, some of my friends could type quickly, fluently and accurately without glancing at any buttons on a keyboard at all, considerably amazing me. Afterwards, I tried to practice this skill a lot through the program for practicing typing I gave from my computer teacher until finally I could type effectively for Thai keyboard with the use of all of my fingers (correct position on the keyboard) and without looking at any buttons on the keyboard—as my friends did. Since then, I am no longer worried about such a problem, and additionally now my typing ability has been also further developed for English keyboard. Therefore, I believe the full effort on routine practice would help bring about the great change in one’s ability despite no talent and lead to succeed in anything.

In addition, one thing that is important for attaining any achievements is belief. Belief is about law of attraction that makes one think positively and has hope to do and overcome any challenges and obstacles so as to reach successful aims. Not only that, but also well-defined goals will encourage and motivate oneself to keep doing with the best attempt. Both well-posed goals and firm belief improve nothing but the chance of success in one’s life. Finally, two meaningful statements for fulfilling one’s dream I want to share here are “Do something successfully is better than do nothing at all” and “People are more capable than they think they are.”

.....May the force be with you.....

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Reference

Can you succeed at anything with enough practice?. (2015, April 1). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/business-31945687