One more prediction rings true.

It is now illegal in Tennessee to tell someone else your Netflix password.

English Education

For those with an interest in English Education, this analysis is something you should take to heart.  It's all been said before, but it's still relevant.

Bonus:  What errors of thinking does the article address?

Site warning

This showed up just now when I tried to visit consumernews.co.kr:

Browse at your own risk.

A singer should be judged by her song

These days, at least entertainment news is full of Ok-juhyun. She was a famous idol singer and now is usually singing at a musical. Her singing has been considered very good as an idol, but definitely not as a musician. After she was decided to appear in "I am singer", many netizens blamed her because they thought her singing ability was not good enough to participate in the competition. A rumor that she had an argument with Lee Sora worsend the public opinion. However, the rumor turned out not true, and she won the first place at the competition. Well...I thought that can change people's mind, but it doesn't. I think we should judge her by her song, not our prejudice about her. The producer of "I am a singer" said that we shouldn't make another Tablo who had a hard time because of the rumor, which I think is right.

****I supposed everyone knew about Tablo, which made someone very confused.
Tablo is a famous singer. His music is very popular, but maybe his education made him more popular. He graduated Stanford University, but someone accused him of lying about his academic career. He turned out to be innocent after all. I guess the producer mentioned Tablo because he also had a hard time because of a groundless rumor like Ok-Juhyun.

Expensive coffee vs cheaper coffee?

I actually did a research about this, why people tend to drink expensive coffee rather than cheaper ones?

I first thought, expensive = better taste. So, i did this research about why people tend to drink expensive coffee. First I went to both Coffee Bean and Cafe May. Well, Coffee Bean's shop was less crowded, neat, had larger space than Cafe May or any cheaper coffee shops but still it wasn't enough to explain, why people tend to drink expensive coffee.

I once heard from my friend talking about a commercial of McDonalds, about coffee. It was by placing 4000won on cup A , and placing 2000won on cup B. Then pour the same coffee at both cup A and B. and then let the testers taste both A and B. Guess what?haha

People tend to say, cup A( 4000won) tasted better, and it had a "deep flavor" compared to B!
So, I did the similar thing for my research. I prepared a cup of Coffee Bean and a cup of Cafe May, both with the ice they usually provide. Then, I poured the same "Let's Be" coffee.
I let some students taste and ask which was better, but most of the people told me Coffee Beans tasted a li~~ttle better than cafe May.

As a conclusion, I thought. People buying expensive coffees, they are buying the brand, and the brand makes them satisfy with their product.
After finishing this research.. I thought that this research was sort of obvious...
For example, It is like with clothes. same plain white shirt, one with Nike, other with Nice(imitations)
well, still i found it interesting while doing the experiment though..
Same coffee but, people prefer the coffee on the Coffee Beans cup hahaha

What do you think about Disney fairy tale?

In one of my class, I read traditional fairy tales and had a chance to look up for the information about Disney version of tale or animation. Of course I'm sure you all know about Disney animation. For better understanding for Disneyfication, I'll talk about the definition from Wiktionary "the act of process whereby something is disneyfied". Comparing the traditional fairy to Disney fairy tales, the first characcteristic of Disney's is lengthening the plot and making characters more interesting because of the time management. They mixed somd factors of 19th-century melodrama which arethe innocent heroin and the evil villian with the distinctive idiosyncrasies of sub-characters such as animals and dwars in comedy. So gags became the trademarks of a Disney fairy tale. Second characteristic is enhancing the romantic aspects of the story. While sex and marriage was mundane in the traditional folk tales, it was much more important to pursue of tru love with love-at-fist-sight. So in the stories like Sleeping Beauty, love's first kiss became the only thing for breaking curse. What they changed from the traditional aspect is that something irrational, inhumane and arbitrary changed into sweetened version of the tales. Moreover, ther are chase scenes instead of journey and request which are the important factor for the traditional fairy tales. It seems that all the aspects of Disneyfication are bad, but there are good perspecives of Disneyfication which is that they show some of the contemporary values and the change of beliefs. For example, 1959's Sleeping Beauty represents the Second World War.
However, the Walt Disney only took the features of typical characters from the original tales and changed into the visualized animation with friendly animals. By doing this they forgot the roots and purposes of the original tales. Everything in is revised into the amusement without any morals or lessons. What is more serious problem is that it can affect the children's thinking while they are watching this disneyfied animation. They might get confused by what is real and what is not because of too much visualized images aimed at making at unrealistic animal characters. Another problem is that there are no cultural diversities because of the Walt Disney's globalization and that leads into the one way of thinking which must be the Americanized way of thinking.
I've never thought that Disney's tales or animation had negative effects, but now I have a slightly different idea from before after gathering information about it and compare things.

Red and Processed Meats Linked With Colon Cancer Risk

I really like to eat meat, mostly beef and pork, lamb etc. I don't count as a meal if there isn't any sort of meat in the table(at least 'spam' should be prepared!). My parents have always told me to eat less meat than now for my health, but I kept on saying that the amout I eat isn't that much(not much to me only...). But when I say this article which introduces a study that eating large amount of red and processed meat will make 34% increase of cancer possibility than those who don't eat red meat that much, I got a bit worried because I was actually eating meat a bit more than the recommended amount.

I think that for some people like me(who enjoys eating meat) it is hard to cut off the amount of meat eating per day. So in this article it gives a way to lessen the possibility of cancer while cutting the amount of meat eating progressively, "to add more vegetables and fruits during meal". Well, since I eat a lot of 'Kimchi' when I eat meat I'm not sure whether it will be able for me to do so.

Although many people and many articles tell us to lessen the amount of intake of meat, It's very hard for me to be motivated to lessen the amout I eat. Do you guys have any good idea for me???

How Many Hours Did You Sleep Last Night?

This semester, 4 of my 5 weekdays begin with a 0900 class. Average hours of sleep that I get during weekdays may be around 4 to 5 hours. During weekends, I sleep alot to recover myself from fatigue.

However, according to a recent study, I was doing something terribly wrong to my body. The study about optimal hours of sleep was published in a scientific journal Sleep. It concludes that 7 hours per day is the ultimate answer. (Article: Seven hours sleep is the recipe for health)

Deprivation of sleep is well known to elevate blood pressure, and reduce glucose tolerance, in result, increases the risk of artery damage. More seriously, a study conducted by University of Warwick analyzed 16 studies involving a total of 1.3 million people. Guess what they concluded. The conclusion was that those who sleep fewer than six hours are more likely to die prematurely, before the age of 65, than those who slept between six to eight hours a night.

Then, should we sleep as much as possible? The research also says "No" to such question.
Those who slept long hours had increased chances of suffering from breathing disorders, with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. (Article: 7 Hours Sleep Just Right)

7 is not only a number that signifies a good luck, but is a magic number that will keep us healthy. Live with the number 7.

Do we truly have freedom of speech?

During my photojournalist class I got to watch a movie called "The People vs Larry Flynt". The movie is basically about a rise of a pornographic magazine publisher and how he became a defender of free speech for all people.

There is a saying in that movie
" I like that I live in the country where I can pick up a magazine and read it if I want to or throw it in a garbage can, if that's where I think it belong and that I can exercise my opinion and not buy it . Because we live in a free country, you know we say that a lot but we forget what that really means, we live in a free country that is a powerful idea and a magnificent way to live. But there is a price for that thing, which is that sometimes we have to tolerate things that we don't necessary believe. If we start throwing up walls against some of the thing you consider obscene, we may very well wake up one day and realize that walls have been gone up in all kinds of places that we never expected and we can't see or do anything and that's not freedom"

To me this statement seemed like an appropriate statement, but in the movie the jury objected to this statement. This made me think that there is no such thing as complete freedom in this world. There can't be because at some point, one person's complete freedom will infringe on another's. We are never "free" from our speech, and certainly not our actions. We are always bound by the consequences that come with the words we choose. So do we really have the freedom of speech?

Threat of unknown virus

Recently, there were several reports of deaths from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
The victims suffered acute pneumonia which developed into pulmonary fibrosis, or scarring of the lungs. The peculiarity is that most of the patients suffering from this is pregnant women, and the reason for this is unknown. And today, I read a news article that third pregnant woman died of that mystery virus

There are many questions about this on-going situation. The virus assumed to be the cause of this symptom is unidentified, and it is not clear whether it's contagious or not.

According to the article that I have linked above, this "new" acute pneumonia is unusual because the virus have infected young healthy pregnant women, and killed them in a very short period of time. The symptoms are also very different. While patients of regular pneumonia usually show early symptoms such as fever, The patients of this new acute pneumonia had sudden breathing difficulties.


This current situation reminded me of some sci-fi horror movies I had watched before, those with themes of unknown virus threatening the mankind.
The situation is not as dramatic or terrifying as in the movies, but I was so shocked at the fact that we people are 'actually' being threatened by some unknown virus and couldn't figure out the exact cause and produce a solution to this. Several days have passed and we are still in the uncertain situation.
I guess I had somehow unconsciously thought that the world I am living in right now had no problems that cannot be solved, with all of today's state of the art, high-technology.

We have already lost three lives. Everything must be done to find out the answer to this situation as soon as possible, and adequate measures should follow promptly to stop anymore lives from getting lost.

Tens of Thousands of Dollars for a College Admission

We all know that the private education market in Korea is extremely big and the demand for private education only continues to grow. This is also the case for Chinese students living both in China and in the United States. I recently read an article on the recent boom of college admission consulting companies among Chinese students which made me question the role of private education in our lives. This article was about college admission consulting services that cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. The agencies designs extracurricular activities for the students, guides them in essay writing, tutors them for the SAT, helps them with meet-and-greet sessions with alumni, and more. Not only do the agencies guide and assist the students, at time, the agencies write application essays and fill out the applications themselves on behalf of the students. This is not only a fast-growing industry among Chinese students but have been extremely popular in Korea as well.

Even though it is understandable why students and parents demand these college admission consulting services, I think it poses numerous problems. First of all, by consuming these services, students are basically allowing themselves to be molded by these agencies. As Barbara Knuth, the vice provost at Cornell University, said, “Students have a responsibility to identify their own path toward future goals, rather than keying in how to get into a certain school.” It seems that high school years have become less about learning and more about fitting oneself into something of a formula for successful college admissions.

Another problem with these costly college admission consulting services is that they can lead to a greater bipolarization of the rich and poor. As college admissions get evermore competitive, it seems to be that those who can afford these types of services and other private education are more likely to accepted to prestiges colleges. It is difficult for less well off students to compete with students that have received these services and naturally the unwealthy students will go to less prestiges schools. Though stated generally, I think that the college consulting services can potentially have this impact on society.

The match-rigging scandal

You must have heard about the match-rigging scandal in K-league. The scandal is getting worse because a football player involved in the scandal committed suicide.
He was a former midfielder for Jeonbuk Hundai. He felt ashamed of being involved,and
he said that the players under the prosecution investigation are all his friends. He also said that he's responsible for everything.
Some people appeal to our sympathy by arguing that most of players involved are getting very low salary, but even such a player is paid more than the average salary. K-league players' complaints and concerns have been low popularity of the league, but they became the one who spolied the league after all. I don't blame most of players who try their best, but this match-fixing should be rooted out. No matter what excuse is, it can never be justified. K-league doesn't have to be called 'sports' if it is all lie.

I pray for the deceased, but I hope no player try to solve the problem by killing himself ever again.

***I am very sorry.I made a stupid mistake.
You're right. I am not "preying".

The Effectiveness of Course Evaluations

After every exam period we are required to fill out course evaluations before we can check our grades. For each course we have two chances to evaluate the course, once after the midterm exams and once again after the final exams. In my opinion, the purpose of these course evaluations is to let the professor and school know how each student feels about the course second, and to make necessary improvements, if necessary. However, everytime I fill out the course evaluations, I question the effectiveness of the course evaluations.

First of all, I think that most students fill out the course evaluations only to be able to check exam grades. I don't think the students are encouraged to be honest and actually take the necessary time to think about how the course really is, because we can rarely see any significant changes in the courses that reflect our evaluation. I think the problem is that the professors have no incentive to make changes reflect the course evaluations by the students. If there were to be a system that rewards professors with good course evaluations, I think that it would encourage the professors to consider the course evaluations more. Also I think that this would act as an incentive for professors to continue to make positive changes. This may, in turn, also encourage the students to take the course evaluations more seriously.

Another problem I found with the evaluations is the questions. All courses are evaluated in the same way with the same questionnaire. This is neither a thorough nor an effective method to evaluate courses. Because each course is different depending on the major or method of teaching, I think different courses should be evaluated differently with different questions.

Waiting for the new mobile payments

The mobile phone makes our lives convenient. It provides us with many advantages. Easy telecommunication, getting information, logging on web sites and sengding an e-mail and other things. This article informed us of another thing. We can pay for somethings by our mobile phones.
But it will take some time the mobile payment service becoming available and popular. This is because of the small number of smart phone users and a lack of the mobile payment technology.
And the author said that people need more incentives to use a new service, such as coupons and digital receipts. But I think it is enough to provide us with a new payment service. It is revolution in a way. Many people don't have to carry their heavy wallets with cash, credit cards and other things. It will be very convinient.
And many people can take a bus, buy some beverages in the vending machines easily. And other changes will happen. This will be innovation for our lives.

Literally Unbelievable

There is now an entire site dedicated to facebook posts from people who don't get that The Onion is satire.

Read it and weep.

Impostor

I found this comic from xkcd webcomics and as a literature major I found it extremely funny. I want to relate this comic to my experience. When writing an essay or analysis in literature classes, sometimes I make up my own interpretations without any knowledge of the text and get a full score on it and this could never happen in pure science subjects. It is true that there are no definite answers in literary criticism and therefore it becomes easier to fool others on things they do not really know compared to other fields of study. It is hard to distinguish whether the person knows or is pretending to know.

This difference also makes it harder to make a conversation between people of pure science major (such as physics, biology, math, etc.) and people of social science or humanities major. Even though these studies are all related, it seems like we live in two different worlds because we understand and interpret everyday situations differently. Sometimes, we tend to disregard or put more importance on particular field of study. My high school math teacher used to say humanities study is all about 'playing with words,' and a professor at KAIST said the same thing. On the other hand, my high school Korean subject teaher said that in a society, social science or humanities majors are always at the top of hierarchy (such as CEOs, presidents, etc.) I thought both arguments are convincing in a way but I don't think one is more important than another. People are born with talent and dispositions that are more suitable for a centain field of study and that is what makes people unique, diverse and interesting!

professor...

professor, I can post articles, but somehow i can't write comments on other classmate's work.

whenever I try to upload a comment, the page directs me back to the log in page even though I'm logged on to my account already...Below is my comment for Injection without Needle article:

Nice! As you said, it would be nice to have injections without feeling the pain of needles going inside my body. Would that also be possible to draw my blood out for donation purpose without the needle injection? The first reason I do not donate my blood is because I don't want to feel dizzy for the whole day after the donation, but the second reason is because the place you can go to donate your blood is so dirty and looks unhygenic. I don't want to get virus or some kind of disease for doing something helpful for the society. Wthi this new medicine, perhaps blood donation would be easier as well. :)

somehow I can't post this under her article... sorry I must be terrible in computer. :(

N.K releases the captured American

According to this article in yahoo, North Korea released an American citizen who was kept in their country for a half a year.

Jun Young Su, who was arrested last November admitted committing a crime "against the state" during an investigation, North Korea's official KCNA news agency reported. U.S. rights envoy Robert King said about the caption while he paid a visit to the secretive state's capital to assess its pleas for food aid. It is said in the article that he would be released on "humanitarian grounds" according to the NOrth Korean news. It is also stated that Jun was a businessman from California and that he had been doing missionary work in the North Korea, which presumably caused him trouble.

The article itself is not mentioning much about Mr. Jun's condition or the exact reason why he was captured for so long. It was only according to the North Korea's official KCNA news agency that he admitted to commit a crime against the state. What does this exactly mean? How can he cause a crime against the state by doing a missionary work? Isn't religion freedom of choice for individuals? I guess it is not, in a state of monarchy under Kim Jung Il's rule. It's sarcastic that US right envoy was there while he was paying a visit for food aid purpose when one of their country's citizen was captured. It is another way of saying that Mr. Jun's life was not as important as negotiating with North Korea about nuclear weapon on behalf of food aid from America. Ofcourse, it is not as important for the nation as a whole, but for somebody who is representative for the right of their citizen, the protection for one citizen should be valued equally as well.

also do not understand how he would be released on "humanitarian grounds." What does that really mean? I can detect how careful the media is with their words and how careful the politicians are choosing their wordings. They are being too careful as to not mention exactly what happened to Mr. Jun while he was captured. Was he treated fairly as an individual, or was his right taken away under Kim Jung Il's command? And why couldn't US free him earlier? The article even had not much to say about this release and had to aid more information about food aid agreement. Isn't it such a shame that due to the state sovereignty, no country or another state can put a stop to Kim Jung Il's immoral, dictatorial ruling system? To put my opinion in "childish" terms, it is really disappointing to see all the countries are unable to control North Korea's bullying.

A shot without injection needle

Today, I read a news article that 'a shot that does not need the use of injection needle' was invented by Korean researchers!
I was very glad to see this news because even though I had shots from hospitals many times until now, I'm still not so comfortable with getting injections. I'm not afraid of it or anything but still, seeing the long needle going into your skin and the following sting does not make it a pleasant experience. I think many people also feel something similar to what I feel. :b


source)http://www.consumernews.co.kr/news/view.html?gid=main&bid=news&pid=251483

This is the picture of the shot.
The body of this newly invented shot is divided at the middle by a rubber film: The upper part is filled with water and the down part with liquid medicine.
For use, laser is beamed on the upper part and there bubbling and popping takes place. This causes a sudden pressure rise -ten thousand times higher than the atmospheric pressure- which leads to pushing the rubber film, and the liquid medicine is shot out through the nozzle.

The medicine is shot at the speed of 100~200m/s - too fast for the patient to feel any pain.
With this new 'shot' what many children and people who didn't like getting injections have imagined and wished for, would actually come true.
- Getting shots without any pain!

When this new 'shot' is deployed on a commercial scale later on, patients would not have to feel uncomfortable about getting injections anymore. There would be far less crying of little children at pediatric hospitals. Good news for children, their parents, and doctors ALL :)

Top 25 companies for work-life balance

There are many recruiting programs in school, and many students are interested in companies that provide good welfare programs to its employees.

So I choose this article to get a answer of which company provides the best welfare programs. This article is about a recommendation of top 25 companies for work-life balance. The writer of this article is giving several examples of these companies which provides work-life balance. The main idea of this article is that now days, there have been a increasing desire for workplace policies that allow employees to meet family and personal responsibilities. But these policies not only benefit the employees, but benefit also for the company by improving employee retention rates, retain its best employees, having high efficiency in work. There are also drawbacks of this work-life balance policy to the company for some reasons such as the low opportunity to hire new workers since the existing workers never leave its workplace. The article wraps up the article with giving few ideas how to get into these good balanced companies.

The part that made me most interested was the part telling that companies which provided large scale of welfare programs gained more net income than those which doesn't provide a large scale of welfare. We usually think that when the company uses a lot of money in welfare, the profit of the company will decrease. But this article was telling us that even though the company has to spend more money for welfare, the percentage of income growth is much bigger than the growth of welfare expenses.

Social Networking Sites.

Just yesterday I saw an online research organization paper on our society's usage of the Social networking sites (SNSs) The research paper conveyed that over 53% of the subjects were currently using one or more SNSs. Among those users 68% actively uesed Cyworld, 17% Facebook, 14% twitter and 4% me2day.

After reading this research paper, I got to think about the SNSs. There are several differnt types of SNSs at this moment but there are new types of SNSs appearing every other second. Everytime new Snss comeout people think or believe that the sites contain a different sturtural or format. But if we look at the contents of the SNSs very carefully the function of SNSs are initially the same. But then, why do we perceive each and every SNSs as an unique product?

Why did we use Buddybuddy, friendster, freechal and cyworld before
but use facebook, twitter and kakao talk now?

Is it because of our 21st century's 'cultural industry'? Where false conception makes us believe in the indifferent differences? Are we too blinded by the mass media that surrounds us? Are we becoming too guillible?

For once, I think that we should try to take a step back from all these technologies and really question ourselves about the diversity we carry and the seriousness and the danger our society's high culture is at...

'Maria the Korean Bride' Has 50th Wedding

Maria Yoon, 39 years old Korean-American female finally has her 50th wedding on May 22nd (today) at Times Square in New York City. She calls herself “the voice of the unmarried Asian-American woman,” because this is not an actual marriage but rather an art performance. She started this performance after she got upset by her parents wishing her to get married young. Since then, she got married in 50 different states and examined how getting married is seen in other cultures.

At first glance, it seems that she is not taking the institution of marriage too seriously, but she argues, "I take marriage so seriously, I needed to explore what it really means," and in ceremonies, “she never smiles, out of deference, she says, to her forebears. And some grooms have remarked that she's so intent on getting everything right, they're glad the marriage is over quickly.”

When I first read the title, I thought she is a reckless person who doesn’t have any sincerity on marriage. But after reading the article, I was impressed by her expression of art on marriage. I also think this could be an extreme sarcasm on today’s marriage culture. In many cultures, wedding ceremonies are seen as something to boast about. Especially in Korea, weddings have to be elaborate because “showing” is really important to them. Wedding ceremonies are becoming more institutionalized; the studio, dress, food, etc. have to be taken great care of. If you’ve ever been to the Korean wedding, you realize that guests are not so interested in the couple but rather on how much they spent on their wedding and how elaborate it is.

Also, it is surprising that a lot of females in Korea nowadays see marriage as a substitute on getting a job, which means females think marriage as a guarantee on money and stable life. I think Maria Yoon, the Korea Bride, gives us an issue to think about. Weddings are becoming more institutionalized than ever, and there is less sincerity on marriage.

Here is the article, on "Maria the Korean Bride"

Cool Science!

Don't try this at home...



From Science Bob.

An interesting book I read :)

Have you read the book "You just don't understand-women and men in conversation" written by Dborah Tannen? There is a Korean version, too "남자를 토라지게 하는 말, 여자를 화나게 하는말". After reading it, I found that it had been at the top for eight months during its four years on the Times' bestseller list. Consisting of the ten chapters, the book is about language and gender describing how men and women grow up and live in a different world using "genderlect". They interpret what they are saying based on their own world view, which leads in to troubles between men and women. It has a lot of intersting anecdotes which remind of my real experiences and I think you will do so if you read this book. You might think that it is not just gender differnce which makes misunderstanding between each other. Rather you think there are innumerable other influences such as ethnicity, religion etc, which was also asssumed by the author. But I think it will be good to have an opportunity to know why we don't understand each other in terms of gender. This will be helpful not only for couples but also for the relationship between men and women like coworkers. I wanted to write the story in detail and some of the examples that I thought were quite fun to talk, but maybe it would reduce your curiosity about the book. So I didn't. I hope you also enjoy this book.

A British Woman was Decapitated!!! (head cut off)

Dear classmates,

I am not posting this article to make your weekend miserable and terrifying. I just wanted to inform you how fearful and evil this world has become these days! So many people seem to go.. nuts!!

I just went into Yahoo to search for information (for my other class assignment) and found this terrible news article about a woman who was decapitated, meaning her head is cut off, by a criminal while she was in the supermarket in Tenerife. According to the article, she is a retired Norfork County Council officer who left Britain to enjoy traveling after her retirement. She was out in the supermarket when a man attacked her abruptly with a knife he bought in that same supermarket. The spanish police have captured the man who was holding the head by the hair, walking down the road. When the police ran after him to catch him, he supposedly threw the head down the road.
There were numerous witnesses of the scene and the family of Ms Mills-westley, the beheaded woman, is in shock of her sudden and terrifying death.

After reading this article, it just made me shiver with such a great fear. What is happening these days? Killing and being killed by pyscho-path killers seem to be on headline more frequently than ever before. A week ago, we hear about Binladen's death and a few days ago, I hear about a girl who was killed after being raped in Korea. Is it just me being paranoid with fear or has the world really become a dangerous place without any safetyzone? Do I need to be scared to walk down the street to the supermarket, because some crazy lunatic might stalk me and just cut my head off??? What else am I to think about this news??? Am I supposed to be relieved that it did not happen in Asia?

I assert strongly that there must be life imprisonment to these pyschologically damaged criminals. It is clearly stated in the article that this killer had caused harmful incidents before and he was only treated to hospital. When judges decide the criminal is mentally ill, they are to stay in hospitals to get pyschological treatment. This is not doing any good to reduce their criminal act. Whether or not the killers are pyschologically damaged or not, I think when anybody commits a kill, they should be imprisoned for life for other people's safety.

Adding fuel to the fire!

I posted an article about banning a great Hanbok designer from entering Shilla Hotel. And today, luckily I found an interesting article related to that! What do you think? Inducing people to wear Hanbok? Lotte Hotel said that it has been planned ahead, but I don't know.. Do we wear Hanbok when family gathers? Mostly on Children's Day or Parents' Day? I don't think so. I assume that Lotte got the idea about Hanbok from Shilla's incident. It seems that Lotte Hotel wants to show appreciation of Hanbok targeting to be compared to Shilla Hotel. Did anyone wear Hanbok this week? Or any one of your relatives' wore one?

Sunday Reading

Three good articles for a lazy Sunday:

The Cognitive Cost of Doing Things — Why is it so hard for us as humans to get around to doing things, especially things that we know really aren't that hard?  Here's an analysis of how our brains are programmed and why some tasks take so much energy.

Two Billion Viewers — Did two billion people really watch the royal wedding?  Unlikely, considering that that's more than a quarter of the world's population.  Why, then was this “fact” reported by otherwise reputable news sources?

A Syrian Man-In-The-Middle Attack against Facebook — Do you pay attention to the pop-up warnings that come up when you're surfing the Internet?  Well, you should.  The Syrian government was caught intercepting its citizens' Facebook access by sending out a fake security certificate, a scam that only works on users who ignore the warning and just click OK.

Via boing boing.

I want a Raspberry Pi

When I was growing up, hobby computers were the thing to have if you were a real geek.  Buy one in kit form, solder it together and hook it up to your TV.

Now it looks like some modern geeks are bringing this idea back... to mixed reviews.

It all sounds rather like a nostalgic cry for a lost 8-bit computing era to us - something we're guilty of indulging in ourselves, to be fair - through a device you connect to your telly and code on. This notion will be immediately and intimately clear to anyone who grew up in the early 1980s.

Fair enough, but the educational value in such do-it-yourself home projects is huge, not to mention that it's a great way to make technology fun.  I want one.

(Oh, and they mention the Khan Academy as well.  Bonus point.)

Escape Digital Slavery

Yesterday, May 5th, was national holiday of Korea, so-called Children's Day. I was in subway, on my way to Kwang Hwa Moon. In the train, the surprising thing that I observed was that many of the parents sitting in the train were looking at their smart phones, instead of their kids. While some of the kids sitting next to their parents tried to talk to them, others were looking at their parents’ smart phones with silence. The train was not as loud as it used to be in couple of years ago, where parents were holding balloons instead of smart phones, talking joyfully with their children.

At the same time, I noticed that I was keep holding my iPhone since I came out from my house. The “Digital Slavery,” a term that was introduced long ago, has not been so serious as it is nowadays. However, it is now a “digital era,” and smart phones could be essential parts of our lives. Therefore, it is almost impossible to tell others to not to use smart phones. Instead, we would have to come up with some ways to control our use of smart phones and balance our real and digital lives to stay away from “digital slavery.”

Fortune, America's second longest-running business magazine, suggested 5 tips that can keep us away from “digital slavery.”

One, go with face-to-face contact.

Two, use tech to break your bad tech habits.

Three, put the smartphone down.

Four, Create boundaries for your tech/real self.

Five, take it one task at a time.

Although these tips are not ultimate solutions, they still can be effective. However, I’m a bit skeptical with the second tip that a bad tech habit can be controlled by using another tech. It sounds as if the author is urging us to become a tech-dependent person. Still, other tips could be useful and are easy to remember. Apply them to your everyday life and see if there is anything that changes.

History textbook problem

We meet such a big deal. Do we have to modify the whole story of our history textbook?
Korea has a long history, about five thousand years. And we made various cultures, tradition. But Japan has invaded and colonized Korea. And they changed our history. After we were independent of Japan, some scholars having learned from Japan have educated people about history in a wrong way.

Japan knew that Korea had a improved history and culture. They changed history and educated Koreans about it. This education has continued. This is a colonialization policy.

Fortunately, the government pronounced the history will be a required subject in the high school before long. It's a good thing. Because the students studying our history will be increasing. But still, our history textbook includes wrong history. We have to know our right history. So we have to change history text.

the article

The Ongoing Gossip

I believe this recent hottest issue will continue for a while! This was such a shock! The first my reaction was disbelief. As I kept reading the online news reports that were continuously coming up, my reaction turned into a daze. And when I realized that all these were true, I became to wonder. How could they keep this secret for such a long time? I think everyone has read all about this issue, and knows that it just ended. But I couldn't help myself from keep thinking about their marriage. Then I felt sorry for Lee Ji A. She was veiled for the sake of Seotaiji's mysticism. They both said that they truely loved each other. But then why Lee Ji A suddenly set this secret afloat? Yes, of course, the money is always the last reason, I thought.. It's so sad that their memories were revealed because of money! But is there other reasons as well? And, although Lee Ji A withdrew the suit, there must be other reasons other than mental anguish. What about Jeong Woo Seong??? He is obviously the innocent victim!

A play I have recently saw "Radio Time".

I watched a play presented by Sogang University Communication Division, named "Radio Time". The original play's name is "Welcom Back Mr. Mcdonald." I have wrote a short review.

The play itself was interesting and fun to watch. The actors acting were actually very professional. But the first part of the play seemed to be a bit boring. When the first scene is started the actors seemed a bit nervous and unprepared. When the play went along, they seem to be more natural and confident. Also, they seemed to be a bit over exaggerating at some points. I have not seen the original movie “Welcome Back Mr. Mcdonald”, but I assume that the actors have well expressed the original characters. The fact that the setting is in a radio studio, it was interesting to see the actors interact with each in such a closed area. Moreover, it is astonishing to know that each character has different personality. Mary Jane is played by once famous, stubborn and arrogant actress. She wants everything in her own way. The actor playing Mr. Mcdonal is passionate and hard working. The drama producers show different personalities as well. It was fun to see the team work of people with different personality to complete the drama on such a short time. Lastly, the play can also be thought of reminding the good old days where radio was the essential method of broadcasting. Overall, Radio Time is a warmhearted, humor mixed play depicting odd behaviors of the world of radio broadcasting. I never heard a radio drama but it was an eye-opening experience to know how radio dramas are made.

Watching the poor original screen writer be forced to change her scenario was sad. The power of the actress playing Mary Jane was immense. The screen writer has to surrender to the demand of the actress. This depicts how powerful people abuse their power to achieve their goal. This shows the sad reality of our life. In this sense, this play can be sorted as a black comedy. There are many humorous situations but if you think once more, it is not fun but a bit gloomy.

In conclusion, I liked the format of the play and the acting was good. However by watching the weak surrender to the strong was sad. If the producers didn’t surrender to the offer of Mary Jane, the play would have been much better. Radio Time is an entertaining, human drama which leaves people to laugh and think at the same time. I would recommend this play to other classmates.

It's not just money, my life

You've must heard about the bankurupt of savings bank. When I heard about the news, I wondered why depositors put their money in such a risky bank. The higher interest a bank gives you, the higher risk you need to accept, which is a basic principle. However, many depositors were underclass. They deposit all their money into the troubled savings bank. They just believed that my bank is never gonna fail. They believed what bankers say. Some people invested even in subordinated bonds which are not protected by Deposit Insurance. A woman who saved her money by working as a temporary worker and lost 24,000,000 won which is less than other people's damage said "it's not just money, my life". We can not just blame their ignorance. One reason they invested in risky bank is they are not informed about finance sufficiently. The problem about failed savings banks will be solved in anyway, but I think the more important thing is to educate underclass people on finance.

Plagiarism in music

One of many topics we studied was Plagiarism. It was mostly about text, but I want to talk about plagiarism in music. It is more difficult to identify plagiarism in music because even though two music sounds similar, which is not plagiarism until the composer accept that.

On April 13th, the court judged that "외톨이야" by CNBLUE did not copy "파랑새" by WHYNOT. I've been interested in this issue. To many people, two songs sound very similar, but the songwriter of "외톨이야" denied the suspicion. He even said that if he really had wanted to copy a song, he would've chosen a song by famous foreign musicians, not indie band. However, it sounded very strange to me because he could choose a song by indie band because he thought no one would realize the similarity between two songs.

The dispute is still going on even after the court's judgement. Meanwhile, a software company is developing a program identifying the similarity between two songs. Music is art, but we need a computer program to know whether a song is original. It sounds very ironic.

Three 50 minute classes

I have been trying to observe some problems that we experience in our everyday lives, and one problem I have encountered in school was the lack of focus in class. I think that 75 minute classes are a bit ineffective due to the long class time, so I thought about the advantages and disadvantages of 75 minute classes. The advantages was that even excluding class preparation time, there was enough time to cover a lot of material in one class. Another would be that because one class is 75 minutes, we only have classes twice a week. There were also some disadvantages that I found. The most important being the decreasing level of focus towards of the end of class. This would mean that the effectiveness of learning in the last 15 minutes of class drops dramatically. Another is that since we only go to class twice a week, we tend to study for the subject only twice a week, making it easier to forget the contents of the class.

As a solution for this I thought about 50 minute classes instead of 75 minute ones. Three 50 minute classes would solve the problems that are present with the 75 minute class system. First of all, because people tend to become less attentive during the last 15 to 20 minutes of class, focusing for 50 minutes and having a 10 minute break will help students focus throughout the whole class. Moreover, since having 50 minute classes would require three classes per week, we would have an opportunity to review class material more frequently.

However, there is also a potential problem with this system. It is that if too much time is wasted preparing for class in the beginning such as taking attendence, turning the computer on or waiting for students to settle down, there might not be enough time to cover all the necessary materials. A solution to this problem would be to have TA's finish the preparation for class during the break times in between classes. Another would be to have a more strict tardy system to encourage students to be prepared for class by the time class starts.

The Forgetting Curve of Ebbinghaus

Hope everyone had a great mid-term exam period. This is my 6th semester, but I never get used to exams. I get nervous before them as I do “last minute rush” for most of my exams. Moreover, I always blame myself for having such a bad memory. Some, maybe few, of us may get frustrated by the fact that we do not remember what we have studied, even something that we have studied just before an hour. However, we should not be stressful since this is a very natural phenomenon according to the “Forgetting Curve of Ebbinghaus.” By using this curve, I’d like to suggest two simple study tips that could help you on the exams!

Tip one: Use the power of “spacing.” Rather than studying every day, increasing the interval between your reviews of studied materials actually resulted in better retention. In other words, reviewing your materials everyday could be less effective than reviewing in one day, three days, six days, and so on. To effectively retain new information, we need to spread review sessions out.

Tip two: Take chance of your last 20 minute. The technique, called “cramming” in fancy word, can be most effective when you do it for your last 20 minute before an exam. According to the curve, for newly acquired information, we already lose about 60% of them just after an hour of study. Do not waste your last minute by chit-chatting with your classmates, but go back to some important information that may show up on the exam.

Once again, acknowledging the fact that your brain is not perfect can increase the efficiency of your study and will make you less stressful. Share your secret study tips with us if you have one!

Thousands of swallowed objects form curious collection

In a certain museum, it is filled with various things, safety pins, small trinkets, buttons and other items. And these objects were swallowed and extracted by people. Chevalier Jackson, a pioneering laryngologist of the late 19th and early 20th centruries, donated to the museum. he collected these things after he operated and extracted them from other people bodies. When we explore the various drawers, we will feel astonished and wondered. How could someone swallow such things? Mary Cappello wrote a new book about this -Swallow: Foreign bodies, their ingestion, inspiration, and the courious doctor who extracted them'(The New Press). In this book, we learn that not only about Jackson, but the lives of the people who once ingested the objects. These are stories from comic to tragic. In some cases, it's not accidents, it's voluntary swallowing, a social history of hunger, confounding human class and race.


Take, for example, the 1923 case of a boy, Joseph B. According to his account, Jackson removed 32 things from the child, including buttons, closed safety pins, bent straight pins and cigarette butts. His mother had ignored signs-such as a button found in her son's stool-by assuming it fell of his clothing. Even his friend believed that she fed these things to his child.


'The main cause of swallowed things is the carelessness'. Jackson said. He pointed to the carelessness of using an old broken egg-beater in making the custard pie. He said. 'So care should be taken, when cooking or serving food, to see that there are no loose pins or buttons in the waist that could fall into the food.' And other cause of this is chewing of pencils, toothpicks, grass, stalks, etc, he said.


Cappello also said. 'Poor children were not victims of careless caretakers or lacked self-control but because they were starving, they ate.'


This story is not only interesting to me, but also sad. Someone swallowed such things because of just a mistake. But babies ate those things because of their parents' carelessness. And poor children ate because of starving.


And there were my cases swallowing somethings-such as chewing gums,etc. It's awful to me. I think other people may feel that, too. So we should care about swallowing accidents. We can take out of eggshells from food before cooking. And we should take care of food for children. We have to prohibit them from eating things not food.

the article I referred

Freedom of religion?

Recently I was very interested about the history and culture of England. It is mainly because that I'm planning to travel England during the summer vacation, but aslo because of the wedding ceremony which was held today. While watching the wedding ceremony of Prince William and Kate Middleton today, I was interested about their religion 'The Anglican Domain'. As I also saw in the movie 'King's Speech', the role of the pope was very powerful, for example during important events of the Kingdom of England, the pope was in charge of those events.

As United States and England share a lot of things in common, I searched for informations about 'The Anglican Domain' in the States. But while studying the culture of the United States, I've found that the religion of United States wasn't similar to England. From the book I read gave the reasons why those two nations have different religions. United States is known to separate religion from the personal lives of its citizens. United States was founded upon the doctrine of “separation of church and state”. This originated from the European founders who came to America to avoid religious prosecution in their homeland, and many Americans take pride in religious freedom that government provides and keep harmony among different groups.

While seeing the freedom of religion in the United States, I was questioned about Korea. Although we also state the freedom of religion in Korea, when seeing the happenings which happen here sometimes make me confused. How do you think about it? Do you think that we have freedom in religion in Korea or not?

Ever seen a Two-headed cow?!

As I was surfing the net today, I came across a very shocking picture.
What I saw was a picture of two-headed calf!!!

A news article reports that a two-headed calf has been born on a Chinese farm.
Except the fact that this calf has 3 ears instead of 4 ears, the head is almost like
two seperate heads bind together; each part of head has its own pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth, all in perfectly-normal state.
The two heads point in opposite directions and they are literally 'head-to-head' without an additional neck to be separated and rested on, so the two heads cannot see one another by its eyes.

I wonder if the two heads stand out seperately - as individual characters - or that the calf has only 'one' brain and it just happened to be born to with an extra, surplus head.
It would be really weird if they really have separate identities; Then the calf will be like some kind of creatues in myths. It's really freaky when I imagine seeing two heads somehow expressing different wills :b

Despite its abnormal body appearance, the news says that the calf is healthy. Unfortunately, the two-headed calf can't stand upright by itself so it is bottle-fed by a person.

To my surprise, this two-headed calf was not the first to be born on earth.
There were more incidents of two-headed calves' births in Estonia, China, and Georgia since 2000 and it is not clear whether those were results of genetic problem or environmental pollution.

I had heard more news of 'mutated animals' thesedays, especially of those contaminated by radioactivity. People are worrying about the possible effects of radioactivity, after some serious radiation leakage accident took place in Japan.

What I had only considered possible in Sci-fis and imagination are actually happening in front of my eyes.
It sure would be a serious problem if the cause of this calf's mutation turns out to be environmental pollution. We should really care about environment and make plans to effectively deal with problems rising from environmental pollution and radioactive contamination.

iPhone location tracking issue

I want to talk about iPhone location tracking issue. Recently, I saw the news telling that we should care about iPhone using. Because our location datum were stored in our iphone.

I referred to this article http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/04/iphone-location/

Whenever we use apps with location services, the iphone gets information about nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi accesss points, and stores the infomation. Every 12 hours, an iOS device's stored geodata gets anonymized with a random string of numbers and it gets transmitted to Apple in a batch. Apple says it keeps this data in its own database, so it can provide you quicker and more precise location services.

But after they use the information to provide location services, the information remain on our iphones permanently.

I agree that this function will benefit us. Because we can get information that we want to know more easily, fast. But the problem is that remaining geodatum on our devices permanently. Geodatum are personal information. So if a thief got his hands on our iphones, he can figure out where we live and moved. So the information can be used badly. Then it will be problems and risks to us.

So the location datum should not remain our iphones. These personal information shouldn't be used by other people. We should care about that problem. And we should ask Apple to fix this. There are many iphone users around the world. Apple must suggest a solution about this problem.

Part-Time Jobs

I decided to write about college students and part-time jobs because for the last couple of days I've been doing some part-time translation job and was wondering if this is has a positive or negative effect on my studies. Ever since my admission to Sogang, I have always had a part time job, such as teaching, working at a cafe, and translation. The reason why I took on a job in the first place was because my parents decided not to give me allowance when I turned eighteen. Even though this was fairly rare among Korean students, I thought it would be a good experience and eventually have a positive effect on me. I thought it would help me become more independent, become more aware of my spendings, save up more, and get ready for the managing a real job later on. The last one about better managing a real job later on, I wouldn't know since I am still in school. However, as for the other positives influences I thought a part time job would have on me, I actually think the disadvantages outweighed the benefits.

Of course, I could say that I became more aware of my spendig habits. However, I found myself spending much more than I used to and saving even less than before. In addition to these disadvantages, I think the biggest problem with having a part-time job is the effect it has on school. I think that when we are in school, it is better to focus on school. Though having a job has benefits, I think it can actually act as a distraction.

Many people criticize today's young generation because we are too dependent on our parents. However, I think for a college student learning should be the first priority. I am, in no way, suggesting that college students shouldn't work at all. I think intership programs that allow you to experience the real work environment and help you to find your interests are great. In other words, I think the purpose of the job is actually more important than whether or not you have a job. I think it is great for college students to take on internships during the vacation and gaining hands-on experience. However, managing school and work at the same time, I think have more disadvantages than advantages.

This is just my personal opinion. I ended up writing about this because for the last couple days, trying to meet a deadline for work while also having to study for the midterms really troubled me. What do you guys think of college students having part time jobs? Do you think it should encouraged?

The Royal Wedding

I hope everyone's enjoying their Easter!

I wanted to bring up the "celebrity wedding" between Prince William and his love Kate Middleton. Their announcement had brought a great sensation to the whole world because the couple's marriage between the royal family and the middle class is the first in 350 years in the history of the British monarchy.

This short clip with Richard Quest is about why royal weddings matters so much to us. There are other articles and clips too that you might interesting.

Your breakfast can be unique!

You wouldn't want to be eating the exact same thing as anyone else, would you?  Well, look at this!  You too can be special and have a breakfast that's uniquely yours.  How's that for individuality?

I sometimes cook oatmeal as part of my breakfast, and this is a photo of the box it comes in.  I think this is a perfect illustration of the implicit assumption that individuality is something everyone strives for.

Counting your sugar intake for the day

Along with the post on “Popcorn’s Dark Secret,” I found an article on calories which gives you the pictures of sugar cubes contained in popular food. I want to give you an idea of how much sugar we are taking every day.

Awareness on eating healthy food is increasing every day, so whenever we eat food, we pay attention to the calories that is printed on the label. But, even though we know there are 39 grams of sugar in soda, we do not know how much of that sugar look like!

So this website offers you pictures of food with stacks of sugar that is hiding in popular foods. This website may help you in preventing the unintentional consumption of sugar.

As an example, when we drink a can of coca cola, we are drinking 10 sugar cubes which are 4 grams each. This is a fact that we rather want to ignore. No one would drink a coke just for thirst knowing that it contains 10 sugar cubes! But I realized that a lot of popular food we eat every day is just stacks of sugar hidden with different flavors. Especially when we eat ice creams, we cannot taste the sweetness as exact as other food because the coldness of it hinders us from tasting its sweetness.

Clearly, in this case, “A picture is worth a thousand words”

harsh criticism on "Please Look After Mom"

Recently, I read a transcript from NPR (National public Radio)'s one of radio reviews on "Please Look After Mom", the well-known Korean novel written by Shin Kyung-Sook.

Maureen Corrigan, a professor at Georgetown University, made a cynical, unbearable remark about this novel that made me furious. She thinks that the novel is nosense and has nothing to do with American culture that values individualism than collectivism where one is to feel guilty for not taking care of their parents. She says that the message is "completelalien to our own therapeutic culture."

Okay, I understand that one may feel this way in any Western countries, because it is true that we value collectivism and believe it is duty for children to take care of aging parents in our society. It is also true that by the age of 18, it is natural for western young adults to leave their homes. Although it is changing in Korea, it is still common for us to stay home until we get married and have our own family. So I"m not here to criticize her opinion, because as we learned, we can accept other people's opinion without embracing it. However, what made me furious is her barbarious comments about this novel not worthy enough to be published by Knopf, a well-known publication for literary work.

The worst comment she made is that this novel is a "cheap consolations of kimchee-scented Kleenex fiction." What a phrase to degrade the novel in the first place and humiliate Koreans as well! How dare she talk about novel in such ridiculous way? Just because she is a professor does not mean she can just talk rubbish about a novel that has our tradition and culture rooted in the story. It touched our hearts because the story shows the changing generation of less valueing their duty as sons and daughters and it touched our hearts because that is exactly how we as Koreans mostly feel. Who is she to criticize our culture? It is one thing to not like a novel, but it is a whole different story to talk about it in such unrespectful manner.

May be I am the only one infuriated by this critic. See it for yourself classmates by going to this site.

If you want to see what Korean news writer wrote about this review by Maureen Corrigan, go to this website.

The Case for Letting Your Partner's Eye Wander

This article is telling about a new study about why we should let our partner's enjoy themselves in a wandering eye. To support this research, the article is showing the experiment and the conclusion for it. There were three experiments, each showing the relationship between peoples satisfaction and the limit they were given. It has proven that the more we limit and block our partner seeing a attractive person, it will make the relationship worse. As a conclusion the authors of this new study tells that an effective way to boost satisfaction during a relationship is to work on enhancing relationship processes that will naturally lead to decreased attention, such as focusing on positive aspects of ones partner.

It was very interesting because the study which is introduced in this article is actually talking about a situation which happens to a lot of us. For example, when we are with our boy/girl friend, if a attractive person(of course opposite sex) passes by us we happen to see that person. And as a normal respond we try to block our partner seeing at the attractive person and try to just focus at us. But in this article it is telling us that just blocking and limiting isn't a good way to make are partner concentrate to us. I first thought it was quite odd, but as a read through the article I was able to fully understand the writers idea.

But there were some parts I thought that this article should cause a argument because actually this experiment was involved with a group of 42 undergraduate students. But I think that the number of the group were quite small to prove the things the researchers wanted. And also, this experiment was tested by undergraduate students, which can't prove whether the conclusion of the experiment will work the same to other ages. So I thought that to be a more reliable experiment, there should be a larger samples.

Well... in some ways I think this research is actually true. How about you?

When is the last time you wore hanbok?

When I heard about this news, I just laughed. It was ironic! Just hearing the word "Shilla" makes me think of something traditional. However, they rejected a woman from entering a hotel restaurant because she wore hanbok! I understand hanbok is long and it flares out that others may step on it. And due to the characteristic of a buffet, there can be some accidents. However, I think the staffs were not trained properly. They should have just given the designer a warning to be careful when walking around. And I guess the staffs didn't know who she was. If they knew that she is a well-known hanbok designer, how could have they said that to her?? I wonder what happened to the staffs of The Parkview.. And I also think that this happening spreaded out so quickly because she was a famous person. It could have gone much slower if this happend to a mere citizen..

21st century and its ideal image.

Just looking back a few decades ago, being fat was equivalent to beauty. But then what has changed our perspective? Is it all because of the media? Or is it due to technological invention? Maybe, it’s the economical growth in our society. I don’t have the answer to this question but, what I am really sure of is that both man and woman have unrealistic expectation when describing their ideal figure. Just a few days ago, I was having a conversation with my friend and he was asking me for a blind-date. He expected me to introduce a girl who was funny, pretty and smart just like Kim Tae Hee. GOSH. He then told me that he could do average looking girls too. Then he stated that average looking girls meant ‘girl groups.’ I instantly told him that I’m not going to set him up for a blind date. We just laughed off about this topic but the conversation really got me thinking for a few days. This wasn’t my first time hearing this. Girls too talk about this oh so very often. Then, is this the new phenomena in our society? Is everyone so self absorbed that they all expect this standard. Or are we still living inside a fairy-tell story scared and worried to enter the actual world itself? What has made our society (especially Korean society) become obsessed about our outer experience? I personally want to blame the media. MASS MEDIA. Well, Media plus technology. Initially, technology equals to economy, and economy is always followed by politics. So are these problems all inter connected? One leading into another problem… Our current perspective has now become rooted down into our society so deeply that are hands are tied down. Is the outcome of our thoughts initially our own fault? There are so many questions…. And no one with the definite answers to it.

Don't you dare touch that popcorn!

Classmates.. (especially girls who care about their looks!) let's stop eating popcorn when we are watching movies at the theater! Even if you are on a hot date or a ladies night out after your big long stressful exam week, let's not go too far and eat popcorns at a movie theater. I just found an article on New York Times, called "Popcorn's Dark Secret" by Karen Barrow.



Go Here


Yes, I know that everyone knows how much fattening those popcorns at movie theatres are with double amount of sodium and butter. Though knowing the vague idea of it and actually knowing the exact amount of fat and sodium in popcorn will make you think twice about having that popcorn this weekend! According to the article, in order to have just enough amount of popcorn as a healthy snack, you would have to share your popcorn with the entire row of moviegoers around you! The study from the Center for Science in the Public Interest researched three movie theaters ( probably in America) and small size popcorn has 670 calories, 550 miligrams of sodium and 24 grams of saturated fat! The only relieving fact from this article is that the size of American popcorn cup is much larger than Korean ones and I believe Korean movie theater popcorns do not use coconut oil for their popcorn. So hopefully we can cut down about 100 calories from what they say on this article, but I don't guarantee anything from the amount of sodium! Also, I wrote the portion of small size popcorn so I don't scare you away too much. For large popcorn.. see it for yourself on this article!!


Now, as you can see if you go into the hyperlink, the article was posted on November, 2009. That is almost a year and a half old article and yet I have to say there are a lot more popcorn flavor invented since then! Just in Korea for example, we have buttered pop corn, spicy flavor (using ramen sauce), garlic flavor, and charamel flavor. I personally love charamel flavor, but I heard that is buttered popcorn coated with charamel on top. Don't make me calculate the calories there... I walk & run for 30 minutes on treadmill every other day and I bet you that doesn't make me lose 700~800 calories I eat from charamel popcorns! Now, the article suggests to skip popcorns when watching movies at theater. I can do that. But it also says that air popped popcorn also contains enough sodium for your daily nutrient. I am sure no body just eats one popcorn for a whole day.


Now, the movie theaters pops their popcorn using coconut oil, which often has 90% of saturated fat. So I repeat, let's just forget about popcorns from now on when we go to movie theaters if you are not going to share your popcorn with the entire row of movie goers as this article says!


Just to add a little information: this does not mean you can have nachos instead of popcorns at movies!!

What is self-esteem, confidence, and conceit?

Confidence: belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities.

Conceit: an excessively favorable opinion of one’s own ability, importance, wit, etc.

Self esteem: a realistic respect for or favorable impression of oneself.

I looked up these words in the dictionary because after taking the self-esteem test in the class, I got a relatively high score of 75 and I wondered if I’m more conceited than confident. To make sure if I’m conceited or confident, I had to find the difference between the two.

By looking up the definitions, I found out that confidence is a belief of one's own capabilities, powers, and etc. and conceit is about believing and showing others about his or her ability that they are better than others. These two words could have the opposite or the cause and effect connotation. Because sometimes confidence can bring conceit. For example, when one succeeds in his/her work and is acknowledges by others because of their self-confidence, they are likely to become conceited.

A Former General Electric CEO, Jack Welch said, Quote His view on self-confident people is that they are not afraid take others’ views into consideration and change the old views.

These two definitions are very different. Confidence is a belief of oneself. It is not about showing or comparing oneself to others. But conceit is an expression of one’s capabilities. These two words may sound similar but there is a big difference to it, which is a belief in oneself. It means that people who are conceited is likely to put a low value on others because they have a low self-esteem. They may be unaware of the fact that they have a low value too. They have self-doubt in themselves and that is why they have to push others down to prove they have higher values than others. But if they already consider themselves as a valuable person, then they don’t have to prove it to others. People of self-confidence and self-respect are acknowledged as they are because they respect others the same way.

It is hard to draw a line between the two and I think the only way to maintain a balance solely depends on one’s attempt to control self-esteem. After researching this subject, I think I have a relatively high self-esteem than others but not so conceited.

How important is 'First impression'?

While I did yesterday's reading assignment, the part "be wary of first impressions" really got me to think.
How important is 'first impression' and to what extent?

It is true that the first impressions we get at the moment of first encounter on anyting, affect us greatly.-They easily take over your mind and constantly makes you think, react, and behave in the similar way and it's really hard to change your attitude.

When I look back myself, I think I have missed many chances due to my 'first impressions' on many things and the followed bias that led me to behave in certain ways.

For example- certain movies, after I saw the trailers or advertisements, I thought they were not the type of movies I prefer to watch and skipped them.
Some movies, I thought the storyline was so cliche and my perceptions even progressed to a negative feeling about those movies; that they were not good movies. A Few years later I happened to see those movies by chance and actually found out that they weren't so bad after all. Some of those movies, surprisingly, were very entertaining for me and now they are even one of my favorite movies.

I Even had similar experience with my friend. One of my friends, when I first saw her, I thought it would be the most likely that we become close friends. I didn't have bad feelings about her, but we seemed to have 'nothing' in common; Her ideas were so mature, she was always hard working and seemed to excell on any given work, and she reacted so cool on any situations or frustrating events. And I seemed to be everything BUT all those. Then one day we had a chance to chat a little and found out that no matter how different we seemed (and we were), we were connected very well anyways.
Now, she is one of my closest and most dependable friends.

What I have wrote are situations that I do 'realize' because my impressions and behaviors changed. There are sure to be many chances - either finding a good book, chance to be good friends with someone, trying new things, etc - that I have let go
and not even notice until now, because I clung on to my narrow first impressions which are not even very reliable ideas.
(Writing all this, I feel like such a fool. Too much affected by first impressions and so biased! :b)

First impressions seemed to have affected me my whole life.
I think everyone had similar experiences on first impressions somehow.
Like the main point of the class, it can prevent you from producing and accepting better ideas.So as the book suggests, we should "be wary of first impressions".
But no matter how hard one tries to be aware of his/her first impressions, I think everyone is bound to be affected by first impressions to some degress and its power controlling your mind is not so small.

Below are some cartoon cuts that I've found on the internet.
See how the cartoon characters react to the idea of 'first impression'.
(I thought it was so funny that the Asian businessman bowed in very low position, to make good first impression to his clients)




source) http://www.titusconsultingllc.com/services.html



source) http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/f/first_impression.asp

More About Fan Deaths in Korea

After the lecture on the April Fool's day, I have once again realized that becoming a critical thinker is definitely not an easy thing. The fan death article, I totally have accepted all the information written on it without any hesitation. I regret about it and now I decided to find more about it.
The arguments on this issue clearly divided into two. Those who believed that fans can actually kill, and the other who argued that they don't.

Those who believe fan deaths argue that if a fan is blowing in a sealed room then it may cause the body temperature to cool down, eventually causing hypothermia. This hypothermia even leads a person to death. Their second assertion would be suffocation. The argument is that the blowing fan creates a vacuum around one's face area, which prevents him or her from breathing, leading to death. Actually, the strongest arguments may be the anecdotes of some people who have experienced a "near-death" when they have forgotten to turn their fans off while they were asleep.

However, there never was an objective scientific study that proved fans can create such deaths. It is so widely believed among Koreans, but no one exactly knows how really a fan kills a person.
In fact, a research was conducted in Korea back in 2007 which led by KBS(Korea Broadcasting Service). According to this controlled research the doctors proved that fans did not cause suffocation, nor hypothermia. On the other hand, there were some experts saying that the fans may work negatively to people who are already suffering from obesity or respiratory diseases.

To sum up my short research, the fan death may not be a direct cause of a death, but may be an indirect cause. This means that when a person is already suffering from chronic diseases, he or she may be more susceptible to change in body condition by a fan.
I think more researches must be conducted on this issue controlling various circumstances that may affect the result of the research.

** For your information, refer to the research done by KBS. Sorry that this is only provided in Korean.
** This is an interesting article on Fan Death from Snopes.com, an urban legend reference site.

KaTalk Boom!

When smart phone first came out, I did not welcome. What's the use of having one? I can use the Internet with my laptop, and I don't mind carrying it with me.
But it was iPhone4 which changed my mind and to register online among the first. I just loved the design. So simple, but attractive.
We live in the world where there are so many products to choose from with the technology advancing everyday. It is us, the consumers, who have the control to make a company thrive or just die. However, Apple is different. Who would ever thought that so many people will stay up all night and wait in a long line to buy a product these days? And we thank Steve Jobs for inventing such a product.. As Kimsun posted below, I think people who get addicted to smart phones are the ones using iPhones.
And now the new issue is about applications! Application industry is emerging, and it's true that telecoms are gaining less revenue because of it. The use of SMS and MMS is decreasing. Even though I can use 300 SMS for free, sometimes I don't use them all! Most of my friends have smartphones, and therefore we talk continuously using KakaoTalk or MyPeople. But it is possible since I monthly pay enough money for using data. Isn't it more profitable than revenue that can be earned from SMS and MMS? If one of the telecoms block the use of mobile messengers, I am sure that many will switch to other telecoms.

Can humanitarian intervention be justified?

With all that is going on today in Libya, I thought about issues regarding humanitarian intervention, state sovereignty, political reform, and so on. I used the W.I.S.E. approach to clear my ideas and think more about the issues. To begin with, in the "wonder" stage, I thought of numerous controversial questions. When the United States and several European countries attacked the Qaddafi government in the name of humanitarian intervention, it made me wonder if humanitarian intervention can be justified. Furthermore, I thought about to what extent the sovereignty of a nation should be respected by other nations. These questions and more were essentially rooted in the issue of humanitarian intervention.

Moving on, I thought about the conflicting arguments that exist regarding this issue of humanitarian intervention. In this section I did both steps two and three (investigate and speculate) because since so many ideas and arguments are interrelated it is difficult to separate one idea from another, issue from resolution and conclusion, and so on. Humanitarian intervention refers to the use of force across state borders aimed at ending infringements of fundamental human rights of individuals. At first thought, it seems that intervention of such nature is for a good cause, resulting from good intentions. However, on the other hand, it seems ironic that force and violence is used for the purpose of stopping force and violence that result in violation of human rights. Then the questions arises, whether the use of force can be justified if it is for a good cause and a desirable end result. The use of force is not the only controversial issue when it comes to humanitarian intervention. Another very important problem is state sovereignty. The idea of sovereignty allows a state to have supreme and independent authority over its state and state affairs. This would mean that a state has the supreme power over its state over any other nations. Then given this, is it just or fair for a nation to intervene in the matters of another nation, how ever good the intentions may be? Though there are many conflicting ideas regarding humanitarian intervention, it seems that without it a countless number of innocent people may never be protected as in the case of Libya.

Finally, for the last step (evaluate), I thought about which arguments I think are most agreeable. In my opinion, there are many flaws in this idea of humanitarian intervention such as the use of force, denying a nation its sovereignty, and etc. However, I still think that humanitarian intervention is necessary and inevitable. Sovereignty should not be an unlimited power. If a state abuses its power and denies its citizens their fundamental human rights, it is the responsibility of the capable nations in the international community to intervene and end such abuse of power by the government. However, the sole purpose of such intervention should be to end infringements of fundamental human rights of the individuals and not be to further the intervening nation's interest such as political reform or economic gain.

In conclusion, I think that humanitarian intervention was needed in Libya where the government was basically waging war against its own people. However, as the US and the European countries turn over their responsibility to NATO, more questions arise. With the US essentially being the leading nation of NATO, it seems that the US may be getting too involved with what is actually a civil war within Libya between the existing government and rebels who want reform.

Dokdo at Times of Crisis?

On March 11, Japan was stricken by a mighty earthquake and tsunami. Many have lost their lives and homes during the catastrophe. People had to evacuate and leave their homes as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crippled. With the sudden tragedy, Koreans sympathized for the loss, and donated funds to Japan. With funds being collected, the Korean public showed their mature attitude by helping their neighboring country. It all seemed that both country’s foreign relations and the public’s opinion of each country improve; however, on the 30th, Japan stated that they will publish Dok-do, a Korean island under territorial dispute with Japan, as their territory on middle school textbooks. Korean's sentiment against Japan started to become negative. It is very frustrating why Japan has made this statement when the Korean’s and Japanese’s public sentiments were getting optimistic. It is hard times for Japan struggling to get back to its feet. Japan is rich a country and they may not need our aid, but when Korean publics feet sorrow for Japan's tragedy, it would be grateful to show some appreciation. However, Koreans did not deserve an answer in this way, especially at current times. Just as the topic of the island was forgotten, it was resurrected and the past history was again at the dispute table. Few years back, Japan apologized for the wrong things done in the past history to Korea. However, if Japan keeps disputing about Dok-do, it feels as if Japan is still not apologetic for the wrong things done in the past history. If Japan is truly sorry about the past history, they should leave history behind and stop trying to take away from Korea. In Germany, the past history is history to them. More than 60 years have passed since the holocaust and 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Germans were able to live peacefully together till today as they kept the past behind and by understanding each other. If Japan keeps their past history behind and not dispute, then the Korean public might be more sympathetic to Japan. Only then, at times of difficulty, can both neighboring countries be able to help each other more greatly when needed.