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!