ELP journal

Yesterday the first thing we did was to take our socks and shoes off.... I was a bit hesitated to do so because just before the class I had a PE class and was very, you know, sweaty.
Anyways, the reason why we had to do the activity was to see our feet and to categorize them in to groups. There were three types of feet in our class, the Greek, the Egyptian, and the Peasant.
My feet turned out to be the Greek, one which has the middle finger longer than the big toe. Most people in the class had either the Greek feet or the Egyptian feet, and only 2 people had the Peasant feet.
They Rab asked us to decide which type of feet is the most beautiful and the result was that people chose the feet which they have to be the most beautiful.
It was explained that it is natural for a person to believe that the group of people which he or she belongs to be superior than other groups.
People can categorize themselves in to groups by many aspects, such as gender, age, nationality, blood type, skin color, language, etc.
I think it is a human nature to do so because at the very ancient time, people couldn't live without forming groups or tribes. They had to stay together to do hunting and finding a worm place to sleep.
(I also believe that it is essential for a person to be with someone else, because we humans are made to be social, but maybe it is another story. )
However, I also think that forming groups could be dangerous because when you are in a group, you sometimes get a rivalry feeling towards other groups, without any specific reason.
I would like to know the academic researches about this tendency of human to form group.

We also continued to learn the proper way of essay writing and maybe I have said the same thing in my previous blog entry, but I found the class very very helpful.
I studied all the rules concerning essay writing in my high school but now I don't remember a thing....
It is scary how much you can forget when you are not using your brain.

ELP journal

On last Friday, we had a class at ILC and we watched several interesting video clips.
I didn't know that there are many web-sites which introduces artist's creative works for free, and I am definitely going to use them for my studies.
About the videos we watched, I found some of them very creative and innovative.
For example, I really liked the one with many mouths. I thought the idea mouths going against junk foods and starting revolution was catchy.
In contrast, I didn't like the Meatrix because I generally don't like watching parodies, especially when it is animation. But I thought the idea of it was very good.
After watching couple more videos, I found that how strongly can visual /audio tools affect our ideas, comparing with materials in papers.
For example, in animation, we can put our theme in to a very simple story, which is easy to understand for many people. But at the same time, we can also illustrate the story with attractive pictures and sounds that can grab attentions from audience.
Soon we will be doing a group project, and I would like to use this sort of tool to make the project creative and mostly, fun to watch.

ELP journal

We got to discuss about the Ohinata reading yesterday.
Over the weekend I didn't have a chance to read Ohinata because I didn't have the paper.
So obviously at first I didn't understand what the reading is all about but my group members explained about it very well. And I also got the point that the reading is a boring piece.
We also learned the academic writing style in English and I found it very useful. I've been writing essays in English since high school but it is still difficult for me to follow every required steps for writing essay.
Maybe it is a different story, but I sometimes cannot agree with the whole point of essay writing.
I found it very uncomfortable to state that my argument is right and thus it is also difficult for me to put efforts to prove my argument. It is because I do know that there are so many things that I do not know about the theme of my essay.
I assume that the difference between Japanese and American style of writing may come from their difference in ways of arguing.
I would like to learn more about essay writing because I am not satisfied with my way of writing and I really want to improve it.

Radical Revolution: journal 2

I've read chapter 2 and 3 of "Radical Revolution".
I like this book because in each chapter, it always introduces some new scientific technologies which are under development. For example, I found the idea of filling a space with full of technologies very exciting.
Also, by reading these chapters, I got a bit more idea about the heaven and the hell scenarios.
Either it is heaven or hell, it is caused by a radical and rapid revolution in science.
I basically believe that scientific development is good for us. One obvious reason is beacause it can halp our lives for many ways. For example, there are people who have incureable disease and waiting for new treatement. For them, scientific development is a way to save their lives.
However, I am also worried about development. Because as it was written in the book, I think that the development is uncontrolable.
When we discover something new, we usually discuss either it is good for us or not. However, it takes long time before we reach to conslusion and there are even times when we cannot reach to conclusion because of complexity of issue. And while we are discussing, there are always some people who are using the newly discovered technology.
In this way, we are not able to control or manage the result of our technology.
I would like to know wether the book is going to introduce some thoughts similar with mine.

ELP journal

On last friday, we did a little psychological test in our class.
We were asked to think of our favorite color, animal, form of water, and to imagine a white room.
Then we were asked to give 5 adjectives for each of three things.
It turned out that the adjectives for color are the personal qualities that you want to have, and adj. for animal represents characteristics which you want for your boy or girl friend. Then form of water represents your ideal form of love and adjetives for the white room represent your image of death. I thought the test was interesting but i don't really know if they are right or wrong because I've never been in a relationship with someone ... and so obviously i don't know much about love.
One thing i found very interesting was my image about death. I found that I'm affected by christianity more than I thought. I am not a christian but I've been studying at christian school since kinder garden. I wonder how other people who have different religious beliefs imagine about death.

color, animal, water, and white room

Beige

calm

natural

tender

soft

Cat

smart

capricious

soft

flexible

mysterious

Rain

natural

rhythmical

silent

calm

rough

Room

clean

silent

bright

plain

stainless

ELP journal

On last wednesday, we discussed about ethics in our class. We learned about 6 ethical theories. I've had heared of some of these theories in a NHK TV program called "Harverd 白熱教室"(Harvard's Heated Discussion Classroom). This program shows a class of Justice, which is thought by professor Michael Sandel, at Harvard. I like topics such as philosophy, ethics and moral, so I was happy to get a chance to learn about the subject in class. An activity we did was to read a story and examine what ethical theory you use when making decisions. The story is about a diamond mine which open up for public once a year. One day, while couple of visitors are inside the mine, an earthquake occures and they become trapped inside the mine. The only way to save the visitors is to pull them up by using a rope. After reading the story, we were given all descriptions about all 13 visitors, from their age to their personal relationships. Based on these information, we were asked to decide who to put the visitors in numbers in the order of priorities of saving them. It was amazing how we thought differently and in my group, although we had discussed for about 20 minuts, we couldn't reach to a single agreement.
I would like to know if there are specific reasons to determine one's ethical theory.

ELP journal

Today we learned how to do well on presentation.
I thought the class was really for me because I've never been good at presentation. When I stand infront of people it makes me feel so nervous and even panic. I sometimes struggle with words that I can normaly pronounce well and I make many gramatical mistakes.
Then Rab tought us the ways to look professional and confident. He also thought us gestures to be avoided during presentation, such as looking up/down, repeating certain words, and reading from text. Then we actually presented ourselves to the class, and when following all these instructions, people really looked confident.
I believe that I'm going to be doing many presentations at ICU and also outside of the univerity... and I do not want to make people fall asleep while I'm talking.
I think I am lucky to have many occasions to do presentation here at ICU because if I screw up my presentation at work, it can really hurts you in many ways.
I'm going to apply what I learned today on my presentation that we are going to have in our class.

ELP journal

In today's class, we had our first P&D. I was not comfotable with doing P&D this time because I was not sure if I've got the main idea of my book right. The book I read is "Dogs and Demons - The fall of modern Japan" by Alex Kerr. I chose this book because I'm interested in politics, especially the politics of my own country. I also think that I should learn about it because although I am Japanese I do not know much about Japan. It is partly because I went to high school in Canada but I do not want to use it as an excuse.
After presenting my book to others, I felt that I need to quickly go through the book again because I realized that I've already forgot a large part of the book.
My group members presented two books, "Things fall apart" and "The sky train". They both sounded interesting to me, but especially the latter. The issue between Tibet and China has been one of my interests and I actually attended to a lecture by the Dalai Lama last June. Not only the issue of Tibet, but I am also interested in the ethical issue as a whole. At ICU, I'm participating in Japan Israel Palestine Student Conference and as you know, there is a big ethnic issue between Israelis, Arabs, and Israeli-Arabs. I wonder if we are going to look at any ethnic issues in class.
Overall, I really enjoy sharing our thoughts about what we read because there is always something that you can not find out by yourself. And as my self being a bookworm, I just love talking about books and I wish we can have more of this kind of occasions in this term.

ELP Journal

Day before yesterday, for the ELP class, we spent two hours at a computer lab. at the ILC building. I was excited to attend to that class because Rab told us that on every friday we will be using those cool Apple desktop and doing something exciting, something fun.
First off, we were thought how to use Gmail effectively. I learned many things that we can do with it and I found that it will be a very helpful tool for our studies. I sometimes tend to avoid using technology and go with a old fashioned ways. For example, writing my research papers with a pencile in my hand. But considering the amout of work I have to do at university, there is no way not to use technology. After that Rab showed us two music videos on youtube, which the contrasst of the two videos was a great analogy of two kinds of papers. One is a paper whichs' ideas are from various sources and are well connected and the other paper which is made of similar sorts of ideas and is not so well organized. I thought this analogy was great because by watching these videos, the difference was so obvious. Not just the importance of writing papers with different ideas, but I also learned the effectiveness of images and sounds. I would like to learn the ways of using visual and audio tools for our studies such as presentation.
We then looked at some stereograms on the internet. I was not able to find some of the patterns and images hidden in pictures but many of my class mates were excited to find them. I was surprised of how decieving some things that we see can be and how difficult it is for us to find out that we are tricked. This experience reminds of me the biased information that we find in our everyday lives. These information often look trustworthy because we tend to believe that if they are on TV, or written in a book, they can be trusted. But as we have been learning here at ICU, we sould not just trust what we hear and what we see. Instead, one must have a critical mind and think wthether something infront of you can be trusted or not.
Overall, I found the class very fun and useful and I'm looking forward to take the next class on this coming friday.

"Radical Evolution" Book journal 1

Prologue: The Future of Human Nature/Chapter Two: Be All You Can Be

Before start reading this book, I was not sure if I could have much interest in this book. It is because I knew that this book is about science and I do know well that I am not a scientific person. In fact, I like TV programs and stories related to science, but most of the time, I cannot truely understand them. I also felt that those newly invented scientific technologies are things that are not really related to our lives and even if they have possibilities of becoming usuful to our daily lives, it will take somewhat 20 or 30 years to be popular.
This is why I was so amazed when I read the first two chapters of this book. First, I did not know how various the topics of the field of science is. There are scientists working for scientific development in medicine, military, biology, sports, etc. Almost every aspects of our lives are being analyzed by scientific research. Not just things in our lives, but scientists are also trying to develop mankind itself. There are various possibilities that scientists are trying their best to make possible. When I read about these possibilities I thought that they are like things in science fiction movies and books or TV games. For example, human becoming able to regrow it's own body parts, to work 24/7, and to gain strength of Olympics athelete. However, as I read that there are actually many organizations in the world, such as Defence Advanced Research Project Agency in the U.S. , which are doing scientific research by goernment funding and the ways they function, I realized that these are not the things only in movies and books, but they are becoming reality.
At this point, I am not sure which one of the three scenario human being is following. But I am eager to get an idea about it by reading this book.
About the book in general, I liked the way author writes. He seems to be always neutral and he does not give his own opinion about scientific research or development that he introduces in the book.

ELP journal

Today was the first day of ELP class. It was nice to see familiar faces in class.
Everyone seemed to be excited about the new semester and so was I.
Our new teacher Rab talked about the syllabus of this semester and what he expects from us. It seemed to me that this semester will be a bit harder than the last semester, because there are more group working and essay writings. But I also understand that all of these works are designed for us to acquire the skill of critical thinking, which is very essential for our academic studies but also for our lives. I have to admit that during the last semester, I didn't put my best effort into my studies and my final report reflected that exactly. Today, I thought of the reason why I came to ICU and the purpose of being in this ELP class. Now I'm determined to try to perform best as I can.