Is Endangerment Dangerous?

In his earlier post today, "How liberals and conservatives determine morality", Liu summarizes some fascinating research and makes some thought provoking comments on the basis of our moral judgements and on morality.

This ties in neatly with the reading we will begin next week, but it also prompted me to think of another question that we might add to the list on page 235 of Quest, which is the opening page for chapter 7, "Endangered Species". On page 235, Hartmann and Blass ask us to consider what the word endangered means, and what we can do to save endangered animals (2007). I want to add another question that I think comes first: why should we try to save endangered animals at all?

Should we try to save endangered animals or plants? If we should, does the word should have a moral force here, or something else? Would it be unjust (this is where you might like to have a look at Liu's post) to let animal species become extinct? Would it be morally wrong to deliberately push endangered species to extinction?

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References

Hartmann, P. & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing, (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Myspace, Facebook, then Twitter. What's next?

Social networking becomes extremely popular recently, especially among teenagers. Some of us can not go anywhere without tweeting about it all on Twitter. Many more can not leave the house unless they water their plants on one of Facebook's famous game, Farmvilles, first. The innovation is not only addictive but also very useful for people to get in touch, it's wonderful that internet can be very beneficial. "Where next for social networking?" is an article I came across earlier today in New Scientist, it brings us some predictions of successful website investors about what is next in online investment.

A founder member of Google, Ram Shriram, predicts that there will be no e-mail using anymore because people will facebooking instead and that the most popular way to use the internet will be via mobiles. Reid Hoffman, the founder of Linkedin says that in the future there will be the inventing of applications based on people's real information such as the application that can match people with suitable jobs. While, Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, believes that social networking makes people opens with each other and feels involved with the world.

For me, I always get excite whenever new innovations have been launched, regardless of whether I'm going to use it or not. However, I think very less about what is going to be the next best things and just appreciate when the things come out. Reading this article made me realize why these computer geeks are very successful in the business. They have visions, they look into the future. We all are owing people like them for the conveniences we have in life. I never saw social networking as anything except stuff that made for fun but these aspects really made me think about it more and take it more seriously. I started to think how social networking will effect our lives, especially in the future when it is more developed, people would be drew closer together than ever and the world would seem much, much smaller.

Moreover, in online world, people never have to show their real identities, they can have fun disguising themselves or being someone else entirely, but in social networking the users will enjoy it better if they use the websites as their own selves, using their true information, because they can have fun with their real life friends on these website,too. Therefore, I strongly agree with Stone's idea about using real identity like this would make people be more open and more genuine with others , may be when social networking becomes even more popular than today, we could see dramatical changes of people's behavior in society all over the world.


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References


Simonite, T.(2009, November 25). Innovation: Where next for social networking?. New Scientist. Retrieved December 3, 2009 from http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18196-innovation-where-next-for-social-networking.html

How liberals and conservatives determine morality

One of major conflict in society stem from the different opinion between liberals, who emphasize freedom and the value of individual, and conservatives, who place great value on tradition and self-sacrifice for the whole society. Although in Thailand we cannot attribute all social conflicts directly to this cause, some controversies, such as social welfare, also have some relationship with this problem, especially the matter of how to define the meaning of "justice". The article adresses the problem of radical difference of morality between leberals and conservatives.

The author briefs the research of Haidt and Graham which proposes the explanation why liberals and conservatives think differently. Haidt suggests that there are "five psychological foundations of morality" (Haidt (2007)) which influence our belief about what is right or wrong, namely harm, fairness, loyalty, respect and purity. Then, the researchers asks people to do self-evaluation whether they are liberal or conservative and determine which components are important when they decide if something is right or wrong. The research shows that people who consider themselves as leberals place emphasis on harm and fairness more than the latter three items, whereas other group who identify themselves as conservatives regard all five items important. Haidt explains further that because justice(fairness) accounts for one-half of morality for liberals whereas it accounts for only one-fifth of that of conservatives, as a result, both groups usually have misunderstanding on the motives of each other which often ending up as conflict in society.

This reseach provides not only the scientific explanation of the different mode of thinking between liberals and conservatives, but also gives the framework that could lead to more understanding between the two groups. Each group should acknowledge the difference between their morality and seek the compromising acceptance between them.

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References
Shermer, M. (2009, December). Political Science: The Psychological Differences in the U.S.'s Red-Blue Divide. Scientific American. Retrived December 3, 2009 from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=political-science-skeptic
Haidt, J. and Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: conservatives havemoral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research. Retrived December 3, 2009 from http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.php

Five eco-crimes we commit everyday

Global warming is the important topic that will be discussed between the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next month. In the article "Five eco-crimes we commit everyday" in New Scientist, Dave S. Reay suggests us to prevent global warming by changing our 5 habit. The five habits are drinking coffee, using toilet paper, changing fashion, doing laundry, and wasting food.
Coffee itself isn't the cause of global warming; however, using cup of black filter coffee can produces CO2 152 gram. If we still drink coffe six days a week, The CO2 emission will be at least 175 kilograms each year. Also, milk added in the coffee is produces from cow that bleaches methane that is a cause of climate change. This fact is surprising. I have never thought that what a problem we have done with our world when we drink coffee. Drinking coffee is our daily habit that is difficult to change.
The toilet papers made from new wood use more electricity to produce than the recycle ones. Although recycled toilet tissues are used in many countries, most people still like the softest and fluffiest toilet tissues which is made from new wood. When the demand of soft toilet paper is high, the production company try to complete by producing that new toilet tissues instead of the recycled ones. If the consumers don't stop buying toilet tissues made from new wood, our world will be warm and warmer.
Fashion trends have changed very fast especially in the summer. Because of fast fashion, the clothing and textile company have to produce more and more product. The production of these clothes emits CO2 more than 3 million tones each year. We can stop the climate change by recycling our clothes so that we don't have to buy a new one. In addition, we can mix and match our old clothes to make it looks like the new one.
Apart from Fashion, laundary wastes a lot of energy especially during the process of cleaning. The cleanliness of clothes is an ideal domestic life. We use more energy from electricity, water, and detergent to clean their clothes. It's hard to decrease this habit because we need to wear cleaning clothes everyday and no one will like the smell clothes. What we can do is that we should not change our clothes every often by trying to wear only 2 clothes per day ; day thime and night time.
The last one is food wastage. People throw away 30 percent of their food. The CO2 is splitted out to the environment form the food wastage. Furthermore,every process of food production and transportation produce a lot of green house gasses. Thus, if we throw away the food, it means that we waste a lot of energy without any advantages. The solution of this problem is buying food in the amount that we can eat. Moreover, keeping the food in the suitable way can stop rotten food.
Although we feel that these habit is very common in our society, they can make a lot of green house gasses that are the cause of global warming in our world.

Reference
Reay, D.S. (2009, December, 1). Five eco-crimes we commit everyday. New Scientist. Retrived December 2, 2009 from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427361.900-five-ecocrimes-we-commit-every-day.html?page=2

The Electronic Health Record: Is It Worth It?

The US has had a plan to implement The Electronic Health Record (EHR), which is the way to record patient information by digitizing, standardizing, and computerizing it, into entire hospitals in the state for a long time. According to the article "will Electronic Medical Records Improve Health Care?" in scientific American, only 10% of hospitals in the US are using EHR. In early 2009, 19$ billion of economic stimulus package was passed by the Obama administration. This provides an incentive for hospitals or healthcare facilities to adopt an EHR in order to make healthcare service more efficient in many ways. EHR improves doctors to make better decisions that are based on easy-to-access information of patients, medical records of each patient that can be link together, and family history information that doctors can diagnose the potential of genetic illnesses. More than that, a time for doctors to find or ask such information from patient is reduced, and the information is more accurate. Most of all, D'Avolio suggested that recorded information must not be just information that store in unstructured formats which is impossible by using information technology for generating trends or statistical studies, EHR will be useless if it just automate the operation work and cannot achieve anything else.

However there are many arguments about installing EHR. The cost of implementing is the major factor. Ashish Jha, associate professor of health policy and management at Harvard School of Public Health, made a point that hospitals have to spend 20$ million to 200$ million to deploy EHR in their infrastructure. Typically, networks and computers in hospitals are manufactured by different vendors and are not connected together, which mean there is no standard for communicating and hard to organize. Another problem is that doctor and staff in the hospital themselves find a hard time to adapt from old-fashion work- paper- to a new one, and there must be a lot of training cost incurred.

I’m surprised that physicians or staffs don’t want to change the way they work just because they already get used to the current way. It’s not just healthcare industry that has to adopt IT in improvement. Most industries have already changed from paper-based work to IT-based work, and their workers have to adapt themselves to it altogether. It’s true that there will be slow starts. But consequences that come after would contribute to their industries greatly. Although IT and its infrastructure are expensive, in a long term those industries can save more money due to reducing of workload, and outcomes of their work will be more productive.

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References
Greenemeier L.(2009).Will electronic medical records improve health care?. Scientific American. Retrieved December 2, 2009 from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=electronic-health-records

The world looks different if you are depressed

When I was looking through the health section in New Scientist, the article “The world looks different if you’re depressed” catches my interest. Jessica Hamzelou gives the new information that I never known before about depression.

According to the article, depressed people don’t naturally have a neurotransmitter, which is a chemical substance in the brain, called GABA. This chemical has been related to a visual skill called “spatial suppression” (¶ 2), which helps us discriminate details surrounding the object. Julie Golomb, at Yale University, did the experiment with 32 people to watch “a brief computer animation” (¶ 3) and reply the way of moving. She found that the volunteers who recently recovered from depression had a worse response than the other group. While when the image was bigger, their responses improved. Therefore, she concludes that depressed people’s ability to discriminate fine details was impaired.

Depression is one of the most common mood disorders today. I think this article provides important information not only for the medical profession, but also the patients and their relatives who suffer from depression. The spatial suppression skill is a necessary perception that we use everyday to survive such as identification aspects, figures, colors and movement of things. Moreover we use it to detect the difference between objects to avoid dangerous things and animals. Thus this visual defect of depressed people can directly affect their daily lives. It is a good idea to give them a perception training besides drug therapy. I think this visual skill is like other skills that we can improve if we practice more such as writing and reading skill. Therefore doctors should help patients to improve their spatial suppression skill; even though: they recovered from depression by using only medicines.

Now, when you know people who suffer from depression, don’t misunderstand them if they see the world differently from you.

References
Hamzelou, J.(2009, November 30). The world looks different if you’re depressed. New Scientist. Retrieved December 1, 2009 from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427365.000-the-world-looks-different-if-youre-depressed.html

Many children addict to computer game.

The fact about a computer game player that surveys show that 30 percent of computer game players are under the age of 10. This fact make me concern about a problem of children who addict to computer game.

Now the number of children who addict to computer game is always increasing and the age of those children who begin to play computer game is very young. There are many study show that many young student always play on computer game more than other activities. Addict to computer game can clause many problem to children and society. For example, it can make children have an aggressive behaviour because they try to imitate behaviour or action from the computer game. For this reason, parent should not allow their children who are not 10 year olds play computer games and should spend more time with them. Moreover, although the children are over 10 year olds, parent should try to find other useful activities for them instead of let them play computer games.

For me, playing on computer game is not a useful activity for the children. They should spend their time with their family such as travel with their family or participated in useful activities such as playing sport or music. They should not waste their time by only playing on computer game.

The gods won't be happy either

In The New York Times' front page "Swiss Sharply Criticized After Vote to Ban New Minarets", Nicholas Cumming-Bruce gives a concise summary of reactions, both domestic and international, to the result of a recent referendum in which Switzerland voted to ban allowing the building of any new minarets, those distinctive towers that clearly proclaim the presence of a Moslem mosque. As Cumming-Bruce reports, the general opinion, both amongst Swiss political commentators and politicians and internationally, is that the Swiss people have made a serious mistake in passing this law.

I am inclined to agree with the consensus that Cummings-Bruce presents with his quotations and paraphrases of comments from people such as Swiss justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, and France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. I think that Cummings-Bruce and his sources are also right in speculating that the reasons for this awful vote are based on fear of Islam, which in turn seems to me to be based solidly on ignorance and intolerance, neither of which are good reasons for making law.

Of course, people who voted in favour of this unjust law give other reasons for what they did, such as that minarets are not simply religious tools and symbols, but are also political symbols of something that is not and cannot be a part of a healthy democracy. This seems wrong to me. Although it might be true that the religious symbol has also acquired political connotations, that does not stop it from still being a religious symbol, and one that is important to the followers of that religion. Unless there was some stronger reason, I don't think that the fact that something represents a political and legal system, such as Islamization and Sharia law, that are rightly loathed by many is a good enough reason to ban it. That would be equivalent to arguing that if we don't like something, it should be banned, in which case almost everything would be banned: there are many people who dislike any particular religion, so they would all have to be banned. Also, the cross seems to me to be at least as much a political symbol as the minaret, and whilst I would approve a law that banned the state from showing crosses or other religious symbols on public property, I think that a law that made it illegal to show crosses on private property, especially church property, must be an unjust law.

One final thought: this issue reminded me of a point that Roong made in her essay on the nature of democracy, that simply because a majority approve something does not make it either morally just or even democratic. In this case, I think the new Swiss law is democratic, and is an example of the fact that democracies are not perfect, that they too can and do pass laws that are unjust. But flawed as democracies might be, they are better than every alternative.

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References

Cumming-Bruce, N. (2009, November, 30). Swiss sharply criticized after vote to ban new minarets. The New York Times. Retrieved December 1, 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/world/europe/01iht-swiss.html?_r=1&hp

Overseas Call Centers

According to Hertmann and Blass, it is true that some companies have call centers that are located in foreign countries. In fact, an international company which I used to work in Japan has a regional consolidated call center in Singapore. Although there is a big cost-cutting benefit, the managements of international companies should not relocate their call centers to other countries because it could deprive people's employment opportunities in origin countries.
When I started to work at the company, there was the call center in the same building, which supported the employees to solve various kinds of computer problems. However, one day, the management decided to consolidate the several call centers in Asia into one and relocated it to Singapore so that many co-workers lost their jobs. At that time, Japanese economy was shrinking very much and it was exactly one of the most serious economic problems that an outflow of jobs to foreign countries that leads to unemployment.
Consequently, even though companies cannot help trying to make a profit as much as they can, it is also important to consider the long-term influence of the economic growth of the origin countries.

Do your kids watch TV way too much?

The fact that American children watch an average of 21 hours and 42 minutes of television each week is quite shocking because it takes too much valuable time away from children. American parents must limit the time of TV-watching and must choose the programmes to watch for their kids to prevent them from bad influenced of television programmes.

Television watching can be useful sometimes, but usually it is not, because when a kid wastes too much of his time on TV, he will have very less time to do other useful activity such as reading, doing exercise, and interacting with friends and family members. The consequences can be quite severe, the kid could fail subjects in school because of the lacking of studying hour at home, he might also have terrible social life, and he can not be a healthy kid because he has no time to go play outdoor. Most of all, if kids watch everything on TV they will be influenced by violence and inappropriate behaviors such as using drugs and drinking alcohol.

Limiting the time children spend on TV and choosing the programmes they watch considerably are two important solutions parents have to use. Children will spend appropriate time per day watching TV, so they have time to do other stuffs and still can enjoy their favorite shows. They will also watch only programmes that suit their age, selecting by parents, so they will not copy inappropriate behavior from TV.

Animals' Artwoks

Nowadays, artworks, that nonhuman primates in captivity (such as orangutans) make, are usually sold and shown publicly. People should be aware that buying those artworks is equal to helping persons who capture those animals gain more profit. Consequently, there will be more animals that capable of making piece of art captured by humans who want to harvest from them. Therefore, government must make law to prohibit selling artworks that come from encaged animals. Many animals that can produce art are conserved animal, some of them are endangered such as orangutan. Although sciencetists and zoo biologists do some researches in this topic, some people just harvest from those poor animals. They can be trained to draw, and of course many people are excited and want to buy what they call art without thinking that if they keep buying, those animals will have to draw something for their entire life. They are not artists. They want to live their life in woods. They are also not pets. It’s true that we can tame them, but that is not their natural instinct, unlike dogs that we can train them to play dead or to catch a throwing stick. Moreover, the numbers of animals, that will be captive because of the profit they can give to human, will rise. Thus, government must not allow people to sell any pieces of art that animals produce.

Why not a formal art training school?

The fact that some pieces of art created by nonhuman primates are often sold and exhibited which is mentioned in quest 3, strikes me that we should set up an institute that trains talented primates in art. There are several advantages in establishing such a school which are shown as follow.

First, the staffs who work in this institute would have relatively higher expertise in training art to nonhuman primates. Therefore, this institute trains not only nonhuman primates but also human experts in this field. Second, generally art is performed by human and almost limited to human who have been trained in art. If we try to train nonhuman primate in art, we would have new form of art. It might extend the concept of art to the extent that we have never dreamed of before. Finally, by comparing the process of studying art in human and nonhuman primates, scientists might be able to draw new knowledge about the evolutionary process that set these primate species apart.

For these reasons, it is a good idea to create such an institute or school devoted mainly to training nonhuman primates in art. There might be great deal of breakthrough knowledge that will be discovered in this kind of research.

Unholy Animal Slaughters?

According to Hartmann and Blass, the religion of Santeria allows animal sacrifices today (2007, p. 219). In fact, killing animals for religious reasons has been common for thousands of years: the Greeks and Romans did it, the Jews did it, and many shamanic religions still do it.

I don't know much about Santeria, and I don't much like the idea of killing animals for religion. However, governments must not make laws to stop people killing animals for religious reasons, even if the animals are endangered. People kill animals for many reasons, the most common being to eat them, such as lamb shank with white beans, and even the filthy Big Mac. Other reasons are for fun, such as bull fighting, and because they are seen as pests, which is why we often kill cockroaches, rats, and even kangaroos (in Australia, kangaroos are sometimes so numerous that they really are pests to human agriculture, so farmers cull them.)

It's hard to see why any of these reasons would be better or worse than any other, with the possible exception of killing for sport, but even there, most arguments against that would also seem to apply to all the other reasons that human's kill animals, including to eat them. THis is the main reason why I think we cannot consistently argue that it's wrong to kill animals for religious reasons, or even just for fun. If we do, then that reason will probably also apply to killing animals for food.

But if you think I'm wrong, please present your case for thinking that it's OK to kill animals for some reasons, such as to eat them, but not to kill them for other reasons, such as superstitious religious beliefs which are always false (for every religion), or even for fun.

Note: if you have studied in my class before, you might remember that we read Stephen Law's essay "Carving the Roast Beast", in which he presents a very strong argument that it is morally wrong to kill animals for food (2007, p. 124 - 140). I disagree with Law, but his arguments are strong, and they might be relevant to my idea here. In fact, now that I think about, I want to make my main idea a bit stronger: governments must not make laws to ban the killing of animals for any reason that does not directly harm other human beings.

As you can see, I had a very rough idea in mind when I began this response, but it is certainly not a carefully planned and organized academic writing. Perhaps I should have kept if shorter, but Hartmann and Blass allow us to write for 10 - 15 minutes in a response writing, so that's what I've done.

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References

Hartmann, P., & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing, (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Law, S. (2007). The Xmas Files. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

You don't need to add a list of references in a less formal response writing, but it's not a bad idea to practice doing it.

children as a computer game player

The statistical survey shows that the percentages of computer game player who are under ten year old are thirty percent. To stop the increasing number of children who are a computer game player, parents should find another activities such as sport for their children instead of letting them playing computer game.
When children have other activities to do, they will forget computer. For example, parents may bring children to a swimming pool, for their children don’t pay attention to the computer. These activities are more useful than playing computer game. First, they will learn how to live in the society because most of the activities require children to play with other people by using natural communication such as speaking and body language. In addition, children who spend more time with computer game cannot solve the problem in the real situation. They don’t have experience with the problem that they face in real society. For example, if they have a problem with friends, they don’t know how to deal with this situation, and that may be their problem in the future when they grow up. Second, Children will be stronger if it is a sport activity. Also, they will not getting fat. Third, children may have a chance to success in one of the activity that they’ve done. For example, if they spend their time with drawing, their ability to draw will increase that they can have a competition and get a prize. In conclusion, younger children should not be allowed to play computer game too much. Instead, they should do the other activities that they can get benefits from them.

Cigarette Advertisements with cartoons in its should not be allowed

Those cigarette manufactures is using a cartoon character in their advertisements must stop this kind of advertisement because it affects the children in the bad way.
Mostly children love cartoons, and of course when they see the cartoon advertisement of cigarette they will be attracted. Children are innocent and easily to imitate whatever they see or watch. For example: when my cousin was younger than now he watched superman and wanted to fly same as superman so he jumped from the tree about 2,5 meters high to the ground and almost got broken leg but he was fortunate so he just got a sprain ankle. In the same way, if children see this kind of advertisement they may imitate what they see without consciousness. In addition, when we get older our interests in cartoon are less then when we were children or no more interest in cartoon for some adults. Why do these cigarette manufactures use cartoons in their advertisement when their target customer is adult, not children.
In short, children are very easy to imitate whatever they observe so cigarette advertisement with cartoons in its is not good at all for children because cartoon is what children are interested in the most.

A television must not be installed in the children's bedroom

From the fact that American children spend an average of 21 hours and 42 minutes watching television per week. Surprisingly, it shows that childrend watch television about 3 hours per day. How they manage their time to do anything eles? Although, it is the popular activity to do at home, but it has many bad effects to their health and behaviour. Therefore parents must not install a televistion in the children's bedroom in order to reduce spending time on watching TV.

Today, many children have TV on their bedrooms. When they are in their private room, they can do anything that they want. If TV is installed in the bedrooom, they can watch it all the time. TV can be just as addictive as any substance. No matter it is interested or not.

It is a good idea to move TV out of their bedroom and install it only in the living room. Firstly, parents can control the amount of time which thier children should spend on it. For example, parent can fix the schedule of watching TV at 7pm to 9pm after they finish the homework. Secondly, children cannot spend excessive time on TV and don't become addict because they cannot have a chance to watch alone at night. Moreover, it will encourage them to do other activities besides wasting time in their bedroom because they don't have thier own TV and need to join with thier parents.

Oops - even Oxford University scholars make mistakes

As I mentioned briefly on Friday, as you finished reading vol. II of Pride and Prejudice, you might have liked to see if you could spot the mistake that Fiona Stafford makes in that volume (Austen, Stafford & Kinsley, 2004). I don't think it's a serious mistake, but it did surprise me.

I like the Oxford World Classics editions of the great works of English literature, which, as we would expect from anything bearing the Oxford University Press name, are very well edited and produced, which makes it all the more surprising that Stafford's mistake was not only made, but not picked up in proofing. This afternoon, I bought a new copy of the edition we are using, which was reissued in 2008, and the mistake has not been corrected.

I have no complaints at all about Austen's writing, and Kinsley's editing seems excellent. Stafford's introduction is also well worth reading. It is insightful and suggests some productive ways of approaching the novel. I personally did not find some of her explanatory notes that useful, although others did give useful information, and it is in one of these notes that the mistake occurs. In fact, I only noticed it very recently when, out of curiosity, I read a note that I'd previously ignored. I've since checked all the rest and have not found any more errors.

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References

Austen, J., Stafford, F., & Kinsley, J. (2004). Pride and Prejudice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Is a doctor a healer ?

According to my essay " Is euthanasia a proper part of a doctor's role as healer", I gave the definition of healer as a person who stops a difficult situation, physical pain, and emotional suffering. My idea is that doctor plays an appropriate role as a healer in euthanasia because he helps terminally ill patients to avoid their severe pain even though he knows the result in that these patients will die.
There are some cases in euthanasia that patient is not the one who have a terminal illness.
The first one is the case of Daniel James . He used to be a rugby player; however he had an accident in the rugby game that cause paralysis from his chest down. Thus, he asked doctor to help him die. (from Paralyzed player killed himself)
The second case is Sir Edward Downes and his wife. He ask the doctor to kill him and his wife. Although Sir Edward is not suffer from terminal illness, his wife has a secondary cancer in her liver and pancreas. They need to die together after stay together for 45 years. (From The independent)
Do you think the doctor who assisted suicide in these two cases can be called a healer because he help to relieve emotional suffering of the patients from my definition?

References
Paralyzed player killed himself (2008, December 10). BBC News. Retrieved November 25 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hereford/worcs/7774802.stm

Brown, J.(2009, July 15). The independent world. Retrieved November 25 from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/after-54-years-together-they-decided-to-die-together-1746472.html

I don't understand what is going on on pride and prejudice page 77

Despite the fact that Peter already explained the sentence in the class today, I still don't understand the scene in pride and prejudice page 77-78. Can anyone give me some explanation?

1) What is wrong with Mr. Bennet's speech on page 77? Why does Mary become disconcerted? Is it just only she want to sing more but Mr. Bennet oppose her intention or anything else?

2) After Mr. Collins' remark, what happens next? Does Mary stop singing and another girl sing instead?

3) What is the result of Mr. Collins' speech? It just only lightens up the situation or it implies anything else? Why does Mrs Bennet appreciate his speech? When the author says that Mr. Bennet is amused, does it mean that his speech is just only funny and has nothing more?

4) How about Elizabeth's reaction to this speech? In page 78 paragraph 2, does it mean that she feel frustrated with the behavior of her families members, including Mr. Collins?

liu

Changing Student Behaviour: What would you do?

Once we get past the nauseating title and the fairly stupid first paragraph, "Teachers instilling good morals in pupils", published in today's Nation, has some interesting content.

In her article, Wannapa Phetdee describes the efforts of a Malaysian and a Thai teacher to improve the behaviour of students at their schools. Although both accounts are worth some reflection, it was the work of Jamaliyah bt Shaik Abdullah from Malaysia that interested me more. In particular, her attention to changing very specific behaviour that was seen as undesirable in students at her school caught my eye. Like many, and unlike many who believe the opposite, Jamaliyah believes that "sharing understanding with students is better and more effective than punishing them" (Phetdee, 2009, ¶ 8). However, for Jamaliyah this is not some general nonsense so vague as to be perfectly meaningless. She did some research to get solid facts about very specific behaviours before implementing a detailed program to change those behaviours, and then checked to see if it actually worked or not. What she did was use video and other techniques to create a dialogue with students, and then measure the results over a period of months. As the article notes, the rate of students arriving at class late dropped dramatically over a three month period, from 333 instances in January this year to only 88 in February.

Happily, lateness is not a big problem in our class, but it is sometimes a problem at AUA, even amongst AEP students. Some questions that you might like to respond to in a comment are:

• What would you suggest to solve the problem of late arrival by AUA students?
• Would you favour a Jamaliyah like approach, or a punishment based approach? Why?
  How would you react to each type of solution?
• What specific proposal would you suggest to get students in class on time? Why?
• How about in other situations, where lateness is a problem? Say, parents arriving late to pick up their children from a class or activity?
• What factors are important in coming to a solution? What can we do? And what can't we do? (Cutting off the heads of offenders, whilst likely to be effective, is probably not acceptable. Parents would complain.)

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References

Phetdee, W. (2009, November 23). Teachers instilling good morals in pupils. The Nation. Retrieved November 23, 2009 from http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/11/23/national/national_30117127.php

Most Plainly Unplain

One of the book reviews in this week's edition of The Economist is of a collection of essays by 33 modern writers exploring their fondness for Jane Austen. As we would expect, Pride and Prejudice get a high mention, which is why I thought you might be interested in reading "No Plain Jane".

Apart from the fact that everyone, from housewives to scholars, from garbage collectors to engineers has loved her books for the past two hundred years, the article make the point that Jane Austen's readers love to reread her books. And it also suggests the reason for this: every time we read an Austen novel again, we appreciate yet more the depth and subtlety of Austen's writing, and we like them even more than before. I have to admit that since I first read Pride and Prejudice some thirty years ago, I've read it many times since. It never bores me, but improves every time I reread it. The only danger is that I have to take care to read our daily 15 pages immediately before class, else I won't be clear about exactly what is in those particular 15 pages and make the mistake of referring to something that you haven't read yet.

Another point made in the article is that "after 200 years, it is still possible to have new insights" (2009, ¶ 6), which reminded me of our discussion this morning, where we saw that complex questions can not always be settled easily, thereby necessitating much discussion, all of which can help us gain a better understanding of the issues involved as we approach an answer to our questions. And of course, not only in law but even in science, exactly the same thing happens. Newton's ideas were compelling for a long time, but then new results necessitated further discussion about the nature of mass, force and gravity in our universe. And the ultimate nature of our universe is today a matter of intense argument amongst physicists. They might all be wrong, or one group might be right about what composes us and everything else, from electrons to galaxies, but the matter is so complex that there is room for a lot more discussion.

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References

No plain Jane. (2009, November 19). The Economist. Retrieved November 20 from http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14902478

Isn't Garro a Hero?

Peers,

I cannot still resist thinking my idea, Garro is also a hero for Melik, because he can be qualified as a hero with the definition which I found below.

According to Macmillan English Dictionary, one of definitions of hero is "someone who you admire for their intelligence, abilities, or personal qualities."

We can read that Garro is satisfied with his life because he has seven children and enough valuable assets. (Line 33-34) Considering this point, we could say he is one of admirable people for Melik who has an ability to succeed in his life. That is why Melik seriously listened to Garro's advice (he said "Yes, sir" every time after Garro gave advice) even though Melik found later that those advice were wrong.

In addition, I think Garro was very worried about his nephew's traveling alone because he is still young. (we can assume Melik might be a teenager from the line 11; "You are no longer a child") For this reason, Garro tried to make Melik be more careful with telling every possible dangerous situation he could imagine during a travel. That is another reason why his advice sounds very exaggerated.

Consequently, although Garro seems not to be a typical "hero" we usually imagine instantly, his characteristics in the story qualify for being a hero, especially for Melik. Yesterday, I got an idea from my peers that everyone can be a hero. I think Garro is one of "everyone".

Does anti-psychotic drugs is a good treatment?

As I was lokking on the BBC News, I saw an article "Dementia drug use 'killing many'" that make me want to know more about this article.


Nowadays, many doctor always treat their dementia's patients by using anti-psychotic drugs although those patients do not have a serious problem. There is a report reviews that anti-psychotic drug's can cause the death of the patients. This report also shows that using anti-psychotic drugs in needless 150,000 cases can cause 1,800 deaths. For this reason, the goverment of England begins to reduce using anti-psychotic drugs and try to use counselling instead of use drugs.



Using anti-psychotic drugs is not the good way for cure or treat psychotic's patients. There are many effective types of counselling now. As I'm interesting in psychology and study in this field for four year in my university, I'm always believe that couselling is a better way to treat a psychotic's patients than using drugs. Every drugs have a side-effect. I'm very glad that there is a report about this topic to prompt the goverment or doctor to reduce using this drugs and find another effective way to treat this kind of patients.


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References


Dementia drug use 'killing many'. (2009, November 12). BBC News. Retrieved November 12, 2009 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8356423.stm

Good news from battle front

The article "Dog lost in Afghan battle returns" in BBC made me happy and sad at the same time.

It reports that a female sniffer dog called Sabi who has joined the Australian army in Afghanistan and has lost 14 months during the attack in in Uruzgan province in September 2008 was found by a US soldier. The fact that the dog is in good condition indicate that during her missing someones must have taken care of her.

After reading this article I feel happy about Sabi who can return unscathed from the war. Moreover, despite a scarcity of food and the difficulty of living in war time, some people were still kind to a lost dog. This reflects the mercy that lies in human hearts. However, the fact that due to political conflict, people need to kill each other also make me sad. If the one that has lost during the ambush was a soldier I wonder if he could have come back uninjured. People usually value human life the most, compared with other animal life; however, in wartime the main targets of attack are human.
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References
Dog lost in Afghan battle returns. (2009, November 12). BBC News. Retrieved November 12, 2009 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8356224.stm