The Great mystery

The Great mystery is a documentary. The film maker interviewed several people of mean religions in united states, and together with their feeling towards their religious the film maker wants to let everyone know her idea that the great mystery is a  noble effort posing hope fir the world's major religions to work together toward everlasting peace.

These film gave me a brand new view of religions. Before I came to the United States, Religions were far away from me, and I knew noting about them. I did not know that why these people were so faithful to their God? So many question haunted in my mind. After I can to American and got touch with so people who believe in religion, I began to know about religions and God. I find( just in my opinion) that God is something metaphysical. He/She is not a person but the combination of social values, He/she teaches his/her followers to be a noble person. Different form people who dont have a belief just like me, people have religion can view the world in another position.Let's take one of my Christian friend Steve as an example. a couple weeks ago he took part in a competition. He tried his best to prepare for it, but an accident took their victory away. He was so frustrated, but he did not defeated by his failure. He told me that it seems that the god didn't answer my prayers, but actually god is giving me more than a victory, and he wants me to know that I deserve something better in the future. I admire my friend's open and clear, and I think this is the power of the religion, the power that never let people down.

      
    

The last samurai

Here I highly recommend the movie The last Samurai: Bushidou to you gays. It's a movie acted by Tom Cruise. The story of took place during the Meiji Restoration，through which Japan become the first Asian country that escaped from the ruling of western colonist. Tom Cruise an famous American captain came to japan and occasionally become a Samurai.

The story is not to announce the Bushido spirit, because to some extend it is the root of the militarism, but to tell us the justice of the war and the concept of loyal faith and love. Although  The american captain famous through United states for killing Indians, he was tired of these injustice war, a war without honor. But when he was employed by the Meiji government to suppress the rebellion, he saw the some great values such as royal and faith of his enemy Kasumoto. He realized where his glory is. and he helped his enemy. Although Kasumoto and captain failed, the finally found their inner peace in their life.

In my point of view, the industrial revolution changed many thing, although it brought us abundant materiel resource, at the same time, it also destroyed many traditions. Though traditions is 100% good, many traditional spirits is worthy. They are the heritages of our ancestors, So can we slow down the development speed and try our best to let these heritages to last forever( especially Chinese :p 囧 ). 
                     

Jokab the liar

This weekend I watched a movie named Jakob the liar. The story happened in World war 2. At that time the Nazi conquered the Poland. To reconstruct the confidence of people, a man named Jakob created a fake news mentioning that the Soviet red army is on its way to help Poland. So this movie reminds me of the value of truth. Are Truths so important to us? people should always telling the truth?    

There is a mainstream notion that truth is the most significant core of any relationship between people. As far as I am concerned I cannot agree more about it. It is the truth that can be the fundamental of any relationship

Truth plays a important role in business activities, however, in modern business some companies are willing to sacrifice trust, honesty and other social virtues for financial profits which will lead to numerous bad consequences such as lose the market. on the country, it is the truth that can make a great profit. For example, apple company produced a new type of cell phone named iphone4 which has some systematic bug in connecting internet to the market. To make up the mistake apple company tell the truth to all the users and promise to provide a chance for users to promote their machine for free. this activity did not let the company suffer from a failure yet apple company won a good reputation from it. So great profit always result in telling the truth.

The truth is critical to families as well. The basic of relationship between husband and wife is trustiness, when it comes to a quarrel couples will always become illogical, even a lei may cause the eruption. Then telling the truth can totally avoid f such disaster, for the truth shows sincerity and respect to each other and increase the understanding between couples.

Always telling the truth may also have a negative influence on some relationship such as doctors and patients. a doctor cure a cancer patient by telling a white lei. In this case the doctor did not tell the truth but he successfully saved a life. If the doctor told the patient that he has a cancer what will happen next?

To sum up from what has been discussed, it is insightful to support the statement that always telling the truth is better than telling lies.

The Great Dams

The Great Dams

   Dams are the most important water conservancy projects in the world. In the ancient time, with the help of Dams, people are able to adjust the water system to benefit the agriculture. Nowadays dams make the water to produce electricity possible, and power thousands of cities in the world. However, The built of the three gorges dam, the biggest dam in China, is debatable, because of its side effects. People began to aware of the ecological damages casted by Dams, So a notion that human beings should stop building new dams for the sake of protecting the environment is prevailing. Nevertheless, as far as I am concerned, it is unwise to claim not to build new dams.

Dams can bring great benefits to agriculture. For thousand years, the archenemy of agriculture has been extremely drought. But the presence of dams changed the situation. Dams are able to conserve water so that people can irrigate even in extreme dry season. For example, the Aswan high dam, which locate in Egypt. This great construction conserves large quantities of water from Nile River and 80% of the water used as irrigation water. As we all know, water plays an important role in countries like Egypt, where surrounded by desert. Further more It also prevent many cities from floods near the Nile River, which also contribute to the agriculture, because farmers do not need to salvage their agricultural yields when the flood come.

The two blades sword-technology

This week i watched a film named Matrix. it is a science fiction. The story shows the great fear of the internet technology in the future. Will we manipulated by internet or machine? its a sad truth that nowadays we are more rely on modern technologies, but we are the creators, and we are able to control the innovation of the technology. That we rely on modern technology is because of its convince and the great benefits it brings. Here is the example-internet technology.

    

The terrifying earth quake that stroke Japan on march 2011 astonished the whole world, thanks to the powerful communication tool-internet, people received the news immediately and government of Japan got abundant help from all over the world in time. It is also the internet that create a scenes of hazard of nature disasters. people are becoming more and more illogical when they are faced with this catalysis. A question emerged that internet weather it brings problems or good news.

As far as i am concerned,the advent of the internet marked a new period of information-- information age. with the help of the world wide web people have the ability to absorb countless information when they are doing research job. for example if a engineer want to built a new engine he did not have to design the blue print himself. Just one clip on the computer and the internet will provide him with numerous blue print. then the rest thing is to go to the factory. before the emerge of the internet this job may consumes more than one year to accomplish. The efficiency safes a lot of time.

Not only has the time been short cut but also massive information broaden people's eyesight. at ancient time the eyesight always terminated by the high mountains or deep rivers, even after the appear of modern transportations such as train titanic ship and plane. because the high cost accompanied by modern transportation is also terrifying. until the 21^st century the utilize of the internet enable the poors of the poor to explore the splendid world. Internet offered people a great stage to demonstrate their culture religion and knowledge. so even a primary school student can get knowledge as a professor do.

unfortunately the boom of information case some huge troubles. when exposed to large number of information people will become illogical, they gradually lost the capacity to choose what they need and it hard for them to classify information. because it is impossible for human brains to deal with such massive information.

Terrible as the internet bring, can we hardly deny it is the necessary step of modern technology development.

How to buy happiness

This week the talk performed by Michael Norton,  an Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing Unit and Marvin Bower Fellow at the Harvard Business School, brand me a new point of view on spending money. in his point of view money is able to exchange happiness. He shares fascinating research on how money can, indeed buy happiness -- when you don't spend it on yourself.
Can you accept the concept that happiness can be trade?  my answer is no. as we all know happiness is the deepest feeling originated in your soul. it is priceless, and there exist countless examples show that money, actually, brings sadness more than happiness. The example in the talk, for instance,  the lottery winner's social net works were destroyed after his wining the $5,000,000 lottery. It is a strange phenomenon. when you got large sums of money, you can fulfill all your material needs, and then the satisfactions may rise the happiness. But we often over romanticized this material satisfactions, together with the wealth, old friends' envy and prejudices came. It is a human nature,and it is not a bad thing, we are born to be "selfish".(sorry, I believe that people have the sin, but i am not a christian) it is inevitable.
From this aspect, money can not buy happiness. Nevertheless, just as Michael said, if you spend money on others, you will gain extra happiness! His experiments  well support his point, which make me changed my mind. It seems that people do get happiness from money! After a thought, i realized that it is not the money give the happiness ,but the way you spend it. Sometimes the phenomenon eclipse truth. we spend money on our friend, and we feel happy. it is because our action benefits our friend,and then let us realize our value. it is a kind of self achievement. what's more, i think Michael's intention is to tell us to view a thing in a new aspect, and we may have some new discoveries.
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_norton_how_to_buy_happiness.html

let's put birth control back on the agenda

It was a busy week to me, and during this week I have read several TED talks. One of the most attractive talk is the one brought by Melinda Gates, the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The talk is about Contraception, a controversial topic in recent year. Just as the talk told me that now a days, in terms of contraception issue, most governments and the society focus on women’s ability to control their birth rate instead of on the women themselves. This point of view gave a new aspect to look at the birth control policy.

When we are talking about birth control, the first place come to my mind is Africa and Asia, especially my home land China main land. In my country, the policy of birth control has been carried for 30 years, and the outcome is really amazing that we slowed down the pace of world population growth. The policy seems really effective, but during these years we just focused on the birth rate control. What we neglected the basic right of women, the freedom the will and the ability to control their future. Under the pressure of world population, we do need the birth control policy, but we should consider this problem in terms of humanity and feminism. Before the birth control, can we know the opinions of women first?

Many times we do a just thing, such as birth control, in a wrong way. As far as I know, in some outlying villages governments terrify women to use contraceptive methods. Although it is effective, it twisted the will of women! It violated the basic right of women! Why can not we just use a gentle way to do that? Why not just convey the opinion that give all the best to your child to them, I think, under the nature of mother it will be more effective. As far as I am concerned, we should do everything in the name of humanity!   

http://www.ted.com/talks/melinda_gates_let_s_put_birth_control_back_on_the_agenda.html    

The virtual dissection table

This week I have watched the movie We were soldiers and the TED talk On The Virtual dissection table. Both of them are really cool to me! The movie We Were Soldiers told me a story of the war in Vietnam. It is because that I am not familiar with this history, I will not talk more about the movie.

So I will focus on the TED talk On The Virtual Dissection Table. Child of a medical as I am, I used to dreaming of becoming a doctor as my mother, uncle and grandpa. Nevertheless, the dissection lesson frightened me. Consequently, I give up the dream that one day I can hold s scalpel fight against evil diseases. Although I quit pursuing being a doctor, I still pay much attention on the technology development of medical. It is today that I realized that we will no longer use a dead body to do dissection. The present of dissection table help student to know about the human body and saves a lot of money for hospitals and medical colleges. The most important thing is that the dissection table solved an ethical problem, the feeling of guilty when students dissecting a body. It allows students to make mistakes when they are doing virtual surgery, and this means that when they are doing a real surgery they will make less mistakes. Consequently doctors can protect more people form the shadow of death.

However, dissection and surgery is not like playing a game that every patient is the same. As we all know every disease on every person the symptom will not be 100% same. In other worlds the virtual dissection table has its own disadvantage-it can not 100% reflect the real situation of doing surgery. As far as I am concerned, the Virtual dissection should be improved, but in rapid progress we can invent a more efficient machine to help us to train sophisticate doctors.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_choi_on_the_virtual_dissection_table.html  

Connected, but alone

This weekend i have read several talks on the TED.com, and one talk cast a profound influence on me. The talk is from Sherry Turkle, a professor of social studies of science and technology at Massachusetts Institute of technology. The talk is about ow technology is shaping our modern relationship.

As what sherry said, in the talk, that now a days, although technology, cellphone text and email for example, brought us a lot of convenience when communicating, yet this technology, at the same time, enlarge the gap between each other in the society. Even in a family! parents text or email while their children complain about not having their attention, and children text all day long being together while not being together. I think it is strange that people communicate with each other without using their mouth, eye contact and heart.

As far as i am concerned, it is a symptom of a crisis of believe. It's seems that people no longer believe in each other. They rather trust a machine than a real person. If things go on like this, the society will be freezing cold that is not what i want to see in the future. The lack of trust and the deepest loneliness within together will cause a endless loop- a person who is lack of sense of trust will feel loneliness easily and then he/she may seek for the comfort from the machine, such as cellphone. the more the person use machines the more he/she relies on machines and then the more he/she feels loneliness......Just as what sherry said we expect more from technology and less from each other. This is a world that i do not want want to live in. In my mind the world is filled with love, laughter and languages instead of the cold hard words on the screen.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html