Voice~Pretty fun

Try to guess who is speaking and what is he speaking about.
btw...Try to pronounce the words because thats how it should sound like~

Ay bolo, come! Look what I ave, lap top. Cool aye~. And…Sole, chu don’t know how to use a cumputar? Solei, let me taught chu. Step one, you need to open the lid. Yea, the lid. Not the case bolo, the lid. Dan chu need to turn it on. Bress the turn on button. It looks like a circle with a stick goin up. Yea, horizontal! Up! Dan it is very complicated. Chu see, theres a button that looks like a broken donut. NO! Not a real donut! Dan chu look for the internet icon. Err…it should look like a lowercase e. Lowercase e!! Bolo! Do chu know chur alphabets? Don’t worry man…I give up…

Answer: Samoan

The Grizzly Man

In the film “Grizzly Man”, I found something that I’ve never seen before. Timothy Treadwell, an amateur bear expert spent his life protecting these grizzly bears from poachers, hunters and most of all, the societies. Every summer, he moves to Alaskan wildlife refuge on Kodiak Island and stayed there for about two months. For him, grizzly bears are more than animals, they are families. Timothy wishes that one day, the grizzlies can accept him as one of their own. The love from Timothy is no less than the love that’s project from a mother to her newborn. For many peoples, this documentary is about a man trying to be a bear. Yet, for me, I think Timothy was always a bear. He is above the level of obsess. He deserved to be called grizzly bear for what he had done for those bears. Even though the majority of the society refuses to give him the esteem he deserved, he still did a very good job at showing the world the truth side of grizzlies.

I think Timothy is very similar to Steve Irwin. I know they have a totally different lifestyle and I’m totally aware of that, but for some reason, I see a similarity between the two. They both have extreme ways to educate the society without losing their attention. Timothy always goes to elementary and teaches little kids about grizzly bears. This is similar to Steve when he educates the whole world from footages on his own adventures into the wild. They both risk their life for the same reason, the better future of those animals.

I think Timothy has an amazing personality. He is so emotional, and candid in the same time. He openly shared his feeling to the society which surprised me. In the society today, it is very unusual to find such candidness. This is another reason why I respect Timothy.

For me, Timothy’s death is definitely a new beginning. With the expand of his company, the grizzly peoples, I’m very hopeful about the futures of these bears. There might be poachers still and I believe Timothy’s death means nothing to them, but I know that one day, the society will have a sudden awakens and realize the sacrifice Timothy Treadwell had done. Timothy’s death will definitely help change the future of the grizzlies.

Number

What do numbers mean to you? Is it math? Cash? Or, it could be lottery numbers. Numbers have different meaning to everyone and I’m going to share a very interesting story about “Numbers”. Yet, instead of reviewing this story, I want to point out interesting voice that’s projected by its author.

This story is obviously about numbers, but interestingly, this story doesn’t make numbers equal to cash, math or lottery numbers. The story is about a fatalist called Frederick Ronald Fulton. Freddie had a misery life when he reached adolescent from anticipating his own death. He knew that his life will end on a certain date and as he grew older, he become more nervous about the arrival of this day. The anxiousness made him scan all kind of papers for clues.

In the past, Freddie had a few attempt suicides, yet all of them failed. He tried to hang himself on a loose rope and leaped in front of a train which he is later rescued from beneath the mighty train engine. The hope of resting for eternity never came.

Until one day, he is brought into the police station because two constables found him saying the same word over and over again, “Today”. The police must have thought Freddie is going to suicide again, so they brought him back. The constables later found out that Freddie is holding onto something, tightly. They took the paper and found out that it’s a lottery ticket which was 251987. After checking the newsletter, they found out that Freddie was the luckiest winner. The police ran and told their sergeant the wonderful truth. However, the sergeant immediately realized that the numbers were same as the date, the 2^nd of May, 1987. With the shocking discovery, they ran back and found Freddie sitting there with both eyes open. Yet, not breathing.

I think from reading this story, I can see the voice this author might sound like. The story is obviously about black humors. Its rich use of adjective made this story more gripping and I think this project the author’s personality. The way this story is planned also showed me that the author must be a very organized and funny in the same time. Obviously, he is very creative and coherent. He is definitely someone that I want to meet with.

2nd Expedition Question

Do we have an ethical responsibility toward animals?

Yes, we should. First, we humans are animals too. We shouldn’t exempt ourselves from the animals because we evolved faster than them. And throughout history, animals never treat others cruelly. They compete but they don’t exterminate. If we humans accept them truth that we are animals too, we should definitely follow the rule of the mother natural.

Do animals have emotion? Give example is possible.

I strongly believe that “some” animals have emotions. For example, dogs. I think dogs are very emotional. They had been human’s friend for millions of years. They makes sounds and movements to show their emotions. Another example is elephant. I once read from an article that elephants have incredible memory. And the article is talking about a little boy bullied and infant elephant in a national park. And when the boy grew up, he went back to the same national park. And when he got there, he is attacked by an adult elephant. Later, he found out that it’s the infant elephant he once bullied. This elephant showed its hatred toward the man because it’s bullied by him before.

Arctic Tale

Today, the whole grade 11 watched a movie called Arctic tale. This is a documentary film made by the National Geography in 2007. The film itself took fifteen years to make because everything is live footage and it is talking about the cycle of two animals, polar bears and walruses. It is so well filmed; many people couldn’t believe that it’s a documentary. The main idea for this film is to show the lifestyle of polar bear and walrus, and also to show the devastating effect global warming are having to the north pole.

This film clearly showed the reality of both polar bears and walrus’s lifestyle. I learnt that male polar bear might attack female of youth bears for unknown reasons. The fact that baby walrus can memorize the whiskers on the elder walruses is incredibly amazing. I’m also shocked that polar bear can smell through 3 feet of ice and then break open the ice by stamping their front feet on it.

During this movie, there are many peaceful and funny moments which I would love to share with you, but I don’t want to lost track of the main reason of this movie. I believe this movie is really trying to get two ideas across. First, they want to use footages to show that animals DO have feelings. This a very big problem in our society right now. Many scientists refuse to agree that animals have feeling and cruelly perform vivisection on animals. Anthropomorphism becomes something that scientist refuse to get close to and this idea disseminated and influenced most of the young scientist. To proof the scientist wrong, the narrator used a very extreme method. Throughout the whole movie, Queen Latifah anthropomorphized everything and I have to admit that she did a terrific job. I don’t know if animals have feeling or not, and I don’t want this post to be controversy.

I think, the main idea for this movie is to show the devastating effect global warming has to the North Pole. The movie shows how many animals are forced to face a totally different environment and many died because they couldn’t adapt to this new environment fast enough. In the footages, it shows how dangerous it is for both polar bears and walruses because their environment changed so much. Polar bears are having difficult times crossing the ice because it is too thin for them and walrus are forced to find lands that are hard enough for them for the same reason. It is like watching the last 20min of Titanic because many walruses are forced to stay underwater because there are no ices that could support them.

When I saw the whole fleet of walruses fled into the open sea to find a harder land, I felt extremely shameful. These walruses are at risk because of me. My convenient life results in their death and I’m very shameful for that.

At last, I strongly recommend everyone to watch this movie. It gives positive influence to little kids because it not only improves their knowledge on the animals, but they could also be more aware of the reality. This could also help teenagers and adults. I know that everyone knows global warming very well, but not everyone know the effect it has on the environment. There for, I believe this movie should be watched by everyone.

Reading and Questioning

I think after reading the title of this blog, anyone can tell that this is another blog on reading techniques. This technique is analogous to reading and prediction. This technique also requires spending more times because it requires a lot of thinking. Basically, you read and ask yourself what is the author’s intend. This is very helpful when you are reading very complicated books because it allows you to think in a different view, which is very helpful in many cases.

Another reason why I suggest everyone to use this technique is because it helps you to remember the texts more clearly. If you understand what the author’s intend is, the main idea for that chapter would stay in your mind for a longtime.

For me, this technique really helped me to understand difficult books. It not only helps me understand it, it also left a very strong impression after over a month. This means a lot for a student whose first language is mandarin.

Fast Food Nation

Today in class, we finally finished the movie “fast food nation”. In the movie, it shows the process of making a hamburger. But unlike other documentary movies, it doesn’t simply show the process. Instead, it has an interesting storyline that connect to other issues such as the illegal immigrants from Mexico. I’m not going to summarize the movie here, but I want to express my feeling after I watched the movie. I think this movie not only shows the process of making burgers, it also reflects to the society. When the main character found out that the burgers are contaminated with bovine feces because the production line is too fast, it makes me wonder. What is the reason for a production line which makes food to go that fast? Profit. Simply profit. The faster the production line is going, the more meat patty there is. It really disturbs me, because I can’t imagine what the manager is thinking when he knew his meats are being contaminated with craps! Also, this movie talks about the illegal workers from Mexico. Before I watch this movie, I didn’t know the situation of illegal immigrants in America. I’m really shocked about how the Mexicans are living in such harsh conditions in its’ own country. But what’s more painful is when I saw them being treated like animals when they arrived in America. I’m less concerned about the whole issue of illegal immigrant. It feels terrible when I watch the movie. Americans think they disserve to be treated like this because they make more then what they make at Mexico, but, I think its not fair to say that. Since the Mexicans arrive to this country, shouldn’t they be able to live the life like an ordinary American? This made me more aware to the issue to racism.

Wal* Mart

I’ve never been to Wal-Mart and I’ve never heard of Wal-Mart before I watched this movie. But I know exactly what Wal-Mart is like because we have the similar corporation in Australia called K Mart. My family goes to K mart monthly because they sell a wide range of things and most of them are cheap. And we always know that K Mart uses cheap labor, in fact, most people know. But I don’t know how serious it is until I watched this movie. Workers have little privacy and they have nearly no rights. When I see the workers in China moving to the dining hall, the whole factory suddenly looked like a Nazi concentration camp. It shocked me! The interviews on small business also shocked me. When I saw they cry, my heart broke into pieces. I never thought of the affect large corporation like Wal-Mart could cause. I always though Wal-Mart is making little money because its’ products cost so little. Then I saw how Wal-Mart is also putting pressure on its own employees, and this really angered me. They give their workers small amount of wages and expect them to work their hardest, it is just immoral. The movie showed some of their employees’ family and some of them are struggling to give their child a better education. Wal-Mart is trading their employees’ future for its profit. And I feel really angry about this. At the end of this movie, it shows how towns are rejecting Wal-Mart all over the country. Many people stand up for themselves and I think this really gave small family owned business hope.

Peace Keeping Law

Today our class are discussing about the peace-keeping law. It’s like a cycle between everything! The novel uses the ABC theory for example, and I think the real peace-keeping law is far more then ABC. Everything on this planet is connected, the iceberg in Antarctica can affect the weather in China, and an increase of emission in USA can affect Europe. This peace-keeping law includes many things. In the animal kingdom, competition is everywhere. But we will never see a lion go killing hyenas because they are eating lion’s foods. This however isn’t the same in our society. We have wars between countries because of natural resources, beliefs and even race. Everyone wants to destroy their enemies, and they will do everything to stop their enemy’s advance. Another thing animal kingdom does is they don’t store extra foods. They lay their life in the hands of mother natural. Elephants don’t store glass for themselves. If they sense the weather is getting drier and they know they will run out of grass, they won’t store the grass. They simply move. We humans don’t do that. We will never give our life to the natural because we want to rule the natural ourselves. After the discussion, I think my understanding on the peace-keeping law increased a lot! Because I heard many ideas from my classmate which I will never think about.

The God must be CRAZY!

In the beginning, it shows the life in the natural and how the African bushman lives. It talks about their lifestyle and it sound just like the Leavers in Ishmael. They show total respect to all sorts of lives in the natural, take only what they need, don’t own any of the lands and this is just like the peace-keeping law. Then the movie starts showing the Takers’ lifestyle. Busy cities, works, educations, entertainment and these are just like a routine for them. Day by day, they follow what they considered to be the law, not the peace-keeping law, but a law they must follow to stay alive in their own world. Then the movie went back to the African family, as they are living their ordinary life, one major event happened. A pilot passing their village threw a coke bottle out and landed right next to an African bushman. This bottle totally changed this family’s life. First they don’t know how to use the bottle. They thought this is a gift from the gods and they believe this bottle should be in good use. Then they start to discover new uses of this bottle. They use it to smooth the skin of a snake, smash roots, print paints on cloths and even as musical instrument. But the problem is, there is only one bottle and there are over 15 members in that family. So a feeling of ownership starts to spread. Everyone in the family wants that bottle. So, the adults fight over it when they want to use it as a tool and the kids fight over it when they want to play with it. This is just like what Ishmael is trying to tell us. The takers fight over power. They know this power can help them to complete works more easily and also bring fun to them. But one big difference between the Leavers and the Takers is, Leavers can give up certain things which they believe is going to ruin their life. Takers can’t even admit their mistake and they will continue whatever they are doing. So, the family begins to understand how evil this bottle is and the person who brought it back decided to throw it to the end of earth. He left this family and begins him journey to the end of the world with this bottle. Then the movie went to another scene, some rebels who disagree with its government assassinated some politicians. After the assassination, some rebels got caught and gave the police their hide place which result in a big war between rebels and polices. This is a perfect example of what the Takers are doing. They fight over power and wealth. They have greed in themselves and want to have the power to rule over the others. Then the movie went on talking about how Steyn is making a fool out of himself in front of Kate Thompsons and how Kate goes to the little village and teach students. This is when the African bushman entered the Takers’ world. He saw all kind of civilized things such as cars, guns…etc. Even though he entered the Taker’s world, he still lives like a Leaver. He shot a goat which is owned by someone because he is hungry. Then the police came and first he grabbed the goat and put it in his car. This mad the bushman angry. He think the police is really greedy and selfish, but he didn’t argue with him. He turned and tries to hunt another goat. Unfortunately, the police thought he is running away and shot him in the leg. Later he ended up in jail for 3 months. When his translator knows this, he got really angry because he knows the depression will end the bushman’s life. So he went and brought him out of the jail to work with him. In that time, he taught him how to drive. Then the movie went on talking about how the rebels used Kate and her students as hostage and tries to leave the country. Steyn, bushman and his translator saw them and used sleeping darts to rescue them. After all these incidents, the bushman decided to leave his friends, Steyn and the translator and continue his journey. Not knowing how long he walked, he reached a cliff. It is above the clouds and it looked very much like the end of the world. So the bushman threw the bottle into the cloud without any hesitate. This journey is like an example which the Leavers must take. There are more things that are hindering them from living the way there are now, If they wants to live like a Leaver, they will have to travel a similar journey to quit some bad habits. But they are willing to do that. This is also like a good example Ishmael’s ABC theory. He risk his life not because the bottle is troubling him, but because the bottle is bringing doom to him family. This is like how A cook for B, they don’t think about themselves first. They always think about how this will affect the other and what they can do to create a better life for others. And this what I felt after watching this movie.

Prophet and Prophesy

Today, we watched a very shocking and disturbing video. It is about the People’s Temple founded by Jim Jones. On November 18^th, 1978, he made all of his followers to commit suicide by taking cyanide poisons. I also did a little research on this incidence and I was wroth when I found out they shoot or force inject the poisons to anyone who resisted committing the suicide. I simply can’t believe they way people react to prophets and their prophesies. I think it’s the stress, anger, fear and confuse we have on our society that turned us to the prophets. Humans are very intelligent, we know there’s something wrong with our life, and we are fully aware of anything around us. But we don’t know “What” is wrong, so we stop looking for problems and listen to others. We trust a prophet instead of looking into ourselves. If we start to trust the prophet or the prophesy, our mind will no longer think for itself and simply follow the prophet, this is because we don’t want to go back to the ordinary life which we hated.

Reaction After watcning Jane Goodall's TED Talk

After watching Jane Goodall’s speech, a feeling of shame rushed into me. Jane said that we human are not much different from the chimpanzees because they too have emotions, knows physical and mental suffering, have a sense of humor and have the ability to invent and use tools. If they are not much different than us, why should they be locked up in the cage? The reason is this, we want to be superior. We want to rule the world and twist is around if we feel like it. It took us very long to accept the fact the chimpanzees are not much different to us. It is true that we humans have a greater power but we abused this power. Instead of using this power to help, we destroy. Just like what Ishmael said, we think we are the peak of the creation. We think our destiny is to rule the world in our own way because we are the chosen one. But the more advance we get, we realized more things. We realized that mother earth is far more powerful than us. A simple earthquake can destroy a whole city, a simple tsunami can sink a whole island. This is not what human want. There’s is no way we could rule the world like this. So humans challenged mother earth. We open up a mountain is we want to get through and we fill up a lake if we want more lands. Humans are too arrogant and will never give up until we fully conquered the world. We humans not only pressure the animals, we also put pressure on the native humans. This is according to Ishmael, the Leavers. They are indigenous who lives in the deep forest and up in the mountains. They live with the nature peacefully and understand the way we should live. Ishmael said we humans need to find the way to live and the Leavers is doing just fine in their forest. Sadly, instead of asking for helps, we went and tried to take over land. We went into their forest and dig holes just to find oils. They helplessly defend themselves but this doesn’t seem to work because no one outside knows about the fight in the forest. This is just like what Ishmael said, humans use to travel around the world to find food and we don’t stay in the same area for a long time. But, when agriculture begins, human started growing food and raises more kids. This repeats and humans eventually decide to growing more then what we needed. This is similar to what Jane Goodall said about hunters. They use to only kill what is needed to feed them. But as time goes, hunters turned greedy and started killing more then what they needed. Some is restored for food, but most of them are sold to merchant for profits. This is very disgusting when I heard Jane Goodall said it. If we don’t change our greediness, one day we might bring extinction to all animals! Another similarity Jane Goodall, Ishmael and other scientist from TED have is that all of them seek help from the readers or the audiences. They know that not all human beings are the same and there are some peoples out there that also want to save the world. So they are trying to convince the open minded people. Ishmael is using a lot of lessons and challenges to get the reader opened up. This way we won’t forget what we’ve learned. E.O Wilson and Phil Borges try to convince the audience by power speech with true statements. For Jane Goodall, she chooses another way. Her method is using Roots and Shoots programme. This is just a union that teaches peoples how to save the world. Kind of like the Global Ethics class now. Another thing about Jane Goodall and other peoples is that they give us hope. After all the terrible facts, they gives us hope for the better future. In the end, Jane said that the hope of our planet is in our hand and if we want, we could change the world over night.

E.O Wilson's Talk

I think after watching E.O. Wilson’s TED speech, the word “warning” trucked my mind. Mr. Wilson showed me the ignorance of human’s behavior toward other species which inhabit in our planet. E.O. Wilson stated that we are using HIPPO to destroy innocent creatures for our own benefits. He warned us with many good examples. He told us about the interconnectedness we have with insects. If one day humans destroyed all insects, the cycle between the two will break and all human been will be gone within a few months. Although this might seen forever because of the mass amount of insects that is still alive, but studies tells us that over the last 600 years we humans have already pushed over 44,000 varieties of bugs into extinction and that’s only because humans only just started polluting this earth. I read an article over the holiday about hermit crabs in Taiwan. Their habit is being destroyed cruelly from the pollution and there’s hermit crabs forced to use waste pipes as shells. If we continue to ignore this issue, the speed of species’ extinction will increase dramatically and the extinction of humans will come faster than ever.

During Mr. Wilson’s speech, he also talked about the little knowledge we humans have on our mother earth. It’s incredible that humans only know 16% of the species that lives among us. Sadly, without learning from them, we humans are already pushing them into extinction. E.O. Wilson tried to convince us to respect the animals and to spend more times understanding them. His greatest dream is to create an encyclopedia of life. The word encyclopedia basically means knowledge. He wish humans can have wisdom and to understand the natural. That’s why it’s call the encyclopedia of life. He wishes to include all living creatures that inhabit in our earth in the encyclopedia. If his dream really come true, human’s life will change dramatically. For centuries, humans have been learning from the animals around us. Our ideas mainly come from the animal kingdom. If we know all the species and protect them, our knowledge about all surrounding will increase and it will also teach peoples to take care of each others. The help it give is so wide that I can’t even imagine. After all, the main point is too take care of the environment and treat the species with all respect.

Reading and Summarizing

I mentioned in my previous blog that while reading, you could help to understand more by predicting the story. However, not every strategy works the same for all peoples. So I want to present another new technique to you. It’s called Reading and Summarizing.

This is very useful for peoples whose first language isn’t english. It is really normal for peoples like us to accidentally scan through pages while thinking about the previous chapters. This is quite critical to your understanding of a book. This happened to me many times. Luckily, I learned this awesome technique, and here I’m going to share it with you.

Every book (well...most books) have chapters. These chapters all contain its own topic and they are always the main stepping stone to the next chapter. Understand each chapter is essential. Yet, not many people can remember everything they read. It would be hard to refer to earlier chapter if you haven't make any notes.

So the new strategy is to take notes. This is very useful when you are reading a big and confusing book. When you are reading a chapter, even if you understand it pretty well and you think the main idea will always stay in your mind, Still Write Notes. It is very normal for ideas to fadeout in times. So always write notes on the chapters you've read. The best advantage of writing notes down is that, you can improve your skill on taking notes down. For a student like me which is going to college in 2 years, developing the habit of writing note is very helpful.