Time flies.

I came to Vancouver almost 1 year ago.  I have taken 3 sessions in the ELI, so this session is my third session.  I'm glad to finish my school life, but I'm also sad at the same time because I have to leave here as soon as I finish this session.

When I just came to the ELI, my writing level was just 300 levels in writing. Those days, I had been really struggling to write even one paragraph.  I haven't realized I could improve my writing skill even after I moved up to 400 levels, but now I finally figured out that my writing skill got better, compared to the first session.  In this writing class, I have learned a lot of important and interesting things.  Although I don't know whether I deserve 600 levels or not, I really enjoyed this class, and I got many things.

In addition, I'm happy to have seen my awesome classmates and teacher.  What Nathan gave us was always interesting, and he always helped us. (Some articles were little bit too difficult for me though.) Also, I really like my classmates.  They always have stimulated me, and I have learned a lot from them.

What I learned in this class is not only English, but history, Christianity, science, society, and lots of other things. I really appreciate it.

I'm sorry to be late very often...(but compared to last session, I got better!)

Thank you everyone!!

Let's stay in touch!

I'm gonna post my blog sometimes!

A Summary of "The riddle of experience vs. memory"

Nowadays, a lot of people think about happiness.  Everybody tries to make people as happy as possible; however, in spite of many efforts, sometimes it's really hard. That's because of traps.    There are three main cognitive traps: a reluctance to admit complexity, a confusion between experience and memory, and the focusing illusion.  When people think about happiness, people don't refer to their experience but memory.  Even if a person had good time for long time, if he/she had bad feeling in the end, the whole memory changes to bad memory; eventually he/she can't feel happy.  We have both experiencing self and remembering self. The biggest difference is how to handle time.  As some examples show us, remembering self is much more important than experiencing self.  People shouldn't think about happiness as a substitute of well-being; because those ideas are completely different.

2001 A Space Odyssay

I have watched this movie before I watched it in a class.  When I watched it for the first time, I couldn't understand what happened in this movie at all.  Even now, the movie is still difficult for me; however, I try to interpret the movie.  Definitely, the monolith has a certain purpose.  First of all, the monolith gave human a technology which is enough for them to go to the moon.  After long time, finally people got to the moon and found the second monolith.  The purpose of second monolith is to lead people to the Jupiter.  After eight months, people got the technology enough to go there. And a person got to the Jupiter where is transcending time and space.  He traveled time; after that, I guess he was the only creature in the space.  He was chosen by monolith.  When he was about to die, he saw the last monolith and was reborn as a new human.  The will of monolith is the will of space, and the final purpose is to create new kind of life.  In addition, HAL is a symbol of the technology people achieved to get. I think the scene shows us the fact that technology would attack human if it were developed too much.

2001 A Space Odyssey

Actually I have watched this movie at least three times, but I've fogotten the detail of story.  What I remember about this movie is that the movie is one of the difficult movie to figure out a message.  This movie is profound, meaningful, and artistic.  People in this movie don't speak so much, and Kubric is using some beautiful classic music in some scene where we don't expect that kind of music is used.  I especially like the beginning of this movie, which is called "The dawn of man".  At the moment human beings achieved the innovative evolution, the movie impressed me with beautiful music.

An Optical Illusion

Do you trust your eyes? If so, how can you trust your eyes?  The picture is famous for optical illusion.  Can you believe the square marked A and the one marked B are exactly same colour?  You may say "A is much darker than B"; however, they are same.  This is called an optical illusion (or visual illusion), which is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality.  There are three main types: literal optical illusions, physiological optical illusions, and cognitive optical illusions.


Initially, literal optical illusions create images that are different from the objects that make them.  For example, the lines in following picture are actually parallel, but we somehow feel they have angles.
Zollner, who were Geman, found this optical illusion.  I don't know why our eyes are deceived in this case.  According to Zollner, oblique lines in each parallel lines influence our brain, and the bigger the angle of oblique line is, the more effective it is.  I have a lot of examples about this kind of simple optical illusion, so if you  guys want me to introduce them, let me know!



The second type of optical illusions is physiological one.  This one is the effects on the eyes and brain of excessive stimulation of a specific type such as brightness, colour, size, position, tilt, or  movement. For example, look at the left picture.  Although there are only white dots on the cross, we can see black dots there.  The theory is that a stimulus follows its individual dedicated neural path in the early stages of visual processing, and that intense or repetitive activity in that or interaction with active adjoining channels cause a physiological imbalance that changes perception, according to the literature on this subject.


The third type is cognitive optical illusion.  This type is  called "unconscious inferences". This idea was suggested in the 19th century by Hermann Helmholtz.  For example, look at the right picture.  What do you think this picture looks like?  Some people might say this is two faces which gaze at each other.  The other people might say this is vase.  If we change the way to see it, we can find other shape in a same picture.


What are optical illusions teaching us?  What I wanted to say with using those example is a very simple but important thing. That is, nobody can say "what I see is absolutely correct".  People usually believe only what they can see; however, sometimes truth is hidden.  If we change the way to see, we may be able to see what we haven't seen or what other people usually see.


P.S.
I put the picture which clearly explains the first picture because some of you may be still doubtful.

The Summary of "A Darwinian theory of beauty"

What is beauty?  We can find beauty in many different things like music, art, sports, plays, and so on.  When we think about this topic, we are likely to think beauty is determined by personal sense of value or culture.  However, Denis Dutton illustrates that there are universal beauty that has never changed since human existed, with Darwin's theory.  In nature, there are natural selection and sexual selection.  These selections mean that beautiful things naturally win and remain and what lost in competition disappears. This phenomenon is not dependent on culture but everywhere.  There are beautiful landscape which everybody loves regardless of culture or nationality.  Also people can feel beauty in something done well.  These example shows us that we have aesthetics not in our eyes but in our deep mind.  We have taken it over historically and we also give it to offspring as long as human exist.

Personal Reaction about Bill Reid Gallery

Before I came to Vancouver, I hadn't been curious about the First Nations' culture in Canada.  However, once I knew the history, the culture, and the totem poles, I became interested in the First Nations.  Although the Bill Reid Gallery was smaller than I expected, it was interesting.  In particular, what I found interesting is tongues which most faces have.  The thrusting tongues looks humorous, but actually it doesn't mean it.  The tongue-thrusting is serious, and I heard that it shows that the creature is giving "knowledge" or "power" to the creatures to whom it is thrusting its tongue.  Totem poles are not symbol of religion but symbol of the history.  I felt the First Nations had found their history or origin very significant when I went to the gallery.