reading career group report NO.3

Reference: Kakutani, M. (2009, November 20). You Know That Chicken Is Chicken, Right? The New York Time.


Summary:
According to the article “You Know That Chicken Is Chicken, Right”, Michiko Kakutani showed that people did not pay enough attention on animal rights. In this article, there were several people who came from different areas showed their opinions about whether people need eat animals or not. Kakutani said that there was a journalist who wrote a book about how dirty the factory farming and the slaughterhouse was. Also, there was another writer wrote that some farmers yield animal in a very short time because they could get more profit from this way. However, that kind of chicken or beef has some unknown diseases because animals has weakened immune systems. The author also mentioned that this writer who was a meat eater before. The writer did not like animals at all because he thought they was dirty and troublesome, but after his wife adopted a puppy dog, he changed his mind. Also, he changed his diet habits became a vegetarian. Kakutani presented an idea that animals should be same with us because they are humans best friends .


Critique:
Nowadays, more and more people got diseases by eating the animals. It is time to think about our relationship with the animal. Do we really need eat animals? Do they need our protection? It is true that people can get many kinds of nutrition from eating meat. However, the meat in the market is feeding in a short time. It means the chicken or beef we eat will not good for our health. May be it will bring some unknown diseases for people. This article gave us a very good example about how a writer changed his mind to become a vegetarian. Even though the writer did not like animal at all, he changed his mind and thought animals are our good friends. It is too merciless to kill so much animal everyday. Nowadays, many kinds of animal have already died out. so protect the animal not only for animal rights, but also keep ecological balance. In my opinion, we should try eat less meat first because it is hard for people stop eating meat. Then, find a way to balance people diet and protect animals.

listening career group report NO.3

Reference: Shiller, R. (2008, January 14). Financial Markets: Finance and Insurance as Powerful Forces in Our Economy and Society. Open Yale Courses. Podcast Retrieved from:
http://openmedia.yale.edu/projects/media_viewer/video_viewer2.php?window_size=medium&type=flv&title=ECON%20252%20-%20Lecture%201%20-%20Prof.%20Robert%20Shiller&path=%2Fcourses%2Fspring08%2Fecon252%2Fflash%2Fecon252_01_011408

Summary:
According to lecture video “Finance and Insurance as Powerful Forces in Our Economy and Society”, Shiller talked about what he would teach in his course and the basic information about the course books. First of all, he introduced his five teaching assistants. All of them were PhD candidates. He has been teaching this course, ECON 252, over 20 years and he liked listening different opinions from different people. He thought finance was a very important technology and also very important for people to understand it in the real world. He would not put too many maths into his course because he knew many people who did not like math but still wanted to take this course. He said that his course books would help students reviewed the key points and key terms for the exams. Also,he would list the main points to help students took exams. At the end, he said his course might give students some ideas about how to do a business but students need to be careful about it.


Critique:
I chose this lecture because I want to know what finance lecture is talking about. The website listed all the lectures about this course. I just want to know the general information about the finance, so I chose the introduction part. In this part, the teacher introduced the basic information about what he will teach his course, what the finance happened in the real world, and his teaching materials. I agreed with him that finance became a very hot major in these few years. I was interested in it before because I heard a lot of successful people stories and they all did very good job. I know a lot of Chinese students want to study this area and they think this major can help them to find a better job than any other majors. However, in my opinion, the most important thing to choose a major is students' interest because it will provide more fun than choose a major for a future job which can earn a lot of money. It is really hard for people to face something that they do not like it and continue to do it for a long time. It will make them feel whiny and depressed. Nevertheless, sometimes there is no choice to choose the major by themselves for chinese students.

Career Group Reading Report NO.2

Reference: Kanter, J. (2010, January 24). Stop Eating Meat and Save the Planet? The New York Time.

Summary:
In the article “Stop Eating Meat and Save the Planet?”, Kanter showed an argument about livestock rise the levels of greenhouse gases and what people could do with it. In Kanter’s article, there were many famous people in the world who showed their opinions about this topic. At the beginning, there was a woman who was showing a picture to warming people do not eat meat on the climate conference in Copenhagen. She came from Ching Hai organization and she wanted people ccould think about eating meat which has raised the planet-warming gases. Paul McCartney, who was a former member of the Beatles and joined in the parliament, said European legislators need to come out a law which could encouraged people just eat meat once a week. However, Mr. Slater said meat contained a lot of nutrition which people need in their body and meat was not green food was people’s bias. At the end, Mr. Seré said if people cut off the meat supporting, it would affect poor people and poor countries. Also, in same situation livestock was pillar of the economy in a country, so it was not easy to solve this problem just without eating meat.

Critique:
This is a very interesting article. It mentioned people eating meat will affect the climate change. Generally, it is hard to think about the relationship between meat eating and climate change. Even though this was not my first time heard about it, I still think it is interesting. Nowadays, the rising demand for meat and dairy products become more and more serious. People like eat meat for many reasons. As the person said in the article, meat maintains different kinds of nutrition and it is good for our body. However, methane is the main gas exhaust from livestock. In the past few years, methane was the major gas raising the temperature and it has became more and more serious.
In Belgian, Civil servants and schoolchildren have already begun with a meat-free day a week. I think this is the first step to solve this problem which began with slowing down the meat consumption. In my opinion, people should eat food in an appropriate way because different people have different health situation with their body. Some people can not eat meat, but others need to eat meat. It is hard to control people eating meat, but I think people can decrease the quantity that they eat.

Career Group Listening Report NO.2

Reference:
Brar, R. (2010, April 17). Exoplanets: The search for other planets. Best lecture 2010 @ TVO Podcast. Podcast Retrieved from:
http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?videoid?78619145001

Summary:
In TVO’s lecture video “Exoplanets: The search for other planets”, Rupinder Brar explained the recent research about exoplanets. In his lecture, he showed how people used direct detection or indirect detection methods to detected planets in the galaxy. First of all, he gave us a general idea about planetary system. Then, he used an emergency light and a small ball to help him explained the theory of planetary. From these experiments, we can see that if a planet was very close to the shining star, the planet would be very hard to detect because the light from the shining star would cover the planet. It means that the parents planet have very strong influence on the small planets which around them. Secondly, he presented the first extrasolar planet which was called Fomalhaut. Fomalhaut’s track was confirmed via direct imaging in 2008. At the end, he said that our technique can be improved to a higher level, and people can detect and learn more planets in the galaxy.

Critique:
I choose this lecture because I want to get knowledge from different areas and learn some general ideas from different majors. This lecture was a little bit hard for me because there were a lot of new vocabularies about astronomy. However, after Brar using some pictures and tools to explain it, I got the ideas. I like Brar’s lecture, not only the tools and the examples that he used can made me easy to understand his lecture, but also the way he presented was very easy to understand. I like his teaching style because he is friendly, and students would feel that the teacher is their friend. Also, he helped students to get the information easier. Students paid attention for him because he always walking around the classroom and communicate with students. I learned a lot of knowledge about the exoplanets from this lecure. It was really interesting. I think it was important for people to know the planets which around our earth. On the other hand, sometimes governments waste a lot of money to explore the galaxy. It is true that our environmental contamination become more and more serious. However, we should protect and save energies to instead finding a new planet to live.

Listening report NO.1

Reference:
Joordens, S. (2010, June 3). Critical Thinking. Best lecture 2010 @ TVO Podcast. Podcast Retrieved from
http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?videoid?69381193001

Summary:
In the TVO’s lecture video “Critical Thinking”, Steve Joordens expound about how people think critically. He introduce what is critical thinking and how people think. Also, he shows how important is critical thinking for people and the way can help people improve their critical thinking. First of all, he presents some expects opinions about the way people think and what make people think differently. Secondly, he uses two pictures about historical content to show people believe have very strong influence for critical thinking. He uses an example that should people eat meat or not pointed out the true reason or primary cause for global warming is green house gas raising the animals in factories, farms from meat consumption. At the end, he advises people to open their mind, show their opinions, and gain more information.

Critique:
This is a really good and interesting lecture. I like the examples in Joordens lecture because it was easy to understand and got the main idea. This lecture gave me more ideas about the way people think and how people learn new information. I agree with what Joordens said in his presentation. He said that people seem to familiar with something they have already known. People will follow by what they thought or learned is true and they got very strong influence from who they admire or their parents. Also, this will be a big problem for improving people think critically because in their mind they tend to accept what they think is right. In my opinion, critical thinking is a challenge for people because it is hard to change the way people think. However, it does not mean impossible to change it just it needs time. I think first of all is, people need enrich their knowledge because they need different opinions with different information. Then, try to refute the new theories. Why it is right and why it is wrong and shows your own opinions. I think it will not change immediately but sometimes it will good for your creative thinking.

Career Group Reading NO.1

Reference:
Cloud, J. (2010, June 14 ). Tastes Like Chicken: The Quest for Fake Meat.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993883,00.html

Summary:
In the article “Tastes Like Chicken: The Quest for Fake Meat” Cloud showed that fake chicken can have same taste like real one. Also, in his article he explained how to make this kind of meat. The scientists who come from University of Missouri produced a kind of chicken which made by soy and it tasted like real meat. Cloud mentioned that this soy product will bring huge profit for whoever brings it to the market. Then, Cloud explained the detail about how to make none meat stuffs together and become like the real meat. Firstly, put soy-protein powder, wheat flour, and water into an extruder machine. Secondly, mix them up until like a batter. Lastly, hit it with suitable temperature. This kind of fake chicken also engages Ethical Treatment of Animals attention. This organization hope through this kind of food can protect more animals. At the end of article, Cloud said that people can eat chicken which grown up in vitro in the future.

Critique:
I think this kind of fake chicken meat is really interesting. That is the main reason I want choice this article to read and I strongly recommend it to my classmates. However, I have several questions with this kind of new food. For one new thing come out, most people will ask is this food safe for them. It is a basic question for a new food and I think this is very important. Also, I am worry about the prise of the product because it makes from a complex way. If this new product bring to market may be it will shock the market and affect some meat companies. I am not sure if this is a good new for all vegetarians. For all vegetarians, they can only eat vegetarian diet and they can not eat meat. I also want to know the meat that make by vegetables will belong to meat or vegetarian diet. If people eat a lot meat they will be very fat, so if people change the diet to eat the fake meat may be they will lose weight. The last one I want to know about the nutrition whether it is balance or not.