http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeaDwFx8fgs

Questions:

1. Have you ever met some friends with mental disorder (Down syndrome, Asperger syndrome, bipolar disorder, etc.)?   

Can you get along with them?

http://chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/business/2013/06/25/382059/Mays-jobless.htm

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The unemployment rate fell to 4.06 percent in May, down 0.01 percent from April and down 0.06 percent from the same time last year, according to a report released yesterday by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS, 主計處).

clip : http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_beware_conflicts_of_interest.html

script : 

So, I was in the hospital for a long time. And a few years after I left, I went back, and the chairman of the burn department was very excited to see me -- said, "Dan, I have a fantastic new treatment for you." I was very excited. I walked with him to his office. And he explained to me that, when I shave, I have little black dots on the left side of my face where the hair is,but on the right side of my face I was badly burned so I have no hair, and this creates lack of symmetry. And what's the brilliant idea he had? He was going to tattoo little black dotson the right side of my face and make me look very symmetric.

It sounded interesting. He asked me to go and shave. Let me tell you, this was a strange way to shave, because I thought about it and I realized that the way I was shaving thenwould be the way I would shave for the rest of my life -- because I had to keep the width the same. When I got back to his office, I wasn't really sure. I said, "Can I see some evidence for this?" So he showed me some pictures of little cheeks with little black dots -- not very informative. I said, "What happens when I grow older and my hair becomes white? What would happen then?" "Oh, don't worry about it," he said. "We have lasers; we can whiten it out." But I was still concerned, so I said, "You know what, I'm not going to do it."

Source: http://science.time.com/2013/05/14/modifying-the-endless-genetically-modified-crop-debate/#ixzz2WHxx2Y4x 

Modifying the Endless Debate Over Genetically Modified Crops

I’ll admit—I’ve never quite understood the obsession surrounding genetically modified (GM) crops. To environmentalist opponents, GM foods are simply evil, an understudied, possibly harmful tool used by big agribusiness to control global seed markets and crush local farmers. They argue that GM foods have never delivered on their supposed promise, that money spent on GM crops would be better funneled to organic farming and that consumers should be protected with warning labels on any products that contain genetically modified ingredients. To supporters, GM crops are a key part of the effort to sustainably provide food to meet a global population that is growing by the billions. But more than that, supporters see the knee-jerk GM opposition of many environmentalists as fundamentally anti-science, no different than the deniers on the other side of the political spectrum who question the basics of man-made climate change.

source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking. That's why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.

News misleads. Take the following event (borrowed from Nassim Taleb). A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where he came from. Where he planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all irrelevant. What's relevant? The structural stability of the bridge. That's the underlying risk that has been lurking, and could lurk in other bridges. But the car is flashy, it's dramatic, it's a person (non-abstract), and it's news that's cheap to produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated.

Summary: When 13 year-old Logan LaPlante grows up, he wants to be happy and healthy. He discusses how hacking his education is helping him achieve this goal.

please go to the link and watch the video 

http://youtu.be/h11u3vtcpaY

source: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/30/leading-neuroscientist-religious-fundamentalism-may-be-a-mental-illness-that-can-be-cured/

A leading neurologist at the University of Oxford said this week that recent developments meant that science may one day be able to identify religious fundamentalism as a “mental illness” and a cure it.

During a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday, Kathleen Taylor was asked what positive developments she anticipated in neuroscience in the next 60 years.

“One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated,” she explained, according to The Times of London. “Somebody who has for example become radicalised to a cult ideology – we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance.”

source: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/an-insiders-view-of-the-hype-and-realities-of-3-d-printing/

Questions:

1. If you get a 3D printer, what would you like to print? If you had a DORAEMON, what things would you ask for?

2. What's your attitude toward a new technology? Why and why not you adopt that? 

source:http://www.englisharticles.info/2011/12/26/near-death-experiences-2/

The near death experience has been recorded in art and literature throughout history but has only recently been a topic of systematic scientific investigation, where it is commonly referred to as NDE. While there is no precise definition of thenear death experience, the term refers to a cluster of phenomena reported by people who have survived an acute trauma or medical condition that was almost terminal. A number of individuals in a near terminal state have reported experiencing a series of phenomena that appear to be nearly universal and independent of culture. Likely to be included in any NDE are a sense of being absent from one’s physical body, a sense of being surrounded by or going through a tunnel of white light, a profound sense of peace, and a confrontation with a significant figure, often identified in religious terms such as Shiva or Christ, who indicates that it is not time to die and orders a return of the self to the body. People often report that as a consequence of such an experience, they have a renewed sense of purpose in life, a deepened or newly discovered religious faith, and a conviction that there is life after death.

Some scientists attribute these experiences to such factors as oxygen deprivation and the secretion of endorphins generated by the brain as the body begins to die. Thus, while few dispute the reality of near death experiences, whether they are religious or not depends on how they are interpreted. People within faith traditions that emphasize the reality of an afterlife often find confirmation of this belief in a near death experience, and they identify the figures that appear in NDEs as significant figures within their religious tradition.

After a near death experience, some individuals without any faith tradition may seek out a faith tradition that supports the reality of what they experienced. For others, the phenomena are merely phantasms produced by a brain near death. Those who are spiritual use noncommittal language to describe an experience that for the religiously devout can be explicitly described in the language of their faith. A small number of near death experiences are quite negative, and some are described in language suggesting a confrontation with the demonic.

source : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22467640 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPgpRw9tiuM  This is a show in which the host uses lie detector in a funny way. You can watch it if you get time.

The curious story of how the lie detector came to be

The science behind the lie detector test has been disputed since its creation 90 years ago, so is there any reliable way to tell if someone is lying, asks Dr Geoff Bunn, author of The Truth Machine: A Social History of the Lie Detector.

"If I was guilty and wanted to beat that machine, it wouldn't be hard," says Sharon Stone's psychopathic character in Basic Instinct.