20160529 Essay: An important skill to be successful

21th Century. It is the period when the collaboration of various ideas exists. People all over the world are now sharing their ideas and making them come true so as to be successful, and success which most people want to achieve gives you the feeling of happiness itself. And in these circumstances is one important skill you need to know: the polite refusal. It might sound contradictory, at the point that the word ‘polite’ and ‘refuse’ make you imagine quite distinct mood of pictures. Though, there clearly is a refusal method that the counterpart gets less hurt: The proportion of the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ remarks is the key of it. You should say 5 positive things to cite a negative thing, in order to communicate appropriately, according to the love equation suggested by doctor Gottman. So, why is the polite refusal important?

First of all, it can relieve your feelings. Many of you, especially people who want to be kind to others, hesitate to refuse other’s suggestion because you are afraid of making them annoyed. However, unconditional acceptance can rather make others feel stuffy because they always have temporal and situational burden as the counterpart should decide all the things. Also, such the acceptance can contribute to uncomfortable situations to you since none of your opinion is included. For example, when you go to a restaurant for dinner, and you don’t suggest your idea of what to eat, the counterpart will choose your dish and it might not always fit your taste. But if you do not know how to refuse the counterpart’s order, you would not be satisfied. On the contrary, the polite refusal makes the counterpart understand the precise characteristics of you, which can offer a chance to communicate with each other.

Second, it is another way of expressing consideration. Altruism does not mean following others, at all. Saying our own thoughts so that you can participate in making a community’s opinion, which can be showed as a form of refusal, is an expression that you are paying attention to others.

There is an old saying “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” We should all know the way to refuse well in social relationships to prevent unreasonable situations to happen to you. And it is now the chance to get your own beliefs.

20160626 Essay: Computer Games

Recently, IS, an Islam radicalism terror community, released a video promoting themselves. What was controversial about the video was that it compared a screen of a video game and a real IS soldier’s life, saying that “You can experience things in the game in reality.”

First of all, there can be a serious addiction to computer games. American Psychological Association concluded the game addiction was included into a kind of mental illnesses. They commented the symptoms of computer games was similar to those of gambling addictions, impulse control disorders. And this addiction appears due to the desire to be rewarded – Griffith, in his book <Online video gaming>, cited that addictions were radically based on certain rewards and reinforcement of thoughts - by something very simple for them to do in their life. Some proponents of computer games claim that there exists some policies, a shut-down policy in Korea for example, to keep people from being addicted to the games. However, one statistics conducted for adolescents about the proportion of game addict shows that there were no change after applying the policy, proving those policies have no practical effects.

Also, it can badly affect children’s mental conditions. According to a social learning theory suggested by Albert Bandura, children may observe and imitate the behavior the people around them do. And owing to this imitation mentality, children also copy the game contents they see. Since many of the computer games contain sensationalism and violence, such as some criminal incidents like murder and robbing, this kind of behavior confuse our society’s atmosphere. The most representative example of this is the Gangnam-yeok homicide case, of which the criminal committed cruel murders by the impact of violent computer games.

Lastly, computer games make people unresponsible for their job, especially for students to study less than they should. According to a statistics measured in one Korean middle school, students 20% from the bottom on performance usually appear to play game over 3 hours once they start it. Like this instance, computer games can have cons to studying students. But some people insist that there be some educational games. However, the market share of educational games is staying at low level. As a result, most computer games cannot be seen as having good aspects to studying.

In conclusion, I think computer games are not good for children on the grounds that they can have strong addictiveness, deteriorate children’s sentiments, and make children study less. Although games give us a little exciting feeling of life, we should control ourselves from falling out the world of provocative computer games.

20160807 Essay 5: INTERNET

“Knowledge is power.” Francis Bacon, the father of scientific methods of inquiry, said this, which means the more one knows, the more one will be able to control events. In this modernized world where computer remembers much information, the meaning of “knowledge” have been extended from just our brain’s memorization to what information our computer has, and the information-gathering and the information-filtering capability are being much stressed. Thus, in our life, a huge cluster of data of the past histories, known as BIG DATA and used to analyze social phenomena, is now interpreted as “power” of Bacon’s quote. For the reason, I think the Internet, the network connecting computers, provides people with a lot of valuable information, most of which has its own special meanings contributing to improving the usability of BIG DATA analytics.

First of all, that information can make the analysis much accurate. Some people might insist we are having too much information on the Internet so that it confuses the interpretation of social veins. However, the purpose of BIG DATA analytics initially is finding hidden patterns of the information. And in the process, having much information, though it seems useless, can work as an important resource of understanding this human society. For instance, social network analysis(SNA), one of the BIG DATA analytics that investigates social structures among networks, seeks influencers of the social network services who give others certain impacts through statistical tools like graphs and use them in marketings. And in this method, any information relevant to the influencer, if proper range of searching keyword is set, can be appreciated by its value making the outcome of the statistics more exact.

Second, having much information contributes to increasing the ability to regard something in diverse perspectives. There is a Korean proverb that “The more you know, the more you can see.” So having much information can expand the view on an object. Thomas Edison, for example, was able to invent a lamp since he knew about 1000 different ways that can cause failure, resulting in getting rid of the number of cases. And in the process, he could grow his own knowledge and eventually find how he can make a lamp work. Computers of 21th century, which we live in, can help us know ways to fail much easier than Edison’s era, by analyzing their own information effectively by calculating.

In conclusion, I think the Internet is now offering valuable information that can attribute to the accuracy of the analysing statistics and the diversity of information. The Internet would provide us a new way of life, by analysing and showing many views in the world.

20160828 Essay 4: Alone vs With Friends

“No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main.”, said the poem ‘for whom the bell tolls’ by John Donne. Like this sentence, we, human beings, are considered as social beings that interact with others to be mature. However, can humans find their values or meaning of existences only in social communication? The answer, on my own, is: Absolutely no. Although being with friends enables us to share our ideas with them and develop our ideas, we can think much deeply through a process called self-reflection; we recall our behaviors of the past and try to improve them to much rational aspects in the course. So I regard the self-reflection as more important thing to practise than interacting with others, so as to grow myself up.

First, spending time alone makes my feeling much stable. Some people might claim that our feelings are things to share with others so that we can be more comfortable, holding up a synonym “A Sorrow shared is half a trouble, but a joy that`s shared is a joy made double” as an example. But in this case also, we cannot get rid of concerns about the turbulence of human relationships. For instance, students often tend to evaluate others by their statements, and if there’s a bad estimation on someone, people usually spread the bad evaluation and gather to isolate the person so he would be lonely because of the evaluation and relationship. However, if being alone, we can retain our feelings much stably.

Second, investing time to myself enables self-improvement. Some insist that being with friends are more reasonable than being alone for it increases sociality. However, time for my own can also contribute to the society since I can reflect myself of the past calmly and know myself well to consider the ways to improve my actions. And in the procedure, our actions can be approached closer to the social ethics, which requires continuous self-criticizing, according to a philosophy professor Namsun Gang. Also, since each person gathers to make a society, and we interact with other members of society, having improved social ethics of myself would make for the entire society’s ethics to be better.

To conclude, I prefer to spend my time alone than with friends because it makes me be stable and give chances to improve more. Time never runs back: I hope we spend our time much efficiently which would be helpful to our life, by self-reflection and improvement.

The Story of Recycling Over Coffee

    

Picture 1. Coffee Beans

Since Gojong era of Choseon Dynasty, coffee drinking culture has deeply pervaded Korean society and history. It now became a part of modern people’s life as coffee drinking population in Korea rose. However, simultaneously, some environmental problems in the process of coffee making such as the disposal of coffee cups are often being a controversial issue.

And one of those problems mainly cited nowadays is the disposal of “used coffee grounds”. Although many people think the amount of coffee grounds wouldn’t be much, the amount of disposed coffee grounds everyday is about the average 130t, only in coffee shops located in Seoul.

One factor that makes this phenomenon happen is the unorganized recycling system in Korea, which omits the recycling of coffee grounds even if it could be reused. As a result, most people actually do not recognize the fact that used coffee grounds can be recycled since there was no national promotion about it.

     

Picture 2. Mushrooms grown by coffee grounds

 

As a solution to this problem as well as giving benefits to our lifes, growing mushrooms with coffee grounds is suggested in Paris. By using coffee grounds in urban agriculture, it is making the local consuming possible in the area. Also, the education toward farmers about it is now practiced to expand this eco-friendly method to the whole world.

In Jong-no of Seoul were similar businesses promoted. By using coffee grounds collected in the coffee shops in Jong-no district, people are now recycling them as fertilizer and fodder, making the environment much cleaner.

In addition, a bevy of scientists of Nevada University in America suggested more developed forms of technology using coffee grounds, which was producing “bio-diesels” using coffee grounds. This idea named Caffé Fuel was created since discovering the fact that the chemical reaction of ethanol and coffee grounds can make bio-diesels.

I hope further studies about disposed coffee grounds would be developed and also the perception and use of these technologies would be known to the public.

 

 

* Related Stories

- Bio-diesel producing corporation using coffee grounds

http://www.bio-bean.com/

- An Article about Caffé Fuel

https://engage.blogs.unr.edu/2013/06/20/caffe-fuel-how-coffee-could-revolutionize-biofuels/