I once read a book called Flatland by Edwin Abbott. The story was about a 2-dimensional world. It was actually pretty boring in the beginning; it described this 2d world in great detail giving the history of it (wars and such) and all the laws of the world, the social structure. All of the people were 2d shapes - triangles, squares, octagons, circles and such. I suppose it was pretty creative. And then it focused on a square, or some shape. I actually don't remember the book very well; it was a long time ago.


So let's say this square then discovered or was shown 1-dimensional worlds. So these were just lines with dots or other line segments on it. And the square observed how primitive these 1-dimensional worlds were. Each member could only ever come in contact with two other members, the one on its right and the one on its left. And news travelled up and down the line or something like that. And there would be an entire other world right across from it, parallel, and one after that and after that, but they could never know of these other worlds because they could never travel in that other direction. So the square thought they were poor and ignorant and he pitied them.


Then the square discovered or was shown a 0-dimensional world. That means a point. There's obviously only one member in this world, the point itself. This was the poorest of all creatures. It never knew ANYTHING other than itself. And whenever something happened to it, whenever light fell upon it or it heard a sound or smelled a scent it relished in its own assumed intelligence or magnificence or power which must have brought this wonder upon itself. Or if it heard an idea it thought itself to be so full of creative wisdom. So this creature was the most depraved of all but yet the most proud, and so the square decided that it was more miserable than anything he'd ever seen.


At some point this square met another square. Let's say square 1 is our friend who we've been talking about and square 2 is this new one. Square 2 told square 1 of a new dimension, a third dimension. Of course square 1 thought square 2 was crazy, but eventually square 2 brought square 1, let's say up, up to this third dimension. And they started flying. Only then could square 1 see that square two was actually not a square at all, but the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen. Square 2 was actually a cube. So they flew around and square 1 could see the 0-dimensional wretched soul and all the 1-dimensional slightly less wretched souls and then he could see his own 2-dimensional now understandably wretched world. And the third dimension was so wonderfully beautiful.


Then some more stuff happens and the book ends. I actually recommend it. It's a fairly easy and interesting exercise in thinking differently, as far as I can remember. I probably came away with more than one impression from this book, but what I've remembered is what the 0-dimensional creature made me think of. When it was being described in the book, I couldn't help but think that we as people are a little bit like this. On the surface, most Japanese are not going to fit this description, maybe subconsciously you do, but most of the Western world I think most definitely falls into the same trap as this creature. When we achieve something we love to take full credit for it. And we become drunk on pride. We forget about all the help that we have received along the way. Or we love to think ourselves better than others, completely ignorant of the fact that if only born in a different country we would find ourselves starving and without shame. Ok, maybe this is a little extreme. But at the least I think we can all agree that we are excessively inwardly focused. (Please count the amount of mirrors you look in during one day.) At least this is what I thought of myself when I read this book. And I think, if it's even possible, when we truly take our eyes off ourselves it must be one of the most liberating feelings. Maybe like flying in a new dimension - as long as we wouldn't feel proud of ourselves for getting there ; )




▼▽▼▼Amberlyの過去の記事を読む━━━━━━━━━━━
・【Something Interesting】2008.10.22 (Wed)

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Procrastination is a habit which involves putting things off until the future and is a common culprit for many of our productivity problems. Everybody procrastinates, but the degree to which you do it can have a significant effect on your performance.


As students, there are many things you have to do in order to achieve your goals, taking tests. Unfortunately,things like work, social arrangements and other distractions often get in the way. Obviously doing something pleasurable in the short-term can can be a very tempting distraction and people often choose the path of least resistance. However, there are many other reasons why people simply put off doing something until later: fear of the unknown, low risk tolerance, lack of ideas and so on.


Sometimes its difficult to see a direct relationship between your ultimate goal and the steps you need to take to get there, so take the time to sit down and see how these stages link together. For example, if you want a degree from your dream school but you are constantly procrastinating and suffering from a lack of motivation to study, try and weigh up the future consequences of this in tangible terms and break down the steps into SMART goals to motivate you to take action now. If you need more convincing, check out the movie 'The Butterfly Effect' (1 and 2!)


Probably the most important step is to begin to notice when you are procrastinating and to snap out of it as soon as you can.




▼▽▼▼Paulの過去の記事を読む━━━━━━━━━━━
・【The Pareto Principle】2008.10.15 (Wed)
・【There's more than one way to skin a cat】2008.11.05 (Wed)

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つい先日、尊敬する相馬雪香さんが96歳で永眠されました。
「憲政の神様」と呼ばれる尾崎行雄さんの三女として、青春期に英国で学び、尾崎行雄さんの欧米歴訪の際には通訳としてご一緒された方でした。



年齢だけでなく私たち人道支援の分野でも大先輩で、わずか数人しかインドシナ難民を受け入れていなかった日本に対して、「難民に冷たい日本人」と非難する国際世論に日本人の善意を示そうと、1979年、NGO（現在の「難民を助ける会」）を設立した方でした。今以上にNGOへの理解が得にくかった時代、いくつかの当時のエピソードをお聞きするだけで、頭の下がる思いでした。


私が初めてお目にかかったのは10数年前。既に80歳を越えてらっしゃいましたが、対人地雷全面禁止のシンポジウムなどで壇上に上がりマイクに向かった瞬間から発せられる「気」は圧倒的でした。されてしまいました。機会を見付けては個人的なお話しをさせていただいたのですが、お目にかかるだけでこちらの気持ちが「しゃんと｣まっすぐ伸びる、たたずまいの美しい方でした。「しゃんと｣するのは気持ちだけでないようで、外国人の若い記者さんが直立不動で固まった不思議な姿でインタビューしているのを見て、語学力だけではない人間力というものがあることを初めて感じました。


いくつになっても本を開いて学んでいた姿を思い出すと、人間力を育むには環境だけではないと改めて思います。


ご冥福をこころよりお祈りします。
合掌。


▼▽▼▼田口さんの過去の記事を読む━━━━━━━━━━━
・【「言葉」について】2008.09.29 (Mon)
・【私はイタリアの8人の働き者です！】2008.10.26 (Sun)

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Today, I'd like to continue the discussion that we began with my last blog post (Oct. 17th). As you may recall, I mentioned a little about the background of the English vocabulary and then I introduced the study of morphemes as a way to help make vocabulary learning a little easier. In this post, I will describe some specific ways that this technique can be used and I'd like to discuss some of the categories of morphemes that many of us are familiar with already.


Last month, we studied the words "transport" and "bilingual" by breaking them down into smaller pieces, called morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest units of language that can convey meaning. The process of analyzing a word in smaller pieces is called parsing. Parsing is a great tool to use, but in some cases, it is most effective only if you are already familiar with the individual morphemes. In other words, if I can't recognize any of the parts of the word, it can be next to impossible to break it down for analysis. Therefore, in order to make the most of morphemes as language-study tools, it will take a little bit of work to memorize them.


However, one of the best things about morphemes is that some of them will be incredibly easy to learn. In fact, without realizing it, there are probably some that you already know. Take, for example, the morpheme auto. It means "self," and can be recognized in words like automobile, automatic, and autobiography. Inter, meaning "between or among" is another that can be often seen in common words like international, intermediate, and interrupt. So you can see that in some cases, the meaning of a morpheme can be simple to determine, and can also increase or deepen our understanding of a word's meaning.


There are also certain categories of morphemes that most people are familiar with, like prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are types of morphemes that are attached to the beginning of words in order to alter the meaning of the word or, sometimes, to create a new word altogether. Suffixes serve the same function as prefixes, but are added to the end of a word. Here are a few examples of common prefixes and suffixes:
• Pre-, "before": prepared, precede, precaution
• Anti-, "against, opposite": antidote, antipathy, anti-war
• Con-/co-, "together, with": cooperate, conclude, concentrate
• Re-, "again, back": revise, react, reassure
• -able, adjective: countable, capable, disable, amiable
• -tion, noun: reaction, correction, subscription
• -ize, verb: finalize, theorize, organize


A special characteristic of suffixes that you may have picked up on is that they are often clues about the classification of a word. This means that it is often the end of the word that tells us if it is a noun, verb, adjective, adverb and so on. One of the ways that this knowledge of suffixes can help is when we determine how to use a word grammatically. This can especially be useful on tests when we need to identify different types of words. Just knowing that a word is a noun and not a verb, for example, can make a big difference in some cases.


The most practical application of this skill of parsing results from the ability to interpret meanings of individual morphemes. The benefits are valuable to both language learners and native speakers alike--everyone likes a shortcut when it comes to difficult words. If you'd like some advice on how to begin your own studies, come and find me at Kaplan and I have some materials I can give you.


Thanks for reading!




▼▽▼▼Melanieの過去の記事を読む━━━━━━━━━━━
・【Fun With Morphemes】2008.10.17 (Fri)

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At Kaplan, we often use newspapers and magazines in ourcourses. These are useful not only for vocabularybuilding, but also as analytical tools to help studentsbetter understand ways to approach questions on varioustests.


Naturally, a side benefit of reading these materials is that one can learn more about attitudes regarding various issues in foreign countries; however, we must always keep
in mind the interests and biases of the writers and their employers. Their articles may not always reflect attitudes in their countries as a whole, and "facts" may even be distorted to conform to the author's point of view.


We associate this phenomenon most often with articles about politics and economics, but bias is common in every subject from space exploration to fashion.


Reading a variety of sources with different viewpoints about a given subject goes a long way toward developing our critical reading skills, which are essential for future academic success.




▼▽▼▼【講師】Kurt先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【How much will I improve?】2008.10.08 (Wed)
・【The Importance of Writing】2008.10.29 (Wed)

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