Tuesday Writing Class (3T)

    Hello, everyone! Today, I'll talk about 'Face surveillance,' which is technology to monitor our life by recognizing our face. I learned about this technology in TED talks 'What you need to know about face surveillance.' The speaker was Kade Crockford.     In this podcast, she talked about what privacy is and why she thinks that face surveillance is dangerous for our privacy. She explained that privacy is not opposed to safety, but it is guarantor of safety: thus, what privacy it is is not dangerous, but it is dangerous for us to be known our privacy by someone.      In terms of this idea, Ms. Crockford dislike the idea that governments should monitor every one, every day by face surveillance. Encryption (to protect your smart phone or computer by some software or your own means) protect our safety because privacy also will be protected, but the new technology does not. It can be used to arrest criminals because of its massive information, but also ...

     Hello, everyone! Today, I'll introduce 'Freetown', a city which is located in Sierra Leone. I knew this city in TED daily talks. The speaker was Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, who has been the mayor of the city since 2018.           She talked about her plan to plant a million trees on her city in next two years . Can you imagine why has she been planning such project?... The reason why she wants to plant so many trees comes from her own experience. As a matter of fact, she had been not interested in such environmental movement at all before December 2015. 2015 was the last year of the Ebola outbreak, so she could notice what happened to environment in Freetown after the outbreak.     She noticed that a lot of lush forest which had been in Freetown were disappeared because of climate change and deforestation to make people's houses. Also, there is a massive landslide in August 2017 in her city. She took it all in (it means that she under...

     Hello, everyone! Today, I'll introduce Virgin Hyperloop's interesting vehicle, which was introduced in a pod cast.     These days (about a half of month ago), Virgin Hyperloop, a vehicle with new technology, run on the 500 meters of test track placing two passengers for the first time in human history. It covers 500 meters in 15 seconds , so in theory, it can run 1,000 kilometers in about 4 minutes ! Surprisingly, this velocity is just a fraction of the company's aim to achieve.     Virgin Hyperloop is not only company to make new vehicle, but to conduct the test which included people is worth noticing because they could verify that people can ride without any obstacle. The vehicle can eliminate fraction between vehicle and rail. Therefore, it is similar to linear motor car which are under construction in Japan.      As well as other new vehicle aim to dodge traffic obstacle, Virgin Hyperloop also is developed to help people to move...

     Hello, everyone! Today, I'll talk about food made in space. I listened to a pod cast 'Food made in space.' As you know, plants require natural light and nutrition to grow up, but these days, NASA and other corporations have been trying to grow up plants using LED light instead of natural light.      In this pod cast, the woman said that LED light is enough light to grow up plants. Also, researchers experiment that what effects appear on plants by changing wavelength of LED light. So far, they found that plants' feature would be changed depending on wavelength. They also success in growing plants which can absorb all range of wavelength, and the plants look black because they do not reflect all lights. Such plants are very efficient because they can use all light they receive for photosynthesis.      However, to grow plants in space is more difficult than to do without natural light because of microgravity .  Plants' roots grow...

 Hello, everyone!      Today, I'll talk about 2020's most expensive cities to live in. Most expensive cities means the city which prices are high. Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) compiled a list of such cities by researching the cost of 138 items in 130 cities.        Can you expect what cities are in the top of the list? This year, because of COVID-19 virus, there are a lot of change in the ranking. Hongkong, Paris, and  Zurich are occupied top three, on the other hand, Singapore slipped 4th position. Also, Osaka and Tel aviv share 5th position. I think that the fact that Tokyo is less expensive to live in than Osaka is very surprising because Tokyo seems more developed than Osaka in my image.      However, to be contained in this list means not only the city is developed but also there are some problems in suppling product and currency exchange.   For example, Teheran's prices are increasing because of USA's ...

 Hello, everyone! Today, I will talk about " Time bender. " This is a new term which was made by Grace Pacie, an author of ' Late! A Timebender's Guide to Why We Are Late and How We Can Change. '      "Time bender" does not stand for a person who can bend time but describes a person who are always late. I think that you may have met such person at least once. If you are punctual, sometimes you may be irritate at such attitude. However, Pacie insists that time benders actually does not want to be late, but they cannot estimate exactly how many times something to do takes. It is said that they always estimate it approximately four fifth times as long as it really requires.     Also,  some time benders always late because they try to do a lot of things before meeting time. They think that to arrive at meeting place early and wait for a few minuets are waste of time.  Because of this feature, time benders can be more productive than ordinal people on ...

     Today, I listened to "Melting ice sheet: Is it too late?" In this pod cast, the man and the woman talked about melting ice sheet of Green land and the Arctic and whether it's too late for human beings to strive to stop global warming.       Michalea King, a glaciologist, explained that usually, the amount of melting ice sheet and the amount of newly frozen ice was in balance, so we do not have to worry about melting ice sheet. In other words, "the amount of ice being drained from the glaciers was equal to what we are gaining on the surface via snow every year."(This is a citation from her words.)       However, recently, the glaciers have been melting faster than ever, and the balance was destroyed. She said that the situation which we are now facing is the tipping point. In fact, 500 gigatons of ice are now melting into the ocean every year, and the amount of newly frozen ice is less than that. Gigatons stands for a billion to...