Posts

Noam Chomsky -about education

As I read the book " Reversal of the intellect ", there are some writings saying that the education for test is very harmful and he also mention about education system of John Dewey because he studied at school of its education philosophy. I also agree its opinion because test score is just a indication of understanding, memorizing and there are no other meaning. But as I wrote this , score or ranking is sometimes main goal for study in japan and it is ridiculus. Reading books and find something that we didn't know is fantastic experiences. And thinking about the origin of university or college, I think it all started from people' s curiosity. In case of japan, maybe at the begining of meiji-era (1868-) , young people wanted to know abount unknown things or about foreign countries and were gathering and studied at small cram schools and those were the roots of many japanese universities. But the times goes by and the original desire for wanting to know turned out

About TPP

Now in Nikkei newspaper, there is a column of Carla Hills and I like this articles. This nikkei column is called "watashi no rireki-syo" meaning that someone is chosen and  he or she write down their life story every day during about 1 month. I liked these columns because there are some good wisdoms. In today's article, she recalled about the memory of US-Japan car trade episode and she said that she insisted  fair competition is good for both country and both companies, and if there is some restriction about trade (custom), it brought company's weakness in a longrun. It is very good concept. But why she at that time? because in today's newspaper's top article are TPP, and nikkei newspaper strongly support TPP. But anyway, her concept is very splendid, I think so.

Curiosity and education

In today's newspaper nikkei, I found the article that university of tokyo join the online education "Coursera". Recently, circumstance of education is changed rapidly, because we can learn many things from good quality of materials like i-Tunes university, coursera,edX, Kahn. In japan, MBA course are becoming popular among business people, newspapers said, but paying such high tuition is hard for many people. But by using such materials, we can learn by almost free (needs internet access fee but very cheap in japan and tools like i-pod are recently cheap). Seeing this ted video, it seemed very intersting and learning platform will be important. I think that education is most important thing for human beings, but in japan, many people seek the name of university and licences etc. Maybe that's why they don't know the fun of learning. I like studying when I was child and I am very gladful for my parents to give me a circumstance of studying and most impo

Riemann Hypothesis

As I wanted to see the TV program "NHK kouhaku uta-gassen" , a TV program of music broadcasted at 31 Dec. annualy, I searched  NHK on demand . This TV program was pay program but I found some intersting TV programs on free, and one of them is " Riemann Hypothesis ". It was broadcasted at 2009 and length is about 1.5 hour. I think that this is very interesting program. I like math and I read several books about Riemann Hypothesis but this mathematic concept is very difficult to understand. This TV program translated this difficult concept to very easy way using CG technology. Some blog  said badly about this program but I think that it is very good because explaining this theory in plain terms needs some mathematic background and knowledge and maybe this TV director have such sense, I think.

Very good period of time for studying

For what purpose do we study? There must be many reasons for each persons. My reason is same as when I was a child (about age 3) until now. I want to know many things, simply curiosity. This is all that motivate me. I simply choose my school and company simply because it might give me much intellectual excitement. If this level might be low, it is boring. Nowadays, there are booms to learn, for example studying at some school like MBA school, etc. Of course it is very good thing, but like me who had little money for free and want to stay my own home with my family and play with my son, IT tool is very excellent things for studying. Because there are huge amount of excellent videos,text,etc for free in English. The amount, quality, its level of materials is very higher than things of Japanese (of course there are good things existed, but there are huge gap between them because people all over the world use English) And cost of IT environment is very cheap now. Foe example in my

Using web services

Recently, I use several web services to get&manage informations. -Step1 To get informations, rss reader (now I use google reader) is very good tools, but recently I also use facebook & twitter, because recently many site focus on social media  so these two pages (facebook&twitter) is very good for many websites (nature, economist, etc). And recently I rent books from our city's library by requesting internet. These userinterface is very excellent so when I read newspapers or etc and find intersting books, I memo these titles and reserve these books by internet and if these books are delibered to the library I selected (in our city, there are about 20 points including sattelite library to get these books). If these books are derivered at these points, I receive the notification by cell-phone email and  get them at near satellite library. -Step2 Then store informations. I mainly use Gmail because if I use many services, it sometimes take many times to serch at where I sto

About japanese education system

Recently, we often see a topic about changing japanese university system in various media. And Tokyo university annouced to start disccusion about changing of entrance timing from spring to autumn. Many people including other university's presidents said it's good and I also think that it is good idea, but truely saying that it doesn't hit my heart. That might be because it comes from what is university means and what is about the ranking of university. Tokyo university said that it aimed to enter the world top ranking (now tokyo university is ranked 30th ), but what it meaned ? Maybe that is why I didn't dislike this topic. I think that education is most important thing for human being and searching for truth is very important thing, but in japan, entrancing high ranked university is the aim, and I think that it is strange thing. I think internet is changing intelligence world so isn't there any meaning to study for entrancing university with so many times

science & mathimatics

Today is 30 April and I am enjoying 9 consecutive holiday called "golden week" in Japan. This year, if we took two paid holidays (1 and 2 May) we can enjoy 9 holiday, so I plan to take 9 holiday. Recently, I was busy so today I enjoyed relaxing time with surfing webs. And when I happend to see Simon Singh's website , this was renewed and find the page of "felmat's last theory" which I very liked. His books was very fantastic because he may like science and math and many reader can understand his love of science.

gardening

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We bought 3 fertilizer near our house. \250 per sack. Recently templature is rising and cherry blossom season will soon come, so planting season is coming !

Terribly, our farm

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We planed to plant potetos, so we digged our farm fot a long time. After digging, we found big stones and after removing them, this place began to a mud places. It was dangerous in such conditions because we couldn't step into this place! so we put back these stones and fixed them. It took about 2 hours and we were very tired. After that, we put potatos which we cut  half and was covered with ashes which protect potatos from bacteria.

watch repairment (CASIO G-SHOCK)

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G-SHOCK I bought about 14-15 years before was recently damaged at the protection parts, so I orderd this parts. About 2,3 days after, it was delivered at repairing shop so I went to this CASIO repair department . It was about 1500 yen ($20) and renewed my watch.  It was very cheap, but I liked this watched because design was simple and tough and not expensive!