안녕하세요~ 미도리 입니다.
목요일 진행 소개해 드리겠습니다. 참가 예정은 저 포함해서 Midori, Esther, Susan, Heo.woong 이렇게 4명입니다.
다음주 Abby 시간에는 창조적인 답변을 할 수 있도록 준비 꼭 해가고 싶어지는 오늘 스터디 였습니다. 내일 신문기사는 이렇게 하죠. 신문기사 url 을 답글로 남겨주시면 제가 본문에 끼워 넣겠습니다.
<스터디 준비> 1. 1분 스피치 내용 준비+연습 2. 자기가 고른 신문기사 읽고 내용 요약해서 설명하기 + 관련 질문 1~2개 만들어 오기
<진행 순서> 1. 1분 스피치(10분) 순서대로 돌아가면서 1분 동안 영어로 말합니다. 내용을 미리 준비하셔서 외우거나 보면서 말하면 됩니다. 내용은 자신의 의견, 말하고 싶었던 것, 좋아하는 글, 외우고 싶은 문단 등이 되겠습니다. 스피드감도 있게 그리고 남한테 잘 전달이 되도록 말해주시면 좋습니다.
2. 신문기사(40분) 돌아가면서 각자의 신문기사 내용을 자연스러운 문장으로 설명하고 자신이 만든 질문을 다른 멤버들에게 던집니다. 물론 같은 질문에 자신도 대답을 해보구요. |
Esther
www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2011/08/113_92145.html
National cemetery or not for cat-saving fireman?
When a firefighter dies while rescuing a cat, should it be considered “death while on duty” warranting a burial lot in the national cemetery?
According to the law, it is not, but opposing voices loudly call for the authorities to change this.
Fireman Kim Jong-hyeon, 29, was rescuing a cat which was trapped on the third floor of a building in Sokcho, Gangwon Province, on July 27.
After being tied with a rope and sent down from the rooftop, he was moving back and forth to catch the cat, but fell to his death when the rope became cut, according to Sokcho Fire Station.
His funeral took place on July 29, but it has not been decided whether he can be buried in the national cemetery. His remains are currently being kept at a charnel house.
According to the law, firefighters who die putting out a fire, during other rescue work or while training are buried at national cemeteries.
“Kim died during his service to the people, not during disaster-related operations stipulated by the law. In such cases, the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs decides whether burial at a national cemetery is appropriate. We are urging officials to finish the examination as soon as possible, so that Kim can be buried,” an official of the fire station said.
As the story spreads, bloggers are demanding the authorities promptly have Kim laid to rest at a national cemetery.
More than 1,500 people have signed an online petition on Daum.
“Kim died not while rescuing a cat but while carrying out citizens’ call to rescue the cat. He died while performing his duty. Allowing the burial will give pride and a sense of duty to other firefighters,” said the blogger who started the petition.
The Korean Society for Animal Freedom is also urging people to leave messages in support of Kim’s national cemetery burial on websites for the patriot affairs ministry and the Ministry of Public Administration and Security.
The group said saving a life is the same, whether it is a human being or an animal.
“Rescuing animals is a government job, as is rescuing abused women or children. People call fire fighters to rescue animals as there’s no other government agency in charge of such duties. Firefighters have taken that role, and the government shouldrecognize their faithful service to the people,” the group said on its website
Midori
http://www.economist.com/node/18988496/
China's family planning
Illegal children will be confiscated
The one-child policy is not just a human-rights abomination; it has also worsened a demographic problem
Jul 21st 2011 | from the print edition
“BEFORE 1997 they usually punished us by tearing down our houses for breaching the one-child policy…After 2000 they began to confiscate our children.” Thus Yuan Chaoren, a villager from Longhui county in Hunan province, describing in Caixinmagazine the behaviour of family-planning bureaucrats. According to Caixin, local officials would take “illegal children” and pack them off to orphanages where they were put up for adoption. Foreign adoptive parents paid $3,000-5,000 per child. The bureaucrats collected a kickback.
Stealing children is not an official part of Beijing’s one-child policy, but it is a consequence of rules that are a fundamental affront to the human rights of parents and would-be parents. The policy damages families and upsets the balance between generations. It is so hated that even within China it is now coming under political attack. For the first time a whole province, Guangdong, with a population of over 100m, is demanding exemptions (see article).
A thousand-mile journey begins with a single step
Chinese officials are fiercely attached to the one-child policy. They attribute to it almost every drop in fertility and every averted birth: some 400m more people, they claim, would have been born without it. This is patent nonsense. Chinese fertility was falling for decades before the one-child policy took effect in 1979. Fertility has gone down almost as far and as fast without coercion in neighbouring countries, including those with large Chinese populations. The spread of birth control and a desire for smaller families tend to accompany economic growth and development almost everywhere.
But the policy has almost certainly reduced fertility below the level to which it would have fallen anyway. As a result, China has one of the world’s lowest “dependency ratios”, with roughly three economically active adults for each dependent child or old person. It has therefore enjoyed a larger “demographic dividend” (extra growth as a result of the high ratio of workers to dependents) than its neighbours. But the dividend is near to being cashed out. Between 2000 and 2010, the share of the population under 14—future providers for their parents—slumped from 23% to 17%. China now has too few young people, not too many. It has around eight people of working age for every person over 65. By 2050 it will have only 2.2. Japan, the oldest country in the world now, has 2.6. China is getting old before it has got rich.
The policy’s distortions have also contributed to other horrific features of family life, notably the practice of aborting female fetuses to ensure that the lone child is a son. The one-child policy is not the sole cause, as India shows, but it has contributed to it. In 20 years’ time, there will not be enough native brides for about a fifth of today’s baby boys—a store of future trouble. And even had the one-child policy done nothing to reduce births, the endless reiteration of slogans like “one more baby means one more tomb” would have helped to make the sole child a social norm, pushing fertility below the level at which a population reproduces itself. China may find itself stuck with very low fertility for a long time.
Demography is like a supertanker; it takes decades to turn around. It will pose some of China’s biggest problems. The old leadership is wedded to the one-child policy, but the new leadership, which is due to take over next year, can think afresh. It should end this abomination as soon as it takes power.
Susan
http://www.ted.com/conversations/1417/how_to_train_my_self_to_be_cre.html
Apr 21 2011:
James
http://www.koreaherald.com/lifestyle/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20110725000545
Dieting does not lead to weight loss
2011-07-25 14:14
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(MCT) |
A new study suggests the majority of overweight people rarely return to their former shape through dieting, the Daily Mail reported.
The survey of 25,000 people by the Medical Research Council’s National Survey of Health and Development further provided evidence of ‘yo-yo dieting,’ a phenomenon in which people are trapped in a cycle of losing weight and regaining it.
According to the research, fewer than 10 percent of the 12 million Britons who go on a diet each year succeed in weight loss and even those who do regain the same amounts of weight within a year.
The scientists concluded it is better to avoid getting fat in the first place.
The follow-up study which measured weight, blood pressure and examined lifestyles of 5,362 men and women born in 1946 and 20,000 born in 1958, revealed both groups started gaining weight in the 1980s and continued upward in size ever since.
“A few lose weight but very few get back to normal. The best policy is to prevent people becoming overweight,” said Dr. Rebecca Hardy, the council’s program leader on body size.
However, such findings do not negate the benefits of dieting since eating less and working out leads to increased fitness and lower blood pressure.
Steve Fuller