TED: The magic of truth and lies on ipods

     I saw the video of Marco Tempest, who is the speaker of TED, about the magic of truth and lies on ipod.
     He uses ipod innovatively for magic. However, his ipods are just the tools for lucid understanding of his lecture: self-deception. At first, he talks about just deception. He articulates that its just a pivotal part of life. Candid people are scanty. Then, Marco talks about self-deception which is his novel theme.
     According to the Marco Tempest, the speaker, self-deception is occurred when we convince ourselves that a lie is the truth. Also, we often do this self-deception. Also, this self-deception engenders optimisitic illusion. Thus, this is very benevolent phenomenon. People today live rigorous life and they become languish. However, with this self-deception and optimistic illusion, people can stand.
     I really liked Marco's lecture since he used elaborate and amiable way: magic with ipod. Also, his content's brevity was very great. At first, I was skeptical to his saying. As time passed, I now think that his lecture was really pragmatic, because I think he scrutnized about his theme. Also, he was not redundant thus I really liked his lecture.

Assignment : review

Game Review : SamGukJi 10 (三國志 10)

     This game is known as Romance of the three kingdoms at American version.

Original version

American version

     SamGukJi is a story about ancient Chinese history about three countries and many heroes. This story is well known to Korean people and there are many fans of it. I'm also one of the fans of SamGukJi.

KOEI logo

     The company that made the game is KOEI and this company is well known as company of SamGukJi.

     Almost every game that is related to SamGukJi was made by this company. There are action version, RTS(Real Time Simulation) version, Strategy Simulation version and many other kinds of SamGukJi game.
     What I want to review about is Strategy Simulation version: SamGukJi 10.
     It had many series of SamGukJi, and of course, SamGukJi 10 is 10th series. The latest series is SamGukJi 11 but many people including I think that 10th series is more fun and more completed series. At the previous editions, they chose turn based systems. However, from tenth edition, Koei chose time based system. This new system is very innovative since this system enabled users to control our character freely than older system. 

We can move freely through the map because of time based system.

     Also we can control domestic affairs as we want. All of these systems enabled us to play the game freely and users feel satisfaction at these systems.

 

Domestic affairs System

     However, there are some disadvantages of this game. Firstly, the relationship between characters is very easy to control. Even if character A and character B are enemies at original story, I can form brotherly ties between them. Also, action scenes of war systems are too deficient.

The war system of SamGukJi 10

     As you can see, only small characters appear and they fight.

Dual System

     On the other hand, there are other things that can complement this lack of action scenes. The first one is combat, or dual. This system represents fighting only between two characters, 1 to 1, without any other soldiers. This system is often used to show off characters' power. The other one is verbal battle. This system represents heated discussion between only two characters without any soldiers. This system is often used to persuade the other to take him to my team.

Verbal Battle System

     Many users are satisfied at these systems even though the war scenes are cute.


     Next, the game is very high quality in story. The story is based on real story of SamGukJi and as I mentioned earlier, there are many SamGukJi fans in Korea. Most of fans want to play SamGukJi game with real-based story. SamGukJi 10 put effort to satisfy these opinions. They made real-based story and the story's quality is very high.


     There are also other Korean critics. Since this game is very famous in Korea, I thought Korean critics are more reliable than other critics. This is one critic that I saw from Gameshot.net which is one of the Korean game critics site.(http://www.gameshot.net/common/con_view.php?code=AC40e7cdb925244)


     As a result, I think the SamGukJi 10 is very fun even though the war system is quite not stylish and level of difficulty is easy.
I will give game quality score at 7 out of 10. However, I will give game fun score at 9 out of 10. Thus, total score of this game is 8 out of 10.

Metafiction

     Mark is a high school student. He was tired of his repetitive life : go to school, study, come back home, go to academy, come back home… His only job was reading tremendous amount of fictions. He loved to read those books and he sometimes wanted to be the main character of the fiction that are usually very free and do what they want to do. One sunny Sunday, he went to bookstore to buy new book. On the book shelf was a book with the very bizarre name. He felt attracted to it at first sight, and took the book into his arms. He toddled home with my eyes on the book.

     ‘William Irving lived in the suburbs of Belmont, Massechussetes. Apparntly born without the ability to laugh, cry, or show emotion in any other way, the only time William had ever left his town was when a friend convinced him to watch a parade downtown 3 years ago. He had not enjoyed that experience very much. This story is about that day.
     After one of his friends' suggestion, William decided to travel all over the world to find emotion and to learn how to show emotion. He first went to Japan. He saw some monkey shows but they were not fun at all. He then went to North Korea. He met a fat but small monster there. The monster was wearing sunglasses.’

“Wow, I want to travel too! However, my mother will not allow me to travel outside… She always pushes me into academy and I should study to satisfy my mom’s expectation…”

He kept reading it without seeing his front but only seeing his book.
    ‘The monster, named Kim Jung Il, started to make the cheapest jokes that William had ever heard in his life. But somehow, the other people around the monster seemed to be enjoying its strange sense of humor. Bravely, William said to the monster. "Excuse me, but your jokes are not funny." The next moment he woke up, and he found himslef in a dark, confined cell.
     It was his home. It was just all a wild dream! He just dosed off while going to watch the parade.’

“Cool! It was a very good reversal of the story!” He then noticed that he was not on his way to home. He looked around and he found that there was the parade!!

     The parade in front of him was just spectacular! Giant dinosaurs waling by, the dinosours playing with an even more giant set of Jenga, and, also, nuclear missiles flying everywhere. It was just awesome, but William couldn't laugh or make an expression about it. So he made a very, very bold move to overcome his inability, a move which he would regret for the rest of his life!

Mark was very surprised that his book became real! He was very excited and read his book again to see what happened to William

     ‘William, prior to that moment, had convinced himself that his situation was due to some trait in his genes; he thought that he needed a drastic genetic alteration in order to gain access to the human emotions that everyone else could summon so easily. Now, watching himself fail yet again to crack a simple smile, William decided to expose himself completely to the nuclear missiles flying overhead. Surely those missiles would contain enough energy and nuclear influence to affect his genes. He rapidly climbed up one of the oversized Jenga sets that the dinosaurs were enjoying and jumped straight into the path of one near-flying missile.’

Mark felt that there was something wrong. He suddenly looked up and his premonition was proved right. Mark found nuclear missiles over his head.

“What the f…!”

There was no time to watch the missiles. He started to run but he couldn’t stop reading his book. He had to find out what had happened to William.

     ‘In a miraculous coincidence of the quantum orbitals of the atoms that constituted William and the missile, the impact did not cause William to explode into an infinite number of micro-particles. Instead, it gave William the uncanny ability of being able to control each and every one of those particles individually while maintaining a unified consciousness. That meant he could freely alter the shape or position of his body parts with a simple thought or even detach parts and have them move on their own………..’

The last page seemed to be torn off. Mark couldn’t read real ending and suddenly the missiles exploded above his head. Intense light hit Mark and he couldn’t see anything around him. He couldn’t feel nor hear anything. Mark thought that this is the end of his life.

”I wanted to be free. But I didn’t want this kind of freedom. I don’t want to die…. I don’t want to DIE!!!”

“What are you talking about kid?”

Suddenly Mark heard mysterious sound from anywhere.

“Who are you?”

“Oh kid… Wake up!! It’s already 8 o’clock!”

“What??”

Mark woke up and it was a total dream.

He felt relax. 

However, he felt something in his hand.

It was the book he read…!

Metaphor exercise

I have big eye like the moon in the sky. Everyone who sees me at the first time always say about my eye. This may seems good thing since I can easily start the conversation with someone who I don’t know. Moreover, I don’t easily give up my hope like turtle that raced with rabbit. I always meet bad conditions and have difficulty to solve those conditions. However, I don’t give up my hope even if very difficult conditions come to me. For example, when I solve math problems, I don’t give up even if I take 1 hour to solve only one problem. Lastly, I can easily make someone to smile like Pierrot. That makes me very worthwhile.

Reflective response to 'Spring'

     Today, we watched KimKideok's film 'Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter' and we only watched 'Spring' part in the class. It was 25 minutes long which is very short part of the film. However, it included very deep idea about moral thing. Also, it contained some fun sorts in the movie so I didn't feel bored or tedious.
     The film was about one young boy monk who live with one adult monk. The boy monk was not matured enough to understand other's mind. Thus, for his fun, he wrapped the wild animals and fish with stone or rock and feels pleasure by seeing animals pain. The big monk saw this situation and he wanted to teach the young boy to do not do such things. That night, when the young monk was sleeping, the big monk went to the mountain and took the big rock, and he wrapped the young monk with the rock. Next morning, the young boy complained of pain to the big monk. Then the big monk told the young monk to do not do such things any more and release wild animals and fish. The young monk went to the place where he wrapped the animals but animals were dead. The young monk cried. This is the whole story of the'Spring'. There were some fun sorts such as the big monk wrap the young monk with huge stone or the young monk don't fear about snake and throw the snake. These sorts made me enjoying this film.
     The most important thing about this movie is the lesson that it contains. I think the main lesson that this movie contains is 'we should think about other side', in Korean '역지사지'. This is very important since mind of value life and many other moral minds come from this simple lesson. At first, the boy monk was too young to know this simple lesson so he acted badly. Then, the big monk helped him to learn this fact effectively. The young monk finally cried when he saw dead animals which were dead because of his bad action.
     This lesson also influenced me. Today, many people in Korea just think about theirselves and live without other neighbors. This is same to me. I became the person who think only about myself and don't care about environment. However, by seeing this short chapter of film, I was greatly influenced and I wanted to return to the first mind which is '역지사지'. Thus, the 'Spring' is very great movie that contains great lesson and fun also.

Class Chain Writing

Title: Some Rules are Made to Be Broken

     If I could go back in time, I would change the rules of the world. Most of the rules in today's world are made to live comfortable life at the time when the rules were made. However, those rules are full of contradictory.(by LKB)
     For example, why do people have to have different heights? though tall height could have been helpful in ancient tribal societies, nowadays people with small height(like me) are feeling inferior compared to other people. I don't like this(by KSM)
     So if I go back in time I would change history so that short people are praised and tall people looked down upon.
     Also another rule I would change is computer violation in KMLA. In the past, students may have lost control playing game. However, the current generations are too mature and wise to lose control on such thing. Computer games just help student relax and enhances their hand-eye coordination so that's what I'll change.(by BSW)
     But more importantly violation regarding destroyed school property is unjustifiable. This violation is given when 2 students lie together in the same bed. However, I believe there are a lot of benefits we can reap when two males are at the same bed. First, you have the chance to share serious conversation with your roommates. When you are separated from each other, students don't usually talk about their future or dreams. But when 2 people are in the same bed, they become more comfortable and intimate with each other and become more open-minded about serious subjects such as college application. What's more, students have more opportunity to interact physically. The warmth we share makes people feel good!