Jeff Speck 1 : The walkable city

                                  

TED 2013

Jeff Speck 1 : The walkable city (transcript)

Summary

Although it is difficult for us to change our lifestyle, the speaker tells us that now, it'll be time to reconsider that.

It's because the problem is suburban sprawl. It means the chaotic development of the cities which definitely require automobiles, remove trees to park cars and people seek their homes further from the cities centers and their jobs but they spend their time to commute for over two hours.

Here, you can think that you don't spend your money on your driving and homes but you can spend it on local recreations. It means that your home investment and transportation fee shift your local investment that you can use. It includes trying to have many corporations, for example, a biotech, medical and aerospace one, slimming highway to use cars and investing to rebuild cities streets for bicycling and walking. The city becomes the cool kind of the city where young people want to live in and can save money more.  

You don't forget that your city spends more money to create usual highways than that and that the city affects your health.

The biggest health crisis we have comes from environmentally induced inactivity, thus if you live in a more walkable city, it's possible for you to have less weight and it leads to your health.

So lacking exercise, having asthma, and meeting car crashes are not related whether you're in the city or not but how your city is designed.

This is a walkable city where, of course, burning fuel will be the half.

You can think that you live in there that is a walkable neighborhood, it makes you more sustainable and puts you a higher quality of life.  

Words in this story

sprawl /noun/ an ungainly or carelessly relaxed position in which one's arms and legs are spread out.

induced / bring about or give rise to.

neighborhood / a district, especially one forming a community within a town or city.

Noriko Arai : Can a robot pass a university entrance exam?

                                  

TED 2017

Noriko Arai : Can a robot pass a university entrance exam? (transcript)

Summary

The speaker is a Japanese woman who is an AI expert. Now, Japanese robotic technology is superior. In the game fields like shogi and chess, robots win over their professor players.

Also the remote server that a robot has is developed to the level that the robot can pass more than 60 percent of the universities in Japan.

The robot is called Todai Robot. Todai Robot Project aims to pass the entrance examination of a top university. “To” of Todai means Tokyo, and “Dai” means the university that is Daigaku in Japanese.

Japanese top university is The University of Tokyoin which the world ranking is 34th.

Next, will AI pass the entrance examination of a top university by 2020?

Todai Robot is very good at searching and optimizing. Todai Robot doesn't read and doesn't understand questions, but is statistically correct in the examination. Todai Robot can write a better essay than most of the students and it's the top one the mathematics exam.    

Just, Todai Robot doesn't understand any meaning and it makes an error when the ability to be able to read well is required. However, the ability to able to read well is lacking in students too because they just pack the knowledge without understanding the meaning of knowledge, that is just memorizing.

The conclusion is that if The University of Tokyo don’t have this kind of exam, Todai Robot can pass the exam.

If the Universities have only the exam that needs the ability to be able to read well and students change the ways of studying like understanding what they are reading, only students can pass the exam.

Words in this story

singularity / the state, fact, quality, or condition of being singular.

coexist / exist at the same time or in the same place.

Elon Musk predicts World War Ⅲ

CNN technology news
Elon Musk predicts World War III　(transcript)
Summary
This is an interesting piece of news.
Elon Musk is a very famous entrepreneur who is a CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
In the past, he created the original company of PayPal, he owned a McLaren F1 supercar and his girlfriend is said to be a famous actress.
This year, he launched a company called Neuralink. It creates devices to connect the human brain with computers. He probably thought that computers were really useful though it would be dangerous and it would be better to have new regulation to keep the public safe.
I thought that he wanted to tell us that we　
are afraid of testing nuclear weapons of North Korea though we didn't realize that our computers were more dangerous than North Korea.
Although computers were created by humans, the development of computers can control us in the near future. Then that was the Labor Day weekend. Now is the time when we have to think about the ways that we safely work with AI on the Labor Day.

Words in this story
peril /  danger, jeopardy, risk, hazard
executive /noun/  chief, head, director  /adj/ having the power to put plans, actions, or laws into effect.

Motives of North Korea ‘s Leader Baffle Americans and Allies

The New York times

Motives of North Korea ‘s Leader Baffle Americans and Allies (article)

Summary

I have a question. Can North Korea stop nuclear testing what if North Korea gets the respect that it's said that they want the best?

Last Sunday, North Korea’s underground nuclear test was done again and on Monday, its army fired ballistic missiles also.

Probably, many people didn't think that they’re done frequently. It's because it's dangerous and it's needed a lot of money.

However, those don't seem to be related, even people in North Koria are struggling.

Self-preservation, unclear narcissism and a deep desire to preserve the family business are said to be done the test.

Keeping nuclear weapons is engendering fear and loyalty in the country's populace for the Kim regime. This seems to be his politics.

Then it turns out that North Korea's nuclear technology is highly advancing, it’ll has the capability to directly hit the United States.  

According to the article, Mr. Kim wants American troops to withdraw from the peninsula and wants the United States not to station tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea. He hopes that North Korea is treated like Pakistan or India also.

Now, nine nation of the world still has nuclear weapons and Pakistan and India are included.

However, this is not only the problem for the countries which have nuclear weapons.

Words in this story

baffle /verb/   confuse, perplex, puzzle, bewilder, mystify

reluctance / regret,  unwillingness

engender /  induce, provoke, give rise

ballistic / of or relating to projectiles or their flight.

arsenal / warehouse,  weapons, weaponry, arms

Nine nations are the United States, Russia, France, England, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.

North Korean Nuclear Test Draws U.S. Warning of ‘Massive MilitaryResponse’

　　　　　　　　

The New York times

North Korean Nuclear Test Draws U.S. Warning of ‘Massive Military Response’ (article)

Summary

Last Sunday, North Korea’s underground nuclear test was done again and on Monday, its army fired a ballistic missile also. Those tests to complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community, but the blast was more powerful than the bombs that were dropped on Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World war 2. It killed over 100,000 people instantly.

I learned from the article.

The status of the world s involved in this problem.

Examples of this are the cold war of North Korea and South Korea, 1) the relationship of North Korea and The United States, 2) the relationship of the United States with China, Russia, South Korea and Japan also,3) and even Japan and South Korea. 4)

If the missiles hit one country, many people will be killed. However, its neighboring country suggested no new action, the country expressed strong condemnation of the test, though. The reason will not be close to America.  

Surely, Korth Korea's threat deserves to be met with a massive military response.  

However, countries around it can cooperate to stop the tests, can't they?

Words in this story

destructive / causing great and irreparable harm or damage.

intimidated / frighten, menace, threat, be timid

disregard / ignore, take no notice of, pay no attention

David Christian: The history of our world in 18 minutes

                            

TED 2011

David Christian: The history of our world in 18 minutes (transcript)

Summary

Big History is an emerging academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present.

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution.

The speaker is the first person who teaches courses on "Big History".

Our world seems to be created by complexity build stage by stage in a universe ruled by the second law of thermodynamics.  Its moment is called threshold moment.  At each threshold,  the complex things get more fragile, vulnerable, the Goldilocks conditions get more stringent and it's more difficult to create complexity. the Goldilocks conditions mean the just right conditions for the creation of complexity, for example, it's not too hot, not too cold and it's not too much, not too little.

The Big History starts 13.7 billion years ago, the place where there is nothing, suddenly　something like an explosion occurs and a universe appears. It has crossed the first threshold. I think that this seems to be energy beginning.

Simple atoms appear of hydrogen and helium and from about 200 million years after the Big Bang, stars begin to appear all through the universe.

4.5 billion years ago, after a fourth threshold, the current solar system was formed. It means to be formed planets, moons and our Earth. Living organisms are created by chemistry, then. Our early Earth was almost perfect, it was just the right distance from the sun, and contain huge oceans of liquid water. Fantastic chemistry began to happen and atoms combined in all sorts of exotic combinations.

Life introduced an entirely new thing that's DNA.

DNA contains information, copies itself to make living organisms, learns, and builds greater diversity and complexity. It's continued over 40 billion years from DNA was born.

About 600 to 800 million years ago, multi-celled organisms, fungi, fish, plants, amphibia, reptiles, and dinosaurs appear.

65million years ago, an asteroid landed on Earth, dinosaurs were extinct and mammals started to flourish.

20,000 years ago, finally humans appeared. DNA generated a faster way of learning and had produced the first organisms with the brain which has the ability to speak and to memorize.
10,000 years ago, humans learned to farm.

So we human being can have the great ability called collective learning and we can have the great lives that are completely different before.  

However, we've stumbled on another energy that is a fossil. Burning it too much leads to the staggering complexity.  Its speed leads to the destruction of the entire biosphere.

The Big History tells us that the Goldilocks conditions made us flourish and should be continued from now. On the beautiful planet, human beings were just born in the Big History.

Words in this story threshold / the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested. Big bang / the rapid expansion of matter from a state of extremely high density and temperature that according to current cosmological theories marked the origin of the universe. the Goldilocks principle / to show that neither too hot nor too cold, but has just the right temperature. memorize /verb/ commit to memory, remember, memory /noun/

Susan Pinker : The secret to living longer may be your social life

                             

TED 2017

Susan Pinker : The secret to living longer may be your social life (transcript)

Summary

This is a good news for men because, in the world, it is said that women often live longer than men do. The speaker researched a place where men live as long as women.

The important things to live longer were, of course, clean air, having your hypertension treated, stop feeling guilty about whether you're lean or overweight, exercising, rehabbing well a cardiac event,  a flu vaccine and quitting boozing and smoking.

And then the two top features were your close relationships and social integration. Those mean that there are people who grant small requests around you, and how much you interact with people as you move through your day. The face to face contact releases a whole cascade of neurotransmitters and oxytocin which increases your level of trust and lowers your cortisol levels and stress. Dopamine is generated, kills your pain and protects you. In fact, women are more likely to prioritize and groom their face to face relationships, thus they live longer.

lastly, if the structure of our cities, workplace, and agendas bolsters where people interaction can be naturally created in will be built, it helps us live longer.

The speaker adds that face to face of the digital technology still continues studying. Although it's the difference in brain activity between interacting in person and taking in static content, it will be improved in the near future.

Words in this story

integration / composite, putting together, coordination

centenarian / a person who is one hundred or more years old.

boozing / drink alcohol, especially in large quantities.

neurotransmitter / a chemical substance that is released at the end of a nerve fiber by the arrival of a nerve impulse and, by diffusing across the synapse or junction, causes the transfer of the impulse to another nerve fiber, a muscle fiber, or some other structure.