Category: hirotot

Summary

In the last class, we talked about plans of a new national stadium renewed for 2020 Tokyo Olympic. At first, a plan by Zaha Hadid, renowned architect won the competition. But the estimated costs of building this new stadium was spiraling up to 252 billion yen and that plan was abolished. This incident caused a dispute and led to the resignation of the Ministers of Education and Sports. The new plan made by Kengo Kuma that won the new competition, costs 149 billion that is far cheaper than Ms. Hadid’s one. Supporters of this plan say it’s also fit better to the immediate environment and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe highly evaluated the new plan.

Opinion

I could not completely agree with the decision of cancelling the Hadid’s plan to be honest because I think Japan might lose its credit by this incident. After this, architects especially in foreign countries would hesitate to apply to other competitions held by Japanese official bodies because they might think even if he/she win, their plan could be abolished. Certainly the original Ms. Hadid’s plan costs too much and is also not acceptable to many people who pay taxes. But the treatment to Ms. Hadid’s plan by Japanese bodies including government and JOC, cancelling her plan one-sidedly seems rough and even impolite. I think the Japanese bodies should have been more careful and have to apologize to her.

(231words)

<Summary>

We discussed coffee’s potential effect to Type 2 diabetes. Today 1 in 10 people in the US are diabetic. People with Type 2 diabetes have some troubles about controlling the amount of glucose because insulin doesn’t work well in their body. Diabetes implicates that there will be other damages to large blood vessels in the heart, brain, legs, kidneys, eyes and nerves. And the article we read said that coffee has possibilities to be a resolution to diabetes. More than half American adult drink coffee daily. Coffee includes many chemicals such as quinic acid or acetylmethylcarbinol and some specific ingredients in coffee might be able to cure diabetes. But it is not clear how it could. So the article strongly recommended studying the ingredients’ molecules.

<Opinion>

Almost every morning, I drink coffee because drinking coffee makes me feel calm and it’s also refreshing. So when I heard the news, I felt happy. However, I don’t think I will drink coffee more than now because there is not such a thing that has only good points. Everything must have both merits and demerits. Foods also must be one of the cases. For instance, having too many drinks that includes caffeine can lead to caffeine poisoning. As the article about bacon I read in this class said, everything should be moderate. If people eat normal foods moderately that can do a little harm to him/her, there would be no problems. Instead, I think we’d better not expect too much the effect of normal foods and eat them immoderately.

(253words)

Summary

Following the scandal of Volkswagen’s illegal software so-called “defeat device” that misrepresents the amount of emission, Volkswagen is now investigating other types of engines. The suspicious type is older version of an engine called EA288. The engines firstly uncovered by the US’s EPA are called “EA189” and Volkswagen said 11 million diesel cars have this engine. This incident is also the subject of criminal investigation and some European countries’ regulators started it. Volkswagen set aside 6.5 billion Euros to cope with this series of incident but some analysts say this will be not enough.

Opinion

We can see this type of scandal everywhere. Also in Japan, TV news and newspapers are telling new findings about a scandal concerning a tilted apartment in Yokohama city. As for these scandals, companies got involved have to investigate and explain the truth sincerely even though they directly have nothing to do with cause of problem or they are not legally responsible for that problem or it’s not caused by instructions of executives. Everyone might think it’s obvious thing. But some companies fail to do this. In the case of TAKATA’s defected airbag, firstly it said the number of the defected airbags is limited and it refused to recall these airbags because they don’t have legal responsibility to do so. After that, however, the number of it is surged and as a result, it completely lost credit from customers and is about to go bankrupt. Though it is still unclear whether this VW ‘s scandal is caused by instructions of executives or not, all VW have to do now is not to make excuses but just to reveal information to customers.

(275 words)

In the talk, Andras said making leather or meat by using biofabrication technology is a better way than the way we do today to make them. There were two main reasons. The first reason was that we don’t need to kill animals anymore. He said using this technology is morally acceptable and he also points out that this way is more environmentally friendly because animals are the one of the main consumers of land and fresh water and also they make huge amounts of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. The second reason was that we would be able to be more creative. Speaking about making leather, he said that by using this technology we can control the thickness and shape of leather.

I completely agree with his idea. As he said this technology is a better way to produce leather or meat than the way by just killing animals in terms of ethic, environment and creativity. I also think it could solve other problems. Here I raise two problems. First problem is religious or some kind of religious problem. Some religions such as Hindu ban eating meat because they think it’s not right thing to kill animals and some vegetarians also don’t eat meat because of the same reason. But these vegetarianism might harm one’s health. Here this biofarication technology would be one of the solutions for this problem because they no longer don’t need to feel the sense of guilty to eat meat. The second problem is the food crisis. As Andras pointed out in the presentation, population in the whole world would drastically increase and food crisis would inevitably happen. Especially poor areas in developing countries would suffer from serious food shortage and as a result many people including children might die. Certainly the price of these meats made by using biofabrication technology is now high, but this price can be lowered just by development of this technology and mass production unlike the way we produce meat today, raising real cow. So this technology could solve the food crisis problem.

This technology still has some problems such as cost or taste, but in the near future the technology will progress and be a strong solution of today’s problem concerning food.

(373 words)

Today we discussed a controversial topic, euthanasia. Recently Ovidio Gonzalez suffering from terminal throat cancer and unbearable pain became the first case of being performed euthanasia in Columbia. Assisted suicide was approved by Constitutional Court in1990s that means euthanasia is legitimated. But any measures have not been voted by Congress and only a set of guidelines for hospital were issued by the health ministry in May. Furthermore Roman Catholic Church that has predominant position in this country said euthanasia is morally unacceptable.

<Summary>

We discussed the recent election of the parliament in Turkey. AK party that had been party in power for 13 years in the parliament lost its majority and in contrast HDP, the opposition party, got more seats in the parliament. The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdodan, who has a strong connection to AK party had a strong power and could execute his policies as he like with the support of this party. But because of this AK party’s defeat, he can no longer do what he wants to do like before. The reason of the loss is thought to be a stagnation of the economy that had been in good times until recently and high-price as a result of the stagnation and also, violent ways to control opposition movement or the mass media is one of the reasons.

<Opinion>

Through the discussions in this class, I often saw some bad cases of the president’s abusing of his power. These cases raise question as to whether the system of having the president is necessary especially when the country has the Prime Minister. But I think a presidential system is still meaningful compared to a parliamentary system of government such as UK or Japan. Certainly, giving a strong power to one person is dangerous, but people directly elect the president and parliament whose member is also elected by people as well can be deterrence. This means that there are two direct tests by people while a parliamentary system of government has only one direct test. Of course a presidential system also has some bad points but I think this system is well-balanced and useful system of government.