Long TED Talk - Joshua Foer : Feats of memory anyone can do

summary
Joshua Foer is a science writer. He starts to get himself involved in the memory research and to realize how memory works  when he has to cover the news of U.S. Memory Championship. Today, the psychologists refer to the concept of techniques of memory as elaborative encoding. However, from the historical record, the techniques aren't new, which can date back to 2500 years to Ancient Greece. They all come from the idea called the memory palace. To remember information, the way is to transform it into something meaningful to us and create the images in our mind. The more bizarre the images are, it's more likely to help memorize. In fact, the mechanism it's not a shortcut but it's a sort of depth of processing. When we want to create images or make connection between two things, it actually force us to think and thus we're deeply engaged. The techniques are learned and everyone can be trained to have a good memory. In the end, Joshua Foer wants to remind us that our lives are made up of chunks of our memories, so if we want to live a memorable life, we have to remember to remember.

What can learners learn from this talk?
Since the technique can be learned, we can train to improve our memory. We can apply the techniques to our lives, and I think it helps to improve our speech skill, which make sure we won't forget what we're going to talk about in the speech. However, the techniques work because they force us to work, so it also implies us to pay much more attention to our lives. Pay attention to the people we have met with, and engaged to the things in the real world.













  

Short TED Talk-Did you hear the one about the Iranian-American?

Summary
The speaker of this talk show is Maz Jobrani who is an Iranian-American comedian. He is also a founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. Seeing Comedy Tour as a kind of platform, Maz Jobrani tries to tour around and break down the stereotype toward Middle Eastern people in a hilarious way. He has mentioned a common stereotype for characters in movies that people always hold. Most of people may think that whenever Middle Eastern people show up in the movie, they always come with bombs, they belong to the evil side or they fight for islamic jihad on behalf of God. However, it's not always truth. In fact, Maz Jobrani has met many people in Middle East and people are just so great everywhere and there are many great things there that you can learn from these countries, such as Dubai Mall. Maz Jobrani hopes people can present Middle East in a more positive way for the coming years.

What can listeners learn from this talk
After listening to Maz Jobrani's talk, listeners can rethink over their perspectives toward Middle East. I think most of people today more or less still hold a certain stereotype to Middle Eastern people because of their religion, history and maybe their mystery. However, before totally understanding one culture, we should not have any bias against it, or we might have lost many opportunities to see the greatest things of the world. So, for those who have bias on Middle East, it may help break down the block in mind and will be willing to embrace the world with open arms.

Movie Clip - Megamind

Which movie does this clip come from?
This clip is from the movie Megamind.

What is this movie about?
Megamind and Metro Man represented two extremely different guys - wicked devil and brave hero relatively. However, Megamind wasn't made from wickedness. He turned into a bad guy after Metro Man kept bullying him, and it seemed that Metro Man was not a so-called hero anyway. Metro Man, in fact, got sick and tired of being a hero to save the world and "playing" with Megamind. Therefore, Metro Man pretended to be killed and let the whole world under Megamind's control. However, it seemed to be boring and meaningless when Megamind could destroy the world with ease and own everything to his heart's content without any collision. As a result, Megamind tried to made a new hero to go against him. Contrary to his expectation, Megamind created a wicked guy, Tighten, who was even much cruel than himself, instead. Tighten smashed the world and arrested a woman whom Megamind was in love with. In the end, Megamind defeated Tighten, saved the world and even saved the woman's heart. Megamind became a new hero to the world.    

What is happening in this clip?
In this clip, it was the last fight between Megamind and Tighten.Tighten was going to kill the woman by whom he seemed to have been ripped down his heart, but at that moment, Megamind appeared. The woman was so surprise to see his back and to save her, for she just had a fight and ran away from him after she found out that Megamind had once disguised himself as other guy in order to go on a date with her. This showed that Megamind was by nature a good guy, and he wanted to protect the world from Tighten's destruction.  

Movie Trailer - High School Musical 3

Why did you select this trailer to show the class?
When it comes to movies in all genres, musicals always come to my mind first. Blended the elements of music and dance with drama, musicals can always be versatile and overwhelmingly appealing. High School Musical can be the outstanding example of all times. It takes people at home and abroad by storm. Through the first and second season, this time, it comes to the final season-Senior Year. The series of HSM are always trying to convey friendship, family love, perseverance and other inspiring features. We will find it stirring as it was used to be in High School Musical 3.

Based on the trailer, what do you think the movie is about?
Each season of High School Musical goes around with a main idea-dream. Both Troy, Gabriella and their fellows will soon graduate from the high school. They are gonna climb onto the next rung of ladder, entering their ideal colleges. However, it's not always happiness but bitterness. It will be a harsh time to farewell to the friends and leave far away; sometimes they are confused and can't believe in themselves. However, no matter how rugged the road will be, they can still weather the storm for their dreams by all means.