2019/2020 LE blogs

    2/16     Today we decided on what topics to cover on our website. We decided to cover pathological corporations, the Israel-Palestine conflict, international relations and Scottish independence.      2/17     Mr Paterson told us that the examples we were going to cover should explain the theory behind the incidents because the theories are the important message that we want to convey. Yesterday, we chose random topics from what we did this year, so there wasn't a common theme between the four topics. So today we set our core theme as "How the media hides the truth from us".  I'm in charge of the pathological corporations, but we had too many topics to cover so we decided to focus on a single topic to make.

      Today we got in groups and continued creating our websites. There were a lot of things to decide on, such as the style, font, colour, theme etc. but above all, the top priority is the content of the website, so we decided on who would be in charge of which topic.

    Today we learned about how the senior elites hide the truth using their connections. There is a music program on BBC called "top of the pops", and many pop stars came to BBC's studio to do lipsync performances. Jimmy Savile, a popular DJ was sexually abusing the audiences which were mostly young people. However, he had strong connections with the seniors in BBC, the police force and other people with authorities. This case was put on investigation many times, but the investigation was suspended many times, and the report had mysteriously disappeared when it was submitted to the police.  BBC hasn't gone deeply into this topic since the incident had happened in its own studio. In Japan, people cynically call this phenomenon "the freedom of the press (to not report on inconvenient topics)". It is so disgusting to think that some people had abused their powers to sexually abuse the weak and the poor.

      Today we did a simple yet difficult nine-dot puzzle. I already knew the classic four lines solution, but I couldn't come up with other more creative answers such as reallocating the circles or looking at the paper from a different angle.  I could only come up with the cylinder solution, ripping-the-paper solution and the overlapping-circles solution. I thought the linguistic loophole solution and the going-around-the-entire-globe solution was the most creative solutions. Through this simple puzzle, I realized how much I was conditioned to subconsciously assume unexisting rules and constraint our imaginations/creativity.       I think one of the reasons for this is the entrance exam system in Japanese universities. Unlike in the US or Germany, Japanese high school students can enrol into universities based on only their entrance exam scores. The original purpose of education in high schools is "to cultivate rich humanity, creativity and healt...

      Today we did an interesting activity called "marshmallow challenge" which you get in groups to build a tower with spaghetti to support a marshmallow on top within 18 minutes. This challenge shows how your creative skills, leadership skills and cooperative skills. Our team's plan was to create a secure tripod and then put a long rod of spaghetti on top of the tripod. I thought our plan would succeed, but the marshmallow was heavier than I guessed, and the tower collapsed in a second after we got our hands off it. The key point of this challenge is to check the rules more carefully. Mr Paterson didn't say we weren't allowed to search how to build a stable tower or to ask for more resources. However, we all assumed that that would be cheating. In the TED talk about the marshmallow challenge, the speaker said that it's better to learn by doing and refining your prototype to create a better tower. The video mentioned that kindergarteners did better than busin...

      Today we didn't have class, but we watched a documentary on BBC's bias during the Scottish independence referendum. BBC had deliberately used negative words such as "warning", "catastrophe" etc. with "Scottish Independence" in their articles. Also, BBC didn't cover the pro-independence campaigns footages and only broadcasted the anti-independence campaigns. What's surprising is that the anti-independence campaign "Vote No Borders" was actually a scheme of the PR company called Acanchi, which specializes in improving the government image. BBC had broadcasted this campaign on its channels thirty minutes every day.  The campaign was disguised as a grass-roots campaign from Scotland, however, it was a giant fraud. Scotland doesn't have any independent media, because the British government doesn't want Scotland to have one, even when there are independent media in other small countries such as Moldova. I was shocked by th...

      Today we learned about how one director's political ideology completely ruined the Star Wars series in the last three movies. This topic was mentioned a few times in previous classes, but this time, Mr Paterson told us in more detail why and how the movie was ruined. Kathleen Kennedy, former assistant director of Steven Spielberg, became the chief director of the last three films. She hated the first Star Wars films because the protagonist was a white male, so she changed the protagonist into a female character and changed the character of Luke Skywalker. However, the general storyline was unoriginal. On the other hand, "The Mandalorian" which was filmed by Marvel, was a success because it was original and didn't change the characters.      I think the worst mistake Kathleen made was the unoriginality of the entire three movies. This shows she lacked the ability to create a good film, and I think that's a problem worse than using Star Wars as a politi...