Response to Lee Siegel "Against the Machine"

The Artificial World We Live In "The Internet"

By: Natalina (Sogang University)

Do you think that there is another world out there? I do think so. There is a world inside this world which is created by human and that is the Internet. Even though it just something that considered to be artificial, but it can connect all the people from all over the world. As we see, these days, people find it awesome to play with the Internet since it offers them so many things. As an example, they can see different people and different countries without needing to across the ocean, but only stare on their computers or Smartphone’s screen. Hence, all of the people have connection of internet to their computer at home or mobile laptop which can be carried with them everywhere they go, like tablets (iPad or Samsung galaxy) and Smartphones. The use of these devices can be viewed from two different sides since everything in this life has its good and bad sides, so does the Internet. 

First, there are so many positive things we get from the Internet. The Internet is a good tool for implementing the idea of freedom of speech, great facility for collecting information, and it is an easy means to build social connection to focus in Information, there is a lot that we can find such as: up-to-date news, entertainment, sometimes helps students to do their assignment. In modern technology where competition is everywhere, information is playing crucial role. For instance, if there is a job opening, people no more use paper to make the announcement instead they prefer to use internet as the mean to make announcement online. If you have no access to the Internet, to their website, then automatically you will have no access to the related information. Therefore, in this very competitive world, information is above all. The search engines like Google, Yahoo, or for most Korean people search engines like Naver and Daum, are the places where you can find variety of information just by typing a key word of the subject that you want to know. You can almost find any type of information and subject that you are looking for. 

Additionally, with the social sites that human being ever created can connect us throughout the world. We can make millions of friends just by using the Internet. With so many great ways for you to keep in touch with them, like email and instant messaging services from Yahoo! Messenger, Skype, MSN. 

However, in contrast of the positive things, the Internet also carries some negative things. For instance, people can steal your personal information such as name, address, credit card number. Because of this kind of thing happened, some people prefer to hide themselves, their identity. As Lee Siegel in his essay The World Is All That Is the Case, he said that for the first time in human history, a person can broadcast his opinions, beliefs, and most intimate thought-“not to mention his face, or any other part of his body”to tens of millions of other people. 

Another best example is people in these days have way more eye contact with their computers, or tablets, or Smartphone’s screen for hours rather than they do with other humans being. As described in the opening discussion of Lee Siegel’s essay, that everyone is sittings speechless in Starbucks. Instead of seeing each other and talking face-to-face, people feel more comfortable talking to each other through the wall on the Internet. It also happened to me several times, when I post something on my Facebook wall, some of my Korean friends comment a lot on that pretend like we know each other very well, but when we meet around at school we don’t even say hi to each other. This is funny but so true. I just don’t get why people should feel way comfortable like that. 

Aside from the example above, I sometimes faced some serious time management problems because I used to be so addicted to surfing the Internet, and I found myself unable to concentrate on my work before me. I sometimes also found the Internet awesome when I have bunch of work to do. I hated it when this happened to me. I always regretted after I spent an awful time on that each day, and I found my sleeping schedule ruined. However, I relieve now, because I’m not that addicted anymore to surfing the Internet. 

In the whole, from the essay of Siegel about the Internet, he is strong on pointing out the problems, but less impending about what he sees as the solutions. However, possibly it's necessary to understand the extent of the problems first before we start solving them. However, I think that the solutions are back to individual, to the people who use the Internet. Since the Internet is just a mean that does’t have brain to think like we do, so we can take good things of it and leave bad things. God gave us beautiful and smart brain, so we should use it very well, not to be a stupid person that easy to be manipulated by the machine.

Response to E.B White "Once More to the Lake"

E.B White: "Everything Was as It Always Had Been"

By: Natalina (Sogang University)

People usually like to retrieve their childhood memories when they get older. Sometimes they can remember what they have done in their childhood well, but sometimes they don’t. Revisiting the places where they visited the most when they were young, or seeing their childhood photo album again, or sometimes seeing themselves through the children around them who act the same way as they did when they were young are some ways of recalling childhood memories. E.B White, the author of “Once More to the Lake”, recalls his memories by revisiting the place that he went the most with his family every summer, a Maine Lake, in his childhood time. After he replaced his father’s position as a father and his son replaced his position as a son, he took his son with him to the lake one day to experience again the moments he had experienced. When he got there, he found out that things around the lake were unchanged although we all know that everything gradually changes with the passage of time. There are several examples we can see in White’s essay “Once More to the Lake” which prove that everything remains the same for him. 

The first example is the lake itself, the water and its small waves, the boat, the green grass, the farms and their farmhouses for White, the ways they all look have not changed. He describes things from the past as if nothing has ever changed, because he still feels very familiar with the place and the things around it. When he returns back to his childhood vacation spot, the lake, once more with his son, yet he clearly remembers all the things he saw at the first time he went there with his family. It shows that White has a very special feeling and view to this place as a holy spot not as a usual place. Imagine that this happens to us, I believe that we also can only remember places that we think are special although for others they are not. Therefore, even though it has been a long time White left the lake, but he still explicitly remembers all his memories in that place. 

The second example is the behavior of his son which is exactly the same as his when he was a young boy. “I knew it, lying in bed the first morning, smelling the bedroom and hearing the boy sneak quietly out and go off along the shore in a boat.”, (White, 187-188) and it shows that his son’s attitude reminds him of how he was always the first up, although now he lays still while his son sneaks out earlier in the morning. Everything that he sees from his son’s behaviors makes him think that his son was him. As he says “I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father” (White, 188). Many times he keeps repeating the same thing that he got confused and unable to distinguish who he was, whether a father with his son or him with his own father, because he and his son in the present share and do the same thing as he and his father did in the past. That’s why White says that change is changeless since both the past and the present have no big difference for him. We all know that time goes on, and people change, and sometimes the nature and things around it do change as well, but still some of them remain the same to recall our memories and bring us travelling back to where we were. However, it depends also on individual perspective that whether or not things and the person himself change. 

The last example is his feeling of being a young boy again when he returns there. Throughout the essay, White says that he frequently finds himself seeing the lake through the eyes of his son. He imagines and rethinks himself as a young boy by standing in his son’s shoes. The place brings him to an illusion world which got him confused about him, and this clearly represents that he struggles by letting of his child inside of him. However, he seems enjoy the illusion of returning back to the past as he was a little boy, and experiences the unchanging lake once more. If we happened to revisit any places that we had been the most, it surely brings us back to the past, to who we were and the things that we did at the time until we left the place, because as humans, we all experience something for the first time which will stick with us for the rest or our lives. 

In short, White’s illusion makes everything he sees around the lake seems like they bring his past to the present even though it just happens for a while artificially. The lake gives White a sense of his boyhood life because years after years it remains the same. He does realize that time has moved forward and he is growing when he hears the unfamiliar nervous sound of the outboard motor. However, some things don’t change, only the role in which he plays. Hence, the past is just something that we cannot erase from your memory, or maybe some can, but surely someday all the memories recover accidentally without us expecting that, just like what happened to White. All the senses, whether it is smell, sight, hearing, taste, touch, can physically bring back memories, because in fact through these senses White recalls his memories. As White says in the sentence “Outside, the road was tarred and cars stood in front of the store. Inside, all was just as it had always been”. It can be analyzed that White tries to say outside there we could see everything changes as time goes on, but inside, the whole things that we already done stay the same.  

Living Like Weasels - Annie Dillard

A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his underground den, his tail draped over his nose. Sometimes he lives in his den for two days without leaving. Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home. Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go. One naturalist refused to kill a weasel who was socketed into his hand deeply as a rattlesnake. The man could in no way pry the tiny weasel off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label. 

And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton--once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before he was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant? Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful airborne bones? 

I have been reading about weasels because I saw one last week. I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance. 

Twenty minutes from my house, through the woods by the quarry and across the highway, is Hollins Pond, a remarkable piece of shallowness, where I like to go at sunset and sit on a tree trunk. Hollins Pond is also called Murray's Pond; it covers two acres of bottomland near Tinker Creek with six inches of water and six thousand lily pads. In winter, brown-and-white steers stand in the middle of it, merely dampening their hooves; from the distant shore they look like miracle itself, complete with miracle's nonchalance. Now, in summer, the steers are gone. The water lilies have blossomed and spread to a green horizontal plane that is terra firma to plodding blackbirds, and tremulous ceiling to black leeches, crayfish, and carp. 

This is, mind you, suburbia. It is a five-minute walk in three directions to rows of houses, though none is visible here. There's a 55-mph highway at one end of the pond, and a nesting pair of wood ducks at the other. Under every bush is a muskrat hole or a beer can. The far end is an alternating series of fields and woods, fields and woods, threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks--in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs. 

So, I had crossed the highway, stepped over two low barbed-wire fences, and traced the motorcycle path in all gratitude through the wild rose and poison ivy of the pond's shoreline up into high grassy fields. Then I cut down through the woods to the mossy fallen tree where I sit. This tree is excellent. It makes a dry, upholstered bench at the upper, marshy end of the pond, a plush jetty raised from the thorny shore between a shallow blue body of water and a deep blue body of sky. 

The sun had just set. I was relaxed on the tree trunk, ensconced in the lap of lichen, watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and part dreamily over the thrusting path of a carp. A yellow bird appeared to my right and flew behind me. It caught my eye; I swiveled around—and the next instant, inexplicably, I was looking down at a weasel, who was looking up at me. 

Weasel! I'd never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin; maybe two brown hairs' worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn't see, any more than you see a window. 

The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key. 

Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don't. We keep our skulls. So. 

He disappeared. This was only last week, and already I don't remember what shattered the enchantment. I think I blinked, I think I retrieved my brain from the weasel's brain, and tried to memorize what I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splash-down into real life and the urgent current of instinct. He vanished under the wild rose. I waited motionless, my mind suddenly full of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didn't return. 

Please do not tell me about "approach-avoidance conflicts." I tell you I've been in that weasel's brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine. Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secret tapes-but the weasel and I both plugged into another tape simultaneously, for a sweet and shocking time. Can I help it if it was a blank? 

What goes on in his brain the rest of the time? What does a weasel think about? He won't say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose leaf, and blown. 

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular--shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?--but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasels: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will. 

I missed my chance. I should have gone for the throat. I should have lunged for that streak of white under the weasel's chin and held on, held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life. We could live under the wild rose wild as weasels, mute and uncomprehending. I could very calmly go wild. I could live two days in the den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses. Down is a good place to go, where the mind is single. Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses. I remember muteness as a prolonged and giddy fast, where every moment is a feast of utterance received. Time and events are merely poured, unremarked, and ingested directly, like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein. Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow? 

We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity. 

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles. 

From Twenty-Five Great Essays Book Third Edition, Robert DiYanni, New York University

December Rain

By: Natalina (Sogang University)

Everybody has a story to tell. This is part of my story and it has made me who I am. December 2008 was my very first time to celebrate my birthday without my family. That time, I woke up, grabbed my phone on my desk next to my bed. I turned the phone on and saw the calendar fixed on the phone screen. December 2nd was the date that calendar showed. I looked at my window and obviously could still see the blue sky. The sun rays streamed in through the glass window. I got up, and opened the window, and the winds came in blew me away. It was one of the prettiest mornings I have ever experienced. I felt cold but fresh in that morning while throwing my gaze outwards there. 

I looked at my calendar again. I still didn't believe my eyes about what I saw on the phone screen, so I turned back to ask my roommate who was ready to go out. I wrote down this question “Today 02-12?” on a white blank paper and showed to her because I couldn't speak either English or Korean at that time. Yes, I knew one thing that I knew nothing. I understood what they said in English, but it was hard for me to speak out. The only words I could speak out were: hi, yes, no, thank you, and sorry. I felt like a mute person who could only used body languages for communicating with others. When she saw my written message, she then supported my eyes that what they saw was right. 

South Korea, it isn't like in my hometown. The people here are well know by tradition as being busy and quick-moving. Every morning, whenever I went down to cafeteria of the dormitory where I used to live, which is located on the basement, I found it hard for me to see a smiling face. Likewise, at that time, people who I met there in the basement looked tired, busy and hurry, even though it was Saturday. I don’t like that, it seemed like they were facing a very big problem in their lives. I wanted to see people smile or I wanted to show them my smile, not to those people who I met there, because I would be look at as weird or creepy if I smiled to people who I don’t know. However, I really wanted to do it, at least only that day, which was my birthday, or it might be OK if I did to the chef who cooked for us. As I said, I wanted to see people smile, but no one did. I wish I was at home with my family, where I could find it really easy see smiling faces in the morning. After breakfast, it was not only the Korean people looked busy. I noticed the elevator was busy as well. So, I went back to my room by taking the stairs. I went through the 162 steps, where I counted it every time I stepped on, until I got to the 8th floor, where my room was. That was the most exercise I have done in the morning, not to mention on my birthday. 

I took a look at my window again. The sun was getting right at its peak. I did not know how long it would be dominating on the sky up there. I sat near the window, turned my laptop on and tried to relax myself. I started to breathe deeply while imagining what I should do. When my laptop was ready to be used, I typed out yahoo.com on the Internet Explorer web browser's address bar. I was expecting that someone would send me a birthday message, but I got nothing in my email inboxes, so I decided to watch a movie--a funny movie. Not bad though I think, watching movie and laughing by myself. After around 2 hours, the sun was slowly fading as cloud blocked it. And the sky became overcast. Immediately, cumulonimbus cloud covered the sun’s residence.  

It also invited the rain to drop a pitter patter at first, and then followed by the second pitter patter, third, and so on. Rain!!! It was so soothing, but I stood up and closed my window. I stayed still, stood in front of my window, and stared at every raindrop that felt down heavily that made the ground wet and muddy. 

I went back to where my laptop was, eating a Choco pie while watching Just for Laughs program on YouTube. And again I checked my email. Finally, I got a message, but did’t know who the sender was. I clicked it out and began to read. After I reached at the end of the message, I found out who the sender was. 

The message was from my little sister. She used her new email account to write me a birthday message. I had no idea why she did that. By the way, I read the message over and over again, and my tears began to fall, a bit by bit, down to my chicks. I did’t know whether the tears symbolized my happiness or sadness. They fell more and more, without me noticing, and they fell down continuously as the rain fell heavily outside there. Now, if I rethink that moment again, I still don’t understand why I felt that way. Because I could’t hold the feeling, plus the kindly weather, sleep started to attack me slowly. So, I lay down on my bed and pulled the blanket over my head and then fell asleep. 

After a couple of hours of sleeping, I then woke up, and looked myself in the mirror. Well, what Demi Lovato, an American actor and singer, said "The mirror can lie. It doesn't show what inside", is true. The mirror told me that I was OK, but I still felt lonely. The feeling didn't disappear with my dream. I saw straight ahead to the window again, the rain had subsided perfectly. However, I still felt the remainder of the rain. It was moist. It was cold. Only one less thing: the rainbow. I waited to see the rainbow and hoped it could appear to help me coloring my day with its color. However, it was winter; there was no rainbow. Because I was afraid if my roommate came and found me crying, I so washed my face. 

Outside there, twilight moved increasingly dominating the perfect sepia afternoon. It also covered the sky slowly and became dark, and the darkness became more concentrated. I was silent and staring at the glass of my window which became foggy because of the rain and the cold weather, which reflected the lights colors outside the black background at night. I rubbed a finger into the frosted glass window, and drew several curves that I never knew the meaning of. Suddenly my phone alerted me. I got a message from my roommate. I texted her back, and told her to get us a medium size cheese pizza for dinner. 

I spent my Saturday night watching TV with my roommate. We ate pizza while watching TV in living room. We both didn't talk to each other. I then went back to my room after eating, and slept. I believed that sleep is nice thing that I should do because I could forget about everything for a while. 

Since that, I tried to accept my birthday as a normal day. I tried, and tried to forget the meaning of my birthday that was saving on my dictionary, that there should be a cake with the candles, and a birthday present. I deleted them. It gave me the lesson that every day is a birthday. When I open my eyes in the morning means that I was born again, and I should thank God for given me one more chance to breathe. This is what my mom has taught me. There are lots of people who don’t even know when their birthday is, so appreciated and be thankful that you do. 

I am eternally grateful when it rains. Thank the rain for giving me an opportunity to daydream, specially the rain in that time, because it has changed me. I don’t know what others like doing in their spare time when it rains. For me, daydreaming is the whole things I always do in rainy day. It makes me rethink about the good and bad memories that have been preserved on my life pages.

Response to Darwin's Theory

By: Natalina (Sogang University)

Since time immemorial, man has always questioned the origins of life, perhaps with this simple question “Where did we come from?” This sounds simple yet intriguing, but actually it has very deep mystery behind it which all expert scientists have tried to bring up and break, but it has remained unsolved until now. For the time being, there are two views that can be put forward about how living things first appeared on earth. The first view states that all living things were created by God, and the second view states that life is formed by random coincidences and beyond intent. Some people who have heard the Darwin’s Natural Selection and Evolution may think that this concept only concerns the field of biology and doesn't affect everyday life in the slightest. I think this assumption is a big mistake because this theory is more than a biological concept. 

I was introduced to this theory when I was in middle school by one of my professors who thought Biology. The first thing I learned in school about Darwin’s theory was Theory of Natural Selection. My professor explained that in a book entitled The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, the author as well as scientist Charles Darwin claimed natural selection to be the process by which the origin of species occurred. He gave us an example that there existed short-necked giraffes and long-necked giraffes, where the long-necked giraffes are those who could survive until now, while the short-necked giraffes are those were already extinct because it wasn't easy for them to get food by reached the leaves on the trees. Due to their survived, the long-necked giraffes were able to reproduce, and they passed the adaptive nature of the long neck to the next generation. That’s why all the long-necked giraffes are existed now. Besides the example above, there are so many examples that Darwin gave in the form of facts that he collected to support his theory. In my opinion, the example that I mentioned above does make sense, even thought it cannot be witnessed with my eyes since I wasn't born that time. 

In the case of environmental change, I am sure it is true that nature has always been changing. It can be caused by natural disaster, drought, differences in temperature and climate, etc. Organisms that live in nature should be able to adapt to the environmental changes in order to stay alive. The survival of a species of organisms is also influenced by the availability of food. We all know that organisms need food, and food sources come from the environment that has potential to provide foods. Otherwise, organisms proliferate continuously, so that their populations continue to increase, and this will lead to a competition among members of the populations which live in the same area. It seems like natural selection really embraced the notion, “Who is stronger will be the winner”, and the consequences for the losers have to leave the habitat and find a new place or otherwise they will die. Meanwhile, the stronger will win and stay in the area. 

I happened to think about this while I focused on this discussion of Natural Selection, that apparently natural selection does not only occur for animals in the forest. The theory is everywhere, and can happen in our lives. Joining a community for example whether it is in the neighborhood, an organization, or in the working world. If we cannot adapt and get along with people, of course we will be gradually eliminated from the community. This is where it takes a great emotional intelligence of a person, and not wrong if one said that someone who has a high IQ (Intelligence Quotient) may not work if it is not supported by a good EQ (Emotional Quotient), I mean it is not only competition but cooperation. 

To consider another of Darwin’s theories that I learned about at school, the Theory of Evolution, this theory can be viewed from two different aspects, namely as a historical process and how the process occurs. Regarding the issue of the Theory of Evolution which has been and still will be debated about, in my opinion, it should be viewed from different glasses. From one side of the glasses, it viewed as the evolution is the result work of human thought and observation based on the intelligence, and the other side of the glasses, it depends on everybody’s belief.

According to Darwin's theory of evolution, the ancestors of human are apes. We know what is being said by Darwin's theory is limited, which means his statement could be wrong. In my case, personally I disagree with the statement said man is descended from apes. I am not sure whether it is true or not Darwin wrote this in his book because I did’t directly read his book since I don’t have any interest in reading this kind of crispy essays full with confusing things. However, what I have learned from school, all of my professors who thought Biology, History of Science, and other subject they always mentioned about this statement. They even showed the same drawing which shows several steps of how an ape turned into a man.

  

Darwin's Theory of Human Evolution 

Now, I remember when my middle school professor showed the drawing to us, we all were like “What, are you serious sir Darwin?”, and we started to mock each other by saying “Probably you are the one who descended from apes, because you just look a little bit the same as an ape”, until some of my friends cried because of being ridiculed. I guess all of teen students maybe did the same thing as we did when they learnt about it. 

We actually just learnt about the first creation of human being on earth through Religion class 20 minutes ago right before the Biology class, where they said Adam and Eve, a couple who created by God are the first human beings. Since that, we started confusing that did Darwin theory revelation was against the religion’s belief or the religion belief did? Anyway, I get seriously sick when I imagine about the ancestor or human being in a form of an animal. Who’s going to be happy if somebody tells you that you are descended from an animal? I think no one, or maybe there is. ‘Man is descended form an ape’ does’t really make sense because a human and an ape are totally different species, so humans are not descendants of apes. Logically, if humans are descended from ape, why there are still apes? Why did’t they all turn into men? Another reason underlying the difficulty of recognizing the theory of Darwinian evolution is why only apes were evolving into human, and other animals were not? 

Darwin’s theory has always been a big controversial issue. I think, things will be fine and there will be no complicated things, and even disputation between religion and science if Darwin only mentioned and gave examples of evolution about animals and nature, instead of the presence of human being on this earth, or if he has strong evidence for what he wrote in his book. However, I believe the hundred percent might be true that the first man must be a man which is Adam, and human beings are perfect from other creatures, hence a man must be come from human, not an animal.

Computer and I

By: Natalina (Sogang University)

Nowadays every student has their own computer at home or mobile laptop which can be carried with them everywhere they go, and these devices are always connected to internet connection. Of course nowadays, people can access the internet not only by using laptop or computer but also by using tablets, such as iPad or Samsung galaxy, etc, and Smartphones, the recent mobile web surfing. I have a Toshiba laptop, and I think that it is very useful for me, it can help me doing my homework/assignments, using Skype to talk to my parents, and doing something fun like editing photos and videos. 

The good things using computer and internet are we can find a lot of information such as up-to-date news, entertainment, etc. In modern technology where competition is everywhere, information is playing important role. In this very competitive world information is above all. For instance, people can find job information through online; can get the most recent information through social sites, and more. The search engines like Google, yahoo, or for most Korean people search engines like Naver and Daum are the place where you can find variety of information just by typing the title of the subject that you are searching for. You can almost find any type of data and almost any kind of subject that you are looking for. With the social sites that human being ever created can connect us throughout the world. We can make millions of friends just by clicking on it. 

With so many great ways for you to keep in touch with them, like email and instant messaging services like Yahoo messenger, Skype, MSN, etc. However, sometimes internet can be facing grave danger. For instance people can steal your personal information such as name, address, credit card number, etc. Also, there are thousands of pornographic sites on the Internet that can be easily found and can be a detrimental factor to letting children use the Internet. I think perhaps this is the biggest threat related to children’s healthy mental life. These are very serious issue concerning the Internet. As you can see, each of us has our own purposes on using the internet. Some are using the internet for educational purposes, to keep in touch with friends or to advertise their company’s brand or for online shopping. However, on the other side some people who are using for other purposes like hacking a company’s site, or some related illegal action.

We All Are One

By: Natalina (Sogang University)

Human being is a social creature that always helps and needs others during our life time on this earth. There is no one who can live alone on an island. Because of our social relationship we always encounter so many challenges and problems that even sometimes we don’t understand. One of the fundamental issues that always trigger the problem between us is what so called ‘Egoism’, excessive or exaggerated sense of self-importance. There are some who always look down on other people. They think that they are the best, above all. Because of these things we always face problem and conflict between us. But for them, they have forgotten that we all are the same, we all are equal. To that, let me measure it out, we are equal by one heart, one liver, one tongue, one nose, etc, that God had given us. Skin color is not the measure of our differences as doing by some countries right now. Besides, religion also never considered as the measurement of the differences between human being. Skin color is just the part of our body to cover our skin, and religion is only the way that somebody worships to. We have different skin color and different God to worship but that is to tell us that how unique we are on this planet.

Now, in some countries when they hold campaign to get political power, they always put forward this matter as the main issue, by saying that do not support this or that man/woman because they worship different God from us, or they have different skin color from us. Sometimes politics try to distinguish us. Until we discriminate each other through religion and skin color. But that is just for their benefit to get power. It never gives benefit to someone else when we discriminate others. Why should we discriminate our friends just because of the skin color or the religion to help someone who want to go up and get the power?  Nowadays, in countries like USA, these things are slowly diminishing. Some people begin overly nice to black people. They begin feeling that it is time to respect each other with dignity. Well, I have never been to the USA or other places except South Korea and Indonesia. However, since I started my life in South Korea, what I encounter in my daily life is that there are no people who discriminate black people.

When I first came to South Korea, the very first friend that I made was with two foreigners, they are from Tanzania and Morocco (a Muslim girl). Even we have different skin color and religion, but we always treat each other respectfully. Because when I was in the middle school, my teachers and parents always told me that: ‘We should respect others equally as we respect ourselves because we are the same, God’s Children’. 

I think all of us know about Sept 11 attack that made the USA and the world shocked, at that time some blamed on Muslim people because the terrorist is from Islamic people. However, I personally disagree what they did to Muslim people after the attack. Terrorist is only a small group of people in Muslim community, and not including the whole Muslim people. So, we cannot blame on all Muslim people on this world. I know that American people felt angry and hated Muslim because of the lost of their people on that attack. Anyway, in my opinion if this attack happened because of politics game between American and Afghanistan, and then who should be the fault? It should be Politics not religion. Why religion should be at blame on? And why Quran should be burned? Muslim is not the enemy. The enemy is those people who did the attack, terrorist. So, let us together to eradicate discrimination and make the world to live in peace.  We all are one, God’s children. Love others as we love ourselves.