Month: July 2020

On July 23rd, 2020, I received a bouquet of flowers from the President of Dhurakij Pundit University, Bangkok, Thailand, congratulations for me on my attainment of the assistant professorship.

I consider this event another milestone in my teaching career as an English teacher and researcher.

Thank you for all the best wishes and congratulations.

There are several nice coffee shops on Kret island, an island in the middle of the river. But this one called Kua Mue (Thai คั่วมือ) is special and awesome. You can roast and grind the coffee yourself and learn about coffee as well as coffee making. Besides, it is affordable. The fact that you can prepare your own coffee, from roasting to brewing makes it so special.

As coffee drinking has gained its currency among the Thai consumers, more and more shops keep opening up to serve the stronger demand in the kingdom. In this tough market, one needs to find one’s selling points. This is one of the shops that has found its unique spot in the market.

The owners of the shop are two friendly Thai ladies. They told me that the coffee beans are the Robusta coffee beans. The specific geographical location of the plantation is Chumpon province, South of Thailand. They told me that the coffee is very strong. It smells nice too. I love the aroma of the DIY coffee.

It is one of the must-see places on the island.

How to cite a YouTube video in the APA Style

Most people watch YouTube videos and they enjoy them very much. Many YouTube videos provide reliable sources of data and information that are unique and do not available elsewhere.

It’s a good idea to learn how to cite them. To cite a YouTube video, it is so simple.

Here is how to do it. You simply include the video title (italicized), the channel or creator that uploaded it, the upload date, and, finally, a link to the video, which you can get it directly from the link provided by YouTube.

Example

Format

Uploader. (Year, Month day). Title of the video [Video file]. Retrieved from url.

Real example is here:

Dialogflow. (2018, May 25). Dialogflow Dialog Control: Shape the flow of your conversation [Basics 3/3] [Video file].
Retrieved from https://youtu.be/-tOamKtmxdY

In-text citation (Dialogflow, 2018)

According to Dialogflow (2018), there are two types of conversation - linear and non-linear.

You can see that it is simple. Let’s do it more often.

Good language learners

“Good” language learners have been described by

Rubin in 1975 as being those who:

                  1. are willing guessers

                  2. are accurate guessers

                  3. have a strong drive to communicate

                  4. look for patterns in the language

                  5. try to classify language

                  6. analyze language

                  7. take advantage of all practice opportunities

                  8. monitor their own speech

                  9. pay attention to meaning

Do you consider yourself a good language learner?

Reference: Rubin, J. (1975). What the “Good Language Learner” Can Teach Us. TESOL Quarterly, 9, 41-51.

By Janpha Thadphoothon

There are things in life that we can prepare ourselves for. For example, exams or tests, especially when we know the outline and scope of the tests. However, many things are complex and any preparation needs to be flexible. We also need to prepare for the unexpected.

Professor Ducan Brown has proposed a set of natural laws, and one of which is this:

1. For every action on a complex, interactive, dynamic system, there are unintended and unexpected consequences. In general, the unintended consequences are recognized later than those that are intended.

This first law reflects the fact that most people pay attention to their intended outcomes. The law of nature is not what we have intended. It follows what the Buddha called ‘Pratītyasamutpāda’ or causes. In a treaty called Pratītyasamutpāda, the Buddha said that — all phenomena or Dhammas arise in dependence upon other Dhammas. The dictum goes — “if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist”.

Nature has its own laws. Human laws are social laws, which may not be the same as those operated by nature. For example, when you clean a room, you will get 50 dollars. This is the law of humans. The law of nature may be simply – when the room is cleaned. It is clean. If we are too attached to the laws of humans, we may be suffered and disappointed. Nature does not yield to human wishes.

How then can we prepare for what is unexpected? This question merits our effort to do some research. The best we can do is to do our best now – at the present time. Do not worry too much about the future, bearing in mind well that phenomena follow the law of nature. We need to develop our perspective of the universe – the Right View.

Notes

Summarizing the twenty-four conditions, they are:

root-condition (hetu-paccaya)

object-condition (arammana-paccaya)

predominance-condition (adhipati-paccaya)

proximity-condition (anantara-paccaya)

contiguity-condition (samanantara-paccaya)

conascence-condition (sahajata-paccaya)

mutuality-condition (annamanna-paccaya)

dependence-condition (nissaya-paccaya)

decisive support-condition (upanissaya-paccaya)

prenascence-condition (purejata-paccaya)

postnascence-condition (pacchajata-paccaya)

repetition-condition (asevana-paccaya)

kamma-condition (kamma-paccaya)

vipaka-condition (vipaka-paccaya)

nutriment-condition (ahara-paccaya)

faculty-condition (indriya-paccaya)

jhana-condition (jhana-paccaya)

path-condition (magga-paccaya)

association-condition (sampayutta-paccaya)

dissociation-condition (vippayutta-paccaya)

presence-condition (atthi-paccaya)

absence-condition (natthi-paccaya)

disappearance-condition (vigata-paccaya)

non-disappearance-condition (avigata-paccaya)

+++

The Nine ecological bloodymindedness laws are:

1. For every action on a complex, interactive, dynamic system, there are unintended and unexpected consequences. In general, the unintended consequences are recognized later than those that are intended.

2 Any system in a state of positive feedback will destroy itself unless a limit is placed on the flow of energy through that system.

3. Any sedentary community, by virtue of its sedentism, will encounter problems of sanitation. The manner in which sanitation is managed will affect the manner in which supporting agriculture is managed.

4. For every increment in the agricultural surplus there is a corresponding increment in the volume of urban sewage.

5. Stability or resilience in ecosystems requires that all essential reactions within the system function within ranges of rates that are mutually compatible.

6. The long-term survival of any species of organism requires that all processes essential for the viability of that species function at rates that are co0mpatible with the overall functioning of the ecosystem of which that species is a part.

7. If any species of animal should develop the mental and physical capacity consciously to manage the ecosystem of which it is a part, and proceeds to do so, then the long-term survival of that species will require, as a minimum, that it understands the rate limits of all processes essential to the functioning of that ecosystem and that it operates within those limits.

8. Long-term stability or ‘sustainability’ in ecosystems (including agricultural systems) is dependent in part upon the recycling of nutrient elements wholly within the system or upon their replenishment from a renewable source, provided such replenishment is not itself dependent upon a finite source of energy.

9. If a population continues to grow exponentially it will eventually consume essential resources faster than they can be replenished. The provision of or access to additional resources will extend the ‘life’ of such resources, and hence the duration of growth of the population, only to a very small extent.

Sources

1.  Nina van Gorkom “Different Aspects Of The 24 Conditions: Summarizing The 24 Conditions”. Retrieved from wisdomlib.org/buddhism/book/conditions/d/doc2917.html

2.  Feed or Feedback: Agriculture, Population Dynamics and the State of the Planet Paperback – October 1, 2003, by A. Duncan Brown (Author)

Pictograms, Ideograms, and Alphabets

In semiotics – a study of signs and meanings – pictograms, ideograms, and symbols or letters are called signs. A sign is anything that stands for something else. Semiotics is a fascinating science, allowing one to probe into one’s ontology.

In this short article, I shall explain the key terms in the meaning-making system – they are pictograms, ideograms, characters, and alphabets.

A pictogram (pictograph) is simple a picture. It is defined as “a picture or symbol that represents a word or phrase.” Another term is an icon. For example, a computer icon is a small pictogram.

In other words, a pictogram or pictograph is a symbol representing a concept, object, activity, place or event by illustration. Pictography is a form of writing whereby ideas are transmitted through drawing.

An ideogram or ideograph is a combination of two words – ideas and grams, defined as “a written character symbolizing the idea of a thing without indicating the sounds used to say it.” Simple examples are numerals and Chinese characters.

An ideogram is a graphical symbol that represents an idea, rather than a group of letters arranged according to the phonemes of a spoken language, as is done in alphabetic languages.

The term “ideogram” is commonly used to describe logographic writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters. However, symbols in logographic systems generally represent words or morphemes rather than pure ideas.

Another term we should look into is ‘logograph’. A logogram, or logograph, is a single grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). This stands in contrast to other writing systems, such as alphabets, where each symbol (letter) primarily represents a sound or a combination of sounds. A Chinese character, for example, is a logogram

As we can see it is about levels of abstraction, from the concrete to the abstract. A picture is concrete, but a word is an idea (abstract).

a letter, number, or other mark or sign used in writing or printing, or the space one of these takes:
a string of characters (= a line of marks)
The address was written in Chinese/Japanese characters (= systems of writing).
The computer screen on this laptop is 66 characters (= spaces) wide.

Alphabet refers to “a set of letters or symbols in a fixed order, used to represent the basic sounds of a language; in particular, the set of letters from A to Z.” (Source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/

How many letters are there in the alphabet? – Worldometerwww.worldometers.info › languages › how-many-letter…
The English Alphabet consists of 26 letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.

References

https://www.historyofvisualcommunication.com/02-ideograms

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/