Hey! Half a year already!

Topic sentence: It has been almost half a year since bridging ended. 

First of all, time really flies, taking away my English grammar, vocabulary.....Secondly, It seems this is my first time to come here after bridging course. Maybe it is the pressure from exams that reminds me of my bridging course. Finally, bridging course was really a good time, although I didn't think so when I have it.

Well, here comes to the paragraph of conclusion. Actually I post this for no point, although writing this makes me kind of nervous because it is in English...I just wonder if there is anyone in our group who still checks his or this blogger group, anyone miss the life with a center of learning English or teaching English in some group 4. Also, long time no see the tutors, and long for a lunch or dinner with you at the beginning of next semester.

Essay done. Good night!!

The South Pacific Ocean

Recently, I have been watching a BBC documentary called "the south pacific ocean＂. It introduces many endangered species in the south pacific ocean, and explains how human activities influences those animals. Even though the survival of some of them are becoming more difficult, the beauty of them have deeply rooted in my mind. The most impressive animal for me is the dolphin, this kind of dolphin often appeare in the coast off New Zealand. The photographer shooted the animal above the sea. Every movement of the beautiful creature is fully displayed. Dolphins swim around the boat, and sometimes, they jump out of the water and spin in the air. They are indeed the ballerinas in the sea. The next animal I an going to write is not as lucky as those dolphins. The northeast penguins on the earth gose to some islands in south pacific for breeding. Unfortunately, tourism bring many alien species, some of them will threaten baby penguins. The photographer was intended to film how baby penguins grow up, but them found many dead penguins which were killed by fcats. Both the photographer and I feel so sad. Owning to the perciverance of documentary makers, they found a nest with two baby penguins finally. After watching the documentary, I realize that even though those animals are far away from me, it is still my duty to protect them. I will find practical way to make contribution for their survival.

Saving endangered species: your responsibility

      The last Passenger Pigeon died alone at the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914; Caribbean Monk Seal was officially declared on June 6th, 2008; the last naturally born Pyrenean Ibex, named Celia, died on January 6th, 2000. The statistics I mentioned are just miniatures of the havoc that human’s behaviors caused on animal species. Sadly, the pace of extinction has been accelerating over the years.

      I have seen movies about massacre to dolphins happening at the small bay in Japan; it was a video secretly recorded by several volunteers. It showed that thousands of dolphins were killed at this bay every year and blood of dolphins dyed the sea into red color. When I saw the scene displayed in the movie, I was totally shocked. Animal species is dying out at an unprecedented speed due to human’s overfishing, over-exploitation and other excessive exploitation to nature. Human beings have to pay for what they gain from the nature and everyone should take the responsibility.

      To keep the stability of the nature, awareness of individual is required. Everyone should know that they have the obligation to protect the endangered species and prevent common species from becoming endangered as well. Fortunately, many countries have already realized the benefit of the ecological balance and the potential benefit of natural diversity. Many natural conservations were set up, NGOs such as WWF, Greenpeace etc. were found. These actions have exerted certain positive influence on preserving endangered animals, but that is far not enough. Saving lives of endangered species needs everyone’s effort. As a student, taking part in NGO may be a good choice and also an easy access to nature.

      Nature has kindly given its resources to human beings and now it is time to think about repaying. It is not only the government’s or NGO’s work, but also a work that everyone can take part in.

Chinese Sturgeon

The Chinese sturgeon, a member of the family Acipenseridae and the order Acipenseriformes, is an endangered species in China. This species has a long history, for it dates back to the same time of dinosaurs. Also, people sometimes call Chinese sturgeon living fossil because of its long history. It is also named as “national treasure”. And the sturgeon is also classified as “China’s Class One Protected Animals”.

The sturgeon is a species of fish, and a grown-up one can weigh 450 kg and measure up to 4 meters long. Every year, they will migrate more than 3200 km up the Yangtze River, which is the longest migration of any sturgeon in the world. It seems that every year they must take a tough journey for their species’ reproduction. Unfortunately, they are very sensitive to the noise on the river and vulnerable to the boat propellers. Over these years, the number of Chinese Sturgeon has decreased largely because of human’s activities. For example, overhunting and poaching.

Over these years, there are many studies on Chinese Sturgeon in China have been conducted to help people know more about them, and many actions have been taken to protect them. For example, the Chinese Sturgeon Museum was built to use some technology to help them reproduce and breed their children. But the most significant measure is that people are highly aware of the preciousness of the Chinese Surgeon and try their best to protect them. As ordinary people, we can stop killing them, and we can stop destroy their home for our own benefits. 

Never be apathetic to our nature

The extracting of bear bile caused heated discussion among Chinese people in recent days. “During the short period of extracting bear bile, the bears look very comfortable.”; “You are not the bear, how could you know that they are painful.” These two sentences were come from the head of the China Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the head of one company which extracts the bear bile. I could not find a word to describe how I feel when I heard of what they said, is it angry, shocked, or shame? Though from their previous announcement which argues that it may be good for bears to extract their bile, some opponents of the extracting of bear bile still find the evidence of the permanent injuries to bears because of the extraction. Personally, another thing I cannot accept is the word “comfortable” they used. It is true that I am not the person who can feel the painful when bears are doing bile extraction, but they are also not the persons who can feel the so-called comfortable of bears.
During this heated discussion, what I saw are some endangered persons who only concentrate on their reputation and interests. They earned their money at the expense of our natural resources, and I believe that one day they will ruin themselves by what they have done to nature. It is not the single case to show the confliction between the development of economy and the balance of nature. It is a crucial time for people to calm down and think deep about the relationship between money and nature, one was created by human beings, on the other hand, one supports our human beings.

Zoo? A killer of wild animals?

  Have you ever imagined a situation that we can only see wild animals in the zoo? These endangered animals are sure to be fed well. It may seem that they have a good life. However, they are always kept in cages, which is a lager disadvantage of zoos.

  I felt impressive when I saw the video about zoo. Animals that kept in zoos only can wander in a small place to kill their time. What a sad thing!

  Kept in cages, wild animals will lose their wild natural abilities to hunt for food and other abilities. Even for a human-being, he or she may lose some skills if one does not practice them for a long time. People usually keep endangered wild animals in a small cage, in which way they think they can protect wild animals. However, they are pushing endangered wild animals towards an edge of extinction. Wild animals will lose their skills to hunt after being separated from wild environment for a long time. They are far from their wild habitats. They can only feed on artificial food or dead animals, so that they cannot have chance to hunt in the wild. Even though one day they may be released, they may not survive in their former in habitats.

  What I mentioned before may become a circle. More wild animals are kept in zoos, more of the may lose their natural abilities. Then more of them lose their natural abilities, more of them need to be protected. Then more of them are kept in zoos. As time goes by, the condition of wild animals may become worse.

  When wild animals are not wild any more, it makes no sense to protect them by keeping them in zoos. Making natural reserves may be a better way to really protect wild animals. They can have a larger living place and will not lose their natural abilities.

Central Rock Rat

Last Thursday we had an activity in which we introduced some endangered species. Our group was taking charge of endangered mammals and we introduced pandas. However, I found that many of you were interested in central rock rat. To be honest, I was also interested in it since I had never heard about it. Thus, I want to give you some introduction of central rock rat today.

First of all, I want to introduce its appearance. Picture 1 is a photo of central rock rat. Frankly speaking, I did not see any differences from a normal rat (Picture 2). To distinguish these two rats, I searched in http://www.australianfauna.com. According to this website, “Thick yellow fur … is present. The feet are a similar colour as the underbelly. The average head and body measurement of the central rock rat is 120mm …Central rock rats have round ears and a roman nose.” which made me more confused. After checking several websites, I concluded that there is little difference between them and we can just ignore it.

Picture 1 

 

 Picture 2

Next, I was going to introduce its nesting habits, but I read they can only be found in “the western portions of the MacDonnell Ranges of Australia”. Moreover, due to the hard environment, it is hard for humans to investigate its habits. As a result, we do not know much about it until now, even when it is going to extinct.

In conclusion, central rock rat is endangered species and we have not known it much yet. We have to save them and care about them.

A Few Reflections on Coach Carter

    We watched the movie Coach Carter this Tuesday. It was an impressive movie, which was as impressive as the snacks that Ms. Norazida gave us. It is said that the movie is based on a true story. Coach Carter agreed to train the basketball team in his old school, Richmond High School. However, the training was nothing smooth because of the aggressive and disrespectful players. Coach Carter started to teach his team from respect and physical strength, and the team made a winning streak for nine games.
    Up to now we can see that Carter is not only good at teaching playing basketball, but he is also good at teaching them how to be a good student (as all the good teachers do). He taught his students to be respectful. He used punishment to convince his aggressive and stubborn students. He used his charisma to influence and inspire them. When he was training his team, he was even more stubborn than the students. However, his stubbornness made the improvement of his team more convincing, and earned more trust from his team members.
    Although the games seemed perfect, but students were not. When Carter found his students got poor grades on their schoolwork, he closed the gym and stopped training and playing games. Later on, the school committee opened the gym under pressure from the public; however, Carter entered the gym only to find the students studying there.
    Carter made a calm judgement between basketball and students' future. In front of the pressure from society, he has the courage to persist his teaching method. Although he failed to persuade the parents, he finally got the hardworking students who trusted him. When no one cared about the students' future, he cared; when every one protested against the lockdown on the gym, he persisted.
    After reaching the academic goal, the team was back to game and keep on winning. Although they lost the last game to the best high school team in the state, they were still proud of what they learnt. Finally, six of the team members went to college.  It was his love and foresight that made him a great coach and made his students successful players.

    P.S. When I wrote this blog, I put my thought into the introduction of the movie. I hope it is okay.

Hold on expectations of your life

Over a few weeks of reflecting and suffering, I cannot find any interesting ideas on “tracing our roots”. The topic seems to be more about scientific research rather than my personal hypothesis. When I flipped the supplementary material of that week to find some inspiration, I found an article called “Life is a journey”. Well, then let me talk a little about life-expectation of life.

People have different expectation of their life. The expectations depend on different ages. Some children are inclined to have some great expectations based on their interest, such as becoming the richest man in the world, becoming a scientist like Einstein, inventing a time machine and so on. If a child suffers from a severe cold, he may want to make a magic medicine to cure all illnesses. University students’ expectations are more realistic. They begin to care about salaries and listen to other people’s experience for reference, while middle-aged people are more mature and set sights on practical objectives such as cars or houses. Because of different views of different ages, parents sometimes may find it hard to accept the thoughts of their children. 

One’s expectation can be ridiculous in others’ eyes. That is when someone seems crazy. Under pressure from parents and friends, people may give up some dreams in their life. That is when someone’s dream is killed by others. We dream as we expect; however, sometimes we give up as other people expect. However, we are the one who expect, dream and choose. Even if we cannot realize our dreams, we should at least have a try before we give up.

Therefore, engineers, don’t just immerse in yourself in economics; Singers, don’t keep writing research papers; scientist, have a try before you listen to your mom who told you to be an economist. Maybe we cannot finish the way to our dreams, but at least we need to begin as we want. Have a try, since we are still young.

Ahhha, Jailbreak!!

Today is an important day for all the apple fans, because pod2g-the famous developer for studying jailbreak-and his team finally released untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.1 devices. To mark this thrilling day, I want to show the steps of jailbreak and some other tips for over ten apple device users in group 4 (in fact for girls mainly).

1. Restore

Theoretically, it is better if you can restore your iOS devices before starting jailbreak, but according to my personal experience, it is still very successful if you just start jailbreak without restore.

To insure the success of jailbreak, I put the address of restore file of iPad 3 here. You can choose to restore your device.

http://appldnld.apple.com/iOS5.1.1/041-4327.20120427.xW6U6/iPad3,1_5.1.1_9B206_Restore.ipsw  (For the new iPad only)

Restore means recover your system to the original factory state, so you should backup your information, your photos and your apps before you start restore. Connect your device to PC, open iTunes, click right button on your iPad icon in the sidebar on the left, choose backup.

After backup, double-click your iPad icon, then press shift key and at the same time click “recover” as the following image shows (Chinese version, sorry, Joshua…).

2. Jailbreak

Here is an address to download the jailbreak file.

http://sinastorage.com/3gsoft.downtech/20120525/df3326ab/absinthe-win-2.0.zip?fn=&ssig=E3hkWTZykQ&Expires=1338084571&KID=sae,230kw3wk15&ip=1338005371,137.132.3.9

When you extract it, the system may tell you that “the system cannot extract it with encryption, do you want to go on extracting without encryption?” Then just click yes and go on.

Next you can open “absinthe-win-2.0.exe”. Then a folder appears in the same index as the exe file, open it, open the exe file in it.

When you open the program, it may tell you cannot begin jailbreak because you set up a passcode in your iTunes. Then close jailbreak, open iTunes, press the iPad icon and cancel the passcode that you used to encrypt your backup, like this image shows.

In addition, for insurance you should close auto-lock and your lock-passcode on your iPad.

Then you can open absinthe-win-2.0.exe again and if the program doesn’t tell you anything wrong, you can press the jailbreak button. After waiting for a couple of minutes, you will see the words, “Done. Enjoy!” Then unplug your iPad and start enjoy your device with a jailbreak.

3. Other tips

You will see Cydia after jailbreak. In Cydia you can download some interesting and powerful gadgets for your iPad. To find more free gadgets, you need to add some “sources”. A source is like a library, you can find lots of things in it.

Here is a sample to add sources.

http://cache.baidu.com/c?m=9d78d513d9c056ae28fa94091a17a763134380126d9c864e2cc3923884125d563760f7fc677c1f5e95833e7000dc5441b1b26c2f6b5437b7ec8edd1a9afa852858d97a6b6d5ac1074f9342fc955b6280778d5aebad13e4b9ed3291acd8d0dc5758c959047b82f19c5a77559029af4a&p=9a7aca5b8d934eac59e6c22d0215d124&user=baidu&fm=sc&query=1%2E78+cydia%D4%B4&qid=8b524e3b01428c60&p1=3

In this page, you can also find some really good sources.

4. Free softwares

For this function of jailbreak violate intellectual rights, I will not introduce any more. If you are interested in this, you can search on your own. The method is widely introduced in the Internet.

Ok, this is all of my blog. Best regards!

Sumatran tigers

  In 14th century, the prince from the neighboring island of Singapore was exploring the seas for new land and made landfall on a new island. Upon arrival, he and his men a powerful beast with a golden mane and his men told him it was a lion. Therefore, the Prince named the island 'Singapura', which means the City of Lion. Many people think, however what he saw was not a lion but a tiger. And this tiger was considered to be the ancestor of Sumatran tiger.

  Wild Sumatran tigers live in the tropical rain forests in Sumatran and it is the only surviving member of Sunda Islands group of tigers, which included Bali tigers and Javan tigers; but according to the current situation of Sumatran tigers, they will extinct as the cousins soon. In 1978, there were more than 1000 Sumatran tigers lived in the wild, but the population is fewer than 400 now. There are two main reasons for the declining of Sumatran tigers.

  First, Sumatran tigers’ habitat is shrinking in Sumatra and the whole Indonesia because of human activities. People destroyed forests for plantations, agriculture and settlement. From 1985 to 1997, about 67,000 km² of forest was lost in Sumatra and the decline is continuing in a fast rate. And among the remained forest, only 1/3 has been form of conservation area. Sumatran tigers’ living area is losing and the king of forest has no more forest to rule.

  On the other hand, over-hunting “makes a great effort” for the decline of Sumatran tigers. Tiger poaching is rampant in Indonesia; many shops sell tiger products, such as tiger bones and skins. Also, many tiger products are exported to other countries. Although Sumatran tigers are on the edge of extinction, there is no evidence that tiger poaching has declined significantly.

  There is a urging for people to take actions to protect them; we can help save the tiger. First, do not buy any product containing tiger parts, such as some Chinese medicines with tiger bones. Second, saving paper. For example, we should use double-size printing instead of one side. And also, we can donate money to some tiger protect projects. It is the time that we should make an effort to save tigers and give future people a chance to see the creature, which made Singapore to be called “lion city”.      

 

Ps: Here is a video of Sumatran tiger. If you want to know more about Sumatran tiger, please click

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yud3ymLsuao&feature=player_embedded#!

The Cover

    When talking about the endangered species, human beings’ cruel actions towards the nature come to my mind. However, I still be shocked by the bloody scenario when I watched the movie The Cove. I could never imagine such cruel killings towards dolphins before I watched it.

    The Cove is a documentary film that recorded the dolphin hunting culture in Japan. The film follows former dolphin trainer and former Sea Shepherd activist Ric O'Barry's quest to document the dolphin hunting operations in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan. Ric O'Barry, himself used to be one of the best dolphin trainers in the world. He spent ten years in training dolphins, but at last used thiry-five years to abolish such activity. He was proud that he made more people fall in love dolphins, the clever and beautiful animanl, but he also felt guilty for such love has made more dolphins be killed.

  The film highlights the fact that the number of dolphins killed in the Taiji dolphin hunting drive is several times greater than the number of whales killed in the Antarctic, and claims that 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed in Japan every year by the country's whaling industry. It also argues that dolphin hunting as practiced in Japan is unnecessary and cruel. To get the real scenario, the film crew met a lot of difficulties. Their attempt to film the dolphin hunting in the cove is blocked by the local government who treats foreign visitors as enemies. Foreigners who come to Taiji are questioned by the local police. Thus the film crew could not get the permission. In response, together with the Oceanic Preservation Society, Psihoyos, O'Barry, and the crew utilize special tactics and technology to covertly film what is taking place in the cove. They also get help from O'Barry’s friends who were good at plunging. Anyway, at last this film finished.

    After this film came out, people were shocked by what was happening in Taiji in Japan. Many actions were called to halt mass dolphin kills, change Japanese fishing practices, and to inform and educate the public about the risks, and increasing hazard, of mercury poisoning from dolphin meat, and the situation of dolphin hunting has improved a lot now.

    I was extremely when watching lots of dolphins were killed cruelly. When I was a child, I heard about a story that a dolphin save a person who fell into sea and also be drowned, so in my mind dolphins are kind and clever animals, and I love it very much. Protect dolphins, and give a peaceful beautiful cove to those beautiful dolphins.

Endangered Species: Human Beings

        Now the population of human beings is increasing at a fast speed. It seems that human beings will not become extinct. In my opinion, however, human beings are also endangered species. We may die out sometime in the near future. We are in danger now.

         First, human beings may die out because of world war. Now the world situation is characterized by turbulence. Many countries are having a strained relationship with some others. Also some countries have formed groups to achieve their goals and protect their own benefits. Once a war breaks out, it must be a world war which involves the people all over the world. No one can ensure that the nuclear weapons will not be used. Wars always cause huge damage to human beings, and large number of people must die in a war. Therefore, a world war with nuclear weapons may lead the extinction of human beings.

        Second, human beings may become extinct of diseases. With the development of technology, scientists have created some useful medicines. In the meantime, they may also produce some potential problems. In the movie "I'm a legend", scientists created a new vaccine with unknown infectious virus which caused the death of most human beings. There was only one person left who lived in the city alone. This situation may happen in real life. Now many animals and plants have been genetically modified, and even our food is genetically designed. Science is filled with secrets, so scientists cannot master all the technology. They may make potential mistakes but they cannot notice, so I do not trust them. Maybe in the future we will die out because of some diseases or viruses created by ourselves.

         Besides the above two factors, there are many other factors may cause the extinction of human beings. Maybe we will be invaded by aliens or attacked by mutant species. As the deterioration of environment and the extinction of other species, human beings may have no place to live in and no friends to live with in the future. This may also make it difficult for human beings to survive. I think dying out is the destiny of human beings, but when we will become extinct is still controlled by our own hands.

Zoos: prisons of animals

When I was a little boy, I would like to visit zoos to see tigers, lions and elephants. I am still curious about animals now, but I do not want to see animals in the zoo, because I feel sorry when I see these animals limited in a small place.

Zoos are once established for protecting animals, but now it has become a place to have fun. Some animals are even caught from their habitats to meet visitors’ curiosity. I have been to the Singapore Zoo. I saw many animals from many parts of the world, but they were not in a good state as the wild animals. I saw two lions: One was lying and the other was walking in the small tiger cage. One of my friends even shouted at the tiger and tiger had already lost their fierceness. I have also seen the elephants in the Singapore Zoo. All of them are ridded by trainers and did many unnatural movements. Audiences were all applauding. At that moment, elephants were only the toys of human beings and of no dignity. How does a zoo show its function as a haven of animals? It is actually the prison of animals.

Animals are friends of human beings. How can people treat friends as toys? I think more natural reservations should be established to keep animals in a natural state rather than keep them in “prisons”.

Our Deepest Fear

This Tuesday, our group watched a movie in class named Couch Carter. In this movie, a profound but elusive words impressed me.     "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't insecure around you. We were all meant to shine, as children do. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear. Our presence automatically liberates others. "       At first, I had no idea what does these words mean. After I came back to hostel, I found that this words originated from Marianne Williamson's book, A Return to Love, and this words were also used by the former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela in his Inaugural Speech in 1994.      In my opinion, this words mean that we fear because we are afraid that we cannot be the best of ourselves. As the words"we were all meant to shine", we all have the potentiality to make things perfect. However, in real life, people usually cannot release all their potentiality and the reason for this is nothing but fear. Sometimes I cannot do well in my presentation only because I fear I cannot do well. I could not figure out an item, which I should have figured it out, in college entrance exam, because I feared I cannot do it during that exam. Our fear of not being the best of ourselves block us to be the best of ourselves, and this fear is our deepest fear. Imagine if we know we are bound to fail at an exam or a presentation, then we will not fear anymore but accept our certain failure. We fear because we know we can always do better.     We should conquer that fear. as the words "there is nothing enlightened about shrinking", we should not give in to that fear but to face it and try to eradicate it. It is hard but it is possible. 

Queen of the Andes

Queen of the Andes is an endangered plant species. Its scientific name is Puya raimondii. The reason I want to write about it is that Puya raimondii is the queen of Andes mountain plants.

Queen of the Andes is an endemic species of Bolivia and Peru, and its distribution is restricted to the high Andes at an elevation of 3200m – 4800m. It is called lonely queen, because it is in big size and often occurs in very isolated places. The plant is monocarpic and seeds only once in about 80 years or more before dying. Although a mature Puya will produce 8–12 million seeds, very few of them will survive because of bad living conditions. This is why a century-old plant may not reproduce at all.

The global warming and climate change may cause the conditions of Queen of the Andes to become even worse. In addition, the major risk is due to human activities, such as to set fires on the mountains to get available land, or to cut down trees to serve as fuel or material. Queen of the Andes might also be eaten or kept underfoot by animals. Those are reasons why it is endangered now.

Human activities have changed the world in recent years. Because of human being’s destroy to the nature, many species are dying out. I think everyone of us should try to do something beneficial to the nature, such as saving plain water and planting more trees. Human beings have the responsibility to make the world a better place for all the species to live in harmony.  

Zoos--not a haven for animals

Many animals are going to extinct nowadays. Many people decide to keep them in zoos in order to protect these spices. Yet this may not reach the expected result since the life in zoos will harm their natural instincts and their ability to evolve.

Animals in the zoo behave differently from the way they behave in nature. I still remembered what I saw in a documentary about lions. They are the king of the prairie. They hide themselves and wait for their prey to come. As soon as they confirmed their prey, they jumped and chased after these animals promptly. When I visited the zoo, I felt quite depressed to see lions wandering in such a narrow place with empty eyes. Comfortable lives in the zoo had taken all the fights out of lions. Zoos help them survival but they no longer look like what the wild lions should be.

Zoos might block the evolution of animals as well. When animals live in the wild, they need to adapt to the environment and nature will choose the most suitable ones to survive. This process helps animals to be more competitive in the struggle for life. When living in zoos, animals are taken good care of by the zookeepers and they lose the chance to develop themselves, which will make them even easier to become extinct.

Zoos are not a good place for animals. They will lose their natural instincts and fail to evolve.  Animals should live in the nature. The best way to protect the endangered animals is to forbid people from harming them and their habitat.  

My dear dolphin

My dear dolphin

     Today Qing Shuo’s mention of an oceanic preservation society film “the Cove” remained me of the scene when I saw this film. Then after school I took a second look of the film just now. The movie tells about the dolphin slaughter in Tai Ji, Japan that about 23,000 dolphins are killed every year. Some of them are selected for performance and the others are killed for meat. This slaughter begins from September to March of next year, which lasts half a year every time.

     There are many organizations in Japan that can protect dolphins from killing, such as World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, International Fund for Animal Welfare, and the International Whaling Commission, but none of them make any sense on this issue.  

     The places where dolphin slaughter happens are only open to some fishermen who are involved in this issue. They do not allow visitors to enter these places and take photos, and shout at visitors that these are their “private places”. When be asked, they say killing dolphins is their tradition and culture just like western people kill cows , and it is also a way to prevent sea fishes from shrinking.

     Seeing the scene of dolphin slaughter that is took secretly and difficultly, I was shocked. Fishermen prink dolphins cruelly, and dolphins struggle in the cove. The water turns into red while fishermen’ boats are leaving with full-loaded dead dolphins.

     It is so difficult to protect dolphins that even letting the world know about this slaughter is a tough work. Dolphin is just one of the endangered species, the other species may be facing more serious situations. “The …slaughter is scheduled to resume …unless we stop it”

Extinction or Evolution

Every species experienced a hard period. Only small number of mutated animals could survive, and they became new species, replacing the old ones. Other species died out, becoming extinct species.

 The difference between extinct species and evolving species is variation; the evolving species changed and adapted themselves to the hard environment, but most extinct species never change.

However, not all variation is good for animals; some variation will make animals weaker. In the history of evolution, many mutated species also die out. Although variation is dangerous, it is the only way to survive from some hard period, such as ice age.  

Although we do not need to care about evolution, we still can learn a lesson from extinction and evolvement. Today, many people do not want change the situation they are familiar with; though they feel bored about the invariable life, they think they are safe in the familiar situation even the situation gets worse. However, profits always stay with risks. People, who are brave to make changes or even to lose their wealth, have more chances to earn more money. It is good for people care less about their wealth, when they have already cannot give up their wealth. Letting the wealth become the obstacle on development is not a right choice.

Making a change is not an easy thing; people do not want to give up what they already have and are afraid of what they might lose. Therefore, we need to force ourselves to get the courage of sacrificing our comfortable situation. Otherwise, we can never get advancement.

Endangered Species-Panda

After knowing the topic of this week-endanger species-I searched Internet for the definition of the “endangered species.” I learnt that “an endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters.”（http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_species）

When I was happily looked at the definition, a picture on the margin of the website came into my sight. （http://www.worldwildlife.org/species/finder/giantpanda/panda.html）

   The cute animal in this picture is panda-the precious animal in China-and it is the rarest number of the bear family. The panda is popular almost all over the world, but it is now among the world’s most endangered animals. The population of the panda is less than 1600 according to the data on this website. Therefore, it is clear that the panda’s situation is dangerous and her future remains uncertain. As a member of the whole nature, it is necessary for us to take our every effort to prevent these valuable species from dying out. Moreover, as Chinese students from China, the panda is the epitome of our nation, so it is our responsibilities to protect and save them. We know that two pandas will come to Singapore soon, so we can pay more attention to them and offer some advice to the government about how to keep this specie; or we can just take action in our daily life, such as stop tempering with the plants. I think that these two panda will strengthen the relationship between Singapore and China, and I also believe that the panda will not die out soon with the protection of every people.