To Achieve Something Tremendous

David Blaine is a famous magician, who looks just funny and cheerful. However, he is a very hard worker who has strong fortitude.

After some mind boggling challenges like, keeping standing on top of a hundred foot pillar for 36hours, he decided to challenge a world record―holding his breath more than 17 minutes. As we knew, it was very dangerous and that was why doctors stopped him. Nevertheless, he never changed his mind and through a lot of trials and errors, he achieved the goal.

In the last of this video, he said "Magic is practice, training, and experimenting, while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be." How strong his remark is! He was able to say so, because he himself made a tenacious effort for his goal and succeeded in it. I think we can apply his remark to our lives. To achieve something tremendous, practice, training, and experimenting are absolutely necessary. What is more, I think, a life without these is boring and worthless.

Using Our Ingenuity Is Fun!

A lot of people tend to think that being fashionable and unique cost a lot. We apt to think we can get nice clothes only from big‐name shops. Needless to say, they are expensive.  Can't we  get gorgeous coordinates from really reasonable shops? 

Yes, we can. Actually, she does. At first glance, the speaker looks just a very fashionable woman, but she has a secret; She never buy anything new. She always buys some secondhand clothes only from flea markets or thrift stores and coordinates them effectively.

Before, when I heard of the word "secondhand clothes", I didn't have good images on them; It would be a bit dirty, out of date, and useless. I had been thinking that wearing such a kind of clothes would make me feel less confident and uneasy, until I watched this video. Here, she looked very stylish and sophisticated with them! What was more, how happy she looked!

I think her message was that we could make the most of anything by using our ingenuity. Besides, exercising ingenuity is kind of fun. I really enjoyed not only her fashion show but also her way of thinking.

Dennis Hong: Making a car for blind drivers

Accepting a challenge from the National Federation of the Blind, Mr. Dennis Hong, together with his team, started to invent vehicles for blind people.


For this goal, his team had to take perception, computation and non-visual interfaces into account. Needless to say, the drivers weren't supposed to see, so something had to perceive the road condition or obstacles on it instead. Then his team invented very sophisticated sensor. Next, they needed a  computer to accumulate this information and instruct the drivers how to drive. Hence, they devised a special one that was able to consolidate and organize the information, and instruct the blind.


For his team, the problem was how these instructions were conveyed to the visually impaired. To solve this problem, after a lot of trials and errors, finally they made a special interface for non-visual users. This gadget had many holes where compressed air come out, which made blind people image the shape of the roads or the existence of obstacles.


Later, their effort were rewarded. Even though it was just a prototype, but they succeeded in achieving their goal. However, according to him, what is more important is the wonderful technologies that come from their experiments. They may be able to use these technologies to make safer cars for sighted people. They may be able to utilize them to make home appliances for blind people. 


Honestly, the saying ”making a car for blind drivers” sounds unrealistic. Many people must have thought he was kind of mad. However, no one could say that it was 100% impossible and actually, they succeeded. I hope he will develop his study more and the vehicle will be made into a product.

Amy Lockwood: Selling condoms in the Congo

A marketer named Amy Lockwood was wondering; why didn't people in the Democratic Republic of Congo buy condoms even though donor agencies provided them cheaply?


In the DRC, the HIV prevalence rate is 1.3%, it means there are 930,000 people that are infected. To improve this situation, donor agencies provided condoms at low or no cost. However, people didn't buy them. Instead, they prefered the generics. Curious as she got, she started to look over the reason for that. Then she figured out donor agencies made a big mistake in their way of marketing; failure of understanding customers.


In the first place, donor agencies named their condoms like "TRUST" or "VIVE(LIVE)".  Besides, the packages of them were filled with a lot of decent pictures, like red ribbon or ones of a husband and a wife, which reminded people to behave prudently. Who buy these things before they are about to sex? These things are not likely what people think when they buy them. On the other hand, generic condoms showed the pictures like sexy girls or things to tempt people. In short, these private companies understood the customers better than donor agencies did.


Her conclusion was that; to move or affect people, what we should understand is who the customers are and how they are likely to feel. I was totally convinced by her explanation and her insight.

Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now

According to her, we are all cyborgs. The traditional definition for this is "an organism to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments". Thanks to the advancement of technology, we can travel faster than before, we can communicate with people wherever we are. She explained these tools, planes or mobile phones, were the "exogenous components" and without them, we were not able to live our lives. I agree with her opinion, but is being a cyborg good thing?


I think, it is absolutely not. Needless to say, our life is getting convenient exponentially, but the  excessive convenience makes us lazy and dull. For example, now, when we encounter problems, we can easily solve them by asking our friends through mobile phones. Before we had these gadgets, we had to think them out by ourselves. Surely it was tiring, but by thinking a lot, we were able to mentally grow up.  Next, since the appearance of text messages, we have been writing hand-written letters lesser and lesser. Disappearance of these warm letters has been making our lives a bit cold to some extent. Taking these facts into account, sometime I wonder whether we should pursue the technological advancement more.

Jane Chen: A warm embrace that saves lives

The speaker Jane Chen and her team invented wonderful stuff. It was a new incubator. Although it looks like just a sleeping bag at first sight, it can save lives.

According to her, 20 million premature babies are born every year around the world. They are so tiny that can't keep their temperature warm, so 4 million of them die annually. However, the more serious problem is that the survivors tend to cause long-term health problems like heart disease or low I.Q. Of course if they are kept in incubators, we can avoid these sad consequences. Yet, in developing countries, the number of incubators is absolutely insufficient.  

To improve this situation, her team came up with this new incubator. It doesn't require electricity at all unlike traditional incubators. Furthermore, it is much cheaper and much easier to handle. Until they finally invented it, they always tried to understand end users and exerted all their powers into it. She believes it can reduce the infant mortality.

It is a wonderful thing that such a kind of small stuff can save a lot of lives. More than that, however, I was impressed with her. The reason is that it was not common that a young woman like her went to developing countries, tried to understand the people there, and put her heart into saving lives. I got envious of her, who had a great job that she was able to devote her passion.

Nina Jablonski breaks the illusion of skin color

The greatest biologist, Charles Darwin made a big mistake. He mentioned that the differences among the variety of skin colors didn't attribute to climates. As most people know, the fact is that skin colors unquestionably vary according to our environments.


Strictly speaking, the intensity of ultraviolet radiation governs the degree of skin pigmentation. This is why people who live around the equator have dark pigmented skin and the degree of pigmentation becomes lighter as they go toward the poles. At first, our ancestors, who lived around equator, got melanin to protect their skin. Then as people dispersed into high latitudes, they decreased its amount in accordance with the decline of the intensity of ultraviolet radiation. In short, this differences are the proof of evolution.


 Hence, by just looking at our skin, we can easily recognize our evolution. As this speaker mentioned, it is wonderful thing. After watching this video, I thought people really shouldn't discriminate others by their colors of skin, because this differences are gifts from our ancestors.