English Recordings

If so, then no one has supplied more theories and findings to fill that hole than Ramachandran. The Cartesian division of mind and body long ago fell out of fashion in both philosophy and neuropsychology, but only recently have we begun to realise that not only is the brain part of the body but the body is also part of the brain. Ramachandran has been at the forefront of reimagining this interdependence with his ground-breaking work on phantom limbs.
Among amputees, 90% suffer from phantom limb pain, which can often cause excruciating discomfort. For most of the 20th century, medical science was divided over whether the cause was psychological or as a result of traumatised nerve endings. Neither hypothesis did much to help the afflicted.

The former Cambridge PhD student has also been feted in Britain, giving the Reith lectures in 2003, gaining fellowships of All Souls College and the Royal Institution, as well as a two-part Channel 4 series. Furthermore, his book Phantoms in the Brain was highly acclaimed. But for all that recognition, he's still not easily recognised. That may change with his latest book, The Tell-Tale Brain, which, according to the Financial Times, is an unimprovable "sweep of contemporary neuroscience".
And neuroscience is where the intellectual action is these days. In a recent edition of the New Yorker, the journalist David Brooks declared: "We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness… brain science helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophy."

Among his contemporaries he's a pioneer who, by using real mirrors and looking at mirror neurons, is changing the way we think about thinking
Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran is not a name that rolls off the tongue, even in its more common abbreviated form of VS Ramachandran. Perhaps this is the reason its owner is not as well known by the general public as his fellow neurologist and friend Oliver Sacks. But within the sciences he is seen as one of the great pioneers of our time.
In an often-quoted description, Richard Dawkins once wrote: "Ramachandran is a latterday Marco Polo, journeying the Silk Road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind." Such is his reputation for pushing back the boundaries of neuroscience that Newsweek magazine identified him among the "100 most prominent people to watch" in the 21st century.

At the end of the Zhou Dynasty, the area we now know as China had fallen into a state of fragmentation and conflict. While the Zhou dynasty had ruled for several centuries, several other states, originally feudal domains, tried to carve out their own kingdoms. The state of Qin would eventually emerge the victor and unify all of China under one rule for the first time in history.

Officially falling on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, the Dragon Boat Festival is also known as Double Fifth Day. While many stories regarding its origin abound, the most popular and widely accepted version regards Qu Yuan, a minister during the Warring States Period (475 - 221 BC)

to lunge
battering ram
to detest
offshoot
fortuitous
spectator
resourceful
to intercept
eye strain
to teeter
hot seat
chain gang
refined
fatigue
to vow
to assume
grueling
to give a little tickle to
forceful
brute
clinic
lasting weakness
to steer
foresight
guarded optimism
goner
brittle
relentlessly
carnal
to rumble
dog-eat-dog
post mortem
to devour
to render harmless
to concede
ironclad
kibitzer
cramped
to splinter
resilient
to parry
brisk but manageable
edge
anaemic
gross
to encounter
queasy
markedly
to inflict
to recoup
adventurous
bout
hitch

It was fun reading their version of an event which I remember happening, also interesting to note how different my memories are from their descriptions. On a more solemn note, I found there were many things going on that we as children were unaware of, since my parents wanted to protect us from whatever we might find worrying or unpleasant. It was only by reading those letters that I realised how many problems my parents had to deal with and appreciated the amount of thinking and care they put into our upbringing. Through the letters I also discovered interesting views on some people which I only knew as a child, but never saw much of when I grew up. For instance, we used to look forward to visits from a specially eccentric family friend, because we found him very odd and entertaining. My mother used to dread them. Apparently, with an adult’s perspective, his oddities were somewhat less amusing. As a result of this experience I am freshly converted to the advantages of letter writing. I too live abroad and have children. I do write to my mother every now and then, but I must say that I give in all too frequently to the immediacy of a quick telephone call. My mother saves my letters as hers did and my children could enjoy a nostalgic afternoon, buried in childhood memories one day. As my mother says, a phone call is over as soon as you hang up, but you can read a letter over and over again.

Last time I was in Ireland, my mother gave me some letters to read. They were written to her parents in England when we were children. My grandparents had saved them for her and returned them neatly filed in folders and dated. When we left home, it was a sort of mother’s eye-view record of our childhood and since my parents were both prolific and witty letter writers, they made wonderfully entertaining reading. I was absorbed in them for hours, transported back to marvellous afternoons imaginatively whiled away in our playroom with my siblings and friends. There we invented many of our own games and acted out all sorts of dramas for whatever audience we could entrap, usually my poor mother of course. She writes, for example, about us being inspired for months by a Christmas trip to the operetta The Mikado. We put on an excellent show, which included costumes and props. Our mother made sure we always had plenty of things that with a little skill and imagination could be turned into nearly anything. She passed on to us old bedspreads and blankets, odd ear-rings, gloves and socks, pieces of leftover materials and jumble sale acquisitions. This particular show became a classic with our drama company, so much so that the next door neighbour presented us with a recording of The Pirates of Penzance, hoping it, too, would catch our fancy and give him a break from ‘Three Little Maids from School are We’ floating melodically but all too frequently through his wall.

In Japanese, there is a word "complex" コンプレックス, which is used like the phrase "inferiority complex" in English.

People are sometimes traumatized by what other people say.

When I was talking with a friend of mine the other day, I noticed something interesting: People in different cultures seem to have inferiority complexes about different things.

My friend is American. I was surprised to hear that she was shocked and upset when her neighbor, who is Japanese, told her that she had a "small face." You know what? Being told that you have a small face is a good thing for most Japanese women. We say, "I envy you. You have a small face!" However, my American friend got confused and ended up treating as if her neighbor was saying that she had a "small brain." (^_^;)

Another thing that we often say as a compliment is "You have really white skin." My female friends from America take it as a "pale skin," which sounds to them, like a sickly and unhealthy complexion.

We have the phrase "having a high nose" 鼻が高い, which is also a good thing for Japanese people. However, it seems like Westerners take it as having a big nose or something, right?

Thus, some of my friends from America are very confused by hearing what Japanese people say to them.

In general, Japanese women's ideal face is "white" and "small" with "round big eyes" and a "high nose." My friend told me that all of those things are theopposite in America. If that's the case then, our compliments toward Western women must sound offensive most of the time...

Japanese people, who don't have any friends from other countries and never know how Westerners feel, they will keep saying those things to them. That's a shame.

One thing that I am very impressed by Western women is that they don't talk about other's appearance features much. (^v^) / I am honored.

After hearing her talk, I thought that I should learn more about Western culture while I'm learning English.

Argentina had a core of toughness and tenacity, a 30-something team now that includes Luis Scola and Andres Nocioni and Carlos Delfino. Behind them had been Oberto and Pepe Sanchez. They all played in the NBA to different degrees of success, but Ginobili has forever been the game changer.
"He is my hero," Scola says.
"He took on a huge responsibility, and elevated everything there," Kobe Bryant says. "I admire him."
For all the discussion about how the NBA's desire to turn the Olympics into an under-23 tournament will affect the Americans, there's been little perspective on how this rule will impact the rest of the world. This has been a magical generation for the Argentines, and there hasn't been great young talent rising behind them in the country. In some ways, moving to under-23 will make the United States even more dominant in the Games, because these kinds of generational core groups aren't so easily replaced in the Argentinas and Spains.
"If I was 24 right now, I'd be crying in that corner over there," Ginobili says. "[Olympic basketball] has been one of the wonderful experiences of my life, and I wish that every athlete could have the opportunity."
Ginobili has almost always played for Argentina in his summers, and the Spurs understand that it's cost them a cumulative toll on his body. He tore ligaments in his ankle in a medal-round game against the United States in the 2008 Olympics, necessitating surgery. Yet Buford and Spurs president and coach Gregg Popovich have always accepted that they've reaped the benefit of all those pressure international games that Ginobili played, reaped all that winning and team building that he brought to the Spurs.
As Buford says, "When we brought him over [in '02], we wanted him to bring that to our program."
Ginobili was wired to care deeply, wired to loyalty, and the continuity of the Spurs' core players and values blended perfectly with the Argentine national's.
"The success of this team is chemistry, compromise," longtime Argentina national coach Julio Lamas says. "They want always after a win, like Athens, is that they want to win again."
Lamas was talking about the national team, but he could've been describing the Spurs, too. This is the reason that Buford and Popovich, Tim Duncan and Tony Parker, will be forever indebted to Ginobili. He was a two-time All-Star, an NBA sixth-man of the year, but most of all, he was the player no one dared take their eyes off, full of flamboyance and ferocity, endless grace and humility.
Yes, Ginobili comes out of Bahia Blanca, Argentina, and Bologna, Italy, of the Euroleague and San Antonio of the NBA. He's won Euroleague championships and Euroleague Final Four MVPs, and elevated Argentina into the global basketball elite. He comes out of the core of a Spurs dynasty that delivered three NBA titles on his watch, and, rest assured, Manu Ginobili deserves to go into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame with one of the great collective NBA and international resumes in history.
"He's the poster child for what's good about being part of a team," Buford says.
Ginobili will likely wear his Argentina colors for the final time in these Olympic Games. And for all that everyone wants to talk about the end of the NBA superstar in London as purely a story about Team USA – about Kobe Bryant and LeBron James – the biggest goodbye of all belongs to the three-time Olympian who changed the way the world looked at Argentina basketball, and maybe, too, the way that USA Basketball looked at itself.
As a boy, the NBA stars taught him the game, but as a man, Ginobili and Argentina passed on a refresher on the lessons and values the U.S. national team needed to incorporate again. USA Basketball responded, revolutionized, and Ginobili is forever owed a debt of gratitude. Ten years later, the Team USA gold medal deserves a nod to one of the great basketball givers of this time, Emanuel David Ginobili.