Japan teen in historic Rubik win

A Japanese teenager has won the Rubik's Cube World Championships in Hungary's capital, Budapest, taking less than 13 seconds to finish the cult '80s puzzle.

Link.

Podcasts

Have you heard of podcasts? Podcasts are online radio programmes for people to download. They are usually free. There is a wide variety of programmes for you to choose from. Today, I want to introduce to you some programmes to help you learn English.

1. Real English
This is a podcast offered by BBC to help Chinese people to learn authentic English. Each episode lasts several minutes. All key terms or phrases will be translated into Chinese (Mandarin). It is a quick way for you to learn English in a snap.

2. Talk about English
Another podcast offered by BBC to help students to improve their English vocabulary, grammar, and listening skills. Each episode lasts about 20 minutes. The programmes include features and interviews to help students practise and develop their English. They cover a range of topics using everyday informal English, highlighting useful words and expressions.

If you want further information about how to get podcasts, you can simply ask me during the English lessons.

Sony offers cut-price PlayStation

A cut price PlayStation 3 (PS3) with a smaller hard drive and no backwards compatibility with previous consoles goes on sale later this month.

The £299 (HKD$4,738) PS3 has a 40-gigabyte hard disk and will be released in Europe, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand.

Link.

The time has come to act on class sizes

The education community should reject the chief executive's policy address if it does not include a commitment to reducing class sizes, a leading principal told an education forum this week.

"If the policy address does not say when small-class teaching can be implemented, I think we should not accept [the chief executive's] homework," said Tsoi Kai-chun, chairman of the Subsidised Primary Schools' Council.

Speaking at a forum on small-class teaching at Hong Kong Institute of Education on Thursday, he urged the government to begin reducing class sizes from next September.

Mr Tsoi said the chief executive should turn "adversity into an opportunity" in dealing with the declining student population.

"A third of primary schools are already being forced to teach small classes due to falling enrolments," Mr Tsoi said. "We are ready for this change. We are just waiting for this one thing: for the chief executive to give the go-ahead."

There have been reports Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen is likely to unveil plans to extend free education to senior secondary from 2009, coinciding with the implementation of the "3+3+4" reforms.

But although speakers said it would send a positive message, some criticised the move as a political one that would have a minimal effect on the quality of education.

"This is unrelated to the quality of education," said Choi Kwok-kwong, chairman of Education Convergence. "It is not an educational question, it is a political one." The small-class issue was also political. "Once there is a loud enough call from society, it will happen," Mr Choi said.

Principal Assistant Secretary for Education Ip Ling-bik appeared to indicate the government could be willing to alter its "wait-and-see" approach to the issue. She said although the pilot study into small-class teaching in 37 primary schools would not be released until late next year, early results appeared to show benefits.

"Teachers recognise they need to change from their traditional role," Ms Ip said. "When they do . . . there is a better relationship between teachers and students."

School leadership was an important factor in how well teachers adapted to the change. "Some of the principals in the pilot scheme are able to do something to enable the school to make big changes."

Ip Kin-yuen, principal of HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity and a former lecturer at HKIEd, said it was not necessary to wait until teachers had been prepared for that change before reducing class sizes.

"I hope we can give our teachers an opportunity to learn this at the same time as they are teaching smaller classes," he said.

However, Alex Cheung Chi-hung, chairman of the Aided Primary School Heads' Council, questioned whether it would be practical to reduce class sizes across the school system starting next September.

"Schools are already crying out for help due to difficulties finding qualified English teachers."

Lai Kwok-chan, head of the HKIEd's Centre for Development and Research in Small Class Teaching, the forum organiser, said it was impossible to predict Wednesday's speech.

"We don't know what will be in the policy address as the education sector has heard nothing from the government," Dr Lai said. "We hope to hear some good news."

Consider your present situation, do you wish to have a smaller class size? Is it going to improve your learning experience?

iPods cheap in Hong Kong, but a Brazil bank-breaker

In the market for a new video iPod? Head to Hong Kong or, if Europe-bound, stop off in Switzerland. But best avoid Brazil.

Link.

Ultra-thin TV to hit the market

An ultra-thin television brighter and crisper than current generation screens will go on sale from Sony in December.

Link

Is this our future?

10.40pm. 32°C. The future's red hot for HK

This is the first thermal satellite image of Hong Kong taken in summer - and it shows just how hot the nights can get in urban areas.

The high-resolution image, taken by Nasa's Terra satellite at 10.40pm on August 4, shows broad swathes of Kowloon sweltering in temperatures of 32 degrees Celsius or higher (shown as white and red on the map).

It was taken for researchers at Polytechnic University who are studying the urban heat island effect in Hong Kong - the tendency for densely populated urban areas to become much warmer than nearby rural areas.

Janet Nichol, associate professor in its department of land surveying and geo-informatics, said the picture - taken during a record-breaking 12-day period of very hot weather - was the shape of things to come.

"The temperatures are exceptionally hot for the night ... It is a very, very good example of the extreme of the urban heat island effect we might expect in future. Based on predictions of a three degree increase in air temperature in Hong Kong by 2050, these periods may become quite commonplace in the next 10 years."

Professor Nichol, who runs the project with Dr Lam Ka-se, of the department of civil and structural engineering, said the image was taken using a novel technique that is accurate to within 10 metres - nine times the resolution of a typical satellite image.

The variation is caused by the greater heat absorbency of man-made materials and concentrations of tall buildings which limit air flow.

Professor Nichol said the urban heat island had expanded markedly into Hung Hom and Whampoa and towards West Kowloon since the team's first satellite picture of Hong Kong was taken in January. The 490-metre-high International Commercial Centre and subway station under construction at Union Square could be factors, while air conditioners were a likely contributor in mixed residential and commercial areas.

"We didn't expect to see any heat island effect in the Union Square area because it is near the coast," she said. "This could be the start of a general expansion of the heat island towards southwest Kowloon."

Residents of Tai Kok Tsui are campaigning against plans to build a 40-storey tower block they say will complete a "great wall" of buildings that will block the area's last air corridor.

People have been complaining about the intense heat of Hong Kong's summer, but not many people have tried to evaluate the whole issue from a more scientific point of view. This thermal satellite image reveals us something we have not witnessed before. What should we do? Should we all just sit back and enjoy our cool air-conditioning at home?

Nokia's poster advertisement at New York

See whether you are familiar with the latest gadget trend in the world. This is a poster ad found in New York. The thing I want you to find out is which product is this ad attacking? If you've read this post and have an answer, just tell me in my lessons.

(It's interesting to find out how many of you have actually been visiting this blog on a daily basis.)

Where is the missing stone?

One of our historic city boundary stones is missing

The government is hunting for a missing boundary stone, one of at least seven marking the limits of the city of Victoria, the first urban settlement in Hong Kong after it became a British colony.

The stone disappeared in June during slope renovation work on Magazine Gap Road.

"The Antiquities and Monuments Office has been attempting to approach the owners of the private lot for the whereabouts of the stone, but has yet to get a reply," a spokesman for the Development Bureau said.

Winfoong International Limited, the owner of the private lot on which the stone had stood, claims to know little about the missing marker.

"We are not aware of this stone and we have no further information to provide," company secretary Julia Cheng Kin-nam said.

When Hong Kong Island was occupied by Britain in January 1841, there were 16 villages. In 1843, Britain created the city of Victoria covering Sheung Wan, Central and Wan Chai. The government later erected boundary stones on Hong Kong Island marking the city limits. Each stone bears the inscription "City Boundary 1903".

Six boundary stones can be found on Sai Ning Street, Pokfulam Road, Hatton Road, Old Peak Road, Bowen Road and Wong Nai Chung Road, all on government land. In late 2005, a seventh stone was rediscovered along Magazine Gap Road on a private lot.

But the granite stone, half embedded in a retaining wall, disappeared during slope reinforcing works between June 10 and 14.

Lee Chak-yan, the chairman of the Hong Kong History Study Circle, the group that discovered the seventh stone in 2005, said: "The seventh stone means a lot in our history. It was the footprint of the city's early urban development."

Joseph Ting Sun-pao, author of The City of Victoria and the former chief curator of the Museum of History, confirmed the providence of the seventh stone last year.

Mr Lee wrote an urgent e-mail to the Antiquities and Monuments Office in June regarding the missing stone. The office's assistant curator, Lui Kin-pui, replied a month later to say its status as a boundary stone could not be confirmed.

"I was so outraged that the government failed to recognise this significant city pillar," said Mr Lee, who launched a letter-writing campaign this month to urge the chief executive to find out the fate of the stone.

"It is possible there is an eighth stone around Wan Chai Gap Road, according to the location and distribution of other boundary stones," Mr Lee, who has been searching for boundary stones since 2005, said.

"Historical documents reveal that boundary stones are usually fixed on main roads. Wan Chai Gap Road was one of the main roads along the boundary of Victoria city," he said.

A spokesman for the Lands Department said there were no official records detailing how many boundary stones had been erected.

Concerning the other stones, the spokesman said: "Relevant departments have been requested to alert the monuments office of any works proposals that may affect these stones, so the office can render appropriate advice to protect them."

None of the boundary stones have been graded or declared monuments, so they have no legal protection against damage or demolition.

Other countries do not treat something like this so lightly. Should we be more aware of our history?

Bike Hits 130.7 mph. On Snow

33 year old Austrian Markus Stoeckl has smashed the World Speed Record for series mountain bikes. Link.

(Wired Blogs)