Lesson 4

Agenda
• News!
• Summary redo
• + latest summary homework
• Comprehension: Barbarians at the gates…
 The death of BB

A woman speaks on her BlackBerry at a mall in Dubai on Aug. 2,

2010. Key services of the smart phone may be cut off for more than a
million BlackBerry users in Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.
 Can Dubai Business Survive
Without the BlackBerry?
• An easy place to do business
• Suspension of: e-mail, Web access and the BlackBerry instant-
messenger service
• If a blackberry can be banned… What else can this lead to?
How open is this market?

The UAE contends some BlackBerry features operate outside

the country's laws, "causing judicial, social and national
security concerns." At the heart of their concerns is the way
the devices handle data, which get encrypted and routed
through RIM's servers overseas. The automatic encryption
makes BlackBerry data far more difficult, if not impossible,
for authorities to monitor.
The sanity of city-dwellers
• Reasons they retain their sanity
• “they learn to cope with the multiple problems”
• adjust to handle many varied situations
• “learn to insulate themselves psychologically”
• ability to shut out external world
• “mental illness is a result of complex human and social
problems… present wherever you live”
• serious psychological problems rooted in relationships with
others - universal
• “they sift out things that do not concern them”
• distinguish important from trivia
• “the stresses of city life can provide a temporary problem... but
they are rarely the long-term problem”
• at most - short duration
• “cities are even organised to provide ties that help people
cope”
• capitalise on many people and services around
• “with a wide-ranging network of secondary relationships
which offer informal support and exchange of services”
• large group of supporting connections
• “the support systems that influence people’s perception of
stress”
• means to deal with strains
 Complete answer
• City-dwellers have several resources to keep them sane. Firstly, …

• they have the ability both to adjust their lives so that they can handle many varied
situations and to shut out the external world when they need to. City-dwellers are good at
distinguishing important matters from the trivia, enabling them to cope better. Indeed,
serious psychological problems tend to be rooted in relationships with others, a universal
phenomenon not confined to city-dwellers. The environmental problems of the city are at
most of short duration, rarely causing deep psychological problems. The social environment
of cities, on the other hand, contains many people and services for people to capitalise on,
as a means of dealing with strains. City-dwellers can draw on a large group of supporting
connections.
Gandhi
The ritualisation of
childhood
 Discussion
• http://
hi.baidu.com/xoox/blog/item/40ab93583d661fdf9d820432.ht
ml
• What is “childhood”?
• What are some of the things that happened during your
childhood?
Comprehension:
Globalisation
Comprehension: The
creative class
 Think about eugenics
• Consider this: “If you don’t include your women graduates in
your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end
up a more stupid society. So what happens?
• “There will be fewer bright people to support dumb people in
the next generation. That’s a problem.”
• Justifiable?
• "We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month
and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never
to have more than two... We will regret the time lost if we do
not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend
which can leave our society with a large number of the
physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic." - MM Lee in
1967
 Your homework
• Rewriting
• Vocabulary-building
• Comprehension on cities