The Best Photos from Time 2010

I love photography, so I always look forward to the annual Time top 10, top 20, top 50 lists.

Here's the link to the best photos from Time 2010.

I'm sure you'll all enjoy! :-)

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2036245_2217562,00.html

Student's awesome assignment 9:Who moved my cheese?

http://www.whomovedmycheese.com/ by Spencer Johnson

Once in a large maze, there were two mice, and their names were Sniff and Scurry. There were also two little people, and their names were Ham and Hew.

Inside the maze, there was a place with a lot of cheese.

Everyday, both the mice and the people went there to eat the cheese and rest. They had never faced any problem to get the cheese before. There was always plenty of it.

But one morning, when they arrived, there was no cheese where it was supposed to be. Immediately Sniff and Scurry ran to look for cheese in another station, the C station. Then, Hem and Haw didn't know what to do. Suddenly, Haw decided to go to the new C station, because he knew that there could be a chance of finding cheese there, but his partner didn't want to go with him.

Haw went alone and day after day he was loking for the cheese. Meanwhile he learned many things, such as:

1º - To go in a new direction will set you free;

2° - The fear in your mind is worse than what it is really going to be;

3º - When something runs out, a better change comes;

4º - Things you do if you aren't afraid.

In many parts of de maze, Haw wrote sentences like those.

While Sniff and Scurry had already found the other station, which was full of cheese, Haw also found it a few days later. He didn't forget about his friend Hew, and they arrived together at the new C station.

All of them had a lot of cheese to eat, but the great lesson was to Haw, because he was the one who first accepted the challenge.

Summary by Celina Camargo.

Thanks, Celina!

Here's the link from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F

Favela in English is favela.

With all of the crackdown of the "Complexo do Alemão" in Rio de Janeiro going on, many of my students ask me how they can say "favela" in English. When I answer "favela in English is favela", they usually get puzzled. There are certain words that are similar to favela, such as:

SLUMS-A heavily populated urban area characterized by substandard housing and squalor. Often used in the plural.

SHANTY TOWNS- more appropriate than slums: settlemen of impoverished people who live in improvised dwellings made from scrapplywood,corrugated metal, and sheets of plastic.

I prefer to use favela, though. It's becoming a more and more common term. If you asked people from other countries about the meaning of this word 10 years ago, they probably wouldn't know what it meant. But now, it's even used on newspapers and on television, as you will read or listen in the links below. It's a globalized world that we live in, after all.

Well, here are some links about this:

BBC news:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11857309

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11862593

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11856422

Reuters

video: http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=164486217

Guardian

video: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/video/2008/feb/15/severino.silva

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/world/americas/27brazil.html?_r=1

Time Magazine

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2033277,00.html

Euronews

http://www.euronews.net/2010/11/30/rio-police-move-in-to-violence-stricken-favela/

SAA 8- Steve Jobs- How to live before you die

This Student's Awesome Assignment is about the lecture given by Steve Jobs at the Stanford University's 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005.

How to live before you die

This was a lecture given by Steve Jobs, Apple’s and Pixar’s founder. He gave a speech for some Standford students on their graduating day and told them what he called 3 stories.

The first one was about how he was born and learned to connect the “dots”. Steve Jobs was born from a graduated student whom gave him to adoption. He was only chosen by the second couple and had as a goal of life to graduate from College. But he did not. Instead he just did 6 months of it and then stopped because he thought that he was just wasting his parents money. However he did not dropped out, he went to courses that he was really interested and thought that could improve him as a person, just like calligraphy, for example. This went on for 18 months and then, today, he said that at that time calligraphy was not useful for him, but it gave him, later, the idea to put lots of different fonts for pc users to write. So the first valuable lesson was to follow your instincts and then hope that in the future it will all be connected.

The second one was about love and loss. Steve Jobs said that he loved work with computers and started his own company (Apple) and 10 years later it was a huge success, but then he was fired. Although he was feeling lost, he had the certain that he still loved working with computers and then, all the pressure he felt being and director from a company changed into lightness, because he was a beginner again and could be creative and free. He founded Pixar and Next, and got married. The first one is, today, a huge success. The second one was bought by Apple and he returned to it. So the second big lesson was: choose your work as you choose your lovers, because it takes a huge time of your life and you could not handle the sadness when it come if you do not love it. And if you have not found what you really like to do, do not settle.

The last and third story was about death. He began saying that you have to try to live each day as it was your last, but one day it will be true, and besides everybody knows that one day we are all going to die, no one wants it. And then he told about being diagnosed with a pancreatic cancer. The doctors said that he would have just 3 months to resume his affairs. Aka, to him organize his life in order to die. But then he did a biopsy and the doctor found out that his cancer could be cured with surgery and then he was saved. But then he realized that death was the most intelligent thing created by nature to renew, and that is everybody’s and everything’s fate. So the big lesson of this story was: live your own life. Do not let yourself be trapped by society’s notion. And then he ended his speech saying: stay young, stay foolish.

I think that all he said makes perfect sense. He lived a so dramatic life in all aspects and I am certain that he was surely on the edge on every aspect of what he said. I try to follow myself for sometime the same basic concepts of his speech. For example, I did graduate from Biology, although my parents wished were that I had became a doctor. And I choose this profession with the age of 12. Moreover I really did study Japanese (I even have a Proficiency degree) for 2 years, although I did not connect the dots yet, I found a huge pleasure, not in read and write in the proper sense of the word, but it was through the language that I learned the Japanese habits and their life philosophy (not that I put it into practice, but I wanted just to have the knowledge). Maybe the last concept is the hardest to understand because everybody has obligations and we could not live our life as we were in vacation, but we have to find small daily things that make it worth.

Of course that it was his life. It does not mean that anybody who drops college will turn into a big company CEO. But what I think that we really have to do (summarizing the main point of his speech) is do not let school, college, our parents, anything and anyone limit us. We have the right to be the best we can and only us can certificate this for ourselves.

by Flávia G.

Molecular Biology Graduate student

Here's the link from the script of his speech: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Dilma's victory

Here are some links about Dilma's victory:

Guardian:

Brazil election: Dilma Rousseff's victory

The governing party candidate, Dilma Rousseff, has been elected Brazil's president, becoming the nation's first female leader, and will take office in January

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2010/nov/01/brazil-dilma-rousseff#/?picture=368242789&index=3

Time Magazine: Brazil's New President: Can Dilma Be Another Lula?more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2028581,00.html#ixzz143XWgIQ3

Reuters:1.

Rousseff rides economic boom to Brazil's presidency

http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-52577120101101

2.

Brazil steps toward post-Lula era with Rousseff

http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-52582720101101?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a54:g12:r1:c0.666670:b38903260:z3

New York Times: In a First, Brazil Elects a Woman as President http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/world/americas/01brazil.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=dilma&st=cse

Al Jazeera: Ruling party candidate has defeated rival Jose Serra in vote and will become Brazil's first female president.

BBC news: Brazil elects Dilma Rousseff as first female president

The Economist: No surprises this time

http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2010/10/brazils_presidential_election_4

Green Issues

Hey Citizens of the Green World!

Last week, I was discussing with some students of mine about "Green Issues", how green they think they are and stuff we could all do to be a little bit greener. There were many "confessions", for example, most of us still use plastic bags when we go shopping... Sorry, planet! It's on my resolution list 2011 to quit using plastic bags!

Well, anyway, I think the most insteresting and controversial topic about this is the construction of the Complexo Hidrelétrico do Madeira, a.k.a. the Belo Monte dam. It's a gigantic project and it will also affect Bolivia and its inhabitants who depend on those rivers to survive.

I became familiar with this documentary because a student of mine is a Forest Engineer and she brought it to class for discussion. I was immediately shocked, principally because it's not in the media... Hm... I wonder why!

You can check the video: http://www.amazonia.org.br/noticias/noticia.cfm?id=345936

Here's a summary of it:

The Madeira River Complex

The enormous Madeira River Complex, in the tri-border region of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil is one of the Integrated Regional Infrastructure for South America's (IIRSA) anchor projects. It would transform the Madre de Dios-Beni-Mamoré-Itenez-Madeira river system into a major corridor for energy production and raw material export. The proposal includes the construction of four hydroelectric dams, most importantly the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams in Rondônia, Brazil. Together, these two dams would produce a projected 6,450 megawatts of hydroelectricity, totaling eight percent of the Brazilian energy matrix. By comparison, this is equal to half of the electricity produced by Itaipu dam in the Brazilian state of Paraná, the world’s largest hydroelectric power plant.

The Madeira project would also increase the capacity for transporting soybean, timber, and minerals to Pacific ports through the installation of navigation locks and dredging to open the river channel, and to connect with highways being built in the Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon. The project would result in a potential 500 percent growth of soybean transport from the current annual seven million tons to 35 million tons exported.¹ Brazilian agribusiness companies such as Grupo André Maggi, the largest soybean producer in the world, have already helped build the Itacoatiara port downstream from Manaus, which is a major distribution center for soy export. The company received a loan from the International Finance Corporation, of the World Bank, in 2004 of US$30 million to expand soybean production, which is arguably the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

The Madeira Complex may also turn into an investor's nightmare, due to the enormous cost and technical challenges. Potential environmental and social impacts – including displacement, threats to food security, increased exposure to disease, pressure on already weak social services, risks to biodiversity, and deforestation leading to greenhouse gas emissions – make the Madeira Complex a "development" disaster in the making.

source: www.amazonwatch.org

James Cameron (the director of Titanic and Avatar) came to Brazil last March and he's joined this organization called Amazon Watch.

http://www.amazonwatch.org/

Well, watch these videos, practice your listening, and be shocked...

SAA 7- National Day Against Tobacco

Hey citizens of the world,

Today's posting is about this assignment done by Márcio Theodoro.

Brazilians who were born in the 80's started smoking at 17

Research done by INCA (National institute of Cancer) shows that a family composed of a couple of smokers spend an average of R$ 1495,20 (around US$898,00) in one year with the purchase of cigarettes

Important Facts:

• Rio de Janeiro celebrates the National Day Against Tobacco with an increase of people who want to quit smoking
• More radical federal law would decrease the number of smokers in Brazil, even more INCA
• Women have more difficulty quitting smoking than men, says the institute
• In Brazil, the National Day Against Tobacco is celebrated this Sunday (August 29)
• Search for anti-smoking treatments doubles in hospitals in Sao Paulo
• 5 million people per year, die in Brazil as a result of smoking.
• 20% of pregnant women smoke Brazil
• Smokers spend an average of 10% of their salary on cigarettes

Data from the Special Survey on Smoking (PETab) shows that the generation of Brazilians born in the 80's, that is, who are now 30 years old, begins to smoke, on average, at 15.
The PETab research was made in more than 51,000 households, interviewing smokers, nonsmokers and former smokers. The work, which is the most comprehensive research about smoking in Brazil, was also performed in 13 other countries. Internationally, research is known as the Global Adult Tobacco Survey.

Also according to the PETab, of all people 15 years or older, 96.1% believed that smoking could cause serious illness. Another point highlighted is the high perception of the relationship between smoking and lung cancer: 95% of interviewed people, 91% were smokers, and 96% nonsmokers.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable malignancies, as explained by the thoracic surgeon and director of the Cancer Hospital, Paulo de Biasi. 90% of patients with lung cancer in the INCA are smokers.

Another serious problem is the passive smoking. The sooner a person is exposed to smoke in rooms with smokers, the greater chance of eventually developing cancer in adulthood, according to Biasi.

PASSIVE SMOKING X LUNG CANCER

The main clinical manifestations in adult passive smokers are respiratory symptoms in healthy patients, increased rate of cardiovascular mortality (25 to 35%), lung cancer, and developing more than 10 other types of cancer.

In my opinion, the passive smokers are those who suffer the most. These laws certainly came to help in the fight against tobacco, but this is still a long way. The authorities should continue to take this issue more seriously.

Sources:
www.g1.com.br
Jornal do Centro (newspaper – Campinas)

Márcio Theodoro- chemist

Here are some links to the videos Márcio has indicated.

Let me tell you in advance that these videos are very shocking... I myself could not see, only listen... But for the braver ones, it's worth taking a look!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4JQOpvQZAQ&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaHZLKvL7EE&feature=player_embedded

"It can't get any worse"- Tiririca's victory around the world...

Oh my GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tiririca is now international news, not surprisingly....

Here are some links for your "delight"... What I find more interesting, though, are the comments, which are usually posted by Brazilians living abroad. The opinions are very controversial, as you can imagine...

time.com-

http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/10/04/clown-campaign-victory-wouldn%E2%80%99t-you-elect-this-guy-as-federal-deputy-too/

My favorite line in this article is "You don't have to speak Portuguese to appreciate the ads"

the Economist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2010/10/brazils_presidential_election_0

CBS news- my favorite headline:

"Brazil Elects Non-Metaphorical Clown to Congress"- because, of course, there are many metaphorical clowns there, but this is the first and official REAL CLOWN! How crazy is that?!?!?!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/04/ap/strange/main6925513.shtml

BBC news

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11465127

ABC news

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/06/3030802.htm?section=justin

Bloomberg Business Week

This is interesting... It's saying that the "Clown may stop laughing"...

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-29/brazilian-clown-may-stop-laughing-after-likely-election-victory.html

So, citizens of the World...

should we laugh or cry?!!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?

SAA 6 "INGRID BETANCOURT "

Hi everyone!

This amazing assignment was done by Michelle and she chose to talk about the heroine Ingrid Betancourt.

A LITTLE ABOUT INGRID BETANCOURT AND HER SOME BITTER LESSONS IN LIFE

Ingrid Betancourt was born in Colombia on December 25, 1961 and grew up in Paris, France. She returned toColombia in 1989 and became a Senator in 1998. She was kidnapped by the rebel group FARC (Revolutionary

Armed Forces of Colombia) in February 2002, while campaigning to become president. She was rescued six and a half years later in July 2008 with other 14 hostages.

In July 2008, I read about her rescue in Epoca magazine and I was very impressed about her suffering and courage to support all the torture during those years and the doubt of not knowing when it would end. Since then, I started to read everything that was published about her.

So, I read that she wrote a book called “Even Silence has an end”, in Portuguese “Não Há silêncio que não termine”. In this book, she recounts how she was repeatedly beaten, humiliated and threatened with death while being kept prisoner in Colombia's jungle.

I heard an interview in BBC website that she talks about it and she started with:

“The first and most important of all is that we are all captives of something in our free life. We always justify what we do or how we behave because we’ve had this problem or this other. I came to the conclusion that you can be deprived of all kinds of freedom – the freedom to eat, or to drink or to speak to somebody or to move or even to choose to go pee or not to pee, very basic things... But they cannot deprive you from the freedom of being and of choosing who you want to be.”

In this interview, she recounts about the difficult process of writing the book:

“And then, once I was confronted to the blank paper, and I just unleashed the memory, I was there in the jungle again. It was emotionally very, very stressing”.

But, I also found some bad things about her. Some of her fellow hostages wrote unflattering accounts of being held captive with her. Three US military contractors say in their book that she was selfish and one of them says that she was even worse that the FARC guards. Mr. Stansell accuses her of telling their Farc guards that the Americans were CIA agents and they were almost killed because of this.

Mr Gonsalves says Ms Betancourt put pressure on Farc commanders to keep the Americans out of her shelter. However, he wrote that his opinion of her changed after she agreed to share her radio with him. "Maybe she was not the person we thought she was. Maybe Ingrid has a far more complicated and multi-dimensional person than she'd allowed us to believe." Mr. Gonsalves developed a close friendship with Ms Betancourt, he says, and came to admire the former Colombian presidential candidate. "She's a tough woman. She used to give those guerrillas a hard time."

She ends the interview saying: “I think we are in a world where we tend to strive for stupid things… in that striving for stupid things – money, fame, all those kind of glittering stupid things – we forget the essential. We are so frightened to feel pain that we don’t want to look to the pain of others. And we are like the world, we want to forget that there are people suffering”.

I read a comment and I have to agree with this: Ingrid Betancourt remains as an enigma. But, I will read the book and try to discover the mystery because I think she is a strong woman and must be heard or, in this case, read.

Links:

Interview with Ingrid Betancourt: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9015000/9015751.stm

Comments from three fellow hostages: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7914287.stm

Interview at Oprah part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS42aH3q-d8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjert3Q7lpU&NR=1

by Michelle- Executive Assistant

The importance of WRITING

Hi everyone!

As you must have noticed, the previous postings have been about Student's assignments.

I'm very excited to find out that, not only most of my students enjoy doing these tasks, that is, looking for a current events article, read, check the vocab and write about it, but many readers, from many parts of the world, are enjoying READING these writings.

This for me is extremely rewarding, as I am an avid reader and an "experimental writer" myself.

The sad thing is that, many people do not understand the importance of writing, especially if they are learning a new language.

Writing should always be a priority; it's when you write that you realize what you know and what you don't know. Also, it's an extremely rich way to improve your vocabulary and knowledge about current events and other cultures.

I hope that these samples can help you to bear in mind the importance of DAILY reading and WEEKLY writing. As you can see, these assignments are intelligent and simple. My students tell me that it takes them between 20 minutes to 60 minutes to read and prepare this assignment.

SAA 5 Oil Spill

Hi everyone!

This is a summary of a piece of news from Kariéllen. It's about BP oil spill.

BP finally seals leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well

On April 20^th, the worst accident about oil spill in the Us history happend, when the deepwater horizon rig blew up, killing eleven workers and later sinking.

After eighty seven days , the rupture was sealed after spewed more than four millions of barrels of oil into de Gulf of Mexico.

The BP company put a temporary cap in the hole on July 15^th, sealed the flow, but last Thusday they linked up with the rupture weel and started to pumping out cement. Because of this, the cap wasn’t necessary anymore and the spill was permanently closed.

The spill oil finished but the environment damage is still a nightmare to hundreds of miles of US coast. The oil arrived in many beaches and killed many sea animals. How to clean up everything?

Obama said: “we are commited to do everything possible to make sure the Gulf of Mexico recovers fully from this disaster. But will it be possible?

Maybe it’s impossible to rebuild everything or it will spend too much time and money. The oil can be degradated by the nature luckly, would be worse.

Now all the oil company must think about it and has a plan in cases of accident like this, because the consequences are so serious and affect all the world.

Kariéllen, Quality Control Analyst

ARTICLE http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/11365122

VIDEO http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10848147

SAA 4

Hi everyone!

This SAA is from my student Eduardo.

This is the link from the website:http://www.astro.iag.usp.br/index.php?dir=inst&file=hist.php

And this is his summary:

New Sun Eruption May Supercharge Northern Lights

Today, everybody forgets to look the sky at least one time during the day, but even so, after billions of years, the sun light continues to reach the Earth with big power.

Day after day the scientists try to discover better renewable sources of energy and now some progress was obtained transforming the sun light in electricity to use in our home, car and industries.

In the interesting text published in the FOXNEWS site, you can see a few examples about the quantity of energy generated in the interior of the sun. Each ejection of matter

Is launched to the space in big speed (100,000 Kilometers/Second) and the plasma has temperatures around 1.5 millions of grades Celsius.

I believe one day in the future the man will find a way to use more efficiently all this energy we need.

The following video can help to illutrate this topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Bhf42uY3E

Eduardo, Process Manager

Very interesting, indeed Eduardo! Thanks a million!