Fake or Real? II

And this is one of the most visited videos in 2011, a breathtaking recording of animal interaction in a nature preserve called Kruger, in South Africa. Judge by yourselves: fake or real?

Pretty amazing, huh? But there's always room for some critical reflection here:  Do you think the man may be somehow involved in the way animals interact here? Maybe you wanna think about the dimensions of park safaris like this one...

Fake or Real?

... So do lemmings really commit suicide? This has been a question sometimes heard in conversations about wild life in the last fifty years... Well, the answer is no, lemmings do not commit suicide. Where does that myth come from? In 1958 Walt Disney produced White Wilderness, part of the studio's True Life Adventure series. This documentary featured a segment on lemmings, detailing their strange compulsion to commit mass suicide. But this was all fake. In fact, it was staged: The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off the cliff by Disney filmmakers! The epic "lemming migration" was staged using careful editing, tight camera angles and a few dozen lemmings running on a snow covered turntable.
As Karl S. Kruszelnicki puts it in his article, considering a company like Disney, where one rodent, namely Mickey Mouse, was Royalty, it's rather odd to think that Disney could be so unkind to another rodent, the lemming...

Read more about the lemming suicide myth here

Political Causes of World Hunger: A talk by Nuria Rebato

Dear all,

Hope you had a nice timeout these past days. And hope you're ready to get back to English! For starters, here I attach the great presentation Nuria gave on World Hunger and some of the real causes lying behind. Thanks a lot Nuria, for sharing your work with us!

Political Causes of World Hunger, by Nuria Rebato

Writing an Essay on Childhood Obesity

After the practice we did in class on the basic components of an article or essay. After these fun titles we came up with for some given topics. After learning about what a topic sentence is, and managing the structure and layout of an article, here comes your writing assignment for the month: Child Obesity in Spain.
Click on the link below and write about this topic as suggested in Exercise 1. Write about 180 words.

Exercise 1: Writing and Essay on Child Obesity in Spain

English Idioms, Sayings, and Proverbs

Dear all,
Here I attach the full document wih the English idioms, sayings and proverbs we were going through the other day in class. Definitions and explanations are also included in this post for your convenience. But remember this very old proverb: Soon learnt, soon forgotten, so you don't want to rush with this material. Savour the cognitive and cultural frames behind them instead.

English Idioms and Proverbs

English Sayings and Proverbs

Do we also have some of these images in Spanish? Maybe you would like to look into parallel structures in both languages! And what about Romanian, Diana and Cosmina?

Collapse: A follow up to David's talk on the financial crisis

Collapse is a documentary on Michael Ruppert, a police officer turned independent reporter who predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter, From the Wilderness, way before  it happened. He's now an investigative journalist and peak oil theorist. Whether a crackpot or a visionary, his theories leave no one feeling indifferent. This film, controversial as it may be, is probably going to catch your attention, especially after the discussion we had yesterday in class. And thanks David for sparking the debate. 

Click here to watch the documentary

Why I am leaving Goldman Sachs

Since the new topic of the week is Power and Money, I recommend you to read this letter published in the New York Times, written by Greg Smith, who is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm's United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Reasons for resigning from his job in Goldman Sachs? He states them fairly clear, just read on! 

Greg Smith's resignation letter

PS.: And thanks, Carlos Estangüi, for the heads up!