SELF EVALUATION

First step: chooses a topic. About the topic, it hasn’t been difficult to decide. In fact, one day I read in a newspaper that heels has been wearied by men at first. This surprises me and catches my attention, that’s why I suggested to Iman, my partner for this presentation, to make our presentation about heels. She liked it and this is why we chose to talk about heels.

Found information didn’t bring any problem. It was the case of the timing and the information we wanted to give.

We wanted to expose interesting information and some details that people could remember. That was the hardest part.

I would like to talk about memorizing too. Remembers your text takes time and is not so easy, but makes it fluent and spontaneous takes even more time. That’s why I’m happy that we could do our presentation later than it has been decided. Like this, our presentation could get almost all the punctuation, thank you for the two more days we had that let us integrate all the information and present our topic speaking fluently and catching the audience’s attention.

10 ways to have a better conversation

( https://www.ted.com/talks/celeste_headlee_10_ways_to_have_a_better_conversation#t-674329 )

Summary

When your job hinges on how well you talk to people, you learn a lot about how to have conversations — and that most of us don't converse very well. Celeste Headlee has worked as a radio host for decades, and she knows the ingredients of a great conversation: Honesty, brevity, clarity and a healthy amount of listening. In this insightful talk, she shares 10 useful rules for having better conversations. "Go out, talk to people, listen to people," she says. "And, most importantly, be prepared to be amazed."

Opinion

Communication is the base of any group of species. All of them communicate on one way or another.

Humans are a species that have been communicating at first by signs and nowadays we can see that the communication has made a huge evolution and takes an important place in our society. To see its importance we simply have to realize that communication is all everywhere without exception.

No matter if it’s oral verbal communication or writing, both are essential for communities. They need to intercommunicate between each other.

I think Celeste Headlee is right when she argues that we must improve the conversation, doing the 10 steps in order to not be fifty percent in the conversation and fifty out. Because, the way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.

How could Christianity get so many followers in a short period? It’s a question that our History of Art's teacher ask us.

The reason, I think, is in the beginning of Christianity where it gets the attention of working class. How? The working class resign themselves with their hard life because they have the faith that there is another life after death; Christians believe that another life exists after death, known as a resuscitation. In this period where the huge difference between the status is present, the working class live in a bad condition.

Christianity gives us a reason to accept this condition thinking that in another life you will live better.

Now that we have an answer I have a question for those that believe in a religion. If in history, religions didn't exist,do you think history could been different? People would have act differently if they didn't have this excuse in order to resign themselves to this life and its hard conditions?

For my part, I’m sure that everything would been different.

Why you should talk to strangers

-Kio Stark

(https://www.ted.com/playlists/413/the_beauty_of_strangers)

Summary

"When you talk to strangers, you're making beautiful interruptions into the expected narrative of your daily life — and theirs," says Kio Stark. In this delightful talk, Stark explores the overlooked benefits of pushing past our default discomfort when it comes to strangers and embracing those fleeting but profoundly beautiful moments of genuine connection.

Opinion

I believe more people in our society than we think are afraid of strangers. They take fright when their parents in their childhood told them to not talk to any stranger and to not trust in any of them because of their supposing bad intentions.

I’m not saying that what our parents said is the mistake. Our parents are right. A child is innocent why normally he can’t see if he is in danger when he’s in front of a new situation or a stranger. A child is discovering our society and which kind of person there is inside.

The mistake is to live our life without believing in our learning we get after years observing our society. We must trust in our feelings and intuition as Kio Stark says in his spoke.

I’m not affirming that when we get older our feeling will never deceive us. I’m just agree with Kio Stark when she says that we must believe in our sensitives perception instead of our fears.  

I’m sure that those who leave behind this warning of their childhood and start to believie in the human -stranger or not- they will in all likelihood see that most people are not so bad or dangerous as they thought.

Furthermore, those who are in the situation of believing in strangers even they are more comfortable talking with them than with those who know them. Those kinds of people are as Kia Stark says are the ones that prefer talking with strangers because there no consequences of their talks.

When Kia Stark says that those people expect the stranger to read their mind, I think that isn’t the reason. Perhaps those people feel that stranger understands what he feels. And for them they understand better than the people that know him.

In fact, the only reason why a stranger could understand better what someone feels better than the person who knows this person. The reason is with the stranger there isn’t the idea that you have with the person that knows you.

For me the stranger can’t know what we think because he doesn’t know us. Our unconscious knows it. It why unconsciously I believe that we explain more what we feel. We externalize our feelings because we don’t expect that they could understand us without it.

With close people, instead of externalising our feelings, we expect them to read our mind. That why sometimes stranger seems to understand us better than close people. It’s because with them we are unconsciously externalizing more our feelings.

Let's use video to reinvent education

( https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_teach_for_mastery_not_test_scores?language=fr )

Summary

Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script – give students vídeo lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help.

Opinion

I totally agree with Salman Khan. The occidental education has been the same during centuries. There was no evolution until know in the method of education.

Our system education is influenced by Plato. Who said every individual should devote his life to what is best fit for him to do. And the important function of education is to determine what every individual is by nature capable and fitted of doing things.

Nowadays children enter school at six where they first learn the three Rs (reading, writing and counting) and then engage with music and sports. Later when they end High school, students have to choose one between many kind of studies.

In the 5^th century BC Plato says “Social justice is giving what is due to whom it is due”.

It looks nice but in fact if we stop to think about it our society doesn’t let us choose what we want to do. And this begins with the education.

Years after years some students accumulate gaps when they don’t understand the whole subjecte. Anyway, his whole class will move on to the next subjecte, probably a more advanced subject that's going to build on those gaps. Some people over time will disengage. Not because something is difficult or the student isn’t bright. It's because of this accumulation of gaps.  

Salman Khan talks about an example: Home-building. And said if we would choose to build a house on unfinished foundations. I’m sure everybody would say “of course not”. 

Why then do we urge students to finish their education when they have not always grasped the fundamentals?

I believe our education system must change. The idea is teaching for mastery and not test results.

The human is the animal who fail the most

We just should compare a foal with an infant. The foal, after one hour trying to walk, he will get it, conversely, the infant after more than two thousand attempts to walk he cans approximately walk.

Nevertheless, the human perhaps is the animal who live the more fails in his life but is the animal that can drive a car, ride bike, etc. Regarding the horse, after 10 years he will walk as he walked when he was one year old.

Another example could be: the spider. When the spider does his spiderweb, he doesn’t fail. Or the bird. When the bird does his bird’s nest he gets it immediately at first time.

The human perhaps, should try the things many times but he is free and he doesn’t depend on the instinct like the spider, the bird or the foal. The human is free and thereby he can go more far than any other species.

The danger of hiding who you are

(Summary) Morgana Bailey has been hiding her true self for 16 years. In a brave talk, she utters four words that might not seem like a big deal to some, but to her have been paralyzing.

Why speak? Because she realized that her silence has personal, professional and societal consequences.

In front of an audience of her co-workers, she reflects on what it means to fear the judgment of others, and how it makes us judge ourselves.

(Opinion) This TED makes me think about Nietzschei that said we are what we think.  My point of view is that a person feels judge when something of his attitude or appearance makes him think it. In fact deeply inside we reflect what we think we are. This idea of us is based on the vision that we supposed people have of us. Sadly this vision or supposition of what people think on us is an excuse for tell our self the truth or the reality. A reality that we don’t want to accept but that deeply inside we know. Morgana Bailey for 16 years hasn’t been in harmony with his own person. She didn’t accept his situation because she judges his own self and here there is the truth that she didn’t want to accept and that she reflect with the supposing opinion of other on her.

You should stay with the idea that when you accept what people are supposedly thinking is that you accept who you are. Believe in you and people are or will accept who you are.

JOKE

Fashion cycle Girona

(The first Edition cycle Girona)

All enterprises want to make more and more money. This begun with the Industrial Revolution and spread nowadays with globalization.

There are different industries and the ones I want to talk about are the clothes ones. More than the clothes industries I would like to talk about the way they get know their brand to public.  As many economical activities, they know that they must be known by the public to increase their sales. A way to get it, is the advertisement.

There are many different types of advertisements nowadays. We have billboards, magazine ads, television ads, online in websites, etc.

This 8^th Saturday of October, 2016 in Gerona, I had the opportunity to be present at a new way to promote clothes and brands. This different and original way consisted on employ models with the idea that they promote wearing branded clothes, going by bike, throughout through the city.

Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are

(http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are)

To sum up this video this sentence is perfect “Our bodies change our minds and our minds change our behavior and our behavior changes our outcomes”.

Body language affects how others see us, but it also changes how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” – standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident – can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.

Scientists say that our behavior changes until our thirties. Well in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, we can and do still change, but these changes come more slowly, and require more effort, said Paul T. Costa Jr., scientist emeritus at the laboratory of behavioral science at the National Institutes of Health (http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/11/how-much-can-you-really-change-after-30.html ). Why am I telling you this? Because perhaps our behavior doesn’t change anymore or just a little bit after our thirties but as Amy Cuddy says we should believe in or self to have better results. How? Like she said with power posing there’re reactions in your brain. Many things change during a short instant. And the beauty of this speech is that she tries to convince us that doing it often and not only a few times, it will not be only different during an instant, you will find results in the future.

Look at life in pink and it will present itself in pink. I mean if you act with confidence you will obtain everything you want to undertake. It makes me think in the Kaizen’s method that says even the longest path begins with a step, and there’s nothing bad in to be a short one. So think that the way you are standing right now could change your future.

Hello Lourdes,

My name is Faustine Gabard, I'm a 17-year-old girl that hopes that one day she will switch on a light, not the one that is in the kitchen neither the one in the bathroom or the one in the living room, none of those. I hope one day I will switch on the light next to my bed and in this instant I'll be sure to be on the right path.

We know that the path to success has many potholes and we know that sometimes things or people can deviate our direction. Precisely for this reason, the most important thing for success is never to forget our goals.

I will be honest, I don't really know right now what are my long-term goals... well, I have the ones that every student has: try to achieve my best grades to finally have the opportunity to enter into any university. Yes, I said "any" because I don't know which degree I would like to do. This isn't really important yet, so if we suppose that all I said before happens, I hope  I will find a good job, one that I like and where I can earn enough money to have a good life.

I will end this e-mail telling you a short-term goal that I think all humans should have. This short goal is to try to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible today, tomorrow and the days to come, because I'm convinced that if everybody does, our planet will be there for our children, our children's children and all the future generations.

We should think that if our ancestors had been selfish as some of us are now and they had had our technology surely, we would not have been here writing an e-mail to our fantastic English teacher.

My Best, Faustine Gabard :)

Rosa Fair

Last Saturday I was in Rosas. It was the 28th of May of 2016 so I had the chance to be in Rosas the day of the Fair of the Rose.

I could find flower arrangements, art, music, food, art, culture.... I think I photograph almost everything.

At the end of the day I came back to my house with a little smile on my lips bring about all these wonderful things I saw during the day.

A few days after I was curious to know why Roses did this Fair, hence I search information about it on the internet.

I find some and the one that catch my attention was this:

Post pictures of Rosa Fair 2016 with the tag # firarosa2016 Instagram between Friday 27 May at 10 am and Sunday 29 May at 21 pm and participate in the competition.

Prize: 100 € in cash

It was too late for me...

My futurist vision is an alimentation without hamburgers. The ones you find in fast-food. If I can afford, I will say that the society today is healthy.

Perhaps it is merely a tendency. Who knows? Yes it is true that this tendency could change tomorrow, but I am convinced that it will not change and one day this hamburger that represents all fast-food will disappear. It will disappear because one day everybody will realize that the key to a long and healthy life is in a healthy diet and doing sport regularly.

If everyone realizes it there is a high percentage of chance that another problem will appear from but meanwhile we will have eliminated the hamburger. The hamburger that is prejudicial to our health.

Unimportant like

Facebook and Instagram among other detrimental social networks for us have profound and severe modification in our behavior.

I will focus on the “likes”, an emoticon that represent an emotion; in this case to say indirectly that you like the picture that someone shares.

Those “likes” become for many people an element to be happy day to day. Can you see the huge problem this could cause? There are people that share a picture and according to their point of view the picture doesn’t have enough likes, on account of this they start to think things like they are perhaps ugly or not an interesting person. This thinking can end in a bad self-confidence; those people can end up never believing again in their own qualities just for unimportant things like the futile quantity of likes.

<< One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. >> The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell

Les gens heureux fument et boivent du café

(“Happy people smoke and drink coffee”)

It was a Thursday. A day like another day.

I started my journey at 8 o'clock in the morning. I went to school with my little white and maroon Vespa and like every day I arrived few minutes late at class.

It was a long day. Some subjects were boring, others really interesting. Some teachers give us homework, others no.

Well, it was a day like everyday.

At 3 o'clock p.m. I arrived tired and hungry at home so before going to sleep, I ate the plate that my mum prepared lovingly for us before we came back from school.

After sleeping and resting myself a little bit I took my school bag. I sat in front of my desk and started to do my homework and study.

In the evening after eating the meal I decided to go to read the book that my mum had recommended me. So, I went upstairs, I went in my room, let my body fall on my bed and started to read the book.

The title of the book was "Les gens heureux fument et boivent du café".

The main character started telling that it's been a year that she had lost her daughter and husband in a car accident.

After the first four pages I stopped because I heard my mum crying down stairs. I decided to go to see what happened, to know what makes my mum cries.

I arrived in front of my mum and my sister and both were crying all the tears of their body.

I asked what happens, but my mum couldn't answer and my sister looked at me during three seconds that seems like an eternity for me.

Finally, my sister could tell me what happened, she said:

-Your piano teacher died in a car accident this Wenesday.

I could not believe what she said. I could not believe what was happening. The time stopped, everything stopped because the tears that started to fall down without control blurred my vision.

<<We expect  that it will be overcome after a certain period of time, and we believe it will be inappropriate and even harmful to disrupt it.>>

Sigmund Freud, about mourning and melancholia.

Dachau

This year I went to Germany and Austria with a school trip. I spent two days in Austria and three days in Germany before coming back to Spain. 

I will focus this redaction in Dachau, a concentration camp we visited in our journey. Why? Simply for all the strange, different and freezing sensations I had felt in this lugubrious place.

*(Dachau concentration camp was the first of the Nazi concentration camps opened. Opened in Germany in 1933 by Heinrich Himmler, its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, ordinary German and Austrian criminals, and eventually foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded. The concentration camp in question it is located in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany.)

I went to a place where people underwent unthinkable sufferance. Actually I think no one can really know what those people who died for no reason in this horrid place felt.  I can just say that all these millions and millions of lives that died leave a huge and deep hole in the history of humanity. A hole where there should be hopes and fears, joyfulness and sorrow, smiles and tears… life is fully of distinct feelings. When we kill a person the time is wholly empty.

Everything will stop if our society continues pretending to not see all this awful misery in the world. The things that happen to someone can happen to you, so could we think not just about ourselves and think a little bit for everyone, merely to reach a better world.

<< Undoubtedly we should desire the happiness of those whom love, but not as an alternative to our own. In fact the whole antithesis between self and the rest of the world, which is implied in the doctrine of self-denial, disappears as soon as we have any genuine interest in persons or things outside ourselves. >> The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp

We don’t have time…

I would like to talk about my favourite series but I realize that we don’t have time to watch it for many reasons but the main reason is homework.

Teenagers have too much homework, therefore we do not have an appropriate sleep duration (the appropriate sleep ranges for teenagers is 8-10 hours according to The National Sleep Foundation), we also do not have the time for extracurricular activities where people can improve an ability. Yes, school subjects are not the only knowledge that exists. I believe that music, sports, art are equally as important as than mathematics and Spanish among other school subjects. Another problem and not the least caused by too much homework, is that we cannot socialise with friends.

I suppose that the message is clear, the education system should give less homework to students. A lot of homework is not the key for a better education and Spain is the proof. Spain is one of the OECD countries that load students with more homework at home and have the lower school performance.

Sugar tax: How it will work? (News)

The article in question talks about a new sugar tax that the UK will introduce on the soft drinks industry to fight against child obesity.

It will be aimed at soft drinks, but they said that some drinks will be exempt from the scheme.

Office for Budgetary Responsibility suggests levying at 18p and 24p per liter.

Finally Mr. Osborne said the money raised will be spent on increasing the funding for sport in primary schools.

I would like to center your attention in sugar. A tax only for sugar? Do you agree that very probably behind this sugar tax there another main interest than increasing the funding for sport in primary school? I don’t know which one; perhaps the money raised will be used for something else. In fact, this usually happens, for example Spain did it with a freeway; for financed it the state put turnpikes. After end the reimbursement the state doesn’t remove it.

A better solution could raise awareness of the problem among the general public instead of tax the sugar. For example, they should put in every aliment with a high quantity of sugar a picture showing how many spoons of sugar there in.

Sometimes a picture says more than words, in this case than a tax.

( http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35824071 )

Charlotte Rampling says oscar boycoctt is racism against white

The point of view of Charlotte Rampling is that all of us are differend but some people have historically been ejected from certain community. Basically, here it's a problem of skin color.

In fact we would never really know how the Academy makes its decisions. That's why so many minority performers still feel that they lack the recognition they deserve.

In one way, Mr Lee Later's suggestion for more transparency is legitimating the selection. He wants to institute a policy similar than the NFL'D requirement that teams interview minority candidates for head coach and senior staff jobs.

To conclude if you can't impose a find choice to the jury, the competition could be more equitable and the members of the jury could be, at least, forced to evaluate all candidates in the same way.

 

( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/movies/charlotte-rampling-says-oscars-furor-is-racist-against-whites.html?_r=0 )

 

News :

http://www.nytimes.com/topic/destination/brazil

 

Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians have been taking to the streets to protest against their government, as a gathering corruption scandal threatened to engulf the president and her predecessor. President Rousself appointed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as her chief of staff, in what was widely seen by her critics as an attempt to shield him from prosecution over alleged corruption and money-laundering. Hours after Lula’s appointment, a number of secretly taped phone calls between Lula and Rousseff were released, which appeared to suggest that the job offer had indeed been made to protect Lula. 

 

Heavily bitter elite opposition staging a coup to seize power of a democratically elected president. If the guardian are offering us only a one sided cover on this story, there only two things that comes into my mind, bad journalism or bad intentions.
Remember, the party driving the coup current government as it is cracking down heavily on the vital arteries of well established corrupt deal with international companies, that in turn, would benefit exploring and securing Brazil’s abundant natural resources.

 

Promise at Down (Book)

La promesse de l'aube
Summary:

This book has been written by Romain Gary, a french author. It's an autobiography witch particularly treats about his special relation with one of the most important person of men's life this mother.

 

She was courageous and  and incredibly confident about his son's successful future. She wasn't only hopping the best for him but made all the possible for this result could happened.

 

Even after her death (3 years before of the end of the 2nd WW) she continues to support him. He knows what she was expecting for him and he struggles to become like she hopes and expected.

Opinion:

I did choose this book because the tittle is full of hope. Indeed, the author believe in humanity and never abandoned his idealistic hope for the future. Nor during the war, neither during the worst moment in his life he never feel lost.

 

During the lecture I was smiling because the ton was ironic even in the most dramatic situation. I recognized myself in many scenes and I imagined what I would have done if I was at his place.

Their judgement or yours :

Why feel judge by others ? Why be convinced to know what the others think about you ?

I think we do not realize that no one thing equal, that no one live in the same way the moments, no one is equal. 

I only can say that the opinion you thing people have on you is the reflect of your own opinion on you. 

Why ? If we can not know the think of others the presume judge they have on you is a result of an attitude or something you wear that make you think this. At the end is your own opinion but the one you do not want to accept, but you know it.

Is every one créatif ?

Well we have to know that brain interpret the reality in function of the information that arrive to it. Thence the brain decide what is more important.

For example, if you imagine a circle: the contour will have more importance than the interior or if you imagine a triangle: the angle will have more importance than the right line. Why? Because they contain more information. And if information do not arrive to the brain this one gone a create or imagine what there might be.

This capacity of the brain for invent the reality is creativity so the human is créatif !

In fact for my opinion, with the reason we can not discover everything.

So every body are créatif but there is always some more than others.

Die and not feel pain or feel pain and probably die :

If humans would not need to give a sense to their live therefore be insignificant, they do not suffer. It would not exist pain, and die would not affect us. It make me think to this sentence: nobody will miss me if I die.

Just giving importance to something or somebody if this thing or person disappear, disappoint you... in this case you will fill certainly pain.

Only problem is that humans wants to give a sense to his life. Be someone in the life. This reason bring us to feel pain and be afraid to die but it also make us feel happy, in love and make us feel a lot of different feelings.

The positivity of linguistic diversity

I defend the posture "interculturalism and dialogue" because I see the linguistic diversity as an enriching thing.

More than enriching languages are types of identity.

Religions, the color of the skin among others are also types of identity . People need an identity but the problem is that religion or the color of the skin bring conflicts and in fact have had throughout the history the cause of lot of wars.

For this reason I defend the linguistic diversity like a passive identity. Plus you can have more than one language so more than one indentity. With religion or the skin's color you can't.

Why continue doing metaphysics ?

The metaphysics is a philosophy so a type of knowledge that try to arrive to the wisdom. It is not a copy of knowledge is a way to live.

 

The metaphysics is criticize for his secrecy and elitism. I agree that metaphysics is quite abstract and in fact I think that the problem of metaphysics is to formulate questions that the reason can not answer.

There something you should think about:

 

Is true that metaphysics try to answer questions without answer. But throughout the history this questions bring us to find and discover for example lungs . I mean when the metaphysics try to answer what is the soul they found something that we need for live.

Why people pay someone else for do something ?

It is obvious when someone pay someone else for do something is because this person don't want to do it. But why she / he don't want ?

 

I think simply that people are lazybones. But perhaps can be also because you don't want to do this activity because you don't like it, but you are obligate to do it so you pay someone else. Or because is illegal but it is necessary to do it. Or simply for time. Yes, time is money and money can give you time.

 

If someone pay someone else for bring his or her dog walk is simply for win time and perhaps she or he like to walks his or her dog but we have one life and sometime we have to choose what thing we prefer o do.

 

 

Dear Santa Claus!

My name is Faustine. I'm 17 years old and I live in Empuriabrava. A really nice place.

I believe I was nice this year so I suppose I can ask you some present for Christmas day.

Santa Claus, I know you have a lot of work and your time is precious.

For this reason, because the richest person is the one who  is satisfied with what she or he has, I don't want to ask you a present. I just want to give you more time.

Give you time to make happy as me the people who are in war.

Give you time for help to find all vaccines the ill people need.

Give you the time to stop the global warming.

Give you time to make sure that everyone have education within easy reach.

I just want to give you time to make this world a better world.

Phrasal Verbs

I selt off every day at 8 o'clock but yesterday I got up at 6 o'clock because someone rang me up to tell me that the inspector needed help with a case in Miami.

Later in the morning my airplane took off. Three hours later I was in Miami' station.

The inspector told me what they had found looking into the case.

In the evening I went to sleep with a gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateborad and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I carried on the day in the Police station to try to find more clue.

END of the weekend_