Under an old warehouse in Shoreditch, secrets of London's 16th Century Theatreland are being painstakingly uncovered. Thousands of artefacts have been uncovered giving us more clues about Elizabethan life.
Three meters under what was an old warehouse in Curtain Road Shoreditch, secrets of London’s 16th century theatre land are painstakingly uncovered.
It’s a hugely exciting project to be part of, and it’s not just that here we are with all that chance to look at one of this really rare buildings which is connected to people such as William Shakespeare, but it’s also what’s gonna happen to the archaeology at the end.
The Curtain Playhouse was one of London’s first theatres. Historians believe this was the first place where Shakespeare performed some of his plays. The rectangular shape of the stage and the mysterious underground tunnel are puzzling archaeologists.
You realise the size and shape of the stage, but these were doorways that would allow access under the stage so, again, you know, how were actors using that space, how does that influence what you can form on the stage itself. It’s asking a whole range of questions that can really kind of change our understanding of the evolution of early English drama.
We’ve got this lovely drinking jug…
Thousands of Elizabethan artefacts have also been found, including the cones everyone carried for tackling headlights.
These are tops from ceramic pots that would’ve been used to collect theatre-goers takings. They were sealed to prevent theft, and taken to a special office to break them open and transfer the money to a strongbox, hence the term box office, still in use today.
16th century audiences were apparently a rowdy bunch.
There would’ve been thousands coming to these places. We know about pawnshops, in fact there was a famous pawnshop at the door of The Curtain in 1613, we know people were eating and drinking, we know that people would throw rotten apples or whatever at the actors if they didn’t like it.
The Curtain Theatre and artefacts will be on show to the public when an office and housing development opens near the sight in 2019.
Yvonne Hall, BBC London News, Shoreditch.
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Culture. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Culture. Mostrar todas las entradas
jueves, 15 de junio de 2017
miércoles, 14 de junio de 2017
Talking point: Culture
This week's talking point is culture. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas come to mind more easily the day you get together with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.
If you were visiting a foreign country and wanted to learn more about its culture, which of the following would interest you most? Why?
The ancient Greek dramatist Menander (342BC-292BC) said that 'Culture makes all men gentle'. What do you think he meant?
Imagine that your school is organising an exhibition entitled 'Aspects of our culture'. Talk together about the various aspects of culture represented in the pictures. Then suggest two other aspects of culture that you would like to see represented in the exhibition.
Which two activities in the pictures above do you find the most appealing? Why?
In what ways are cultural activities important for society?
What are some of the customs and traditions in your country which are more representative of its culture?
If you were visiting a foreign country and wanted to learn more about its culture, which of the following would interest you most? Why?
a performance of traditional music and dances
a theatrical performance
visiting a museum
visiting historical and archaeological sites
eating local dishes
attending a local ceremony, like a wedding
graffiti on the walls of buildings
The ancient Greek dramatist Menander (342BC-292BC) said that 'Culture makes all men gentle'. What do you think he meant?
Imagine that your school is organising an exhibition entitled 'Aspects of our culture'. Talk together about the various aspects of culture represented in the pictures. Then suggest two other aspects of culture that you would like to see represented in the exhibition.
Which two activities in the pictures above do you find the most appealing? Why?
In what ways are cultural activities important for society?
What are some of the customs and traditions in your country which are more representative of its culture?
martes, 13 de junio de 2017
Amsterdam, first city of the modern age
It's the fishing village that grew to become one of the largest ports in Europe: capital of the Netherlands, birthplace of the modern stock market, home to Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh and Anne Frank.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. What does '60' refer to?
2. Why was the city's location a threat to its residents?
3. What did the residents of Amsterdam pioneer in the centuries that followed after the city's foundation?
4. How many 'cities' within Amsterdam are mentioned?
5. What was the purpose of the piece of wood coming out the top of buildings with a hook on it?
6. What did Rembrandt capture in his paintings?
7. Why are there no curtains in the windows?
8. What can you buy in a coffee shop?
9. What does the Dutch word gedogen mean?
Welcome to Dam Square, the site of a long-ago dam, they put the dam in Amsterdam. It’s the bustling centre of the city. I’m with the Royal Palace right behind me, the perfect starting-off point.
Perhaps the best way to tour this city is by boat, along its 60 miles of canals.
Here it was in the Middle Ages people started coming here and they…
Our guide is Russell Shorto, author of a bestselling history of Amsterdam. From its founding in the late 12th century, this city's location on a river delta that often flooded, posed a challenge for its residents.
And this is the crucial point, they started banding together in small groups in their communities and building dams and dikes and canals in order to control this problem of water, and make it work for them.
Their success in transforming their natural environment led to a re-shaping of their entire approach to life.
They started to realize, you know, we've got something here. We’ve got this… it changed their mentality, and then they built on that.
What the people of Amsterdam built in the centuries that followed were the first businesses of the modern age: shipping, insurance, the first stock exchange, and international trading enterprises, like the Dutch East India Company. As the economy grew, so did the city, with eye-catching details we saw at every turn.
This is the Herengracht, the Gentleman's Canal, one of the great 17th century canals. This is the Golden Age city that we're in. And you had the Medieval City first, and then the City Fathers made this plan where they were going to lay out this ring of canals around it, because the city was expanding so rapidly.
The canals were lined with the townhouses of Amsterdam's thriving merchant class, each adorned with special architectural details, like these stones to show the owner's profession.
If you look over there, those gables, to… the ones… that’s called a spout gable. You see the piece of wood coming out the top with a hook on it, that's a hoist beam. You would bring your goods on the canal up to your door, and then you would hoist them up, and you would store them in your attic.
And it wasn't all business; genius and talent also flourished in the arts during Amsterdam's Golden Age of the 1600s.
Where we are now, the Doelen Hotel, this is Rembrandt area. You see the guys up there with their fluffy era Rembrandt-era hats on.
Rembrandt's paintings of the city's leading citizens, including the famous Nightwatch, fill Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. He captured all his subjects' outward signs of success, but also, author Russel Shorto says, something more.
He seemed able to paint who you were inside. And if you look at those paintings, you see that, you feel that, you feel these people thought about themselves, for the first time, the way we think about ourselves today.
Along with Rembrandt, there was Van Gogh. There’s an entire museum devoted to his works. And one of the city's most visited sites is the Anne Frank House, where young Anne wrote her famous diary during the two years she and her family hid from the Nazis during World War II.
These days, it seems, there is a refreshing openness about life here. And what’s with the young, no curtains in the windows.
You know, some people say that that is, 'Look, we have nothing to hide.' Or 'We're decent, ordinary people here.’, you know.
Nothing to see here!
Exactly, because, you know…
Another thing an American visitor notices, Amsterdam's tolerant attitude toward everything from marijuana use to sex. The nearly 200 coffee shops here don't just sell coffee; you can also legally buy marijuana, and smoke it on the spot. And there's the famous red light district, where prostitutes legally display their wares. Shorto says the city's tolerance is of long standing.
That is a tricky thing to try to understand, and I don't know if any foreigner, any outsider can really get it, but there's a Dutch word, gedogen, which means -this is my definition of it- it means 'technically illegal, but officially tolerated'.
Put everything we’ve been seeing on our cruise together, and you begin to understand Amsterdam's unique draw.
It's the city itself, it's the city of canals and of canal houses, which are built for individuals. It's a monument to the ordinary individual person and ordinary individual families. This is in many ways the birthplace of our modern sense of ourselves as individuals. This was where that started.
KEY:
1 The number of miles that canals stretch around Amsterdam
2 It often flooded
3 The first businesses of the modern age
4 Two: The Golden Age City and the Medieval City
5 To bring the goods from the boats into the houses
6 Both the outward signs of success and the person's inside
7 The younger generation has nothing to hide
8 Both coffee and marijuana
9 Technically illegal, but officially tolerated
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. What does '60' refer to?
2. Why was the city's location a threat to its residents?
3. What did the residents of Amsterdam pioneer in the centuries that followed after the city's foundation?
4. How many 'cities' within Amsterdam are mentioned?
5. What was the purpose of the piece of wood coming out the top of buildings with a hook on it?
6. What did Rembrandt capture in his paintings?
7. Why are there no curtains in the windows?
8. What can you buy in a coffee shop?
9. What does the Dutch word gedogen mean?
Welcome to Dam Square, the site of a long-ago dam, they put the dam in Amsterdam. It’s the bustling centre of the city. I’m with the Royal Palace right behind me, the perfect starting-off point.
Perhaps the best way to tour this city is by boat, along its 60 miles of canals.
Here it was in the Middle Ages people started coming here and they…
Our guide is Russell Shorto, author of a bestselling history of Amsterdam. From its founding in the late 12th century, this city's location on a river delta that often flooded, posed a challenge for its residents.
And this is the crucial point, they started banding together in small groups in their communities and building dams and dikes and canals in order to control this problem of water, and make it work for them.
Their success in transforming their natural environment led to a re-shaping of their entire approach to life.
They started to realize, you know, we've got something here. We’ve got this… it changed their mentality, and then they built on that.
What the people of Amsterdam built in the centuries that followed were the first businesses of the modern age: shipping, insurance, the first stock exchange, and international trading enterprises, like the Dutch East India Company. As the economy grew, so did the city, with eye-catching details we saw at every turn.
This is the Herengracht, the Gentleman's Canal, one of the great 17th century canals. This is the Golden Age city that we're in. And you had the Medieval City first, and then the City Fathers made this plan where they were going to lay out this ring of canals around it, because the city was expanding so rapidly.
The canals were lined with the townhouses of Amsterdam's thriving merchant class, each adorned with special architectural details, like these stones to show the owner's profession.
If you look over there, those gables, to… the ones… that’s called a spout gable. You see the piece of wood coming out the top with a hook on it, that's a hoist beam. You would bring your goods on the canal up to your door, and then you would hoist them up, and you would store them in your attic.
And it wasn't all business; genius and talent also flourished in the arts during Amsterdam's Golden Age of the 1600s.
Where we are now, the Doelen Hotel, this is Rembrandt area. You see the guys up there with their fluffy era Rembrandt-era hats on.
Rembrandt's paintings of the city's leading citizens, including the famous Nightwatch, fill Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. He captured all his subjects' outward signs of success, but also, author Russel Shorto says, something more.
He seemed able to paint who you were inside. And if you look at those paintings, you see that, you feel that, you feel these people thought about themselves, for the first time, the way we think about ourselves today.
Along with Rembrandt, there was Van Gogh. There’s an entire museum devoted to his works. And one of the city's most visited sites is the Anne Frank House, where young Anne wrote her famous diary during the two years she and her family hid from the Nazis during World War II.
These days, it seems, there is a refreshing openness about life here. And what’s with the young, no curtains in the windows.
You know, some people say that that is, 'Look, we have nothing to hide.' Or 'We're decent, ordinary people here.’, you know.
Nothing to see here!
Exactly, because, you know…
Another thing an American visitor notices, Amsterdam's tolerant attitude toward everything from marijuana use to sex. The nearly 200 coffee shops here don't just sell coffee; you can also legally buy marijuana, and smoke it on the spot. And there's the famous red light district, where prostitutes legally display their wares. Shorto says the city's tolerance is of long standing.
That is a tricky thing to try to understand, and I don't know if any foreigner, any outsider can really get it, but there's a Dutch word, gedogen, which means -this is my definition of it- it means 'technically illegal, but officially tolerated'.
Put everything we’ve been seeing on our cruise together, and you begin to understand Amsterdam's unique draw.
It's the city itself, it's the city of canals and of canal houses, which are built for individuals. It's a monument to the ordinary individual person and ordinary individual families. This is in many ways the birthplace of our modern sense of ourselves as individuals. This was where that started.
KEY:
1 The number of miles that canals stretch around Amsterdam
2 It often flooded
3 The first businesses of the modern age
4 Two: The Golden Age City and the Medieval City
5 To bring the goods from the boats into the houses
6 Both the outward signs of success and the person's inside
7 The younger generation has nothing to hide
8 Both coffee and marijuana
9 Technically illegal, but officially tolerated
lunes, 5 de junio de 2017
Listening test: A description of Anuta
Listen to some extracts from BBC's From Our Own Correspondent about the remote Pacific island of Anuta and choose the heading A-I which best corresponds to each extract. 0 is an example.
A -A long and boring journey – 0 Example
B - A principle applied in all areas of their life
C - How to solve conflicts
D - Not a varied menu
E - Opposing worlds
F - Some misunderstandings
G - The most welcoming community
H - We might not go back
I - Youth problems
0
Sailing from Santa Cruz, in the eastern Solomons, it took us five days to reach Anuta. It was one of the most tedious journeys I have made, the continuous pitching of our small yacht making it impossible to either read or write. So it was with some relief when the speck of land that was Anuta finally appeared on the horizon.
1
We were their first visitors in two years. For a moment though, the feeling of isolation was overshadowed by Joseph’s T-shirt, which was emblazoned with the words ‘Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas’. It would be hard to imagine a greater contrast between two places. Las Vegas, the capital of excess, and little Anuta where even a mirror is considered a luxury. But while Anuta’s remoteness may have severely limited the quantity of consumer goods reaching the island, its isolation has forged a community spirit that would be very hard to beat.
2
The Anutans have their own word for this, aropa, which means love and compassion. It is an ideology that is applied to almost everything they do. You can see it at work in the way food and tasks are shared, but it goes further than this. Bizarrely they even adopt each other’s children. Joseph’s oldest daughter was adopted by a couple who gave him their son in return a few years later. When I asked Joseph about this, he simply said that it wasn’t an issue as Anutans saw children as communal. What was important was that everyone who wanted a child had one.
3
During our two-week stay we had at least one meal in at least every one of the 24 households. Sitting on the floor of each hut we were served communal dishes of fish and glutinous puddings of taro or manioc, all wrapped up in forest leaves. The meals, prepared by the women, were virtually identical from one hut to the other, but this was all about aropa, affection through sharing.
4
When I asked Joseph what the biggest changes have been in the last 20 years, he said ‘young people playing ukuleles’. Was this a problem? I asked, rather jokingly. ‘Well’, he replied more seriously, ‘before the ukuleles the younger generation would dance every evening. Now it is rare’. I got the same response from at least half a dozen other adults. As trivial as this sounds, it does make one think about our own, supposedly advanced, society. We worry about our children getting in with the wrong crowd, taking drugs, drinking, teenage knife crime, Anutan parents worry about their kids playing homemade ukuleles.
5
On the day we left, a group of men came onto our yacht and, with little notice, broke into their farewell song, ‘Sorrow come to us’. One of the chorus lines was: ‘Sorry we will never see your faces anymore’. It was enough to bring a lump to my throat. The lyrics had a point however. Anuta’s isolation has meant that few visitors ever return. But then, this is probably just as well. The beauty of the Anutan way of life comes from the relative absence of outside influence.
6
In the end it was easy to see what the island’s 300 people saw in the place. As a hardened traveller I do not say this lightly, but the Anutans were the most harmonious and hospitable people I have ever met.
KEY:
1E 2B 3D 4I 5H 6G
A -
B - A principle applied in all areas of their life
C - How to solve conflicts
D - Not a varied menu
E - Opposing worlds
F - Some misunderstandings
G - The most welcoming community
H - We might not go back
I - Youth problems
0
Sailing from Santa Cruz, in the eastern Solomons, it took us five days to reach Anuta. It was one of the most tedious journeys I have made, the continuous pitching of our small yacht making it impossible to either read or write. So it was with some relief when the speck of land that was Anuta finally appeared on the horizon.
1
We were their first visitors in two years. For a moment though, the feeling of isolation was overshadowed by Joseph’s T-shirt, which was emblazoned with the words ‘Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas’. It would be hard to imagine a greater contrast between two places. Las Vegas, the capital of excess, and little Anuta where even a mirror is considered a luxury. But while Anuta’s remoteness may have severely limited the quantity of consumer goods reaching the island, its isolation has forged a community spirit that would be very hard to beat.
2
The Anutans have their own word for this, aropa, which means love and compassion. It is an ideology that is applied to almost everything they do. You can see it at work in the way food and tasks are shared, but it goes further than this. Bizarrely they even adopt each other’s children. Joseph’s oldest daughter was adopted by a couple who gave him their son in return a few years later. When I asked Joseph about this, he simply said that it wasn’t an issue as Anutans saw children as communal. What was important was that everyone who wanted a child had one.
3
During our two-week stay we had at least one meal in at least every one of the 24 households. Sitting on the floor of each hut we were served communal dishes of fish and glutinous puddings of taro or manioc, all wrapped up in forest leaves. The meals, prepared by the women, were virtually identical from one hut to the other, but this was all about aropa, affection through sharing.
4
When I asked Joseph what the biggest changes have been in the last 20 years, he said ‘young people playing ukuleles’. Was this a problem? I asked, rather jokingly. ‘Well’, he replied more seriously, ‘before the ukuleles the younger generation would dance every evening. Now it is rare’. I got the same response from at least half a dozen other adults. As trivial as this sounds, it does make one think about our own, supposedly advanced, society. We worry about our children getting in with the wrong crowd, taking drugs, drinking, teenage knife crime, Anutan parents worry about their kids playing homemade ukuleles.
5
On the day we left, a group of men came onto our yacht and, with little notice, broke into their farewell song, ‘Sorrow come to us’. One of the chorus lines was: ‘Sorry we will never see your faces anymore’. It was enough to bring a lump to my throat. The lyrics had a point however. Anuta’s isolation has meant that few visitors ever return. But then, this is probably just as well. The beauty of the Anutan way of life comes from the relative absence of outside influence.
6
In the end it was easy to see what the island’s 300 people saw in the place. As a hardened traveller I do not say this lightly, but the Anutans were the most harmonious and hospitable people I have ever met.
KEY:
1E 2B 3D 4I 5H 6G
sábado, 3 de junio de 2017
Reading test: Russian explorers find 'swamp' of Soviet money
Read the BBC article Russian explorers find 'swamp' of Soviet money and choose the option A, B or C which best completes each gap. 0 is an example.
A group of explorers in Russia have found around a billion roubles in old Soviet money at an abandoned mine, but it's all completely (0) … .
The group from Saint Petersburg, who publish a blog on abandoned sites across Russia, (1) … the money after following rumours that large quantities of cash (2) … in old missile silos near Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Komsomolskaya Pravda news website reports. After travelling for several hours across rough terrain in Russia's Vladimir region, they found the mine literally overflowing with cash.
The site contains an estimated one billion roubles ($18m; £13.5m at current exchange rates, or $33.3m at the "official" Soviet rate in 1991) in Soviet Union banknotes of various denominations issued between 1961 and 1991, all (3) … legal tender in the Russian Federation. The mine (4) … in recent years, leaving what was essentially a swamp of banknotes bearing the face of Vladimir Lenin, the explorers' YouTube channel shows.
According to their (5) … of events, elderly locals told the team about the mine, but said that nobody (6) … go near the place because it was linked to the Soviet Union's ballistic missile programme, and contaminated with radiation. (7) …, Geiger counters showed that this was not the case.
Team member Olga Bogdanova said that the sight of such "riches" was difficult to convey in words. "There's delight and some sadness, (8) … you realise that this is a bygone era which will never return, that all this money would have been more than enough for anybody," she said. Just 100 roubles would have been a very good salary back in Soviet times.
Fellow explorers Anton Alekseev and Sergey Volkov were (9) … interviewed on Rossiya1 television, where the presenter noted that the (10) … was dumped following a government decision at the end of the Soviet Union, and that this might be one of at least three such sites across Russia.
The video has caught the imagination of social media users, many of whom wish that the money was (11) … legal tender. "I would dive in there like Scrooge McDuck," says one user, while another exclaimed, "I wish I (12) … have a time machine, return with a pack of those banknotes and buy myself a controlling stake in Google, Gazprom, Rosneft, and never work again."
0 Example:
A. priceless
B. valuable
C. worthless
1
A. came across
B. came round
C. came up to
2
A. had been dumped
B. have been dumped
C. have dumped
3
A. any longer
B. any more
C. no longer
4
A. drowned
B. flooded
C. inundated
5
A. account
B. narrative
C. tale
6
A. could
B. dared
C. tried
7
A. Although
B. Despite
C. However
8
A. because
B. even though
C. so
9
A. additionally
B. incidentally
C. subsequently
10
A. bucks
B. cash
C. currency
11
A. already
B. still
C. yet
12
A. can
B. could
C. will
KEY:
1A 2A 3C 4B 5A 6B 7C 8A 9A 10B 11B 12B
A group of explorers in Russia have found around a billion roubles in old Soviet money at an abandoned mine, but it's all completely (0) … .
The group from Saint Petersburg, who publish a blog on abandoned sites across Russia, (1) … the money after following rumours that large quantities of cash (2) … in old missile silos near Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Komsomolskaya Pravda news website reports. After travelling for several hours across rough terrain in Russia's Vladimir region, they found the mine literally overflowing with cash.
The site contains an estimated one billion roubles ($18m; £13.5m at current exchange rates, or $33.3m at the "official" Soviet rate in 1991) in Soviet Union banknotes of various denominations issued between 1961 and 1991, all (3) … legal tender in the Russian Federation. The mine (4) … in recent years, leaving what was essentially a swamp of banknotes bearing the face of Vladimir Lenin, the explorers' YouTube channel shows.
According to their (5) … of events, elderly locals told the team about the mine, but said that nobody (6) … go near the place because it was linked to the Soviet Union's ballistic missile programme, and contaminated with radiation. (7) …, Geiger counters showed that this was not the case.
Team member Olga Bogdanova said that the sight of such "riches" was difficult to convey in words. "There's delight and some sadness, (8) … you realise that this is a bygone era which will never return, that all this money would have been more than enough for anybody," she said. Just 100 roubles would have been a very good salary back in Soviet times.
Fellow explorers Anton Alekseev and Sergey Volkov were (9) … interviewed on Rossiya1 television, where the presenter noted that the (10) … was dumped following a government decision at the end of the Soviet Union, and that this might be one of at least three such sites across Russia.
The video has caught the imagination of social media users, many of whom wish that the money was (11) … legal tender. "I would dive in there like Scrooge McDuck," says one user, while another exclaimed, "I wish I (12) … have a time machine, return with a pack of those banknotes and buy myself a controlling stake in Google, Gazprom, Rosneft, and never work again."
0 Example:
A. priceless
B. valuable
C. worthless
1
A. came across
B. came round
C. came up to
2
A. had been dumped
B. have been dumped
C. have dumped
3
A. any longer
B. any more
C. no longer
4
A. drowned
B. flooded
C. inundated
5
A. account
B. narrative
C. tale
6
A. could
B. dared
C. tried
7
A. Although
B. Despite
C. However
8
A. because
B. even though
C. so
9
A. additionally
B. incidentally
C. subsequently
10
A. bucks
B. cash
C. currency
11
A. already
B. still
C. yet
12
A. can
B. could
C. will
Photo: BBC
KEY:
1A 2A 3C 4B 5A 6B 7C 8A 9A 10B 11B 12B
viernes, 26 de mayo de 2017
How what we eat has changed
We’ve gone from roasting to processing over thousands of years. What does the future hold for our food? Watch the video above to see what we’ll be eating in decades to come.
Humanity’s relationship with food production has certainly been a fruitful one. Our constant pursuit of refining how we eat is one of the reasons there are billions of us alive today. But it’s also a key factor as to why we are greatly damaging the Earth.
It all begins with fire. As far back as 29,000 BC Central Europeans were using primitive forms of ovens, roasting pits covered by yurts. Back then, mammoth was on the menu.
As we invented tools like ploughs and mills to help turn resources from the earth into food in our bellies, we produced enough to feed houses, then villages, then towns. Human civilization established itself.
One feature of civilizations that evolved was a thing called trade, and we did a lot of it. That’s why most of today’s biggest cities are found close to rivers and trade routes.
As agricultural revolutions took place, our population exploded, our food became more resilient due to developments such as machine refrigeration and pasteurizing, invented by this guy, French chemist Louise Pasteur in 1864. We could send hundreds of thousands of men to war and feed them thanks to food storage in cans.
By the 20th century microwave ovens arrived, meaning the mammoth we cooked 30,000 years ago in a pit, could now spin around in our kitchens.
We reached a point where the scale of production needed to feed everyone was impacting the planet’s resources. By the 1990’s we were selling genetically modified tomatoes to ensure reliable crop results.
This brings us to today’s climate concerns. Current food production is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. How will we continue to feed a vastly increasing population while reducing damage to the environment? How do we tackle our global obesity epidemic and encourage healthier diets? One thing is certain, we must look immediately for new approaches. We’ve achieved it many times before, so it shouldn’t be too hard too swallow, right?
Well, that was delicious.
Humanity’s relationship with food production has certainly been a fruitful one. Our constant pursuit of refining how we eat is one of the reasons there are billions of us alive today. But it’s also a key factor as to why we are greatly damaging the Earth.
It all begins with fire. As far back as 29,000 BC Central Europeans were using primitive forms of ovens, roasting pits covered by yurts. Back then, mammoth was on the menu.
As we invented tools like ploughs and mills to help turn resources from the earth into food in our bellies, we produced enough to feed houses, then villages, then towns. Human civilization established itself.
One feature of civilizations that evolved was a thing called trade, and we did a lot of it. That’s why most of today’s biggest cities are found close to rivers and trade routes.
As agricultural revolutions took place, our population exploded, our food became more resilient due to developments such as machine refrigeration and pasteurizing, invented by this guy, French chemist Louise Pasteur in 1864. We could send hundreds of thousands of men to war and feed them thanks to food storage in cans.
By the 20th century microwave ovens arrived, meaning the mammoth we cooked 30,000 years ago in a pit, could now spin around in our kitchens.
We reached a point where the scale of production needed to feed everyone was impacting the planet’s resources. By the 1990’s we were selling genetically modified tomatoes to ensure reliable crop results.
This brings us to today’s climate concerns. Current food production is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. How will we continue to feed a vastly increasing population while reducing damage to the environment? How do we tackle our global obesity epidemic and encourage healthier diets? One thing is certain, we must look immediately for new approaches. We’ve achieved it many times before, so it shouldn’t be too hard too swallow, right?
Well, that was delicious.
viernes, 12 de mayo de 2017
Marking 100 years of The Ivy
The Ivy's been recognised with a green plaque for its contribution to London life. BBC's reporter Frankie McCamley has been behind the scenes of the world famous venue that started life as a small Italian café.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. What is The Ivy celebrating?
2. Who was the Royal at the Ivy Miranda Richardson talks about?
3. When did The Ivy last go over a major refurbishment?
4. Why is it so difficult to stay at the top of the restaurant world in London?
5. What famous English dessert is mentioned at the end?
A familiar sight outside of one of London's most popular haunts for the rich and famous. But today they're not here just to catch a glimpse of the celebrity A-listers on the guest list. The Ivy is celebrating its hundredth anniversary with a commemorative green plaque from Westminster City Council. And behind the iconic stained glass windows is one of the many famous regulars, not short of a story to tell.
Coming in here with some friends who will remain nameless, on the same evening that Princess Margaret arrived and my friend, disappearing from the table at some point, coming back extremely giddily, she said, I’ve just worn Princess Margaret’s coat.
This is one of the most sought-after tables here in the restaurant where the likes of Tom Cruise and Kate Moss have sat. It's a million miles away from where it first started, where there were lino floors and paper napkins. Now we're surrounded by famous artwork and dishes made by some of the top chefs in the capital.
The venue has had different owners over the years and a major refurbishment in 2015 as it’s tried to adapt and keep up with competition in the city.
It's very difficult to stay at the top in an incredibly and increasingly competitive restaurant world. And people like new. People want to go to the next hottest place, so for restaurants like The Ivy that have been around for a hundred years it's… it's a job to stay relevant.
And that it has. With a host of celebrities caught on camera here over the years, including the supermodel Kate Moss and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Posh and Becks, and the American film star Jack Black. One of the people capturing those moments with Max Cisotti.
The Ivy was always very important because you always get a good calibre of celebrity. It's just seeing, you know, the lifestyles of the rich and famous and in their more candid situation, sometimes, not always just at official events.
Along with its infamous shepherd's pie, it's clear this venue has been part of the city’s theatrical history. Now the hope here is it will remain that way in the years to come.
Frankie McKinley BBC London news in the West End.
KEY:
1 its 100th anniversary
2 Princess Margaret
3 2015
4 people like to go to new places
5 shepherd’s pie
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. What is The Ivy celebrating?
2. Who was the Royal at the Ivy Miranda Richardson talks about?
3. When did The Ivy last go over a major refurbishment?
4. Why is it so difficult to stay at the top of the restaurant world in London?
5. What famous English dessert is mentioned at the end?
A familiar sight outside of one of London's most popular haunts for the rich and famous. But today they're not here just to catch a glimpse of the celebrity A-listers on the guest list. The Ivy is celebrating its hundredth anniversary with a commemorative green plaque from Westminster City Council. And behind the iconic stained glass windows is one of the many famous regulars, not short of a story to tell.
Coming in here with some friends who will remain nameless, on the same evening that Princess Margaret arrived and my friend, disappearing from the table at some point, coming back extremely giddily, she said, I’ve just worn Princess Margaret’s coat.
This is one of the most sought-after tables here in the restaurant where the likes of Tom Cruise and Kate Moss have sat. It's a million miles away from where it first started, where there were lino floors and paper napkins. Now we're surrounded by famous artwork and dishes made by some of the top chefs in the capital.
The venue has had different owners over the years and a major refurbishment in 2015 as it’s tried to adapt and keep up with competition in the city.
It's very difficult to stay at the top in an incredibly and increasingly competitive restaurant world. And people like new. People want to go to the next hottest place, so for restaurants like The Ivy that have been around for a hundred years it's… it's a job to stay relevant.
And that it has. With a host of celebrities caught on camera here over the years, including the supermodel Kate Moss and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Posh and Becks, and the American film star Jack Black. One of the people capturing those moments with Max Cisotti.
The Ivy was always very important because you always get a good calibre of celebrity. It's just seeing, you know, the lifestyles of the rich and famous and in their more candid situation, sometimes, not always just at official events.
Along with its infamous shepherd's pie, it's clear this venue has been part of the city’s theatrical history. Now the hope here is it will remain that way in the years to come.
Frankie McKinley BBC London news in the West End.
KEY:
1 its 100th anniversary
2 Princess Margaret
3 2015
4 people like to go to new places
5 shepherd’s pie
lunes, 8 de mayo de 2017
Listening test: Hair washing
Listen to a report on hair washing and complete the blanks in the sentences below with up to THREE WORDS. 0 is an example.
0 Example:
Queen Elizabeth I of England took a bath about 4 times a year
1. In the 16th century bathing wasn’t considered to be a _________________ thing to do.
2. When the narrator grew up, they didn’t have _________________ for their clothes.
3. Gary Barlow tweeted that he hadn’t washed his hair for _________________ .
4. The narrator’s _________________ also agrees that washing your hair isn’t necessary.
5. The anti-washing people say that after ten days the grease goes, the skin calms down and the hair _________________ .
6. According to the National Hairdressers’ Federation, shampoo is not harmful and it can make your _________________ .
7. The narrator _________________ using a normal deodorant some years ago.
Queen Elizabeth I of England took a bath about 4 times a year, they say, even if she didn’t need to. At that time, in the 16th century, bathing was not considered a very healthy or safe thing to do. It wasn’t so much that people didn’t like to be clean; it was more a fear of immersing yourself in water. You might catch something from the water. People, or rich people at least, preferred to wipe their bodies with clean, wet cloths. When I was growing up, many people used to bath and wash their hair only once a week. And people didn’t change their clothes nearly as often as they do today. There were practical explanations for this. The bathroom in the house where I grew up, for example, was freezing in the winter. And we didn’t have modern washing machines for our clothes.
I was thinking of all this the other day, when I was reading about Gary Barlow, one of the members of the famous Take That boy band, along with Robbie Williams. He tweeted that he had just washed his hair for the first time in 14 years. This produced a lot of reaction, as you can imagine. A number of other celebrities then revealed that they too have given up washing their hair. There’s a group of people who think that washing your hair is not necessary. And my daughter is one of them. They say that not washing your hair is good for both your hair and the skin on your head. But if I don’t wash my hair for a week, my head gets itchy and my hair gets greasy. These anti-washing people say, however, that you have to be patient and that after about 10 days, the greasiness goes, the skin on your head calms down and your hair starts cleaning itself.
The story was on the BBC website, and of course, the BBC always has to be balanced in its reporting, so they asked somebody from the National Hairdressers’ Federation what they thought. ‘There’s nothing wrong with washing your hair,’ they said. ‘Shampoo does not harm your hair or the skin on your head, and it can make your hair look better. Hair cannot clean itself.’ Well, perhaps, we might expect a hairdresser to say that.
So what should I do? Follow the no-wash trend? I probably won’t, but you never know, I did give up using a normal deodorant some years ago. I switched to using what’s known as a crystal deodorant, and I’m very happy with it.
KEY:
1 healthy or safe
2 modern washing machines
3 fourteen years
4 daughter
5 starts cleaning itself
6 hair look better
7 stopped / gave up / did give up
source: Gerry's News Digest
0 Example:
Queen Elizabeth I of England took a bath about 4 times a year
1. In the 16th century bathing wasn’t considered to be a _________________ thing to do.
2. When the narrator grew up, they didn’t have _________________ for their clothes.
3. Gary Barlow tweeted that he hadn’t washed his hair for _________________ .
4. The narrator’s _________________ also agrees that washing your hair isn’t necessary.
5. The anti-washing people say that after ten days the grease goes, the skin calms down and the hair _________________ .
6. According to the National Hairdressers’ Federation, shampoo is not harmful and it can make your _________________ .
7. The narrator _________________ using a normal deodorant some years ago.
Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I at the Royal Museums Greenwich
Queen Elizabeth I of England took a bath about 4 times a year, they say, even if she didn’t need to. At that time, in the 16th century, bathing was not considered a very healthy or safe thing to do. It wasn’t so much that people didn’t like to be clean; it was more a fear of immersing yourself in water. You might catch something from the water. People, or rich people at least, preferred to wipe their bodies with clean, wet cloths. When I was growing up, many people used to bath and wash their hair only once a week. And people didn’t change their clothes nearly as often as they do today. There were practical explanations for this. The bathroom in the house where I grew up, for example, was freezing in the winter. And we didn’t have modern washing machines for our clothes.
I was thinking of all this the other day, when I was reading about Gary Barlow, one of the members of the famous Take That boy band, along with Robbie Williams. He tweeted that he had just washed his hair for the first time in 14 years. This produced a lot of reaction, as you can imagine. A number of other celebrities then revealed that they too have given up washing their hair. There’s a group of people who think that washing your hair is not necessary. And my daughter is one of them. They say that not washing your hair is good for both your hair and the skin on your head. But if I don’t wash my hair for a week, my head gets itchy and my hair gets greasy. These anti-washing people say, however, that you have to be patient and that after about 10 days, the greasiness goes, the skin on your head calms down and your hair starts cleaning itself.
The story was on the BBC website, and of course, the BBC always has to be balanced in its reporting, so they asked somebody from the National Hairdressers’ Federation what they thought. ‘There’s nothing wrong with washing your hair,’ they said. ‘Shampoo does not harm your hair or the skin on your head, and it can make your hair look better. Hair cannot clean itself.’ Well, perhaps, we might expect a hairdresser to say that.
So what should I do? Follow the no-wash trend? I probably won’t, but you never know, I did give up using a normal deodorant some years ago. I switched to using what’s known as a crystal deodorant, and I’m very happy with it.
KEY:
1 healthy or safe
2 modern washing machines
3 fourteen years
4 daughter
5 starts cleaning itself
6 hair look better
7 stopped / gave up / did give up
jueves, 27 de abril de 2017
Welcome to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch is a town name really difficult to pronounce.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. Where is the town?
2. How many people speak Welsh in the town?
3. How many letters does the name have?
4. Why was the name invented in the mid 19th century?
5. What does the name mean?
6. What is the short version of the name?
7. In what area does the town have the longest name in the world?
Any more passengers for Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?
Anybody?
Nope, anybody for Fan-Merc?
Plans-clull Llanfair
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Right.
It's a small town in Northern Wales.
Around 76% of the population here speaks Welsh. It's also the longest town name in Europe with 58 letters. There are literally four Ls next to each other. Right there. What is with this name?
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is not the original name of the village.
You've got to be kidding.
In the 1860s, the name was contrived by the local cobbler, and it was meant to bring in people and tourists.
Alun, help us break this name down.
The name means places within the village.
You've got the Church Mary, in the hollow of the white hazel, near to the rapid whirlpools, at the Church of Tysilio, and the red caves.
Okay, so, let's say you wanna mail a letter. Do you have to write the whole name, Postmaster Jim Evans?
You could. But you'd have to write very small. Or, you could use a shortened version, which is the first 20 letters.
If you play for the local football league, does the name fit on your jersey, team manager Steve Smith?
It does, and it's the longest name of any football team in the world. And it just about fits.
Can you say it after a pint, pub owner Kevin Bryant?
I'm sure I can.
Let's see.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
God, you did it.
But, can you put it in a song?
Wow, apparently you can.
Llanfair, Llanfair, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
It might be the greatest PR stunt of the mid-1800s. I don't know, even of today. After all, we're here.
Here in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. I think that's pretty good.
Key:
1 In Northern Wales
2 76%
3 56
4 to attract people and tourists
5 places within the village
6 the first 20 letters
7 football team
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. Where is the town?
2. How many people speak Welsh in the town?
3. How many letters does the name have?
4. Why was the name invented in the mid 19th century?
5. What does the name mean?
6. What is the short version of the name?
7. In what area does the town have the longest name in the world?
Any more passengers for Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?
Anybody?
Nope, anybody for Fan-Merc?
Plans-clull Llanfair
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Right.
It's a small town in Northern Wales.
Around 76% of the population here speaks Welsh. It's also the longest town name in Europe with 58 letters. There are literally four Ls next to each other. Right there. What is with this name?
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is not the original name of the village.
You've got to be kidding.
In the 1860s, the name was contrived by the local cobbler, and it was meant to bring in people and tourists.
Alun, help us break this name down.
The name means places within the village.
You've got the Church Mary, in the hollow of the white hazel, near to the rapid whirlpools, at the Church of Tysilio, and the red caves.
Okay, so, let's say you wanna mail a letter. Do you have to write the whole name, Postmaster Jim Evans?
You could. But you'd have to write very small. Or, you could use a shortened version, which is the first 20 letters.
If you play for the local football league, does the name fit on your jersey, team manager Steve Smith?
It does, and it's the longest name of any football team in the world. And it just about fits.
Can you say it after a pint, pub owner Kevin Bryant?
I'm sure I can.
Let's see.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
God, you did it.
But, can you put it in a song?
Wow, apparently you can.
Llanfair, Llanfair, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
It might be the greatest PR stunt of the mid-1800s. I don't know, even of today. After all, we're here.
Here in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. I think that's pretty good.
Key:
1 In Northern Wales
2 76%
3 56
4 to attract people and tourists
5 places within the village
6 the first 20 letters
7 football team
martes, 18 de abril de 2017
As faith declines in Spain, so do Seville’s glorious convents
Everywhere you turn in Seville, Spain, there are reminders of a rich religious past, including its cloistered convents, which have been part of the fabric of the community for hundreds of years. Yet few women in Spain heed the call to join the sisterhood anymore, and once-bustling communities are now the victims of decay. Jeffrey Brown reports on efforts to save the endangered convents.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. When was the convent of Santa Ines founded?
2. What does ‘15%’ refer to?
3. What are some of the reasons for the lack of vocations in Spain, according to the prioress?
4. How were convents supported?
5. When was Santa Paula established?
6. What does Santa Paula’s massive church portal combine?
7. How did architect Marta Villanueva get into the field of restoration?
8. What purpose do some of the abandoned convents serve?
9. What does a convent without nuns mean?
JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: Today is Good Friday, when Christians around the world commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, ahead of Easter Sunday. One of the largest public displays occurs each year in Seville, Spain, but declining faith among the Spanish people is threatening a longtime pillar of the Catholic Church, its cloistered convents. Jeffrey Brown has that story. It’s part of our continuing series Culture at Risk.
JEFFREY BROWN: Everywhere you turn in Seville, tradition and history, reminders of a rich religious past. But rarely seen, Seville’s cloistered convents, cities within cities behind high walls, a piece of the fabric of the community, yet separate and apart, places like the convent of Santa Ines, founded in 1372 by Maria Coronel, whose body still lies in repose in the church’s chapel. Prioress Maria Rebecca Cervantes Cisneros joined the sisterhood when she was just 13 years old.
MARIA REBECCA CERVANTES CISNEROS, Prioress, Santa Ines Convent: Many people might say that a person doesn’t know what she’s doing at that age, but I think that it is a gift from God, and that he is free to call for you whenever he wishes. And, to this day, I do not regret having heeded that call.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yet, in Spain today, few women heed that call. Only about 15 percent of the population even attends mass. Twenty-five years ago, there were 41 cloistered convents in Seville, the highest concentration in Spain. Today, just 15 active ones remain, and at Santa Ines, eight nuns, practicing what’s known as their vocation, watch over this entire complex. Six of them come not from Spain, but from Mexico, including the prioress.
MARIA REBECCA CERVANTES CISNEROS: Here in Europe, there’s a very general crisis of vocations. Perhaps there’s also a lack of knowledge. Maybe we need to promote ourselves more, because people aren’t very familiar with us. Many people think that the life of a contemplative is like a useless life.
JEFFREY BROWN: Convents like Santa Ines here in Seville are hidden treasures from an earlier era, once small, but bustling communities, now fewer inhabitants now, and walls that are decaying. The murals lining the courtyard, which illustrate biblical stories and are said to date to the 1400s, are cracking and flaking away. So, too, are many of its Spanish tiles. Some are held in place by fabric. The structural beams supporting the entrance to the outside world, through which everyday citizens enter daily to buy sweets through the turnstile, are cracked, in danger of collapsing. Weeds grow out of every nook.
PABLO LONGORIA, World Monuments Fund: This is one of the two, three convents that is in worst shape.
JEFFREY BROWN: Pablo Longoria directs projects in Spain for the world monuments fund, which last year added Seville’s convents to its endangered heritage watch list. With his help, we were given rare access during the season of Lent. Even still, many of the nuns preferred to remain away from our cameras.
PABLO LONGORIA: Convents are very old buildings that were usually kept by the donation of citizens, religious people that would give the convents money and products, and by the nuns. So, 50 years ago, you would have 80 nuns in this convent. Now you have eight left.
JEFFREY BROWN: With much less support.
PABLO LONGORIA: With much less support and with many more years. The average age must be 75 to 80 years.
JEFFREY BROWN: While Santa Ines has imported its nuns from Mexico, at Santa Paula, another convent less than a mile away, most of the 20 nuns are from India. Santa Paula was established in 1473 by the Order of Saint Jerome and, thanks to the largess of the noble family of a former prioress, is in better shape.
JEFFREY BROWN: Which is your favorite?
WOMAN: This.
JEFFREY BROWN: This one?
The nuns here sell their sweets from a shop, and even have a small museum often open to the public. But with only about a third of its former population, the problem of maintaining this huge place remains.
This massive church portal, designed by Italian sculptor Nicola Pisano and dating to 1504, combines Gothic, Moorish and Renaissance styles, but it’s been slowly destroyed by water damage, spiders nests, an overall lack of care.
MARTA VILLANUEVA, Architect: It’s more dark here. That’s because of the water.
JEFFREY BROWN: Marta Villanueva has been coming here since she was a little girl, and followed her father into the field of architectural restoration. She’s now working on a two-year project to restore this portal, funded by a $200,000 grant from the U.S.-based Annenberg Foundation.
MARTA VILLANUEVA: This facade is absolutely one of a kind. There are no others like it in all of Spain. The most unique aspect is the capacity it has to unite different currents, both aesthetically and in thought. It’s a synthesis of the culture that was enriching all of Seville.
JEFFREY BROWN: But, she says, the needs of this convent and others far outstrip the means of the nuns’ orders, which own them.
MARTA VILLANUEVA: This type of monument needs continual maintenance, and that requires means to see them through. The resources aren’t always there.
JEFFREY BROWN: The World Monuments Fund is attempting to bring stakeholders together in Seville, the religious orders, the surrounding communities and the regional government, to catalogue the damage and prioritize the greatest needs.
PABLO LONGORIA: The best case scenario is, we find, through careful study of the building, a way to make it sustainable through time, a way in which the nuns can stay, they can keep their traditions.
JEFFREY BROWN: Many convents have been lost already, abandoned or converted into offices for the municipal government, museums or event spaces.
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ BARBERAN, University of Seville: You feel here like if you work in a part of the convent.
JEFFREY BROWN: Javier Rodriguez Barberan is a professor of art history at the University of Seville and, like many here, grew up around the convents.
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ BARBERAN: Imagine there are no nuns inside the convent. You can see beautiful building, you can see beautiful works of art, but it’s no more a convent. It would be a museum. It would be a hotel. It would be a restaurant, I don’t know, but no more a convent.
JEFFREY BROWN: Which would mean the life of the place is gone.
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ BARBERAN: Exactly. Exactly.
JEFFREY BROWN: At Santa Ines, Prioress Cervantes is asking the regional government to make good on a decades-old pledge to help restore her convent. She hopes they won’t have to close this sanctuary, but is at peace in any case.
MARIA REBECCA CERVANTES CISNEROS: Even though we are concerned about the shortage of vocations and such, I think you simply forget the present, leave it aside and give your life and devotion to the vocation we have received as a gift, and the rest is up to God.
JEFFREY BROWN: For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Jeffrey Brown in Seville, Spain
KEY:
1 in 1372
2 the percentage of people who attend mass
3 a lack of knowledge; contemplative life is not promoted; people feel contemplative life is useless
4 by the donations of citizens
5 in 1473
6 Gothic, Moorish and Renaissance styles
7 through her father’s influence
8 they have been converted into converted into offices for the municipal government, museums or event spaces
9 that the life of the place has gone
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. When was the convent of Santa Ines founded?
2. What does ‘15%’ refer to?
3. What are some of the reasons for the lack of vocations in Spain, according to the prioress?
4. How were convents supported?
5. When was Santa Paula established?
6. What does Santa Paula’s massive church portal combine?
7. How did architect Marta Villanueva get into the field of restoration?
8. What purpose do some of the abandoned convents serve?
9. What does a convent without nuns mean?
JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: Today is Good Friday, when Christians around the world commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, ahead of Easter Sunday. One of the largest public displays occurs each year in Seville, Spain, but declining faith among the Spanish people is threatening a longtime pillar of the Catholic Church, its cloistered convents. Jeffrey Brown has that story. It’s part of our continuing series Culture at Risk.
JEFFREY BROWN: Everywhere you turn in Seville, tradition and history, reminders of a rich religious past. But rarely seen, Seville’s cloistered convents, cities within cities behind high walls, a piece of the fabric of the community, yet separate and apart, places like the convent of Santa Ines, founded in 1372 by Maria Coronel, whose body still lies in repose in the church’s chapel. Prioress Maria Rebecca Cervantes Cisneros joined the sisterhood when she was just 13 years old.
MARIA REBECCA CERVANTES CISNEROS, Prioress, Santa Ines Convent: Many people might say that a person doesn’t know what she’s doing at that age, but I think that it is a gift from God, and that he is free to call for you whenever he wishes. And, to this day, I do not regret having heeded that call.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yet, in Spain today, few women heed that call. Only about 15 percent of the population even attends mass. Twenty-five years ago, there were 41 cloistered convents in Seville, the highest concentration in Spain. Today, just 15 active ones remain, and at Santa Ines, eight nuns, practicing what’s known as their vocation, watch over this entire complex. Six of them come not from Spain, but from Mexico, including the prioress.
MARIA REBECCA CERVANTES CISNEROS: Here in Europe, there’s a very general crisis of vocations. Perhaps there’s also a lack of knowledge. Maybe we need to promote ourselves more, because people aren’t very familiar with us. Many people think that the life of a contemplative is like a useless life.
JEFFREY BROWN: Convents like Santa Ines here in Seville are hidden treasures from an earlier era, once small, but bustling communities, now fewer inhabitants now, and walls that are decaying. The murals lining the courtyard, which illustrate biblical stories and are said to date to the 1400s, are cracking and flaking away. So, too, are many of its Spanish tiles. Some are held in place by fabric. The structural beams supporting the entrance to the outside world, through which everyday citizens enter daily to buy sweets through the turnstile, are cracked, in danger of collapsing. Weeds grow out of every nook.
PABLO LONGORIA, World Monuments Fund: This is one of the two, three convents that is in worst shape.
JEFFREY BROWN: Pablo Longoria directs projects in Spain for the world monuments fund, which last year added Seville’s convents to its endangered heritage watch list. With his help, we were given rare access during the season of Lent. Even still, many of the nuns preferred to remain away from our cameras.
PABLO LONGORIA: Convents are very old buildings that were usually kept by the donation of citizens, religious people that would give the convents money and products, and by the nuns. So, 50 years ago, you would have 80 nuns in this convent. Now you have eight left.
JEFFREY BROWN: With much less support.
PABLO LONGORIA: With much less support and with many more years. The average age must be 75 to 80 years.
JEFFREY BROWN: While Santa Ines has imported its nuns from Mexico, at Santa Paula, another convent less than a mile away, most of the 20 nuns are from India. Santa Paula was established in 1473 by the Order of Saint Jerome and, thanks to the largess of the noble family of a former prioress, is in better shape.
JEFFREY BROWN: Which is your favorite?
WOMAN: This.
JEFFREY BROWN: This one?
The nuns here sell their sweets from a shop, and even have a small museum often open to the public. But with only about a third of its former population, the problem of maintaining this huge place remains.
This massive church portal, designed by Italian sculptor Nicola Pisano and dating to 1504, combines Gothic, Moorish and Renaissance styles, but it’s been slowly destroyed by water damage, spiders nests, an overall lack of care.
MARTA VILLANUEVA, Architect: It’s more dark here. That’s because of the water.
JEFFREY BROWN: Marta Villanueva has been coming here since she was a little girl, and followed her father into the field of architectural restoration. She’s now working on a two-year project to restore this portal, funded by a $200,000 grant from the U.S.-based Annenberg Foundation.
MARTA VILLANUEVA: This facade is absolutely one of a kind. There are no others like it in all of Spain. The most unique aspect is the capacity it has to unite different currents, both aesthetically and in thought. It’s a synthesis of the culture that was enriching all of Seville.
JEFFREY BROWN: But, she says, the needs of this convent and others far outstrip the means of the nuns’ orders, which own them.
MARTA VILLANUEVA: This type of monument needs continual maintenance, and that requires means to see them through. The resources aren’t always there.
JEFFREY BROWN: The World Monuments Fund is attempting to bring stakeholders together in Seville, the religious orders, the surrounding communities and the regional government, to catalogue the damage and prioritize the greatest needs.
PABLO LONGORIA: The best case scenario is, we find, through careful study of the building, a way to make it sustainable through time, a way in which the nuns can stay, they can keep their traditions.
JEFFREY BROWN: Many convents have been lost already, abandoned or converted into offices for the municipal government, museums or event spaces.
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ BARBERAN, University of Seville: You feel here like if you work in a part of the convent.
JEFFREY BROWN: Javier Rodriguez Barberan is a professor of art history at the University of Seville and, like many here, grew up around the convents.
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ BARBERAN: Imagine there are no nuns inside the convent. You can see beautiful building, you can see beautiful works of art, but it’s no more a convent. It would be a museum. It would be a hotel. It would be a restaurant, I don’t know, but no more a convent.
JEFFREY BROWN: Which would mean the life of the place is gone.
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ BARBERAN: Exactly. Exactly.
JEFFREY BROWN: At Santa Ines, Prioress Cervantes is asking the regional government to make good on a decades-old pledge to help restore her convent. She hopes they won’t have to close this sanctuary, but is at peace in any case.
MARIA REBECCA CERVANTES CISNEROS: Even though we are concerned about the shortage of vocations and such, I think you simply forget the present, leave it aside and give your life and devotion to the vocation we have received as a gift, and the rest is up to God.
JEFFREY BROWN: For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Jeffrey Brown in Seville, Spain
KEY:
1 in 1372
2 the percentage of people who attend mass
3 a lack of knowledge; contemplative life is not promoted; people feel contemplative life is useless
4 by the donations of citizens
5 in 1473
6 Gothic, Moorish and Renaissance styles
7 through her father’s influence
8 they have been converted into converted into offices for the municipal government, museums or event spaces
9 that the life of the place has gone
miércoles, 29 de marzo de 2017
Talking point: The art of communication
This week's talking point is the art of communication. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas come to mind more easily the day you get together with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.
Do you know anyone who is a good listener?
Do you remember an occasion when there was an awkward silence in the conversation?
Can you think of situations in which you have misunderstood someone or someone has misunderstood you?
How easy or difficult do you find it to make small talk (polite conversation about unimportant things)?
When did you last hit it off with someone? (like each other from the very beginning)
Do you remember an occasion when you put your foot in it (accidentally do or say something which embarrasses or offends people)?
Do you know anyone who tends to dominate the conversation?
Are you good at putting people at ease (make someone feel relaxed and confident)? If so, how do you do it?
Who in your family is good at telling interesting stories in family reunions?
When did you last have a row?
Do you know anyone who has a pleasant/unpleasant voice?
Do you ever talk to yourself?
Do you dread going to places where you don’t know many people?
Is how you say something as important as what you say?
Is gossip always harmful?
Do you think a person should never raise their voice during a discussion?
To what extent is technology having a negative effect on the quality of conversation?
What advice would you give a visitor to your country about the following:
- personal space?
- common gestures?
- interrupting?
- making eye contact?
- conversation topics to avoid?
To illustrate the topic, you can watch Julian Treasure's talk at TED How to speak so that people want to listen.
You can read the transcript here.
Do you know anyone who is a good listener?
Do you remember an occasion when there was an awkward silence in the conversation?
Can you think of situations in which you have misunderstood someone or someone has misunderstood you?
How easy or difficult do you find it to make small talk (polite conversation about unimportant things)?
When did you last hit it off with someone? (like each other from the very beginning)
Do you remember an occasion when you put your foot in it (accidentally do or say something which embarrasses or offends people)?
Do you know anyone who tends to dominate the conversation?
Are you good at putting people at ease (make someone feel relaxed and confident)? If so, how do you do it?
Who in your family is good at telling interesting stories in family reunions?
When did you last have a row?
Do you know anyone who has a pleasant/unpleasant voice?
Do you ever talk to yourself?
Do you dread going to places where you don’t know many people?
Is how you say something as important as what you say?
Is gossip always harmful?
Do you think a person should never raise their voice during a discussion?
To what extent is technology having a negative effect on the quality of conversation?
What advice would you give a visitor to your country about the following:
- personal space?
- common gestures?
- interrupting?
- making eye contact?
- conversation topics to avoid?
To illustrate the topic, you can watch Julian Treasure's talk at TED How to speak so that people want to listen.
You can read the transcript here.
martes, 28 de marzo de 2017
Is this the best April Fool's ever?
This is the background story to how BBC's Panorama programme deceived Britain on 1 April 1957.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. What does BBC’s Panorama deal with?
2. When was it broadcast?
3. What was the budget Michale Peacock gave to Charles Eager?
4. How had reporter Richard Dimbleby earned his reputation?
5. What metaphor did they use in the film?
6. Why was the spaghetti flexible?
7. Who did they tell about the prank?
8. What did the Director-General say to his wife?
9. How did the Panorama team feel afterwards?
I was anything, producing a very important programme in the BBC called Panorama. Panorama was a major vehicle for current affairs coverage of the major stories of the day.
We had noted in an editorial meeting that April 1st was on a Monday, and Monday was our transmission day. A week or so later Charles Eager, who was a freelance cameraman, came into the office and they pitched the idea of the spaghetti harvest being an April Fool’s joke. I gave Charles a budget of a hundred pounds and then sent him off.
It isn't only in Britain that spring, this year, has taken everyone by surprise. The past winter, one of the mildest in living memory, has had its effect in other ways as well. Most important of all, it's resulted in an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop.
When the writer’s came back, it was obvious that we had a wonderful film in the making and that we should treat it as a newsreel. The anchor man for Panorama was Richard Dimbleby. Richard was a most respected reporter. He’d earned his reputation as a war correspondent. He knew perfectly well we were using his authority to make the joke work. He loved the idea and then went at it with relic, I’ll put it that way.
Spaghetti cultivation here in Switzerland is not, of course, carried out on anything like the tremendous scale of the Italian industry.
David Wheeler, who wrote it, had been clever enough to use the wine harvest as a metaphor. This gave to those who knew what we were up to a coat-hanger, as it were, to hang their understanding and enjoyment of the film and for those who didn't know anything about spaghetti harvest, it made it more, more credible.
Many of you, I am sure, will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantations in the Po valley. For the Swiss, however, it tends to be more of a family affair.
Spaghetti had been cooked so it was flexible and where they wouldn't stick, they use a bit of cello tape.
Another reason why this may be a bumper year lies in the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil, the tiny creature whose depredations have caused much concern in the past.
We realized that if we told even one person, like my boss, the last thing we wanted was to have the idea getting to the press, so we told nobody.
Many people are often puzzled by the fact that spaghetti is produced at such uniform length. But this is the result of many years of patient endeavour by plant breeders who've succeeded in producing the perfect spaghetti. For those who love this dish, there is nothing like real home-grown spaghetti.
At the end of the item, Richard spoke to camera, said that's all from Panorama this April 1st 1957. I learned that the Director-General had said to his wife, I didn’t know spaghetti grew on trees, and he started to reach for his encyclopaedia, and his wife said, don’t be a fool, of course it doesn’t.
Overall, I mean the press loved the story. There was a huge reaction. Some couldn't understand what was going on. Others loved it. Others hated it for misleading the nation. This is why it worked so well. We all felt very pleased with ourselves, of course.
KEY:
1 current affairs
2 on Mondays
3 £100
4 as a war correspondent
5 the wine harvest
6 because it had been cooked
7 nobody
8 I didn’t know spaghetti grew on trees
9 pleased with themselves
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. What does BBC’s Panorama deal with?
2. When was it broadcast?
3. What was the budget Michale Peacock gave to Charles Eager?
4. How had reporter Richard Dimbleby earned his reputation?
5. What metaphor did they use in the film?
6. Why was the spaghetti flexible?
7. Who did they tell about the prank?
8. What did the Director-General say to his wife?
9. How did the Panorama team feel afterwards?
I was anything, producing a very important programme in the BBC called Panorama. Panorama was a major vehicle for current affairs coverage of the major stories of the day.
We had noted in an editorial meeting that April 1st was on a Monday, and Monday was our transmission day. A week or so later Charles Eager, who was a freelance cameraman, came into the office and they pitched the idea of the spaghetti harvest being an April Fool’s joke. I gave Charles a budget of a hundred pounds and then sent him off.
It isn't only in Britain that spring, this year, has taken everyone by surprise. The past winter, one of the mildest in living memory, has had its effect in other ways as well. Most important of all, it's resulted in an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop.
When the writer’s came back, it was obvious that we had a wonderful film in the making and that we should treat it as a newsreel. The anchor man for Panorama was Richard Dimbleby. Richard was a most respected reporter. He’d earned his reputation as a war correspondent. He knew perfectly well we were using his authority to make the joke work. He loved the idea and then went at it with relic, I’ll put it that way.
Spaghetti cultivation here in Switzerland is not, of course, carried out on anything like the tremendous scale of the Italian industry.
David Wheeler, who wrote it, had been clever enough to use the wine harvest as a metaphor. This gave to those who knew what we were up to a coat-hanger, as it were, to hang their understanding and enjoyment of the film and for those who didn't know anything about spaghetti harvest, it made it more, more credible.
Many of you, I am sure, will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantations in the Po valley. For the Swiss, however, it tends to be more of a family affair.
Spaghetti had been cooked so it was flexible and where they wouldn't stick, they use a bit of cello tape.
Another reason why this may be a bumper year lies in the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil, the tiny creature whose depredations have caused much concern in the past.
We realized that if we told even one person, like my boss, the last thing we wanted was to have the idea getting to the press, so we told nobody.
Many people are often puzzled by the fact that spaghetti is produced at such uniform length. But this is the result of many years of patient endeavour by plant breeders who've succeeded in producing the perfect spaghetti. For those who love this dish, there is nothing like real home-grown spaghetti.
At the end of the item, Richard spoke to camera, said that's all from Panorama this April 1st 1957. I learned that the Director-General had said to his wife, I didn’t know spaghetti grew on trees, and he started to reach for his encyclopaedia, and his wife said, don’t be a fool, of course it doesn’t.
Overall, I mean the press loved the story. There was a huge reaction. Some couldn't understand what was going on. Others loved it. Others hated it for misleading the nation. This is why it worked so well. We all felt very pleased with ourselves, of course.
KEY:
1 current affairs
2 on Mondays
3 £100
4 as a war correspondent
5 the wine harvest
6 because it had been cooked
7 nobody
8 I didn’t know spaghetti grew on trees
9 pleased with themselves
sábado, 25 de marzo de 2017
Reading test: Lent 2017
In this week's reading test we are going to practise the insert-the-sentence type of task. To do so, we are going to use The Telegraph article Lent 2017 starts today, here's everything you need to know about Ash Wednesday.
Read this text and choose the best sentence (A - K) for each gap. TWO of the sentences do not correspond to any of the blanks. 0 is an example.
A - angered some traditionalists
B - as a reflection of Jesus's sacrifice in the Judean desert
C - fall on the same date each year
D - for prayer and penance
E - it can fall on any Sunday
F - it is determined by when Easter falls
G - to give up a particular vice
H - to use up rich, indulgent foods like eggs and milk
I - which comes before Easter in the Christian calendar
J - which marks the start of Lent in the Christian calendar – 0 Example
K - which means 'spring'
When is Ash Wednesday 2017?
Ash Wednesday, (0) … , has been observed by Britons for centuries. Its exact date changes every year, because (1) … . But it is always the day after Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day, and it always falls in February or March. This year, it is on Wednesday, March 1.
In January last year, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, suggested that Easter should (2) … . The plan, which would schedule the Christian festival on the same Sunday each year, was welcomed by parents and schools but (3) … .
At present, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox around March 21. This means (4) … between March 22 and April 25. Archbishop Welby said that Easter should most likely be fixed for the second or third Sunday of April.
What is Lent?
Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent, a period of 40 days (excluding Sundays) (5) … .
Christians who observe Lent use it as a time (6) … . By observing Lent, Christians are remembering the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who withdrew into the wilderness and fasted for 40 days before his crucifixion.
Traditionally, pancakes are eaten on the day before Ash Wednesday (7) … before the 40-day fasting season of Lent begins.
This year, Easter falls on Sunday, April 16. The English word Lent is a shortened form of the Old English word 'lenten', (8) … .
KEY:
1F 2C 3A 4E 5I 6D 7H 8K
Read this text and choose the best sentence (A - K) for each gap. TWO of the sentences do not correspond to any of the blanks. 0 is an example.
A - angered some traditionalists
B - as a reflection of Jesus's sacrifice in the Judean desert
C - fall on the same date each year
D - for prayer and penance
E - it can fall on any Sunday
F - it is determined by when Easter falls
G - to give up a particular vice
H - to use up rich, indulgent foods like eggs and milk
I - which comes before Easter in the Christian calendar
J - which marks the start of Lent in the Christian calendar – 0 Example
K - which means 'spring'
When is Ash Wednesday 2017?
Ash Wednesday, (0) … , has been observed by Britons for centuries. Its exact date changes every year, because (1) … . But it is always the day after Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day, and it always falls in February or March. This year, it is on Wednesday, March 1.
In January last year, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, suggested that Easter should (2) … . The plan, which would schedule the Christian festival on the same Sunday each year, was welcomed by parents and schools but (3) … .
At present, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox around March 21. This means (4) … between March 22 and April 25. Archbishop Welby said that Easter should most likely be fixed for the second or third Sunday of April.
What is Lent?
Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent, a period of 40 days (excluding Sundays) (5) … .
Christians who observe Lent use it as a time (6) … . By observing Lent, Christians are remembering the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who withdrew into the wilderness and fasted for 40 days before his crucifixion.
Traditionally, pancakes are eaten on the day before Ash Wednesday (7) … before the 40-day fasting season of Lent begins.
This year, Easter falls on Sunday, April 16. The English word Lent is a shortened form of the Old English word 'lenten', (8) … .
Photo: Wikipedia
KEY:
1F 2C 3A 4E 5I 6D 7H 8K
miércoles, 1 de marzo de 2017
Talking point: Generation divide
This week's talking point is generation divide. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas come to mind more easily the day you get together with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.
What do you understand by the term ‘generation gap’?
How different are your attitudes and opinions from those of other generations in your family? Think about the following:
Look at the names of different generations, as used by demographers and the media. Which are you?
Could you outline a stereotypical profile for each generation based on the people you know? Give examples.
Veteran, Traditionalist, Silent Generation: Born before 1945
Baby Boomer, Boomer: Born between 1946 and 1964
Generation X: Born between 1964 and 1980
Millennial, Generation Y, Gen Why? Echo Boomer: Born since 1980
Generation Z: Born after 2000
What are some of the challenges which face those who work in a multi-generational workplace?
In what ways are people who were brought up in the age of social media different from older generations?
What are the factors that affect the beliefs and attitudes of a generation?
How do you think people who are born after 2020 will be different?
To illustrate the topic you can watch Patrice Thompson's Talk at TED London Closing the gap: A millennial proposal for a happy multigenerational workplace.
What do you understand by the term ‘generation gap’?
How different are your attitudes and opinions from those of other generations in your family? Think about the following:
Bringing up children
Importance of social status
New technology
Saving and spending money
Other cultures and nationalities
Fashion
Manners
Music
Working hard
Look at the names of different generations, as used by demographers and the media. Which are you?
Could you outline a stereotypical profile for each generation based on the people you know? Give examples.
Veteran, Traditionalist, Silent Generation: Born before 1945
Baby Boomer, Boomer: Born between 1946 and 1964
Generation X: Born between 1964 and 1980
Millennial, Generation Y, Gen Why? Echo Boomer: Born since 1980
Generation Z: Born after 2000
What are some of the challenges which face those who work in a multi-generational workplace?
In what ways are people who were brought up in the age of social media different from older generations?
What are the factors that affect the beliefs and attitudes of a generation?
How do you think people who are born after 2020 will be different?
To illustrate the topic you can watch Patrice Thompson's Talk at TED London Closing the gap: A millennial proposal for a happy multigenerational workplace.
viernes, 20 de enero de 2017
Meeting the child brides of Ethiopia
A major report by Save the Children has found that one girl under the age of 15 is married every seven seconds. The study says girls as young as 10 are forced to marry much older men in countries including Afghanistan, Yemen, India and Ethiopia. Model Poppy Delevingne has been to Ethiopia to talk to some young girls about their experiences.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. Why is the reporter in Ethiopia?
2. How old was Selam when she was propositioned to get married?
3. What position is she at her school now?
4. How old was she when she married?
5. When did she get pregnant for the first time?
6. Why didn't Selam go to school after she got married?
We are here in beautiful Ethiopia, somewhere that I’ve always wanted to travel to since I was a little girl. And here we’re going to be investigating child marriage and female genital mutilation and the issues that concern us around these topics.
So, we've just arrived in …, which is a small village in Lalibela. This is where they run the Save the Children programme Keep It Real, and I'm going to be speaking to some young girls about child marriage.
Pleased to meet you, how are you?
Hi.
OK, so right now I am with the beautiful Selam. We are at her school, and she's just been telling me all about her stories about child marriage. She was 11 years old when she was propositioned to be married. And with the help of Save the Children's Keep it Real programme, she learned about all the problems within child marriage, and with the help of her brother and sister, they managed to persuade her parents that child marriage was not a good thing.
She is now at school, and is number one, number one in her class and she even told me that I should ask the teacher if that was true, and it was true.
Selam, I hear that you were married as a child. Would it be OK for me to come to your home and hear all about it?
So, I spent my afternoon with the lovely Selam, who was a victim of child marriage. When she was just 13 years old, she was married. By the time she was 14, she was pregnant with her first child, but when she was nine months pregnant, she left her husband as he was physically abusive, and moved back in with her family. But not only that, when she was engaged to him, he promised her that she would still have an opportunity to have an education, something he totally went back on, and instead, she did house chores and had to work unbearable hours, something a 13-year-old really shouldn't have to do. I have a 13-year-old cousin, and the idea of her getting married and then even next year having a baby, to me, is just... totally incomprehensible, and something that I can't believe
is happening in this world today still. Lovely Selam has got a bright future ahead of her, and it was truly an honour that she shared her story with me.
Key:
1 to investigate child marriage and female genital mutilation
2 eleven years old
3 number one
4 thirteen
5 at fourteen
6 she had to do house chores and worked very long hours
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. Why is the reporter in Ethiopia?
2. How old was Selam when she was propositioned to get married?
3. What position is she at her school now?
4. How old was she when she married?
5. When did she get pregnant for the first time?
6. Why didn't Selam go to school after she got married?
We are here in beautiful Ethiopia, somewhere that I’ve always wanted to travel to since I was a little girl. And here we’re going to be investigating child marriage and female genital mutilation and the issues that concern us around these topics.
So, we've just arrived in …, which is a small village in Lalibela. This is where they run the Save the Children programme Keep It Real, and I'm going to be speaking to some young girls about child marriage.
Pleased to meet you, how are you?
Hi.
OK, so right now I am with the beautiful Selam. We are at her school, and she's just been telling me all about her stories about child marriage. She was 11 years old when she was propositioned to be married. And with the help of Save the Children's Keep it Real programme, she learned about all the problems within child marriage, and with the help of her brother and sister, they managed to persuade her parents that child marriage was not a good thing.
She is now at school, and is number one, number one in her class and she even told me that I should ask the teacher if that was true, and it was true.
Selam, I hear that you were married as a child. Would it be OK for me to come to your home and hear all about it?
So, I spent my afternoon with the lovely Selam, who was a victim of child marriage. When she was just 13 years old, she was married. By the time she was 14, she was pregnant with her first child, but when she was nine months pregnant, she left her husband as he was physically abusive, and moved back in with her family. But not only that, when she was engaged to him, he promised her that she would still have an opportunity to have an education, something he totally went back on, and instead, she did house chores and had to work unbearable hours, something a 13-year-old really shouldn't have to do. I have a 13-year-old cousin, and the idea of her getting married and then even next year having a baby, to me, is just... totally incomprehensible, and something that I can't believe
is happening in this world today still. Lovely Selam has got a bright future ahead of her, and it was truly an honour that she shared her story with me.
Key:
1 to investigate child marriage and female genital mutilation
2 eleven years old
3 number one
4 thirteen
5 at fourteen
6 she had to do house chores and worked very long hours
domingo, 15 de enero de 2017
Extensive listening: Don't ask where I'm from, ask where I'm a local
When someone asks you where you're from … do you sometimes not know how to answer?
Writer Taiye Selasi speaks on behalf of "multi-local" people, who feel at home in the town where they grew up, the city they live now and maybe another place or two.
"How can I come from a country?" she asks. "How can a human being come from a concept?"
A writer and photographer of Nigerian and Ghanaian descent, born in London and raised in Boston, now living in Rome and Berlin, who has studied Latin and music, Taiye Selasi is herself a study in the modern meaning of identity.
In 2005 she published the much-discussed (and controversial) essay "Bye-Bye, Babar (Or: What Is an Afropolitan?)," offering an alternative vision of African identity for a transnational generation. Prompted by writer Toni Morrison, the following year she published the short story "The Sex Lives of African Girls" in the literary magazine Granta.
Her first novel Ghana Must Go, published in 2013, is a tale of family drama and reconciliation, following six characters and spanning generations, continents, genders and classes.
You can read a full transcript for the talk here.
Writer Taiye Selasi speaks on behalf of "multi-local" people, who feel at home in the town where they grew up, the city they live now and maybe another place or two.
"How can I come from a country?" she asks. "How can a human being come from a concept?"
A writer and photographer of Nigerian and Ghanaian descent, born in London and raised in Boston, now living in Rome and Berlin, who has studied Latin and music, Taiye Selasi is herself a study in the modern meaning of identity.
In 2005 she published the much-discussed (and controversial) essay "Bye-Bye, Babar (Or: What Is an Afropolitan?)," offering an alternative vision of African identity for a transnational generation. Prompted by writer Toni Morrison, the following year she published the short story "The Sex Lives of African Girls" in the literary magazine Granta.
Her first novel Ghana Must Go, published in 2013, is a tale of family drama and reconciliation, following six characters and spanning generations, continents, genders and classes.
You can read a full transcript for the talk here.
miércoles, 11 de enero de 2017
Talking point: Food
This week's talking point is food. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas come to mind more easily the day you get together with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.
Are you any good at cooking? If so, how did you learn?
What is the best dish you can cook?
What kind of thing do you usually eat in the morning? For lunch? In the evening?
Are you a fussy eater, an unadventurous eater or an adventurous eater?
Which do you prefer, fish or meat?
What is your country’s national dish?
What ingredients does it have?
How do you cook it?
How often do you eat out? Where do you usually go?
What’s the best/worst restaurant you’ve ever eaten in?
What foreign cuisines can you get in restaurants in your town/city?
Where can you buy foreign food where you live?
Do you ever buy foreign/imported food?
What food from your country would you missed if you went to live abroad?
What food and eating habits in your country do you think foreigners might find strange?
To illustrate the topic, you can watch this group of friends discussing British food.
So it's been a while since I’ve been back to England, so I’m looking forward to going home and having some good old English food.
English food!
Fish and chips!
Well, there’s a lot more to English food than fish and chips.
Really? Isn’t English all food mashed potato and…
Well, you know, we have traditional dishes like, you know, shepherd’s pie which is mashed potato and meat and vegetables, and the steak and kidney pie and things like that, Cornish pastries and all those things. But then, you know, these days the English… the restaurants scene in England is really buzzing, with lots of international restaurants, lots of international food having influence on English food…
The most Indian food I ever had in my life was in London.
Really?
Hands-down. In East London there is a street where they just huller out…
Brick Lane
… yeah, where they just huller out deals, and you go in there, and liquid seeps from every orifice in your face as if you were in heaven.
It sounds dangerous. I don’t know if I want to go to that restaurant.
I’m telling you, I’m telling you… It’s wonderful.
Yeah, yeah, I love spicy food… that’s Indian.
Actually, actually there are some, what you might think Indian dishes which are actually English dishes like chicken tikka masala, which was invented by the Indians for the English.
No…
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
It’s England’s national dish?
So you now claim it as your own.
We might have a few Indians…
It’s like American pizza
We might have a few Indian spices in it but it’s our dish, the number one food in England.
Really?
And if you go to any Indian restaurants in the States the number one dish order and the number one that they advertise is chicken tikka masala.
Really?
You’ve been eating English food for longer than you knew.
Yeah, really. I didn’t know that.
And I don’t know if you guys have ever had one, but a steak and ale pie, you know, in a proper British pub…
Very good.
… could be one of the best things I have ever had, the fluffy pastry and the gravy.
It’s not the health option though, is it? It’s not good for the arteries maybe.
It’s good for the soul.
It’s better than …
Did you know outside of France, London is the place which got the most Michelin stars, you know the Michellin stars.
That’s not true.
I read this the other day.
That’s incorrect. It’s absolutely Tokyo.
Really?
Absolutely.
Well, then it must be after Tokyo it is London, but it’s strange everyone criticizes English food, but then, you know, we do have a lot of restaurants with Michelin stars. We might be international…
…capitals in the world?
You do have a lot of famous, a lot of celebrity chefs.
Yeah, like Jamie Oliver, he’s famous in Australia, too.
Yes, he is.
And then we’ve got Gordon Ramsey, who is quite famous in the States.
He’s the rude one, isn’t he?
Well, yeah, every other word is a swear word. But his shows are quite… I’ve been watching Kitchen Nightmares, it’s quite good. He kind of goes into a restaurant that is failing and he tries to help them, make the restaurant a success. It’s quite interesting, he doesn’t usually manage…
I wouldn’t trash talk the fish and chips because it’s such a simple dish. You have a wonderful fish and fresh chips, it can really make your day, I think I want one today.
Oh, yeah, me too.
Hey, come up to my place, I’ll make fish and chips.
Got it.
Are you any good at cooking? If so, how did you learn?
What is the best dish you can cook?
What kind of thing do you usually eat in the morning? For lunch? In the evening?
Are you a fussy eater, an unadventurous eater or an adventurous eater?
Which do you prefer, fish or meat?
What is your country’s national dish?
What ingredients does it have?
How do you cook it?
How often do you eat out? Where do you usually go?
What’s the best/worst restaurant you’ve ever eaten in?
What foreign cuisines can you get in restaurants in your town/city?
Where can you buy foreign food where you live?
Do you ever buy foreign/imported food?
What food from your country would you missed if you went to live abroad?
What food and eating habits in your country do you think foreigners might find strange?
To illustrate the topic, you can watch this group of friends discussing British food.
So it's been a while since I’ve been back to England, so I’m looking forward to going home and having some good old English food.
English food!
Fish and chips!
Well, there’s a lot more to English food than fish and chips.
Really? Isn’t English all food mashed potato and…
Well, you know, we have traditional dishes like, you know, shepherd’s pie which is mashed potato and meat and vegetables, and the steak and kidney pie and things like that, Cornish pastries and all those things. But then, you know, these days the English… the restaurants scene in England is really buzzing, with lots of international restaurants, lots of international food having influence on English food…
The most Indian food I ever had in my life was in London.
Really?
Hands-down. In East London there is a street where they just huller out…
Brick Lane
… yeah, where they just huller out deals, and you go in there, and liquid seeps from every orifice in your face as if you were in heaven.
It sounds dangerous. I don’t know if I want to go to that restaurant.
I’m telling you, I’m telling you… It’s wonderful.
Yeah, yeah, I love spicy food… that’s Indian.
Actually, actually there are some, what you might think Indian dishes which are actually English dishes like chicken tikka masala, which was invented by the Indians for the English.
No…
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
It’s England’s national dish?
So you now claim it as your own.
We might have a few Indians…
It’s like American pizza
We might have a few Indian spices in it but it’s our dish, the number one food in England.
Really?
And if you go to any Indian restaurants in the States the number one dish order and the number one that they advertise is chicken tikka masala.
Really?
You’ve been eating English food for longer than you knew.
Yeah, really. I didn’t know that.
And I don’t know if you guys have ever had one, but a steak and ale pie, you know, in a proper British pub…
Very good.
… could be one of the best things I have ever had, the fluffy pastry and the gravy.
It’s not the health option though, is it? It’s not good for the arteries maybe.
It’s good for the soul.
It’s better than …
Did you know outside of France, London is the place which got the most Michelin stars, you know the Michellin stars.
That’s not true.
I read this the other day.
That’s incorrect. It’s absolutely Tokyo.
Really?
Absolutely.
Well, then it must be after Tokyo it is London, but it’s strange everyone criticizes English food, but then, you know, we do have a lot of restaurants with Michelin stars. We might be international…
…capitals in the world?
You do have a lot of famous, a lot of celebrity chefs.
Yeah, like Jamie Oliver, he’s famous in Australia, too.
Yes, he is.
And then we’ve got Gordon Ramsey, who is quite famous in the States.
He’s the rude one, isn’t he?
Well, yeah, every other word is a swear word. But his shows are quite… I’ve been watching Kitchen Nightmares, it’s quite good. He kind of goes into a restaurant that is failing and he tries to help them, make the restaurant a success. It’s quite interesting, he doesn’t usually manage…
I wouldn’t trash talk the fish and chips because it’s such a simple dish. You have a wonderful fish and fresh chips, it can really make your day, I think I want one today.
Oh, yeah, me too.
Hey, come up to my place, I’ll make fish and chips.
Got it.
domingo, 1 de enero de 2017
Extensive listening: New Year Resolutions -Want to be happy? Be grateful
The one thing all humans have in common is that each of us wants to be happy, says Brother David Steindl-Rast, a monk and interfaith scholar. And happiness, he suggests, is born from gratitude.
Want to be happy? Be grateful is an inspiring lesson in slowing down, looking where you’re going, and above all, being grateful.
Many first met Brother David Steindl-Rast through a viral video called Nature. Beauty. Gratitude, where Louie Schwartzberg's footage of time-lapse flowers in bloom is narrated by Brother David's moving words asking us to simply be ... grateful. Since 1953, Brother David has been a monk of Mount Saviour Benedictine monastery in New York, dividing his time between hermitic contemplation, writing and lecturing. He's the cofounder of http://gratefulness.org/, supporting ANG*L (A Network for Grateful Living).
You can read a full transcript of the talk here.
Want to be happy? Be grateful is an inspiring lesson in slowing down, looking where you’re going, and above all, being grateful.
Many first met Brother David Steindl-Rast through a viral video called Nature. Beauty. Gratitude, where Louie Schwartzberg's footage of time-lapse flowers in bloom is narrated by Brother David's moving words asking us to simply be ... grateful. Since 1953, Brother David has been a monk of Mount Saviour Benedictine monastery in New York, dividing his time between hermitic contemplation, writing and lecturing. He's the cofounder of http://gratefulness.org/, supporting ANG*L (A Network for Grateful Living).
You can read a full transcript of the talk here.
lunes, 19 de diciembre de 2016
Listening test: Gourmet Ireland
Listen to this report on Irish cuisine and choose the option A, B or C which best answers the question or completes the sentence.
1 The introduction to the report suggests that Irish cuisine
A. has only ever had one real ingredient.
B. was based on very basic and simple foods.
C. was traditionally very bad for your health.
2) Ciaran Fitzgerald's restaurant at the Blue Haven Hotel
A. has the finest imported products.
B. is famous for its locally caught fish and seafood.
C. is well known for its elaborate dishes of meat.
3) The teams of chefs at the hotel are
A. all from Kinsale and south-west Ireland.
B. come from abroad but were trained in Ireland.
C. nearly three quarters Irish in origin.
4) How does Ciaran Fitzgerald describe the food found at his restaurant?
A. A mixture of traditional Irish and international dishes.
B. International dishes with local Irish touches.
C. Traditional Irish food with international accompaniments.
5) Which statement best describes the population of south-west Ireland?
A. Both Irish and foreign people have lived there for some time.
B. The area's scenery has recently attracted foreign visitors.
C. There are mainly only Irish people living there.
6) How would you best summarise Jeffa Gill’s experiments with cheese-making?
A. Her success has been totally unexpected.
B. She always wanted to be a professional cheese-maker.
C. She makes enough money from it now to survive.
7) She concludes that cheese-making has enabled her to
A. have time to enjoy her hobbies.
B. live in a place where there is very little other work.
C. start a family in an area which she loves.
Many people still associate Irish cuisine with the potato, which has been a major part of the Irish diet for centuries. Generations of Irish people grew up eating potatoes, Irish stews and cottage pies — carbohydrates ruled. Over the past 10 years, all this has changed, however. At the centre of the fine food revolution is the fishing town of Kinsale, Ireland's `Gourmet Capital'. One of the most famous hotels in town is the Blue Haven. It is managed and co-owned by Ciaran Fitzgerald, the youngest in a Kinsale family of six. Ciaran was only 25, and working as an accountant, when he took over the running of the hotel last year. The hotel's outer wall is the oldest wall in town: 200 years ago, there was a fish market here. Kinsale's fishing heritage, says Ciaran Fitzgerald, is very much reflected in the Blue Haven's restaurant menu.
We have very much focused on seafood. Seafood is emphasised. You've got fresh lobster from the tank, you've got John Dory, you've got red snapper, a lot of just nice seafood dishes. I suppose, Kinsale, fishing... traditionally a fishing town, great access to some fantastic local suppliers of seafood. So we... I suppose that's what we represent here, and that's what I would see as modern Irish cuisine. I've a team of chefs in there who, who have pretty much, I'd say 70 per cent of them are Irish, but they've trained abroad.
So they take those dishes and they put some little twist on them, with the different accompaniments and different things like that. So, I suppose the basic dish itself, the roots of it are traditional Irish type of food, and then you just garnish and accompany it with more kind of international flavours.
Places like Kinsale have benefited from Ireland's new wealth. People now have more money to go to restaurants. But the beautiful scenery of the southwest has attracted both Irish and foreign residents since the 1960s.
Many started small farm businesses here, often growing organic produce. Today, more and more people want to buy high-quality food that is produced locally. Driving west from Kinsale, you pass the town of Clonakilty. This is the home of Ireland's famous black pudding, made from ox blood, oatmeal, onions, beef and six spices.
Further north along the coast, lonely Sheep's Head Peninsula sees few tourists. And yet on this rugged finger of land Jeffa Gill produces rind washed Durrus cheese. The cheese has won prizes and is even sold as far afield as Tokyo. Jeffa Gil didn't expect this to happen when she began making cheese back in 1979. At that time cheese-making was virtually a lost art in Ireland:
I didn't really intend to become a cheesemaker. I was young and enthusiastic and we had a small farm, and we had a small herd of cows. And I started to make cheese from the left-over milk from taking the milk to the diary, to the creamery. So it started very much as a hobby. It wasn’t something I intended to do. I did not intend to build a cheese factory! But it was just in the 70s, and we needed to make a living off a small farm. So I made cheese. And the cheese developed and the market developed . Because it just went from selling to friends to selling to restaurants, to sell¬ing to the local shop and selling to a local distributor. You know, going from a pan on the stove" to a vat in the comer, and then the house grew up around the cheese, and the dairy grew up. I just de¬veloped an interest in it, verging on an obsession, I suppose, but also an obses¬sion to make a living. It was a way to make a living, and live in West Cork. I always wanted to live in West Cork. Un¬less you were a writer, or you had a private income, you couldn't live here.
Key:
1B 2B 3C 4C 5A 6A 7B
Source: Speak up Italy
1 The introduction to the report suggests that Irish cuisine
A. has only ever had one real ingredient.
B. was based on very basic and simple foods.
C. was traditionally very bad for your health.
2) Ciaran Fitzgerald's restaurant at the Blue Haven Hotel
A. has the finest imported products.
B. is famous for its locally caught fish and seafood.
C. is well known for its elaborate dishes of meat.
3) The teams of chefs at the hotel are
A. all from Kinsale and south-west Ireland.
B. come from abroad but were trained in Ireland.
C. nearly three quarters Irish in origin.
4) How does Ciaran Fitzgerald describe the food found at his restaurant?
A. A mixture of traditional Irish and international dishes.
B. International dishes with local Irish touches.
C. Traditional Irish food with international accompaniments.
5) Which statement best describes the population of south-west Ireland?
A. Both Irish and foreign people have lived there for some time.
B. The area's scenery has recently attracted foreign visitors.
C. There are mainly only Irish people living there.
6) How would you best summarise Jeffa Gill’s experiments with cheese-making?
A. Her success has been totally unexpected.
B. She always wanted to be a professional cheese-maker.
C. She makes enough money from it now to survive.
7) She concludes that cheese-making has enabled her to
A. have time to enjoy her hobbies.
B. live in a place where there is very little other work.
C. start a family in an area which she loves.
Many people still associate Irish cuisine with the potato, which has been a major part of the Irish diet for centuries. Generations of Irish people grew up eating potatoes, Irish stews and cottage pies — carbohydrates ruled. Over the past 10 years, all this has changed, however. At the centre of the fine food revolution is the fishing town of Kinsale, Ireland's `Gourmet Capital'. One of the most famous hotels in town is the Blue Haven. It is managed and co-owned by Ciaran Fitzgerald, the youngest in a Kinsale family of six. Ciaran was only 25, and working as an accountant, when he took over the running of the hotel last year. The hotel's outer wall is the oldest wall in town: 200 years ago, there was a fish market here. Kinsale's fishing heritage, says Ciaran Fitzgerald, is very much reflected in the Blue Haven's restaurant menu.
We have very much focused on seafood. Seafood is emphasised. You've got fresh lobster from the tank, you've got John Dory, you've got red snapper, a lot of just nice seafood dishes. I suppose, Kinsale, fishing... traditionally a fishing town, great access to some fantastic local suppliers of seafood. So we... I suppose that's what we represent here, and that's what I would see as modern Irish cuisine. I've a team of chefs in there who, who have pretty much, I'd say 70 per cent of them are Irish, but they've trained abroad.
So they take those dishes and they put some little twist on them, with the different accompaniments and different things like that. So, I suppose the basic dish itself, the roots of it are traditional Irish type of food, and then you just garnish and accompany it with more kind of international flavours.
Places like Kinsale have benefited from Ireland's new wealth. People now have more money to go to restaurants. But the beautiful scenery of the southwest has attracted both Irish and foreign residents since the 1960s.
Many started small farm businesses here, often growing organic produce. Today, more and more people want to buy high-quality food that is produced locally. Driving west from Kinsale, you pass the town of Clonakilty. This is the home of Ireland's famous black pudding, made from ox blood, oatmeal, onions, beef and six spices.
Further north along the coast, lonely Sheep's Head Peninsula sees few tourists. And yet on this rugged finger of land Jeffa Gill produces rind washed Durrus cheese. The cheese has won prizes and is even sold as far afield as Tokyo. Jeffa Gil didn't expect this to happen when she began making cheese back in 1979. At that time cheese-making was virtually a lost art in Ireland:
I didn't really intend to become a cheesemaker. I was young and enthusiastic and we had a small farm, and we had a small herd of cows. And I started to make cheese from the left-over milk from taking the milk to the diary, to the creamery. So it started very much as a hobby. It wasn’t something I intended to do. I did not intend to build a cheese factory! But it was just in the 70s, and we needed to make a living off a small farm. So I made cheese. And the cheese developed and the market developed . Because it just went from selling to friends to selling to restaurants, to sell¬ing to the local shop and selling to a local distributor. You know, going from a pan on the stove" to a vat in the comer, and then the house grew up around the cheese, and the dairy grew up. I just de¬veloped an interest in it, verging on an obsession, I suppose, but also an obses¬sion to make a living. It was a way to make a living, and live in West Cork. I always wanted to live in West Cork. Un¬less you were a writer, or you had a private income, you couldn't live here.
Key:
1B 2B 3C 4C 5A 6A 7B
lunes, 5 de diciembre de 2016
Listening test: Gambling
Listen to a report on gambling and choose the heading A-J which corresponds to each extract. There are two headings you do not need to use. 0 is an example.
A - A ban on gambling
B – An old, popular pastime 0 Example
C - A very strange bet
D - Highest wins
E - How to achieve success in gambling
F - Hundreds of types of gambling
G - Gambling tourism
H - The longest-running bet
I - Unsuccessful gambler
J - Why lotteries exist
0 - Example
Human beings have spent large amounts of money trying to beat the laws of probability for centuries. More than thirty countries currently have legalized gambling in the form of national lotteries or private casinos. In the last ten years this addictive pastime has been generating millions more via the internet.
1
Back in 1873, engineer Joseph Jaggers won $300,000 dollars in three days at the casino in Monte Carlo by noticing that the mechanical faults in their roulette wheels made certain numbers come up more often than others. More recently, an Australian wrote a software programme to help him spot winners on the horses in Hong Kong and has supposedly won $150 million over the last 20 years.
2
What’s the biggest lottery jackpot ever? – the record is currently $350 million, won by two people in the USA in May 2000. This, of course, is peanuts. It costs $444 million a year just to keep an aircraft carrier in the water…The biggest single win on a national lottery was $314.9 million in the Powerball game in 2002 by a man who had already made a fortune in the sewer business. Another American won $39.7 million from a slot machine in a Las Vegas casino in 2003 after putting in about $100 worth of coins. The lucky man had actually only gone to watch a basketball match.
3
Often to make money for the state. The Chinese had a lottery over 2000 years ago to raise money to build the Great Wall. King James I of England set one up to finance the new colony of Virginia in America in the 17th century. The British Museum in London was also built this way.
4
Before gaming was legalized there in the 1930s Las Vegas was a small desert town; today it has 35 million visitors and earns seven and a half thousand million dollars from its casinos every year. What do they do with the profits? Build hotels, it seems – the world’s biggest is the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino with 5,005 rooms. In fact somebody estimated it would take one person 329 years to sleep in every hotel room in Vegas.
5
Politician and fraudster Horatio Bottomley went to Belgium in 1914 and bought all six horses in a race. He also paid the jockeys to cross the finishing line in a particular order. Then he put huge amounts of money on all the horses. Unfortunately, the race meeting was by the sea and a mist came in and covered the entire course. The jockeys couldn’t see each other and the judges couldn’t make out who had won. Bottomley lost a fortune.
6
There was a ten-year bet between writer Paul Ehrlich and businessman Julian Simon that the price of certain metals would be higher in 1990 than in 1980. Ehrlich lost when copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten dropped in price. Simon was trying to make the point that the world is not heading for catastrophe and that we are not using up the world’s resources as Ehrlich had predicted. He refused, however, to agree to a second bet that in the following ten years there would be an increase in greenhouse gases and AIDS victims and a decrease in tropical rainforests, agricultural land and human sperm counts.
7
An American businessman bet a British investor $100,000 that it was not possible to walk around the world without being recognised. A certain Harry Bensley agreed to take up the challenge. He had to wear an iron mask for the whole trip and pay his way by selling pictures of himself. While travelling, he also had to find a woman who would marry him, to push a pram and carry only one change of underwear! He set off from London in January 1908 and was arrested a few miles down the road for selling postcards without a licence. He supposedly got most of the way round the world and was in Italy on his way home in 1914 when the First World War broke out and he had to call the whole thing off.
KEY: 1E 2D 3J 4G 5I 6H 7C
source: British Council
A - A ban on gambling
B – An old, popular pastime 0 Example
C - A very strange bet
D - Highest wins
E - How to achieve success in gambling
F - Hundreds of types of gambling
G - Gambling tourism
H - The longest-running bet
I - Unsuccessful gambler
J - Why lotteries exist
0 - Example
Human beings have spent large amounts of money trying to beat the laws of probability for centuries. More than thirty countries currently have legalized gambling in the form of national lotteries or private casinos. In the last ten years this addictive pastime has been generating millions more via the internet.
1
Back in 1873, engineer Joseph Jaggers won $300,000 dollars in three days at the casino in Monte Carlo by noticing that the mechanical faults in their roulette wheels made certain numbers come up more often than others. More recently, an Australian wrote a software programme to help him spot winners on the horses in Hong Kong and has supposedly won $150 million over the last 20 years.
2
What’s the biggest lottery jackpot ever? – the record is currently $350 million, won by two people in the USA in May 2000. This, of course, is peanuts. It costs $444 million a year just to keep an aircraft carrier in the water…The biggest single win on a national lottery was $314.9 million in the Powerball game in 2002 by a man who had already made a fortune in the sewer business. Another American won $39.7 million from a slot machine in a Las Vegas casino in 2003 after putting in about $100 worth of coins. The lucky man had actually only gone to watch a basketball match.
3
Often to make money for the state. The Chinese had a lottery over 2000 years ago to raise money to build the Great Wall. King James I of England set one up to finance the new colony of Virginia in America in the 17th century. The British Museum in London was also built this way.
4
Before gaming was legalized there in the 1930s Las Vegas was a small desert town; today it has 35 million visitors and earns seven and a half thousand million dollars from its casinos every year. What do they do with the profits? Build hotels, it seems – the world’s biggest is the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino with 5,005 rooms. In fact somebody estimated it would take one person 329 years to sleep in every hotel room in Vegas.
5
Politician and fraudster Horatio Bottomley went to Belgium in 1914 and bought all six horses in a race. He also paid the jockeys to cross the finishing line in a particular order. Then he put huge amounts of money on all the horses. Unfortunately, the race meeting was by the sea and a mist came in and covered the entire course. The jockeys couldn’t see each other and the judges couldn’t make out who had won. Bottomley lost a fortune.
6
There was a ten-year bet between writer Paul Ehrlich and businessman Julian Simon that the price of certain metals would be higher in 1990 than in 1980. Ehrlich lost when copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten dropped in price. Simon was trying to make the point that the world is not heading for catastrophe and that we are not using up the world’s resources as Ehrlich had predicted. He refused, however, to agree to a second bet that in the following ten years there would be an increase in greenhouse gases and AIDS victims and a decrease in tropical rainforests, agricultural land and human sperm counts.
7
An American businessman bet a British investor $100,000 that it was not possible to walk around the world without being recognised. A certain Harry Bensley agreed to take up the challenge. He had to wear an iron mask for the whole trip and pay his way by selling pictures of himself. While travelling, he also had to find a woman who would marry him, to push a pram and carry only one change of underwear! He set off from London in January 1908 and was arrested a few miles down the road for selling postcards without a licence. He supposedly got most of the way round the world and was in Italy on his way home in 1914 when the First World War broke out and he had to call the whole thing off.
KEY: 1E 2D 3J 4G 5I 6H 7C
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