Evolution celebrates 200 years with Darwin, with polemic

'Adam and Eve', by Titan

Polemic goes on with creacionists defying the theory of evolution formulated by Charles Darwin almost 200 years ago. When the world celebrates all the core discoveries from his travels and studies, the number of creacionists has increased greatly. The Guardian reports in the article Defying Darwin.

What is the difference between recession and depression?

This is the question formulated by many papers to promote a greater understanding of the current crisis. The Economist put out this answer relating many events in financial scenario and putting some light on  historical milestones in the last centuries.

Mainly, the difference between them is the period, given that a recession is the previous alert to a depression, but this is rather tricky to be put that simple.

From the Free Dictionary:

Depression. A depression is a severe and prolonged downturn in the economy. Prices fall, reducing purchasing power. There tends to be high unemployment, lower productivity, shrinking wages, and general economic pessimism.

Since the Great Depression following the stock market crash of 1929, the governments and central banks of industrialized countries have carefully monitored their economies. They adjust their economic policies to try to prevent another financial crisis of this magnitude.

Recession. Broadly defined, a recession is a downturn in a nation’s economic activity. The consequences typically include increased unemployment, decreased consumer and business spending, and declining stock prices.

Recessions are typically shorter than the periods of economic expansion that they follow, but they can be quite severe even if brief. Recovery is slower from some recessions than from others.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which tracks recessions, describes the low point of a recession as a trough between two peaks, the points at which a recession began and ended — all three of which can be identified only in retrospect.

The Conference Board, a business research group, considers three consecutive monthly drops in its Index of Leading Economic Indicators a sign of decline and potential recession up to 18 months in the future. The Board’s record in predicting recessions is uneven, having correctly anticipated some but expected others that never materialized.

Curious headlines today

Big Phil or Filipão, born Luis Felipe Scolari, Brazilian coach who has just been sacked from Chelsea due to his poor English to communicate with the players, as claimmed the club, is setting for more money from previous club Blues and hit the headlines in a very curious sentence: Big Phil x big Blues, meaning not saddness, but the money owned to big Phil by the club, what we call a pay-off.

Also the eternal BeeGee Robin Gib has just fathered. What? Yes, father as a verb, have you seen this before? The mother was not his wife, but his maid.

Big Phil

Big Phil set for big Blues pay-off

Tue 10 Feb, 07:45 AM

Former Chelsea manager Luiz Felipe Scolari could collect as much as £15million in compensation after being sacked as Blues coach.The Premier League club terminated his three-year contract, worth an estimated £6million per annum to the Brazilian, after he had spent just seven months in the Stamford Bridge hot-seat. Read on.

a pay-off =to pay the wages due to (an employee) upon discharge, meaning dismiss

Robin and Dwina Gibb

Gibb fathers child with maid

Yesterday, 12:00 pm

59-year-old married Bee Gees star, Robin Gibb, has fathered a child with his live-in housekeeper.

The 59-year-old married Bee Gees star has allegedly been having an eight-year romance with 33-year-old Claire Yang, as part of the open relationship he enjoys with his wife Dwina Gibb. Read on.

to father: to give birth to a child

The Big Bang Theory TV Show

Sheldon:

So, what time does
the costume parade start?

Penny:
The parade?

108
00:06:41,809 –> 00:06:44,684
Yeah, so the judges can give out
the prizes for best costume.

Sheldon:

You know, most frightening,
most authentic,

most accurate visualization
of a scientific principal.

Penny:
Oh, Sheldon, I’m sorry,

but there aren’t going to be any parades
or judges or prizes.

Sheldon:
This party is just going to suck.

Penny:
No!
Come on, it’s going to be fun,

and you all look great.
I mean, look at you, Thor,

and, oh,

Peter Pan.
That’s so cute.

Leonard:
- Actually, he’s Robin Hood.
Howards:

- I’m Peter Pan.

And I got a handful of pixie dust
with your name on it.

Penny:
No, you don’t.

Penny:
What’s Sheldon supposed to be?

Leo:
He’s the Doppler effect.

Sheldon:
Yes. It’s the apparent change
in the frequency of a wave

caused by relative motion between
the source of the wave and the observer.

Penny:
Oh, sure, I see it now.
The Doppler effect.

All right, I got to shower.

You guys…
make yourselves comfortable.

Sheldon:
See?
People get it.

How do you wanto to improve your English?

We all know some ways to get better in writing or listening, for example,  and we do see the progress. But, sometimes, we can not see good results in one oe other ability when learning English. Do you feel like that? Take part in our poll now:

Carmem Miranda to warm up before Carnival

In two weeks time starts the biggest holiday in Brazil and the warm up has name and surname: Carmem Miranda. Her Carnival songs, known as marchinhas, brought this colorful party to the highest popular levels ever and this year we celebrate 100 years of her birth.

Born on February, 9th 1909  in Portugal, Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha grew up in Rio de Janeiro, in the Lapa district and was responsible for launching some of the most important composers from Brazil such as Dorival Caymmi and made others  greatly well-known: Lamartine Babo, André Filho and Ary Barroso, to name a few. In 1939, she moved to the United States, where became the widely famous exotic singer and dancer, fitting the malicious and tropical stereotype of latin women in that time.

Frommer’s Review in The New York Times has some words about the Museum Carmem Miranda, in Rio de Janeiro:

If  Carmen Miranda could see her museum, she’d roll over in her grave (spilling pineapples and bananas everywhere). A concrete bunker in a postage stamp-size park surrounded by four lanes of traffic hardly seems a fitting tribute to the flamboyant ’40s film star. Inside the banana bunker, however, the small collection does a fine job illustrating Carmen Miranda’s star appeal. A large number of her publicity photos are on display blown up to near life-size, along with smaller photos showing the story of her life and career, including her 1939 American breakthrough in the Broadway musical Streets of Paris. Also on display is the outfit she wore to the 1941 Academy Awards ceremony, as well as jewelry and accessories, including the trademark tall fruit hats. The museum also has a large collection of video documentaries, biographies, the movies she starred in, and a compilation of her songs. The receptionist is delighted to play these for visitors.

On the web you can listen to her top hits and sing along at http://www.carmen.miranda.nom.br.

Contest: how many sides does a triangle have?

Any comment?

Daily ESL for beginners

If you are very curious about how to get information in the airport, go to a dentist´s appointment, enjoy a barbecue at home go to Daily ESL Conversation Starters for English Students .Beginners can do exercises with audio and choose from more than 50 daily situations. You can practice pronunciation and the vocabulary as well.

Planning to take a train travel around Europe? Check this out!

Special preparation for international exams

ENGLISH-TEST-NET.COM is a site full of services in English learning and teaching, easy to use and comprehensive.

One of the highlighst is the quite complete forum for you to share information about Tests preparations such as TOEFL, TOEIC, GMAT, GRE.

The section with listenings can help mainly beginners, from topics that range from Alphabet to Phonetics.

If  you do all the tests you can enter a ranking of the best performances in the lessons the site offers, along with the messages you have posted so far.

To take part in the community, just register with your email and post in !

Randall´s Cyber Listening

Randall´s ESL Cyber Listening Lab has a variety of American accent on quizzes good for beginners. But again, the technology was badly applied here and at the moment you click to listen to the audio, you are transferred to another window and can´t follow the exercises anymore. The solution is to open twice the site so you can listen in one and answer the exercises in the other. By doing that, beginners can benefit from the quizzes and have the score online,w ith the correct answers.  The listenings of medium and difficult level may be only available with RealPlayer which limits the options to the students.