English Conversation Course

Richard Avedon was born in 1923 in New York. He came from a wealthy family so he had enough money to pursue photography. He loved photography. As a 12 year old boy, he joined the Young Men's Hebrew Association camera club. His photographic career sterted early. Firstly he took   photos for Merchant Marines. Then he took the advertising photograpy for the Department Store. He succeeded immediately and started his big career. The Harper's Bazaar's art director invited young Avedon to cooperate with them when he was 22. Avedon cooperated with this magazine for 20 years. He became more and more popular in the whole fashion world He set up his own photo studio. There he created all his popular photos. He was a clever man, who broke contemporary conventions. Previously fashion was presented in a static nd inflexible way. Models were like mannequins. He introduced movement into fashion. He allowed models to be natural. Models could have a smile and a natural...

source:   http://www.secureteen.com/uploads/2013/10/interracial-relationships.jpg This time I would to raise a bit delicate and controversial topic of mixed race marriages/couples. Unfortunately, I had only data from the US which might not correspond to the situation for instance in Poland or other European countries. Firstly, many of you might not know but interracial marriages became fully legal in all states of the US in 1967. Before that it was simply illegal and it was treated as crime. There is actually a known case of Mildred and Richard Loving from 1967 in Virginia. Research from 2010 According to the Pew Research Center Report the 15.1% of all new marriages in 2010 were interracial ones and most often the Asians (27.7%)  and Hispanics (25.7%) who chose a spouse outside of his/her race or ethnicity. However,  the most often appearing mixes were White-Hispanic (43.3%) and Other Combinations (30.4%). Other Combinations were defined as mixes of minor...

source:  http://rashmanly.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/political_correctness_by_chazlene-d4d45jh.png The meaning of the term "political correctness" that we know today came to mainstream usage in the 1990s mostly in the US and shortly after it appeared in the UK. However, the origin of this term reaches to the early-to-mid 20th century and it was used mainly by Communists and Socialists in political debates. Obviously, back then it had another meaning from what we are familiar with these days. Modern political correctness Nowadays political correctness is  rarely used correctly. Therefore, there are many cases  we can certainly describe as the ones that "crossed the line". source:  http://www.brucesallan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/PC-at-Elementary-School.jpg   In my opinion the good example of proper usage is replacing all kinds of physical disabilities with less offensive names. For instance the word blind is replace...

Google, for most of us - a search engine. Mail account? A browser maybe? (nah, that's Chrome). Oh, I know - maps. Well, for sure a service provider on a global, mass scale. Our university mail (@pjwstk.edu.pl) is run by google for education (or business). Some of the teachers decided to use the old, PJ-run domain @poljap.edu.pl due to privacy or security reasons (or any other). Students also got a chance to declare which one they want to use. I bet none of you wanted the university-run domain. Why is that? Probably because most of us already use Google services. Google search engine according to different sources has over 50% of the market share. As the search results are improved based on search history, the amount of users alone stands for the quality. Did you know, that you can access your web-search history if you've been logged to your account at https://history.google.com  ? Our university mail has that function disabled as default (at least I think so), but if y...

Are you a cat or a dog person? What do you think? Here, take any of this two quizzes or both and tell us the result in the comment: Quiz1 Quiz2 Why is there such a division or categorization one may ask. Well, both types have some easily recognizable traits like being more confined to oneself, or very excitable with no particular reason. It's quite different from a simple assumption 'I prefer cats so I'm a cat person' or 'I prefer dogs so I'm a dog person'. It's more like 'If I were to be a cat/dog, which one would reflect my personality  better?'. Both this stereotypes are based on most common pets. So why can't someone be a turtle-person? Or a rabbit-person? Is it simply too much fuss? Dividing the population in two saying you're either a cat or dog type allows the great majority of pet owners to associate with a large community, feeling the strong connection with their beloved companion. And so the minorities lik...

Do you know that photo ? There is even an opinion that it is the most famous war photograph. I didn’t even know that the word “famous” can be used to describe that kind of photography. The author of this picture is Kevin Carter, a member of (again) famous photo group “Bang Bang Club”. Bang Bang Club is a label that 4 photographers used to describe themselves. Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich, Ken Oosterbroek, and João Silva worked in the early 90s in RPA during the transformation period and the fall of apartheid. They showed the world how a war in South Africa looked like. The photo I’ve mentioned in the beginning is the most recognizable from their works. It was shot by Kevin Carter and is said to be the reason for Carter’s suicide. The fact is that despite their big success, worldwide fame and journalist prizes, they had to face serious mental problems due to everything they experienced. Carter photographed a starving girl with a companion of a vulture. Public opinion accused hi...

Those are my free thoughts and reflections about traveling, backpacking, and related topics, that have been stuck in my mind since I started my journey. Eli, Eli Edwin is a tourist guide in Manila. He shows his city to people who travel from different parts of the world. To be specific, his job is to show people the slum’s life. He takes western travelers, backpackers, photographers, journalists to slums where he used to live and where he grew up. People walk through poverty, through disabled, through extreme misery of humanity, taking photos, and saying to each other: “look, what a great shot I’ve made”. Of course after a great shot, a little poor kid gets his one dollar, or a cookie, and everybody is happy. A Western, photographer gets his perfect frame, a poor kid earns money for the rest of the week. The photographer will come back home and show his great pictures to his friends, and they will say: “You are so brave, you’ve been in slums” and he will say: ”Yes, that’s true. It ...

Every now and then, the media burst out with news describing cases of excessive force usage against the protesters or an abuse of power by police officers, in the most common situations. Incidents described below present only a few examples of extensive police brutality observed in USA and Poland over the last decade: ·          26 th November 2014, officers from Cleveland Police Department shot a 12 year old boy twice in the torso, after a citizen called 911 and reported that the child had been playing with a gun in the park, terrorizing people. As it turned out, the gun with which the child was playing, was found out to be BB replica. Here is a video of the incident : http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/26/cleveland-shot-boy/19548827/ ·          February 2014, LAPD squad, during a hunt for a spree killer, over 100 bullets were shot at the wrong car inside which, two innocent w...