Read an article of your interest at http://www.theguardian.com/uk
and present it here. Comment on the articles presented by other students as well.
and present it here. Comment on the articles presented by other students as well.
Owls are nocturnal creatures. They’re wide awake at night and they sleep during the day. If this sounds like bliss to you, then, like about 20 percent of the population who find themselves most active at around 9 pm, you may fall into the same category as our feathered friend. Night owls often have difficulty waking up in the morning, and like to be up late at night. Studies of animal behaviour indicate that being a night owl may actually be built into some people’s genes. This would explain why those late-to-bed, late-to-rise people find it so difficult to change their behaviour. The trouble for night owls is that they just have to be at places such as work and school far too early. This is when the alarm clock becomes the night owl’s most important survival tool. Experts say that one way for a night owl to beat their dependence on their alarm clocks is to sleep with the curtains open. The Theory is that if they do so, the morning sunlight will awaken them gently and natura...
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Jewelry that you can plug into your body, so your blood (!!) powers it and later you can use it to charge your phone or something. Who would use something like that?
http://design-milk.com/naomi-kizhners-parasitic-powered-jewelry/
"This week in science" ;)
http://sutura.io/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Science-October-12th.jpg
It looks like a very cool thing for me. It's a good chance to use your body abilities, why not?
And it looks very interesting, I think. Pretty cool!
Thanks for the link)
I have chosen the article „Gia Coppola: keeping it in the family”, because I am interested in the film industry. Gia is a granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola’s niece, so she is pure filmmaking Hollywood blood. The text is about how she got into filmmaking business.
She was born in 1987 and she was raised by her mother and by many people from the family, because her father died before her birth. Gia did not want to become a film director but a photographer. However everything changed when she met James Franco. He fell in love with her photographs and encouraged her to get behind a film camera. Together they made the movie “Palo Alto”. It is an adaptation of his book about teen years in a Californian city. Gia chose the best stories form the book. As usual, there were some problems connected with the funds for the artwork. She was a director for the first time and she was the first one who wanted to cast some unknowns in lead roles which was not appealing to producers. In the end, James Franco paid for the movie himself. He also played one of the main characters.
“Palo Alto” is about teenagers who are trying to find themselves between childhood and adulthood. Gia made a sensitive movie in which we see awkward time of growing up. She stripped down the stereotypes and examined the humanity underneath.
Personally, I do not like stories about growing up or moving to new city etc. I more like a fan crimes and riddles.
There is simply a bigger risk of infection. I would use something that generate electricity from your walk. For instance something like this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc4CD1aEFwE
I have picked article about lately discovered security issue called "poodle" because I think it is always good to know about dangers in the internet.
In the article there is no any technical explanation of the issue itself but more about its origin and the way it could affect ordinary web user for instance account hijacking.
Basically, it is more server side issue and server administrator should responsible for fixing this bug. However, as users we could albo protect ourself from danger by updating our web browser, whether it is Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer.
In general, it is not a very dangerous bug because there is no many servers affected, therefore not many people could get hacked. However, there is still plenty of servers with this issue so it is better to be cautious.
I want to encourage you to read about and watch a beautiful spectacle which is the starling murmuration. This amazing performance can be seen in autumn and winter. The season just started and I had a chance to watch it last week in Park Szczęśliwicki in Warsaw.
Scientists still do not know what is the purpose of the act. There are several theories: protection from predators, keeping warm together or sharing information on roosting sites.
The Society of Biology’s starling murmuration survey will ask members of the public to track when, where and how long murmurations occur, what were the weather conditions and how the birds behaved.
All the gathered information can help to determine the purpose of the murmuration and maybe stop the decline of these species.
For all of you, more or less interested in nature, this video is a must! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1Q-EbX6dso
Birds look like a shoal of fish in the air. The spectacle is beautiful, but for sure it is better to watch it from the right distance :)
If you like crimes and riddles I highly recommend you to watch TV series “Hannibal” and “Criminal Minds”. They are my favorites.
news:
http://www.androidcentral.com/would-you-implant-nfc-chip-your-hand
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K9xQLDUJzc
The shuttle completed longest orbit flight in the history of the world. It was 674 days on the orbit and it had been conducting “on-orbit experiments”. It is held in secret by NASA what exacly X-37B was doing for so long in the space.
Other X-37B shuttle held the previous flight length record. The X37 program started in 1999 and 3 flights were completed till now. The program went in the 3rd stage (X37-C) in 2011, current shuttles are unmanned, but X37-C is going to be
65%-80% bigger allowing 6 astronouts onboard.
How do you think is this flight was just part of heat shield development for next big shuttles or USA used it to spy on Russians and Chinese? Do you have any other ideas?
I chose this article because it contains some useful advice on the organization of photos.
Personally, I use the "Evernote" to keep notes. With the tags easily later search. In contrast, cataloging photos for example. Holiday use the "iPhoto". It has many helpful functions such as face recognition, geo-location, and stream photos from iPhone or iPad.
But let’s start from the begging. There was this lady and Lana Newstrom was her name. She had this idea to create a invisible art. And she did. She allegedly said that art is about imagination, one has to imagine the art in one’s won way. So there was the gallery filled with..nothing.
It turned up that the news was fake and the whole action was held by two professional radio parodists Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring. But suprisingly many people have fallen for this and the conversation about it began.
Firstly, author belives that this whole situation with invisible art is a little „been there, done that”. He is yawning when he writes that this is just "so retrograde and familiar – just another rehash of ideas that go back to the 1950s.” Many artists had a romance with an invisible art. Marina Abramovic for example. She announced that her next project would be about nothing. But the confusion was not about the idea itself but that she had been acused of a plagiarism, for another artist who sais she/he had the right to nothing. Can you imagine such situation?
The author of the article points out how ridiculus this situation could have been - stupid rich people showing off with their invisible art. But it was a hoax as well. Rich collectors won’t pay a lot of money for an non existing art. The author is convinced that this action showed how much we hate rich people.
He summs up that invisible art really does exist and it’s rather cheap:P
The art world is sometimes really strage to me:P
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/sep/30/invisible-art-hoax-lana-newstrom-cbc
Was this movie a success?
Was this movie a success?
For this assignment I decided to choose an article about animated series "The Simpsons". It is the longest running comedy show and after 25 years it still succeed to entertain viewers.
Roy Carroll, author of the article, presents us a short history of the Simpsons, beginning from 1987, when animation was just a part of Tracey Ullman Show, intended to bridge commercial breaks. The Simpsons quickly gained popularity and in 1989 Fox adapted cartoon into half-hour series.
Article contains also interview with one of original writers, Al Jean, telling readers about phenomenon of this animated series.
At the end of his text, author promotes Simon Singh's book "The Simpsons and their mathematical Secrets". Roy Carroll promises readers, that advertised publication will reveal us how writers of the Simpsons use math to entertain viewers.
Here is an interesting article about future Internet( Will we fear tommorow's Internet?) http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141015-will-we-fear-tomorrows-internet
Thanks for the link!
http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/photos/
I choose the article about organise all digital photos. I thought after reading I find a magically method to sort my all photos, unfortunately it didn't happen. I recommended Adobe Lightroom from list of programs from article. I have photos from 2 digital cameras and smartphone. Some I have on my PC, some are still on memory cards, portable hard drives, on the phone, some in the cloud. One big mess. Once, I bought a large portable hard drive to have all of my photos, only photos, nothing else. Tens of thousands of single files killed my drive. I think that the best way is probably create a data server with software which can synchronize all devices and automatically save and catolog photos. All devices have to be able to connect to the server. Internet of things :)
I choose this article, because it's a rare astronomical event.
Those who own telescopes can witness today a near passing of a comet near the Mars. The comet is called Siding Spring (C/2013 A1). It is thought to be debris from the formation of the solar system 4.5bn years ago. The comet will pass within 140,000 km of Mars which is around 1/3 of distance between Earth and the moon. The last time such an event occurred was 20 years ago, when a comet crashed into Jupiter.
Astronomers all around the world are thrilled of this rare opportunity to gather data about it with every spacecraft which is currently monitoring Mars. Not only can this give us the information about how solar system was 4.5bn years ago, but also can shed some light at how an passing comet and its dust can affect the atmosphere of a planet.
It is not useful though - a blood flow in a minor vessel is not able to generate enough power to charge anything. Plus, the needle wounds are not very appealing (once I have been to hospital and I had my blood collected at least 12 times in one night, no jewellery would make my hand look pretty) and get easily infected.
Speaking of useful jewellery - I have recently seen an article about necklace weapon design. They contain small flasks of formic acid or pepper spray and are very pretty on the outside. I'll post a link to this article when I find it.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-burkeman-column/2014/oct/16/fitter-happier-more-successful-mental-contrasting
Article shows research results about difficulties of visualization, ie kind motivational technique. Respondents was asked to visualize some simple things, for example glass of water with ice.
This conclusion in article was precisely the reverse of one of the central tenets of pop psychology: the idea that picturing the future you desire makes it more likely you’ll attain it.
This should give us food for thought about popular motivation techniques where is inculcated to us by the media every day.
Article suggest in my opinion great answer to the problem of motivation, convincing yourself that life’s meant to be easy just makes it appreciably harder. The best way to quench your thirst for change, it seems, is to remind yourself that the glass is still half empty.
I recommend to read
Some like when everything is done for them by the program, others will to segregate themselves pictures in catalogs. connecting everything is not the best practices when will think about privacy :)
I choose this topic because I think this is quite interesting subject for further discussion.
This days internet trolling becomes a popular phenomenon. People nowadays are social conditioned to not say anything that hurts other people feelings. Internet is great tool to say at loud what we really think because in some cases we can feel deceptively anonymous and really don’t take care about the consequences. But really? I don’t think so. We can be easily tracked and brought to situations that we don’t truly want.
On the other hand – six month jail sentence for stupid internet comments? For me this is a little bit exaggerated penalty considering the fact that most of these trolls are just frustrated sixteen-year old kids.
I don’t say that this should be disregarded. We should definitely took closer look on this subject threating this more like offense not a serious crime.
I chose the article about biometric system in Mastercard cards. I found interesting it because I'm obsessed with security and all these things.
It can much protect you and your card. We already have payments by phone or via remote controls but this biometric card allows users to make payments in stores using their thumbprint and it sounds very cool.
Ajay Bhalla, president of security solutions at Mastercard said: “Our belief is that we should be able to identify ourselves without having to use passwords or pins. Biometric authentication can help us achieve this – our challenge is to ensure the technology offers robust security, simplicity of use and convenience for the customer.”
I'm looking forward such of these cards here in Poland and other countries and hope it will be a good experience.
Link: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/17/vivienne-westwood-living-ethically-cheap-food-fashion
Although I didn’t like this particular article I’ve been recently interested in this subject and in my opinion we all do not put enough attention for history of the product we buy. I mean we care about quality and price, but rarely about production process. I suspect we all are aware about abuses, which are taken place while producing in developing countries, but we prefer not to think about it. Unfortunately there is another aspect, which is mentioned in the article and I completely agree we with it, in fact we can’t changed much as often we are forced to buy cheap products, which usually owe their price underpaying people who produced it. It’s like a vicious circle. There are plenty of organizations, which should help to prevent such abuses, but does it work? In my opinion not or not as much as it should. As an example let’s take fair trade certificate. Everyone knows that black, blue green logo often placed on teas and coffees. Do you know that to get it is enough to have only 30% of product, which is produced within agreed, equitable rules? The price of such goods is much higher than regular and it still doesn’t guarantee that people were well treated and well paid for their job.
I know that there are many other aspects, which haven’t been written here or in the article, because the problem is really complex. If you want to know a little more I recommend below videos, which I recently watched.
First accurately shows how does the problem look in Cambodia. https://news.vice.com/video/the-high-cost-of-cheap-clothes
Another one is about collapsing the manufactory in Bangladesh. http://www.nytimes.com/video/business/100000002214634/the-price-of-fast-fashion-.html
It's easier to cut it off than to actually crack PIN :)
Facebook created safety check, something like presence list after natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis. Not directly addressed to polish people it still may be useful during floods.
How it works? Facebook monitors your location and notified about some natural disaster if it will match it's location with yours you will be asked to confirm that you're ok.
What do you think about it? Imagine that one can lose his phone, and he won't answer the safety question being safe in some other place without any way to contact his family.
I think it can make people panic even more.
In my opinion such system would need some cooperation with local services to obtain data about people from more than one source.
Last year whole New York held its breath when Chef Dominique Ansel, owner of Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York, introduced his sweet invention to the public. He called it „cronut”. The revolutionary pastry is something between a doughnut and a croissant. It's produced by frying laminated dough in canola fryer oil. Sounds easy, but after reading a three-day report by Rhik Sammader, I doubt if I would make an attempt to play baker. He had some serious troubles starting day one. What's worse, the effect was not satysfying. Maybe we shouldn't give up on trying though, as the chance of getting a cronut in a bakery shop is not even close to possible. Take a look at what's happening at the Dominique Ansel Bakery in NY:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I3a4Sc9MJs
Interesting fact, the original Sachertorte's (Tort Sachera) recipe is also still a secret and all the available recipes are only estimations :)
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/19/ofm-awards-2014-best-food-personality-nigella-lawson-im-very-much-a-survivor
Nigella is talking about how food and life are similar - you have to know the basic rules, but sometimes you should also go with the flow and not worry if you're not perfect. She is giving some tips on how to be a good cook - one shouldn't try too hard and a little bit of mess is a good thing.
She is also sharing some memories from when she was writing her wonderful cookbooks and talking about filming her TV shows.
In the end she is talking about her home cooking, cooking mistakes and definitely not taking part in "The Great British Bake Off" TV show.
I agree with her statement "I can't stand a manicured plate (...), concept over taste.". I cook myself and I find gourmet food much too intimidating and unwelcoming. I prefer Nigella's style as it is simple and "tastes-like-home".
I enjoyed reading about her early experiences with cooking. She started at college and tried to spend as little money as possible using common goods at her house-share. She states that "slow cooking is a wonderful thing for a student, as it more gratifyingly postpones the moment of essay writing".
I adore Nigella. She is so sweet and chilled, she really makes cooking fun. But I definitely DO NOT recommend cooking from her books everyday - almost every recipe contains a butter stick, heavy cream, sugar and other ingredients that are definitely not healthy. But oh, the food tastes great!
Article linked above describes Vivienne Westwood thoughts about products prices which in her opinion do not have true impacts on our enviroment. She claims that everything is cheap enough so everyone can afford it. According to her, world we live runs on debt and we experience lower prices or living costs anywhere we go.
I don't agree with v.westwood statement because if prices were higher people wouldn't buy beautiful clothes and delicious food. Normal people usually earn not too much money to buy some luxury products. This is normal, but everyone has rights to comfortable and nice life and everyone has rights for eat meals in restaurants and wears beautiful clothes to feel better or increase self-esteem.
Osian Rhys Edwards, 29 year old, is a primary school teacher in Welsh. He was charged £15,000 by Vodafone for his phone bill.
The story goes like this: While holidaying in Barcelona, his phone got stolen. During the next night, the thief used his phone to make expensive phone calls.
Edwards claims that he called mobile provider soon after a pickpocket made off with his handset to cancell his number. On the other hand, Vodafone claims they have no records of him cancelling and makes him liable for all the calls before its fraud department cut the phone off. At the end, Vodafone offered to cover 30% of the bill.
In the next part of the articles there are more similar cases presented along with quotes from the victims.
The problem seems to lie in the operators' security. Nowadays phone calls are not being monitored in real-time and in the result it takes much more time to stop the crime. Additionally, victims of this crime have no one to seek help from.
This problem is being continuously negotiated within and between the mobile operator firms.
I believe that in the nearest future mobiles will become more safe.
The article I have chosen is about what two biggest companies Apple and Facebook are offering to their female employees. This two companies offer to freeze eggs.
A Apple company representative says they cares about employees and their families. Facebook offers about $20 000 for egg freezing for female also offers help in adoption.
I want to ask you what is your opinion about this idea. I read this article twice and I'm still confused and a little bit shocked. If the message is not clear: no women should become pregnant while working for a company ? Isn't this a disgraceful way to treat women ?
Well, actually, we're not blogging. Or are we? Are we generating content, creating something new or just commenting, rethinking, uhm... yeah, what exactly are we doing?
http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/oct/09/blogger-blogging-digital-publishing-content
Do you think you can identify yourself as one of the archetypes mentioned in the article? If you're blogging, that is. And if not, which one you think would be?
The article that caught my eye talk about the rising popularity of meat substitutes. According to the article the sales of meat alternatives have experienced an 8% growth in 2013. What is interesting out of all the people who declared buying those products only 7% said that they are vegetarians, The popularity of the less-meat diet can be visible even in the gourmet restaurants for example one of the top chefs with a three-star restaurant has recently changed his menu to almost meat-free. One of the benefits of meat substitutes' production is a lower impact on the environment as less land is needed to feed the same amount of population. One should also think about the health benefits of eating organic meat substitutes compared to consumption of almost industrial meat pumped with steroids and who else knows what.
Meals prepared with meat alternatives can be vary tasty and can pleasantly tingle your taste buds, but at the end of the day what is a fish-less fillet compared to a good beef burger?
Article is an interview by Sean O’Hagan. She has talked with verry signifficant people from photography world: Nan Goldin, Cristina de Middel, Oliver Chanarin, Bruno Ceschel, Marin Parr, Juergen Teller, Paul Graham, Viviane Sassen, Brett Rogers, Pieter Hugo, Mishka Henner, Alec Soth, Simon Baker and Michael Hoppen. She asked them about their favourite photobooks.
All of them told short story about his favourite photobook. All of them is another, so photobooks are verry different, but everyone is unique. All of photobook from article is good and fascinating.
It’s good article. I recomend it each of person, who is fascinated with photography and photographer.
Thanks to article I’ve known a lot of new great person from „photoworld”.
Here is the link to the article: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/19/photographers-on-photobooks-nan-goldin-juergen-teller-martin-parr
Ok, so i somehow stumbled across infographic about Robert Downey Jr. It's not very good, but it's Sunday evening you can give it a try. You can get to know cool facts like that he was in prison for 18 months the ironic one, which tells that when he was a kid, he once bullied other kid for reading Iron Man comic book.
But those facts may not be accurate at all, for example percentage of the poll in the middle ads up to 110%, so it's hard to believe in anything else what that author wrote.