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...