English Conversation Course

If you ask anybody about what makes a strong and good relationship, you will often hear: “trust it is!”. It’s hard to disagree with that statement, isn’t it? Regardless of what we are talking about, is it a relationship between an employee and his employer, between two companies or between husband and wife, it would be impossible to cooperate without trust. If there was no trust between, let’s say, a boss and an employee, the employee would probably never get any assignment or, even better, would never be employed in the first place. That sounds obvious but are things really that simple? While I agree, that trust is essential in establishing any kind of rapport, I strongly believe, there is another factor that is equally or even more crucial. Actually, it is the trust’s evil twin – distrust. At first it might feel a bit weird, because you may think “how can trust be equally important as distrust? If you trust somebody, you cannot distrust him at the same time!”. Well, I believ...

Some time ago I visited the Museum of Silversmiths in Kazimierz Dolny. I saw some astonishing works of art - goblets, plates, cups and other examples of great craftsmanship. I was pleased and impressed by what people were able to craft of silver, gold, amber and jewels. In the same building, on upper floor, there was a modern art exhibition. There was no need to buy another ticket, so I went to see it. There are many words I could use to describe what I saw there but I think ‘disappointment’ fits best. There were some crude necklaces and earrings made of plastic or natural materials and simple pictures presenting nothing. I felt like nobody put any actual skill or effort to produce those. That looked like a caveman’s work. "Why is modern art like that? Why is it so bad? What makes modern art so popular?" I asked myself. If you are also curious about answers to these questions, I encourage you to watch the video below, where Robert Florczak - american artist and illu...

We are facing a global crisis in learning. Despite the growing cybernetization of our societies and the recent upwards trend of numbers of science breakthroughs we see each year, we are still falling behind in education. The recent data shows that a quarter million children still don’t have access to education. Even worse, a third of a million children attend schools, but still fail to learn from the classes they undertake.   Unfortunately this trend is increasing. If the present state of things continues the Education Commission prognoses, that by 2030 half of the word’s children and youth will be out of school of failing to learn. Thankfully it’s not too late. If we do change our approach to education, we can still turn things around. https://www.ted.com/talks/amel_karboul_the_global_learning_crisis_and_what_to_do_about_it   1. What do you think about the Vietnam's approach? Do you think it helps to motivate students?   2. What do you think about the Amazon...

Our world is built on electricity. The computer you’re reading this post on, the pumps that deliver water to your home, the early tsunami detection systems on the pacific ocean. All these things run on electric power. Power, for which the demand is ever-growing, with each new-born person, and each new-bought appliance. Thankfully over the years we’ve been getting better and better at generating said power. Today a new kind of power generation system promises to give us even more for even less input. A system based on kites. Renewable energy is certainly a great thing. It’s clean, non-reliant on fossil fuels and virtually inexhaustible. Unfortunately, despite all of its advantages, it still struggles with several key problems preventing it from becoming our sole method of power generation. The main one is its localization. What would be the best place to place all of our solar energy plants? In the middle of a desert, obviously. Unfortunately that’s just not feasible, since the fur...

A few years ago when I was playing FIFA I was wondering how it is possible that not very famous footballer who moves in a characteristic way looks like in reality. It turned out it was because of Motion Capture. What is Motion Capture? http://www.creativementors.in/img/content/motion-capture.jpg https://latimesherocomplex.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/lotr.jpg%3Fw%3D600%26h%3D319 Motion Capture (mocap) - is technique used in movies and computer games in which you capture 3D moves of actors and save them on the computer. It turned out that they invited most footballers to EA studio and they recorded them with mocap. EA sports is Canadian company from Vancouver. This company is famous worldwide and employs 2500 people. Company campus has got 37 thousand m2. It is most of all two buildings, one for employees who work only on FIFA. They make all animations in the game in hangar size of football pitch. There are 132 cameras, more than 10 monitors and special equipment. 25 em...

When I was watching I found presentation about interesting app made by Jeff Kirschner. When you use this app you identify, collect and geo tag waste on the map. Jeff collects information about rubbish in more than 100 countries and he hopes to use data to prevent rubbish from falling on the ground. He needs to cooperate with companies and organizations to do it.   Personally I think that this app is good idea. When you use it you can use rubbish in artistic way and show people the problem in your area. What do you think? Have you ever taken part in cleaning the world ? Are you going to download this app?

Bitcoin, does that name sound familiar to you? It might due to recent events. On the 9th of November, 1 bitcoin was worth almost 7900$. This might not be shocking on a first look, but comparing to 1000$, which bitcoin was worth on the beginning of 2017, it is quite an achievement. 790% profit return in a year sounds brilliant, but how about that. If you spend 1000$ on bitcoin in 2010, you would now have about 333k bitcoins, which is about 2,63mld $!.  So what is bitcoin and how does it works? Questions : Do you own any cryptocurrency? Do you think bitcoin is a bubble like famous tulip mania in 17th century? Do you think in few years we will use bitcoin rather than dollar or euro in daily activities?

Daylight saving isn’t as old as you think it is. First suggested by Benjamin Franklin, in 1784, it was at the time shot down by many very sensible people as being pointless. The Standard Time Act was passed in 1918, which officially established time zones and incorporated daylight saving months into federal law. This was during World War I, when national efforts were made to conserve materials for the war effort. It was believed that if daytime hours could correspond better with natural light, fewer tasks would need to be done at night and households would save energy. source: http://ww4.hdnux.com/photos/52/55/50/11196967/5/920x920.jpg Besides making the world seem like a darker place, one annual effect of this event is a huge spread  of articles  proclaiming that DST is a garbage idea  that needs to end. For years it has been the topic of stormy discussions in our society. Let us take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of this phenomenon. ...