English Conversation Course

Faith Healing (Belief Therapy, Faith Therapy, Energy Therapy) is a therapeutic approach in which patients resort to healers to treat their disease. This type of treatment has its own fans and its market is hot in developed countries. Many of "ideological therapists" are hateful and disgusting. They tend to exploit desperate patients because they are greedy. The issue may become serious and dangerous when patients are encouraged to not to use medicine recommended by doctor and stop medical treatment and instead of that seek for "ideological therapists". Derren Brown, a well-known British mentalist and magician, in a documentary entitled "Miracles for Sale” presents a set of techniques and tricks used by such therapists. This way, he demonstrates that such people do not have any special power; still, patients have an illusion that they have been healed by them. Perhaps at first glance, the subject of this documentary seems to be specific for Western cou...

Several methods and strategies for detecting rumors and false news Our experience has shown that most of the rumors have a common structure and features that can be identified even by ordinary people and can have a significant effect on reducing their volume of publication. In this post we introduce some of these features. The piece of film and photo slice are the main tools of the rumors A picture as much as has thousand lines of text to say, may give a possibility to make thousand rumors too. The specific angle of camera, the uncertainty of what happened before and after the piece of the film, linking unrelated photos, manipulating photos and videos (photoshop), low quality, uncertain details and ... may create the opportunity for storytelling and rumors.  Declare relative dates instead of the specified date An hour ago, last night, today, recently, from tomorrow, the latest achievements ... For example, over the past three years, a rumor has be...

How to build (and rebuild) trust? This is the main question following Frances Frei presentation in which she is breaking down fundamentals of trust. She speaks about how trust works, how to build it, maintain it and rebuild it after you loose it. Of course some cases are fatal but, not all. Please, watch this course and answer some questions. Here are some questions: 1. Is it easy for you to trust someone? 2. Have you ever experienced major trust fail? 3. Do you agree with argument that fundamentals of trust are: empathy, authenticity and logic? 4. Are you able to trust somebody again?

Improvisation     One of my favourite pastimes lately, is going to improvisations. Ones that im talking about are short comedy shows.      It all started 1 year ago when my friend invited me for the first time to see - Two gentelmen - an improvised duo.They are, yes, 2 comedians  from Wroclaw and one of best (for me) duo on stage.  But how it all works? Everything begins with them coming up on stage completly unprepaired. They welcome viewers, introducing themselves and show has already started. They welcome again those who are for the first time to make you feel a bit more special. Then they ask you to find an eye connection with somebody that you never met before. It is kinda funny and painfull at the same time. Then when you are already wormed up it is time for public to come up with one word as inspiration for show. It let you understand that in fact it is totally unprepaired.      The lights go out and show begins. One ...

In every workplace, there are three basic kinds of people: givers, takers and matchers. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant breaks down these personalities and offers simple strategies to promote a culture of generosity and keep self-serving employees from taking more than their share. 1.    Are you a giver, taker or matcher? 2.   Is being a taker a bad thing for you? Why? 3.   How can we prevent givers from getting poor performance ratings? https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_are_you_a_giver_or_a_taker

If you are a gamer or you love watching someone else playing computer games, surely you have heard about Fortnite: Battle Royal. This co-op sandbox survival game developed by Epic Games had a premiere a year ago and during this time it has over 45 million users. Fortnite has simple rules and pretty, cartoon graphics which makes it pleasant to watch. It’s dedicated to people of all age. Ok, but what is it about? I could describe it by saying: the last man standing wins. At the beginning of each game, you are dropped from the purple flying bus and land on the ground using the parachute. In the hands, you’ve got the pickaxe which can be used to deal the damage to an opponent or to harvest materials from walls, trees, cars etc., to build your own structures. The map is full of items such as bandages, weapons, shields etc. Like many other battle royal games, the whole action takes place in the habitable island. To make the game more dynamic, the living a...

Have you ever heard about such a thing like game jam? The name is meant to resemble musical jams - when a  group of friends hang out in their basement to improvise and create music just for the sake of fun and exploration. But instead of (or sometimes, in addition to) guitars and microphones, game jammers bring their computers to the party. The game jam traditionally takes ca. 48 hours (Friday-Sunday) and during this time participants are supposed to create a completely new game from scratch. Usually there are no restrictions towards technologies and equipment used so one can get really creative and experiment with new ideas. Jammers in their natural habitat [1] Game jams gather people from many different disciplines: programmers, musicians, graphic designers etc. It’s important to cooperate and share your knowledge and skills , so that you can create unique experience. Team sizes vary from lone wolfs up to even 10 people with different level of experience: beginners ca...

We often don't think about the passing time. Sometimes, when we talk with our friends we argue which event happened earlier, or we realize that our memories of shared experiences, for example  from high school stories, are flawed. The same goes with our perception of the timing of historical events. Let's watch this interesting video from a great educational channel called "Kurzgesagt" - it will help us organize our picture of past events and distances between them. Questions: 1. Do you feel that your high school years happened years ago or do you feel like it was yesterday? 2. Do you think that the internet was a good invention - does it speed up our development or does it make us waste too much of our time? 3. Did any of the information from the video surprise you in any way?

A lot of budget airlines are present in Europe nowadays. But what makes their tickets so chip? The video tries to explain how budget airlines work, why lowcost companies are so profitable, and why large players cannot repeat their success. Questions: 1) Did you use low-cost airlines? 2) What  matters for you more: price or comfort? 3) Are cheap flights connected with negative or positive experiences?

You may have noticed a ton of privacy policy emails lately from companies like Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, or this app I used to use or remove which I have no idea. Those new policies are the result of something called the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR,  which went into effect May 25th. It's a new rule in the European Union, that's rewriting how data sharing works on the internet and almost no one is ready for it, most people don't even know what it is. The  General Data Protection Regulation  -  is a  regulation  in  EU law  on  data protection  and privacy for all individuals within the  European Union  and the  European Economic Area . It also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU and EEA. So it's totally ok, to not fully understand the GDPR because it's really complicated, but basically it sets new rules for how companies can treat user data, with a particular eye towa...

Privacy – the ultimate payment method of current world. I can bet that 100% of the people who read this post have no idea that they have given up part of their privacy while doing so. Why u ask ? Well blogspot is collecting data on you while you read for example. What I want to say is that most of you are not aware that most if not all of the free sites are not actually free. They don’t take our money in exchange for goods, they take the ultimate payment bite into your data, into your privacy. So most of us have probably heard about Cambridge Analytica scandal. For those unaware Facebook shared over 87 million people’s data to Cambridge Analytica. After exposure Facebook’s chief Mark Zuckerberg was questioned by US Congress on its data leak, fake news and Russian election meddling suspicions. Following the scandal many have prophesied Facebook’s end, a downfall of Facebook’s user base, masses deleting accounts. That never actually happened,  Facebook’s usage actually...