Learning Languages

I guess there is no need to explain why it's important to know different languages nowadays.
Especially if your native language is spoken only in your home country and there are less then 5 million people who speak this language. What do we do for learning a new language then? Of course we have an opportunity to study it in school or in Universities. We also can take a language courses individually. But there are a lot of other ways how to learn a new language or to improve the one you already know on World Wide Web. Today I want to tell you about useful web-site that can help you to improve your language skills. This is a  very interesting online language learning community - www.livemocha.com. This is a web-site where you can create an account and use it for educational purpose. Livemocha provides instructional materials in more then 30 different languages and also it is a platform  for people to interact with native speakers and help each other to learn new languages.

Free basic courses are offered in almost 38 languages on this site, consisting of 30-50 hours of coursework. Few languages were first added to Livemocha through the process of "Member Translation". Members of the community fluent in two or more languages may translate already available course materials into their native tongue and put the results on web-site. Other users can rate and improve the translations. By the way Lithuanian language courses are among these type of courses, created by users of the web-site :)

More advanced courses - called "Active Courses"  are available in five languages: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. But you have to pay for it. They require a monthly or annual fee however these courses are intended to achieve conversational fluency.

I think that even courses which are offered on this site free of charge are very useful. For beginners it's quite easy to start language exercises. For those who are already on intermediate or advanced level site gives a really good opportunity to communicate with native speakers. Of course you can communicate with native speakers on other social networks as well. But very specific and different thing about this web-site is that as it is meant to be a language learning community you can ask other members (more probably native speakers) to review your accomplishments in learning language and to give some suggestions. It's really easy and convenient access to native speakers. By the way if you want you can also help others to learn your native tongue or the language which you already know quite well. You can revise their works on web-site, give them some advices and make the learning process easier.

Couchsurfing

"An excellent way of getting to know a local culture."   the Guardian

"CouchSurfing isn’t just a means of accommodation; it is an entirely new way to travel"   Time

"We saw and learned much more than if we had just gotten a hotel room. You can avoid being “that person” with the folded-out map when you’re exploring the city."   npr

                                                


If you want to travel you need a lot of money. If you want to travel you need to know the local spoken language. If you want to travel you need to read a lot of tourist guides.
Not with this new form of travelling: Couchsurfing. As the word somehow already says, the method is to "surf someone's couch", meaning, to stay for some nights in someone's apartment and sleep on his\her couch, floor,... .

But the philosophy of couchsurfing isn't just to provide a sleeping place for a total stranger, the aim for the host and the traveller is also to meet new people, get to know a different culture and find friends from all over the world. It is common that hosts and hosted one's take a stroll around the city (because in the end the traveller came to visit a place), explore the night life together, speak for hours about the personal life and interests, and somehow form a friendship, maybe not for a whole life time, but for some days.

Before couchsurfing existed, people on the go who couldn't afford or who didn't want to stay in a hotel or hostel, maybe talked to some complete stranger in a bar and ended up sleeping at this person's place. Without knowing with whom they are sharing an apartment and without any security net. The website couchsurfing.org can't provide a complete security net of course, but it gives the opportunity to create a profile, find a place to stay, and rate hosts after you visited them. This way future travellers can see, if a host got positive ratings and therefor is likely to be a good person, or at least a nice companion for some days.

And this is how it works:

How it Works

1. Start by searching for people who interest you.
2. Once you’ve found someone, send them a message, inviting them to your home or requesting to stay in theirs.
3. Then, meet up in person and share a unique experience.
4. And, at any time, join an activity to meet new people wherever you are.
5. 
   

(source: couchsurfing.org)

Couchsurfing.org claims on their website, that they are the "largest travel community". And indeed with millions of members in almost all countries world wide, it has become a huge multicultural community.

If you are interested in joining the group, becoming a host or are thinking of travelling somewhere and want to meet local folk and explore a country and culture not through the eyes of a stranger and tourist, but like a true inhabitant, then visit the couchsurfing website.


the couchsurfing website:
http://www.couchsurfing.org/

for further information read those articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/garden/20couch.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.time.com/time/travel/article/0,31542,2045092,00.html#ixzz1grewkXF6


r.s.

Solar Storm is likely to be felt on Earth tomorrow

Our planet is being bombarded by high-energy particles unleashed by the strongest solar storm since 2005, scientists say.


The storm has been caused by a so called potent flare that erupted from the Sun at 4am GMT on Sunday. Though the effects are likely to be felt on Earth throughout Wednesday, as the particles need some time for the journey from the Sun to Earth.


The charged particles are not necessarily dangerous for all human on our planet, they are mostly a concern for satellites and astronauts, who are currently in space.


Moreover it is possible that they cause communication problems for aircraft travelling near poles.


The only positive effect we could maybe experience are "Northern Lights" (aurorae) which are likely to occur in more southern regions that usually.


Personally I hope to see this fascinating "Northern lights" as I have never seen them in real life.




for further information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16701407


r.s.

French Senate vote on Armenian genocide law

The French Senate has approved bill that makes it a criminal offence to deny that genocide was committed by Ottoman Turks against Armenians during World War I. The bill is quite controversial. Armenia says up to 1.5 million people died in 1915-16 as the Ottoman empire split. Turkey rejects the term genocide and claims that the number was much smaller.   
The bill will now be sent for approval to the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. Turks living in France made a demonstration against the new law but despite of this fact French Senate has approved the bill. 


For more information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-16695137 - Turkish fury at French vote on Armenian genocide law
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16677986 - French Senate passes Armenian genocide law

What is the story of Captain Schettino?

While the rescue divers are still trying to find the still missing passengers and crew members who were on the Costa Concordia when she hit a rock in front of the Tuscan coast a few days ago, the Captain of the ship still declines all accuses that are brought up against him.
Captain Schettino is accused of causing the crash and therefor was put under house arrest.

Captain Schettino

Moreover the captain has to face accuses, that he left the ship before all passengers have left the sinking ship.

A recording of a call between him and the responsible coast guard Gregorio De Falco after the crash appears to support this, though Capt Schettino denies the claims.

In this recording you can year the coast guard demanding from the Captain to go back on the ship in order to coordinate the evacuation and save the passengers and crew members.

BBC news released a transcript of the recorded call:

Conversation of Gregorio De Falco and Captain Schettino

Gregorio De Falco: "Hello. Hello."

Francesco Schettino: "Good evening, captain."

De Falco: "Hello, I'm de Falco, from Livorno. I am speaking with the commander?"

Schettino: "I'm Commander Schettino."

De Falco: "Listen Schettino, there are people trapped aboard, you go with your lifeboat under the prow of the ship on the port side and you go aboard the ship using the rope ladder. You go aboard and you tell me how many people there are. Is it clear? I'm recording this conversation, Commander Schettino."

Schettino: "So, I'll tell you something..."

De Falco: "Speak louder."

Schettino: "Now, I'm in front of..."

De Falco: "Commander, speak louder, take the microphone and speak loud. Is that clear?"

Schettino: "Commander, right now the ship is skewed."

De Falco: "Understood. Listen there are people going down from the prow using the rope ladder; you take that rope ladder on the opposite side, you go aboard and you tell me the number of people and what they have on board. Is that clear? You tell me whether there are children, women or people needing assistance. And you tell me the number of each of these categories. Is that clear? Schettino, maybe you saved yourself from the sea, but I'll make you pay for sure. Go aboard."

Schettino: "Commander, please?"

De Falco: "Please, now you go aboard."

Schettino: "I am on the life boat, under the ship, I haven't gone anywhere, I'm here."

De Falco: "What are you doing, commander?"

Schettino: "I'm here to coordinate rescues."

De Falco: "What are you coordinating there? Go on board and coordinate rescues from on board. Do you refuse?"

Schettino: "No, no I'm not refusing."

De Falco: "You're refusing to go aboard, commander, tell me why you're not going."

Schettino: "I'm not going because there is another lifeboat stopped there."

De Falco: "Go aboard: it's an order. You have no evaluation to make, you declared abandon ship, now I give orders: go aboard. Is it clear?"

Schettino: "Commander I'm going aboard."

De Falco: "Call me from aboard, my rescuer is there at the prow of the ship. There are already dead bodies, Schettino."

Schettino: "How many dead bodies?"

De Falco: "I do not know. One for sure. You have to tell me how many."

Schettino: "Do you realise that it's dark here and we can't see a thing?"

De Falco: "And what, do you want to go home, Schettino? It's dark, so you want to go home...? Go on the prow of the ship, using the rope ladder and tell me what can be done, how many people there are and what are their needs. Do it now."

Schettino: "Here there is also the vice commander. I'm together with him."

De Falco: "Then go aboard together. Together. What's his name?"

Schettino: "Dimitri."

De Falco: "Dimitri what? You and your vice go aboard. Now, is it clear?"

Schettino: "Commander, I want to go aboard, but here there is the other lifeboat, there are other rescuers who stopped. Now I called other rescuers."

De Falco: "You've been telling me this for one hour. Go aboard. Go aboard. And you tell me right away how many people there are."

Schettino: "Ok commander."

De Falco: "Go, quickly."

source: BBC news

Picture taken during the night when the people were trying to leave the sinking Costa Concordia

If Schettino really went back on board of the ship remains unclear for the moment. But during a court hearing on Tuesday, the captain said he could not get on board the vessel because it was lying on its side.

He argued that after hitting rocks he had executed a difficult manoeuvre that had saved many people's lives.

Without doubt the police will try to analyse the happenings last Friday on the Costa Concordia very carefully and Captain Schettino will have to answer a lot of questions.

for further information: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16606405

r.s.

PROTECT IP/SOPA - the end of the free internet?

The topic of a new bill POTECT IP that has been introduced to Senate is intensively discussed on internet. The bill is scheduled for a test vote in the Senate on 24th of January.  


Do you want to know more how PROTECT IP/SOPA works? check these videos out:


http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa - PROTECT IP / SOPA Act Breaks the Internet


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zBtr4aZtmrQ - SOPA "explained" by The Guardian

Costa Concordia salvage to begin

The Costa Concodia is currently trapped in front of the Isola del Giglio

As the fatal event of the Costa Concordia hitting a rock in front of the Tuscan Coast, Italy, the chances of finding one of the about 24 missing people are getting lower and lower. This is why it is likely that the responsible rescue troupes will declare today or tomorrow that they will end their efforts to find those passengers and crew members in the vessel. 


From this point on salvage workers will start their examinations of the vessel and among them, a specialist group from the Netherlands (SMIT) is to start drilling through the ship towards the 17 tanks that hold more than 2,000 tonnes of fuel. Fortunately for now experts have claimed, that there is a pretty good chance that those tanks haven't been damaged and therefor this Dutch group of salvage specialists should be able to keep the situation under control.
Nevertheless the operation of pumping the fuel out of the tanks could take several weeks.


r.s.

English Wikipedia shuts down for today

The English version of Wikipedia, our virtual helper for homeworks, presentations and best friend whenever we have a scientific question, made it's threat come true and is unavailable for today's Wednesday. 
As Manana and I have already written yesterday, with this shutdown of their page they want to show that they disagree with the US Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) being debated by Congress.


for further information: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16590585


r.s.

The brutal story about our pet and some interesting links on Internet Freedom topic :)

Today I have decided to tell you a story about our pet which is not alive anymore... So I was looking for an information on Wikipedia about this "pet" when I saw a waring note that "In less than 18 hours, the English Wikipedia will be blacked out to protest SOPA and PIPA. Of course I pressed "learn more" and now instead of writing the brutal story about our pet I decided to write about this protest. I think it's more important then the story about the bug (so called ladybird) which we've allowed to live in our kitchen since September 2011 and then in few months how it has become a monster...a mutated ladybird.. and how we started to worry about having it in our kitchen. It was walking slowly, we even could see his face:/ In short, it was very disgusting to have him there and the only possible way to destroy it seemed to take it to...

As Rabea already posted in news about the protest against SOPA and PIPA I will give you some interesting links on this topic:

1. http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57329001-281/how-sopa-would-affect-you-faq/ - How SOPA would affect you: FAQ -  here you can find answers on your questions about SOPA is, who's opposed to SOPA and who don't; How would SOPA work?; What will SOPA require internet providers to do?; What's the justification for SOPA and Protect IP? 


2. http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-10012-pipa-is-the-new-sopa.html - PIPA is the new SOPA 
a very interesting article about new bills

3. http://www.keepthewebopen.com/ - OPEN: Online Protection & ENforcement of Digital Trade Act - an alternative bill .OPEN puts rogue sites under the purview of the International Trade Commission, which already oversees patent infringement. The ITC would have the authority to block the flow of money and advertising to these sites, but that’s all.


4. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/opinion/firewall-law-could-infringe-on-free-speech.html?_r=4 -

Stop the Great Firewall of America - also an interesting article about internet freedom

In the end I would like to add the quote  from Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director's letter published on Wikipedia on 16th of January, 2012. 

"My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA—and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States—don’t advance the interests of the general public."

Which number are you? :)

BBC news recently put a very funny online tool on it's website. If you ever wondered, which number as a person out of almost 7 billion on our planet you are, how many people are living in your home country and how fast it's population is growing, and what your life expectancy according to your country of origin and your gender is, click on the link below and find out :)
This way I found out, that when I was born (according to this calculation system) I was the 5,504,614,518th person currently on Earth.
The website also gives you interesting facts about the current population in total, the fastest shrinking and growing countries, and further information on related topics.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515

r.s.

English Wikipedia goes offline for 24 hours

Wikipedia plans to take its English-language site offline on Wednesday as part of protests against proposed anti-piracy laws in the US.


The sites' webmasters are opposed to the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) being debated by Congress, as they argue, this two programs would affect their website's activities in a negative way, but don't really prevent online piracy.
The very famous social network website "Twitter" announced that it won't take part in this "protest day" and therefor won't shut down their website on Wednesday.
We will see tomorrow, if Wikipedia will act as it said... .


for further information: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16590585


r.s.

What to do with a 450-million-euro vessel?

The Costta Concordia can take up to 4 thousand passengers and is worth 450 million euro

Since a few days now, the 450-million-euro cruise ship Costa Concordia is sinking deeper into the sea before Italy's Tuscan coast. As chances sink, that the rescue divers will find the still missing people alive in the vessel, other problems and questions arise. Is there a high risk of environmental damage due to the tons of diesel oil in the ship? Will it be possible to rescue the cruise ship or will it be declared as a total loss? How will ingenieur's remove the super-size ship?


BBC-news has taken different possible szenarios into account:

1) Before it is possible to remove or try to rescue the ship specialists have to figure out how much damage the rock, which the ship hit in this fatal night, has made. Moreover fears grow that diesel could flew out of the vessel and in this case it will be the first priority to cease the dangerous liquid from flowing into the sea. The major of the island nearby has called the vessel an "environmental-time-bomb" and hopes that it will be possible to pump the fuel out.

2) As the this enormously huge ship is worth 450 million euro, the owners maybe will try to save the whole, or at least part of it. In this case, the vessel must be brought into an upright position. It may be possible to use air filled balloons for this purpose and once brought into an upright position, the ship could be brought away by tugs. Nevertheless, if it is not possible to fix the damage made by the rock on the bottom of the ship, this method may not work. On BBC they report that there was a similar rescue mission in 1987, but in fact this ship was only a quarter of the size of the Costa Concordia. But not only the big size of the ship can be a problem when trying to save it. Given the huge damage, it may be just cut into pieces and taken away.



3) No matter if it will be possible to save the ship or not, personal belonging of the passengers and crew members have to be rescued our of the vessel. Moreover there is a huge amount of food on the ship, which will start to smell after a while and can't be just left in the sea. Furthermore the owner of the cruise ship will definitely try to save at least parts of the ship, the interieur and expensive devices.



4) What about insurance?

What's the deal with insurance?

• A normal salvage operation to recover a ship is paid for by the ship's insurers
• But if a ship becomes a write-off and has very residual value under scrap, then the wreck removal operation is paid for by those underwriting the liabilities of the ship owner

Source: International Salvage Union

No matter what the owners of the Costa Concordia will decide, in the end the tragedy of this incident is not the fact, that a cruise ship worth this enormous amount of money is maybe lost forever. The tragedy is, that an uncertain number of people died on this ship and a huge number of passengers and crew members who survived will always remember this terrible night when they had to experience such a terrible event.

for further information: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16573312

r.s.

Predictions of life in 100 years time

Last week we've posted ten 100-year predictions made by American engineer John Elfreth Watkins in 1900.  Now BBC published twenty top predictions for life 100 years from now made by readers of their website. Many predictions made by Watkins were considered as 'almost impossible' but they came true. So it's interesting to know what are the predictions for the next 100 years.

Here is an article where you can find  Twenty top predictions for life 100 years from now suggested by readers and commented by futurologists Ian Pearson and Patrick Tucker.

So  twenty top predictions are:
1. Oceans will be extensively farmed and not just for fish (Jim 300)


2. We will have the ability to communicate through thought transmission (Dev 2)


3. Thanks to DNA and robotic engineering, we will have created incredibly intelligent humans who are immortal (game_over)


4. We will be able to control the weather (mariebee_)


5. Antarctica will be "open for business" (Dev 2)


6. One single worldwide currency (from Kennys_Heroes)


7. We will all be wired to computers to make our brains work faster (Dev 2)


8. Nanorobots will flow around our body fixing cells, and will be able to record our memories (Alister Brown)


9. We will have sussed nuclear fusion (Kennys_Heroes)


10. There will only be three languages in the world - English, Spanish and Mandarin (Bill Walker)


11. Eighty per cent of the world will have gay marriage (Paul)


12. California will lead the break-up of the US (Dev 2)


13. Space elevators will make space travel cheap and easy (Ahdok)


14. Women will be routinely impregnated by artificial insemination rather than by a man (krozier 93)


15. There will be museums for almost every aspect of nature, as so much of the world's natural habitat will have been destroyed (LowMaintenanceLifestyles)


16. Deserts will become tropical forests (jim300)


17. Marriage will be replaced by an annual contract (holierthanthou)


18. Sovereign nation states will cease to exist and there will be one world government (krozier93)

19. War by the West will be fought totally by remote control (LowMaintenanceLifestyles)

20. Britain will have had a revolution (holierthanthou)