Yolanda's blog

Alt-rock icon Amanda Palmer believes we shouldn't fight the fact that digital content is freely shareable — and suggests that artists can and should be directly supported by fans. Don't make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them. In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer (drop a dollar in the hat for the Eight-Foot Bride!), she examines the new relationship between artist and fan.   TRANSCRIPT: CLICK HERE

If you’ve never heard of the American singer-songwriter known as Rodriquez, perhaps it’s because he reached his height of unlikely popularity in South Africa during the 1970s. After two albums that flopped in the U.S., Rodriquez’s songs improbably made their way to South Africa and spread like wildfire via bootlegs, motivating a generation of youth to join protests against the Apartheid regime of the time. Searching for Sugar Man  is a 2012 Swedish–British–Finnish documentary, directed and written by Malik Bendjelloul, which details the efforts in the late 1990s of two Cape Town fans, Stephen "Sugar" Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, to find out whether the rumoured death of American musician Sixto Rodriguez was true and, if not, to discover what had become of him.  On 10 February 2013, the film won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary at the 66th British Academy Film Awards in London, and two weeks later it won...

   

Watch the video and find out how global warming and deforestation are melting the vast snow fields of Mount Kilimanjaro. Complete the following statements: 1-Mount Kilimanjaro is also known as __________________. 2-It is located in ____________________. 3-People travel there to ____________and______________. 4-Ernest Hemingway described the ice fields as________________. 5-The glaciers are a vital source of ___________ and __________ water. 6-Since 1912, the glaciers ________________ by more than 80%. 7-The NASA satellite has been taking pictures for _____________. 8-As the Kilimanjaro is located in the tropical area, glaciers _____. 9-Deforestation means that trees _________ in large quantities. 10-Some consequences of the loss of the glaciers include: __________ and__________. KEY: 1-the roof of Africa 2-North Eastern Tanzania 3-climb the mountain_and view the gracier-covered peak 4-wide as the world, great high and unbelievably white in the sun 5-drinking_ and ...

A fertility doctor says that he can help parents choose a lot more than the baby's gender. Hattie Kauffman reports on the controversy surrounding designer babies. PGD was created to screen for _____________________. It was then used for ___________________. By next year eye-colour will have been determined with an 80% _____________. Dr Jeffrey Steinberg is a pioneer in ___________________. Kirsten and Matt Landon used Dr Steinbers’s clinic to select ______________. Most people support PGD when it comes to ___________________ serious diseases. Dr Steinberg is in favour of using technology for _____________________. Dr Caplan thinks we will be able to choose certain characteristics just because we will have a(n) _____________________ for them. Dr Caplan disagrees with the idea that a doctor has the obligation to offer his patients the possibility to choose if the technology is ______________________. Dr. Caplan wonders if everything is ____________________ at the fertil...

When we talk about social networks, we think of Facebook, Twitter, _____________________, etc. When Gerry uses the word social , he is thinking about _____________________ encounters. When Gerry was growing up, he used to _____________________ to meet his friends. The difference between children these days and children 50 years ago is that today’s children spend all their time _____________________. There is much less social _____________________ nowadays. People have fewer social _____________________ than they used to. Dave states that playing _____________________ is not a face-to-face activity. In Dave’s opinion, social networks are just a(n) _____________________. If there is a problem, it is the people who are using them who are _________________ for it, not social networks. According to Dave, social networks can be used in an anti-social way, for example: stalking a(n) ______________________. online ______________________. However, social networking __________...