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Bilderberg 2012 date and location confirmed: from May 31st to June 3rd in Chantilly, Virginia (US). Bilderberg Meetings Once again the secretive and mysterious gathering of global elitists will inspire controversy and anxiety among the fraternity which suspects the gathering represents a cabal of International power-mongers intent on molding the world into a place of advantage to them, and according to some, ostensibly at the expense of average citizens around the globe. Count me as one of those. Although not privy to what or why such sinister ulterior motives may be within the "Bilderberg Group" agenda... we do have an inkling as to the purpose of them, they have not been shy to divulge. -  Develop our plan for the world. -  March towards a world government. By means of... supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers! What could possibly go wrong with that, do you suppose? In scope the Bilderberg group comprises approximately 150 exclusively invited l

We often read endless debate about who creates jobs. Depending upon a particular agenda many factions claim credit for job creation. Typically, the rich, entrepreneurs or even governments lay claim to the phenomena of job creation, each usually cries for support or additional personal advantage because of their claimed "contribution" in the matter of job creation. In these cases the job creation claims are nonsensical and in fact may be fraudulent claims if leveraged to obtain funding from the public purse. The fact is... non of these claimants creates jobs, it is more probable these factions contribute more to job loss, not job creation. Who or what then REALLY creates employment opportunity? Simply, demand for products or services does. If you wanted to ascribe job-creation credit to a faction it would be to the consumer faction--a collective of ordinary people who want or need specific goods and services. If a product, good or service is in demand the producer of it is mot

Many watch and wait as the slow motion demolition collapse of the global economy draws gradually to its certain conclusion. Although the event is protracted--taking 48 months thus far, the stunning spectacle has unfolded as though a prescript was activated much like the planned demolition of a tired and graceless building--one too old and worn to be worth renovating. Unlike the planned demolition of a brick and mortar building, the demolition of the global economy came as a huge "surprise" to folks "expert" in the field of economics. It seems only common folks with a passing knowledge of gravity and the immutable laws of unsustainable activity were not surprised. In any event the "charges" were placed (derivatives and other forms of larceny) and the firing current sent (un-payable I.O.U's) ... the rest... like they say is now history. This demolition seems to have suffered an unfathomable lack of governance, regulation, oversight and any form of post-c

Introducing students to the idea of lexical priming and a web tool called Netspeak Photo by Tzvi Meller In my previous post from the For the classroom category I shared a lesson idea which I developed for Honesty Day celebrated on 30 April (click  here  to see it). Apart from the song and discussion activities, students also read three articles from the  Breaking News English  website. To lead in to the articles I cut up the three headlines and asked my students to unjumble them, i.e. put the words in the right order. With hindsight I realised that I'd set up my students to fail as one of the headlines read: Homeless man in credit card honesty You often hear of  credit card fraud  (or perhaps  credit card debt )   but  credit card honesty  is an unlikely combination in a linguistic sense. The ability to unjumble sentences is not only a matter of syntactic knowledge but also lexical competence. Hence it is much easier to unjumble sentences consisting of predictable word combinations

In the second installment of his thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable “Dissing Dogme” series (see here ), Hugh Dellar addresses the touchy topic of language input in Dogme but this time Task-Based Learning (TBL) is also thrown in the mix. Why has TBL come under attack? I enjoy reading Hugh Dellar’s posts, especially his latest anti-Dogme series which he pulls off with such ease and eloquence (and often withering sarcasm). For those who don’t know, Hugh Dellar is an advocate of the Lexical Approach and, together with Andrew Walkley, the co-author of Innovations and Outcomes , the only EFL textbooks available on the market written from a lexical perspective (you can read my very favourable post about Innovations here ) I’ve always thought that TBL and Lexical Approach with their focus on meaning and the emphasis on use and exposure are close cousins. That’s why I was surprised to see that while pulling Dogme to pieces Hugh Dellar also talks disparagingly of TBL. In doing so, he dr

The old adage refers to the futility of closing the stable doors AFTER the horses have escaped. Last of Japan's 50 reactors goes off-line --announced today. Before I properly begin I would like to express the sentiment that the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster which was precipitated by inadequate protection from easily predicted Earth Quakes and subsequent Tsunami waves will eventually be known as the zenith of man-caused disaster--in that untold very long term damage on a global scale will eventually be acknowledged and cited to be the worst carnage inflicted by the madness of mankind.. So vast is the ongoing emission of deadly radiation it may be decades before the full extent of the travesty is known. Japan this weekend became a nuclear-free nation for the first time in more than four decades, at least temporarily. This unusual circumstance was prompted by Japans' citizens who have lost complete faith and trust in their government and corporate masters. While closing all of the pl