Humor4u

The continuing saga - The replacement of capitalism with "debtism" - let the record show 2007-2012 to be the transition time-frame. Investment is a strategy of risking capital in the hope of yielding a profit. The higher the risk the greater the "implied" future reward. We are at a point where the risk of investing in anything is so obviously a losing gambit, I believe the usefulness of the strategy is no longer appropriate or even tenable as an economic "system." What we have now is an economic environment which is tantamount to loans becoming tender for investment in debt, debt supporting more debt--hardly a capitalistic scenario. I visualize a left arm giving a right arm a transfusion while a left and right leg are bleeding profusely, it may look comforting to the patient but in reality the final outcome will not be denied. Death will occur unless the blood flows are stanched and the deficit is replaced. In the case of the economy the source of replenis...

April 30th is celebrated in the USA and some other countries as Honesty Day. To mark this day, Billy Joel's classic ballad was an obvious choice for my upper-intermediate students but then I also decided to develop some activities around it. The activity outlined below is suitable for both teen and adult learners at Upper-Intermediate (B2) level and up Outline Step 1 - Discussion Before the discussion you can brainstorm with your students examples of dishonesty (e.g. lying, cheating in an exam, stealing etc) Step 2 - Situations I found a quiz on the CBS website which I adapted for this activity. I was very tempted to use "What would you do?" to get the students to practise hypothetical modal would but "What do you do?" seemed more natural in the given context. Step 3 - Song Gapfill activities with songs can be a trite affair; however using them before listening is highly beneficial especially if you gap parts of a collocation or another common expression - and s...

Finding and aggressively treating non-symptomatic disease that would never have made people sick , inventing new conditions and re-defining the thresholds for old ones: will there be anyone healthy left at all?

This activity based on Beyonce's song is suitable for older teens and adults at pre-intermediate level and up. The lesson plan is based on the listening activity template I blogged about earlier (click here ). An Interactive WhiteBoard (IWB) is desirable but not essential. IWB techniques Two IWB techniques are used here: in the pre- and post-listening stages of the lesson. Drag-and-Drop Display the  If I were.. . activity on IWB and elicit from students which statement should go in which column ( Boys' answers / Girls' answers ). Drag them to the appropriate columns or get one of your students to do it. There might be some confusion here as the statements should not correspond with what they do but with what they would do (if they were boys/girls). This later can be exploited to focus on the hypothetical nature of would. Erase-and-Reveal Colour over the answers on IWB page 3 with white ink. Then reveal one by one as you go through the answers with the class. The rest of th...

From my contribution to the Cochrane Collaboration blog: Cochrane @ PubMed Health If "Cochrane" and " CD005032 " aren't currently part of your worldview, you can read more about the Cochrane Collaboration here .

INTERLUDE Our Electric Universe Stay Tuned...

Evidence-based should mean there is a systematic approach behind the work seeking to minimize bias and rely as much as possible on research that also minimizes bias. You can read more about the basic principles here .