Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Oral Presentation - Live Cooking Show

Berry Mousse by Xavier








































Our Cook/Speaker did a wonderful job, first, he prepared a very professional Power Point presentation and explained the main points of this appliance, and then he actually whipped up a dish: a berry mousse! absolutely divine.

But another student, a guy, could not resist the temptation to crack an easy sexist joke: 

too many buttons for a any man to handle! 
don't you think? 

and we all laughed about it. Then, to top it off, he added:

I still can't figure out 
how you managed to get the white of the eggs!! 


all right guys, 
next topic for an oral composition will be how to crack an egg,

was my modest contribution; at which point we were all rolling down the aisles and i took this picture above.





Sunday, February 26, 2012

Oral Presentation - Personal

Alba Iulia University


XII Conference on Sports Medicine (Seville 2009),
Ladder Workouts


IX Conference on Women's Studies (Madrid 2009), 
Orgasm and Nirvana in  Female Representation


54th ILA Conference (New York 2009),
Using ICT to recreate a Private Tuition Environment in a Multi-functional Classroom
Cognate Bilingual Dictionaries


1st Conference on Spanish and Portuguese Studies (Philadelphia 2008), 
Cognate Bilingual Dictionaries

32nd Spanish Associaction of American and British Studies Conference (Mallorca 2008), 

Cognate Bilingual Dictionaries


1st. Conference on Intercultural Issues (Alba Iulia 2008), 
LiveScripts and Cognate Bilingual Dictionaries

1st Ibero-American Summit on Sports Education (La Habana 2008), 
Ladder Workouts
Urban and School Orchards in Physical Education


VI Conference on Sports Education (Barcelona 2008).
Ladder Workouts



Friday, February 24, 2012

Oral Presentation - Pueblo Ingles



Contents to be included

Oral Presentation - Wood Solutions for Construction



OUTLINE:
  1. WOOD - A BUILDING MATERIAL OF THE 21st CENTURY
  2. CLT (cross-laminated timber)
  3. LVL (laminated veneer lumber)
  4. RECENT PROJECTS
  5. QUESTIONS




WOOD AS A BUILDING MATERIAL:
BENEFIRTS:
  1. Wellbeing. Wood is very warm material. Massive wood has a great warmth capacity. In summer the atmosphere is pleasantly calm and in winter smoothly warm.
  2. Appearance. Wood is beautiful material. Natural forms and colours. Natural surroundings bring up creativity.
  3. Ecology. Wood is a renewable resource and using it supports the global sustainable development. As a tree grows it binds carbon dioxide to itself and slows down the global warming on its behalf. The materials of a genuine wood house are recyclable after decades.
Forest is a wood factory which produces wood using only solar energy. In processing and production , wood requires far less energy than other building materials.
  1. Economy. Wood is an inexpensive material.
PROBLEMS:
  1. Fire.
  2. Durability.
  3. Design limitations.


ENGINEERED WOOD
Engineered wood, also called composite wood, man-made wood, or manufactured board; includes a range of derivative woodproducts which are manufactured by binding the strands, particles, fibersof wood, together with adhesives, to form composite materials. These products are engineeredto precise design specifications. Engineered wood products are used in a variety of applications, from home construction to commercial buildings to industrial products. The products can be used for replace steel in many building projects.



CLT (cross-laminated timber)
Is a product used in prefabricated construction.Spruce boards are technically dried in modern factories and glued together crosswise with a minimum of three layers.

MANUFACTURE:
  1. Cut spruce tree
  2. Select trunks
  3. Cut in planks
  4. Do finger joint union
  5. Glue the cross-laminate timber boards
  6. Put wacuum pressure on the panels

BENEFIRTS:
WHEN PLANNING
Free planning without being bound to one grid, using approved building materials in the largest dimensions
A high level of pre-fabrication facilitates reasonably priced simple building
The simplest building component construction and detailed planning
Heat-, sound- and fire-proofing combined in one building component
Minimum planning risk due to detailed planning documents

WHEN BUILDING
The shortest building times
Economical building due to large elements
Exact superstructure due to accurately fitting building components
The simplest, prepared connections
Only one type of joints or fasteners required
Problem-free interior work
Minimum sealing work required and high level of airtightness due to low number of joints
The simplest handling of elements due to integrated fitting aids

WHEN CONSTRUCTING
Identical elements for all applications (wall /ceiling / roof)
Bracing building components, no extra bracing measures required
The option of bridging wall openings at room height without lintels using LenoTec ceiling boards
Biaxial load relief with floor elements
Building components support and create space at the same time

WHEN LIVING IN LENO MASSIVE CONSTRUCTION
Long-lasting, solid wooden construction
Ecological, CO2 storing material
Building component construction vapour permeable
Pleasant, warm living climate due to solid, moisture regulating building components
Up to 15% more living area compared to alternative types of construction due to slim constructions with the best thermal insulation
The best tried and tested sound-proofing results
High level of thermal insulation due to heavy building components


LVL (laminated veneer lumber)
Laminated veneer lumber (LVL) is an engineered woodproduct that uses multiple layers of thin woodassembled with adhesives. It offers several advantages over typical milled lumber: it is stronger, straighter, and more uniform. It is much less likely than conventional lumber to warp, twist, bow, or shrink due to its composite nature. Made in a factory under controlled specifications, LVL products allow users to reduce the onsite labor. They are typically used for headers, beams, rimboard, and edge-forming material.


MANUFACTURE:
  1. Cut spruce tree
  2. Select trunks
  3. Rotary pile get 3mm veneers
  4. Glued together lengthwise



BENEFIRTS:
The same + no design limitations.

RECENT PROJECTS
  1. Barcelona
  2. Alp
  3. Seville
  4. Marrakech (sky light)


Seville




Oral Presentation - Caving





Specific vocabulary used in the presentation on caving


pitchblack(adj.) totally black
helmet hardhat that protects the head
headlamp a lamp to be worn on the head (e.g. attached to the helmet)
wetsuit a suit that keeps you warm in the water
through trip a caving tour that leaves the cave through another entry
speleothems various types of stone formations that can be found in caves
stalactite speleothemgrowing vertically from the ceiling
straws very thin, long stalactite
stalagmite speleothemgrowing vertically on the ground, under a stalactite
column a stalctite that has met its stalagmite (or the ground)
flowstone a speleothem that looks like a frozen liquid
drapery a curtainlike, hanging and often thin sheet of flowstone
pitch a vertical drop in / into a cave
to abseil (br.), rappel (am.) to let oneself down on a rope (from German: abseilen)
to belay to secure
carabiner/ maillon a metal loop that can be opened
to tackle to equip a pitch with a rope
anchor belaypoint
harness a safety system that indirectely connects the rope to the caver
caving gear equipment used by a caver
descender a device that enables controlled “abseiling
ascender a device that allows one to climb up a rope
to jam to block
cowtails a set of short ropes, equipped with carabiners that allows cavers to attach themselves to belay anchors




Carnival - Sitges





Thursday, February 9, 2012

Sailing on the Sea of Dreams




Dreaming the Future of Dreaming


It will not be long before neurologists map out all altered states of mind - dreams, lucid dreams, meditation, trance, rapture, orgasm, epilepsy... - and relate them not only to the mystic and religious revelations of prophets and shamans from the beginning of mankind but also, on one hand, to artistic and scientific creativity and, on the other hand, to our everyday and everybody's divine intuition.

Dream research will also show that these states of illumination can be accomplished by sheer true desire and love as well as traditional fasting, prayer, music and dancing - or yoga. Science and the media will make this phenomenon so obvious that any religious leader or therapist will never ever again claim to have any monopoly of a Truth that belongs to all of us - just like dreaming.

Dream research will branch out into as many categories as fields of expertise, with groups of specialists working and dreaming together old and new solutions, particularly in social sciences and economy. Dreaming diaries will display a standard design, and after being used - preferably with cinematographic language - their pages could be stamped and legalized for interchange among scholars.

Dreaming cruises will still be more popular than they are today. There will be Dreaming Temples again. People will still celebrate Christmas, the 4th of July, Saint John's Eve, being totally aware they are actually celebrating the solstices and our connection to Mother Earth. Rituals of birth, coming of age, marriage and death will be experienced in another richer way and a 'good night' expression will become a particularly meaningful kind of farewell: Happy dreams! 



Domenec Mendez 

Saturday, February 4, 2012

CSDL 2012 - The Da Vinci Code Collaborative Writing



Syntactic and Style Analisis of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
As an example of Collaborative Writing


Dan Brown required 88 sentences in his prologue of The Da Vinci Codeto lure more than a hundred-million readers and hook them up to his mystery novel about the Holy Grail, the sacred femenine and the supposed marriage between Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ. Obviously, all grammar and style features, however simple might seem at first, have successfully arisen everybody's interest: quite a few verbless noun phrases, mostly copulative and intransitive verbs in simple or coordinate sentences, subordinate clauses linked with colloquial connectors, fifteen gerund clauses, frequent dislocation of complements -anastrophes- and use of adjuncts, quite a few apparently naive repetitions, numerous omissions of relative pronouns and auxiliary verbs, and figures of speech reduced to little more than one single personification.

Most of these features are more common in spoken language and, therefore, confere the prologue a very colloquial -almost informal- style which eases up the reader's understanding of the action at the same time that it increases our curiosity about the reasons for the murder and the secret kept worthy of one's life.

As an educator and amateur writer, it is impossible to resist the temptation of a more extensive analysis of the rest of chapters to confirm -or not- these and other features of the novel in an obvious attempt to break the code of Dan Brown's artistic feat. My victims have been four classes of credit and non-credit English language students including a class group of teachers and professors. Each student has been given a chapter of the novel to analyze and, then, deliver a guided composition with their results which put together with an introduction, objectives and conclusions would conform a perfect example of collaborative writing, ready to publish and perdure for further researching endavours and comparisons with other linguistic sources like movie transcripts, classic novels, articles from newspapers or magazines, spoken records, etc...

My students' conclusions have proved more accurate than anticipated, uncovering a subtle connection between the grammar choices -in narrative or direct speech- and the characters' psychological traits. Therefore, revealing a deeper richness of style than usually attributed to the author. Besides, we will have to agree that the plot is extremely complex which together with the vast variety of topics researched or mentioned account for the tremendous success of the novel. Dan Brown has striken a cultural nerve, someone said; personally, I modestly think he has drawn from Jung's collective unconscious, that is, everybody's secret knowledge, convictions and dreams.

CSDL 2012 - Linguistics and Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence






Linguistics and Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence.

All attendants to the course on Multiple Intelligences organized by Pilgrims at University of Kent, United Kingdom, last Summer, were to perform a final class project that we decided to call: MIMU (an acronym standing for either Multiple Intelligences Museum or simply My Musem). The  performance was meant to recreate each one of the seven intelligences in Gardner's theory in relation to applied linguistics and share our designed activities with the rest of attendants to other Pilgrim's courses -about three hundred students every two weeks.

So when our trainers gave us a formal explanation of our assignment, it triggered off the memory of a recent pub conversation about the Maori dance held before rugby matches which one of my colleagues had shown on stage in a school festival; and it occurred to me that we could rehearse and peform a simplified version of the dance as a warm-up, an energizing or ice-breaking activity.









My colleague -a history teacher in a bilingual program, current rugby coach and ex-semi-professional player- was puzzled at first, but eagerly accepted my suggestion and we had a ball with our museum visitors. It turns out,  the Programme Director used to practice rugby at school and he joined us in one of our dances while we were videotaped for promotion, so we were publically congratulated with all classmates performing our Maori dance.

One of the conversations with a primary school teacher and visitor of our bodily-kinesthetic work station was particularly interesting. We concluded that while kindergarden and primary school have unintendedly but effectively considered all five doors or entry points to convey meaning and content to students, including music, dancing, songs, games, etc...  that approach usually stops at secondary education. The whole experience has led me to collect all my bodily-kinesthetic activities in an attempt to share them with the rest of the teaching community, learn from everybody -which is the purpose of this presentation- and publish our activities and conclusions:

1. A web-quest to identify a set of Paleolithic and Neolithic venuses served the pupose of illustrating a different esthetic perspective of human and female representation to prevent anorexia and bulimia, then students used clay to recreate one venus of their own.

2. Newaza – Ground Techniques to link with a coursebook unit on extreme sports,

3. Massage – Giving each other a Rub to show trust and care for others,


4. Human Castles to link with a coursebook unit on traditions and customs,


5. a Karaoke session with choreography to memorize linguistic content.


Thursday, February 2, 2012

III Edicion del Salon MiEmpresa - Madrid

This entry is meant to express our gratitude for the invitation to the conference above.

LiveScripts has a tremendous growing potential still in difficult times like this and not only in our country but also worldwide, particularly in emerging markets like China, Malaysia or even India.

More than fundings, this endavour is in need of agreements with companies and institutions trusting in our full potential.

Thank you.



Mission Statement

LiveScripts, G-64961121, has a legal framework to market a magazine featuring complete movie transcripts in original version with their translation as reading guides previous to the projection; and addressed to the general public, teachers and students. We pay royalties of trasncripts published in paper. Therefore, this blog includes a number of movie transcripts, some with their translation, activities, key answers and link to the video. See Index for a list.

Another block of entries focuses on activities related to bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, and teaching resources like guided debates, links to personal publications, proposals to administrations, business plan and external contributions.


LiveScripts-Guiones, G-64961121, posee el marco legal para comercializar una revista con los diálogos de una película en versión original traducida como guía de lectura previa a la proyección, y dirigida al público en general, docentes y estudiantes. Incluimos, por tanto, las transcripciones completas de ciertas películas, algunas con su traducción correspondiente, actividades, soluciones y enlace al vídeo.

Otro bloque de entradas se focaliza en actividades relacionadas con la inteligencia corporal-cinestésica y otros recursos didácticos como debates guiados sobre paridad de genero o la vida tras la muerte, así como enlaces a publicaciones personales, propuestas educativas, plan de empresa y contribuciones externas.
 

V EASLCE - Yague Speaks


"NATURA LOQUENS": 
Eruptive Dialogues,  Disruptive Discourses


Yagüe Speaks


The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 and the Amendments of 1994 under President Bill Clinton granted indians the right to use psychoactive cactus peyote for ceremonial purposes, a practise recalling the consumption of soma among the Indo-Iranians and the Mithraic Misteries of Rome -perhaps preserved today in the Eucharist liturgy so well portrayed in Hair. On these regards, the Tree of Knowledge might well stand as a symbol for both the Neolithic revolution and the primal cause -in the shape of an amanita muscaria, for example- of our linguistic capability and abstract thought just like Terence McKenna suggests.

Therefore, not only does nature in the form of ayahuasca speak but also shouts the disolution of boundaries and the unity with everything -beyond the symbiotic relationship between animals and plants in our interchange of oxigen and dioxid. The vomits paved the way to orgasmic sighs and the fractal patterns evolved into living entities whose lucid message spoke of Jung's collective unconscious or Gaia's consciousness directing our paths of warriors, like in a school of fish or flock of birds, towards -figurative and literally- a single world army.

Only Unity will liberate us from the chains of anxiety, insatisfaction, fear and consumism on which biased publicity pray. If folk tales of Snowhite and Cinderella hide the rebirth of the sacred feminine, Tom and Jerry encarnate the new balance of ying/yan and The Dancing Trees of Walt Disney's Fantasia 2000 echo this experience: Nature has a will of her own.

10TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WOMEN'S STUDIES - Isis



10TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WOMEN'S STUDIES // X JORNADAS INTERNACIONALES DE ESTUDIOS DE LA MUJER
TOPOGRAFÍAS DOMÉSTICAS Y GÉNERO // NEGOTIATING GENDERED SPACES

Isis 

or the eneolithic morality of the sacred feminine 

by D. Mendez


Needles to say, one of the gendered spaces to negotiate is that of spiritual guidance. Accused of encarnating evil since the Genesis of history, expelled from early Christianity by the Synod of Nicaea and condemned again during the Catar heressy, women have just recently recovered part of their spiritual leadership in the inter-religious, multicultural Riverside Church of Manhattan, Protestant temples and tribal rituals, but she is still ostraziced of most others.
Nevertheless, modern scanning techniques of brain activity (Carter, 1999; Rubia, 2003) have depleted ecstasy and priesthood of their past male-dominated legitimacy and have turned religion into only a tradition as old as the written word. But prior to this, there seems to be quite some evidence of gender parity in the sacred matters of the paleolithic (Adovasio, 2008).
Moreover, according to historical research (Eisler, 1987) and linguistic evidence, early neolithic settlements with more egalitarian social structures were swept away by tribes of cattle breeders, dispossessed and mercenaries with a martial and patriarcal ideology -the expansion of Indo-European languages and the Hebrew exode described in the Bible being two obvious paradigms.
Therefore, more than sharing the altar of our churches, our most urgent challenge consists precisely of bringing back those more egalitarian moral values: the philosophy by which a simple couple of a man and a woman represent all pairs of opposites -day and night, life and death...- and our embrace stands for the union of opposites, the fertility of our fields, the prosperity of our lives (Mendez, 2010).
This approach points out a new alternative to Dutch and Swedish policies to deal with prostitution, that is, a more resposible attitude than simply ignoring this sordid reality (Ayen, 2010): sacralizing sexuality and legalizing the oldest profession as the religious cult to Ishtar it was once and is still practiced in modern India.
This train of thought reminds me of Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood (Paint your Wagon, 1968) as forty-niners during the Gold Rush in the town meeting in which the only remedy for Marvin's jealousy -married to the only woman in town- consisted of assalting a coach, kidnapping six French bawds and taking them to No Name City:
Soon there'd be another saloon... And another gambling hall... And hotels!
Property would shoot straight up. They'd make more money selling old claims than gold.
These men didn't come out here to forge a nation!
That's for men with a big dream, with visions of America's greatness. l'm warning you, if you want to turn us into a dreary boom town metropolis filled with nothing but millionaires, all you gotta do is put up one little, tiny two-storey cathouse!
l say let's put it to a vote, and any man opposed is a traitor!”
If Eve's original sin meant women's submission to men, the acknowledgement of the sacred character of human sexuality could bring about the redemption of humanity as well as the overcoming of our crisis of ideologies and markets.