London restaurants - EOI Aragón inglés B2 resuelto

A. Anchor & Hope

Great things at friendly prices come from the open kitchen at this packed, no-reservations, leading gastropub on the Cut in Waterloo: pot-roast duck and chicken pithivier (puff pastry pie) are two standouts. It's cramped, informal, and highly original, and there are great dishes for groups, like slow-roasted leg of lamb. Expect to share a table, too.

B. Boxwood Café

Attached to the Berkeley and in the Gordon Ramsay stable, the Boxwood is the best uptown but relaxed place to dine in Knightsbridge, with opulent marble, brown, and greens. The New Yorkstyle restaurant is open late (until midnight Thursday-Saturday) and set lunch is useful at £28. Favorite dishes range from Orkney scallops to yellowfin tuna, and veal burger to treacle tart. Service is top-notch, and you'll find a fashionable buzz.

C. Great Queen Street

Expect crowds and a buzz at Covent Garden's leading gastropub that showcases classic British dishes in a burgundy and bare oak-floor-and-table setting. Old-fashioned dishes like pressed tongue, mackerel and gooseberry, and mussels and chips may be revived from a bygone era, but Londoners adore them. Dishes for the whole table—like venison pie or seven-hour shoulder of lamb—are highly convivial. There's little for nonmeat eaters, and no dinner Sunday.

D. Skylon

Located in the Royal Festival Hall, Skylon is the Southbank Centre's destination restaurant/bar/grill. Spacious, attractive, and with huge picture windows with spectacular views of the Thames, Skylon guarantees a classy pre- or post-performance meal in the '50s Festival Hall.

Against a background of dancing and music, concertgoers sip lush cocktails at the central bar and dine on lamb and harissa at the grill, or Anjou pigeon, spelt risotto, and sea bass with bok choy in the restaurant. The food is accomplished, and the setting impressive.

E. Yauatcha

It's a superbly lighted slinky Soho classic. Well designed by Christian Liaigre—with black granite floors, aquarium, candles, and a starry ceiling—the food is a match for the seductive setting.

There's wicked dim sum (try prawns or scallops), crispy duck rolls, silver cod, fancy cocktails, and tea and colorful cakes in the first-floor tearoom. Note the quick table turns, and ask to dine in the more romantic basement at night.

F. Cecconi's

Enjoy all-day buzz at this Italian brasserie opposite the Royal Academy on Burlington Gardens.

Between Savile Row and New Bond Street, clients pitch up for breakfast, brunch, and Italian tapas (cichetti) at the bar, and return for something more substantial later on. Ilse Crawford's green-andbrown interior is a stylish background for classics like veal Milanese, Venetian calves' liver, and tiramisu. Note: it's a nice pit stop during a shopping spree.

G. Scott's

Scott's is so hot that it's where the A-list go to celebrate. Founded in 1851, and recently renovated and reborn as a glamorous seafood haven and oyster bar, it draws beautiful people who pick at Cumbrae oysters, Red Sea prawns, and Stargazy pie. Standouts like cod with chorizo and padron peppers are to die for. Prices are high, but you're dining at the hippest joint in town.

H. Tayyabs

City finance boys, Asians, and medics from the Royal London Hospital swamp this high-turnover halal Pakistani curry canteen in Whitechapel. Expect queues after dark, and bear in mind it's BYOB, jam-packed, noisy, and mildly chaotic. Nonetheless, prices are dirt cheap and you can gorge on minced meat shami kebabs, skewed beef seekh kebabs, karahi chicken, or marinated lamb chops.

The decline in home cooking - EOI Extremadura inglés B2 resuelto

Image: Daragh Mc Sweeney

Once they were upheld as the paragons of feminine genius in the kitchen, but all that remains now of Les Mères de Lyon —the famous 20th-century French mother cooks— are their names. Mère Brazier may be written above the door of the restaurant at No. 12, Rue Royale in France's second major city, but there's a male chef in Eugenie Brazier's former kitchen. Mère Lea's stove at La Voûte (Chez Léa) is today tended by chef Philippe Rabatel and the restaurants of those equally renown priestesses, Mère Paulette Castaing and Marie Bourgeois, were long ago taken over by male chefs, who work very differently to their female forebears.

These bistros, or porte-pots as they were known, originated as places where the Lyon white-collar work force could stop and eat perfectly cooked, comforting, motherly food made from seasonal, often inexpensive ingredients.

Les Mères often worked with only one assistant, and their short menus and practical techniques are in marked contrast to the technique heavy "haute cuisine" prepared by brigades of male chefs today.

The decline in French home cooking—specifically the nurturing, bourgeois home cooking for which French women have always been admired-- joins a trend that has affected all major European nations as their societies and economic structures changed post World War II.

Home cooking is in decline in Southern Europe as it is in the northern and Nordic countries, yet in each there are variables in the style of change. It is happening faster in certain countries—such as the U.K., where total industrialization was complete in the 19th century—than others.

Analyzing the decline across these nations is mainly a matter of reading the figures for sales of convenience and fast food, and collecting statistics that mark change in attitude and trend. Market-research firm Euromonitor carried out a comprehensive study of changing habits across Europe from 2000–2007. It found that among large, less affluent populations in European countries, the take up of fast food and convenience food is increasing. The researcher's latest figures this year for sales of packaged food in the U.K., France, Italy, Denmark and Germany, for example, show an average increase of 15% in consumption.

But there is a parallel story of a much smaller number of wealthier women and men in the same countries becoming increasingly concerned about their health, trying organic and cooking fresh foods from scratch. When this group buys convenience food, they tend to buy the healthier, often natural or organic, option.

You cannot pin the demise of home cooking in European countries on a single issue. The loss of structured mealtimes can be put down to a number of causes including urbanization and smaller households, but the changing role of women in European society in the past 40 or 50 years is very significant. Exercising their right to equality in the workplace raises the family income and the hardpressed career woman relies more on prepared food or eating out when it comes to feeding her family. Mr. Marquis, an acclaimed chef, believes that aspirational tastes have put good traditional home cooking lower on the agenda in upwardly mobile European families. "In my youth, we had one car and ate very well on a budget supported only by my father's salary," he says. "Now everyone wants three cars, Apple technology and long-haul holidays, so both parents must work. Food becomes less significant," he adds.

There is the added dynamic that women are sometime sole breadwinners.

Their male partners can enthusiastically take up the home-cooking role. Male keenness for cookery remains in the margin of wealthier families, but there is a role reversal that fits with the eminence of chefs in the media and heading up kitchens in the world's "best restaurants."

Controversially, there is the accusation that liberated women (who gave up cooking) inadvertently generated a modern irresponsible food industry. The women that chose not to follow their mother and grandmother's career, left the door open. Had the food companies created a healthy surrogate for all and not just wealthy society—we might not have the fast-food industry and ensuing health problems, such as rising obesity. It is important to note that no feminist would have intended such an outcome, and that other environmental and economical factors have contributed to the problem.

It is not that women in Europe need leave their jobs and go back to housework, but families risk rearing a generation of "kitchen orphans," men and women who have never witnessed their parents cooking. There is no substitute for this; no popular TV chef can replace the effectiveness of the conversation about the right way to prepare a dish between mother and daughter, or indeed father and

son. The talented Les Mères gave up their kitchens to male chefs and their brigades of helpers, worn down by an unequal society that gave them too much work and little assistance, as did millions of stay-at-home mothers throughout Europe. In a culture where gender roles are more evenly balanced, there is a chance to revive the heroic, nurturing motherly food of each nation. It isn't just a sociological need, but an economic one. Mr. Marquis, whose life's work has been to emulate this, says a return to these basics is politically necessary. "In the past there were economic reasons for women getting out of the kitchen; now there is an economic reason for their simple, perfectionist cooking to be restored. This is the culture that is the envy of the world."

From The Wall Street Journal

The most powerful woman in Hollywood - EOI Castilla y León inglés B2 resuelto

On the morning of 5th September 1932, the Hollywood producer Paul Beern was found dead on the floor of the house he shared with his new wife, the then popular actress Jean Harlow. The housekeeper rang Harlow, one of MGM's most glamorous stars, who was staying with her mother, and her mother. in turn, knew just who to call: not the police, not 311 ambulance. She called Howard Strickling, MGM's head of publicity.

Strickling spoonfed stories to the gossip columnists. When actors were hired at MGM they were immediately sent to Strickling's office, where he would ask, after hearing their life story. 'Are you holding anything back? Is there anything embarrassing in your past that we should know about? If you tell me now. I can make sure anything like that stays out of the press.’ Contractually speaking, the film studios in those days virtually owned the stars who worked for them and stage-managed their lives, and when that wasn't possible, their lives were rewritten with happier endings. Strickling, in the words of his biographer, 'was as likely to arrange a wedding as cover up a death.'

Although film studios no longer own their stars, publicists still wield the power in Hollywood and one of the most powerful is Pat Kingsley. She is feared by the press and revered by her clients. Stories of her techniques are legendary. Believing overexposure to be one of the prime risks of celebrity, she will drastically curb the number of interviews her clients give, she will demand that her stars appear on the cover of magazines or not at all, that they have the right to veto over writers and photographers, that they get copy approval, and often she herself will be present throughout the interview. In short, she will ensure that nothing escapes her control. If she doesn't like what a writer or magazine has done with one of her clients, she is reputed to forbid access to all of her other clients for ever more -- and she represents everyone (or did until recently). In the past 18 months she has been fired by Tom Cruise in favour of his fellow Scientologist sister (resulting in outlandish behaviour that vindicates, to most eyes. Kingsley's conviction in exercising restraint.)

Still, no one who relies on celebrity interviews to keep their circulation up dares to cross Pat Kingsley. If you have ever read an interteriew with say, Al Pacino, or Jodie Foster or, in the past, Nicole Kitdman, Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise, and found it somewhat unrevealing, you have Kingsley to thank. It would he hard to overstate the reach of Kingsley's invisible touch. For instance. many of her clients have come to rely on her opinion so extensively that they ask her advice on scripts they are sent. Another example: the work of Kingsley's company is 30 per cent corporate — they represent big companies like American Express, Reebok, Cadillac, among others, and their aim is to fuse their entertainment contact with their corporate clients. So. for example, their film star clients are driven to the Oscar Awards in Cadillacs; for Tom Cruise's film, Minority Report, Kingsley arranged for it that Cruise would walk into a shopping mall in which the shops and advertisements that were seen all belonged to her corporate clients. Her influence may be subliminal, but that's why it works - on all of us.

When I told one of my Los Angeles friends I was coming to meet Pat Kingsley, she gasped and said: 'Here that's like saying you're coming to meet the Queen.' All this was rather awe-inspiring and with some unease I waited for Kingsley to arrive. She eventually walks into the room. At 73, she has greying ash-blond hair, a well-meaning look in her eye and a leisurely Southern accent that seems in its lilt, conspiratorially sly. Kingsley, of course. plays down her power. She believes that stars can't be manufactured any more and she says that it is all based on the quality of their work, and that is something she is not responsible for. When I suggest that some excellent actors don't get the attention they deserve, meaning that there is more in the publicity aspect than she is letting on, she replies sympathetically, 'That's always been the case and always will be. Some of our best actors still struggle mightily to get work.'

Adapted © The Observer Review 2005

EOI País Vasco inglés B2 resuelto - Au Renoir mister Franglais

The British are notoriously bad at learning foreign tongues. But with Franglais anyone could get by on holiday with just a petit peu of effort. If there is one foreign language that English speakers always seem to crack, it's Franglais.

Its rules are simple. Insert as many French words as you know into the sentence, fill in the rest with English, then speak it with absolute conviction. Although it wasn't known as such then, Franglais is found in Shakespeare and has probably been used for as long as the English and French have had to talk to each other.

But Miles Kington did it best. After all, he coined the name for this hybrid tongue. Kington studied languages, and it showed. In a long-running series of columns for Punch he satirised the earnest but doomed efforts of native English speakers to handle French. Like a phrase book, each of his "lessons" covered a particular situation.

Bodged attempts at foreign languages are as important as food poisoning to a good holiday anecdote, but Franglais is a daily reality for millions working in Europe, Africa and Canada.

The Canadian journalist Karl Mamer, author of a website on Franglais, says many Canadians speak "cereal box French", as they only get to practise it by reading the bilingual text on the back of the box in the morning.

When they then travel to French-speaking centres, like Montreal or Quebec City, their few words of French are used as a kind of peace offering to shopkeepers. He says they're thinking: ‘Look, I'm going to try speaking as much French as possible, showing you I'm making a sufficient effort, and then you please switch to your fluent English as soon as I've linguistically self-flagellated myself before you.’

Franglais might be good enough to buy your oignons, but it's different if you want to win votes.

Politicians running for office in an officially bilingual country need to try to master both languages, although some have made it to high office without knowing their coude from their elbow. According to Janyce McGregor, a producer who covers parliament for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, ‘they may be very clever, but their language skills are always going to be a factor.’

It's not just high office either. A Francophone bus passenger in Ottawa complained to the city transport authority last December that drivers must be bilingual, and be sent off for language training if necessary. But as Ms McGregor points out: ‘If people are bilingual, they probably won't apply to be bus drivers.’

In Canada, Franglais helps French and English speakers co-exist, even if it's a shoddy compromise for some. In France it is something quite different. It is a cultural attack. This is not the Franglais of the tourist asking awkwardly for a cup de cafe. What concerns them is the creeping advance of English words, especially American-English, into their language.

The Toubon Law, passed in 1994, was an attempt to restrict them. It makes French compulsory in government publications. Public bodies weed out English words and suggest French ones where they previously did not exist. So it was goodbye "e-mail", hello "courriel", although "le weekend" - for some the dark heart of Franglais - has survived.

London-based French journalist Agnes Poirier says those who suggest new words are often too late. ‘The man in the street will have already adopted English words to describe new trends.’

It's true that, like a really good French waiter, Franglais always seem to be hovering nearby with a suggestion. Need a three-word headline to sum up the man who has cost Societe Generale billions? Le Rogue Trader, as the Independent - Kington's own paper - described him last week.

So e-mails still swamp courriels on French web pages. And despite the Toubon Law, Ms Poirier says the internet has led to an invasion of English words, which are picked up by newspapers because they seem fashionable, and then find their way into speech.

But why does it matter? Ms Poirier's book, Touche, a French Woman's Take on the English, has plenty of examples of the English language adopting French words and phrases, even if some of them, like "double entendre", are not actually said in France. It's a kind of Franglais, but it has never seemed to bother anyone.

Other mixed languages like Spanglish and Denglisch (German and English) also exist without causing nearly so much anguish. The French see it differently because English is taking over the world and French isn't. English doesn't need defending, but French, once the European language of freedom and culture, does. And English is not just 600,000 eccentrically spelt words in a very large book, it is, to some, a symbol of Anglo-American cultural imperialism, the language of junk food. You might think we were talking about the last two speakers of a native American dialect, rather than French, which is used by more than 350 million people. But to some, a future of Franglais n'est pas un future at all.

Adapted from BBC.co.uk

Spanish supermarket chain finds recipe - EOI Asturias inglés B2

You are going to read an article about Mercadona, a popular Spanish supermarket chain.

As Country's Jobless Rate Approaches 25%, Mercadona Keeps Hiring and Boosting Sales Using a German Template

By D. BALL and I. BRAT

MADRID—Spain's unemployment rate is near 25%, retail sales have declined for 25 straight months and the country is closer than ever to a bailout from the European Central Bank. Yet supermarket chain Mercadona S.A. hired 6,500 employees last year, more than any Spanish company, and its sales increased 8% and remain on the rise.

The secret to its success: a German-style recipe for higher productivity that includes flexible working conditions, extensive employee training and performance-linked bonuses - a rare mix in Spain. As a result, the family-controlled retailer is fast becoming a model in a country urgently trying to rewrite the rules for its economy.

A decade ago, corporate Germany reached a compromise with employees who agreed to work more hours and for wages growing more slowly than productivity. In return, workers were awarded better job security, even in difficult times. Labour costs fell 1.2%, while productivity rose 9% between 1999 and 2006, according to Deutsche Bank. But in Spain, easy money silenced companies into accepting rigid labour contracts. Corporate earnings were artificially boosted by inflation, relieving the pressure to keep costs under control. The result: Spanish labour costs rose 23% over the same period.

"The whole country went over the top - including trade unions, businessmen, bankers and politicians," Juan Roig, Mercadona's billionaire owner, said at a company presentation this year.

Mercadona has become a point of reference in Spain, though it will take a while for anyone to copy it, says Luis Simoes, who runs the Spanish office of consulting firm Kantor Worldpanel. "Mercadona has invested in its employees for years and years." The chain had 1,356 stores and 70,000 permanent employees at the end of last year. Profit increased 19% to €474 million on €17.83 billion in revenue. The closely held company doesn’t release quarterly figures.

Mr. Roig's drive to transform Mercadona began in the early 1990s. Big international chains such as Carrefour S.A. started raising competitive pressure on Mercadona, which started as a butcher shop in eastern Spain in the 1970s. Mr. Roig decided that Mercadona needed to offer consistently low prices to compete. "We had to find a model that would differentiate us from our competitors," he says by email. Among his models was Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Mr. Roig visited his stores and noticed poorly stocked shelves and managers checking employee bags for stolen items at the end of shifts. He decided that temporary contracts - which then covered about 60% of Mercadona's workers - hurt morale. He abolished the practice. Today, about 90% of Mercadona workers have permanent, full-time contracts. At other big Spanish retailers, 60% of employees work part-time, according to the country's General Workers' Union.

Mercadona invests about €6,500 and four weeks of training in each new employee - largely unheard of in Spain. Employees receive an additional 20 hours of training a year. The Spanish government recently followed Mercadona's example by granting all workers in the country a right to 20 hours of training a year.

Mercadona also pays above-average wages and never has conducted mass layoffs. If the company hits certain profit targets, nearly all employees receive a bonus of up to two months' salary. In exchange, Mercadona requires dedication from its employees. They are sometimes called on to help with other jobs around a store, giving the company freedom to adjust to changes in shopper traffic. Workers are trained to keep a close eye on customer needs. When a shopper spends a long time before a fresh-food shelf, for example, an employee can offer help in around seven seconds, the company says.

Although Mercadona unions have expressed support for the company, the approach occasionally causes tension. Workers with minor medical conditions face pressure to consult company physicians instead of independent doctors who might authorize longer sick leave, some union officials say. A company spokesman says workers are free to visit any doctor and that under federal law, sick-leave can only be approved by state health-service doctors.

Adapted from online.wsj.com 23 October 2012

Native American tribe reclaims slice of the Hamptons after court victory - EOI Baleares inglés B2 resuelto

From a distance the teardrop-shaped peninsula looks just like any other bit of the famed Hamptons shoreline. Thick woods crowd down to the water’s edge and, through the trees, houses and roads can be glimpsed. But this land is not part of the Hamptons, neither is it really part of the United States anymore. This patch – in the middle of the playground of Manhattan’s social elite – is proudly and fiercely Native American country. Almost four centuries since its first contact with the white man and after a 32-year court battle that has just ended in victory, the tiny Shinnecock tribe has now been formally recognized by America’s federal government. The decision means that the Shinnecock, numbering some 1,300 members, many of whom live in deep poverty compared with their wealthy neighbours, can apply for federal funding to build schools, health centres and set up their own police force. It means its tiny 750-acre reservation is now a semi-sovereign nation within the US, just like much bigger and more famous reservations in the west. In order to qualify, the Shinnecock literally had to prove that it existed, submitting thousands of pages of tribal records. “Why do we need federal recognition to show we are who we are?” said Shinnecock leader Lance Gumbs as he sat in his office in the community centre. “It’s a humiliating, degrading and insensitive process. Why do Indian people have to go through that? No other peoples are treated like that.” Many believe that the lengthy and painful process that the Shinnecock has been forced to go through is explained by the tribe’s position bang in the middle of the Hamptons, the string of Long Island towns where rich New Yorkers come to party away the summers. The difference between Shinnecock land and the rest of the Hamptons is jarring. The reservation, signalled by a line of stalls selling cheap cigarettes, sits side by side with the town of Southampton, heart of the Hamptons scene. On the reservation, some roads are dusty and unpaved. The houses are sometimes ramshackle. Unemployment can be a problem for many Shinnecock members. Outside the reservation, on the streets of Southampton, stretch limos and black Lexuses prowl down streets lined with shops selling Ralph Lauren and Diane von Furstenberg. A real estate agent on Southampton’s main street happily advertises a local house going for $12.2 million. Historically – and indeed pretty much since Europeans first arrived in the area in the 1600s – the Shinnecock has been on the retreat. It lost land steadily as more and more Europeans began to farm its traditional territory, eventually leading to an agreement in 1703 that saw it confined to a broad swath of land around Southampton under a 1,000-year lease. However, in 1859 the pressure of development saw that deal scrapped by the settlers and the Shinnecock reduced to its current tiny holding. For years, tribal members then eked out a living working on white farms or helping local fishermen and whalers.

Now that is all set to change as a key part of federal recognition allows the Shinnecock to do the one thing that has changed Native American fortunes more than anything else in the last 100 years: build a casino. Gumbs now sees real power finally in Shinnecock hands. “We are going after everything we are entitled to,” he said. “I am not a big fan of Southampton. They were happy as long as we were the good little Indians in the corner. Well, that’s changed now.” Some of the Shinnecock feel that federal recognition – and the prospect of a casino – might be the beginning of a wider Shinnecock resurgence. In the white land grab of 1859, an area of land called the Shinnecock Hills was taken. Many Shinnecock held it to be sacred ground. It is now full of rich houses and the famous Shinnecock Hills golf club, with total real estate worth more than a billion dollars. The Shinnecock tribe has sued to get it back. 

Source: © Guardian News & Media 2010 First published in The Observer, 11/07/10

Support for domestic violence victims at risk - EOI Extremadura inglés B2 resuelto

New multi-agency schemes are under threat despite their success in helping women and children who have been abused

Tens of thousands of women most at risk of being seriously harmed or even killed by violent partners are not getting access to the help that could save them, domestic violence experts claim.

More than 28,000 adult and 40,000 child victims of domestic abuse were supported by a Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (Marac) last year – where agencies join together to help high-risk victims. Many have been raped, strangled and beaten. But they are a fraction of the 120,000 adults and 117,000 children at high risk of severe abuse, according to a new report out tomorrow.

More than 200 multi-agency schemes currently operate nationally – fewer than the 300 that experts estimate are needed. The resulting provision lottery forces some women to wait weeks before they get help.

Diana Barran, the chief executive of Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse (Caada), which produced the report, said: "In some areas there are local committed individuals, but other areas don't have those individuals and there is very little in the way of commitment."

She said the death of a child as a consequence of domestic abuse was often the catalyst for more resources being given to Marac teams.

The report warns that the new approach, first piloted in 2007, is being hampered because there is no legislation making Maracs statutory. They are vulnerable to being cut and even closed down, it warns. The future of the service is under threat, with funding due to run out in 2011, according to the charity, whose report calls on the Government to give legal protection to Maracs and to commit £120m in funding.

A national roll-out of the multi-agency approach, with support for the independent domestic violence advisers who play a key role, could save the taxpayer £740m a year, the report argues, by reducing the amount of time and money spent on dealing with repeat victims.

Up to 60 per cent of those helped by Marac report no further violence. And for every £1 spent on the multi-agency approach, at least £6 could be saved in direct costs to the police, health, criminal justice system and children's services.

The report comes amid fears that the economic climate could cause a surge in domestic violence. Although cases have declined recently, partially because of greater efforts by the police and the growth of specialist services, they remain prevalent, said Professor Gene Feder from Bristol University. Professor Feder, who advises health ministers on domestic abuse, added, "It's still incredibly common, and we still have a major problem. When it comes to health consequences it ranks up there with major causes of ill health such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. We are entering into years of economic pressure on households, which I think is going to manifest itself in increased violence."

Backing calls for more support for victims, Sandra Horley, the chief executive of Refuge, said: "Only one in four high-risk victims receives support from a Marac at present. That is simply not enough. All women and children experiencing domestic violence must have access to this level of support. It not only makes financial sense; it makes moral sense."

Wiltshire's chief constable, Brian Moore, the lead officer on violence and public protection at the Association of Chief Police Officers, warned: "Engagement in the multiagency process is on a voluntary basis and, as a result, there is inconsistency in attendance and they are not operating to their full potential."

The Government has pledged to ensure Maracs cover all of England and Wales. A Home Office spokesman said: "To ensure every area has a Marac in place and that every relevant statutory agency attends them, the Government can see a case for this change, but it is important that we consult fully on the best way of achieving this. It is our intention to launch a public consultation by the summer 2010."

The stakes could not be higher, said Ms Barran. "I have people ringing me who say, 'I just want you to know this woman would be dead if it hadn't been for the Marac'. This is the single most important advance in dealing with domestic violence since the start of the refuge movement and it would be a travesty to lose it."

Instant recall - EOI Navarra inglés B2 resuelto

I was idly flicking through blogs when I stumbled upon a website. It was a collection of polaroid photographs and gradually I began to realize that there was one for every day between March 1979 and October 1997. There was no way of telling who they belonged to, no commentary or captions, just the photos, arranged month by month like contact sheets. There was a sense, too, that I was not supposed to be there, browsing through these snaps of friends and family, of baseball games and picnics, but they were funny. There were pictures of things that did not exist any more as well as car parks and swimming-pools.

Slowly it became apparent whose collection it was – friends would come and go but one man regularly popped up over the 18 years documented, doing ordinary stuff like eating dinner or unusual things in faraway countries. In one picture he is proudly holding a skinned goat, in another he is on stilts. A lot of the time he looks serious while doing ridiculous things. During the 80s there are lots of pictures of him playing music with an avant-garde street performance outfit called Janus Circus. There are pictures of TV screens – ball games, Frank Zappa’s death, president Carter, Reagan and Clinton.

Then, in 1997, events take a dark turn. There are pictures of the photographer in hospital, then with a long scar across his head. He is gravely ill. For a short while his health appears to improve and he returns home. In October there is a picture of a ring, then two days later a wedding ceremony. But just a few weeks after that he is back in hospital with some friends from the early photos. On October 25 the series ends. The photographer has died.

Of course I was not alone in discovering this remarkable site. Since the end of May it has been passed from blog to blog across America. “The first I knew about it was when all my other websites started to closing down under the strain,” says New Yorker Hugh Crawford, who was responsible for putting his friend’s pictures on line after his death. “Initially it was not meant to be looked at by anyone. A group of us were putting on an exhibition of the photos and the site was a place where we could look at the pictures while we talked on the phone.”

The photographer’s name was Jamie Livingston. He was a film maker and editor who worked on public information films, adverts and promo videos for MTV. Taking a single photo every day began by accident when he was 22 and studying film with Crawford at Bart College, in upstate New York. “He’d been doing it for about a month before he realised he’d been taking a photo about one picture a day, and then he made the commitment to keep doing that,” says Crawford. “That’s what he was like. There are some people who have flashes of brilliance and do things in a huge rush or creative burst but he was more of a steady, keep-at-it kind of guy and he did amazing stuff. Part of the appeal of the site is that Jamie was not this amazing-looking guy. He led an incredible life, but there’s an every man quality to the photographs.”

There are a lot of visual jokes, funny shots and fluted self-portraits, but the plan was to take one picture and keep it no matter how it turned out. Once they found themselves walking with a circus of elephants through the heart of New York, late at night. Crawford turned to his friend and suggested this could be the picture of the day. “He was like, “No, I took a picture of my lunch, it’s already been taken,” laughs Crawford. […]

Only one mystery remains about Livingston’s life: “There’s one woman who appears a lot (in the earlier photographs) who seems to have been a girlfriend but no one knows who she is,” says Crawford, much of whose own life story is told within the pictures as well.

The more famous the pictures become, the more likely it is that one day he’ll find out.

© The Guardian 13.08.08

Drunk, and dangerous, at the keyboard - EOI Madrid inglés B2 resuelto

ANYONE who has spent more than a few minutes over the last couple of weeks trolling tech blogs or cocktail lounges has probably heard about Mail Goggles, a new feature on Google’s Gmail program that is intended to help stamp out a scourge that few knew existed: late-night drunken e-mailing.

The experimental program requires any user who enables the function to perform five simple math problems in 60 seconds before sending e-mails between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. on weekends. That time frame apparently corresponds to the gap between cocktail No. 1 and cocktail No. 4, when tapping out an e-mail message to an ex or a co-worker can seem like the equivalent of bungee jumping without a cord.

Mail Goggles is not the first case of a technology developed to keep people from endangering themselves or others with the machinery of daily life after they have had a few. For years, judges have ordered drunken-driving offenders to install computerized breath-analyzers linked to their car’s ignition system to prevent them from starting their vehicles when intoxicated.

But as the first sobriety checkpoint on what used to be called the information superhighway, the Mail Goggles program also raises a larger question: In an age when so much of our routine communication is accomplished with our fingertips, are we becoming so tethered to our keyboards that we really need the technological equivalent of trigger locks on firearms? In interviews with people who confessed to imbibing and typing at the same time, the answer seems to be yes.

Kate Allen Stukenberg, a magazine editor in Houston, said that “the thing that is disappointing about Mail Goggles is that it’s only on Gmail,” because many people need cellphone protection, given the widespread practice of drunk text-messaging.

The Mail Goggles program itself was born of embarrassment. A Gmail engineer named Jon Perlow wrote the program after sending his share of regrettable late-night missives, including a plea to rekindle a relationship with an old girlfriend, he wrote on the company’s Gmail blog. “We’ve all been

there before, unfortunately,” said Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. So-called drunk dialing may be as old as the telephone itself, but now, he said, the edge of the abyss is much closer in an era when so many people carry personal digital assistants containing hundreds of contact numbers — including clients, work adversaries and bosses — everywhere, including bars and parties.

And e-mail messages can be particularly potent because they constitute what social scientists call “asynchronous” communication, meaning that exchanges between people do not happen in real time, unlike face-to-face or telephone conversations. People can respond to work-related messages hours after they leave the office — a risky proposition if they happen to log on after stumbling home from happy hour.

The delay in response time means that people have lots of time to shape a response to achieve maximum impact, he said. “If you have eight hours of bar time to think of all the bad things you can come up with, this becomes uniquely damaging,” Dr Bailenson said.

Text-based communication and alcohol are a potent mix in part because people already tend to be more candid online than they are in person, even before they loosen their inhibitions with a drink, said Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Research suggests that for some people, the use of computers or other gadgets creates some emotional distancing from the person they are addressing,” Mr Rainie said in an e-mail message. The distance, in other words, makes them feel safe — flirting becomes more flirtatious; insults become more insulting.

The latter was the case with one 23-year-old record producer in Manhattan who recalled a drunken text-message mishap on a recent trip to Syracuse University. The producer, who declined to be identified, said he had picked up an undergraduate woman while intoxicated and had accompanied her back to her apartment. But sitting in her kitchen at 4 a.m., he said, he started to have second thoughts. So while she was in the room, he tapped out a message to a friend’s iPhone: “Eww Saratoga, what am I thinking? I can def. do better than this ... can you drive my car and get me out of here?” Seconds later, her telephone buzzed. He had accidentally sent the message to her, not his friend, the producer said. Months later, after a few more romantic misadventures with her, “We had a long talk and I apologized,” he said. “I now write songs about getting my life together.”

Adapted from © New York Times, 2008.

Egypt travel guide - EOI Asturias inglés B2 resuelto

Doing business & staying in touch

Courtesy and hospitality are important when doing business in Egypt. The host of a business meeting will usually offer tea or a small snack before commencing. It’s polite to refuse the first offer, but once the host insists, the guest should then accept. Alcohol is legal, but should be avoided until visitors know their Egyptian colleague's attitude towards drinking, and, if acceptable, should be drunk in moderation. It is not considered suitable for women to over-indulge in alcohol. If invited to a business lunch, expect food to be lavish and plentiful.

Throughout the Arab world, it is considered bad manners either to display anger or to openly criticize another person in public. Tact and diplomacy are always required. In social life, punctuality is almost laughable. For business, visitors should be on time but expect locals to be often late, and do not take offence. Men should not offer to shake a woman's hand, and vice versa, unless clearly invited to do so. Men and women should dress smartly for business meetings – suits and tie for men; suit for women or smart trousers/skirt/jacket – and always dress modestly. Shoulders and knees should never be shown.

Economy:

On taking power in 1970, Anwar al-Sadat introduced a policy of infitah (openness) towards investment. Egypt's economy underwent rapid growth during the 1970s with the quick expansion of the oil industry, tourism and the Suez Canal, and it has continued to expand in subsequent decades.

The tourist sector is expanding rapidly, particularly along the Red Sea and Mediterranean coasts, despite sporadic terrorist activities of Islamic fundamentalists. Agriculture, which relies on irrigation from the Nile, employs one-third of the working population. Foreign aid, especially from the USA, is an important source of government funds.

Internet:

There are internet cafés in the main cities, including Cairo, Alexandria, Dahab and Luxor. Even small, more remote towns including Siwa will have at least one venue, usually in the market area. Connection is usually reliable. Tourists can also access the Internet in hotels, with in-room Wi-Fi available, though often at a costly price.

Media:

The Egyptian press is one of the most influential and widely read in the region, while Egyptian TV and the film industry supplies much of the Arab-speaking world with shows from its Media Production City. Press freedom is encouraged. Press laws which allow prison sentences for libel have encouraged self-censorship on sensitive issues.

http://www.worldtravelguide.net

A night of terror - EOI Aragón inglés B2 resuelto

Patricia Morgan and Carlo Fraizzoli had had a hectic week in Baltimore. But now, aboard Carlo's sailboat they were heading for a scenic cove 25 miles south on the Magothy River. 

Morgan saw that clouds to the north had darkened the skies over the city. She asked Carlo to put the motor on and head to shore as two lightning bolts crackled behind the boat. Within seconds, the sunlit sky above them had turned dark. Whitecaps sprang up on the water, and sheets of rain began to batter the boat. Morgan jumped up to get a life jacket from the cabin. Before she could grab one, a powerful gust slammed into the boat, tilting the sloop onto its side and sending the mainsail into the water. As the boat tipped, Morgan lost her balance and tumbled onto the rail. Looking facedown into the waves and fearing the boat was capsizing, she made a split-second decision—"I'll be safer in the water" and jumped into the bay.

As Morgan floundered in the waves, Fraizzoli righted the boat. He threw her a life preserver. It slipped through her hands as the current began to pull the boat away from her. Fraizzoli started the motor and steered the boat toward the sound of her voice. She missed it, and the motor stalled. Morgan watched the powerless boat drift away and out of sight. It was after 9 p.m.

Morgan wasn't a strong swimmer and wasn't wearing a life jacket. She started swimming toward dim lights on the shore, about two miles away. Then, directly ahead of her, she saw an enormous looming shape: a 200-foot barge, being towed by a tugboat. She'd been pulled into the middle of a shipping channel.

The barge is going to run her over, Fraizzoli thought. The mainsail was in tatters, shredded by the repeated pounding of 60 mph winds. The docking line was now wrapped around the propeller of the outboard motor, jamming it. Fraizzoli had left his ship-to-shore radio at home in Baltimore. Suddenly, he remembered Morgan's cell phone and dug for it in her purse. He punched in 911. Fraizzoli was unsure of his location but rescuers would determine the coordinates of the boat by tracking the cell phone signal.

Morgan, meanwhile, swam away from the barge. After the hulking vessel passed her, she began a frenzied crawl stroke, knowing that in the darkness, another ship could run her down. But the waves kept coming at her. She tried diving underneath them. Her arms burned, her legs dragged, and her heart hammered so hard in her chest that she gasped for air. She felt fear gnawing at her. Morgan spotted the lighthouse off Gibson Island. Thinking there might be a ladder, she headed toward it. But the ladder was set high above the water to deter vandals. In the distance, she could see lights along the shore. She headed for them.

By 10 p.m. rescue boats were nearing Fraizzoli's sloop. Fraizzoli described to the rescue crews the last place he thought he'd seen Morgan. They assumed Morgan had attempted to swim toward shore, so they steered the boat slowly back and forth along the two-mile-wide strip of water between the shipping lane and Gibson Island, stopping every few minutes to look and listen.

A fireboat scanned the waves with a handheld spotlight. The water temperature was a survivable 60-plus degrees, but the relentless pounding of the waves was sure to exhaust even an experienced swimmer. Morgan would have been in the water for nearly two hours by now. Fire officials were preparing to switch the mission from a rescue to a body retrieval. Suddenly someone shouted, “I think I heard somebody scream.” They stopped the engines. The men strained to hear.

Morgan had seen the boat's searchlight and yelled. But her strength was failing.

The men shut down the motor twice more so they could listen. Finally, the spotlight shone on Morgan's head. The men shouted and held out the boat hook so Morgan could reach the life jacket they had hung from it. She grabbed at it but missed. Morgan summoned a final bit of strength and paddled toward the boat. They dropped her a life ring, then reached toward her and grabbed her arm. Three men were able to maneuver her along the side of the boat to the swim platform at the stern. They hauled her on board, where she collapsed. Taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, Morgan was treated for dehydration and exhaustion and released after a few hours.

Fraizzoli and Morgan did marry, two months after her rescue, at the Baltimore city courthouse. He credits the near tragedy for bringing the two of them closer. "I realized I didn't want to lose her again."