Earth Day Tips

Dear inhabitants of this planet,

As I opened a browser session this evening, I was cheered up by the beautiful, really helpful Earth Day Google Doodle I could play and watch; so I thought I should share it with you.

Even more happy I felt when I clicked onto the magnifying glass icon to discover the Earth Day Tips to make our planet happier. They are great too!!!

I strongly suggest that you click to start the second animation that illustrates some of the things we have commented in class and at home and onto the links to find info about how to:

– contribute to the conservation of the wildlife, the coral reefs and the rainforest and

– what and how we can put apart to be recycled and what has to be thrown away in the ordinary bin.

Your can calculate the carbon footprint you are producing, using a metric conversor and then work hard to reduce it changing your behaviour in several of the 25 ways suggested.

It has also inspired me to send you some songs (not in English this time) with awareness-raising lyrics and others that, although I can’t quite understand, make me feel connected with a happy life with my feet on a looked-after Earth. There they go:

Dios Mío by Pedrito

Latinoamerica by Calle 13 featuring Totó La Momposina, Susana Vaca and María Rita

Grité, Moving and Somos Luz by Macaco, the last with La Mari

Tirineri Tsitsiki by Lila Downs

Sur o No Sur by Kevin Johansen

Poema by Susana Baca

Senhor da Floresta by María Bethania

Ijexá by Clara Nunes

Ella by Bebe

Sientiendo by Bomba Estereo

Dispidida by Mayra Andrade

From Gagarin’s Point Of View by Esbjörn Svensson Trio

… and keep Prince EA’s talk in mind!!!

To contribute to preserve our World’s beauty and rich diversity, keep faucets closed and devices and lights turned off and even unplugged the longer time, the better …. at least!!

Live music description challenge

 

I have decided to  challenge you to be creative decribing someone else’s creativity.

First, I want you to get comfortable to enjoy the piece played by another huge, young musician from Havana, Roberto Fonseca.

Now, I would like you to describe that very special experience. 

The set of steps at http://classroom.synonym.com/write-essay-event-4075.html, may help you in the task.

 

Taking advantage of the energy plants waste

I suggest you just have a look at the following video and make the comments or ask the questions that come to your mind.

Avishai Cohen

Here is the link to the text I had written on how we experienced Mr. Cohen’s music being played by a previous trio to the one shown in the picture below. It was surprising and nice to know my piece of writing was chosen winner.

The pic shows him playing the double bass in the middle, with his two new wonderful fellows: Nitai Hershkovits at the piano and Daniel Dor at the drums. The image wasn’t taken during the concert Amina, Manuel, my family, friends and I attended at the Lara Theatre on 7th April 2014, though it is close in time to when we enjoyed together part of the prize I had won.

I suggest you see to some of Avishai Cohen Trio live music in the  formation I wrote about to understand my description better 

Going back to my award-winning text, you may notice there are no amazing, interesting, important, I like, I love, good or bad, the exhaustingly common, hollow type of words I keep telling you you should avoid using. By the way, there is an order mistake in my text, I would like you to spot and suggest how to make right.

For further illustration, there goes another video of Avishai playing a real fun “Caravan” with a larger, more jazzistic band longer ago:

The next is a version of “Seven Seas” with the last trio formation I saw here in Madrid

Finally, this last one features the last formation Avishai has arranged

… how young will the next drum player be?

 

Cipolla’s Theory about Human Stupidity

For further understanding of this theory, I suggest you read the following:

A deeper, clear explanation of Cipolla’s Theory

The entry for Carlo M. Cipolla on the Wikipedia

An article in The Guardian that explains the influence of the author’s contribution and links to a more recent research that has lately come to supplement Cipolla’s basic laws by establishing that incompetent people never get to become aware they are.

In order to sweet-talk others and manage to get away with what one wants, though, we must have this theory present but never address someone as a helpless, a bandit or a stupid. We should always have in mind the guidelines to enhance happiness masterfully set by Dorothy Corkille Briggs in her Your Child’s Self-Esteem or its Spanish version, El Niño Feliz. The guidelines I refer to mainly appear on the chapter named The Safety of Nonjudgment or La seguridad del no enjuiciamiento. A summary of it is that rather than to qualify the other person we must express our feelings as a reaction to the behaviour of the other, as behaviours are easier to change in comparison with personality traits.

Another key  to remain young is not forgetting that one can always be mistaken because acting otherwise prevents us from learning from others. The higher the number you choose in the following diagram, the earlier your wrinkles will appear and deepen.

A beautiful idea with a simple, lovely realization

The girl’s pregnancy is accompanied by the father calmly expressing in a song how he feels about taking in the responsability about to begin. With a man like this at one’s side, no girl would even think of the word abortion, don’t you agree?

Who has this young man learnt to be so sweet from? His parents? His teachers? His partner? All of them?

After having tried for a while, I haven’t been able to find the lyrics of the song on the Internet. I need badly to read the wording as I hear the song, though. This is why I suggest a nice task we can do together: write its words down on a google drive doc!!!!! … Of course!

This is the link to the message behind the time-lapse video created by the couple to welcome their baby, Buzz, a real star.

Enjoy!

Paco de Lucía passed away today

At the age of 66 and while enjoying holidays with his family in Cancún, México, Paco de Lucía left us today.

Maybe he was just passing by to say bye when, this morning, I wrote on the blackboard part of the name of the song that left a footprint in many of our age forever.  I just wrote “Dos aguas” although its complete name is “Entre dos aguas”. My apparent lapse of memory must not have been one, as his soul, at that precise time, was no longer between the waters of two continents but flying up to go and stay somewhere in between the clouds, our clouds.

Enjoy watching a homely moment towards the creation of that piece he would become really used to play later.

I can’t help but pasting in, as a tribute to both Spanish masters, another song of the time I was a kid; this one always gets me goose bumps in its original quality recording, Mediterraneo by Joan Manuel Serrat, or live with lyrics on the following video:

Let’s keep getting positive and point at another of the great talents we still have amongst us, this one here in Madrid.  I’m referring to the Cuban, Alain Pérez, who was lately conducting  Paco de Lucía’s concerts and you can see playing the bass guitar with him (00:50) in the one that took place two years ago at Montreaux.

Remote Tribes

The purity of humanity exists. It is there in the mountains, the ice fields, the jungle, along the rivers and in the valleys. Jimmy Nelson found the last tribesmen and observed them. He smiled and drank their mysterious brews before taking out his camera. He shared what real people share: vibrations, invisible but palpable. He adjusted his antenna to the same frequency as theirs. As trust grew, a shared understanding of the mission developed: the world must never forget the way things were.There is a pure beauty in their goals and family ties, their belief in gods and nature, and their will to do the right thing in order to be taken care of when their time comes. Whether in Papua New Guinea or in Kazakhstan, in Ethiopia or in Siberia, tribes are the last resorts of natural authenticity.

‘’In 2009, I planned to become a guest of 31 secluded and visually unique tribes. I wanted to witness their time-honoured traditions, join in their rituals and discover how the rest of the world is threatening to change their way of life forever. Most importantly, I wanted to create an ambitious aesthetic photographic document that would stand the test of time. A body of work that would be an irreplaceable ethnographic record of a fast disappearing world.

Elegant and evocative portraits created with a 4×5 camera. The detail that is attained by using such large negatives would provide an extraordinary view into the emotional and spiritual lives of the last indigenous peoples of the world. At the same time, it would glorify their varying and unique cultural creativity with their painted faces, scarified bodies, jewellery, extravagant hairstyles and ritual language.”

Meet the tribes Jimmy Nelson visited in his project Before They Pass Away on http://www.beforethey.com/#meetthetribes

Interview to Matt Mullenweg, the inventor of wordpress at 21

Enjoy watching the youngster behind the platform that enables someone to create a blog like this!! He’s got lots of interesting ideas to listen to.
This is how he introduces himself on his blog: http://ma.tt/about/ and this is the information about him on the wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Mullenweg

His last Thursday’s post  links technology and freedom: http://ma.tt/2014/01/four-freedoms/ It’s long for the texts we are used to read and worth reading.

http://buddypress.org/ is his turn towards social networking.