Times change, Christmas as well

You're going to see a video which tells how the Nativity would have been if there had been new tecnologies in the ancient times. Can you imagine it? Check if you are right.

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Ana Botella and her English dialect

Madrid Mayor Ana Botella’s Olympic Speech

by David Roman 

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhJt3Tzjy8I

Try typing the name of Madrid’s mayor Ana Botella in Youtube, and see what the auto-fill option suggests: ¨relaxing cup of café con leche” shows first, with “ridicule” and “Madrid 2020,” a reference to the city’s failed Olympic bid, further below.

What you find by clicking in most of the videos shown is Ms. Botella speaking in Buenos Aires to representatives of the International Olympic Committee ahead of its vote Sept. 7 to make Tokyo, rather than Madrid or Istanbul, the host city for the 2020 games.

It’s not a great performance, and is one that quickly went viral in Spain and, together with Madrid’s defeat itself, is threatening to demolish the mayor’s political career, sowing the seeds for yet another political crisis in the recession-hit country.

Like many Spanish politicians, Ms. Botella has only a rudimentary command of English, but she still went ahead and gave the language a try (unlike Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who spoke in Spanish). The result was an uninspired, heavily accented speech including some sentences in the patois commonly known as Spanglish—the local equivalent of Chinglish or Franglish.

The live version of the performance is a tough sell. Luckily, social network aficionados are using it to experiment. There is, for example, an electronic music version that includes a doctored photo with the mayor posing in rap-style garb, and puts much emphasis on one of her key messages to the world: “Madrid is fun.”

Fun was also had by Facebook users. School of Fish, a language school in Madrid, put up and ad reminding customers that they have intensive English courses “so that the sentence ‘relaxing cup of café con leche…’ never happens again.”

Users of Whatsapp and other instant messaging systems circulated a variety of spoofs based on the sentence: a relaxing soccer cup won by a rival team in Madrid’s Bernabeu stadium, fake pictures of coffee machines offering “relaxing white coffee,” yet another doctored picture of Ms. Botella, not looking at her best, searching for a “relaxing double whisky.”

To be fair, Ms. Botella—whose English is better than that of many of her critics—has taken this all rather well. Just Thursday, she joked about the issue and praised the Spaniards’ capacity to laugh at themselves. She said that Madrid, which also had made failed bids to be the host city in 2012 and 2016, won’t be a candidate for the 2024 Olympics.

One important point is that Ms. Botella’s Olympic missteps, and the popular reactions to them, go beyond the anecdote: they compound a series of earlier miscalculations that have some political observers predicting that she may be dropped as mayoral candidate by her political party, the Conservative Popular Party, for the 2015 city elections—an important political contest that the party wants to win at all costs.

But this may be easier said than done. Ms. Botella is the wife of Spain’s former Prime Minister—and current Newscorp board member—José María Aznar. He remains the most influential figure within the party, and not one that Prime Minister Rajoy wants to pick a fight with.

Curiously, Mr. Aznar is perhaps the best English-language speaker among Spanish heads of government. He also features in one of the best-produced doctored images that circulated in social networks, coyly asking Ms. Botella over breakfast whether she’ll have any coffee today.

“Go to hell,” she responds.

Tapescript:

Activities:

1- Try to write the speech in correct English.

2- How would you describe Madrid in order to promote the city as the next olympic games placement? If you have never been in Madrid before, describe your own city or town.

Cher Lloyd sings Want U Back

Cher Lloyd (born 28 July 1993) is an English singer-songwriter, rapper and model. Lloyd rose to fame when she finished fourth in the seventh series of The X Factor.

She has several hit songs, including "Want U Back". Lloyd's first song "Swagger Jagger" was released in 2011. Although it got negative reviews, the single entered at number one on the UK Singles Chart and number two in the Republic of Ireland. Her second single "With Ur Love" was released on 31 October 2011, featuring Mike, and peaked at number four on the UK Singles Chart, and number five in Ireland. She released her third single "Want U Back" on 22^nd May 2012 in the United States, in this case featuring Astro.

LYRICS:

Hey, boy you never had much game

Thought I needed to upgrade

So I went and walked away way way

Now, I see you've been hanging out

With that other girl in town

Looking like a pair of clowns clowns clowns

Remember all the things that you and I did first?

And now you're doing them with her

Remember all the things that you and I did first?

You got me, got me like this

And now you're taking her to every restaurant

And everywhere we went, come on!

And now you're taking her to every restaurant

You got me, got me like this

Chorus:

Boy you can say anything you wanna

I don't give a shh, no one else can have ya

I want you back

I want you back

Wa-want you, want you back

I broke it off thinking you'd be cryin'

Now I feel like shh looking at you flyin'

I want you back

I want you back

Wa-want you, want you back

Please, this ain't even jealousy (jealousy)

She ain't got a thing on me (a thing on me)

Tryin' to rock them ugly jeans jeans jeans

You clearly didn't think this through

If what I've been told is true (is it true?)

You'll be crawling back like boo hoo hoo

Remember all the things that you and I did first?

And now you're doing them with her

Remember all the things that you and I did first?

You got me, got me like this

And now you're taking her to every restaurant

And everywhere we went, come on!

And now you're taking her to every restaurant

You got me, got me like this

Chorus

Ooh, I thought you'd still be mine

When I kissed you goodbye uh oh uh oh

Ooh, and you might be with her

But I still had you first uh oh uh oh

[Astro - rap verse]

Let's go! Astro!

We used to be, but now there's a separation between you and me

Baby I'm moving on to another girl that understands me more

Dated her in front your place so you can see it all

I remember the times, when we used to bond

But I never realized that you wanted to be mine

So I gave her the ring, instead of you, nickname too

I can tell that you're upset, because it ain't you

Met a new girl, and I gave her my heart

Not noticing that you wanted me from the very start

You want me back?

We can just be friends, don't try this thing all over again

Come on 

Chorus

Ohhh, I want you back

I want you back

Wa-want you, want you back

(bis)

How do you land a plane on water?

The ditching of an airliner into the Hudson River in New York, in which all 155 passengers and crew escaped alive, has been hailed as a textbook example of landing on water.

The plane, an Airbus A320, appears to have have hit a flock of birds shortly after taking off from the city's LaGuardia airport, before making an emergency landing in the river.

Captain Chesley Sullenberger III has been praised for his "masterful" landing, but how does a pilot safely attempt such a manoeuvre?

Although the likelihood of a waterborne landing is remote, all commercial pilots must undergo training for such an eventuality before qualifying. They are taught to follow a procedure - which, in its initial stages is similar to an emergency landing on solid ground. However, there may not be time in an emergency to follow it rigorously.

Having made a mayday call and alerted the cabin crew, those in the cockpit must ensure the undercarriage - the wheels - is retracted to aid a smoother landing and prevent warning sirens sounding as the plane nears the ground. The air conditioning would also be turned off to allow cabin pressure to match that outside.

There is an overriding need to slow down the craft. If there is still power to the engines and a wind of more than 25 knots, a pilot would be expected to fly into the wind to assist slowing. Wing flaps would also be fully extended. If there is time a pilot would be expected to burn as much fuel as possible, reducing the weight of the plane and so increasing buoyancy when it hits the water. On this occasion, however, the engines appear to have already cut out.

NY mayor hails 'hero' crash pilot.

As the aircraft nears the water, the pilot must try to continue slowing while, crucially, ensuring the aircraft does not "stall". In aviation the word has a different meaning to that in motoring, for example. Stall is an aerodynamic term which describes when wings lose their lift.

It's a difficult balancing act.

"You don't want to hit the water too quickly or the plane will break into pieces", says first officer Tom Hanks of DHL, who flies Boeing 757s for the courier company.

At this point, a lot depends on the weather. In the seconds before impact, a pilot must try to ensure the wings are level - a feat clearly achieved by Captain Sullenberger, says David Learmount, operations and safety editor of Flight International magazine.

"[He] landed at precisely the right speed, completely under control, wings totally level. If one wing dips and catches the water, the aeroplane cartwheels, breaks up and some people would definitely have died."

The calmness of the Hudson river was a blessing in this case, compared with a choppy sea, says Mr Hanks.

"He could land anywhere as it wasn't rough water."

While keeping both wings horizontal the pilot must then lower the tail end. The nose would be at 12 degrees, which is higher than in a normal runway landing, and at the last minute the pilot would slowly lower the plane into the water.

Ideally, the aircraft would plane for a while before stopping, after which it would start to sink.

As Eric Moody, a former British Airways pilot, told the BBC, "you have to skim the surface like a pebble. If you go any other way; putting the tail or nose down too quickly, you're either going to break the plane in half or porpoise the thing, into the water and out."

Skill is a significant part of the process, observes Mr Hanks, but it's not the only requirement. "In terms of the actual impact on this occasion, [Capt Sullenberger] did a very good job, and he was also very lucky."

Funeral Blues [Four Weddings and a Funeral] by W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

By Wystan Hugh Auden

For more information about the poet go to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._Auden

An almost made up poem By Charles Bukowski

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny

blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny

they are small, and the fountain is in France

where you wrote me that last letter and

I answered and never heard from you again.

You used to write insane poems about

ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you

knew famous artists and most of them

were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’ all right,

go ahead, enter their lives, I’ not jealous

because we’ never met. we got close once in

New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never

touched. so you went with the famous and wrote

about the famous, and, of course, what you found out

is that the famous are worried about

their fame –– not the beautiful young girl in bed

with them, who gives them that, and then awakens

in the morning to write upper case poems about

ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ told

us, but listening to you I wasn’ sure. maybe

it was the upper case. you were one of the

best female poets and I told the publishers,

editors, “ her, print her, she’ mad but she’

magic. there’ no lie in her fire.” I loved you

like a man loves a woman he never touches, only

writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have

loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a

cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,

but that didn’t happen. your letters got sadder.

your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all

lovers betray. it didn’ help. you said

you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and

the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying

bench every night and wept for the lovers who had

hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never

heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide

3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you

I would probably have been unfair to you or you

to me. it was best like this.

By Charles Bukowski

I'm not yours By Sara Teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you,

Not lost, although I long to be

Lost as a candle lit at noon,

Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still

A spirit beautiful and bright,

Yet I am I, who long to be

Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out

My senses, leave me deaf and blind,

Swept by the tempest of your love,

A taper in a rushing wind.

By Sara Teasdale