Little Red Riding Mood and Facebook

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGr_KFiCX4s&feature=player_embedded#at=76


Watch out what you child is doing on the net, I got this on Christina an ESL Teacher in Greece, and I decided to post here, that's why it's really educative and preventive against pedophilia on internet, actually I recommend you check out http://markaki-students.blogspot.com/2011/04/little-red-riding-mood-and-safe.html and add it on my favorite blogroll. 

George Clooney

BY GEORGE

Source: www.speakup.com.br
Speaker: Chuck Rolando
Standard: American accent
Language level: Proficiency





George Clooney is a man who needs no introduction. In addition to being considering “one of the world’s sexiest men,” he is also an actor who invariably chooses interesting movies. He also spends a lot of time and energy raising money for – and bringing attention to – charity causes. And so, at the Emmys, when other actors received prizes for their work in television, Clooney was given the “Bob Hope Humanitarian Award” for his, quote unquote, “determined commitment and efforts to increase awareness of human rights issues and spark constructive response to international crises. “When he met with the press, he talked about the charity work.

George Clooney

(Standard American accent)

I don’t particularly do more than anybody else and the position I’m in. I try to pick subjects that I can learn about and then focus on and then try to do as much as I can and, if you have a tremendous amount of heat from the spotlight, then you’re able to shine a little bit more of a light in a different direction. It’s just deflecting. My dad calls it a celebrity credit that you just try to cash in on in other places. And people were asking me about Haiti expert, you know, more than anything, but you could name dozens of people on the music industry, in my industry and in a millions of other industries, by the way, they’re…they’re doing the same thing. I think if you’re in this position, you should do it.

BERNAD AND BRAD

He was then asked whether there was a public figure whom he personally admired:

George Clooney

There are people that I’ve worked with personally that I’ve found…the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, has been pretty amazing. He sort of started Doctors Without Borders, but he’s always very involved in other events. I know him personally and I’ve stumbled onto him in the Congo, in tiny villages, and I always find him to be sort of amazing in…in that way. He wouldn’t have to be doing that at this point in his life and…but there’s in terms of well-known celebrities, I mean, you know, Brad’s in (Brad Pitt), you know, New Orleans right now and he’s done a tremendous job of trying to bring focus and build houses. He’s hit u all up for dough on building houses, and he’s really good at that. I’m impressed, but there’s a lot of people doing a lot of really good stuff out there right now.

BONO

And he was asked whether there was anyone had inspired him:

George Clooney

You learn from people who do it really well. I mean, Bono was very good at that idea of…so many of our friends have…they’re people that have been doing this for ever. You know, this is not something new, from the War bonds during World War II! We’re not reinventing the wheel here. All we’re trying to do is say that, if there’s going to be a tremendous amount of attention placed on us, it’s too much, then we should try and deflect some of it onto some people who could really use it. That’s all it is and, if you can do it effectively and do it without harming people along the way, then it’s a good thing, that’s all.

BUT…

Yet, even though celebrities like Clooney do a lot of charity work, the money doesn’t always reach the victims. Clooney was asked how closely he and his colleagues monitored the money thy raised:

George Clooney

In all of these fundraisers we’ve been incredibly responsible with because every one of the places…for instance, we had seven and, at sometimes, eight different places that we gave the money to: the Red Cross, Oxfam, World Food Program, and, you know, every one of them at one point or another have had financial troubles. They’ve gotten themselves in a little dutch. W make it our responsibility to make sure that the money is used in the

right way, for all of them. And we’ve done that in all of these, you know, fundraisers and have always done it. We keep close tabs on them. It’s important to do.

WHAT ABOUT BOB?

He was also asked about Bob Hope, the great late comedian who gave his name to the humanitarian award.

George Clooney

Well, first of all, he did it so effortlessly. It wasn’t just the USO show. That’s the thing that everybody remembers him for, that he did for 50 years, but he did so many tremendous actors. He did it all. And it was…also very quit, but he always did it with a great sense of humor.  

Family Album, 61

SOURCE: FAMILY ALBUM USA, 61

Complicated, Evril Lavigne

Source: 

http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=1932#a

                              

ASK 1: Choose the correct word

Chill out, what you are yellingshoutingscreaming for
GetLaidSit back it's all been done before
And if you could only let meithim be, you willarecan to see
I like you thethisthat way you are
When we're driving in your bikemotorbikecar
and you're talking to me one oninat one but you've become

TASK 2: Put the verses in the correct order numbering them 1-7

 Somebody else

 You're watching your back

 You're trying to be cool

 like you can't relax

 you look like a fool to me.
 round everyone else

 Tell me!

TASK 3: Complete with the missing words

Why do you have to go and make  so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're  else gets me frustrated

Life's like this you
And you fall and you  and you break
and you take what you get and you turn it into 
and promise me I'm never gonna find you  it
No, no, no!

TASK 4: Choose the correct word

You come uponover unannounced
dressed upoffover like you're something else
where you are ain't where it's at you see
you're making me
laugh out when you strikemakegive your pose
take upoffover all your preppy clothes
you know you're not fooling anyone
when you've become

TASK 5: Match the phrases in bold from task 4 to their definition

: to visit informally

: to remove

: to put on one's best or fanciest clothing

: to take on or assume

Around the World in 80 Days 5/6

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdY4-4X-uKk

The Wright Brothers: They Showed the World How to Fly

Source of the picture: http://turtledove.wikia.com

Source: Welcome to Voice of America Special English

www.manythings.org/voa/people 

 PEOPLE IN AMERICA from VOA Special English.  Today, Sarah Long and Rich Kleinfeldt tell the story of Wilbur and Orville Wright.  The Wright brothers made a small engine-powered flying machine and proved that it was possible for humans to really fly.

(MUSIC)

Wilbur Wright was born in eighteen sixty-seven near Melville,  Indiana.  His brother Orville was born four years later in Dayton, Ohio.  Throughout their lives, they were best friends.  As Wilbur once said: "From the time we were little children, Orville and I lived together, played together, worked together and thought together."

Wilbur and Orville's father was a bishop, an official of the United Brethren Church.  He traveled a lot on church business.  Their mother was unusual for a woman of the nineteenth century.  She had completed college.  She was especially good at mathematics and science.  And she was good at using tools to fix things or make things.

One winter day when the Wright brothers were young, all their  friends were outside sliding down a hill on wooden sleds.  The Wright brothers were sad, because they did not have a sled.  So, Mrs. Wright said she would make one for them.  She drew a picture of a sled.  It did not look like other sleds.  It was lower to the ground and not as wide.  She told the boys it would be faster, because there would be less resistance from the wind when they rode on it.  Mrs. Wright was correct.  When the sled was finished, it was the fastest one around.  Wilbur and Orville felt like they were flying.

The sled project taught the Wright brothers two important rules.  They learned they could increase speed by reducing wind resistance.  And they learned the importance of drawing a design.  Mrs. Wright said: "If you draw it correctly on paper, it will be right when you build it."

 VOICE ONE:

When Wilbur was eleven years old and Orville seven, Bishop Wright  brought home a gift for them.  It was a small flying machine that  flew like helicopters of today.  It was made of paper, bamboo and  cork.

The motor was a rubber band that had to be turned many times until it was tight.  When the person holding the toy helicopter let go, it rose straight up.  It stayed in the air for a few seconds.  Then it floated down to the floor.

Wilbur and Orville played and played with their new toy.  Finally, the paper tore and the rubber band broke.  They made another one.  But it was too heavy to fly.  Their first flying machine failed.

Their attempts to make the toy gave them a new idea.  They would  make kites to fly and sell to their friends.  They made many designs and tested them.  Finally, they had the right design.  The kites flew as though they had wings.

The Wright brothers continued to experiment with mechanical  things.  Orville started a printing business when he was in high  school.  He used a small printing machine to publish a newspaper.  He sold copies of the newspaper to the other children in school, but he did not earn much money from the project.

Wilbur offered some advice to his younger brother.  Make the  printing press bigger and publish a bigger newspaper, he said.  So, together, they designed and built one.  The machine looked strange.  Yet it worked perfectly.  Soon, Orville and Wilbur were publishing a weekly newspaper.

They also printed materials for local businessmen.  They were finally earning money.  Wilbur was twenty-five years old and Orville twenty-one when they began to sell and repair bicycles.  Then they began to make them.  But the Wright brothers never stopped thinking about flying machines.

 VOICE TWO:

In eighteen ninety-nine, Wilbur decided to learn about all the  different kinds of flying machines that had been designed and tested through the years.  Wilbur wrote to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.  He asked for all the information it had on flying.

The Wright brothers read everything they could about people who  sailed through the air under huge balloons.  They also read about  people who tried to fly on gliders -- planes with wings, but no  motors.

Then the Wright brothers began to design their own flying machine.  They used the ideas they had developed from their earlier experiments with the toy helicopter, kites, printing machine and bicycles.

Soon, they needed a place to test their ideas about flight.  They  wrote to the Weather Bureau in Washington to find the place with  the best wind conditions.  The best place seemed to be a thin piece of sandy land in North Carolina along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.  It was called Kill Devil Hill, near the town of Kitty Hawk.  It had the right wind and open space.  Best of all, it was private.

In nineteen hundred, the Wright brothers tested a glider that could carry a person.  But neither the first or second glider they built had the lifting power needed for real flight.  Wilbur and Orville decided that what they had read about air pressure on curved surfaces was wrong.  So they built a wind tunnel two meters long in their bicycle store in Dayton, Ohio.  They tested more than two hundred designs of wings.  These tests gave them the correct information about air pressure on curved surfaces.  Now it was possible for them to design a machine that could fly.

The Wright brothers built a third glider.  They took it to Kitty Hawk in the summer of nineteen-oh-two.  They made almost one thousand flights with the glider.  Some covered more than one hundred eighty meters.  This glider proved that they had solved most of the problems of balance in flight.  By the autumn of nineteen-oh-three, Wilbur and Orville had designed and built an airplane powered by a gasoline engine.  The plane had wings twelve meters across.  It weighed about  three hundred forty kilograms, including the pilot.

The Wright brothers returned to Kitty Hawk.  On December  seventeen, nineteen-oh-three, they made the world's first flight  in a machine that was heavier than air and powered by an engine.  Orville flew the plane thirty-seven meters.  He was in the air for twelve seconds.  The two brothers made three more flights that day.  The longest was made by Wilbur.  He flew two hundred sixty meters in fifty-nine seconds.  Four other men watched the Wright brothers' first flights.  One of the men took pictures.  Few newspapers, however, noted the event.

Wilbur and Orville returned home to Ohio.  They built more powerful engines and flew better airplanes.  But their success was almost unknown.  Most people still did not believe flying was possible.  It was almost five years before the Wright brothers became famous.  In nineteen-oh-eight, Wilbur went to France.  He gave demonstration flights at heights of ninety meters.  A French company agreed to begin making the Wright brothers' flying machine.

Orville made successful flights in the United States at the time Wilbur was in France.  One lasted an hour.  Orville also made fifty-seven complete circles over a field at Fort Myer, Virginia.  The United States War Department agreed to buy a Wright brothers' plane.  Wilbur and Orville suddenly became world heroes.  Newspapers wrote long stories about them.  Crowds followed them.  But they were not seeking fame.  They returned to Dayton where they continued to improve their airplanes.  They taught many others how to fly.

Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever in nineteen twelve.  Orville  Wright continued designing and inventing until he died many years  later, in nineteen forty-eight.

Today, the Wright brothers' first airplane is in the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.  Visitors to the museum look at the Wright brothers' small plane with its cloth wings, wooden controls and tiny engine.  Then they see space vehicles and a rock collected from the moon.  This is striking evidence of the changes in the world since Wilbur and Orville Wright began the modern age of flight, one hundred years ago.

(MUSIC)

This program was written by Marilyn Rice Christiano and produced by Paul Thompson.  Your announcers were Sarah Long and Rich Kleinfeldt.  I'm Faith Lapidus.  Join us again next week for PEOPLE IN AMERICA from VOA Special English.

Larry Hagman...Where are they now?

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Image's source:  www.lifestreamsdb.blogspot.com

Source: www.speakup.com

Language level: Pre-intermediate

Standard accent: American

Speaker: Chuck Rolando

LARRY HAGMAN

Thirty years ago everybody asked the same question: “Who shot J.R.? J.R was J.R Erwing, the star  of theTV series Dallas. JR. was a corrupt Texas oilman. He was cruel in business and he was cruel in his private life. He had many enemies. The show’s second season ended on March 21^st, 1980. In the last episode a mystery figure entered his office and shot him. The next season began in November. Viewers awaited eight months for the answer to the question “Who Shot J.R?” 83 million Americans watched the first episode of the new season. It was also an international sensation. The Turkish parliament interrupted a session: this was so that M.P.s could go home and watch Dallas!

SOLAR POWER

Larry Hagman is the actor who played J.R. His performance was brilliant: he was the man “everyone loved to hate.” In reality Larry Hagman is very different from J.R. JR, was a Texas oilman. He probably liked another Texas oilman, George W. Bush, but Larry Hagman is left-wing and he hates Bush! And Hagman doesn’t like oil: today he campaigns for solar energy.

CAREER

Larry Hagman was born on September 21^st, 1931. His childhood was difficult. His mother, Mary Martin, was a famous actress. She divorced her husband when Larry was five. Larry went to live with his grandmother. As a teenager he developed a drink problem. When he left school he decided to become an actor but he joined the United States Air force during the Korean War. He left the Air Force in 1956 and worked as a TV actor. He became a star in the 1960s, thanks to the success of the series I Dream of Jeannie. The show was about a female genie: Hagman played her master. And Dallas made Hagman a superstar. The show ran from 1978 to 1991. Hagman appeared in all 357 episodes.

THE ANSWERS…

Today Larry Hagman is 79. He is a member of the environmental group Solar World. He and his wife live in an enormous house in the California Mountains. It is completely solar-powered. In the past the Hagman’s annual energy bill was $37.000. Today is $13.

One last question. Who shot J.R? It was his sister-in-law, Kristin. And that’s not all: Dallas will return to television. There will be a sequel about J.R’s children. Larry Hagman will probably appear.