Yesterday I finished tabulating the immersion results, turns out that they were pretty good and I had some good surprises when it comes to new teachers. They are totally immersion material and I just hope they stick around for the next season, because turnover can be very high, and not only at the end of terms. So, thinking that this would be the good piece of news of the week at work, I got a call from a big company today looking for something similar to what we do in immersion classes. The programme is really successful but we’ve been basically working with one company for many years now and we want to expand to other businesses. If we could get this contract — and make it something permanent –, man, it would be w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l!
So, I was listening to the radio this morning and the news was that newly elected PM David Cameron is having a 5% pay cut in his salary as well as his ministers’, which is a far cry from the reality in Brazil. Last year, the Supreme Court ministers (yes, they’re ministers), had their salaries raised in September by 5% and then from February this year, extra 3.88%. I guess if you divide the pay raise in two installments, it doesn’t look so obvious to the population, right? So, altogether, they got 8.8% raise, but the original number was 14.09%, which was rejected by the Congress. Oh, that helped a lot, indeed… I heard that Congress also rejected the complimentary drinks bill, which could really save some big cash for the country!!!
Well, I guess Glenn Beck is a subject that will constantly pop in the posts, unless he quits his job or, I don’t know, something happens to him. The latter is something that he himself talks about in his radio show, saying that his life is kind of “The Identity Bourne” movie. It’s kind of funny picturing him as Jason Bourne, you know, dodging bullets, fighting KGB guys, taking part in high speed chases… I don’t know, man, I don’t know what other talk radio shows are like, I don’t know what other kinds of non-sense stuff are said, but it couldn’t be something worse than saying that the population might be looking at mass murders, mass sterilization and forced abortions. I mean, seriously. When I think the line has been crossed, he manages to draw a new line and goes even further. He mentions something about the regulation of the population’s food intake in the health bill and I don’t know what the text is neither do I have the entire show. But, if the population was encouraged to add healthy food in their diet, so many people with serious health problems wouldn’t spend a lot of tax dollars on treating such problems. And, as he probably doesn’t care about the people’s health, I’m surprised that he doesn’t see it as a way to save money. Now I wonder: where will the next line be drawn???
Now, the good stuff. Two more TEDTalks available in Portuguese! The first, translated by Sueli Zardo and reviewed by me, shows Deborah Scranton talking about her documentary “The War Tapes”, where the viewer is immersed in the battle field by watching images filmed by the soldiers themselves, along with their personal accounts. The second, translated by Volney Faustini and reviewed by me… well… I don’t know what to think about. I’m sure it’s a fascinating talk for people that actually understood the content! Stephen Wolfram, a really smart guy and founder of Mathematica, wants to make a theory of everything… using computers and algorithms and, well, I guess images are involved in that… I need to confess that after doing the review I had a bit of a headache (not sure if I should’ve mentioned that…). Anyway, worth checking out!
-- Never too many beers -- 