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Author Archives: Daniel Fuchs
A better trade agreement
What would you change about TTIP, and what would a better trade agreement between then EU and the US look like?
Yvette, Martina, Steffi, Jana
- reduce tariffs on essential items such as medical equipment and drugs
Nina, Celine, Stefan, Julian
- reduce tariffs on cars, pharmaceutical and agricultural products
- preserve Germnan standards of consumer protection
Anna, Cindy, Maria, Kim
- maintain tariffs to avoid competition of cheap foreign products with local ones
- maintain consumer protection laws, especially with regard to pesticides in agriculture
Alexander, Nga, Nadja
- fair prices
- keep EU standards on cosmetics (no testing on animals)
Strange creature
Here’s a puzzle:
What has a face and two hands but no arms or legs?
(Obviously, the answer is not ‘a smiley with two hands’.)
The lumbersexual
Would you like to be as free as this man?
All you have to do is grow a beard and join the ranks of the lumbersexuals, a new fashion and lifestyle trend for men. (If you’re a woman, there may still be hope even without a beard). Its typical exponent has been described by GearJunkie as
He is bar-hopping, but he looks like he could fell a Norway Pine. He looks like a man of the woods, but works at The Nerdery, programming for a healthy salary and benefits. His backpack carries a MacBook Air, but looks like it should carry a lumberjack’s axe.
The commercial, by the way, was made by Urban Beard, a Canadian cosmetics company that sells organic beard grooming products.
My question to you: is this a real thing or just an invention of marketers? Does it appeal to you?
Quirkology
Today we talked about the word stunt, which is used differently in English than in German. Here’s a video about party stunts:
Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the UK, also runs a blog with more interesting videos about optical illusions and the power of imagination.
By the way, Quirkology (the name of Richard’s YouTube channel) is a made-up word (from quirky = weird, eccentric and a standard Latin suffix). So quirkology is the science of the weird and eccentric.
False advertising
via BoredPanda — a blog (mostly) about the beautiful things in life.
The changing themes of commercials
Have a look at these three commercials. What has changed from the 1980s until today?
Lifestyle Sports discounter (Ireland), 1980s
Speak ‘n’ Spell (Texas Instruments), 1980s
Coca Cola, contemporary
How not to give a presentation
This is from a book called Career Express. A guy presents a laptop in the style of a Shakespearean drama.
Please don’t do that for your exams, or you’ll make me crack up and fall from my chair.
So what’s the problem with this speaker? He’s got the right expression, but he’s absolutely overdoing it. This is especially bad if you speak like Hamlet but make funny mistakes or use inappropriate vocabulary.
To sum up, you should use some expression, but don’t do anything that feels unnatural.
The story of stuff
The Story of Stuff is a series of videos about impacts of our consumer culture on people and the planet. Here’s one about electronic devices:
You will find more information on the Story of Stuff website.
A diamond among authors
So we talked about the history of business and trade. Which came first, money or markets, money or interest?
If you’re interested in human history in a broader context, more questions may pop up: Why have we stopped living as hunter-gatherers? Why and when did states evolve? Why did the Mayan and Greenland Viking Empires collapse but not Spain or China? Why did Europeans conquer native America and not the other way round? Why are most African countries notoriously poor while Europe and North America seem to be predestined for wealth? Is it because Africans are less bright than we are?
Jared Diamond, an American biologist and historian, has probed into these questions and gives surprising answers based on his broad knowledge of both natural sciences and society. His most famous books include: *
- Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
His books have also been translated into German, but if you want to improve your English, I’d recommend the original versions.
* I don’t want to imply that you should use Amazon. Search for these titles anywhere else, and you may find better offers.