emotionally over-sensitive

First of all what are the symptons of highly sensitive person?

First sign that can prove that you are in this groupe of people can be that you cry at commercials, or anything you watching. You can also literally seem to feel what others feel or have an especially hard time coping with criticism. Another one, when  you have a hard time sorting out and identifying what you're actually feeling or feel emotionally triggered when you hear or witness stories about things that happen to vulnerable people or animals. If you experience mood swings or unstable emotions really often may also indicate that you are emotionally sensitive person. 

As the people who are emotionally sensitive claim that it's rather a disease, which they are suffered from. However, there are also the advantages of being one of them. First of all you are emotional awerness and more creative person. Nevertheless everyday interactions can limit your ability to lead a happier life. Therefore person emotionally over-sensitive should aim to find the balance in everyday life.

SoKo

In my last post I mention song untitled "We Might Be Dead by Tomorrow". I would like to present one of the remarkable person for me. Stéphanie Sokolinski better known by her stage name Soko, was born in a polish jewish family in Bordeaux. She left home at 16, quit school and moved to Paris to start acting class. Nowadays she's 27 years old singer and actress  (Her acting career include french films like: Ma vie n'est pas une comédie romantique, Augustine, Les Interdits etc.) Soko was also nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress for her role in À l'origine (English title In the Beginning, directed by Xavier Giannoli. Although she emphasizes that her first love was singing and then acting. Her début album- entitled I Thought I Was An Alien was released in February 2012.

The music reminds me of Leonard Cohen and I personally believe that her music is ideal not only for melancholy days.

First kiss

Few months ago the black and white video titled "First Kiss"  that everyone shared on Facebook and has been watched more than 45 million times caused a sensation in the Internet.

The three-and-a-half-minute video, shot in black and white, showed 10 pairs of strangers kissing for the first time. Directed by Ms. Pilieva. She emailed it to just a couple people. ”Hey my dears, I wanted to share our little film with you. Here are the links, feel free to share as you wish,” she wrote in the email.  Just few days after that a YouTube link had about 45 million views. 

As a proof of shocking global reaction can be a comment on video in Ellen show.

In the fact, it was revealed that the 'strangers' were actually actors and models hired by the clothing company WREN.  They commissioned filmmaker Tatia Pilieva to create a video that would showcase their Fall collection but it succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.The video was made on a shoestring budget of $1,300. French musician Soko not only stars in one of the most moving scenes in'First Kiss' ( in which she kissses a woman), she also provide the pretty tune ' We might be dead tomorrow' as a score to the three-minute love. 

As the 2014 FIFA World Cup is starting in Brazil from tomorrow, 12 June I want to present you some of the street art that shows the paradox of organization the championships in that country.

According to a document released by the popular movement ‘People's Committee of the World Cup and Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro', the preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro will displace more than 7,185 families from their homes to make way for new sports facilities, bus routes and improvements in tourism infrastructure.

Graffiti depicting Fuleco, the World Cup mascot, and a pig.

And the last one, the most famous and which shows problems in the most convincing way.

Graffiti by Brazilian street artist Paulo Ito depicting a starving child with nothing to eat but a football.

Water is the most important liquid for humain body. We all need that substance. 
It's good to replace other beverages to water. But are you ever think what happend to bottled water?
Is a bottled water harmless for us?
I want to present you 10 reasons why some people use other container insted of buying plastic water bottles:


#1: About 1/4 of all bottled water is actually TAP water? Dasani and Aquafina both admitted their product is nothing more than filtered TAP water! (You can do that for free at home.)
#2: Plastic water bottles are NOT safer than tap water (Plastic = BPA = Toxic = Cancer.) Advertisements have us brainwashed into thinking bottled water is safer than tap water, more pure, and from the mountains of Spring Water Happy-Land. (It's not.) 1 person from the FDA regulates the entire water bottle industry, aka nothing is really being regulated here. 
#3: Water bottle companies (like Nestle, Pepsi, Coke) are taking fresh water from the Earth (for free), contaminating it with plastic, selling it back to us, and getting totally rich. (Who said that water was theirs?)
#4: These water bottle companies are corrupt and only care about power and money. (These guys claim water is "liquid gold" and are capitalizing on it BIG TIME). That pisses me off.
#5: These water bottle companies are barging into places like Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado, (just to name a few) and pumping (stealing) the water, causing lower water levels and throwing off natural ecosystems. (People aren't happy about that.)
#6: The plastic factories are using TONS of oil to make these bottles.
#7: The plastic factories where these billions of bottles come from are posioning the land and the people who live nearby because it is highly toxic.
#8: Americans use (and throw out) approximately 30 million plastic water bottles A DAY! The Earth is being seriously polluted because some of us are so wasteful. 
#9: Even the bottles that are being "recycled" aren't actually getting recycled... more like piled up in landfills. 
#10: It's a waste of your money! Water should be FREE! 

Isn't it a little bite shocking? Anyway you must admit that convincing to some extent.

Commercials are usually associated  with messages in internet newspapers, magazines, flyers, billboards to sell a product, item or service. For the society it's rather brings negative feelings about being manipulate by the biggest companies etc.

However another type of commercials can promote healthy habits, or eliminate some addictions. That range of commercials is called social campaign. Some of them slip our  mind , others have an effect on us. At the weekend i came across with the Thai anti-smoking campaign, which i want to share with you.

It really  give me pause for thought. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_YZ_PtMkw0

last Communist leader

Many people associate picture above with difficult times to Poland. This image shows 

Gen Jaruzelski in 1981, when he declared martial law and ordered the arrest of the pro-democracy Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. 

Gen Jaruzelski fought in a Polish unit of the Russian army during World War Two and rose up the military ranks after the war to become chief "political officer" of Poland's armed forces.

He denied ordering the fatal shooting of dozens of shipyard workers in the northern cities of Gdansk and Gdynia in 1971, for which he was later put on trial.

"Martial law was evil but it was a far lesser evil than what would have happened without it," he told his trial.

To many Poles he was a traitor but others gave him the benefit of the doubt.

His trial was suspended in 2011 after he was diagnosed with cancer.

Today, on 25 may 2014 Poland's last Communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski has died  after a long illness.

inland surfing lake

Are you into surfing? Britain's first artificial, inland surfing lake is due to open in Snowdonia, in North Wales the next summer. Revolutionary engineering is bringing the power of the ocean to the mountains of North Wales. The giant wave lagoon, three times the size of a football pitch, will be the first of its kind in the world. You need to presses a button and 1.2m (4ft) waves rise up, peel and break in exactly the same spot. One is formed every minute. The revolutionary technology makes that sport easier to practise.

In the natural world waves are created by the action of wind moving over the water and are affected by, among other things, tides and the geography of the ocean floor. It is a complicated mix.

The official site of  inland surfing lake  is set to open around Easter 2015, then all you need to do is booking an hour and instead of waiting for the wind, you will be able to enjoy surfing with pressing the bottom.

The inventors maintain that it could transform the sport of surfing and also giving it the potential to be considered as an Olympic event. But don’t you think that it will take the pleasure back from surfing in the bosom of nature? That only time can tell.

Historical footage remastered

    During the weekend a friend of mine invite me to the cinema. Some historical film was mentioned. I take him up on his offer, but i wasn't sure if that film will be worth seeing. 'Battle of Warsaw 1920 ', film which i watched few years ago was still in my memory. That was the worst movie i've ever watched, even if it was directed by Jerzy Hoffman ( one of the most famous polish director).  Nevertheless i had fancied going out at the weekend. And that was the only reason i I found myself in cinema hall. The first impression was really good, i read on the screen that the movie had been created in cooperation with The Warsaw Rising Museum. Then I realized that it's a feature film showing authentic events of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

It's no point in revealing the plot of movie, because I think it’s better to see it for yourself. I'm certain you won't be disappointed.

As I found out later It's the world's first feature film assembled completely of documentary materials.  Many specialists worked on the production. It is interesting that besides hard work with a treatment of destroyed film tapes, there were employed specialists who read with the movements of the lips. They worked on the silent material from chronicles and were responsible for dialogues of insurgents.

BBC news about the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsFD_2zm27g

             Being fit is nowaydays really trendy.  Its nothing wrong with eating healthy, practicing sport etc.  Even if  some people become healthy freaks.  They publish picture of their meal, outfit for running, or themselves at the gym.  We can not deny that for some it is important to show off in front of friends.  

Despite that I think that this new trend has many positive aspects.  People want to be more attractive and what is more to feel good with their body.  Today I want to shed some light on a question about healthy diet. For me the most important thing is to be aware of what you eat. human body needs a balanced, healthy eating plan to keep functioning properly. Eating a variety of foods can reduce the risk of getting conditions including heart disease, stroke, some cancers, diabetes and osteoporosis.

Below I want move to interesting facts about the nutrients in foods.

Do you know that…

Fruit and vegetables are one of our main sources of vitamins and minerals, which the body needs to perform a variety of functions well. For instance, vitamin A helps to strengthen our immune system, B vitamins help us process energy from food, vitamin D helps us maintain healthy teeth and bones, and vitamin C helps to keep cells and tissues healthy. The steamed carrots and broccoli will maintain a higher proportion of vitamins than boiled or fried vegetables. Fruit and vegetables (eaten with the skin on) also contain high amounts of fibre which help to maintain a healthy gut and digestive system.

Meat fish, eggs and pulses provide us with significant amounts of protein which is essentially a building block of the body. Everything from our hair, muscles, nerves, skin and nails needs protein to build and repair itself.

Fluids are also vital to help our bodies perform their functions effectively, and the best fluid of all is water. It's necessary to help our blood carry nutrients and waste around the body and to help the chemical reactions that occur in our cells.

Common Sayings

      One of thing you should certainly learn in order to enrich your language are idioms. However, we should pay attention to use them correctly.

      Above is a picture where it is literally raining cats and dogs. The word "literal" has a very clear meaning: "actual or without exaggeration." Yet, it is far too often used to add emphasis to a situation and exaggerate a certain thing that could not possibly be factual: I literally froze to death (Then how is it you are alive and able to express this nonsense?), My phone is literally blowing up. (Your phone is not a ticking time bomb, or is it? )  The correct word in these and others cases in which you don't really mean literally but figuratively.

   

If you're "taken for granite" that would mean you're mistaken for one of rocks. You should be careful with misspelling. For example: to take something for granted is to assume that you are entitled to it, without question or to simply fail to appreciate its value. Whereas to take something for "granite" can only mean to assume that the person or thing is actually a piece of igneous rock.

I strongly recommend the website where you can find interesting examples for proper use of idioms and not only:  http://grammarist.com/

Trade Secrets We Wish We Knew

Apart from the various advertising gimmicks used by large corporations like special ingredients to make a hamburger looking delicious in advertisements, or yellow colour  in commercials to stimulate your appetite. 

Every company takes part in a rat race to get the highest amount of consumers. They promises a better product - a better burger, a better search engine, a better hotel room. For the companies below, the secret to a superior product is worth millions, or even billions.

Now let's take a look at some trade secrets, that are worth a lot of money to the people that own them.

First of all coca cola's secret recipe: it's common knowledge that the world's most famous secret recipe once contained cocaine; what's less known is that Coke still uses a coca leaf extract made by the Stepan Company, the only company in the U.S. that is allowed to process cocaine. Coca Cola also admits to using African kola nuts, lime extract and vanilla, and various reports suggest other exotic ingredients, including lemon extract, orange extract, nutmeg and neroli. The true recipe remains a mystery. Unfortunately, the decision to avoid a patent didn't protect Coke from two of its own employees who tried to sell the formula to Pepsi. Luckily, they were turned in by Coke's competitor.

Secondly, the trade secrets we know little about, but are worth billions. It is a Google's proprietary search algorithm, which helped it achieve dominance over the Internet.

And the last one- popular chain restaurant, KFC (aka Kentucky Fried Chicken). Sanders created a recipe for a tasty chicken coating about 70 years ago that contained 11 herbs and spices. That same recipe is still used today.  His original, handwritten copy is hidden in a safe in Kentucky, and only a few select employees, bound by a confidentiality contract, know what the recipe is.

beer belly

We know beer is pretty calorific, as are the snacks we crave to accompany it.
But why does it specifically affect men’s guts? Greg Foot explains all.

When you drink beer, your liver has to go into overdrive to detoxify the alcohol. Now add a few packets of crisps to the equation, maybe some peanuts and those calories are there to stay. Beer itself is pretty calorific stuff, to the tune of around 150 calories a unit so why beer makes you fat, well that starts to seem obvious.

Now why does it give you a beer belly specifically? Well the answer is down to two things apparently - gender and age. After about the age of 35 most men's metabolisms start to slow down. While men tend to put weight on their... bellies, women's fat stores commonly go on their backside and hips.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRx5MhNqWvc

contact lens and diabetes

Google has announced it's testing a smart contact lens that
can help measure glucose levels in tears.

The contacts contain a tiny wireless chip and a sensor.
The company is hoping the technology could lead to a new way
of helping people with diabetes manage their disease.

If this invention can help people who suffer from diabetes, why not?
More about that topic:
http://news.yahoo.com/google-contact-lens-could-option-diabetics-062656935.html

Can music make you smarter?

In my last post I wrote about a scientific experiment which concerned true and false beliefs.
In this one I would like spot another, namely research on music.

Can music make you smarter?
This is a question which we need to answer.
You have probably heard of the Mozart effect. It’s the idea that if children or even babies listen to music composed by Mozart they will become more intelligent. A quick internet search reveals plenty of products to assist you in the task.
The students who listened to Mozart did better at tasks where they had to create shapes in their minds. For a short time the students were better at spatial tasks where they had to look at folded up pieces of paper with cuts in them and to predict how they would appear when unfolded. But unfortunately, as the authors make clear at the time, this effect lasts for about fifteen minutes. So it’s hardly going to bring you a lifetime of enhanced intelligence.

In that video James May delves into the mysteries of music in his own inimitable way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zU7PyUrdU

The puppet show and our minds

What connects two distant things from the title?

              Psychologists can use dolls to reveal how we judge true and false beliefs in the world around us. Yet not everybody has this talent. as Jason G Goldman discovers.

In a scientific experiment, children were invited to watch a scene featuring two dolls, then asked make a decision about what they saw – see if you make the same choice as they did.

A puppet-doll called Sally, who has a marble (a ball). She places it into a basket, and then leaves the room. Next, another doll, Anne, steals the marble from Sally's basket, and moves it into her own. Sally returns, without known about Anne's trickery.

If you watched this EXPERIMENT, where do you think Sally will look for her marble? It seems obvious – her own basket – but not everybody gets the answer right. Some children, and many animals, try to imagine Sally’s perspective.

This talent is a signature of “theory of mind” – an ability I have been exploring in my previous two columns, on deception and distinguishing intention from happenstance. We share those two simpler forms of mindreading with other animals – but passing the Sally-Anne test requires far more sophisticated thinking.

Why? You must be able to hold two contradictory ideas at once. First, you must know the true state of the world: the marble is in Anne's basket. Second, you must understand Sally's flawed perspective of the world: Sally believes the marble is still in her own basket. In other words, you must simultaneously maintain both a true belief and a false belief in your mind without confusing the two.



Research in the intervening decades has refined that conclusion, but the Sally-Anne task and others like it have been used extensively as a clever method for detecting the more sophisticated forms of theory of mind. Most replications of the Sally-Anne task with typically developing children have found that four-year-old children tend to pass the test, but that younger children usually fail.

New Year's resolutions

Each year comes this time when we all sum up the past year and we creating new list of resolutions. Everybody wants to have better time in the upcoming year. So we find a place where we can sit and reflect, then think about changes and improvements we'd like to make. The most common sacrifices and promises are: to lose weight and get fit, to quit smoking, to learn something new, to eat healthier and diet, to get out of debt and save money, to spend more time with family, to travel to new places, to be less stressed, to drink less. Who has never promised himself even one of these things?  Nobody! all promise to improve themselves, do something for their own sake. Like a necessity imposed from the top.

really nice video by
Dr. Mike Evans- 'New Year's Resolutions' <- click