TED Talk by BLACK

Half of it is talk, the other half is a performance. I think that everyone should take some time to think about what they do for fun, what their passions are. Not centers of interest, but real passions. What have you done to realize your dreams? Have you had the courage to dedicate yourself to your passion, or did you follow our society's preconceived roads? In a world where everything is vowed to efficiency and speed, "personal" fun, as in playing the Yoyo for hours by yourself, is being discriminated.
I think this video is very profound and utterly denounces capitalism.
http://www.ted.com/talks/black_my_journey_to_yo_yo_mastery.html

- TEDxParisUniversités 2013 ! -

- TEDxParisUniversités 2013 ! -

the afternoon of June 8th... in French!

Perhaps you'd like to discover a Paris TEDx!

james

An Interactive Map of Regional American Accents, With Audio

An Interactive Map of Regional American Accents, With Audio: updated on April 17, 2003

back to America :-)  . Here's a map of American accents  with lots of authentic recordings.

See you on Friday!
James

Phil Waknell: Secrets of a great Wiki Talk - WikiStage ESCP Europe Paris - YouTube

Phil Waknell: Secrets of a great Wiki Talk - WikiStage ESCP Europe Paris - YouTube: Phil Waknell: Secrets of a great Wiki Talk -


Phil Waknell: Secrets of a great Wiki Talk - WikiStage ESCP Europe Paris - YouTube: Phil Waknell: Secrets of a great Wiki Talk -

Some of you will be doing your oral presentations for the class soon.... you might enjoy this talk.... let me know if you see anyone you know in the audience.

Leave a comment please...
see you soon
james

TED Talks

After  having watched the favorite TED Talks of Valeh and Nicolas, which I found really interesting and impressive, I randomly looked at some talks on the website. However, I was willing to see other TED Talks that people found awesome and so I moved to Bill Gates' 13 favorite TED Talks.
The first one, made by Hans Rosling, really changed my mind about chart studies (like we had to do in Geography courses in High School). This man did a great job with charts and animations, I highly recommend this video :
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

I like this one too, dealing with history, and complexity (2nd law of thermodynamics)
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history.html

Damien

TED Talk - Hack a banana, make a keyboard!

This is my favorite TED Talk out of 5 I watched yesterday. Jay Silver explains here how to hack a banana in order to make a keyboard... Well in fact it's a bit more than that !

At the begining of the video, I simply thought that this guy was a wacko... But since the title interested me, I decided to continue watching it. And it was totally worth it ! This guy is in fact a real genius and so creative ! One should watch this video from the begining to the end because it's amazingly awesome !

Nicolas

British Accent vs American Accent Funny.flv on Veehd

British Accent vs American Accent Funny.flv

Since our guest who is doing next week's class is British I'd like you to all adjust your pronunciation so as to make Clive feel at home...  This li-(tt)-le guide will help you.  Please leave a comment to say what you think!

Remember.... homework... before the end of the year...
1) book blurbs --  coming???  (two or three paragraphs and a section with nice expressions... either explained in English or used in a little text or story).
2) feedback on the CCC project on survey monkey (Valeh... you shouldn't have to retype everything again... just use the same IP and add your name! if it doesn't work contact me... maybe I can add your name as admin.)
3) post at least one Ted talk to the blog with a paragraph about why you chose it... (Which ones of the 1500 tedtalks online are really good??  What is your favorite!)

I invited the four of you that weren't yet "contributors" to the blog. You should be able to accept the invite. (If there's a problem any of the others can invite you again since everyone is an admin.)

The agenda for our last 4 classes....
1) Clive's class....  "Welcome to Britain"
2) After Clive's class next week, we'll have a class where (finally) Ali gets to speak and where Charles is preparing a blind test for us...
3) Then the following class Gilles and Damien will give their talk and also Valeh and Agathe will get to organize an activity for us.
4) Then in our last class...  Felix and Nicolas and ???? will get to organize an activity for the group and I can give you my grammar test!

any other suggestions or suggestions?  (comments and posts on the blog now go to the whole group..)  (don't be a lurker... do it!)

have a nice long weekend
james

TED talks

This afternoon we talked a bit about TED talks and watched 2 of them. I had never watched any of them completely before, but just some parts of some of them which weren’t that interesting! But the 2 we watched this afternoon were, I think, really cool (above all this one : http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days.html :) !! And I decided to take a photo every day, like the speaker said he had done, for a month!)

Tonight, I watched 4 other ones :

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/fr/candy_chang_before_i_die_i_want_to.html (Inspiring, it’s about a woman who decided to transform the wall of an unused place to a sort of huge black board on which passengers could write on with a chalk what they would like to do before they die. During the talk, she reads out some of the answers and there are some funny ones, as well as more “serious” ones that make you think a little bit... I found it quite interesting the idea of “preparing yourself for your death” as she explains at the end of the talk...)

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/fr/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html (Inspiring. This one was quite long, but the subject was rather interesting so I watched it till the end. On the whole it’s about how your body postures can influence the way other people consider you but also (and this I had less thought about before) yourself : studies have shown that there are considerable impacts on your performance or on the amount of some hormones in your body, when you have or not some physical postures...)

http://www.ted.com/talks/ron_gutman_the_hidden_power_of_smiling.html (Inspiring as well (I like this category most actually ;) !) As the title says, it’s about why and how much smiling can help you improve your self-confidence, likeability, performance, social relations, and stuff like that. It’s not very long and the speaker smiles during the whole talk, which is in fact rather pleasant :) ..!)

http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_tells_a_story_of_mixed_emoticons.html (Funny, it’s vert short and consists mostly in presenting some emoticons, the well knowns such as :) and :( but also a whole lot others I personnally didn’t know at all and that I found funny (I’m fond of them actually ;) …) like Q<= for a girl (it’s in the same direction as the sad face and smiling faces...)

I actually liked the 4 of them! Though I’d say that the most interesting which sometimes do really influence you and make you reflect, are the “Inspiring”-tagged ones...

Valeh