Tag Archives: November 2014

Books

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Books, Students

Charades Game #15 – Teenagers & Adults

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We have begun a new round of our hit game, Charades. Our latest video is in our Teenagers & Adult’s section.

Take part in the game by clicking on the picture above or the Reader’s Blog Charades link below.

[button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://englishbookgeorgia.com/readers/” target=”blank” ]Reader’s Blog Charades[/button]

Students

How can a scientist get closer to an animal he or she is trying to study? By dressing up like that animal, of course!

 

Did you dress up as a giant panda this Halloween? Well, panda keepers in China take it a step further by sprinkling themselves with panda poop and pee!

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“That’s to mask the human smell,” says Andrea Muller of Pandas International. By wearing panda suits when handling the cubs, caregivers minimize the animals’ stress and human attachment, Muller says.

At the International Crane Foundation in Wisconsin, staff dress like ghosts—wearing white to hide their bodies—and use a bird-shaped hand puppet to interact with baby whooping cranes hatched at the foundation.

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“We try to replicate what actual parents do,” says Kim Boardman, the assistant curator of birds. “The puppet offers natural food, catches grasshoppers, and teaches chicks to forage.”

Biologist Tom Reimchen and his students at the University of Victoria in British Columbia wanted to see how salmon reacted to spirit bears—black bears with a genetic variation that gives them white fur—compared to more common black bears with black fur. So, Reimchen and his students wore either white or black fabric and waded in a fishing hole.

The salmon were less spooked by students wearing white, suggesting that spirit bears may be more successful at catching fish, possibly because the fish don’t recognize the rare bears as predators.

To see how moose around Yellowstone National Park would react to the smell of wolves that were making a comeback in the area, biologist Joel Berger of the Wildlife Conservation Society and his colleagues wore a moose suit. The suit allowed them to get close and drop wolf poop near the moose.

The scientists discovered that the moose had forgotten to run when they smelled a wolf, but the moose quickly learned to avoid the wolves when they returned to the area!

Sometimes, scientists resort to dressing up their technology rather than themselves.

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To get close to emperor penguins in Antarctica, scientists camouflaged remote-controlled rovers to look like a penguin adult and chick. Many penguins tried to communicate with them. Studies also showed that the penguins were less stressed out by these robotic penguins than they were by humans.

In Kenya, researchers faced danger from hippos while trying to collect river water samples, but they knew that hippos and crocs ignore each other. So Amanda Subalusky, a graduate student at Yale University, and her colleagues decided to construct a remote-controlled boat disguised with a lifelike crocodile head and outfitted it with scientific instruments. The students were able to steer the boat through hippo swimming holes and collect the data they needed.

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[button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141028-halloween-costumes-science-conservation-nation-animals/” target=”blank” ]Source[/button]

 

Students, Teachers, Training & Conferences

Interesting Words and Expressions – Annihilate

What does annihilate mean?

It is a verb that means to destroy (something or someone) completely; obliterate OR to defeat (someone) completely.

How do you pronounce it?

/əˈnʌɪɪleɪt/

or

[an·ni·hi·late]

Where does it come from?

From the 1520’s, Late Latin ‘annihilatus’, past participle of ‘annihilare’, to bring to nothing.

How do you use it?

For example, “The enemy troops were annihilated.” OR “He annihilated his opponent in the last election.”

Students, Teachers, Training & Conferences

12 Fun Facts about the American holiday, Thanksgiving

 On the fourth Thursday in November, families across the U.S. gather to feast on turkey. Below are some facts about this American holiday.

The first Thanksgiving was held in the autumn of 1621 and included 50 Pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag Indians and lasted three days. Many historians believe that only five women were present at that first Thanksgiving, as many women settlers didn’t survive that difficult first year in the U.S.

Thanksgiving didn’t become a national holiday until over 200 years later! Sarah Josepha Hale, the woman who actually wrote the classic song “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” convinced President Lincoln in 1863 to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, after writing letters for 17 years campaigning for this to happen.

No turkey was on the menu at the first Thanksgiving: Historians say that no turkey was served at the first Thanksgiving! What was on the menu? Deer, ducks, geese, oysters, lobster, eel and fish. They probably ate pumpkins, but no pumpkin pies. They also didn’t eat mashed potatoes or cranberry relish, but they probably ate cranberries.

No forks were at the first Thanksgiving! The first Thanksgiving was eaten with spoons and knives — but no forks! That’s right, forks weren’t even introduced to the Pilgrims until 10 years later and weren’t a popular utensil until the 18th century.

Why is Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November? President Abe Lincoln said Thanksgiving would be the fourth Thursday in November, but in 1939 President Roosevelt moved it up a week hoping it would help the shopping season during the Depression era. It never caught on and it was changed back two years later.

Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird, not the eagle.

Americans eat 46 million turkeys each Thanksgiving.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s first meal in space after walking on the moon was foil bags with roasted turkey.

The heaviest turkey on record, according to the Guinness Book of Records, weighs 39 kilograms (86 pounds).

Californians consume the most turkey in the U.S. on Thanksgiving Day!

Female turkeys (called hens) do not gobble. Only male turkeys gobble.

The average turkey for Thanksgiving weighs 6.8 kilograms (15 pounds).

Books, Professionals

Book of the Week: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products by Leander Kahney

“An adulating biography of Apple’s left-brained wunderkind, whose work continues to revolutionize modern technology.” —Kirkus Reviews

In 1997, Steve Jobs discovered a scruffy British designer toiling away at Apple’s headquarters, surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes. Jony Ive’s collaboration with Jobs would produce some of the world’s most iconic technology products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone. Ive’s work helped reverse Apple’s long decline, overturned entire industries, and created a huge global fan base. Yet little is known about the shy, soft-spoken whiz whom Jobs referred to as his “spiritual partner.”

Leander Kahney offers a detailed portrait of the English art school student with dyslexia who became the most acclaimed tech designer of his generation. Drawing on interviews with Ive’s former colleagues and Apple insiders, Kahney “takes us inside the creation of these memorable objects.” (The Wall Street Journal)

[button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://englishbookgeorgia.com/catalogue/shop/bestsellers/jony-ive-the-genius-behind-apples-greatest-products/” target=”blank” ]Buy the Book[/button]

 

Books, Professionals

The Little-Known Story of Jony Ive’s First Apple Product Design

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Jony Ive hasn’t always been the tech design colossus that he is today — in fact, it turns out that his highly acclaimed design chops had very humble origins at Apple. Business Insider has published an excerpt from Leander Kahney’s book Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products that details Ive’s first time heading up an Apple design project, in this case the Newton MessagePad 110 that was a sequel to the first-generation Newton that infamously failed to set the tech world on fire in the early 1990s.

After the original Newton got panned in early reviews, Apple put Ive in charge of the project to right the ship. Although no Newton will ever be seen along the same lines as the iPhone or the MacBook Air, Ive did bring some real improvements to the device that were readily apparent. You’ll be unsurprised to know that Ive worked to make the device’s stylus thinner and he also redesigned the device’s lid with a spring-loaded mechanism that opened up the device when you pressed down on it.

The result was a device that won several design awards despite the fact that it didn’t sell anywhere close to what Apple had hoped. And more importantly, the Newton MessagePad 110 won Ive many admirers within the company and set the stage for his later triumphs.

[button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://news.yahoo.com/little-known-story-jony-ive-first-apple-product-010026948.html” target=”blank” ]Source[/button]

 

Professionals

5 Ways To Get Prospective Customers to Choose You

In the world of business marketing, the strategic focus has slowly shifted from seeking potential clients to making them want to come to you.

In other words, you as a business owner can finally forgo the drudgery of always having to jump through hoops to gain a client and instead focus on making your customers want to come to you.

To learn how to utilize this marketing strategy, read the helpful tips listed below:

 

1. Don’t target everyone.

Admittedly, it does seem counterproductive to minimize your potential client base when attempting to grow your business.However, often catering to a niche client base will help you succeed in your efforts to grow your business, not the reverse.

After all, you can’t please everyone and people love specific personalized solutions for their problems.. By selecting a niche group within your broad business arena, you can market more specifically and offer products or services for specific needs.

A good example is Richard Simmons. He is known as exercise expert who focuses on a niche market: overweight people who would otherwise avoid working out. In so doing, Simmons has become a huge success.

 

2. Make your marketing entertaining. 

While you want prospects to attain information about your business, product or service after watching the ad, you also want your marketing campaign to be memorable, funny and worth sharing. Otherwise, it will likely be forgotten.

 

3. Provide free resources.

If you as a business owner and solve a client’s problem for free, you will have succeeded where 99.9 percent of others have failed.

By offering a tip or helping a client pro bono, you are building repoire with them which could lead to business down the line. This can help gain credibility, trust and create an image of yourself as an expert in your field.

 

4. Use authority positioning.

Authority positioning means that you are seen as an expert in your chosen field. To communicate your trustworthiness to your clients, try the following strategies:

Align yourself with other experts. Whether through speaking at the same seminar as other experts in your field or simply using their logo on your website (with their permission of course), when you align yourself with other experts in your field, you garner immediate trust.

Appear in relevant media. Another way to prove your authority is to be quoted in articles, appear on TV or become a guest on a radio shows and podcasts.  To stand out, create three different pitches that tie into general interest news, so you can sent to producers. The key is writing them, so the producer doesn’t have to do any research or work. Give them everything they need for a five- to 10-minute segment.

Share what you know through various means. Whenever you have an opinion, can offer advice or build yourself up as a thought leader share alot and often. A great example of this point is Dave Ramsey. He shares what he knows about financial independence with Christian values on his radio show every day. He also uses seminars, books and his website, to build brand trust and recognition.

 

5. Create a strong digital profile.

Having a polished digital profile is an important step in getting prospects to come to you.

Why is this so important?

  • Potential business connections and clients will sometimes search for your name in advance of meetings, so you want to have an impressive profile available for them to peruse.
  • Your digital profile is a reflection of who you are, what you are passionate about and what you do well. In addition, since you should also include a photo in your profile, it shows your appearance.
  • Your online profile allows you to brand yourself and showcase your talents, and in many ways, has taken the place of a traditional resume.
  • A digital profile that is well maintained gives you the ability to create a professional network, which will help you build trust and authority in your field.

[button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239719″ target=”blank” ]Source[/button]

Books, Students

Charades #15 – Young Learners

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We have begun a new round of our hit game, Charades. Our latest video is in our Young Learner’s section.

Take part in the game by clicking on the picture above or the Reader’s Blog Charades link below.

[button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://englishbookgeorgia.com/readers/” target=”blank” ]Reader’s Blog Charades[/button]