Spotify Pulls Silent Album Which Made $20,000

Summary:

Spotify is a music program that pays 0,007$ to the artist who share songs for each reproduction of more than 30 second that people make on their songs. This program is very popular and has millions of users. Knowing all that a band wanted to make profit and shared a completely silent album encouraging their fans to listen it while sleeping. They earned 20000$ but finally Spotify has removed the album because it says it violates their terms of content.

The money that the band has earned will be used by them to fund a tour around the areas where the album has been most listened.

Opinion:

In my opinion this has been a very intelligent action for the group to make money and to promote the band. Moreover it’s good that the money going to be used to tour for the people who have helped them to won it.

Words learnt:

-Gist

-Mapped

-Streaming

http://news.sky.com/story/1257610/spotify-pulls-silent-album-which-made-20000

The refereeing

If you have read old post you may know I was referee during a year. I arbitrate little children in football-7 matches and they weren’t many important but these matches were my first job. I started to earn money by working of referee and I liked to control the match and to be responsible of what happens in the field. I only was doing that during a year because the next year I started the Batxillerat and I thought it will be difficult to combine the school, the playing football and the refereeing, so I decided to stop being referee but I keep that like a great experience.

This year I have seen the opportunity of starting the refereeing in football-11. This is the opportunity to start a real job with responsibility and make some money during the year. What is good to combine this with other activities is that the matches use to be only on the weekends so during the week you know you will be able to study or do homework. So the great memories of the past experiences help me to decide to start the course for becoming referee. I have just started the course with two teammates and I’m seeing that this is what I want to do the next year!

Antibiotic resistance now 'global threat', WHO warns

Summary:

The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that a “post-antibiotic” era is coming. According to the WHO the antibiotics are becoming useless and the bacteria are becoming more and more resistance because of the misuse of these drugs. In this “post-antibiotic” era, several injuries which have been treated for decades will kill again.

The solution they propose is more medical cooperation to develop new antibiotics, more hygiene and more vaccinations to avoid the diseases.

Opinion:

We have studied this year in school that due to the misuse of the drugs we are killing the weak bacteria and we are letting place to the hard or mutated bacteria which resist the antibiotics. This is worrying because is showing the speed of the process and that we are becoming more sensible to the diseases. As usual the problem comes from our irresponsible behaviour with these drugs.

Words learnt:

- Stakeholders

-Spread

-Last-resort

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27204988

Villarreal give life ban to rogue fan who threw banana at Dani Alves

Summary:

On 27th April Barcelona faced Villareal away on “El Madrigal” (CF Villareal stadium) where started the story. It was around the minute 70 when Dani Alves (Barcelona defender) was about to take a corner kick. In that moment a Villareal fan threw a banana just next to Alves as a racist abuse. Dani Alves, maintaining his composure, picked up the banana and ate it, so he turned the action to humour. FC Barcelona finally won his match and the action of the defender became very popular all around the world. A lot of football players and famous people have supported with the action by sharing photos with bananas on the internet.

The shameful action has been apologized by Villareal and they also have punished the fan with a life ban, so this fan won’t be able to enter any football stadium in the Liga competition and this will be an exemplary punishment to avoid similar future actions.

Opinion:

In my opinion this is a shameful action and the worst is that it hasn’t been the first time it happens that in the Spanish competitions. The punishment which has been imposed will be useful to discourage people from doing future similar actions but in my opinion people should be sufficiently intelligent and polite to know how stupid these actions are.

Learnt words:

-Withdraw

-Berk

-Utterly

-Culprit

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/28/sport/football/dani-alves-banana-racism-football/index.html?hpt=ieu_mid

If I knew back then...

Dear Roger,

If I knew back then I wouldn't have changed many things because all the experiences I have lived for almost six years have made me become who I am now.

I won't tell you your future experiences or advise for particular cases. What i want to tell you are only some general advices for you, and I wish you took them in account.

Appreciete more every moment and every experience because as you may know in school things will become harder and harder but at the same time you will live a lot of new experiences.

Try to live all the experiences in a more intense way without thinking a lot of what other people may think, working harder and without worring about what you had done. 

I wish this was useful for you.

Have a nice future!

Roger Farrés.

Bad times for a FC Barcelona supporter

I probably have said my favourite football team in other posts but if you don’t know it I am a FC Barcelona fan. In this last weeks, Barcelona has lost the Spanish cup final, has been eliminated from the Champions League, and has lost a lot of possibilities to win the Spanish football league. In the next weeks the Champions League semi-finals and final will take place and it will be the first time in a lot of years that Barcelona won’t be there. For me it has been a big deception the team’s performance this year and it’s complicated to accept that.

I remember during these last years, when the team made a splendid performance and all was going well, that all was fantastic and everybody was happy. With the pass of the years we started to view all that as normal and we demanded that Barcelona won trophies and moreover that they played well. I can remember that my father told me that we were living an extraordinary era and that it won’t last forever. He advise me that we were demanding too much and untenable.

For me, the extraordinary period of Barcelona has finished and now we see that we demanded too much. Every match is difficult and all requires a lot of work. We see how now Barcelona probably will finish the league in the 3^rd position and have arrived to the cup final and everybody criticize the team. It’s true that is not easy to accept a big change but we will have to accept that because it seems that the team will face a difficult situation in the coming years.

Brazilian fisherman finds satellite launch debris in Amazon

Summary:

A Brazilian fisherman found a large metal piece of launch debris from a European satellite. The man found the object floating on the river and he pushed it to the bank of the river to see what it was. The object belongs to the UK Space Agency and comes from the Europe’s most sophisticated satellite, which launched from the neighbouring country of French Guiana last year. A spokeswoman for the UK Space Agency confirmed the provenance of the debris and explained that the object probably landed on the Atlantic and then floated inland. Moreover local, authorities didn’t trust the first calls and they didn’t arrived after the media first reports.

Opinion:

This is a strange happening and I would have been very confused if I have been the discoverer of the object. In my opinion this news are worrying because shows the lack of control of the pieces they throw.  It’s difficult to believe that this big object floated inland for the river and it’s strange that the UK Space Agency didn’t recollect the object from the sea.

Learnt words:

Debris

Payloadshroud

Wreckage

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-27215788