Reflection 1

The other day I was travelling on the underground and I couldn’t help hearing a few people in my carriage talking on their phones. I was forced to listen to a girl chatting with a friend about their boyfriends, a man doing business on the phone (and possibly disclosing some confidential corporate info) and a woman planning a weekend away with someone.

Somehow these people found it acceptable to share their personal and professional lives with complete strangers. I find it difficult to understand on at least two levels. On the one hand, I don’t wish random people to know what I do at weekends and what I think about my boss (and what if one of the unwitting listeners happens t be my boss’s cousin?). Why on earth would anyone want to share such ins and outs of their life with strangers? On the other hand, I am not interested in knowing about random people’s love lives and shopping habits and I’d rather they kept them to themselves.

Privacy seems to be a thing of the past, which I find deeply disturbing.

Welcome back!

I hope everybody's had good holidays and you are all ready to get back to work. 
This term your homework is going to involve, among other tasks, watching some selected TED talks. You are expected to:
1. watch the talk, preferably without subtitles, and definitely without translation
2. take notes concerning the main points the speaker made and other interesting facts or thoughts that caught your attention
3. put down key vocabulary and any collocations/idioms you found interesting
4. be ready to discuss the talk in class

Here is the viewing schedule (the dates refer to the classes in which we will discuss the talk): 

2b 2018 / 2019 – viewing schedule 1^st term  Source: www.ted.com

20 Sep	1.      Amy Cuddy Your body language shapes who you are (2012)
27 Sep	2.      Barry Schwartz On the paradox of choice (2005)
4 Oct	3.      Kathryn Schulz on being wrong (2011)
11 Oct	4.      Dan Pink The puzzle of motivation (2009)
18 Oct	5.      Frans De Waal Moral behaviour in animals (2011)
25 Oct	6.      Celeste Headlee 10 ways to have a better conversation (2015) CANCELLED
8 Nov	7.      Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The danger of a single story (2009)
15 Nov	8.      Ben Goldacre Battling bad science (2011)
22 Nov	9.       Dan Gilbert Why are we happy? (2004)
29 Nov	10.  Brett Hennig What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people (2018)
6 Dec	11.  Ken Robinson Schools kill creativity (2006)
13 Dec	12. Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend (2013)
20 Dec	13.  Jonathan Haidt Can a divided America heal? (2016)
3 Jan	14.  Hans Rosling The best stats you’ve ever seen (2006)