Saturday, November 24, 2012

Thanksgiving, but US Turkey Farmers Aren't Celebrating

From VOA Learning English, this is the Agriculture Report in Special English.

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday that Americans celebrate on the fourth Thursday in November. This autumn festival is traditionally celebrated with family and friends over a big meal that takes hours to prepare.

The meal usually includes turkey served along with dishes like cranberries (1), sweet potatoes (2), green beans and pumpkin pie. The turkey is usually seasoned and roasted in an oven, but some people fry the bird in oil or cook it on a grill or in a smoker (3).

(1): quả việt quất – xem thêm.

(2): khoai lang

(3): lò hun khói

The National Turkey Federation estimates that Americans ate forty-six million birds for last year's holiday. The government expects turkey production to increase two percent this year. About two-thirds of the turkeys raised in the United States came from six states: Minnesota, North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Virginia and Indiana.

Turkey is eaten all year, and Americans have been eating more of it over the years (4), though chicken, beef and pork are still more popular. Federation president Joel Brandenberger says twenty-twelve (5) will not be as profitable for turkey farmers as the last two years were. Feed costs are up while turkey prices are about the same.

(4) diễn đạt ý “ngày càng…)

(5) năm 2012

"Corn is our number one feed ingredient, and the drought has obviously increased the price of corn dramatically and, frankly, the fact that an ever-increasing (6) amount of the corn crop is being diverted to ethanol production also has increased the cost of corn. So that's created some difficulty for the industry this year."

(6): chưa bao giờ tăng nhanh như vậy

The Pilgrims' feast in sixteen twenty-one is often considered the nation's first Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims were early settlers of Plymouth Colony in what is now Massachusetts. They held a three-day feast to celebrate a good harvest. However, other European settlers in North America also held ceremonies of thanks. These included British colonists in Virginia in sixteen nineteen.

In eighteen sixty-three, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November as a national day of thanksgiving. In nineteen thirty-nine, as the Great Depression was ending, President Franklin Roosevelt established the holiday on the fourth Thursday. He did not want to shorten the Christmas holiday shopping season in years when November has a fifth Thursday. (7)

(7) cultural note: Thanksgiving is the biggest holiday in the US.

The season traditionally begins with a busy shopping day on the Friday after Thanksgiving (8), although some stores are now opening on the holiday itself.

(8) cultural note: This is the Black Friday – This year: 23/11/2012.

One of America's founders, Ben Franklin, thought the turkey would better represent the country as its official bird than the bald eagle. But Joel Brandenberger disagrees.

"I think we're better off having the bald eagle on our coins and the Thanksgiving turkey on our dinner table."

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Original article: http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/thanksgiving-but-us-turkey-farmers-arent-celebrating/1550483.html

Download PDF file: Download PDF- Thanksgiving, but US Turkey Farmers Aren't Celebrating

Listen and download MP3 file:  http://learningenglish.voanews.com/audio/Audio/232875.html

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Nice weekend everybody :).

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Kiểm tra tốc độ bút USB

Bút nhớ USB (USB flash drive) ngày càng rẻ hơn và thông dụng hơn –> có khả năng lưu trữ lớn hơn. Để kiểm tra tốc độ đọc/ghi của 1 bút nhớ USB, bạn có thể dùng công cụ sau: USB Flash Benchmark (download tại đây)

Đây là 1 công cụ portable hữu dụng, tương thích với Windows 64bit.

Còn đây là ảnh chụp giao diện:

USB Flash Benchmark

Trong phép thử trên, bạn có thể thấy copy nhiều file nhỏ sẽ mất rất nhiều thời gian. Do đó nếu bạn cần di chuyển một khối lượng lớn file nhỏ, hãy nén chúng lại trước khi chuyển dữ liệu :).

Nguồn: http://www.techsupportalert.com

Chúc các bạn cuối tuần vui vẻ.

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Sunday, November 11, 2012

Technology in the service of history

Building replicas of historic sites to save them from tourism.

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Only one is the real thing

FOR 3,000 years it was unknown—and that is what kept it safe. But so many people have visited the tomb of Tutankhamun, since Howard Carter, a British archaeologist, unearthed the steps leading down to the royal burial-chamber in November 1922 that it is now in critical condition. Shifting temperatures and humidity are affecting the delicate painted surfaces and conservation of the plasterwork has led to a build-up of salts under the plaster, pushing it off the walls. In January 2011 Zahi Hawass, then (1) secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced that the tomb would soon have to close until a solution was found.

(1): hồi đó

Mr Hawass lost his job soon after, in the tumult that followed the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, but a solution to the problem of Egypt’s tombs and tourists may be at hand. Ninety years after Carter’s discovery, on November 13th, an exact facsimile (2) of the royal tomb will be unveiled in Cairo. Replicas of delicate historic sites are becoming increasingly common; facsimiles of the painted caves at Lascaux, in France, and Altamira, in northern Spain, between them attract nearly 5,000 visitors a day. And the digital technology used in creating three-dimensional replicas is improving all the time (see comparisons pictured).

(2): bản sao – các bạn nhớ nghe cách phát âm từ này ở đây.

The Tutankhamun facsimile is the most ambitious yet and is the work—and gift—of a Madrid-based artists’ workshop, Factum Arte, and a Swiss philanthropic foundation. The workshop made its name in 2007 with a facsimile of Veronese’s giant painting “The Wedding at Cana”, which has been placed in its original location, the Palladian refectory of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. If making an exact colour reproduction of a painting is technically difficult, copying a three-dimensional object poses even more of a challenge (3).

(3) linking technique –> COHESION

In 2009 Factum Arte’s founder, Adam Lowe, and his team spent five weeks in Egypt making a forensic study of the tomb walls and sarcophagus (4). Without touching the surface, they made three different kinds of recordings: laser scanning—which operates like a bar code reading—to record the surface detail, white-light scanning to capture the relief and a close examination of the decoration to match up the colours.

(4): quan tài đá

There is a plan to erect the facsimile, which weighs nearly four tonnes, permanently in the Valley of the Kings. Others may follow. Factum Arte’s first Egyptian facsimile, of the burial-chamber of Tuthmosis III, unveiled in 2003, has already had more than 3m visitors.

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In Vietnam, you are still be able to enjoy the real things, so please, don’t forget to help preserve our historic gems.

Source: www.economist.com

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Recycling in Mexico

This is how the government can entice people into recycling, which makes a lot of sense in Vietnam.

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A novel market swaps rubbish for vegetables

THE 21m residents of Mexico City have far too much rubbish and not enough healthy food (1). Now they can swap one for the other. A new monthly market run by the city government takes paper, glass, plastic and aluminium in return for tokens that can be swapped for locally grown food and plants. Since it began in March the “Barter Market” in Chapultepec park has exchanged 140 tonnes of rubbish for 60 tonnes of produce.

(1): used to introduce contrast

The market is a small step towards tackling a big waste problem. In January piles of rubbish built up after a landfill closed. It had received up to 12,600 tonnes of trash a day, and was the size of 450 football pitches. The muck-up (2) will not be the last unless households get better at recycling. “We want people to learn that rubbish is not rubbish,” says Paola de María y Campos, a city official who helped set up the market.

(2): mistake

The project provides welcome jobs for the city’s farmers, many of whom work in the watery southern district of Xochimilco. Canals there are the last reminder of what Mexico City looked like before the Spanish drained the lake on which it sat. The city’s undeveloped south is prone to (3) illegal slum-building. The government hopes to deter this by promoting farming on the land.

(3): adj. having a tendency

      adv. with the front of face downward

The market is proving popular. Queues start to form at 6am, and food nearly sells out by noon. “Now everyone in our family is separating their waste,” says Eugenia Trueba, showing off a bag of lettuce, sesame seeds and cactus leaves which she got for newspapers and plastic bottles. However, over half of visitors come by car, somewhat undermining the market’s green credentials.

The project does not break even. Each month the market sells 20 or so tonnes of rubbish to glassmakers, paper manufacturers and other firms for about 40,000 pesos ($3,100). The food, which the government buys from Xochimilco’s farmers at above-market prices, costs 90,000 pesos. Taxpayers pick up the difference.

The point, however, is to get people recycling, not to make money. Plans for new branches are under way, and the market may go fortnightly (4). The real test will be whether more households can be persuaded to recycle even without the carrot of free food in return.

(4): happening once every 2 weeks

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I do hope this article helps persuade you to separate your waste. I’m proud that my wife insists on doing that, and my family follows whole-heartedly, especially the kids :).

Source: www.economist.com

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Saturday, November 3, 2012

A case study: TED

This below article is about what business owners can learn from TED to grow their companies. For those who have never heard of TED, visit http://www.ted.com/talks – you will thank me for this suggestion.

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What a nonprofit events group can teach business

Nov 3rd 2012 | from the print edition

WHEN it started in 1984, the TED conference (an abbreviation of “Technology, Entertainment, Design”) brought together a few hundred people in California. It has since grown into a global craze (1). It will soon pass a milestone: the one-billionth download of an online TED speaker video.

(1): such as Gangnam style

How did it get so popular? The internet played an important role. So did social media. But part of the success is the result of untraditional management. Instead of controlling the most valuable parts of the business, the group took the riskier path of opening them up to everyone. The method may hold lessons for other companies.

(2): this is how the two reasons are linked and introduced –> bringing about COHERENCE

In 2009, as it was becoming well known, TED decided that, instead of managing its brand more tightly as conventional wisdom instructs, it would create a free licence for others to host local conferences, called TEDx. Now, six or seven TEDx events are held every day. These events seem to add to the lustre of the main conferences, rather than dilute them (3). The talks are also posted online free, with little advertising. By not milking things (4), TED has inspired people to contribute to it for nothing: 8,000 volunteers have translated subtitles for thousands of videos into more than 90 languages. And by getting consumers to do things for nothing, TED has managed to innovate with fewer resources.

(3): tô điểm thêm cho…

(4): không “mổ gà lấy trứng”

All this requires establishing a community of users and accepting some loss of control. Such tactics might not work for, say, Coca-Cola or Intel. Yet they may work for others. A kitchenware-maker might want to create a place on its website for amateur chefs to show off their skills and recipes, for example, or a sporting-goods firm could encourage local tournaments with its brand.

To critics (5a), TED is emblematic of a world of short attention spans and passive entertainment. To satirists (5b), it is smug and self-important: the Onion parodies it with video talks such as: “Compost-Fuelled Cars: Wouldn’t That Be Great?” But to supporters (5c), TED has inspired millions to pursue lifelong learning. And for business (5d), it shows what is sometimes possible by taking what is valuable and giving it away.

(5abcd): Linking technique to represent Comparison and Contrast –> COHERENCE

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Happy weekend everyone :).

Source: www.economist.com

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