On this day, on the 8th of May 1945, the War in Europe was officially over after the signing of the unconditional surrender by the provisional German Government. This day marks the end of fascist regimes in Europe after 6 years of atrocious fighting.
More than 80 years ago, a man, who was appointed the Prime Minister of the UK with “nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears an d sweat”, refused to submit his Country to Hitler’s requests, he knew that the future of the world was at stake. He was carrying on his back the responsibility to choose how life would be in Europe in the following years: a life either characterized by fascist regimes or by democratic societies.
Luckily for us, he chose “to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might”, and was well aware that “if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age”. This man, who I’m referring to, is the legend, the myth, Winston Churchill: a man that was able “to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny” and was able to achieve for us a free world.
After the end of World War 2 that date has been officially and internationally, proclaimed as “Victory in Europe Day” and has been observed, particularly, in the United Kingdom since 1945, without missing a single anniversary, even during the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 regular commemorations were held.
So you would probably be wondering: how that date, and the decision made by this man in the past, could have affected my everyday life?
In fact, it’s thanks to this day that we live our everyday life as we have known since we were born. If we can think, speak, live, and more in general express ourselves freely, we owe this possibility to all those men who put a “higher good” in front of their very life.
Currently, we live in a society which guarantees freedom and equality to all the people who lives in it, having said that, is it for real like that? In fact, no.
I’ll make an example, are we free to say everything we want whenever we want? True. Accordingly to what I just exposed; can I say something totally normal from my point of view even if it may sound offensive to somebody else? False. That’s my point, isn’t this technically a limitation of my freedom of expression? Definitely not. So, here comes the paradox of our society, when does my freedom to express begin, and, when does it end?
Most of the time, we forget that our society is made by a majority of people who express the same idea in the same way, and, a minority of people that may express a totally different idea or the same idea of the majority in different ways. We all have our own lives, marked by our emotions and sensations, and, most importantly, we all are sensible or insensible regarding something. Cleared this aspect, we must always remember that everyone of us counts as one and everybody is free to say anything they want, provided that he won’t interfere with the right of somebody else
Nowadays we are facing the hardest time for our western society: we are bound to make a decision that will certainly have an impact on our future. Just as 80 years ago, we shall allow everybody to express themselves freely without any prevarication or any suppression of any means. We can do it in one possible way: we must “let’s go forward together with our united strength”, remembering that we are all citizens of the same world and that we should straight up defend the existence of minorities with laws and with social campaign guaranteeing the right of expression for everyone.
On the other hand, if we do not understand the ever simple concept that we are all human beings, everybody different and perfect with its imperfection from one another, we will be forced, in order to defend minorities to censor some words, some common expressions and, eventually, our society will be no different from the repressive societies of the past.
I hope that we will be able to overcome this critical issue and, in the end, I hope that we will find the right balance between mutual freedom and, if our society will “last for a thousand years, men will still say: this was their finest hour.”
Tag: England
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VE-Day and its legacy
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April fool’s day (April fish)
April Fools’ Day is celebrated on the first day of April each year.
It’s the custom to play a trick or a joke on someone on this day for example telling friends that their shoelaces are untied or sending them on so-called fools’ errands. If the person falls for the joke, then they are called an ‘April Fool.
Its true origins are unknown and effectively unknowable. Many people believe that April fool’s day originated in France in the 1500s because they used the Julian calendar and celebrated the New Year with a celebration that concluded on April 1st.
Today, April fool’s Day is recognized throughout the Western world, where it is common for newspapers to publish false stories on the day and for people to play hoaxes on each other,
In France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and French-speaking areas of Canada and Switzerland, the 1st April tradition is known as the ‘April Fish’. The fooled person is , perhaps in reference to a young fish and hence to one that is easily caught; it is common for children to pin a paper fish to the backs of unsuspecting friends.
In the UK, jokes and tricks can be played up until noon on 1 April. After midday, it’s considered bad luck to play a trick. Anyone who forgets this and tries a joke in the afternoon becomes an ‘April Fool’ themselves. In Ireland, a popular prank is to send someone on a ‘fool’s errand’. The victim is sent to deliver a letter, supposedly asking for help. When the person receives the letter, they open it, read it and tell the poor messenger that they will have to take the letter to another person. This continues and the victim ends up taking the message to several different people until someone feels sorry for them and shows them what the letter says: ‘Send the fool to someone else.’
Some newspapers, TV channels and well-known companies publish false news stories to fool people on 1st April.
In 1959, the BBCTV show Panorama report a Swiss spaghetti Harvest, and showed a Switzerland family harvesting spaghetti!
In 1962 the Sweden channel Sveriges Television was in black and white, so it told people they could convert their reception to colour by putting a nylon stocking.
On April Fool’s Day 1998, the American hamburger chain Burger King announced that it had created a left-handed hamburger. The advert for the ‘new product’ explained that all the ingredients had been rotated 180 degrees so that it was more comfortable for left-handed people to pick up and eat. The following day, Burger King admitted that this advertisement had been a hoax, but said that thousands of customers had gone to restaurants across the USA asking for a left-handed burger.
April Fool’s Day fans say it encourages fun and laughter, and one study found that it reduces stress and therefore could be good for your heart. Other people point out that it can have negative consequences, like confusion, worry or wasting time and resources.
I love April Fool’s Day. It can be really good fun. I love playing tricks on people and I don’t mind if people play tricks on me. It’s one day of the year you can be really silly and have a laugh and it’s OK. You have to be quite sensible for the other 364 days of the year, so I look forward to 1 April.
One of the most important things to remember is to have fun in safety, without making dangerous jokes.
In the era of ‘fake news,’ it’s often hard on a normal day of the year to work out when we’re being tricked into believing something that isn’t true, but on April Fool’s Day, you need to be even more alert. No one knows exactly how the tradition started, but there are plenty of people who enjoy this light-hearted day and are happy to keep the tradition alive.
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The mysterious world of the left-handed
Do you know that about 10 per cent of the population is left-handed or it’s better to say “lefties”?
S
cientists believe it may be genetic. Being left-handed has not always been accepted and has sometimes been considered a flaw. In the Middle Age, people thought that left-handed people were witches.Until recent decades, the left hand was considered the “hand of the devil”, because in contrast to the right, the hand that blesses. For this reason, left-handers have been considered for centuries as “reverses”, to be corrected and sometimes lefties were victims of prejudice.
An organization called Left-Handers International created the day for left-handers( it’s August 13th) to celebrate the uniqueness of left-handed people, encouraging the positive aspect and also raising awareness of the difficulty they experience in a world created for right-handers. One of the main goals of the day dedicated left-handers is to see the positives of being on the other side.
The right side of the brain commands the left side associated with subjects such as art or music. This makes left-handers more creative.
The demonstration of left-handed genius comes from people like Beethoven, Einstein, Mozart, Charlie Chaplin who were all left-handed Many people think it is real, others believe it is a myth.
For left-handed people, it is difficult to live in a right-handed world. There are a lot of tools and utensils for left-handed people like scissors, corkscrews, peelers, can opener but they are more expensive and this is not fair.
An activity that you can do with right-handers to make them understand the difficulties of being left-handed is to create a “Left-Handed Zone” in which right-handers perform normal actions but with their left hand. Please try this fun experiment and let me know!
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“Dantedì or Dante day, that is the question”
Using English words in the Italian language seems to be becoming more and more popular these days up to be part of the Italian dictionary. It appears that Italian has a strong inclination towards Anglicism to such an extent that Italian words often tend to be substituted by English ones, even when it may not really be necessary.
Here are just a few examples of cases in which the English terms are preferred to the Italian ones: computer, make-up, glamour, relax, love, sex, shock, fashion, style, weekend, team and many others.
This use of an ever-increasing number of foreign words raises many questions and people wonder why Italians don’t create equivalent words in their own language, instead of importing foreign terms.
But Italians don’t really seem to like these translations, and the debate is still open. On one side, there are those who support the introduction of foreign words, especially English words, into the Italian language, considering them as a way to show off a more international and sophisticated culture. On the other side, many linguists believe that the overuse of these words could represent a threat to the purity of the language.
Accademia della Crusca (Academy of the crusca /of the Bran), the oldest language academy in the world, established in 1583 in Florence (home of the Italian culture) are debating on how English words are despoiling the beauties of Italian. On the occasion of the National Dante Day, or Dantedì established to celebrate Dante Alighieri’s 700th death anniversary (dante alighieri , the greatest poet of Italian and world literature) the controversy of the academicians, Puritans of the Italian language, journalists haven’t appeased. They are mortified by the way English words are despoiling the beauties of Italian and are planning a fightback.
The academy’s President, Claudio Marazzini, has called a summit and is promising to set up a quick-response unit to “go after politicians, bureaucrats and journalists who bring English words into our language”.
But what sort of words are worrying them? The communications expert Annamaria Testa, enumerated hundreds, including austerity, chewing gum, download, outsourcing, public relations, politically correct, taskforce, welfare, caregiver, jobs act, bay-sitting, smart working (the latter used and soon contested by the Italian Premier Mario Draghi.
Scholars of Italian linguistics and philology see themselves as linguistic sifters (separating good Italian from bad) and they want to dispatch Italians who use hybrid versions of English words to a particularly fiery circle of hell: “footing” for jogging, “baby parking” for creche, “sexy shop” for sex shop, “mister” for football manager, “box” for garage.
“It’s too late to do something about ‘car sharing’,” admits Marazzini, “but we need to find Italian words in a hurry for ‘quantitative easing.”
The Academy motto is: “Il più bel fior ne cogli: “She gathers the fairest flower”, a famous line by the Italian poet Petrarch and it means that the purest part of the Italian language is examined and offered. Respecting one of the most beautiful languages in the world: the Italian language is necessary to defend people’s identity and history but it’s no longer possible to avoid the language of Shakespeare and Dickens in the land of Dante and Petrarch. In a multicultural society, a community needs to resort to foreign words as an alternative for easy communication.
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The power of sleeping
Do you know that on March 17th is World Sleep Day?I’m sure of it because I like sleeping and I’m also a daydreamer as my friends say of me. Moreover, I’ve just finished reading a book about this topic written by Richard Wiseman a psychologist and the best selling author of the book “Night School: the Life-changing science of sleep” also published in Italian by Valardi as “Il potere del sonno”. And to be honest I read it in Italian.
Some years ago Dr Wiseman started having strange hallucinations during the night, so he began to do some researches and he collected them in his book.
During an interview, he underlined we spend a third of our life asleep and how the importance of a correct and balanced sleep can have psychological and health benefits.
According to him, if you reduce your sleep hours, you are damaging yourself. However not everybody needs eight hours of sleep, for example, Margaret Thatcher, ex-British Prime Minister, could just sleep for four hours a night. Most people need to sleep about eight hours and if they cut this time they will increase the risk factor for heart disease, diabetes and for early death.
Dreaming also serves a purpose. It is a sort of inner therapist. People who are suffering from depression dream up to five times more than other people because they’re trying to work through their problems in their sleep. Dreams can be also creative in fact many artists and writers took inspirations, for their masterpieces, from their dreams. One example is represented by Paul McCartney who wrote The Beatles song “Yesterday” after a dream. Stevenson, the Scottish writer of “Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, actually dreamt the entire plot of his novel in dreams. So it’s very clear that sleeping and dreaming have high power in the survival of human life and for our creativity and mind too.
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Meghan Markle’s public shocking confession: a denounciation or a publicity stunt?
Meghan Markle made her name as an actress, campaigner and blogger before marrying Prince Harry in May 2018 and becoming the Duchess of Sussex.
When she became a member of the Royal Family, she gave up her acting career – and immersed herself in the life of a working royal, using the platform to highlight the charities and causes close to her heart.
She became a mother in May 2019 but within a year she and Prince Harry had stepped away as working members of the Royal Family and started a new life in North America.
She is now living in California and expecting her second child.
During these three years, she’s been pretty active with her Royal duties – but the public eye has been very much focused on her behaviour.
Once, she wore dark nail polish. How very unduchess-like! Even worse, she also closed the door of her own car. That’s unheard- of!
The list of occasions that Meghan Markle has broken Royal protocol goes on and on. Most of them are related to her bold fashion choices. For example, she wore black from head to toe when not in mourning. She also wore no stockings underneath a skirt. Bare legs in public! It doesn’t matter if it was the middle of August… this is certainly something that the Queen strongly disapproved of.
The problem is that the list is getting longer…
While often described as a Royal rule-breaker, she migrated to a life free from Royal commitments and duties overseas.But what happened some days ago when she together her husba nd Harry were interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, one of the most appreciate American talk show host? The interview was hold in Southern California, where they now live and where Meghan released shocking public confessions.
She said her life as a British royal was so isolating and lonely at one point she “didn’t want to be alive anymore” — a stunning admission likely to rock the foundations of the centuries-old institution. Moreover, she confessed that a senior royal had “concerns and conversations” about how dark her son Archie’s skin would be.
Queen Elizabeth II turns the tables and breaks the silence with a press release officer that leaves everyone speechless. As a great woman of power and a fine strategist (who in her long years of regency has seen all sorts of things), Queen Elizabeth was not caught unprepared and defined herself “saddened” by the suffering told by the two and the difficulties that Meghan had to deal, especially with regard to the “racial issues” brought to light by the Dukes of Sussex.
Buckingham Palace, therefore, decided to immediately take a precise position, thus avoiding remaining in the shadows after the strong statements of Meghan and Harry.
The situation is getting complicated if we also consider the delicate health conditions of Prince Philip, close to 100 years old and in hospital due to heart surgery. Many believe that Meghan goes down hard in the interview, but the Duchess seems to have suffered a lot and she has decided not to hide it anymore.
To tell her truth, she chose the dangerous mechanisms of television, aware of the boomerang effect that could come. Mayb
e she is lying to make herself a victim or she is using the race card to gain sympathy.
What is sure is that soon Twitterati empathised with the former royal couple and their interview.
What we can understand is that Meghan like Diana, married into a family that did not understand her and believed she would conform, without complaint, to royal customs and protocol. As with Diana, proved unable or unwilling to tow the family line, and like Diana, Meghan found herself hounded by the tabloids, the same intrusive media that has forced her to move and live a normal life away from England.
Anyway, Prince William has declared:” “We’re very much not a racist family”, and to be honest: We believe him!
-Giulia Franchini,
-Davide Palumbo.
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The way to Zero Waste
Every day the media outlets report on the ever-growing pollution, the impact on the environment of the carbon footprint, the emission of gases that
contribute to global warming.
So, what can we do as individuals to stop harming the environment? The first step and the possible right answer towards switching to a more sustainable lifestyle can be Zero Waste. Mr Rossano Ercolini, an elementary school teacher, has begun a public education campaign in the waste field and is a leading name of the zero waste movement in Italy. As a result of his efforts, his home-town Capannori (LU) was the first European city to declare the goal of zero waste by 2020. He has helped the Zero Waste movement grow beyond the Italian borders into what is now the Zero Waste Europe movement. In 2013 Mr Rossano was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, considered the “Green Nobel PrizePol” for his contributions to the Zero Waste movement in Italy. I had the pleasure and for that, I want to thanks the headteacher of the Lyceeum I attend because, this morning students and of course me were invited to a meetup and to have a talk with Mr Ercolini who, with his oratory skill, has told us about his great campaigns and his famous books to promote a zero-waste philosophy and to share insights. The meeting was broadcasted in live streaming on youtube.
According to Mr Ercolini waste is one of the most important problems of our society, even if it is often overlooked.
Here are a few measures, to be precise ten steps if you want to be part of the solution:
- source separation,
- door-to-door collection,
- composting,
- recycling,
- waste reduction,
- reuse and repair,
- punctual pricing,
- waste recovery,
- research and redesign centre,
- waste zeroing.
In addition to these suggestions we can implement the 7 RS:
- Refuse the things you don’t need.
- Reduce consumption and purchasing and try to just by stuff that is really indispensable.
- Reuse and Restore, and try to repair, as many things as possible. Give them a second life.
- Recycle everything you can.
- Rot, meaning “recycle” all organic materials, turning them into compost you can use fertiliser.
- Revive a green technology to re-use and produce sustainable alternatives to products such as coffee grounds, palm oil and so on.
In addition to these tips, we must try to reduce packaging and plastic consumption to save the world.
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Idioms
Questa sezione nasce dal bisogno di prendere confidenza con espressioni idiomatiche che gli inglesi amano utilizzare nelle conversazioni quotidiane, e che spesso si trovano nei libri, nelle serie TV e nei film. Poiché il significato corrisponde a modi di dire che non sono sempre letteralmente comprensibili, è necessario familiarizzare con il loro significato e imparare ad utilizzarli correttamente. Anche se questo potrebbe sembrare molto difficoltoso, non fatevi spaventare: imparare le espressioni idiomatiche inglesi può essere molto divertente, soprattutto se si confrontano con quelle italiane.
Let’s start then!
All hell broke loose: tutto l’inferno si è liberato? Equivale all’italiano: è successo un finimondo. E’ successo qualcosa di veramente grave.
Meaning: to refer to violent and destructive situation that suddenly begins.
Ex: The policeman shouted but the robber started shooting and all hell broke loose.
Ants in your pants: formiche nelle mutande. Equivale all’italiano non stare mai fermi un attimo, essere agitati.
Meaning: be extremely resteless or excited.
Ex: I think John likes him. He has annts in hir pants when he meets her.
Apple of my eye: mela del mio occhio? Noooo. Luce dei miei occhi.
Meaning: when a person is very important for you.
Ex: My Husband is the apple of my eye.
A bad egg: un uovo cattivo? Equivale all’italiano: persona inaffidabile
Meaning: To refer to someone as a bad egg means that they cannot be trusted.
Ex: His boyfriend was a bad egg and she lost all her money.
A flash in the pan: un lampo nella padella. Equivale all’italiano: essere una meteora.
Meaning: something that happens once and only for a short time.
Ex: That singer was just a flash in the pan with his hit in 2001.
A piece of cake: un pezzo di torta? Equivale all’italiano un gioco da ragazzi. Una cosa facile.
Meaning: a very easy task.
Ex: Don’t worry! Your exam will be a piece of cake.
A pain in the neck: un dolore nel collo. Equivale all’italiano: una gran seccatura.
Meaning: something or someone that is very annoying.
Ex: My son is sometimes a real pain in the neck.
A cash cow: una mucca da soldi. Equivale all’italiano: essere una mucca da mungere
Meaning: a person or a business that generates a consistent profit.
Ex: Rob loves gambling and his friends think he is a real cash cow.
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No vaccine, no fly?
During this year one of the most disrupted sector is certainly the air travel. When in April all the world was locked down and the borders were closed all the airlines around the world founded
themselves without passengers, and so, without a revenue. Most airlines decided to ground all of their fleets or use a small percentage of it to fly cargo planes or repatriation flights, like Alitalia which flew during all the first lockdown non-stop from Rome to Hong Kong, Beijing, New Delhi and so forth.As of December 2020 the first vaccine is going to be given to the population and is expected that in a few months we will achieve herd immunity. The states administrations all around the world want an answer by the IATA (International Air Transport Association) on how air travel will be in 2021. IATA still does not know the answer yet, but two major airlines have already independently exposed themselves; Qantas and Delta Airlines.
“Our position on this is clear. We have a duty of care to our people and our passengers, and once a safe and effective vaccine becomes readily available, it will be a requirement for travel on our international services,” said Mr Joyce, Qantas CEO, in comments to the media on Thursday.
In Europe, the EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) still follow the special guidelines for air travel: wash your hands, keep a seat empty, use of a safe mask for all the duration of the flight and so on…
On the other hand in the US the FAA (Feder Aviation Administration) has authorized pilots and air traffic controllers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, subject to certain conditions.
The authorization comes as the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared a vaccine. It is important to clarify that in the US the Covid’s guidelines are still not followed due to the position of their President: Donald Trump, a convinced negationist.
We hope that the travel will begin again and there will be a full recovery after this pandemic. From almost a year we are waiving our youth away to reach the safeguard of elder and fragile people, we are blocked from seeing the world and explore, but, we know that these special measures are going to end and we personally hope that with this vaccine we are a step closer to win this tremendous virus.
Giulia Franchini, Davide Palumbo IV B s.a.
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Goodbye to the eclectic teacher who helped us to get by with English language
John Peter Sloan, a great singer, a theatre actor, a comedian, a book writer but above all an eclectic and excellent English teacher died suddenly on 25th May (at the age of 51) for serious breathing problems while he was in his house in Melfi (Sicily).The Birmingham-born teacher had lived in Italy for thirty years now and was working on several projects, including online lessons from the schools of English he founded based in Rome and Milan, temporarily closed due to the lockdown.
He became soon popular because he was able to teach English in the best way that is involving the students with English and a smile, trying first of all to create an emotional and human bridge between English and Italian culture. That bridge then made access to English grammar more agile which, according to John, is often taught in a peremptory and boring way in Italian schools.
He landed in Milan for the first time in 1990 with his band “The Max” with which he had several concerts scheduled. As soon as he set foot at Linate airport, John noticed that “people didn’t talk, they screamed. Since than he decided that the “Belpaese” would become his new home.
He was immediately one of Zelig’s (the stand-up comedian broadcasted on the Italian channel Italia 1) most loved faces. His English lessons became a cult.
The success came in 2010 with the publication of an English tailor-made course for Italian speakers that became the Best Seller “Instant English”, with the sale of about 300 thousand copies of the first edition. All the gains were then reinvested in the schools of English he founded and directed. His famous method: the “Sloan Method” was based on irony and charisma an integrated approach with non-formal education which combined play and smile with rules and vocabulary.
We hope, as students, that his brilliant ideas, criticisms, methods and proposals can have a following and a development, always seasoned with some laughter and with the sweet memory of his figure.
And I can say that your way of teaching that was a real labour of love, is for me as you would say “a big feather in my cap”.