Group Text "The European Year of..."

Here's the link to our group text:

http://flaviusleahu.blogspot.co.at/2014/01/final-correction-european-year-of.html

When the dead are not allowed to die

In the United States the case of the 13-year-old Jahi McMath has regularly been making the headlines since December. The girl had had her tonsils removed surgically, but after the procedure she went into cardiac arrest and was declared brain dead shortly afterwards. Her family didn't accept her passing and wanted her to be kept on life support, while the hospital and the coroner wanted her to be taken off the ventilator, so they could start their investigation on Jahi's death.
The family moved to court, insisting the girl showed signs of life, but the judge declared her brain dead, too. Now - with the coroner's consent, since she's legally dead - the girl's body, attached to a ventilator, has been released from the hospital and transferred to an undisclosed facility while Jahi's family keeps on hoping for her recovery.

I of course understand the tragedy of the situation, the grief of the family and that they are hoping beyond reason that their little girl might recover, but the sad fact is that she's dead. Her brain has stopped working and even if they keep her on life support for the next twenty years that's not going to change, unless a true miracle happens. By prolonging her body's "life" they are just prolonging their own suffering.

If they let her die peacefully instead of clinging on to an irrational hope, they could start grieving and, over time, come to terms with their fate. Maybe this would also be in Jahi's best interest.
If I were to fall into a coma or be declared brain dead, I would want to be taken off life support as soon as possible. To me, the idea of being in a completely helpless state, only kept alive by machines, is utterly humiliating. I'm aware that probably nobody of my friends and family would want to make this decision, but if the doctors tell you that it's unlikely that I'm ever going to be my old self again, then please pull the plug on me. I do not wish to be, under any circumstances, some helpless, motionless, lifeless being that is nothing more than the focus of pity, grief, and sadness.

Vocabulary Notebook

My approach to mastering the Porter vocabulary is a rather traditional one, meaning I rely a lot on paper an a pen. I usually go through the chapters and seek out the words of which I don't know the exact meaning or pronunciation, then I write them down in my notebook. My next step is to look them up in the online version of the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary. I really like this dictionary because its so clearly arranged. It shows you exactly what you need to know and there are recordings of every word. After reading through the page, I copy the information relevant for me into my notebook.

Sorry for the bad quality, but my webcam won't do any better (at least I don't know how to get it to make a better picture). I hope you get the idea anyways.


I also use the vocab lists on vocabulary.com, but I prefer to work with that after studying my vocabulary notebook. On the backside of the notebook I write down words, collocation, or idiomatic expressions I encounter in books I read and which I haven't known before or particularly want to remember.

My English Pronunciation Progress

Over the past few week I have tried to improve my English pronunciation in order to make it sound more "American". To accomplish that I've done some exercises and watched a few videos from our teachers' pronunciation practice page.

I tried a few of the Merriam-Webster's Perfect Pronunciation exercises, but I think that they are not that useful. Different words and sentences are pronounced by native speakers and you are supposed to repeat them correctly, but they don't give you any tips on how the sounds are produced.

I also had a look at the videos on manythings.com. Since one of the sounds I feel I still have to work on a little is the "r" sound, I watched the videos about words containing it. These videos didn't really help me at all, because they focus on words with the endings "-er" or "-re", which I don't have any problems with. I have difficulties pronouncing double "r"s correctly, like in "horror", and none of the videos were about this type of words.

I've practiced quite a bit over the last weeks and I think that I've made considerable progress on the "v" sound that I used to pronounce more like a "w". The only thing I still have to improve now is the "rr" in the middle of words, but I can't pronounce this sound properly in other languages as well, so maybe this is an innate problem. Nevertheless, I will try to solve also my last pronunciation issues.

Teacher's Feedback on my Summary

Summary of "Europe already has one foot in the 'Japanese' deflation grave"

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in The Telegraph of October 23, 2013 analyses the risk of deflation for the Eurozone.

According to the author, Europe is at risk of deflation which would cause the debt in the affected countries to rise. This would be devastating for countries like Spain or Italy that are already having serious debt issues. Their chances to stabilize the national debt decrease sharply with every percentage point inflation drops. Furthermore, austerity measures are widely unpopular in these countries, making it even more unlikely that they will ever be able to achieve a balanced budget.

Evens-Pritchard thinks that a rising inflation rate would prevent deflation from happening, but Germany wants inflation to stay low, because a low inflation rate helps their economy in the short run. However, if deflation settles within the Eurozone, it could soon spread to Germany as well. The author states that the Club Med allies, including France and Italy, should unite in the European Central Bank’s governing council and force Germany to accept a higher inflation rate of around two percent. Instead of imposing counter-measures against deflation the European policy leaders seem to hope for a decade of global growth to help them solve their debt-crisis.

Here's the version that incorporates my teacher's feedback:

Summary of "Europe already has one foot in the 'Japanese' deflation grave"

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in The Telegraph of October 23, 2013 analyses the risk of deflation for the Eurozone.

According to the author, Europe is at risk of deflation which would cause the debt in the affected countries to rise. This would be devastating for countries like Spain or Italy that already have serious debt issues. Their chances to stabilize the national debt decrease sharply with every percentage point inflation drops. Furthermore, austerity measures are widely unpopular in these countries, making it even more unlikely that they will ever be able to achieve a balanced budget.

Evans-Pritchard thinks that a rising inflation rate would prevent deflation from happening, but Germany wants inflation to stay low, because a low inflation rate helps their economy in the short run. However, if deflation settles within the Eurozone, it could soon spread to Germany as well. The author states that the Club Med allies, including France and Italy, should unite in the European Central Bank’s governing council and force Germany to accept a higher inflation rate of around two percent. Instead of imposing counter-measures against deflation the European policy leaders seem to hope for a decade of global growth to help them solve their debt-crisis.

Group Essay: EU-Russia Relationship

Here's the link to the group essay I wrote together with Andrina and Stefanie:

http://andrina-suk.blogspot.co.at/2013/12/group-essay-eu-russia-relationship.html

Pecha Kucha Presentation: Maltese Language

Before the Christmas break, my partner Anita and I did a Pecha Kucha presentation on the Maltese language. I had never heard of Pecha Kucha before this semester, so the first thing we did was to find out how such a presentation is supposed to look like.
Here's how it works: you create a presentation consisting of 20 slides. On each slide there is a picture, but you don't write any text on it like you probably would in a classic Power-Point presentation. During the presentation, each slide will be displayed for exactly 20 seconds.

We started off by looking for the pictures for our presentation. When we were done with that we began writing our text. It turned out to be quite difficult to write 20 short texts that would be about 20 seconds long when read out. We had agreed that I would narrate the slides with even numbers and Anita would do the odd ones. As soon as we were done writing we sat down with a stop watch and read our texts out aloud to check if they had the appropriate length. Needless to say, we had to make a lot of changes since most texts were either too short or way too long.

While giving our presentation, our biggest problem was - once again - the very narrow time frame. A few times we had to leave things out towards the end, because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to finish in time with the slides. Despite the huge stress factor inherent to this type of presentation, I think we did a good job. Pecha Kucha was an interesting experience, but if I had the choice I probably wouldn't use this presentation technique again. I prefer the traditional style with less time pressure.

Here's the link to our presentation:  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rTkhdULyVZmnsERQcKOMLAwwLZYEHzJQ_EfVbSmbpFE/edit#slide=id.g17886b2dc_015

Progress on my Academic Paper

The topic of my paper is the relationship between the EU and Russia. The exact title is "How has the Diplomatic Relationship between the EU and Russia Developed Since 2008?" It has to be 1,500 words long and right now I'm about halfway through.

Luckily, I've already researched my sources before, so I could start writing immediately. Well, after a little reading, of course. At first, I pasted the introduction I had already written before into my new document and created a temporary bibliography. The first actual paragraphs I wrote were the ones on visa liberalization, because I had a good source for this chapter and because I have personal experience with Russian visas.

The only serious problem I have encountered yet is quotation. There's an ITAT guide on how to quote correctly, but it's actually more confusing than helpful. I quote some official websites of government agencies and private organizations and there's nothing in the guide on how to quote them, at least nothing that I have found.

Apart from my quotation-problem, my paper is progressing quite well. I'm optimistic that I won't have any trouble with meeting the deadline and I hope that my rather shady quotations won't cost me too many points.

Do We Have a Freedom of Unpopular Opinion?

A&E's reality show "Duck Dynasty" has recently gotten some unwanted publicity. For those who don't know the show, it's about a Louisiana family who owns a duck-hunting business and consists of quite unique characters. I have never watched a whole episode myself, to be perfectly honest, because I don't feel that it would be the best way I could spend my time.

What has drawn my attention to this show is the recent controversy about Phil Robertson, one of the stars of the show. He was suspended by A&E after making anti-gay comments in an interview. Read for yourself:

"It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”  -Phil Robertson


First off: I, personally, totally think that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, to have children, and to enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples. But that's just my opinion and I respect the fact that there are people who don't share it.

The United States is a free country in which each and every one should have the right to express their opinions freely and without fear of consequences, however unpopular those opinions may be. For A&E to punish somebody for making use of their constitutional right of freedom of speech, is just plain wrong. Even worse, it's an act of pure hypocrisy. After all, they gave a show to a family that is "known for [...] their religious views" according to Wikipedia, and he didn't even make his comments on the show, but in a separate interview with GQ Magazine. Were they seriously surprised that a redneck duck-hunter living in the Louisiana swamps might not have an all too favorable view of gays???

Dear A&E executives: If remarks like the ones made by Mr. Robertson are against your station's policy, then don't freaking hire people who are highly likely to make them!

Were the above remarks offensive? Hell, yeah. But they were less so than some made by certain politicians. Robertson stressed that he was just stating his personal opinion and he also expressed incomprehension of the subject on his part, which - if you ask me - further weakens his statements.

Although I strongly disagree with Mr. Robertson's views on homosexuals, I disagree even more strongly with any infringement of the freedom of speech, and I'm glad that the suspension of Phil Robertson has been lifted after a few days.