December...

December is coming and with it the lights of Christmas.

December seems to have been institutionalized as the month of giving, of showing some solidarity towards those less fortunate. Everybody is committed to be seen doing some good, taking some action to alleviate the suffering of the poor, the homeless...those who are invisible throughout the year.

December is the month when children are remembered by all. Advertisers bombard them with images of magic toys, that most can only dream with and feel even more the weight of poverty, of discrimination..

December should be, like all the other months, the month of true love ...

Even though, December is and will always be the month of Christmas, ...a period in which we all wished to go back in time , to feel as if we're kids again.

Let's live December...and be happy! At least for some time!...

Hope...

Amidst the storms, heavy rain and wind, there are delicate, fragile flowers that are able to survive and give colour to gloomy, dark and long Winter days.

Dafodils are a sign of hope and beauty...hope that tomorrow we'll have a better day!

Anorexia...

Anorexia made another victim.

Ana Carolina Reston, the brasilian model, who was 21 years old, died from anorexia last Tuesday, in São Paulo Brasil. She was 1,72 m tall and weighed 40kg.

Ana Carolina is only one in thousands...many young girls and boys start developing the disease because of some absurd beauty standards, imposed by the fashion industry and magazines.

Fortunately, some of the most important passerelles are setting up new and healthier standards, to allow models go and succeed on the catwalk.

But what is anorexia?

People with anorexia are obsessed with being thin. They lose a lot of weight and are terrified of gaining weight. They believe they are fat even though they are very thin. Anorexia isn't just a problem with food or weight. It's an attempt to use food and weight to deal with emotional problems.

The reason some people get anorexia isn't known. People with anorexia may believe they would be happier and more successful if they were thin. They want everything in their lives to be perfect. They blame themselves if things in life are not perfect.

Girls with anorexia usually stop having menstrual periods, have dry skin and thinning hair on the head. They may feel cold all the time, and they may get sick often. They are often in a bad mood. They have a hard time concentrating and are always thinking about food.

It is not true that anorexics are never hungry. Actually, they are always hungry. Feeling hunger gives them a feeling of control over their lives and their bodies. It makes them feel like they are good at something--they are good at losing weight. People with severe anorexia may be at risk of death from starvation.

Treatment of anorexia is difficult, because they refuse to admit the disease. At an earlier stage they can be successfully treated without having to be admitted to the hospital. But for successful treatment, patients must want to change and must have family and friends to help them.
People with more serious anorexia need care in the hospital. Treatment involves more than changing the person's eating habits. Anorexic patients often need counseling, so they can work on changing the feelings that are causing their eating problems. These feelings may be about their weight, their family problems or their problems with self-esteem.

Better not even think of going on a crazy diet...enjoy your image!

Love

Because I love you...and " the course of true love never did run smooth..."( Shakespeare)

24th November...

Here is the programme for the Debate on Education!

Escola Secundária de Felgueiras

Programa para o debate sobre a educação, no âmbito do Debate Nacional sobre Educação”, promovido pelo Conselho Nacional de Educação, subordinado ao tema “Como Vamos Melhorar a Educação nos Próximos Anos?”

Organização:
Escola Secundária de Felgueiras / GAPE (Gabinete de Apoio a Projectos Educativos)
Local:
Auditório da Escola Secundária de Felgueiras
Data:
24 de Novembro de 2006 - 21 horas

Intervenientes:

Representante do Ensino Superior(U. Minho)- Dr. Lino Moreira
Conselheiro de CNE - Dr. Davide Castro Dias
Presidente do Conselho Executivo - Dr. Pedro Araújo
Vereador do Pelouro da Educação e Cultura - Dr. João Garção
Representante da Associação de Pais
Representante da Associação de Alunos
Relatores:
Dr.ª Engrácia Pereira
Dr.ª Rosa Guimarães
Lúcia Guimarães
Público – Alvo:
Professores em geral, pais e encarregados de educação, autarquia, alunos e outros…

Programa
Área Temática:

“Medidas e Metas para Melhorar a Educação em Portugal”

Questões em debate:
.Que organização escolar poderá melhorar o processo educativo?
.Como fomentar uma melhor articulação entre Escola / Professores / Encarregados de Educação.
De que forma?
Em que matérias?
.Como promover uma melhor articulação entre a educação escolar e outras formas de aprendizagem para que todos exerçam uma cidadania activa e responsável?
. Que mais podem (e vão) as autarquias / comunidades locais fazer pela Escola / Educação
. Em que medida a actividade do professor é preponderante na melhoria da Educação?

Organização: GAPE – Dr.ª(s) Ofélia Ribeiro - Engrácia Pereira - Isabel Lima - Rosa Guimarães

Debate...

Education is a very serious subject.

In Portugal, schools, local councils, cultural associations, parents, students and citizens in general are invited to debate Education and to give suggestions about what can be done to improve our educational systems, but above all, the results of education.

So The CNE- Conselho Nacional de Educação, promotes a national debate. These national debates are due until the 30th November 2006.

Escola Secundária de Felgueiras and GAPE -Gabinete de Apoio a Projectos Educativos are promoting a debate on the 24th November 2006, in the school's auditorium, by 9:00 p.m. The issue on discussion is " Metas e Medidas para Melhorar a Educação em Portugal"

So, I, as a member of GAPE invite all to be there and listen to the speakers' contribution. The idea is to offer the audience a time to discuss the subject- Education.

( the programme will be published soon)

English for Fun...

Recently discovered this site.

Visit it and try your English.

Have fun while learning!...

http://a4esl.org

"The Devil..."

"The Devil Wears Prada" is the name of the film I saw this weekend.
The films depicts the world of fashion.

Glamorous, beautiful and fashion addicted are the way the characters are seen by the viewers.
Within this rutheless world of fashion, yes, rutheless as anyone that doesn't fit the looks pattern is immediately discriminated, (" common" women are not right), there is Andy Sachs (Anna Hathaway) that will courageously face the "devil", Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep).
Andy is an intelligent, graduated girl that is looking for an opportunity to get a job. Her chance comes when Miranda accepts her as her assistant, in Runway a fashion magazine, against all odds. She is the opposite of the other women working there.
In a desperate attempt to prove her talent at work, she ends up being transformed in a twentieth-first century Cinderela, wearing Channel, Gucci, Valentino and so on.
Nevertheless, after an initial fascination for the million dollar world of fashion, she ends up recovering her values. She gives up a promising career in fashion to fulfil her dream, that is to become a journalist.
I loved the film. It is easy to follow, with some funny situations although sometimes exaggerated.

"What Values for This Time?"

"What Values for This Time?" was the name of a conference held in Portugal, Lisbon, and in which the french biophysicist Henri Atlan was a speaker.

Here are some of his ideas about the advances of science and genetic engineering technologies.
According to him it is very difficult to draw a line between what is a human foetus or simple cells.
There are some people who try to find out different stages of a foetus development and then decide when those cells are considered to be human or not. There is also the most traditional line drawn in ancient time, from Aristotles and that had been adopted by the greatest religious traditions such as Christianism until Saint Thomas, the Islam and others that say we can't think of a human being unless it is possible to distinguish a human shape, including a human face with the eyes. They suggest this might happen around the forty days. So, to the scientist Henri Atlan, each theory has got its own coherence.
The real question is: When is it that a cell becomes a human foetus?
This is a recent issue because in the past it would be impossible to have a baby outside the mother's womb. Today, we can produce babies without fecundation and whose initial development takes place outside the body of a woman...this is cloning. So we are artificially procriating.
They are only cells, developing without fecundation, that can become a foetus if they are placed in a woman's womb and if they develop there, normally.
The issue is similar when we think of egg women donors, and surrogate mothers. There are as well serious ethical, legal and moral values involved.
The problem is that this process will afect relationships.
Henri Atlan says that this scientific evolution indicates a dissociation between having children and sexuality. According to him, in the future, we'll have the possibility to chose between our womb to have our children or an artificial one.

Cloning...?

Cloning is a highly controversial subject.

It raises many moral and ethical and legal questions to which we are not yet ready to answer.
Lets see what some specialists say about the issue:

Cloning is the process of creating an identical copy of an original organism or thing. A cloning in the biological sense, therefore, is a molecule, single cell (like bacteria, lymphocytes etc.) or multi-cellular organism that has been directly copied from and is therefore genetically identical to another living organism. Sometimes this term can refer to "natural" clones made either when an organism asexual reproduced by chance (as with identical twins), but in common parlance, a clone is an identical copy created intentionally.

To clone or not to clone: that is the question.

The prospect of cloning humans is highly controversial and raises a number of ethical, legal and social challenges that need to be considered.
Why would anyone want to clone humans? Some reasons include:
To help infertile couples have children
To replace a deceased child
From a technical standpoint, before humans are cloned, we need to have a good idea of the risks involved. How sure can we be that a cloned baby will be healthy? What might go wrong?

Find some more information on the given sites

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/cloning/whatiscloning/

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/cloning/cloningornot