English Recordings

Welcome to this sighseeing tour of New-York. Today, thanks to the TopView bus, you are going to discover the city of New-York. First, on your left, you can see a famous monument: the Statue of Liberty. Beautiful isn’t it?
Then in this street, there are many shops and restaurants and there is also a nice park on your right.
If you look right and left, you can see many buildings too.
And over there, you can see great museums on your right.
Look! Can see this big church on your left? It’s St Peter’s Church. Thank you for visiting New-York with us. See you soon!

"I'm scared", Eddie said.
I shivered and zipped my coat up to the chin.
"Eddie, this was your idea", I told my brother.
"I didn't beg and plead to see the Terror Tower. You did. "
He raised his brown eyes to the Tower. A strong gust of wind fluttered his dark brown hair.
"I have a strange feeling about it, Sue. A bad feeling." [...]
"This was London's first debtor's prison." Mr Starkes explained as held the way.
"If you were too poor to pay your bills, you were sent to prison. Which meant that you could never pay your bills! So you stayed in prison forever." ...[...]
At the entrance, I raised my eyes to the top of the dark tower.It was solid stone. No windows except for a tiny square at the very top.
People were actually imprisoned there, I thought. Real people. Hundreds of years ago. I suddenly wondered if the castle was haunted.
I tried to read the serious expression on my brother's face. I wondered if Eddie was having the same chilling thoughts.
We stepped up to the dark entrance way. "Turn around, Eddie," I said.
I took a step back and pulled my camera from my coat pocket.
"Let's go in," Eddie pleaded. "The others are getting ahead of us."
"I just wanted to take your picture at the castle entrance,"I said.
I raised the camera to my eye. Eddie made a dumb face. I pressed the shutter release ans snapped the picture.
I had no way of knowing that it was the last picture I would ever take of Eddie.
R.L. Stine, Goosebumps: A Night in Terror Tower

Sherlock Holmes - Who are you?

Stranger - I work at Stoke Moran but I don’t want to reveal my identity.

SH - Why did you want to testify?

Stranger - I don’t have proof but I think Roylott is a scary man and has to be investigated.

SH - Where were you the night of Julia's murder?

Stranger - On the night of Julia’s murder, I was outside smoking a cigarette.

SH - What did you witness?

Stranger - I saw Roylott carry a box inside the house.
He held the box very carefully, maybe because there was something fragile in the box.

SH - When did you see this?

Stranger - I saw this the day before Julia died. And he did the same thing last week.

The British (serves 60 million)
Take some Picts, Celts and Silures
And let them settle,
Then overrun them with Roman conquerors.
Remove the Romans after approximately 400 years
Add lots of Norman French to some
Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings, then stir vigorously.
Mix some hot Chileans, cool Jamaicans, Dominicans,
Trinidadians and Bajans with some Ethiopians, Chinese,
Vietnamese and Sudanese.
Then take a blend of Somalians, Sri Lankans, Nigerians
And Pakistanis,
Combine with some Guyanese
And turn up the heat.
Sprinkle some fresh Indians, Malaysians, Bosnians,
Iraqis and Bangladeshis together with some
Afghans, Spanish, Turkish, Kurdish, Japanese
And Palestinians
Then add to the melting pot.
Leave the ingredients to simmer.
As they mix and blend allow their languages to flourish
Binding them together with English.
Allow time to be cool.
Add some unity, understanding, and respect for the future,
Serve with justice
And enjoy.

Note: All the ingredients are equally important. Treating one ingredient better than another will leave a bitter unpleasant taste.
Warning: An unequal spread of justice will damage the people and cause pain. Give justice and equality to all.

From Wicked Boy, By Benjamin Zephaniah

There were no doors off this landing, but Ron nudged Harry and pointed at the ceiling, where there was a circular trapdoor with a brass plaque on it. "Sibyll Trelawney, Divination teacher, "' Harry read. "How're we supposed to get up there?" As though in answer to his question, the trapdoor suddenly opened, and a silvery ladder descended right at Harry's feet. Everyone got quiet. "After you, " said Ron, grinning, so Harry climbed the ladder first. He emerged into the strangest-looking classroom he had ever seen. In fact, it didn't look like a classroom at all, more like a cross between someone's attic and an old-fashioned tea shop. At least twenty small, circular tables were crammed inside it, all surrounded by chintz armchairs and fat little poufs. Everything was lit with a dim, crimson light; the curtains at the windows were all closed, and the many lamps were draped with dark red scarves. It was stiflingly warm, and the fire that was burning under the crowded mantelpiece was giving off a heavy, sickly sort of perfume as it heated a large copper kettle. The shelves running around the circular walls were crammed with dusty-looking feathers, stubs of candles, many packs of tattered playing cards, countless silvery crystal balls, and a huge array of teacups. Ron appeared at Harry's shoulder as the class assembled around them, all talking in whispers. "Where is she?" Ron said. A voice came suddenly out of the shadows, a soft, misty sort of voice. "Welcome, " it said. "How nice to see you in the physical world at last. "Harry's immediate impression was of a large, glittering insect. Professor Trelawney moved into the firelight, and they saw that she was very thin; her large glasses magnified her eyes to several times their natural size, and she was draped in a gauzy spangled shawl. Innumerable chains and beads hung around her spindly neck, and her arms and hands were encrusted with bangles and rings. "Sit, my children, sit, " she said, and they all climbed awkwardly into armchairs or sank onto poufs. Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat themselves around the same round table. "Welcome to Divination, " said Professor Trelawney, who had seated herself in a winged armchair in front of the fire. "My name is Professor Trelawney. You may not have seen me before. I find that descending too often into the hustle and bustle of the main school clouds my Inner Eye. "Nobody said anything to this extraordinary pronouncement. Professor Trelawney delicately rearranged her shawl and continued, "So you have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts […] We will be covering the basic methods of Divination this year. The first term will be devoted to reading the tea leaves. Next term we shall progress to palmistry […] we shall progress to the crystal ball--if we have finished with fire omens, that is […]
Now, I want you all to divide into pairs. Collect a teacup from the shelf, come to me, and I will fill it. Then sit down and drink, drink until only the dregs remain. Swill these around the cup three times with the left hand, then turn the cup upside down on its saucer, wait for the last of the tea to drain away, then give your cup to your partner to read. You will interpret the patterns using pages five and six of Unfogging the Future. I shall move among you, helping and instructing. "

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 6: Talons and Tea Leaves.

School again

There is no time to play
It is school again !
Let’s count to ten !
Oh no ! It is a bad day !

It is time to cry
I hate my tie !
Goodbye trainers,
Hello blazers.

Shopping for school
Is not so cool !
My school emblem is horrible
And I don’t like my timetable !

My new backpack
Is heavy on my back,
I hate homework,
I hate teamwork !

So I can say
I am sad today,
‘Cause back to school
Is really cruel !

School again

There is no time to play
It is school again !
Let’s count to ten !
Oh yeah ! It is a good day !

It is time to start,
We all look smart.
New uniform, blazer and shirt
Trousers, shorts and tie or skirt !

New equipment,
It is so pleasant !
New pencils, books and glue,
And a brand new hairdo !

My new backpack
Is on my back !
Hello my friends,
The summer ends !

And I can say,
I am happy today,
‘Cause back to school
Is really cool !

I've heard he's a Debbie Downer.

Why companies should welcome disorder
A

Organization is big business. Whether it is of our lives – all those inboxes and calendars – or how companies are structured, a multi-billion dollar industry helps to meet this need.

We have more strategies for time management, project management, and self-organization than at any other time in human history. We are told that we ought to organize our company, our home life, our week, our day and even our sleep, all as a means to becoming more productive. Every week, countless seminars and workshops take place around the world to tell a paying public that they ought to structure their lives in order to achieve this.

This rhetoric has also crept into the thinking of business leaders and entrepreneurs, much to the delight of self-proclaimed perfectionists with the need to get everything right. The number of business schools and graduates has massively increased over the past 50 years, essentially teaching people how to organize well.

B

Ironically, however, the number of businesses that fail has also steadily increased. Work-related stress has increased. A large proportion of workers from all demographics claim to be dissatisfied with the way their work is structured and the way they are managed.

This begs the question: what has gone wrong? Why is it that on paper the drive for organization seems a sure shot for increasing productivity, but in reality falls well short of what is expected?

C

This has been a problem for a while now. Frederick Taylor was one of the forefathers of scientific management. Writing in the first half of the 20th century, he designed a number of principles to improve the efficiency of the work process, which has since become widespread in modern companies. So the approach has been around for a while.

D

New research suggests that this obsession with efficiency is misguided. The problem is not necessarily the management theories or strategies we use to organize our work; it’s the basic assumptions we hold in approaching how we work. Here it’s the assumption that order is a necessary condition for productivity. This assumption has also fostered the idea that disorder must be detrimental to organizational productivity. The result is that businesses and people spend time and money organizing themselves for the sake of organizing, rather than actually looking at the end goal and usefulness of such an effort.

E

What’s more, recent studies show that order actually has diminishing returns. Order does increase productivity to a certain extent, but eventually the usefulness of the process of organization, and the benefit it yields, reduce until the point where any further increase in order reduces productivity. Some argue that in business, if the cost of formally structuring something outweighs the benefit of doing it, then that thing ought not to be formally structured. Instead, the resources involved can be better used elsewhere.

F

In fact, research shows that, when innovating, the best approach is to create an environment devoid of structure and hierarchy and enable everyone involved to engage as one organic group. These environments can lead to new solutions that, under conventionally structured environments (filled with bottlenecks in terms of information flow, power structures, rules, and routines) would never be reached.

G

In recent times companies have slowly started to embrace this disorganization. Many of them embrace it in terms of perception (embracing the idea of disorder, as opposed to fearing it) and in terms of process (putting mechanisms in place to reduce structure).

For example, Oticon, a large Danish manufacturer of hearing aids, used what it called a ‘spaghetti’ structure in order to reduce the organization’s rigid hierarchies. This involved scrapping formal job titles and giving staff huge amounts of ownership over their own time and projects. This approach proved to be highly successful initially, with clear improvements in worker productivity in all facets of the business.

In similar fashion, the former chairman of General Electric embraced disorganization, putting forward the idea of the ‘boundaryless’ organization. Again, it involves breaking down the barriers between different parts of a company and encouraging virtual collaboration and flexible working. Google and a number of other techs companies have embraced (at least in part) these kinds of flexible structures, facilitated by technology and strong company values which glue people together.

H

A word of warning to others thinking of jumping on this bandwagon: the evidence so far suggests disorder, much like order, also seems to have diminishing utility, and can also have detrimental effects on performance if overused. Like order, the disorder should be embraced only so far as it is useful. But we should not fear it – nor venerate one over the other. This research also shows that we should continually question whether or not our existing assumptions work.

Back to the future of skyscraper design
Answers to the problem of excessive electricity use by skyscrapers and large public buildings can be found in ingenious but forgotten architectural designs of the 19th and early-20th centuries

A

The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture by Professor Alan Short is the culmination of 30 years of research and award-winning green building design by Short and colleagues in Architecture, Engineering, Applied Maths, and Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

‘The crisis in building design is already here,’ said Short. ‘Policymakers think you can solve energy and building problems with gadgets. You can’t. As global temperatures continue to rise, we are going to continue to squander more and more energy on keeping our buildings mechanically cool until we have run out of capacity.’

B

Short is calling for a sweeping reinvention of how skyscrapers and major public buildings are designed – to end the reliance on sealed buildings that exist solely via the ‘life support’ system of vast air conditioning units.

Instead, he shows it is entirely possible to accommodate natural ventilation and cooling in large buildings by looking into the past, before the widespread introduction of air conditioning systems, which were ‘relentlessly and aggressively marketed’ by their inventors.

C

Short points out that to make most contemporary buildings habitable, they have to be sealed and air-conditioned. The energy use and carbon emissions this generates is spectacular and largely unnecessary. Buildings in the West account for 40-50% of electricity usage, generating substantial carbon emissions, and the rest of the world is catching up at a frightening rate. Short regards glass, steel, and air-conditioned skyscrapers as symbols of status, rather than practical ways of meeting our requirements.

D

Short’s book highlights a developing and sophisticated art and science of ventilating buildings through the 19th and earlier-20th centuries, including the design of ingeniously ventilated hospitals. Of particular interest were those built to the designs of John Shaw Billings, including the first Johns Hopkins Hospital in the US city of Baltimore (1873-1889).

‘We spent three years digitally modeling Billings’ final designs,’ says Short. ‘We put pathogens* in the airstreams, modeled for someone with tuberculosis (TB) coughing in the wards and we found the ventilation systems in the room would have kept other patients safe from harm.

—————-
* pathogens: microorganisms that can cause disease

E

‘We discovered that 19th-century hospital wards could generate up to 24 air changes an hour – that’s similar to the performance of a modern-day, computer-controlled operating theatre. We believe you could build wards based on these principles now.

Single rooms are not appropriate for all patients. Communal wards appropriate for certain patients – older people with dementia, for example – would work just as well in today’s hospitals, at a fraction of the energy cost.’

Professor Short contends the mindset and skill-sets behind these designs have been completely lost, lamenting the disappearance of expertly designed theatres, opera houses, and other buildings where up to half the volume of the building was given over to ensuring everyone got fresh air.

F

Much of the ingenuity present in the 19th-century hospital and building design was driven by a panicked public clamoring for buildings that could protect against what was thought to be the lethal threat of miasmas – the toxic air that spread disease. Miasmas were feared as the principal agents of disease and epidemics for centuries and were used to explain the spread of infection from the Middle Ages right through to the cholera outbreaks in London and Paris during the 1850s. Foul air, rather than germs, was believed to be the main driver of ‘hospital fever’, leading to disease and frequent death. The prosperous steered clear of hospitals.

While miasma theory has been long since disproved, Short has for the last 30 years advocated a return to some of the building design principles produced in its wake.

G

Today, huge amounts of a building’s space and construction cost are given over to air conditioning. ‘But I have designed and built a series of buildings over the past three decades which have tried to reinvent some of these ideas and then measure what happens.

‘To go forward into our new low-energy, low-carbon future, we would be well advised to look back at design before our high-energy, high-carbon present appeared. What is surprising is what a rich legacy we have abandoned.’

H

Successful examples of Short’s approach include the Queen’s Building at De Montfort University in Leicester. Containing as many as 2,000 staff and students, the entire building is naturally ventilated, passively cooled, and naturally lit, including the two largest auditoria, each seating more than 150 people. The award-winning building uses a fraction of the electricity of comparable buildings in the UK.

Short contends that glass skyscrapers in London and around the world will become a liability over the next 20 or 30 years if climate modeling predictions and energy price rises come to pass as expected.

I

He is convinced that sufficiently cooled skyscrapers using the natural environment can be produced in almost any climate. He and his team have worked on hybrid buildings in the harsh climates of Beijing and Chicago – built with natural ventilation assisted by back-up air conditioning – which, surprisingly perhaps, can be switched off more than half the time on milder days and during the spring and autumn.

Short looks at how we might reimagine the cities, offices, and homes of the future. Maybe it’s time we changed our outlook.