Around 18 billion cigarettes are sold around the world every day. In the United States alone, it is estimated that cigarette-related healthcare costs exceed USD $300 billion per year. However, the sale of cigarettes in the US has had an interesting history over the past century.
Please have a look at the chart below and discuss what you see with your teacher.
Decoding cryptograms is a great way to sharpen your English. A cryptogram with a simple substitution code is fairly easy to decipher, but it forces you to think carefully about spelling and vocabulary. As your English improves, you can move on to harder codes, like ones that don't put spaces in between the words so you have to figure out yourself where one word ends and the next begins.
This simple code uses the English alphabet. Letters are swapped for letters:
Decode this sentence: "B l f x z m g l g z o o b w l g s r h !"
Did you get it right? The answer is in the last discussion question.
Were you aware that you practiced English spelling, vocabulary, and colloquial expressions by decoding that saying?
When computer games appeared, men were their target comsumer. Games were created for men, and the main characters in games—protagonists—were mostly men too. Women were mostly presented as characters who needed help. For instance, Mario and Princess Peach.
Recently, the gaming industry has started targeting women too. More female protagonists are appearing.
Look at the graphs below and discuss them with your teacher.
Since smartphones first connected us to the Internet, the time we spend on our phones has been increasing.
2020 showed us that our whole life can be on the Internet. It is no longer a tool to work. It is something that gives us a voice, an opportunity to build relationships and connect with people. Some people find this useful. Others are worried about developing Internet addiction—when people use the Internet so much that other areas of their lives are damaged (relationships, work, studies, etc...) The American Academy of Pediatrics even proposed the idea of Facebook Depression. It is when people compare themselves with what they see on mass media platforms, and they feel incomplete, depressed and unhappy.
Most of us have the Internet in our pocket at all times. That means our media consumption and screen time has changed significantly over the last decade.
Please have a look at the graph below about American media consumption.
Vaccines can be a controversial issue in some cultures. For instance, according to the Washington Post, in the United States, 9 per cent of adults oppose vaccinating children against measles. Also, many people believe that the coronavirus vaccines are not safe.
Countries have different policies regarding whether it should be mandatory to vaccinate children. Have a look at the map below and discuss what you see with your teacher.
According to the Japan Times, the Japanese government plans to encourage firms to allow their employees to choose to work four days a week instead of five, aiming to improve the balance between work and life for people who have family care responsibilities.
The coronavirus pandemic has helped the idea of a four-day workweek gain traction as the health crisis has caused people to spend more time at home.
Experts are divided, however, on whether the new initiative, intended to address challenges posed by Japan’s labor shortage, will be widely accepted. Labor and management are both voicing concerns about possible unwanted outcomes.
For employers, while people working four days a week may become more motivated, this may not improve their productivity enough to compensate for the lost workday. An expected advantage is helping people with family care responsibilities avoid the need to quit their jobs.
According to The Guardian, the renowned Swiss architect Le Corbusier developed a system that has shaped much of the world. It dictates everything from the height of a door handle to the scale of a staircase. But the system, Le Modulor, developed in the 1940s, was created with a handsome six-foot-tall British policeman in mind. So all sizes are governed by the need to make everything as convenient as possible for Le Corbusier’s ideal man.
The system's influence even extended to the size of city blocks, since these responded to the size and needs of the car the ideal man drove to work.
By the 1980s, some women had had enough. After decades of struggling with prams and shopping trolleys, navigating dark underpasses, blind alleyways and subways in the cities mostly made by men, it was time for a different approach.
Vaccination against the COVID-19 virus started in December 2020. It has progressed at an unequal rate around the world. As of late April 2021, only a few million people had received a vaccination in the whole of the African continent, while over 200 million Americans had been vaccinated.
However, for some smaller countries, the situation can change very quickly.
Please take a look at the graph below and discuss what you see with your teacher. 
First, make a choice about how to watch the film. It is about 7 minutes. You have a few options.
This discussion topic is based on a short film by Pixar, called "Float". It uses metaphor to express a complex truth in simple terms.
What is a metaphor? It's saying one thing is another thing, but it's not literally true. Here are some examples:
Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas has designed a high-tech face mask that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. Called Xupermask, it has three dual-speed fans to keep you cool, and a design to keep you looking cool. The real money-grabbers are noise-canceling headphones, LED lights for nighttime, and Bluetooth capability. You can listen to music, take and make calls, and put on your own light show while wearing this thing. It doesn't come cheap, but at $299, it costs less than a set of Bose headphones, and a lot less than a mobile phone! And you can use the Xupermask for both, with a bonus face mask thrown in.
The look of the Xupermask was designed by Jose Fernandez. He created Elon Musk's spacesuits, and Marvel characters' costumes in the Avengers, Black Panther, and X-Men 2. So you know it's going to look out of this world.
Bloomberg News reports that according to Microsoft's Work Trend Index, which polled 30,000 people from a variety of companies in 31 countries and used trillions of data points, the majority of workers feel they are struggling or just surviving in pandemic work conditions and a large percentage are considering leaving their employer this year.
Nearly half of respondents said they are planning to move to a new location this year, which reflects the greater flexibility of working from home. Also, 41% of those surveyed said they're mulling leaving their jobs. The data found that burnout is widespread: 54% of workers said they are overworked and 39% said they are exhausted.
Here in Melbourne, Australia, we are heading into the colder months.
Daylight Saving has just ended, so we moved our clocks back an hour. On the plus side, we all got an extra hour of sleep over the weekend. But it also means the sun sets an hour earlier.
If I want to catch the daylight, I have to walk the dog earlier. I also have to put better lights on my bicycle because I'm cycling more often around twilight and dusk.
But as a Canadian, I love this cool weather. I love crisp autumn mornings and wearing sweaters in the evening. I can go for a run without constantly worrying about dehydration. It is all much more familiar than the typical Australian summer with sweltering days and warm nights.
So I'm happy to bid farewell to the summer and start these cooler, shorter days. I know a lot of people feel differently. To each their own!
"Prepare for warp speed." If you're a Trekkie or Star Wars fan, and maybe even if you're not, you've heard about warp drives and probably dreamed of being able to travel faster than the speed of light. It seemed like the stuff of fantasy—until now. Physicist Erik Lentz has come up with a theoretical model of a warp drive that would shorten a trip to the star Proxima Centauri, the closest star beyond our solar system, from 50,000–70,000 years using rocket fuel, or 100 years using nuclear fuel, to just 4 years and 3 months.
The life expectancy of people in Japan has been increasing for the past 65 years. Life expectancy means the prediction of how long people are expected to live. There are many reasons for the increase in life expectancy, such as better food, cleaner water and improved medicine.
Please have a look at the chart below and discuss what you see with your teacher.
The English National Opera (ENO) has teamed up with a London hospital to teach breathing techniques to people recovering from COVID-19. One of the common lingering effects of the virus is difficulty breathing. Proper breathing is essential for opera singers, so they're in a unique position to help patients recover.
When in-house opera concerts were cancelled due to the pandemic, the ENO wanted to find other ways to use their skills to help others. They realized they are experts in breathing, so they created a 6-week program, called ENO Breathe, that uses therapeutic techniques reworked by singers. The techniques help restore lung capacity, as well as lessen anxiety through deep breathing exercises.
People around the world follow different religions. We use specific words to describe them.
Crossing the street is very easy in most countries. You simply wait for the crosswalk light to turn green. The cars stop and let you walk safely to the other side.
However, in Hanoi, Vietnam, crossing the road is an adventure. There are few traffic lights, and the cars and motorbikes will never stop for you. You need to just walk into the street and the vehicles will go around you. It can be very scary, but that is the only way to cross the street in Vietnam. You have to trust the drivers not to hit you.
You get used to it very quickly and then laugh when you see tourists panic while crossing the street.
Languages generally develop organically, following changes in culture. But sometimes we have to purposefully change our language to create the culture we need.
Take, for example, sexism. In English, seeing the masculine form of a word—e.g., adding "-man" to a job title, and using he/him/his pronouns—as neutral had been accepted as the norm since the 19th century and still often is. In the 1970s, however, women began to demand equal representation in all things, and that meant in the language, too.
Studies have shown that people are influenced by the words they see. In one study, people were asked to read a story with the following sentences in it:
“The foreman reassured himself he had made the right decision.”
"The foreman reassured herself she had made the right decision.”
According to The Guardian, a newspaper based in the United Kingdom, Bookshop is a socially conscious alternative to Amazon that allows readers to buy books online while supporting their local independent bookseller.
Bookshop was founded by writer and co-founder of Literary Hub, Andy Hunter. It allows independent bookshops to create their own virtual shopfront on the site, with the stores receiving the full profit from each sale. Customer service and shipping are handled by Bookshop and its distribution partners.
Christmas is very popular in Germany—lights, food and decorations abound. Also, of course, presents are a main component for many people, especially younger people. But the Germans are famous for being pragmatic and no-nonsense. So what kind of gifts are commonly given in Germany? Read the chart below to find out.
