READING A BOOK OR AN EBOOK?

Nowadays, we are so familiarized with tecnology. That's why many people are starting to read books through a screen using eBooks and not how it has traditionaly been made. 

Personally, I prefer reading books, because I'm always using moviles, computers... And when I'm reading I like to disconnect of all. Also, because I like having the book to turn the pages, smell the odor of the book... But let's see the advantages and disadvantages of reading a book and reading an eBook. 

The advantages of books are that they don't need energy to run so you don't have to read it at home plugged and you can take it everywhere you want. Also you can feel the book like I've said and if you have the oportunity, the writer can sign your book.

The disadvantages are that it is more expensive than an eBook and it takes up more space.

On the other hand, the advantages of eBooks are that you can have all the books you want in the eBook, because it doesn't taked much space and also because it's cheaper than a book in paper. 

Also because it is easy to carry the eBook,  it doesn't weights too much. Finally, you don't have to move or wait to but a book you can buy it instantatly and if you need it, you can also search the definition on the eBook because some bring an incorpored dictionary. 

But the disadvantages are that eBooks need Internet to buy books and you also have to charge the battery which can ends at any time. Though you can have many books in your eBook, some don't have a digital verions of it. And the most important is that it exhausts your eyes.

SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION

Social media addiction is becoming a bigger problem that we think. The reason why people have this problem is because they spend too much time on social media and also because companies know how to make them more attractive so that people enjoy using them. 

The consequences of this kind of addiction are, in the first place that people spend too much time on the internet and they take distance from the reality and from people around them. Also, when they don't have a connection, they feel anxiety because they need to be in contact with the others. 

I think that the only way of solving this problem is by stopping focusing on the social media and really focusing on the people around you. 

"I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction, the world will have a generation of idiots." - Albert Einsten. 

When Albert Einstein said this he was predicting what was gonna happen, because it was obvious to him that someday this would happen and we would be addicted to technology, because it makes our lifes easier

Here you can watch a short documentary about social media addiction:

CHRISTMAS COMMERCIALISM

Many people say that Christmas is a materialistic holiday, that it is driven by commercialism and that it's not worth keeping Christmas anymore. 

In my opinion, it is obvious that companies are taking advantage of this time of the year when they can sell much more products because people buy many presents. But I don't think that we should stop celebrating Christmas because of it. 

For me, the most important part of Christmas is that we are able to stay home with our family and spend time together doing things that we enjoy, like decorating the house, putting up and decorating the christmas tree, baking cookies... I really do enjoy those moments as many people does too. 

My opinion about the presents is that it is true that many people is driven by consumerism because at this time of the year they buy a lot of not necessary things. It is also true that we could celebrate Christmas without presents and then we will finish with this intense commercialism, but I think that in this time of the year we really love giving presents to the ones we love and seeing them happy for it. 

And it is also true that we could just do these things every day, meeting with family, giving presents, decorating the house or just baking, so maybe Christmas is not necessary, but I think that it is special because, first of all, we don't have many free days and it's hard to organize a day when all the family can meet, and second because it is beautiful to wait all year for Christmas, to be able to do things like I said, or just to see all the streets decorated with lights and go shopping with your family. So I think that what makes it special and beautiful is that it's just a day of the year and it is the perfect excuse spending time with family, and that's why I think that Christmas is worth keeping. 

Advantages and disadvantages of learning English abroad compared to learning in your own country

Some years ago I had the oportunity to travel to Plymouth, UK to learn some English and to visit new pleaces. I've never been away from home that much time but it was a great expirence and I've learn a lot of English and a lot about England. 

Learning English abroad, especially in the UK, has a great advanage as you have to speak the lenguage all the time whether during classes or in daily activities such as shopping , asking for directions, and watching TV. It will certainly improve your accent and make you used to thinking in English, not in your native language. Not everyone can afford studying English abroad as it is very expensice. Also, some people cannot get along with a different culture and suffer homesickness. 

Learning English in your own country  has its pros and cons. Being with students speaking the same language and having the same problem makes studying more fun, and sometimes competition urges students to work harder. At the same time using the native language in class limits the ability  to speak English fluently. 

Taking into consideration the high expenses of learning abroad, I prefer to study in my own country and make efforts to improve my Englishby making friendships with English native-speakers who live in or visit my country. 

WOULD I TAKE A GAP YEAR?

There are many advantages about taking a Gap Year but also there are some disadvantages that we have to consider if we are planing to have a year off. 

When you travel outside of your country you learn many things. First of all you learn how to move all around the world which is very important when you grow up and you start living your live by your own. Apart from this, you will learn many things depending on what trip you choose. You can focus on a particular activity as a sport or just find a work or volunteer on some research... There are many possibilities depending on your personal likes. 

Another advantage is that when you travel to another country you've never been before you learn a lot about their culture, their language and their  activities. And finaly you will meet many new people and make new friends for life because you will experence many things together. 

But though there are many things you  will have to go through while you are on this new country. One is that you will be away from your family for a long time and sometimes it is hard. Also, you have to be very extroverted because you will have to meet need people. And finally, because depending on the trip you choose it could be dangerous so you have to plan a little bit the places you're going to stay at night also discover with whom you are going to stay and the activities you are going to do.

So my final conclusion is that I would take a Gap Year because it is a great oportunity to learn many things and also because it isn't very expensive depending of what trip you take because while you make many activities you can work on something. 

PERSONALITY OR PHYSICAL ATTRACTION?

When you meet someone for the first time you notice the way they dress, their body, their face's beauty, their hair, height... Basically their appearance is the first thing we see of a person even before they say a word. It's normal because we don't know at first how their personality is. So, we only see their physical appearance and we don't know anything about them. In that point, some people ask: should we focus on the physical appearance over they personality? Or their personality over their appearance? 

We live in a society where physical appearance is very important. Also, our idea of beauty may be a bit unconsciously marked by the media: Internet, television, magazines... Although we all have an own pont of beauty, most of the people have quite the same idea, which is the one that says the media. For example, the prototype of the perfect women nowadays is slim, tall but with boobs and butt. Of course, not every men and women think the same but that's. 

Also, we took as an example the celebrities; a lot of celebrities are recognized as being "the most beautiful people in the worlk" like Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Emma Watson... And there are lists that rank the celebrities based only on their looks. All of this tells us that appearance is most important so some people have a tendency to be very superficial.

Talking about love, when you are searching for your "soul mate", a good personality should definitely be at the top of your list. Of course you would like to have a partner that you are physically attracted to. But you shouldn't be in a relationship with somebody only becaue of their look. Remember that the outside beauty doesn't last forever; the inner beauty does.

But though all I think that both of them are important. I think that a part from having a good personality it's such an important thing to feeel attracted to you partner. So when we first see a person it's good to be attracted by the physical appearance but then when we start to talk and know each other we finally decide if we like their personality and we want to have a relationship with them or if not. 

POLLUTION

In this post I will talk about a global issue that we are fighting against nowadays. This global issue is about air pollution.

As we live in some villages around Castelló d'Empuries we are not used to see smog hanging over our heads everyday, but if sometimes we have visited some big city we could probably have seen it.

Delhi, the capital territory of India is the most polluted city in the world. This territory is half the size of Rhode Island and is twice more polluted than the entire New York City. To make us aware of what it is like to live in a place with too much pollution, a photographer named Matthieu Paley travelled there and took photos of it.




The main pollutant substance is Carbon dioxide. It is warming the Earth and we are constantly throwing it to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as gasoline and natural gas. Also, in the past 150 years, we have thrown enough Carbon dioxide to the atmosphere to raise levels higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years.

SOLUTIONS FOR THIS PROBLEM:

Industrialized countries have been working against this problem and they are taking measures to limit emissions of Carbon dioxide by making people just drive and fly more and also by recycling more. Also the Paris Agreement, which is a voluntary agreement among 118 nations to try to combat against climate change. As a part of the agreement, each country has to keep the post-industrial global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius. And also they put higher taxes on gasoline so that people will conserve more this energy and pollute less.

My personal opinion about the solution of this problem is that governments should focus more on industrial pollution because they throw many substances to the air that are contaminating the industrialized cities. But also everyone should be more aware of this problem and try to help as much as they can because it is a global issue so it affects everyone. Personaly, we should all use public transport and recycle more because people think that this doesn't help but actually it does. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours and also recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75.000 trees.

Ear cropping and tail docking

Recently the Spanish congress has approved the prohibition of ear cropping and tail docking just for aesthetic reasons. 

The surgery to cut off a dog's tail is usually done with surgical scissors and without anesthesia when they are just a few days old because that's when their tail is still soft. It causes pain to the dog, but it is just a puppy so he is not alert and he won't remember it. 

The surgery to cut off part of a dog's ears is done with anesthesia and with dogs between 6 and 12 years old. 

Tail docking and ear cropping is banned in some parts of the world as Australia or the U.K.

I think that this decision of the Spanish congress is going to be positive, because many people use these technics to just give a look to their dogs. But obviously it is not positive for them. First of all because it causes pain to them and it is not natural. Another reason is because dogs use their tails to communicate emotions like anger or excitement, so if they cut off its tail, he will be less able to interact with other dogs. Also cutting their tail or ears is dangerous for its health because it could cause some problems as a developer of a nerve tumor or a neuroma. 

Although this surgery has been less common in the past years because it has fallen out of fashion and people stopped doing it. But the fact that the Spanish congress has banned it, is finally going to make people stop doing it.

SCIENTISTS MAKE MEAT

Scientists from the Netherlands finally discovered how to grow meat in the laboratory. This way we won't have to kill more animals to eat, but there are some problems.



The first problem is the cost of the production. Just a piece of meat costs around $12.500 to make, but because the laboratory has an investor from the meat industry, maybe the first hamburger will be on the market within five years.
Though all it will be expensive and in small production, because it lasts 3 months to grow a hamburger, so it will be just for restaurants and for 12-14 dollars.

The other problem is that people don't like the idea of laboratory products and they prefer the natural products, especially if the laboratory one is also expensive.

The positive part is that with this process, we will never need to kill more animals, because with just some cells from a tissue, that are able to divide into many other cells, can turn into muscle fibres and then create a burger.

But I think that we all just should have a diet with less red meat so we won't have to kill that amount of animals to eat, and also because it is healthier to have a varied diet that includes everything we need.

Here you can watch the process of creating a burger from a cell in the laboratory:

BEST STAGE OF YOUR LIFE

The best stage in life for me is young adulthood because you have the legal age and you are able to do things you couldn't when you were under eighteen. 

At this stage of your life you can have your driving license and you can have your first car and go wherever you want to go whenever you want without having to ask someone to drive you. Another reason why I think this is the best stage of your life is because you finished the hard last years of high school and you are able to go to university and focus on studying something you really like and something you really enjoy doing and after this, if you are lucky, you can work on something you have studied for and something you enjoy like doing. Also at this stage of your life you can leave your parent's home and go to live near the university with your friends or with new people you meet there, because you have many new friends there, and you start living your life by yourself being independent and doing whatever you want and being responsible. 

By saying this, I don't mean that other stages of your life are less important. For example, infancy and childhood are very beautiful periods of your life, but from infancy, we don't remember anything and from childhood the same, we just remember some things we have seen in photos. But anyway, those were times of your life where you just focused on living life happily and not worrying about anything. 

From adolescense, I think it's also a beautiful period of your life, but it's a bit hard because you have to focus on studying, but you also want to hang out with your friends, and your parents don't trust you because you are young yet, but it's beautiful because you don't have to worry too much about problems in life, you see your friends in high school every day, you probably will have your first love, and you will experience many new beautiful feelings. 

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF AMERICAN NOMINEES

DONALD TRUMP:

Strengths:

One of his major strendths that we have seen in numerous conversations between reporters and Trump is that he is able to lead a direct question into the direction he wants to. Also he knows how to talk to the anger voters without being shy and not fearing of what he says. He says what voters want to listen to even if it has risks. Another of his strengths is that he has a good business expirence and he is able to self finance his campaign.

Weaknesses:

Repeatedly he has made some extremists statements about immigrants, women and Muslims, he has been seen as egocentric and publicity hound and also he would not be taken seriously by some. Another weakness is that people is affraid of what he would do if he was in the White House because he is so impredictable. A very important weakness of his candidacy is his weak knowledge of the political terms. In some of the debates against Clinton this was a problem because he is a smart and experienced woman.

HILLARY CLINTON:

Strengths:

One of the most important strengths of Hillary Clinton is that he is a political fighter, she doesn't give up easily and she is able to defend herself against political opponents. The fact that she would be the first female president could be positive for her because it makes her candidacy truly historic because the fact that people voted a women could be a step foward for a nation where women weren't allow to vote until 1920 and where sexism remains in. The most important strength is that she has political expirence, she has been a Secretary of the State, a U.S. Senator, First Lady of the United States and First Lady of Arkansas.

Weaknesses:

One of the bi problems of her candidacy is that people don't know if they can trust her because of the way she handle her email as a secretary of the state using a private server outside the official system. Also it seems like she has been hiding information instead of taking risks and being more open.

 MY OPINION: 

In my opinion Hillary Clinton would be a better president of the United States than Donald Trump. First of all because she has much more political epirence than him and she has been related with the White House. Also because she is a woman and this could be positive for a country to have a female president where gender inequality remains part of the culture of the country. And also because she hasn't been related with extremists statements as Donald Trump.