!mamãe já foi trapezista

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/index.shtml
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,2142,2595,00.html
http://www.ex.ac.uk/german/abinitio/

Pop CD

Paris Hilton, Paris Hilton

(Warner Brothers)

Alexis Petridis
Friday August 11, 2006
The Guardian

Buy Paris Hilton now

For a woman apparently ill-suited to anything more taxing than standing around nightclubs in a pair of really enormous sunglasses, Paris Hilton is quite the polymath. In recent years, the hotel heiress has variously revealed herself to be a TV star, a perfumier, a jewellery designer, a nightclub owner, a model, an actor and an author (albeit one whose book, Confessions of an Heiress, was described by a disgruntled Amazon customer as "a huge blow to the medium of literature as a whole"). You read her CV and boggle at what wildly improbable occupation she might turn her hand to next. Spot-welding? Cognitive neuropsychology?

Alas, no: it's singing. Lest one carp, Hilton has been quick to point out that singing is a vocation for which she is eminently skilled. "I know music," she reassured the Sunday Times children's section. "I hear it every single day."

While this obviously gives Hilton a massive advantage over those who have never heard any music and thus believe it to be a variety of cheese, there remains the nagging suspicion that this might not represent sufficient qualification for a career as a singer, in much the same way as knowing what a child is does not fully equip you for a career as a consultant paediatrician.

Nevertheless, you have to admire her pluck. Putting your name to a ghostwritten book, appearing on reality TV shows and launching your own perfume collectively represent the sine qua non of 21st-century celebrity: they all do it. But for some reason, a public only too willing to watch celebrities on TV, read their books and douse themselves in their branded scents balks when asked to listen to them sing. Jordan couldn't win A Song for Europe. The minute Kelly Osbourne starts singing, audiences rise as one in order to throw things at her.

Understandably, those behind Hilton's debut album have left little to chance, employing a vast team of crack producers and songwriters. Some decisions regarding membership of said team seem a little baffling - when Hilton's record label decided a reggae track "would be a really good fit", they naturally called songwriter Shep Solomon, famed for mashing up Kingston dancehalls with militant Rastafarian collective S Club 7 and ragga's Queen of Slackness Natalie Imbruglia - but you can't argue with its hit-making pedigree. We should perhaps draw a veil over Kara DioGuardi, whose penchant for collaborating with Celine Dion and Pop Idol's Darius makes her less a songwriter than a public nuisance, and instead focus on Scott Storch - producer to urban royalty from Busta Rhymes to Beyoncé - and Billy Steinberg. The latter's songwriting CV reads like the track listing of a CD with a steering wheel on the cover and sleeve notes by Jeremy Clarkson: Eternal Flame, Alone (by Heart), I Drove All Night and the Divinyls' I Touch Myself.

It would be churlish to deny they have done their job. The songs are uniformly well-turned. There is decaf R&B, Strokes-esque new wave pastiches, pop house, and lyrics that hint at Hilton's private life: Jealousy takes aim at her skeletal nemesis Nicole Richie, while Screwed vaguely references the porn tape marketed by her oily ex-boyfriend.

But as Turn It Up cranks into life, you realise why Hilton felt it necessary to confirm to the Sunday Times that she knew what music was. She sings like a woman who has heard of something called singing, can't be sure of exactly what it might entail, but is fairly certain you do something a bit like this. She sounds both distracted and bored stiff, as if making an album is keeping her from the more serious business of standing around a nightclub in a pair of really enormous sunglasses.

On Stars Are Blind, the combination of tinny cod-reggae and your-call-is-being-held-in-a-queue vocal technique results in something so plasticky, it's perversely enjoyable. Elsewhere, Hilton's audible lack of interest torpedoes her own chances. Someone has encouraged her to make erotically charged squeals of affirmation and panting noises, with deleterious results. "Yah! Uh-huh-huh! Yah!" she huffs, like a Sloane Ranger having an asthma attack.

Listening to her sing Rod Stewart's Do Ya Think I'm Sexy, you are gripped by the fear that civilisation as we know it is doomed and that brimstone is going to start raining from the sky any minute. It doesn't, but a sense of terrible foreboding is further stoked by the sleeve notes, which make reference to "all my albums to come". You might call that another example of the sheer force of will that has got Hilton so far in so many improbable careers, but on the basis of the 11 tracks here, it sounds more like a threat.

:: http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,1841306,00.html

a summary.

Summary – American Beliefs and Values

Even though the United States is quite a large country, there are certain beliefs and values which most Americans share, the principal one being that of freedom. It was the Founding Fathers’ belief that everyone is created equal and that it is the government’s duty to protect every person’s basic inalienable rights that shaped Americans’ sense of freedom. It is also understood, however, that differences in religion, sex, race or age mean that not all Americans are, in reality, entitled to the same rights and opportunities. The concept of freedom for Americans is closely tied to individualism, which is not only understood as self-reliance, but also economic self-sufficiency.

Scholars believe that such American beliefs and values arose within the context of the frontier experience, for, in order to survive in the wilderness, one had to be a robust individualist. Also imbued in the American system of beliefs and values is their “can-do spirit”; Americans often think they have innate do-it-yourself abilities. This “do-it-yourself spirit” is called volunteerism, i.e. “people helping people through privately-initiated, rather than government-sponsored, agencies”. Such practice is so common that 6 out of 10 Americans are members of a volunteer organization.

Americans have always liked to think that their country has limitless wealth; however, many resources have gradually been depleted over the course of America’s history. The United States is still rich in resources, though.

Americans’ sense of abundance is related to their habit of mobility, which is not a sign of aimlessness but rather one of optimism. This habit has greatly contributed to homogeneity within a country that is so diverse, culturally speaking. Besides, this habit also means that there is greater attachment on the part of citizens to the country as a whole as opposed to specific regions.

Americans associate the idea of freedom to that of progress, which they usually measure by looking into the history of their families.

An important concept in the American system of beliefs and values is that of the American Dream, which can be defined as “the dream of a land in which life should be better, richer, and fuller for every man with opportunities for each according to his abilities and achievement”. American history has shown, however, that achieving success is not something that is available to all Americans and recently they have begun to question accepted beliefs and values.

a summary.

Summary of The Making of a Nation

The United States has been from the very beginning a nation of immigrants, many of whom have gone to America in search of better opportunities. Most of the early settlers that went to America were British, but many other Europeans followed suit, mainly attracted by prospects of wealth.

Upon arriving in the “New World”, many immigrants preserved the traditions they had in their home countries. However, many immigrants also underwent acculturation so as to narrow the gap between themselves and the dominant WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) culture.

The arrival of Europeans in America changed the destiny of Native American Indians since the latter had their lands seized. Many battles were fought due to this fact.

It was in the years between 1840 to 1860 that the United States received the greatest number of immigrants in its history, with 50 million people arriving in America at that time.

Even up to 1880 it was still the Europeans that made up the largest portion of immigrants arriving in America. We call “old immigration” the northern and western Europeans who arrived between the years of 1840 and 1880.

It was in the late 1880s that a new wave of immigration started, the new immigrants being mainly Latin, Slavic and Jewish peoples from southern and eastern Europe.

The great number of foreigners arriving in America gave rise to ethnic neighborhoods, such as Little Italy and Chinatown. Many Americans didn’t accept immigration all too well and resented foreigners for fear that they were changing the composition of the country; besides, foreigners mean cheap labour, triggering unfair competition between Americans and foreigners since the latter were willing to perform similar tasks for much lower wages.

Immigration dropped significantly after the 1920s; however, the number of immigrants has risen again sharply of late, which has once more given rise to an assimilation problem.

Many immigrants who have arrived in America are in fact refugees that were allowed in under the Refugee Act signed in 1980.

Illegal immigration has also been a problem for America, with many immigrants accepting work for much lower wages than Americans would. In the past, altough illegal immigrants were not allowed to work in the United States, companies were not penalized for hiring them. However, in 1986 a law was passed that changed this situation.

Many Americans are in favor of imposing stricter bans on immigration because they believe that overpopulation is a threat. Moreover, they also fear that it affects the country’s identity. On the other hand, many Americans also recognize the importance that immigrants have had to the country, creating a more diverse atmosphere.

Americans are now said to be facing an identity crisis, with fewer and fewer Americans actually claiming to be WASPs. This has obviously led to a change as far as attitudes towards ethnic and religious differences are concerned.

a century of covers.

a summary.

Other Voices

Paula Gunn Allen tells the story of the discovery of America from a rather different perspective to that we are used to hearing of.

First of all, Paula doesn’t attempt to ignore the presence of the earlier inhabitants in America before the Europeans arrived. On the contrary, she tries to recount the lives of the earlier inhabitants and to analyze the reasons as to why their history has been swept under the carpet as though it never actually existed.

She shows that the history of Native American Indians is closely tied to the American nation we have nowadays. For example, she gives tidbits of facts about American history that go to show the importance that Indians had in the shaping of the country, such as the fact that the Chickasaw platoons were the reason for the victory of the United States over England in the war of 1812. She shows a great deal of frustration in the fact that most Americans are oblivious of such facts, or “amnesiac” as she describes them. Having killed off thousands of Indians, she states that it is somehow reasonable that America should want to forget its past.

At one point she refers to the beginning of the colonization process in America the “American Adam”, criticizing the fact that it denies the existence of any father or mother to it, as it were.

In this parallel that she draws, the mother is the Indians, earth and Nature, which, according to her, “were submerged into the ‘infinite pool’ of the unconscious, hopefully never to be recovered.”

She also points out that such isolation and self-reliance have become the theme for American civilization. Moreover, she states that the Indians were called savages not because they committed atrocities but because they valued the community as opposed to the individual. She even says that “belonging is most important to the Indians, while belongings are most important to the Whites.”

In this story, Paula also shows how strong Native Americans actually are as opposed to the preconceived notions we usually have of their apparent weakness and insignificance. There were also many interesting bits of history that she uncovered that deserve special attention in the teaching of American history, such as the fact that English has become the official language of the United States purely by accident.

Overall, what I believe we can learn from Paula’s text is that truth is but a matter of point of view, with each person defending whatever “truth” best suits their interests. As Jane Austen once said, we must “not allow books to prove anything.”