2011-2012 Challenges. Number 1

Five mercenaries in the Thirty Years´War

Source: http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Daniel-Hopfer/Five-Mercenaries-In-The-Thirty-Years-War-1518-48.html

Hi everybody!

As we have lessons on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday this year, the weekly challenges will be set on Thursday afternoon. This way you will have more time to research and solve them. Let´s inaugurate this year´s challenges with some questions about the Thirty Years´ War.

QUESTION 1

One of the most famous Spanish painters immortalized the result of a victory of the Hispanic Army during the Thirty Years´ War. Who was this painter? What is the name of that painting?

QUESTION 2

There is a famous series of novels, which explain different aspects of life, culture and politics in the Hispanic monarchy during the  17^th century. The main character of these novels fought and died in the Battle of Rocroi, considered to be the beginning of the end of the Hispanic hegemony in Europe. What is the name of this fictional character? Who is the author of this series of novels?

QUESTION 3

The casualties of the Thirty Years´ War were numerous, especially in the German States, where the main battles took place. The use of mercenaries caused a lot of damage to the civil population. They attacked and sacked cities and villages and acted with extreme cruelty. Some regions didn´t recover until 100 years later. What percentage of the population of the German States died in this war?

The hanging, one of the prints of The miseries and misfortunes of war, Jacques Callot, 1632

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Hanging_by_Jacques_Callot.jpg

QUESTION 4

One of the consequences of the Thirty Years´War was the independence of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. What type of State had this new country? What type of State is the Netherlands at present?

The questions are not difficult. Researching and learning more are the main objectives. Come on, participate!

21st/September/2011

Source: http://latinajadediogenes.blogspot.com/2009/05/quevedo-y-su-tiempo.html

Today in Social Sciences, at the beginning of the lesson, Paqui has told us to participate at least twice a month and she has given us the books of 3rd year of ESO, because we are going to continue with the last unit of the book, the first for this year:´´The 17th Century: Absolute Monarchy and Baroque`` It´s The GOLDEN CENTURY. We have copied the index of the unit which is divided into four points. 1st: Demography, society and economy. 2nd: Politics(The thirty Years´War,Absolute Monarchy and The English Revolutions).3rd: The decline of the Hispanic Empire. 4th: Art and culture in the 17th century(The Scientific Revolution and Rationalism and Baroque style). In the Baroque, many writers, painters appeared, such as:Góngora,Velázquez... Afterwards, we have read the introduction and Paqui has explained it. The main features of the 17th century are crisis and contrasts.In some parts of Europe(the Catholic countries), the nobles dominated the society, but in other parts of Europe(the Protestant countries) the bourgeoisie developed and they imposed their values and their way of life. The predominant political system was: Absolute Monarchy, but it was critizised in some places. Art and culture reflected these contrasts and changes, and as I have said before the new art style was Baroque. The Scientific Revolution took place with the evolution of the science and thinking. There were many scientific discoveries, for example Galileo Galilei discovered more planets, Kleper... The 17th Century is like the continuation of the 15th Century, because there are some common features. After the introduction we have continued with the second point, and we have read DEMOGRAPHY: very slow population growth because there were high mortality rates caused by epidemics, wars and strong famines, only in some places like England and the Low countries, the population grew, because agriculture improved. SOCIETY: it continued divided into estates: Privileged (nobles and clergy) and Underprivileged (bourgeois and peasants). The bourgeois were unhappy because they were richer and influential, but they didn´t have political power. The bell has rang, so Paqui has given our homework. We have learnt some new words such as: Golden Century(Siglo de Oro), Mess (lío), Famines (hambruna), Harvests (cosechas) and Starvation (muerte por hambre). We have to do two exercises for next day about the demography and the society of the 17th century.

See you :)

40,000 visits!

Hello everybody!

Today we have a commemorative post because we have reached to 40,000 visits (and counting). As we know, we have many visits from other countries as the USA, India, the UK, Canada and some other places, for all this, we should participate more on the blog, writing and commenting the classmates and teachers' post, because this is YOUR blog!

We promise to continue writing many interesting things from this subject: Social Sciences.

Waiting for the 50,000 visits!

Back to school!

Source: http://aeropaq.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/back-to-school.jpg

Hello everybody!
Today it has been our first class of Social Sciencies after holidays! We all know each other except a new girl in the class: Sara. We have also reminded three classmates that are not with us this year: Mónica, Daniel and Carlos. Paqui has said we might change the photo of the blog.

First Paqui has read us the Social Sciencies Assessment Criteria because it has changed in some things with respect to last year. And she has given us our books. It is VERY IMPORTANT that we take care on our books because they have been made by Paqui and Cristina, and they have dedicated a big part of the summer to do them.

Then, we have started the lesson. Paqui has explained us that we are going to continue with this blog and she has told us that every time we add images, we have to write the source below them. She has explained us another change as well. We all have to participate a minumum amount of times in this blog, and if we don't obey her our mark will be worse.

She has showed us some posts of the glog that she posted in summer. One of them was about crisis and the debt ceiling (techo de deuda). This picture explains that in the developing countries people live in a continuous crisis, so they don't notice the crisis as in the developed countries.

Some of the new words we have learnt and reminded are the following:
"Etching" and "print" which mean "grabado".
"Glue stick" which means "pegamento".
And "ring binder" which means "archivador".

At the end of the class, Paqui wanted to show us the video of "Tanto monta, monta tanto" but the bell has rung. Next day we are going to study the last unit of third of ESO: the 17th century: Absolute Monarchy and Baroque.

I hope to have a great year and we must use all our effort and participation to learn. See you on Wednesday classmates and teacher!! :)

Oh Paqui, I have written my wrong gmail account. So please remember me to write it well in the next class because you know that I always forget about things jajaja!

Source: http://babygirlandpandyplease.blogspot.com/2010/08/first-day-of-class.html

Update: Reform of the Constitution

Source: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/mora010911.html

Last Friday a majority of  deputies of the Congress voted for the reform of the Spanish Constitution. The majority parties (PSOE and PP) reached an agreement to reform Article 135. This article referred to the debt and loans the State can get. The new writing of the article includes a limit to the possibility of the State and Autonomous Communities of getting into debt and obtaining loans. The limit (debt ceiling) will be established in a  subsequent Organic Law. The majority parties have decided that the deficit of the Spanish administrations can´t be more than 0.4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This loans and public debt limit tries to satisfy the demands of austerity and deficit control of the EU and to appease the so-called markets (investors for some, speculators for others). 

This reform has been very controversial, because limiting the possibility of getting debts can mean the restriction of public investments and social expenses. The way the reform has been made has also caused a lot of protests. Two deputies of the PSOE voted against the reform and the minority parties consider that the constitutional consent has been broken, because the majority parties have decided the reform by themselves and very urgently. These parties criticize that there won´t be a referendum to ask the population for their opinion about the reform. 

Here you have the text of article in English before the reform:

http://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/sp00000_.html#A135_

And this is the new article in Spanish: 

http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2011/08/26/actualidad/1314314619_582841.html

The reform has to pass in the Senate as well. 

The relativity of words

The beginning of a new school year is coming. Here you have some cartoons to warm up your neurons and think about how words don´t mean the same depending on the context. These cartoons refer to the economic crisis the world is going through and the debt ceiling, a very controversial issue during this summer:

Source: http://microfinancehub.com/2010/02/20/impact-microfinance-surviving-economic-crisis/

Source: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/directory/d/debt_ceiling.asp

An amazing year!

This has been an amazing year. We have had good moments such as the filming of the video of  "Tanto monta" and we have had bad moments, as the arguments with Paqui.

The best moment of the year has been the recording of the video "Tanto monta". In the recording of this video we have had a lot of good time.

This year we have learned many things:

-Polithics
-Economy
-Types of states
-History

These are some presentations my mates did the last days:

A good year.

Hello everybody!

I am very sorry for the delay. I was in Alicante and I forgot that I had to write this. The first, I hope you are enjoying your summer.

It's a pitty that I couldn't participate in the video about the Catholic Monarchs because it was very educative and funny at the same time.

I have to say that, in this year, I have learnt a lot of new things and very interesting things. I agree with Yolanda, I loved the project in which we had to explain a painting. I explained The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, and it was really interesting.

All of us should say thanks to Paqui and Kelly, because they have taught us a lot of things and they have spent their time teaching us, and they haven't received good things in exchange many times.

My favourite unit was the one about economy, I loved it!

But I think that it's very important to learn about many different things, and this year we have reached that.

I think that sometimes we have spoken a lot, but we have also had many good times and we have enjoyed as well.

I am very happy because I think it has been a good year and i would like to have more years like this one with the same classmates and teachers!

See you!

Image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanmouk/3820479581/

Immappancy and the true size of continents

This is an interesting link provided by Kelly. It refers to the distorted image of reality commonly used maps offer. Mercator´s projection is the most used map projection in Europe. It enlarges the size of the Northern hemisphere and it makes us think that the places we live in are bigger than they are. On the following links you can learn more about a phenomenon called "immappancy" and check an example of the real size of Africa, a continent that could include such big countries as the USA, India and China and the most part of Europe altogether: 

http://www.good.is/post/what-is-the-true-size-of-africa/

http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/true-size-of-africa.jpg

Update: recent changes in Spain´s politics

There have been some changes of faces in Spain´s politics recently. After the last local and autonomous elections, there have been some changes in the presidency of some Autonomous Communities in Spain. Except for the new  president of Navarre, who is a member of UPN, all the new presidents belong to the Popular Party (PP) or were former members of this party. This is the case of the new president of Asturias, who created a new party called Foro Asturias, because he was not designated as candidate for the presidency of the Principality by his former party. Here you have the new faces:

ARAGÓN

LUISA FERNANDA RUDI

Source: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luisa_Fernanda_Rudi

ASTURIAS

FRANCISCO ÁLVAREZ CASCOS

Source: http://www.estrelladigital.es/espana/Cascos-Asturias-Francisco-Alvarez-Estrella-Digital_0_991701488.html

BALEARIC ISLANDS

JOSÉ RAMÓN BAUZÀ

Source: http://www.eduardriudavets.cat/2010/10/08/a-menorca-deim-got-sr-bauza/

CANTABRIA

JUAN IGNACIO DIEGO

Source: http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_31171.shtml

CASTILLA-LA MANCHA

MARÍA DOLORES DE COSPEDAL

Source: http://es.globedia.com/publicado-real-decreto-nombra-cospedal-presidenta-castilla-mancha

EXTREMADURA

JOSÉ ANTONIO MONAGO

Source: http://www.elperiodicoextremadura.com/noticias/noticia.asp?pkid=365281

NAVARRE

YOLANDA BARCINA

Source: http://www.que.es/sevilla/201107211257-presidenta-navarra-espera-salida-bolsa-epi.html

VALENCIAN COMMUNITY

The last change happened yesterday and it was not motivated by the result of the past elections. Francisco Camps, who was elected president some weeks ago, resigned due to his involvement in a corruption scandal,  uncovered by the investigations of Gürtel case. The new president will be Alberto Fabra, who held the post of mayor in Castellón until yesterday. 

ALBERTO FABRA

Source: http://www.ppdigital.es/es/alberto-fabra/

And there has been a remodelation of the government as well. The exit of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the PSOE candidate for the next general elections, has provoked some changes in the configuration of the ministries and the appointment of a new minister of the Interior, Antonio Camacho.

ANTONIO CAMACHO

Source: http://www.heraldo.es/noticias/antonio_camacho_ministro_interior_jose_blanco_portavoz.html

The new spokesman will be José Blanco (he keeps his post in the Ministry of Public Works) and there will only be two vice-presidents, Elena Salgado and Manuel Chaves.