Reading: marzo 2012

The 84th Academy Awards

Voice of America's Learning English Service 05 March 2012

Photo: AP

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The first Academy Awards were held in Hollywood in 1929. On March 19, 1953, Americans and Canadians saw the Academy Awards on television for the first time. Bob Hope hosted the Academy Awards in 1939, when “Gone With the Wind” won for Best Picture. He hosted the Academy Awards the most times – eighteen.
The Academy Awards are often called the “Oscars”. There are many stories about the name “Oscars”. The most popular story is that in 1931, Margaret Herrick, who worked as a librarian at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said the statue looked like her Uncle Oscar. After that, people started to call the “Academy Awards” the “Oscars”.
People all over the world watched the 84^th Academy Awards on February 26, 2012 at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. This was Billy Crystal’s ninth time hosting the Academy Awards. He opened the show by acting in scenes from several fabulous movies.
Before the show, many people like to predict who will win. These were some predictions before the show in 2012, and these were the real winners:

Category	Prediction	Real Winners
Best Actress	Viola Davis, “The Help”	Meryl Streep, “Iron Lady”
Best Actor	Brad Pitt, “Moneyball”	Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”
Best Foreign Language Film	“A Separation”, Iran	“A Separation”, Iran
Best Picture	“The Artist”	“The Artist”

Interesting Oscar Facts
-Meryl Streep was nominated seventeen times. This is her third Oscar win.
-The youngest actress to win was ten-year-old Tatum O’Neal for “Paper Moon”. Christopher Plummer is the oldest at 82 years old.
-Pakistani film wins for best short documentary.
Oscar Firsts:
-Jean Dujardin was the first French man to win Best Actor.
-“The Artist” is the only silent movie to become Best Picture since the first Oscar ceremony 83 years ago.
Speeches:
The acceptance speeches are often very emotional. When Christopher Plummer won for Best Supporting Actor, he said, “I would happily share this award if I had any decency, but I don’t.”

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Living in a World With Facial Recognition

Voice of America's Learning English Service 13 September 2011

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Computers are beginning to recognize faces. Alessandro Acquisti is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He did a study to see how this will affect people’s privacy.
Professor Acquisti says social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn have some of the world's largest databases of identities. He thinks facial recognition software will threaten people’s privacy.
Recognition systems measure things like the size and position of a nose, the distance between the eyes, and the shape of cheekbones. The software compares lots of images to try to identify the person.

Facial recognition programs are used in police and security operations. But the software is increasingly popular in other uses, including social media sites.
For the study, the Carnegie Mellon researchers used software from Pittsburg Pattern Recognition, or PittPat. Google bought that company in July. The software can recognize faces in photos and videos.
The researchers did three experiments. First, they collected profile photos from a dating website. Its members try to protect their privacy by not listing their real name. With the software, the researchers could identify one out of ten people on Facebook.
In the second experiment, the researchers asked permission to take pictures of students on campus. They compared these photos to photos on Facebook. This time they correctly identified one-third of the students.
In the third experiment, they tried to see how much they could learn about people just from a photo. They found not only names but birthdates, personal interests, and even locations, when people listed them. And Professor Acquisti says the technology is only improving.
“Because face recognizers keep improving accuracy, because cloud computing keeps offering more power, and because more and more images of ourselves are going to be online, we are getting really close to this future where what we did as a proof of concept will be possible to do by anyone on a massive scale.”
In June, Facebook launched a facial recognition system to help users "tag" or list the names of people in photos. In June, Germany became the first country to say this software was a violation of privacy.

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