A 15yearold boy planned to put a ball covered with petrol into his mouth and set it on fire. He would film the dangerous action and put it on YouTube. And, he hoped to become famous on the Internet. But things didn't go the way he imagined. His clothing caught fire, and he was rushed to the hospital with serious burns on his body.
YouTube hosts millions of videos of people attempting dangerous actions. Many of them are by kids and young adults. Some experts say that by hosting these videos, YouTube encourages young viewers to take deadly risks. Research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that more than 180，000 Americans die from accidental injuries each year. That's one person every three minutes. More than 14，000 of those killed are kids under the age of 19. Is YouTube to blame?
People have always found it interesting to watch others try risky things. Audiences are mad about these kinds of things. Some of the earliest Greek comedies had characters followed by wild animals and knocking into walls. Now, in the age of the Internet, anyone with a camera and a YouTube account can create this kind of “fun”. Many viewers, especially teenagers, are influenced by what they see and want to try it themselves. “YouTube has taken the playing in the neighborhood to a worldwide level，” says Clair Mellenthin, a researcher from the Centers.
Supporters of YouTube argue that it isn't YouTube's responsibility to examine its content. “Parents should be the ones to make sure that kids are behaving safely，” they say. In fact, YouTube has a rule on content. For example, dangerous activities that have a risk of serious physical harm or death are not allowed. Staff of YouTube, carefully watch the website 24 hours a day, looking for videos that are against their rules. But is this enough?
Yours sincerely,
Li Hua
Jacquelina used to weigh over 500 pounds. And for years, she
She realized her life needed a complete
Of course, it was no easy task. She devoted years to
Years later, Jacquelina
"I was
But Jacquelina was ready to face her fears.
"In the past I would
Instead of letting their response bring her
“That was a huge
While she'd lost 350 pounds, it wasn't just Jacquelina’s body that had changed. Her
| A．tried | B．refused | C．agreed | D．liked |
| A．stop | B．hug | C．change | D．mixture |
| A．stuck | B．lost | C．buried | D．punished |
| A．touch | B．weight | C．sight | D．thought |
| A．arguing | B．bargaining | C．chatting | D．consulting |
| A．rather than | B．in case of | C．because of | D．instead of |
| A．slid | B．wandered | C．headed | D．escaped |
| A．shirt | B．cover-up | C．hat | D．decoration |
| A．excited | B．bored | C．willing | D．nervous |
| A．Sadly | B．Hopefully | C．Hurriedly | D．Calmly |
| A．glared | B．waved | C．aimed | D．laughed |
| A．forgive | B．allow | C．persuade | D．direct |
| A．Though | B．Since | C．And | D．But |
| A．down | B．up | C．forward | D．out |
| A．pack | B．entertain | C．smile | D．turn |
| A．moment | B．failure | C．comment | D．gesture |
| A．shy | B．same | C．silly | D．slim |
| A．appearance | B．style | C．figure | D．mind |
| A．swung | B．mattered | C．hurt | D．helped |
| A．nothing | B．something | C．anything | D．everything |
A beautiful，young girl is smiling at me from a picture frame on my desk as I write this. She is my sponsored child from the Philippines and even though I have never met her
I can
Empathy does change us. It makes us into better people with bigger
Let your empathy grow then. Let your love grow. Let your heart grow bigger and bigger every
| A．by design | B．in advance | C．by chance | D．in person |
| A．consume | B．cost | C．spend | D．benefit |
| A．Therefore | B．Instead | C．However | D．Besides |
| A．further | B．less | C．more | D．fewer |
| A．across | B．over | C．between | D．beyond |
| A．combines | B．contributes | C．connects | D．adapts |
| A．also | B．just | C．still | D．ever |
| A．overseas | B．everywhere | C．aboard | D．anytime |
| A．admiring | B．purchasing | C．accepting | D．rejecting |
| A．urged | B．reminded | C．inspired | D．taught |
| A．wealthy | B．intelligent | C．happy | D．secure |
| A．suffering | B．education | C．personalities | D．surroundings |
| A．bring | B．carry | C．collect | D．give |
| A．companies | B．organizations | C．colleges | D．communities |
| A．reach out | B．take on | C．turn out | D．make up |
| A．follow | B．occupy | C．change | D．control |
| A．shoulders | B．ambitions | C．dreams | D．hearts |
| A．race | B．creature | C．family | D．life |
| A．better | B．larger | C．quieter | D．brighter |
| A．other | B．single | C．different | D．accessible |
Experienced⁃Based Education
Everyone is familiar with traditional education. You sit in a class and a teacher teaches. This is an important part of development. But at some point, every individual has to take charge of their own education. To do this, one must look at the root of learning.
Basically, unfamiliar experiences usually add more value than experiences that are familiar.
High school is a new experience. College is a new experience. However, at some point traditional education becomes repetitive. It is not that you won’t learn anything else, but that the environment is so familiar.
To solve this, an individual needs to introduce new experiences into their life. You may spend a summer in a different part of the country or learn a new language through trial and error. You can also go to a drive⁃in movie（or some other entertainment event that is new to you）.
These types of experiences often result in very little“book knowledge”. Instead, they will often provide you with a better understanding of yourself as you experience your reaction to different situations.
| A．Has education changed so much in the last decade? |
| B．They will also provide you with a better understanding of others. |
| C．Those new experiences may not lead to great personal development. |
| D．These are all things that can stretch and expand your experience in life. |
| E．This is because unfamiliar experiences require much more of our attention. |
| F．As a result, you can easily become less aware of your experience and not learn as much. |
| G．What makes some experiences add great value to our lives while other experiences do not? |
One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all.
Before you go deep into the puzzle, consider this: If you measure the height of your male friends, for example, the average is about 170 centimeters. You are 172 and your friends are all about the same height as you are. Indeed, the mathematical concept of “average” is a good way to capture the nature of this data set.
But imagine that one of your friends was much taller than you. This person would dramatically skew the average, which would make your friends taller than you, on average. In this case, the “average” is a poor way to capture this data set.
Exactly this situation occurs on social networks. On average, your coauthors will be cited more often than you, and the people you follow will post more frequently than you, and so on.
Now Lerman from University of Southern California has discovered a related paradox, which they call the majority illusion. They illustrate this illusion with an example. They take 14 nodes linked up to form a small network. They then color three of these nodes and count how many of the remaining nodes link to them in a single step.
In one situation, the uncolored nodes see more than half of their neighbors as colored. This is the majority illusion — the local impression that a specific feature is common when the global truth is entirely different.
So how popular is it in the real world? It’s found out that the majority illusion occurs in almost all network scenarios. “The effect is largest in the political blogs network, where 60% of nodes will have majority active neighbours, even when only 20% of the nodes are truly active,” says Lerman.
It immediately explains many interesting phenomena. For a start, it shows how some content can spread globally while other similar content does not — the key is to start with a small number of well-connected early adopters fooling the rest of the network into thinking it is common. The affected nodes then find it natural to follow the trend. A real spread finally comes into being.
But it is not yet a marketer’s charter. For that, marketers must first identify the popular nodes that can create the majority illusion for the target audience. These influencers must then be persuaded to adopt the desired behavior or product, which is essential to the prospect of the marketing plan.
1．The phrase skew the average in the passage most probably refers to the action of ________.| A．hiding the real average to be unrecognizable to others |
| B．producing an average against the general feature of data |
| C．working out the common feature suggested by the average |
| D．ignoring the average because of the frequency by which it is reviewed |
| A．Majority illusion rarely has impacts except in political blogs field. |
| B．The majority illusion on social networks relies on that people you follow post more than you. |
| C．The essence of successful opinion spread is to initiate the trend with well-connected sharers. |
| D．The spread scale of ideas on networks mainly depends on the quality of content. |
| A．thoroughly understand the concept of majority illusion |
| B．accurately figure out who is the powerful person to affect others |
| C．definitely decide who are the target audience for the promotion |
| D．successfully convince the influencers to practice certain action |
| A．The social network vision that tricks your mind. |
| B．Who is stealing your network identity? |
| C．Minority network opinion spread, curse or blessing? |
| D．Have you been misled during the last political voting? |
Museum Craze Involves More Teenagers
More museums are here waiting for you! China’s capital, Beijing, is going to open another batch (一批) of museums this year. The building of a new branch of the Palace Museum, one of the world’s most visited tourist attractions, kicked off as well.
As the museum craze has grown stronger in the past few years, teenagers in China have become more involved in exploring museums, where they can immerse (沉浸) themselves in modern technology as well as culture from the past. According to Educator magazine, visits by teenagers to museums each year increased from 220 million to 290 million in the past 5 years. Among the increasing numbers of museum visitors, many of them were teenagers accompanied by their families, reported Guangming Daily earlier this month.
To draw younger visitors, many museums are creating more offline activities for the purpose of spreading Chinese culture. They include artifact making, night visits, secret adventures, treasure evaluation, and some interesting courses. At the China Hangzhou Arts & Crafts Museum, for example, teenagers gathered around to make paper umbrellas during the Spring Festival holiday. With white gloves on and little spades in their hands, visitors in Henan province got to experience the daily work of archaeologists (考古学家). Apart from the activities, some museums even open branches especially designed for teenagers. A hall called Popular Agricultural Science for Young Visitors is a special branch launched by China Agricultural Museum. It is an exhibition hall that combines both visual and audio technology to involve teenagers in agriculture. Besides these offline approaches, a number of museums have also created official websites for teenagers, the Palace Museum in particular. Online visitors may go on an exciting adventure on the website in the style of a comic book.
Going to the post office is usually a weekly event for me. I rarely give it any thought other than to drive there, go inside, and drop off my letter or package. However, our world has changed and now I must give careful consideration to this journey, as my age and preexisting condition put me into the “vulnerable” category. I am worried about getting infected with the pandemic. There are decisions that I need to make. Is this a package that must go out now? I conclude that it is. Is there anyone else who can take the package for me? I conclude there is not. So I have made two decisions already. Next, I must determine which of the two post offices closest to me would be the easiest one to accomplish my goal. I realize the larger one would be my best choice. Three decisions have been made!
On the drive over, I determined that I would look to see the number of cars in the parking lot before making my decision to go in. Upon arriving, I concluded that the car population was small enough, so I pulled into an empty space. My next thought was,” Perhaps I should wait for someone to come out and ask them to take my package in? “Then I realized, I would be making contact with a perfect stranger, and what was the difference between talking to that stranger and just going in and talking to the clerk? Next decision made, I walked inside. There were only two people and both were standing at the counters making their transactions (业务). I walked to the front of what was normally a very long line. I was standing alone, waiting for my turn. I was wondering whether this place had been disinfected (消毒) and was safe to stay here.
Shortly, I was called to the window. I could see that the postal clerk was aware of the fear in my eyes. She quietly stepped back from her station and signed to me to come forward. I stepped up to the counter and placed my package on the scale (秤).
She then signed to me to step back.
As I inserted my credit card, tears started to roll down my cheeks.
| A. network B. specify C. traditionally D. ingredient AB. uneasy AC. additional AD. culturally BC. block BD. determine CD. requirement ABC. critical |
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