My Own Beat
My pulse quickened as my feet took me closer and closer to the door. In my head, I could hear the words my kids kept telling me, “Do it, Mom. You never do anything for yourself. Just follow your dream.” I felt my lungs filled with air and released it.
“What are you doing here? You’re a single mom of five. You’re fifty years old!” My thoughts were fighting with my kids’ words. Even so, it was as if I had no control over my feet. As if they were being urged along from somewhere deep inside me.
Finally I gathered my courage, stepped into the hall and signed up for drum classes, which was my childhood dream.
Wednesday came, and along with it my first drum lesson. I walked through the door and headed directly to the seating area in the back. My hands kept fidgeting (动来动去) with the sticks. I kept nervously looking at the time. I tried to slow down my breath. I knew the teacher would say I was not the right type of person to play the drums. I turned around to see an older man looking at me.
“Stephanie? I’m Mike, the drum teacher,” he said.
People make me nervous. That’s the way I’ve always been. But Mike had a very calm manner about him, so I relaxed just slightly. Not only did he not tell me that I was the wrong type of person to play the drums, but he complimented me on how well I held the sticks and followed along with him.
“You are fine. I see so much potential in you,” he told me.
Soon my thirty-minute lesson is over. Walking back to my car, I felt full of excitement and energy. I thought of how many times I had driven my kids to their competitions and watched proudly as they bravely went in front of judges and audiences.
Now it felt scary and amazing at the same time to follow my dream and do something that was purely for my enjoyment, something just for me. Maybe one day I would have the chance to stand on the stage.
I started the car and couldn’t wait to go back home to tell my kids about my class.
Seeing my devotion and progress, Mike convinced me to play in a concert.
| A．As | B．It |
| C．What | D．Which |
| A．anyone who | B．those who | C．anyone | D．those |
Social networks are a big part of nearly every teenager's life in this day and age. Many teens have QQ, WeChat, or Weibo but little do a lot of teens know that they can be held responsible for everything they post for the rest of their lives. Everything you post online is part of a digital footprint that can always be traced (追踪) back to you. That includes every post, even every like, comment, favorite and forward that you have ever committed. All pictures you've posted or will post have been stored in a digital database, and it is the companies' right to keep all of these documents that you believe to have been deleted or hidden.
With every post comes a consequence; whether it is good or bad, what you post could be seen by anyone. That is why you have to be very careful of what you decide to post or comment.
If you think you are safe from Servite finding out about one funny comment you made six months ago on a meaningless picture, you are probably wrong. Recently, a senior, Aaron, at Servite learned this lesson the hard way this year. He wrote a series of ugly comments towards Connelly girls on a web page, ignoring potential consequences.
This student, however, did have to face consequences from Servite as he was removed from all of his leadership roles in the school. Surprisingly enough, he fully agreed with his punishment handed down by the administration and fully understood why he was given such severe discipline (处罚). “When you agree to come to Servite, you are agreeing to defend what Servite stands for,” the young man said. “That continues from 8 am to 2 pm. It's at all times.”
So, next time you're about to post something you think could be received as offensive or inappropriate, think twice, or don't press the “Send”.
1．What does the author think the teens should do in the first paragraph?| A．Avoid using social media. |
| B．Remove their own digital documents. |
| C．Be responsible for what they put online. |
| D．Learn to balance their online and offline time. |
| A．Drawing some meaningless pictures. |
| B．Making some bad comments. |
| C．Failing to take his lesson. |
| D．Breaking down a special web page. |
| A．It reached an agreement with Connelly girls. |
| B．It helped Aaron get rid of ill effects. |
| C．It gave Aaron a severe punishment. |
| D．It stood on Aaron's side. |
| A．Teenagers. | B．Teachers. |
| C．Parents. | D．Network engineers. |
| A．13 years old. | B．11 years old. | C．7 years old. |
| A．He helped Bill leave the burning house. |
| B．He got the bottle cap out of Bill’s throat. |
| C．He called the fire department. |
| A．Sitting in his mother’s car. | B．Playing basketball. | C．Playing with his RC car. |
| A．Give more examples of young people. |
| B．Present Davyon with a certificate. |
| C．Play a video of Davyon. |
Joey was so excited he could hardly wait to get to the store. He walked so fast that his sister Beth had to run. “Do you have to hurry like that?” she puffed. On his way from school he had seen that baseball cap in Rogers’ store window. Only a dollar, and this was the last cap! Joey had looked at the cap a long time. He wanted it more than anything. Every boy at school had one.
Joey thought of his piggy bank, into which he put every coin for running errands (差使) for his family and neighbors.
Joey raced home, not stopping for anything. He held the fat iron pig, opened it carefully, and poured out the coins. Ten...twenty...thirty...ninety cents. If only he had one more dime (一角硬币)!
Lost in thought, Joey stared out the window. “What’s wrong, Joey?” asked Mother. Joey told about the money and the cap. “If you give me what you have, I’ll add a dime,” Mother said, handing him a dollar bill. “I’ll have some errands for you tomorrow.”
Joey jumped up. “Oh, thanks, Mom. That’s great!” And away went Joey and Beth to the store with the dollar bill in Joey’s pocket.
They turned the last corner. Ahead was a group of boys and girls, talking heatedly and looking down at the sidewalk.
One of the children was Ronny, a new boy who had been in this town only a short time. Ronny’s father had been sick, so there wasn’t much money for extras - like baseball cap.
“What’s the matter?” Beth asked, anxiously.
“It’s Ronny,” answered Susan. “He’s been working and finally saved up a whole dollar, and now it’s lost!”
Joey went over to Ronny.
“We’ll all help look. We’ll find it!”
“Ronny was going to get that last cap in Rogers’ window,” put in Billy.
“I wanted it a lot. I want to join them.” Ronny said slowly.
Suddenly Joey remembered how Ronny had watched the fellows playing baseball, his eyes lighting up eagerly as they shouted and ran.
Joey stared at the ground, thinking hard.
Forcing a smile, Joey showed Beth the empty pocket.
If you are a person who remains busy in work and pays no attention to your health and well-being, you may experience stress, depression, and anxiety. Take a break from the robotic routine and pick healthy habits. According to a psychologist, true wellbeing comes with balance, constant growth and acceptance.
Deal with stress
Although it is difficult to avoid stress nowadays, it is definitely possible to deal with it.
Be social as much as you can
A man cannot stay healthy without interacting with other people.
Find and practice new hobbies
Hobby helps us keep busy and engaged. When you have an interest in some activities and enjoy doing them, you take healthy steps to improve your emotional well-being.
The biggest reason for experiencing depression and anxiety is when a person remains stuck in past events. Negative self-talking such as “why people did this to me” steals not only the happiness but makes the person miss opportunities that the present moment tries to offer. We should learn to enjoy the present life and try not to think too much about the future.
| A．Learn to live in the present. |
| B．Keep a positive attitude about future. |
| C．Communicating with others lowers the stress level. |
| D．Here are a few tested ways to improve your quality of life. |
| E．It also keeps the work and daily life’s pressure off your brain. |
| F．Staying happy and laughing more is essential for a quality life. |
| G．It is very important to learn to deal with stress in a smart way. |
We humans are in trouble. We have let loose a new evolutionary process that we don’t understand and can’t control.
The latest leaps forward in artificial intelligence (AI) are rightly causing anxiety. Yet people are responding as though AI is just one more scary new technology, like electricity or cars once were. We invented it, the argument goes, so we should be able to manage it for our own benefit. Not so. I believe that this situation is new and potentially dangerous.
My thinking starts from the premise that all design anywhere in the universe is created by the evolutionary algorithm (算法). This is the process in which some kind of information is copied many times, the copies vary slightly and only some are selected to be copied again. The information is called the replicator (复制者), and our most familiar example is the gene.
But genes aren’t the only replicator, as Richard Dawkins stressed in The Selfish Gene. People copy habits, stories, words, technologies and songs; we change, recombine and pass them on in ever greater variety. This second replicator, evolving much faster than genes ever could, Dawkins called memes (模仿传递行为) — and they are selfish too.
As we face up to the recent explosion in AI, new questions arise. Could a third replicator take advantage of the first two? And what would happen if it did?
For billions of years, all of the Earth’s organisms were gene machines, until, about 2 million years ago, just one species — our ancestors — started imitating sounds, gestures and ways of processing food. They had let loose a second replicator and turned us into meme machines. Following the same principle, could a third replicator appear if some object we made started copying, varying and selecting a new kind of information?
It could, and I believe it has. Our digital technology can copy, store and spread vast amounts of information with near-perfect accuracy. While we had mostly been the ones selecting what to copy and share, that is changing now. Mindless algorithms choose which ads we see and which news stories they “think” we would like. Once a digital replicator takes off, its products will evolve for its own benefit, not ours.
All is not lost, though. We already cope with fast-evolving parasites such as viruses by using our immune systems, machines and vaccines. Now, we need to build our collective mental immunity, our critical thinking and our ability to protect our attention from all that selfish information. Taking lessons from evolution, we can stop imagining we are the controllers of our accidentally dangerous offspring and start learning how to live with them.
1．As for people’s attitude toward AI, the author is ____________.| A．disapproving | B．unconcerned |
| C．sympathetic | D．tolerant |
| A．memes are composed of selfish genes | B．the speed of evolution is underestimated |
| C．replicators vary with human interference | D．memes and genes share a common feature |
| A．Technologies can be double-edged. |
| B．Collective efforts make a better world. |
| C．We should live in harmony with nature. |
| D．Past experience is relevant to future action. |
| A．The pace of technological progress is unstoppable. |
| B．The initiative of algorithm should be strengthened. |
| C．The new evolution can bring about negative effects. |
| D．The artificial intelligence can satisfy our real desires. |
“Flying insects don’t fly directly to lights from far away because they’re attracted to them, but appear to change course toward a light if they happen to be passing by due to a strange inborn biological response,” writes Samuel Fabian, a bioengineer, in a research paper.
Until now, the leading scientific hypothesis has been that insects use the moon’s light to direct the way at night and mistake artificial lights for the moon. But this idea doesn’t explain why insects that only fly during the day also gather around lights.
To find out what really happens, Samuel’s team track the precise movements of insects in the wild around lights using a high-speed camera. This revealed two notable behaviours. First, when insects fly above lights, they often invert (转向) themselves and try to fly upside down, causing them to fall very fast. Just after insects pass under a light, they start doing a ring road. As their climb angle becomes too steep, they suddenly stop and start to fall. Second, when insects approach a light from the side, they may circle or “orbit” the light.
The videos show that the inversions sometimes result in insects falling on lights. It can appear to the naked eye as though they are flying at the lights. “Instead, insects turn their dorsum toward the light, generating flight perpendicular(垂直) to the source,” the team write. It is common to the two behaviours that the insects are keeping their backs to the light, known as the dorsal light response (DLR). This DLR is a shortcut for insects to work out which way is up and keep their bodies upright, as the moon or sun is usually more or less directly above them, and this direction allows them to maintain proper flight attitude and control. They also find that the insects fly at right angles to a light source, leading to orbiting and unstable flights as the light’s location relative to them changes as they move.
Samuel’s team suggest that a possible outcome of the research could help the construction industry to avoid the types of light that most attract insects.
1．What does the research focus on?| A．Why insects gather around lights. |
| B．Where artificial lights lead insects to. |
| C．What biological response insects are born with. |
| D．How to design environment friendly artificial lights. |
| A．They fly directly to lights. | B．They circle close to lights. |
| C．Their flying speed is steady. | D．Their inversions can be controlled. |
| A．balance their flying | B．keep their route straight |
| C．decide their body positon | D．shorten their flight distance |
I spent 15 years trying to make it in the music industry. When I was a teenager, I did any odd job to afford time in a recording studio. I knocked at managers’ doors and sent out demo (录音样带) after demo, but I got nowhere. In 2010, aged 27, I was doing a job in a restaurant when I wrote a song called Dream Goes On. It was a song about never giving up. I just let out all of my frustrations at the keyboard.
Over the next five years, the music career never materialized but I persisted. Then, in 2019, I uploaded Dream Goes On to a music-sharing website. I just wanted someone to notice my music.
Later that year, I received an email out of the blue from Music World from South Korea, requesting a license for the song. They had chosen my song from the millions on the music-sharing website for a theme tune for one of their shows. I was amazed and negotiated a contract for $5,000 for the use of the song and signed up straight away. I was pretty excited, but didn’t think anything more would come of it, so I focused on my job in the restaurant.
This February, Music World organized a musical festival in Seoul and my song Dream Goes On was also chosen as the theme tune for the festival. I watched on YouTube as my song was being played to a huge crowd of people. It was amazing.
After three days of the festival, I was contacted by Music World and they asked if I’d like to go to Seoul to sing Dream Goes On in a concert. They flew me out there the next day. I was welcomed like a celebrity—everyone I met thought I was a big name in England. I had to break the news to them that I wasn’t a pop star.
I had never performed the song live, and hadn’t been on stage for years.
After the concert, I had photographers and journalists battling to interview me.
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