Everywhere I look outside my home I see people busy on their high-tech devices, while driving, walking, shopping, even sitting in toilets. connected electronically, they are away from physical reality.
People (influence) to become technology addicted. One survey reported that "addicted" was the word most commonly used by people (describe) their relationship to iPad and similar devices. One study found that people had a harder time (resist) the temptation of social media than they did for sleep, cigarettes and alcohol.
The main goal of technology companies is to get people to spend more money and time on their products, not to actually improve our quality of life. They have successfully created a cultural disease. I see people (trap)in a pathological (病态的) relationship with time-consuming technology,they serve technology more than technology serves them. I call this technology servitude(奴役). I am referring to a loss of personal freedom and independence uncontrolled consumption of many kinds of devices that eat up time and money.
What is a healthy use of technology devices? That is the vital question. Who is really in charge of my life? That is what we need to ask if we are to have any chance of breaking up false beliefs about the use of technology. When we can live happily without using so much technology for a day or a week, then we can regain control and personal freedom, become the master of technology and discover what there is to enjoy in life free of technology. Mae West is famous for the wisdom that "too much of a good thing is wonderful." it's time to discover today's overused technology.
Richard Fernandez, an executive coach at Google acknowledged that "we can be swept away by our technologies," To break the grand digital connection, people must consider life long ago could be fantastic without today's overused technology.
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A. potential B. limitless C. attached D. initial E. promotion F. appeal G. expand H. equal I. recognition J. threaten K. practice |
Celebrity (名人) has become one of the most important representatives of popular culture. Fans used to be crazy about a specific film, but now the public tends to base its consumption on the interest of celebrity to any given product. Besides, fashion magazines have almost abandoned the of putting models on the cover because they don't sell nearly as well as famous faces. As a result, celebrities have realized their unbelievably powerful market , moving from advertising for others' products to developing their own.
Celebrity clothing lines aren't a completely new phenomenon, but in the past, they were typically aimed at the ordinary consumers, and limited to a few TV actresses. Today they're started by first-class stars whose products enjoy fame with some world top brands. The most successful start-ups have been those by celebrities with specific personal style. As celebrities become more and more experienced at the market, they try to their production scale rapidly, covering almost all the products of daily life.
However, for every success story, there's a related warning tale of a celebrity who overvalued his consumer . No matter how famous the product's origin is, if it fails to impress consumers with its own qualities, it begins to resemble an exercise in self-promotional marketing. And once the attention dies down, consumer interest might fade, loyalty returning to tried-and-true labels.
Today, celebrities face even more severe embarrassment. The pop-cultural circle might be bigger than ever, but its rate of turnover has speeded up as well. Each misstep is likely to to reduce a celebrity's shelf life, and the same newspaper or magazine that once brought him fame has no problem picking him to pieces when the opportunity appears. Still, the ego's (自我的) potential for expansion is . Having already achieved great wealth and public , many celebrities see fashion as the next frontier to be conquered. As the saying goes, success and failure always go hand in hand. Their success as designers might last only a short time, but fashion—like celebrity—has always been temporary.
Many things happen when people are ageing. Apart from the greying hair and wrinkled skin, there is a(n) 1 change which comes with older age. When humans reach their later years, they favour more long-term 2 and their social cirele is reduced.
Now, for what appears to be the first time, scientists have seen the same 3 in another species. Twenty years of observations of chimpanzees (猩猩) reveal that older males choose to keep contact with their 4 friends at the expense of other relationships.
The researchers studied 78,000 hours of observations made between 1996 and 2016 that followed the social 5 of 21 male chimpanzees between the ages of 15 and 58 years old. They classified the chimps' 6 depending on the amount of time they sat with others and groomed (梳毛) them. They then rated (分类) the various pairings as mutual (相互的) friendships, where both chimps seemed to enjoy the relationship; 7 friendships, where one chimp was more keen to be friends than the other; and non-friendships, where neither chimp showed 8 the other.
When the scientists looked at the 9 of friendships, they found that the older chimps had more mutual friendships and fewer one-sided friendships than younger chimps. Another 10 seen in older humans was also spotted in the chimps. As the males got older, their levels of 11 gradually become less, meaning they started fewer fights and tended to threaten others in their group less often.
The observations have left the researchers 12. According to an idea in psychology known as socio-emotional selectivity theory, older humans prefer more 13 relationships because they are aware that time is running out. However many animal experts argue that chimpanzees 14 the human sense of mortality (死亡) , suggesting something else is driving the behaviour.
Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford, said in humans, the 15 social circles with age is due to declining social motivation to get out and meet people combined by lack of opportunity. In chimpanzees, as older males compete less for mates, they may focus on close, reciprocal (互惠的) relationships with trusted partners, he said.
Each day, 10-year-old Seth asked his mom for more and more lunch money. Yet he seemed skinnier than ever and came home from school hungry. It turned out that Seth was handing his lunch money to fifth grader, who was threatening to beat him up if he didn't pay.
Most kids have been made fun of by a brother or a friend at some point. And it's not usually harmful when done in a playful and friendly way, and both kids find it funny. But when teasing becomes hurtful, unkind, and constant, it crosses the line into bullying and needs to be stopped.
Bullying is intentional torment(折磨)in physical or psychological ways. It can range from hitting, name-calling and threats to blackmailing(勒索)money and possessions. Some kids bully others by deliberately separating them and spreading rumours about them. Others use social media or electronic messaging to make fun of others or hurt their feelings.
It's important to take bullying seriously and not just brush it off as something that kids have to tolerate. The effects can be serious and affect kids' sense of safety and self-worth. In severe cases, bullying has contributed to tragedies, such as suicides and school shootings.
Kids bully for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they pick on kids because they need a victim—someone who seems emotionally or physically weaker, or just acts or appears different in some way—to feel more important, popular, or in control. Although some bullies are bigger or stronger than their victims, that's not always the case.
Sometimes kids bully others because that's the way they've been treated. They may think their behavior is normal because they come from families or other settings where everyone regularly gets angry and shouts or calls each other names.
Unless your child tells you about bullying—or has visible injuries—it can be difficult to figure out if its happening.
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Welcome to the online Macmillan Dictionary of the BUZZWORD of the month. Word entry-JOMO JOMO is an acronym (首字母缩略词) standing for the expression , and is simply refers to the gratifying feeling you get when you break away from the（real or virtual）activities of your social group and spend time doing exactly what you most want to do. JOMO is often described as a resist against the hyper-connected society we live in, where technology pushes both social and professional activity constantly in our faces, so that it's virtually impossible to be happily unaware of what everyone else is doing. This often forces us into spending time in ways which we wouldn't necessarily have chosen. JOMO then, is about stepping off the social fashion and reconnecting with what really makes us happy. Background-JOMO The concept of JOMO first appeared in 2012, its early use often credited to blogger Anil Dash who, having to withdraw from both on-and offline activity for a period after the birth of his son. realized that he'd enjoyed himself greatly and didn't feel he'd missed out on anything at all. JOMO is a play on the earlier acronym FOMO, meaning "fear of missing out", which is used to describe the feeling of anxiety that people experience when they discover, often via social media, that they've let go on a social event or other positive experience. The existence of expressions like JOMO suggest that, although we're unlikely to resist technology completely, the more deeply we immerse（沉浸）in it, the more we're beginning to evaluate its hold on us. Other newly created combined words reflecting this zeitgeist include ringxiety. the constant need to check your phone or mistakenly thinking it's ringing. nhubbing, the related condition of being impolite in social situations by checking your phone, tablet, etc., and infobesity, continuous addiction to digital information in which affects your ability to concentrate. |
Once upon a time, science fiction was just a style among other styles. There were crime stories, there were horror stories, there was literary fiction, and there was science fiction. But today science themes dominate these other styles. It's difficult to think of much modern crime, horror or "serious" fiction that doesn't involve science.
And its not just books. With every second movie and computer game having a sci-fi element, science fiction seems to have controlled our entire entertainment culture. It's clear that if we want to define science fiction, we should relate it to the role that science plays in our lives.
Although some experts have claimed to be able to trace sci-fi back to ancient times, it is more reasonable to find it in initial form in the 19th century, when industrial societies arose. One of the features that set industrial societies apart from other kinds was the increasing part that science played in everyday life. Factories with vast machines turned out huge quantities of goods, which were transported by trains, motor vehicles and ships all over the world. Cities were built on the back of technology, with electricity in homes and hospitals helping everyone to lead healthier, more convenient lives. All of these changes had great effects not only on people's real lives, but on their imaginative ones.
Writers began to describe these changing physical and mental landscapes, eventually giving science fiction a large and devoted fan base of especially young readers, who found that it spoke to their curiosity about the future that science would create.
But sci-fiction reflected fears about science more than it did hopes. These typical early science fiction novels might be a UK novel like H. G. Wells' The War of the worlds (1897). With great skill, Wells played upon the fears of technology by imagining Earth under threat by a civilization-that of men from Mars.
The science fiction of today expresses the impact of the computing revolution, robotics and our environmental challenges, while it is less concerned with "little green men from Mar" and other themes of past sci-fiction.
Given that science, technology and polities are always intertwined, contemporary science fiction often has a great deal to say about power. Many recent novels-like American Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (2008)-are concerned with government and security service "conspiracies (阴谋)" against the people, particularly as the revelations of whistleblowers like Edward Snowden sink in. This can give sci-fi writing a "skeptical (怀疑的)" feel.
This underlines one of the features that remains constant between the beginnings of the empire of science fiction and its state today.
As then, so now: We want to read about how fearful the future will be, not how it will be a paradise.
Who's in control of your life? Who's pulling your strings? We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. As Oscar Wilde puts it, most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry (模仿), their passions a quotation.”
So when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We long for this good feeling like a drug一we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsened lives to keep getting their fix (成瘾物), we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.
But just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom-the freedom to be ourselves. The truth is that we cannot control what other people think. People have their own schedule and they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they're more interested in themselves than in you. Everyone has different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process.
So how can we take back control? We should guide ourselves by means of a set of values-not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life.
A. I's the inner self born in our mind that is keeping us under control.
B. Furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand.
C. As a matter of fact, people sometimes fail to understand who they are and where they are going.
D. For the most of us, it's other people-society, colleagues, friends, family or our community.
E.I think there's only one way-make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think.
F. Therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, failing to do the things we really want to.
These days, its not unusual to see middle-aged men collecting Star Wars action figures, office workers wearing Hello Kitty accessories, or celebrities like David Beckham playing with Lego bricks, it's becoming more and more common to see adult taking an interest in toys, comic books and the activities that are traditionally associated with children. This phenomenon has given rise to a new word: kidult.
What lies behind the phenomenon? One is about adults' nostalgia (怀旧)for the carefree days of childhood, and this is especially true with today's fast-paced, stressful lifestyles. Another is about a societal change in recent decades where people are starting families later. As a result, they have more time and money to spend on themselves. Some adults could only window-shop for their dream toys when they were kids, but now they can afford that radio-controlled car or high-priced doll they have always wanted.
Society traditionally disapproves of adults who refuse to put aside childhood interests, viewing the refusal as a sign of social immaturity (不成熟) and irresponsibility. Those who agree with this view sometimes claim that kidults are suffering from the pop-psychology concept known as Peter Pan Syndrome, an anomaly (异常) that people remain emotionally at the level of teenagers.
From the standpoint of kidults, though, this phenomenon is seen as nothing but harmless fun. Kidults insist that having youthful interests keeps them young, happy and creative, and their refusal to conform to society's acccptable tastes shows independent thinking. Besides, they argue that being part of the social trend of delayed adulthood is not purely a personal choice. The real causes include expensive housing, increased educational requirements for employment and poor work opportunities.
假设你是李华，你们学校将为学生开设一系列微课程，每人可以选择其中的一项参加课程包括“文学欣赏”（Literature Appreciation）、“厨艺”（Cooking Skills）和“野外生存”（Wilderness Survival Skills）。你在英国留学的表哥Wilson很关心你这次课程的选择。请你写E-mail给他，说说你选择的结果，并简要谈谈你这样选择的理由。
