Have you ever been really hungry, but there wasn't much to eat in your kitchen? Did you throw together a bunch of stuff you had on hand and were pleasantly surprised when it tasted good? You aren't alone. Some of our favorite foods were created by accident. Here's a sample menu of some familiar foods that would never have happened if someone hadn't created them by mistake.
POTATO CHIPS
One of the world's favorite snacks is the result of a complaint. In 1853, a man was eating dinner at Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York. He ordered fried potatoes, a popular side dish. But when they came out of the kitchen, he didn't think they were crispy enough. He sent them back to the kitchen, where Chef George Crum was so angry at having his cooking criticized that he sliced the potatoes really thin, put lots of salt on them, and fried them. Not only did the diner love them, but everyone else did, too. They soon became a specialty of the restaurant.
TOFU
Tofu, or bean curd, is made by curdling (使凝结) fresh soya milk, pressing it into a solid block, and then cooling it. Tofu was accidentally invented in China 2,000 years ago, when a cook added seaweed to soya milk, which made it curdle. This is the same process that is used for making cheese. Like cheese, tofu is a great example of how really messing up a recipe can create something unexpectedly good.
CHEESE PUFFS
Did you ever wonder who thought up cheese puffs? The company that invented them wasn't even trying to make food for people. It was trying to make animal feed. In the 1930s, the Flakall Company of Wisconsin made animal food from small, flaked pieces of grain. One day, an employee, Edward Wilson, watched workers pouring cornmeal (谷粉) into the flaking machine, wetting it to keep it from clogging (堵塞). Because the machine was very hot, the wet cornmeal came out of it in puffy ribbons that hardened when they hit the air. Wilson took some of the ribbons home, added oil and flavoring to them, and voila! Cheese puffs!
All the Beauty in the World, Patrick Bringley's memoir (回忆录) about his 10 years working as a guard at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), brings new meaning to the term "art appreciation". During 8-12 hour shifts spent among the galleries, he takes advantage of the gift of time to study the masterpieces he's been hired to protect and to think about the role of art throughout history.
Bringley is not the only Met staffer to write about the institution. But Bringley's "guard's-eye view" is unique, and he presents his personal story with sincerity. After his brother Tom's death from cancer in 2008, Bringley gave up his job as a journalist for a job in which "I was happy to be going nowhere". He explains, "I had lost someone. I did not wish to move on from that. In a sense, I didn't wish to move at all." Bringley doesn't say when he decided to channel his experience of finding peace into art, but this story about jumping off the career ladder in order to find the space for quiet reflection is surprisingly suited to our times.
All the Beauty in the World offers well-chosen facts about the museum to support Bringley's personal tale. As interesting as these facts are, it's Bringley's reflections on dozens of individual paintings, photographs, sculptures and ancient artifacts that turn this book into a tribute (致敬) to the power of art. Discussing Alfred Stieglitz's photographs of his wife, he writes, "I think that sometimes we need permission to stop and adore things, and a work of art gives us that." In a Vermeer port rait of a dozing maidservant, he is moved to see that the artist caught "that feeling we sometimes have that a private setting possesses a holiness (神圣) of its own. It was my constant feeling in Tom's hospital room".
As rich in moving insights as the Met is in treasures, All the Beauty in the World reminds us of the importance of learning not about art, but from it. This is art appreciation at a high level.
Whenever I order food for delivery, I play a little game to guess how many sets of tableware(餐具)the restaurant will provide with my meal. Sometimes restaurants will throw in two, three or four sets for just one order. But I rarely need any tableware at all, and the waste goes into the trash or collects dust in a kitchen drawer.
Researchers working with Chinese technology group Alibaba tried a simple approach to this problem. Instead of just wastefully doling out tableware, the company required food-delivery customers in some cities in China to pick how many sets of tableware they wanted to receive.The default (默认设置)was set at zero. The result, published today in the journal Science, was a 638% increase in the share of no-tableware orders. If applied across China, researchers found, the approach would save nearly 22 billion sets of plastic tableware. The study doesn't cover carbon emissions, but it's safe to say that the impact would be significant. It struck me as a useful reminder of the many low-hanging fruits across the economy that can cut waste, and emissions.
Nudging its customers cost Alibaba nothing more than a few hours of software engineering time and the impact it brought was immense. The concept of nudging comes from the field of behavioral economics known as nudge theory. It suggests that a slight action can encourage good human behavior without the need for policies that limit choice or economic punishment that raises the cost of bad behavior. To nudge customers to eat better, for example, a restaurant might organize its menu by listing healthy options first and bury unhealthy ones at the bottom. More recently, some big companies like Google have also begun to use nudges to advance climate objectives.
Behavioral economics broadly, and nudges more specifically, aren't without controversy. Some might think it assigns consumers responsibility for addressing environmental challenges. But there is another way to look at it. In the absence of necessary policy—and policy is needed一companies can help encourage a widespread shift of consumer behavior.
And all of that behavioral change can add up. The International Energy Agency found in 2021 that small behavioral changes in energy consumption such as walking instead of driving and adjusting the thermostat could in total shave off 4% of global emissions. The more that companies can do to facilitate such changes, the better.
The iPhone has become a usability nightmare (噩梦). A new one comes with 38 preinstalled (提前装好的) apps, of which you can delete 27. Once you've downloaded your favorite apps, you're now sitting at 46 or more.
Like many companies, Apple has decided that there's no need to build an easy-to-use product when it can use artificial intelligence. If you want to find something in their garbage dump of apps and options, you must use Spotlight, Apple's AI-powered search engine that can find almost everything there.
This "innovation" of artificial intelligence is not the creation of something new but simply companies selling you back basic usability after decades of messy design choices. And these tech firms are charging us more to fix their mistakes and slapping an AI label as a solution.
Alexa and Siri have become replacements for intentional computing. They give commands into voice interfaces (接口) easily but sacrifice "what we can do" to "what Amazon or Apple allows us to do." We have been trained to keep apps and files, while tech companies have failed to provide any easy way to organize them. They have decided that disorganized chaos is fine as long as they can provide an automated search product to sift (筛查) through the mess, something more tech, even if tech created the problem in the first place.
Artificial intelligence-based user interfaces rob the user of choice and empower tech giants to control their decision-making. When one searches for something in Siri or Alexa, Apple and Amazon control the results. Google already provides vastly different search results based on your location, and has redesigned search itself multiple times to trick users into clicking links that benefit Google in some way.
Depressingly, our future is becoming one where we must choose between asking an artificial intelligence for help, or fighting through an ever-increasing amount of poorly designed menus in the hope we might be able to help ourselves. We, as consumers, should demand more from the companies that have turned our digital lives into trillion-dollar enterprises.
How to Exercise in a New Way
Get healthy with these bite-sized amounts of exercises
What should people do when they can't find the time or desire to do a long workout?
Exercise snacks ("零食式"运动) are a popular and inventive new way for people to stay fit. Instead of requiring hours at the gym, this concept instructs you to keep it short. Then you can take a break that lasts 30 minutes to four hours before another snack. It has been reported that exercise snacks can be as effective as traditional exercise methods.
Of course, the more of these brief exercises you complete in a day, the better. Just three exercise snacks a day that gets your heart pumping can be good for your health. Your concentration and creativity improve, and you can become more productive. Also, "snacking" throughout the day prevents you from sitting too long — something that's always positive.
Another great thing about exercise snacks is that there are so many to choose from. The goal is to spend a short time doing something that raises your heart rate. Acceptable activities range from sit ups to jumping rope to running up and down some stairs.
●Exercises that are strength-based such as lifting weights will fit the bill. Since most people don't keep weights at their office, lift full water bottles.
●Squats involve moving your hips as if to sit down while keeping your back straight. This exercise helps strengthen your lower body and improve your movement. Five to ten of these should make a good snack.
●For those who don't like traditional exercises, simply turn up the music. Pick a lively song and start dancing; it'll make for a fun workout.
A. It doesn't take up too much your time.
B. They should break that "large meal" into exercise "snacks."
C And there are plenty of other benefits beyond improved fitness.
D. These exercises can last anywhere from 20 seconds to two minutes.
E. Consider giving exercise snacks a try, and see if they are to your taste.
F. They should constantly remind themselves of the importance of exercises.
G. But for those who don't know where to start, here are some helpful exercise options.
My first goal: try not to look so scared. It took quite a few tries before I could 1 from the mouth open, eyes wide 2 that being on roller skates(溜冰鞋) gave me.
I took up roller skating at the end of 2021, as a way to 3 a difficult year spent in my house. In online skate class, they 4 me to wear protective equipment, to encourage and 5 when someone falls because falling means you're trying. Everyone can 6 in skating, but having a positive 7 helps.
I learned how to move on wheels and danced alone at home, but the rink(滑冰场) was incredibly 8 , Everything moves so fast, 9 in unpredictable directions. What 10 me about the rink is how people create their own sense of11 inside the circular movement, so that two awkward dancers might 12 past each other to avoid knocking into each other, all while on rhythm.
Now I've made much progress. The other day I skated past an older woman moving 13 in her knee pads(护膝) . "My goal is to skate like you," she said, almost under her breath. I tried to 14 my pride. "Keep at it!" I yelled over my shoulder. Soon, I tripped, fell, quickly 15 myself up, and then kept at it.
Cultural Legacy Highlights China-France Tourism Year
A brief meeting about the China-France Year of Culture and Tourism in 2024 was held at the Palace Museum in Beijing on Thursday. The meeting has released variety of upcoming activities covering fields such as cultural legacy and arts.
The meeting place, was in the Palace Museum, was chosen for a reason. Starting from April 1, an art show co-planned by the museum the Palace of Versailles in Paris, will debut (首次亮相) on site. A pocket watch that witnessed the "friendship" between France's King Louis XIV and the Emperor Kangxi(1654-1722) of China's Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) will (display) among 181 other (item).
The rare objects will introduce visitors the cultural interactions that took place between the two countries (date) back to the second half of the 17th century through the 18th century.
Compared to fields such as paintings, music and films, "cultural legacy" is a rather novel field in China-France exchanges. The two (country) cooperation in areas like legacy conservation will inspire the world (see) how the growth of humanity is independent from different cultural contexts.
Besides shows (hold) in China, more than 10 programs will be launched in France to bring Chinese culture to locals in 2024. More than 20 Tang Dynasty(618-907) treasures will be selected and then exhibited at the Guimet Museum in France in November.
1.倡议的原因和目的；
2.倡议
具体内容；
3.发出倡议。
参考词汇：垃圾分类 garbage sorting 区分 differentiate
注意：词数80左右
可适当增加情节，以使行文连贯。
Dear friends，
LiHua
A Sweet Song
"Nothing will ever be the same again" Ally whispered. She sank slowly into her father's favorite chair and stared at the small American flag on his desk. It was the flag which Chief Russell had given to her after the funeral last summer, when he hugged her and told her how proud the Police Department was of her dad's work for them. His tears had warmed Ally's cheeks; her own tears were still frozen inside her heart.
Ally looked at her father's picture on the bookcase. Dad was sitting in the middle of a stream, wet through but grinning proudly. "I miss you, Dad," she said softly. By this time last year she had already taken dozens of pictures. Ever since she could remember, she and Dad had been a team, searching the woods behind the house each weekend for a glimpse of the special wood warbler（林中莺）.
Ally reached for the first photo album she and Dad had put together. On the cover a tiny orange bird with blue-gray wings and sharp black eyes peered out of the photo her father had clipped from a local newspaper. Ally smiled, remembering the excited look on his face when he first showed her the pretty bird. "Ally, I bet if we search real hard, we'll see this little guy together some day."
They'd never spotted the warbler, but her father had an amazing way of making each outing seem special. Staying with Dad, Ally felt comfortable. "If only I could get that good feeling back," she thought, sighing.
Staring at the bird, suddenly, she knew exactly what she had to do. Grabbing the-little flag, she placed her camera around her neck and hurried outside. Ally stuck the flag among the flowers in the garden. "Please let me see the warbler," she murmured to herself. She gave her worried Mom a kiss and then set off into the woods.
注意
1.续写词数应为150个左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Familiar smells of the earth rose up to greet her.
Determined to start out the next morning, she was about to head home when a ringing birdsong floated down to her.
