The best festivals in August
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world. In 2018, the festival lasted 25 days, including 55, 000 performances of 3, 548 shows in 317 places. The festival started in 1947. For around three weeks in August, the city of Edinburgh welcomes a large number of artists and performers around the globe. Anyone can join in with the performance of their choice.
Wilderness Festival
Wilderness Festival takes place in one of the oldest woods in England. Taking place four days in nature, people will experience music, comedy, theatre, and dance from Sadler's Wells. All the campsites(野营地) are made to order for different needs, including family camping.
Notting Hill Carnival
Notting Hill Carnival takes place on the streets of Notting Hill in London, England in each August lasting over two days. Attracting around one million people each year, it's one of the biggest street festivals in the world. Happening since 1966, Notting Hill Carnival is an essential cultural experience in London.
La Tomatina
Each year, the Valencian town of Bunol gets changed into a red mess as locals and tourists take to the streets and throw tomatoes at each other, all for fun. This tomato festival has been happening since 1945 and is held on the last Wednesday of August each year.
Have you ever noticed that the stars sometimes appear brighter in December, January and February? There's a link between cold air and the night lights. "Part of it is that it tends to be drier in the winter," said Diane Tumshek, an astronomer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Even though it's invisible, moisture (湿度) can change the way light moves through the air. And in the summer, moisture can make stars appear more dull.
Air temperature is also what puts the twinkle twinkle in the little stars. "Even on very clear nights, some of the atmosphere is cooler, and some of the atmosphere is warmer," said Tumshek, who also works with the Allegheny Observatory. And when the light from a star passes through those bubbles of varying temperatures, "it bends and shifts the light, so that we are seeing stars appear to dance or twinkle," she said.
For star lovers in the United States, there's another factor that comes into play for bright winter stars, although this is a matter of coincidence (巧合). During Earth's journey around the sun, "there are just simply more bright stars visible from the Northern Hemisphere in the winter sky," Tumshek said. If you really want to see a shiny star, just try to find a burning ball of gas called Sirius near the horizon (地平线). At
8.6 light-years away, Sirius is relatively close to Earth and the brightest star visible in the night sky. It is also large—nearly twice as big as our sun and 20 times as bright. So this winter, when the world turns cold and it seems like we should be spending more time indoors, consider asking an adult to go exploring outside. With a warm coat and a clear sky, any night can be turned into a treasure hunt. All you have to do is look up.
Rejection (拒绝) is a universal experience, but the pain of it can feel so individual. No matter how many times you have experienced it, being told you didn't get the job or that a date doesn't want to see you again is always hurtful.
Historically, the pain that comes with rejection has been a useful tool. For our ancestors, being kept away from a group would have been a death sentence, since it was difficult to survive alone. Thus, the brain likely developed an alarming system to warn us when we were at risk of being rejected. Those who experienced rejection as more painful gained an advantage since they were more likely to adjust their behavior to remain in the group.
Being rejected has far smaller consequences now than it did thousands of years ago. Still, we read it as a threat to our health. The reason why it hurts is the same reason why we experience pain when we step on a sharp object. Research which compared brain activity of people who had experienced rejection with that of people who had experienced physical pain showed that many of the same regions of the brain lit up. The pain is a warning that something is damaging our health.
Concern with rejection is perfectly normal, but being overly worried can affect the quality of our life. If you take rejection personally, your self-worth will suffer; but if you blame it on the general injustice of the world, it will make you angry and bitter. Therefore, it is necessary to do a realistic analysis on what the problem is. If someone doesn't call you back, don't jump to the conclusion that they don't want to talk to you. They might be sick or busy.
Rejection is a normal part of everyone's life. Instead of seeing the shame that comes with rejection as a negative emotion, see it as a sign that your brain is working exactly how it should be.
After Stewart and Debbie Wilder lost their son, Cameron, in 2013, the last thing on their minds was decorating for the holiday season. "We havenˈt put anything up in three years. It has all stayed boxed up," said Debbie.
But in December 2016, the house was lit up for Christmas, with little lights cheerfully lining the roof and eaves（屋檐）. It wasnˈt the Wilders but a stranger Carson Zickgraf, the founder of CZ Enterprises LLC, who finally made the house shine. "I started crying," Debbie says about seeing the lights for the first time. "It was really special."
Zickgraf has been donating his light-stringing services to brighten the lives of families affected by losing their children, especially during the difficult holiday season since 2015 and has decorated the houses of more than two dozen families so far.
He started the project by chance. He was hanging lights on a home when the owner mentioned that some neighbors were having a hard time that holiday season because their son had recently died. Then he had an idea. "I sent my crew there to decorate that house too," he says. The family was delighted. In fact, he had two friends who had died young, and heˈd always wished he could ease the pain for their loved ones. Now, heˈs found a way.
" Thereˈs something special about Christmas lights. They warm the spirit." Zickgraf knows his efforts canˈt completely remove the pain from these families, but he can make the holidays a little cheerier. "I wish I had a bigger company so I could do more houses," he says.
Going to outer space is a little like going camping. Food with all the water dried out is lightweight and doesn't spoil (变坏). So, many space foods are dried on Earth and stored in special packets. .
On Earth, gravity is the force that keeps your feet on the ground and your sandwich on your plate. To keep food from floating (漂浮) away, astronauts on the Space Shuttle attach the packets to a special tray (托盘). The tray can be fixed to a wall or to the astronaut's lap. To prepare their food, astronauts use liquid forms of salt and pepper. The liquid sticks to the food better. Regular salt and pepper would float away, maybe up an astronaut's nose.
So astronauts drink everything from a small bag with a straw (吸管) that can be closed. Astronauts say that most space foods taste pretty good.
Some, such as apples and pudding, are the same as the foods you eat on Earth. Astronauts eat tortillas instead of bread because they make fewer crumbs (碎屑). Your body uses food in space the same way it does on Earth. Your body must deal with waste in space too.
During take-off and landing, astronauts can't leave their seats to go to the bathroom. They wear diapers (尿布) under their spacesuits instead. The Space Shuttle has a bathroom the size of a small closet. The toilet has bars that keep astronauts from floating away. .
A. Liquids float right out of cups and glasses, though.
B. But there's no gravity in space.
C. In outer space, everything seems to be different.
D. Rubbish from daily life can not be thrown everywhere.
E. Some, such as dried pears, taste good right out of the packet.
F. Floating crumbs could get stuck in equipment or an astronaut's eye.
G. A strong flow of air is used instead of water to flush waste down the toilet.
While I was waiting in line at a coffee shop earlier, a woman drove alongside the queue in a mobility scooter (踏板车). There was only a 1 space between the line of people and the tables, which she attempted to drive along. She drove over my foot and didn't 2 saying nothing at all.
I got annoyed and expected she would have 3 , but then I just decided to 4 it and got down to selecting which pastry (点心) to go with my coffee. The lady and I ended up sitting at adjacent (邻近的) tables. She was on the end of a row so that she could park her 5 . After about half an hour, when she had 6 her coffee, she got up and back onto her scooter. It wouldn't start. She tried to turn the key several times 7 she telephoned the place she purchased it from.
An engineer 8 within 5 minutes. The place must have been local. I couldn't resist overhearing their conversation, and it turned out she had just 9 the scooter that morning. This was her very first outing in it. She felt really 10 about driving it. Certainly, she wasn't used to its speed, nor its 11 , and this combination made it quite 12 to drive it through narrow gaps.
Suddenly, I felt 13 for the lady. It really didn't 14 me at all that she'd driven over my foot. I had made an assumption, however, that a person doing that should apologize.
Next time you're about to 15 someone, pause for a second and remind yourself that people have judged you without knowing what was going on in your mind or your life.
一些同学赞同 | 一些同学反对 | 你自己的观点 |
获得新的知识 | 耗资巨大 | |
从太空取得 新资源 | 宇航员的 安全问题 | |
扩大人类的 生存空间 |
注意：1)词数100词左右；2)标题与开头已写好，不计入总词数。
提示：astronaut宇航员； resource资源
Outer Space Explorations, YES or NO?
We had an argument over whether it was necessary to carry out outer space explorations at a class meeting the other day.
