Over the years, a lot of people have talked about New York City, including some famous people in all walks of life. Here are some of their ideas about the Big Apple.
Andrew WK, musician: I just want to be around people who are completely strange to me. Every person who walks by is, like, the most intense person you've ever seen! And you wonder: why did they have to come here and make it here?
Patricia Field, designer: We live in a cultural Garden of Eden. You walk down the street and in one block you hear five languages, you have visuals and sounds of all these cultures. It's educational and inspiring to live in and experience NYC--that's what keeps me here.
Norman Reedus, actor: There's a kind of openness in New York and New Yorkers in general that I'm really fond of. It's one of those places where you're out and about amongst people all day. I'm not complaining about Los Angeles or anything--I do not hate LA; -but you know, you're in a car so much in LA. Here everyone is saying hi to you.
Raul, soccer player: You have the best shows in the world here, no? And they love it. The last one I saw with my wife and kids was Matilda. It was very nice for the kids. And we saw Mamma Mia! This is a classic. You know, with five kids, you don't have a lot of time. But we have to see more shows. We are crazy fans.
Video conferencing has been around for more than 20 years. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, though, you would find that many people needing to attend a meeting remotely would be calling from a real conference room full of their teammates. Today, we're routinely holding video conferences that are 100% virtual. And this is creating a problem that technology can't fix.
The problem is us, specifically the fact that we haven't evolved socially to the point where we can bear much separation. So much of our well-being and work productivity is decided on how close we are physically. The removal of that for any period of time can be severely damaging. One surprising victim of social distancing is laughter.
Normally people laugh about 18 times per day. And 97% of that time we're laughing with others—we are 30 times more likely to laugh with others than to laugh alone. Think about it: how often when you and your friends laugh at something that is actually funny? Research shows that 80% of what people laugh at is really not that funny.
So why do people laugh? They laugh in order to laugh with others. Just as everyone starts yawning when just one person yawns, most people can't help but laugh when those around them do. This is why TV comedy shows often use prerecorded laugh tracks.
Laughing in response to other people's laughing is not just a behavioral phenomenon. When we laugh, our body produces two key chemicals: endorphin which helps relieve pain and sets off feelings of pleasure, and dopamine which can improve learning, motivation and attention. In fact, studies show that people can stand 15% more pain simply by laughing for a few minutes beforehand. Laughter is also associated with higher motivation and productivity at work.
In today's home-alone, virtual-team world, this is exactly what you as a team leader should be doing: for your team members to stay healthy and productive, you need to get them to laugh more and stress less.
Psychologists tell us our self-image defines what we believe we can and cannot do. Each of us over the years has built up belief about ourselves. Unconsciously, our pictures of who we are have been formed by past experiences. Our successes and failures, what others have told us and what we think people believe about us all help form impressions of what we think we are. Because self-image is so important in our growth, it is important to examine our concepts of self in order to reach our full potential.
Changing our self-image is possible. Some psychologists suggest we begin to change our self-image by mentally picturing ourselves performing well at some task. Since we presently react to things based on our present images, it's suggested that we replace those with better ones. In many experiments, people were asked to sit quietly for a few minutes each day and imagine themselves doing well. For instance, subjects would sit and imagine themselves throwing darts at a bull's-eye on a target. Over a period of weeks, their dart game improved. This has been done with people who wanted to play chess better, throw a ball more accurately, increase their salesmanship or musical talents, and improve many other skills. In most cases, remarkable improvement is made.
The point of changing self-image is not to develop an image of ourselves that is not real. To try to become something we really aren't is just as wrong as living the unrealistic, inferior image we may have. The aim is to find the real self, to bring our mental images of ourselves in line with our true potential. However, it is generally accepted among psychologists that most of us fail to do justice to ourselves. We're usually better than we think we are.
Another important part of changing self-image is to not think about past mistakes. Don't let failures do harm. Our errors or humiliation over mistakes are necessary steps in learning. It is all right to make mistakes. But when they have taught us what we did wrong, we should forget them and not dwell on them. Sometimes we keep remembering our failures or mistakes and feel guilty or embarrassed about them. We let them take over, and then we develop a fear.
It is important to have realistic expectations of ourselves. Some of our dissatisfaction might come from expecting too much of ourselves. If we demand constant perfection in everything we do, we can be disappointed and our poor self-image will continue. If our goal is to reach perfection, we are doomed from the start.
"Welcome to the U. S. A.! Major Credit cards accepted!"
By the millions they are coming no longer the tired, the poor, the wretched mass longing for a better living. These are the wealthy. "We don't have a budget," says a biologist from Brazil, as she walks with two companions through New York City's South Street. "We just use our credit cards."
The U. S. has long been one of the world's most popular tourist destinations, but this year has been exceptional. First there was the World Cup, which drew thousands from every comer of the globe; then came the weakening of the U. S. dollar against major currencies. Now the U. S. still the world's superpower, can also claim to be the world's bargain electronics to fashion clothes to tennis rackets. Nobody undersells America Bottom retail prices --anywhere from 30% to 70% lower than those in Europe and Asia-have attracted some 47 million visitors, who are expected to leave behind $79 billion in 1994.
That's up from $74 billion the year before.
True, not everyone comes just for bargains. There remains an undeniable fascination in the rest of the world with all things American, nourished by Hollywood films and U. S. television series. But shopping in the U. S. A. is proving irresistible. Every week thousands arrive with empty suitcases ready to be filled; some even rent an additional hotel room to hold their purchases. The buying binge has become as important as watching Old Faithful Fountains erupt in Yellow Stone Park or sunbathing on a beach in Florida.
The U. S. has come at last to appreciate what other countries learned long ago: the pouring in of foreign tourists may not always be convenient, but it does put money in the bank. And with a trade deficit at about $130 billion and growing for the past 12 months, the U. S. needs all the deposits it can get. Compared with American tourists abroad, visitors to the U. S. stay longer and spend more money at each stop; an average of 12. 2 nights and $1624 a traveler versus the Americans' four nights and $298.
My husband and I made an agreement to help each other stay off social media platforms as much as possible. We left our accounts up instead of deleting them, but consciously stopped using them. Now, I'm glad to report that they have worked.
Tired of being the last to hear of things, we downloaded a few news-specific apps that provide timely information. Instead of relying on articles shared by my friends, I now have access to a steady stream of headlines that span far broader than my pre-specified interests.
Staying updated on our social circle has also been a more conscious effort. Previously I was kept up-to-the-minute on engagements, weddings, new jobs and babies through updates and pictures.
Without social media, I now learn of these important events only when actually meeting the people involved.
The effort taken to sit down and write is far challenging, but when I do take the time to journal, my reflections go far deeper.
I still log in occasionally. Based on the screen time tracked by my phone, I used to spend an average of over 24 hours a week on various social media platforms. That is down to just 20 minutes every month now, freeing up a large amount of time for sleep, hobbies and offline interactions.
I might know less about my acquaintances now, but have more time to keep directly in touch with my closest friends. Walking home last week, I was greeted by a dramatic purple-pink sunset. I would have immediately reached for my phone a year ago. Now, it was enough to simply watch it darken into the night.
A. Overall, I'm glad to have made the change.
B. I bought myself a diary again after many years.
C. We have made a few adjustments in our daily life.
D. This has also widened the range of news I keep up with.
E. I do miss the convenience of using social media to record and reflect.
F. However, social media now plays a much less important role in my life.
G. I didn't realize how programmed I had become to constantly use the app.
Ten years ago, I set out to examine luck. I wanted to know why some people are 1 in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experienced ill fortune. I 2 notices in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.
Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my 3. Over the years I interviewed them, watched their lives and had them 4 various experiments.
I carried out a simple 5 to discover whether their differences in luck was due to differences in their ability to 6 opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had 7 placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying "Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50."
This 8 took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to 9 it and the lucky people tended to spot it.
Unlucky people are generally more 10 than lucky people, and this anxiety affects their ability to notice the 11. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to gatherings focused on finding their perfect partner and miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers 12 to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.
Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there 13 just what they are looking for. My research eventually showed that lucky people create good fortune via four 14. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition (直觉), create self-fulfilling prophesies (预官) via positive expectations, and adopt a "never say die" attitude that 15 bad luck into good.
Waste Management Booming
Several sculptures made from cans, tires and plastic bottles (display) around a recyclable transfer center in Shanghai last year. The idea of making sculptures with trash is to make people aware that trash can be useful when (sort) properly.
It was in 2018, when President Xi Jinping emphasized the importance of trash classification, the initiative (倡议) started to get on the fast track. The question "What kind of trash are you carrying?" became a popular joke when Shanghai enforced a law that household waste is required to be sorted four categories: recyclables, kitchen, hazardous (危险的) and residual waste. many people doubted it initially, the trash sorting program has achieved great success. Moreover, in the (propose) for the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), the Central Committee said the country should speed up the building of waste recycling systems.
Besides the efforts made by the government, many companies are entering the trash separation and recycling market. Huazhan Environment, high-tech company in Jiangsu province, launched a new brand, Mr. Cat in English, selling intelligent trash stations and bins to communities. (equip)with cameras, sensors and screens, the smart trash stations are (interact) and help people (reasonable) deal with different kinds of trash. They can also alert waste transportation companies when bins are full.
An A for Mrs. Bartlett
I was sitting next to Missy in my ninth-grade world history class when Mrs. Bartlett announced a new project. In groups, we were to create a poster around what we were studying.
On a piece of paper, we wrote the names of three friends we wanted in our group. After collecting all the requests, Mrs. Bartlett informed us that she would take into consideration the names we chose and would let us know the results the next day. I was a well-rounded top student in the class, so I had no doubt I would get the group of my choice. There were only a handful of sociably decent people in the class, and Missy was one of them. I knew we had chosen each other.
The next day, I anxiously awaited the class. After the bell rang, Missy and I stopped talking as Mrs. Bartlett called for our attention. She started to call out names. When she reached group three, Missy's name was called. So I'm in group three, I thought. The second, third and fourth members of the group were called. My name was not included. There had to be some mistake!
Then I heard it. The last group: "Mauro, Juliette, Rachel, Karina." I could feel the tears well in my eyes. How could I face being in that group--the boy who barely spoke English, the one girl who was always covered by skirts that went down to her ankles, and the other girl who was often wearing very strange and unusual clothes with fancy items. They certainly fell into the category of the least popular in our class. They were considered misfits (不合群的人)！
There must be something wrong! Mrs. Bartlett was such a person of insight, vision and thoughtfulness that she never forgot to bring out the potential of all her students. Oh, how badly I wanted to be with my friends. Finally I was determined to convince her I should be in the "good" group.
注意：
1）续写词数应为150左右；
2）请把每段的段首句照抄在答题纸上，并按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
P1: I fought back tears as I walked up to Mrs. Bartlett.
P2: Halfway through the week, I felt myself enjoying the company of these three misfits.
