Hi, everybody! Welcome to our newly-opened Richards Cinema Bookstore!

    Now let me introduce to you some of the new film books in our store.

    Are you Chinese film fans? OK, here comes the latest 25 New Takes about Chinese films. It is a collection of 25 fresh readings of different Chinese films from the 1930s to the present. In recent years, Chinese films are very popular in the States, such as Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, Hero, and Flowers of Shanghai.

    Do you like French films? Well, here is The French Cinema Book. It covers French films from the 1890s to the beginning of the 21st century. It is written for all lovers of French cinema: students and teachers, specialists and fans, and so on.

    Maybe you are Indian film fans and star-chasers. Then here is Encyclopedia (百科全书) of Indian Cinema. The book is a complete introduction to all the best Indian films. It also offers a full list of names of the famous and successful film stars in the past ten years. You know, the Indian film industry is the largest in the world after our Hollywood.

    If you like British films, we have The British Cinema Book. It is a good review of British cinema. This book contains a good many nice pictures.

    In our bookstore, you can also find books about Mexican, Japanese, Australian, German and Italian films.

    Well, please help yourselves to some coffee or tea, and have a good time here!

HOLIDAY FUN AT THE POWERHOUSE

500 HARRIS STREET ULTIMO·TELEPHONE

( 02 ) 9217 0111

    Join in the holiday fun at the Powerhouse this month linked to our new exhibition, Evolution & Revolution: Chinese dress 1700s to now. DON'T FORGET our other special event, the Club Med Circus School which is part of the Circus(马戏团)！150 years  of circus in Australia exhibition experience!

◆Chinese Folk Dancing: Colourful Chinese dance and musical performances by The Chinese Folk Dancing School of Sydney. Dances include: the Golden stick dance and the Chinese drum dance. A feature will be the Qin Dynasty Emperor's court dance. Also included is a show of face painting for Beijing opera performances.

    Sunday 29 June and Wednesday 2 July in the Turbine Hall, at 11：30 am & 1：30 pm.

◆Australian Chinese Children's Arts Theatre: Well­known children's play experts from Shanghai lead this dynamic youth group. Performances include Chinese fairy tales and plays.

    Thursday 3 to Sunday 6 July in the Turbine Hall, at 11：30 am & 1：30 pm.

◆Chinese Youth League: A traditional performing arts group featuring performance highlights such as Red scarf and Spring flower dances, and a musician playing Er Hu.

    Sunday 6 to Tuesday 8 July in the Turbine Hall, 11：30 am to 1：30 pm.

◆Kids Activity: Make a Paper Horse: Young children make a paper horse cut­out. (The horse is a frequent theme in Chinese painting, indicating a kind of advancement.) Suitable for ages 8～12 years.

    Saturday 28 June to Tuesday 8 July in the Turbine Hall, 12：00 pm to 1：00 pm.

◆Club Med Circus School: Learn circus skills, including the trapeze, trampolining and magic. Note only for children over 5. There are 40 places available in each 1 hour session and these must be booked at the front desk, level 4, on the day.

Tuesday 1 to Saturday 5 July at 11：30 am & 1：00 pm.

    Enjoy unlimited free visits and many other benefits by becoming a family member of the Powerhouse. Our family memberships cover two adults and all children under the age of 16 years at the one address.

    Members receive Powerline, our monthly magazine, discounts in the shops and the restaurants, as well as free admission to the Museum. All this for as little as $50.00 a year! Call (02)9217 0600 for more details.

    Explore the possibility of using the iPad App Store in the classroom.

    App Name: Bridge Constructor/Cost: $1.99

    Bridge Constructor lets players build increasingly challenging bridges over deep valleys, canals and rivers. Stress tests reveal whether the bridge kids build can withstand continual use from cars, trucks, and more recently, super-heavy tank trucks. Players can choose from among a range of bridge-building materials such as wood, steel, cables and concrete pillars (混凝土柱). Each bridge also has a budget, and there are numerous ways to successfully complete each challenge.

App Name: Pyramid Adventure 3-D/Cost: $13.99

    The interface allows users to fly around the plateau where the pyramids and the Sphinx are located at Giza near Cairo. Interactive, three-dimensional maps let students wander around the labyrinthine tombs and passageways. Uses can examine wall paintings in detail, or view royal statues and objects with a 360-degree feature. To help explain the world of ancient Egyptians, the app offers an accompanying interactive book, specially written by world-famous Egyptologist Zahi Hawass.

    App Name: Grammar Up/Cost: $4.99

    Grammar Up is a multiple-choice quiz system for English grammar. Kids and adults can learn most quickly when playing learning games with real-time error feedback, which Grammar Up provides. The app also offers students practice tests so they can see how much they've learned. A summary is presented at the end of each test, showing the time spent, a score, and the questions answered correctly and incorrectly. The results are also e-mailable.

    I was just in France to visit my grandmother who is very dear to me. I don't get to cross the Atlantic very often, and she's now 96 years old, so every time I visit her, the two of us are very aware that it might be the last time we see each other.

    Last year, I did a series of short video interviews about her life. I asked her what it was like growing up with her father in the 1910s, and living alone with two young children. I asked her about her greatest memories, and her favorite books, foods, etc. I learned a lot of amazing new things about her I had never known before. These were very intimate conversations, which made me know her better.

    This year, I did not really have questions and I only had a great desire to make her know how much I loved her. I cooked for her and read her stories. I gave her a foot massage (按摩), which was her first ever! Before leaving, I was looking for a way to leave something meaningful behind besides the memory of our time together. Therefore, I wrote her five different love notes, and hid them in different places where I knew she would eventually find them.

    I left really joyously knowing that these cards would surely cheer her up after I left. She called me as I was travelling back to Paris to catch my plane back to the US and said, “I found your cards! By the time I discovered the last one, I was laughing out loud! Thank you so much, my sweetheart!” I smiled to myself, knowing she still had two more to go! It was Sunday, so my guess was that she had not checked her mailbox and had not yet driven her car!

    Will it matter if you don't take your breakfast? Recently a test was given in the United States. Those testes included people of different ages, from 12 to 83. During the experiment, these people were given all kinds of breakfast, and sometimes they got no breakfast at all. Special tests were set up to see how well their bodies worked when they had eaten a certain kind of breakfast. The results show that if a person eats a proper breakfast, he or she will work with better effort than if he or she has no breakfast. This fact appears to be especially true if a person works with his brains. If a student eats fruit, eggs, bread and milk before going to school, he will learn more quickly and listen with more attention in class. Contrary to what many people believe, people become so hungry at noon that they eat too much for lunch, and end up gaining weight instead of losing. You will probably lose more weight if you reduce other meals.

    That the US stock market dropped sharply immediately after the US government put forward the proposal on Tuesday to tighten the control on exports of various artificial intelligence technologies indicates what the market thinks of the move.

    Multi-national corporations have led the way in the profound compressing(压缩) of time and space that has flattened and changed the world over the last couple of decades, and the overwhelming majority of international technological transfers have been conducted among multi-national companies in pursuit of profits.

    Thus the proposal the US government put forward on Tuesday to tighten the control to "avoid negatively impacting US leadership in the science, technology, engineering and manufacturing sector" is being viewed not only as a brake on the US economy but also as a barrier to maintaining that leadership since it will reduce cooperation with the rest of the world and shrink the market for US companies preventing them from investing research and development.

    The bigger its market, the more profits a technology company can earn, and the more money it then has to invest in developing even more advanced technologies. This is as true for US companies as it is for others.

    Behind the proposal is the narrow-mindedness of policymakers in the US administration, who choose to ignore the fact that the United States would not have become the world leader in science and technology if it had kept its doors closed.

    If such controls are intended to contain China's development, they will certainly fail.

    It is true that China has a lot to do to catch up with the US and other developed countries. Yet it has made great steps forward by opening its doors and cooperating with other economies.

    As it opens its door wider, it will have even more opportunities to cooperate with other countries in science and technology.

The de-materialization of economic activities — with economic output and income generation increasingly reliant on information rather than inputs of raw materials — only increases the need for cooperative agreements and a cross-disciplinary approach to increase the capabilities of AI and advance its application.

    By trying to enforce and exploit an invented-here ideal that is untenable, the US will undoubtedly lose the leadership in science and technology gradually to which it has become accustomed, and prevent the progress of both humans and machines.