My color television has given me nothing but a headache. I was able to buy it a little over a year ago because I had my relatives give me money for my birthday instead of clothes that wouldn't fit. I let a salesclerk fool me into buying a discontinued model. I realized this a day later, when I saw newspaper advertisements for the set at seventy-five dollars less than I had paid. The set worked so beautiful when I first got it home that I would keep it on until stations signed off for the night. Fortunately, I didn't get any channels showing all-night movies or I would never have gotten to bed.

       Then I started developing a problem with the set that involved static(静电) noise. For some reason, when certain shows switched into a commercial, a loud noise would sound for a few seconds. Gradually, this noise began to appear during a show, and to get rid of it, I had to change to another channel and then change it back. Sometimes this technique would not work, and I had to pick up the set and shake it to remove the sound. I actually began to build up my arm muscles(肌肉) shaking my set.

       When neither of these methods removed the static noise, I would sit helplessly and wait for the noise to go away. At last I ended up hitting the set with my first, and it stopped working altogether. My trip to the repair shop cost me $62, and the sit is working well now, but I keep expecting more trouble.

    Life is comprised emotion and sense. When we were babies we reached the pinnacle(顶峰) of emotion. At that time we asked for everything that we wanted, cried as we were uncomfortable, laughed as we were happy and released our emotions day and night. When we grow up we find that if we want to live in a cozier environment we must be sensible enough to deal with our emotions and relationships. Our world is based on sense and beautified by emotion.

    Sense is the base of life; it builds up the structure of life, and helps us see the real world. And emotion is the invaluable element of life. It adds colorful paint to our life. Lacking sense we may lose the guiding light and lacking emotion we may lose the value of life.

    We admire Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, we are attracted by Michelangelo's The Creation of Man, and we are carried away by Monet's Lotus. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet may bring us tears, Victor Hugo's poems can make a maid's love revive, and Jane Austin's stories arouse our dream of holding a party of ladies and gentlemen as an England beauty in the countryside. All of them are people who deserve our respect and showed us sentimental emotion: love, hatred, betrayal, loyalty and so on. They made their works full of emotion, shocked our nerves, and evoked our passions. Somebody may have found their destiny in these works, and surely they influence people time after time. But in fact, though these people or their works have the power to control our mental world, we don't choose them to be our President or Prime Minister. We cannot deny the fact that our world is based on sense and ration. Mark Twain once said that the passion of friendship is so sweet, steady and royal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime if neither of the two friends asks the other to lend money.

    Emotion is our nature and sense gives us an eye to live in reality. Only sense makes Jack a dull boy; emotional moments give us vigor and enthusiasm to live and color our life.

    At thirteen, I was diagnosed with kind of attention disorder. It made school difficult for me. When people else in the class was focusing on tasks, I could not.

    In my first literature class, Mrs. Smith asked us to read a story and then write on it, all within 45 minutes. I raised my hard right away and said, “Mrs. Smith, you see, the doctor said I have attention problems. I might not be able to do it.” She glanced down at me through her glasses, "you are no different from your classmates, young man.”

    I tried, but I didn't finish the reading when the bell rang. I had to take it home.

    In the quietness of my bedroom, the story suddenly all became clear to me. It was about a blind person, Louis Braille. He lived in a time when the blind couldn't get much education. But Louis didn't give up. Instead, he invented a reading system of raised dots（点）,which opened up a whole new world of knowledge to the blind.

    Wasn't I the “blind” in my class, being made to learn like the “sighted” students? My thoughts spilled out and my pen started to dance. I completed the task within 40 minutes. Indeed, I was no different from others; I just needed a quieter place. If Louis could find his way out of his problems, why should I ever give up?

    I didn't expect anything when I handled in my paper to Mrs. Smith, so it was quite a surprise when it came back to me the next day-with an “A” on it. At the bottom of the paper were these words: "See what you can do when you keep trying?”

                                                                              Learning a Second Language

    Some people learn a second language easily. Others have trouble learning a new language. How can you help yourself learn a new language, such as English? There are several ways to make learning English a little easier and more interesting.

    The first step is to feel positive about learning English. If you believe that you can learn, you will learn. Be patient. You do not have to understand everything all at once. It is natural to make mistakes when you learn something new. We can learn from our mistakes. In other words, do not worry about taking risks.

    The second step is to practice your English. For example, write a diary every day. You will get used to writing it in English, and you will feel comfortable expressing your ideas in English. Several weeks later, you will see that your writing is improving. In addition, you must speak English every day. You can practice with your classmates outside class. You will all make mistakes, but gradually you will become comfortable communicating in English.

    The third step is to keep a record of your language learning. You can write this in your journal. After each class, think about what you did. Did you answer a question correctly? Did you understand something the teacher explained? Perhaps the lesson was difficult, but you tried to understand it.

    You must be positive about learning English and believe that you can do it. It is important to practice every day and make a record of your achievements. You will enjoy learning English, and you will feel more confident in yourself.

    The popular wisdom for years has been that drinking in moderation (适度)—that's one “standard” drink a day for women and two for men-is linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular (心血管的) disease. But recent studies are casting some doubt on that long-held learning. Science now says it depends on your age and drinking habits.

    A 2017 study of nearly 2 million British with no cardiovascular risk found that there was still a modest benefit in moderate drinking, especially for women over 55 who drank five drinks a week. Why that age? Alcohol can influence the substance in the blood in positive ways, experts say, and that's about the age when heart problems begin to occur.

    Also, a 2018 study found that drinking more than 100 grams of alcohol per week—equal to roughly seven standard drinks in the United States or five to six glasses of wine in the UK—increases your risk of death from all causes and in turn lowers your life expectancy. Links were found with different forms of cardiovascular disease, with people who drank more than 100 grams per week having a higher risk of stroke, heart failure.

    Another 2018 study found that consistently drinking a moderate amount of alcohol, within recommended guidelines, had a protective effect on the heart over time. Unstable drinking habits were associated with a higher risk of heart disease, which the authors reflected might indicate broader lifestyle changes, such as poor health or stress. Former drinkers were also at greater risk.

    Overall, however, the latest thinking is that any heart benefit may be outweighed by other health risks, such as high blood pressure, certain cancers and liver damage.

Women who drink are at a higher risk for breast cancer; alcohol contributes about 6% of the overall risk, possibly because it raises certain dangerous hormones in the blood. Drinking can also increase the chance you might develop liver, mouth and oral cancers. One potential reason: Alcohol weakens our immune systems, making us more likely to inflame (发炎)—a driving force behind cancer.

    Three men have had a big influence on modern sound and communication technologies. We started with the beginnings of computer-generated music.

Max Vernon Mathews

    Max Vernon Mathews has been called the father of computer music. He created electronic tools so that people could use computers, as musical instruments. He had a huge influence on the development of electronic music and how it is written, recorded and played. In 1957, Max wrote the first: computer program, Music, to enable a computer to create sound and play it back. The computer was so slow that it would have taken an hour to play the piece of music in seventeen seconds. For that reason, Mathews moved the work to a tape player, which could be sped up to play the music at a normal speed.

    Mathews continued creating other versions of the Music program. He became interested in how computers could help musicians outside recording studios. The Groove program he developed was the first computer program made for live performances.

Norio Ohga

    Sony Corporation official Norio Ohga helped to develop, the compact disc in the late 1970s.

    He pushed for CDs to be larger, and with a longer playing time. He wanted them to hold seventy-five minutes so that they could store all of Bcethoven's Ninth Symphony on one disc. This way, listeners could enjoy the musical work without any break. The compact disc changed the electronics industry and the way people listened to music.

Hubert Joseph Schlafly

    Hubert Joseph Schlafly was an electrical engineer who helped change the way actors, politicians and other people speak on television. In 1950, he and two other men developed the teleprompter. One co-worker, Fred Barton, was an actor. He had an idea for a tool that would help television actors read their lines without having to memorize them. The first teleprompter involved a person who turned a long piece of paper printed with tall letters. As the actor read the lines, another person would, move the paper ahead on the device. Later versions used television screens to show the words that were to be read.