Jimmy is an automotive mechanic, but helost his job a few months ago. He has good heart, but always feared applyingfor a new job.

One day, he gathered up all his strengthand decided to attend a job interview. His appointment was at 10 am and it wasalready 8:30. While waiting for a bus to the office where he was supposed to beinterviewed, he saw an elderly man wildly kicking the tyre(轮胎） of hiscar. Obviously there was something wrong with the car. Jimmy immediately wentup to lend him a hand. When Jimmy finished working on the car, the old manasked him how much he should pay for the service. Jimmy said there was no needto pay him; he just helped someone in need, and he had to rush for aninterview. Then the old man said, “Well, I could take you to the office foryour interview. It's the least I could do. Please. I insist.” Jimmy agreed.

    Upon arrival, Jimmy found a long line ofapplications waiting to be interviewed. Jimmy still had some grease on himafter the car repair, but he did not have much time to wash it off or have achange of shirt. One by one, the applicants left the interviewer's office withdisappointed look on their faces. Finally his name was called. The interviewerwas sitting on a large chair facing the office window. Rocking the chair backand forth, he asked, “Do you really need to be interviewed?” Jimmy's heartsank. “With the way I look now, how could I possibly pass this interview?” hethought to himself.

    Then the interviewer turned the chairand to Jimmy's surprise, it was the old man he helped earlier in the morning.It turned out he was the General Manager of the company.

  “Sorry I had to keep you waiting, but Iwas pretty sure I made the right decision to have you as part of our workforcebefore you even stepped into the office. I just know you'd be a trustworthyworker. Congratulations!” Jimmy sat down and they shared a cup of well-deservedcoffee as he landed himself a new job.

    When men get together, they seldom talk about their feelings or inner thoughts. However, they talk about a lot, like their newest computer, how to repair their car, or even business.

    Talk might move to the best place to find fish or women, jump to computer games, then continue to the sport of the season. They also like to tell jokes each other and spend a fair amount of time playing one up and boasting (吹牛). Men seldom call each other to chat.

    When a man meets a woman, he usually wants to make a good impression. Many single men try hard to carry on amusing, fun, and pleasant conversations. They use conversation to discover her interests and feelings in order to learn how to be attractive to her.

    Some men, either out of nervousness or ignorance, spend most of the time talking about themselves, often appearing to brag about their achievements or talk endlessly about their problems or work. Even the quietest man talks to his woman when love is new.

    When women get together, they talk about feelings and relationships, their work and their family. They enjoy talking but also want the give and lake of a talk, then listen. Women often call each other to chat. Conversation is an important part of most women's lives.

    As relationships progress, however, many a man turns on the television and forgets how to talk. This raises anger and cry from his woman partner who says. “You never talk to me anymore.'' Some men start talking. Many, however, mainly discuss their own achievements and problems.

    When the woman starts talking about her favorite subjects: feelings, family，relationships, friends and her work, many men lose interest or bring the conversation back to themselves. Pretty soon, the man is back to staring at the television each night, wondering where his relationship has gone. The woman is talking to her friends, mom, sister, or neighbor, often about that very relationship and how she is hurting.

                                                                                      The Lifecycle of a T-shirt

    We all probably have a lot of T-shirts, but do you ever stop and think about the influence of a T-shirt on the planet? You'd probably be surprised to learn what's involved in the lifecycle of just one T-shirt.

    There are 5 major stages: material, production, shipping, use and disposal. The material stage involves farming, irrigating, fertilizing, harvesting and ginning. While cotton is a natural fiber (纤维) and not as harmful to the environment as manmade fibers, it still takes a toll in the material and production stages. Commercial cotton farming uses a large amount of water, and the use of pesticides (杀虫剂) is widespread across the globe, especially in cotton farming. Studies have shown that farmers spend around $4.1 billion on pesticides annually, of which 25% was spent on cotton crops in the US.

    Once the cotton is grown and harvested, so begins the production stage: spinning, knitting, bleaching, dyeing, cutting, sewing, etc.——these processes also use a great deal of water and energy. Commercial dyes and bleaches are harmful pollutants and can eventually pollute groundwater.

    After the T-shirt is produced, it enters the transportation stage. This often involves overseas shipping. Take a look in your closet. Chances are that most of your cotton garments (衣服) are made in China or India. Garments can be shipped via plane, ship or truck…, all of which spill CO₂ into the atmosphere. Calculations show that CO₂ emissions from light trucks alone amount to 1.15 pounds per mile.

    Once the T-shirt reaches the retail market, it is purchased. This stage may seem like the leastenvironmentally damaging part. But consider the number of times you've washed and dried your favorite T-shirt. Washing machines are certainly becoming more efficient. However, the average American household does 400 loads of laundry per year, using about 40 gallons of water per load. Such excessive water use is combined with the large amount of energy used by dryers.

    The final stage of life is disposal. This releases harmful emissions, or involves a landfill where cotton takes years to break down. Current US records show that an estimated 15% of clothes and shoes are recycled, which means that consumers send a shocking 85% of these materials to landfills.

    We all need new clothes every once in a while, but let's all try to keep in mind what goes into the production of clothing... It has a real impact on the planet.

    There are a lot of things you can do to help reduce your impact. Reuse and recycle clothes. If they're too worn out to wear, cut them up and use them as cleaning rags. Donate them to charity or another organization that recycles textiles. When possible, make an effort to buy organic cotton. Turn down the thermostat on your washer, and line dry your clothes when the weather will allow it.

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    Course 1：General English

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    Course 5：One on One

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    Diet pills, diet Coke, diet Pepsi, no-fat diet, vegetable diet… We are surrounded by the word "diet" everywhere we look and listen. We have so easily been attracted by the promise and potential of diet products that we have stopped thinking about what diet products are doing to us. We are paying for products that harm us psychologically and physically.

    Diet products significantly weaken us psychologically. On one level, we are not allowing  our brains to admit that our weight problems lie not in actually losing the weight, but in controlling the consumption of fatty, high-calorie, unhealthy foods. Diet products allow us to jump over the thinking stage and go straight for the scale (秤) instead. All we have to do is to swallow or recognize the word "diet" in food labels.

    On another level, diet products have greater psychological effects. Every time we have a zero-calorie drink, we are telling ourselves without our awareness that we don't have to work to get results. Diet products make people believe that gain comes without pain, and that life can be without resistance and struggle.

    The danger of diet products lies not only in the psychological effects they have on us, but also in the physical harm that they cause. Diet foods can indirectly harm our bodies because consuming them instead of healthy foods means we are preventing our bodies from having basic nutrients. Diet foods and diet pills contain zero calorie only because the diet industry has created chemicals to produce these wonder products. Diet products may not be nutritional, and the chemicals that go into diet products are potentially dangerous.

    Now that we are aware of the effects that diet products have on us, it is time to seriously think about buying them. Losing weight lies in the power of minds, not in the power of chemicals. Once we realize this, we will be much better able to resist diet products, and therefore prevent the psychological and physical harm that comes from using them.

In 2011, Nancy Ballard went for a routine check-up that turned into something extraordinary. In fact, she was carrying a painting of a plant she'd done when she arrived at her doctor's San Francisco office. "It would be great if we had artwork like that for our chemotherapy(化疗) rooms," the nurse said. Ballard asked to see one. 

She was shocked by what she found. The walls were dull and bare, and the paint was falling. It was a depressing room for a depressing routine—patients were restricted to chemo drips for perhaps several hours, often with nothing to look at other than those sad walls. Ballard didn't have cancer herself, but she could sympathize with the patients. "I couldn't imagine how anyone could even think about getting healthy in a room like that," she says. As it happened, Ballard's physician, Stephen Hufford, was ill with cancer himself, so finding time to decorate the rooms was low on his to-do list. So Ballard made it her task to brighten up the place. 

She started by emailing 20 local designers. "I wrote, ‘You don't know me. But my heart hurts after seeing these rooms,'" she remembers. She then asked whether they would donate their time and money to transform just one of Dr Hufford's rooms each. 

As it happened, six of them wrote back almost immediately. Six rooms got new paint, light fixtures, artwork and furniture. Dr Hufford was delighted. "All the patients feel relieved of the pain because of it," he said. He even noted that his own tone of voice was different in the rooms and that he was better able to connect with his patients. 

Ballard was so encouraged by the patients' reactions that she created a non-profit organization to raise money and decorate more spaces. Since then, she has worked on 20 projects, including one in Pennsylvania. "We were in Philadelphia for a ribbon-cutting(剪彩), and a woman was there on her third battle with cancer," says Ballard. "When she saw what we'd done, she said, ‘I'm gonna beat it this time. I thought I wasn't going to, but now I know I'm gonna beat it.'"