Throughout the history of the arts, thenature of creativity has remained constant to artists．Nomatter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces andforms that cause change—to find poetry where no one has ever seen orexperienced it before．

Landscape (风景) isanother unchanging element of art．It can be found from ancient timesthrough the17th-century Dutch painters to the 19th-century romanticists andimpressionists．Inthe 1970s Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued thispractice．Lesliesought out the same place where ThomasCole, a romanticist, had producedpaintings of the same scene a century and a half before．UnlikeCole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace innature, Leslie paints what he actually sees．In his paintings, there is no particularchange in emotion, and he includes ordinary things like the highway in thebackground．Healso takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography to helpboth the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom．

Besides, all art begs the age-oldquestion: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown theirunderstanding of reality in one form or another．The impressionists saw reality in briefemotional effects, the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, andthe Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in theancient forests．Tosum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of allperiods．

Over thousands of years the function ofthe arts has remained relatively constant．Past or present, Eastern or Western, thearts are a basic part of our immediate experience．Many and different are the faces ofart,and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings．

    A good joke can be the hardest thing to understand when studying a foreign language. As a recent article in The Guardian newspaper noted, “There's more to understanding a joke in a foreign language than understanding vocabulary and grammar.”

    Being able to understand local jokes is often seen as an unbelievable ice-breaker for a language learner eager to form friendships with native speakers. “I always felt that humor was a ceiling that I could never break through,” Hannah Ashley, a public relations account manager in London, who once studied Spanish in Madrid, told The Guardian, “I could never speak to people on the same level as I would speak to a native English speaker. I almost came across as quite a boring person because all I could talk about was facts.”

    In fact, most of the time, jokes are only funny for people who share a cultural background or understand humor in the same way. Chinese-American comedian Joe Wong found this out first-hand. He had achieved huge success in the US, but when he returned to China in 2008 for his first live show in Beijing, he discovered that people didn't think his. Chinese jokes were as funny as his English ones.

    In Australia, meanwhile many foreigners find understanding jokes about sports to be the biggest headache. “The hardest jokes are related to rugby because I know nothing about rugby,” said Melody Cao, who was once a student in Australia. “When I heard jokes I didn't get, I just laughed along.”

    In the other two major English-speaking countries, the sense of humor is also different. British comedian Simon Pegg believes that while British people use irony (反话)—basically, saying something they don't mean to make a joke—every day, people in the US don't see the point of using it so often. “British jokes tend to be more subtle and dark, while American jokes are more obvious with their meanings, a bit like Americans themselves,” he wrote in The Guardian.

    The Bowler family had a very unusual experience this year. It was one of more than 400 families who applied to 1900 house, a reality TV show which took a typical family back a hundred years to see how people lived in the days before the internet, computer games and even electricity.

    The Bowler family spent three months in a London home without a telephone, computers, TV, or fast food. The bowlers wore clothes from 1900, ate only food available in England at that time, and cooked their meals on a single stove. Paul Bowler still went to work every day in a then uniform. The children changed their clothes on the way to and from school and their classmates didn't know about their unusual home life. Joyce stayed at home, cooking and cleaning like a typical housewife of the time, though everything took three times as long.

    So does Joyce think that people's lives were better in the old days?

    “I think people in the old days had just as many troubles and worries,” Joyce said. “And I don't think their life was better or worse, there were lots of things back then that I'm happy I don't have to deal with nowadays, but on the other hand life was simpler.” “We had a lot more time with our family, and it was hard being nice to each other all the time,” eleven-year-old Hilary said.

    So what did the Bowler family miss most about modern life while living in the 1900 house?

Paul, 39: “telephone and a hot shower”

Joyce, 44: “a quick cup of tea from a kettle you could just turn on”

Hilary, 11: “rock CD”

Joseph, 9: “hamburger and computer games”

    If you think American cooking means opening a package and throwing the contents into the microwave oven (微波炉)，think again. On the one hand, it's true that many Americans have cold cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and instant (方便的) dinners. From busy homemakers to working people, many Americans enjoy the convenience (方便) of fast food that can be ready to serve in 10 minutes or less. On the other hand, many Americans realize the importance of cooking skills. Parents—especially mothers'—see the importance of training their children- especially daughter's. Most Americans think that there's nothing better than a good home-cooked meal. But with cooking, as with any other skill, good results don't happen by accident.

    Probably every cook has his or her own way of cooking. But there are some basic skills that most people follow. For example, baking is a main method (方法) of preparing food in America. For that reason, Americans would find it next to impossible to live without an oven. American cooks pay special attention to the balance of foods, too. In planning a big meal they try to include meat, a few vegetables, some bread and often a dessert. They also like to make sure the meal is colorful. Having several different colors of food on the plate usually makes for a healthy meal.

    For those who need guidance in their cooking, or for those who have just run out of ideas, recipes are a great help. Recipes list all the ingredients for a dish (generally in the order used), the amount of each to use, and a description of how to put them together.

    J.K. Rowling is the writer of Harry Potter, which is now one of the bestsellers in the world.

    J.K. Rowling was born in Bristol on July 31st, 1965. She has one sister who is two years younger than her. Both girls loved listening to their father reading bedtime stories to them. They especially loved stories about magical worlds. Rowling wrote her first story, called Rabbit, at the age of six.

    After she graduated from the university, Rowling worked as a translator in London. During this time, on a long train trip in the summer of 1990, the idea came to her of a boy who has magic but doesn't know it. In 1992 Rowling began to teach English. She lived with her baby daughter, Jessica, and spent much time finishing the first Harry Potter book for young readers. It appeared in June 1997. To her surprise, the book was greatly successful. The film came out in November 2001. Now Harry Potter series(系列) is popular with people of all ages and about 60 million books were sold in 200 countries.

    Why has the series been so successful? There are a few things. Many other magical stories take place in faraway lands or in past or future times. But Harry lives in modern England. He's also a very normal boy: polite, friendly, brave and clever. So when other children read about Harry, they can imagine being like him.

    J.K. Rowling is very happy with the success, and she is now busy finishing the whole series of seven books. She's writing full time and she's really enjoying life. She says she will go on living a normal life with her daughter and writing children's books.

    Owen Williams and his wife befriended their eighty-year-old neighbor, Ken Watson, when they moved into their home in Wales three years ago. When their daughter, Cadi, was born a year later, Watson became a grandfather figure, taking the time to drop off Christmas presents for the child. Watson died in October.

    On Monday, Watson's daughter stopped by the Williams home with a large bag containing 14 wrapped Christmas presents her father had bought and wrapped for Cadi.

    Williams posted notes about what happened on Twitter to spread some Christmas spirit. He wrote that he wasn't sure whether he should give his daughter all the presents now, or hold onto them and give her one a year. Twitter responded in a big way, with many saying the story brought them to tears. So many people weighed in about the gifts, in fact, that Williams made a Twitter poll. So far, more than 55, 000 people have voted on how he should distribute the gifts.

    Williams, who is a social-media consultant, said the majority of people are voting for giving Cadi one present a year. He said he has no idea what is in the packages, but he's leaning toward listening to the will of the voters. "I think we're going to turn it into a Christmas story for our daughter," he said. "We'll do one a year for the next 14 years. It feels like the right thing to do now. If she opens a box of Lego when she's 16 then so be it."

    He said he was struck by how many people have responded by saying their neighbors are virtual strangers to them. "The thing that stands out to me is how few people know their neighbors," Williams said. "People are saying, 'That's so lovely. I don't even know my neighbors.' … This Christmas, take your neighbors a bottle of wine or a small gift, a token. Just say, 'Hi.' You can open a new world like we did."