Modern graffiti began in big cities in the United States in the 1970s. In New York, young people wrote their names, or 'tags', in pen on walls around the city.

    One of the first 'taggers' was a teenager called Demetrius. His tag was TAKI 183. He wrote his tag on walls and in stations in New York. He did it just for fun and he had never imagined his behavior would have launched an amazing art campaign. Other teenagers saw Demetrius's tag and started writing their tags too. Soon, there were tags on walls, buses and trains all over New York.

    Then, some teenagers started writing their tags with aerosol paint. Their tags were bigger and more colourful. Aerosol paint graffiti became very popular in the 1970s and 1980s. It appeared on trains, buses and walls around the world.

    In the 1990s and 2000s, a lot of graffiti artists started painting pictures. Some artists' pictures were about politics. Other artists wanted to make cities beautiful and painted big, colorful pictures on city walls.

    In some countries, writing or painting on walls is a crime. Sometimes, graffiti artists have problems with the police. In other countries, artists can draw and paint in certain places. For example, in Taiwan, there are 'graffiti zones' where artists can paint on walls. In São Paulo in Brazil, street artists can paint pictures on walls and houses. Their pictures are colorful and beautiful. Some tourists visit São Paulo just to see the street art!

    In Bristol in the UK, there is a street art festival in August every year. Artists paint all the buildings in a street. Lots of people come to watch the artists and take photos. You can see exhibitions of street art in some galleries too. There have been exhibitions of street art in galleries in Paris, London and Los Angeles.

    Being outspoken is a quality that, when used with skill and wisdom, can set you apart from the crowd. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} The quality of being outspoken is a positive and active skill. Here are some tips.

    Gain self-knowledge(自找认识)through journaling. Knowing who you are, what you believe, and how you feel is the beginning of knowing yourself, and journaling is a great way to gain that knowledge. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Not only can you know yourself better, journaling is an excellent tool to improve self-confidence. Self-confidence is the foundation of being outspoken.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} In order to be outspoken, you have to believe that your voice has worth. You have to believe that your input will make any conversation better. And it probably will! It's different opinions that make conversations or debates interesting.

    Overcome shyness. The fact that you're confident doesn't mean you like hearing your own voice. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Overcoming a natural tendency towards shyness can seem horrible, but doing the opposite of your natural instinct can open up a whole new set of choices: brave choices.

    Back up your opinion with facts. Some people feel uncomfortable having or expressing an opinion because they don't know much about a topic. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} 

A. Be confident

B. Open your mind and speak it out.

C. The next step is overcoming your shyness.

D. Practice journaling for 15 minutes each night before bed.

E. Being outspoken is to speak your mind—to be honest and frank.

F. Allowing the other parties to make their points fully can help you seem more reasonable.

G. You can combat this feeling and have more confidence about your opinion if you learn facts that can support your opinion.

    A Californian man who was feeling sick almost died recently from a shocking cause.

    26-year-old Luis Ortiz went to a hospital because of a headache and nausea(恶心). When doctors examined him, they were shocked to find a tapeworm lava(绦虫幼虫)in his brain. The story got stranger. The larva was still alive.

    The creature had caused a cyst(囊肿)inside his head. The cyst was restricting the flow of liquids to different areas of his brain. The situation was so serious that doctors said they had to perform an emergency operation to remove the larva.

    A doctor who operated on Ortiz told him he had only 30 minutes to live. When the doctor pulled the worm out of his head, it was still moving.

    Luis Ortiz was a student at California State University in Sacramento. He began experiencing headaches in late August. But Ortiz said he did not think the headaches were serious.

    In September, he visited a friend and his parents in another city. That is when the pain got worse. His mother saw Ortiz throwing up and took him to a hospital emergency room

    The doctors saved Ortu's life. However, the surgery also affected him. Ortir had to drop out of school and move  back home. For now, he is not permitted to work or drive a vehicle.

    The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the U. S. has about 1,000 reported cases of tapeworms each year. The CDC adds that tapeworms are more common in developing countries with poor public health systems.

    The best way to avoid a tapeworm infection(感染)is to wash fruits and vegetables. Also, make sure meat is cooked thoroughly. The CDC suggests cooking all meat to an internal temperature of at least 63 degrees Celsius.

    One of the executives gathered at the Aspen Institute for a day-long leadership workshop using the works of Shakespeare was discussing the role of Brutus in the death of Julius Caesar. “Brutus was not an honorable man,” he said. “He was a traitor（叛徒）. And he murdered someone in cold blood.” The agreement was that Brutus had acted with cruelty when other options were available to him. He made a bad decision, they said—at least as it was presented by Shakespeare—to take the lead in murdering Julius Caesar. And though one of the executives acknowledged that Brutus had the good of the republic in mind, Caesar was nevertheless his superior. “You have to endeavor,” the executives said, “our policy is to obey the chain of command.”

    During the last few years, business executives and book writers looking for a new way to advise corporate America have been exploiting Shakespeare's wisdom for profitable ends. None more so than husband and wife team Kenneth and Carol Adelman, well-known advisers to the White House, who started up a training company called “Movers and Shakespeares”. They are amateur Shakespeare scholars and Shakespeare lovers, and they have combined their passion and their high level contacts into a management training business. They conduct between 30 and 40 workshops annually, focusing on half a dozen different plays, mostly for corporations, but also for government agencies.

    The workshops all take the same form, focusing on a single play as a kind of case study, and using individual scenes as specific lessons. In Julius Caesar , sly provocation（狡诈的挑唆） of Brutus to take up arms against the what was a basis for a discussion of methods of team building and grass roots organism.

Although neither of the Adelmans is academically trained in literature, the programmes, contain plenty of Shakespeare tradition and background. Their workshop on Henry V, for example, includes a helpful explanation of Henry's winning strategy at the Battle of Agincourt. But they do come to the text with a few biases (偏向): their reading of Henry V minimizes his misuse of power. Instead, they emphasize the story of the youth who seizes opportunity and becomes a masterful leader. And at the workshop on Caesar, Mr. Adelmans had little good to say about Brutus, saying “the noblest Roman of them all” couldn't make his mind up about things.

    Many of the participants pointed to very specific elements in the play that they felt related Caesar's pride, which led to his murder, and Brutus's mistakes in leading the  after the murder, they said, raise vital questions for anyone serving as a business when and how do you resist the boss?

    Whenever we see a button, we are eager to press it because we know something will happen. This is true in most cases, for example on a doorbell and on the “on/off” button on the TV. But some buttons are actually fake, like the “close” button on a lift.

    Many people are in the habit of pressing the “close” button because they don't have the patience to wait for the lift doors to shut. But lifts, “close” buttons are a complete scam, at least in the US—the doors will not close any faster no matter how hard you press.

    It started in the 1990s when the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the US, making sure that all lifts stayed open long enough so that people with disabilities could enter. Only US firefighters and repairmen can use the buttons to speed up the door-closing process if they have a code or special keys.

    But to normal lift riders, the buttons aren't completely useless. According to psychologists, fake buttons can actually make you feel better by offering you a sense of control.

    “Perceived (能够感知的) control is very important. It reduces stress and increases well-being,” Ellen J. Langer, a psychology professor, said, “Having a lack of control is associated with depression.”

    Experts have revealed that a lot of buttons that don't do anything exist in our lives for this same purpose. For example, many offices in the US have fake thermostats (温度调节器) because people tend to feel better when they think they can control the temperature in their workspace.

    But psychologists found it interesting that even when people are aware of these little “white lies”, they still continue to push fake buttons because as long as the doors eventually close, it is considered to be worth the effort.

    “That habit is here to stay,” John Kounios, a psychology professor, said, ''Even though I have real doubts about the traffic light buttons, I always press them. After all, I've got nothing else to do while waiting. So why not press the button in the hope that this one will work?”