For the rest of March,a disease will sweep across the US.It will keep kids home from school. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Employees will suddenly lose their ability to concentrate.

    The disease, known as “March Madness”, refers to the yearly 65－team US men's college basketball tournament (锦标赛). {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Teams compete against each other in a single－elimination (单局淘汰) tournament that eventually crowns a national champion.

    Nearly 20 million Americans will find themselves prisoners of basketball festival madness. The fun comes partly from guessing the winners for every game. Friends compete against friends. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}  Colleagues against bosses.

    Big－name schools are usually favored to advance into the tournament.But each year there are dark horses from little－known universities.

    This adds to the madness.Watching a team from a school with 3,000 students beat a team from a school with 30,000,for many Americans,is an exciting experience.Two years ago,the little－known George Mason University was one of the final four teams. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    College basketball players are not paid, so the game is more about making a name for their university and themselves. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} About $4 billion will be spent gambling (赌) on the event.According to Media Life magazine,the event will bring in $ 500 million in advertising income this year,topping the post －season income of every US professional league,including that of the NBA.

A. Husbands against wives.

B.The players will go all out for the games.

C.But that doesn't mean money isn't involved.

D.College students will ignore piles of homework.

E.People are willing to spend more money on watching it.

F.It begins on March 15 and lasts through the beginning of April.

G.Many people had never even heard of the university before the tournament.

    I had an experience once which taught me something about the ways people made a bad situation worse by blaming themselves. One January, I officiated (主持) at two funerals for two elderly women.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}At the first home, the son of the deceased (已故) woman said, “If only I had sent my mother to Florida and gotten her out of this cold and snow, she would be alive today. It's my fault that she died.” At the second home, the son said, “If only I had not insisted her going to Florida, she would be alive today.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} It is my fault.”

    When things don't turn out as we would like them to, we tend to assume that had we done things differently, the story would have had a happier ending. Any time there is a death, the survivors will feel guilty. Because the course of action they took turned out bad, they believe that the opposite course, for example, keeping mother at home, would have turned out better.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    There seem to be two elements involved in our readiness to feel guilty. The first lies in our belief that the world makes sense—there is a reason for everything that happens.

    The second is the thought that we are the cause of what happens, especially the bad things that happen.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}A baby comes to think that the world exists to meet his needs, and that he makes everything happen in it. He wakes up in the morning and calls the rest of the world to its tasks.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}When he is hungry, people feed him, and when he is wet, people change him. Very often, we do not completely abandon that childish thought that our wishes cause things to happen.

A. That long airplane ride was more than she could take.

B. After all, how could it have turned out any worse?

C. Life and dead is an unsolved mystery.

D. The roots of this feeling may lie in our childhood.

E. He cries, and someone comes to attend to him.

F. Both died a natural death.

G. They believe that they are responsible for what has happened.

    Last week the electricity in my flat went out.{#blank#}1{#/blank#} My typical evening is spent watching TV and scrolling (滚动) through social media. Tonight this wasn't possible. My roommate and I weren't prepared with candles and matches. We just rely on electricity.

    So for me it was an early night.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} That night, losing our electricity felt like losing a basic necessity, as basic as running water. But really, electricity is a luxury that we've grown to take for granted. I use electricity all the time, even when it's not really necessary.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} And as I'm writing this, I have my lights on, even in the middle of the day when I don't really need them.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}It contributes to global warming. It is harming our environment and we need to do what we can to stop it. Not only that, but if we continue to use the same large amount of energy, we will soon run out of it.

    How would we survive in a world without electricity? Our daily lives go around it. We wouldn't be able to function.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}So, shouldn't we start preparing for it now? Cutting down on our use of electricity would save energy resources so that they could last for longer. And if everyone does it, we can make a big difference.

A. Yet we know one day we will run out of it.

B. Our over-use of electricity is a big problem.

C. This left me in complete darkness the whole night.

D. It is a real problem to cut down on the use of electricity.

E. I know for sure I could cut down on my use of electricity.

F. I couldn't help but think, do we rely too much on electricity?

G. I turn on the TV in the background even when Tm not watching it.

    The cost of living in countries like the U.S., Britain, Australia or France has skyrocketed (飞涨) in recent years. However, if you are willing to leave your country and explore life in other areas, there are many countries boasting an extremely cheap and low cost of living. Check out the following countries when planning your next move.

    Ecuador

    Ecuador is similar to the United States in many ways, and as a result has become a popular American getaway. They even use the U.S. dollar for their currency. In this country, it is cheaper to eat out every day than cook for yourself on a budget in the U.S. You can even buy a property for around $50,000 and hire someone to tend to it while you are away.

    Mexico

    Although the country is known for its poverty-ridden streets, there are many wealthier areas that provide every facility you might need. You can live off a mere $700 to $800 a month in Mexico, and this includes rent for a nice place, facilities, food, and any sightseeing.

    Argentina

    Argentina has been a popular tourist destination for many years. It has great restaurants, a rich history, and many places to explore. Not to mention, it is not very expensive to live there. A decent sized home can cost around $139,000, which is relatively cheap in relation to homes in the United States.

    Vietnam

    Vietnam has also become a popular tourist destination in recent years. There are many million dollar luxury homes by the beach, but you can find a modest flat or small home for around $25,000 to $50,000 if you search in the right areas.

    Having a great collection of books at home doesn't really mean that you are a person who loves reading. It may be got from your father or your father's father, and it can just impress people around you with the fact that you are a person of culture.

    From my point of view, reading is very important in our daily life. For example, reading is a way of gaining knowledge in different areas. It can help us have a great imagination, and it makes things easier when it comes to making compositions on different themes. It gives you the possibility to speak about science, even if you don't work in this field. You can express your opinions about a political event because you have read something about that.

    Secondly, reading gives us the possibility to enter the world of imagination. We can imagine what life will be like in the future. Sometimes, we compare ourselves with the people in the stories we read and they can give us some clues to solve the problems and tell us what to do in certain situations. Books are based on real life. Even if writers are considered to be somehow different from common people, they often face the same problems as we all do.

    In short, I would like to say that literature is the perfect way of enriching our culture, expressing correctly, having a rich vocabulary, being able to understand different fields and really being considered to be a learned person.

    A few weeks ago, I sat with a California farmer named Dave Ribeiro. I asked him what he wished to know about farmers. He smiled and said, "That we walk among you. We look like you and talk like you. We have advanced degrees and hobbies, just like you."

    Take Dave for example: He's a young man with a music degree. And if you walked past him on the street, you'd never think, "There goes a farmer."

    Is someone like Dave who you picture when you think of a farmer? Probably not. I think that most people would picture a man in his overalls(工作服). I can tell you, that does not represent Dave or any of the many other farmers I have gotten to know.

    Not only do we have to throw out our previous impression of farmers, but farming as a whole doesn't look much like it used to either. We recently sent a team out to see what modern farming looks like, and they found farmers to be completely different from our usual ideas about them and also came across them in some unexpected places.

    In a parking lot in a neighborhood of Brooklyn, they met a new crop of young farmers who were trying to bring fresh greens closer to eaters in the city by growing them in high-tech indoor vertical(垂直的) farms. In a Florida field under the fight path of an airport, they discovered farmers with university degrees growing plants that might someday fuel our cars. And in a modern farm in California, they observed how farmers were using technology to take the best possible care of their animals.

    These farmers all spend their days in very different ways—none of them looks like the previous farmer we have in our mind—but they're all working on new ways to feed our planet. Not only do we need to change our idea of what farming looks like, but we also need to change our view of where solutions can come from. Feeding all of us is going to take all of us working together.