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    LakeLander·2 hours ago

    Today, a man talked very loud on his phone on a train between Malvern and Reading, making many passengers upset. I wonder how he would react if I were to read my newspaperoutloudonthetrain, Ihave never had the courage to do it, though.

    Pak50          ···     ·57 minutes ago

    Why not give it a try? Perhaps you should take lessons on a musical instrument. The late musician Dennis Brian is said to have asked a fellow train passenger to turn off his radio. When his request was refused, he took out his French horn(号) and started to practice.

    Angie O'Edema·42 minutes ago

    I don't see how musical instruments can help improve manners in public. Don't do to others what you wouldn't like to be done to yourself. Once, a passenger next to me talked out loud on his mobile phone. I left my seat quietly, giving him some privacy to finish his conversation. He realized this and apologised to me. When his phone rang again later, he left his seat to answer it. You see, a bit of respect and cooperation can do the job better.

    Taodas                          ·29 minutes ago

    I did read my newspaper out loud on a train, and it turned out well. The guy took it in good part, and we chatted happily all the way to Edinburgh.

    Sophie 76                                     ·13minutes ago

    I have not tried reading my newspaper out loud on a train, but ,several years ago, I read some chapters from Harry Porter to my bored and noisy children. Several passengers seemed to appreciate what I did.

    This may be music to your ears.

    Researchers P. Jason Rentfrow and Samuel Gosling gave 3,500 people a personality quiz. “We found that the musical styles people like are closely linked to their personalities,” Gosling says.

    RAP/HIP-HOP

    Known for their quick speech, some rappers can say more than 700 syllables（音节）a minute!

    If you like rap/hip-hop, you are energetic（精力充沛的）and have a way with words. You put a fresh spin on things, whether it's new moves on the dance floor or your hip style.

    CLASSICAL

    In the 18th century, classical musicians were like rock stars. Beethoven and Mozart, for example, played in crowded concert halls.

If you like classical, you are open to new ideas and like debating with friends. Creative and imaginative, you can easily spend many hours scrapbooking, writing or painting.

    COUNTRY

    Country music came from the folk songs of English, Scottish, and Irish settlers of the southeastern United States.

    If you like country, you express your opinions well, which makes you the ideal class president or team captain. Traditional and loyal, you enjoy spending time with your family.

    POP

    Pop music is designed to attract almost everyone, and it does. Each year, the industry brings in about 30 billion dollars!

    If you like pop, you are attractive to your friends. You can make big things happen, like planning for a huge party or inspiring your team to victory.

ROCK/ALTERNATIVE

    In the 1950s, rock music created a brand-new culture. Teenagers, for the first time, had an identity separate from adults and children.

    If you like rock/alternative, you are a risk-taker who never accepts no for an answer. You rise to any challenge, like doing very well in a big exam or landing the lead in the school play.

    If these personality profiles（人格剖析）don't match you, that's OK. These are just for fun.

    A new technology is going to ripe, one that could transform our daily lives, help to form new industries, even remove world economic powers from their present positions. Unlike the wave of industrialization that began in the West and spread later to the rest of the world, the new developments are taking place in research labs all over the globe—and Asians are in the forefront. Physicists are creating a new class of materials that display an amazing property unforeseen even two years ago—superconductivity (超导体技术).

    Used today only in specialized equipment, super conductors have the potential to radically change most of the electrical and electronic appliances found in the home, making them smaller, more powerful and efficient. They could free our cities of pollution by replacing petrol and diesel (柴油) vehicles with electric cars, and cut the cost of electricity. The new materials do something that even the best of conductors such as copper and silver cannot—they do away with all electrical resistance. The significances for energy storage are great.

    The technology is in its early stage, still accessible to countries that decide to invest brains and money. For 75 years it had remained little more than a scientific curiosity with limited practical use because the phenomenon occurred only at extremely low temperatures. It was first observed in 1911 by a Dutch scientist named Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who cooled mercury (水银) to temperatures below -269℃ with liquid helium (氦). Then in January last year, two IBM scientists, K. Alex Muller and J. George Bednorz, found a metal oxide ceramic (氧化陶瓷) that superconducted at -243℃. Their report went largely unnoticed until last December, when it was confirmed at a scientific meeting in Boston. Today Japan, India, China and other Asian countries all have their share of experts who spend their days and nights in labs, acting as midwives (助产士) to a new technology.

    Attitudes toward new technologies often fall along generational lines. That is, generally, younger people tend to outnumber older people on the front end of a technological change. It is not always the case, though. When you look at attitudes toward driverless cars, there doesn't seem to be a clear generational divide. The public overall is split on whether they'd like to use a driverless car. In a study last year, of all people surveyed, 48 percent said they wanted to ride in one, while 50 percent did not.

    The fact that attitudes toward self-driving cars appear to be so steady across generations suggests how transformative the change to driverless cars could be. Not everyone wants a driverless car now-and no one can get one yet—but among those who are open to them, every age group is similarly involved.

    Actually, this isn't surprising. Whereas older generations are sometimes reluctant to adopt new technologies, driverless cars promise real value to these age groups in particular. Older adults, especially those with limited mobility or difficulty driving on their own are one of the classic use-cases for driverless cars.

    This is especially interesting when you consider that younger people are generally more interested in travel-related technologies than older ones.

    When it comes to driverless cars, differences in attitude are more pronounced based on factors not related to age. College graduates, for example, are particularly interested in driverless cars compared with those who have less education: 59 percent of college graduates said they would like to use a driverless car compared with 38 percent of those with a high-school diploma or less.

    Where a person lives matters, too. More people who lived in cities and suburbs said they wanted to try driverless cars than those who lived in rural areas.

    While there's reason to believe that interest in self-driving cars is going up across the board, a person's age will have little to do with how self-driving cars can become mainstream. Once driverless cars are actually available for sale, the early adopters will be the people who can afford to buy them.

Many people think that listening is a passive business. It is just the opposite. Listening well is an active exercise of our attention and hard work. It is because they do not realize this, or because they are not willing to do the work, that most people do not listen well.

Listening well also requires total concentration upon someone else. An essential part of listening well is the rule known as "bracketing". Bracketing includes the temporary giving up or setting aside of your own prejudices and desires, to experience as far as possible someone else's world from the inside,stepping into his or her shoes. Moreover, since listening well involves bracketing, it also involves a temporary acceptance of the other person. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will seem quite willing to open up the inner part of his or her mind to the listener. True communication is under way and the energy required for listening well is so great that it can be accomplished only by the will to extend oneself for mutual growth.

Most of the time we lack this energy. Even though we may feel in our business dealings or social relationships that we are listening well, what we are usually doing is listening selectively. Often we have a prepared list in mind and wonder, as we listen, how we can achieve certain desired results to get the conversation over as quickly as possible or redirected in ways more satisfactory to us. Many of us are far more interested in talking than in listening, or we simply refuse to listen to what we don't want to hear.

It wasn't until toward the end of my doctor career that I have found the knowledge that one is being truly listened to is frequently therapeutic. In about a quarter of the patients I saw, surprising improvement was shown during the first few months of psychotherapy, before any of the roots of problems had been uncovered or explained. There are several reasons for this phenomenon, but chief among them, I believe, was the patient's sense that he or she was being truly listened to, often for the first time in years, and for some, perhaps for the first time ever.

How to Appreciate Art

Unlocking the meaning behind a work of art is one of the many joys of viewing and collecting. But how do you appreciate art and actually interpret it?{#blank#}1{#/blank#}.

Look at the art

        {#blank#}2{#/blank#}, but it's more than quickly glancing at the art and drawing a conclusion. Before stepping back and taking the artwork in, take a moment to identify the artwork's basic qualities：

Is it a painting or sculpture?

Is the texture (质感) rough or smooth?

Does it appear chaotic (混乱的) or organized?

All of these are elements the artist chose when designing the artwork, so they need to be considered. 

Identify the art and artist

Knowing when or how the artwork was made reveals more information. Take for example the famous Guernica (1937) by Pablo Picasso, knowing Picasso composed the painting in response to the bombing of the town of Guernica during the Second World War leads to understanding its anti-war ideas. Even if the historical context of an artwork is not apparent, knowing the year of its creation offers an idea as to the broader events taking place at the time.         {#blank#}3{#/blank#}.

   {#blank#}4{#/blank#}.

Use what you observed in the first two steps to think about meanings the artwork could have. Many artists have specific meanings behind their art, but also encourage viewers to come up with their own understandings. In this way, there is no "right"answer that must be reached to unlock the painting's mysteries.

Discover your tastes

Just remember one important fact: You don't have to look at everything. For instance, if you dislike abstract art, skip the abstract. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}, so don't be afraid to stop and observe something outside of your tastes.

The next time you are admiring a work of art, keep these techniques in mind, and its meaning may unfold before your eyes.
 

A. Think about the meaning

B. Maintain your own opinions

C. Viewing the art seems like an obvious first step

D. However, keeping an open mind is always encouraged

E. Applying these techniques to every work of art you come across may seem confusing

F. Looking at and understanding art is all about taking the time to view, identify and think

G. In all cases, learning something about the artist undeniably adds to the appreciation of art