My father's reaction to the bank building at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue in New York city was immediate and definite: "You won't catch me putting my money in there!" he declared, "Not in that glass box !"

    Of course, my father is a gentleman of the old school, a member of the generation to whom a good deal of modern architecture is upsetting, but I am convinced that his negative response was not so much to the architecture as to a violation of his concept of the nature of money .

    In his generation money was thought of as a real commodity (实物)that could be carried, or stolen. Consequently, to attract the custom of a sensible man, a bank had to have heavy walls, barred windows, and bronze（青铜） doors, to affirm the fact, however untrue, that money would be safe inside. If a building's design made it appear impenetrable（难以渗透的）, the institution（公共机构, 协会, 制度）was necessarily reliable, and the meaning of the heavy wall as an architecture symbol dwelt in the prevailing attitude toward money.

    But the attitude toward money has, of course, changed. Excepting pocket money, cash of any kind is now rarely used; money as a tangible（切实，实在）commodity has largely been replaced by credit. A deficit (赤字) economy, accompanied by huge expansion, has led us to think of money as product of the creative imagination. The banker no longer offers us a safe: he offers us a service in which the most valuable element is the creativity for the invention of large numbers. It is in no way surprising, in view of this change in attitude, that we are witnessing the disappearance of the heavy-walled bank.

    Just as the older bank emphasized its strength, this bank by its architecture boasts of imaginative powers. From this point of view it is hard to say where architecture ends and human assertion (人们的说法)begins.

     My husband and I had been married nearly twenty-two years when I acquired Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a disorder where my immune（免疫的）system responded to a virus by producing painful blisters. Although my long-term evaluation was good, I, who had been so fiercely independent, rapidly became absolutely helpless.

My husband, Scott, stepped up to the plate, taking care of kids and cooking dinners. He also became my personal caretaker, applying the medicine to all of my blisters because my hands couldn't do the job. Needless to say, I had negative emotions, bouncing from embarrassment to shame caused by total reliance on someone other than myself.

I recovered from my illness, but I couldn't seem to recover from the thought that I loved my husband less than he loved me. This seeming distinction in our love continued to annoy me for the year following my illness.

Then recently Scott and I went on a long bike ride. He's an experienced cyclist; I'm quite the green hand. At one point with a strong headwind and sharp pain building in my tired legs, I really thought I couldn't go any further. Seeing me struggle, Scott pulled in front of me and yelled over his shoulder, “Stay close behind me.” As I followed his steps, I discovered that my legs quit burning and I was able to catch my breath. My husband was pulling me along-again.

     I pray my husband will always be strong and healthy. But if he should ever become the struggling one, whether on a bike ride or with an illness, I trust Ill be ready to call out to him, Stay close behind me--my turn to pull you along.

    How much television do you watch? Did you really give an honest answer? A recent study shows that people aren't totally truthful about their television-watching habits.

    The study in question was conducted at Ball State University in the US. Researchers there wanted to find out how much television people view according to their age. The study was paid for by a council associated with the Nielsen Company, which determines television ratings. The conclusions were that people spend more than 8 hours a day looking at a screen. This included cell phones and computers，but the majority were television screens.

    There are three interesting things about this study. The first is that people are exposed to more than one hour of advertisements per day. The second is that even with access to DVDs and internet videos, television is still the most popular media source. The third is that the amount of screen-watching people do is relatively the same from the ages of 18-65.

    So, if everyone is watching television, why lie about it? Well, if someone admits they watch television for five or six hours, they could be considered a couch potato. Michael Phillips, one of the study's main researchers, says, “There's a social stigma for people who watch too much television. Sometimes, however, watching the latest reality show or the funniest sitcom gives co-workers and friends fun things to talk about.”

    Even if you do watch a lot of television, perhaps we can use this study as a reason to be honest with ourselves about how much time we spend in front of the television. I mean, after all, everyone else is doing it...

    This is my origin story: when I was a teenager I wrote terrible poetry. Like really bad. Worse than yours, I bet. A lot of it about how every little thing reminds me that we're all going to die one day. I wrote collections and collections of these poems, thinking one day I would have my moment. I named one collection, ironically, The Eternal Optimist.

    In 1996, I found an advert for the International Poetry Competition. I was 16 years old and ready for my poetry to be released on the world. Not only was it a competition with a cash prize, but it was poetry, which I wrote, and international. This was my ticket to becoming world-famous. I submitted a poem called Trail of Thought. If you ever wrote bad poetry as a teenager, you'll have written something like it. In the poem, I went for a walk and noticed small poignant(辛酸的) things in nature, and each one reminded me that we were all going to die one day.

    I filled out the form, printed off the poem and sent it off, fingers crossed. I waited to hear back I carried on writing, I probably finished another collection. Then I got a letter from the International Society of Poets. I opened the envelope carefully, just in case a prize-winning cheque fell out I hadn't won. But, they liked my poem enough to include it in their anthology(诗选), Awaken to a Dream. I closed my eyes, I wanted to scream with happiness. I was going to be a published poet.

    All I had to do in order to be published was accept the terms and pay £ 45（plus £ 5 p & p）for an anthology. If I didn't buy a copy of the anthology, my poem wouldn't be included. I had to convince my mum, who thought my writing a meaningless pastime, to part with £ 50. She even asked the question: “Why do you have to pay to be in this book?” Nevertheless, she wrote a cheque for £ 50 and I returned it with my letter of agreement.

    I was 16 and about to be a published poet. This was what it had all been about. This is what it had all been leading to. The months waiting for the anthology were a torture. I hit some sort of writer's block, I couldn't write anything. It was almost as if, now I was published, it mattered more what I committed to page and I didn't want to write anything down unless it was good enough to go into an anthology like Awaken to a Dream.

    The book arrived through the post. Here it was. The first thing I had ever been published in a book called Awaken to a Dream, featuring a blistering take on the mundanity(世俗) of mortality by yours truly. I opened the package to find a book, containing my work. The first thing that struck me about the book was that it was bigger than A4. And it was thick. And on each page was a poem, next to another poem, next to another. The type was small and the paper thin enough to trace with. With three or four poems per page and more than 700 pages, I had a sinking realization. This was a scam, an illegal trick for making money.

    If each poem had cost the author £ 45, they were sitting on a fortune. I felt ashamed. Everyone who had submitted something to the International Poetry Competition had fallen for the same hustle（忙碌）as me. I couldn't bring myself to show my mum. And she never asked to see it. Perhaps she thought if the price of me learning a lesson was £50 we didn't really have, then so be it.

    But that stayed with me, that moment of realization. Because I determined to keep writing and ensure that my precious words always found a home worthy of them. Or at least that's how, more than 20 years later, I justify falling for a scam. Because your first time being published should be special, and if I don't convince myself that there was a reason for my first poem being in a vanity(无价值) book, then what good was it in the first place? And, strangely, someone is selling this book on Amazon at the moment. I wonder how many other writers who went on to do more stuff are in there.

    "Can't hold a candle to" is a popular expression. When there wasn't electricity, someone would have a servant light his way by holding a candle. The expression meant that the person who cannot hold a candle to you is not fit even to be your servant. Now，it means such a person cannot compare or compete.

    Another expression is "hold your tongue. "It means to be still and not talk. "Hold your tongue" is not something you would tell a friend. But a parent or teacher might use the expression to quiet a noisy child.

    "Hold out" is an expression one hears often in sports reports and labor news. It means to refuse to play or work. Professional football and baseball players "hold out" if their team refuses to pay them what they think they are worth.

    The expression "hold up" has several different meanings. One is a robbery. A man with a gun may say, "This is a hold up. Give me your money." Another meaning is to delay. A driver who was held up by heavy traffic might be late for work. Another meaning is for a story to be considered true after an investigation. A story can hold up if it is proved true.

    "Hold on" is another expression, which means wait or stop. As you leave for school, your brother may say, "Hold on，you forgot your book. " It is used to ask a telephone caller to wait and not hang up his telephone.

    Our final expression is "hold the line." That means to keep a problem or situation from getting worse—to hold steady. For example, the president may say he will "hold the line on taxes." He means therewill be no increase in taxes.

    Supermarket shoppers who buy lots of foods on "two for one" deals are far more likely to be obese (肥胖的), a major study suggests.

    Cancer Research UK found that those with highest consumption of discounted foods were at 50 percent greater risk of obesity, compared with those with low take-up of such deals.

    The study of more than 16,000 households found almost one in three food and drink items in UK supermarket baskets were bought on promotion. And the discounts were far more likely to be applied to unhealthy foods, with almost half of all chocolate, crisps, popcorn, and savoury snacks bought on promotion.

    Shoppers whose baskets contained between 40 and 80 percent of goods on special offer were 54 percent more likely to be obese than those with a maximum 20 percent of foods on such deals. Those with highest take-up of the deals bought 30 percent less fruit, and nearly 25 percent fewer vegetables than those shunning the deals.

    The study follows a government consultation on proposals to ban "buy one, get one free" deals on unhealthy foods and supermarket "guilt lanes" as part of its childhood obesity strategy.

    One in five children are overweight or obese when they start primary school, rising to around one in three when they leave.

    Research has found that obesity increases the risk of 13 different types of cancer including bowel and breast disease.

    Alison Cox, director of cancer prevention at Cancer Research UK, said: "The government's proposed 9 p. m. ban on junk food ads is a step forward in fighting childhood obesity. Now we want to see restrictions on price promotions for unhealthy food and drink items, as well as those strategically placed at checkouts. This will help families to make healthier choices.

    "There isn't one magic fix for the problem, but getting rid of these encouragements to buy unhealthy food is key to changing it."