A new concept vehicle, Pod was introduced by Toyota and Sony at the Tokyo motor show. The car is intended as a four-wheeled friend. It aims to provide affection, sympathy and encouragement. Like a dog welcoming its master, the car sits up, wags its tail and acknowledges its owner's presence using hydraulics(液压装置) and a multi-coloured LED display panel(引擎) across the front.

    While on the road, the car constantly monitors the driver's mood with pulse and sweat(汗) sensors on the joystick(操纵杆). Cameras focused on the eyes keep watch for any sigh of drowsiness. If a driver appears to be losing his or her cool, Pod will display warnings, play soft music and blow cold air at the face. Drivers are shaken awake with loud music and a shaking chair.

    To improve driving skills, Pod uses a comparison to score drivers, offer advice and rank all Pod owners. Toyota claims that the car will eventually be able to learn its owner's likes and dislikes by monitoring passenger conversations. If the car hears a favorite song being discussed, it will download the track from the Internet and play it without being asked. It will also recommend(推荐) restaurants that might suit the driver's taste and take photographs of passengers when they sound particularly happy.

    In keeping with the moodiness that is the car's main selling point, Pod expresses a form of road anger. If a driver brakes or swerves(急转弯) suddenly, the LED panel shows an angry red and the tail rises at the back.

    Anger is one of the car's ten “emotional states”. Another is sadness — a blue front with tear-shaped lights seemingly dropping from headlights — which appears after a flat tire or when gas is low.

    “We wanted to show that the cars can be cheerful and entertaining,” said Yasunori Sakamoto, part of the Toyota design team. Mr Sakamoto said Toyota has no plans to put Pod on the market. Sad, really.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    Flu easily spreads from one person to another. This is especially true to people who are weak. If you are weak, you are more likely to catch flu easily. Do you know how you can avoid flu?

    Keep in good health

    The best antidote (解药) to illness is good health. You can eat everything you want but make sure that your diet is healthy. The healthier you are, the better for you to avoid any type of illness around. Most doctors suggest plenty of fresh fruit juice and water in order that one can avoid flu.

    Stay away from people with flu

    If a member of the family or a friend has flu, stay away from them until they are well. Flu is very communicable and you can catch it by going with the person with flu. Wear a mask (面罩) and avoid using things that the person with flu is using.

    Exercise

    Exercising will make you stronger which means a stronger immune (免疫的) system too. Exercise often so that your body will keep healthy. It doesn't matter what kind of exercise.

    What is important is you are making your body stronger to prevent illness from attacking you.

    Be happy

    Happy people are healthy people. Their life is stress-free, so they are more likely to be safe from illness. If you are unhappy, which affects your immune system, you will easily get sick.

    Avoiding the flu is easy. Just boost (增强) your immune system and it will take care of the rest.

Global English Center

    General English in all four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

    3-month (700 yuan), 6-month (1,200 yuan) and one-year (2,000 yuan) courses.

    Choice of morning or evening classes, 3 hours per day, Mon. -- Fri.

    Experienced college English teachers.

    Close to the city center and bus stops

    Add: 105 Zhongshan Road   Tel: 6760000

    Modern Language School

    Special courses in English for business, travel, banking, hotel management and office skills.

    Small classes (12~16 students) on Saturday and Sunday from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m..

    English teachers from Canada and the USA.

    3-month (1,000 yuan), 6-month (1,800 yuan).

    Add: 675 Park Road      Tel: 6777777

    The 21st Century English Training Center

    We offer morning or afternoon classes, both of which last three months and a half at a cost of 800 yuan. Entrance exams: June 1 and December 1.

    We also have a six-week TOEFL preparation class during winter and summer holidays.

    Only 15-minute walk from city center.

    Call 6016666 for more information.

    The International House of English

    3-or 6-month English course for students of all levels at very low cost: 60 yuan for 12 hours per week; convenient class hours: 9:00~12:00 a.m. and 2:00~5:00 p.m.

    4-month evening classes for developing speaking skills(same cost as day classes)

    Well- trained foreign teachers

    Free sightseeing tours and social activities

    Very close to the Central Park.

    Call 6886666 for further information.

    To err is human. To blame the other guy is even more human.

    Common sense is not all that common.

    Why tell the truth when you can come up with a good excuse?

    These three popular misquotes(误用的引语) are meant to be jokes, and yet they tell us a lot about human nature. To err or to make mistakes, is indeed a part of being human, but it seems that most people don't want to accept the responsibility for the problem. Perhaps it is the natural thing to do. The original quote about human nature went like this, "To err is human, to forgive is divine(神圣的)."This saying mirrors an ideal: People should be forgiving of others' mistakes. Instead, we tend to do the opposite -- find someone else to pass the blame on to. However, taking responsibility for something that went wrong is a making of great maturity(成熟).

    Common sense is what we call clear thought. Having common sense means having a good general plan that will make things work well, and it also means staying with the plan. Common sense tells you that you take an umbrella out into a rainstorm, but you leave the umbrella home when you hear a weather forecast for sunshine. Common sense does not seem to be common for large organizations, because there are so many things going on that one person cannot be in charge of everything. People say that in a large company, "the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing."

    And what is wrong with a society that thinks that making up a good excuse is like creating a work of art? One of the common problems with making excuses is that people, especially young people, get the idea that it's okay not to be totally honest all the time. There is a corollary(推论) to that: If a good excuse is "good" even if it isn't honest, then where is the place of the truth?

    No poem should ever be discussed or "analyzed", until it has been read aloud by someone, teacher or student. Better still, perhaps, is the practice of reading it twice, once at the beginning of the discussion and once at the end, so the sound of the poem is the last thing one hears of it.

    All discussions of poetry are, in fact, preparations for reading it aloud, and the reading of the poem is, finally, the most telling 'interpretation' of it, suggesting tone, rhythm, and meaning all at once. Hearing a poet read the work in his or her own voice, on records or on film, is obviously a special reward. But even those aids to teaching cannot replace the student and teacher reading it or, best of all, reciting it.

    I have come to think, in fact, that time spent reading a poem aloud is much more important than "analyzing" it, if there isn't time for both. I think one of our goals as teachers of English is to have students love poetry. Poetry is "a criticism of life", "a heightening of life, enjoyment with others". It is "an approach to the truth of feeling", and it "can save your life". It also deserves a place in the teaching of language and literature more central than it presently occupies.

    I am not saying that every English teacher must teach poetry. Those who don't like it should not be forced to put that dislike on anyone else. But those who do teach poetry must keep in mind a few things about its essential nature, about its sound as well as its sense, and they must make room in the classroom for hearing poetry as well as thinking about it.

    MacArthur's love for sailing dates back to when she was just four years of age, when she first got the opportunity to have a try. "I'll never forget that feeling as a kid of setting foot on a boat for the first time," MacArthur said. "It's kind of struck me that this boat had everything we needed to take us anywhere in the world. And as a child, that opened up everything," she explained how it felt like the "greatest sense of freedom".

    This experience lighted a passion within MacArthur. She knew then that she wanted to sail around the world. She had no idea how to achieve it — growing up in the countryside, it wasn't the most obvious career path — but she knew that was what she wanted to do at some stage. So, she acquired knowledge and saved up for years to seek a career in sailing. She would have potato and beans every day for eight years so that she could save up to buy the right equipment. By reaching certain financial goals and asking technical questions about sailing, MacArthur felt as though she was getting closer to her ambitions.

    "When you know where you're going, you can actually get there — even if it seems impossible. The impossible could be possible and aiming high is not necessarily such a crazy thing to do." And it seems that MacArthur's drive to become a sailor went beyond her expectations. At the age of 24, she started to receive media attention after participating in the Vendee Globe, a single-handed non-stop yacht (游艇) race that goes around the world. She came in second place. Some three to four years later, MacArthur chose to sail for 71 days and 14 hours, covering more than 26,000 miles during the course of her journey. This led to MacArthur scoring a new world record in 2005, as the fastest person to sail around the globe single-handedly. While this record has since been surpassed, MacArthur is still considered as Britain's most successful off shore racer.