Max Vernon Mathews has been called the father of computer music. He created electronic tools so that people could use computers as musical instruments. He had a huge influence on the development of electronic music and how it is written, recorded and played.

    In 1957, Max Mathews wrote the first computer program that enabled a computer to create sound and play it back. At the time, he was working as an engineer at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. His computer program was called Music. It enabled a large IBM computer to play a seventeen-second piece of music that he had written.

    The computer was so slow that it would have taken an hour to play the piece of music in seventeen seconds. For that reason, Mathews moved the work to a tape player, which could be sped up to play the music at a normal speed. He later said that the sound quality of the music notes was not great, but the technical importance of the music was huge.

    The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke visited Bell Laboratories in the 1960s. He heard a computer “sing” the song "Daisy Bell" on devices and programs developed by Max Mathews andother engineers. Clarke noted this technology in his book “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which was later made into a movie.

    Mathews continued creating other versions of the Music program. He became interested in how computers could help musicians outside recording studios.

    Max Mathews had a long and productive career. He worked with composers like John Cage and Edgard Varese. He helped create a center for research in computer music in Paris. And he taught at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in Stanford University in California.

    Mathews believed modern musicians were not making full use of the power of computer music. He said a violin always sounds like a violin, but with a computer, the way a violin sounds is unlimited. He said he did not want computer sounds to replace live music. But he said he hoped laptop computers would one day be considered serious instruments

    At the beginning of the century there was a big farm called Hollywood Ranch. It was near Los Angeles in California. A few years later Hollywood was one of the famous places of the world. From 1910s to the 1950s Hollywood was the film center of the world. Every family knew the names of its film stars Charlie Chaplin, Grete Garbo, Bergman and hundreds more.

    The reason why people went to Hollywood to make films was the sun. At first people made films in New York on the east coast of the United States. But then they heard about Los Angeles where there are 350 days of sun every year. As they made all the films by sunlight, the west coast was a much better place to work.

    Also near Hollywood you can find mountains and sea and desert. They did not have to travel far to make any kind of film.

    When TV became popular in the 1960s, Hollywood started making films for television. Then in 1970s they discovered people still went to cinema to see big expensive films. After twenty years they are still making films in Hollywood and people watch them all over the world.

    I grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. When the holiday decorations went up, there were houses on my block with trees lit up for Christmas in front yards and behind living room windows. I was born in a Jewish family. Even though I received eight presents for Hanukkah (an eight-day Jewish holiday in November or December), it just wasn't fair. My friends had beautiful trees with lights and presents brought by a man in a red suit. I didn't have a tree, and I lived in an apartment building, so I had no chimney(烟囱).

    That year, some neighbors bought a Christmas tree, but it was too tall for their living rooms. They cut off the top and, knowing I wanted to celebrate Christmas, gave the top to my family. After my parents fell asleep, I opened a window in our apartment. I imagined Santa could park his sleigh(雪橇) on our fire escape. When I woke up the next morning, the window was closed and Santa had delivered a present. I can't even remember what it was, but my memory of the morning lasts.

    My relationship with Santa took a break until my daughter, Amanda, was born in 1992. My wife and I saw no reason to deprive(剥夺) her of meeting Santa. In 1998, a friend of mine portrayed(扮演) Santa at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. He told me to stop by with my wife and daughter, and asked for their names in advance so he could greet them. When he saw us at the seaport, he greeted us by our names. My daughter's mouth opened wide and she pulled back. Maybe she was too young to appreciate this. But other families waiting to see him seemed delighted by his appearance and the gifts he brought.

    My two children are now grown up and do not visit Santa, and we do not have a Christmas tree, yet our family still enjoys the holiday. On Christmas Eve, in the spirit of the night, we leave a plate of my favorite cookies on the kitchen table in hopes Santa will leave a present.

    Everybody sleeps, but what people stay up late to catch or wake up early in order not to miss varies by culture.

    From data collected, it seems the things that cause us to lose the most sleep, on average, are sporting events, time changes, and holidays.

    Around the world, people change sleep patterns thanks to the start or end of daylight-saving time（夏令时间）. Russians, for example, began to wake up about a half-hour later each day after President Vladimir Putin shifted the country permanently to "winter time" starting on October 26.

    Russia's other late nights and early mornings generally correspond（相一致）to public holidays. On New Year's Eve, Russians have the world's latest bedtime, hitting the hay at around 3:30 a. m.

    Russians also get up an hour later on International Women's Day, the day for treating and celebrating female relatives.

    Similarly, Americans' late nights, late mornings, and longest sleep fall on three-day weekends.

    Canada got the least sleep of the year the night it beat Sweden in the Olympic hockey（冰球）final.

    The World Cup is also chiefly responsible for sleep deprivation. The worst night for sleep in the U. K. was the night of the England-Italy match on June 14. Brits stayed up a half-hour later to watch it, and then they woke up earlier than usual the next morning thanks to summer nights, the phenomenon in which the sun barely sets in northern countries in the summertime. That was nothing, though, compared to Germans, Italians, and the French, who stayed up around an hour and a half later on various days throughout the summer to watch the World Cup.

    It should be made clear that not everyone has a tool to record their sleep patterns; in some of these nations, it's likely that only the richest people do. And people who elect to track their sleep may try to get more sleep than the average person. Even if that's the case, the above findings are still striking. If the most health-conscious among us have such deep swings（明显改变）in our sleep levels throughout the year, how much sleep are the rest of us losing?

    It was the last day of the final examination in a college. On the steps of building, a group of engineering students were waiting for the last exam. On their faces was confidence.

    They knew the exam would be easy. The professor (教授) had said they could bring any books or notes during the test.

    Right after they came into the classroom, the professor handed out the papers. There were only five questions on it.

    Three hours passed. Then the professor began to collect the papers. The students no longer looked confident. On their faces was nervous expression. The professor watched the worried faces before him, and then asked, "How many of you have completed all five questions?" No hand was raised. "How many of you have answered four?" Still no hands. "Three? Two?" The students moved restlessly in their seats. "One, then? Certainly somebody has finished one." But the class kept silent. The professor said, "That is exactly what I expected. I just want to make you know clearly that even though you have completed four years of engineering, there are still many things about the subject you don't know. These questions you could not answer are common in everyday practice." Then, smiling, he added, "You will all pass this course, but remember, your education has just begun."

    The years have obscured the name of this professor, but not the lesson he taught.

    Most Americans see their pets as family members, surveys show. Those with dogs are more likely to call themselves pet "parents" than pet "owners". There are more of these parents than ever. In big cities such as San Francisco and Seattle,(owned) dogs outnumber children.

    The ways in which companies are profiting from the trend are also becoming various. Kinds of dog food and various pet mattresses (垫子) are always in hot sale. And it is not surprising that, for pets, Americans spent more than $400 million only on Halloween costumes this year. Overall, annual spending on pet food and products in America has risen by around 40% over the past ten years.

    Now a pack of startups have sensed a fresh opportunity.

    Much as Airbnb has offered travelers another choice instead of staying in a hotel, two firms, Recover and DogVacay, want to give pet owners an alternative to kennels (养狗场) when away from home. The cost is around $30 a night, with the majority of that going to the sitter, who takes care of the dog, and around a fifth to the company﹣much less than you would spend to check your dog into a kennel.

    The other big sellingpoint is that pets will receive better treatment. There are ways, apparently, to vet (审查) dog hosts to the real pet lovers: only around 15% of those who apply to serve as sitters are passed. Besides offering more attention and room, Rover has launched a feature that helps customers to see how far their dog has been walked via the GPS in the host's phone. Like Airbnb, both DogVacay and Recover insure stays against accidents.

    Another advantage of the model is that consumers often use dog-sitting services many times a year, and they tend to be loyal. That has helped DogVacay and Recover attract a lot of money﹣around $140 million between them.

    But firms that connect pets with hosts will face great competition as they try to go global. Companies offering homestays for dog rapidly appear in many different countries, including Australia, Brazil and Britain. And unlike Airbnb, which pulls in customers thanks to its presence in lots of markets that people want to travel to, the network effect for services like DogVacay is local.

    Despite having predicted the trend early, such firms may never achieve the same scale as an Airbnb. But then no one ever said it was easy to be top dog.