My color television has given me nothing but a headache. I was able to buy it a little over a year ago because I had my relatives give me money for my birthday instead of clothes that wouldn't fit. I let a salesclerk fool me into buying a discontinued model. I realized this a day later, when I saw newspaper advertisements for the set at seventy-five dollars less than I had paid. The set worked so beautiful when I first got it home that I would keep it on until stations signed off for the night. Fortunately, I didn't get any channels showing all-night movies or I would never have gotten to bed.

       Then I started developing a problem with the set that involved static(静电) noise. For some reason, when certain shows switched into a commercial, a loud noise would sound for a few seconds. Gradually, this noise began to appear during a show, and to get rid of it, I had to change to another channel and then change it back. Sometimes this technique would not work, and I had to pick up the set and shake it to remove the sound. I actually began to build up my arm muscles(肌肉) shaking my set.

       When neither of these methods removed the static noise, I would sit helplessly and wait for the noise to go away. At last I ended up hitting the set with my first, and it stopped working altogether. My trip to the repair shop cost me $62, and the sit is working well now, but I keep expecting more trouble.

    The 4-year-old boy was mentally disabled, unable to speak in complete sentences and unable to play with other children because of his violent fits(发作) of hitting and biting.

    The decision facing one Brooklyn jury（陪审团）was how much a landlord should pay in damages to the boy — named “G.M.M.” in court documents — after an investigation showed he had been living in an apartment illegally coated with lead paint.

    Attorneys（律师） representing G.M.M. said $3.4 million was the right number, arguing that the boy would have had a bright career ahead of him; both of his parents had graduated from college and his mother received a master's degree. But the landlord's defense put the figure at less than half that — $1.5 million. Attorney Roger Archibald noted that because the boy was Hispanic, G.M.M. was unlikely to attain the advanced education that would provide to such a large income.

    The 4-year-old's case is a rare public look at one corner of the American legal system that explicitly uses race and gender to determine how much victims or their families should receive in compensation（赔偿） when they are seriously injured or killed.

    As a result, white and male victims often receive larger awards than people of color and women in similar cases. These differences largely derive from projections of how much more money individuals would have earned over their lifetimes had they not been injured — projections that take into account average earnings and employment levels by race and gender.

    When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you're at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get into a lift, you play with it.

    Cigarettes? Cup of coffee? No, it's the third most addictive（使人上瘾的） thing in modern life, the cell phone. And experts say it is becoming more difficult for many people to curb their wishes to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships.

    With its shiny surface, its smooth and satisfying touch, the cell phone connects us to the world even as it disconnects us from people three feet away. It affects us in ways its inventors in the late 1940s never imagined.

    Dr. Chris Knippers, an expert at the Betty Ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem not much different from other harmful addictions: a barrier to one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality.

    Sounds extreme, but we've all witnessed the evidence: the person at a restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table; the woman who talks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband; the teen who texts messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him. Is it just rude, or is it a kind of unhealthiness? And pardon me, but how is this improving the quality of life?

    Jim Williams, an industrial sociologist based in Massachusetts, he points to a study by Duke University researchers that found one-quarter of Americans say they have no one to discuss their most important personal business with. Despite the growing use of phones, e-mail and instant messaging, in other words, Williams says studies show that we don't have as many friends as our parents. “Just as more information has led to less wisdom, more acquaintances(熟人) through the Internet and cell phones have produced fewer friends,” he says.

    If the cell phone has truly had these effects, it's because it has become very widespread. In 1987, there were only 1 million cell phones in use. Today, almost 300 million Americans carry them. The number of cell phones is far more than that of wired phones in the United States.

    Wouldn't it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the headache of communicating in a different language?

    In a recent Wall Street Journal article, technology policy expert Alec Ross argued that, within a decade or so, we'll be able to communicate with one another via small earpieces with built-in microphones. That's because technological progress is extremely rapid. It's only a matter of time. Indeed, some parents are so convinced that this technology is imminent that they're wondering if their kids should even learn a second language.

    It's true that an increase in the quantity and accuracy of the data loaded into computers will make them cleverer at translating “No es bueno dormir mucho” as “It's not good to sleep too much.” Replacing a word with its equivalent (同义词) in the target language is actually the “easy part” of a translator's job. But even this seems to be a discouraging task for computers.

    It's so difficult for computers because translation doesn't—or shouldn't—involve simply translating words, sentences or paragraphs. Rather, it's about translating meaning. And in order to infer meaning from a specific expression, humans have to interpret a mass of information at the same time.

Think about all the related clues that go into understanding an expression: volume, gesture, situation, and even your culture. All are likely to convey as much meaning as the words you use.

    Therefore, we should be very skeptical of a machine that is unable to interpret the world around us. If people from different cultures can offend each other without realizing it, how can we expect a machine to do better? Unless engineers actually find a way to breathe a soul into a computer, undoubtedly when it comes to conveying and interpreting meaning using a natural language, a machine will never fully take our place.

    She was returning from teaching out in a small community. It was a black, moonless night, and a heavy snow was falling.

    She thought back to the time when she had first started teaching out in small communities. During those days she had always picked up hitchhikers (搭便车者), until the day her sister told her that one of her friends had been shot in the head by a hitchhiker, all because she had stopped out of kindness to help him during a storm.

    Her family didn't stop worrying about her safety over the hitchhikers until the family heard the promise: “No more hitchhikers!” The snow that night was making her think back to this.

    Then she saw a man waving. She slowed down for him, but as he ran toward the car in the dark, she shook with fear. Yet she thought that if he was truly in need, she couldn't leave him here in this storm.

    The stranger explained that his car was dead, and she told him to get in. They drove for an hour into the next city and she took him to a convenience store. She waited until he had made a call. When he reported back to her that a family member would soon come to pick him up, she wished him well and then left.

    Tears fell on her cheeks as she drove away. It felt as though she had been holding her breath for an hour.

    “I hope they'll understand why I had to break my promise,” she thought.

    The impression you make at the beginning of an interview is very important. Employers often decide to hire someone in the first three minutes of the interview. They judge you by your appearance, attitude and manners.

    A friendly smile when you walk into the room is important. A smile shows a confident and positive attitude. When you introduce yourself, make eye contact with the interviewer. Some interviewers offer a handshake. Others don't.

    Try to be as natural as possible. But pay attention to your body language. The way you sit, walk, gesture, use your voice and show feelings on your face is all part of your body language. It makes the interviewer know how you feel about yourself and the situation you are in. Are you feeling positively about yourself？Your abilities? Your interest in the job？

    Speak clearly and loudly enough. Show interest and enthusiasm in your voice. When you speak, look at the interviewer. Also, don't say negative things about yourself, or former employer.

    Listen to questions carefully. If you don't understand a question, ask the interviewer to repeat or explain:

    "I'm sorry, but I didn't catch that."

    "Almost everyone is nervous in a job interview. Interviewers know that. They don't expect you to be totally calm and relaxed. But they expect you to try to control your nervousness. They expect you to show confidence in your ability to do the job.

    At the end of the interview, thank the interviewer for her or his time. It's a good idea to send a short thank-you letter right after the interview, or deliver it by hand.

    Phone the company if you have not heard anything after one week. Ask if they have made a decision about the job.

Good luck!