The following is a true story. It shows that potential(可能性,潜力) discovered may lead to success.

    A young man traveled by train. As it was running across a 1 passengers looked out of 2 idly and aimlessly. When the train came near a bend it 3 and then an unadorned (简陋的)house came into 4. It was so obvious 5 the deserted landscape that everybody on the train turned to " 6 " it with eyes wide open. Some passengers 7 began a discussion about it.

    The young man was also 8 by the scene. On his return he 9 the train at the nearest station and found his 10 to the house. Its  11 told him that troubled by the 12 of the train he wanted to sell the house but 13would buy it.

    Soon after the young man 14thirty thousand dollars for the house, regarding it as a 15 site for advertisement. It was facing the railway 16 where the train had to slow down and the 17 passengers would cast their eyes at the house to 18 themselves.

    He managed to get 19 to big companies and tried his best to convince them of the advantage of the place for 20 . Finally the Coca Cola Company took a lease on(租用) it to put up promotion signs. The young man was paid 180 thousand for a three year rent.

    The plan: turn Mars into a blue world with streams and green fields, and then fill it with creatures (生物) from the earth. This idea may sound like something from a science fiction (科幻小说), but it is actually being taken seriously by many researchers.

    This suggested future for the "red planet" will be the main topic for discussion at an international conference hosted by NASA (美国宇航局) this week. Leading researchers as well as science fiction writers will attend the event. It comes as NASA is preparing a multi billion dollar Mars research programme. "Turning Mars into a little earth has long been a topic in science fiction," said Dr Michael Meyer, NASA's senior scientist for astrobiology (太空生物学). "Now, with scientists exploring the reality, we can ask what are the real possibilities of changing Mars."

    Most scientists agree that Mars could be turned into a little earth, although much time and money would be needed to achieve this goal.

    But many experts are shocked by the idea. "We are destroying our own world at an unbelievable speed and now we are talking about ruining another planet," said Paul Murdin, of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK. Over the past months, scientists have become increasingly confident they will find Martian life forms. Europe and America's robot explorers have found proof that water, mixed with soil, exists in large amounts on the planet.

    In addition, two different groups of scientists announced on March 28 that they had found signs of methane (甲烷) in the Martian atmosphere (大气). The gas is a waste product of living creatures and could be produced by microbes (微生物) living in the red planet's soil.

    But scientists such as Dr Lisa Pratt, a biologist at Indiana University, say that these microbes will be put in danger by the little earth project. "Before we have even discovered if there is life on Mars, we are talking about carrying out projects that would destroy all these native life forms, all the strange microbes that we hope to find buried in the soil," said Dr Pratt. This view is shared by Monica Grady, a planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum, London. "We cannot risk starting a global experiment that would wipe out the precious information we are looking for." she said, "This is just wrong."

    My topic today is the Internet. It was prompted(引出)by the first letter, which I am unable to answer fully for the reasons given!

    Dear David, I am a middle school student. Now I am preparing for a writing competition. Could you please check the mistakes in my article about using the Internet and give me some advice? Thank you.

    No name

    David writes: I am very sorry to say that I think it would be very unfair for me to help you win a competition — unfair to the other competitors!

    But I will say that your article is very interesting and I wish you good luck. Your article makes some good points that deserve talking about in this column!

    Dear David,

    I'm now learning English by myself. Can you introduce some useful websites where I can make friends with foreigners? Please help me.

    Moonlight

    David writes: Well, dear moonlight, I bet you made a good choice by using the Net in your self-studies. Two very good websites I would suggest to you are: www.britishcouncil.org.cn and www.britishcouncil.org /learnenglish.

    By the way, for those readers interested in the teaching of English, there is an Internet discussion group called ELTCSChi-L (English Language Teaching Contacts Scheme China List).And also, a healthy warning to all my readers: If over-used, the Internet can be a WOMBAT-A Waste of Money, Brains and Time!

    Norah had a cottage on a cliff above a big bay. In winter it could be very nasty because of strong winds and sea spray. In fact, when a gale was blowing, Norah and her husband got used to sleeping in a small room downstairs, because their bedroom upstairs, which faced the gales, had a very big window, and they were afraid that an extra violent gust might break it and blow pieces of broken glass over them.

    Also, the salt spray from the sea put an end to many of the colourful plants Norah planted in her garden. She tried putting up a fence to protect them, but the wind just hit it, went up over the top and then down the other side, so in the end she filled the garden with trees and bushes that liked salt.

    But most of the summer Norah enjoyed her cottage and garden very much. At weekends she could sit our of doors in the sun, looking at the beautiful view, with interesting ships and boats passing by, and she could very easily cycle down to the sea for a swim.

    Now, Norah and her husband had plenty of friends and relations. In the summer lots of them used to come to enjoy the beautiful place, and in the end it really became quite annoying for Norah and her husband. When they were at home, they found friends and relations arriving, expecting to be given unlimited drinks and meals, and to sit in the sun for hours, talking as if Norah and her husband had nothing else to do but entertain and listen to them.

    This went on for several years. Norah did not wish to appear rude by refusing to let her friends and relations in, but on the other hand, she was getting tired every summer.

    Then one day Norah was complaining about this to her hairdresser while she was doing her hair. "You're disturbed by too many uninvited guests, are you?" said the hairdresser. "Why don't you try my way of escaping?"

    "What's that?" asked Norah.

    "Well," the hairdresser answered, "when the bell rings, I put on my coat and take my shopping bag. If it's someone I don't want to see, I say innocently, 'I'm sorry, but I've got to go out.' But..."

    Email has brought the art of letter writing back to life, but some experts think the resulting spread of bad English does more harm than good.

    Email is a form of communication that is changing, for the worse, the way we write and use language, say some communication researchers. It is also changing the way we interact(交流) and build relationship. These are a few of recently recognized features of email, say experts, that should cause individual and organizations to rethink the way they use email.

    "Email has increased the spread of careless writing habits, "says Naomi Baron, a professor of linguistics at American University. She says the poor spelling, grammar, punctuation(标点符号) and sentence structure of emails reflect a growing unconcern to the way we write.

    Baron argues that we should not forgive and forget the poor writing often shown in emails. "The more we use email and its tasteless writing, the more it becomes the normal way of writing," the professor says.

    Others say that despite its poor prose(文字), email has finished what several generations of English teachers couldn't: it has made writing fashionable again.

    "Email is a critical new communication technology," says Ian Lancashire, a University of Toronto professor of English." It fills the gap between spoken language and the formal methods of writing that existed before email. It is the purest form of written speech."

    Lancashire says email has the mysterious ability to get people who are scared by writing to get their thoughts flowing easily onto a blank screen. He says this is because of email's close similarity to speech." It's like a circle of four or five people around a campfire," he says.

    Still, he accepts that this new found freedom to express themselves often gets people into trouble. "Almost everyday I get emails that apologies of previous emails," he reports.

    In the US, the number of emails sent in a day exceeds(超过) the number of letters mailed in a year. But more people are recognizing the content of a typical email message is not often exact.

    Happy birthday! Do birthdays really make people happy? Of course they do. Birthdays celebrate the day we were born. Besides, that extra candle on the cake suggests another year of growth and maturity (成熟)— or so we hope. We all like to imagine that we're getting wiser and not just older. Most of us enjoy seeing the miracle(奇迹) of growth in others, as well. For instance, seeing our children develop and learn new things makes us feel proud. For Americans, like people in most cultures, growing up is a wonderful process(过程). But growing old? That's a different story.

    Growing old is not exactly pleasant for people in youth-oriented(以年轻人为中心) American culture. Most Americans like to look young,act young and feel young. As the old saying goes, "You're as young as you feel." Older people joke about how many years young they are, rather than how many years old. People in some countries value the aged as a source of experience and wisdom. But Americans seem to favor those that are young, or at least "young at heart."

    Many older Americans find the "golden years" to be anything but golden. Economically, "senior citizens" often struggle just to get by. Retirement(退休) at age 65 brings a sharp decrease in personal income. Social security(安全) benefits usually cannot make up the difference. Older people may suffer from poor nutrition(营养), medical care and housing. Some even experience age discrimination. In 1987, American sociologist Pat Moore dressed up like an older person and wandered city streets. She was often treated rudely — even cheated and robbed. However, dressed as a young person, she received much more respect.

    Unfortunately, the elderly population in America is increasing fast. Why? People are living longer. Fewer babies are being born. And middle-aged "baby boomers" are rapidly entering the groups of the elderly. America may soon be a place where wrinkles(皱纹) are "in". Marketing experts are already noticing this growing group of consumers.

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