Woman Uses Daughter's Key to "Steal" Car

    Charlie Vansant, a college student of Athens, Ohio, who reported that his car was stolen, got a surprise when he learned a woman had mistaken it for her daughter's car and taken it — using her key.

    Kate Anderson became an accidental car thief when picking up her daughter's car near an Ohio University building last week. Anderson spotted the Toyota Camry（丰田凯美瑞）and used her daughter's key to unlock the car, start the engine and drive home — without realizing that the car wasn't her daughter's.

    When Charlie Vansant left class a short time later, he found only an empty parking spot. He first assumed the car had been towed, but when the police couldn't find a record of it, they took a theft(偷窃) report.

    The morning after Anderson took the car, her daughter discovered the Camry in the driveway wasn't hers. Anderson said she was able to find Vansant's name on paperwork in the glove compartment and look up his phone number on the website for the university.

    When Anderson told Charlie the car was in her driveway, "It sounded really suspicious at first, as she wanted to hold the thing for ransom (赎金) , ” said Vansant. He eventually went to the house with a police officer, where he was reunited with his car. According to the police report, the case was closed "because of mistaken car identity", and Anderson wasn't charged.

    Vansant seemed to blame the car company more than the "thief". "Her key fit not only my lock, but my ignition（点火装置）as well — so high-five for Toyota, I guess." he said.

    Telepathy (心灵感应) is the ability to communicate without the use of the five senses. It's an instinct (本能) which can be woken up in times of emergency or need. When we feel that something is happening or about to happen by instinct，we're using resources within the unconscious (潜意识的) mind. When the resources of two persons' unconscious minds link together into the same frequency (频率)，we call it telepathy.

    We can either send or receive telepathy. If you know who is calling before you answer the ringing phone，you are probably a good receiver. If you think of a person and he/she calls you，you are most likely to be better at sending.

    You can easily put your ability to the test. Thinking of somebody and wish him or her to contact you. Be patient. The other person may not be a good receiver，but they should contact you much earlier than would normally be expected. Or whenever the phone rings，try ‘feeling' who is contacting you. Don't guess，but try to feel it with your mind. However，if neither of these works for you，that doesn't mean that you have no ability of telepathy. As mentioned earlier，telepathy is most likely to turn up in case of emergency.

    Telepathy dreams often contain telepathic messages. Two people may both dream of the other and find that their dreams have a clear connection. These people are probably linking to each other's unconscious mind.

    Telepathy & relationship. The more people spend time together，the more likely they are to be able to link up to the other's mind，especially when separated. There are two reasons for this. One is that they understand the other's mind through time spent together；the other is that there is usually a strong desire to communicate. A mother will often sense that her child is in danger. This is due to the child's eagerly wanting his or her mother，knowing that this is the person who would always want to be there for them，and the mother's deep desire to protect her child from harm.

    The baby is just one day old and has not yet left hospital. She is quiet but alert (警觉的). Twenty centimeters from her face researchers have placed a white card with two black spots on it. She stares at it carefully. A researcher removes the card and replaces it by another, this time with the spots differently spaced. As the cards change from one to the other, her gaze(凝视) starts to lose its focus—until a third, with three black spots, is presented. Her gaze returns: she looks at it for twice as long as she did at the previous card. Can she tell that the number two is different from three, just 24 hours after coming into the world?

    Or do newborns simply prefer more to fewer? The same experiment, but with three spots shown before two, shows the same return of interest when the number of spots changes. Perhaps it is just the newness? When slightly older babies were shown cards with pictures of objects (a comb, a key, an orange and so on), changing the number of objects had an effect separate from changing the objects themselves. Could it be the pattern that two things make, as opposed to three? No again. Babies paid more attention to squares moving randomly(随意地)on a screen when their number changed from two to three, or three to two. The effect even crosses between senses. Babies who were repeatedly shown two spots became more excited when they then heard three drumbeats than when they heard just two; likewise(同样地) when the researchers started with drumbeats and moved to spots.

    Peter Damon produces about 30 paintings a year and sells them for between US$250 and US$1,500. That's not enough to make ends meet, but it has made him whole again. He lost both arms in an accident.

    "Having this skill that even normal people find difficult was something that really helped me and made me feel like I fit in more in the world," Damon said.

    He was a worker in a car factory. One day when he was working, there was a gas explosion (爆炸), killing one worker and injuring him.

    "I lost my right arm above the elbow, about three inches above the elbow, and my left about six inches below," he explained.

    "How am I going to make a living and take care of my family? I had always worked with my hands," he said.

    Then with a simple little drawing, a new future opened up for him.

    "I thought it was wonderful in a way," Damon said. "Something was telling me to focus on this and everything will be alright." Damon doesn't have a perfect prosthetic arm (假肢)—just a hook (钩子), which he finds works best.

He and his wife Jen run True Grit Art Gallery in Middleboro, Massachusetts, where he shows the works of local artists. With his disability check from the government, he can afford to be an artist. He is a man doing what he wants with his life, and doesn't look at his situation as a hard time.

    "I don't see it that way," Damon said. "Suffering an injury like this has a way of making you focus on what's important in life."

    He believes his best work is still ahead of him. But with his pictures of simple American scenes, Damon has already produced his best work.

Why does rain seem to make you sleepy?

This spring on the east coast of the US, it feels like we've lost touch with the sun. In Washington, DC, 14 of the first 17 days of May were rainy. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} It means that, for me, May has been one of the months I've felt the sleepiest. The dull weather can hit almost all of our senses in a way that gives a sign to us it is time for a sleep.

First, there's what we see—or rather, what we don't. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} When it's raining and skies are cloudy, we miss out on our body's internal alarm clock. As Naomi, a scientist from Central Queensland University said, when you don't see the sunlight first thing in the morning, your body never gets the signal that it needs to shift into daytime mode.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Plants produce oils during dry periods, possibly to stop seeds from developing. When it rains, the water brings out the oils and they mix with a chemical to create a "musky" smell. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Additionally, after a thunderstorm there's a chance you may smell ozone(臭氧), which is generated when lightning interacts with the air. Some compare its smell to that of clean bed sheets.

Rain sounds are also comforting. The rhythmic pattern of rain hitting a roof, umbrella, or the ground below is called "pink noise." Pink noise is a category of background noise that has all of the frequencies that human can hear and has lower volumes at higher frequencies. According to some research, it may improve our quality of sleep by decreasing our brain activity.  {#blank#}5{#/blank#}.

The difficulty in waking up, the fresh, earthy scents, and the peace of the rain tapping on windows are enough to make anyone want to go back to bed for the day. Sadly, none of this evidence is enough to justify doing so; but it can at least explain why you may feel a little sleepy on these cloudy days. 

A. Noises can make us feel sleepier during the daytime.

B. The others have been cloudy and dull for at least part of the day.

C. The earthy smell of rain can make you feel calm and comfortable.

D. It makes it easier for us to wake up from our sleep the night before.

E. Sunlight causes our bodies to stop producing what makes us sleepy at night.

F. And you'll also smell that when you are in your garden turning over your soil.

G. You can listen to an hour of rain on a window here, if you intend to test it out.

Music is all around us. It's an accessible and popular art form which accompanies our daily lives. Advertisers have long understood the popularity and emotional power of music and capitalized on it. They spend much time and money securing the right soundtrack (配乐) for an advertisement in order to boost sales. For example, Microsoft spent a reported US$3 million using Start Me Up as part of their advertising campaign for Windows 95.

As one researcher puts it, "Music expands pictures and colors words, and often adds a form of energy available through no other source." This is supported by other studies, which suggest that music matching the main message of an advertisement has a positive effect on consumer engagement. This is known as "musical congruity" and can result in better attention, a positive emotional response, finally improving the effectiveness of an advertisement.

Take the simple but interesting advertisement for Air France, with the soundtrack of Mozart's Piano Concerto No.23, for example. It projects greatness and elegance in the hope that viewers will associate those qualities with the airline. The research, which looked at hundreds of viewer comments about the music used in advertising, suggested it was successful.

Music is also effective at arousing (唤醒) emotional memories in advertisements creates associations with consumers' past experiences. A good choice of music allows businesses to tap into this nostalgia for commercial benefit.

However, the use of popular music in advertising can also arouse arguments between artistic effort and commercialism. Some people believe a work of art shouldn't be used for the pursuit of profit. The findings of study showed that consumers sometimes passionately oppose the use of music produced by respected musicians in advertisements, as they believe that it destroys the aesthetic integrity (美学完整性). For example, Nike's use of the Beatles' song Revolution was seen by some as using John Lennon's music to sell shoes. It made some Nike wearers so angry that they refused to buy the products.