You are the collector in the gallery of your life. You collect. You might not mean to but you do. One out of three people collects tangible things such as cats, photos and noisy toys.

    These are among some 40 collections that are being shown at “The Museum Of”—the first of several new museums which, over the next two years, will exhibit the objects accumulated（积累）by unknown collectors. In doing so, they will promote（推动）a popular culture of museums, not what museums normally represent(代表).

    Some of the collections are fairly common—records, model houses. Others are strangely beautiful—branches that have fallen from tree, for example. But they all reveal （显露）a lot of things: ask someone what they collect and their answers will tell you who they are.

    Others on the way include “The museum of Collectors” and “The Museum of Me.” These new ones, it is hoped, will build on the success of “The Museum Of.” The thinkers behind the project want to explore why people collect, and what it means to do so. They hope that visitors who may not have considered themselves collectors will begin to see they, too, collect.

    Some collectors say they started or stopped making collections at important points: the beginning or end of adolescence ( 青春期 )—“it's a growing-up thing; you stop when you grow up,” says one. Other painful times are mentioned, such as the end of a relationship.

What's On?

Electric Underground

7:30pm－1:00am   Free at the Cyclops Theatre

    Do you know who's playing in your area? We're bringing you an exciting evening of live rock and pop music from the best local bands. Are you interested in becoming a musician and getting a recording contract (合同)? If so, come early to the talk at 7:30pm by Jules Skye, a successful record producer. He's going to talk about how you can find the right person to produce your music.

Gee Whizz

8:30pm-10:30pm   Comedy at Kaleidoscope

    Come and see Gee Whizz perform. He's the funniest stand-up comedian on the comedy scene. This joyful show will please everyone, from the youngest to the oldest. Gee Whizz really knows how to make you laugh! Our bar is open from 7:00pm for drinks and snacks (快餐).

Simon's Workshop

5:00pm-7:30pm    Wednesdays at Victoria Stage

    This is a good chance for anyone who wants to learn how to do comedy. The workshop looks at every kind of comedy, and practices many different ways of making people laugh. Simon is a comedian and actor who has 10 years' experience of teaching comedy. His workshops are exciting and fun. An evening with Simon will give you the confidence to be funny.

Charlotte Stone

8:00pm-11:00pm Pizza World

    Fine food with beautiful jazz music; this is a great evening out. Charlotte Stone will perform songs from her new best-selling CD, with James Pickering on the piano. The menu is Italian, with excellent meat and fresh fish, pizzas and pasta (面食). Book early to get a table. Our bar is open all day, and serves cocktails, coffee, beer, and white wine.

    In many businesses, computers have largely replaced paperwork, because they are fast, and do not make mistakes. And they are honest. Many banks say that their business is “untouched by human hands” and therefore safe. But they have no thought that the growing number of computer crimes (犯罪) show they can be used to steal.

    Computer criminals (罪犯) don't use guns. And even if they are caught, it is hard to punish them because there is often no proof. A computer cannot remember who used it. It simply does what it is told. The head teller(出纳主管) at a New York City bank used a computer to steal more than one and a half billion dollars in just four years. No one noticed this because he moved the money from one account (账户) to another. Each time a customer whose money he had stolen questioned the balance in his account, the teller said it was a computer mistake, then replaced the missing money from someone else's account. This man was caught at last.

    Some workers use the computer's power to punish their bosses they consider unfair. Recently, a large company fired its computer record assistant for reasons that were connected with her personal life rather than her job. She was given thirty days notice. In those thirty days, she stole all the company's computerized records.

    Most computer criminals have been common workers. Now police wonder if this is “the tip of iceberg”. As one official says, “I have the feeling that there is more crime out there than we are catching. What we are seeing now is all so poorly done. I wonder what the real experts are doing—the ones who really know a computer works.”

    For thousands of years, people thought of glass as something beautiful to look at. Only in large glass windows. Glass bottles and jars that hold food and drink allow us to see the contents. Glass is used to make eyeglasses, microscopes, telescopes, and many other extremely useful and necessary things.

    Until the Second World War, most of the glass used for optical (光学的) instruments was imported from Europe. However, during the war Americans could not get European glass, and they were forced to make their own. Therefore, new kinds of glass were developed that had been previously unknown. These new effects were achieved by mixing other chemical elements with the sand. Some of the new glass is very strong and can resist many kinds of shocks. Legend (传说) has it that a kind of very hard glass was invented by a Roman who showed his discovery to the Emperor. When the Emperor saw the glass he feared that it would become more valuable than gold and sliver, making his treasure worthless. Therefore, he had the glass-maker killed, and the secret was not discovered again for hundreds of years.

    In the present century, safety glass was invented for use in modem cars and planes. Safety glass is made by placing a layer of plastic between two layers of plate glass. When the outside layer of glass is broken, the pieces do not scatter (散开) and injure people. Some glass of the type is strong enough to resist bullets (子弹).

    Although nowadays plastics have replaced glass under conditions where glass might be easily broken, there are new uses being developed, for the greatest advantage of glass is that its component (组成的) parts are inexpensive and can be found all over the world.

Tips for Writing Short Stories

    I was reading an article with David Vann's top tips for writing short stories -- he is a published writer, his most famous book being, "Legends of a Suicide." First of all he stats that there are no rules, but if he were forced to create rules for short stores, then they would be something like the following.

    He says there is no room for anything that is not related to the protagonist -- the main character of the story -- or indeed the problem of the protagonist. He makes it clear that the protagonist must have a problem, and this problem must divide the protagonist: he doesn't know what he is going to do to solve the problem. There is no point, then, in having a short story about a man who says he is hungry and then just goes to the shops to buy food. Nothing exciting happens. But if the man is hungry and he has a child who is hungry, then he has a problem; who does he give the food to?

    There should also be an antagonist, that is, somebody who works against the protagonist. The antagonist should ideally have the same problem as the protagonist but will have a totally different way of looking at it. This presents the possibility of having battles in the short story.

    Furthermore, the antagonist and the protagonist must know each other. But because they are viewing the same problem from different angles, they will probably drive each other crazy.

    Finally, the short story has to acknowledge a change in the protagonist. We must then, as a reader, see how the character will continue their life differently as a result of the events of the story. There is no point in going back to the beginning; the short story is a waste of time if nothing actually happens that is significant.

    It is very hard to create a character whom a reader cares about and a plot that a reader is interested in with just a few hundred words. But it is possible: Edgar Allen Poe, Anton Chekhov, and JG Ballard -- amongst many others -- have proved repeatedly that short stores can be little pieces of perfection. The best don't just see the protagonist change; they see the reader change, too.

    The Chinese invented paper in 105 A. D. They mixed the bark of a tree and rags (破布) with water, put a screen into the mixture, and lifted out a thin piece of wet paper. They dried the paper in the sun.

    The Chinese kept their secret of how to make paper until a war with Muslims in the ninth century. The art of papermaking soon spread throughout the Muslim world.

    The Mayan Indians in Central America and Pacific Islanders also discovered how to make paper, but their knowledge never spread to the rest of the world.

    For centuries, all paper was made by hand. Rags were the main material. Then a French scientist discovered that people could make paper from wood, too. Finally, in the eighteenth century, a Frenchman invented a machine to make paper from wood.