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 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 you 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.

    All animals produce waste. We call it "waste," but we all know it can be very useful. In some parts of the world, animal waste, or poop, is collected, dried, and burned for cooking and heating. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} 

    The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Center has an unusual way of using animal "waste." The center's 40 pandas produce about two tons of poop a day. This material is being turned into a new product called Panda Poop Paper. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} After all, paper is made from plant fiber, which cannot be digested and simply goes through the body as waste.

    Since pandas eat nothing but bamboo, their "waste" is perfect paper material. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} 

    Their stomachs haven't fully developed for their vegetarian diet, so their bodies make use of just 20% of what they eat. The other 80% comes out as poop: very high in fiber and perfect for paper.

    Once the poop is collected, it is cleaned with chemicals, crushed(碾碎), and put into frames(框架) to dry. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Because of its good quality as well as the worldwide popularity of the panda, gift products made from the paper sell well.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} They got the idea from the elephant dung(大象粪) paper made at Elephant Conservation Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand. And Creative Paper Wales in the U.K. sell paper gifts made from sheep waste.

A. But do you know some paper from poop?

B. Where does the paper come from?

C. After these steps, good, strong paper comes into being.

D. Moreover, there is more special about pandas.

E. It's not really that strange!

F. Yet, the Chinese weren't the first people producing paper from animal waste.

G. Farmers have been using animal and human waste for a long time.

    A global cyberattack, which is considered the biggest cyberattack ever, is spreading quickly and widely.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    What the attack does

    Cyber bad guys have spread ransomware(勒索软件), known as WannaCry, to computers around the world. It locks down all the files on an infected computer. The hackers then demand $300 in order to release control of the files.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    How it happened

    WannaCry takes advantage of a vulnerability(弱点) in Microsoft Windows. Microsoft released a security patch for the vulnerabilities in Marclf. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Playing with fire finally caught up with the victims.

    Microsoft requires Windows 10 customers to automatically update their computers, but some people with older PCs disabled automatic updates.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    The attack has been found in 150 countries, affecting 200,000 computers, according to Europol, the European law enforcement agency. FedEx, Nissan, and the United Kingdom's National Health Service were among the victims. In the U.K., hospitals were crippled by the cyberattack, which forced operations to be canceled and ambulances to be diverted.

    Who is vulnerable

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}Microsoft said it had taken the "highly unusual step" of releasing a patch for computers running older operating systems including Windows XP, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2003. So even people with older computers should update them.

    Apple's Mac computers were not targeted by this ransomware attack. Bad guys generally target Windows far more than Apple's operating system because there are vastly more computers running Windows around the world.

A. When it will be solved

B. How widespread the damage is

C. That's why it's called ransomware.

D. The hackers remain anonymous for now.

E. Here is a super-simple explanation of what's going on.

F. Anyone who hasn't updated their windows PC recently is easy to attack.

G. But many corporations don't automatically update their systems.

    Grown-ups are often surprised by how well they remember something they learned as children but have never practiced ever since. A man who has not had a chance to go swimming for years can still swim as well as ever when he gets back in the water. He can get on a bicycle after many years and still ride away. He can play catch and hit a ball as well as his son. A mother who has not thought about the words for years can teach her daughter the poem that begins “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” or remember the story of Cinderella or Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

    One explanation is the law of overlearning, which can be stated as follows: Once we have learned something, additional learning experiences increase the length of time we will remember it.

    In childhood we usually continue to practice such skills as swimming, bicycle riding, and playing baseball long after we have learned them. We continue to listen to and remind ourselves of words such as “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” and childhood tales such as Cinderella and Goldilocks. We not only learn but overlearn.

    The multiplication tables (乘法口诀表) are an exception to the general rule that we forget rather quickly the things that we learn in school, because they are another of the things we overlearn in childhood.

    The law of overlearning explains why cramming (突击学习) for an examination, though it may result in a passing grade, is not a satisfactory way to learn a college course. By cramming, a student may learn the subject well enough to get by on the examination, but he is likely soon to forget almost everything he learned. A little overlearning, on the other hand, is really necessary for one's future development.

    For many students who desire to move around but not far freely, one of the most common vehicles is the bicycle. For such a seemingly simple invention, its story is not that simple.

    Most historians trace its origin back to 1817, when a German nobleman named Karl von Drais invented a wooden, two­wheeled machine that riders moved forward with their feet. His invention became popular in both England and France, where it eventually became known as the velocipede. Unfortunately, it was eventually banned as a danger to pedestrians and was rarely seen after the early 1820s.

    Things were quiet for several decades until the bicycle development took off in the 1860s. An important milestone happened in Paris in 1863 when pedals were added to the front axle (轴). This occurred in Pierre Michaux's workshop, but it's unclear whether he or his employee, Pierre Lallement, should be given credit for the innovation Lallement moved to the United States, where he obtained a patent for "improvements in velocipedes" in 1866. These new machines proved to be popular, and the name "bicycle" had come into use by 1869. However, many people referred to them as "bone shakers", which described their clunky ride due to a heavy wooden frame and steel wheels.

    In the 1870s, "high wheelers" or "penny­farthings" became popular. However, with a large front wheel and a much smaller rear wheel, they could be dangerous, if riders had to stop suddenly, as they would "take a header" when their momentum (动量) carried them over the front wheel onto their heads. Eventually, English inventor John Kemp Starley designed a "safety bicycle" with two same small wheels, a chain drive, and a set of gears. With tires added in and brake systems bettered in the following decades, bicycle production had skyrocketed to over one million bicycles by 1899.

    Mass production of bicycles increased their popularity greatly, since they became affordable for the average person. Over the course of the 20th century, manufacturers continued to improve the features and design of bicycles as new technologies appeared.

    You have probably heard the saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Lemons are considered not tasty while lemonade is considered sweet. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    But when something bad happens, it's common for most people to complain about life, " Why me?" That's like getting a bag of lemons and thinking, "Lemons taste bad! I just want chocolate!" {#blank#}2{#/blank#} But what if you did something with them? What if you made lemonade? Isn't it possible to do something similar in a bad situation?

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Let's say you're about to go to the movies, but you discover you have a flat tire(瘪了的轮胎). You consider this a terrible thing. After all, you're really looking forward to spending some time with your favorite film stars. Now you're very worried, hating the tire, the car, and your life. But what if you called AAA(美国汽车协会) to get your tire fixed or caught up on things that you' d been meaning to do? {#blank#}4{#/blank#} A bad experience can be turned into something good. Almost everything can work itself out into something better. You can't change what has happened, right? So make the best of it. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} The easy thing to do is to be disappointed about what has happened and not consider what it could be turned into.

    Next time when some bad things happen, stop and think, "How can I turn this around? How can I make it a positive experience?"