When US musician Bob Dylan was announced as the winner of this year's Nobel Prize for literature last month, many people took to social media to suggest that Leonard Cohen was the only other living songwriter who deserved(值得)the honor.

    Sadly, on Nov 7, the deep-voiced Canadian artist died at the age of 82.

    Many tributes(称赞)were written for Cohen, who had just released his 14th album, You Want It Darker, on Oct 21st. “Leonard Cohen is as important today as he was in the 1960s,” Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on in a statement. “ His ability to describe human emotion made him one of the most influential and lasting musicians ever.”

    Cohen's most famous song, Hallenlujah, in which he compared physical love to a need for spiritual connection, has been recorded hundreds of times by different musician since it was first released in 1984.

    And Cohen's song Bird on a Wire(1969) could be considered a perfect epitaph(墓志铭)that he wrote for himself. As the song's first line goes, “Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in midnight choir(合唱团), I have tired in my way to be free.”

    “Cohen writes words that explain what it means to be human. I've read poetry that has as much beauty as Cohen's work, but in the world of music, Cohen is a rarity,” US singer Jennifer Warnes told Austin American-Statesman newspaper. ‘He describes things that go on inside a heart and what it feels like to be here.”

    Along with his spirituality, Cohen's dry, deep voice also helped his popularity. In 2006 he spoke with the NPR radio station about how he got his interesting voice—apparently it was “500 tons of whiskey and a million cigarettes.”

    But he never forgot to work on the instruments that made up his songs, even though he was most famous for his lyrics (歌词)and voice.

    “There is no difference between a poem and a song,” Cohen said in 1969 interview with the New York Times newspaper. “Some were songs first and some were poems first and some were written at the same time. All of my writing has guitars behind it, even the novels.”

    “When people talk about Cohen, they fail to mention the melodies(旋律), which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius,” Bob Dylan told the New York magazine.” They give a lift to every one of his songs. As far a I know, no one comes close to this in modern music.”

    Before discussing different kinds of emotions,let us briefly talk about how researchers measure bodily processes and action or behavior,and how this relates to what we do in our daily lives when we observe emotions in others.

    Bodily processes can be directly measured by means of a polygraph.When a polygraph is skillfully used to compare how we react bodily with what we are saying,it is called a “lie detector”.Bodily processes can also be measured indirectly.This is what we do when we observe someone blushing (脸红).However,we are not always aware of what bodily processes respond to.

    Measuring action or behavior is the other way researchers assess the emotions.For example,one measure of fear of snakes is how close a person will go to the snake.Another procedure is to have a person tell how afraid he is,or how he feels.In this way,researchers have developed the so－called “fear thermometer” to assess a person's fear.In our everyday living,we do very much the same thing.Only not too systematically,we react to what a person does, what he says,how he says it,and how he looks.Is he smiling? Is his voice trembling? We put all this observations together to infer what a person is feeling.

    However, we do not always act as we feel.Sometimes we do things that we don't feel like doing.Sometimes we say we feel one way and then we act another.Actors,for example,successfully learn to “make believe” emotions,or learn to hide them.Thus we cannot always tell what a person is feeling by what he says or by what he does.

George Gershwin, born in 1998, was one of America's greatest composers. He published his first song when he was eighteen years old. During the next twenty years he wrote more than five hundred songs.

Many of Gershwin's songs were first written for musical plays performed in theatres in New York City. These plays were a popular form of entertainment in the 1920s and 1930s. Many of his songs have remained popular as ever. Over the years they have been sung and played in every possible way — from jazz to country.

    In the 1920s there was a debate in the United States about jazz music. Could jazz, some people asked, be considered serious music? In 1924 jazz musician and orchestra leader Paul Whiteman decided to organize a special concert to show that jazz was serious music. Gershwin agreed to compose something for the concert before he realized he had just a few weeks to do it. And in that short time, he composed a piece for piano and orchestra which he called Rhapsody in Blue. Gershwin himself played the piano at the concert. The audience were thrilled when they heard his music. It made him world-famous and showed that jazz music could be both serious and popular.

    In 1928, Gershwin went to Paris. He applied to study composition (作曲)with the well-known musician Nadia Boulanger, but she rejected him. She was afraid that classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style. While there, Gershwin wrote An American in Paris. When it was first performed, critics (评论家)were divided over the music. Some called it happy and full of life, to others it was silly and boring. But it quickly became popular in Europe and the United States. It still remains one of his most famous works.

    George Gershwin died in 1937, just days after doctors learned he had brain cancer. He was only thirty-nine years old. Newspapers all over the world reported his death on their front pages. People mourned the loss of the man and all the music he might have still written.

    Fun day

    To celebrate the Year of the Dog

    Organized by Lam Tin Youth Centre and Kwun Tong High school

    Date：2 February 2018

    Time：10 am – 5 pm

    Place：Kwn Tong Playground

    Fee: $ 20 (buy three get one free)

    Programmes：drama, lion dance, magic show and ballet performance

    Highlights: 1) enter the lucky draw to win a digital camera

    2) learn to make festival food

    Join us on the Fun day! Free Soft Drinks

    All are welcome!

    Note:

    Ticket are available at the General Office of Lam Tin Youth Centre.

    For those who would like to be a volunteer, please contact Miss Olivia Wong one week before the activity.

On August 1, 2023, new rules went into effect in the United States thạt make it against the law to sell most incandescent (白炽的) light bulbs.

Incandescent light bulbs have been common since the late 1800s. They use electricity to create light by heating a metal wire, which glows. Over 90% of the electricity used by the bulbs goes into making heat — not light.

Since 2005, countries around the world have been banning incandescent bulbs. That's what's happening in the US. The new rules don't actually make incandescent bulbs illegal. They just say that light bulbs that are sold must be able to create a certain amount of light (45 lumens) with a certain amount of energy (l watt). Most incandescent bulbs can only create about 15 lumen s with I watt.

These days, the best way to replace incandescent bulbs is with LED light bulbs. These bulbs can create about 75 lumens with 1 watt of electricity. And they can last 25 or more times longer than incandescent bulbs.

Though the rule just took effect at the beginning of August, it was first created in 2007. Since then, the rule has been delayed many times, usually for political reasons. In the early 2000s, LED bulbs cost more money than they do today, and weren't nearly as good. But in recent years, people have been switching over to LED lights, even without the rule. The lights have become more and more popular, since they use less energy and save people money by lasting longer.

The new rules will also help the environment. Over the next 30 years, LED bulbs are expected to help prevent a huge amount of pollution in the US — about as much as would be used by 28 million homes in one year. That will be an imperative step in tackling the climate crisis.