【推荐2】Max Vernon Mathews has been called the father of computer music. He created electronic tools so that people could use computers as musical instruments. He had a huge influence on the development of electronic music and how it is written, recorded and played.

In 1957, Max Mathews wrote the first computer program that enabled a computer to create sound and play it back. At the time, he was working as an engineer at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. His computer program was called Music. It enabled a large IBM computer to play a seventeen-second piece of music that he had written.

The computer was so slow that it would have taken an hour to play the piece of music in seventeen seconds. For that reason, Mathews moved the work to a tape player, which could be sped up to play the music at a normal speed. He later said that the sound quality of the musical notes was not great, but the technical importance of the music was huge.

The science fiction writer Arthur C.Clarke visited Bell Laboratories in the 1960s. He heard a computer “sing” the song “Daisy Bell” on devices and programs developed by Max Mathews and other engineers. Clarke noted this technology in his book 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was later made into a movie.

Mathews continued creating other versions of the Music program. He became interested in how computers could help musicians outside recording studios. The Groove program he developed was the first computer program made for live performances. He also developed an electronic device he called the Radio Baton. The device looks like two drum sticks. It enables the user to control the speed and sound levels of orchestral music played on a computer. The user does this by moving the two sticks on a special electronic surface.

Max Mathews believed modern musicians are not making full use of the power of computer music. He said a violin always sounds like a violin. But with a computer, the way a violin sounds is unlimited. He said he did not want computer sounds to replace live music. But he said he hoped laptop computers would one day be considered serious instruments.

【推荐3】While waiting in bus stations, airports or parks, some people are busy with a friendly conversation, and others read newspapers, comics (漫画), novels and pocket books. That was many years ago.

Today everyone uses smartphones, desktop PCs and laptops at home, work and school. Exactly, it improves our communication, social media, entertainment and provides convenience to work. The computers, Internet, and smartphones have become part of our everyday life.

However, the publishing houses suffer terrible losses, and the comics industry is out of business, for everyone goes dependent on digital gadget (小玩意).

Especially in the COVID-19 times, the sales (销售) of PC, laptops and gadgets suddenly went up quickly. Because of health safety problems, people chose to shop online. Moreover, education happens through Online Distance Learning, which forced parents to buy desktops and smartphones. Yet behind the benefits and use of these modern gadgets is a sad reality. Many students lose the face-to-face conversation power, skills in public speaking, and social skills.

Another problem is health. The young generation today spends so much time on gadgets inside homes. They don’t live the traditional healthy outdoor life. The result is eyesight problems and enjoying very little sunlight.

For workers, too much exposure to video call meetings has damaged their health. What’s more, many of us are expected to continue working at home.

Modern information technology (IT) has really affected our way of life. In the COVID-19 times, these products of modern technology have protected us from public exposure and direct interaction with people. However, its continuous use can also harm people’s health and interest. Thus, we should take control of IT application in our life and not allow IT to endanger our health and safety.

【推荐1】Mona Lisa, the mysterious woman in Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th century masterpiece, had just given birth to her second son when she sat for the painting, a French art expert said on Tuesday. The discovery was made by a team of Canadian scientists who used special infrared(红外线) and three-dimensional(三维的) technology to study the paint layers on the work, which now sits in the Louvre museum in Paris.

Bruno Mottin of the French Museums’ Center for Research and Restoration said that on very close examination of the painting it became clear that the Mona Lisa’s dress was covered in a thin transparent gauze veil.(透明面纱).

“This type of gauze dress was typical of the kind worn in early 16th century Italy by women who were pregnant or who had just given birth. This is something that had never been seen up to now because the painting was always judged to be dark and difficult to examine,” he told a news conference.

“We can now say that this painting by Leonardo da Vinci was painted in memory of the birth of the second son of Mona Lisa, which helps us to date it more precisely to around 1503.” The young woman with the ambiguous half smile has been identified as Lisa Gherardini, wife of Florentine merchant Francesco de Giocondo. She had five children.

“People always wrote that Mona Lisa had allowed her hair to hang freely over her shoulders. This greatly surprised historians because letting your hair hang freely during the Renaissance was typical of young girls and women of poor virtue(美德)” he said.

The team had hoped to discover more details about Leonardo’s painting techniques, which the artist used to create a hazy(朦胧的)effect. But scientist John Taylor said the team had been disappointed by the lack of brush stroke(笔触)detail on the painting.

【推荐2】What is the place of art in a culture of inattention? Recent visitors to the Louvre report that tourists can now spend only a minute in front of the Mona Lisa before being asked to move on. Much of that time, for some of them, is spent taking photographs not even of the painting but of themselves with the painting in the background.

One view is that we have made tourism and gallery-going so easy that we have made it effectively impossible to appreciate what we’ve travelled to see. In this society, experience becomes goods like any other. There are queues to climb Everest as well as to see famous paintings. Thus, leisure is considered as hard labour rather than relaxation.

In the rapidly developing society, what gets lost is the quality of looking. Consider an extreme example, the late philosopher Richard Wollheim. When he visited the Louvre he could spend as much as four hours sitting before a painting. The first hour, he claimed, was necessary for incorrect impression to be removed. It was only then that the picture would begin to disclose itself. This seems unthinkable today, but it is still possible to organise. Even in the busiest museums there are many rooms and many pictures worth hours of contemplation (沉思) which the crowds largely ignore.

Marcel Proust, another lover of the Louvre, wrote: “It is only through art that we can escape from ourselves and know how another person sees a universe which is not the same as our own and whose landscapes would otherwise have remained as unknown as any there may be on the moon.” If any art remains worth seeing, it must lead us to such escapes. But a minute in front of a painting in a hurried, harried (烦扰) crowd won’t do that.

【推荐3】About the Scottish Portrait Gallery

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is one of Edinburgh’s most extraordinary buildings—a great red sandstone neo-gothic palace which sits proudly on the city’s skyline. Following a dramatic three-year redecoration, completed in December 2011, the Gallery now offers 17 new displays. Each of these explores different aspects of the story of Scotland and her people.

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery was designed by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson as a holy palace for Scotland’s heroes and heroines. A detailed Arts and Crafts decorative scheme, both inside and outside, with its glittering friezes, evocative murals and extensive sculptural embellishment, makes it a very special visitor experience.

The Portrait Gallery’s collection is an exceptional national resource of over 30,000 fascinating images containing a rich variety of media and including many internationally outstanding works of art. The portraits depict(刻画) the men and women whose lives and achievements helped shape Scotland and the wider world. The Gallery is also home to the NGS’s outstanding collection of photographs which includes around 6,000 works by the early Scottish pioneers of the medium, Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill as well as new works by leading-edge contemporary photographers.

The new Portrait Gallery cafe serves a delicious menu of fresh dishes and classic recipes, using the very best local ingredients and seasonal produce. Our new shop offers a fresh twist on design-led gifts and souvenirs. The gallery now has all the facilities which today’s visitors expect, including a fantastic new lift, an Education suite and disabled access throughout the building.