【推荐1】In modern society there is a great deal of argument about competition. Some value it highly, believing that it is responsible for social progress and prosperity; others say that competition is bad because it sets one person against another and because it leads to unfriendly relationship between people.

I have taught many children who held the belief that their self-worth relied on how well they performed at tennis and other skills. For them, playing well and winning are often life-and-death affairs. In their single-minded pursuit of success, the development of many other human qualities is sadly forgotten.

However, while some seem to be lost in the desire to succeed, others take an opposite attitude. In a culture which values only the winner and pays no attention to the ordinary players, they strongly blame competition. Among the most vocal are youngsters who have suffered under competitive pressures from their parents or society. Teaching these young people, I often observe in them a desire to fail. They seem to seek failure by not trying to win or achieve success. By not trying, they always have an excuse: “I may have lost, but it doesn’t matter because I really didn’t try.” What is not usually admitted by themselves is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, that would mean a lot. Such a loss would be a measure of their worth. Clearly, this belief is the same as that of the true competitors who try to prove themselves. Both are based on the mistaken belief that one’s self-respect relies on how well one performs in comparison with others. Both are afraid of not being valued. Only as this basic and often troublesome fear begins to dissolve (缓解) can we discover a new meaning in competition.

【推荐2】When newspapers and radios report the damage caused by a hurricane (飓风)called Hazel,girls named Hazel are probably played a joke on by others.To keep out of trouble,the Weather Bureau says,“Any resemblance(相似)between hurricane names and the names of particular girls is only accidental.”

Some women became angry because hurricanes are given their names,but many other women are proud to see their names make headlines.They don’t even care that they are the names of destructive storms.Because more women seem to like it than dislike it,the Weather Bureau has decided to continue using girls’ names for hurricanes.

In some ways a hurricane is like a person.After it is born,it grows and develops,then becomes old and dies.Each hurricane has a character of its own.Each follows its own way through the world,and people remember it long after it has gone.So it is natural to give hurricanes names,and to talk about them almost as if they were alive.

【推荐1】Is beauty something always positive? Almost everyone thinks attractive people are happier and healthier, have better marriages and have more respectable jobs. Personal advisors give them better advice for finding jobs. Even judges are softer on attractive defendants. But in the executive(主管的) circle, beauty can become a disadvantage.

While attractiveness is a positive factor for a man on his way up the executive ladder, it is harmful to a woman. Handsome male executives were considered having more honesty than plainer men; effort and ability were thought to lead to their success. Attractive female executives were considered to have less honesty than unattractive ones; their success was connected not with ability but with factors such as luck.

All unattractive women executives were thought to have more honesty and to be more capable than the attractive female executives. Why are attractive women not thought to be able? An attractive woman has an advantage in traditionally female jobs, but an attractive woman in a traditionally manly position appears to lack the manly qualities required.

This is true even in politics. “When the only clue is how he or she looks, people treat men and women differently,” says Anne Bowman, who recently published a study on the effects of attractiveness on political candidates. She asked 125 college students to rank two groups of photographs, one of men and one of women, in order of attractiveness. The students were told the photographs were of candidates for political offices. They were asked to rank them again, in the order they would vote for them.

The results showed that attractive males completely defeated unattractive men, but the women who had ranked most attractive unchangeably received the fewest votes.

【推荐2】As we all know,the best way of learning a language is using it.The best way of learning English is talking in English as much as possible.Sometimes you'll get your words mixed up(混合)and people will not understand you.Sometimes people will say things too quickly and you can't understand them.But if you keep your sense of humor,you can always have a good laugh at the mistakes you make.Don’t be unhappy if people seem to be laughing at your mistakes.It’s better for people to laugh at your mistakes than to be angry with you,because they don't understand what you are saying.The most important thing for learning English is:“Don’t be afraid of making mistakes because everyone makes mistakes.”

【推荐3】Do Cyber Schools Make the Grade?

Students in Caldwell, Idaho, can attend class in their pajamas!

At Vallivue Virtual Academy, courses are taught online. Students work at home with parents, who serve as learning coaches. A certified teacher oversees the students' progress.

The cyber school was launched as a free option for students in kindergarten through grade 8 who have trouble succeeding in the district's traditional public school. Supporters of the program say that virtual learning can help students work at their own pace. If students struggle with subjects, they can take those courses online and spend more time on them. Valerie VanSelous, a teacher from Hopewell Township, N.J・，agrees. "Teachers, students, and parents need to accept new technology and not be afraid of it. Offering different teaching aids just might be the key to unlocking a student' s potential. "

Some also believe that attending virtual school can prepare students for college and for work after graduation. "We need to be responsible for working on our own,” says Angela Goscilo, a senior from Pound Ridge, N.Y. "We need to develop technology skills that will help us in whatever we do. Getting an early start is a good idea."

Not everyone gives cyber schools a passing grade， however. Some educators argue that online learning makes it hard for students to make friends. Payton Mcdonough, 13, a seventh grader from Glencoe, m., agrees. " I don't know how I could sit at a computer all day without actually interacting with my peers and teachers," he says.

In addition, virtual schools don’t have enough structure. Students who take online courses can set their own schedules, which will cause problems for students who have trouble staying motivated.

Many parents also feel that cyber schools put unrealistic time demands on them because they have to oversee their kids' daily work. Many of them have full-time jobs. How are they going to run their children's education, excel in their jobs, and take care of their other responsibilities at home?

【推荐2】There’s a new AI bot: ChatGPT, and you’d better pay attention, even if you aren’t into artificial intelligence. The tool is an AI chatbot system that OpenAI released in November 2022 to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can achieve.

ChatGPT remembers the thread of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. It derives its answers from huge volumes of information on the Internet. ChatGPT is built on top of the OpenAI GPT-3 family of large language models and is fine-tuned (a method of transfer learning) using both supervised and reinforcement learning (监督和强化学习).

You can ask ChatGPT anything, like explaining physics, asking for birthday party ideas and getting programming (编程) help. Perhaps it’s not smart enough to replace all humans yet, but it can be creative, and its answers can sound downright authoritative. A few days after its launch, more than 1 million people were trying out ChatGPT. UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley estimated in February 2023 that ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly users in January, accomplishing in 2 months what took TikTok about 9 months and Instagram two and a half years.

ChatGPT is free to use at the moment because it is still in its research phase. But when too many people hop onto the server (服务器), it overloads and can’t process your request. It just means you should try visiting the site at a later time when fewer people are trying to access it. If you want to skip the wait and have reliable access, there is an option for you. As of Feb. 1, 2023, OpenAI has a ChatGPT pro plan, ChatGPT Plus, which allows users to have general access even during peak times. This service does come at a cost of $20/month.

However, ChatGPT can not replace Google. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence bot that provides solutions to your questions, but Google is a search engine in which you can search for as much information as possible. ChatGPT has limited knowledge due to its programming but Google has unlimited knowledge which is updated every day.

【推荐3】Beethoven wrote many famous pieces of music, but he’s probably best known for his nine symphonies. A symphony is a long, complicated piece of classical music, usually divided into four parts. The four parts are often linked by “themes” — repeated musical ideas that tie the whole piece together.

When Beethoven died in 1827, he had some ideas for a 10^th Symphony. But all that he left behind were some notes about the piece and a few “sketches” — short bits of written music.

In 2019, a special team of musicians, computer scientists, and historians was formed. Their goal: to try to complete Beethoven’s 10^th Symphony to celebrate his 250^th birthday. The team didn’t just want to complete the symphony, they wanted to come as close as possible to producing the symphony that Beethoven meant to write. That’s where deep learning came in. Deep learning — sometimes called Artificial Intelligence (AI) — describes computer programs that sort deeply through huge amounts of information. This allows them to find patterns humans may not have noticed. The programs can then use those patterns in new and surprising ways.

To train an AI to help with the symphony, the team turned every piece of music that Beethoven ever wrote into a form the computer could understand.

By feeding the program all of Beethoven’s music, the AI could look for patterns in the way Beethoven wrote. This included, for example, how he re-used simple melodies all through a piece to create a theme, or how he moved between different parts of the symphony.

Other members of the team studied Beethoven’s notes and sketches, and worked to figure out what Beethoven was planning to do. Where in the symphony did he plan to use each little bit of music that he left?

________. They played a few minutes of music created by the AI for Beethoven experts, musicians, and reporters. No one could tell which parts had been written by Beethoven and which parts the AI made up.

Finally, the AI had the challenge of trying to connect the little musical bits into a symphony. It took over two years, but the team was able to complete Beethoven’s 10^th Symphony. Not simply a melody, but 40 minutes of music for a full orchestra — a large group of musicians playing everything from string instruments, like violins, to trumpets, flutes, drums, and piano. So Beethoven now has a 10^th Symphony. And though Beethoven didn’t write it all, the team feels sure that the music is very much like what he might have written, if he’d had the chance.