【推荐1】You might not realize just how much work goes into making a newspaper. Apart from searching for a good story and the endless editing required to correct mistakes, copy editors need to make sure that everything fits perfectly. A good headline tells as much as possible in a short space. There never seems to be quite enough space to express completely what you want to say.

News headlines often focus on the central and most important new information. The relevantly insignificant information might be left out in order to stress the main idea or just to be brief. News headlines are featured by the vivid language. They add something special to attract readers’ eyes. Because the headline aims to describe the main focus of the story in six or seven words, every word counts and accuracy is decisive. For instance, “stab”(刺杀) is a better verb than “kill” because it tells the reader how the criminal did his deed; similarly, “Toyota” is a better noun than “car”. But the make of a good headline is not characterized necessarily by the amount of information in it. For instance, the front-page headline on the Los Angeles Times on September 11—the day New York’s World Trade Center was attacked—simply read “TERROR STRIKES” , all in capitals. While these two words do not describe how, where or why the buildings were attacked, they were accompanied by a half-page photo that captured(捕捉) the event in which around 3,000 people lost their lives.

【推荐3】Language and culture are connected to each other in so many ways: language names and explains important events and people. When the Fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792) ordered a lunch (so that he didn’t have to leave the gaming tables) there was no word to refer to the bread-and-butter-encased food that has ever since borne his name. Another example is grog, a drink of rum(朗姆酒)mixed with water. The word was coined from the nickname(绰号)of Admiral Edward Vernon (1684-1757)—Old Grog. The nickname came from the cloak(披风)of “ grogram ” which he habitually wore, and it provided the word for watered-down rum which he gave to sailors. In Australia it has become the word for alcoholic(含酒精的)drink of any kind. Both sandwich and grog are known throughout the English-speaking world, and have been borrowed into other European languages—sandwich into French, and grog into German.

In Australia some rather more specialised foods go by the names of local heroes and heroines. The lamington owes its name to Charles Wallace Alexander Napier Cochrane-Baillie, Second Baron of Lamington, who was governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901. He was well-known for his concern for the treatment of local workers in northern Qucensland. Another sweet, Peach Melba, was invented in 1892 or 1893 by the French cook Auguste Escoffier at the Savoy Hotel, London, to respect the Australian singer Nellie Melba.

Some words have their origin in the sports world. The boxer Larry Foley (1849-1917) stopped boxing at the age of 30, having developed a training school for young boxers. His name is probably the one behind the expression “give someone Larry Dooley". Also a sporting hero was the footballer Roy Cazaly (1893-1963), who is the person in “ Up There Cazaly ” , used well beyond football as an expression of encouragement. He became a great footballer by taking amazingly high marks for the St Kilda and South Melbourne clubs.

【推荐1】Stories of immigrants attract me a lot, especially the life stories of Italians who have come to America since the 1700s. In each of these stories I see elements of my own story, that of leaving my birthplace and family and creating a new life in a different culture and in a different language.

The child of Italian immigrants and an award-winning scholar of Italian literature, in the book My Two Italies, Joseph Luzzi struggled to create or find his own identity from an early age. Even more problematic for him was “which” Italy to “choose,” the one he inherited from his family, poor and linked to old traditions and customs he finds rude and somewhat cruel, or the one he finds in literature and art books that show him a country with a modern literary culture.

The choice becomes even sadder as in his professional life he becomes a scholar of Italian literature and culture. He describes episodes of his youth that show the clash between the first and the second generation immigrants that are both funny and tragicomic (悲喜剧式的). These episodes highlight the daily customs his parents brought from their hometown that are in conflict with Joseph’s desire to “fit in” the American culture. Joseph’s visits to Italy as a student and then as a scholar deepen the divide between his two Italies and highlight his quest for identity.

The author’s personal changes are full of quotes and comments on the cultural and political landscape of Italy. I find that his insights on contemporary Italian cultural and political phenomena are particularly interesting. In this book, Joseph touches or comments in depth about several issues concerning Italian life, such as the relationship between dialects and the official “Italian” language, and the Southern “question” or the uneasy interaction between Northern and Southern Italians.

I enjoyed reading this book. It is personal, moving, educational and entertainment. I hope you will enjoy it too!

【推荐2】Young children are more likely than adults to have their opinions influenced by robots according to a new research. The study, conducted at the University of Plymouth, compared how adults and children respond to an identical task when in the presence of both their peers (同龄人) and robots.

It showed that while adults regularly have their opinions influenced by peers, something also shown in previous studies, they are largely able to resist being persuaded by robots. However, children aged between seven and nine were more likely to give the same responses as the robots, even if they were obviously incorrect.

The study asks people to look at a screen showing four lines and say which two match in length. When alone, people almost never make a mistake but when doing the experiment with others, they tend to follow what others are saying.

When children were alone in the room in this research, they scored 87% on the test, but when the robots joined in, their score dropped to 75%. And of the wrong answers, 74% matched those of the robot.

Professor Belpaeme said, “People often follow the opinions of others and we’ve known for a long time that it is hard to resist taking over views and opinions of people around us. But as robots will soon be found in the home and the workplace, we were wondering if people would follow robots. What our results show is that adults do not follow what the robots are saying. But when we did the experiment with children, they did. It shows children can perhaps have more of an affinity (亲和力) with robots than adults, which does pose the question: What if robots were to suggest, for example, what products to buy or what to think?”