The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) continues to be in the red. It reported a net loss of $5.6 billion for 2016 alone, the 10th straight year its expenses have exceeded revenue. Meanwhile, it has the debts of more than $120 billion, mostly for employee health and retirement costs. There are many bankruptcies. Fundamentally, the USPS is in a historic squeeze between technological change that has permanently decreased demand for its bread-and-butter product, and a regulatory structure that denies management the flexibility to adjust its operations to the new reality.
Interest groups ranging from postal unions to postcard makers exert self-interested pressure on the USPS’s final supervisor—Congress (参议院), insisting that whatever else happens to the Postal Service, aspects of the present legal situation they depend on get protected. This is why repeated attempts at reform legislation (立法) have failed in recent years, leaving the Postal Service unable to pay its bills except by postponing vital modernization.
Now comes word that everyone involved—Democrats, Republicans, the Postal Service, the unions and the systems heaviest users—has finally agreed on a plan to fix the system. Legislation is moving through the White House that would save USPS an estimated $28.6 billion over five years, which could help pay for new vehicles, among other survival measures. Most of the money would come from a penny-per-letter permanent rate increase and from shifting postal retirees into Medicare. The latter step would largely reduce the financial burden of annually pre-funding retiree health care, thus addressing a long-standing complaint by the USPS and its union.
If it clears the White House, this measure will still have to get through the Senate—where someone is bound to point out that it amounts to the bare, bare minimum necessary to make the Postal Service stay afloat, not comprehensive reform. There’s no change to collective bargaining at the USPS, a major mistake considering that personnel accounts for 80 percent of the agency’s costs. Also missing is any discussion of getting rid of Saturday letter delivery. That common-sense change enjoys wide public support and would save the USPS $2 billion per year. But postal special-interest groups seem to have killed it, at least in the White House. The emerging consensus around the bill is a sign that legislators are getting frightened about a politically embarrassing short-term collapse at the USPS. It is not, however, a sign that they’re getting serious about transforming the postal system for the 2lst century.
1. The financial problem with the USPS is caused partly by ________.| A．its rigid management. | B．its unbalanced budget. |
| C．the cost for technical innovation | D．the suspension of bank support. |
| A．protecting every interest group benefits the USPS |
| B．the USPS will invest more money in retiree health care |
| C．the White House has already approved the reform |
| D．the author seems to be discontent with legislators |
| A．Boom. | B．Survive. |
| C．Decline. | D．Expand. |
| A．The USPS Starts to Miss Its Good Old Days |
| B．The USPS Starts to cooperate with Legislators |
| C．The USPS Needs Comprehensive Aid and Reform |
| D．The USPS Is Bound to Get out of the Dilemma |
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【推荐1】More than 80 colleges are creating a website where students will be able to apply to dozens of them. Some of the top names in higher education are joining the effort under a group called the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, whose goal is to simplify the application process, especially for low-income students.
The website not only gives students one place to send their applications, but also gives them tools to get started years in advance. On the site, students will be able to request advice from college admissions offices and they can create digital portfolios(文件夹) with the help of their teachers and instructors.
Members of the coalition(联盟) include private universities such as Harvard and Stanford and public counterparts such as the University of Virginia, University of Florida and Ohio State University. The colleges came together to fix a problem: Complex admissions processes deter students from applying and those who come from low-income families can’t afford the instructors and classes within reach of their wealthier peers. High schools, for example, can already buy software to help instructors track their students through the application process, but many can’t afford it.
More than 600 colleges now accept the standardized Common Application. Unlike the Common Application, which aims to create a uniform application process among schools, the new website aims to help students dive deeper into many distinct applications. It will give them a place to store their checklists and essays and invite anyone to provide feedback and edit.
Each college will have its own portal(入口) where students can submit applications, but they’ll all be accessible through the same site. The portfolio tool will let students add any extra information they want. Artists can include samples of their work and musicians can link to performance videos.
1. What is the aim of the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success?| A．To make applying for college easier. |
| B．To give students more choices of subjects. |
| C．To donate money for low-income students. |
| D．To increase the quality of higher education. |
| A．It is the founder of the website. | B．It is the most famous among them. |
| C．It is a public counterpart. | D．It is a private university. |
| A．Assist. | B．Prevent. | C．Protect. | D．Separate. |
| A．It is hard to use. | B．It is very practical. |
| C．It is very effective. | D．It is very expensive. |
【推荐2】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 Building
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 Collection
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.
Visitor Facilities
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.
1. What do we learn about the Scottish National Portrait Gallery?| A．It is well-known for its building. | B．Every display reflects Scotland. |
| C．There are about 6,000 works in it | D．It has a comparatively short history. |
| A．rare and user-friendly | B．modern and all-round |
| C．characteristic and attractive | D．beneficial and conventional |
【推荐3】While some feel that bookstores are fading away, one Chinese bookstore has found new life by marching into rural areas in China to bring colorful cultural life and higher incomes lo local residents.
By absorbing local rural characteristics, the village branches of the Librairie Avantgarde Bookstore (LAB) chain have transformed into important platforms to display local history, culture and folk traditions. Not just bookstores, they are foundations helping to relieve spiritual poverty (贫困) and centers for gathering and displaying rural culture.
To better fit in the lives of local residents, earth village branch has its own characteristics, like the branch in Shaxi, southwest China’s Yunnan province. Many of nearly 20,000 books in the store are associated with the history, geography and folk customs of Yunnan and the Bai people.
“Turning in profits is not our only aim. Our bookstore has become a public gathering space for villagers. Not only young people, but many elderly residents come here. They do not buy books, but pass the time by reading or chatting with each other in our store.” Liu Xia, the bookstore owner explained.
She added that this is a cultural atmosphere that bookstores offer the area. Some residents have grown accustomed to turning to the books of the store to find answers to the troubles they face, such as operating a business or controlling tourists from urban areas. The biggest benefit of opening bookstores in villages is that it helps provide a healthy environment for children’s growth. “My kids often come to the store. They love reading books here. They gain knowledge and curiosity about outside world.” one villager said.
The arrival of the bookstore menus a lot to the village when young residents have been leaving for urban areas in recent years. During the 2020 May Day and National Day holidays, the daily number of tourists traveling to the village reached 5,000, a record high. Visitors were attracted by the bookstore. Surrounding it, several restaurants and holds have opened.
1. Which of the following best describes village branches of the LAB?| A．They are disappearing gradually. |
| B．They feature local rural cultures. |
| C．They could make much higher profits. |
| D．They have set up poverty-relief foundations. |
| A．It specializes in history-related books. |
| B．It creates a public gathering space for business. |
| C．It shares the same features with oilier branches. |
| D．It helps villagers know more about the Bai people. |
| A．Attracting more people lo pay a visit. |
| B．Offering kids a healthy atmosphere. |
| C．Helping residents lo acquire knowledge. |
| D．Encouraging the young to go to big cities. |
| A．LAB: A Bookstore on the Rise |
| B．Local Culture Welcomed by Tourists |
| C．Village Bookshops Promote Rural Life |
| D．Great Ambitions of Village Bookstores |
But since Avatar, 3D cinema has struggled. In 2010, several 3D movies bombed at the box office. And by late 2010, Some people said the technology was dead. Of course, this isn’t the first time Hollywood has struggled with new technology. Although sound was added to movies in the late 1920s, it took audiences time to get used to the new technology. But in the end, sound and color became the standard. James Cameron, director of Avatar, thinks we’re going through the same process with 3D.
Some say cinemas are charging too much for 3D movies. In the US, seeing a 3D movie can cost up to $7.5 more than seeing it in 2D. Also, a recent study at California State University found audiences don’t actually enjoy movies in 3D any more than in 2D. Walter Murch , a famous movie editor, wrote in 2011 that human beings have no ability to process 3D images. Watching a 3D movie confuses our brain and this is why some people get headaches.
But James Cameron disagrees. In fact, he recently predicted that in five years all movies will be in 3D. And there are signs that 3D is fighting back. More 3D movies were put on the market in 2012 than ever before. The Lion King 3D recently made over US $150 million at the box office, and Cameron’s Titanic 3D made even more.
Who knows what the future holds for 3D? Steven Spielberg recently said, ‘Tm hoping 3D gets to a point where people dorft notice it. Because then it just becomes another tool and helps tell a story.”
1. The underlined sentence in Paragraph 2 probably means that in 2010, 3D movies______
| A．were not successful | B．became popular |
| C．developed quickly | D．were of poor quality |
| A．Hollywood tends to absorb what is new |
| B．3D technology takes time to be accepted |
| C．Hollywood struggles with new technology |
| D．high technology helps to make better movies |
| A．bring moviemakers great profits |
| B．are more expensive than 2D movies |
| C．do great harm to people’s health |
| D．are unsuitable for people to watch |
| A．Avatar was the first 3D movie. |
| B．3D cinema has existed for years. |
| C．Titanic 3D has made the most money. |
| D．2012 witnessed the coming of 3D’s time. |
It is a common experience for many: You make donations to others, such as unfortunate people in disaster-stricken areas, and you are appreciated.
A billionaire couple has recently made one of the biggest charitable donations to a university in China’s history. Chen Tianqiao and Chrissy Luo, co-founders of China’s Shanda Group, donated $115 million (799 million yuan) to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to help advanced brain research. The couple’s donation will be spent building a neuroscience(神经科学) institute, with the aim of deepening the understanding of how the brain works, according to a statement from Caltech. Chen has been interested in brain research for a long time.
However, this huge donation has caused heated discussions among Chinese scholars and internet users alike.
Many criticized them for choosing to give money to a foreign university rather than Chinese institutes for brain research, which are developing fast and are on track to catch up with the US in just a few years.
Others, however, support the couple’s choice for brain research. They believe Caltech is a more rational choice compared to Chinese research institutions.
A similar controversy started two years ago when Pan Shiyi, chairman of SOHO China, along with his wife Zhang Xin, donated $15 million to Harvard University to help disadvantaged Chinese students.
Many believe that China is still behind in the management and use of donated money, and that as a result, Chinese philanthropists(慈善家) are looking abroad.
“To get more donations, Chinese universities should be bolder and more honest… they need self-reflection, rather than jealousy,” commented Xinhua.
| A．Rao Yi, a biologist and professor at Peking University, even said the donation was a “typical mistake”. |
| B．Some previously planned to donate to a Chinese university, but this didn’t happen after the university refused to give them a report on the planned use of the money. |
| C．It can shape the industries of the future such as artificial intelligence, robotics and virtual reality. |
| D．However, donations can also draw criticism. |
| E．They can also provide full access for donors who want to trace the use of the money. |
| F．It has a long history and has taken a leading position in biology and neuroscience studies, therefore producing more efficient results. |
【推荐3】If you're a book lover, you have a pile of books on your bedside, or a bookshelf in your library with a “to read” sign on it. Yet you can't stop yourself from adding to the pile. This can lead to feelings of guilt over your new purchases. But I'm here to tell you to stop worrying.
What you have is an antilibrary, and it's a very good thing. The term comes from writer Umberto Eco. He is the owner of a large personal library. He separates visitors into two groups: those who react with “Wow! What a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others who get the point that a private library is not something to show off but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection an antilibrary.
If you think you already know everything about a subject, you're cutting yourself off from a stream of information at an artificial point. So a growing library of books you haven't read means you're consistently curious about the unknown. And that attitude is a great foundation for a lifelong love of learning.
So don't feel guilt over your unread books. Those books will be there for you when you do want them, and as you build your library of read and unread books, you can start using it as you would use a bigger library. Certain books may become references more than read-throughs. Or you may find that a book you bought five years ago has special relevance today. Letting the role of books evolve in your life is a healthy sign of curiosity. That's good for you and good tor the world around you.
1. What does the underlined word "antilibrary in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Feelings of guilt over new books. | B．A pile of books on the bookshelf. |
| C．The collection of unread books. | D．A large personal library. |
| A．The unread books you bought years ago are of no use. |
| B．You don't have to read every book from cover to cover. |
| C．Read books are of more use than unread books. |
| D．You shouldn’t purchase new books until the unread ones are covered. |
| A．Approving. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Critical. | D．Indifferent. |
【推荐1】Norway aims to discover new resources beneath the sea, but its push into mining has raised environmental concerms.
Norway could license companies for deep-sea mining as early as 2023. That could place it among the first countries to harvest seabed metals. Copper, zinc and other metals are in high demand for electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines and solar energy centers. However, that could also place Norway on the front line of controversies over the environmental risks of mining the world’s unexplored seabeds.
Norway recently announced it was carrying out an environmental study needed to start mineral exploration and mining. Once that is completed, the govemment plans to have public comments on its environmental study and on a proposal to open areas for exploration and production by the end of 2022.
The demand for minerals is being driven by what are often called “clean” technologies. But the process of getting those minerals from the seabed could cause environmental problems.
Environmentalists including Britain’s David Attenborough have called for a temporary (暂时的) stop to deepseabed mining until more is known about how it affects sea life. The environmental group Greenpeace called for a total ban in a recent report. In another report, the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, known as the Ocean Panel, also called for greater knowledge about the effects of deep-sea mining. The Ocean Panel is cochaired by Norway and has 14 member states that want to shape policy on the world’s oceans.
Norway is known as a major oil producer. But, the country of 5. 4 million people wants to find something to replace its top industry that is better for the environment and can grow in the future.
The move toward deep-sea mining follows three years of expeditions(探险). The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, which carried out the work, said it found copper, zinc, cobalt, gold and silver. The expeditions also discovered large armounts of lithium and the rare earth metal scandium used in electronics and metal mixtures.
1. What does the underlined word “controversies”in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Power. | B．Benefits. |
| C．Arguments. | D．Popularity. |
| A．Decide mining areas. | B．Ask for people’s opinions. |
| C．Start seabed mining at once. | D．Take action to protect nature. |
| A．Unsupportive. | B．Positive. |
| C．Unclear. | D．Uncaring. |
| A．Earning more money. | B．Controlling the areas. |
| C．Developing clean energy. | D．Learning about sea resources. |
【推荐2】US poet Allen Ginsberg once said, “Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind.”
To recognize the unique ability of poetry to capture the human spirit, World Poetry Day is held by the United Nations on March 21 each year.
The magic of poetry lies in the connection built up through words between the author and the reader. When we read a poem, we often imagine what the poet was thinking when he wrote it, or what he was doing at the time. These thoughts let us connect with the words better, as if we’d written the poem ourselves.
But in the age of artificial intelligence, would a poem still mean as much if it weren’t written by a human at all? Today computers can create all kinds of texts, including research papers, books, news stories and even poems by using algorithms (算法).
In 2013, Australian researcher Oscar Schwartz and his friend Benjamin Laird created a website called “bot or not”, where readers can read poems and guess whether they were written by a human or a computer. During a recent speech at TedX Sydney, Schwartz said that throughout the years, some of the website’s poems were able to fool 65 percent of human readers into thinking they were written by a human.
By launching the website, Schwartz and Laird hoped that people would question the difference between humans and machines - and be able to identify what makes us human.
Unstableness is part of the answer. “The human mind is not a cold, hard fact,” Schwartz said during his TedX Sydney speech. “Rather, it is something that’s constructed with our opinions and something that changes over time.”
A computer may be able to create poems that are correct in both grammar and style, but it wouldn’t be able to get the same meanings and emotions across as a human poet could. In fact, current AI software creates poems based on ones that have already been written by humans. As Schwartz noted, “The computer works like a mirror that reflects any idea of a human that developers teach it.”
So a new challenge arises: What kind of human mind do we want the computer to reflect back at us?
1. What’s the purpose of the first three paragraphs?| A．To show the popularity of poetry around the world. |
| B．To introduce the origin of World Poetry Day. |
| C．To show the function of poetry in general. |
| D．To give some tips on appreciating poetry. |
| A．Computers can also produce poems of high quality |
| B．65% of the poems on the website “bot or not” were written by computers |
| C．Readers don’t really care whether the poems were written by humans or not |
| D．Few readers can tell poems written by computers from those by humans |
| A．Unstableness. | B．Identification. |
| C．The human mind. | D．The Website. |
| A．They can’t create poems that make sense. |
| B．They can’t express emotions as well as humans. |
| C．They fail to use the correct grammar and style. |
| D．They only know how to copy existing poems. |
With a swimming pool for adults and teens, and a smaller one for children, our center has something for all the members of the family．Parents can relax while children play in the water．For anybody who is interested in competitive sports, football and basketball courts are the ideal places to work off stress．
Whether you just want to keep in shape, lose some weight or build your strength, there's the super-modern equipment and three personal trainers to look after you and answer your questions．They can also give you general advice about healthy eating and dieting．
Lessons
It doesn’t matter if you’re five or eighty-five, there’s something for you at the Sunshine Sports Center! We offer personal training in all sports if you want it, but there are also group lessons for all sports if you prefer teamwork．
Kids and teenagers
Take advantage of our special offer for younger members．For members between five and sixteen years old, there are special lessons in water polo, competitive swimming and diving．There are many classes for all levels of swimmers, with a lifeguard on duty from 9:00 am when the pool opens until it closes at 7:00 pm．
Social events
Sunshine Sports Center is not only for sport! You can enjoy a delicious meal at our restaurant or have a milkshake（奶昔）with your friends on the balcony overlooking the swimming pool and the courts．In addition, there are lovely gardens where families or friends can have a picnic! To celebrate a birthday, there is no better place than the Sunshine Sports Center．
So, come on Sign up for Sunshine Sports Center today!
1. In Sunshine Sports Center ．
| A．children are not allowed to swim alone |
| B．lifeguards are on duty 24 hours a day |
| C．people can have birthday parties |
| D．special lessons in diving are offered to adults |
| A．build strength |
| B．sign up |
| C．learn to swim |
| D．play basketball |
| A．explain the rules of the sports center |
| B．show the benefits of sports |
| C．persuade people to play sports |
| D．attract people to the sports center |
【推荐1】As prices drop and their functionality expands, you can expect to see humanoid(类人的)robots in more places, including schools, airports, and hospitals. Will they influence human behavior?
In a study published recently, scientists found that mean robots can help people concentrate. The experiment, published in Science Robotics, was based on something called the Stroop Task, which is widely used in psychology and described as the "gold standard" of attentional tests. It challenges participants to name the colors of words and ignore their meanings while calculating reaction time.
The researchers put a modern twist on the task, though-this time, there was a robot in the room. The goal was to see if the presence of a robot would affect cognition, and the researchers found it did, but only when the robot was mean.
How do you make a robot mean? In this case, a meter-tall toy robot called a Meccanoid G15KS was made to respond to seven questions. The good robots told jokes, spoke about friendship, and described test subjects as nice. The bad robots replied to questions with passive aggressive comebacks, such as "I enjoy doing analysis programs but you would not understand" and statements like "I do not value friendship."Then the participants rated the robots."The more participants thought the robot made them uncomfortable, the greater the improvement of their Stroop performance was," the researchers wrote."Not surprisingly, the bad robot was rated as less warm, friendly and pleasant than the good robot."
The study authors argue that robots are crossing the line in some situations from machines to social agents. That will change how humans interact with and behave around them.
“Similar to a human's presence, the presence of a robot might not be neutral(无倾向性的) in situations like school or in the office when you are working." Nicolas Spatola, one of the study authors said in an email, "So before your boss decides to introduce a robot in your office, it could be a good idea to evaluate how you feel about it and how it can positively or negatively impact your work, how comfortable you may feel with it or if you feel it to be a threat."
Just 58 students from University Clermont Auvergne in France participated in the experiment but the researchers found an increase in the speed of correct answers among those in the presence of a mean robot when compared to those who were with a nice robot or alone.
In the future, robots will almost certainly become more and more common in nursing homes, hotel check-in desks, behind the wheel, and elsewhere. “If we want to improve the use of robots in our daily life, there seems to be a need to first understand how Human Robot Interaction can impact human psychology,” Spatola said.
1. What was the finding of the new study?| A．The use of robots is rising. | B．Humanoid robots can be mean. |
| C．Unkind robots can sharpen our focus. | D．Robots are becoming more functional.,. |
| A．By their words. | B．By their actions. |
| C．By their appearance. | D．By the Stroop Task. |
| A．Be careful about using robots. | B．Leave the robot if it presents a threat. |
| C．Robots will have a good impact on offices. | D．Robots may replace humans in the workplace. |
| A．The participants were too young. | B．The study method wasn't scientific. |
| C．There was a slight difference in speed. | D．The number of the participants was too small. |
| A．Scientists have already developed humanoid robots. |
| B．Humanoid robots have already found its way into our daily life. |
| C．Humanoid robots will certainly come into our daily life sooner or later. |
| D．There is no difficulty we'll meet with before humanoid robots are widely used. |
【推荐2】If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal(夜间活动的) species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequences — called light pollution — whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels — and light rhythms — to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect or life is affected. In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze (霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We’ve grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night, — dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadow on Earth — is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet(磁铁). The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses. Humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs. Like most other creatures, we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy-arching overhead.
1. What does the underlined word “it” (Paragraph 1) most probably refer to ?| A．The moon. | B．The night. |
| C．The sky. | D．The planet. |
| A．show how light pollution affects animals |
| B．provide examples of animal protection |
| C．compare the living habits of both species |
| D．explain why the number of certain species has declined |
| A．human beings cannot go to the outer space |
| B．light pollution does harm to the eyesight of animals |
| C．human beings should reflect on their position in the universe |
| D．light pollution has destroyed some of the world heritages |
| A．The Magic Light. | B．The Orange Haze. |
| C．The Rhythms of Nature. | D．The Disappearing Night. |
【推荐3】Ever look at your to-do list and want to run and hide? Me too. But life is more than working hard to finish tasks, collapsing into bed, judging the past 24 hours and our success by how much we've managed to tick off.
So here’s how to get stuff done and enjoy yourself at the same time.
1.Rename it My friend Jim Kwik says, “Call your ‘got-to-do’ list your ‘get- to-do’ list.” It’s a tiny change but a major shift. Think about it. You get to walk your dog, choose wonderful dinner ingredients and go to a job each day that affords you the life you have.  |
2.Add some action Instead of writing plain reminders down as memory urges, like “Dentist” and “Report,” add some verbs and result-based benefits, like “Book dentist and get teeth sparkly white!” or “Complete report and let out your breath.” Imagine the good feeling attached to each agenda item and let it fuel you. |
3. Trust there’s time Have you ever noticed when you’re in a rush, you make mistakes? Like when you’re late for work: You can’t find your jeans, you hurt your toe on the bed by accident and you misplace your phone as you head down the elevator. When we operate from a place of calm, stuff happens faster. We find what we need. We don’t burn the toast. It can be as simple as sitting up in bed, taking ten deep breaths when you wake up and setting a simple intention for the day (not reaching straight for Instagram and email). |
4.Ask yourself this How are you spending your days, your life? Are you having enough fun? Can your got-to-do list be a get-to-do list with some good moods dancing on the page and an air of “I got time!” attached to it? Yes, it probably can. Now, what’s first? |
1. Which of the following does the author agree with about “your to-do list”?
| A．Choose wonderful dinner ingredients and go to a job each day. |
| B．Change “Dentist” into “Book dentist and get teeth sparkly white!” |
| C．Remind yourself you have plenty of time to deal with daily routines. |
| D．Keep asking yourself questions with the air of “I got time!” |
| A．A. a state of mind | B．a get-to-do list. | C．a memory urge | D．a place of calm |
| A．To find out what to do first every day. | B．To imagine the good feeling of tasks. |
| C．To explain the importance of lifestyle. | D．To discover how to enjoy daily life. |
