Anyone who has ever come across a parrot in a pet store can prove the fact that they     16     imitate（模仿）what humans say, but that they can actually produce human speech. Many people think this is an uncertain point since they believe that birds can’t     17     talk, much less hold conversations. For others, including some experts, parrots and a few     18     birds are capable of verbal communication（语言交流）. Parrots are language learning animals and are physically able to recreate     19     in the human language.

Except that parrots can speak, some else have also shown signs of     20     intelligence. An African Gray Parrot named Alex had a vocabulary of some 150 words and could do simple math.     21    , it could distinguish（辨别） seven colors and five shapes, and     22     the meaning of zero. Overall, he had the intelligence of a five-year-old human. This means that parrots having conversations with humans is no longer a     23     that is strictly（严肃地）for the birds.

Adrian Limani, now based in Serbia(塞尔维亚), has produced a series of innovative photographs which he believes give the same effect as ships in a bottle.

The 21-year-old has even put the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa in an image of two light bulbs, while another image shows two birds scrapping in mid-air in a bulb.

“I just took some shots of light bulbs, without any effects, just straight shots with the camera,” said Adrian, explaining how he was inspired(激励) to create these images. “Then I suddenly discovered that I really liked that kind of form. I will continue with the bulb ideas because I like being unique.”

To make a really great image, however, is not easy. “Because you need to have a lot of ideas, a lot of imagination and it’s better to be a unique style of work that you share,” Adrian added. The artist said his ideas or inspiration(灵感) usually came from music, movies, books and his everyday life.

To create the images, Adrian combines two or three photographs. “When I have free time, I go out and take a lot of shots, in different places and from different views, so that I’ll have more materials to make something really good,” he said. After making each combination(结合), he would do two or three different versions of colors and then choose the best one.

A self-taught photographer, the young man said his passion for photography started with browsing wonderful photographs on the Internet. He began to do serious photography when he was 17 and “it was a great feeling.”

“People say to me, ‘Just continue what you’ve started because you do great work,’ and I really try to do my best,” said Adrian.

I first heard this story a few years ago from a girl in New York. Probably the story reappears every few years, to be told in one form or _________. However, I still like to think that it really did happen, somewhere, sometime.

They were going to Florida — three boys and three girls. After they got on the bus, they _________ talking happily about the golden beaches in Florida.

As the bus passed through New Jersey, they began to notice Vingo. He sat _________ them, dressed in a plain suit, never moving, silent, his dusty face masking his age.

Deep into the night, the bus stopped at a café. Everybody got off except Vingo. He still sat in his seat, and the young people began to wonder about him. One of the girls _________ the bus again and came up to him.

“We’re going to Florida,” she said. “I hear it’s really beautiful.”

“It is,” he said _________, as if remembering something he had tried to forget.

In the morning, they awoke outside a café, and this time Vingo went in. The girl insisted that he join them. He seemed very shy. _________ they returned to the bus, the girl sat with Vingo again, and after a while, slowly and painfully, he told his story. He had been in jail New York for the past four years, and now he was going home.

Many of us have seen recent pictures on the Internet of an American named Jason Loose sharing French fries and drinking water with an old beggar woman on a street in Nanjing. This kind of action may have been rather shocking to many of us, making us question our own reaction to beggars on the street, and to poor people in general.

First, it seems some beggars are secretly wealthy, taking advantage of people’s generosity（慷慨） to live in luxury. Friends tell me that in Xiamen, where I now live, a fancy car picks up beggars at nightfall to take them home to their houses. I have not seen this with my own eyes, but it gives me a reason to avoid giving to beggars here. How can we know which ones are truly needy?

But, rich or poor, local or foreigner, we all need friendship and acceptance. When I see a beggar in any country, something I want to do first is to turm away, but then my conscience（良心） hurts, and I think, “How would I feel if I were in his situation?”

The planet of ours is becoming smaller and smaller. Travel and communications are becoming easier. We find we have more in common with peoples all over the world than the differences that divide us. That simple photo of a foreigner sharing food and drink with a local beggar should make headlines is a sad statement which shows we have not fully recognized our common humanity. Jason had to show us how, by cutting through the prejudices（偏见） of social class, gender and nationality, to share a simple meal on a human level. We, too, can pause in our busy day to give a kind word or lend a helping hand to someone in need.