Mad Science

Until relatively recently, popular media neglected fact-checking and mostly offered negative, mad scientist-oriented stereotypes. A survey of more than a thousand horror films from 1931 to 1984 found that a third     1     “scientists or their creations as villains or monsters,” while merely 11 percent painted them as heroes. Later, a 2003 study    2     concluded that even “good” movie scientists (across genres) commonly succumbed to evil and corruption.

Onscreen researchers also typically     3     complex storylines, or even details of their personal lives, the 2003 article found. That’s a problem because most people don’t know scientists themselves and form opinions based on the media they consume, leading to a dehumanizing effect.

Factual errors and     4     portrayals have real-world consequences. As of 1981, people who frequently watched TV were more likely than     5     viewers to mistrust science, view it as dangerous and reject the entire career     6    .

That’s the primary reason why researchers work on Hollywood projects: to     7     these misconceptions.

Satisfyingly,     8     has improved in recent decades, likely because it’s far more common to recruit science consultants. Now, audience expect more     9     explanations behind far-out plots. These days, it’s now impossible for films to get away with these silly stereotypes, unless it’s a horror film or comedy. Hollywood now tends to heroize scientists, but glorifying the profession also has its     10     : It may obscure the fact that researchers are human and can make human mistakes too.

2 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

An American researcher who studied 600 millionaires found how rich you can get comes down to 6 “wealth factors“. She found that six behaviors are related to net worth potential, regardless of age or income. These were thriftiness, confidence, responsibility, planning, focus and social indifference.

Being thrifty comes as no great    1    .“Spending above your means, spending instead of saving for retirement, spending in anticipation of becoming wealthy makes you a    2     to the paycheck, even with an astronomical level of income,”she wrote. To properly build wealth, experts recommend saving 20% your income and living off the    3     80%.

Having confidence is another key    4    , as it helps people to be thrifty. It takes confidence to live within your means. It also takes confidence to invest    5    . Instead of making investing decisions with your emotions, financial planners advise that you should leave your investments alone and focus on a long-term investment plan.

But people can’t invest--or manage their own money--without    6     responsibility for the outcomes. Many millionaires take on personal responsibility--and most also happen to be self-made, meaning they didn’t acquire their wealth through luck. Millionaires don’t count on anyone else to make them rich, and they don’t    7     anyone else if they fall short. They focus on things they can control and align their daily habits to the goals they have set for themselves. They tend to be goal-    8     and hard workers, which enables them to plan financially and focus on seeing those plans through. 92% of the millionaires surveyed developed a long-term plan for their money, and 97% almost always achieved the goals they set for themselves.

And it is these    9     that make it easy for them to be socially indifferent. They    10     lifestyle creep, the tendency to spend more whenever one earns more. Essentially, they don’t yield to pressure to buy the latest thing or to keep up with others or what they have acquired. Instead of being focused on what might make them happy today, they’re focused on their long-term wealth-building plan.

Chinese traders were recorded as making voyages to the north coast of Australia from the 1750s, but were probably visiting Australia long before. Chinese men arrived in Australia in small numbers after the 1788 British settlement as free settlers and criminals. A small population grew rapidly after 1848 under a system of indentured (契约的) labor, after China had     1     its ports to foreign trade in 1842. They worked in rural New South Wales as cooks, farm laborers and etc.

Indentured Chinese     2     worked in all colonies variously as station hands, plantation workers, miners, on public works, cabinet makers, personal servants and in laundries. Most came from the south-eastern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian.

Due to labor     3     in West Australia, the Colonial Government organized Chinese contract labor between 1847 and 1898, most working as laborers, cooks and gardeners. Many Chinese people came from rural backgrounds and brought with them     4     and water management skills. By 1885, there were 54 Chinese market gardens in Sydney. By 1901, 67% of New South Wales market gardeners were Chinese.

Gold rushes in Victoria in the 1850s and New South Wales in the 1860s significantly     5     the population of Chinese immigrants in Australia; about 45,000 prospectors arrived in Victoria alone in 1854-58. Numbers continued to increase as gold and other     6     were discovered in Queensland, Northern Territory and Tasmania.

When mining became less     7    , many Chinese people worked successfully to provide goods and services such as furniture making, market gardening, fishing and, particularly, store-keeping including the import and export of goods from overseas. Chinese goods, especially tea, silk, vegetables, herbs and other spices were highly sought-after items of trade by non-Chinese people. Tea rooms, importing and selling many varieties of tea, were very popular. Chinese silk was turned into     8     evening wear and cloaks by Chinese tailors and seamstresses.

Today there is a culturally diverse Chinese     9     in Australia with links to south-eastern China as well as Vietnam and Hong Kong. The Chinese communities in Australia are brought together every year by     10     of Lunar New Year.

Lego: One Step Closer to Being Sustainable

The Lego Group is one step closer to reaching its goal of making all its products from sustainable materials by 2030.

The Danish toymaker revealed a prototype (雏形) brick made from     1     plastic. In a news release, Lego said the PET plastic from     2     bottles makes up the first brick to meet the company’s “strict quality and safety requirements.” One way the company     3     safety is by sourcing materials from suppliers that use processes approved by the US Food & Drug Administration and European Food Safety Authority.

“The biggest     4     on our sustainability journey is rethinking and innovating new materials that are as long-lasting, strong and high quality as our existing bricks—and fit with LEGO elements made over the past 60 years,” Lego Group Vice President of Environmental Responsibility Tim Brooks said. “With this prototype we’re able to    5     the progress we’re making to the public.”

It will be “some time” before bricks made from used materials can be     6    , Lego said. The company will continue to test and develop the PET formulation (配方) and decide whether to move to the     7     production phase, which is expected to take at least a year. One factor the company is testing is how the material can be     8    .

“Experimentation and failing is an important part of learning and     9    . Just as kids build, unbuild and rebuild with LEGO bricks at home, we’re doing the same in our lab,” Brooks said.

The move follows last year’s announcement that the company was making a $400 million investment over three years into sustainability     10    . It included phasing out the single-use plastic bags from its boxes and instead using recyclable paper for its packaging.

An Innovative Painter

Alan is a pioneering painter, working with oil paint on canvas in a traditional way. It is only in his use of paint that he differs from the usual practice of using brushes.

Although he does use a brush to draw the main lines of his     1    , he uses painting knives to apply the paint. Early on he found that paint laid on with painting knives gave him the particular body and texture (质地) he wanted to     2     his subjects. The knife is capable of an enormous variety of marks, from delicate     3     to fierce sweeping and slices of paint. The knife’s sharp edged marks create their own dynamic of light and shade. Alan possesses many painting knives of different sizes, but tends to favour three or four, which are now     4    thin with constant use. He is still discovering new possibilities with the knife, driven by the demands of a new subject. Although Alan’s paintings are made in the studio, they are all composed from drawings made outdoors. These drawings are the seed corn on which all his paintings are based. The marks that go down on paper make sure he     5    not just the actual scene but also the changing light, the direction of the wind and the     6     sounds and smells. For the painter, the whole     7     experience remains fixed within the drawing long after he has left the scene.

Throughout his life Alan has travelled     8    for particular places that fuel his creative imagination. He is an adventurous seeker, regardless of the     9     or difficulty of some of the locations. Long ago he decided to     10    the idea of working on large oil paintings out of doors because it involved canvases, oil paints and many other tools around. He now travels light, taking only sketchbooks, pens and a few watercolours with him. This gives him the freedom to draw anywhere and to catch the fleeting moment — the “here-and-now-ness” of the place.

It happens just about every time I go to a restaurant with my daughter. I open the menu and scan the options. Then I glance at the children’s menu. Oftentimes, the menu is pretty    1    , with the same pasta and tomato sauce. But the items on the children’s menu are usually less expensive, and I’ll think to myself: Wow, good deal.

If I think again for a moment, though, the deal isn’t really a deal. After all, I estimated the cost of the pasta    2    on the adult menu, not on the actual cost of making some bow-tie noodles and serving them with a red sauce.

My faulty    3    is the product of anchoring, a cognitive bias (认知偏差) that can weaken our critical thinking.

According to researchers, anchoring is when people rely on    4    but easily accessible facts to make judgments. Our minds give too much weight to initial impressions or numbers that influence our    5    thoughts. In my case, the prices on the adult menu    6    or anchored my judgment about the value of the items on the children’s menu.

Studies show that anchoring effects    7    no matter how weak the connection between the anchor and the actual decision. One study found that “estimates of an athlete’s performance were influenced by the number on his jersey ( 运 动 衫 ).” In other words, people thought that an athlete with a higher jersey number was better than an athlete with a lower number, all else being equal.

Anchoring affects all kinds of decisions, even those made by experts who should know better. In particular, a recent study shows that anchoring is far more common in the financial world than    8     believed, with substantial anchoring effects influencing performance in the stock market. A study showed that investors valued firms more highly if the firms had higher stock prices. So, if two companies have the same financial    9    except that Company X has fewer shares at a higher price than Company Y, then Company X’s shares will sell better over the long run than Company Y’s. Why? Because the stock price — the anchor — enhances the company’s perceived value.

The phenomenon of anchoring shows that while we think of ourselves as rational and logical beings, unrelated details can have a(n)     10    influence on our reasoning. The best solution is to improve critical thinking skills. Otherwise, you might be a victim of anchoring, dragged down by your bias, whether you notice it or not.