2 . Zachariah Fike has an unusual hobby. He finds old military(军队的) medals for sale in antique stores and on the Internet. But unlike most collectors, Zac tracks down the medals’ rightful owners, and returns them.

His effort to reunite families with lost medals began with a Christmas gift from his mother, a Purple Heart with the name Corrado A. G. Piccoli, found in an antique shop. Zac knows the meaning of a Purple Heart—he earned one himself in a war as a soldier. So when his mother gave him the medal, he knew right away what he had to do.

Through the Internet, Zac tracked down Corrado’s sister Adeline Rockko. But when he finally reached her, the woman flooded him with questions: “Who are you? What antique shop?” However, when she hung up, she regretted the way she had handled the call. So she called Zac back and apologized. Soon she drove to meet Zac in Watertown, N.Y. “At that point, I knew she meant business,” Zac says. “To drive eight hours to come to see me.”

The Piccolis grew up the children of Italian immigrants in Watertown. Corrado, a translator for the Army during WWII, was killed in action in Europe.

Before hearing from Zac, Adeline hadn’t realized the medal was missing. Like many military medals, the one Zac’s mother had found was a family treasure. “This medal was very precious to my parents. Only on special occasions(场合) would they take it out and let us hold it in our hands,” Adeline says.

As a child, Adeline couldn’t understand why the medal was so significant. “But as I grew older,” Adeline says, “and missed my brother more and more, I realized that was the only thing we had left.” Corrado Piccoli’s Purple Heart medal now hangs at the Italian American Civic Association in Watertown.

Zac recently returned another lost medal to a family in Alabama. Since he first reunited Corrado’s medal, Zac says his record is now 5 for 5.

5 . We have no idea what the job market will look like in 2050. It is generally agreed that machine learning and robotics will _________ almost every line of work — from producing yoghurt to teaching yoga. _________, there are conflicting views about the nature of the change and its urgency. Some believe that within only a decade or two, billions of people will become _________ redundant (多余的). Others think that, even in the long run _________ will keep creating new jobs and will provide greater future for all.

So, are we really facing a terrifying sudden change, or are such _________ meant to attract people’s attention? It is hard to say. Fears that automation will create considerable _________ go back to the 19’century, and so far they have never come true. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, for every job lost to a machine at least one new job was _________, and the average standard of living has increased greatly.

Yet, there are good reasons to think that this time is different, and that machine learning will be a real _________. Humans have two types of abilities — physical and cognitive (认知的). In the past, machines competed with humans mainly in _________ abilities, while humans still had a great advantage over machines in cognitive. __________, as physical jobs in agriculture and industry were automated, new service jobs appeared that required the kind of cognitive skills only humans possess. They include learning, __________, communicating and, above all else, understanding human emotions. However, AI is now beginning to __________ humans in more and more of these skills, including the understanding of human emotions.

We don’t know of any third field of activity — beyond the physical and the cognitive — where humans will always have a secure __________. It is important to realize that AI revolution is not just about computers getting faster and smarter. It is also one that is being __________ by our breakthroughs in the life sciences and the social sciences as well. The better we understand the biochemical mechanisms (机制) that support human desires and choices, the better computers can become at analyzing human emotions, predicting human decisions, and __________ human drivers, bankers and lawyers.

8 . Of all the changes that have taken place in English-language newspapers during the past quarter-century, perhaps the most far-reaching one has been the inevitable decline in the scope and seriousness of their arts coverage.

It is difficult to the point of impossibility for the average reader under the age of forty to imagine a time when high-quality arts criticism could be found in most big-city newspapers. Yet a considerable number of the most significant collections of criticism published in the 20th century consisted in large part of newspaper reviews. To read such books today is to marvel at the fact that their learned contents were once considered suitable for publication in general-circulation dailies.

We are even farther removed from the unfocused newspaper reviews published in England between the turn of the 20th century and the eve of World War II, at a time when newsprint was dirt-cheap and stylish arts criticism was considered an ornament (装饰) to the publications in which it appeared. In those far-off days, it was taken for granted that the critics of major papers would write in detail and at length about the events they covered. Theirs was a serious business, and even those reviewers who wore their learning lightly, like George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman, could be trusted to know what they were about. These men believed in journalism as a calling, and were proud to be published in the daily press. “So few authors have brains enough or literary gift enough to keep their own end up in journalism,” Newman wrote, “that I am tempted to define ‘journalism’ as ‘a term of contempt applied by writers who are not read to writers who are’.”

Unfortunately, these critics are virtually forgotten. Neville Cardus, who wrote for the Manchester Guardian from 1917 until shortly before his death in 1975, is now known solely as a writer of essays on the game of cricket. During his lifetime, though, he was also one of England’s foremost classical-music critics, a stylist so widely admired that his Autobiography (1947) became a best-seller. He was knighted in 1967, the first music critic to be so honored. Yet only one of his books is now in print, and his vast body of writings on music is unknown save to specialists.

Is there any chance that Cardus’s criticism will enjoy a revival? The prospect seems remote. Journalistic tastes had changed long before his death, and postmodern readers have little use for the richly upholstered Vicwardian prose in which he specialized. Moreover, the amateur tradition in music criticism has been in headlong retreat.