1 . Rave-on!

How about learning new skills on the guitar, drums and keyboard by video? Follow the touch-screen instructions to find lessons on each instrument, or search for a song to practise playing along to. Try our Professional Selection, with video clips of band members who will explain the techniques that make their recordings so individual.

Show-in-a-day!

Be a star singer or dancer for the day in a one-time-only special performance! Experts in international music and dance styles will train you, and costumes provided for the performance help create a really special, individual show. Get your friends and family to come and see you perform, as no videoing or photography is allowed.

Archived Images

Want to find out about a new band, or just want more information about an old favourite? Visit our collection to find out facts and figures, or see the actual possessions of famous bands and musicians you are interested in. You can actually get to touch things worn on stage at major rock and pop events, and there are plenty of other concert souvenirs.

Rhythm-studio

Get your body moving in the studio and learn to move to rhythms and sounds from the past to now, including Soul and Disco. Learn your steps from our professional onscreen dance instructor, then watch your performance and become the star in your own video recording which you can take away!

2 . In your life, sometimes you may be asked to speak in front of a large group of people. Although it sounds a little scary, even those with stage fright can speak successfully to the group with adequate preparation.

Practice your speech before the big day.    1     If possible, practice the speech in front of a friend or family member to get used to saying it to real people. If you feel you must have note cards, limit the amount to about three cards. This will force you to keep your speech brief and help you keep your eyes focused on your audience.

Remember why you’ve been invited to speak. If you’re battling fear over speaking to a large group of people, keep your mind on the fact that you were selected for this important role. The speech organizers must have seen something valuable in you or your expertise.    2    

Remember that fear of public speaking is very common.    3     Most of the people in the audience would be feeling the same fear and stress that you do in your position. Knowing this may make you feel better.

    4     What you say should be tailored (专门的) to why you’re there and who you’re speaking to in order to avoid sounding general. If speaking to a charity group,mention the good work certain specific individuals have done for the cause. If speaking at a business conference, briefly state why you want to help these people.

Keep eye contact with the crowd.    5     Pick one person in each section and look at him while you’re speaking. After each important point in your speech, switch your focus to another section. When you focus only on one person at a time, the size of the crowd isn’t as frightening.

3 . “Two centuries ago, Lewis and Clark left St. Louis to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase,” George W. Bush said, announcing his desire for a program to send men and women to Mars. They made that journey in the spirit of discovery. America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons.

Yet there are vital differences between Lewis and Clark’s expedition and a Mars mission. First, they were headed to a place where hundreds of thousands of people were already living. Second, they were certain to discover places and things of immediate value to the new nation. Third, their venture cost next to nothing by today’s standards. A Mars mission may be the single most expensive non-wartime undertaking in U.S. history.

Appealing as the thought of travel to Mars is, it does not mean the journey makes sense, even considering the human calling to explore. And Mars as a destination for people makes absolutely no sense with current technology.

Present systems for getting from Earth’s surface to low-Earth orbit are so fantastically expensive that merely launching the 1,000 tons or so of spacecraft and equipment a Mars mission would require could be accomplished only by cutting health-care benefits, education spending, or other important programs—or by raising taxes. Absent (缺乏)some remarkable discovery, astronauts, geologists, and biologists once on Mars could do little more than analyze rocks and feel awestruck (敬畏的) staring into the sky of another world. Yet rocks can be analyzed by automated probes without risk to human life, and at a tiny portion of the cost of sending people.

It is interesting to note that when President Bush unveiled (公开) his proposal, he listed these recent major achievements of space exploration: pictures of evidence of water on Mars, discovery of more than 100 planets outside our solar system, and study of the soil of Mars. All these accomplishments came from automated probes or automated space telescopes. Bush’s proposal, which calls for reprogramming some of NASA’s present budget into the Mars effort, might actually lead to a reduction in such unmanned science—the one aspect of space exploration that’s working really well.

Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars to hurl (投) tons toward Mars using current technology, why not take a decade or two or however much time is required researching new launch systems and advanced propulsion (推进力)? If new launch systems could put weight into orbit affordably, and advanced propulsion could speed up that long, slow transit (运输) to Mars, the dream of stepping onto the red planet might become reality. Mars will still be there when the technology is ready.

4 . When office workers were sent home in the spring of 2020, managers suddenly faced a new challenge: how to monitor teams that were working remotely.

A new book, “Leading at a Distance”, by James Citrin and Darleen Derosa of Spencer Stuart, an executive-search firm, attempts to provide some practical tips for managers dealing with staff whom they do not see face to face.

The authors are not in the gloomy(阴暗的) camp that believes remote working is a disaster. They think it can be just as effective as face-to-face work.

They point out that the ability to hire people who can work anywhere means that businesses will find it easier to develop more diverse workforces. A study by McKinsey, a consultancy(咨询公司) ,found that 70% of companies thought remote hiring would help in this respect.

The book offers some useful advice. For starters, keep virtual teams small. The upper threshold(界限) seems to be around a dozen. A study found that 37% of low-performing teams had 13 or more members. In addition, the best-performing teams tended to be drawn from one department, such as marketing, rather than from across the firm.

Mr. Citrin and Ms. Derosa also warn of the dangers of virtual meetings. Just because it is possible to schedule one does not mean it is necessary or wise to do so. Poorly run meetings do not just waste time, they threaten the ability to meet deadlines, adding to workers’ stress. Long meetings should have breaks, allowing for a gap between sessions in an hourly schedule.

A few things must change when people work remotely. But not everything does. Managers will need to make a more determined effort to keep in contact with their staff. If, as most people expect, a hybrid(混合的) model emerges with remote working a couple of days a week, there will be plenty of space for interaction when managers and team members are both present.

5 . How Can I Fight Laziness?

Lazy people will never gain anything in life. However, laziness can be defeated once a few changes have been made in your mind.

    1    Many people lack sleep constantly, since they stay up too late and get up too early to prepare for work. These people have little motivation once they arrive home. Laziness works hand in hand with a lack of motivation and a tendency to put off things. By adjusting your sleep schedule to provide a few more hours of meaningful rest, you can fight laziness throughout the day.

Another way to fight laziness is to change your mind from passive to active. Some people treat their lives as if they were pushed from task to task. Others take a more positive approach, viewing each task as a challenge they must overcome alone.     2    

Some people fight laziness removing the temptations that surround them. A television in the living room may provide entertainment, but watching too much TV often contributes to laziness.     3    Complete a few tasks and reward yourself with what you enjoy, such as a good dinner or a film.

Laziness can also be a lasting problem at home. Couples and children may all have different energy levels, but laziness can be spread if not deal with immediately.     4     Be the first to collect and wash dishes after a meal. Others in the home may eventually follow your example and perform their own task. It is difficult to practice laziness when you are surrounded by motivated people.

    5     Enough exercise and a balanced diet can help you to develop a healthy lifestyle, thus enabling you to have more energy and help lift your spirits.

6 . Ten years ago, I set out to examine luck. I wanted to know why some people are ________ in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experienced ill fortune. I ________ notices in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.

Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my ________. Over the years I interviewed them, watched their lives and had them ________ various experiments.

I carried out a simple ________ to discover whether their differences in luck was due to differences in their ability to ________ opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had ________ placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying “Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50.”

This ________ took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to ________ it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

Unlucky people are generally more ________ than lucky people, and this anxiety affects their ability to notice the ________. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to gatherings focused on finding their perfect partner and miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers ________ to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.

Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there ________ just what they are looking for. My research eventually showed that lucky people create good fortune via four ________. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition (直觉), create self-fulfilling prophesies (预官) via positive expectations, and adopt a “never say die” attitude that ________ bad luck into good.

8 . Psychologists tell us our self-image defines what we believe we can and cannot do. Each of us over the years has built up belief about ourselves. Unconsciously, our pictures of who we are have been formed by past experiences. Our successes and failures, what others have told us and what we think people believe about us all help form impressions of what we think we are. Because self-image is so important in our growth, it is important to examine our concepts of self in order to reach our full potential.

Changing our self-image is possible. Some psychologists suggest we begin to change our self-image by mentally picturing ourselves performing well at some task. Since we presently react to things based on our present images, it’s suggested that we replace those with better ones. In many experiments, people were asked to sit quietly for a few minutes each day and imagine themselves doing well. For instance, subjects would sit and imagine themselves throwing darts at a bull’s-eye on a target. Over a period of weeks, their dart game improved. This has been done with people who wanted to play chess better, throw a ball more accurately, increase their salesmanship or musical talents, and improve many other skills. In most cases, remarkable improvement is made.

The point of changing self-image is not to develop an image of ourselves that is not real. To try to become something we really aren’t is just as wrong as living the unrealistic, inferior image we may have. The aim is to find the real self, to bring our mental images of ourselves in line with our true potential. However, it is generally accepted among psychologists that most of us fail to do justice to ourselves. We’re usually better than we think we are.

Another important part of changing self-image is to not think about past mistakes. Don’t let failures do harm. Our errors or humiliation over mistakes are necessary steps in learning. It is all right to make mistakes. But when they have taught us what we did wrong, we should forget them and not dwell on them. Sometimes we keep remembering our failures or mistakes and feel guilty or embarrassed about them. We let them take over, and then we develop a fear.

It is important to have realistic expectations of ourselves. Some of our dissatisfaction might come from expecting too much of ourselves. If we demand constant perfection in everything we do, we can be disappointed and our poor self-image will continue. If our goal is to reach perfection, we are doomed from the start.

10 . What if we had the power to control time, instead of moving from the past to the present to the future? What if we could jump and travel through time in a machine? What if we could go wherever and whenever we pleased?

The mysterious puzzle of time has kept people debating its nature for hundreds of years. Science fiction writers have turned it into imaginative stories. Some scientists have even attempted to explain it using math, trying to make the dream of time travel come true.

Albert Einstein said that time and space are one thing called “spacetime.” He said there are three dimensions in space: height, width and depth. A scientist named Hermann Minkowski added time as a fourth dimension.

Einstein introduced two ideas that have led to theories about the possibility of time travel. The first is relativity. The idea of relativity is that the force of gravity causes space to bend, which causes time to twist. The second idea focuses on special relativity. The idea is that a traveler moving super-fast through flat spacetime will enter the future. Einstein considered time “relative” because it is measured based on where we are on Earth or in space.

Stephen Hawking believes that a time machine will never be built. If it were possible, he thinks we would already know. If a time machine could be built, how come no one from the future has invaded us?

The first science fiction story with this theme is The Clock That Went Backward by Edward P. Mitchell, which was published in 1881. Since then, thousands of books, films and television shows have explored the idea of time travel, in which some tools such as phones, watches, photographs and old books take travelers backward and forward.

Will time travel ever happen? Who knows? Most important is to keep your eyes open and have a sense of wonder.