1 . About a decade ago, I attended a dinner in Guangzhou. The bird’s nest soup was gentle and delicious, the fish fresh and perfectly steamed. The most memorable dish, however, was the plain soup served at the end. Made from chicken, probably with ham as well, it was simple but perfect.

Ending a banquet with soup may seem odd to Westerners, accustomed as they are to sweets at a meal’s close. But, as Fuchsia Dunlop, an English food writer, explains in her new book, Invitation to a Banquet, “The transparent soup is an ideal conclusion to a meal.”

Invitation to a Banquet is Ms Dunlop’s seventh book. Unlike those for which she is best known, including The Food of Sichuan, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, and Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook(about Hunanese cuisine), this is not a cookbook. Instead, she has chosen 30 dishes and used each to illustrate different aspects of Chinese cuisine—and, in turn, Chinese life and history.

“Westerners have traditionally assumed that the Chinese eat animal parts because they are poor, when in fact turning up one’s nose at pigs’ heads and legs shuts the door on a wide range of foods that are really wonderful,” Ms Dunlop argues in the book.

In short, Ms Dunlop has made a convincing case for the superiority of Chinese cuisine, but in a delighted and expansive rather than chauvinistic (沙文主义的) way. She shows how it has absorbed foreign influences(as other cuisines have, too), how it has changed with China’s increasing wealth and how central it is to the country’s intellectual and cultural history.

She makes an equally good case in this book that the Chinese food most Westerners can find at their local takeaway is neither inauthentic nor wrong. Instead, it reflects local tastes which are as representative of the cuisine’s diversity as a frozen pizza is of Italy’s adventurousness. The local takeaway has made the real thing more accessible than ever outside China.

2 . It was early September, a season of less rain. I paid a visit to the Exploradores Glacier in southern Chile’s Laguna San Rafael National Park.

The glacier is an ice sheet that reached its biggest size about 28,000 years ago. But like all glaciers, its growth or decline relies on the amount of snow it receives and the temperatures that either keep it frozen or speed up its disappearance.

“Glaciers are like nature’s thermometer (温度计),” said Jorge O’Kuinghttons Villena, the guardian of the glacier who was accompanying me. “When you see them melt, you know that human lives nearby are at risk. ”

O’Kuinghttons was referring to the fact that melting ice might result in glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOFs, that can destroy nearby communities. A striking case of this occurred in 1977.

“Many people were taken by surprise, because it was a sunny day without rain,” said O’Kuinghttons.

“Was the GLOF a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence?” I asked.

“No, it was an extreme event,” he replied. “But it happens more frequently here, with more violence recently.”

Hiking around the glacier was a unique experience. Owing to its remoteness, there was no life, no movement, no change of any sort in sight. Every 10 minutes or so, the deep silence gave way to a gunfire-like sound: the cracking of ice. Just as suddenly, silence returned.

“It is an everyday occurrence. The glacier is dying,” O’Kuinghttons said. “Take your photo here, and then come back in five years. You can see the difference. What really worries me is the glacier’s slow but accelerated disappearance due to the rising temperatures.”

Late in the evening, I found myself lying in the comfort of my bed and listening to the unmistakable sounds followed by the quietness. The cycle kept me awake all night. I wondered when we would be punished for our own activities.

3 . Keeping your home neat and tidy is a continual process that takes a lot of emotional energy and time. Here are some useful decluttering (清理) strategies.

    1    

If you have a lot of clutter in your house, ask yourself what has made it hard to get rid of. In many cases, it is due to the fact that you hope to hold on to the past or want a different reality than the one you’re living in.

Take the emotion out of it

Then comes the hardest part: figuring out what to get rid of.    2    . Go through it as though you’re helping a friend and none of your stuff means anything to you.

Start small

Don’t try to tidy up all your clutter in one afternoon. Instead, start with something less challenging, like one single bathroom drawer.    3    . This kind of work often takes the most time and emotional energy.

You can also work within short time periods. If you only have an hour to declutter your home this week, divide that time into three 20-minute periods. For the first 20 minutes, look for trash to throw away. For the next 20 minutes, identify anything you want to give away or donate.    4    .

Make it easy to stay organized

It’s easy to be organized the day after decluttering. But what happens when you come home from a trip and are too tired to unpack your luggage? Or when you get the flu and are too sick to clean up?    5    . For example, label storage containers on all four sides so they’re easier to spot. Make sure your most used items are always the easiest to reach.

4 . On February 15, 2024, OpenAI, the maker of Chat GPT, released a new AI tool that can make instant short videos from written commands.

The new text-to-video generator, Sora, isn’t the first of its kind. Google, Meta and Runway ML are among the other companies to have demonstrated similar technology. But industry analysts are deeply impressed by the quality and length of the videos shared so far. Fred Havemeyer, head of AI and software research at Macquarie, said that Sora’s launch marks a big step forward for both OpenAI and the future of text-to-video generation technology.

“Sora’s videos not only run up to 60 seconds in length, but also look so natural that it seems to actually respect physics and the real world,” Havemeyer said. “The length and consistency of the videos represent new opportunities for creatives to generate videos from one or a few written commands.”

Although Sora’s abilities have amazed observers since its launch, anxiety over potential problems of AI-generated video uses also remains.

“Having a potentially magical way to generate videos that look and sound realistic may present a number of issues for the society,” Havemeyer added. “It’s a serious issue that every business and every person needs to face.”

However, tech companies are still calling the shots when it comes to controlling AI and its risks as governments around the world are still struggling to catch up. Last year, the European Union reached a deal on the world’s first comprehensive AI rules, but the act won’t take effect until two years after final approval.

OpenAI promised to take important safety steps before making Sora widely available. “We are working with experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content, and bias,” OpenAI’s Vice President of Global Affairs Anna Makanju said at a conference. “We’re also building tools to help detect misleading content such as a detection classifier that can tell when a video was generated by Sora.”

While Sora can create complex, incredibly detailed scenes, OpenAI admits that there are still some weaknesses. For example, a person might take a bite out of a cookie, but afterward, the cookie may not have a bite mark.

5 . 2023 was a good year for archaeological discoveries. Here are some of the most interesting new finds.

A moai

In February, volunteers unearthed a stone head called a moai on Easter Island. The statue is small for a moai — a little over five feet tall, while others of the roughly 900 statues on the island are up to 33 feet tall.

Most of the moai were created between 1250 and 1500, and local people regard them as the living faces of their ancestors. But nothing is known about this new moai, including which ancestor it represents.

Two mummy workshops

Archaeologists announced in May that they discovered two more workshops near the ruins of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis. One of the workshops features stone beds meant for the preservation of human bodies, while the other one has smaller beds that were used to mummify animals.

A Maya city

In June, Mexican archaeologists discovered a lost city called Ocomtun. They thought it was a major center from about AD 250 until it was abandoned when the Maya civilization collapsed between 900 and 1000, possibly from drought and civil wars.

Ocomtun covers more than 120 acres and features well-preserved homes, raised platforms and pyramid temples. The remains of the largest pyramid are more than 80 feet high.

Roman jewelry

In June, dozens of precious stones were discovered by archaeologists in the ruins of an ancient pipe system that carried water away from public baths in the third and fourth centuries. It’s thought they were worn by wealthy bathers. Some of these precious stones are carved with images of Roman gods, such as Apollo, Venus, and Mars, while others show animals, such as rabbits and birds.

The public baths were found at Carlisle in England. The city was a regional center in Roman Britain, when it was known as Luguvalium.

For some, cloning (克隆) is a problem, since it means that the awkward day     1     somebody proposes cloning people is unavoidable. For others, it will help medical researchers mass-produce animals for     2     (they) experiments.

That sort of cloning is the goal of Dr Sun Qiang of the Chinese Academy of Science. In 2018, Dr Sun made headlines by     3     (raise) a crab-eating monkey. The following year, he performed     4     same trick with five crab-eaters. On January 16, 2024, he reported in Nature Communications that he has invented a better way to clone monkeys in quantity and that he has in his lab a healthy two-year-old male monkey     5     (produce) with the new method.

Cloning has become     6     (popularity) since it gave the world Dolly, a sheep that, in 1996, became the first animal to be cloned from an adult with this method. But success     7     (rate) are low. For most species only, 1—3% of implants produce a surviving new-born. Even for cattle, where the odds are better, they are still only 5—20%. At the moment, the only people making money from cloning are companies that clone pets and horses. If cloning animals is to become a     8     (scientific) useful technology, then better ways of doing it have to     9     (find).

“    10     we have just obtained one healthy baby monkey from 11 implants, it’s not a bad outcome for the first trial of a new technique,” said Dr Sun.

9 . On Sunday, Tara VanDerveer, Stanford University’s coach, got her 1,203rd victory in a game against Oregon State University at Maples Pavilion. The _________ has helped her set an all-time record for most-wins in the history of college _________ — men’s or women’s. Celebrations had already _________ two days before, when the 70-year-old coach _________ the most-wins record.

Instead of _________ her own achievements, VanDerveer shifted the attention to the players and their _________.

“I just _________ how our teams battled,” VanDerveer told the Pac-12 Network. “It’s just a tribute (致敬) to the _________ basketball teams I’ve taught, the nice places I’ve worked and got so much _________.”

It’s VanDerveer’s latest milestone in a __________ career marked by success. During the 1995-96 season, she took leave from Stanford to __________ head coach of the women’s national team which she led to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta to __________ a gold medal with an undefeated record.

In a recent __________ with The New York Times, VanDerveer reflected how __________ women’s college basketball has gone. “When I __________ Stanford in 1985, we girls had to practice at 7:30 at night because the __________ went from 2 to 7. We just had hamburgers when we returned to our __________ at 9:30 or 10 o’clock at night. We had to __________ our own uniforms and shoes while the boys could get everything free from the school,” she said. “Just to see the __________ the girls get now: They can get equal support from the school. Such treatment is more than I ever could have __________.”