2 . “Blame My Brain” by Nicola Morgan, reviewed by Rosalie Warren

As someone who constantly blames my brain for all sorts of things (not my fault — my brain did it!), I was _______ by the title of Nicola Morgan’s book and only slightly disappointed to learn that it was _______ teenagers. Since I have many days when I feel that I am barely out of my teens (though the mirror, sadly, does not bear this out), I decided that the book might still be relevant to me, and indeed to my relationships with my no-longer-teenage children.

The subtitle is “The amazing teenage brain revealed” and amazing is, I soon _______, exactly what the teenage brain is. I learned that one of the things that _______ to the brain in our early teenage years is a flurry of growth of the dendrites (connections between neurons), followed a few years later by a major pruning session where many of the relatively unused connections are culled and the remaining ones are strengthened and coated with a fatty myelin layer ready for adult life. Not _______, all this activity is not without its downside for the person “within”, and it goes along way towards _______ why teenagers can be so difficult to live with and to cope with themselves.

There are also brain-based explanations of why teenagers need so much sleep, why they don’t tidy their rooms, why they come _______ when the rest of the world is going to sleep and why some of them, at least, are risk-takers. There’s stuff about alcohol and drugs and why such things are not good for the brain, but all of it is written in a very _______ and understanding way that I think teenagers will warm to.

Nicola Morgan is not a neurologist or a _______ scientist, but she clearly had done a great deal of research and ________ experts including Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and Professor Susan Greenfield, among many other eminent names in the field. Morgan has a gift for simplifying and explaining ________ subject matter with a light but precise touch, and she is careful to ________ between established facts and theories and speculations of her own and other people’s.

There’s plenty of humour and a good few well-deserved digs at the stupidity of parents and other well-meaning but misguided adults, which teenagers will ________. There are diagrams, tests, photos relating to questions like What emotions can you recognize? Do you ________ other emotions with anger? What kind of thinker are you? Which mental tasks do you find comparatively easy or difficult? There’s also sound advice for addiction, self-harm, depression and other ________ illnesses, and some pointers towards recognizing when you may need to seek help.

The illustrations by Andy Baker are great, too. And oh yes — there’s some interesting discussion on the differences between girls’ brains and boys’, if there are any. You’ll have to read it to find out...

4 . A skywell, or "tian jing", is a typical feature of a traditional home in China. ________ a northern Chinese courtyard, or “yuan zi”a skywell is smaller and less exposed to the outdoor environment. They are________ seen in homes dating to Ming and Qing dynasties, which were designed to________different generations of relatives.

Although a skywell's size and design vary from region to region, it is always rectangular and located in the Core of a house, either________by rooms on four sides or three sides plus a wall. Skywells were designed to cool buildings before air-conditioning existed. When wind blows above a skywell house, it can enter the indoor space through the opening. Because outdoor air is often cooler than indoor air, the ________breeze travels down the walls to the lower storeys and create air ________ by replacing warmer indoor air,   which rises and leaves through the opening.

The main purpose of a skywell is to allow in light, improve ventilation (通风) and ________ rainwater. In Huizhou, a skywell is small but tall, and the rooms around it can ________ sunlight on hot days, enabling the bottom of the skywell to stay cool. ________ hot air inside the house can rise and escape through the opening above the skywell, which“works just like a ________”

As a(n) ________ space between indoor life and the outdoor environment, a skywell acts as an effective heat buffer(缓冲)to shield residents from the hot air outside. But the largest part of skywell's cooling effect actually comes when there are bodies of water in the enclosure.

Evaporated water cools hot air, a process known as evaporative cooling which is ________ in Huizhou skywells. In the past, Huizhou families collected rainwater in their skywells because they believed this could safeguard and boost their wealth. Skywells therefore have channels around them to ________ rainwater coming from the roofs.

Though existing in China for hundreds of years, in recent times they have often been forgotten by people who prefer modern________. Over the past two decades, however, due to a ________ of traditional Chinese architecture, skywell buildings have been making a comeback.

7 . In modern cities, it is now time as much as space that separates urban functions, as people’s lives are lived not only to different timetables, but also at wildly different rates. The mass timetable of the industrial city, with 9-5 office hours and silent Sundays, has gone. In its ______ is flexi-time, part-time working, Sunday shopping and the 24-hour city.

European cities are ______ these changes perhaps faster than British cities. In at least half a dozen cities in Italy, ______, you will find the Uffici Tempi--the Offices of Time. What they do is try to reorganise time more flexibly in the city, in order to meet new needs. This is particularly relevant for Italian women, an increasing number of whom have to ______ two timetables: work and home. Usually located in the Mayor’s office, the Uffici Tempi bring together transport providers, shop-owners, employers, trade unions, the police and other services to see how their efforts might be better ______. The main aim in all this is to increase the efficiency and productivity of the city. This can mean delaying the starting tunes in schools, offices and factories to avoid rush hours, or having shops opening later in the day but closing later too. One further ______ is that there can be more police about in the evening, patrolling the streets when people most need them.

In a number of German cities, people have been ______ whether the timetable of the future city should be 6x6 or 4x9--working hours, that is. Apparently male workers favour a four-day week, while women workers, on the other hand, favour ______ shorter working days. This would give employees more time in the afternoon to be with children or to get the shopping.

The ______ for public services to adapt to our changing lifestyles has been quite difficult for some of the staff involved. ______, who likes working evenings or Sundays? Nevertheless, many city centres are now open for shopping seven days a week, and a number of them now promote themselves as ‘24-hour cities’, where those with money can drink, eat, dance and even shop the whole ______.

Time is flexible, but buildings aren’t. The ______ between the structure of the city and its uses, over time, is a serious architectural and planning problem. ______ has become the key skill. We are slowly ______ the terms of dormitory suburbs and industrial districts, in favour of mixed- use areas, out-of-town retailing and working from home. There is no doubt that planning theory is being ______ by the changing nature of time in the modern city.

8 . Probably the number one complaint about reading Shakespeare is that it doesn’t always read like “normal” English. It’s a natural and reasonable ________. Shakespeare wrote for an audience over 400 years ago. Think about how word meanings and expressions change over a relatively short time; four centuries bring with them a lot of ________. The Renaissance and England’s emerging status as a sea power ________ the language to an ever-increasing range of cultures and languages. At the same time, there was no real standardization in English. Formal dictionaries and grammar textbooks ________ did not exist, and proper education focused much more on classical Latin than on colloquial English. Despite this neglect- or perhaps because of it- English by the reign of Elizabeth had a certain flexibility to it, of which Shakespeare ________.

So how can a reader today ________ that gap between then and now? There are two critical areas to ________: word usage and grammar. Once you understand these fundamental concepts, Shakespeare becomes a lot more ________. First and foremost, there have been numerous vocabulary changes in English since Shakespeare was writing. While many words are still recognizable today, others have shifted in their meaning or dropped altogether from usage. ________, when was the last time you heard anyone use words such as bodkin (a piercing tool), contumely (verbal abuse), or fardel (a bundle)? Often the context in which a word is used will help you determine its meaning. A good ________ with detailed footnotes will help you, as well as a good dictionary. The main thing is to be aware that even a familiar word from today may be used within a different meaning in Shakespeare’s works. Grammar is where the ________ of Shakespeare English is often most apparent. Parts of speech are frequently ________, such as nouns or adjectives becoming verbs. Verbs and subjects don’t always ________. Even sentence construction can be ________, with inversions of the basic subject-verb-object order. ________ we would say, “John caught the ball,” Shakespeare would say “John the ball caught” or “The ball John caught.”

9 . The Great PowerPoint Panic of 2003.

Sixteen minutes before touchdown on the morning of February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia (“哥伦比亚”号航天飞机)______ into the cloudless East Texas sky. All seven astronauts aboard were killed. As the shattered shuttle flew toward Earth in pieces, it looked to its live TV viewers like a swarm of shooting stars.

The immediate ______ of the disaster, a report from a NASA Accident Investigation Board determined that August, was a piece of insulating foam (绝缘泡沫胶) that had broken loose and damaged the shuttle’s left wing soon after liftoff. But the report also   ______ out a less direct, more surprising cause. Engineers had known about - and inappropriately______ - the wing damage long before Columbia’s attempted reentry, but the flaws in their analysis were ______ in a series of overstuffed computer-presentation slides that were shown to NASA officials.

By the start of 2003, the phrase “death by PowerPoint” had well and truly entered the ______ vocabulary. Edward Tufte was the first to have taken it literally: That spring, the Yale statistician published a booklet entitled The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, whose core argument was that the medium of communication influences the substance of communication. While PowerPoint, as a medium, did not ______ create unclear, lazy presentations, it certainly ______ and sometimes even masked them — with potentially deadly consequences. This is exactly what Tufte saw in the Columbia engineers’ slides.

Wired ran an excerpt (节选) from Tufte’s booklet in September 2003 under the headline “PowerPoint Is Evil.” A few months later, The New York Times Magazine included his assessment — summarized as “PowerPoint Makes You Dumb” — in its ______ of the year’s most important ideas. “Perhaps PowerPoint is uniquely suited to our modern age of confusion,” the entry read.

Despite the backlash it inspired in the ______, the presentation giant rolls on. The program has more monthly users than ever before, well into the hundreds of millions. During lockdown, people ______ PowerPoint parties on Zoom. Kids now make PowerPoint presentations for their parents when they want to get a puppy. If PowerPoint is evil, then evil ______ the world.

On its face at least, the idea that PowerPoint makes us stupid looks like a textbook case of misguided technological doomsaying. Today’s concerns about social media somehow resemble the PowerPoint critique. Both boil down to a worry that new media technologies ______ form over substance, that they are designed to hold our attention rather than to convey truth, and that they make us stupid.

______, concerns about new media rarely seem to make a difference. If the innovation did change the way we think, we are measuring its effects with an altered mind. Either the critical remarks were wrong, or they were so right that we can no longer tell the   ______.

10 . The Grey’s Anatomy doctors are navigating the patients that have kept them on our screens for some 400 episodes of the show. But in this episode, for the first time, the _______ to the drama is the very real issue of climate change. It’s a relatively rare example of the many kinds of climate-related storylines that are typically missing from _______ TV and film worlds. Social scientists argue that climate is a topic that belongs in many kinds of on-screen stories, not just the _______ climate-disaster thriller.

But can seeing the realities of climate change affecting characters on the screen help us relate _______ to the unfolding climate crisis – to cope better, or even change our behavior?

Non-profit storytelling consultancy Good Energy believes it can. It is among a small but growing number of organizations _______ far more TV and film scripts to _______ climate-related storylines. In April 2022, it released its Good Energy Playbook, a set of guidelines for embedding climate change into any on-screen story. It joins other initiatives in drawing attention to the need for film and TV to _______ the numerous ways climate change leaves its mark on our everyday lives.

The Good Energy Playbook’s suggestions are appropriately wide-ranging: characters with climate anxiety and those fighting against injustice; utopian (乌托邦的) narratives that explore climate solutions; storylines that quietly _______ climate references into their characters’ worlds.

The playbook was created by Good Energy founder Anna Jane Joyner, “It started as a personal _______, where I just got on the phone with as many screenwriters as I could,” she says. She quickly learned that writers wanted to talk about climate, but “didn’t really have the support and toolset to be able to do it”.

Many research studies looked at the impact introducing climate stories had on viewers, and found it prompted greater concern about climate change. It also ________ people’s understanding of it and made them more likely to take action to reduce their emissions. ________, science tells us that stories have a power that hard facts often don’t. Research has long established that the human brain finds it easier to understand and remember information delivered as a ________, and has even found that stories can influence behavior.

Climate stories, then, seem like a pretty good idea. But these sorts of narratives have been few and far between. Julie Doyle, professor of media at the University of Brighton in the UK, says climate change has ________ for years to get into any form of fictional film or TV representation. “There’s been a silence around it,” she says.

It’s time to break the climate silence, says Doyle. “Mainstream media has tended to follow rather than lead, and it would be great if mainstream media could lead this.” Day-to-day mentions of climate change in media are especially important because, while blockbuster climate films can have a positive impact on awareness and action, the effect is sadly __________. People can feel inspired to take action in the moment, but the feeling __________ in a matter of weeks.