The world of live action role-playing

For many people, the days of playing make-believe (假扮) ended in childhood. But for some, the game of make-believe lives on in Live Action Role-Playing, or LARP. This is a game where people act out characters in a(n)     1     plot. A gamemaster creates the plot and then puts together an event where people     2     the story. Those who find a particular plot interesting sign up for the event. Then the gamemaster, or the players themselves, make up their characters for the story. At the event, each person comes in costume and behaves as their character.

Although pretty much anything goes in LARP, nearly every event involves players completing a(n)     3     together. A gamemaster writes a goal into the plot and usually prepares challenges for the players. For example, a character may hold up the mission, making it hard to     4     the goal. LARP events can be as long as the gamemasters want them to be. They can last anywhere from a few hours to several days.

The genius of LARP is that each event can be any kind of story. The most     5     ones come from fantasy, historical, horror or science fiction genres (体裁). With such a variety of story types, LARP attracts all kinds of people. Some players enjoy LARP as a(n)     6     to practice creating or costume-making. Other players enjoy the challenge of going into different worlds and using their brains to solve puzzles. There are also those who simply want to have fun and make friends.

One     7     LARP players have is coming out of their LARP experiences and returning to the real world. This is especially common after a long event. Most players experience a “bleed,” which describes parts of their LARP experience     8     into their everyday life. Since all the senses — seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting — are at work,     9     becomes difficult. However, researchers agree that the overall effects of LARP are     10    . People of different backgrounds come together to grow their skills, play and express creativity.

4 . Hello, everyone!

Are you worried about crime? I am. We read it every day in the newspapers. A terrible crime has been committed, and the police have arrested someone. He has appeared in court and claimed his innocence but has been found guilty of his crime and he has been sentenced to ten years in prison.     1     Innocent citizens like you and me can sleep more safely at night.

But what happens next? We all hope the prisoner will benefit from society’s retribution. A spell (一阵子) in prison will reform him and make him a better person. We all hope he’ll reform and become like us. We all hope that when he is eventually released, he will be a good character.     2     But, let’s face it. The reality is usually very different. The prisoner may be released on parole (假释) before the end of his sentence. He will try to re-enter society. But then he often becomes a victim himself, unable to find work and is rejected by society.     3    

So what can we do to make sure the offender doesn’t commit another crime? Of course, there are alternatives to prison, such as community service or he can pay a large fine. Alternatively, we could establish a more severe system of punishment.

The answer is far simpler. We need to be tough not on the criminal, but on the cause of the crime. We should spend less of the taxpayer’s money in funding the judges and all the other people who are working for the legal system.     4     We in the ConLab Party believe that everybody needs a good chance in life, and this is a good step forward.

Vote for us now!

Even Very Young Children Can Be Depressed

If you doubted it, I would introduce you to Susan, who came to my office and talked constantly about her “bad feeling”. Susan     1     (lose) interest in her favorite activities, stopped playing with her friends, and told her parents that she wanted to be dead. She’d spent more time in the school nurse’s office than in her classroom.

Susan was six years old and     2     (suffer) from depression. Proper treatment helped Susan recover. Without it, she might still be an unhappy child, alone and in pain.

The risk for depression does tend to increase as we grow older. Depression in young children is rare but real. Rene Spitz, a     3     (note) psychological researcher, found that infants who were in an institutional orphanage after World War II refused to eat and eventually died     4     they weren’t held by their caretakers. Children have an innate need     5     (hold) and comforted. If those needs aren’t met, then even very young children can fail to thrive and may become sick and die.

Approximately 1% of preschoolers experience depression; they often have great difficulty expressing their feelings, because not all of their language skills     6     (develop) sufficiently. Instead of expressing their feelings in language, the depressed preschool children are likely to show emotions by exhibiting significantly aggressive, fearful, or crying behavior.     7     most preschool children may get angry if they’re hungry, sleepy, afraid     8     their parents go away, or fail to get Daddy to buy them the latest toys, these behaviors are often carried to extremes of intensity and frequency in depressed children.

Although a diagnosis of clinical depression is rare in preschool children, there are times when it is appropriate. In most cases, the child who     9     (experience) significant frustrations resulting from the death or absence of a parent, has witnessed or been victims of violence, or has had a significant health problem     10     has interrupted normal emotional or physical development. I find preschool children to be more resilient (适应力强的) than older children in dealing with these events, as long as they have a supportive parent and receive timely treatment.

6 . Beside pencil sharpeners and calendars in classrooms throughout Minnesota’s Lakeville Area Schools, there are now big blue boxes with a red button and the word POLICE. The button sends a text message to emergency correspondents, alerts the rest of the school to potential danger, and _______ 1,200 pounds of magnetic (磁性的) force to keep the door shut.

It’s one of the measures that Michael Baumann has employed to _______ the schools in his district and protect against active shooters since he became supervisor in 2017. He hired four more advisers to improve mental-health services. He established a team to monitor _______ threats of violence. He spent $14.4 million installing the emergency-alert system and building panels into walls that are designed to stop bullets—all _______ helping students and teachers survive an active shooter.

“Everybody goes to bed and thinks, ‘That’ll never happen in my school district. ‘ Well, I can tell you as a supervisor, that’s the _______ dream,” says Baumann, who previously served in the Army. “I felt like it was my _______ to do what I could.”

Fear of shootings has turned school security into a _______ industry. The market for school-security equipment and services reached $2.7 billion in 2017, according to a report by the research firm Omdia. That was before the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., further increased the focus on security measures at schools.

The school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 this year has restarted the discussion about whether safety measures at schools can _______ mass shootings. And many politicians, after indicating that they are _______ to support gun-safety lawmaking, have argued instead that heightened physical security measures are necessary to prevent future attacks.

________ , experts say it’s not clear that such measures actually make schools safer. Research shows that the number of deadly shootings at schools has increased since 2012, during a period in which protective measures also ________ . There also isn’t clear evidence that school resource officers (SROs) improve safety. SROs were ________ in Uvalde and in Parkland before the gunmen entered the schools, but failed to stop those shootings.

“When we add metal detectors, observation cameras, increased police presence, active-shooter drills, and we turn schools into this mix of castles and ________ ,” says Bryan Warnick, an education professor at Ohio State University.

Although many school districts invest in security in the hopes of preventing shootings, some worry that reinforcing schools ultimately makes ________ responsible for solving the gun-violence outbreak.

“Schools are ________ with trainings and new procedures,” Warnick says. “It’s a larger social problem of easy access to guns, of lack of access to mental-health care.”

A star athlete at the college where I work recently stopped by my office. After committing a few unforced errors during a weekend match, she was torn apart by self-criticism. “I can’t stop beating myself up,” she told me. “I’m at peak fitness, and I practice hard. How is this happening?”

This student, like many I teach, believes she should be able to control the outcomes of her life via her hard work. The mentality can be described as such: all-nighters in the library and hours on the field should get her     1     where she needs to go.

I study and write about resilience (适应力), and I’m noticing a     2     point in students like this athlete. When they win, they feel powerful and smart. When they fall short of what they imagine they should accomplish, however, they are crushed by self-blame.

We talk often about young adults     3     with failure because their parents have protected them from discomfort. But there is something else at play among the most advantaged in particular: a false     4     that they can achieve anything if they are willing to work for it.

The cruel, messy reality is that you can do everything in your power and still fail. This knowledge comes early to underrepresented minorities whose experience of     5     and inequality teaches them to prepare for what is, for now,     6     beyond their control to change. Yet for others, the belief that success is always within their grasp is a setup. University of Chicago professor Lauren Berlant calls this “cruel optimism,” when the     7     of a goal harms you because it is largely unachievable.

Instead of allowing our kids to beat themselves up when things don’t go their way, we should all     8     a culture that has taught them that feeling anything less than overwhelmed means they're lazy, and that how they perform for others is more important than what actually inspires them. The point is not to give our kids a pass on working hard. We would be wise to remind our kids that life has a way of sucker-punching us when we least expect it. It’s often the people who learn to say “stuff happens" who get up the fastest.

We’d like to believe that peace is normal and that the “hell” of war is rare and unusual. However, according to Wikipedia, there are 40 conflicts, or wars,     1     (happen) around the world today. Some of these wars are between countries, but most are within countries, much like America’s Civil War in the 19th century. One of these wars, the one in Afghanistan (阿富汗), a country     2     neighbors China along its Western border, has just ended. At least, we hope it has ended, because the final days of that war showed how terrible war can be.     3     the U.S. troops were waiting to leave Afghanistan, a terrorist bomb exploded at Kabul airport,     4     (kill) 90 civilians. Days later, ten civilians, including seven children, were mistakenly killed by an American bomb.

Young people in Shanghai are lucky to     5     (spare) an experience like that in Afghanistan. But it hasn’t always been this way. In 1937, the Japanese attacked Shanghai and 3,000 civilians were killed. We remember it today as the Battle of Shanghai. Today, you can visit a museum at the Sihang Warehouse on Suzhou Creek,     6     brave soldiers held back the Japanese for days, giving civilians time to escape the city. I once met a man who had been a boy living in Shanghai during that time. He was the father of a friend of     7    . And I had been invited     8     the family's Spring Festival dinner. I asked him     9     it was like to be in Shanghai in 1937. “It was terrible,” the old man replied. That was all he would say. His response wasn’t unusual. People who have lived through the horrors of war often don’t like to talk about their experiences. The memories are simply too painful. We should be grateful     10     we are at peace.