Welcoming the Year of the Dragon or the Loong?

As communities worldwide, both within and outside China, participate in diverse festivities to welcome the Year of the Dragon, the mythical creature has become the subject of debate. Some call it a dragon, while others prefer the term “loong”,     1     a discussion about the most accurate translation of this symbol of traditional Chinese culture.

Do dragon and loong convey the same meaning, or do they represent different creatures with     2     connotations? In Western culture,     3     by Greek mythology, the dragon is frequently portrayed as the guardian of treasure, embodying a symbol of greed and destruction. In China, however, the dragon is very positive. It’s an animal that helps humanity and that is     4    , with emperors often referring to themselves as the “true dragon sons of heaven”.

In the Chinese language, more than 100 idioms incorporate the word “dragon”,     5     conveying positive connotations such as excellence, prestige, royalty,     6     and good luck. The term “dragon” remains a pervasive and     7    element in everyday conversations. When people express admiration for a son-in-law, they often refer to him as “a swift son-in-law who rides the dragon”. During weddings, the groom is usually referred to as the dragon and the bride the phoenix.

Why has the loong been translated into English as dragon? In the early 19^th century, British missionary Robert Morrison compiled the first Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary in history, in which he translated the Chinese loong as dragon. The impact of this dictionary was profound, leading to the widespread adoption of the term dragon in the West. Language     8     influences human minds, and as a result, Westerners perceive it intriguing that the Chinese associate themselves with the concept of dragons. In their culture, dragons are symbols of malevolence, contributing to a cultural distortion and misinterpretation.

With China becoming more     9     into the global community and the world becoming more familiar with the Chinese zodiac sign, has the time come to translate the Chinese dragon to loong? The issue of translation may seem trivial. What matters more is conveying the true essence of the zodiac dragon. The Chinese people place great importance on welcoming people globally to immerse themselves in the Year of the Dragon’s celebratory spirit and share in the Spring Festival’s joy, warmth and     10    .

‘Guilty’ Pleasures? No Such Thing

We know them when we see them: The TV shows and movies we love, even though we just know they’re bad. The trashy books we simply can’t _________. The awful earworms we hate to love.

Yes, these are our guilty pleasures — what some people consider the _________ food in our media diets. But if we enjoy them, why should we feel _________ ? We should be free to enjoy whatever we like! And as it turns out, these so-called “guilty” pleasures can actually be good for us, so long as they’re enjoyed in _________.

Taking a mental break and enjoying something that doesn’t require intense intellectual _________ gets us out of problem-solving mode, said Robin Nabi, a professor of communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who specializes in media effects and emotion. It can also improve our ability to productively deal with stressors and help us _________ more positively with other people.

If that’s true, then why do guilty pleasures get such a bad _________? Well, it’s not the addiction itself, but the _________ we have when talking about them. However, according to experts like Dr. Nabi, feeling guilty about or disparaging (贬低) activities we enjoy can _________ the benefits they offer us while getting rid of self-imposed (自我强加的) embarrassment about our interests can be empowering and enrich our social lives, which is why it’s time to remove “guilty pleasure” from our collective __________.

One important value of a guilty pleasure is the bond it can create between people. “These shows are out there for a reason — they’re resonating (产生共鸣的),” Dr. Nabi said. He added that the connections we make with others who share our interests in such things “is not to be __________.”

__________, talking about what we enjoy can ease any remaining guilt and makes it easier to discover more things that bring us pleasure. Being able to talk __________ about what we love is more than just a way to spend the time. After all, if you don’t feel like you can be honest about what TV pleases you, then what else are you __________ yourself and others.

Still, it’s best to follow the age-old advice our parents taught us: Everything in moderation. Though guilt can enhance pleasure in some cases, it can also push us to indulge (沉溺) in __________ we feel guilty about in others.

The World Is Our Classroom

Tonight, our family was going out to play under the full moon.

We first started going on full moon walks for ourselves, because my husband Todd and I, loved them and we needed these little doses of moonlight to stay happy and to function in society. But after we became parents, we did this for our children. We wanted Sierra and Bryce to see that there is much magic in the natural world and that most of it is accessible to anyone. We also wanted to show them that it was not necessary to travel far from home to have an adventure, learn, and experience something new. Nearly every month, our family went into the night to “play” by the full moon.

Once we arrived at our location that evening, Sierra and I stood holding hands, waiting to cheer the full moon in its rising. A thin sliver of the apricot (杏黄色) moon poked above the shape of the Blue Mountain Ridge. Everyone stood up and witnessed its rising. More of the moon came out until it turned into a brilliant orange sphere. Todd explained to Sierra and Bryce that the moon makes no light of its own, but simply acts like a mirror, reflecting the sunlight back to us long after the sun has sunk below the horizon.

“Does the moon’s face change?” Bryce asked. I told him that the moon rotates with the earth, but it does not spin on its axis like the earth does. The same side of the moon is always facing earth. We never see the other side, the far side of the moon. Sierra remarked that the moon looked larger and closer when it was rising. I explained that it is an optical illusion (视错觉) because it is so close to the horizon that the moon tricks our eyes into comparing it with nearby objects to create the impression of increased size.

Much of the knowledge that Todd and I shared with the kids had been learned from our past life experiences. If we did not possess the knowledge to explain and educate, we looked it up, either beforehand to enhance the experience, or afterwards, together, after we wondered and came up with a list of questions.

Sometimes all it takes is going outdoors and gazing up at the heavens.

Not all birds sing, but those that do—some several thousand species—do it a lot. All over the world, as soon as light filters over the horizon, songbirds start singing. They sing to defend their territory and to impress potential mates.

“Why birds sing is relatively well-answered,” says Iris Adam, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Southern Denmark. The big question for her was this: Why do birds sing so much? “For some reason,” Adam says, birds have “a crazy drive to sing.” This means hours every day for some species, and that takes a lot of energy. Plus, singing can be dangerous.

“As soon as you sing, you reveal yourself,” she says. “Like, where you are, that you even exist, where your territory is —all of that immediately is out in the open for predators, for everybody.”

In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, Adam and her colleagues offer a new explanation for why birds take that risk. They suggest that songbirds may not have much choice. They may have to sing a lot every day to give their vocal muscles the regular exercise they need to produce top-quality song.

These findings could be related to human voices too. “If you apply the bird results to the humans,” says Adam, “anytime you stop speaking, for whatever reason, you might experience a loss in vocal performance.”

To figure out whether the muscles that produce birdsong require daily exercise, Adam designed a series of experiments on zebra finches —little Australian songbirds with striped heads and a bloom of orange on their cheeks.

Through these experiments. Adam’s conclusion is that “songbirds need to exercise their vocal muscles to produce top-performance song. If they don’t sing, they lose performance, their vocalizations get less attractive to females—and that’s bad.”

This may help explain songbirds’ constant singing. It’s a kind of daily vocal practice to keep their instruments in tip-top shape. It’s a good rule to live by, whether you’re a bird or a human—practice makes perfect, at least when it comes to singing one’s heart out.

Too Big, Too Expensive and Too Silly — Why Video Game Movies Fail

Film adaptations of video games have fallen on the unsuspecting viewing public like a Drop Bear. At first they look harmless enough, but they often leave viewers bruised and regretful.

These movies are plentiful.     1     Yet despite big budgets and quality talent both in front of and behind the camera, most video game movies are commercial and critical failures.

    2     The answer comes down to a complex mix of conflicting audience demands and commercial realities. Video game movies often assume that the audience wants, or is interested in, the game’s legend and background. In fairness, this is out of fear that fans will? Criticise legend changes, alienating a key demographic. But games reveal legend progressively over tens of hours of gameplay, whereas movies have a small portion of that time. This tension risks creating boring exposition and complex story lines. For example, Warcraft details the origins of conflict between humans and orcs (兽), the central conflict in the game’s world.     3    

Additionally, excessive adherence to the source material extends to using silly plot devices without spending enough time establishing proper reasons for their existence. In games, these can work due to the “unspoken but commonly understood logic of ‘this is a video game’”. In a game, people accept inconsistent narrative devices because they facilitate interesting interaction and are the quickest route towards allowing gamers to, say, shoot hell-monsters on Mars.

The game series became increasingly complex , as the player-controlled protagonist (主角) parkoured his way through time periods like Renaissance Italy and Revolutionary America. The incredibility of the narrative world paled beside the fun of vaulting from rooftop to rooftop in15th-century Florence.

    4     The plot — an original story which retains the key elements of the games —was criticized as “scattered and fractured”, “hastily explained” and “disorienting”. Vanity Fair pointed out that. It’s not clear why any of this is happening and RogerEbert.com summed it up as: Characters [talking] in quiet whispers about the complex methods they use to realize their poorly-hidden agendas.