Happy Birthday, Thorstein Veblen, who invented the expression "conspicuous( 炫耀性) consumption ".
Why do we buy? What drives us to get things we know we don't need and that we know are bad for the planet? Thorstein Veblen, born on July 30th, 1857, discussed this in his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class, where he first wrote about conspicuous consumption.
According to a website named Conspicuous Consumption, the term refers to consumers who buy expensive items to show off their wealth and income rather than cover their real needs. Such a consumer shows such behavior to enjoy or achieve higher social status. The result, according to Veblen, is a society characterized by wasted time and money.
There is also a type of goods called "Veblen goods", which really exist only to show the status of the person buying them. Rolls-Royce or fancy supercars are a good example; a Lamborghini won't get you anywhere faster in a world with speed limits. A Patek-Philippe watch doesn't keep time as accurately as a Timex.
Conspicuous consumption can lead to conspicuous waste —the ability to just throw things away and buy replacements even when they work perfectly well. Through "conspicuous consumption" often came "conspicuous waste", which Veblen hated. Much of modern advertising is built upon a Veblenian idea of consumption and competition.
Veblen also explains why poor people won't fight against conspicuous consumption. The poor, and all those persons who concentrate on the struggle to make a living, are conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow.
Some of Veblen's theories wouldn't find a place in today's USA, but you must be impressed by his most famous saying: Invention is the mother of necessity.
Happy 163rd Birthday, Thorstein Veblen!
In storm-ravaged Santa Clarita, California, last March, Margarito Martinez approached Runner Road slowly. A small stream had overflowed onto the road. Martinez, driving a Toyota SUV, figured he'd be OK.
Halfway across, the rushing waters grabbed hold of his vehicle, sweeping it off the road and washing it down a rocky stream bed. It finally stopped a good 80 feet away, when the water somehow lifted the SUV and landed it in the ground at a 45-degree angle. Injured, shaken, and trapped inside with the muddy water rising quickly and the door seriously damaged, Martinez was certain that he was going to die.
On the road right behind Martinez were a partly-rental delivery worker and his niece. They watched the horror unfold, and when Martinez's SUV came to rest in the middle of the river, the man leaped to act. First, he grabbed heavy-duty ropes from the back of his truck and fixed the SUV to nearby posts. Then he climbed atop Martinez's vehicle and struck on a rear window with his fists. Frustrated, he turned to his niece and yelled, "Give me a rock!"
Over and over he smashed the rock into the window, to no avail. "We were scared that something else was going to come down and take the SUV, take him, take my uncle," Krystina Reyes, 27, told CBSLA. Her uncle has not publicly revealed his name.
Reyes's uncle shouted to Martinez to move away from the window. He braced himself—right foot on the spare tire, left in the wheel well. He leaned back and threw the rock. Finally, the glass broke and the man kicked in the remaining pieces. Soon, a soaked Martinez came out through the window frame, and the men escaped to dry land. Martinez was saved by an anonymous delivery worker.
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are making waves nowadays, and although it's too soon to determine their final influence on the universities across the country and the world, they are sparking off a lively debate among educators and students.
The first MOOC arrived on the scene back in 2011 when two Stanford teachers offered their artificial intelligence class online for free. Enrollment topped 160,000, and the unexpected success of the experiment encouraged other schools.
Supporters believe making quality educational instruction available to the public will provide higher quality and lower cost for many, and might easily be the best instructional model for the future. MOOCs can be attended by thousands or even hundreds of thousands of students at a time. In fact, Sebastian Thrun, one of the Stanford teachers who started it all, sees a day in which as few as 10 universities meet the world's higher education needs.
Where MOOCs may provide quality instruction for many, detractors often see that very fact as its biggest failing. MOOCs don't offer any individualized training, and some educators feel using it as a for-credit standard in the future will leave some students behind. A common argument is that individualized, face-to-face teaching works best in many cases. The lively exchange of ideas can activate a classroom.
Some find other aspects of MOOCs troubling. In the first MOOCs, plagiarism (剽窃) was a problem and completion rates on the whole were low. This may have been because some students were curious about the format rather than focused on the study.
How will MOOCs progress in the future? No one knows for sure, but the modem classroom may turn out to be a combination of the old and the new, with on-campus activities like labs, debates and online activities working with massive online offerings to provide a special learning experience that's cost-effective and convenient.
We all know that cuckoos (杜鹃) use a mean way to raise their babies. The female cuckoos lay their eggs into other parents' nests. If the cuckoo chick hatches earlier than other eggs, it will push other eggs onto its back, one by one, and make the eggs fall out.
"It's amazing," notes Daniela Canestrari. She's a biologist who studies animal behavior at the University of Oviedo in Spain. At first, she wasn't focusing on brood parasitism. She just wanted to learn about crow behavior. But some crow nests had been parasitized by spotted cuckoos. When the cuckoo eggs hatched, the chicks didn't push crow eggs out of the nest. They grew up alongside crow chicks.
"At a certain point, we noticed something that really puzzled us," Canestrari says. Nests containing a cuckoo chick seemed more likely to succeed. By that she means that at least one crow chick survived long enough to fly out on its own.
The researchers wondered if the reason had something to do with attackers. Wild cats sometimes attack crow nests, killing all the chicks. Are the cuckoos helpful in defending nests?
So the scientists found crow nests containing a cuckoo chick. Meanwhile, they moved some cuckoos to crow nests that weren't parasitized. Then the researchers monitored whether the nests succeeded. They also watched nests that had never contained a cuckoo chick.
About 70 percent of crow nests with added cuckoo chicks succeeded. This rate was similar to that of chicks in parasitized nests that kept their cuckoos. But among nests whose cuckoo chicks were removed, only about 30 percent succeeded. And this rate was similar to what was seen in nests that never held a cuckoo.
"The presence of the cuckoo was causing this difference," Canestrari concluded. Then how did the cuckoos slim down the attackers and protect the crow nests? The researchers found cuckoos produced smelly liquid when they were in danger. The results showed that the attackers all turned up their noses when they were exposed to the liquid-coated meat.
The word "emoji" comes from Japanese, literally meaning "picture character". They come in different categories, such as faces and people, plants and animals, and food and drink.
When first introduced in Japan
in 1999, emojis were limited to 176 simple designs. Now there are more than 3,000
emojis. Due to their popularity, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in 2015
was a pictograph 
instead of a traditional word.
In today's world, emojis have become more and more popular. People like them because they add emotional meanings, and are quick and easy to use. With a smiling or sad face added to a message or post, your reader can "see" your facial expression while reading your words.
For instance, if your friend is moving across the country, you may just send them a string of crying faces to express your sadness over your separation.
A Shakespeare series for young readers has taken William Shakespeare's popular plays and replaced some words with textspeak and emojis. The intention of these adaptations is to make the classics more accessible to young readers. Some people, however, believe that these new versions have taken away the heart and soul of Shakespeare's plays.
As we can see, emojis have a tendency to pop up all over the place. Users of emojis say that they facilitate the way we communicate and express ourselves. But this makes others, especially educators, worry that we are losing the ability to communicate properly using the written word, or even the spoken word. After all, how many of us today would rather send a message packed with emojis than make a telephone call? On that day, emojis will have become a real pictorial "language". But, for now, maybe it's best that we just enjoy using them.
A. Maybe emojis' best days are ahead.
B. The most popular emojis are absolute classics.
C. The use of emojis has even spread to classical literature.
D. Perhaps people will one day choose to communicate in pictures.
E. It seems that emojis have clear advantages over written language.
F. Emojis are small symbols representing ideas, emotions or feelings.
G. Emojis can also help people express their feelings when they can't find the appropriate words.
My seven-year-old son Arthur and I were leaving a holiday party and there was plenty of leftover food that the organizers were trying to give away. Immediately Arthur1 a dish of tiramisu that no one else wanted. "Please, Mom? Please?" I2 to him.
As we left the restaurant, Arthur stopped to look at something. Standing nearby was a gentleman with his 3 jacket. Every few seconds he 4 and tried to speak to the 5 who didn't pay him any attention. At that moment, the gentleman spotted my son 6 him. "Hey man, do you happen to have any7?"
Arthur checked his8 pockets and then looked at me briefly. I 9 my head. Arthur frowned(皱眉) and then he said, "No, I don't. But are you10? Do you like tiramisu? Here, you can have mine."
I blinked back tears as I watched the man's smile11 in appreciation. My son didn't just 12 the food and walk away. He engaged the man in 13 , perhaps the first one this gentleman had all day. He treated the man as a person, with14 . The smile on the man's face told me this was the real reason for his15 .
Friendship is one of life's greatest gifts, and it (value) in both Eastern and Western cultures. One of the most famous sayings about friendship in China can be found in the words of Confucius: "Isn't it joy when friends visit from faraway places?"
In the UK, there is an (equal) famous poem about friendship. It reminds people (remember) and value old friendships, as they look to the years ahead. That poem is Auld Lang Syne.
"Auld Lang Syne" is Scots and translates word for word as "old long since", (mean) "days gone by". The poem was written by the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. It was printed in 1796, just after Burns's death. And over the years it became the song that is so familiar us today.
(Joy) but at the same time a bit sad, Auld Lang Syne has featured in many films, including Waterloo Bridge, the film made the song widely known to Chinese audiences.
Today, Auld Lang Syne has been translated into many different languages, and is one of the world's best-loved songs. It's played at parties, (celebrate), festivals, and even at some shopping centers at closing time. Whatever language or occasion, it has become a symbol of friendship and (share) experience—whether we can sing it or not.
An anonymous (匿名的) person's rude note was sent to a struggling neighbor. Prior to receiving the unpleasant letter last month, Randa Ragland and her family had been facing a variety of tough challenges. Her husband had lost his job; she had been diagnosed with some health issues; but worst of all, her 3-year-old son Jaxen had been diagnosed with stage IV neuroblastoma just before his birthday. Jaxen had already suffered seven surgeries and been hospitalized more than 20 times.
Being a desperate Mom, Ms. Ragland had to care for her little one attentively and tried to get in contact with the "best doctor in the world for this condition". She and her husband travelled all the way state after state to give her little one a fighting chance. Exhausted and worn out, she found the sparkle (火花) of the hope for lighting the messy situation was to go out.
On top of all of this, she opened her mailbox in Pinson, Alabama, to find an unaddressed note from a neighbor criticizing her for the state of her lawn. The note said that since her yard had fallen into disrepair, its appearance was "affecting the resale value" of their homes and that Ragland needed to "do better."
At first, she felt a little angry. But so much had been going on with her and her family. She just didn't have the energy to be more negative.
She posted a photo of the note on Facebook as a means of encouraging her friends to have patience with their own neighbors because we never know what hardships someone might be going through.
注意：1）续写词数应为150左右；
2）请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Unexpectedly, her post was shared by dozens of people.
……
Ms. Ragland had never met any of these people before in her life.
