World's largest coral found in the Pacific The coral was spotted by a videographer diving off a National Geographic research ship in the Solomon Islands. It is 32m long, larger than a blue whale. It may be up to 500 years old. It is made up of billions of tiny creatures forming one organism, making it different to a coral reef. It is mostly brown, with patches of bright yellows, blues and reds. At the UN climate talks, COP29, the Solomon Islands' climate minister said the nation's coral reefs are special and need more protection from global warming. 词汇表 the Pacific [pə'sɪfɪk] 太平洋 spot [spɒt] 发现；看见，认出 videographer [ˌvɪdiˈɒɡrəfər] 摄像师；电视录像制作人 dive off [daɪv] 从……跳水，潜水 National Geographic (Society) [ˌdʒiːəˈɡræfɪk] （美国）国家地理学会 Solomon Islands [ˈsɒləmən] 所罗门群岛（西南太平洋上的群岛国家） blue whale [weɪl] 蓝鲸 organism [ˈɔː(r)ɡəˌnɪz(ə)m] 有机体，生物体 coral reef [ˈkɒrəl][riːf] 珊瑚礁 patch [pætʃ] 斑块，斑纹，斑点 UN climate talks 联合国气候会谈 COP29 第29届联合国气候变化大会 climate minister [ˈmɪnɪstə(r)] 气候大臣，气候部长 ​ 🗒️翻译和pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复1可加入【打卡交流群】

Let's begin in the French overseas territory of Mayotte. Just a tiny collection of dots in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Mozambique. It's home to around 300,000 people who've just endured one of the worst storms on the archipelago in nearly 100 years. In our earlier podcast, we quoted French media reports from soon after the cyclone made landfall on Saturday stating that four people had been found dead. Now, as we record this podcast, authorities in Mayotte are warning that the death toll from Cyclone Chido will be in the hundreds, if not the thousands. The storm spared no one and nothing. Homes, boats and schools were all destroyed, even the capital's hospital. These people in the main city of Mamudzu were queuing for food and water: We've come to get something to eat. For the kids, for us adults, for everything. We've got nothing left. The wind's taken it all away. We had stocked up, but the wind took it all away. We've had no water for three days now. We're trying to get the bare minimum to live on because we don't know when the water will come back. Chido then moved on to hit northern Mozambique with videos on social media showing flooding and uprooted trees near the port city of Pemba. The UNICEF spokesperson in Mozambique, Guy Taylor, is there: UNICEF is concerned about the immediate impacts of this cyclone, the loss of life, the damage to schools, to people's homes, to healthcare facilities. We're also worried about the longer term impacts. Children potentially being cut off from learning for weeks on end, people unable to get access to healthcare, and the potential spread of waterborne diseases like cholera and malaria. Getting hold of anyone on Mayotte is proving almost impossible. Phone lines and the Internet are down. The BBC's Richard Kagoi, who's in Nairobi, has been piecing together what's happened. What we're hearing right now is that emergency responders are currently trying to reach most places, trying to clear, so then they can be able to access much of the debris which has covered warehouses that majority of the people in the island once lived. What is the latest on the relief operation? So far we have French soldiers who had been deployed just before the cyclone struck. And today the first aircraft are carrying aid, specifically medical supplies, blood for transfusions and medical staff. Touchdown in the airport, which was significantly damaged. We're expecting two more aircrafts to come as well. And when the French interior minister will be traveling to the island, he'll be coming along with other soldiers, plus firefighters who are now going to assist with rescue and clearing operations. And presumably we're going to have big problems going forward with just basic things like food and medicine. Yeah, it is a very poor island. In fact, actually, it's the poorest of all the French territories. What's happened right now is because of the devastation, the destruction that has been caused, you'd have lots of people who have been displaced. About 300,000 people lived in this island, so preliminary estimates put it at about 100,000 of them don't even have a shelter. So first of all, access to clean drinking water, which was a huge challenge even before the cyclone, having access to food, to medicine, this is really going to be a major challenge going forward. 🌟更多文本内容见公众号【琐简英语】

Why do we choose to text instead of talk? Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil. And I'm Georgina. Can I ask you something, Georgina? --Mm-mm-hmm. Georgina? --I said, I want to ask you something...are you listening to me? ! --Mm-hmm, just a second, Neil, I'm texting a friend. Ah, has this ever happened to you? Someone too busy texting to talk. With the huge rise of mobile phones in recent decades, communicating by text has become more and more popular and scenes like this have become increasingly common. --...and send! There, all done! Now, what were you saying, Neil? In this programme, we'll be investigating why people often choose to text, instead of talk to the people in their lives. We'll be asking whether this popular form of communication is changing how we interact with each other. --And, of course, we'll be learning some related vocabulary as well. Now, Neil, what did you want to ask me? My quiz question, Georgina, which is this. Young people are often the biggest users of mobile phones, but in a 2016 study, what percentage of British teenagers said they would prefer to send a text rather than speak to someone, even if they were in the same room? Is it a) 9 percent, b) 49 percent, or, c) 99 percent? --That sounds pretty shocking! I can't believe 99 percent of teenagers said that, so I'll guess b) 49 percent. --OK, Georgina. We'll find out later if that's right. In one way, the popularity of texting, sometimes called 'talking with thumbs', is understandable-people like to be in control of what they say. But this low-risk way of hiding behind a screen may come at a cost, as neuroscientist, Professor Sophie Scott, explained to Sandra Kanthal, for BBC World Service programme, The Why Factor. When we 'talk with our thumbs' by text or email or instant message, we're often prioritising speed over clarity and depth. But when we can't hear the way someone is speaking, it's all too easy to misunderstand their intention. So if I say a phrase like, 'Oh, shut up!' -has a different meaning than, 'Oh, shut up!' There's an emotional thing there but also a strong kind of intonation: one's sort of funny, one's just aggressive. Written down it's just aggressive- 'Shut up!' -and you can't soften that. And we always speak with melody and intonation to our voice and we'll change our meaning depending on that. You take that channel of information out of communication you lose another way that sense is being conveyed. When reading a text instead of listening to someone speak, we miss out on the speaker's intonation-that's the way the voice rises and falls when speaking. Intonation, how a word is said, often changes the meaning of words and phrases-small groups of words people use to say something particular. Reading a phrase like, 'Oh, shut up!' in a text, instead of hearing it spoken aloud, makes it easy to misunderstand the speaker's intention-their aim, or plan of what they want to do. And it's not just the speaker's intention that we miss. A whole range of extra information is conveyed through speech, from the speaker's age and gender to the region they're from. Poet, Gary Turk, believes that we lose something uniquely human when we stop talking. And there are practical problems involved with texting too, as he explains to BBC World Service's, The Why Factor. If you speak to someone in person and they don't respond right away, that would be rude. But you might be speaking to someone in person and someone texts you...and it would be ruder for you then to stop that conversation and speak to the person over text...yet the person on the other side of the text is getting annoyed -you haven't responded right way-it's like we're constantly now creating these situations using our phones that allow us to like tread on mines-no matter what you do, we're going to disappoint people because we're trying to communicate in so many different ways. Do you prioritise the person on the phone? Would you prioritise the person you're speaking to? Who do you disappoint first? You're gonna disappoint somebody. So what should you do if a friend texts you when you're already speaking to someone else in person-physically present, face to face? You can't communicate with both people at the same time, so whatever you do, someone will get annoyed-become angry and upset. Gary thinks that despite its convenience, texting creates situations where we have to tread on mines, another way of saying that something is a minefield, meaning a situation full of hidden problems and dangers, where people need to take care. Yes, it's easy to get annoyed when someone ignores you to text their friend. 📝 字数限制，完整文本、翻译及pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复1可加入【打卡交流群】

How You Could Ruin Someone's Day or Life A lot of evil is done in the world by people who can't imagine that they have any power to hurt anyone. It's their sense that nothing is at stake in their behaviour towards others that leads them to ignore the rules of politeness and humanity – and to kick people as if they were plated in armour. They are – in this respect – paying homage to childhood. Think of the situation of a young child, of perhaps six, who has fun mocking a parent's double chin or the wrinkles around their eyes. To this child, the parent is still, in many ways, an invulnerable deity. They live in a remote, impressive world of work, credit cards, driving and the news. How could someone of such stature be hurt by a comment about their less-than-perfect physique by a tiny person who can't spell properly? But the child is missing the point. Their words do hurt. They can make their parents cry (in private). The child simply can't grasp how desperate and anxious their parent might be, how every morning they might stare in dismay into the bathroom mirror at the visible signs of ageing that speak to them relentlessly of a wrongly-lived life. The parent, out of dignified generosity, has shielded their child from their own fragility. And now their child is paying them a beautiful if misguided, compliment: a belief that they are beyond suffering. Something related may happen when employees get together to gossip about the person they work for. In their imagination, the boss is so far above them that it couldn't possibly matter what they say about them. It's only when they themselves move to senior positions that they start to realise how vulnerable the person in charge might feel, how completely normal it is to want to be liked (even if you have a seat on the board) and how imperfect your self-esteem might be. This idea casts a useful light on the activity of particularly dangerous people online. Their venom isn't the expression of a feeling of power. Rather, the troll tends to feel like a medieval vagabond outside a heavily fortified city, hurling insults and threats at what they take to be comfortable inhabitants sleeping behind meters of stone walls lined by vigilant troops. They want to hurt, but they don't in any way actually imagine they can; that is what renders them quite so vicious. True kindness may require us to take on board a very unfamiliar idea: however young we are, however forgotten and ignored we feel we are, we have a power to cause other people serious damage. It isn't because we aren't wealthy or revered in elite circles that we thereby lose a capacity either to comfort or to wound strangers. We become properly moral, and properly adult, when we understand that we may all, whoever we may be, ruin someone's day, and on occasion, through a few incautious and misplaced words, their life. 词汇表 at stake [steɪk] 利害攸关，处于危险或风险之中 be plated in armour [pleɪt][ˈɑː(r)mə(r)] 身披盔甲 in this respect 在这一点上，从这个方面来说 pay homage to [ˈhɒmɪdʒ] 对…表敬意，致敬 mock [mɒk] 嘲笑，嘲弄，模仿 double chin [tʃɪn] 双下巴 wrinkle ['rɪŋkl] 皱纹，褶皱 invulnerable [ɪn'vʌlnərəb(ə)l] 无懈可击的，不会受伤害的，刀枪不入的 deity [ˈdeɪəti] 神，神性 stature [ˈstætʃə(r)] 身高，高度；声望，名望 less-than-perfect 不完美，不尽人意的 physique [fɪˈziːk] 体格，体形 grasp [ɡrɑːsp] 理解，领会，明白；抓住 in dismay [dɪs'meɪ] 沮丧地，惊愕地 relentlessly [rɪˈlentləsli] 无情地，残酷地；不断地 dignified [ˈdɪɡnɪfaɪd] 高贵的，有尊严的 generosity [ˌdʒenəˈrɒsəti] 慷慨，宽宏大量，大方 fragility [frə'dʒɪləti] 脆弱，虚弱，易碎 misguided [mɪsˈɡaɪdɪd] 误导的，搞错的，误入歧途的 gossip [ˈɡɒsɪp] 闲聊，说闲话，传播流言蜚语 senior position [ˈsiːniə(r)] 高级职位 vulnerable ['vʌln(ə)rəb(ə)l] 脆弱的，敏感的，易受伤的 in charge [tʃɑː(r)dʒ] 负责，主管，管理 board [bɔː(r)d] 董事会，理事会，委员会 self-esteem [selfɪˈstiːm] 自尊；自负，自大 cast a light on 阐明，揭示（使更加清晰或易于理解） venom ['venəm] 恶毒，恶意；毒液 troll [trɒl] 网络喷子（故意留下激怒他人言论的人） medieval vagabond [ˌmediˈiːv(ə)l][ˈvæɡəbɒnd] 中世纪流浪者 heavily fortified [ˈfɔː(r)tɪfaɪ] 重兵把守的，戒备森严的 hurl insults and threats [hɜː(r)l][ɪn'sʌlt] 大声辱骂和恐吓 inhabitant [ɪnˈhæbɪtənt] 居民，栖息动物 vigilant troops ['vɪdʒɪlənt] 警惕的部队 render [ˈrendə(r)] 致使，造成，使变得 vicious ['vɪʃəs] 邪恶的，恶毒的 take on board 理解，接受，考虑 revere [rɪˈvɪə(r)] 尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 elite circle [ɪˈliːt] 精英圈 incautious [ɪnˈkɔːʃəs] 不谨慎的，轻率的，鲁莽的 misplaced [ˌmɪsˈpleɪst] 不合时宜的，不恰当的 🏫翻译、视频版和pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进入【打卡交流群】

What staying up all night does to your brain Anna Rothschild | TED-Ed • Nov 2024 You're just one Roman Empire history final away from a relaxing spring break. But you still have so much to study! So you decide to follow in the footsteps of many students before you and pull an all-nighter. When you stay up all night, you're fighting against your body's natural circadian rhythms. These are the cyclical changes that virtually all living things experience over the course of a 24-hour period— such as sleeping and waking— and they're heavily influenced by light. But for the moment, you're alert and powering through the rule of Julius Caesar. As the sun sets, your eyes send signals about the dwindling light to a part of your brain called suprachiasmatic nucleus. This is basically your circadian rhythm's clock. It alerts your pineal gland to start producing melatonin. That's the hormone that helps prepare your body for sleep, and levels start to rise about two hours before your normal bedtime. At the same time, neurons in the hypothalamus and brain stem release a compound called GABA. This slows down activity in your brain and can have a calming effect. You're approaching your normal bedtime. Since the brain needs to cool down before sleep, your core body temperature starts to drop. Huh, that map kind of looks like a face. Uh-oh, your attention has started to drift. Throughout the day, your brain has been releasing a waste product called adenosine. The more adenosine latching onto receptors in your brain, the more tired and inattentive you become. Time for a cup of coffee. Caffeine blocks adenosine from binding to receptors, which can give you a boost of energy. However, it might also make you jittery and increase your anxiety. You're acing these flashcards! Right now these dates and names are being stored in an area of the brain called the hippocampus. Normally when you go to sleep, memories like these are consolidated and slotted into long-term storage in your brain's neocortex. So it's a good thing you only need to remember this information through tomorrow. Microsleeps are unpredictable periods of sleep that last for only a few seconds and are triggered by sleep deprivation. You stretch in an attempt to stay awake. But at this point your motor skills have also taken a hit. Studies have found that people who have been awake for 19 hours have similar coordination and reaction times as those who have been drinking. As the sun rises, your pineal gland stops releasing melatonin. You feel a "second wind" come on. And despite everything, you leave for school in a really good mood. Sleep deprivation can briefly induce euphoria. It's caused a temporary boost in dopamine levels, which can unfortunately also lead to poor choices. The final starts off well. It's all multiple choice! But then you get to the essay portion. It's thought that during sleep, our brains process ideas and draw connections between new memories and old ones. So your sleepless brain might be able to regurgitate facts, but you're finding it more difficult to find patterns or problem solve. You stare at the blank page, defeated. You head up to your room, anxious and irritable. Your amygdala, the part of the brain involved with processing emotion, is going haywire. Your prefrontal cortex usually keeps your amygdala in check, but it still isn't firing on all cylinders. Your bed has never felt so sweet. After one sleepless night, your body and brain bounce back pretty quickly. Which is a good thing since we can't always control how much sleep we get. But going for long periods without a good night's sleep or constantly changing your bedtime, can take its toll. Regularly getting less than seven hours of sleep each night is linked to all sorts of health issues, from diabetes to stroke to chronic pain. It also leaves you more vulnerable to developing mental health issues like depression. Your sleep schedule can even affect your grades. Studies have shown that college students who keep regular sleep hours have, on average, a higher GPA than students who don't. So the next time you're thinking of pulling an all-nighter, remember that Rome wasn't built in a day, or for that matter, one night. 🎬翻译、视频和pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1" 可加入【打卡交流群】

Science and Technology 科技 Neuroscience 神经科学 Nothing better than the real thing 没有什么比真的更好了 Why recorded music will never feel as good as being at a concert 为什么听录制音乐的感受永远比不上听现场 In a world of music streaming services, access to almost any song is just a few clicks away. Yet, the live gig lives on. People still fill sweaty basements, muddy fields and gilded concert halls to hear their favourite musicians play. And now neuroscientists might know why: live music engages the brain's emotion centres more than its recorded counterpart. Concerts are immersive social experiences in which people listen to and feel the music together through crescendos, key changes and drops. They are also dynamic--artists can adapt their playing according to the crowd's reaction. It was this last difference that led neuroscientists, based at the Universities of Zurich and Oslo, to study the brain responses of people listening to music. In the“live" experiment, participants lay in an MRI scanner listening to the music through earphones, while a pianist was positioned outside the room. The pianist was shown the participant's real-time brain activity as a form of feedback. In the recorded condition, participants listened to pre-recorded versions of the same tunes. The scientists were interested in how live music affected the areas of the brain that process emotions. In the live condition pianists were instructed to try and modulate their playing in order to drive the activity in one of these regions known as the amygdala, an almond-shaped area deep inside the brain. The results, just published in the journalPNAS, showed that live music had far more emotional impact. Whether the music was happy or sad, listening to the pianist playing in a dynamic way generated more activity in both the amygdala and other parts of the brain's emotion processing network. The researchers also found that participants' brain activity tracked the acoustic features of the music, like tempo and pitch, far more closely when it was played live. The study was far from replicating the real experience of a gig, and the authors noted that the live music ended up sounding quite different from the recorded tracks, which may have driven some of the differences in participant's brain activity. But the results indicate that the ability of artists to change the way they play in response to the audience may be one aspect of what makes live music special. Some musical acts now attempt to recreate the real gig experience with everything but the artist-ABBA Voyage is a social, immersive show performed entirely by pre-recorded hologram avatars. But without Benny's ability to read the mood of the room, it will never quite match the real thing. 词汇表 recorded music 录制音乐 streaming services [ˈstriːmɪŋ] 流媒体业务 live gig [ɡɪɡ] 现场演出 sweaty basements ['sweti]['beɪsmənt] 闷热的地下室 muddy fields ['mʌdɪ] 泥泞的户外 gilded concert halls [ˈɡɪldɪd] 金碧辉煌的音乐厅 neuroscientists [ˌnjʊərəʊˈsaɪəntɪst] 神经科学家 counterpart [ˈkaʊntə(r)ˌpɑː(r)t] 对应的人（或事物） immersive [ɪ'mɜ:sɪv] 沉浸式的，身临其境的 crescendo [krəˈʃendəʊ]（音乐的）渐强，声音渐增 key changes 音调变化 drop （音乐）高潮部分 dynamic [daɪ'næmɪk] 动态的，不断变化的 MRI scanner [ˈskænə(r)] 核磁共振扫描仪(magnetic resonance imaging) position 安置，使处于 real-time 实时的，及时处理的 tune [tjuːn] 曲子，曲调 modulate [ˈmɒdjʊleɪt] 调节，调整（声音等），变调 amygdala [ə'mɪɡdələ] 杏仁核 almond-shaped [ˈɑːmənd] 杏仁状的 PNAS 美国国家科学院院刊(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) acoustic [əˈkuːstɪk] 听觉的，声学的，音响的 tempo [ˈtempəʊ] （音乐的）节奏，拍子 pitch [pɪtʃ] 音准，音高 replicate [ˈreplɪkeɪt] 复制，复现，重复 track（光盘、录音磁带等上的）一首歌，一支乐曲 hologram [ˈhɒləɡræm] 全息图，全息摄影 avatar [ˈævəˌtɑː(r)] 虚拟化身，替身 🔆翻译、pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

Are middle-aged people more unhealthy than ever? The findings come from nearly 8,000 adults taking part in the 1970 British cohort study that spans more than 50 years of life. Around one-in-three of this group of people aged 46 to 48 had two or more chronic health conditions – that includes issues such as recurrent back problems, mental ill health, and high blood pressure as well as risky drinking. Although obesity was not recorded as a health condition, it was measured as a possible risk factor and did appear to be linked to diabetes and high blood pressure. Experts advise that even in later life, adopting healthy choices, such as eating a good diet, limiting alcohol intake, quitting smoking and getting regular exercise, can make a difference. 词汇表 cohort [ˈkəʊˌhɔː(r)t] 定群的（将特定人群分组追踪观察的） chronic [ˈkrɒnɪk] 慢性的，长期的 recurrent [rɪ'kʌrənt] 反复出现的，周期性的 risky drinking 危险饮酒（指饮酒过量或酗酒的行为） obesity [əʊˈbiːsəti] 肥胖，肥胖症 diabetes [ˌdaɪəˈbiːtiːz] 糖尿病 alcohol intake [ˈælkəˌhɒl][ˈɪnteɪk] 酒精摄入量，饮酒量 quit [kwɪt] 戒掉，停止，摆脱 🗒️翻译和pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复1可加入【打卡交流群】

Easy ways to get more nutrients A can of soft drink and two large eggs may have a similar number of calories, but the eggs will provide us with protein, vitamins and other nutrients, and satisfy our hunger, while a fizzy drink provides little more than tooth decay and calories. The important concept here is nutrient density. This is the number of nutrients we take in for each calorie consumed. No one would suggest replacing sweet drinks with eggs, but what can we do to increase nutrient density in our diet? "Have you had your five a day?" that's the message on British supermarket shelves, and it's asking about fruit and vegetables. Many countries have launched similar campaigns to encourage people to eat more healthily. Fresh, natural produce is usually very dense in nutrients. Eating a wide range of fruits and vegetables is important, so some advice focuses on including different colours of food in our diets. 'Eating a rainbow' could be one way to get more nutrients. Other advice recommends that we are more adventurous in what we eat. Cooking food that we haven't eaten before can lead us to use ingredients that we don't usually consume. This can give us a wider range of nutrients. It's not just about fruit and vegetables. Even using different seasoning can offer health benefits. Nutrition academic Hazel Flight highlights that flavourings such as garlic, ginger or turmeric can have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, while also leading people to use less salt. Dairy products such as milk and cheese, are high in calcium, while in limited amounts, meat can be a good source of protein. If you're not feeling that adventurous, then swapping individual food items can be beneficial. Choosing wholegrain bread or rice instead of white bread or rice can increase fibre intake. Unsalted nuts provide more nutrients than snacks such as crisps. Possibly surprisingly, popcorn is a wholegrain snack that is high in fibre. So, fresh fruit and vegetables, swapping the worst things, and just a little bit more adventure could be the secret to a more nutritious diet. 词汇表 soft drink 软饮料（不含酒精） calorie [ˈkælərɪ] 卡路里（热量单位） protein [ˈprəʊtiːn] 蛋白质 vitamin [ˈvɪtəmɪn] 维生素 nutrient [ˈnjuːtriənt] 营养素，营养物，养分 fizzy drink ['fɪzi] 汽水，碳酸饮料 tooth decay [dɪ'keɪ] 蛀牙 nutrient density ['densəti] 营养密度 take in 摄入，吸收 consume 吃，食用，摄入 launch campaigns [lɔːntʃ] [kæm'peɪn] 发起运动 produce 农产品 dense in 富含 a wide range of 许多，各种各样的，广泛的 adventurous [ədˈventʃ(ə)rəs] 勇于冒险的，大胆的 ingredient [ɪnˈɡriːdiənt] 食材，配料，原料 seasoning [ˈsiːz(ə)nɪŋ] 调味品，佐料 flavouring ['fleɪvərɪŋ] 调味品，调味料 garlic [ˈɡɑː(r)lɪk] 大蒜，蒜头 ginger [ˈdʒɪndʒə(r)] 姜，生姜 turmeric [ˈtɜː(r)mərɪk] 姜黄 antioxidant [ˌæntiˈɒksɪd(ə)nt] 抗氧化的；抗氧化剂 anti-inflammatory [ˌæntiɪnˈflæmətəri] 抗炎的，消炎的；抗炎药 property [ˈprɒpə(r)ti] 属性，特性，性能 dairy products [ˈdeəri] 乳制品，奶制品 calcium ['kælsiəm] 钙 swap [swɒp] 交换，替换 wholegrain [ˈhəʊlˌɡreɪn] 全麦的，全谷物的 fibre intake [ˈfaɪbə(r)] [ˈɪnteɪk]（膳食）纤维摄入量 unsalted nuts [ʌnˈsɔːltɪd] 无盐坚果 snack [snæk] 零食，小吃，点心 crisp [krɪsp] 炸薯片，松脆食品 popcorn [ˈpɒpˌkɔː(r)n] 爆米花 📖 翻译、pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

Why read books, not screens? Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Phil. And I'm Georgie. For me, there's nothing like reading a book – I love turning the pages and the smell of the paper. But nowadays, the fact is that much of the time we read from electronic screens, not paper. --Yes. Like Georgie, I love books. I also find that too much screen time hurts my eyes. But the availability of digital information means that I end up reading from screens most days. So, apart from sore eyes, is this a problem? Is reading from screens harmless, or could it be damaging us in some way, such as reducing our attention span - the length of time that someone can keep concentrated on what they are doing? That's what we'll be discussing in this programme, and of course, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary too. Great, but first it's time for my question. Whether you prefer paper or screens, as humans we're now reading more words than ever before. So how many words does the average person read a day? Is it: a) 50,000 words? b) 100,000 words? or, c) 200,000 words? --I'll guess it's 50,000 words a day. --OK, Georgie, we'll find out the correct answer later in the programme. Of course, there's little doubt that any kind of reading is good for you. Here's Cressida Cowell, author of the How to Train Your Dragon children's books, speaking with BBC Ideas: Reading brings three magical powers - creativity, intelligence, and empathy. Reading for the joy of it is one of the two key factors in a kid's later economic success. You're more likely to not be in prison, to vote, to own your own home. All of these advantages and benefits happen as a result of literacy. Cressida talks about the importance of reading for the joy of it. When you do an activity for the joy of it, you do it simply for the pleasure of doing it, rather than as a way to gain something else. Cressida lists the many benefits of reading for children, including economic success in later life. But many of these benefits depend on a state known as 'deep reading' – analysing a text to understand its deeper meaning. And in test after test, researchers have shown that 'deep reading' skills develop better when kids read from books. Professor Maryanne Wolf is a teacher, and advocate for children's literacy around the world. Here, she explains more about 'deep reading' to BBC Ideas: When we read at a surface level, we're just getting the information. When we read deeply, we use much more of our cerebral cortex. Deep reading means that we make analogies, we make inferences, which allows us to be truly critical, analytic, empathic, human beings. The reality is, it's not what, or how much we read but how we read, that's really important. The very volume is having negative effects because to absorb that much, there's a propensity towards skimming. Professor Wolf's research shows that reading from screens encourages reading at the surface level – quickly and superficially looking at what can be easily understood. Reading books, on the other hand, activates different areas of the brain, allowing a reader to develop positive traits like empathy, and to understand the deeper level of a book, including analogies and inferences. An analogy is a comparison between things that have similar features. For example, you might talk about the human heart using the analogy of a pump. An inference is a guess, opinion, or conclusion that you make based on the information you already have. For example, seeing smoke in the distance you would make an inference that there's fire. It's these types of deeper, more subtle understanding that we get from reading books. So, why is it that reading from screens doesn't develop these skills in the same way? Well, the answer has to do with the volume, the sheer number of words, pings and notifications that screens bombard us with every day. Instead of deep reading, this encourages skimming - reading rapidly in order to get a general overview of something. I think it's time to reveal the answer to my question, Georgie. I asked you how many words does the average modern person read a day. --And I guessed it was 50,000 words. --Well, you were half right. In fact, the correct answer was double that – 100,000 words. 📝 字数限制，完整文本，翻译及pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复1可加入【打卡交流群】

Lie to Ourselves: A Mask to Avoid Pain A major obstacle to self-knowledge, and in turn to a flourishing life is the tendency of one part of our minds to lie to the other. We lie for what might initially seem like a very understandable reason, because we want to avoid pain. But in so doing, we hugely damage our chances of happiness. Given how risky the truth about us can feel, we had to learn to be masters of deception. Our techniques are wide-ranging, devilish, and often hugely imaginative. Here are some of the leading maneuvers we employ to pull the wool over our own eyes. 1. Distraction/Addiction 分心/上瘾 We identify something that can powerfully keep our thoughts away from troubling inner confrontations. Online pornography's a favorite. The news another. Alcohol, a third. Work, a fourth. We don't so much like these elements in and of themselves. We like them for their ability to keep us away from what we fear. 2. Manic Cheeriness 狂躁的快乐 A sadness we haven't been able to admit to, is often covered up with exaggerated doses of manic cheeriness. We aren't happy, so much as incapable of allowing ourselves to feel even the slightest sadness, in case we were to be overwhelmed by our buried grief. We develop a brittle insistent tendency to say that, "All is very well", "This is lovely, isn't it?" We might press leaving no room for any ideas to the contrary. 3. Irritability 易怒 Denied anger with a particular personal situation often seeps out into a generalized irritability. So successful is the lie, we don't really know what's up. We just keep losing our tempers. Someone moved the TV remote. There are two eggs in the fridge. The electricity bill is slightly higher than we expected. Anything can set us off. Our brains are so filled with how frustrating, annoying things are. We have cleverly left no space at all for focusing on the true and very sad issue. 4. Denigration 贬低 We tell ourselves that we simply don't care about something. Love or politics, career success or intellectual life. That beautiful student or the house we can't afford. And we are very emphatic about our lack of interest and complete disdain. We go to great lengths to make it very clear to others and ourselves how absolutely unconcerned we are. 5. Censoriousness 挑剔 We grow censorious and deeply disapproving of certain kinds of behavior and people. What we don't admit is that was so full of condemnation, only because we need to ward off awareness that a part of us in fact really likes the condemned element. We attack certain sexual tastes as utterly deviant and beyond the pale, precisely because we half know that we share them, somewhere inside ourselves. So we're delighted when particular people are arrested or shamed in the press. What they did was utterly awful, we insist, our outrage shielding us from any risk of spotting the connection between them and us. 6. Defensiveness 防御 When there's unwelcomed news, we may resort to a highly successful diversionary tactic, taking offense. A colleague tries to give us a bit of feedback. Instantly, we accuse them of rudeness, arrogance in a sense of entitlement. A partner points something out. We get furious that they're piling pressure on us at a difficult point. Feeling offended takes up all our attention. It muddies the waters. We no longer have to pay attention to information that is at heart correct but challenging. 7. Cynicism, Despair 愤世嫉俗，绝望 We're sad about particular things. But confronting them would be so arduous, we generalize and universalize the sadness. We don't say that X or Y has made us sad. We say that everything is rather terrible and everyone is rather awful. We spread the pain, in order that its particular specific causes can no longer be the focus of attention. Our sadness gets, to put it metaphorically, lost in the crowd. Why is lying to ourselves a problem? We need to tell ourselves the truth when we can, for the simple reason that we often pay a very high price for the short-term calm of our lies. We miss key opportunities for growth and learning. We're not very nice to be around. We develop harmful systems. And not least, the truth will be out. When we don't let it emerge, it has a tendency to reveal itself through involuntary often physical symptoms. We become insomniac or impotent. An eyelid starts twitching. We acquire a stutter, and scream in our sleep and lose energy. We fall into depression. We owe it to ourselves to dare to start to confront our real nature. 🏫翻译、视频版和pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进入【打卡交流群】

The world's largest iceberg weighs nearly a trillion tonnes Imagine a field of ice more than twice the area of Greater London, but as thick as its skyscrapers are tall. This is A23a, current title holder of the world's biggest iceberg. Scientists have used radar pulses from a European Space Agency satellite to essentially take a tape measure to the colossus. The researchers from the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling say the berg has lost quite a bit of mass since breaking away from the Antarctic coast in 1986, but it still tips the scales at 950 billion tonnes. As A23a moves north and warms in the coming weeks, its melt rate will accelerate, and it'll be dumping more fresh water into the ocean daily than is consumed by the entire UK population. 词汇表 Greater London 大伦敦（地区） skyscraper [ˈskaɪˌskreɪpə(r)] 摩天大楼 title holder 冠军头衔保持者 iceberg [ˈaɪsˌbɜː(r)ɡ] 冰山（浮在海上的巨大冰块） radar pulses [ˈreɪdɑː(r)][ˈpʌlsɪz] 雷达脉冲 European Space Agency 欧洲航天局 tape measure [teɪp] 测量尺，卷尺 colossus [kəˈlɒsəs] 庞然大物，巨物 Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling 极地观测和建模中心 mass [mæs]（物理）质量；块，团 break away 脱离，突然离去，断裂 Antarctic coast [æn'tɑ:ktɪk] 南极海岸 tip the scales at 达到…重量 dump [dʌmp] 排放，倾入 🗒️翻译和pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复1可加入【打卡交流群】

Is life meaningless? And other absurd questions Nina Medvinskaya | TED-Ed • Sept 2020 Albert Camus grew up surrounded by violence. His homeland of was mired in conflict between native Algerians and colonizing French Europeans. He lost his father in the First World War, and was deemed unfit to fight in the second. Battling tuberculosis in France and confronting the war's devastation as a resistance journalist, Camus grew despondent. He couldn't fathom any meaning behind all this endless bloodshed and suffering. He asked: if the world was meaningless, could our individual lives still hold value? Many of Camus' contemporaries were exploring similar questions under the banner of a new philosophy called existentialism. Existentialists believed people were born as blank slates, each responsible for creating their life's meaning amidst a chaotic world. But Camus rejected their school of thought. He argued all people were born with a shared human nature that bonded them toward common goals. One such goal was to seek out meaning despite the world's arbitrary cruelty. Camus viewed humanity's desire for meaning and the universe's silent indifference as two incompatible puzzle pieces, and considered trying to fit them together to be fundamentally absurd. This tension became the heart of Camus' Philosophy of the Absurd, which argued that life is inherently futile. Exploring how to live without meaning became the guiding question behind Camus' early work, which he called his "cycle of the absurd." The star of this cycle, and Camus' first published novel, offers a rather bleak response. "The Stranger" follows Meursault, an emotionally detached young man who doesn't attribute much meaning to anything. He doesn't cry at his mother's funeral, he supports his neighbor's scheme to humiliate a woman, he even commits a violent crime — but Meaursault feels no remorse. For him the world is pointless and moral judgment has no place in it. This attitude creates hostility between Meursault and the orderly society he inhabits, slowly increasing his alienation until the novel's explosive climax. Unlike his spurned protagonist, Camus was celebrated for his honest philosophy. "The Stranger" catapulted him to fame, and Camus continued producing works that explored the value of life amidst absurdity many of which circled back to the same philosophical question: if life is truly meaningless, is committing suicide the only rational response? Camus' answer was an emphatic "no." There may not be any explanation for our unjust world, but choosing to live regardless is the deepest expression of our genuine freedom. Camus explains this in one of his most famous essays which centers on the Greek myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was a king who cheated the gods, and was condemned to endlessly roll a boulder up a hill. The cruelty of his punishment lies in its singular futility, but Camus argues all of humanity is in the same position. And only when we accept the meaninglessness of our lives can we face the absurd with our heads held high. As Camus says, when the king chooses to begin his relentless task once more, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." Camus' contemporaries weren't so accepting of futility. Many existentialists advocated for violent revolution to upend systems they believed were depriving people of agency and purpose. Camus responded with his second set of work: the cycle of revolt. In "The Rebel," he explored rebellion as a creative act, rather than a destructive one. Camus believed that inverting power dynamics only led to an endless cycle of violence. Instead, the way to avoid needless bloodshed is to establish a public understanding of our shared human nature. Ironically, it was this cycle of relatively peaceful ideas that triggered his fallout with many fellow writers and philosophers. Despite the controversy, Camus began work on his most lengthy and personal novel yet: an autobiographical work entitled "The First Man." The novel was intended to be the first piece in a hopeful new direction: the cycle of love. But in 1960, Camus suddenly died in a car accident that can only be described as meaningless and absurd. While the world never saw his cycle of love, his cycles of revolt and absurdity continue to resonate with readers today. His concept of absurdity has become a part of world literature, 20th century philosophy, and even pop culture. Today, Camus remains a trusted guide for moments of uncertainty; his ideas defiantly imbuing a senseless world with inspiration rather than defeat. 🎬翻译、视频和pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1" 可加入【打卡交流群】