Despite the enormous contribution of the music industry to the UK economy and the huge benefits to children, the government remains quiet about its importance in schools, but instead announced plans to try mental health training for pupils recently. It has not dawned on politicians that this can be achieved through the arts. Music education has become harder to access since 2010, when new measures were introduced to boost the number of students studying science and languages, and since then the number of students taking music at A-level has dropped by about 9% as teachers homed in on “academic“ subjects. Children are compelled to take up private tuition, putting those who cannot afford such lessons at a disadvantage. In 2014, the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain found that out of its members aged 7 to 13, nearly 70% of those at state school received private education. In 2012-13, only 10% of music students at universities came from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. But that’s not the only problem. For a creative subject, music has always been taught in a far too academic way, meaning that theoretical knowledge is the main route to advancement. While there are routes into musical careers for the untrained, there are also dozens of choirs and amateur collectives that put a huge focus on musical notation. This is an obscure, tricky language that can only be read by a small number of people, most of whom have benefited from private education. Children who cannot comprehend it are written off even when they are capable performers. The insistence on theoretical understanding is supported by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, which sets the most widely-used music exams. To meet its requirements, pupils must work through limited repertoires of old, mostly classical music, focusing their efforts on mastering musical literacy, above songwriting, composing or enjoyment. So there is not only a wealthy elite presiding over music, but an academic one, which decides what sort of knowledge and ability make children competent — even though, like artists, musicians vary immensely in their tastes, tools and learning mechanisms. Sure, we may not be able to tell the difference between a low sound and a high sound, but we can play our favorite songs. That is all I wanted from music. I worry that the current state of play means many children are locked out. As a discipline, music needs to attract a bigger crowd. Diversity breeds diversity, and teaching is where this needs to start.

Your mind and emotion can be greatly affected by colors. Particular colors stimulate mental energy and even have a physical effect. By combining colors, you can create or inspire the emotions and moods that best fit the situation, whether it is at home or in the work environment. Strong bright colors stimulate energy. The color red is so stimulating that it actually can raise blood pressure. Red is known to excite the mind with passion. Yellow is believed to increase energy and a feeling of cheerfulness. Orange has been linked to stimulating the appetite and providing a general feeling of goodwill. Other colors can bring about mental balance. Green is associated with nature and is known to have a balancing effect on the mind. Likewise, blue inspires feelings of peace and tranquility by exerting a calming effect on the mind and body. The color blue can decrease blood pressure. Some colors are particularly useful for inspiring creativity. Purple can arouse curiosity and the intuitive aspects of your mind, and curiosity contributes much to creative thought. The color pink fosters feelings of affection and social acceptance, so it can leave the mind free of social factors that may restrict creativity. Pure white inspires mental energy and actually promotes the strengths of the other colors when used as a background. White also stimulates creativity by clearing the mind to allow the thought process to grow. Black also inspires mental acuteness in the form of discipline, independence and individual strength. Q13: What colors can stimulate energy? Q14: How do we feel when we see the color blue? Q15: What can be inspired by the color white? Purple and pink. Black and white. Red and yellow. Orange and blue.

That’s OK then. A pint a day keeps the doctor away. A pint of beer, that is. Yes, it used to be a pint of milk, but that was before milk was bad for you. Going to work on an egg was the same. Now it is our old friend alcohol that is back in favor. Seven pints of beer, or a bottle and a half of wine, dramatically cut whether you get type 2 diabetes. It’s official. Danish scientists say so, and who are we to quarrel? What should the ordinary reader make of the daily stream of stories bursting from medical research, usually followed by a request for more research cash? The biggest headlines go to anyone who can think about previous advice differently. Vitamins are good for you, or totally useless. Exercise is good for your heart, or might kill you, depending on who you are. Carbohydrates are good if complex, bad if not. Cholesterol also comes in “good“ and “bad“ varieties. As for the microbiome theory, it offers a new and abundant supply of horrors and delights. Some things are getting better. Time was when “surveys show...“ was preliminary to pure advertising copy. Peddlers of cigarettes, fats and cereals all used pseudo-science to claim health-giving properties for their wares. They probably killed hundreds of thousands. Advertising regulation and scientific peer review have done something to curb such distress. The new threat is self-diagnosis. Doctors claim that a majority of patients investigate their symptoms online, arriving at the surgery demanding not diagnosis, but prescriptions. Flourishing health columns in the media have a similar effect. Huge profits can be made by drug companies from claiming to postpone the approach of death. Big pharma behaves like medieval popes, selling indulgences to reduce time spent in temporary suffering. Its long campaign against cancer immunology — to protect its profitable chemotherapy patents — was a scandal of similar proportions. So is the continued condemnation of medicinal marijuana. Increased knowledge about health must be a good thing. Increased regulation of such knowledge is essential, though not if dominated by big pharma, as it still is. As yet, there is no regulation of the Internet health anxiety, which fills the world with fake news in seconds. The wisest response remains the old alliance of doubt and enjoyment. Trust nothing at first sight. Test everything against the evidence. The good things in life are best taken in moderation. But what makes you happy cannot be all bad, whatever the doctor says.

You can’t predict the future, but in Silicon Valley you can invent it. This is a popular saying at some companies that deliver digital delights. But underneath the surface of modernity, openness and progress there’s a problem that technology can’t fix. Relatively young white males overwhelmingly run Silicon Valley firms and are stealing our future. Facebook is more than a social hub. It has become an important centralizing authority for news. More than 40% of American adults rely on the social network to stay on top of the news. However, its trending news stories are softly manipulated by free-willed people. Another example of Silicon Valley bias is the almost complete absence of the female perspective. These large companies are really designing the future unless the many can introduce the few to some more diverse perspectives about what’s useful or important. Another big problem is that these corporations seem to know very little or care even less about other people. This bold claim has some basis in brain science — all tech people are slightly autistic. Autism (自闭症) can be a useful trait for seeking technical brilliance, but becomes an obstacle if a general naivete about human beings is translated directly into the design of products and services used worldwide. How digital technologies enhance or diminish our humanity depends largely upon how much developers of technologies care about their fellow beings. Privacy is a good example. If Internet culture is autistic, this could explain how some companies can regard privacy as accidental damage, how some companies constandy ignore or offend customers, and how some technology companies can’t see that an open, connected and copyright-free world isn’t necessarily better for everyone. Jonathan Franzen has said that the Internet is “an incredible concentrator of wealth in the hands of the few while giving the appearance of voice and the appearance of democracy to people who are in fact being exploited by the technologies.“ But if you’re an autistic corporation, you probably can’t see that “free“ can come at a cost, that some privacy is fundamental to functioning government, that physical presence can matter or that some people don’t want to be online all the time or read everything on a screen. After all, technology is a choice, not a destiny. We shape our future by the decisions we make today. We still have time to push things along in any direction we wish, commanding, altering and deleting technologies as we see fit.

Retail is tough. Customers have to be able to figure out which item will best suit their needs while retailers need to make sure their customers are happy enough with their purchases to keep them. One way to serve both needs is with a solid “try before you buy“ system, which lets consumers get some hands-on time with items before committing to a full purchase. This is even more useful when customers are looking for big-ticket items like fancy wearables and high-end cameras. Big-box electronics retailer Best Buy has partnered with gadget rental startup Lumoid to provide just such a system, which is due later this month. According to ReCode, Best Buy you will soon be able to rent items like cameras, wearables and audio devices with a featured button on Best Buy’s website. However, a Best Buy spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that a remotely controlled micro-aircraft will not be on offer through the rental service. Best Buy’s website will have a button that sends you to Lumoid’s site to manage the actual rental of these items, many of which may be “open box“ returns instead of new items. You’ll earn about 20% of the rental price in Lumoid credits, which can then be applied to a purchase of the rented item. Best Buy gets to breathe new life into items people have already bought and customers get to check out big-ticket items for a low monthly fee. This new program could give Best Buy an advantage over Amazon, which does not currently offer a similar rental service. Letting customers rent a higher-priced item like a Sonos speaker, Sony Alpha camera or Apple Watch could get them the time they need with the device to decide if the purchase is worth it. Lumoid’s founder, Aarthi Ramamurthy, says that wearables get the highest conversion rate from rental to purchase, with one in three renters deciding to buy after the try. We’ve reached out to Lumoid for more details on this partnership and will update this post. Have you found anything that catches your fancy online? Why not try Lumoid to save yourself money? Once you have purchased a gadget this way, you will wonder why such business was not started earlier. Remember that retail is not all about quality and price. In some cases, innovation is what counts.

Unfortunately, e-mail leaves many things to be desired. Online communication has a wide variety of forms, but each of these has its own requirements that users must try to be aware of in order to avoid saying something inappropriate or incomprehensible. Indications of interest, positive remarks, or even compliments that we easily comprehend in face-to-face meetings can be interpreted as ironic when said in e-mail. These issues are hard to address. Restraining yourself from making an impulsive response is not always possible in a busy workday, nor is it always desirable to suppress the spontaneity of your remarks. But as an insurance policy against a possible disaster, you should try to anticipate how your remarks may be taken.

Tourism can be sustainable...so that potential______(2 words) on the host community do not surpass the financial benefits.Tourism can bring many economic and social benefits, particularly in rural areas and developing countries. Tourism can be sustainable if it is carefully managed so that potential negative effects on the host community do not surpass the financial benefits. Tourism creates jobs, both through direct employment within the tourism industry and indirectly in sectors such as retail and transportation. When these people spend their wages on goods and services, more jobs are created. The tourism industry also provides opportunities for small-scale businesses, which is especially important in rural communities, and generates extra tax revenues, such as airport and hotel taxes, which can be used for schools, housing and hospitals. Improvements to basic facilities also benefit the local community. Tourism encourages the preservation of traditional customs, folk music and festivals that might otherwise have been lost. Interchanges between hosts and guests create a better cultural understanding and can also help raise global awareness of issues such as poverty and human rights abuses. Tourism, particularly ecotourism, helps promote conservation of wildlife and natural resources such as rain forests, as these are now regarded as tourism assets. It also helps generate funding for maintaining animal preserves and marine parks through entrance charges and guide fees. By creating alternative sources of employment, tourism reduces problems such as over-fishing and deforestation in developing nations.

Corruption is a breach of a public official’s commitment to uphold the Constitution. objection obligation designation termination

In this book, the author’s vision is not only creative, but a compelling prediction of where the world is headed. deteriorating dominating expanding proceeding

Factory workers will submit to punishment if they fail to achieve the required standards. carry on with be subjected to give in to do away with

Some of the recent actions of the government are not in line with their statement of policy. in the interest of in conformity with in the event of in proportion to

These areas have______higher population density and their total population and density will grow even more. importantly significantly imperatively radically

China has seen remarkable improvements______the gloom______global warming. amid.. .over between.. .for in.. .with within.. .to

Teenagers who watch films showing actors smoking are more likely to______smoking themselves. take up take in take after take over

It can be inferred from the first two paragraphs that______.

The underlined words in Paragraph Two probably mean______.

Which of the following is NOT one of the problems with music education?

In Paragraph Eight, the author expresses the belief that______.

The author argues in the last paragraph that______.

It can be inferred from this passage that advanced music education in the UK______.