I was one of the only kids in college who had a reason to go to the post office box at the end of the day, and that was mainly because my mother has never 17 email, Facebook, texting or cellphones in general.

When I moved to New York City after college and got completely punched in the face by depression, I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I wrote those same kinds of letters that my mother had written me for 18 , and tucked them all throughout the city, dozens and dozens of them. I left them everywhere, in cafes and in libraries, at the U.N., everywhere. Overnight, my inbox was transformed into the 19 of heartbreak, a single mother in Sacramento, a girl being bullied in rural Kansas, all asking me to write them a love letter and give them a 20 to wait by the mailbox.

Today I fuel a global organization that is fueled by those trips to the mailbox. In this way, we can harness social media like never before. We write and mail strangers letters when they need them most, then strangers write letters to other strangers, not because they’re ever going to meet and laugh over a cup of coffee, but because they have 21 one another by way of letter-writing.

They are the ones of us that have grown up into a world where everything is paperless, and where some of our best 22 have happened upon a screen. We have learned to diary our pain onto Facebook, and we speak swiftly in 140 characters or less.

 23 , letter-writing will never again need to flip back her hair and talk about efficiency, because she is a(n) 24 form now, including the signing, the scripting and the doodles in the margins. The mere fact is that somebody would even just sit down, 25 a piece of paper and think about someone the whole day 26 . Though it is an art form that does not get faster. We still clutch close these letters to our chest, speaking louder than loud to sisters and brothers and even to strangers.

A

If you pluck someone off the street, whether in New York or Seattle or Sacramento, and ask them how many steps people should aim for per day in order to get enough physical activity, they’ll probably tell you 10,000.

But is there any medical reason to embrace this number? Not really. That’s because the 10,000-step-a-day recommendation has nothing to do with sedentary, fast-food-drenched circa-2015 America. Rather, the recommendation first popped up in a very different food and environment: 1960s Japan. “It basically started around the Tokyo Olympics” in 1964, said Catrine Tudor-Locke, a professor who studies walking behavior at LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Center. “A company over there created a man-po-kei, a pedometer. And ‘man’stands for ‘10, 000’, ‘po’ stands for ‘step’, and ‘kei’ stands for ‘meter’ or ‘gauge’.”

Whatever the reason for the adoption of this particular number, “It resonated with people at the time, and they went man-po-kei-ing all over the place,” said Tudor-Locke.

The problem, which barely needs stating, is that circa-1964 Japan was markedly different from the circa-2015 U.S. Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations shows that the average per-capita food supply for Japanese people in 1964 was 2,632 calories, while the average for Americans in 2011 was 3,639. That’s a difference of about 1,000 calories —or, about 20,000 steps for an average-size person.

More broadly, 10,000 steps is just a bit too simplistic a figure, say nutrition researchers. 

All the ones I spoke to agreed that there’s nothing wrong with shooting for 10,000 steps, and that walking more is better than walking less. But Tudor-Locke said that “The one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t necessarily work.”

“Focusing exclusively on how many steps you’re getting and neglecting those other aspects isn’t going to lead to an overall improvement in health, unless you’re addressing those other factors simultaneously,” said Jeff Goldsmith, a biostatistics professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Maybe it’s time, given just how unhealthy so many people are and how much they’d benefit from moving around just a little more, to embrace an improvement approach to exercise. “Stand rather than sit, walk rather than stand, jog rather than walk, and run rather than jog,”wrote Ulf Ekelund, lead author of the European mortality study, in an email. Tudor-Locke concluded even further: “Just move more than before,” she said.

B

Joanne Rowling, born on 31 July 1965, is an English fiction writer who writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling. Rowling is the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series, which has gained international attention, won multiple awards, and sold over 375 million copies worldwide.

J.K. Rowling’s new novel arrives with the high drama and state secrecy of a royal birth. Its due date is announced in February, and in April the disclosure of its title, “The Casual Vacancy”, makes international news. The release of the cover image in July commands headlines again, and Fleet Street commissions a “design guru” to analyze its mysterious artistic beauty, in search of clues as to what might lie within. Waterstones predicts the novel will be “the bestselling fiction title this year”. Literary critics begin to publish preliminary reviews, revealing what they think they will think about a book they have not yet even read.

I am required to sign more legal documents than would typically be involved in buying 

a house before I am allowed to read The Casual Vacancy, under tight security in the London offices of Little Brown. Even the publishers have been forbidden to read it, and they give me the manuscript carefully, religiously, as though handling a priceless Ming vase. Afterwards, I am instructed never to disclose the address of Rowling’s Edinburgh office where the interview will take place.

In the 15 years since she published her first Harry Potter, Rowling has become both universally known and almost unrecognizable. The untidy red hair who used to write in the cafes of Leith has slowly transformed into a shiny fashionable lady, one who is beyond recognition behind wealth and control. Once a penniless single mother, she became the first person on earth to make $1 billion by writing books, but her rare public appearances suggested a faint ice maiden quality.

Rowling is completely relaxed about this arrangement. Warm and energetic, quick to laugh, she chatters so freely that her publicist gets nervous and tells her to lower her voice. “Am I speaking too loud?” She doesn’t look a bit concerned. “Well, I can’t get passionate and whisper!” When I tell her I loved the book, her arms shoot up in celebration. “Oh my God! I’m so happy! That’s so amazing to hear. Thank you so much! You’ve made me incredibly happy. Oh my God!” Anyone listening would take her for a debut author, meeting her first ever fan.

In a way, that’s what she is. Rowling has written seven Harry Potter books, and sold more than 450m copies, but her first novel for adults is unlike them in every respect.

“Obviously I need to be in some form of vehicle to have a decent idea,” she laughs. Having dreamed up Potter on a train, “This time I was on a plane. And I thought: local election! And I just knew. I had that totally physical response you get to an idea that you know will work. It’s a rush of adrenaline, it’s chemical. I had it with Harry Potter and I had it with this. So that’s how I know.”

Next task, we’re going to do is, we’re going to hold a debate, based on the advantages and disadvantages we have, I mean, you have come on with, either in your mind or in your textbooks or you have just learned, your knowledge, your personal, your personal experiences. So the topic is, the topic. FOR SIDE—there are two sides in the debate, FOR SIDE and AGAINST SIDE, right? FOR SIDE, computers bring more benefits than harms to young people. All right? So we have here four teams. Two FOR SIDEs, two AGAINST SIDEs. So study monitor, stand up, please. I mean team leader we have, you know who team leader is. Stand up, please. Oh, are you for or against?

 阅读以下教学材料，回答问题。

It was near the end of the football match, and neither team had scored. The captain of the Eagles passed the ball to a teammate, and then ran down near the Kangaroos’ goal. His teammate passed the ball back to him, but the shot was too high. The Eagles’ captain knocked the ball to the ground with his hand, and then kicked it and scored. The referee blew the whistle; the match was over and the Eagles had won. Of course, the goal should not have counted. However, now it was too late.

Later, a reporter asked the Eagles’ captain what had happened.

“We won, and that is all that matters,” the captain said.

The Kangaroos were out of the tournament, while the Eagles continued on. However, with the referees now keeping a close watch on the Eagles, they struggled and lost their next match. Afterwards, they complained that the referees had been unfair.

The Eagles went home angry and bitter because they did not win the tournament. Meanwhile, the Kangaroos went home and trained harder than before.

In the next tournament, the Kangaroos defeated the Eagles by a score of 5 to 1. They went on to the final match against the Bears. The match was tied with minutes to go. The Kangaroos’captain was near the Bears’ goal. A teammate passed the ball to him, and by accident it hit his hand. The Kangaroos’ captain stopped the match and let the Bears have the ball. Within minutes, the Bears scored and won.

Later, a reporter asked the Kangaroos’ captain what had happened.

“They won,” the captain said. “They were the better team.”

The Kangaroos went home proud that they had done their best. Many of the Kangaroos’players became friends with the players on the Bears, team for the rest of their lives. In defeat, the Kangaroos found something more precious than victory—they found friendship, honour and respect.