【挑战TIME】第二期

　　He was born Curtis Jackson, but he made his mark on the rap world performing under his childhood nickname. His third album, Curtis, debuted Sept. 11. 50 Cent will now take your questions

　　Is it Curtis or 50 Cent? —Maggie Shaw, New York City It’s 50, but the album title is Curtis. It made perfect sense for me to title it Curtis, considering my grandfather is Curtis Sr., his firstborn is Curtis Jr. and I’m his first grandchild, so my mom named me after him. I’m Curtis III, and this is my third album. 50 Cent was a name that kind of stuck. For me, it was a metaphor for change. That’s what made me utilize it when I actually started rapping.

　　What should we expect from your new album? —Ignacio Meza, Los Angeles

　　You should expect a lot of surprises. For my last two albums, I isolated myself to working with only members of G-Unit [50 Cent’s original rap group]. On this album I worked with Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, Mary J. Blige, Akon, Nicole from the Pussycat Dolls, Dr. Dre and Eminem. I’m in a place where I’m secure enough to have all these other talented people around me because I’ve proven myself, with my first two projects selling over 21 million copies.

　　Why don’t you do more hard-core stuff like you did on Get Rich or Die Tryin’ [in 2003]? —Raveen Bhasin, Dallas

　　I take into consideration what the music business is facing with things like the Don Imus situation. I think it would cause a full uproar if I wrote [hard-core] lyrics from that perspective all the way through my album. That’s why I released Curtis instead of my next project, Before I Self Destruct. It’s more of a hard-core sound, and it would be too aggressive for this period.

　　Is your beef with Kanye [West] for real? —Erika Ramirez, Houston

　　I said I would retire if his album [Graduation, also released Sept. 11] sold more than mine. I think people would like for it to be a beef. Then it would be really uncomfortable for Kanye, wouldn’t it? I’m already conditioned for those things, but he’d have to adjust. My car’s already bulletproof.

　　Why do rappers use so much slang that the average 50-year-old can’t understand them? —Gabriel Goldenberg, Montreal

　　Some audiences have to come to you. You can’t cater to everybody. Kanye West’s record is aimed at a straight pop audience. It may work for him now, but I don’t believe that will exist long. That base has no loyalty at all.

　　You took a bullet to your face. Has that changed your rapping style? —Ravi Rami, Houston

　　It changed my voice. I still have a fragment of a bullet inside my tongue. And I have a hole in the back of my mouth. This is the voice that works, though. This is why I believe it happened for a reason. The voice before I got shot was the one that not many people listened to.

　　You have a home in suburban Connecticut. Why did you move outside the city? —Susan Ashley, Houston

　　I generate a lot of interest in New York City, so it’s difficult. If I was going to a nightclub or if I was just getting out of the car to go to the store, it’d be difficult. It’s way different here, because it’s a country setting. I don’t even leave my house to go to the store. I send somebody else to do it.

　　I know you like to work hard and play hard. What’s your favorite place to vacation? —Janelle Robison, Brooklyn, N.Y.

　　Vacation’s at home. I do so much traveling that when I just stay at home, it feels like I’m on vacation. All you have to do is turn the phone off. The house is big as a country club anyway.

　　Are you endorsing a particular candidate in the ’08 election? —Haren Para, New York City

　　No, but I like Hillary. I think she was already our President once. [Laughs].

　　Any plans for another movie? —Conor Egan, Belmar, N.J.

　　I’ve got a film called Righteous Kill. It’s myself, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Donnie Wahlberg, John Leguizamo. [Laughs]. If you ask me, I’m the next Denzel Washington.

　　练习:

　　1.Please translate the blue sentence into Chinese.

　　Some audiences have to come to you. You can‘t cater to everybody.

　　2.what is the album title?

　　3.What‘s his favorite place to vacation? and why?

　　4.why he said:"My car‘s already bulletproof."?

　　参考答案及解析:

　　1.你不得不想到一些听众。你并不迎合所有的人。

　　come to sb.（指看法）被某人想出。ie,It suddenly came to her that she had been wrong all along.

　　2.the album title is Curtis.

　　3.It is at home,because he do so much traveling that when he just stay at home, it feels like he‘s on vacation.

4.Because he believe that his album sold more than Kanye‘s.

　　WhyFacebookIstheFuture

　　【 Introduction 】

　　Facebook is enjoying a tremendous popularity these days, and WHY? Here is a article from TIME that will answer your question. (In China, there are some websites like Facebook, such as 校内网 )

　　(This article have lots of New words)

　　Why Facebook Is the Future

　　On Aug. 14 a computer hacker named Virgil Griffith unleashed a clever little program onto the Internet that he dubbed WikiScanner. It‘s a simple application that trolls through the records of Wikipedia, the publicly editable Web-based encyclopedia, and checks on who is making changes to which entries. Sometimes it‘s people who shouldn‘t be. For example, WikiScanner turned up evidence that somebody from Wal-Mart had punched up Wal-Mart‘s Wikipedia entry. Bad retail giant.

　　WikiScanner is a jolly little game of Internet gotcha, but it‘s really about something more: a growing popular irritation with the Internet in general. The Net has anarchy in its DNA; it‘s always been about anonymity, playing with your own identity and messing with other people‘s heads. The idea, such as it was, seems to have been that the Internet would free us of the burden of our public identities so we could be our true, authentic selves online. Except it turns outwho could‘ve seen this coming?that our true, authentic selves aren‘t that fantastic. The great experiment proved that some of us are wonderful and interesting but that a lot of us are hackers and pranksters and hucksters. Which is one way of explaining the extraordinary appeal of Facebook.

　　Facebook is, in Silicon Vallese, a "social network": a website for keeping track of your friends and sending them messages and sharing photos and doing all those other things that a good little Web 2.0 company is supposed to help you do. It was started by Harvard students in 2004 as a tool for meeting or at least discreetly oglingother Harvard students, and it still has a reputation as a hangout for teenagers and the teenaged-at-heart. Which is ironic because Facebook is really about making the Web grow up.

　　Whereas Google is a brilliant technological hack, Facebook is primarily a feat of social engineering. (It wouldn‘t be a bad idea for Google to acquire Facebook, the way it snaffled YouTube, but it‘s almost certainly too late in the day for that. Yahoo! offered a billion for Facebook last year and was rebuffed.) Facebook‘s appeal is both obvious and rather subtle. It‘s a website, but in a sense, it‘s another version of the Internet itself: a Net within the Net, one that‘s everything the larger Net is not. Facebook is cleanly designed and has a classy, upmarket feel to ita whiff of the Ivy League still clings. People tend to use their real names on Facebook. They also declare their sex, age, whereabouts, romantic status and institutional affiliations. Identity is not a performance or a toy on Facebook; it is a fixed and orderly fact. Nobody does anything secretly: a news feed constantly updates your friends on your activities. On Facebook, everybody knows you‘re a dog.

　　Maybe that‘s why Facebook‘s fastest-growing demographic consists of people 35 or older: they‘re refugees from the uncouth wider Web. Every community must negotiate the imperatives of individual freedom and collective social order, and Facebook constitutes a critical rebalancing of the Internet‘s founding vision of unfettered electronic liberty. Of course, it is possible to misbehave on Facebookit‘s just self-defeating. Unlike the Internet, Facebook is structured around an opt-in philosophy; people have to consent to have contact with or even see others on the network. If you‘re annoying folks, you‘ll essentially cease to exist, as those you annoy drop you off the grid.

　　Facebook has taken steps this year to expand its functionality by allowing outside developers to create applications that integrate with its pages, which brings with it expanded opportunities for abuse. (No doubt Griffithis hard at work on FacebookScanner.) But it has also hung on doggedly to its core insight: that the most important function of a social network is connecting people and that its second most important function is keeping them apart.

　　【 Analysis 】

　　Marked with green color - New Words(analysis in section 2)

　　- Good Sentences(analysis in section 3)

　　Marked with red color Good usage of words or phrases (analysis in section 2 or 3)

　　On Aug. 14 a computer hacker named Virgil Griffith unleash ed a clever little program onto the Internet that he dubbed WikiScanner. It‘s a simple application thattroll s through the records of Wikipedia, the publicly editable Web-based encyclopedia , and checks on who is making changes to which entries. Sometimes it‘s people who shouldn‘t be. For example, WikiScanner turned up evidence that somebody from Wal-Mart had punch ed up Wal-Mart‘s Wikipedia entry. Bad retail giant.

　　窗体底端

　　WikiScanner is a jolly little game of Internet gotcha , but it‘s really about something more: a growing popular irritation with the Internet in general. The Net has anarchy in its DNA; it‘s always been about anonymity , playing with your own identity and messing with other people‘s heads.The idea, such as it was , seems to have been that the Internet would free us of the burden of our public identities so we could be our true, authentic selves online. Except it turns outwho could‘ve seen this coming?that our true, authentic selves aren‘t that fantastic. The great experiment proved that some of us are wonderful and interesting but that a lot of us are hackers and pranksters and hucksters . Which is one way of explaining the extraordinary appeal of Facebook.

　　Facebook is, in Silicon Vallese, a "social network": a website for keeping track of your friends and sending them messages and sharing photos and doing all those other things that a good little Web 2.0 company is supposed to help you do. It was started by Harvard students in 2004 as a tool for meeting or at least discreetly ogling other Harvard students, and it still has a reputation as a hangout for teenagers and the teenaged-at-heart. Which is ironic because Facebook is really about making the Web grow up.

　　Whereas Google is a brilliant technological hack , Facebook is primarily a feat of social engineering. (It wouldn‘t be a bad idea for Google to acquire Facebook, the way it snaffle d YouTube, but it‘s almost certainly too late in the day for that. Yahoo! offered a billion for Facebook last year and was rebuff ed.) Facebook‘s appeal is both obvious and rather subtle. It‘s a website, but in a sense, it‘s another version of the Internet itself: a Net within the Net, one that‘s everything the larger Net is not. Facebook is cleanly designed and has a classy , upmarket feel to ita whiff of the Ivy League still clings. People tend to use their real names on Facebook. They also declare their sex, age, whereabouts, romantic status and institutional affiliation s. Identity is not a performance or a toy on Facebook; it is a fixed and orderly fact. Nobody does anything secretly: a news feed constantly updates your friends on your activities. On Facebook, everybody knows you‘re a dog.

　　Maybe that‘s why Facebook‘s fastest-growing demographic consists of people 35 or older: they‘re refugee s from the uncouth wider Web.Every community must negotiate theimperative s of individual freedom and collective social order, and Facebook constitutes a critical rebalancing of the Internet‘s founding vision of unfettered electronic liberty. Of course, it is possible to misbehave on Facebookit‘s just self-defeating . Unlike the Internet, Facebook is structured around an opt-in philosophy; people have to consent to have contact with or even see others on the network. If you‘re annoying folks, you‘ll essentially cease to exist, as those you annoy drop you off the grid .

　　Facebook has taken steps this year to expand its functionality by allowing outside developers to create applications that integrate with its pages, which brings with it expanded opportunities for abuse. ( No doubt Griffithis hard at work on FacebookScanner.) But it has also hung on doggedly to its core insight: that the most important function of a social network is connecting people and that its second most important function is keeping them apart.

　　【 Section one 】 Vocabulary

　　1. unleash: [VN] ~ sth (on / upon sb/sth) to suddenly let a strong force, emotion, etc. be felt or have an effect: The government‘s proposals unleashed a storm of protest in the press

　　2. troll: troll trolls trolling trolled

　　If you troll through papers or files, you look through them in a fairly casual way. (mainly BRIT, INFORMAL) :Trolling through the files revealed a photograph of me drinking coffee in the office.

　　3. encyclopedia: [ en ?saikl?u?pi:di? ] a book or set of books giving information about all areas of knowledge or about different areas of one particular subject, usually arranged in alphabetical order; a similar collection of information on a CD-ROM: a children‘s encyclopedia ◆ an encyclopedia of music

　　4. punch: verb [VN] ~ sb/sth (in / on sth) to hit sb/sth hard with your FIST (= closed hand): He was kicked and punched as he lay on the ground. ◆ She punched him on the nose. ◆ He was punching the air in triumph.

　　5. jolly: adjective, adverb, verb

　　adjective(jollier, jolliest)

　　happy and cheerful: a jolly crowd / face / mood

　　(old-fashioned) enjoyable: a jolly evening / party / time

　　jollity noun [U] (old-fashioned): scenes of high-spirits and jollity

　　adverb(old-fashioned, BrE, informal) very: That‘s a jolly good idea. ◆ It was jolly lucky it didn‘t rain.

　　Idioms: jolly good! (old-fashioned, BrE, spoken) used to show that you approve of sth that sb has just said: ‘I‘ll be there by ten o‘clock.‘ ‘Jolly good!‘

　　jolly well (old-fashioned, BrE) used to emphasize a statement when you are annoyed about sth: If you don‘t come now, you can jolly well walk home!

　　verb(jollies, jollying, jollied, jollied) (BrE)

　　Phrasal Verbs: jolly sb along to encourage sb in a cheerful way

　　jolly sb into sth / into doing sth to persuade or encourage sb to do sth by making them feel happy about it

　　jolly sb/sth up to make sb/sth more cheerful: You need jollying up!

　　6. gotcha exclamation

　　(non-standard) the written form of the way some people pronounce ‘I‘ve got you‘, which is not considered to be correct Help Note: You should not write this form unless you are copying somebody‘s speech

　　7. anonymity: noun n. 无名，匿名

　　8. hacker: a person who spends a lot of time using computers for a hobby, especially to look at data without permission

　　9. prankster: A prankster is someone who plays tricks and practical jokes on people. (OLD-FASHIONED)

　　10. huckster: ?h?kst? ] a person who uses aggressive or annoying methods to sell sth

　　11. discreetly discreet adjective

　　careful in what you say or do, in order to keep sth secret or to avoid causing embarrassment or difficulty for sb

　　12. ogle: to look hard at sb in an offensive way, usually showing sexual interest

　　13. hangout If a place is a hangout for a particular group of people, they spend a lot of time there because they can relax and meet other people there. (INFORMAL)

　　14. Whereas conjunction

　　used to compare or contrast two facts: Some of the studies show positive results, whereas others do not. ◆ We thought she was arrogant, whereas in fact she was just very shy.

　　15. snaffle [VN] (BrE, informal) to take sth quickly for yourself, especially before anyone else has had the time or opportunity

　　16. rebuff (formal) an unkind refusal of a friendly offer, request or suggestion

　　17. classy adjective

　　(classier, classiest) (informal) of high quality; expensive and/or fashionable: a classy player ◆ a classy hotel / restaurant

　　18. upmarket adjective

　　[usually before noun] designed for or used by people who belong to a high social class: an upmarket brand / restaurant / store

　　19. whiff noun [usually sing.]

　　~ (of sth) a smell, especially one that you only smell for a short time: a whiff of cigar smoke ◆ He caught a whiff of perfume as he leaned towards her.

　　~ (of sth) a slight sign or feeling of sth: a whiff of danger / fear / success

　　20. affiliation noun [U, C] (formal)

　　a person‘s connection with a political party, religion, etc: He had been detained without trial because of his political affiliation.

　　one group or organization‘s official connection with another: Trade unions have a long history of affiliation to the Labour Party.

　　21. . demographic

　　In business,a demographic is a group of people in a society, especially people in a particular age group. etc: The station has won more listeners in the 25-39 demographic.

　　22. uncouth adjective

　　(of a person or their behaviour) rude or socially unacceptabl

　　23. imperative noun (formal) a thing that is very important and needs immediate attention or action: the economic imperative of quality education for all

　　24. misbehave verb ~ (yourself) to behave badly

　　25. doggedly ad. 顽强地，固执地

　　【 Section two 】 Good phrases and sentences

　　1. It‘s a simple application that trolls through the records of Wikipedia, the publicly editable Web-based encyclopedia , and checks on who is making changes to which entries.

　　2. The idea, such as it was , seems to have been that the Internet would free us of the burden of our public identities so we could be our true, authentic selves online.

　　3. On Facebook, everybody knows you‘re a dog.(On NET, nobody know you’re a dog)

　　4. the most important function of a social network is connecting people and that its second most important function is keeping them apart.