English listening 菜SanSan

7/30 
Is she turning towards you  or away from you , no one can agree . She is a mysterious subject of (Dutch ) master Jan Vermeer’s,  girl with the pearl earring . A painting (often referred to )  as the mona lisa of the north . Belong to a (Dutch ) styles of the (idealized ) ,sometimes  overly (expressive ) paintings (known as tronies ) . The girl with the pearl earring, has the allure and subtlety characteristic of Vermeer’s work. Vermeer’s treatment of  light and shadow , (or chiaroscuro ) ,uses (a dark flat) background to (further spotlight her three dimensionality , instead of being like  a set piece , in a (theatrical  narrative ) scenes she become a psychological subject, her eye contact and slightly (parted) lips , as if she is about say something , draw us into her gaze .  
Dutch 荷兰的
idealized 理想化的
tronies 特写肖像画
chiaroscuro 明暗对比法
theatrical 戏剧化的
narrative 记叙文的
gaze 凝视

7/29
Trauma , is an experience that is constructed  like any other experience os  constructed . That is doesn’t trivialize  , that just shows  you the  real power of predictions in  the economy of your  everyday life . What’s  happening when (an adverse ) experience become traumatic ? The brain is weighing that experience very heavily in its future predictions . From  (a metabolic ) standpoints ,it’s always better to predict and correct  than it is to react, the traumatic event is re-experienced again and again and again , which only strengthen those connections and  only make those predictions more likely in the future , the reason why a brain would  do this is to avoid missing a threat .
trivialize 重要的

It’s just fun and  gorgeous , and it’s  (see through )  so we can see each other ,all the barbies in their own  barbie dream houses wake up in the morning , and then can wave at each other . 
This is a product of  so many discussions , so many references , I can’t even tell you the meeting we’ve had   about the pink . We sat with all these difference kinds of pinks and we were  like what is pink ,how does the pink interact . Because we didn’t want it  to be so classy that  it didn’t . When I was a litter girl ,  I like the pinkest  brightest  thing . Because barbie was invented in 1959 , and it felt like we can ground everything  in that  look , 1950 soundstage   musicals. (Gene Kelly ) or  (Vincente Minnelli) ,like those  kind of wonderful fake  but emotionally ) artificial spaces . One thing that  those  soundstage musical did so well were beautiful artificial skies . There is a sort of surrealness of the  (gradation) of the color
You can light (them into these intense colors  ,you can light pink and orange form the bottle ,the blue from  the top , you can really go (kind of expressionistic ) with it 
surrealness.  超现实
gradation 渐变层次
expressionistic 表现主义

I am from new York , and my favorite comfort food is grilled cheese , growing up as a  picky eater ,   (grilled cheese ) was  the number 1 thing  that I could  get from every single family member and every single restaurant .  And It be almost the exact same every single time .  It reminds me of being best friend with my mom . 
My favorite comfort food is congee , a type of  rice porridge , there are also many different types of  congee . And I’ve had it plain . with dried scallops ，with preserved egg and salted  pork, and just whitefish .growing up ,  my mother would make this for breakfast somedays ,and she will also make it for me when I was sick , and I couldn’t keep any solid  foods down . 
My favorite comfort food is Lahmajun,  it is a  thin flatbread  , almost like pizza , that’s (enjoyed in and ) around the middle east . It’s  typically made by taking  small dough balls  and flatting  them into really thin pieces , and them it’s topped  with beef or lamb , some vegetables ,and  spices , and then it cooked in oven for just a  few minutes . My family and I typically buy a dozen or so of them from Armenia bakeries or grocery stores  here in LA , because they make them  really tasty 
plain 清淡的
scallops 干贝
flatbread 小面包干
Flat  平坦的
oven 烤炉

Watching  a kitten fumbling around , it might feel as if you’ve  never encountered anything so devastatingly adorable in your mortal live . But you may also feel the conflicting urge to squeeze or smush the kitten . This urge  which phycologists call cute aggression ,is a surprisingly common one estimate to affect about a half of all adults . Cut aggression is importantly not link to the actual intention to do harm,  instead it seems to result  from emotional overload . Some scientist think the cute things (elicited) such positive emotions from certain people ,that the  experiences becomes overwhelming .  They hypothesize that sightly  aggressive  discordant  thoughts ,are the brain’s way of  putting the  brake on, and regulating those intense feelings , not getting you to actually eat a kitten . 
elicited 引出
hypothesize 假设
estimate to affect 估计影响
discordant 不和谐的

7/15
Diet is the behavior that’s been studied the most in terms of trying to affect thing like  aging and longevity.
There really three components of diet that seem to be impacting aging :
So the first is. How much we eat , the second is what we eat , and the third is when we eat . 
So in terms of how much we eat , a lot of science went into this idea of caloric restriction . Caloric restriction isn’t a starvation .it’s usually just about a 20 precent reduction in the overall caloric intake . The other thing , that has  been study , is this concept  of what we eat ,  a lot of research has  gone into whether things  like plant-based diet  are actually beneficial to  aging and longevity, there  seems to be some evidence ,that eating less animal products , more fruit ,veggies , more wholefoods ,it’s going to  be better overall . 
But  what scientists found , is actually fasting can (con mimic ) some of the benefits , that we’ve seen with (caloric restriction ) , so if people can perhaps minimize their eating to a small window , we think (that this  can actually recapitulate ) a lot of benefits , that we are saying in the  caloric restriction studies .