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The new one
sits in the hall
chirrups away
like an electric mouse,
busy all day,
ruling the house.
Grownups moan
about the telephone
upstairs, downstairs,
out of beds and armchairs,
never see a programme through:
what can they do?
‘Not that phone again’ they shout.
Why don’t they have it taken out?
QUESTIONS
| LO 3.6 |
Write a letter to a magazine complaining about cell phones being a nuisance in society. Give yourself a witty pseudonym.
| LO 5.1.4 |
DOMESTIC HELP
The other day,
one of our domestic robots went mad,
kissed my dad,
poured marmalade over the video wall,
shampooed the cat,
sugared my mother’s hair,
and sat on my sister’s knee
(she fell through the chair).
Dad’s frantic fiddling with the control-panel
only made matters worse.
It vacuum-cleaned the ceiling,
put the coffee-table into the garbage disposal unit,
uncorked a bottle of wine
and poured it gently over the carpet,
then carefully unscrewed its head
and deposited it in Mum’s lap.
Mother says
that’s the way it is these days:
you can’t get the robots you used to.
QUESTIONS
| LO 3.1 |
TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT THE MIND MAP. WE HAVE DISCUSSED, WRITTEN ABOUT, READ ABOUT THINGS TO EAT AND THINGS TO WEAR AND GAMES PEOPLE PLAY. NOW IT IS UP TO YOU. FIND OUT ABOUT THE WHEEL, CARS AND THAT MOST FAMOUS OF DOLLS – BARBIE!
First four-wheeled car
First petrol-driven car
First mass-produced car
First car tyres that contained air
AHEAD OF HIS TIME
One inventor who was hundreds of years ahead of his time was Leonardo da Vinci.
Today he is best known as an artist. His most famous painting is probably the Mona Lisa. Another well-known masterpiece is The Last Supper. It is said that one of the disciples is painted in his likeness.
Leonardo da Vinci also left behind many drawings of the human anatomy, which were detailed and precise.
Yet he also invented everything from flying machines and parachutes to horseless wagons. He drew pictures of his inventions and recorded his ideas in backwards writing to keep others from stealing them.
His inventions are startlingly like the machines we have today. However, few of them made it past the idea stage, usually because they were so far ahead of their time that it would have been impossible to build them with the materials then available! Drawings of a machine very much like a modern day helicopter were found amongst his work. He believed in and was very interested in time travel and was ahead of his time by thinking that the world was round and not flat as most people of his generation believed.
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