JOKES

• There is nobody so irritating than someone with less intelligence and more sense than you.

• A psychologist is someone who goes to a strip-tease show and watches the audience.

• A psychiatrist is someone who will listen to you as long as you don’t make sense.

• My son has never been to a psychiatrist.

Why? What’s wrong with him?

• I don’t know how old you are but you certainly don’t look it.

• Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional.

• Education today is teaching a child how to talk and then teaching it how to keep quiet.

• - When you son finishes his education, what will he be?

- About forty.

• A client at the hospital where they make transplantations asked about the prices. The doctor said, “Well, this Ph.D. brain costs $ 10,000. This brain belonged to a NASA top scientist and costs $ 15,000. Here we have a policeman’s brain as well. It costs S 50,000.”

The client asks, “How is it possible?”

The doctor replies, “You see, it’s completely unused.”

WHO INVENTED WRITING

The ability to write provides the opportunity to communicate over time and distance, to keep administrative records and pass messages over long | distances. Over the past 3,500 years civilizations and cultures across die world have created at least 700 different forms of writing. However, if the evolution of the world’s writing systems is traced back, it becomes clear that nearly all of I them originated from just four sources: the ancient script of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and Mexico. All European and Arab scripts originally come from Egyptian hieroglyphs. Most Asian scripts do too, even if the link is less direct. Modem Korean and Vietnamese, however, come from Chinese. The first form of writing was pictograms, simple pictures of objects. Gradually they were replaced by ‘logograms’, symbols representing objects.

At a later stage of development, the alphabetic system successfully overcame the problem of Egyptian hieroglyphs. In this system the combination of characters and letters designated different sounds. Early versions of the alphabet system are the basis of the Cyrillic and Roman scripts still used in Europe today.

The traditional view was that writing was invented in Mesopotamia and then spread to Egypt. It was thought that the Chinese script developed independently a thousand years later. Formerly, it was accepted that the Sumerians invented the fully developed writing system. New evidence demonstrates that they only did this after the Mesopotamians had been using a script for 200 years.

Another discovery is perhaps even more controversial. It suggests the Chinese were writing before the Egyptians. It will take time and more evidence to convince the entire archeological community that the idea of writing spread from east to west, and not the other way round.

2. Выберите подходящее слово из предложенных трех вариантов. INVENTION Ш LITERATURE

Cultural inventions seem to have significantly altered our life style. It was not long

ago that the novel became distinctive from the narrative story, and, most

importantly, gave rise to the ‘popular’ novel.

The detective novel is the only literary genre created in modem times that

Complies with specific rules. It rapidly became internationally successful. All historians

agree on the distinction of the American writer Allan Poe

as its inventor. The first ever detective story, The

Murders in the Rue Morgue, actually established the first

rule of the genre, which is to set out a detective puzzle

and to solve it in the course of the story by

investigation and deduction. The whole literary genre

was to be inspired by it, from Agatha Christie to

CHESS

Chess, often referred to as the royal game, is the oldest of all board games which do not contain any element of probability usually associated with a dice. The origins of chess are uncertain, nevertheless, there are a number of legends regarding its invention. One story tells that it was King Solomon who invented chess, another that it was the Greek god Hermes. And yet another that the Chinese mandarin Han-Sing was responsible for its creation. In fact, chess almost certainly originated in India in the sixth or seventh century AD. The game’s popularity then spread quickly through Persia (now known as Iran) and from there came to Europe. The first documented reference to chess in literature is in a Persian romance which was written about 6000 AD. It is believed the word ‘chess’ comes from ‘shah', the Persian word for ‘king’ and 'chechmate'. The name of the game’s winning move comes from the phrase ‘shah mat’ meaning ‘the king is dead. Actually the name ‘check mat’ is used in some languages as the name of the game. The rules and pieces used in the game have undergo considerable changes over the centuries. Modern chess owes much to the Spainish Ruy Lopez de Segura, who in 1561 wrote the first book

on how to play the game. In it he introduced the concept of 'ccatlmg', which had not been part of the game before then.

BACKGAMMON

Until recently, backgammon was regarded in America as an exotic, unfamiliar game. Today, backgammon is claimed to have millions of dedicated players. Though historians are not sure about the origin of the game, there are quite a number of facts about its early days. During the excavation of die royal cemetery in the ancient Sumerian city of Ur archaeologists found five game boards. Their close resemblance to die early backgammon boards prompted an assumption that the game existed five thousand years ago. Similar to the game boards unearthed at Ur was the board discovered among the treasures in the burial chamber of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen, from around 1500 BC.

Oddly enough, the Spanish adventurer Francisco Pizarro in the 16* century described the Aztecs in Mexico playing a game remarkably like the Egyptians’ game backgammon. This similarity provides Justification to the hypothesis of the possible migration of early people who have come to the Americas from North Africa.

Backgammon’s popularity has risen and fallen through the ages. It can safely be assumed that such fluctuations may be expected in the future.

POPULAR BOARD GAMES

I. MONOPOLY

Monopoly is the world’s best selling game. It was actually invented by Elizabeth Magie, though it was Charles Darrow who started marketing it as his own creation in 1933. Despite its popularity, few of us really know how to play it well. To be successful in this game you should persuade the others that the deal you need will be beneficial to them even though they may be interested only in winning.

II SCRABBLE

The second most popular game, Scrabble, was invented by an American cross-word fan, in 1948. This fascinating word game is available in 30

languages in 121 countries. Despite its success, it has been lately redesigned to be more attractive to players. The essential characteristic of a good Scrabble player is flexible thinking, therefore such individuals are expected to be comfortable with the coming modification and are not particularly concerned with the new board look proposed by the designers.