Lesson 8
The Selfie Bug

Guidance

“Selfie” was word of the year 2013. Do you know what it means? Why is it dangerous? “Selfie” 是2013年的年度熱詞，你知道它是什么意思嗎？為什么“Selfie”會引起麻煩呢？

1 Worried about Ebola? Forget about it! There’s another bug sweeping around the world and infecting hundreds of millions of people—the selfie bug.

2 Unlike Ebola, the selfie bug seems to affect people’s brains and makes them take pictures of themselves in very inappropriate situations.

3 Last August, there was an outbreak of the bug in a hospital in Xi’an where a group of doctors and nurses thought it would be a good idea to take selfies while patients were still lying unconscious on the operating table. Some doctors and nurses took off their masks and smiled for their selfies while others stood in jolly poses and flashed “V” signs. Operating rooms are not usually places for fun, laughter and fooling around, so something must have affected the medical staff’s good judgment.^① It had to be the selfie bug.

4 Now that smart phones with digital cameras are available to everyone, taking photos has become cheap, easy and convenient. And some people are using this technology to document every moment of their lives. So much so that it has become an obsession. People are taking selfies at funerals（葬禮）, disaster sites and even crime scenes（犯罪現場）.

5 In early December, there was a hostage taking incident（綁架人質事件）in a café in Australia. While the drama unfolded inside the café, onlookers outside smiled, laughed and took selfies. Three people died in the hostage taking, but that fact did not discourage the selfie snappers. They merely saw the tragic crime scene as another occasion for a selfie.^②

6 The medical staff at the hospital in Xi’an were fired for taking inappropriate selfies. It just shows how dangerous the selfie bug can be.

(301 words)

Word bank

Notes

^① Operating rooms are not usually places for fun, laughter and fooling around, so something must have affected the medical staff’s good judgment.手術室并非逗趣、歡笑和閑蕩的地方，所以一定有什么東西影響了醫護人員的良好判斷。

^② Three people died in the hostage taking, but that fact did not discourage the selfie snappers.三個人在人質劫持事件中死亡，但即使是這樣還有人忙著搶拍

照片。

Practice

Ⅰ. Reading comprehension

1. What does “selfie” mean in Chinese in this passage?

A. 自我

B. 貝殼

C. 自拍

D. 書架

2. In this passage, what were patients doing when the doctors and nurses took selfies?

____________________________________________________________

3. Where did the hostage taking incident happen?

____________________________________________________________

4. What happened to the medical staff at the hospital in Xi’an for taking inappropriate selfies?

____________________________________________________________

Ⅱ. Word check

A. operating table

B. patient

C. mask

D. discourage

( ) 1. A__________is a piece of cloth or other material, which you wear over your face.

( ) 2. An__________is a table which a patient in a hospital lies on during a surgical operation.

( ) 3. 使氣餒

( ) 4. A person who needs medical care.