万花筒 Kaleidoscope 2007-07-16&07-17, 美国持续高温

.....And across the country Americans are trying to beat the heat, taking shelter from days of scorching 1 temperatures at cooling centers, just as wildfires have burned hundreds of thousands of acres in 12 states. NBC's John Larson is in Winnemucca, Nevada this morning, with more on this. John, good morning.

Good morning, Ann. I know it's gonna sound a little bit strange with a record heat back there and all the records being reported out here in the west. But the information coming in from the fire lines this morning is that it's sort of a glass-half-full kinda situation. Good news: They are reporting that although it was very very hot, it was a bit cooler than expected in many of these states. And most importantly on the fire lines, the winds stayed calm.

It was just incredibly explosive.

Doing whatever they can to stay ahead of the fires, crews are fighting two dozen major fires in the state of Nevada alone. At times, this fire near Winnemucca is calm, at others, consuming 10,000 acres an hour.

"There is nothing you can do when it gets that point."

This is how it looked to a family vacationing to the east in Utah where the largest fire in Utah's history continue to burn mostly unchecked.

"We just kept going until the smoke just overtook us and we just watched ourselves go into blacker and blacker smoke."

"Just as a dark evil."

"And jumping the west side into the medium where there were a lot of big trees. And those went up, and at that point, the flames might have moved a hundred yards in a matter of seconds. And there just big wall of flame and everybody panicked."

The crushing heat that has flattened 2 the west has spread to the northeast. In New York, the city set up cooling centers for those without air-conditioning. In Pennsylvania, where it was 15 degrees above normal, even camp playtime was cut short.

"This morning we just sent one of our campers home, he wasn't felt, feeling well at all."

High 90s from New England to Maryland.

"You don't get used to (it), just tolerate it."

To Delaware, where a gardener plays it smart.

"Pretty bad, but I take a lot of breaks, going to shade."

And others, just play it safe.

"I don't really want to be out here, and if anybody with any good sense, they don't want to be here, either."

Now again as bad as it looks, and, and trust me the fires are bad in many of these states. Mostly good news today to report in that they have no highway closures, no major evacuations going on, no homes were lost in all that fire yesterday and of course, most importantly, no lives were lost. Ann.

Very important. Right, NBC's John Larson this morning, John.

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Glass-half-full: Is the glass half empty or half full? is a common expression, used rhetorically to indicate that a particular situation could be a cause for optimism 3 (half full), pessimism 4 (half empty), realism ("that depends on whether you are pouring or drinking"), functionalism (twice as large as it needs to be), or as a general litmus test to simply determine if an individual is an optimist 5 or a pessimist 6. The purpose of the question is to demonstrate that the situation may be seen in different ways depending on one's point of view and that there may be opportunity in the situation as well as trouble.

Play it smart: [口]做事聪明