【推荐1】I’d like to share a story that happened when I was four. I remember it clearly. Our loving family dog was nearing the end of his life. My father picked him up and put him in a little bed we had made for him. Our dog, my companion, whom we had cared for, bit (咬) my father when he tried to help him. How could he? Why? I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t like him anymore.

I hadn’t thought about that story for a long time but something that happened last week brought it back to me. I went to speak with a friend. When I knocked on the door, I met an angry look and a few harsh (尖刻的) words. When the door was slammed (砰地关上) in my face, I stood there shocked, and in a rush, I was reminded of my dog bit my father 20 years ago or so. What brought that story back was that same feeling of betrayal (背叛).

Both stories taught me something the next day. You see, when I got up in the morning and was told my dog had died, it became clear to me that he must have been in great pain. For him to have bitten a family member, he could not have been himself. Much the same for the other story when I learned that my friend’s wife had just left him.

We are all beings of our environments, our opinions and feelings. And all of those things can cause you to say and do things that can’t be understood by those who are not in the same situation with you.

If you meet someone either behaving out of character or acting in a way that doesn’t seem to fit the situation, put out your hand and be patient when you think it is least possible for him to do so. You may turn around a story that has a sad ending simply by your actions.

【推荐2】A famous doctor Lord Robert Winston took a train from London to Manchester, and he found himself becoming angry. A woman picked up her phone and began a loud conversation, which lasted an unbelievable hour. Furious, Winston took pictures of the woman and post them on the social media.

As the train arrived at its destination, Winston had had enough of the woman’s rudeness. Meanwhile the press were waiting for her on the platform. And when they deliberately showed her the message, she used just one word to describe Winston’s actions: rude.

The story of Winston is something of a microcosm (缩影) of our age of increasing rudeness fueled by the social media. What can we do to fix this?

Studies have shown that rudeness spreads quickly and virally, almost like the common cold. Once infected, we are more aggressive, less creative and worse at our jobs. The only way to end this is to make a conscious decision to deal with it. We must have the courage to point it out, face to face. We must say, “Just stop.” For Winston, that would have meant approaching the woman, telling her that her conversation was disturbing other passengers and politely asking her to speak more quietly or make the call at another time.

The anger and injustice we feel at the rude behaviour of a stranger can drive us to do odd things. In my own research, I surveyed 2,000 adults, and discovered that the acts of revenge people had taken ranged from the ridiculous to the disturbing. Winston put the spotlight on the woman’s behaviour — but in a way that shamed her.

We must fight with rudeness directly. When we see it occur in a store, we must step up and say something. We must defend strangers in the same way we’d defend our best friends. But we can do it with grace, by handling it without any trace of aggression and without being rude ourselves. Because once rude people can see their actions through the eyes of others, they are far more likely to end that rude behaviour themselves.

【推荐2】It’s hard to talk to Dad sometimes. His silence about his feelings and thoughts made him mysterious and hard to see through. You could never break his hard shell and get to know him. And he seemed to want to stay that way too.

But a year ago when my relationship with my wife and career took a hit, I needed my dad to pull back the curtain so I could see him as real and accessible. I was facing serious problems and I wanted to know whether he had faced them before and how he had found his way, because I felt like I had lost mine. In desperation, it occurred to me that sending an email might be the key, so I wrote him one, telling him about my regrets and fears, and I asked him to answer, if he felt like it.

Two weeks later, it showed up in my inbox: a much-thought, three-page letter. Dad, a 68-year-old retired technologist and grandfather of four, had carefully considered my message, and crafted a response. He mentioned his lost love, the foolish mistake he made in career and the stupid pride he had between him and his parents. He comforted me that “life will still find its right track despite many of its twists and turns”.

I closed the email and started to cry, because I wished I had opened up earlier but was grateful it wasn’t too late. I cried because at 33, in the midst of my own struggles, his letter instantly put me at ease. And I cried because in the end, it was so simple: I just had to hit “Send”.

We’ve since had many email exchanges. This increasing communication opened a door into his world. My problems haven’t been magically solved, but getting to know my dad better has made the tough thing more manageable and life sweeter. It’s hard to talk to Dad sometimes, but I’m glad I found a way to talk to mine.

【推荐3】Kids often ask questions like those that are hard or not possible to answer, and adults tend to respond with explanations that try to solve the problem. It is natural to try to comfort a kid who is feeling puzzled by the world. But simple explanations may not be what the child expects or wants. Sometimes, kids simply want to talk about their questions and thought.

I'm a philosopher (哲学家) and educator who has been listening to children and talking with them about their big philosophical questions for the past 25 years. I encourage all young people to think for themselves about problems that matter to them because it's important for them to learn how to understand their own experiences.

Most kids start wondering about big questions almost as soon as they learn to speak, and they continue to think about them throughout childhood. Being full of curiosity about things that most adults take for granted, children all over the world are wide open to the mysterious that AI human life. Research shows, though, that as they get older, kids ask questions less and less.

While children do need adults' help and guidance, parents don't always have to act as an expert providing the answers. Thinking with children about their bigger questions can make Way for more communication. Since these kinds of questions tend not to have settled and final answers, discussions about them allow parents and children to wonder together. In this way, adults feel less pressure to be the experts.

Kids have few long-held beliefs about how the world works and they are open to many possibilities. In discussions about bigger questions, kids often suggest original and creative ways of looking at them. Talking with kids about what they are thinking can help parents explore their own concerns and ideas. Especially now, as families are separated together in a time of great uncertainty, these conversations have the possibility to allow parents and children to communicate more deeply and in a traditional way.

【推荐1】Shortly before Christmas last year, one of Brazilian pianists Joao Carlos Martins invited his friends to a bar near his home. He wanted to show them the best gift he had received: a new pair of gloves. They are not just any gloves, however. The special bionic devices（仿生设备）let the 79-year-old pianist play with both hands for the first time in more than 20 years.

By his retirement（退休） last March, Martins had received 24 medical operations to try to reduce pain caused by a disease and from a series of accidents. Before the gloves, which were especially developed for him, Martins could only play songs slowly with his thumbs and, sometimes, his pointer fingers.

However, one designer believed Martins’ retirement had come too early. The designer, Ubirata Bizarro Costa, created special bionic gloves for Martins’ hands. The gloves help move his fingers up after they press（按） on the piano keys. Costa said he created early models based on images of Martins’ hands, but he said those models were not good. He then decided to tell Martins about his work. Costa and Martins then spent several months testing several kinds of models. Finally, the perfect model came in December, and cost only $125.

These days, Martins never takes off his new gloves, even when he goes to sleep. Martins said, “I have received more than 100 devices in the last 50 years. None of those devices worked well or long enough, but these gloves do.”

The new gloves have given Martins a new goal. He hopes to play the piano at New York’s Carnegie Hall in October. He is already set to conduct a concert celebrating the 60^th anniversary of his first appearance there.

【推荐2】If you have lived in New York City for many years, like me, the skyline becomes part of you and your daily life.

When I was invited to visit the Summit One Vanderbilt—New York’s fourth-highest tower, I wasn’t expecting much. I felt like I’d seen it all and I thought that this observation deck (观测台) would be another space for a view of the city, but nothing else.

Let me tell you something: I have never seen one like this before. It sits on top of a building on 42nd street and Vanderbilt is next to Grand Central Station. Once you have ascended to the top floor, you step into air. It makes you feel like being at 1,000 feet above ground level with its mirrored floors. Once you make your way throughout the space, you feel like New York is part of a body, and your sense of space challenged by the reflections (反射) of the light. The reflections create endless possibilities for photos and videos, and the light changes throughout the day. I took out my camera and began to take photos feeling a connection with the city that no other observatory has been able to give me.

Summit is something unique, an art work with architecture. It will be an observatory (天文台) that will change with the city. I personally can’t wait to take photos at sunset, or when winter arrives.

【推荐1】In the mid-1950s, I was a somewhat bored early-adolescent male student who believed that doing any more than necessary was wasted effort. One day, this approach threw me into embarrassment.

In Mrs. Totten’s eighth-grade math class at Central Avenue School in Anderson, Indiana, we were learning to add and subtract decimals (小数).

Our teacher typically assigned daily homework, which would be recited in class the following day. On most days, our grades were based on our oral answer to homework questions.

Mrs. Totten usually walked up and down the rows of desks requesting answers from student after student in the order the questions had appeared on our homework sheets. She would start either at the front or the back of the classroom and work toward the other end.

Since I was seated near the middle of about 35 students, it was easy to figure out which questions I might have to answer. This particular time, I had completed my usual two or three problems according to my calculations.

What I failed to expect was that several students were absent, which threw off my estimate. As Mrs. Totten made her way from the beginning of the class, I desperately tried to determine which math problem I would get. I tried to work it out before she got to me, but I had brain freeze and couldn’t function.

When Mrs. Totten reached my desk, she asked what answer I’d got for problem No. 14. “I…I didn’t get anything,” I answered, and my face felt warm.

“Correct,” she said.

It turned out that the correct answer was zero.

What did I learn that day? First, always do all your homework. Second, in real life it isn’t always what you say but how you say it that matters. Third, I would never make it as a mathematician.

If I could choose one school day that taught me the most, it would be that one.

【推荐2】All eyes were on Jack Ma. The chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd stepped down on Teachers’ Day from leading the e-commerce giant he founded 20 years ago.

“I still have lots of dreams to go after,” Ma wrote in an open letter last year to announce his parting. “The world is big, and I am still young, so I want to try new things.”

The 55-year-old businessman showed that he was ready for new things by arriving at his farewell party (欢送会) dressed up like a rock star.

In fact, his rags-to-riches story is a good example of doing something different. Visiting the United States in 1995, Ma saw the internet and had the idea of setting up his own trading website. In 1999, he founded Alibaba with a group of friends in a shared apartment, struggling for years to get it off the ground. With all the challenges, the company slowly brought e-commerce to China.

Although his success has influenced a number of Chinese tech businessmen, Ma pointed out that the key is having a dream. “It’s the dreams that keep us never afraid of setbacks (挫折),” Ma said in a video posted on Sept 9.

Now the experienced businessman is looking to focus on education. What can he offer?

“I’m not gonna teach English; I’m not gonna teach business. But I’m gonna teach young people how to face challenges,” he told Bloomberg News.

Skilled sailors were never made on calm waters. As Ma said, “Today is cruel. Tomorrow is crueler. But the day after tomorrow is beautiful.”

【推荐3】The first thing we notice about new people are their faces. The next time we see these people, we remember them because we remember their faces. This seems like a simple process. However, scientists found that it is not such a simple process. The section of the brain that is responsible for face recognition seems to work differently for different people. Some people have great difficulty remembering and recognizing faces, while others almost never forget a face.

Normal babies are born with a natural ability to recognize faces. In fact, their face recognition abilities are much better than their parents. Babies are highly skilled at face recognition at six months. But by nine months, they lose this skill, By nine months, a baby’s face-recognition skills are about the same as an adult’s.

Unfortunately, some people are not born with this ability to recognize faces. The part of the brain that is responsible for face recognition doesn’t work for them. This condition is called face blindness. People with very severe face blindness cannot even recognize their own faces. In fact, people with this condition can sometimes be frightened when they look in the mirror. They don’t recognize their own face, so for a second they are startled when they see this unfamiliar face.

Face blindness is not always severe. Scientists believe up to 10 percent of the population may be affected by face blindness to some degree, yet many people with mild face blindness might not even know they have it. They have no reason to know they are different from anyone else until someone points it out. This is similar to people with color blindness.

Colorblind people can’t see the difference between certain colors such as red and green, until someone tells them that green and red are two different colors.

There is no cure for face blindness. So for the time being. people with face blindness need to find simple techniques to compensate for their problem. They can try to recognize people by their hairstyle, their voice, or their glasses. Hopefully, in the future as scientists learn more about this condition, they will find a cure.