【推荐2】Some houses are designed to be smart. Others have smart designs. An example of the second type of house won an Award of Excellence from the American Institute of Architects.

Located on the shore of Sullivan’s Island off the coast of South Carolina, the award-winning cube-shaped beach house was built to replace one smashed to pieces by Hurricane (飓风) Hugo 10 years ago. Before Hugo, many new houses built along South Carolina’s shoreline were poorly constructed, and enforcement of building rules wasn’t strict, according to architect Ray Huff, who created the cleverly-designed beach house. Soon after Hugo, all new shoreline houses are required to meet stricter, better-enforced rules. The new beach house on Sullivan’s Island should be able to withstand a Level 3 hurricane with peak winds of 179 to 209 kilometers per hour.

At first sight, the house on Sullivan’s Island looks anything but hurricane-proof. Its redwood shell makes it resemble “a large party lantern (灯笼)” at night, according to one observer. But looks can be misleading. The house’s wooden frame is reinforced with long steel rods to give it extra strength.

To further protect the house from hurricane damage. Huff raised it 2.7 meters off the ground on timber pilings－long, slim wood pieces anchored deep in the sand. Pilings might appear insecure, but they are strong enough to support the weight of the house. They also raise the house above storm waves. The pilings allow the waves to run under the house instead of running into it. “These waves come ashore at terrible speeds and cause most of the damage done to beach-front buildings,” said Huff.

Huff designed the timber pilings to be partially hidden by the house’s ground-to-roof shell. “The shell masks the pilings so that the house doesn’t look like it’s standing with its pant legs (裤腿) pulled up,” said Huff. In the event of a storm, the shell should break apart and let the waves rush under the house, the architect explained.

【推荐3】One Dollar a Night in New York

When it comes to finding a place to stay for a night in New York, things don’t always come cheap. However, artist Miao Jiaxin, a Shanghai native who moved to New York in 2006, is offering people the chance to stay in his apartment in Brooklyn.     1    

Guests can easily book Miao’s room on the Internet. Nevertheless, although they will be housed in his apartment, it appears to have more in common with a jail cell（牢房）than a regular bedroom as a cage in the center of the room is where guests will stay.

    2     Guests must stay in the cage for three hours each morning. “From 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., you can’t access the Internet, and there are no electronic devices, books, radio, pens or craftwork. You can’t talk to anybody. You can’t do Yoga or any other exercises. And you can’t even sleep,” writes Miao.     3    

Meanwhile, the cage is monitored and recorded by two cameras and the activity of guests is filmed for the whole time they stay in the cell.

    4     They can enjoy great views of New York on the roof deck outside the room.

The room is inspired by the alienation（疏离感）Miao felt as a new immigrant — feelings he believes are universal. “It’s not for fun. It’s for an experience.     5    ” said Miao.

Now rewind this picture 1,839 years. You are in the same seat, only you are watching classical Greek entertainment.

The city of Athens is a fun mix of the old and the new, the classic and the modern. Often a little shop is located next to the ruins of a temple, which is only a block from a large, air-conditioned hotel. The great city of 2,500 years ago is still visible today.

Ruins are the most obvious sign of ancient Athens, and the most famous of these is the Acropolis(卫城). The Acropolis is a large hill that was the center of life in Athens. On its slopes were temples, monuments, and theaters. From the top, you can see how the urban area of Athens stretches out in every direction.

On the top of the Acropolis is the Parthenon. This was once a huge temple to Athena, the city’s patron. It was first completed in 432 B.C., but has been damaged and destroyed several times. However, visitors can still see the “tricks” used in building the Parthenon. The columns along the outside lean inward, and are slightly fatter in the middle. The temple is also higher in the middle than on the sides. All these effects make the Parthenon look perfectly straight from a distance.

Only a block away from the Acropolis is the neighborhood of Plaka. The area, with its little shops and restaurants, is very popular with both tourists and locals, and is an important part of modern Athenian culture. Many great thinkers, writers, and political leaders lived in ancient Athens. The ruins of their homes and favorite spots are scattered throughout the busy port city. The hill where St. Paul addressed early Christian Athenians is located near the Acropolis. Great thinkers such as Perikles and Demosthenes spoke to the civil assemblies held at the Pnyx Hill. Today the Pnyx is an open-air theater for light and sound shows.

Tourism is very important to people who live in modern-day Athens. Thousands of people come every year to see these ruins and to tour the many museums that house artifacts from ancient times. This provides many jobs and brings money into Athens, which helps the city pay for improvements. Athenians take pride in the accomplishments of their ancestors, and people from all around the world come to admire them. By looking around the city today, we can imagine what life was like in ancient Athens.

【推荐3】For as much as 8,000 years before European contact, the San Juan Islands were inhabited by the Northern Straits Salish peoples and other native people seasonally, preserving food in summer for winters spent elsewhere. All were drawn to the islands by the rich abundance of food and materials found here.

In the mid-1800s, a company came to the San Juans following its numerous international trade routes. One employee, known as ＂Friday＂, settled alone the area of what is now the town of Friday Harbor. This caused many to refer to the place as ＂Friday’s Harbor＂.

By 1900, Friday Harbor had a population of only three or four hundred residents. Road and telephone networks linked the town to the rest of the island. The community was growing and many public facilities had added. What these buildings had in common was simplicity of design. They were attractive and functional, but without complex decoration. Typically, both residential and commercial buildings were built with local wood. Money was so little that it couldn’t be used for the unnecessary, and so most buildings were painted white, more for functional protection against rot, than for decoration. The town wore a pinched look until the late 1960s, when tourism, retirement, real estate(房地产), construction, the arts and a variety of cottage industries began to take hold. Today, the town is again busy and prosperous. Over 6,000 people live in the town.

Though the traditional industries have all but vanished, there are still many visible reminders of the pioneer era — 100-year old orchards(果园), kitchen gardens, turn-of-the-century wooden buildings and companionable roof lines — all acquaint islanders and visitors alike with Friday Harbor’s spirited early days.

【推荐2】Having a microchip implanted in a man's brain may be common in sci-fi movie plots, but it may soon become an actual possibility.

Elon Musk -a US tech tycoon, founder of Space X- has been working on this technology. On Aug 28, Musk gave a display of the chip, which was implanted into the head of a pig named Gertrude.

The chip, developed by Musk's company Neuralink, is the size of a coin. But don't let its size fool you. The tiny chip has over 3,000 electrodes （电极）attached to flexible threads, which can monitor about 1,000 neurons （神经元）.It collects neural signals from an area of the brain, and then transmits those signals wirelessly to nearby computers, according to MSN. That enabled researchers to monitor Gertrude's brain activity while she was walking around in the display.

Though the technology is still in its early stage, it is encouraging for humans. This technology would solve a lot of brain injuries and is essentia] for Al symbiosis, which will allow the human brain to combine with an artificial intelligence.

When the device can be applied to humans, its main goal will be to help those who have mobility difficulties. Musk hopes this technology can also be used to help those with hearing and eyesight issues.

Although such a device could repair those problems, putting it into practice is by no means a piece of cake. Currently, the device can transmit signals from about 500 neurons in the pig's brain. Compared to 80 billion neurons in a human brain, this number is tiny. And to cover the whole human brain also means the electrodes have to be much smaller.

Also, implanting the chip into the brain poses a potential danger. There is a risk of the immune system attacking this foreign body.

Right now, the hope of controlling the brain via controlling a few neurons seems overly optimistic. "There are many technological challenges ... to overcome before Neuralink can put its devices to the purposes," Yuan Lanfeng, an associate professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, told China Daily.

【推荐3】Psychological science is full of interesting topics, many of which tell a coherent picture of human nature, but some of which create seemingly contradictory stories. A case in point is the tricky, and misunderstood, overlap between strength-based science and the research on narcissism (自恋).

There is now convincing evidence to show that narcissism is on the rise, especially in our youth. Some researchers have gone so far as to say that it is occurring in epidemic proportions, with about 25% of young people showing symptoms of narcissism. The inflated ego of Generation Me is reflected in reality TV, celebrity worship, out-of-control consumerism and materialism…perhaps even a new type of president.

We are correct to be concerned about this phenomenon but our fear that all kids are potential narcissists has caused an unhelpful counter-reaction to approaches that seek to make our children and teens feel good about themselves.

In my own research on strength-based parenting, it is common for people to wrongly label this approach as a recipe for narcissism. Their argument seems to be that a child who knows their strengths will automatically view themselves as better than everyone else. It is argued that the self-assurance that comes with identifying and using their positive qualities will make a child arrogant, selfish and uncaring. Genuine confidence about one’s strengths is categorized as over-confidence; desirable self-knowledge is branded as excessive self-admiration.

Why does this occur? It’s partly because more is known about narcissism than strengths. While strengths psychology has largely stayed within the limit of academic journals or has been applied only within certain contexts such as the workplace, research on narcissism has made its way into the mass media and into our collective consciousness. The New York Times noted that narcissism is a favored “go-to” topic and that people everywhere are diagnosing others with it.

The fear that a strength-based approach will cause narcissism also occurs because we unknowingly fall prey to binary (非此即彼) thinking. We mistakenly believe that one cannot be both confident and humble. We focus on Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian rather than Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. There’s no way that Gandhi and Mother Teresa could have achieved what they did without confidence in their strengths, and yet they are both pillars of modesty and selflessness.

When we assume that strength-focus is the same as a self-focus, we fail to entertain the idea that people who know their strengths are, actually, more likely to be pro-social and focus on helping others.

It’s tempting to conclude that every young person is at risk of becoming a narcissist but I’d like to stand up for the thousands of young kids I have worked with who are caring, thoughtful and humble—even when they use their strengths.

【推荐1】On September 18, 2020, people gathered on the steps of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, singing songs like Amazing Grace. Some placed twinkling candles on the steps. Others left flowers and messages. They were there to mourn (哀悼)the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away at the age of 87.

Ginsburg was the second-ever female justice(法官)on the US Supreme Court, the most powerful court in the United States. She served in that position from 1993 until her death. During her long career, Justice Ginsburg fought for women’s equality and human rights for everyone.

Because she was a woman, she had many barriers placed in her path by people who, at the time, felt that women should not have the same rights as men. When she attended Harvard Law School in 1956, she was only one of nine women in her class. The rest of the class-541 students- were men. It wasn’t that other women weren’t smart or talented enough to get in, but because there was a tendency against women attending schools like Harvard Law, so many were turned away while similarly qualified men were accepted. Ginsburg also faced discrimination(歧视)because she was Jewish.

Ginsburg knew that men and women are equal. As a lawyer and later as a judge, she devoted her life to fighting for that principle.

One of her most famous rulings as a Supreme Court justice involved the Virginia Military Institute(VMI), which, in 1996, only allowed males to attend. Ginsburg wrote a ruling that persuaded the other justices that not allowing women into the institute was against the 14th Amendment (修正案), which explains that all people in US have equal rights. Today, about 10％ of the students at VMI are female.

Ginsburg was so inspirational that people wrote books, movies and songs about her. Children went out for Halloween dressed as her, wearing the black justice robes and white collars and other neck pieces she often wore.

Think of Spider-Man, Iron Man and Ant-Man. Think of Black Panther, the Mighty Thor and the X-Men. Think of the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four and all the other superheroes that have stimulated the popular imagination.     1    . From a small office in Manhattan in the 1960s, he helped create a lineup of fictional heroes that have crossed from page to screen in a series of TV and movie adaptations and changed the face of popular culture.

For many, he was the face of Marvel, if not comic books in general, witnessing the company's rise to become an international media giant. As a writer, editor, publisher and Hollywood executive, he played a critical role in what comic fans call one of the medium's golden ages.

    2    . Lee gave the heroes flaws and insecurities, as well as an awareness of trends, social causes and a sense of humor, trying to ''make them real flesh-and-blood characters with personality, '' he told The Washington Post in 1992. ''That's what any story should have, but comics didn't have it until that point. They were all cardboard figures. ''

    3    . Iron Man, for example, could join forces with the Fantastic Four, and Captain America could find himself a wedding guest alongside Doctor Strange. Lee created a fictional universe for readers to explore — one that made readers buy multiple series to get the whole story.

''I used to think what I did was not very important, '' Lee told the Chicago Tribune in 2014. ''People are building bridges and participating in medical research, and here I was working on stories about fictional people who do crazy things and wear costumes. But I suppose I have come to realize that entertainment is not easily dismissed. ''

Stan Lee was as extraordinary as the characters he created, said Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger. Indeed, Lee worked tirelessly his whole life creating great characters for the world to enjoy.     4    . His legacy will outlive us all.

【推荐3】Before Douglas Engelbart, computers were as big as rooms and used mostly for handling numbers. But in the late 1960s, Engelbart invented almost everything your personal computer has today: a mouse, hypertext, screen sharing and more. Engelbart was adding real-time edits, graphics, hyper-linking and sharing screens — all before the birth of the World Wide Web. “The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing,” said Engelbart, and as it turns out, he held all the right cards.

If he’d been British, Engelbart would have been knighted (授爵), but the Portland, Oregon, native instead lived out the rest of his years as an unsung hero, trying to fry even bigger fish in Silicon Valley. His blueprint of the Internet was totally different from today’s profit-driven, streamlined version. Engelbart imagined an information system built on the backbones of cooperation and education, all meant to enhance the collective human mind. He wanted a computerized network of real-time, human-wide cooperation, with the open-source spirit of Wikipedia and the purposefulness of Change.org.

By the late 70s and early 80s, Engelbart and his ideas were cast aside in favour of Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows, along with their profit-generating vision for personal computing, and a user-friendly approach to the Internet. Engelbart’s team of researchers abandoned him, and he had a lesser position at a company called Tymshare while still battling with his pie-in-the-sky visions of a better world. Even worse, when Engelbart’s mouse invention gained widespread use years later, he never gained the profits — it had been licensed to Apple for around $40,000, Engelbart revealed.

And if Engelbart had won? “Hard to say,” says Jefferson of the Internet Archive in San Francisco. “The Web was bound to grow in ways its founders never intended,” he says. He notes his belief that the same spirit of knowledge-sharing and cooperation Engelbart tirelessly pushed for will one day become part of our fast-evolving Internet, even if a commercial layer clouds the original vision. But even so, fame is difficult to achieve; it often ridicules great thinkers like Galileo or Tesla, only to meet them decades after death. Granted, Engelbart was eventually allowed into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1998, and into the Pioneers Circle in the Internet Hall of Fame after his death, but the heart of his dream has yet to be realized.