4 . In the 17th century when a British businessman heard that there were one hundred million people in China, he was determined to go there and sell spoons. He thought even if he could earn one penny for one spoon, he would still make a lot of money.     1    

Then, why do the Chinese people use chopsticks? Some people did research on the origin of China’s chopsticks. One theory is that chopsticks were very convenient for Chinese to use because China was an agricultural society, relying mainly on vegetables for food. When we steamed or boiled food, it was difficult for us to use spoons to dip vegetables in the soup.     2     Westerners, on the other hand, travelled with their animals from place to place and lived on meat. For them, knives and forks were more practical.

Chopsticks reflect gentleness and kindness, the main moral teaching of Confucianism.     3     First, don’t use it to hit the side of your bowl or plate to make noises, because Chinese people think only beggars would do this to beg for meals.     4     It means you lay the blame on others. Also, don’t stick your chopsticks upright in the rice bowl. That usually appears at the funerals and is believed to be impolite to the host and the seniors who are at the table.

Today, chopsticks have become a typical part of Chinese culture, symbolising the power of unity.     5     However, ten pairs of chopsticks represent strength, which means they won’t break off in any cases. We Chinese people draw on this spirit, which always inspires and encourages us to work hand in hand for a better future.

Sachin started a textile business. He invested all the money from his savings into the business. Also, he borrowed some money from his friends and family.

In the beginning, the profit from his projects was only sufficient to cover his basic expenses. But he maintained top quality for all the deliveries. He tried very hard to get big projects but could not get one.

Not returning money to his friends and family members in time, Sachin thought of selling his textile business.

One day he was sitting on a farm and thinking. A farmer asked him, “ Why are you so upset? What is the problem?” Sachin replied his business was not giving returns as he thought. So, he was thinking of selling it off as it was not worth pursuing anymore.

Hearing his whole story, the farmer took him to his farm. He showed him a mango tree and a bamboo tree. He said, “ I planted both the trees at the same time and nurtured them with the same things they needed. After the first two years, the mango tree grew to a certain height. But there were no signs of growth in the bamboo. It continued for the third and fourth years. In the fifth year, the mango tree started producing fruits. Still, there were no signs in the bamboo.

However, after a week, there was a sign of growth in the bamboo tree. Then within six weeks, the tree grew to 100 feet.

Then I realized, in the first four years, it was developing its root deep underground for a base strong enough to support its outside growth. So, the same principle applies to your business as well. Wait for your time and never give up. ”

After hearing this story, Sachin thanked the farmer. He then started exploring the opportunities and went to big companies for orders. In the third month, he got the order from a big company worth millions and then continuous orders.

Sachin settled all the money to his family and friends. His business is now running into a highly profitable business.

7 . At some point, everyone wants to improve or change things in their lives.     1    Whether you want to take on new challenges, enhance your work performance or change unhealthy habits, creating a personal development plan is a great way to ensure success.

Decide what you want to change. Take down notes on the areas of your life that aren’t working well for you. Some experts believe it is better to focus on one goal at a time to stay focused.     2     Pinpoint specific areas in your life that have burdened you for months, or years. For example, if you intend to stop relying on mobile phone, now might be the time to make that goal to quit!

Have faith in yourself and in the process.    3    If you don’t believe you can absolutely transform your life and get what you want, then you might as well forget about goal setting and do something else. If you are in doubt, look around at your world. Everything started with a single thought!

Imagine the outcome. Some experts believe that taking a few minutes every day to visualize specific goals may have a significant impact on the degree of success you experience. In some cases research has revealed that mental practices are almost as effective as true physical practice.     4    

    5     Let’s be honest, if you don’t think about your goals, you won’t make them happen. At a set time, perhaps Monday mornings, review your progress for the last week and set new action steps for the upcoming week that push you towards your ultimate goal. Reading your goals weekly helps remind you of their importance and keeps you clear on what you truly want in your life.

8 . A picture might be worth a thousand words, but sometimes, a few words tell a bigger story. Instagram users find that a carefully thought-out caption for an image can make viewers pause, reveal something about the creator’s personality, drive engagement, and perhaps inspire one to take action. Do labels in museums and art galleries do something similar when paired with artworks?

A recent study, done by Kohinoor M. Darda and Anjan Chatterjee, researchers from University of Pennsylvania, was carried out to find the answer. They asked subjects how much they liked abstract and representational paintings. In the first experiment, Northern American subjects viewed Jackson Pollock’s abstract works with no additional information or accompanied by biographical information about Pollock as well as his technique for creating art. In the second experiment, Northern American subjects viewed Indian and American-European representational paintings that were either presented with no information or with information about the artwork’s content, the artist, and their technique.

They found that viewers’ aesthetic judgments of liking abstract paintings increased when they had information about Jackson Pollock and his technique, compared to no information. Similarly, viewers liked Indian and American-European representational paintings more when presented with information about the content, the artist, and their technique compared to no information. The influence of this information did not apply equally to everyone. Its effects appeared in people who are open to experience and people with less exposure to art.

Contextual information also impacted Indian paintings more than American-European paintings. Without contextual information, North Americans showed an in-group bias, a tendency to show favoritism toward members of one’s own group. In their study, Northern Americans liked American-European paintings more than Indian paintings when no information about the paintings was presented to them. But when the artworks were put into context, this in-group bias was reduced.

Museums or art galleries serve as information spaces where the museum architecture, the location of objects in its space, guided tours, audio guides, and the use of text labels all transmit information and knowledge to viewers to enhance the aesthetic experience. Further, given that the arts create a snapshot of a society or culture at a particular point in space and time, educators can take advantage of context to exert its impact on viewers. Multicultural art education could reduce stereotyping of “the other”. Would today’s world be just a little bit kinder if we could view each other through art and learn a little bit more about different cultural contexts?

9 . With the development of technology, computers are more capable of using language. Large language models ( LLMs) , of which the most famous is ChatGPT, produce what looks like human writing. However, a debate has been aroused over these items: what the machines are actually doing internally and what the operation of the brain is when humans speak.

According to Professor Noam Chomsky, a famous linguist( 语言学家) , human language is different from all other kinds of communication. All human languages are more similar to each other than they are to other types of communication, such as whale song or computer code. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Chomsky and two co-authors said “ we know” that computers do not think or use language as humans do. LLMs, in fact, just predict the next word in a string of words.

It is hard to understand what LLMs “think”. Details of the programming and training data of commercial ones like ChatGPT are proprietary. And not even the programmers know exactly what is going on inside.

Linguists have, however, found clever ways to test LLMs’ underlying knowledge. They found that LLMs can handle some new words and grasp parts of speech. For example, tell ChatGPT that “dax” is a verb meaning to eat a slice of pizza by folding it, and the system can use it easily: “ After a long day at work, I like to relax and dax on a slice of pizza while watching my favourite TV show. ”

GPT-3 ( the LLM underlying ChatGPT until the recent release of GPT-4 ) is estimated to be trained on about 1, 000 times the data a human ten-year-old is exposed to. That leaves open the possibility that children have an inborn tendency to grammar, making them far more proficient than any LLM. In a forthcoming paper in Linguistic Inquiry, researchers claim to have trained an LLM on no more text than a human child is exposed to, finding that it can use even rare bits of grammar. But other researchers have tried to train an LLM on a database of only child-directed language. Here LLMs behaved worse. Perhaps the brain really is built for language, as Professor Chomsky says.

10 . We have met, just not in person. I am a mortgage (抵押贷款) banker so I do my financial transactions over the phone and computer. This lady is a borrower of mine and I have done two of her refinances over the past few years. She is not a woman that is my mother’s age, not a grandmotherly type of client. She is my age.

We have never met in person. She lives in New Jersey and I live in California. I always try to make a Mortgage transaction as exciting as and as fun as it can be and of course her loan turned out great, but nothing spectacular happened where I saved the day or anything like that. Everything ran smooth. Mortgage is not the most exciting thing in the United States of America. Every couple of months, for the past three years, she would email me a little note that told me how much she appreciated me, how I made a difference in her life, how smart I was, and how thankful she was of me.

I have a stressful job, and sometimes my cheese is falling off my cracker all day long and just one little note from her completely changes my whole day. Sometimes it even makes me cry a little because it’s exactly what I needed to hear. Little does she know that one little action to somebody she barely even knows does so much for me over here on the other end.

This morning I turned on my computer and was trying to wake up and grunting at my emails and there it was, another note from her. I started my day in such a good mood and I let her know how much she makes a difference in my life! I also let her know how lucky the people are that are in her life if she treats everybody like this!

Everyone is so stressed out and lonely right now. Take a moment in your day tomorrow to do one little nice thing for somebody, even if it’s for someone you do not know. You can make one little difference in their life and put into motion a whole stream of positivity after that.