2 . The newly-elected president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro says that his country should withdraw (退出) from the 2015 Paris Agreement, and that Brazil’s rainforest protections are standing in the way of economic success. During the election campaign, he promised to ease protections for areas of the Brazilian Amazon set aside for native people and wildlife. Are Brazil’s rainforests in danger?

The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, is called “the lungs of the planet.” Each tree takes in and stores carbon dioxide from the air around it. Billions of trees pull up water through their roots and release water vapor into the air, forming tiny drops of water. The Amazon creates 30 to 50 percent of its own rainfall. Carlos Nobre, a climate scientist, says that it is almost impossible to say Just how important the rainforest is to the planet’s living systems.

Some of Bolsonaro’s support comes from business and farming groups. One supporter, Luiz Carlos, noted that farmers “are not invaders, they are producers.” He blamed the past government for supporting rainforest protections at the cost of farmers. “Brazil,” he said, “will be the biggest farming nation on Earth during Bolsonaro’s years.”

Paulo Artaxo, a professor of environmental physics at the University of Sao Paulo, says that if Bolsonaro keeps his campaign promises, then “deforestation of the Amazon will probably increase quickly — and the effects will be felt everywhere on the planet.”

Other scientists warn that if the Amazon and other tropical rainforests lose too many trees, this could affect rainfall in other areas. Without enough trees to support the rainfall, the longer and bigger dry season could turn more than half of the rainforest into a tropical grassland.

3 . It was one of those moments every new parent dreads (恐惧). My baby son was screaming as if I’d just dipped him in a bucket (桶) of battery acid. It felt as if he’d been screaming like that for years, though he was only two months old. Even worse, this was happening in public— I was sitting with my howling baby in the food court of a Los Angeles mall, despairing (绝望) as other diners silently judged me while watching us over plates of food.

Until, that is, one woman— a complete stranger— did something and taught me a lesson about kindness that lingers to this day. She walked over to me and put her hand on my shoulder. “This won’t last forever,” she said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but things will get better. He’ll stop crying. You’ll get some sleep.”

It was such a small thing, a tiny kindness, really, but it made all the difference. It was 2001 and I was living in a foreign city with a newborn, without friends or family, and I was terribly lonely. This woman had seen me, if only for a moment, and taken the time to make a human connection. It was just a minute out of her day, but it has stayed with me for nearly two decades.

We all want to be better in the world and more giving to others. But we can easily get hung up on the sheer (完全的) importance of that challenge— making time to regularly volunteer or finding money to donate to a cause. Doing good doesn’t have to be an important task, though; it can be incremental (递增的). It can be as quick as a smile, a word, a phone call, an email. It can be the note you send to a friend who is feeling blue or the baby carriage you help carry down the subway stairs for a parent on their own, even though you’re late for work.

I’m reminded of a line from Brian Goldman’s bestseller, The Power of Kindness: “The opposite meaning of empathy is apathy (冷漠).” That is, the opposite of doing good isn’t doing harm; it’s doing nothing. Every tiny act of generosity— every door held open, every coffee bought for a stranger— builds a bridge to another person. It says, “I see you.” Today, when we spend most of our time looking at our phones, and not at people’s faces, that’s invaluable.

So, while I’m not particularly good at regularly volunteering or running marathons to raise money for charity, I’m committed to small gestures. I try to send a note of praise every day to someone whose work I admire. I’ve become phone friends with a lonely 87-year-old woman who contacted me about something I wrote, and who lives in a city far from her own children and grandchildren. On airplanes, I find the new parents with panicked eyes and offer to hold their babies. I remember what it felt like when the screaming baby was mine. I remember when a tiny kindness felt monumental, enough to change the world.

5 . When we talk about intelligence, we do not mean the ability to get good scores on certain kinds of tests or even the ability to do well in school. By intelligence we mean a way of living and behaving, especially in a new or upsetting situation. If we want to test intelligence, we need to find out how a person acts instead of how much he knows what to do.

For instance, when in a new situation, an intelligent person thinks about the situation, not about himself or what might happen to him. He tries to find out all he can, and then he acts immediately and tries to do something about it. He probably isn’t sure how it will all work out, but at least he tries. And, if he can’t make things work out right, he doesn’t feel ashamed that he failed; he just tries to learn from his mistakes. An intelligent person, even if he is very young, has a special outlook on life, a special feeling about life, and knows how he fits into it.

If you look at children, you’ll see great differences between what we call “bright” children and “not-bright” children. They are actually two different kinds of people, not just the same kind with different amount of intelligence. For example, the bright child really wants to find out about life—he tries to get in touch with everything around him. But the unintelligent child keeps more to himself and his own dream world; he seems to have a wall between him and life in general.

6 . A strong feeling of shock and fear caught the heart of the World War I soldier as he saw his lifelong friend fall in battle.Caught in a trench (战壕)with continuous gunfire flying over his head , the soldier asked his lieutenant(中尉) if he might go out into the “No Man’s Land” between the trenches to bring his fallen friend back.

“You can go,” said the Lieutenant , “but I don’t think it will be worth it. Your friend is probably dead and you may throw your own life away.” The Lieutenant’s words didn’t matter, and the soldier went anyway.

Surprisingly he managed to reach his friend, pick him up onto his shoulder, and bring him back to their company’s trench. As the two of them tumbled in together to the bottom of the trench, the officer checked the wounded soldier, and then looked kindly at his friend. “I told you it wouldn’t be worth it,” he said. “Your friend is dead, and you are badly wounded.”

“It was worth it, though, sir,” the soldier said.

“How do you mean, ‘worth it?’” responded the Lieutenant. “Your friend is dead!”

“Yes sir,” the soldier answered. “But it was worth it because when I got to him, he was still alive, and I had the satisfaction of hearing him say, ‘Jim, I knew you’d come.’”