We once had a poster competition in our fifth grade art class.

    “You could win prizes,'' our teacher told us as she wrote the poster information on the blackboard. She passed out sheets of construction paper while continuing, “The first prize is ten dollars. You just have to make sure that the words on the blackboard appear somewhere on your poster.”

    We studied the board critically. Some of us looked with one eye and held up certain colors against the blackboard, rocking the sheets to the right or left while we conjured up our designs. Others twisted their hair around their fingers or chewed their erasers while deep in thought. We had plans for that ten-dollar grand prize, each and every one of us. I'm going to spend mine on candies, one hopeful would announce, while another practiced looking serious, wise and rich.

    Everyone in the class made a poster. Some of us used parts of those fancy paper napkins, while others used nothing but colored construction paper. Some of us used big designs, and some of us preferred to gather our art tidily down in one corner of our poster and let the space draw the viewer's attention to it. Some of us would wander past the good students' desks and then return to our own projects with a growing sense of hopelessness. It was yet another grown-up trick of the sort they seemed especially fond of, making all of us believe we had a fair chance, and then always — always — rewarding the same old winners.

    I believe I drew a sailboat, but I can't say that with any certainty. I made it. I admired it. I determined it to be the very best of all of the posters I had seen, and then I turned it in.

    Minutes passed.

    No one came along to give me the grand prize, and then someone distracted me, and I probably never would have thought about that poster again.

    I was still sitting at my desk, thinking, What poster? when the teacher gave me an envelope with a ten-dollar bill in it and everyone in the class applauded for me.

    Do you have a spare room in your house? What about a driveway for your car? Both of these can help you make money. Many people who are feeling the pinch are taking advantage of what's been called the “sharing economy”.

Perhaps the best-known example of a company in this field is Airbnb—an American web business which allows you to rent out your spare room to holidaymakers. It says it operates in 34,000 cities and it has over 1,500,000 listings.It seems to have concerned the market!

A British company is doing something with parking spaces. JustPark's founder, Anthony Eskinazi, says,“When I had the original idea, Ispotted a driveway close to a sports stadium. It would have been so convenient if I could have just parked in that driveway rather than in commercial car park.” And he has a big clientele（客户）:around 20,000 people have advertised their spaces on the site, and he says around half a million drivers use it. There are other sites doing very similar things, like Uber and Lyft—these let drivers share their cars with other passengers. Any driver knows how valuable a place to park is .A church near Kings Cross in central London has apparently made over £200,000 by renting out space in its yard to travelers!

    Because this is a new business world, those rules aren't there yet and many people are happy to share...as long as it pays!

    But the sharing economy has its critics: the competitors of these new companies. People who run things like traditional B&B, commercial car parks and taxi services are afraid of ending up out of pocket. And there is another issue: regulations on these new business are unclear. How will renting out your driveway affect your neighbor?

    Putting a dinosaur skeleton(骨架)together is not easy. The skeletons are usually very incomplete. Many dinosaur fossils(化石) are discovered badly damaged. Bones are often found crashed (压碎) or bent by the great weight of the dirt and rock above. Sometimes parts from different creatures are mixed together. This just adds to the confusion.

    Unfortunately, some scientists have not been careful enough in their descriptions of dinosaurs. They have told grand stories of how dinosaurs looked and behaved. All of these descriptions are based on guesswork – the imaginations of people who have never seen a living dinosaur. Some scientists have made complete pictures of dinosaurs based on just a single bone or tooth or leg. Such pictures are based on many guesses and very little facts. The scientists' ideas often turn out to be wrong when more facts are discovered.

    Dinosaur fossils are not found with labels attached showing what the animals looked like. That is why no pictures of dinosaurs are exactly right. Every dinosaur painting is sure to contain at least some wrong information. No artist in the twentieth century ever saw the living, breathing animals -- complete with skin, flesh, and color.

    For instance, imagine never having seen or heard of a peacock. One day you find the jumbled bones of it buffed in the ground. You try to put the bones together to form a skeleton. And then you try to draw a picture of what the animal looked like when it Was alive. But bones cannot tell the whole story. Even if you are a very good artist, it would be a miracle if you drew a tree picture of a peacock just from the bones and your imagination.

    The values of artistic works, according to cultural relativism (相对主义), are simply reflections of local and economic conditions. Such a view, however, fails to explain the ability of some works of art to excite the human mind across cultures and through centuries.

    History has witnessed the endless production of Shakespearean plays in every major language of the world. It is never rare to find that Mozart packs Japanese concert hall, as Japanese painter Hiroshige does Paris galleries. Unique works of this kind are different from today's popular art, even if they began as works of popular art. They have set themselves apart in their timeless appeal and will probably be enjoyed for centuries into the future.

    In a 1757 essay, the philosopher David Hume argued that because “the general principles of tastes are uniform (不变的) in human nature,” the value of some works of art might be essentially permanent. He observed that Homer was still admired after 2000 years. Works of this type, he believed, spoke to deep and unvarying features of human nature and could continue to exist over centuries.

    Now researchers are applying scientific methods to the study of the universality of art. For example, evolutionary psychology is being used by literary scholars to explain the long-lasting themes and plot devices in fiction. The structures of musical pieces are now open to experimental analysis as never before. Research findings seem to indicate that the creation by a great artist is as permanent an achievement as the discovery by a great scientist.

    He was once referred to as the Picasso of poetry. Beloved by Chileans of all classes, he is one of the most widely read and respected poets in history. And this year is the 100th birthday of Pablo Neruda (1904-1973).

    Born with the name Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basolto, he was a tall, shy and lonely boy. He loved to read and started to write poetry when he was ten. The American poet Walt Whitman, whose framed picture Neruda later kept on his table, became a major influence on his work.

    However, his father did not like the idea of having a poet for a son and tried to discourage him from writing. To cover up (掩饰) the publication of his first poem, he took the pen name Pablo Neruda.

    In 1924 Neruda gained fame with his most widely read work "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair". Yet his rich experience as a diplomat and exile (流亡) made him go beyond the theme of love. His work also reflected the political struggle of the left and development of South America. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

    Neruda loved the sea which he saw as creative, destructive and forever moving. He found inspiration in the power and freedom of the waves and the seabirds on the coast. "I need the sea because it teaches me," he wrote. "I move in the university of the waves." He loved how the sea forever renewed itself, a renewal echoed in his work.

    Everyone needs friends. There is an old saying, "Friends are God's way of taking care of us." But how do you find real friendship and keep it?

    The American writer Sally Seamans tells young students some smart ways to find friends. Sally says finding friendship is just like planting a tree. You plant the seed and take care of it to make it grow.

    First, you should choose a friend. What makes a good friend? It is not because a person has money or good looks. A good friend should be kind and patient. For example, if you have a bad day, a good friend should listen to your complaints and do his or her best to help. To make a friend, you cannot be too shy. You should make each other happy and share your lives.

    But things cannot always be happy. Even the best friends have fights. What should you do when you have a fight with your friend? You have to talk to him or her. When there is no one around, have an honest talk. If he or she doesn't want to talk, you could write a letter.

    There are three steps to being friends again: Tell him or her how you are feeling; say what your friend has done wrong, and explain why you did this or that. Remember that friendship is the most important thing in your life.