Dear Alfred,

        I want to tell you how important your help is to my life.

        Growing up, I had people telling me I was too slow, though, with an IQ of 150 at 17, I'm anything but stupid. The fact was that I was found to have ADIID(注意力缺陷多动障碍). Anxious all the time, I was unable to keep focused for more than an hour at a time.

        However, when something did interest me, I could become absorbed. In highs chool, I became curious about the computer, and built my first website.Moreover, I completed the senior course of Computer Basics, plus five relevantpre-college courses.

        While I was exploring my curiosity, my disease got worse.I wanted to go to college after high school, but couldn't. So, I waskilling my time at home until June 2012 when I discovered the online computercourses of your training center.

Since then, I have takencourses like Data Science and Advanced Mathematics. Currently, I'm learning yourProbability course. I have hundreds of printer paper, covered in self-writtennotes from your video. This has given me a purpose.

        Last year, I spent all my timelooking for a job where, without dealing with the public, I could work alone,but still have a team to talk to. Luckily, I discovered the job—DataAnalyst—this month and have been going full steam ahead. I want to prove that Ican teach myself a respectful profession, without going to college, and be justas good as, if not better than, my competitors.

Thank you. You've given me hopethat I can follow my heart. For the first time, I feel good about myself because I'm doing something, notbecause someone told me I was doing well. I feel whole.

This is why you're saving my life.

Yours,

Tanis

    Is pricing a plane ticket based on the passenger's weight fair? If you're taking an international flight on Samoa Air today, your fare will be based on your weight, along with that of your luggage. The cost is 93 cents to $1.06 for each kilogram.

    The average American woman weighs 75.5 kilograms, far from the ideal weight for her average height. Her ticket on Samoa Air, at the $1 a kilogram rate, would cost $75.50. But let's be honest here. Since the average American woman is overweight, the ticket will cost her more.

    Samoa Air Chief Executive Chris Langton said, “Planes are run by weight and not by seat. The plane can only carry a certain amount of weight and that weight needs to be paid.”He believes other airlines should adopt the policy.

    It' s not a new idea. I remember a newspaper columnist years ago who put forth the idea that the heavier among us should pay more for their seats on planes, trains and buses. Who hasn' t been squeezed into a middle seat between two plus-sized folks on a flight? It's happened to me; one time my married seatmates had purposefully chosen their seats to have more space until a sold-out flight put me between them. Not one of my better flying experiences.

What if such a policy is adopted by some airlines in the United States? Could such pricing provide a much-needed motivation for Americans to reduce body weight? I hope so. But, as we know, more than one-third of us are obese and another third are overweight. The high probability is that the heavy customers will not suddenly lose weight or stop flying, but will instead choose a different airline, simply moving the supposed problem elsewhere.

    There's no doubt that the heavier will suffer more discrimination (歧视). Discrimination against the overweight in the United States has increased by 66 percent over the last decade —“and is comparable to rates of racial discrimination, especially among women,”wrote Yale University researcher Rebecca M. Puhl. Your weight can affect your salary, your chances for employment, how others view you and even, now, your air fares.

     “If the policy succeeds it may encourage the spread of body discrimination across different industries and the wider culture,” said one British editorial writer. He holds that it is companies' duty to provide equipment that meet the needs of their customers.

And we'll see how effective it is as a business model.

    Written in the first chapter of the book Pride and Prejudice is an extraordinary sentence of which even a person who has had only a brief look upon the book will not fail to receive a deep impression — It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. In terms of Sherlock Holmes, we'd better alter the sentence into “It is a fact universally accepted by readers throughout the world that an excellent book in possession of our famous detective Sherlock Holmes is undoubtedly a masterpiece of all times.” Perhaps this is one of the most obvious explanations for the unrivaled popularity of “Holmes series” in the field of detective stories. Overwhelmed by the recommendations provided by my friends, I decided to take a look on this Sherlock Holmes and the Duke's Son originally published by Oxford University Press.

    As a whole, this book is about a case concerning the Duke's missing son. Arthur, the Duke's son, was found out in a certain morning to have disappeared, accompanied with which was also the disappearance of the German teacher. The school master Dr. Huxtable then turned to the famous detective of the time Sherlock Holmes for help. Realizing how tough and important the case is, Holmes immediately made up his mind to accept the case and followed Dr. Huxtable back to Mackleton by train. Having formed a rough idea about the whole matter, Holmes probed into the case immediately and had a careful investigation of the entire area shortly after the arrival, during the process of which he discovered the body of the German teacher Heidegger. Finally, primarily due to his prominent ability as a detective, he managed to unravel the mystery.

    Having once started reading this fiction, I was completely immersed in the mysterious story. At the beginning, unlike other detective stories, this story first delineates the client's strange behavior at length to indicate the severity of the incident in order to attract the readers to continue reading it. As is known to all, vivid depiction is essential to detective stories as it makes the story more authentic and attractive. Therefore, trying to present a “real world” to his readership, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the original “Holmes series”, has skillfully arranged the plots of the whole story from the perspective of Dr. Watson, a friend of Homes'. In this way, he elaborately (精心)depicted every scene and character in the book. Apart from the special start, the ending of the whole story, being dramatic but reasonable, is certainly an outstanding one. After all, except the author himself, who knows that the Duke's seemingly ordinary secretary is in fact the Duke's bastard(私生子)? In addition, who knows that the Duke actually has already been acquainted with the whole thing before Holmes solves this complicated problem? Yet, surprising as it is, this ending seems so natural that it fits all the plots of the story perfectly well. Closing my eyes, I can even “see” the story happening just like watching a film.

    As far as I am concerned, nothing is more admirable and surprising in the hero Sherlock Homes than his profound knowledge which has certainly assisted him a lot when he was studying the case. Take the bicycle tyres for instance, Holmes is capable of recognizing 42 different varieties of bicycle tyres. Except for his illimitable knowledge, Holmes also specializes in arranging the facts in order and then finding the fact leading him to a great discovery or even the truth itself. In this case, after getting rid of unrelated facts, Sherlock Homes eventually grasped the clue and discovered the amazing fact.

    Needless to say, as a world-renowned masterpiece, Sherlock Holmes and the Duke's Son has attracted and is still charming numerous readers from all corners of the world and people from all walks of life. The “Holmes series” has already set up a standard against which all the following detective fictions are measured. Sherlock Holmes, beyond all doubt, has been a name firmly rooted in people's memories. Although Dr. Watson's closing The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes in 1927 was a great pity to the readers, the discontinuance of the entire “Holmes series” may have actually added to the legendary stature of Sherlock Holmes.

    A child who suffers bullying(霸凌) usually has low self-esteem and their ability to learn and be successful at school is greatly lessened. Therefore, bullying must be stopped.

    The best and most obvious way to stop bullying in schools is for parents to change the way they raise their children at home. Of course, this is much easier said than done and everyone raises their children differently. Bullies, however, come from homes where physical punishment is used and children have been taught that physical violence is the way to handle problems and “get their way”. Bullies usually also come from homes where the parents fight a lot, so children have been modeled on such violence. Parental involvement is often lacking in bullies' lives and there seems to be little warmth.

    Early intervention (干预) is truly the best way to stop bullying, but parents of the victims or therapists(治疗师) can't alter the bully's home environment. Some things can be done at the school level, however. Most school programs that address bullying apply a multi-faceted(多层面的) method to the problem.

    Hand out questionnaires to all students and teachers and discuss if bullying is occurring. Define exactly what constitutes(构成) bullying at school. The questionnaire is a wonderful tool that allows the school to see how widespread bullying is and what forms it is taking. It is a good way to start to solve the problem.

    Get the children's parents involved in a bullying program. If parents of the bullies and the victims are not aware of what is going on at school, then the whole bullying program will not be effective. Stopping bullying in school takes teamwork and concentrated effort on everyone's part. Bullying also should be discussed during parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings. Parental awareness is the key.

    In the classroom setting, all teachers should work with the students on bullying. Oftentimes even the teacher is being bullied in the classroom and a program should be set up to teach about bullying. Children understand modeling behaviors and role-play and acting out bullying situations is a very effective tool. Have students role-play a bullying situation.

    "City Cycling USA: Los Angeles," a pocket-sized tour guide to seeing Los Angeles on two wheels, is seemingly for visitors; Actually, for locals, its series of bike-friendly paths and itineraries (行程) are a road-map to becoming tourists in their own city again.

    "City Cycling" explores five neighborhoods in the Westside and Eastside and generally north of the 10 and south of the 101. Itineraries fit the period of a day, beginning with spots for coffee, walking along museums and shops, and finishing off with recommendations of where to buy a well-deserved drink. Published by Thames and Hudson in association with London cycling brand Rapha Racing, the guidebook is among the first U.S. sections — alongside New York, Chicago and San Francisco — in a series launched in 2013 with biking tours of eight European cities.

    Greatest hits such as the Bradbury Building and Echo Park Lake are included in the neighborhood tours, with plenty of fashionable places for where to eat — Eggslut, Pine & Crane and Gjusta. The guide is a reminder of how crowdedly packed each enclave (飞地) of L.A. is with unusual destinations, the large number of places to explore within a few square mile radius (半径), easily done once we step out of the car.

    Los Angeles' famously pleasant weather makes it an ideal city for exploring by bike; neighborhoods have different styles. While the car still plays an important role, cycling culture, like CicLAvia, already has full support, and is prepared to grow with the implementation (实施) of Mobility Plan 2035, which aims to make the city more bike friendly. "City Cycling USA: Los Angeles" is a start.

    Do you ever pull your phone out of your pocket, thinking it is vibrating(振动), only to find that it isn't? This phenomenon, which scientists call "phantom(幻觉的)phone vibration", is very common. Around 80% of people surveyed say they have imagined their phones vibrating when they were actually still.

    So, what leads to this universal behavior? According to the BBC, the explanation lies in your brainˈs ability to discover signals from the outside world. When your phone is in your pocket, there are two possible states: it is either vibrating or not. Meanwhile, you also have two possible states of mind: the judgment that the phone is vibrating, or that it isn't. Ideally, you match the four states correctly.

However, sometimes your brain decides that the results of missing a call are more serious than a "false alarm". Therefore, you become more sensitive(敏感的) to vibrations so that you don't miss anything. This is just like the fire alarm in your home—it can be annoying when it goes off in response to just a tiny bit of smoke. But that's a small price to pay compared to a fire really breaking out because the alarm fails to alert you. Now, you might still ask: why can't our brains just make every judgment correctly without being too sensitive to false signals? The answer is that your brain bears a heavy burden every day. "You get a large amount of sensory(感觉的) information that's coming from your eyes, ears and skin, and you can't deal with all that information all the time, "Michael Rothberg, a researcher at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, US, told Live Science.

    For example, the rustling(沙沙声)of clothing or the growling(咕咕声)of your stomach may both lead your brain to believe that they come from the vibration of your phone-it is like trying to hear your name being called in a noisy room.

    So, perhaps you should just check your phone whenever you think it's vibrating. It's not too much trouble to do that, is it?