Some years ago, writing in my diary used to be a usual activity. I would return from school and spend the expected half hour recording the day's events, feelings, and impressions in my little blue diary. I did not really need to express my emotions by way of words, but I gained a certain satisfaction from seeing my experiences forever recorded on paper. After all, isn't accumulating memories a way of preserving the past?

    When I was thirteen years old, I went on a long journey on foot in a great valley, well-equipped with pens, a diary, and a camera. During the trip, I was busy recording every incident, name and place I came across. I felt proud to be spending my time productively, dutifully preserving for future generations a detailed description of my travels. On my last night there, I wandered out of my tent, diary in hand. The sky was clear and lit by the glare of the moon, and the walls of the valley looked threatening behind their screen of shadows. I automatically took out my pen…

    At that point, I understood that nothing I wrote could ever match or replace the few seconds I allowed myself to experience the dramatic beauty of the valley. All I remembered of the previous few days were the dull characterizations I had set down in my diary.

    Now, I only write in my diary when I need to write down a special thought or feeling. I still love to record ideas and quotations that strike me in books, or observations that are particularly meaningful. I take pictures, but not very often—only of objects I find really beautiful. I'm no longer blindly satisfied with having something to remember when I grow old. I realize that life will simply pass me by if I stay behind the camera, busy preserving the present so as to live it in the future.

    I don't want to wake up one day and have nothing but a pile of pictures and notes. Maybe I won't have as many exact representations of people and places； maybe I'll forget certain facts, but at least the experiences will always remain inside me. I don't live to make memories—I just live, and the memories form themselves.

    Many teenagers feel that the most important people in their lives are their friends. They believe that their family members don't know them as well as their friends do. In large families, it is quite often for brothers and sisters to fight with each other and then they can only go to their friends for some ideas.

    It is very important for teenagers to have one good friend or a group of friends. Even when they are not with their friends, they usually spend a lot of time talking among themselves on the phone. This communication is very important in children's growing up, because friends can discuss something. These things are difficult to tell their family members.

    However, parents often try to choose their children's friends for them. Some parents may even stop their children from meeting their good friends. Have you ever thought of the following questions?

    Who chooses your friends?

    Do you choose your friends or your friends choose you?

    Have you got a good friend your parents don't like?

    Your answers are welcome.

Craziest Food Festivals sounds like a joke topic, but once you start looking into it, you'll realize they're everywhere—the crazier, the better.

    ⒈Bibimbap Festival

    In the South Korean town of Jeonjuloves, their “mixed rice” dish is a hearty serve of rice topped with raw beef, a rainbow of vegetables, a raw egg and gochujang sauce (韩国的辣椒酱) so much. They take four days out of October to celebrate it.

    Like any festival there's music, entertainment and magic, but making it that little bit different is the bibimbap that's whipped (搅拌) up in a big bowl by dozens of chefs and served to over 400 people.

    ⒉Waikiki Spam Jam (怀基基午餐肉节)

    Who knew this canned meat had so much love? Well, it turns out that a can of Spam is the go-to item in Hawaii, along with a grass skirt and garland (花环). The people of Hawaii love Spam so much that they even spend a day in May serving out the best Spam, a type of cheap canned meat made mainly from pork.

    ⒊Bessieres Easter Egg Festival

    At Easter time, for those in the French town of Bessieres it's all about an egg far less sweet.

    Here they celebrate the holiday by getting dozens of chefs to make one large omelette (煎蛋卷) - 15,000 eggs strong - for the townsfolk (市民).

    ⒋Potato Days Festival

    This festival actually takes place in Barnesville, Minnesota(明尼苏达州), the US. Over the last Friday and Saturday in August the town celebrates its potato-growing skills by hosting potato picking and peeling contests, as well as a Miss Tater Tot pageant (盛典) for five-and six-year-old girls.

    Freedom of the press is rightly protected in most societies, yet it is just this protection that sometimes allows this freedom to be made bad use of. The press has a strong influence which can bring about significant changes to the lives of ordinary people. The story of the first quintuplets(五胞胎) in America clearly showed the power of the press.

    There was a poor family living in Aberdeen, a small town in the U. S. A. Raising five children was already a struggle for the poor parents of this family. When the mother learned that it was another four girls and one more boy that were on the way, she and her husband were shocked beyond belief. Without a doubt, they were going to face even more urgent money problems.

    However, this event changed their lives in ways they had never expected. The day after the birth of the five babies, there were sixty reporters and photographers waiting outside their door. The couple soon made national headlines, for they had become the parents of the first quintuplets in America.

    The family gained fame and money overnight. Newspapers and magazines offered them huge sums of money for the rights to publish their stories as well as their photos. Gifts poured in not only from unknown people, but also from baby food and soap manufacturers who wanted to advertise their products. Though their lives were indeed improved, reporters kept pressing for interviews, which forced the family to hire lawyers to act as spokespeople for them at news conferences.

    Moreover, the birth also brought great changes to Aberdeen. A new highway had been developed, since this town was likely to attract thousands of visitors. Even the name of the town on the road signs was changed to "Quint-City, U.S.A." Locals also discussed the possibility of setting up a "quint museum" to satisfy the curiosity of the public and to protect the family from gossipy visitors at the same time.

    While the babies were still quietly sleeping in the hospital, their parents began paying the price for fame. It would never again be possible for them to lead normal lives. The town itself received so much attention that almost each of the locals there was affected more or less. This was the power of the press, but such power could easily be misapplied.

    The full moon climbs over the eastern horizon (地平线) and hangs like a huge orange globe in the sky. A few hours later, the moon is overhead but seems to have changed. The huge orange globe has become a small silver disk. What has happened? Why has the orange color disappeared? Why does the moon seem so much smaller and farther away now that it is overhead?

    The moon appears orange on the horizon because we view it through the dust of the atmosphere. The overhead moon does not really shrink (缩小) as it moves away from the horizon. Our eyes inform us that the overhead moon is farther away. But in this position the moon is actually closer to our eyes than when it is near the horizon.

    The change in size is a trick our eyes and minds play on us. When the moon is low in the sky, we can compare its size with familiar objects. It is easy to see that the moon is much larger than trees or buildings, for example. When the moon is high in the sky, however, it is hard to compare it with objects on earth. Compared to the vastness of the sky, the moon seems small.

    There is another reason why the moon seems to shrink. We are used to staring at objects straight ahead of us. When an object is difficult to see, our eyes have to try to focus on it. When we move our heads back to look up, we will try hard again. Looking at something from an unaccustomed position can fool you into believing an object is smaller or farther away than it is. However, scientists do not yet understand completely why the moon seems to shrink as it rises in the sky.

    Self-driving cars have been backed by the hope that they will save lives by getting involved in fewer crashes with fewer injuries and deaths than human-driven cars. But so far, most comparisons between human drivers and automated vehicles have been unfair.

    Crash statistics for human-driven cars are gathered from all sorts of driving situations, and on all types of roads. However, most of the data on self-driving cars' safety have been recorded often in good weather and on highways, where the most important tasks are staying in the car's own lane and not getting too close to the vehicle ahead. Automated cars are good at those tasks, but so are humans.

    It is true that self-driving cars don't get tired, angry, frustrated or drunk. But neither can they yet react to uncertain situations with the same skill or anticipation of an attentive human driver. Nor do they possess the foresight to avoid potential perils. They largely drive from moment to moment, rather than think ahead to possible events literally down the road.

    To a self-driving car, a bus full of people might appear quite similar to an uninhabited corn field. Indeed, deciding what action to take in an emergency is difficult for humans, but drivers have sacrificed themselves for the greater good of others. An automated system's limited understanding of the world means it will almost never evaluate (评估) a situation the same way a human would. And machines can't be programmed in advance to handle every imaginable set of events.

    Some people may argue that the promise of simply reducing the number of injuries and deaths is enough to support driverless cars. But experience from aviation (航空) shows that as new automated systems are introduced, there is often an increase in the rate of disasters.

    Therefore comparisons between humans and automated vehicles have to be performed carefully. To fairly evaluate driverless cars on how well they fulfill their promise of improved safety, it's important to ensure the data being presented actually provide a true comparison. After all, choosing to replace humans with automation has more effects than simply a one-for-one exchange.