In 1996, John Tierney suggested in the New York Times Magazine article that “recycling is garbage.” He wrote, “The money spent on recycling programs should have been spent on real social and environmental problems. Recycling programs not only increase energy use and pollution, but also cost more money than the disposal (处理) of plain old garbage. Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America.”

Environmental groups were quick to express their disagreement. They wrote reports on how recycling programs in cities can reduce pollution and cost less than regular garbage pickup and disposal. Michael Shapiro, an official of the US Environmental Protection Agency(EPA), said that “recycling can be good value for money, although there's still room for improvements.”

But in 2002, New York City, a pioneer of recycling, found that its recycling program was losing money, so it stopped glass and plastic recycling. Other major cities watched closely to see how New York was dealing with its remaining program (the city never stopped paper recycling). But then it closed its last landfill (垃圾填埋地), and private companies out of New York raised prices due to the increased workload of carrying away and disposing New York's garbage. As a result, glass and plastic recycling became profitable for the city again, and New York brought the program back. According to Cecil Adams of The Chicago Reader, the lessons learned by New York are relevant everywhere. He believes that, if managed correctly, recycling programs should cost cities less than garbage disposal.

    Even though the benefits of recycling over disposal are many, keep in mind that it better serves the environment to “reduce and reuse” before recycling is even considered as a choice.

    Generally speaking, college graduation brings both the satisfaction of academic achievement and the expectation of a well-paid job. But for 6,000 graduates at San Jose State this year, there's uncertainty as they enter one of the worst job markets in decades.

    Ryan Stewart has a freshly minted degree in religious studies, but no job prospects. “You look at everybody's parents and neighbors, and they're getting laid off and don't have jobs,” said Stewart. “Then you look at the young people just coming into the workforce.., it's just scary.”

    When those graduates entered college, the future never looked brighter. But in the four years they've been here, the world outside has changed dramatically. “Those were the exciting times, lots of dot-com opportunities, exploding offers, students getting top dollar with lots of benefits,” said Cheryl Allmen-Vinnidge, of the San Jose State Career Centre. “Times have changed. It's a new market. The job situation is grim (严峻的) now.” Cheryl Allmen-Vinnidge ought to know. She runs the San Jose State Career Centre, (it is) sort of a crossroads between college and the real world. Allmen-Vinnidge says students who do find jobs after college have done their homework. “The typical graduate who does have a job offer started working on it two years ago. They've postured themselves well during the summer. They've had several internships (实习) ,” she said. And they've majored in one of the few fields that are still hot—like chemical engineering, accounting or nursing—where average starting salaries have actually increased over last year. Other popular fields (like information systems management, computer science, and political science) have seen big declines in starting salaries.

    Ryan Stewart (he had hoped to become a teacher) may just end up going back to school. “I'd like to teach college some day and that requires more schooling, which would be great in a bad economy,” he said.

    It is true more students are able to receive college education. It is also true that they will have to face fiercer competition in the job market as they graduate. It becomes harder and harder for the current graduates to get a foothold in job markets, but many of them have no choice but to follow the beaten track. To some students a degree may not be ticket to instant wealth. For now, they can only hope its value will increase over time.

    You may be familiar with those quotes, but seldom can you associate these quotes with those outstanding women behind them, not to mention the great work they did.

    “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”

—Anne Frank (1929 — 1945)

    Hiding from the German forces, Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl, was gifted a diary by her father when she was 13. However, her diary was published after her death in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15. The diary served as a unique eye-witness account of life during Holocaust (mass murder of about six million Jews during World War II) and it became one of the world's most read books.

    “Not all of us can do great things• But we can do small things with great love.”

—Mother Teresa (1910 — 1997)

    Mother Teresa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner (1979), aimed at looking after those children who had nobody to look after them through her own order “the Missionaries of Charity”. She worked tirelessly towards her goal until her ill-health forced her to step down in March 1997, after which she took her last breath in September 1997.

    “If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”

—Margaret Thatcher (1925 — 2013)

    Margaret Thatcher was loved and hated equally for some of her policies but she never compromise (妥协). She was known as “the Iron Lady” for her leadership style. From being a grocer's daughter to graduating from Oxford University to becoming a banister, she went on to become Britain's first and to date, only female Prime Minister elected in 1979 and the country's fifth longest serving leader.

    “I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move.”

—Rosa Parks (1913 — 2005)

    Also known as “the first lady of civil rights”, Rosa Parks was a pioneer of civil rights in a racially segregated Alabama in 1950s. In 1955, she refused to give away her seat to a white passenger in a bus, disobeying the bus driver's orders. This act of hers sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott that crippled the state capital's public transport system.

                                                                                 Is There Life on Earth

    There was great excitement on the planet of Venus this week. For the first time Venusian scientists managed to land a satellite on the planet Earth, and it has been sending back signals as well as photographs ever since.

    The satellite was directed into an area known as Manhattan(named after the great Venusian astronomer Prof. Manhattan, who first discovered it with his telescope 20,000 light years ago). Because of excellent weather conditions and extremely strong signals, Venusian scientists were able to get valuable information as to the feasibility(可行性)of a manned flying saucer(飞碟)landing on Earth. A press conference was held at the Venus Institute of Technology.

    “We have come to the conclusion, based on last week's satellite landing,” Pro. Zog said, “that there is no life on the Earth.”

    “How do you know this?” the science reporter of the Venus Evening Star asked.

    “For on thing, Earth's surface in the area of Manhattan is composed of solid concrete and nothing can grow there. For another, the atmosphere is filled with carbon monoxide and other deadly gases and nobody could possibly breathe this air and survive.”

    “What does this mean as far as our flying saucer program is concerned?”

    “We shall have to take our own oxygen with us, which means heavier flying saucer than we originally planned.”

    “Are there any other risks that you discovered in your studies?”

    “Take a look at his photo. You see this dark black cloud floating over the surface of Earth?” We call this the Consolidated Edison Belt. We don't know what it is made of, but it could give us a lot of trouble and we shall have to make further tests before we send a Venus Being there.”

    “If what you say is true, won't this set back the flying saucer program several years?”

    “Yes, but we shall proceed as soon as the Grubstart gives us the added funds.”

    “Pro. Zog, why are we spending billions and billions of zilches to land a flying saucer on Earth when there is no life there?

    “Because if we Venusians can learn to breathe in an Earth atmosphere, then. We can live anywhere.”

    Just a few years out of law school, I decided that I wanted to write fictions. The only thing I had ever published before was a law-review article. I had made great efforts to write when I came home at night after work, but I was too tired. I decided to quit my job.

    I began my new life on a February morning. I sat down at my kitchen table at 7:30 am and made a resolution. Every day I would write until lunchtime. Then I would lie down on the floor for 20 minutes to rest my mind. After that, I would return to work for a few more hours.

    In my first year, I sold two stories. Then I wrote a novel, but I thought it wasn't good enough, so I ended up putting it in a drawer. My second novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, was published to glowing reviews and received the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.

    My success sounds like a familiar story, but actually it was far from sudden. I quit my job, and for every story I published in those years, I had at least 30 rejections. The novel that I put away in the drawer took my four years. My breakthrough came in 2006, 18 years after I first sat down to write at my kitchen table.

    Sometimes genius (天才) is just the thing that comes out after 20 years of working at your kitchen. Also, doing something truly creative requires the energy of youth. Orson Welles made his masterpiece, Citizen Kan, at 25. T. S. Eliot wrote The Love Song of J. Afred Prufrock at 23.

    Hi, I'm Neil Harbisso. I come from a place where the sky is always grey, where flowers are always grey, and where television is still in black and white.

    I actually come from a world where color doesn't exist. I was born with achromatopsia. I was born completely color-blind. So I've never seen color, and don't know what it looks like. But since the age of 21, I can hear color thanks to a magic electronic eye called "eyeborg": a color sensor between my eyes connected to a chip(芯片) installed at the back of my head that transforms color frequencies into sound frequencies that I hear through my bone.

    I've had the electronic eye permanently attached to my head and I've been listening to colors nonstop since 2004. So I find it completely normal now to hear colors all the time.

    Since I started to hear color, my life has changed significantly. Art galleries have become concert halls. I can hear a Picasso. And supermarkets have become like night clubs. I love how they sound.

    My sense of beauty has changed. Someone might look very beautiful but sound terrible, and someone might sound very harmonious but look awful. So I find it really exciting to create sound portraits(画像) of people. Instead of drawing the shape of someone's face I write down the different notes I hear when I look at them, and then I send them an mp3 of their face. Each face sounds different. I can even give face concerts now, concerts where I play the audience's faces. The good thing about doing this is that if the concert doesn't sound good, it's their fault.

    I also found out that things I thought were colorless are not colorless at all. Cities are not grey. Lisbon is yellow turquoise(宝石绿); London is very golden red…and humans are not black and white. Human skins range from light shades of orange to very dark shades of orange. We are all orange.

    If we extend our senses, we will consequently extend our knowledge.