Macao is only forty miles from Hong Kong and it is easy to reach. You can get there by sea. It is an interesting place and it has a long history. Macao is part of China and most people living there are Chinese.

    The first Europeans in Macao came from Portugal. More than four hundred years ago the Portuguese went there to trade with China. Some settled and made their homes there. They built strong forts（要塞）to guard the city and the harbor. They also built churches, schools, hospitals and other places. Slowly the city grew. People from many other countries came to live and work in Macao.

    Today many people live in Macao. Some only go there to watch dog-racing or motor-racing or to gamble（赌博）with their money. But Macao is a quiet and peaceful place. It is pleasant just to walk around and look at the old buildings and forts. You feel you are back in the old days. Of course，some of the buildings are now in ruins. The Church of St. Paul has only the front wall with many steps leading up to it. But it is still interesting to see.

    When you are hot and tired, there are small cool gardens to rest in. When you are hungry, there are good restaurants with many kinds of food. Nearby are some islands, which are also nice to visit and are easy to get in. There are certainly a lot to see and to do in Macao.

Climbing Without Ropes

    The popular image of the mountain climber is of a person carefully climbing a steep cliff with a network of safety ropes, but it is not the only kind. Many climbers now enjoy bouldering. It's more accessible and better for the environment.

    Here is an example of a climber addressing a bouldering problem.

    Figure 1: The climber has two routes she could take, one to the left and one to the right. The left one appears easier because it has a jug within easy reach, but look what happens if she chooses that direction. She gets stuck on the rock and has to go back down. Sometimes that is even difficult than going up.

    Figure 2: The climber takes the one to the right this time. using a foothold and placing her right hand in a crimp, she is able to life herself up and locate other handholds. After only a few moves, she is able to throw her leg over the top of the boulder and pull herself up.

    Is any economist so dull as to criticize Christmas? At first glance, the holiday season in western economies seems a treat for those concerned with such vagaries(奇思遐想)as GDP growth. After all, everyone is spending; in America, retailers make 25% of their yearly sales and 60% of their profits between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even so, economists find something to worry about in the nature of the purchases being made.

    Much of the holiday spending is on gifts for others. At the simplest level, giving gifts involves the giver thinking of something that the recipient would like--he tries to guess her preferences, as economists say--and then buying the gift and delivering it. Yet this guessing of preferences is not easy; indeed, it is often done badly. Every year, ties go unworn and books unread. And even if a gift is enjoyed, it may not be what the recipient would have bought if they had spent the money themselves.

    Interested in this mismatch between wants and gifts, in 1993 Joel Waldfogel, then an economist at Yale University, sought to estimate the difference in dollar terms. In a study, he asked students two questions at the end of a holiday season: first, estimate the total amount paid(by the givers) for all the holiday gifts you received; second, apart from the sentimental value of the items, if you did not have them, how much would you be willing to pay to get them? His results were gloomy: on average, a gift was valued by the recipient well below the price paid by the giver.

    In addition, recipients may not know their own preferences very well. Some of the best gifts, after all, are unexpected items that you would never have thought of buying, but which turn out to be especially well picked. And preferences can change. So by giving a jazz CD, for example, the giver may be encouraging the recipient to enjoy something that was ignored before. This, a desire to build skills, is possibly the hope held by many parents who ignore their children's desires for video games and buy them books instead.

    Finally, there are items that a recipient would like to receive but not purchase. If someone else buys them, however, they can be enjoyed guilt-free. This might explain the volume of chocolate that changes over the holidays. Thus, the lesson for gift-givers is that you should try hard to guess the preference of each person on your list and then choose a gift that will have high sentimental value.

    Feelings often run high where insects are concerned, with many people even sick when seeing them, let alone touch or swallow them. And yet insects present a huge nutritional opportunity as an increasing global population seeks more sources of food and feed.

    Insects have generally high levels of animal protein and key micronutrients with lower environmental footprints than traditional alternatives, and they can be raised on leftovers. But cultural, social and economic problems remain, reports an article published today in Nutrition Bulletin.

    “Insects present a nutritional opportunity, but it is unclear how their nutritional quality is influenced by what they are fed, "says Darja Dobermann, a researcher at the University of Nottingham.“In ideal conditions, insects have a smaller environmental impact than most traditional western forms of animal protein; less known is how to raise insect production while maintaining these environmental benefits.”

    “Studies overall show that insects could make valuable economic and nutritional contributions to the food or feed sys tems, but there are no clear regulations in place to bring insects into such supply systems without them turning into a more expensive version of poultry（家禽）for food,” says Dobermann.

    The article highlights how insects have been a source of food for hundreds of years in more than 100countries with over 2,000 species that can be eaten; in central Africa, up to 50% of dietary protein has come from insects, with their market value higher than many alternative sources of animal protein.

    Insects need to be large enough to make the effort of catching them worthwhile and easy to locate, preferably in predictably large quantities. They are consumed at various life stages, as raw, fried, boiled, roasted or ground food.

    Do you suppose Darwin, one of the greatest scientists of all time, really did foolish experiments? Or did he do experiments that were so simple and basic that other people just thought they were foolish?

    Sometimes, people think they already know the answer to a question or the solution to a problem. Sometimes, they really do know an answer or a solution, but without thinking they are important.

    Charles Darwin didn't settle for(满足于) just thinking he knew something. And, he believed all things could be important however simple they seemed to be.

    Suppose you drop sheets of paper that are of exactly the same size and shape. If you drop them at the same time in the same place, they will fall in the same way. Now make one of the sheets of paper into a tight little ball and let it drop along with the other sheets. What happens? You have done an experiment that is so simple that you might think it couldn't be worth anything.

    But this simple experiment is important. It explains part of our present-day understandings of physics, ideas that were worked out long ago by Galileo and Newton. And these understandings set aside some of ancient Greek physics.

    Scientists sometimes stop to look at very simple things and to think very hard about them. Even the simplest idea, which we might think is foolish, can shake the foundations of science.

4-Day Classic Beijing Tour

    The 4-day classic Beijing tour is designed for tourists who come to visit China for the first time. It covers the most popular and typical places in Beijing, fully displaying the scenery, culture, history, local lifestyles and features, food and drinks, business, etc. for you.

Day 1: Arrival in Beijing

    Your guide meets you at Capital Airport, and helps you check in at your hotel

    Enjoy Beijing Duck as welcome dinner.

    Accommodation: Beijing downtown

Day 2: The Great Wall & the Summer Palace

    Start your day at the most famous part of the Great Wall, the Badaling Great Wall. Leave the downtown for the Great Wall at 8 am. Since it is a long drive to the Great Wall (about 2 hours' riding) have a break at the Jade Museum on the way. Lunch will be enjoyed in a local restaurant. In the early afternoon come back to the city and have a sightseeing tour of the Summer Palace.

    Recommended Activity: Beijing Opera Show (Liyuan Theatre, 19:30-21:10 every evening)

    Accommodation: Beijing downtown

Day 3: Beijing city sightseeing & Local experience

    Your guide meets you at the hotel at 8 am and set out for the day's touring: Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City.

    After visiting the two sites, have a break and get ready for lunch.

    Hutong visit: see some traditional arts of the old Beijing, such as paper cutting and kite making, and visit a local family.

    Accommodation: Beijing downtown

Day 4: Beijing Olympic sites

    Visit the Olympic sites: Bird's Nest, Water Cube and Olympic Park, witnessing the fast developing modern China. Enjoy some free time after visiting the sites.

    After lunch, it is shopping time and then the tour is over.