Six years ago at the age of 35,I suddenly decided I wanted to learn the cello（大提琴）.Straight away I rented an instrument and appeared before Wendell Margrave,professor of musical instruction.

    "You can be as good as you want to be,"Margrave said rather mysteriously.On a piece of paper he drew the notes E and F.He showed me where to put my fingers on the neck of the cello and how to draw the bow.Then he entered my name in his book: 10 am,Tuesday.Tuesday followed Tuesday,and soon it was spring.

Thus began my voyage out of ignorance and into the dream.E-F,E-F,we played together—and moved on to G.It was a happy time.I was again becoming something new,and no longer trapped as the same person.Surely the most terrible recognition of middle life is that we are past changing.We do what we can already do.The cello was something I couldn't do.Yet each Tuesday this became less and less true.Riding home on the bus one snowy night and learning the score of Mozart's C-Major Quintet(莫扎特的C大调五重奏),I felt the page burst into music in my hands.I could by then more or less read a score,and was humming（哼唱）the cello line,when suddenly all five parts came together harmonically（和谐地） in my head.The fellow sitting opposite stared.I met his glance with tears,actually hearing the music in my head for the first time.Could he hear it too, perhaps?No,he got off at the next stop.

    As the years slipped by,my daughter grew up,playing the piano well.My goal was that she and I would one day perform together.I also wanted to perform in public with and for my peers,and to be secretly envied.I continued to play,to perform,but it is not the same.Before,when I heard a cello,it was all beauty and light.Now,as the TV camera gets close to Rostropovich's face,I recognize that his smile shows his incredible determination.Even for him,the cello is a difficult instrument that doesn't respect your ambitions.I picked up my cello and practiced.As good as I wanted to be,I am as good as I'm going to get.It is good enough.

    Modern inventions have speeded up people's loves amazingly. Motor-cars cover a hundred miles in little more than an hour, aircraft cross the world inside a day, while computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of speed seems never-ending. Every year motor-cars are produced which go even faster and each new computer boasts of saving precious seconds in handling tasks.

    All this saves time, but at a price. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an air plane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jetlag; our bodies feel that they have left behind on another time zone. Again, spending too long at computers results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to some scientists, too much use may transmit harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to think about.

    However, what do we do with the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to sit and do nothing, or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone when we might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.

    There was a time when some people's lives were devoted simply to the cultivation of the land or the care of cattle. No Multi-tasking there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors faced, they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from wood and stone, Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence.

    When it comes to gifts, it's not easy to shop for someone when you're not sure what they're into. Thankfully, Crate and Barrel's sister store — the modern, fancy version — CB2 has a gift collection that is just as beautiful as it is practical. They're known for their modern designs. We've edited a list of some of our favorite gift ideas from CB2 so you'll know just what to get.

    Galactic Jewelry Box ($21)

    This jewelry box is not only a place to store your jewels, but it looks like one itself. “Designed by UK-based Seascape Curiosities, the jewelry box brings deep space to your room. Open storage space lined with light grey cotton velvet holds most-precious possessions,” CB2 states. The best part? It's under $25.

    Flamingo Catchall ($29.95)

    Designed by the British fashion designer Matthew Williamson, this flamingo catchall is a pop of color in every room and offers a secure place to store some of your favorite rings, earrings, or little items. Not only is it an awesome addition to just about any home, it's also a great conversation starter at dinner parties.

    Heritage Navy Leather Activity Ball ($49)

    It's a great gift for the man in your life who loves sports. Crafted with design and function in mind, handmade activity ball (think of it as a smaller basketball) stands up to years of play and even gets better looking with age. It's a super addition to any bookshelf.

    Black Nickel Cocktail Shaker ($24.95)

    This cocktail shaker starts off with a smoky black finish and fades into grey. It's fashionable, functional, and — above all — easy to clean.

    Frequently, we speak about people being “color-blind” but very few of us are. Even those who describe themselves as color-blind are normally just color lack. A strongly, color-blind person will still be able to tell 20 different colors, compared to the 100 or so that normal-sighted people see.

    Pingelap, a tiny island in the Pacific, is a beautiful spot but one that has a genetic trouble. It is known as Color-blind Island because so many people who live on this remote island can only see black and white.

    Not being able to see colors is bad enough. But one islander, Herrol, who's a fisherman, also struggles in full sunlight because all he sees is a painful burnt-out image. “I find it difficult to go outside in the sun,” he says, “because when it's sunny I cannot see to do my work.”

    But if being truly color-blind is rare, why is it that around 10% of the population of Pingelap live in a totally black and white world?

    Well, we know that in 1780 the population of Pingelap was all but wiped out by a tsunami (海啸). As few as 20 people survived, one of whom was the king. It's believed he had a genetic fault that causes colour-blindness and he passed this fault on to his many generations.

    There is one advantage. Herrol can see well, really well, in the dark. So when it gets dark, Herrol and his friends get in their boats and hunt flying fish. They hang up flaming torches and the fish are attracted to the flames. “This type of fishing is fun,” Herrol says, “especially if we catch plenty. So even though it's hard work we enjoy it.”

    Starbucks will stop using plastic straws from its stores globally by 2020, in a nod to the growing push for businesses to be more environmentally friendly. The Seattle-based company said on Monday it will instead use straws made from other materials, and lids designed not to need straws. McDonald's also recently said it would switch to paper straws in the UK and Ireland by next year, and test alternatives to plastic straws in some US locations. In February, Dunkin' Donuts said that it would refuse polystyrene foam (塑料泡沫) cups from its stores by 2020.

    Environmental activists have been pressuring businesses to ditch plastic straws because they can end up in the ocean and hurt marine life. The push gained great support after a video in 2015 showed rescuers removing a straw from a sea turtle's nose in great detail. Local governments have also been looking at the issue. Last week, Seattle's ban on single-use plastic straws and utensils in food service outlets took effect, and Starbucks says it already offers alternative straws there. Similar proposals are being considered elsewhere, including New York and San Francisco.

    While straws have become a highly-concerned issue, they make up only about 4% of the plastic trash by number of pieces, and far less by weight. Straws add up to only about 2,000 tons of the nearly 9m tons of plastic waste that hits waters each year.

    A team of international scientists is due to set off for the world's biggest iceberg in a mission aiming to answer fundamental questions about the impact of climate change in the polar regions. The scientists, led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), are trying to reach a newly revealed ecosystem that had been hidden for 120,000 years below the Larsen C ice shelf.

    Last year, part of the Larsen C ice shelf calved (崩解) away, forming a huge iceberg-A68—which is four times bigger than London, and revealing life beneath for the first time. Now scientists say it is a race against time to explore these new ecosystems before they are transformed to the light. Marine biologist Dr Katrin Linse from the BAS is leading the mission.

    "The calving of A68 provides us with a unique opportunity to study marine life as it responds to a huge environment change," she said. "It is important that we get there quickly before the undersea environment changes as sunlight enters the water."

    Professor David Vaughan, science director at the BAs, said, "We need to be bold (大胆的) on this one. Larsen C is a long way south and there's lots of sea ice in the area, but this is important science, so we will try our best to get the team where they need to be. He said climate change had already affected the sea around Antarctica and is warming some coastal waters. "Future warming may make some habitats warm. Where these habitats support unique species that are adapted to love the cold and not the warm, those species are going to either move or die."

    There is growing concern about the possible impact of climate change in the Antarctic. Earlier this month, a report revealed that melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are speeding up the already fast pace of the sea level rise. The research, published by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, said, "At the current rate, the world's ocean will be, on average, at least 60cm higher by the end of the century." However, it found that the process is accelerating, and more than three quarters of the acceleration since 1993 is due to melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the study shows.