Last year, around Labor Day, I read a “Happy Ad” in our local newspaper. There was a lady in a local nursing home for the aged, who was celebrating her 90th birthday and her family wanted everyone to know about it. It said that if you wanted to drop her a line, here was her address. So I did. I found a birthday card and dropped her a short note, wishing her a happy birthday.

    A week or so later, someone knocked at my front door. I opened the door and found a middle-aged man standing on my doorstep. He introduced himself as the son of this woman to whom I had sent the card. He explained that he just wanted to drop by in person and thank me for sending such a nice card to his mom. Apparently, like many older folks, she did not receive much mail and was quite excited to receive mine. I just didn't know what to say. I told him it was my pleasure and that I hoped his mom had enjoyed her birthday.

    That year, I did not send out any Christmas cards, except to this lovely old lady in the nursing home. I just told her that I was thinking about her and hoped that she had a nice holiday. I sent her a holiday card and also a couple of notes in between. I just thought she might like to have someone write to her, to get some mails.

    She passed away a couple of months ago. I never met this lady, but I did keep her and her family in my thoughts. I dropped them a line of sympathy. I hope that my few little notes were enough to brighten a couple of her days here on earth.

    When my sister Mertie told me she had put out tomato plants last summer, I was quite impressed.

    Since she was a garden-beginner, Mertie researched exactly how far apart to space her tomato plants; what kind of fertilizer to use; how to keep away the bugs, etc. Once they were planted, she took care of them daily, anxiously awaiting the juicy tomatoes to appear. But, day after day, her plants were tomato-less while all of her neighbors who had also put out tomato plants were already enjoying the fruit of their labor.

    Frustrated, Mertie gave in and went to the market to search fresh tomatoes. While paying, Mertie told the farmer her troubles. The farmer paused to think for a moment and then asked, "Well, what kind of tomatoes did you plant?"

    "I think they were called Big Boy," Mertie remembered.

    "Well there's your problem," the farmer explained. "Big Boy and Better Boy tomatoes have a 95-day growing period whereas regular tomato plants produce fruit in as few as 70 days…you just have to wait a little longer for the Big Boys."

    With that new knowledge, Mertie went home with excitement, knowing they would be worth the wait.

    Thinking about my sister's gardening experience, I had to smile. She just didn't know that Big Boy tomatoes took longer--neither did I — but once she discovered that information, she was no longer discouraged and upset about the lack of tomatoes on her plants. Instead, she was encouraged and excited to see them a few weeks later.

    It makes me wonder how many of us have "Big Boy" dreams in our hearts, yet we just don't realize that they are of the "Big Boy" variety so we are discouraged and worn out with the waiting process. Instead of waiting with excitement, we give up on our dreams and figure we must have done something wrong to stop them from coming to pass. Frustrated, we see other people's dreams coming true, and we wonder why ours haven't yet been achieved.

    Our world natural park is one of the most famous parks in the world. Millions of visitors from different countries visit this park every year. In order to protect it, please do as follows：

    Protect the natural and cultural heritage. Don't damage or deface any buildings, displays and other facilities. Take care of all plants. Put rubbish in the bins provided.

    Take care when you are going up and down steps or stairs and when you are walking nearby the waters.

    Please buy tickets before entering the scenic spot. One ticket is only for one person. Adult：＄60 per ticket. Children over 6 and under 18, half price. People over 60 and children under 6 are free.

    If you are going into the wooded and hilly lands, for your own safety, please go with three people at least and don't take any tinder(易燃物）along with you. The hill is steep so please take care of yourself.

    This scenic spot is the reserve of water source: No fishing, swimming, washing and any behaviors that are harmful to the water source. Meanwhile, please follow the management rules of the scenic spot conscientiously.

    Opening time：From Monday to Friday, 8：00 a. m.～18：00 p.m.；From Saturday to Sunday, 6：00 am.一24：00 p. m.

    Small animals such as rabbits, peacocks, squirrels, frogs must be taken care of: None of them shall be killed.

    If you have any trouble in visiting our world natural park, please call 477-866-7044. Our staff will do our best to help you.

    Jack London, one of America's major writers of adventure tales, was born in California in 1876. During his life, London worked at many jobs. His broad life experiences would become the background for his writing.

    London loved to read. As a teenager, he spent many hours educating himself at the Oakland, California, public library. He attended college at the University of California at Berkeley, but he stayed for only six months. He thought Berkeley was “not lively enough” and wanted to do something more exciting.

    London wrote stories about working people and the hard times they had making a living. He knew their problems first hand. He worked as a sailor, farmer, factory employee, railroad worker, and gold prospector, to name just a few of his many jobs.

    London grew up near the waterfront in Oakland. He loved the water. When he was fifteen years old, he bought a small sailboat called a sloop. Later he sailed to Japan on a schooner, which is a much larger sailing boat. Like many people of the time, London caught the Klondike Gold Rush Fever. In 1897, he headed for Alaska. He didn't find gold, but he discovered something even more valuable. He discovered that people enjoyed listening to the stories he made up with his vivid imagination. London entertained the miners with story after story. Later, using his experiences during the Gold Rush, he created many more colorful stories.

    London resolved to live a full, exciting life. He once said, “I would rather be a superb meteor(流星), every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” Each day, he pushed himself. Once London determined that he was going to be a writer, nothing could stop him. His goal was to write at least one thousand words every day. He refused to stop even when he was sick. In eighteen years, the writer published fifty-one books and hundreds of articles. He was the best-selling and highest-paid author of his day. Many people also considered him to be the best writer. White Fang and The Call of the Wild are his most famous stories and are about surviving in the Alaskan wilderness. Readers can enjoy Jack London's energy and his talent for telling wonderful stories each time they open one of his novels.

    For centuries, mankind and dogs have suffered from a communication failure. We can tell dogs what we want them to do and sometimes they comply, but we've always struggled when it comes to understanding the true meaning of their barks and whimpers. There is exciting news now – a dog translator has been invented to help you communicate with your furry friend.

    Researchers at North Carolina State University have fashioned some kind of miracle dog translator body harness(束腰带). What's special about it is that it doesn't just rely on the dog's vocalizations to interpret what Fido is banging on about.

    Oh no – this miracle harness reads and interprets the ordinary dogs' body language as well, giving us a full two-way dog communication experience.

    Researcher David Roberts says: "Dogs communicate primarily through body language, and one of our challenges was to develop sensors that tell us about their behavior by observing their posture remotely."

    Sensors on the harness monitor the dog's heart rate and body temperature and software builds up a vocabulary, letting the human know what the dog is feeling.

    What would dogs say if they could talk to us? The human can even communicate back through the harness thanks to vibration motors, supposedly by tapping into the dog's senses so that it can understand what you're trying to say to it.

    The dog harness is designed for dogs involved in search and rescue and other front-line work, but it's got us dreaming of a beautiful future, one where humans and dogs can co-exist as equals, with the dog able to fully express itself at all times.

We credit Socrates with the insight that "the unexamined life is not worth living," and that to "know thyself" is the path to true wisdom.

But when it comes to introspection (内省), you might easily slip into the "rumination" (沉思) mode. This pattern is likely to cause you to become stuck in the rut of your own thoughts and absorbed in the emotions that might lead you to a wrong way. Research has also shown that people who are likely to ruminate are often at a substantially increased risk of depression.

Instead, scientific research suggests that you should adopt an ancient method favored by the likes of Julius Caesar, known as "illeism" which was coined in 1809 from the Latin "ille" meaning "he". The point of adopting this third person thinking is that such a small change can clear your emotional fog, allowing you to see your biases and helping you know the limits of your understanding of the problem at hand.

A study finds that illeism can also bring long-term benefits to wise reasoning (including elements like taking the perspective of others, recognizing uncertainty, and so on). The finding is the brainchild of Igor Grossmann, a psychologist. According to Grossmann, wise reasoning had long been considered too vague for scientific enquiry. In one of his earlier experiments, he established that as with IQ, the scores of wise reasoning could be achieved and were meaningful.

Grossmann's latest research team asked nearly 300 participants to describe a challenging social situation, and two psychologists graded them on different aspects of wise reasoning. The participants then had to keep a diary for four weeks. Each day, they had to describe a situation they'd just experienced, such as a disagreement with someone. Half were prompted to do so in the first person, while the others were encouraged to describe their situations from a third person perspective. At the end of the study, all participants repeated the wise reasoning test.

While the control group showed no overall change in their wise reasoning scores, those using illeism improved on their perspective taking and capacity to find a compromise.

Grossmann's work continues to prove that the subject of wisdom is worthy of experimental studies, indicating wiser reasoning is within everyone's power.