Blind tasting is a very strange activity. Contrary to what many people imagine, it has nothing to do with blindfolds. It involves tasting a wine without seeing the label and it can deliver shocking surprises. I tasted seven champagnes (香槟) blind with a group of professionals recently. There was a shock when they discovered the wine most of them preferred carried a label they regarded as their least favorite. That sort of result is especially common with champagne, the most image-driven rather than quality-driven wine of all. But it happens all the time when wine is tasted blind.

    Because I'm interested in how wines really taste instead of how I think they should, I taste wine blind as often as I can, especially when assessing similar young wines. But blind tasting when you know absolutely nothing about the wine in front of you is something completely different. The most difficult Master of Wine exams include three sessions during which you have a dozen glasses in front of you and nothing more helpful than a printed exam paper asking you to identify each wine as closely as possible, and assess its quality.

    Now that the MW is behind me, I taste wine completely blind only very rarely, and never in public. So my blind tastings these days are round the dinner table with good friends and once a year when I act as a judge, with Hugh Johnson, in the Oxford vs Cambridge wine-tasting competition. This is the most extraordinary match, always held before the Boat Race but taken just as seriously nowadays. This year's taste-off took place at the end of last month, as usual in the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall in London.  

    Computer programmer David Jones earns $35.000 a year designing new computer games, yet he cannot find a bank ready to let him have a credit card. Instead he has been told to wait another two years until he is 18. The 16-year-old works for a small firm in Liverpool where the problem of most young people of his age is finding a job. David's firm releases two new games for the fast growing computer market each month.

    But David's biggest headache is what to do with his money. Even though he earns a lot he cannot drive a car, take out a mortgage（抵押贷款）, or get credit cards. David got his job with the Liverpool-based company four months ago, a year after leaving school with six O-levels and working for a time in a computer shop. “I got the job because the people who run the firm knew I had already written some programs”, he said. David spends some of his money on records and clothes and gives his mother 50 pounds a week. But most of his spare time is spent working.

    “Unfortunately, computing was not part of our studies at school”, he said “But I had been studying it in books and magazines for four years in my spare time. I knew what I wanted to do and never considered staying on at school. Most people in this business are fairly young, anyway.” David added, “I would like to earn a million and I suppose early retirement is a possibility. You never know when the market might disappear.”

    You may probably meet most of the powerful graduation speakers, here who are well-known people in their fields. I think the schools couldn't have picked better speakers than them, because they set good examples, deeply inspiring us in our daily life.

    1）Steve Jobs, Stanford University:

   "Remembering you're going to die, and the best way I know is to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose. There is no reason not to follow your heart. Your tine is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. …"

    2）Oprah Winfrey, Stanford University：

   "I consider the world, this Earth, to be like a school. And the secret I've learned to get ahead is being open to the lessons from the grandest universe of all. Don't react against a bad situation. And the solution will arise from the challenge. So don't give up easily, acting with responsibility. …"

    3）Bono, University of Pennsylvania：

   "For four years you've been buying, trading, and selling everything you've got in his market-place of ideas. Your pockets are full, even if your parent's are empty, and now you've got to figure out what to spend it on…The world is more flexible than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape…"

    4）Michael Del, University of Texas at Austin;

   "Now it's time for you to move on to what's next and obtain your desire. But you much must not let anything prevent you from taking those first steps. Don't spend so much time trying to choose the perfect opportunity, or sometimes you'll miss the right opportunity. Recognize that there will be failures obstacles. But you will learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others."

    Recently, a 1935 letter in which Ernest Hemingway detailed his catch of a 500lb blue marlin(青枪鱼), an adventure that is believed to have partly inspired his novel The Old Man and the Sea, has been sold for$28, 000 (£22，000).

    The handwritten letter was sent by Hemingway on 8 May to the fishing editor of the Miami Herald，telling in great detail how the author and his friend Henry Strater battled to keep sharks away from the marlin after catching it off the Bahamian island of Bimini.

    Nate D Sanders, the auction(拍卖)company which sold the letter, said it documented for the first time in Hemingway's own words not only the size of the marlin, but also the attack by sharks，reflecting the plot of the novel.

    The company added that Hemingway's account of the marlin catch differed from other anecdotes(轶事)of it, one of which described Hemingway using a machine gun on the sharks, which is said to have attracted more sharks rather than frightened them away.

    The Old Man and the Sea was also inspired by an anecdote told by Hemingway's Cuban friend Carlos Gutierrez. In 1936, Hemingway wrote in a magazine that Carlos had told him about an old fisherman who caught a great marlin alone.

    Three years later, Hemingway told his editor Max Perkins that he was planning a short story about the old commercial fisherman who fought the swordfish all alone in his sailing boat. Instead, he ended up writing For Whom the Bell Tolls, not returning to the story about the old fisherman until January 1951. It won him the Pulitzer in 1953, and was specifically mentioned when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954.

    Age has never been a problem for 16­year­old Thessalonika Arzu­Embry. After all, she's already got her master's degree.

    The North Chicago­area teen started homeschooling at the age of 4. She began having an influence on others soon after. When she was 6 years old, she was an inspirational speaker at an organization called Tabitha House Community Service, a shelter for people who were forced to leave their homes due to the situations such as earthquake, flood and other natural disasters.

    At the age of 11, she graduated from high school and then earned her bachelor's degree in psychology in 2013. She completed those classes online as she was traveling for church events and leadership meetings.

    She doesn't stop there, though. The teen plans to focus on aviation psychology(航空心理学) for her further study, a decision inspired by her father who is a pilot. She grew up around airplanes and took fights all the time. Her goal is to use it to determine whether pilots are dealing with problems that could have deadly results once the plane takes off­a topic that has been in the news lately. For her, it's a mix of two of her interests.

    In her free time, Thessalonika enjoys playing tennis, swimming and being active in her youth group at church. She also has three self­published books, which are on her site. Jump the Education Barrier is written to help students finish college, and in the future aims to help business owners with trends. Her third book The Genius Race, has a wider appeal. It is designed to help people to be geniuses in various areas of life.

    When I was about twelve, I headed to a restaurant for dinner with my family. It was winter, and on that night, the wind was really blowing hard.

    As my mom and I headed to the restaurant from our car, a girl about my age and her mother came up to us. They asked if we had any spare change (零钱). My mom right away asked where they lived. They pointed to an old car in a parking lot across the street. The girl said there were six of them living in that car. My mom said she had something to do after handing the people a few dollars. She sent me inside the restaurant with my dad and my three siblings (兄弟姐妹). But she didn't come. Later, I found out she had gone home and put all the food in our cupboards (食橱) into a few bags. Then, she brought that food over to the car and handed the bags to the family. I wasn't there when that happened, but I can only imagine the joy it brought to those people.

    A few days later, when I actually found out about what she had done, I asked her why she helped those people. She told me that they were not lucky. I remember the face of that girl who had asked us for change. She was the same age as me, yet we looked so different.

    Here I stood, dressed in almost new clothes, headed to eat in a restaurant and then back home to the bedroom I shared with my younger sister. I remember thinking that the other girl didn't have any food to eat and she was heading back to a cold car shared with five other people.

    After painting this picture in my mind, I understood why my mom had done what she did. I will never forget what she did that night, and how she taught me one of the best lessons I ever learned.