A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

    A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.

    There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two - headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar (奇怪的, 异常的) that I do not know how to argue with them. If their cases were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl -friend.

    No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.

    New Orleans, Louisiana, was established as part of the French Empire in 1718.

    Its location on the east bank of the Mississippi River gave it control of the American hinerland and it became strategically important to many nations. It was transferred from France to Spain, returned to France, and finally sold by Napoleon to the United States in 1803. The city was the site of a famous battle fought in 1815 between the British, who hoped to control it, and the Americans under General Andrew Jackson.

    The riverbed of the Mississippi is constantly silting（淤积）and the river is now actually higher than the city. Levees hold back the river and giant pumps are used to move water from the city into the river.

    Although New Orleans has been a part of the United States for almost two centuries, its population takes great pride in its French heritage. Louisiana still retains parts of the Code Napoleon which, for many years, was its only law.

    New Orleans is carefree city and it boasts its hot, spicy Creole seafood and its native Dixieland Jazz. The Jackson Square neighborhood maintains its French colonial homes and in other sections are pre-Civil War mansions. Visitors are surprised to find that behind this interesting surface of yesteryear is a busy industrial and port city. Grain and coal come from the Midwest and foreign goods are unloaded here. New Orleans is no longer a sleepy Southern town—but it's still fun to visit.

    Being an astronaut sounds cool, doesn't it? In space, they get to do some pretty amazing things, like floating (漂浮) in zero gravity(重力).

    However, there are also plenty of things that astronauts can't do because of their weightless environment(环境), and that's very sad. What's worse, they can't even let their sadness show -because it's impossible to cry in zero gravity.

    Of course, astronauts can still produce tears. But crying is much more difficult in space, reported The Atlantic in January. Without gravity；tears don't flow downward out of the eyes like they do here on Earth. This means that when you cry in space, your tears have nowhere to go — they just stick to your eyes.

    In May 2011, astronaut Andrew Feustel experienced this during one of his spacewalks. "Tears," he said, "don't fall off your eye...They just kind of stay there."

    Besides making your vision(视觉) unclear, this can also cause physical pain. Back on Earth, tears are supposed to bring comfort to the eyes. But that's not the case in space. The space environment dries out astronauts' eyes, and when tears suddenly wet the eyes, it can cause pain rather than comfort. "My right eye is painful like crazy." Feustel told his teammate during the walk.

    Since gravity doesn't work in space, astronauts need some extra help to get rid of the tears. Feustel chose to rub his eyes against his helmet to wipe the tears away. Another choice is to just wait — "When the tears get big enough they simply break free of the eye and float around," astronaut Ron Parise told The Atlantic.

    There are lots of small things — things like crying — that we are so used to on Earth, we usually take them for granted, until they become a problem in a totally different environment, like space. There, astronauts can't talk to each other directly. They also can't eat or drink in normal ways. They can't even burp (打嗝), because there is no gravity to hold the food down in their stomach. If they do burp, they just end up throwing up (呕吐) everything in their stomach, according to the UK National Space Center.

    Thus, perhaps it's only space explorers who can honestly say, "Gravity, you're the best."

    Imagine looking at yourself in the mirror; you do not look like these stick -thin models seen across the media. Your legs are too big, your bottom is too small, and you are too pale. You are too “ugly” You stare in wonder and anger, “Why don't I look like them?" However, you don't need to imagine this situation, because this is a bitter truth for millions of people. In the media，one can quickly see the ideal body, the ideal face, and the ideal person. The advancement of unrealistic beauty on social media causes millions of people to become dissatisfied with their looks.

    Dissatisfaction with one's appearance can cause dangerous behaviors like dieting, which result in eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa (神经性厌食症) and Bulimia Nervosa (神经性易饿病). Eating disorders have seen a dramatic increase following the rise of social media, 119% increase according to recent statistics. According to Brittany Tackett, a mental health professional,“30% -50% of patients in eating disorder hospitals used social media as a means of supporting their eating disorders.”

    Not only can social media become a support-system for unhealthy behaviors, but an article written by Rachel Simmons, a Time magazine writer, suggests that people who spend more time online tend to link their self-worth to their looks. A study conducted by Park Nicollet Melrose Center also says that in the 1990's, fifty-percent of women wanted to lose weight. Now it finds that eighty-percent of women want to lose weight. Although this higher percentage cannot be directly related to the rise of social media, one can argue that the unrealistic and damaging beauty expectations that social media presents contribute to this number.

    In addition, social media causes stress. A survey was conducted in which people were asked whether or not they used social media, and how stressed they felt they were. The study found that “social network users are, in fact, 14 percent more likely than non-users to characterize their lives as at least 'somewhat stressful.' Non-users are 28 percent more likely than users to say their lives are 'not at all' stressful”. Additionally, stress may have more connection to self-confidence than is believed.

    So，there you are again, standing in front of the mirror criticizing the parts of your body which do not follow the idealistic images of models seen on social media. Your legs are too big, your bottom is too small, and you are too pale. You are too “ugly”. Although this time, you realize it is not you who are the problem. The problem is the unhealthy and unrealistic standards that social media encourages. So the next time you are looking through Instagram, opening WeChat, or commenting on Twitter, ask yourself, “Is it worth it?”

5 books I loved in 2018

By Bill Gates

    A great read is the perfect gift and I think everyone could use a few more books in their lives. My book list covers various topics, including an autobiography on learning throughout a life, a deep search on autonomous weapons (武器), a thriller about the fall of a once­promising company and a guide about meditation (冥想)­there's something for everyone.

    The Head space Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness, by Andy Puddicombe. The book starts with Puddicombe's personal journey from a university student to a Buddhist monk and then becomes an entertaining explainer on how to meditate. If you're thinking about trying mindfulness, this is the perfect introduction.

    Army of None, by Paul Scharre. It's an extremely complicated topic, but Scharre offers clear explanations and presents both the advantages and disadvantages of machine­driven warfare. His fluency with the subject should come as no surprise: he's an ex­soldier who helped draw up the U.S. government's policy on autonomous weapons.

    Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou. Carreyrou gives you the definitive insider's look at the rise and fall of a company. I found myself unable to put it down once I started. This book has everything: magazine cover stories, ruined family relationships, and the failure of a company once valued at nearly $10 billion.

    21 Lessons for the 21st Century, by Yuval Noah Harari. I'm a big fan of everything Harari has written, and his latest is no exception. If 2018 has left you stressed out by the state of the world, 21 Lessons offers a helpful framework for processing the news and thinking about the challenges we face.

    Educated, by Tara West over. Tara never went to school or visited a doctor until she left home at 17. I loved this life story of a young woman whose thirst for learning was so strong that she ended up getting a P.h.D. from Cambridge University.

    People have strange ideas about food. For example, tomato is a kind of very delicious vegetable. It is one of useful plants that can be prepared in many ways. It has rich nutrition(营养) and vitamin in it. But in the 18th century, Americans never ate tomatoes. They grew them in their gardens because tomato plants are so pretty. But they thought the vegetable was poisonous(有毒的). They called tomatoes "poison apples".

    President Thomas Jefferson, however, know that tomatoes were good to eat. He was a learned man. He had been to Paris, where he learned to love the taste of tomatoes. He grew many kinds of tomatoes in his garden. The President taught his cook a way for a cream of tomato soup. This beautiful pink soup was served at the President party. The guests thought the soup tasted really good. They never thought their president would serve his honored guests poison apples. Jefferson never spoke to his honored guests about the fact.