Time is more precious than money for an increasing number of people who are choosing to live more with less—and liking it.

    Kay and Charles Giddens, two lawyers, sold their home to start a B&B hotel. Four years later, the couple dishes out banana pancake breakfast, cleans toilets and serves homemade chocolate chip cookies to guests in a B&B hotel surrounded by trees on a hill known for colourful sunsets.

    “Do I miss the freeways? Do I miss the traffic? Do I miss the stress? No,” says Ms. Giddens, “This is a phenomenon that's fairly widespread. A lot of people are revaluating their lives and figuring out what they want to do. If their base is being damaged, what's the payoff?”

    Simple living ranges from cutting down on weeknight activities to sharing housing, living closer to work, avoiding shopping malls, borrowing books from the library instead of buying them, and taking a cut in pay to work at a more pleasurable job.

    Vicki Robin, a writer, lives on a budget equal to a fifth of what she used to make. “You become conscious about where your money is going and how valuable it is,” Ms. Robin says, “You tend not to use things up. You cook at home rather than eat out…”

    Janet Luhrs, a lawyer, quit her job after giving birth and leaving her daughter with a nanny for two weeks. “It was not the way I wanted to raise my kids,” she says, “Simplicity is not just about saving money; it's about me sitting down every night with my kids to a candlelit dinner with classical music.”

    Mrs. Luhrs now edits a magazine, Simple Living, which publishes tips on how to buy recycled furniture and shoes, organize potluck dinners instead of expensive receptions, and generally how to consume less.

    Mrs. Luhrs explains, “It's not about poverty. It's about conscious living and creating the life you want. The less stuff you buy, the less money goes out of the door, and the less money you have to earn.”

    Ottawa is the capital of Canada. It is the second largest city in Ontario and the fourth largest city in the country.

    The Centre Block is the main building on Parliament Hill (国会山). There also stand several ceremonial spaces, such as the Hall of Honor and the Memorial Chamber. The present Centre Block is the second copy of the building, after the first was undermined by a big fire in 1916, and it is one of the most recognizable buildings in Canada.

    Downtown Ottawa is the commercial and economic centre of the city. Most of the buildings are office towers. While most of Ottawa's high tech industry is based elsewhere, it has an important presence in the downtown center. The downtown also contains a number of apartments, hotels, and the older single family homes and townhouses along its edges (边缘).

    The National Gallery of Canada is one of Canada's earliest art galleries. The Gallery has a large and varied collection of paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs. Although its focus is on Canadian art, it also holds works by some well-known American and European artists.

    The Rideau Canal is the oldest continuously operated canal (运河) system in North America. At the very beginning, it was used to provide a safe supply and communication route between Montreal and the British naval (海军的) base in Kingston. It remains in use today mainly for people to boat and enjoy themselves, with most of its original structures undamaged. The locks on the system open for navigation (航海) in mid-May and close in mid-October.

    Not so long ago, most people didn't know who Shelly Ann Francis Pryce was going to become. She was just an average high school athlete. There was every indication that she was just another Jamaican teenager without much of a future. However, one person wants to change this. Stephen Francis observed then eighteen-year-old Shelly Ann as a track meet and was convinced that he had seen the beginning of true greatness. Her time were not exactly impressive, but even so, he seemed there was something trying to get out, something the other coaches had overlooked when they had assessed her and found her lacking. He decided to offer Shelly Ann a place in his very strict training seasons. Their cooperation quickly produced results, and a few year later at Jamaica's Olympic games in early 2008, Shelly Ann, who at that time only ranked number 70 in the world, beat Jamaica's unchallenged queen of the sprint(短跑).

    “Where did she come from?” asked an astonished sprinting world, before concluding that she must be one of those one-hit wonders that spring up from time to time, only to disappear again without signs. But Shelly Ann was to prove that she was anything but a one-hit wonder. At the Beijing Olympic she swept away any doubts about her ability to perform consistently by becoming the first Jamaican woman ever to win the 100 meters Olympic gold. She did it again one year on at the World Championship in Briton, becoming world champion with a time of 10.73—the fourth record ever.

    Shelly-Ann is a little woman with a big smile. She has a mental toughness that did not come about by chance. Her journey to becoming the fastest woman on earth has been anything but smooth and effortless. She grew up in one of Jamaica's toughest inner-city communities known as Waterhouse, where she lived in a one-room apartment, sleeping four in a bed with her mother and two brothers. Waterhouse, one of the poorest communities in Jamaica, is a really violent and overpopulated place. Several of Shelly-Ann's friends and family were caught up in the killings; one of her cousins was shot dead only a few streets away from where she lived. Sometimes her family didn't have enough to eat. She ran at the school championships barefooted because she couldn't afford shoes. Her mother Maxime, one of a family of fourteen, had been an athlete herself as a young girl but, like so many other girls in Waterhouse, had to stop after she had her first baby. Maxime's early entry into the adult world with its responsibilities gave her the determination to ensure that her kids would not end up in Waterhouse's roundabout of poverty. One of the first things Maxime used to do with Shelly-Ann was taking her to the track, and she was ready to sacrifice everything.

    It didn't take long for Shelly-Ann to realize that sports could be her way out of Waterhouse. On a summer evening in Beijing in 2008, all those long, hard hours of work and commitment finally bore fruit. The barefoot kid who just a few years previously had been living in poverty, surrounded by criminals and violence, had written a new chapter in the history of sports.

    But Shelly-Ann's victory was far greater than that. The night she won Olympic gold in Beijing, the routine murders in Waterhouse and the drug wars in the neighboring streets stopped. The dark cloud above one of the world's toughest criminal neighborhoods simply disappeared for a few days. “I have so much fire burning for my country,” Shelly said. She plans to start a foundation for homeless children and wants to build a community centre in Waterhouse. She hopes to inspire the Jamaicans to lay down their weapons. She intends to fight to make it a woman's as well as a man's world.

    As Muhammad Ali puts it, “Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them. A desire, a dream, a vision.” One of the things Shelly-Ann can be proud of is her understanding of this truth.

The surface of Venus has never seemed very hospitable. Temperatures change around 470℃(900°F), the result of a runway greenhouse effect, and the pressure of its atmosphere, thick with carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid(硫酸), is some 90 times that of Earth's. Lead(铅) would flow like water on Venus, and water cannot have existed in liquid form for perhaps a billion years.

    Now NASA'S Magellan spacecraft seems to have found one more horror in the nasty landscape: active volcanoes. Last week the space agency released the first detailed map of Venus and the most dramatic images ever made of its surface. The picture offer the best evidence to date that a planet once assumed dead is actually a lively pot of geological change.

    The most amazing image is of Venus's second tallest mountain, Maat Mons, which rises 8km(5 miles) . Most of the planet's many peaks, including 9.5-km-(6-mile-) high Maxwell Montes, look bright in the radar pictures Magellan takes from its orbit above the permanent could cover. That means they are strong reflectors of radar waves. But Maat Mons is dark; like the Stealth bomber, it absorbs much of the radar falling on it.

    This interesting fact, say project scientists, is a strong hint that the mountains has recently been covered with lava(熔岩). Rock that sits on the surface of mountaintops appears to weather quickly in the hot , chemically reactive atmosphere, creating a soil that is rich in iron sulfide(硫化铁). It is this mineral, the scientists believe, that can easily be seen on radar. If Maat Mons doesn't have any, it has probably been resurfaced, perhaps within the past few years.

    Such resurfacing has undoubtedly taken place in Venus lowlands: earlier images of the planet showed vast areas that are remarkably free of craters(火山坑). That would be easy to explain on a Planet like Earth, where cratering from meteor strikes is erased by steady erosion. But while there is some evidence of wind erosion on Venus, the best explanation for the lack of cratering is periodic lava flow. Magellan has found direct evidence of such flows, including domelike upwellings and hardened streamed of rock trailing down the sides of Venusian peaks. There are also signs of other geologic activities, including dramatic faulting and several distinct incidents of mountain building. But the evidence can't indicate whether they really occurred millions of years ago. The case for active Venusian volcanoes is not yet proved, but Magellan, which is now well into its second complete survey of the planet's surface, may eventually settle the issue.

    Four books that will change your life

    If you're already working 9-5, you might not have much time to read. With the Blinkist app, you can get the key information from the best nonfiction books in minutes, not hours or days. Start with the four most-read titles on self-improvement.

    Thirteen Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do by Amy Morin

    You can't escape misfortune in life. But you can change how you respond to it. Do you struggle to get over your failures? Or live with things out of your control? Getting over these troubles can have a great influence on your everyday life, Morin shares how her most successful therapy（治疗）patients overcame these difficulties.

    How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

    Ever wondered why you can't stop worrying about something? No matter how hard you try, do you focus on the same issue? By defining the source of your stress, you can get over it once and for all. Camegie came up with an effective way that helps you deal with any over-thinking situation.

    Finding Your Element by Ken Rotoinson

    Society often encourages us to follow a certain linear plan. Everyone has a passion. If you don't know what yours is, it just means you haven't discovered it yet. Or perhaps you have, buth disappeared early in life. Find out how you can break free of society's strict rules and find your calling in life.

    Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

    Did you know if your pulse rate rises above 100 bpm, you're considered too emotional to think rationally（理智地）? You probably let feelings cloud your judgment more often than you know. Goleman explains how you can avoid letting your emotions rule you and make better decisions in life.

Do you know of anyone who uses the truth to deceive? When someone tells you something that is true, but leaves out important information that should be included, he can give you a false picture.

For example, some might say, "I just won a hundred dollars on the lottery. It was great. I took that dollar ticket back to the store and turned it in for one hundred dollars!"

This guy's a winner, right? Maybe, maybe not. In fact, he bought $200 worth of tickets. He's really a big loser!

He didn't say anything that was false, but he left out important information on purpose. That's called a half-truth. Half-truths are not technically lies, but they are just dishonest.

Some politicians often use this trick. During Governor Smith's last term, her state lost one million jobs and gained three million jobs. Then she seeks another term. One of her opponents says, "During Governor Smith's term, the state lost one million jobs!" That's true. However, an honest statement would have been, "During Governor Smith's term, the state had a net gain of two million jobs."

Advertisers will sometimes use half-truths. It's against the law to make false statements sol they try to mislead you with the truth. An advertisement might say, "Nine out of ten doctors advised their patients to take Yucky Pills to cure toothache." It fails to mention that they only asked ten doctors and nine of them work for the Yucky Company.

This kind of deception happens too often. It's a sad fact of life: Lies are lies, and sometimes the truth can lie as well.