The stories we share with one another are important. They show wisdom and provide inspiration. They are important to our development. But sometimes people choose not to tell.

    Considering the negative effects of not sharing a story in the news, people are wondering if public health officials are holding back too much information about the recent outbreak of Ebola.

    There is a danger in holding back stories that ought to be told. Bobette Buster said it like this, “The fact is, history has shown us that stories not told can become like a dangerous genie (妖怪) left in a bottle. When they are finally uncorked(透漏), their power to destroy is set free."

    There are a number of reasons why we hide parts of our story: they often show our weaknesses or expose our disadvantages; they require courage and strength to share; and of course, there are some stories that should be kept secret—especially those that embarrass someone else.

    Most of us have two selves: the one we display on the outside and the one we actually are on the inside. And the better we get at hiding the stories that show our true selves, the more damage we may be causing to ourselves and to others.

    Honesty and openness is important: It proves we are trustworthy. It displays we are human. We are not perfect or better. It highlights the importance of hard work and personal development. Hard work may not allow us to overcome our disadvantages completely. But with hard work, we do not have to be restricted to our mistakes.

    Does this mean we admit every weakness, every disadvantage, and every secret regret to everybody we meet? No, of course not. There is a time and a place and a certain level of relationship necessary for some stories to be told in an appropriate manner.

    Let's face it. No one drinks diet sodas for the taste. People drink diet sodas in the hope that it will help them lose weight or at least keep them from gaining it. Yet it seems to have exactly the opposite effect, according to a new study.

    Researchers from the University of Texas said those who drank two or more diet sodas a day had waist size increases that were six times greater than those who didn't drink diet sodas. ＂What we saw was that the more diet sodas a person drank, the more weight they were likely to gain,＂ said Sharon Fowler.

The study was based on data from 474 participants in a large, ongoing research project, where the participants were followed for nearly 10 years.

    While the findings are surprising, they also offer some explanations.

    Nutrition expert, Melanie Rogers, who works with overweight patients in New York, has found that when patients are switched from regular to diet sodas, they don't lose weight at all. ＂We weren't seeing weight loss necessarily, and that was confusing to us,＂ said Rogers.

    So why would diet soda cause weight gain? No one knows for sure yet, but it could be that people think they can eat more if they drink diet sodas, and so over-compensate for the missing calories.

    A related study found some sweeteners (甜味剂) raised blood sugar levels in some mice. ＂Data from this and other potential studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners may be risky,＂ said Helen P. Hazuda, professor at the University of Texas's school of medicine. ＂They may be free of calories, but not of consequences.＂

    Mark Twain, the famous American writer and a great master of humor, liked to play jokes on others. But once a joke was played on him. One day Mark Twain was invited to give a talk in a small town. At lunch he met a young man,one of his friends.

    The young man said that he had an uncle with him. He told Mark Twain that his uncle never laughed or smiled, and that nobody and nothing was able to make his uncle smile or laugh.

    “You bring your uncle to my talk this evening,” said Mark Twain. “I'm sure I can make him laugh.”

    That evening the young man and his uncle sat in the front. Mark Twain began to speak. He told several funny stories and made everyone in the room laugh. But the man never even smiled. Mark Twain told more funny stories, but the old man still kept quiet. Mark Twain continued to tell his funny stories. Finally he stopped. He was tired and quite disappointed.

    Some days later, Mark Twain told another friend what had happened. “Oh,” said his friend,“I know that man. He's been deaf for years.”

    An introduction to this book is as superfluous as a candle in front of a powerful searchlight. But a convention of publishing seems to require that the candle should be there, and I am proud to be the one to hold it. About ten years ago I picked up from the pile of new books on my desk a copy of Sons and Lovers by a man of whom I had never heard, and I started to race through it with the immoral speed of the professional reviewer. But after a page or two I found myself reading, really reading. Here was—here is—a masterpiece in which every sentence counts, a book packed with significant thought and beautiful, arresting phrases, the work of a remarkable genius whose gifts are more richly various than those of any other young English novelist.

    To appreciate the rich variety of Mr. Lawrence we must read his later novels and his volumes of poetry. But Sons and Lovers reveals the range of his power. Here are combined and blended(混合的) sort of “realism” and almost lyric(抒情的) imagery and rhythm. The speech of the people is that of daily life and the things that happen to them are normal adventures and accidents; they fall in love, marry, work, fail, succeed, and die. But of their deeper emotions and of the relations of these little human beings to the earth and to the stars, Mr. Lawrence makes something near to poetry and prose(散文) without violating its proper “other harmony.”

    Take the marvellous paragraph on next to the last page of Sons and Lovers (Mr. Lawrence depends so little on plot in the ordinary sense of the word that it is perfectly fair to read the end of his book first):

    Where was he? One tiny upright speck of flesh, less than an ear of wheat lost in the field. He could not bear it. On every side the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny a spark, into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be extinct. Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and sun, stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in the darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted(气馁). So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core a nothingness, and yet not nothing.

    Such glorious writing lifts the book far above a novel which is merely a story. I beg the reader to attend to every line of it and not to miss a single one of the many sentences that await and surprise you. Some are enthusiastic and impressive, like the paragraph above; others are keen, “realistic” observations of things and people. In one of his books Mr. Lawrence makes a character say, or think, that life is “mixed.” That indicates his philosophy and his method. He blends the accurately literal and trivial(琐碎的) with the extremely poetic.

    To find a similar blending of tiny daily detail and wide imaginative vision, we must go back to two older novelists, Hardy and Meredith. I do not mean that Mr. Lawrence derives(源于) immediately from them or, indeed, that he is clearly the disciple(弟子) of any master. I do feel simply that he is of the elder stature(名望) of Hardy and Meredith, and I know of no other young novelist who is quite worthy of their company. When I first tried to express this comparison, this connection, I was contradicted by a fellow-critic, who pointed out that Meredith and Hardy are entirely unlike each other and that therefore Mr. Lawrence cannot resemble both. To be sure, nothing is more hateful than forced comparisons, nothing more boring than to discover parallels between one work of art and another. An artist's mastery consists in his difference from other masters. But to refer a young man of genius to an older one, at the same time pronouncing his independence and originality, is a fair, if not very superior, method of praising him.

What a Messy Desk Says About You

    For some time, psychologists have been studying how personality traits affect health and health-related choices. Not surprisingly, they have found that people blessed with innate conscientiousness, meaning that they are organized and predictable, typically eat better and live longer than people who are disorderly. They also tend to have immaculate offices.

    What has been less clear is whether neat environments can produce good habits even in those who aren't necessarily innately conscientious. To find out, researchers at the University of Minnesota conducted a series of experiments. In the first experiment, they randomly assigned a group of college-age students to spend time in two office spaces, one of which was very neat, the other wildly cluttered (乱堆) with papers and other work-related stuff. The students spent their time filling out questionnaires unrelated to the study. After 10 minutes, they were told they could leave with an apple or a chocolate bar. Those students who sat in the orderly office were twice as likely to choose the apple as those who sat among the mess.

    A second experiment, however, found that working in chaos has its advantages, too. In this one, college students were placed in a messy or a neat office and asked to dream up new uses for Ping-Pong balls. Those in messy spaces generated ideas that were significantly more creative, according to two independent judges, than those in offices where stacks of papers and other objects were neatly arranged.

    The results were something of a surprise, says Dr. Vohs, the leader of the study. Few previous studies found much virtue in disorder. The broken window theory, proposed decades ago, holds that even slight disorder and neglect can encourage indifference and poor discipline.

    But in the study by Dr. Vohs, disordered offices encouraged originality and a search for novelty. In the final portion of the study, adults were given the choice of adding a health "boost" to their lunchtime smoothie that was labeled either "new" or "classic." The volunteers in the messy space were far more likely to choose the new one; those in the tidy office generally chose the classic version. "Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition," Dr. Vohs and her co-authors conclude in the study, "which can produce fresh insights."

    The implications of these findings are also practical. "My advice would be, if you need to think outside the box for a future project", Dr. Vohs says, "then let the clutter rise and free your imagination. But if your primary goal is to eat well or to go to the gym, pick up around your office first. By doing this, the naturally messy can acquire some of the discipline of the conscientious."

    Columbus made four voyages to the west between 1492 and 1504 in his vain（徒劳的）search for a sea route to Asia. The mystery of why he failed to find it haunted（萦绕心头的,耿耿于怀的） him and filled him with sadness.

    Wherever he went to Cuba（古巴）,Puerto Rico（波多黎各）,Jamaica（牙买加）,South America, Panama（巴拿马）,down the coast of Central America—it was always the same story. Instead of golden palaces, there were grass huts and palm-leaf tents. Instead of silk-robed merchant princes, he found "Indians" who did not have so much as a shirt on their backs.

    When Columbus explored the West Indies in 1493,he heard tales of a fierce Indian tribe（凶狠的印第安部落） who literally devoured（吞食） its defeated enemies after a battle. These people were called by many names in the area, including Calina, Canima, Carib, and Caniba. Columbus recorded the name of the American natives as Canibales in Spanish, a word which came to refer, within a few years, to any eater of human flesh（食人部落,食人族）.In the similar fashion, the word Caribbean, a title for the sea as well as for the region, came into English.

    At times Columbus knew that this new land was not China, not Japan, not the Spice Islands. He seemed to accept it as a part of the earth that the geographers of Europe had never heard of before. It was another world—and he called it exactly that—but Columbus also insisted until he died that land he had reached was an unknown part of Asia.