Navajo was the perfect choice for a secret language. It is very complex. One vowel (元音）can have up to ten different pronunciations, changing the meaning of any word. In the 1940s, Navajo was unwritten language. No one outside of the reservation could speak it or understand it.

    The Navajo Code team had to invent new words to describe military equipment. For example, they named ships after fish: lotso-whale (battleship), calo-shark (destroyer), beshloiron-fish (submarine). When a Code Talker received a message via radio, he heard a series of unrelated Navajo words. He would then translate the words into English and use the first letter of each English word to spell the message. The Navajo words tsah (needle), wol-la-chee (ant), ah-kh-di-glini (victor), and tsah-ah-dzoh (yucca) spelled NAVY.

    The Code Talker kept the code a secret. They memorized everything. There were no code books. As a result, no ordinary Navajo soldiers, if captured by the enemy, could understand the code. More than 3,600 Navajos served in World War II, but only 420 were Code Talkers with the US Marines. They coded and decoded battlefield messages better and faster than any machine. They could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds. Machines of the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job.

    Even after the war the code remained top secret. When they were asked about their role, Code Talkers just said: “I was a radioman.” War movies and histories came out without mentioning them. The code was never used again and was finally declassified in 1968. Only then did the secret came out.

    Hobbs was an orphan. He worked in a factory and every day he got a little money. Hard work made him thin and weak.  He wanted to borrow a lot of money to learn to paint pictures, but he did not think he could pay off the debts.

    One day a lawyer said to him, “One thousand dollars, and here is the money.” As Hobbs took the package of notes, he was very dumbfounded. He didn't know where the money came from and how to spend it. He said to himself, “I could go to find a hotel and live like a rich man for a few days；or I give up my work in the factory and do what I'd like to do: painting pictures. I could do that for a few weeks, but what would I do after that? I should have lost my place in the factory and have no money to live on. If it were a little less money, I would buy a new coat, or a radio, or give a dinner to my friends. If it were more, I could give up the work and pay for painting pictures. But it's too much for one and too little for the other.”

    “Here is the reading of your uncle's will,” said the lawyer, “telling what is to be done with this money after his death. I must ask you to remember one point. Your uncle has said you must bring me a paper showing exactly what you did with his money, as soon as you have spent it.”

    “Yes I see. I'll do that,” said the young man.

    Everyone's at it, even my neighbors. I thought I might be the only person left in the world who hadn't done an eBay deal. So, I decided to try my hand at online Auction（网上拍卖）.

    Buying for Beginners

    Sign up on www.eBay.co.uk. Most items （e.g. tables, computers and books）ready for auction will come with a picture and a short description; others may be marked with Buy It Now and have a fixed price. You can buy these right away.

    If the item is being auctioned, you offer the highest price you are prepared to pay and eBay bids（出价）for you. The bid will be increased little by little until it goes beyond your highest bid, then you are emailed and asked if you would like to bid again. Auctions last up to 10 days and when they finish, you get an email telling you whether you have won the item.

    How to Pay

    Sellers decide how they would like to be paid and you need to check this before placing a bid as you might not want to post a check or postal order （邮政汇票）. The easiest way is through PayPal, an online payment system that takes the money away from your credit card.

    Selling Made Sample

    If you plan to sell on eBay, it helps to include a picture of the item. I followed my friend's advice and put up the items I wanted to sell for a 10-day auction, starting on a Thursday. This way buyers had two weekends to bid.

    The Big Things in Life

    It's easy to post a small item, but furniture is a big part of eBay and this has to be collectively sent by deliverymen. Check the ways of delivery before you bid.

    We often hear stories of animals rescuing people. But now someone has managed to return the favor.

    The event took place one snowy January morning Thomas Smith was walking his dog, Jack, in the park." As I was walking, I just saw Jack running onto the ice towards the ducks in the middle, and then he fell into the water and couldn't climb out, "said Smith. He realized he had no choice but to try and save his dog. "Someone else told me the lake was only one-meter deep, but it was at least twice that. I had to break my way through the 6-cm ice. Finally, I got Jack by the neck, and pulled him out. I don't think I have ever felt so cold by the time we got back to dry land. And when we got there, everyone was asking if Jack was okay no one was particularly worried, about me!"

    A neighbor, Julie Brown, saw it all happen. "The dog went onto an icy lake. All of a sudden, it started to go under. There were crowds of people around, and they were all shouting and screaming. Before I knew it, the owner Smith was in the water forcing his way through the ice. I can't begin to imagine how cold it was. Everyone was very nervous, but he was as cool as a cucumber he just crawled back out, put the dog on its lead, and went home."

    Many regard him as a hero, but Mr. Smith is quite laid-back about it. "Most dog owners are the same as me. They would do what I did without a second thought. But in the future, I'm going to make sure he's on lead near any ice ponds, Pets are members of our family. Would you do the same for them?

    When the company was small, Google cared a lot about getting kids from Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. But Laszlo Bock, Google's former Senior Vice President of People Operations, said it was the "wrong" hiring strategy. Experience has taught him that there are exceptional kids at many other places, from state schools in California to those in New York. "What we find is that the best people from places like these are just as good if not better as anybody you can get from any Ivy League school," said Bock, who authored a book titled "Work Rules!"

    So what else does Google not care about:

    Grades: Google's data shows that grades predict performance for the first two years of a career, but do not matter after that.

    Brain-teasers: Gone are interview questions such as: Why are manhole covers (井盖) round? How many golf balls can fit in a school bus? "Our research tells us those questions are a waste of time," Bock said. "They're a really coachable skill. The more you practice, the better you get at it."

    Here's what Google does care about:

    Problem solvers: Your cognitive (认知的) ability, or how well you solve problems.

    Leaders: The idea is not whether you were president of the student body or vice president of a bank, but rather "When you see a problem, do you step in and help solve it?" and then critically, "Are you willing to let somebody else take over, and make room for somebody else? Are you willing to give up power?"

    Googleyness: That's what Google calls its cultural fit. It's not "Are you like us?" Bock said. "We actually look for people who are different, because diversity gives us great ideas."

    "What's most important is that people are intellectually humble, willing to admit when they're wrong, and care about the environment around them ...because we want people who think like owners not employees," Bock said.

Elizabeth Bishop is considered one of the best American poets of the 20th century. She was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1911. Her dad died when she was just a baby and her mom never recovered from the loss; she went to live with her grandparents in Nova Scotia, Canada when she was five. Eventually Bishop attended Vassar College, where she began to write poetry.

At Vassar she discovered Marianne Moore's poetry and met "Ms. Moore" and began their life-long friendship. She later met poet Robert Lowell. She wrote tons and tons of letters to both of them, which is good for us because we would otherwise know very little of her personal life. Bishop's poetry is sometimes considered objective and cold because it shows almost nothing about the poet or her life.

Bishop published her first book of poetry in 1946 and wrote until her death in 1979. She would spend years working on a single poem. Her poems are not the result of hasty scribbling (匆忙乱写) on paper while eating breakfast. Over a lifetime of writing, she only published about 275 pages of poetry, and about 40 of those are translations. She would look through drafts of poems again and again and improve them until they were as close to perfect as she could get them.

Reading Elizabeth Bishop is like being transported to the very place, the very moment she's writing about. She leads us to a microscope so we can see every smallest part of the scene. It seems she's always asking us to notice more, and more until the poem is so clear in our minds that it's almost painful — like a light that's too bright. It might take your eyes a while to get used to it, but once they do, you'll like what you see.