Here is your best chance to travel around the UK in 2012: More than 200 B&Bs（bed & breakfast）across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are selected to offer you amazing services for your stay at their lowest prices! Don't miss it. Just collect the vouchers（活动券）in our B&B Daily printed from 01/04/2012 to 07/04/2012 and book the stays for your travel following the terms and conditions below:

    The offer includes a room for the night and a breakfast the next morning.

The offer is of two kinds: ￡20 per room, valid（有效的）during stay period of 02/04/2012—31/05/2012 and then again 01/09/2012—31/10/2012；￡35 per room, per night, valid during stay period of 01/06/2012—31/08/2012.

    The offer is valid for a basic twin or double room only.

    The stay must be booked directly with the chosen B&Bs before 28/04/2012.

    Each voucher can only be used by the holder to book one room for one night.

    If voucher holders book either the ￡20 or ￡35 per room per night, any additional services such as lunch, evening meal or activities may require an extra charge. But these are not required in order to take up the offer. Please check directly with your chosen B&Bs to see what extra services are available.

    Vouchers must be presented on arrival. If no vouchers are presented, the     B&Bs may reserve（保留）the right to charge at full price for every night of stay.

    Vouchers may not be used together with any other offer.

    The voucher holders must pay for the stay in full at the time of booking. Additional ￡10 may be paid to confirm（确认）the booking and will be returned on arrival.

    The B&Bs reserve the right to refuse voucher holders' bookings for people under the age of 18.

    There's no doubt that our character has a profound effect on our future What we must remember, however, is not merely how powerful character is in influencing our fate, but how powerful we are in shaping our own character and, therefore, our own fate. Character may determine our fate, but character is not determined by fate.

    It's a common mistake to think of character as something that is fully formed and fixed very early in life. It calls to mind old proverbs like "A leopard can't change its spots." and "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

    This perspective that our character is "etched in stone" is supported by a great deal of modern psychology emphasizing self-acceptance. As Popeye says, "I am what I am." The hidden message is: Don't expect me to be more, better, or different.

    Ultimately (最后), these views of humanity totally undervalue the lifelong potential for growth that comes with the power of reflection and choice.

    How depressing it would be to believe that we can't choose to be better, more honest, more respectful, more responsible, and more caring. None of us should give up the personal seeking to improve our character. Not because we're bad, we don't have to be sick to get better, but because were not as good as we could be.

    There are so many things in life we can't control, whether we' re beautiful or smart, whether we have good parents or bad, whether we grow up with affirmation (肯定) or negation. It's inspiring to remember that nothing but moral will power is needed to make us better.

    No it isn't easy. But if we make a great effort to become more aware of the habits of heart and mind that drive our behavior, we can begin to place new emphasis on our higher values so that we become what we want our children to think we are.

    Next time you hear a funny joke you'd better not laugh too hard. According to a paper published by the British Medical Journal, laughter isn't always the best medicine. Sometimes it can even be harmful. Professor Robin Ferner from the University of Birmingham, one of the authors of the study, found that bad things could happen to people who laughed too much. He says, "We found people with heartbeat problems which had stopped their hearts, we found people who had fainted(昏倒), and we found people who'd dislocated their jaws or burst their lungs."

    It seems that laughing can be no laughing matter. But it's not all doom and gloom. Professor Ferner says there are benefits to laughing when you want to lose weight, for example. Yes, that's right: laugh and be slimmer! Professor Ferner explains that: "You use energy when you laugh, you move your diaphragm(横隔膜), you expand your lungs, and both those things can be helpful."

    According to the research, laughing for a quarter of an hour can burn 40 calories, and if you laughed all day you'd use about 2, 000 calories, which is what most people consume in a day. But don't do that or you might end up with a painful jaw. Ouch! Or you might find people looking at you in a funny way.

    But I don't want to finish this article leaving you feeling desperate. Laughter comes naturally for most of us. Babies begin to laugh at around 3-6 months. So give in to your sense of humour and keep smiling. Life is short anyway.

You may think that the story of Pygmalion (《卖花女》, 1913) — in which people are judged by the way they talk — is something that only existed in the days of British high society. But thanks to etiquette (礼仪) expert and author William Hanson, we realize that little has changed during the past 100 years.

    In a BBC radio program, Hanson released a list of common words used in British English that could reveal whether a person is "common" or "fashionable".

    And yet here comes the interesting part: While some of us might go through life using fancy words, dressing in ways that make us appear more well-off than we really are, there are wealthy people in the world who try to hide their riches because they want to be seen as "normal" instead of "showy".

    Beatrice, for example, is a New Yorker who inherited (继承) millions of dollars. She told The New York Times that she has a habit of removing the price tags (价签) from her clothes so her house staff don't see them and feel uncomfortable.

    "We don't want that 'Wow'." said Scott, also a New Yorker, who had just inherited over $50 million. "We're just not the type of people who wear it on our sleeve."

    Here's a list of books I'm looking forward to this fall season. Not all of them will rise to the level of the advertisement, but it's an abundant crop.

    "Home After Dark" by David Small (Liveright, Sept.11)

    In 2009, Small published a celebrated graphic memoir (回忆录) called "Stitches". Now the Caldecott Medal winner is back with a graphic novel about a motherless 13-year-old boy brought up in an unhappy home in California. This is a tale told in few words and many striking images. On Sept. 11 at 3p.m. . Small will be at Amazonbooks at Union Market. More information at www.amazon.com/graph-tale.

    "Waiting for Eden" by Elliot Ackerman (Knopf, Sept. 25)

    This brief novel is related by a dead soldier who is watching over a horribly burned partner in a Texas hospital. That sounds embarrassingly emotional, but Ackerman, who served in a Navy in Iraq and Afghanistan, is one of the best soldier-writers of his generation. More information at www.amazon.com/military-essay.

    "All You Can Ever Know" by Nicole Chung (Catapult, Oct. 2)

    Chung, the editor of the literary magazine Catapult, was adopted as a baby by a white family in Oregon. In this memoir, she writes about her childhood, her Asian American identity and her search for the Korean parents who gave her up. More information at www.amazon.com/politics-prose.

    "Unsheltered" by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, Oct. 16)

    Alternating between past and present, this novel tells the story of a woman investigating a late-19th-century science teacher who was caught up in the controversy over Darwinism. Like her other novels, this one promises to explore social and scientific problems. Visit www. amazon.com/tech-science for more information.

For hundreds of years, Africans have preserved their history through storytelling. But some Africans worry that oral traditions will be lost to the Internet connections and social media.

This has led a Nigerian woman named Elizabeth Kperrun to create a mobile phone application as a way to preserve African folk stories. She calls her mobile app AfroTalez, which tells children's stories that teach moral lessons.

"We can't teach kids something by telling them, 'Don't do this'. I think kids need context to understand. In a story somebody stole something and then something bad happened to them. Alternatively, somebody else did something good and they ended up happy or rich."

"Hello children. My name is Liz and I'd like to tell you a story about tortoises, elephants, and ..." The voice of "Aunt Liz" narrates the story, while a full-screen animation appears. An arrow signals when it's time to move on. There are also quizzes on object recognition and counting throughout.

Kperrun asks her older relatives to help her collect stories for the application. The stories come from an ethnic group living in southeast Nigeria and northwest Cameroon. "I want to keep it centered on folk stories, not the ones that Walt Disney has made really popular... It's fair and respectful to keep certain cultures alive because folk stories are part of the tapestry that keeps cultures together." Kperrun once said.

Kperrun writes and reads the stories. Her business partner and husband Idamiebi Ilamina-Eremie does the animation (动画).

AfroTalez is available for Android users and can be downloaded for free. So far, AfroTalez has more than 50,000 users. Funding for the app has been a major challenge. Kperrun hopes to use a crowdfunding campaign to help fund the next version of AfroTalez to be released soon.

Kperrun believes technology doesn't have to destroy or replace traditions. Her goal is to combine them to keep African culture alive. She says "Africa is our home, but we are so eager to become Western that we are forgetting things that are really important and should be passed on of who we are, and I don't think that's right."