Most young architects—particularly those in big cities—can only dream about working in a building of their own. And making that dream come true often means finding a building no one else seems to want, which is exactly what happened to David Yocum and his partner, Brian Bell. Their building is a former automobile electrical-parts firm in Atlanta. From the outside, it looks too old, even something horrible, but open the door and you are in a wide, open courtyard, lined on three sides with rusting walls.

    In 2000,Yocum and Bell found this building in the city's West End. Built in 1947, the structure had been abandoned years earlier and the roof of the main building had fallen down. But the price was right, so Yocum bought it. He spent eight months of his off-hours on demolition, pulling rubbish out through the roof, because it was too dangerous to go inside the building. The demolition was hard work, but it gave him time to think about what he wanted to do, and “to treasure what was there—the walls, the rust, the light,” Yocum said. “Every season, more paint falls off the walls and more rust develops. It's like an art installation(装置) in there—a slow-motion show.”

    Since the back building had been constructed without windows, an all-glass front was added to the building to give it a view of the courtyard, and skylights were installed in the roof. The back of the building is a working area and a living room for Yocum and his wife. A sort of buffer(缓冲) zone between the front and the back contains a bathroom, a kitchen and a mechanical room, and the walls that separate these zones have openings that allow views through to the front of the studio and the courtyard beyond.

    Yocum and Bell, who have just completed an art gallery for the city, feel that the experience from the decoration of their building, focusing on the inside rather than the outside, has influenced their work. It has also given these architects a chance to show how they can make more out of less.

    A survey has shown that what you do on a plane can be determined by which nationality is listed on your passport.

    According to the results of an international passenger survey, Australians are the biggest drinkers on board with 36 percent choosing to down the hatch, compared to 35 percent of Americans and 33 percent of Brits.

    The Airline Passenger Experience Association(APEX) spoke to around 1,500 people, aged 18 and older, who have traveled by plane at least once during the last three months and were living in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, Singapore, Australia and Brazil.

The results found Chinese travelers are most likely to nod off once the seat-belt sign switches off. They are also the first to take out their credit card for some in-flight shopping and the biggest fans of gaming. Americans on the other hand like to use their time in the air more productively—- when not drinking—- choosing to work while flying at 35,000 feet.

Meanwhile, Brits and Germans are the best at making chat with random strangers—-spending 50 percent more time than any other nationality. Comparatively, Brazilians conduct their conversations online via email, messaging apps or social media.

    Despite plane food having a bad reputation, seven out of ten interviewees said they were happy to eat up on the selection of in-flight snacks and meals. In-flight magazines were also popular with four out of five passengers.

    The international flyers did however express their desire for better in-flight entertainment. “The industry has greatly improved the comfort, entertainment and onboard service, and passengers are accepting those improvements” said Russell Lemieux, APEX executive director. “At the same time, passengers are demanding more from their air travel experiences which will drive more improvements touching all aspects of the journey.” he added.

    More and more comments sections are being shut down online.

    Autumn Phillips had had enough. On Aug. 19, the executive editor of the Quad- City Times in Iowa, and Illinois, US visited her website, qctimes.com, and saw a story about a man who had been shot to death. When she got to the readers' comments sections at the end, she was shocked by what she saw. Below the story was a growing number of comments—a racist remark about democratic votes, a negative comment about police …So Phillips decided to do something she had been thinking about for a long time: she shut down the comments sections.

    Phillips was not alone in making such a move. Last week, NPR announced k too was closing its online comments sections. The decisions don't mean that the news outlets are no longer interested in what their audiences are thinking. Both stressed their eagerness to hear from readers and listeners on social networks. But both agreed that comments had deviated from their original intention. And so they had.

    In early days of digital journalism, comments were seen as a key part of this new media, a wonderful opportunity for strengthening the dialogue between news producers and their audiences. It was a welcome change, given that for long many news organizations were far too separated from their readers. Much more back and forth conversation seemed like healthy and welcome evolution. Sadly, that's not the way things turned out. Rather than a place for exchanging ideas, comments sections became the home of ugly name-calling, racism and anti-women language. Besides their poisonous quality, comments seem out of place today.

    "Since we made the announcement, I've received an outpouring of responses from our readers," she says. "I've heard from parents whose children were hurt by our online comments. I've heard from people who said they wouldn't send in letters to the editor because they were attacked so fiercely by comments, and wasn't worth it."

    What is the single most effective way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions? Go vegetarian (素食)？ Replant the Amazon? Cycle to work? None of the above. The answer is: make air-conditioners better. On one calculation, replacing refrigerants (制冷剂) damaging the atmosphere would reduce total greenhouse gases equaling 90bn tonnes of CO₂ by 2050. Making the units more energy-efficient could double that. By contrast, if half the world's population gave up meat, it would save 66bn tonnes. Replanting two-thirds of tropical forests would save 61 bn tonnes. A one-third increase in global bicycle journeys, just 2.3bn tonnes.

    Air-conditioning is one of the world's great overlooked industries. Automobiles and air-conditioners were invented at roughly the same time, and both have had a huge impact on where people live and Work. Unlike cars, though， air-conditioners have drawn little criticism for their social impact, emissions or energy efficiency. Most hot countries do not have rules to govern their energy use. There is not even a common English word for “coolth” (the opposite of warmth).

    Yet air-conditioning has done more than most things to benefit humankind. Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, called it “perhaps one of the signal inventions of history”. It has transformed productivity in the tropics(热带地区)and helped turn southern China into the workshop of the World. In Europe, its spread has pushed down heat-related deaths to 10% since 2003, Men 70,000 people than usual, most of them elderly, died in a heatwave. For children, air-conditioned classrooms are associated with better grades at school.

    Environmentalists who call air-conditioning “a luxury we cannot afford” have half a point, however. In the next ten years, as many air-conditioners will be installed(安装)around the world as were put in between 1902(invention time)and 2005.Unless energy can be produced without carbon emissions, these extra machines will warm the world. At the moment, therefore, air-conditioners create a vicious cycle. The more the Earth warms, the more people need them. But the more there are, the warmer the world will be.

    Cutting the impact of cooling requires three things. First, air-conditioners must become much more efficient. The most energy-efficient models on the market today consume only about one-third as much electricity as average ones, Minimum energy-performance standards need to be raised raised, orintroduced in countries that lack them altogether, to push the average unit's performance closer to the standard of the best.

    Next, manufacturers should stop using damaging refrigerants. One type called hydrofluoro-carbons, is over 1,000 times worse than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere. An international agreement to knock out these pollutants will come into force in 2019.

    Last, more could be done to design offices, malls and even cities so they do not need as many air-conditioners in the first place. More buildings should be built with overhanging roofs or balconies for shade, or with natural ventilation (自然通风).Simply painting roofs white can help keep temperatures down. Providing indoor air-conditioned comfort need not come at the expense of an overheating world.

    A story posted by The New York Post Monday tells the tale of Katrina Holte, a Hillsboro woman who quit her job to cosplay a 1950s housewife.

    Let me start by expressing admiration to Holte for using her 2019 freedoms to follow her 1950s dreams. Everyone should be so lucky as to get to decide what they wear and how they spend their time. That's the future our foremothers fought for.

    But as much fun as I am sure she is having living a vintage (复古的) life, which literally includes watching shows like "I Love Lucy" and listening to vinyl recordings (刻录碟片), I think it's important to remember that being a 1950s housewife was actually totally awful, and something our grandmothers and mothers fought against.

    For example, once I called my grandma and asked her for her recipe for Cloud Biscuits, these delicious biscuits she used to make that we would cover with butter and homemade raspberry jam on Thanksgiving.

    "Why would you want that?" she said. "Go to the store. Go to the freezer section. Buy some pre-made biscuits and put them in the oven."

    She straight-up refused to give me the recipe, because it was hard and took a long time to make. In her mind, it was a waste of time.

    Getting off the phone, it occurred to me that spending every day of your life serving a husband and five children wasn't fun at all. And then there are the grandchildren who eventually come along demanding Cloud Biscuits, a whole new expanded set of people to feed.

    She was basically a slave to those hungry mouths, cooking scratch meals three times a day.

    When she wasn't trapped in the kitchen, she had to keep the house clean, make sure she looked good enough to be socially acceptable, and make sure her kids and husband looked good enough to be socially acceptable. And she had no days off.

    I know my grandma loves her kids and her grandkids, her husband and the life she led, but man, it must have been a lot of thankless, mindless labor.

    No wonder everyone went all-in on processed foods when they came around. Imagine the nice break something like a microwave dinner would give a woman working, unpaid, for her family every single day?

    I also had another grandma. She was a scholar who helped found the Center for the Study of Women in Society at University of Oregon. She was a pioneering second-wave feminist who wrote books, gave lectures and traveled the world.

    But, she did all of that after divorcing my grandpa, when most of her kids were out of the house. Back then, in the 1950s and the 1960s, there was no illusion about women "having it all". How could that even possibly happen? If you were taking care of a family, waiting on your husband, you had no time to follow your dreams, unless you made that your dream.

    A lot of women took that approach. We call it Stockholm Syndrome now.

    And of course, these women I am talking about are upper-middle-class white women. Romanticizing the 1950s is especially disgusting when you think about how women of color and poor women were treated back then, and the lack of education and choices available to them.

    Because the women in this country demanded something approaching equality, Holte has the chance to live out her fantasy. Not every woman in America is so lucky.

    We still don't have pay equality and in many states, we still don't have autonomy over our own bodies. Poor women and women of color still lack the opportunities of their wealthy and white peers.

    And while it's getting better, women are still expected to be responsible for the emotional labor of running a household and raising the children.

    But at least we can get jobs. At least we don't have to sew our own clothes, wear a full face of makeup every day and spend hours making Cloud Biscuits some ungrateful kid will wolf down, barely remembering to say thank you.

    Many seniors feel pressured to go straight from high school to college, but Camden Olson, who graduated from the Latin School of Chicago in the US last year, didn't give in. She decided to spend a gap year-taking a year off before college-raising a guide dog for Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Maine. The non - profit provides trained guide dogs to blind and visually - impaired (视力障碍的) people. "This is something I've always wanted to do." Olson said.

    It is becoming more and more popular among American teenagers to have a gap year. Some students use the year off to figure out what they want to do: travel the world or save money for college.

    Olson is using her time to follow a passion she's had since 7th grade. For years, she kept an eye on guide dog services until she came across the opportunity at Guiding Eyes. With support from her friends, family and teachers, Olson went for it. Olson's volunteer work centers around Derby, a one-year-old black dog.

    "My job is to raise him to be well-mannered and socialized," she said. "Guide dogs can't be distracted. They go everywhere with their visually-impaired owner. They give a blind person a lot of support, too."

    Of course, there's an end in sight for Derby and Olson's close bond. When Derby celebrates his own graduation, Olson will have to say goodbye to him.

    "No doubt there will be tears, but, if he passes, I will be so happy for him to become a working dog," she said.

    While some do not agree that gap years are a good choice, Olson said she's seen major success. In fact, she'll be attending Princeton University soon and is thinking about majoring in biology.

    "I think I'm already so much more mature than I was," she said. "So many kids come back from gap years a lot more focused and prepared."