My grandparents believed that you were either honest or you were not. They had a simple saying hanging on their living-room wall: “Life is like a field of newly fallen snow. Where I choose to walk every step will show.” They didn't have to talk about it; they showed this truth by the way they lived.

    They understood that honesty is an inner(内部的) standard for judging your behavior. Unfortunately, honesty is in short supply today. But it is the real bottom line in every area of society and a discipline (自制能力) we must demand of ourselves.

    There's a story told about a surgical nurse's first day on the medical team at a well-known hospital. She was responsible(负责) for all surgical instruments and materials during an operation. At the end of the operation, the nurse said to the doctor, “ You've only removed 11 sponges（海绵）, and we used 12. We need to find the last one.”

    “I removed them all,” the doctor assured her. “ No, you didn't , sir,” insisted the nurse. “ Think of the patient.”

    Smiling, the doctor lifted his foot and showed the nurse the twelfth sponge.

    So when you know you're right, you can't yield. Don't be afraid of those who might have a better idea or who might even be more intelligent than you are.

    Self-respect and a clear awareness (意识)of right and wrong are powerful parts of honesty and are the basis for enriching your relationships with others. Honesty means you do what you do because it's right and not just fashionable or politically correct. A life of principle, of not easily yielding, will always take you forward. My grandparents taught me that.

    Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed Lady Day by her loyal friend and musical partner, Lester Young, Holiday had a great influence on jazz and pop singing. Her voiced style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of controlling tempo (节奏). Above all, she was admired for her deeply personal and direct approach to singing.

    She co-wrote a few songs, and several of them have become jazz standards, notably God Bless the Child, Don't Explain, and Lady Sings the Blues. She also became famous for singing jazz standards written by others, including Easy Living and Strange Fruit.

    Her early career is hard to track down with accuracy. But she later gained work singing in local jazz clubs before being spotted by a talent scout (星探), John Hammond in 1933.

    Her voice and recordings were loved for the depth of emotion and intensity she could bring to classic standards. Her range of voice was not the greatest, but her extraordinary low rough voice was soon to become very famous and influential.

    She was an important icon (偶像) of the jazz era and influential in the development of jazz singing. In the late 1930s, she began singing a civil rights song called Strange Fruit, a song which told the tale of a lynching (用私刑处死) of a black man in the Deep South. It was very controversial for that period and it was not played on radios. It was recorded for Commodore Records and she performed it many times over the next 20 years.

    Billie Holiday had a difficult upbringing which influenced her attitude toward life. She experienced many violent relationships. She also became increasingly dependent on various drugs which contributed to her early death in 1959, aged just 44.

    In 1971, UN scholar Paolo Lugari started an eco-social experiment in Gaviotas, Colombia. Located in one of the most extreme climates, Gaviotas was described as a sustainable, self-sufficient village in an area that Lugari called 'just a big, wet desert'.

    'They always put social experiments in the easiest places,' Lugari said.'We wanted the hardest place. We figured if we could do it here, we could do it anywhere.'

    'Lugari just thought that someday the world would become so crowded that humans would have to learn to live in the planet's least desirable areas,' wrote Alan Weisman, author of Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World.

    Today, Gaviotas is an eco-village with about 200 people. They farm organically. They use wind and solar power. Since 2004, Gaviotas has been 100% fossil fuel independent. The residents also enjoy free housing, schooling, and community meals. Shockingly, there are no weapons, no police, no jail and no mayor. But though these elements would make any social experiment a success, perhaps the most remarkable accomplishment is the planting of 1.5 million pine trees and palm trees. The various results of this new tree growth have been incredible. The shade of the trees has inspired the return of many rainforest species that were once native to the region. Additionally, the residents of Gaviotas enjoy a sustainable source of income from the resin(松香) harvested from the trees.

    The United Nations named Gaviotas a model of sustainable development. The Colombia novelist and Noble Prize winner Grabriel Marquez called Lugari the 'inventor of the world'.

    A new study by a team of researchers has found that 'nature's capacity to store carbon is steadily falling as the world's farmers expand croplands at the cost of the native ecosystem such as forests'.

    Considering this disturbing fact—and as the world population increases towards an estimated 9 billion by the year 2050 and global warming continues to increase the planet's surface temperature—Gaviotas stands as one shining example of how things could be different.

    Cosmo Books Ltd.,                         14, Woodman Road,

    Hertford Estate,                            Two Bridges,

    Rickmansworth,                            West Sussex.

    Middx.                                  25^th February

Dear Sir,

    Just over six months ago, I saw an advertisement in the Morning Mail for a set of the complete works of William Shakespeare. Your company, Cosmo books Ltd., offered this set (eight books of plays and two books of poetry) at what was claimed to be a 'remarkable' price: fifteen pounds and fifty pence, including postage and packing. I had wanted a set of Shakespeare's plays and poems for some time, and these books, in red imitation leather, looked particularly attractive; so I sent for them.

    Two weeks later, the books arrived, together with a set of the complete works of Charles Dickens which I had not ordered. So I returned the Dickens books to you, with a cheque for fifteen pounds and fifty pence for the works of Shakespeare. Two more weeks passed. Then there arrived on my door step a second set of the works of Shakespeare, the same set of novels by Dickens and a six book set of the plays of Moliere, in French. Since I do not read French, these were of no use to me at all. However, I could not afford to post all these books back to you, so I wrote to you at the end of August of last year, instructing you to come and collect all the books that I did not want, and asking you not to send any other books until further notice.

    You did not reply to that letter. Instead you sent me a bill for forty two pounds, and a set of the plays of Schiller, in German. Since then, a new set of books has arrived every two weeks, the works of Goethe, the poems of Milton, the plays of Strindberg; I hardly know what I have. The books are still all in their boxes, in the garage, and my car has to stand in the rain outside.

    I have no room for any more books, and even if I read from now until the Last Judgment, I should not finish reading all the books that you have sent me.

    Please send no more books, send no more bills, send no more angry letters demanding payment. Just send one large lorry and take all the books away, leaving me only with the one set of the complete works of Shakespeare for which I have paid.

Yours faithfully,

SIMON WALKER

    The conclusion of the Paris Agreement in 2015, in which almost every nation committed to reduce their carbon emissions(排放), was supposed to be a turning point in the fight against climate change. But many countries have already fallen behind their goals. Meanwhile emissions worldwide continue to rise.

    The only way to catch up is to aggressively pursue an approach that takes advantage of every possible strategy to reduce emissions. Wind and solar energy are usually part of this effort, but it must also include investing heavily in carbon capture(碳捕捉), utilization(应用)and storage(CCUS)—a range of technologies that pull carbon dioxide from the air, and transform it into useful materials or store it underground. Although CCUS has been opposed as too expensive and unproved, recent gains have made it far more effective. Improvements such as chemical compounds could drive the cost down from $1 00 per ton of captured carbon in 20 16 to $ 20 per ton by 2025, according to a 2016 article in Science.

    Three primary CCUS paths lead to the reduction of carbon emissions: retrofitting(改装)existing power plants; reducing emissions in industries that cannot run on renewable energy; and directly removing carbon from the air. Cutting emissions from existing electric power stations with CCUS could be made more appealing in a future with a circular carbon economy, in which captured carbon could be resold and recycled for other uses——for instance, serving as a raw material for making concrete or plastics.

    The basic idea of carbon capture has faced a lot of opposition. Skepticism has come from climate change deniers, who see it as a waste of money, and from passionate supporters of climate action, who fear that it would be used to justify continued reliance on fossil fuels. Both groups are ignoring the recent advances and the opportunity they present. By limiting investment in decarbonization, the world will miss a major avenue for reducing emissions in a variety of industries. CCUS can also create jobs and profits from what was previously only a waste material by creating a larger economy around carbon.

    The transition to clean energy has become necessary. But that transition's ability to achieve deep decarbonization will become less effective without this wide range of solutions, which must include CCUS.

    The year of 2017 marked the 100th birthday of the honoring Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei.

    From museums to business headquarters, Pei had designed many notable buildings around the world throughout his long professional career. According to the organizers of ''Rethinking Pei: A Centenary Symposium (百年纪念座谈会)" held that year, Pei remained one of the most celebrated architects of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

    The Hong Kong Bank of China Tower is one of his most famous works in Asia. As the bank itself also celebrated its centenary in 2017, it's worth examining the building's historical and architectural background to gain a deeper understanding of the architect who changed Hong Kong's skyline forever.

    The Bank of China Tower (BOC Tower) was completed in 1989, a year which the "New York Times" called, the year of I.M. Pei." For it was in this same year that Pei also completed the glass pyramid of the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, the Creative Artist Agency Headquarters in Los Angeles, and other marvellous architectures all around the world.

    Pei was commissioned (委托)in 1982 by the Beijing-based Bank of China to design it shead quarters in Hong Kong, but construction did not start until 1985.

    There were many reasons for the delay. One of the biggest was the huge challenges posed by the location. The land parcel had been the address of a Victorian building which served as a prison during Japanese occupation of Hong Kong between 1941 and 1945. This terrible heritage might be one of the reasons why it was dismantled in 1982.

    For I.M. Pei, the challenge of the site was not its past, but its present: the relatively small land parcel was surrounded on three sides by elevated roadways serving high-speed heavy traffic, meaning there was no possible public pedestrian access. Then there was its awkward trapezoidal (梯形)shape and the fact that the site also had a deep north-south height difference.

    Another challenge was the unavoidable comparison of the BOC Tower to the neighboring Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Headquarters(HSBC), which was also under construction. A spectacular building generously funded, its architect Norman Foster was simply told to create "the best bank building in the world." At that time it was also the world's most expensive building, costing $668 million. The Bank of China Tower's budget was approximately one fifth of the budget allowed by HSBC.

    The Hong Kong government had promised HSBC that no tall buildings would ever be built in front of its headquarters. Besides, in between the site of the Bank of China and the harbor, there were already a few buildings over 70 meters tall blocking views.

    Recognizing that going tall was the only way to create a landmark at this site with his budget, Pei came up with an architectural tower design that was simple, expressive, innovative, and upon its completion, the tallest building outside of America and the fourth tallest in the world.

    After the Bank of China officially moved into the tower in 1991, noted architect and critic Peter Blake visited the building and declared it to be "probably the most innovative skyscraper structure built anywhere to date."

    Now 30 years after the building^'s construction, the Bank of China Tower continues to offer valuable lessons of architectural and structural creativity under the most demanding conditions. Most importantly, the tower has become one of the most important cultural icons for the city of Hong Kong.