“Cleverness is a gift while kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy – they're given after all. Choices can be hard.” –– Jeff Bezos.

    I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that the Internet usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I'd never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I'd been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go to do this crazy thing that probably wouldn't work since most start-ups don't, and I wasn't sure what to expect. MacKenzie told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I'd been a garage inventor. I'd always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

    I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all.

    After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I'm proud of that choice. For all of us, in the end, we are our choices.

    Recently, the TV show “Where are we going, Dad?” produced by Hunan SatelliteTelevision is a big hit across nation. Many famous stars brought their children to a strange village alone, and they had to spend 72 hours with their children there. The program fully showed us a modern version of the “how to be a good father”. As the young parents today are too busy to take care of their children, this new form of “Lost on the way” played by nanny Daddy and cute kids triggered（触发）a lot of people's emotional resonance（共鸣）. Both the kids and their parents will find that their hearts are being drawn closer. But this kind of feeling has just proved that there is a big spiritual barrier between the modern parents and children.The TV shows like “Children are hard to support!”, “Where are we going, Dad?”, “hot mom” and “cute kids” are becoming more and more popular. All of these show the new parents' confusion in children's education and the appeal for the balance between career and family.

    In the real life, on the one hand, the young parents feel helpless because they are too busy to accompany their children under the pressures of work and life; on the other hand, they continue to do so. The data collected by HNTV shows that nearly two-thirds of their audience are female, among whom 36% are aged from 25 to 34.We can imagine such a scene that one evening a young mother is watching the show with her young children, while her husband is still at work or trapped in socializing, or maybe is just playing computer games in the bedroom. The story of a child without the company of father is still going on. In fact, it is sometimes the same to mothers. In a modern family, it is often the old who take the responsibility of raising a child. The participation of mother in the children's education is also very low.

    It is just this kind of confusion where the parents have gone in the modern family education, and where the parents will guide their children to go that “Where are we going, Dad?” shows us. If a child wants to grow up healthily and safely into a modern citizen with independent personality and free spirit, it is very important for him or her to follow the parents who serve as their first teacher. Maybe this is the real reason why such kind of TV programs could get hot. The truth is that children will go where their parents go; and society will go where the children go.

    In recent years, remote-sensing technologies have become ordinary in archaeological fieldwork（实地考察）. Such tools for excavation produce rapid results and cause no damage to archaeological sites. They are highly accurate and usually cost effective. Here are three of the modern archaeologist's most trusted remote-sensing tools.

    As the simplest of the remote-sensing techniques that archaeologists use, aerial（空中的）photography allows experts to see aspects of a site that may be invisible from the ground, such as the way in which something such as a town, garden, or building is arranged and traces of old walls and roads. The technique involves taking photographs with conventional cameras and filming from airplanes, helicopters, hot-air balloons, or other airborne vehicles.

    Geographic Information System (GIS) contains a large amount of field data archaeologists typically collect in and around excavation sites. While in the field, archaeologists use GIS on their computers to make and manage detailed site maps, and they can combine the results of remote-sensing tests with maps of the region created with the aid of Global Positioning System. Resulting maps sort the most archeologically promising areas and display these sites three-dimensionally.

    Ranging in size from small handled models that one places against the ground to larger ones that one across a site, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) devices use low-power radio waves to detect changes underground. Unlike traditional radar, which broadcasts into the air and uses a dish to focus the returned waves, GPR uses a small but sensitive receiver placed directly against the ground. Depending on their needs, archaeologists can adjust radio frequencies upward for shallow sites or downward for deeper areas, though GPR devices produce the greatest definition（清晰度）when reading depths of three feet or less.

    Most American students go to traditional public schools. There are about 88,000 public schools all over the US. Some students attend about 3,000 independent public schools called charter schools.

    Charter schools are self­governing. Private companies operate some charter schools. They are similar in some ways to traditional public schools. They receive tax just as other public schools do. Charter schools must prove to local or state governments that their students are learning. These governments provide the schools with the agreement called a charter that permits them to operate.

    Charter schools are different because they do not have to obey most laws governing traditional public schools. Local, state or federal governments cannot tell them what to teach. Each school can choose its own goals and decide the ways it wants to reach them. Class size is usually smaller than in traditional public schools.

    Governments strongly support charter schools as a way to re­organize public schools that are failing to educate students. But some education agencies and unions oppose charter schools. One teachers' union has just made public the results of the first national study comparing the progress of students in traditional schools and charter schools.

    The American Federation of Teachers criticized the government's delay in releasing the results of the study, which is called the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Union education experts say the study shows that charter school students performed worse in math and reading tests than students in regular public schools.

    Some experts say the study is not a fair look at charter schools because students in those schools have more problems than students in traditional schools. Other education experts say the study results should make charter school officials demand more student progress.

    Imagine jet-setting from Tokyo to Paris, enjoying first-class travel, a four-course dinner and a city tour－all without leaving the ground. This is the future of air travel according to Japanese company First Airlines, which has used the power of virtual reality to create dream vacations.

    Passengers avoid the costly airport transfer, the baggage fees or busy airport terminal（航站楼）－and instead enjoy the privileges of business or first-class travel and an expensive tour of Paris－all while remaining motionless in Tokyo. As well as Paris, First Airlines also offers the virtual destinations of New York, Rome and Hawaii.

    After boarding, guests can settle down for the two-hour flight on their advanced Airbus seat－surrounded by decoration that is modeled on the inside of an aircraft, for maximum realism. There is flight service and VR, foods, music for every destination. Passengers will be served a delicious meal by air stewards, alongside drinks and other desserts. The menu depends on the destination of choice－Manhattan clam chowder and cheesecake for New York and salmon tartar and onion soup for Paris. After landing at the destination, guests can enjoy a 360-degree tour of the destination－all thanks to projection（投影）mapping and video.

    It makes for a supposedly stress-free vacation, perfect for those whose ability to travel abroad is limited by cost or health. Virtual reality is becoming increasingly present everywhere at all times in the world of travel－allowing travelers to appreciate the wonders of the world, all without leaving their house.

    At just 4,980 yen（$ 46）for business class and 5,980 yen（$ 56）for first class－these two- hour flights are far more affordable than their real-life flights. Tokyo citizens eager to experience First Airlines can book a trip on the website, with reservations currently being taken until May 2018.

The text from my son said it all: "Dad, there's an article you were born to write that the world is finally ready for: Bring Back the Handkerchief!" As my son knows, there's no "bring back" for me. For me, the handkerchief never left. 

My mother raised me with several fixed rules. One was that a gentleman always has a clean handkerchief in his right rear pocket, a piece of simple cotton, roughly 15 inches square and less than four inches when folded. I was a dutiful son, but as a child, I had been wondering what it was there for. After 60 years, my body weight now feels wrong if I'm heading out of the house with an empty back pocket. 

I am sure this habit has sometimes struck friends but in polite company nobody comments on somebody else's business. Children like my kids think of my hankie ridiculously old-fashioned and they have their arguments. If you have to be prepared every day for allergies or a cold, why not choose a little packet of tissues, which saves you from that disgusting business of blowing your nose in the thing and then stuffing it back in your pants?

Point taken. But a handkerchief is more durable and has a far wider variety of uses. Can you grab the handle of a pot that's boiling over with a Kleenex? Or do you recall the cases of skinned knees and drippy noses that hankie wiped? In fact, my wife gave me several new handkerchiefs as gifts. Neither of us can count the number of times her eyes have welled up at a movie, or, as happens, she's needed to blow her nose. 

Yet not even my mother could have anticipated the hankie's new role as an Essential Public Health Appliance. All of us have learnt how hard it is to follow advice from medical experts about not touching your face. Here is an answer. Use your hankie. In case of emergency, your handkerchief can become a makeshift DIY mask that can be pulled over your lower face like a robber entering a bank. 

And it will certainly give me the chance to lift my chin and look at my adult children through one eye, asking in her good-hearted way, "What do you have to say now, smarty-pants?"