Cleverness is a gift while kindness is achoice. Gifts are easy—they're given after all. Choices can be hard.

    I got the idea to start Amazon 16 yearsago. I came across the fact that the Internet usage was growing at 2,300percent per year. I'd never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, andthe idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles was veryexciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I'd been married for ayear. I told my wife Mac kenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go to do thiscrazy thing that probably wouldn't work since most start-ups don't and I wasn'tsure what to expect. Mac kenzie 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 meto follow my passion.

    I was working at a financial firm in NewYork City with a bunch of very smart people and I had a brilliant boss that Imuch admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a companyselling 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 goodjob.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about itfor 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it was reallya difficult choice, but finally, 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 behaunted (萦绕)by a decision to not try at all.

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

    The online economy—from search to email to social media—is built in large part on the fact that consumers are willing to give away their data in exchange for products that are free and easy to use. The assumption behind this trade-off is that without giving up all that data, those products either couldn't be so good or would have to come at a cost.

    But a new working paper, released this week by Lesley Chiou of Occidental College and Catherine Tucker of MIT, suggests that the trade-off may not always be necessary. By studying the effects of privacy regulations in the EU, they attempted to measure whether the anonymization(匿名化) of search data hurts the quality of search results.

    Most search engines capture user data, including IP addresses and other data that can identify a user across multiple visits. This data allows them search companies to improve their algorithms(算法) and to personalize results for the user. At least, that's the idea. To determine whether storage of users' personal data improves search results, Chiou and Tucker looked at how search results from Bring and Yahoo differed before and after changes in the European Commission's rules on data retention(数据保存). In 2008 the Commission recommended that search engines reduce the period over which search engines kept user records. In response, Yahoo decided to strengthen its privacy policy by anonymizing user data after 90 days. In 2010 Microsoft changed its policy, and began deleting IP addresses associated with searches on Bring after six months and all data points intended to identify a user across visits after 18 months. In 2011 Yahoo changed its policy again, this time deciding to store personal data longer—for 18 months rather than 90 days—allowing the researchers yet another chance to measure how changes in data storage affected search results.

    The researchers then looked at data from UK residents' web history before and after the changes. To measure search quality, they looked at the number of repeated searches, a signal of dissatisfaction with search results. In all three cases, they found no statistically significant effect on search result quality following changes in data retention policy. In other words, the decision to anonymize the data didn't appear to impair the search experience. “Our results suggest that the costs of privacy may be lower than currently perceived,” the authors write, though they note that previous studies have come to different conclusions.

    Banker Chip Paillex had never planted so much until he moved to the countryside in Pittstown, New Jersey, seven years ago. Surrounded by working farms, he quickly became interested in the grow-it-yourself idea and rented a piece of 30-by-30-foot land. He planted tomatoes, eggplants and other vegetable—enough to feed his family of four for the summer. He ended up with so much produce; he couldn't give it away. He found a local food factory and donated 120 pounds of fresh vegetables.

    The following year, with a handful of volunteers and a memorable name—America's Grow-a-Row, Paillex harvested 1, 500 pounds of fresh vegetables, all of which he donated to area food banks--places that give food to poor people. Soon Paillex had a hundred volunteers and needed more land. He visited Meredith and Jeremy Compton, who farm Peaceful Valley Orchards in Pittstown. Could he work their land?

    “I guess we were feeling honored, " says Meredith. Not only do the Comptons welcome Grow-a-Row volunteers, they also work on the land.

    What began with a few empty fields has turned into a large local farm. This year, Grow-a-Row will deliver about 250, 000 pounds of fresh produce to food banks. Their secret for getting all of this done? Family power. " Each week, a couple of families 'own' the garden, " says Paillex." They water, pick, and deliver, and then hand it off on Sunday night to the next group of families."

    Paillex also welcomed local school kids. On a Friday morning in May, some kids worked on a field. "We' re growing food, " one fifth grader said proudly.

    "The program shows kids that there are people in need, " says Paillex. “When these kids become tomorrow's leaders, they'll be much more likely to encourage their co-workers or employees to get involved in something like this. “

    "Chip makes people want to help, " says Colleen Duerr, a mother of two. "And families love this. Chip has given us a way to raise our kids with a giving heart. "

    There are plenty of beauty schools throughout the country that can help you to start a career in cosmetology(美容业). Nowadays, young people may not be able to afford a four-year college. Students can look forward to attending a beauty school program which will only take a few months to complete and start their career right away to earn money.

    There can be many benefits of going to beauty school. The expense is much less than attending a four-year university. Besides, attending beauty school is mostly a hands-on(动手的) experience which appeals to many people. Some students don't like sitting all day listening to lectures and then having to study at night. What's more, most beauty school programs keep up with the changing trends and fashion. So you will always be working on different hair types which can be fun and will give you a lot of experience throughout the years of your career.

    If you are worried about finding a job after graduation, many beauty schools will offer assistance for immediate job placement and give you peace of mind that you will not be stranded looking for a job. Most colleges and universities are not equipped to do that because of the large number of graduates each year.

    Cosmetologists will also make a good salary. The average salary will depend on your location, but you may earn a salary around $3,000--$3,500 a month. This is not including tips which could be $600 or more a month. Not only can young people go to cosmetology school, but people of all ages can start this career. As you can see, there are many benefits of beauty schools that can be the perfect opportunity for anyone to become a great cosmetologist.

    Should Parents Teach Children How to Tweet?

    Social media is a seemingly endless source of concern for parents, with worries that it weakens their children's confidence and attention spans. But others counter that it could also be broadening their horizons.

    The latest round of worry was sparked by a study of the impact of social media use on 8-12- year-olds published by Anne Longfield, Children's Commissioner for England. The report focused on 32 children, who said they used social media to stay connected with friends and family and to have fun, by watching videos for example. But they also described pressures from constant contact, online comments that weaken their self-esteem, and the need to shape offline activities to make them shareable. "You see your friends going ice skating, partying or talking about how much revision they have done, and it can make you feel inadequate," says Bea, a junior school student from Bristol, UK. "It's just so hard to get away from."

    Children have to take risks on their journeys to adulthood, and desires to fit in and be popular existed before Mark Zuckerberg came along with Facebook. However, in previous generations these pressures came largely from people they knew, and they mostly stayed outside the home. Now the pressures could come from any one of the nearly 3 billion people online, and follow them from school to home, and can even continue through the night.

    The pressures do get on parents' nerves, among which the utmost concern is how their children can be protected from harms, given that social media is now integral to the way many young people interact. A good starting point is a basic understanding of childhood development milestones.

    Broadly, children have a high dependency on carers for security and guidance up to the age of 5, increasing independence and self-care from 6 to 11, and increasing autonomy and growing reliance on peers from 12-18 years old. Against this background, the suitability of social media for children of different ages should be considered respectively.

    According to Longfield's study, children should be taught about online safety from an early age, better before secondary school. There is growing evidence that efforts need to be extended to provide earlier guidance on less extreme but more common risks, including oversharing, low selfesteem, addiction and insomnia. The evidence suggests she is right. However, approaches that focus merely on the potential negatives are unlikely to work.

    "My school has tried to do a lot, but it often involves trying to drill into us how bad social media can be," says Bea. "People of my age really like social media, so I think a better approach would be if they said ‘Although it is good, here are some negatives'."

When bicycle-sharing company oBike pulled out of Singapore abruptly last year, it left the city with unattended bicycles everywhere. Myanmar businessman Mike Than Tun Win saw the perfect opportunity to turn trash (垃圾) into treasure. "What if these bicycles could be distributed to poor students in villages so they can cycle to school? " he thought.

Mr Than, 33, grew up in Mandalay, where he used to walk to school as a student. While traveling through rural (乡村的) areas in Myanmar over the last few years he saw things had not changed. Long lines of children in rural villages continue to walk 30 minutes to an hour just to get to school. "I thought if we could just reduce the time they take, they could spend more time studying, gain more knowledge and increase their chances of getting out of poverty (贫困), " he said.

With that, he started a movement called Lesswalk with the intention of buying bicycles from bike-sharing firms oBike and ofo—which have stopped operations in Singapore — and shipping them to Yangon. He would renew the bicycles before distributing them to teenagers and families living in rural villages in Myanmar, beginning with villages in Mandalay and Sagaing areas.

Over the last three months, the businessman has bought 10, 000 bicycles in Singapore and Malaysia. He paid for 5, 000 of the bicycles out of his own pocket, with other sponsors paying for the rest.

Mr Than plans to modify (修改) the bicycles so that they can better suit the needs of the children in villages. Most of the time they ride around with their little brothers and sisters. "I'm planning to add an extra seat at the back so that they can go to school together," he said. He also plans to remove the digital locks and give each a new one that works better in villages.

Including the cost of shipping, modification and distribution, Mr Than thinks each bicycle might cost him around US $35 to US $40. "I might have to spend more money, but it is better that these bicycles are going to help some people rather than going to waste," he said.