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    One day a professor entered the classroom and asked his students to prepare for a surprise test. They waited anxiously at their desks for the test to begin. The professor handed out the question paper, with the text facing down as usual. Once he handed them all out, he asked his students to turn the page and begin. To everyone's surprise, there were no questions but a black dot in the center of the page. The professor seeing the expression on everyone' face, told them the following, "I want you to write what you see there."

    The students were confused and got started on the inexplicable (令人不解的) task.

    At the end of the class the professor took all the answer papers and started reading each one of them aloud in front of all the students. All of them with no exceptions, described the black dot, explained its position in the middle of the sheet, imagined what the black dot stood for and so on.

    After all had been read, the classroom was silent. The professor began to explain, "I am not going to grade on you this time. I just wanted to give you something to think about. No one wrote about the white part of the paper. Everyone focused on the black dot and the same happens in our lives. We have a white paper to observe and enjoy, but we always focus on the dark spots. Our life is filled with love and care, and we always have reasons to celebrate—nature renewing itself every day, our friends around us, the job that provides our livelihood, the miracles we see every day…"

    In fact, we insist on focusing only on the dark spots—the health issues that bother us, the lack of money, the complicated relationship with a family member, the disappointment with a friend, etc. Take your eyes away from the black spots in your life. The dark spots are very small compared to everything we have in our lives, so enjoy each moment that life gives you.

    A serious problem for today's society is who should be responsible for our elderly and how to improve their lives. It is not only a financial problem but also a question of the system we want for our society. I would like to suggest several possible solutions to this problem.

    First, employers should take the responsibility for their retired employees. To make this possible, a percentage of profits should be set aside for this purpose. But when a company must take life-long responsibility for its employees, it may suffer from a commercial disadvantage due to higher employee costs. Another way of solving the problem is to return the responsibility to the individual. This means each person must save during his working years to pay for his years of retirement. This does not seem a very fair model since some people have enough trouble paying for their daily life without trying to earn extra to cover their retirement years. This means the government might have to step in to care for the poor.

    In addition, the government could take responsibility for the care of the elderly. This could be financed through government taxes to increase the level of pensions. Furthermore, some institutions should be created for senior citizens, which can help provide a comfortable life for them. Unfortunately, as the present situation in our country shows, this is not a truly viable answer. The government can seldom afford to care for the elderly, particularly when it is busy trying to care for the young.

    One further solution is that the government or social organizations establish some working places especially for the elderly where they are independent.

    To sum up, all these options have advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that some combination of these options may be needed to provide the care we hope to give to our elderly generations.

    Eldon Musk, the entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla and Space X, may have a little more time on his hands, as he's leaving his position on the board of the Open AI, according to a blog post.

    The departure is likely the result of Tesla's moving into the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which he said in 2017 would be the “best in the world” and would even be able to “predict your destination.” Musk will continue to “donate and advise the organization,” Open AI said in a blog post on Feb. 20, adding that “As Tesla continues to become more focused on AI, this will avoid a potential future conflict for Eldon.”

    Musk and Y Combiner CEO Sam Altman co-founded the nonprofit enterprise in December 2015, its mission is to develop safe artificial general intelligence and ensure those developments are made public. Open AI researchers published a paper on the site ArXiv.org, detailing the possible secure threats that come with “malicious” AI. In fact, Musk has heard the “evil AI” alarm several times. On Aug. 11, 2017, he warned that artificial intelligence poses a bigger threat to humanity, and he told a gathering of state governors that the government needs to regulate AI before robots start “killing people.”

    Musk's departure from the Open AI board could mean big things for Tesla. As Eton Goodbye, a financial reporter, noted on Futurism, the move “could signal that Tesla is more deeply committed to their own AI projects than we thought.” He added, “Those who have had their ears to any rumors (谣言) that Tesla is ready to deliver vehicles capable of Level 5 autonomy could take this new Open AI development as a sign that the company is inching closer to that unapproachable goal.” No company has reached that level of autonomy, which means that a driverless car could navigate any road under any conditions and that all the human “driver” would need to do is to input a destination.

    A ten-year-old boy from Howell, Michigan is being praised as a hero thanks to his persistence (坚持) that led to saving the life of an elderly neighbor. The event happened late in an evening when Danny DiPietro was being driven home from hockey practice by his mom.

    That's when the young boy noticed an open garage (车库) and a figure that he believed was a dog outside an apartment building near his house. Given the freezing weather, the young boy got a feeling that something was not right. But instead of dismissing it like most kids at his age, he insisted that his mother, Dawn, find out what was going on. Dawn tried to make Danny believe that no one would leave a dog out in such cold weather, but he refused to take no for an answer.

    Dawn finally gave in and decided to drive to the area with the family dog and see if there was any truth in Danny' s hunch (直觉). Sure enough, as she got closer to the apartment building she noticed a garage that was wide open and someone waving madly for help. Upon getting there, she realized that it was not a dog the young boy had seen, but Kathleen St. Onge. The 80-year-old woman had fallen down on some ice in front of her garage and had been lying there for two hours, unable to get up.

    Dawn rushed home to get her husband to help and called 911. The two then returned with some blankets to cover Ms. St. Onge, while they were waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Though still in hospital, the elderly woman is recovering well and forever grateful to Danny for following his hunch!

    More and more travellers in China nowadays prefer homestays rather than traditional hotels, as they seek private living experiences. The house-sharing model was first introduced by the website Couchsurfing, com in 2003. It is still the largest website for travellers to find accommodation(住宿) without much money to spend.

    Encouraged by her great experience of homestays in France, Maggita, 30, considered short-term hire as her first choice in her future trips. She later went back to her hometown Shanghai and ran a "shared accommodation" business.

    The short-term hire idea has been a win-win business model. For travellers, they can rent a special room at a reasonable price and also enjoy a firsthand experience of the local culture, compared with traditional hotels. For owners, they can gain much with daily rental. Now Maggita has quit her last job in an IT company and become a host of some 20 homestays, which enables her to earn a monthly income of around 40,000 —50,000 yuan.

    In recent years, China has seen many homestay booking websites such as Xiaozhu and Tujia. Chen Chi, the founder and CEO of Xiaozhu, said the model is to share rooms or apartments that are not in use with people who need them. Instead of the traditional view that Chinese people feel uncomfortable living with strangers, Chen found that a large number of travellers got along well with house owners.

    However, experts have pointed out a series of problems brought about by the fashion. Lacking supervision(监管) to those accommodation sharing websites, the service quality and accommodation safety cannot be guaranteed(保障).Experts suggest that the online websites should closely work together with communities and local police stations to improve the services.