Everybody hates it, but everybody does it. A recent report said that 40%of Americans hate tipping. In America alone, tipping is a $ 16 billion-a-year industry. Consumers acting politely ought not to pay more than they have to for a given service. Tips should not exist. So why do they? The common opinion in the past was that tips both rewarded the efforts of good service and reduced uncomfortable feelings of inequality. And also, tipping makes for closer relations. It went without saying that the better the service, the bigger the tip.

    But according to a new research from Cornell University, tips no longer serve any useful function. The paper analyzes numbers they got from 2,547 groups dining at 20 different restaurants. The connection between larger tips and better service was very weak. Only a tiny part of the size of the tip had anything to do with the quality of service.

    Tipping is better explained, by culture than by the money people spend. In America, the custom came into being a long time ago. It is regarded as part of the accepted cost of a service. In New York restaurants, failing to tip at least 15% could well mean dissatisfaction from the customers. Hairdressers can expect to get l5%-20%, and the man who delivers your fast food $ 2. In Europe, tipping is less common. In many restaurants the amount of tip is decided by a standard service charge. In many Asian countries, tipping has never really caught on at all. Only a few have really taken to tipping. According to Michael Lynn, the Cornell papers' author, countries in which people are more social or outgoing tend to tip more. Tipping may reduce anxiety about being served by strangers. And Mr. Lynn says, “In America, where people are expressive and eager to mix up with others, tipping is about social approval. If you tip badly, people think less of you. Tipping well is a chance to show off.”

    Everyone takes drugs. Sometimes a drug might be called a herb but the effect is the same. Drugs and herbs can make life better for they are used to improve health. From the simplest headache to a cure for cancer, people believe that certain drugs can help them. But there is danger if the drugs are not used in a proper way.

    American teenagers sometimes use certain drugs to feel good. They call this “getting high”. The problem is that once a young man or a young woman has the feeling of “getting high”, they want to do it often. If school is boring or too hard, students might get depressed and a drug or herb might help them feel better. If the student takes too much of a drug, the body may change in a wrong way such as a confused mind, poor sight, a headache, and an uncomfortable stomach.

    Schools now have D．A．R．E．program which means Drug Abuse Resistance Education. This program was started so that young students from age 10 to 18 might understand how a drug affects their bodies. The main point of the program is education. Once a student understands certain drugs can cause ill health，he will know he should not use them.

    Education is the key to good nutrition as well. If a student eats correctly, he or she will be full of energy which leads to good study habits and good grades. Poor nutrition may cause the need for more sleep and poor concentration. Proper food is similar to the proper use of drugs. Both allow a healthy body to grow while misuse of them prevents a person from developing normally.

Choose Your One-Day-Tours!

Tour A—Bath &Stonehenge including entrance fees to the ancient Roman bathrooms and Stonehenge—￡37 until 26 March and ￡39 thereafter.

Visit the city with over 2, 000 years of history and Bath Abbey, the Royal Crescent and the Costume Museum. Stonehenge is one of the world's most famous prehistoric monuments dating back over 5, 000 years.

    Tour B—Oxford & Stratford including entrance fees to the University St Mary's Church Tower and Anne Hathaway's—￡32 until 12 March and ￡36 thereafter.

Oxford: Includes a guided tour of England's oldest university city and colleges. Look over the "city of dreaming spires (尖顶)" from St Mary's Church Tower.

    Stratford: Includes a guided tour exploring much of the Shakespeare wonder.

    Tour C—Windsor Castle &Hampton Court including entrance fees to Hampton Court Palace—￡34 until 11 March and ￡37 thereafter.

    Includes a guided tour of Windsor and Hampton Court, Henry VIII's favorite palace. Free time to visit Windsor Castle (entrance fees not included). With 500 years of history, Hampton Court was once the home of four Kings and one Queen. Now this former royal palace is open to the public as a major tourist attraction. Visit the palace and its various historic gardens, which include the famous maze (迷宫) where it is easy to get lost!

    Tour D—Cambridge including entrance fees to the Tower of Saint Mary the Great—￡33 until 18 March and ￡37 thereafter.

    Includes a guided tour of Cambridge, the famous university town, and the gardens of the 18th century.

    In recent years, terms like "going green" and "eco-friendly" have become buzz words on talk shows, commercials and product packaging. The term "eco-friendly" has been used for so many different products and practices.

    Eco-friendly Car Race

    Can you imagine a car racer is so eco-friendly that its tyres are made from potatoes, its body is created from hemp (大麻) and rapeseed oil and it runs on fuel made from wheat and sugar beet (甜菜)? The one-seater racing car called Eco One is built by experts from Warwick University, who hope that Eco One will be adopted by the automotive industry. It is sold at $ 51,000.

    Pollution-sensitive Dress

    Don't be caught outside unaware of pollution levels in the air. The pollution-sensitive EPA Dress by Stephanie Sandstrom notices pollution in the air accordingly. This dress ­ which is actually quite pretty ­ looks like you pull it from the bottom of the dirty laundry pile when the air is dirty. It might protect your health by advising you to stay indoors for the day, but it won't do you any favor if you're meeting with clients.

    Eco-friendly Umbrella

    Traditional umbrellas come with a fixed surface. Although it is changeable, you cannot replace it easily. This eco-friendly design is more flexible. It is actually only an umbrella skeleton(骨架)without any surface, which can be folded, so you can put anything such as newspapers, plastic bags or whatever you want to serve as the protecting surface.

    Eco-friendly Moss (苔藓) Carpet

    It is said that walking on fresh grass increases your blood circulation. The Moss Carpet, created by Nguyen La Chanh, looks at getting the grass to your feet. The mat includes ball moss, island moss and forest moss. The humidity (湿度) of the bathroom ensures that it grows well. And that's why you need to place it there and not anywhere else.

    The San Diego Center for Children recently added three acres of land to its 9-acre Linda Vista campus. Thanks to the efforts of Assembly member Dr. Shirley Weber, the state sold the land near the Center's main campus. Now the Center, which is the oldest children's nonprofit (非营利的机构) in the region, will be able to provide more treatment and educational foster care (看护) to kids and families who need it most.

    Jewish Family Service of San Diego (JFS) received a $10, 000 grant from the USS Midway Foundation to support its Hand Up Food Pantry (食品贮藏室). "Jewish Family Service works every day to help struggling families and individuals in San Diego move forward and build more stable, secure lives," says JFS CEO Michael Hopkins.

    St. Madeleine Sophie's Center raised more than $16, 000 at its Swing with Santa Golf Tournament (锦标赛). The funds will go toward programs for adults with developmental disabilities. The 5th annual tournament included 18 hotels, food and drinks, and two celebrity appearances: both Santa and Elvis made a dramatic entrance via helicopter.

    Coming Up: Raise money for the 4SRanch-Del Sur Community Foundation and Helen's Closet (壁橱，衣帽间) at the 9th Annual Thank You Run on Thanksgiving Day, November 22. Helen's Closet serves patients with ALS. The distance is 5K with a 1K Fun Run for children aged 8 and under.

Chinese delivery driver, Gao Zhixiao, was featured on the cover of Time magazine in March because of his sense of commitment. Alongside five others, he was picked by the magazine as one of heroes among the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Ever since COVID-19 broke out, many restaurants shut down or switched to takeout-only services. Millions of people have been staying at home to avoid getting infected. "People choose to order food online or buy fruit and vegetables to cook at home," Gao told Time. As a result, delivery orders dramatically increased, placing a huge burden on delivery company.

Born into a poor family in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Gao started to make a living in Beijing at age 16. After the novel coronavirus broke out, Gao hesitated for a second to continue working, but then picked up orders because he thought customers might be in need.

Due to the danger of person-to-person transmission, Gao must take care to avoid spreading viruses during his route around Beijing, including taking a regular health test and spending 20 minutes disinfecting his motorcycle and clothes each morning. Besides delivering goods, Gao once willingly cooked for an elderly customer who was living alone at her home.

It is the commitment of ordinary people like Gao that has made the biggest contributions in the fight against COVID-19.