There are some very good things about open education. This way of teaching allows the students to grow as people, and to develop their own interests in many subjects. Open education allows students to be responsible for their own education, as they are responsible for what they do in life. Some students do badly in a traditional classroom. The open classroom may allow them to enjoy learning. Some students will be happier in an open education school. They will not have to worry about grades or rules. For students who worry about these things a lot, it is a good idea to be in an open classroom.

    But many students will not do well in an open classroom. For some students, there are too few rules. These students will do little in school. They will not make good use of open education. Because open education is so different from traditional education, these students may have a problem getting used to making so many choices. For many students it is important to have some rules in the classroom. They worry about the rules even when there are no rules. Even a few rules will help this kind of students. The last point about open education is that some traditional teachers do not like it. Many teachers do not believe in open education. Teachers who want to have an open classroom may have many problems at their schools.

    You now know what open education is. Some of its good points and bad points have been explained. You may have your own opinion about open education. The writer thinks that open education is a good idea, but only in theory. In actual fact, it may not work very well in a real class or school. The writer believes that most students, but of course not all students, want some structure in their classes. They want and need to have rules. In some cases, they must be made to study some subjects. Many students are pleased to find subjects they have to study interesting. They would not study those subjects if they did not have to.

    A handsome middle-aged man walked quietly into the café and sat down. Before he ordered, he couldn't help but noticed a group of younger men at the table next to him. It was obvious they were making fun of something about him and it wasn't until he remembered he was wearing a small pink ribbon(丝带) on the lapel of his suit that he became aware of what the joke was all about.

The man pretended not to notice it, but the whisper and laughter began to get to him. He looked one of the rude young men straight into the eye, placed his hand beneath the ribbon and asked, “This?”

    With that the young men all began to laugh out loud. The man he spoke to said, “Hey, sorry, man, but we were just commenting on how pretty your little pink ribbon looks against your blue jacket!”

    The middle-aged man calmly invited the joker to come over to his table, and politely seated him. As uncomfortable as he was, the young guy had to, not really sure why. In a soft voice, the middle-aged man said, “I wear this ribbon to bring awareness about breast cancer. I wear it in my mother's honor.”

    “Oh, sorry. She died of breast cancer?”

    “No, she didn't. She's alive and well. But her breasts nourished me as a baby, and were a soft resting place for my head when I was scared or lonely as a little boy. I'm very grateful for my mother's breasts, and her health.”

    “Umm,” the young replied, “yeah.”

    “And I wear this ribbon to honor my wife,” the man continued.

    “And she's okay, too?” the young guy asked.

    “Oh, yes. She's fine. Her breasts have been a great source of loving pleasure for both of us, and with them she nurtured and nourished our daughter 23 years ago. I'm grateful for my wife's breasts, and her health.”

    “Uh, huh. And I guess you wear it to honor your daughter, also?”

    “No. It's too late to honor my daughter by wearing it now ……”

    Shaken and ashamed, the young guy said, “Oh, I'm so sorry, mister.”

    “So, in my daughter's memory, too, I proudly wear this little ribbon, which allows me the opportunity to enlighten others. And here…” With this, he reached in his pocket and handed the young man a little pink ribbon. The young guy looked at it, slowly raised his head and asked, “……?”

    Fix it on your own

    Did you know that a bowl of rice could save your iPod if you drop it in a swimming pool by accident? Or that the camera on your phone could tell you what's wrong with your TV remote control(遥控器)? The experts at Geek Squad have made a gadget (小机件) rescue guide. So, let's take a look at some of their useful advice.

    How to get more juice out of your phone battery (电池)

    If your battery goes dead but you need to get a number or send one last text, try warming it up. That may give you a tiny bit of power. Take the battery from the phone and rub it between your hands. Or warm it under your arm for a few minutes. Then try to start the phone-but use it quickly.

    What to do if your gadget gets wet

    First, try drying it out with a vacuum cleaner(真空吸尘器). If a vacuum cleaner isn't at hand, fill a pot or bowl with uncooked rice and put your wet gadget inside. The dry, uncooked rice will absorb all the water and, after a few hours, you should be able to use the gadget. Don't forget to remove the battery and SIM card before you dry it.

    What to do if your TV remote control stops working

    If replacing the batteries doesn't work, get the camera function up on your phone and point the remote at the lens (镜头). When you press a button on the remote, if it is working, the glass bobble (小球) at the front of the remote will light up when you look at it on the screen of your phone. This is because the screen on a phone or digital camera picks up infrared rays (红外线), even though your eyes don't. If the glass bobble doesn't light up, the remote is broken. If it does, the receiving device is broken.

    The possibility of self-driving robot cars has often seemed like a futurist's dream, years away from coming into reality in the real world. Well, the future is apparently now. The California Department of Motor Vehicles began giving permits in April for companies to test truly self-driving cars on public roads. The state also cleared the way for companies to sell or rent out self-driving cars, and for companies to operate driverless taxi services. California, it should be noted, isn't leading the way here. Companies have been testing their cars in cities across the country. It's hard to predict when driverless cars will be everywhere on our roads. But however long it takes, the technology may change our transportation systems and our cities, for better or for worse, depending on how the transformation is managed.

    While much of the debate so far has been focused on the safety of driverless cars, policymakers should be talking more about how self-driving cars can help reduce traffic jams, cut emissions(排放)and offer more convenient and affordable choices to move around. The arrival of driverless cars is a chance to make sure that those cars are environmentally friendly and more shared.

    Do we want to copy or even worsen the traffic of today with driverless cars? Imagine a future where most adults own their self-driving cars. They accept long, slow journeys to and from work on crowded highways because they can work, entertain themselves or sleep on the ride. They take their driverless car to a date and set the empty car to circle the building to avoid paying for parking. Instead of walking a few blocks to pick up a child or the dry cleaning, they send the self-driving minibus. The convenience even leads fewer people to take public transport — an unwelcome side effect researchers have already found in ride-hailing(网约车)services. Policymakers should start thinking now about how to make sure the appearance of driverless cars doesn't worsen the transportation system we have today. The coming technological development presents a chance for cities and states to develop transportation systems designed to move more people, and more affordably. The car of the future is coming. We just have to plan for it.

    Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, say physicists.

    Quantum mechanics (量子力学), though firmly tested, is so weird and anti-intuitive that physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, “I think I can safely say nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Attempts to explain some of the bizarre (奇异的) consequences of quantum theory have led to some mind-bending ideas, such as the Copenhagen interpretation and the many-worlds interpretation.

    Now there's a new theory on the block, called the “many interacting worlds” hypothesis (假设) (MIW), and the idea is just as profound as it sounds. The theory suggests not only parallel worlds exist, but that they interact with our world on the quantum level and are thus detectable. Though still speculative (推测的), the theory may help to finally explain some of the bizarre consequences inherent in quantum mechanics.

    The theory is a spinoff of the many-worlds interpretation in quantum mechanics—an assumption that all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual, though parallel, world. One problem with the many-worlds interpretation, however, has been that it is fundamentally untestable, since observations can only be made in our world. Happenings in these proposed “parallel” worlds can thus only be imagined.

    MIW, however, says otherwise. It suggests that parallel worlds can interact on the quantum level, and in fact that they do.

    “The idea of parallel universes in quantum mechanics has been around since 1957,” explained Howard Wiseman, a physicist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and one of the physicists to come up with MIW. “In the well-known 'Many-Worlds Interpretation', each universe branches into a bunch of new universes every time a quantum measurement is made. All possibilities are therefore realized — in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid (小行星) missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonized by the Portuguese.”

    “But critics question the reality of these other universes, since they do not influence our universe at all,” he added. “On this score, our 'Many Interacting Worlds' approach is completely different, as its name implies.”

    Wiseman and colleagues have proposed that there exists “a universal force of repulsion between 'nearby'(i.e. similar) worlds, which tends to make them more dissimilar.” Quantum effects can be explained by factoring in this force, they propose.

    When asked about whether their theory might imply that humans could someday interact with other worlds, Wiseman said: “It's not part of our theory. But the idea of human interactions with other universes is no longer pure fantasy.”

    What might your life look like if you made different choices? Maybe one day you'll be able to look into one of these alternative worlds and find out.

    Each year, hundreds of thousands of wild animals around the world are killed in trophy hunting—the organized shooting of animals for pleasure. The hunters then bring parts of the animal home with them as their "trophy" to remember the hunting.

    Trophy hunters pay big money to kill animals. Some of the money goes to helping wildlife protection. Trophy hunting also attracts business, which encourages people to preserve land and breed(饲养) animals that would otherwise be endangered. Cathy Dean, head of the Save the Rhino Charity, says that at the start of the 1900s there were only 50–100 southern white rhinos. Now, there are around 18,000. This is partly because some of them were raised specially for trophy hunting.

    But things don't usually go on one way. According to WWF, elephant populations have fallen from 1.3 million to just over 400,000 since the 1980s. Over the same period, hunters from around the world have taken home more than 100,000 African elephant trophies. Trophy hunting is not illegal(非法的) but unfair on the animals. In 2015, Cecil the lion was shot by a US trophy hunter. Cecil was a beloved lion in Zimbabwe, Africa. Cecil was lured with bait(诱饵), shot with an arrow and struggled in blood for more than ten hours before his hunters tracked and finished killing him. His son, Xanda, met a similar fate two years later.

    Cecil's death caused worldwide outrage and protests(反抗) against trophy hunting. Countries including Australia, France and the Netherlands banned(禁止) the import of lion trophies—they stop hunters from being allowed to bring home parts of the animal they kill. They believe that people will stop trophy hunting because the activity might lose its attraction if hunters can't bring their trophies home.

    The UK Government said that it would consider a ban on trophy-hunting imports by 2017, but no action had been taken. In April 2019, a letter by protesters against trophy hunting was sent to the UK government asking to ban trophy-hunting imports. On 7 May, the official in charge of the environment, Michael Gove, said that the UK would not ban the imports for the time being. This left the world in a state of a shock. Hopefully the UK will place a ban on trophy-hunting imports, which would be an important message and inspire others to treat animals better. We're waiting for the day to come.