With the development of science and technology, new inventions, especially new electronic products, have made people's lives easy and convenient. But as the saying puts: A coin has two sides.

    One day, I was walking in the park with a friend and his cell phone rang, interrupting our conversation. There we were, walking and talking on a beautiful sunny day and…I became invisible, absent from the conversation.

    The telephone used to connect you to the absent. Now it makes people sitting next to you feel absent. Why is it that the more connected we get, the more disconnected I feel? Every advance in communications technology is a tragedy to the closeness of human interaction. With email and instant messaging over the Internet, we can now communicate without seeing or talking to one another. With voice mail, you can conduct entire conversations without ever reaching anyone. If my mom has a question, I just leave the answer on her machine.

    As almost every contact we can imagine between human beings gets automated, the alienation(疏远) index goes up. You can't even call a person to get the phone number of another person any more. Directory assistance is almost always fully automated.

    Pumping petrol at the station? Why say good morning to the attendant when you can swipe(刷)your credit card at the pump and save yourself the bother of human contact?

    Making a deposit at the bank? Why talk to a teller who might live in the neighborhood when you can just insert your card into ATM?

    Pretty soon you won't have the burden of making eye contact at the grocery shop. Some supermarket chains are using a self-scanner so you can check yourself out, avoiding those check-out people who look at you and ask how you are doing.

    I am not against modern technology. I own a cell phone, an ATM card, a voice mail system, and an email account. Giving them up isn't wise…they're a great help to us. It's some of their possible consequences that make me feel uneasy.

    More and more, I find myself hiding behind e-mail to do a job meant for conversation. Or being relieved that voice mail picked up a call because I didn't really have time to talk. The communications industry devoted to helping me keep in touch is making me lonelier.

    So I've put myself on technology restriction: no instant messaging, with people who live near me，no cell phoning in the presence of friends, no letting the voice mail pick up when I'm at home.

    Recently I started discovering one thing which amazes me so much: how perfect everything is in the world we are living in! Just look, all day long we are busy working and just when we get tired, the night comes in, so we may sleep and relax. One day we may enjoy the bright sun and another day, when we get tired of the sun, the rain pours down.

    A few months ago I was so happy with my life. Later, I got tired from the happiness. I wished I would have some trial to strengthen my character and learn something new about life. I got what I wanted. Shortly after I got severe angina (心绞痛), so I had to stay home for several weeks. During this period I had time to rethink my life and discover myself. The lessons were terrific, but I felt grateful for this time.

    Another example: I have a friend, who primarily thinks about having fun. Once I thought why we get along well with each other and what in me attracts her. A couple of days ago I found the answer. I like calmness and silence. She likes noise and agitation (热闹). We attract each other just to balance ourselves, in other words, to give some drive to me and some calmness to her!

    So remember that the universe is so wise that it will try to balance you. As for me, this is perfect because extremes create suffering: too much food – too little food, too cold – too hot, too much fun – too little fun.

    Time flies, but the tracks of time remain in books and museums. This is what made a recent tragedy in Brazil even more terrible.

    On Sept.2, a big fire ripped through the National Museum of Brazil.“ Two hundred years of work, research and knowledge were lost,” Brazilian President Michel Temer wrote on Twitter after the fire. “It's a sad day for all Brazilians.”

    Most of the 20 million pieces of history are believed to have been destroyed. Only as little as 10 percent of the collection may have survived, Time reported. Among all the items, there were Egyptian mummies, the bones of uniquely Brazilian creatures such as the long－necked dinosaur Maxakalisaurus, and an 11,500－year－old skull called Luzia, which was considered one of South America's oldest human fossils.

    Besides these, Brazil's indigenous(本土的，土著的) knowledge also suffered. The museum housed world－famous collections of indigenous objects, as well as many audio recordings of local languages from all over Brazil. Some of these recordings, now lost, were of languages that are no longer spoken.

    “The tragedy this Sunday is a sort of national suicide, a crime against our past and future generations,” Bernard Mello Franco, one of Brazil's best－known columnists, wrote on the O Globo newspaper site.

    The cause of the fire is still unknown, as BBC News reported on Sept. 3. After the fire burned out, crowds protested outside the museum to show their anger at the loss of the irreplaceable items of historical value.

    According to Emilio Bruna, an ecologist at the University of Florida, museums are living, breathing stores of who we are and where we've come from, and the world around us.

    Just as underwater grass floats on the surface if it loses its roots, a nation is lost without its memories. The fire at the National Museum of Brazil teaches the world an important lesson: We should never neglect history.

Music

    Opera at Music Hall: 1243 Elm Street. The season runs June through August, with additional performances in March and September. The Opera honors Enjoy the Arts membership discounts. Phone: 241-2742. http://www.cityopera.com.

    Chamber Orchestra: The Orchestra plays at Memorial Hall at 1406 Elm Street, which offers several concerts from March through June. Call 723-1182 for more information. http: //www.chamberorch.com.

    Symphony Orchestra: At Music Hall and Riverbend. For ticket sales, call 381-3300. Regular season runs September through May at Music Hall in summer at Riverbend. http://www.symphony.org/home.asp.

    College Conservatory of Music (CCM): Performances are on the main campus(校园) of the university, usually at Patricia Cobbett Theater. CCM organizes a variety of events, including performances by the well-known LaSalle Quartet, CCM's Philharmonic Orchestra, and various groups of musicians presenting Baroque through modern music. Students with I.D. cards can attend the events for free. A free schedule of events for each term is available by calling the box office at 556-4183. http://www.ccm.uc.edu/events/calendar.

    Riverbend Music Theater: 6295 Kellogg Ave. Large outdoor theater with the closest seats under cover (price difference). Big name shows all summer long! Phone: 232-6220. http://www.riverbendmusic.com.

    There's a song by the great Jamaican singer Bob Marley called So Much Trouble In The World. Marley understood that part of the reason why there are so many problems in the world is the lack of tolerance between people. The UN understands this too—that's why it made Nov 16 "International Day for Tolerance".

    But first of all, what is tolerance? French philosopher Voltaire (1694—1778) can give us some help. According to him, tolerance "is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty (脆弱) and error; let us pardon each other's folly—that is the first law of nature."

    Nobody's perfect. When we're tempted to criticize another person, we should perhaps remember our own imperfections first.

    Very often, people don't realize that they're intolerant. This is because intolerance has a lot to do with ignorance. For example, the UN's campaign is in part about the treatment of females by males. But often, the behavior of men toward women is intolerant because men don't put themselves in the shoes of women.

    It's worth thinking a little about the words "tolerance" and "intolerance". Are they the best words to describe the evils of which we're speaking here? To agree to be "tolerant" of someone isn't necessarily a very respectful thing. When someone is tolerated, it implies that there's something wrong with them.

    But it seems wrong that people should agree to "tolerate" people with black skin, for example. And should women think they have received the respect they are due when men agree to "tolerate" them?

    Still, what Voltaire said stands: We humans are not perfect and this weakness is something that we all share. That's the reason we should be tolerant.

    It's a little like generosity. We can give things to another person, and we can also give our forgiveness. Bob Marley understood this. In the song mentioned above, he advised: "Write your love on a rock so it stays for eternity; write your hate in the sand so the waves will wash it away."

    It was a normal school day for senior Solymar Solis until an unexpected visitor arrived. Her dad, Sgt. Carlos Solis Melendez, surprised her by coming home early from Kuwait and visiting her unannounced at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina.

    After serving in Kuwait for nine months, Melendez returned home a week earlier than his daughter expected. He held balloons and flowers in a classroom as he sat at a student's desk to blend in with the crowd. "It came across my mind like, ‘How is she going to react?" he recalled the heartwarming moment. "Is she going to be happy and run to me and hug me, or cry? That was all going on through my mind."

    As unsuspecting Solymar entered the classroom, she was soon overcome with emotion, immediately bursting into tears and covering her mouth. She didn't talk. She was just crying. She was overwhelmed with everything. She thought it was a dream.

    Melendez was a single parent so while he was deployed (调动), he got his sister to live with his daughter. When he was coming back and talking to his sister, both of them came to the conclusion that they should do something special for his daughter. Melendez and his sister got in touch with the school, and they planned this whole being-in-the-classroom thing, and it turned out perfect.

    The two are very much looking forward to some good daddy-daughter time now that he's home. "It means everything," Melendez said of being able to surprise his daughter this way. "After all the sacrifices she's made, she deserves all the special arrangements and special occasions and celebrations. I'll do anything for my daughter. I believe I'm doing good parenting."