B

    Two weeks before my 12th birthday, my teacher asked me to conduct an experiment. When I mixed some powder together, they exploded. Molten liquid hit me in the face, but I felt no pain.

    I vividly remember standing there in a state of calm. I thought I was in a dream, but however hard I struggled to swim to the surface of consciousness, I couldn't wake up. I didn't understand how terrifying it was until I heard people saying, ＂Who's that?＂ That's when I knew I was unrecognizable.

    I was taken to hospital, but the doctors didn't know what to do with me. Later I was flown to Houston for surgery. Between the ages of 13 and 16, I had 40 operations. As each operation came and went, my vision would come back, then fade again. Eventually, it faded completely and I had what was left of my eyes removed for cosmetic reasons.

    Since then, I have lived in total darkness. Most blind people, even if they don't have any sight they're aware of, are still able to sense light. That gives them a sense of day and night. But not me. I absolutely lost that sense of time passing.

    For many years, I felt my sight loss darkening my life like the loss of my parents from which I would never recover. But when I was in my 40s, I realized I had to find a way to live. I trained to become a counselor, and that has helped me see my experiences in a different way. I can't fix people's broken lives — just like I can't fix my sight — but I can help them find a way to manage.

    Sometimes it feels as if all the struggles and negative experiences I've lived through were in fact a kind of preparation for helping others to make their own way towards the light.

    Well, parents, surprise! Lots of us are using Twitter and Facebook to thumb rides, and not just to school. It's awkward to be refused when you call a friend and ask for a ride. But with Twitter, you just look for other people heading the same way.

    It may sound risky, so many teens stay within their own social circles to find rides, and don't branch out beyond friends when asking on Twitter just like me, but to some young people, especially those taking longer trips, stranger danger is less of a concern.

    “I think the digital connection of young people is really important, because younger generations grew up sharing things on line, sharing files, photos, music, etc, so they've been very used to sharing,” said Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College.

    The sharing economy got big during the recession (经济衰退), allowing people to access more goods, services using technology and even to share costs. And that technology, for me, is what the car was for my mom, a gateway to more freedom, like what my friend Earl says, “The symbol of freedom isn't the car any more because there's technology out there connecting you to a car.”

    According to the researchers at the University of Michigan, 30 years ago, eight in ten American 18-year-olds had a driver's license compared to six in ten today. So it's not that surprising that on my 16th birthday I wasn't rushing to get a license but an iPhone.

“Driving, for young people, does mean they have to disconnect from their technology, and that's a negative. So if they could sit in the passage side and still be connected, that's going to be a plus.” Schor continued.

    To me, another plus is that ridesharing represents something, something much bigger than trying to save money. I see it as evidence that people still depend on each other. My generation shares their cars and apartments the way neighbors used to share cups of sugar. For the system to work, some of us still need our own cars. But until I get my own version of the silver Super Beetle, you can find me on Twitter.

    Inside the Rain Room

    The Rain Room has arrived and local art lovers are taking notice. Is it worth the wait? Yes, I assure you it is. Once inside, visitors find a long, dark room with a high ceiling. A single bright light shines through heavy rain falling around visitors. The mist. The damp air. The noise. It feels like a mighty storm is pouring down. But the storm is inside. And visitors aren't getting wet. Instead, visitors wander in awe, admiring the rain and the artists who created it.

    The Rain Room was created to highlight the connection between humans, nature and technology. With a tracking system that senses movement and stops the rain wherever visitors move, it does just that. Light and sound produce an experience that feels both natural and foreign. The exhibit is moving on to Atlanta next month. I urge you to visit before then. It's time to experience the Rain Room for yourself!

    Welcome to the Rain Room

    The Rain Room features falling water. Please be aware you may get slightly wet. However, visitors wearing raincoat will be turned away.

    This exhibit features advanced technology. To ensure its effectiveness, please avoid wearing dark or reflective clothing.

    Visitors are welcome to take photographs of the exhibit.

    Children must be accompanied by an adult.

    For the convenience of all guests, visits are limited to 10minutes.

    Disney World is a very popular attraction. But going there can be costly. Here are some suggestions that can help you save money.

    Instead of eating at the park, get premade food from a nearby grocery store or even make your own lunch. Also, make sure to take your own water with you because spending $3 on water will make your stomach hurt. Another idea is to pack snacks or quick and cheap pick-me-ups as you make your way around the park.

    Of course you're going to want to take some Disney souvenirs home with you, but you'll quickly realize that it comes with a price. Before buying anything, make sure you have a plan. Some suggestions for keeping costs down include picking your own pearl at the Japan store at Epcot, which is all about the experience and only $15.95 plus tax, or even getting special tradable collection pin that you can trade with Disney cast members or other guests.

    When you go to Disney World on rainy days, you may catch a lot of showers. But you don't have to. Go to a local Dollar Tree and buy disposable ponchos（一次性雨披）for $1. The ponchos at Disney are probably more durable（耐用的）, but they cost $9. For a family of five, the Disney ponchos would cost $45 versus spending $5 at the dollar store.

    It costs $17 to park in Disney for a day. Luckily, most non-Disney resorts offer free shuttles（来往的班车）to and from the park and all Disney resorts offer free transportation for guests as well. If you like to be on your own schedule without worrying about when the shuttle comes, then parking is your only choice. But waiting for the shuttle and going by a schedule isn't really difficult, either.

    There aren't many actors around the world who have enough self confidence to turn down an offer from Steven Spielberg. Maybe that was why Juliette Binoche gave him a choice. She said she'd be happy to be in Jurassic Park as long as she could play a dinosaur. Of course he turned her down and it was probably a good thing. It's difficult to imagine Juliette ripping people apart with her teeth. However, her decision doesn't seem to have done her career any harm. She has gone on to make a string of hits, including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The English Patient (for which she won an Oscar) and Chocolat.

    Success in the United States has not been so easy for other foreign stars. Gerald Depardieu is a good example. Since his first film in 1967, his filmography (影片集锦) lists 172 acting credits. But he has struggled on the other side of the pond. While some of his films have been popular in the US, they have usually been French films that travelled. One possible exception was Green Card, directed by Peter Weir, where he plays a French immigrant who goes through a fake wedding in order to stay and work in the United States. This is a predictable but sweet romantic comedy which typecasts (分配同一类型角色) its lead actors in terms of national stereotypes. While some reviewers were kind, others shredded both the film and Depardieu's performance.

    While Monsieur Depardieu hasn't received the recognition he would have liked in the United States, one Mexican actor has achieved almost instant success. Gael Garcia Bernal first gained recognition in Amores Perros in 2000 and a year later in Y tu mama tambien. Since then he has appeared with hometown hero, Brad Pitt in Babel and, under the direction of top producer and director, Jim Jarmusch, he starred in Limits of Control. He hasn't picked up an Oscar yet, but he was nominated for a BAFTA (英国电影电视艺术学院奖) in 2005 for his performance as the South American hero revolutionary Che Guevara, in Motorcycle Diaries. In the same year he played American music icon Elvis Presley in The King.

    Professor Smith recently persuaded 35 people, 23 of them women, to keep a diary of all their absent-minded actions for two weeks. When he came to analyze their embarrassing lapses(差错)in a scientific report, he was surprised to find that nearly all of them fell into a few groupings. Nor did the lapses appear to be entirely random(随机的).

    One of the women, for instance, on leaving her house for work one morning threw her dog her earrings and tried to fix a dog biscuit on her ear. "The explanation for this is that the brain is like a computer," explains the professor. "People program themselves to do certain activities regularly. It was the woman's custom every morning to throw her dog two biscuits and then put on her earrings. But somehow the action got reversed(颠倒的)in the program," About one in twenty of the incidents the volunteers reported were these "program assembly failures".

    Altogether the volunteers logged 433 unintentional actions that they found themselves doing—an average of twelve each. There appear to be peak periods in the day when we are at our zaniest (荒谬可笑的). These are two hours sometime between eight a.m. and noon, between four and six p.m. with a smaller peak between eight and ten p.m. "Among men the peak seems to be when a changeover in brain 'programs' occurs, as for instance between going to and from work." Women on average reported slightly more lapses—12.5 compared with 10.9 for men—maybe because they were more reliable reporters.

    An astonishing finding of the research is that the absent-minded activity is a risk of doing things in which we are skilled. Normally, you would expect that skill reduces the number of errors we make. But trying to avoid silly slips by concentrating more could make things a lot worse—even dangerous.