A long time ago people thought that the sun went round the earth. In some countries people even said that the sun was a god(神). They thought the god drove across the sky each day on a golden horse. Now we know the earth goes round the sun. It takes the earth a year to go a circle(圈) round the sun. Today men even know how far it is for the earth to go round the sun. They tell us that the earth travels over a thousand miles a minute on its journey round the sun.

    The sun is really a star. It is much bigger than the earth and it is very hot. Some people have been to the moon but we know that no one can ever go to the sun. It is far too hot for people to live anywhere near it. The sun is three hundred thousand times heavier than the earth and more than million times larger.

    Living in a modern society has its advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage is that you often have to live closer to other people than you would like to. Sometimes, your neighbors make a noise that you are not comfortable with.

    The best way to solve this problem is to talk with your neighbor first. You should be very polite and ask your neighbor if he knows how thin the walls of your homes are. This way doesn't criticize (批评) his behavior; it simply points out that he may not realize how far his sound travels. Tell him that you know that sometimes you make noise as well, but that you do your best to keep it down. Often this will solve the problem right away, but sometimes the neighbor may become angry.

    If your neighbor becomes angry with you, there are some more steps you can take. You might write a letter to the neighborhood committee（居委会）. Make sure you write down the source of the noise and the time in the letter. They will review the situation and decide whether your neighbor is out of line. Some noise is considered to be reasonable, even if it bothers you. So you may prepare a good pair of earplugs (耳塞).

    Even if your neighbor makes too much noise, you don't have to live your life in discomfort. It's always a good idea to be friendly with your neighbors. You may clean the rubbish in front of his door. He's sure to appreciate behavior like this and be more open to your suggestions about noise level.

Dear Editor,

    I'm a Senior 1 student in a middle school. This term, my favourite teacher, Miss Mao, no longer teaches us. I want to see her, but I'm afraid that she no longer likes me and I don't want to trouble her. I really miss her. What should I do?

Tian Yan

Dear Tian Yan,

    It's bad luck that you have lost your favourite teacher. But, if she is still in your school, nothing can stop you going to see her. When she isn't busy, ask her if she minds having a quick chat. You can then tell her she was your favourite teacher. Everyone is happy to know they are liked!

    If she has left the school, it will be more difficult to meet her. It will be hard, but remember people always come and go in our lives. We can't depend on them being with us all the time.

    You may be sad to say goodbye to her, but we can remember and learn from her. Think of her best qualities.    

    You could also try looking for similar qualities in your other teachers. Study hard and give your new teacher a chance. In time, you might start to see that he or she has different qualities to learn from.

    Finally, you can not completely depend on other people getting you through your studies, or even your life.

Editor

    Flying for a long time, you finally arrive at the place where you can relax—your hotel room. Now you throw your bag on the bed, turn on the TV and watch an international news programme on a satellite channel probably from UK or the USA.

    The main international broadcasters are BBC World and CNN. With an audience of over 1.5 billion people, these are popular channels that offer good-quality news programmes. In both companies, the journalists are experienced writers that produce journalism of a high standard.

    However, there are alternative news channels which people watch because they want a less traditional or non-Western view on world events. Russia Today and Al Jazeera International, an Arabic company, are international channels that broadcast in English. Both companies say they give a fresh view on big stories, and their experienced journalists often report from places where Western journalists do not work, and so they give us stories that we don't normally see.

    The Internet offers more variety. OneWorldTV is an Internet site where you can find stories about the developing world and human rights, rather than the usual stories about US politics and business. The writers for this company are often local people who write the stories for free. This non-professional journalism is increasing, and it certainly offers more choices.

    This increase in citizen journalism means that you can write the news, too. Main news broadcasters often use photographs and stories that members of the general public send to them, especially when there is a dramatic breaking news story. Besides this, some blogs are popular sources of news, and the website NowPublic lets you write stories using information you can get from anywhere, including sites like Youtube, Flickr and Twitter.

    Next month, I'm traveling to a remote area of Central Africa and my aim is to know enough Lingala — one of the local languages — to have a conversation. I wasn't sure how I was going to manage this — until I discovered a way to learn all the vocabulary I'm going to need. Thanks to Memrise, the application I'm using. It feels just like a game.

    "People often stop learning things because they feel they're not making progress or because it all feels like too much hard work," says Ed Cooke, one of the people who created Memrise. "We're trying to create a form of learning experience that is fun and is something you'd want to do instead of watching TV."

    Memrise gives you a few new words to learn and these are "seeds" which you plant in your "greenhouse". When you learn the words, you "water your plants". When the application believes that you've really memorized a word, it moves the word to your "garden". And if you forget to log on, the application sends you emails, reminding you to "water your plants".

    The application uses two principles about learning. The first is that people memorize things better when they link them to a picture in their mind. Memrise translates words into your own language, but it also encourages you to use "mems". For example, I memorized motele, the Lingala word for "engine", using a mem I created — I imagined an old engine in a motel (汽车旅馆) room.

    The second principle is that we need to stop after studying words and then repeat them again later, leaving time between study sessions. Memrise helps you with this, because it's the kind of application you only use for five or ten minutes a day.

    I've learnt hundreds of Lingala words with Memrise. I know this won't make me a fluent speaker, but I hope I'll be able to do more than just smile when I meet people in Congo. Now, I need to go and water my Vocabulary!

Richard Holmes, a British author and academic, is something of a Romantic, famous for biographies of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In his last book, "The Age of Wonder", he wrote about science and Romanticism and their common commitment to discovery. In his new book, "Falling Upwards", he combines the two again to tell the stories of Europe's early balloonists (气球飞行者).

Mr Holmes's love of balloons was aroused at a village festival and his enthusiasm is one of the book's many pleasures. He refers to the cheerful tone used in many first-hand ballooning stories, and applies it in this second-hand account. He describes men and women wrapped up in fur coats under their hydrogen-filled balloons, enjoying cold chicken and champagne and looking back to earth to see mankind "for what it really is."

Mr Holmes makes much of the strange side of ballooning, but the book is at its best when examining its more serious applications. In the American civil war, for example, both North and South put observers in balloons to spy on enemy movements. And during the Prussian attack on Paris in 1870-71， balloonists managed to fly out of the city to communicate with the French government in exile (流亡) in Tours.

"Falling Upwards" contains much of the historian's writing characteristics, such as footnotes and bibliography (文献书目), but its epilogue (后记) refers modestly to what has gone before as "a series of true balloon stories". It does touch on the more technical aspects of ballooning, and says little about the French Montgolfier brothers who are credited as its inventors. That though seems a small price to pay for such a spirited work. Mr Holmes's tale ends at the start of the 20th century when the business of flight was being handed over to the airship and the airplane.