I was playing in my kitchen. My mom stood in front of me, hardly keeping the tears from spilling over. She told me that my little cousin had cancer. Hearing this, I went completely numb. How could this be happening? I had just seen her, and she was fine.

    These things didn't happen to our family, that's what my uncle said. It seemed like the world turned upside down; just last week my grandmother had passed away. I felt like I couldn't get my feet on solid ground.

    That's when my sister, Ella, came down the stairs with her long brown hair freshly washed. She sat next to me and smiled. Despite what was happening, everything would work out, her smile seemed to say.

    “Mom, do you think I could get my hair cut tomorrow?” Ella asked.

    “Sure,” Mom said, starting to wash the dishes.

    “I want to donate it to Locks of Love” Ella smiled.

    My mom stopped washing and turned to look at her. “Are you sure?” I noticed that Mom was holding back tears. This was a sacrifice(牺牲) for Ella. Her long hair was an important part of her.

    “Yeah, it's just hair. Eventually it will grow back.” She said.

    “All right,” Mom said quietly, smiling again.

    Ella gave up a part of herself for a while. She let a piece of herself go to someone else, someone she didn't know. That day she became my hero too.

    The Queen has had to say goodbye to one of her longtime companions, her beloved pet corgi Holly, who has sadly passed away aged 13. The corgi will probably be familiar to royal fans who would recognize her from the 2012 London Olympics opening video.

    The dog was suffering from old age and was put down at Balmoral after suffering from an illness, leaving Her Majesty three surviving pet dogs, Willow and two corgi-dachshund crosses, Vulcan and Candy.

    According to a spokesperson for Buckingham palace, the Queen was deeply upset by Holly's passing and she doesn't like seeing her dogs suffer. Holly had attained a very good age. She gets more unsettled if they suffer and she knows that putting a dog down is often the kindest solution. She was devoted to Holly and wherever the Queen was, the dog was never far behind.

    Holly was included in one of the portraits for the Queen's 90th birthday, along with her other three pet dogs. Although the Queen usually has several pet corgis, it was recently revealed that she is keen not to breed（繁殖）any more of the dogs. Monty Roberts, a horse trainer who has previously given advice to Queen, told the Daily Mail, “She wouldn't leave any young dogs behind if she died. She wanted to put an end to it. Her Majesty had previously named one of her dogs after her friend, but the dog died in 2012. Dogs love for less time than human beings and we know we're going to lose them—but they are part of the Queen's family. She'll be quite upset.”

    Upcoming Events of New York Chinese Cultural Center

    Ancient Chinese Arts Today: Fan Dance

    Sunday, October17, 2:00pm—3:00 pm, $15 per child

    New-York Historical Society Museum & Library

    Learn Chinese fan dancing with an instructor from NYCCC! This program is a part of Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion, an exhibition which examines the history of trade and immigration between China and the United States.

    Dragon Boat Festival

    Monday, October 18, 2:00pm —2:30pm

    Fresh Meadows Park

    Come and celebrate with us in the thousand-year-old tradition of Dragon Boat racing! Be part of the audience and the excitement of this celebration. FREE ADMISSION! Click here for more information. Dragon Boat Festival will be held in Fresh Meadows Park.

    Dance to China

    Sunday, October 24, 2 pm

    Spruce Street School Auditorium, 12 Spruce St, New York, NY 10038

    Join us in celebrating 43 years of preserving and continuing Chinese traditional dance. Students from NYCCC School of the Arts will be performing traditional Chinese dance, martial arts, and Beijing opera acrobatics. Cost is $15 for adults, $12 for teenagers and senior citizens, $10 for children under 12.

    NYCCC School of the Arts Open House

    Saturday, October 30, from 1:00pm —3:00 pm, $12 per child

    PS 124, Yung Wing School, 40 Division Street, New York, NY 10002

    Join us and see Chinese dance, kung fu, and acrobatic performances performed by our current students. Come and see our students' beautiful artwork on display and make some artwork yourselves during our hour of arts and crafts and face painting from 1—2 pm. The show will be from 2—3pm.

    A woman was sitting by herself in a movie theatre. The movie she was about to set was a musical version(版本)of a very successful book that had sold a million copies that year.

    As the woman was waiting for the movie to begin, she noticed that the theatre was very crowded but the two seats next to her were empty.

    Suddenly a large man carrying a big fur coat walked down the aisle(走廊) and sat down, placing the fur coat on the seat next to her.

    When the lights went out, the fur coat bean to move, and the woman realized it was not a coat but a large furry dog. He was sitting up in the seat, watching the movie screen with great interest. As soon as the movie started, the dog began to nod his head and beat his paws (爪) in perfect time to the music.

    When the movie was over, the woman turned to the man and said, “Excuse me, sir, but I've never seen Such a well-behaved dog in a movie theatre before. Does he go to the movies often?”

    “Oh, yes,” replied the man.

    “And he seemed to enjoy everything so much,” she said, “It was just amazing!”

    “As a matter of fact, it surprised me too.” said the man. “He hated the books！”

    The idea of progress started to flower in the 17th century. At that time, many wise thinkers believed that man liberated（解放） by reason would rise to greater heights of achievement. The many expressions of human nature would be the engines of progress: language, business, science, and moral sensibility （道德感）. Unfortunately, most of those engines have failed to bring the desired human progress.

    The modern age has belonged to material progress and its main source has been science. Science gives people huge power to change the world. But can people be trusted to use it always for good? Think of biotechnology and information technology. And it is not just that scientific progress does not deliver the emotional good. People also fear that mankind is failing to manage science properly. The forests are disappearing; the ice is melting; privacy is leaking; life is becoming a depressing march in an ugly world.

    The point is not that science is harmful, but that scientific progress needs to be mapped tidily onto human progress. That relies on moral sensibility in its widest sense. This liberal force offers hope for a better future. The very idea of moral sensibility probably sounds out-of-date. Bur researchers find that people desire a sense of moral purpose which would give life dignity （尊严）. People want to determine how the world works, not always to be determined by it. Moral sensibility is why people will suffer from their beliefs, and why acts of noble self﹣sacrifice are so powerful.

    It is admitted that our moral ideals will never be realized completely. But sometimes, however imperfectly, we can make progress. Human dignity requires the love of ideals for their own sake, but nothing requires that the love be returned.

Human progress is neither guaranteed nor hopeless. Instead, it is up to us.

    Have you ever heard someone say "You totally look like you're a Jessica" or something similar? People seem to think that they know what kind of person a "Jessica" or a "Michael" looks like. Why is this?

    According to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, humans tend to associate people's names with their appearances, and can even guess someone's name based on how they look.

    Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, collected thousands of photos of people's faces. They labeled (贴标签于) each photo with four names. Then, they asked volunteers to guess which of the four names was correct.

    The volunteers were able to guess the right name 38% of the time. It seems that certain characteristics of faces give them clues about someone's name, Reader's Digest reported.

    However, this only worked when the volunteers looked at names from their own culture. In addition, the volunteers were not as good at guessing the real names of people who used nicknames(昵称)more often than their real names. This may show that a person's appearance is affected by their name only if they use it often.

    "This kind of face-name matching happens because of a process of self-fulfilling prophecy (预言), as we become what other people expect us to become," Ruth Mayo from tile university told science news website EurekAlert.

    Earlier studies have shown that gender (性别) and race stereotypes (刻板印象) can affect a person's appearance. The researchers believe there are also similar stereotypes about names. For example, people tend to think that men named Bob should have rounder faces because the word itself looks round. People may think that women named Rose are beautiful. They expect them to be "delicate" and "female", just like the flower they are named for.