It is quite reasonable to blame traffic jams, the cost of gas and the great speed of modern life, but manners on the road are becoming horrible. Everybody knows that the nicest men would become fierce tigers behind the wheel. It is all right to have a tiger in a cage, but to have one in the driver's seat is another matter.

    Road politeness is not only good manners, but good sense too. It takes the most cool-headed drivers great patience to give up the desire to beat back when forced to face rude driving. On the other hand, a little politeness goes a long way towards reducing the possibility of quarrelling and fighting. A friendly nod or a wave of thanks in answer to an act of politeness helps to create an atmosphere of good will and becomes so necessary in modern traffic conditions. But such behaviors of politeness are by no means enough. Many drivers nowadays don't even seem able to recognize politeness when they see it.

    However, misplaced politeness can also be dangerous. Typical examples are the driver who waves a child crossing the street at a wrong place into the path of oncoming cars that may not be able to stop in time. The same goes for encouraging old ladies to cross the road wherever and whenever they want to.  It always amazes me that the highways are not covered with the dead bodies of these grannies (奶奶).

    An experienced driver, whose manners are faultless, told me it would help if drivers learnt to correctly join in traffic stream without causing total blockages that give rise to unpleasant feelings. Unfortunately, modern drivers can't even learn to drive. Years ago, experts warned us that the fast increase of the car ownership would demand more give-and-take from all road users. It is high time for all of us to take this message to heart.

Incredible experiences in Bucharest

    Admire one of the world's largest buildings

    The world's biggest parliamentary building, Palace of Parliament, happens to be in Bucharest. Hour-long guided tours manage to take in just a fraction of the building's three-million-plus square feet (there are more than a thousand rooms) and focus on the tons of marble, hardwood, and gold used in the building's construction in the 1980s, a time when Romania was trying to feed its own people. Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, both played a direct role in the construction. It was originally intended to house the presidential offices and the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party but was never finished.

    See remains of old “Paris”

    “Paris of the East” was Bucharest's nickname in the decades before World War II. Decades of communist misrule and a tragic earthquake in 1977 brought much of the old city down but there are places here and there where that former elegance can still be glimpsed. The Cismigiu Gardens in the center of the city is a pearl of park built around a romantic lake and featuring old-growth trees and gracious, wrought-iron signposts and benches.

    Learn about Romania's roots

    Walking though Bucharest's busy streets, it's easy to forget that outside the capital and a U large cities, Romania is a largely agricultural country, with a long and rich peasant tradition. The amazing Museum of the Romanian Peasant shows off the elaborate woodworking, pottery-making, egg-painting, and weaving skills of the peasantry in a way that's both educational and amusing. Small tongue-in-cheek signs at the entrance to each room poke fun at modern life, bring a chuckle, and draw you in. Downstairs there's a side exhibition on the Communists' efforts to nationalize the peasantry in the 1970s and 1980s.

    Appreciate 21st-century art

    Romania has exploded onto the contemporary art scene in recent years. The excitement was generated initially by a group of young painters and visual artists from the northern city of Cluj-Napoca, but at least some of the action has shifted to the capital as new galleries and design centers open up. It's hard to pinpoint precisely what constitutes Romanian contemporary art, though critics point to shared elements of wit and dark humor, a somber mood, and bits of surrealism in defining a common style.

    On the night of December 8, 1992, when he was standing in a parking lot talking to friends, Tracy March jumped to the top of a car, as he had done a hundred times before. This time, though, Tracy lost his balance. His head struck the ground, hard.

    All night, Cory, Tracy's mother, stood next to her son, who was lying in a hospital bed, his brown eyes fixed in a lifeless stare. She remembered that Tracy had once mentioned organ donation. Maybe I can spare another family this pain, she thought. When the time came, she and her husband Bill signed the forms permitting his organs to be donated.

    Tracy was declared dead the next day. Twenty-four hours later, in a Boston hospital, Tracy's liver was made part of my husband, David, who was suffering from a hopeless liver disease.

    Months later, we learned from the local organ bank that the donor's parents wished desperately to meet someone who had gained life through the gift from their son. A meeting was arranged by the organ bank to bring together two families linked by the most bittersweet ties imaginable.

    The meeting was risky, but worth it. We talked for 3 hours. They showed us a picture of Tracy. We learned how he had lived and died. We learned something about Bill and Cory too.

    For the Marches, seeing David and knowing he was well seemed to ease their suffering. I'll never forget seeing David's tall figure stopped over Cory, her arms around his waist, as a mother would hug a son. For a long time they held each other tight. It was hard to know if she was saying hello or good-bye. Maybe she was saying both.

    Roughly the size of a soda can, sitting on a bookshelf, a relatively harmless device(设备) may be turning friends away from your home. The elephant in your living room is your Internet-connected camera, a device people are increasingly using for peace of mind in their homes. But few stop to think about the effect these devices may have on house guests. Should you tell your friends, for instance, that they're being recorded while you all watch the big game together?

    "It's certainly new territory, especially as home security cameras become easier to fix," says Lizzie Post, president of the Emily Post Institute, America's distinguished manners advisors." I think it will be very interesting to see what manners appear in terms of whether you tell people you have a camera or not, and whether guests have a right to ask that it be turned off, if it's not a security issue. "Post wants to make clear that she's not talking about legal rights, but rather personal preference.

When it comes to security cameras, Post says it's a host's responsibility to make sure guests feel comfortable within their home. If the host casually acknowledges that there is a camera in the room by telling a story about it, that may be enough to provide an opening for a guest to say if they are uncomfortable.

    However, if a contractor(合约工)is working in your home, you don't need to tell them that there are cameras watching. Then again, the camera can also work in contractors' favor. "If anything does go wrong while they're in the house, they don't want to be blamed for it," she says. "In fact, the camera could be the thing that proves that they didn't steal the $20, or knock the vase off the table.

It was a typical weekend for Mitch White and his friends. They were out celebrating a bachelor party, sailing the peaceful waters of the Minnesota River. They never expected that this single party would transform from a relaxed canoe trip into a painful rescue mission. With the sun setting, an unexpected bark changed everything.

Led by Mitch White, the soon-to-be-married man, they searched for the source of the sound along the banks of the river. Suddenly, a weak cry for help came from the mud. They were surprised to find that the head of a 13-year-old St. Bernard named Ed was barely visible in the thick mud. Mitch said, "The dog wasn't moving on its own, so we should feed it and give it water. " The dog looked like i had used all its strength.

The men took up their oars（桨） and began digging, their festive mood giving way to a focused rescue mission. It took them more than half an hour to free the trapped dog as it was already breathing very feebly after possibly being trapped for 24 hours. When they got the poor fellow out of the mud, he couldn't walk, so they carried him back to the house. Back home with his owner, George Niskanen, Ed began his slow restoration-a happy ending to a dangerous adventure. George was thankful to the bachelor party heroes.

Now, the people of Carver, Minnesota, have new heroes to cheer for. Indeed, this incredible act of bravery and compassion redefined the meaning of a bachelor party. It became a heroic tale of humanity, friendship, and the instinct（本能）to do what's right.

Whales are celebrated for being the largest and most intelligent creatures in the ocean. Now, biologists have discovered that they also capture（捕获） tons of carbon from the atmosphere, a service with an economic value of US $1 trillion for all the great whales, according to a new study published by the International Monetary Fund. The study points out that protecting whales, normally viewed as a human good, also has a monetary motivation.

"The carbon capture potential of whales is truly incredible," said the report. "Our conservative estimates put the value of the average great whale at more than US $2 million, and easily over US $1 trillion for the current stock of great whales." Whales absorb carbon in their bodies during their long lives, some of which stretch to 200 years. When they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking the carbon with them. According to the study, each great whale traps around 33 tons of carbon dioxide on average. A tree during the same period only contributes to 3percent of the carbon absorption of the whale.

Whale populations are today a smidgen of what they once were. It is estimated that there are slightly more than 1.3 million whales in the ocean, a quarter of their pre-whaling number of 4 t o5 million. Some species in particular, like the blue whale, are only 3 percent of what they used to be. "We can create financial methods to promote the restoration of the world's whale populations," said the report's authors. "Rewards could help those who pay significant costs as a result of whale protection."

With the Paris Agreement coming into force next year and the effects of climate change ever more widespread, we must prevent the harm to whales. Researchers analyzed that unless new methods are put forward, it would take over 30 years to double the number of current whales, and several generations to return them to their pre-whaling numbers. "Society and our own survival can't afford to wait this long," they said.