One of the greatest gifts one generation can give to other generations is the wisdom it has gained from experience. This idea has inspired the award -winning photographer Andrew Zuckerman. He interviewed and took photos of fifty over- sixty- five- year -olds all over the world. His project explores various aspects of their lives. The photos and interviews are now available on our website.Click on the introductions to read the complete interviews.

    Let us now have a culture of peace.——Federico Mayor Zaragoza, SpainFederico Mayor Zaragoza obtained a doctorate in pharmacy(药学) from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1958. After many years spent in politics, he became Director- General of UNESCO in 1987. In 1999, he created the Foundation for a Culture of Peace, of which he is now the president. In addition to many scientific publications, he has published four collections of poems and several books of essays.

    Writing is a discovery.——Nadine Gordimer, South AfricaDue to a weak heart, Nadine Gordimer attended school and university briefly. She read widely and began writing at an early age. She published her first short story at the age of fifteen, and has completed a large number of works, which have been translated into forty languages. In 1991, Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

    Jazz is about the only form of art today.——Dave Brubeck, USADave Brubeck studied music at the University of the Pacific and graduated in 1942. After World War Ⅱ he was encouraged to play jazz. In 1951, he recorded his first album(专辑). Brubeck's 1959 album has become a jazz standard. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.For more figures CLICK HERE.

    When we see well, we do not think about our eyes very often. It is only when we cannot see perfectly that we realize how important our eyes are.

    People who are near-sighted can only see things that are very close to their eyes. Everything else seems ­­blurry. Many people who do a lot of work, such as writing, reading and sewing become near-sighted. People who are far-sighted suffer from just the opposite problem. They can see things that are far away, but they have difficulty in reading a book unless they hold it at arm's length. If they want to do much reading, they must get glasses, too.

    Other people do not see clearly because their eyes are not exactly the right shape. They have what is called astigmatism (散光). This, too, can be corrected by glasses. Some people's eyes become cloudy because of cataracts (白内障). Long ago these people often became blind. Now, however, it is possible to operate on the cataracts and remove them.

    Having two good eyes is important for judging distances. Each eye sees things from a slightly different angle. To prove this to yourself, look at an object out of one eye; then look at the same object out of your other eye. You will find the object's relation to the background and other things around it has changed. The difference between these two different eye views helps us to judge how far away an object is. People who have only one eye cannot judge distances as people with two eyes.

    Does your local high school have a student newspaper? Only 1 in 8 of New York's public high schools has student newspapers – and many of those are published just a few times a year. A few more are online, which can leave out poorer schools.

    Rebecca Dwarka, an 18-year-old senior who works for her student paper said, “Facebook is the new way of finding out what happened. Nobody wants to actually sit down and read a whole article about it. This makes a 'whole article' sound a little like a long sentence in lonely places.”

    I am not nostalgic about high school student newspapers and never worked for mine. I put out what was then called a personal magazine with a group of friends because we wanted to write about peace, war and rock 'n' roll without school officials warning us not to make jokes about the local officials.

    School newspapers are in decline because students now find out what happened on social networking websites. This is a little discouraging because it proves that for millions of Americans, journalism is becoming a do-it-yourself thing. Every citizen can be a reporter.

    When something happens, we look for social media messages. Facebook posts and Tweets have become the means by which citizens and reporters can prove, deny, pass on stories and express opinions without the press' challenging, researching or slowing the message.

    But truly good journalism is a craft, not just a blog post. It requires seeing something carefully and it uses an eye for details to help prove a larger view. And even journalism that conveys an opinion tries to be fair. If school newspapers begin to disappear, I hope there are other ways for students to learn that.

    My sister and I were flying by ourselves from our home in Kansas to a summer camp in Minnesota. Our plane had a two-hour stop at the airport in Omaha, Nebraska. A flight attendant took us to a souvenir shop, where a toy airplane looked just like the plane my sister and I were flying on. I really wanted that airplane. I had $10 and the plane cost $8. I had no idea what I needed to buy at camp, but I bought the plane anyway. When we reached the camp, I discovered that there were no showers! Instead, we bathed in a lake every night. I needed to buy special soap because the regular soap I brought had chemicals that could harm the fish. The special soap cost $4 at the camp store. However, I had only $2 left.

    What upset me was that I couldn't get clean without the soap, which was soon found by my teacher, Sally. I had to tell her that I had spent most of my money on a toy airplane. She laughed and explained to me that a budget was necessary and it was a plan for spending money to help make sure you set aside enough for things you need, like soap, before you buy fun things, like toys.

    Sally gave me one of her extra(额外的) bottles of special soap. When I returned home, I decided to budget. I spent several weeks writing down everything I bought, just to get an idea of how I was already spending my money. Then I made my first weekly budget. My budget wasn't always the same each week. For some weeks, I would have more in my “Money In” account because I did some jobs around the house. Once summer vacation started, I didn't need to buy school lunches, so I had extra money to go to the neighborhood swimming pool or to give to the town animal shelter.

    Budgeting was hard, sometimes. Whatever week it was, I always made sure that “Money In” equaled “Save and Spend.” That's called making ends meet, and it's how you make sure that the money you have will always be enough to cover your plans to spend and save.

The World's Unusual Libraries

    Log Libraries

    Alex Johnson writes in his new book—Improbable Libraries,“ The very idea of a library is developing: many of these libraries operate on principles that differ mainly from the traditional libraries. Some, for example, have no membership or identification requirements, and some do not even request that the books be returned.” The oversized bird box in a park in Lowa is part of the Little Free Library Movement, which was established in Wisconsin in 2009.

Phone Booths

    This design from the firm, Stereotank, offers browsing shelter for passers-by. In the UK, a phone company's programme, allowing communities to take over their phone booth for £ 1— means that many have been changed into tiny local libraries. Meanwhile, a solar light has been set in a phone booth so that late night visitors can still read.

    Branches of Knowledge

    Didier Muller's libraries operate as hanging libraries: visitors can look through pages, taking any book they choose and exchanging it with their own. The equipment of hanging wooden houses is one of several art projects serving as a booklover's place.

    Soundproofed Pods

    Around the world, architects are designing buildings that bend bricks-and-mortar libraries into new forms. The Seikei University Library in Japan—the vision of Pritzker Prize winner Shigeru Ban—contains space-age soundproofed (隔音的) pods to encourage discussions between students.

Do you know of anyone who uses the truth to deceive? When someone tells you something that is true, but leaves out important information that should be included, he can give you a false picture.

For example, some might say, "I just won a hundred dollars on the lottery. It was great. I took that dollar ticket back to the store and turned it in for one hundred dollars!"

This guy's a winner, right? Maybe, maybe not. In fact, he bought $200 worth of tickets. He's really a big loser!

He didn't say anything that was false, but he left out important information on purpose. That's called a half-truth. Half-truths are not technically lies, but they are just dishonest.

Some politicians often use this trick. During Governor Smith's last term, her state lost one million jobs and gained three million jobs. Then she seeks another term. One of her opponents says, "During Governor Smith's term, the state lost one million jobs!" That's true. However, an honest statement would have been, "During Governor Smith's term, the state had a net gain of two million jobs."

Advertisers will sometimes use half-truths. It's against the law to make false statements sol they try to mislead you with the truth. An advertisement might say, "Nine out of ten doctors advised their patients to take Yucky Pills to cure toothache." It fails to mention that they only asked ten doctors and nine of them work for the Yucky Company.

This kind of deception happens too often. It's a sad fact of life: Lies are lies, and sometimes the truth can lie as well.