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Have you got some paper, a pair of scissors and, above all, a desire to decorate your house? Then, we have the perfect holiday artwork for you: Make Star Wars snowflakes (雪花). Remembered as a cherished form of work in classrooms before the holidays, paper snowflakes have drawn many people's attention again.

The designer, Anthony Herrera, just recently released his 2013 collection. "The Star Wars snowflake designs began as just doing designs of characters that I and my daughter wanted to make three years ago," Herrera told us in an email. "The second year I introduced vehicles, and this year I decided to push further by designing battle scenes."

Sometimes, he feels a bit bored with his job. With each year, the designs have got more detailed and various, but the process of creating them remained the same: sketching (画) figures on paper with a pencil until a symmetrical (对称）pattern comes out, then scanning the designs and cut them with scissors. However, he says he has plenty of ideas for new flakes next year, so no two will ever be the same. Hopefully with Star Wars: Episode VII coming in 2015 he'll have even more work in the future.

    Check out your favorite finished versions of Herrera's flakes (from both 2013 and previous years) and download the pictures beneath them and then get down to creating your own work. A warning: Most designs aren't for the casual flake-maker, so patience you must have.

    Zebra crossings－the alternating dark and light stripes on the road surface－are meant to remind drivers that pedestrians may be trying to get across. Unfortunately, they are not very effective. A 1998 study done by the Department of Traffic Planning and Engineering at Sweden's Lund University revealed that three out of four drivers maintained the same speed or even speeded up as they were approaching a crossing. Even worse, only 5% stopped even when they saw someone trying to get across.

    Now a mother-daughter team in Ahmedabad, India has come up with a clever way to get drivers to pay more attention－a 3-D zebra crossing with an optical illusion (视错觉).

    Artists Saumya Pandya Thakkar and Shakuntala Pandya were asked to paint the crosswalks by IL&FS, an Indian company that manages the highways in Ahmedabad. The corporation was looking for a creative solution to help the city's residents to cross the busy accident-prone  (易出事故的) roads safely. Thakkar and Pandya, who had previously seen images of 3-D zebra crossings that gave drivers the illusion of logs(原木)of wood on the streets in Taizhou, China, decided to test if a similar way would work in India.

    Sure enough, in the six months that the 3-D crosswalks have been painted across four of the city's most dangerous highways, there have been no accidents reported! The artists say that while it may appear that the zebra crossing could cause the drivers to brake suddenly and endanger the vehicles behind, such is not the case. Because of the way the human eye works, the illusion is only visible from a distance. As they get closer, the painting looks just like any other ordinary zebra crossing. The creators hope that their smart design will become increasingly common throughout India and perhaps even the world. So let's look forward to it.

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    Some years ago, writing in my diary used to be a usual activity. I would return from school and spend the expected half hour recording the day's event, feelings, and impressions in my little blue diary. I did not really need to express my emotions by way of words, but I gained a certain satisfaction from seeing my experiences forever recorded on paper. After all, isn't accumulating memories a way of preserving the past?

    When I was thirteen years old, I went on a long journey on foot in a great valley, well-equipped with pens, a diary, and a camera. During the trip, I was busy recording every incident, name and place I came across. I felt proud to be spending my time productively, dutifully preserving for future generations a detailed description of my travels. On my last night there, I wandered out of my tent, diary in hand. The sky was clear and lit by the glare of the moon, and the walls of the valley looked threatening behind their screen of shadows. I automatically took out my pen….

    At that point, I understood that nothing I wrote could ever match or replace the few seconds I allowed myself to experience the dramatic beauty of the valley. All I remembered of the previous few days were the dull characterizations I had set down in my diary.

    Now, I only write in my diary when I need to write down a special thought or feeling. I still love to record ideas and quotations that strike me in books, or observations that are particularly meaningful. I take pictures, but not very often—only of objects I find really beautiful. I'm no longer blindly satisfied with having something to remember when I grow old. I realize that life will simply pass me by if I stay behind the camera, busy preserving the present so as to live it in the future.

    I don't want to wake up one day and have nothing but a pile of pictures and notes. Maybe I won't have as many exact representations of people and places; maybe I'll forget certain facts, but at least the experiences will always remain inside me. I don't live to make memories—I just live, and the memories form. themselves.

    Sports can help us a lot. Taking exercises can make us strong. In collective（集体的）sports like basketball, volleyball or football, we will learn the importance of cooperation(合作). And sports can also help us relax after work or study.

    However, as the saying goes, "there are two sides of everything." Sometimes we may hurt other players or ourselves if we are not careful enough when participating(参加) in sports activities. What's more, too much or hard practice can be bad for our health.

    Sports can make us healthy both physically and psychologically(心理地). It is also a good way for people to know each other and can improve friendship between people. So long as we are careful enough, sports can do us nothing but good.

    "You know, the soft subjects," says the boy in maths. "The easy ones: the stupid girls at the bottom take them. Like dance. It shouldn't even be a subject." We're choosing subjects for our A-level taster day at school. I see the raised eyebrows (眉毛) when I explain two of my GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) choices are dance and drama(戏剧).

    I was told by advisers that dance and drama wouldn't help me to get a suitable career. My friends told me I'd get bored of dance and switch to science within the first month.

    But taking GCSE dance was the best decision I ever made. Dance gives me something to pour my head and heart into. It gives me a feeling of belonging, creativity, security and freedom.

    The education secretary Nicky Morgan has put emphasis on (强调) science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), saying that students who focus on the arts risk their careers. Stopping young people from expressing themselves at such a young age is not doing them any favours. Perhaps Nicky Morgan has forgotten to open the door of having a drive to study that subject day in, day out. It shouldn't matter what that subject is.

    I don't doubt the influence that STEM subjects can have on the people that love them. But to force children into one field is cruel. As much as I try, I'm not good at and don't love physics, biology or maths. I don't want a career in these areas.

    There has been a decrease in the number of state schools offering arts subjects taught by specialist teachers. I can't even imagine how it feels to be told that you don't teach a "real subject" by an 8-year-old boy.

    To the teachers, the parents, the government I say: Let children make their own decisions. Let them live in the present. Let them have a real, unlimited education.

Everyone has a phone in their pocket nowadays, but how often do we really use them for their original purpose-to make a call? Telephone culture is disappearing. What brought us to this moment, and what are its effects?

"No one picks up the phone anymore," wrote Alex C. Madrigal on The Atlantic. The reflex of answering-centu20^th—telephonic culture—is gone."

The shift is of course due in large part to more communication options: Texting with photos, videos, emojis, reaction gifs, links and even voice messages can be a more attractive option.

Texting is light and fun, not nearly as demanding of your attention as a phone call. It can also be done with multiple people at the same time. Social media, email and video calls have also eaten away at traditional phone calls.

In recent years, another reason has caused people to ignore phone calls completely: robocalls. Robocalls are automate messages from organizations verifying your phone number or telemarketers trying to sell something. Americans received 22.8 billion robocalls halfway through 2020, equaling an annual rate of 45.6 billion, slightly below 2018 numbers, according to YouMail, a robocall protection service and blocking app.

As telephone culture disappears, what is the loss of a singular family phone doing to the family unit? Early landline phones unified family members, whereas mobile phones isolate them.

"The shared family phone served as an anchor for home," said Luke Fernandez, a Weber State University computer-science professor and co-author of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Feelings About Technology, From the Telegraph to Twitter. "With smartphones we have gained mobility and privacy. But the value of the home has been diminished, as has its ability to guide and monitor family behavior and perhaps connect families more closely," Fernandez said.

Of course, as technology progresses, lives always change for better or for worse. With the loss of telephone culture, families will need to find other ways to unite.