“Cleverness is a gift while kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy—they're given after all. Choices can be hard.”—Jeff Bezos

    I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that the Internet usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I'd never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I'd been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go to do this crazy thing that probably wouldn't work since most start-ups don't, and I wasn't sure what to expect. MacKenzie told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I'd been a garage inventor. I'd always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

    I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but finally, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision not to try at all.

    After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I'm proud of that choice. For all of us, in the end, we are our choices.

    I still remember my first day at school in London and I was half-excited and half-frightened. On my way to school I wondered what sort of questions the other boys would ask me and practiced all the answers: “I am nine years old. I was born here but I haven't lived here since I was two. I was living in Farley. It's about thirty miles away. I came back to London two months ago.” I also wondered if it was the custom for boys to fight strangers like me, but I was tall for my age. I hoped they would decide not to risk it.

    No one took any notice of me before school. I stood in the center of the playground, expecting someone to say “hello”, but no one spoke to me. When a teacher called my name and told me where my classroom was, one or two boys looked at me but that was all.

    My teacher was called Mr. Jones. There were 42 boys in the class, so I didn't stand out there, either, until the first lesson of the afternoon. Mr. Jones was very fond of Charles Dickens and he had decided to read aloud to us from David Copperfield, but first he asked several boys if they knew Dickens' birthplace, but no one guessed right. A boy called Brian, the biggest in the class, said: “Timbuktu”, and Mr. Jones went red in the face. Then he asked me. I said: “Portsmouth”, and everyone stared at me because Mr. Jones said I was right. This didn't make me very popular, of course.

    “He thinks he's clever,” I heard Brian say.

    After that, we went out to the playground to play football. I was in Brian's team, and he obviously had Dickens in mind because he told me to go in goal. No one ever wanted to be the goalkeeper.

    “He's big enough and useless enough.” Brian said when someone asked him why he had chosen me.

    I suppose Mr. Jones, who served as the judge, remembered Dickens, too, because when the game was nearly over, Brian pushed one of the players on the other team, and he gave them a penalty (惩罚). As the boy kicked the ball to my right, I threw myself down instinctively (本能地) and saved it. All my team crowded round me. My bare knees were injured and bleeding. Brian took out a handkerchief and offered it to me.

    “Do you want to join my gang (帮派)?” he said. At the end of the day, I was no longer a stranger.

    It is one of the oldest magic tricks in the book—a magician locks a woman in a box, with her head and feet sticking out from either end, and saws (锯) it in half. But when she finally jumps out of the box, the woman is unharmed.

    This trick was introduced nearly a century ago. It has been around for some time, but it never goes wrong. Why is it so successful? The answer is simple: the human mind is easily fooled.

    Our brain processes the world around us based on information that sensory organs, including the eyes, pick up. For instance, when we see a cow or a horse standing behind a tree, we automatically “fill in” the part of the animal's body that is hidden from our sight. “So the brain is taking this kind of very sparse (匮乏的) information about the world and it's generating this rich world by filling in information,” Stephen Macknik, a scientist at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona, US, told Science magazine.

    But since our brains are filling in the gaps, sometimes they get it wrong. They tend to be driven by our previous experiences and we expect things to go as they have in the past even if sometimes they do not.

    This tendency explains magicians' success in fooling people with well-known coin tricks. For example, when you see a magician throw a coin up and down in one hand and then fake a coin thrown to the other hand, you would naturally believe that the coin is in the other hand.

Apart from the information gaps, magicians also use the “blind spots” theory when doing their shows.

    The most well-known experiment demonstrating this theory is called the “invisible gorilla (大猩猩)”, in which volunteers watch a video of two basketball teams. They are asked to count how many times the teams wearing white shirts pass the ball. In the meantime, a person dressed as a gorilla walks onto the court. But shockingly, half of the viewers don't notice the gorilla, even when they appear to be looking directly at it.

    Magicians employ this tactic (招数), what they call “misdirection”, in almost every one of their acts. They direct our attention somewhere else using comedy and music, which can make us miss stuff during the performance.

    British scientists have discovered the willow trees planted at an angle could increase sugars for biofuel production.

    Willow is a fast-growing species. It is already used to produce fuels for the renewable heating and power market. In future it could also help to produce biofuel to power vehicles. It has been known that when willows growing in the wild are blown sideways, they tend to produce more sugars. But for a while it has not been known why this happens.

    Researchers at Imperial College London, led by Dr Nicholas Brereton and Dr Michael Ray of the Department of Life Sciences, have now solved the mystery. When the tree is blown sideways, its genes (基因) produce large numbers of sugar molecules (分子) to straighten the tree upwards.

    “This is an important breakthrough. Our study now shows that natural genetic changes are related to these differences. And this could well be the key to unlocking the future for green energy from willow,” said Dr Brereton.

    The research was carried out under lab conditions. The willows were grown at an angle of 45 degrees. They were compared to willows which grow naturally straight upwards. The team then looked for the same effect among the willows growing on the Isle of Orkney where strong winds cause the trees to bend at extreme angles. They discovered that the Orkney trees produce five times the amount of sugars found in willows grown in sheltered conditions.

    Willow is widely planted across the UK. The results show that biofuel crops such as willows could be grown in climatically changeable conditions where chances of growing food crops are limited.

    The study is published in Biotechnology for Biofuels.

    I'm big into reading, and since you're on this page, I guess you like reading as well. This page is an ongoing log of books I find to be awesome or useful. If you're looking to create a well-rounded, successful college experience, you can't go wrong with any of these.

    The Power of Habit

    This book is absolutely amazing. As it turns out, habits shape much more of our behavior than we realize. The habits we do have largely determine the progress (either good or bad) we make in life. Luckily, the way habits are formed can be understood—which means they can be changed—and The Power of Habit is the best overview of how habits work that I've ever read.

    A Mind for Numbers

    If you're looking for practical techniques you can use to increase your ability to learn new information effectively, you should read this book. Contrary to what the title would imply, Dr. Barbara Oakley's A Mind for Numbers is applicable to any learning discipline--not just math and science. This book will quickly give you an understanding of how your brain learns and encodes (编码) new information, and will also equip you with strategies for learning more while studying less.

    Brain Rules

    If you know how the brain works, you'll be better equipped to manage your own and understand the ones contained inside the heads of the people you know and meet In Brain Rules, John Medina expertly shows us how the brain does things, and lays out 12 rules that form a basis for using that pile of mush (糊状物) more effectively. It's not just an excellent brain book—it's an excellent business book and an excellent college success book as well.

    Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

    I firmly believe that a solid foundation of nutrition, exercise, and sleep will help you succeed in college better than any study hack, which is why I recommend this book. Reading it will educate you on how exercise affects your brain, which in turn will give you more mental ammunition (弹药) that you can use to shoot down excuses when you're feeling lazy or “busy”, and don't want to work out. By the way, how much exercise have you gotten today?

    Florida is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is one of the most visited states in the country and the sunshine state attracts millions of visitors each year. Are you planning a vacation to it? Here our travel guide may help you.

    La Nouba at Walt Disney World Resort

    Duration: 90 minutes

    Location: Orlando, Florida

    While you're in Orlando, spend a day at the theme parks with a Cirque du Soleil show at Downtown Disney, La Nouba is the meeting of two different worlds—the fantastic world of the circus (马戏团) people who wear bright colors and the boring world of the people living in big cities who wear dark, lifeless clothes.

    Kennedy Space Center

    Duration: Flexible

    Location: Orlando, Florida

    Spend a day exploring the attractive Kennedy Space Center, just 45 minutes from Orlando. Learn about the history of the US space program and watch beautiful IMAX films. Don't miss the chance to walk under a Saturn V rocket, and experience a real moonwalk!

    Sea World Orlando

    Duration: Varies

    Location: Orlando, Florida

    Spend a day at Sea World Orlando and come face to face with the ocean's most attractive sea animals. With several up­close meetings with killer whales, sharks and turtles, you'll feel the energy and excitement of all kinds of sea life.

    South Beach Cultural Food and Walking Tour

    Duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes

    Location: Miami, Florida

    On the South Beach Cultural Food and Walking Tour, you'll explore the Art Deco district of South Beach on foot and along the way, you'll taste a variety of foods that make South Beach such an internationally well­known food region.

    Price information：

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