Seventy years ago, a group of well-known people from the art world headed by an Austrian conductor decided to hold an international festival of music, dance and theater in Edinburgh. The idea was to reunite Europe after the Second World War.

    It quickly attracted famous names such as Alec Guinness, Richard Burton, Dame Margot Fonteyn and Marlene Dietrich as well as the big symphony orchestras (交响乐团). It became a fixed event every August and now attracts 400,000 people yearly.

    At the same time, the “Fringe” appeared as a challenge to the official festival. Eight theater groups turned up uninvited in 1947, in the belief that everyone should have the right to perform, and they did so in a public house disused for years.

    Soon, groups of students firstly from Edinburgh University, and later from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Durham and Birmingham were making the journey to the Scottish capital each summer to perform theater by little-known writers of plays in small church halls to the people of Edinburgh.

    Today the “Fringe”, once less recognized, has far outgrown the festival with around 1,500 performances of theater, music and dance on every one of the 21 days it lasts. And yet as early as 1959, with only 19 theater groups performing, some said it was getting too big.

    A paid administrator was first employed only in 1971, and today there are eight administrators working all year round and the number rises to 150 during August itself. In 2004 there were 200 places housing 1,695 shows by over 600 different groups from 50 different countries. More than 1.25 million tickets were sold.

    I'd planned to spend my weekend in the sun, potting flowers outdoors. But that was before the pair of crows (乌鸦). Out of nowhere, they had set up their base camp in our backyard.

    We first discovered our feathered enemies on Friday morning. It was early, and the sound the birds made traveled through our neighborhood. I figured they'd go away soon. But, no. They were getting louder and probably annoying my neighbors nearly as much as us with the noise. I admit I got a little desperate.

    Then, on Sunday afternoon, I looked out the kitchen window to see our dog Quatchi staring at something on the ground. I went to explore and found a small coal-black bird in the grass. Its eyes were milky, and it stayed perfectly still as my dog inched towards it. Only when Quatchi touched his nose to its head did it walk away. I took hold of the dog and locked him inside and came back with my camera.

    It never occurred to me that the young would be hanging out on the ground, growing and gaining strength as its parents guarded it from above. The second I saw this little creature I forgave the crows.

    To be honest, I've never been much of a bird person. I also have a healthy respect for birds, and by healthy I mean slightly fear-based. They're basically living dinosaurs.

    I wish they'd chosen another backyard. There are only so many sunny days in Seattle, and I still can't do any gardening out there. But I'm also grateful that I got to see this little bit of nature unfold up close. It's pretty amazing.

    The experience has also strengthened my desire to create a beautiful backyard garden that attracts lots of bees, butterflies, and yes, birds. They are welcome here.

    Plastic waste has polluted the Arctic. Two new studies have spied bags, fishing rope and tinier bits of rubbish in the Barents Sea. This sea sits north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. It mixes with the Arctic Ocean, which is even farther north.

    Plastic waste in the Arctic could harm wildlife and may hint that large volumes of human rubbish are collecting there, says Melanie Bergmann. She is one of the scientists who spotted the waste. She studies Earth's oceans at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany. She first started counting bits of plastics in the Barents Sea because she kept spotting signs of the stuff there in images taken with deep-sea cameras.

    Bergmann and her colleagues counted pieces of plastic from an icebreaker, a boat designed to break through large blocks of ice in very cold waters. They also tracked plastic pieces they saw during helicopter rides over Arctic waters. The team found 31 pieces of plastic. “That doesn't seem like much, but it shows us that we've really got a problem, one that extends even to this remote area, far from civilization,” Bergmann says. She and her colleagues described their findings October 21 in Polar Biology.

    Another team has also been counting plastics in the area. Those scientists took water from the Barents Sea and counted the number of smaller bits of plastics, called microplastics.

    Plastic in the ocean is dangerous to animals. Some may get caught in rope or bags. And wildlife may swallow bags and other plastic bits. That makes them feel full. But some may eventually starve because they are not getting the nutrients they need to live. Sometimes plastics also may break down in an animal's body and release poisonous chemicals. If another animal later eats the one that swallowed plastic, it too can end up with poisonous chemicals in its body. This, in turn, can travel up the food web, endangering predators (肉食动物) — even people.

    When an Indiana woman got an emergency call that her mother was in hospital, she knew she had no time to waste getting to her mom's side in Montgomery, Alabama. As she pulled over to get gas about 170 miles from her destination, the woman reached for her purse. It wasn't there. In the flurry to get to her mother's side, she'd left her handbag at home, along with her wallet and phone.

    The woman felt totally at a loss. Desperate for help, she asked for help in a truck stop. Someone sent her up the road to Jim Oliver's Smoke House, a restaurant known for its generosity. In fact, it's even been nominated (提名) as one of the Nicest Places in America.

    In the parking lot of the restaurant, the woman broke down telling her story to the owner, James Oliver. He listened patiently, checking her car for an Indiana license plate and deciding whether he should believe her. To her astonishment, he handed her $200 in cash. In hopes of calming her down, Oliver offered her a meal, which she took to go so she could get back on the road.

    Handing hundreds of dollars over to a stranger might seem crazy to some people, but to Oliver, it's common sense. He figured a tank of gas alone would cost $75 or so, and she'd need more money for a motel room and food before she could work things out with her credit card. “I instinctively (本能地) went for $200,” he says. “I didn't think of getting it back.”

    The Smoke House has had a reputation for kindness ever since Oliver's dad, the original owner, was in charge. In addition to helping travelers in need, Oliver's father was involved in the community by helping to establish a state park, daycare, medical center, and more. “Growing up, he instilled (灌输) in us to help other people,” says Oliver.

    The Smoke House might look like a business, but it's a charity at heart. “When you've got food, you can't turn people away that need help,” says Oliver.

    In my memory, winters always used to be really unpleasant. You had to bundle up just to keep warm when you went outside. You were often cold, wet, slip on the ice, and you'd arrive home to an ice-cold house. And that would mean turning on the heating and waiting. It's a miracle you didn't get cold to the bone.

    Fortunately, things don't have to be so challenging any more. Technology, engine ring and design have advanced giving us new solutions to old problems. It means dealing with winter needn't be like skating on thin ice.

    With a smart thermostat (温度自动调节器), our homes can be warm when we need them to be. Many models feature smartphone apps that allow you to control temperature remotely, so we can warm up the house before we arrive home. According to techradar.com, Tado's model features voice control, while the Nest 'leans' your habits and automatically heats the home for you.

    Clothes have been given an upgrade, too. Electronic thermal jackets, sweaters and coats heat up when you turn them on. What better way to keep warm in the dead of winter? At the touch of a button, or through an app on our phones, the clothing generates heat from elements placed inside. Many models offer three levels of heating which stay warm for over 12 hours. .

    Finally, there is the clothing for the head, beanie s and Earmuff, that feature speakers included in the fabric using Bluetooth technology so we can listen to our favourite music or, in some cases, have a phone callusing the in-built microphone. All while keeping the head warm and avoiding a cold.

    For many, the thought of winter used to be enough to make their blood run cold. But using technology, life needn't freeze up. With the right solutions, there's no reason why winter can't be really, really cool.

    The values of artistic works, according to cultural relativism(相对主义), are simply reflections of local social and economic conditions. Such a view, however, fails to explain the ability of some works of art to excite the human mind across cultures and through centuries.

    History has witnessed the endless productions of Shakespearean plays in every major language of the world. It is never rare to find that Mozart packs Japanese concert halls, as Japanese painter Hiroshige does Paris galleries, Unique works of this kind are different from today's popular art, even if they began as works of popular art. They have set themselves apart in their timeless appeal and will probably be enjoyed for centuries into the future.

    In a 1757 essay, the philosopher David Hume argued that because" the general principles of taste are uniform(不变的) in human nature," the value of some works of art might be essentially permanent. He observed that Homer was still admired after two thousand years. Works of this type, he believed, spoke to deep and unvarying features of human nature and could continue to exist over centuries.

    Now researchers are applying scientific methods to the study of the universality of art. For example, evolutionary psychology is being used by literary scholars to explain the long-lasting themes and plot devices in fiction. The structures of musical pieces are now open to experimental analysis as never before. Research findings seem to indicate that the creation by a great artist is as permanent an achievement as the discovery by a great scientist.