"Can I see my baby?" the happy new mother asked. When the baby was lying in her arms and she moved the fold of  cloth to look upon his tiny face, she gasped(喘气). The doctor turned quickly and looked out of the tall hospital window. The baby had been born without ears.

    Time proved that the baby's hearing was perfect. It was only his appearance that was imperfect. When he rushed home from school one day and threw himself into his mother's arms, she sighed, knowing that his life was to be unfortunate. He cried out the tragedy, A boy, a big boy… called me a freak(怪人).

    He grew up, handsome. A favourite with his fellow students, he might have been class president, but for that. He developed a gift, a talent for literature and music. “But you might communicate with other young people,” his mother blamed him, but he felt a kindness in her heart.

    Two years went by. One day, his father said to the son, “You're going to the hospital, son. Mother and I have someone who will donate the ears you need. But it's a secret.” The operation was a brilliant success, and a new person emerged.

    Later he married and entered the diplomatic service. One day, he asked his father, “Who gave me the ears? Who gave me so much? I could never do enough for him or her.” “ I do not believe you could,” said the father, “but the agreement was that you are not to know… not yet.”

    The years kept their secret, but the day did come. He stood with his father over his mother's casket, Slowly. Tenderly, the father stretched forth a hand and raised the thick, reddish brown hair to reveal the mother had no outer ears

    “Mother said she was glad she never let her hair be cut,” his father whispered, gently, “and nobody ever thought Mother less beautiful, did they?”

    Even at school there had been an unhealthy competition between George and Richard.

    “I'll be the first millionaire in Clifford!” Richard Pike used to say.

    “And you'll sorry you knew me,” George would reply “because I'll be the best lawyer in town!”

    George never did become a lawyer and Richard Pike never made any money. Instead both men opened bookshops on opposite sides of Clifford High Street. It was hard to make money from books, which made the competition between them worse.

    Now with only one bookshop in town, business was better for George. But sometimes he sat in his narrow, old kitchen and gazed out of the dirty window, thinking about his former rival(竞争对手). Perhaps he missed him?

    George was very interested in old dictionaries. He had recently found a collector in Australia who was selling a rare first edition. When the parcel arrived, the book was in perfect condition and George was delighted. But while he was having lunch, George glanced at the photo in the newspaper that the book had been wrapped in. He was surprised—the smiling face was older than he remembered but unmistakable! Trembling, George started reading.

    “Bookends have bought ten bookstores from their rivals Dylan. The company, owned by multi-millionaire Richard Pike, is now the largest bookseller in Australia.”

A few years ago, I read about an eight-year-old girl who studied elephant poaching in school and made a poster for her local grocery store. The slogan read, "Save the elephants. Don't buy Ivory Soap, or they will die out." What the girl had done taught me a lesson. Since then, I have looked at eight-year-olds in a different way. As an environmental educator, I used to teach eight-year-olds about the harm of elephant poaching, rainforest destruction, and global warming. I had a degree in natural science—but not in child development. What did I think I was accomplishing by putting my environmental concerns on the shoulders of kids who still believe in fairy tales?

Kids develop the fear of nature when their primary contact with the natural world is hearing bad news about the environment. If I wanted to inspire conservation action, I needed to change my ways, but now? I came across a research by psychologist Louise Chawla. She wanted to know what had gone on in the childhoods of adults who are good environmental citizens. She found two things most common. They had free time to explore the rivers or woods down the street, and they had an adult in their lives who was enthusiastic about the natural world. I understand now that what turned me into a good person today was a childhood spent playing in the field and having a dad who knew that finding a lobster under a rock was better than finding treasure.

    So that's what I was doing when I was eight years old—looking under rocks, climbing trees, and picking wild .flowers. I didn't know a thing about the Clean Air Act that was being debated in congress at that time. I didn't hear a lot of environmental problems. But I built a relationship with nature and I grew up to care. Now I treat my own kids like the child I was. My kids turn off the water when they brush their teeth and turn off the lights when they leave a room.

    Some people think that success is only for those with talent or those who grow up in the right family, and others believe that success mostly comes down to luck. I'm not going to say luck, talent, and circumstances don't come into play because they do. Some people are born into the right family while others are born with great intelligence, and that's just the reality of how life is.

    However, to succeed in life, one first needs to set a goal and then gradually make it more practical. And, in addition to that, in order to get really good at something, one needs to spend at least 10,000 hours studying and practicing. To become great at certain things, it'll require even more time, time that most people won't put in.

    This is a big reason why many successful people advise you to do something you love. If you don't enjoy what you do, it is going to feel like unbearable pain and will likely make you quit well before you ever become good at it.

    When you see people exhibiting some great skills or having achieved great success, you know that they have put in a huge part of their life to get there at a huge cost. It's sometimes easy to think they got lucky or they were born with some rare talent, but thinking that way does you no good, and there's a huge chance that you're wrong anyway.

    Whatever you do, if you want to become great at it, you need to work day in and day out, almost to the point of addiction（沉迷）, and over a long period of time. If you're not willing to put in the time and work, don't expect to receive any rewards. Consistent, hard work won't guarantee you the level of success you may want, but it will guarantee that you will become really good at whatever it is you put all that work into.

    In 1994 I wrote a letter. I stuck it in an envelope, put it away and completely forgot about it. It wasn't until we moved into our new home in 2006 that I found it again. It was addressed to me with explicit instructions not to open until my birthday 2005. It was now 2006 so I decided to open it. This is what it said: Dear Sherri.

    By the time you read this you will be 30. At the age of 18 I had so many hopes and dreams about where you'd be, what you'd be doing and with whom you'd spend your life with.

    Right now I hope that you have traveled and seen everything you've always wanted to, both in Canada and overseas, and maybe even settled down somewhere in Australia doing some research in the field of biology (genetics).I hope you're married to the man of your dreams. The man of mine is Gwynn. He is originally from South Africa (another place I wish to visit).

    However, if things don't go according to plan for you, I wish you all the love, happiness and joy in the world and don't settle for anything less than the best since that is absolutely what you deserve.

    Live long, be happy and live life to it's fullest.

    Love Sherri "18"

    When I read this for the first time since writing it I was floored. Even now having dug this up again another 4 years later I still can't help but think this is really cool. So much of what I wanted for myself has materialized. I did travel to a few more places in Canada although I haven't seen everything I'd like to.

    I did marry the man of my dreams and yes he still is my one and only. I lived in Australia for nearly 4 years, I had a career in Biology in the field of genetics for 10 years. I have two lovely kids I have not one dog but two dogs. Gwynn is a computer programmer.

    I suppose these were things that I really did want. Having never strayed too far from home overseas travel was a huge deal. Having never been away from my family moving to Australia for several years was an huge decision. I find it fascinating how the dreams of a young and naive little girl can become a grown woman's reality.

    How about writing a letter now to yourself in, say, 10 years from now? It's an interesting experiment.

    Astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant galaxy (星系).The black hole is 500 million trillion km away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).

    The announcement was made in Washington, Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo. Details have been published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    Prof Heino Falckc, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who suggested the experiment, told BBC News that the black hole was found in a galaxy called M87. "What we see is larger than the size of our entire Solar System," he said. "It has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. And it is one of the heaviest black holes that we think exists. It is an absolute monster, the heavyweight champion of black holes in the Universe."

    The image shows an intensely bright "ring of fire", as Prof Falckc describes it, surrounding a perfectly circular dark hole. The bright halo is caused by very heated gas falling into the hole. The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined - which is why it can be seen at such distance from Earth. The edge of the dark circle at the center is the point at which the gas enters the black hole, which is an object that has such a large gravitational pull (万有引 力）,not even light can escape.

    "It is remarkable that the image we observe is so similar to that which we get from our theoretical calculations. So far, it looks like Einstein is correct once again." said Dr Ziri Younsi, of University College London -who is part of the EHT cooperation.

    Chinese scientists were involved in the observation through a telescope in Hawaii. They were also highly involved in follow-up data processing and theoretical analysis, said Shen Zhiqiang, head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanhai Astronomical Observatory and a member of the EHT international team.

    Shanghai and Taipei were selected as two of the cities to hold news conferences, together with Washington, Brussels, Santiago and Tokyo, a recognition of China's contribution.

    "In the fields of astronomy, radio astronomy, and space astrophysics, China has made a significant contribution to this global project," Falcke said.