He is both a great director and a great animator (卡通片制作者). He is Japan's Walt Disney.

    Hayao Miyazaki, the 72-year-old Japanese master of fantasy animation (奇幻动画), one of the most respected animation directors in the world, announced his retirement on September 6. Here are some key words about his films.

Good and evil (邪恶)

    Miyazaki rarely tells stories in simple good and evil. The worlds he creates tend to be complex (复杂的) and unclear. The bad figures often don't seem so bad once you get to know them. Miyazaki has explained that the lack of clear good and evil is because he sees the 21st century as a complex time, in which old ideas need to be re-examined, even in children's films.

Children

    The heroes in Miyazaki's films are usually children or teens, more often young girls. Sometimes they can see the spirit world; they are curious and friendly, even to strange creatures. The stories often deal with growing up.

Sky and water

    Two of Miyazaki's great loves are the sky and water, and he uses them in related ways. Flight is a forever theme — Miyazaki has never done a film without flying of some kind. His imagination seems to fly and leave behind the pull of gravity (重力), a force and control that he feels a bound (束缚) from setting him free.

    Water is another way for Miyazaki to fight gravity. In his films he likes the unexpected floods with crystal-clear water, and objects floating on the surface seem to be supported by magic.

Peace

    Miyazaki's negative view of the war goes far more than surface deep. Violence is usually seen as wrong and painful, and Miyazaki's heroes are often peacemakers.

    Rescue officials in Poland are working quickly to clear one of the country's highways. The roadway is covered with a sticky brown material. It is blocking cars from both directions.

    What is causing the mess? Milk chocolate. The problems began early Wednesday, after a huge truck carrying many tons of liquid chocolate overturned. Chocolate spilled out. It spread across six driveways of Poland's A2 highway.

    The liquid chocolate solidified（凝固）as it cooled, causing even more difficulties. The accident happened near the western Polish town of Slupca. Bogdan Kowalski is with the fire fighters of Slupca. He told the Associated Press that “the cooling chocolate is worse than snow”.

    Videos published on social media showed rescuers and cleaners were trying to move the sticky brown mess with a bulldozer（推土机）.

    The private Polish broadcaster TVN24 reported that the driver of the truck was taken to a hospital with a broken arm. The accident happened in the morning when there was little traffic. Nobody else was harmed.

    The sticky situation became a hot topic on social media. Some people offered to help the clean-up workers by eating the chocolate themselves.

    Marlene Kukawa is a media officer for Slupea police. She told the New York Times that rescue workers needed to remove the truck from the highway first. “The cleanup”, she said at the time, “will take a few hours or more.” She added that accidents are rare in this part of the A2 highway. And, she told the New York Times, she is sure the area has never experienced something quite like a huge chocolate spill.

    The quick action of Nick helped five people escape a fire on Hope Road. Nick said he usually left his house about 5:30 a.m. to do morning exercises, but that day he decided to stay at home to get his daughter ready for school. As he looked at his neighbor's house, he realized that it was on fire. "I saw smoke and flames and ran over and started beating on the side of the house shouting, 'Your house is on fire! Your house is on fire!'" Nick remembered it was at about 9 a.m. that the firefighters put out the fire.

    Beverly Penny and her husband, Clark, along with their younger daughters, were sleeping in the living room, next to the kitchen, when they heard Nick beating on the walls. She opened the bedroom door and black smoke came in. She managed to get her kids out. Her dog tried to hide under the bed, but Penny caught it by the leg and threw it out of the door. However, chickens in one of the rooms weren't so lucky.

    Firefighters got the call at about 7:05 a.m. "When we arrived with our fire trucks, there were heavy flames outside on the house," Jerry said. He called Nick a hero, saying that without his quick responses(回应) the result could have been much worse. "The firefighters were fast," Nick said. "They arrived here within about three minutes."

    "They did a great job, and I can't thank them enough," Penny said, then looked at what remained in the house and shook her head as tears rolled down in her eyes. "Everything I have is gone. Luckily nobody was hurt in the fire." She said the fire could have been caused by an electrical problem. "We've been having problems with mice, so that we could have had something to do with it," she added.

    Babies have an astonishing talent that adults entirely lose. By the age of one, they can recognise the significant noises around them and group them into a language. When we have lost this capacity as adults, it becomes enormously difficult to distinguish between sounds that are glaringly different to a native speaker. It all sounds Greek to us. This is because the range of possible sounds that humans use to convey meaning may be as high as 2,000, but few languages use more than 100 and even then the significant noises－the phonemes (音素) of a language－each cover a range of sounds and so vague distinctions which would change the meaning of a word in other languages.

    But where do these phonemes come from and why do they shift over time? New research suggests that the apparently arbitrary distribution of some sounds around the world may be partially explained by diet. This is unexpected. We'd rather think of language as product of our thought  rather than of the arrangement of our teeth. In reality, though, any given language must be both.

    Hunter gatherer languages very seldom use the sounds known as labiodentals (唇齿音)－those such as f and v－that are made by touching the lower lip with the upper teeth. Only two of the hundreds of Australian aboriginal languages use them, for example. But in cultures that have discovered farming, these consonants (辅音) are much more common. The argument goes that farmers eat more cooked food and more dairy than hunter gatherers. Either way, they need to chew mush less, and to bite less with their front teeth. So farmers grew up with smaller lower jaws and more of an overbite than their ancestors who had to bite through harder foods. It became easier for them to make the labiodental consonants instead of purely labial (唇音) ones: one example is that f come to take the place of p. Romans said "pater" but English speakers (unless they're Rees－Moggs) say "father".

    Beyond these particular changes, the story highlights the way in which everything distinctively human is both material and spiritual: speech must combine sound and meaning, and the meaning can't exist or be transmitted without a real object. But neither can it be reduced to the purely physical, as our inability to understand or even to recognise foreign languages makes clear. The food we eat shapes our jaws, and our jaws in turn shape the sounds of our language. The ease with which we eat probably shapes our thought too, as anyone who has suffered toothache could testify. What we eat may have shaped the sounds of our language, but how we eat changes how we feel and what we use language to express. A family meal is very different from a sandwich at the office desk, even if the calorie is the same. Food has purposes and meanings far beyond keeping us alive and pleasing the Palate (味觉).

    How often do you exercise? A new study found that most kids aged 12 to 15 weren't getting enough physical activity. The results were based on about 800 kids. As part of the study, the kids tracked and reported on their own activity levels, and took physical exams.

    U. S. fitness guidelines suggest an hour or more of physical activity every day. According to the study, only 1 in 4 U.S. kids get enough physical activity.

    "It's certainly worrying to see that our kids have such a limited amount of physical activity each day," said Dr. Stephen Pont. He is an expert on children's health.

    Few kids in the study met the guidelines on physical activity that raises the heart rate and makes people breathe harder. Overall, about 25% said they got an hour of that kind of exercise every day. Kids also reported on which activities they did most often outside of school gym class--basketball for boys and running for girls.

    The study found that fat teenagers were less active than normal-weight girls and boys. Fat girls were slightly less active than normal-weight girls, but levels were similar among overweight and normal-weight boys. The study also said that the percent of fat children aged 2 to 19 was 17%, or about 12.5 million kids.

    "There's always room for improvement," said Tala Fakhouri, who was the leader of the study. She also said the results provide useful information to help with fitness campaigns such as Let's Move, which was initiated by Michelle Obama in 2010. To inspire kids to eat right and get in shape, Michelle visits schools and holds exercise events. She also calls on schools to offer regular gym classes.

    The study also found kids who get physical education at school may get better grades.

SHARK CONSERVATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

Take a two-week trip that you will never forget as a volunteer with sharks on a beautiful stretch of South Africa's coastline. Head out to sea to witness one of the world's most powerful (and most misunderstood) creatures on this inspiring project, enjoying watching them from both above and below water.

The DAY-BY-DAY schedule

Day 1: Arrive in Cape Town on a Sunday. You will be collected from the airport and spend your first night in a guest house in the city centre.

Day 2: You will be collected bright and early from the guest house and taken down to the project. The drive takes about 90 minutes. You will receive a welcome and head out to sea to witness your first sharks!

Day 3: Most days you will be out on the boat with the sharks, depending on weather. Help out with the full range of tasks on the boats, and in conservation initiatives on land too.

Last day: On the final day of your project you will be taken back to Cape Town for your onward travel.

The price is £ 829, including the voluntary work programme with accommodations, airport transfers, one night in a guest house in Cape Town, breakfasts daily and lunches when on the boats. Your trip can be extended at a cost of £ 375 per week.

It is an amazing experience! Some volunteers planned to stay for 4 weeks, extended to 6 weeks and still didn't want to come home. If you'd like to chat about this holiday or need help, we're very happy to help.

Call us at 01273 823 700.

Email us at rosy@responsibletravel.com.