We may not be aware of it, but ordinary family homes in the U.S. and the rest of the world are not energy-efficient.

    Most of their energy goes to heating and cooling, and a lot of it is wasted, as warm air and cool air escape through fireplace chimneys and thin or poorly fitting windows and doors. A passive house loses almost none."Imagine a thermos(保温瓶),"said housing developer Brendan O'Neill."You have insulation(隔绝) everywhere, and it's basically completely sealed. And so the idea is to build a house like a thermos. So the windows are sealed. There's insulation completely surrounding the building. We make it as sealed as possible."

    A 147-square-meter passive house, presented by O'Neill Development Corp. as a demonstration unit just outside Washington, was brought to the site in two boxes. "Once it's set and put together, it takes about four weeks to complete the outside construction, to put down carpets," O'Neill said. "If everything is set in place, you put a house like this together in about four months.”The total cost of building it was $325,000, or about 17 percent more than constructing an ordinary house. But its utility(公用事业) bill is only around $20 monthly, or one-tenth the amount for the average house of the same size.

    While passive houses have been around for a long time, the idea has never taken root in the U.S. There was no driving force to push it.

    However, David Peabody, an architect who designs passive houses said, "I think climate change is now becoming a larger issue. And I think building standards are catching on to that. So people are becoming more aware of energy."Peabody said the cost of building passive houses could come down."What really makes sense for truly affordable housing," he said, "is to build multi-storey buildings."

    They had a dozen children, six boys and six girls, in seventeen years. One reason Dad had so many children was that he was confident anything he and Mother teamed upon was sure to be a success.

    Our house at Montclair, New Jersey, was a sort of school for scientific management and the removal of wasted motions — or “motion study,” as Dad and Mother named it.

    Dad took moving pictures of us children washing dishes, so that he could determine how we could reduce our motions and thus hurry through the task. Each child who wanted extra pocket money put forward an offer saying what he would do the job for. The lowest bidder got the contract(合约).

    Dad put process and work charts in the bathrooms. Every child old enough to write — and Dad expected his children to start writing at a young age — was required to sign their names on the charts in the morning after he had brushed his teeth, taken a bath, combed his hair, and made his bed. At night, each child had to weigh himself, mark the figure on a graph, and sign the process charts again after he had done his homework, washed his hands and face, and brushed his teeth. Mother wanted to have a place on the charts for saying prayers, but Dad said as far as he was concerned prayers were voluntary.

    It was strict management, all right. Yes, at home or on the job, Dad was always the efficiency expert. He buttoned his vest from the bottom up, instead of from the top down, because the bottom-to-top process took him only three seconds, while the top-to-bottom took seven. He even used two shaving brushes to make his face smooth enough, because he found that by so doing he could cut seventeen seconds off his shaving time. For a while he tried shaving with two razors, but he finally gave that up.

    “I can save forty-four seconds,” he complained, “but I wasted two minutes this morning putting this bandage on my throat.” It wasn't the injured throat that really bothered him. It was the two minutes.

    I was very fortunate to be selected by Kindspring to receive $100 for the monthly kindness competition and it has helped to make a beautiful difference in people's lives.

    The idea is simple. I took a lot of fallen branches and hung them from the ceiling with the help of volunteers and friends. Then we hung strings with pins attached to them from the branches. I got a whole lot of art supplies and as people came in for the art exhibit, they were encouraged to create a piece of art or a positive message to hang from the tree.

    The tree changed into this really fun way of exchanging positive messages. If you were to hang a message up, you had to take a message down for you to keep. The experience was really amazing. People of all ages and from all walks of life were sharing art and encouragement through the tree.

    With the $100 I received from Kindspring, I made a total of seven more trees. I am putting them all over our community（社区）. One will go to a youth shelter for homeless teens and one will be put right in the middle of town on our public square. They will have paper and art supplies at the base for people to use in creating a message or piece of art. For the classroom I was able to provide them with new colored pencils, markers, and some sketchbooks, which they all loved. The act is to create communications that are positive and can influence people's lives in great ways just by doing a simple act of kindness. The messages people receive can be kept with them forever as a reminder of the good in the world, or they can pass them along to others. The beauty of the idea is that the messages have unlimited possibilities.

    Washington, D.C. Bicycle Tours

    Cherry Blossom Bike Tour in Washington, D.C.

    Duration: 3 hours

    This small group bike tour is a fantastic way to see a world-famous cherry trees with beautiful flowers of Washington, D.C. Your guide will provide a history lesson about the trees and the famous monuments where they blossom. Reserve your spot before availability—and the cherry blossoms—disappear!

    Washington Capital Monuments Bicycle Tour

    Duration: 3 hours (4 miles)

    Join a guided bike tour and view some of the most popular monuments in Washington, D.C. Explore the monuments and memorials on the National Mall as your guide shares unique facts and history at each stop. Guided tour includes bike, helmet, cookies and bottled water.

    Capital City Bike Tour In Washington, D.C.

    Duration: 3 hours

    Morning or afternoon, this bike tour is the perfect tour for D. C. newcomers and locals looking to experience Washington, D.C. in a healthy way with minimum effort. Knowledgeable guides will entertain you with the most interesting stories about Presidents, Congress, memorials, and parks. Comfortable bikes and a smooth tour route(路线) make cycling between the sites fun and relaxing.

    Washington Capital Sites at Night Bicycle Tour

    Duration: 3 hours(7miles)

    Join a small group bike tour for an evening of exploration in the heart of Washington, D.C. Get up close to the monuments and memorials as you bike the sites of Capitol Hill and the National Mall. Frequent stops are made for photo taking as your guide offers unique facts and history. Tour includes bike, helmet, and bottled water. All riders are equipped with reflective vests and safety lights.

    Ray Tokuda, a 54-year-old Japanese American, is proud of the title his school has given him. He is a Shifu, a Chinese word literally meaning a master, mentor or senior practioner of martial arts.

    Tokuda has reason to be proud. He has been involved with Chinese martial arts for almost four decades. After learning them at the martial arts school in New Mexico State, today he is among the most experienced kung fu teachers of the school.

    Practicing martial arts two to three hours and helping students improve their skills have become Tokuda's daily routine. He expects to practice and teach martial arts for the rest of his life. "I'm still learning. It's worth more than a lifetime to learn Chinese martial arts," he said." Once I started, I just couldn't stop. I think it's also the magic of Chinese culture."

    Tokuda was sent to the martial arts school when he was 10. He still remembers how unwilling he was when starting out." My father had always wanted to learn Chinese martial arts but never got the chance, so he put his kid in," he said. "I was so afraid at that time because I thought kung fu was all about fighting."

    But things changed after he learned that martial arts were more than punching and kicking.

    "One of the things martial arts teach me is overcoming adversity," Tokuda said. "As a little kid, my first lesson was like, oh, look, this is a thing that I can get through by diligence, perseverance(毅力)and dedication, and that was priceless for my life."

    Learning Chinese martial arts opened a gateway for him to better understand Chinese culture because he could hear a lot of ancient Chinese kung fu-related stories. "It is like in America, where we hear stories about knights in shining armor and King Arthur and noble deeds done," he said. "I feel martial arts preserve something of ancient China that can't be found in books. They are sort of an oral history."

    Tokuda has also been invited to various events in his home state to showcase traditional Chinese culture, including the dragon dance and lion dance, which he also learnt at the martial arts school. Because of this, he is now considered a cultural envoy (使者) in the eyes of the public.

    Some things should just be common knowledge by now. The Earth isn't flat. Nope, your hair and nails don't grow after you die. The holes at the top of Bic biro pens are there so that, if you swallow one accidentally, you can still breathe and won't choke to death. It's debatable whether that last one there is common knowledge or not. A quick Google search of the fact, rewritten as a question, shows articles addressing this point going back several years, with the latest (re)appearing just this week over on ScienceAlert. We suppose it's one of those things that come up from time to time, like what would happen if you attack Yellowstone with a nuclear weapon (not much, as it turns out).

    If you jump over to Bic's website, under their FAQs (frequently asked questions), it quite clearly states: "The reason that some BIC® pens have a hole in their cap is to prevent the cap from completely obstructing the airway if accidentally breathed in. This is requested by the international safety standards ISO11540, except for in cases where the cap is considered too large to be a choking risk."

    That's rather lovely of them. In appreciation of their want to not kill off their more clumsy customers, we thought we'd share a few more random facts about Bic that are probably going to come up in a pub quiz one day. Did you know, for example, that each Bic ballpoint pen can produce at least 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) of ink before it begins to run out? In fact, in 2018, 7,250 kilometers (4,505 miles) of writing tests on such pens were carried out on ballpoint pens, gel pens(中性笔), and rollers to make sure they worked to the highest standard.

    The best part of the Bic site, however, is this rather curious fact: "100 percent of pen balls are made through a highly-controlled process." As opposed to a highly uncontrolled process, involving explosions and bouncy castles and total chaos, we suppose.