For many parents, raising a teenager is like fighting a long war, but years go by without any clear winner. Like a border conflict between neighboring countries, the parent-teen war is about boundaries: Where is the line between what I control and what you do?

    Both sides want peace, but neither feels it has any power to stop the conflict. In part, this is because neither is willing to admit any responsibility for starting it. From the parents' point of view, the only cause of their fight is their adolescents' complete unreasonableness. And of course, the teens see it in exactly the same way, except oppositely. Both feel trapped.

In this article, I'll describe three no-win situations that commonly arise between teens and parents and then suggest some ways out of the trap. The first no-win situation is quarrels over unimportant things. Examples include the color of the teen's hair, the cleanliness of the bedroom, the preferred style of clothing, the child's failure to eat a good breakfast before school, or his tendency to sleep until noon on the weekends. Second, blaming. The goal of a blaming battle is to make the other admit that his bad attitude is the reason why everything goes wrong. Third, needing to be right. It doesn't matter what the topic is —politics, the laws of physics, or the proper way to break an egg—the point of these arguments is to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong, for both wish to be considered an authority—someone who actually knows something—and therefore to command respect. Unfortunately, as long as parents and teens continue to assume that they know more than the other, they'll continue to fight these battles forever and never make any real progress.

    My son Cameron who was 16 years old came up with this crazy idea to make his own survival show. Well I thought it was just another one of his “phases” but he began to sound more and more serious about it. He's a big outdoors man and has always loved the idea of surviving in the woods by himself, but he has never done anything like this. Anyway, he somehow raised $4,000 for his idea. With the money he bought a nice camcorder(摄像机) ;that's when I realized that he was really serious about this whole thing.

    Cameron organized the trip all by himself. I just put out a few rules that he had to follow and rented a satellite phone so that he could contact us on his journey. My son traveled nearly 50 miles, while surviving for four days and three nights alone in the wilderness. He had no food or water, only his knife, and a camera. The journey was difficult as he traveled through valleys, up and down big waterfalls, all while he was filming his entire journey. The wilderness we dropped him off in was a wild forest that is made up of untouched land; he found his way to the beautiful lake where we picked him up. In the end he made the most amazing movie that I have ever seen in all my life.

    My son's courage should be recognized. That is why I am trying my hardest to get him seen by the rest of the world. Cameron recently turned 17. He already has plans for his next adventure and I have no hope in stopping him from completing it. This next summer he plans on surviving for two or three weeks on a desert island in Fiji or Tonga. No teenage kid has ever done anything close to what my son Cameron has done.

    Science fiction writers create imaginary worlds. The way things work in your imaginary worlds will be based on actual science. So it's important for you to be familiar with the scientific principles and inventions that are related to your creation. For example, if you're writing about human living on a planet with zero gravity, then you need to know the effects of zero gravity on the human body.

    Then you have to figure out the exact rules of your imaginary worlds. And you have to follow them. If humans are able to breathe underwater in Chapter 1, your character can't drown in a swimming pool in Chapter 3. The issue here is maintaining your readers' trust. That means the readers are willing to pretend along with you. If you start out with an ordinary detective novel and then throw in someone breathing underwater in the 6th chapter, you will pull the readers out of their imagination. The same thing happens if you change the rules halfway.

    Part of your preparation work for the novel is to map out its worlds in great detail. You should decide the following issues: the history of the world, the geography, what possibilities it offers, how everything works in this new reality, and how all of these factors affect the way your characters think, feel, and react to things. You don't have to tell your readers all the rules in the first chapter. But you have to let readers know enough to understand what's going on. This also allows you to work out logical problems and contradictions before you start writing.

    When you are writing, remember to make it feel real. You are inviting readers to visit a new world. They will want to be able to see, hear, feel, smell, and even taste what it's like. Whether your novel is about a world without disease or an undiscovered planet, help your readers feel like they're actually there.

    Insects(昆虫) are a very healthy food. They have almost as much protein(蛋白质) as meat from a pig or cow and are low in fat. Eating insects is also very good for the environment since they need less land and water than larger animals.

    Marcel Dicke, who studies insects, explained in a talk how insects also produce more meat from the food they eat. For example, imagine a farmer feeds a cow 10 pounds of food. Those 10 pounds of food produce about 1 pound of meat for people to eat. However, imagine the farmer gives a certain number of insects 10 pounds of food. Those 10 pounds of food produce 9 pounds of meat for people to eat!

    Eating more insects can also help people in poor areas. Many people can raise and sell insects, which can provide jobs and food.

    But insects will not replace animal meat very quickly. First, people in some countries would have to change how they think about eating insects. Many people in North America and Europe eat a lot of meat like beef and pork. But they do not traditionally eat insects. In fact, for many people in the west, eating insects sounds crazy. They believe insects are dirty and dangerous. Insects make them feel uncomfortable.

    Some people are trying to deal with this problem. For example, David George Gordon wrote a book named “The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook”, which tries to show people that insects can be delicious. Other insect experts travel around telling people about the benefits of eating insects. But they will still have a lot work to do.

    Starbucks will stop using plastic straws from its stores globally by 2020, in a nod to the growing push for businesses to be more environmentally friendly. The Seattle-based company said on Monday it will instead use straws made from other materials, and lids designed not to need straws. McDonald's also recently said it would switch to paper straws in the UK and Ireland by next year, and test alternatives to plastic straws in some US locations. In February, Dunkin' Donuts said that it would refuse polystyrene foam (塑料泡沫) cups from its stores by 2020.

    Environmental activists have been pressuring businesses to ditch plastic straws because they can end up in the ocean and hurt marine life. The push gained great support after a video in 2015 showed rescuers removing a straw from a sea turtle's nose in great detail. Local governments have also been looking at the issue. Last week, Seattle's ban on single-use plastic straws and utensils in food service outlets took effect, and Starbucks says it already offers alternative straws there. Similar proposals are being considered elsewhere, including New York and San Francisco.

    While straws have become a highly-concerned issue, they make up only about 4% of the plastic trash by number of pieces, and far less by weight. Straws add up to only about 2,000 tons of the nearly 9m tons of plastic waste that hits waters each year.

    Finland is the happiest place on Earth, according to the 2018 World Happiness Report of 156 nations.

    The report, released Wednesday by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Solutions Network, ranks the countries of the world based on six different categories of well-being: income, freedom, trust, life expectancy, generosity and social support. This year's report also pays special attention to the happiness of each country's immigrants.

    The U.S. dropped four spots from 2017 and landed in 18th place, and last year's winner, Norway, came in second place — followed by Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland.

    "The top five countries all have almost equally high values for the six factors found to support happiness, and four of these countries—Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and now Finland — have been in first place in the six World Happiness Report rankings since the first report" in 2012, "co-editor John Helliwell told CNN. "In a division with such excellent teams, changes in the top spot are to be expected."

    Rounding out the top 10 happiest countries was Canada in sixth place, then New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. The order of the top 10 nations changed from the 2017 list but the countries did not, according to the report. They were also 10 of the 11 top spots in the immigrant happiness category (including Mexico — 24th overall, but 10th in immigration).

    "The most striking finding of the report is the remarkable consistency between the happiness of immigrants and the locally born," Helliwell said in a statement. "Although immigrants come from countries with very different levels of happiness, their reported life evaluations resemble those of other residents in their new countries. Those who move to happier countries gain, while those who move to less happy countries lose."

    Other major world powers placed in significantly low spots on the list. Germany came in 15th, the UK was 19th — followed by Japan in 54th place, Russia in 59th and China in 86th.

    The report, based on surveys completed by citizen volunteers, came just under a week before World Happiness Day on March 20, when the UN declared to recognize "the relevance of happiness and well-being as universal goals and aspirations in the lives of human beings around the world and the importance of their recognition in public policy objectives".