Most people agree that honesty is a good thing. But does Mother Nature agree? Animals can't talk, but can they lie in other ways? Can they lie with their bodies and behavior? Animal experts may not call it lying, but they do agree that many animals, from birds to chimpanzees, behave dishonestly to fool other animals. Why? Dishonesty often helps them survive.

    Many kinds of birds are very successful at fooling other animals. For example, a bird called the plover sometimes pretends to be hurt in order to protect its young. When a predator（猎食动物）gets close to its nest, the plover leads the predator away from the nest. How? It pretends to have a broken wing. The predator follows the “hurt” adult, leaving the baby birds safe in the nest.

  Another kind of bird, the scrub jay, buries its food so it always has something to eat. Scrub jays are also thieves. They watch where others bury their food and steal it. But clever scrub jays seem to know when a thief is watching them. So they go back later, unbury the food, and bury it again somewhere else.

    Birds called cuckoos have found a way to have babies without doing much work. How? They don't make nests. Instead, they get into other birds' nests secretly. Then they lay their eggs and fly away. When the baby birds come out, their adoptive parents feed them.

    Chimpanzees, or chimps, can also be sneaky. After a fight, the losing chimp will give its hand to the other. When the winning chimp puts out its hand, too, the chimps are friendly again. But an animal expert once saw a losing chimp take the winner's hand and start fighting again.

    Chimps are sneaky in other ways, too. When chimps find food that they love, such as bananas, it is natural for them to cry out. Then other chimps come running. But some clever chimps learn to cry very softly when they find food. That way, other chimps don't hear them, and they don't need to share their food.

    As children, many of us learn the saying “You can't fool Mother Nature.” But maybe you can't trust her, either.

    Meeting people from another culture can be difficult. From the beginning, people may send the wrong signal. Or they may pay no attention to signals from another person who is trying to develop a relationship.

    Different cultures emphasize (强调) the importance of relationship building to a greater or lesser degree. For example, business in some countries is not possible until there is a relationship of trust. Even with people at work, it is necessary to spend a lot of time in "small talk", usually over a glass of tea, before they do any job. In many European countries -- like the UK or France -- people find it easier to build up a lasting working relationship at restaurants or cafes rather than at the office.

    Talk and silence may also be different in some cultures. I once made a speech in Thailand. I had expected my speech to be a success and start a lively discussion; instead there was an uncomfortable silence. The people present just stared at me and smiled. After getting to know their ways better, I realized that they thought I was talking too much. In my own culture, we express meaning mainly through words, but people there sometimes feel too many words are unnecessary.

    Even within Northern Europe, cultural differences can cause serious problems. Certainly, English and German cultures share similar values; however, Germans prefer to get down to business more quickly. We think that they are rude. In fact, this is just because one culture starts discussions and makes decisions more quickly.

    People from different parts of the world have different values, and sometimes these values are quite against each other. However, if we can understand them better, a multicultural environment will offer a wonderful chance for us to learn from each other.

    More and more comments sections are being shut down online.

    Autumn Phillips had had enough. On Aug. 19, the executive editor of the Quad- City Times in Iowa, and Illinois, US visited her website, qctimes.com, and saw a story about a man who had been shot to death. When she got to the readers' comments sections at the end, she was shocked by what she saw. Below the story was a growing number of comments—a racist remark about democratic votes, a negative comment about police …So Phillips decided to do something she had been thinking about for a long time: she shut down the comments sections.

    Phillips was not alone in making such a move. Last week, NPR announced k too was closing its online comments sections. The decisions don't mean that the news outlets are no longer interested in what their audiences are thinking. Both stressed their eagerness to hear from readers and listeners on social networks. But both agreed that comments had deviated from their original intention. And so they had.

    In early days of digital journalism, comments were seen as a key part of this new media, a wonderful opportunity for strengthening the dialogue between news producers and their audiences. It was a welcome change, given that for long many news organizations were far too separated from their readers. Much more back and forth conversation seemed like healthy and welcome evolution. Sadly, that's not the way things turned out. Rather than a place for exchanging ideas, comments sections became the home of ugly name-calling, racism and anti-women language. Besides their poisonous quality, comments seem out of place today.

    "Since we made the announcement, I've received an outpouring of responses from our readers," she says. "I've heard from parents whose children were hurt by our online comments. I've heard from people who said they wouldn't send in letters to the editor because they were attacked so fiercely by comments, and wasn't worth it."

Perhaps you think you could easily add to your happiness with more money. Strange as it may seem, if you're unsatisfied, the issue is not a lack of means to meet your desires but a lack of desires—-not that you cannot satisfy your tastes but that you don't have enough tastes.

    Real riches consist of well-developed and hearty capacities to enjoy life. Most people are already swamped with things. They eat, wear, go and talk too much. They live in too big a house with too many rooms, yet their house of life is a hut.

    Your house of life ought to be a mansion, a royal palace. Every new taste, every additional interest, every fresh enthusiasm adds a room. Here are several rooms your house of life should have.

    Art should be a desire for you to develop simply because the world is full of beautiful things. If you only understood how to enjoy them and feed your spirit on them, they would make you as happy as to find plenty of ham and eggs when you're hungry.

    Literature, classic literature, is a beautiful, richly furnished room where you might find many an hour of rest and refreshment. To gain that love would go toward making you a rich person, for a rich person is not someone who has a library but who likes a library.

    Music like Mozart's and Bach's shouldn't be absent. Real riches are of the spirit. And when you've brought that spirit up to where classical music feeds it and makes you a little drunk, you have increased your thrills and bettered them. And life is a matter of thrills.

    Sports, without which you remain poor, mean a lot in life. No matter who you are, you would be more human, and your house of life would be better supported against the bad days, if you could, and did, play a bit.

    Whatever rooms you might add to your house of life, the secret of enjoying life is to keep adding.

    Our tolerating ability is indeed way beyond our imagination. But not until the very critical moment will we realize our potential tolerating ability.

    There was a woman in the countryside who got married at the age of 18 and had to escape with her two daughters and a son wherever she could at the age of 26 due to the Japanese army's invasion, Many people could not bear the suffering of being a fugitive (逃亡者)and wanted to commit suicide. Knowing that, she would come to those people and soothed them by saying, "Don't do that silly thing. There are no such setbacks that we could not overcome. The Japanese armies are bound to be driven away one day!”

    Finally, she insisted until the day when all the Japanese armies were kicked out of China. However, her son died of disease without sufficient medicine and nutrition in those days of hardships. Her husband, after knowing the death of his son, lay in bed for two days without eating and drinking anything. She teared to her husband and said, "We have a tough destiny, but however tough our lives will be, we should persist in our efforts."

    After she gave birth to the second son, her husband died of edema (水肿), which almost, blew her away. But eventually, she recovered and embraced the three young children, saying, "My sweet hearts, don, feel scared. You still have me, your dear mum!”

    It took her painstaking efforts to raise her children up and, the life of her family was getting better and better. Two daughters were married and so was her son finally. She said to everyone she met," Look! What I said is absolutely right. There are no such setbacks that we could not overcome! My life is so happy now!”

    She lived until 86. Before she went to Heaven, she said to her children, You all should live to your best. There are no such setbacks that we could not overcome!”

Imagine a school where students are taught by the best teachers in every subject, regardless of location. Imagine a school where students could go on safe field trips to the Amazon rainforest or Everest base camp. Well, such schools are already being built: in virtual(虚拟的)reality. 

Last year, Optima Academy Online, an all-virtual school, delivered courses that aim to improve the hearts and train the minds of young people. These courses are of different levels, attracting 170 full-time students from all over Florida. In the progress of home-schooling, students use headsets for about three hours a day for formal lessons and then do course work independently with digital check-ins. 

Future versions(版本)of VR will doubtless be widely used in education, but the only questions are: for what purpose and at what speed? There are enough reasons to doubt whether VR schools represent the future of education. Sticking a child in their bedroom with a heavy VR headset fastened to their face and no physical social interaction with other kids will fill many of them and their parents with horror. 

A recent report concluded that digital education could significantly improve the quality and equality of schooling systems. But if managed poorly, it could have the opposite effect, turning a digital divide into an educational one. There is growing evidence to suggest that is happening. In Mexico, only 24 percent of 15-year-old students in poor schools have access(使用)to a home computer for schoolwork compared with 87 percent in rich ones. 

Used properly, technology can be great for enabling self-motivated students to access learning resources and connect with fellow students and teachers all over the world, says Beeban Kidron, a member of the UK's Digital Futures Commission. The trouble is that Edtech is too often seen as a shiny new toy that will solve all problems and save money rather than being viewed as a different way to learn, she adds.