When I was only 3 years old, my mother taught me to memorize and recite poems. She was my first teacher of the arts, and my father was the first to appreciate my performance. Even at that young age, I had a simple understanding of how art and culture affect us as human beings and how we can connect to each other through the arts, which shapes my life to this day.

    When I was growing up, my parents supported my interest in taking acting classes and doing community theater. Their faith in me and the professional（专业的）training I was getting from my theater teachers gave me a sense of purpose and a sense of self-confidence. I learned what artistic achievement actually was and what hard work the business was. While many people see the rosy picture to our business, I was really learning what it would require for me to become a professional.

    I became an actress, but arts education isn't just about preparing our young people for a job in the arts. I recently talked to some of the kids attending theater education. Some of them want to work in theater, and some don't. They are learning not only theater skills, but also about the world around them. They learn about discipline（纪律）and hard work and what's required and what they have to do to bring themselves to the work. They learn how they can be of service in the world through the arts. They learn how to work with a team. By studying the arts, these students are open to worlds and lives that they might not have any other way of knowing about or any other way to connect with in their lives the way they are right now.

    These young people are our future. We are passing the torch to them. And I think that's one of the most important reasons why we need to foster（培养）the arts.

    Keeping fit often means sharing a busy pathway with cyclists, runners and walkers, but imagine facing the task of doing it all without being able to see or hear. It is a challenge many disabled athletes face, unless someone agrees to be their eyes and ears.

    Newly formed group Achilles Brisbane pairs vision－and hearing－impaired（视觉和听觉受损的）athletes with a person who would like to guide them.

    “When we go out, we're always going out into an unknown course,”said Achilles Brisbane president Jane Britt, who is both vision and hearing impaired. “It's much less frightening to have someone beside you that has full hearing to listen for you and tell you what's there.”

    Ms. Cullen and Ms. Britt meet up most Saturday mornings to take part in the free five－kilometer Southbank park run. Their partnership is built on trust, but Ms. Britt said that it took time to develop.

    Ms. Britt said it took an unexpected storm for her to trust Ms. Cullen completely. “There was violent rain, my glasses were broken and we were walking together,”she said. “I suddenly had to tell her I couldn't see anything, and I was going to have to completely trust her. From that time I knew it was going to work because she was so good about dealing with the special situation we both found ourselves in. ”

    Isabella Allen and her seeing-eye dog Tatum are two new additions to the Achilles programme. Ms. Allen kept active by running and cycling but found it difficult to keep going as her vision became worse. After nearly giving up completely, she worked up the courage to ask Brisbane to find someone to share a boat with her.

    Ms. Alien said the fear of not finding anyone to row with almost stopped her from reaching out to Achilles Brisbane. “But, they found people and matched me to them.”she said, “It's the best thing I've ever done. ”

    It is commonly believed that the earliest Chinese paper-cuts appeared during the sixth century. Some scholars believe it was even earlier. Legend has it that during the Western Han Dynasty(206BC-AD24), Emperor Wudi was very sad after one of his favorite concubines, Madame Li, died. A Taoist priest, Li Shaoweng, cut a piece of hemp paper in the shape of Madame Li. When evening fell, the emperor's servants lit candles in his bedroom; the reflection of that paper-cut on the wall made the emperor think about his beloved concubine.

    The Yuxian paper-cut is different from most paper-cuts produced in other regions of China. Paper-cuts from other regions are mostly cut with scissors or knives from single-colored paper, such as red or black paper.

    There are four major procedures to making the Yuxian paper-cut: First, sketch the pattern on the draft paper; second, fasten the draft to the paper to be cut; third, use a knife to carve out the pattern; and fourth, dye (染色) the paper-cut with various colors.

    Precise cutting skills are needed to make a piece of the Yuxian paper-cut, which highlights the craft maker's artistic taste and dyeing skills. That explains the following saying: "The successful making of a Yuxian paper-cut is 30 percent dependent on the maker's cutting skills, and 70 percent on the maker's dyeing skills."

    The traditional Yuxian paper-cut highlights two themes: flowers and characters in Chinese operas. The paper-cut is particularly known for its vivid description of characters in various traditional Chinese operas. In October 2009, the art of Yuxian's paper-cut was added to the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage (非物质文化遗产) established by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization).

    The days of the hunter are almost over in India. This is partly because there is practically nothing left to kill, and partly because some steps have been taken, mainly by banning tiger-shooting, to protect those animals which still survive.

    Some people say that Man is naturally a hunter. I disagree with this view. Surely our earliest forefathers, who at first possessed no weapons, spent their time digging for roots, and were no doubt themselves often hunted by meat-eating animals.

    I believe the main reason why the modern hunter kills is that he thinks people will admire his courage in overpowering dangerous animals. Of course, there are some who truly believe that the killing is not really the important thing, and that the chief pleasure lies in the joy of the hunt and the beauties of the wild countryside. There are also those for whom hunting in fact offers a chance to prove themselves and risk death by design; these men go out after dangerous animals like tigers, even if they say they only do it to rid the countryside of a threat. I can respect reasons like these, but they are clearly different from the need to strengthen your high opinion of yourself.

    The greatest big-game hunters expressed in their writings something of these finer motives. One of them wrote.

    “You must properly respect what you are after and shoot it cleanly and on the animal's own territory(领地). You must fix forever in your mind all the wonders of that particular day. This is better than letting him grow a few years older to be attacked and wounded by his own son and eventually eaten, half alive, by other animals, Hunting is not a cruel and senseless killing - not if you respect the thing you kill, not if you kill to enrich your memories, not if you kill to feed your people.”

    I can understand such beliefs, and can compare these hunters with those who hunted lions with spears(矛) and bravely caught them by the tail. But this is very different from many tiger-shoots I have seen, in which modern weapons were used. The so-called hunters fired from tall trees or from the backs of trained elephants. Such methods made tigers seem no more dangerous than rabbits.

    The Winter Olympics is also called the White Olympics. At this time, many colorful stamps are published to mark the great Games. The first stamps marking the opening came out on January 25, 1932 in the United States for the 3rd White Olympics. From then on, publishing stamps during the White Olympics became a rule.

    During the 4th Winter Olympic Games a group of stamps were published in Germany in November 1936. The five rings of Olympics were drawn on the front of the sportswear. It was the first time that the rings appeared on the stamps of the White Olympics.

    In the 1950's, the stamps of this kind became more colorful. When the White Olympics came, the host countries (东道国) as well as the non-host countries published stamps to mark those games.

    China also published four stamps in February 1980, when the Chinese sports men began to take part in the White Olympics. Japan is the only Asian country that has ever held the White Olympics. Altogether 14, 500 million stamps were sold to raise money for this sports meet. Different kinds of sports were drawn on these small stamps. People can enjoy the beauty of the wonderful movements of some sportsmen.

Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become a lot more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.

While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like companions than mere tools. For example, these robots will be able to distinguish when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more appropriately to the user.

The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn't just deliver general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each individual in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.

Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these spaces.

Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company's "Oshbot" robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product's location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.

The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not intended to replace workers, but to work alongside other employees." We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us," said Breazeal.