The US teenager Thomas Cheatham had planned to study Latin during his time at Hebron High School in Texas. But when he learned that the school district was going to offer a Mandarin class, he quickly changed his mind.

    “I thought Mandarin would be more beneficial than Latin,” said Cheatham, who is now in his second year of studying the language. He speaks Mandarin to order food at Chinese restaurants and can read social media posts from his Chinese-speaking friends.

    While it's a difficult language to master, the high school junior, who plans to study computer engineering, thinks it will be important for his career. “Chinese is a good language to know, especially with China becoming a growing power,” he said.

    Many experts agree that proficiency in a language spoken by a billion people worldwide will give American students an edge in the global economy. “People are looking at China as our next economic competitor, and interest in Mandarin is growing,” said Marty Abbott, executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. “We're seeing it in all parts of the country. ”

    Abbott estimates that as many as 100, 000 students are now studying Mandarin throughout the US, in public and private schools. She said the US government has designated (指定) Mandarin as a “critical needs” language and provides professional development programs for teachers. “Our government wants to increase our language competency for national security and economic competitiveness,” Abbott said.

    At the same time, the Chinese government is spreading knowledge of the Chinese language and culture through Confucius Institutes established in many US states. For example, the Confucius Institute at the University of Texas in Dallas has been the home of a Confucius Institute for 10 years. It sponsors Confucius Classrooms at 21 local public and private schools, where tens of thousands of students are learning Mandarin.

    A handsome man can earn a fifth more than a plainer colleague (同事) but a beautiful woman is not paid a penny more than her average-looking colleague, new research has shown.

    The study by senior economists (经济学家) found that being good-looking meant male workers could earn 22 percent more than average-looking colleagues. Researchers said good looks did not give women a similar advantage.

    Andrew Leigh, the former economics professor at the Australian National University who co-authored the report, said: "Beauty can be a double-edged sword for women."

    "Some people still believe good looks and intelligence (智慧) are incompatible (矛盾的) in women so a good-looking woman can't be that productive, but it doesn't affect men's pay."

He said that although he believed good-looking women may also earn more, the research did not support his theory.

    The research found that handsome men in all jobs, from manual labour to highly-paid professional careers, can earn 22 percent more than their colleagues doing the same work.

    Men with below-average looks face a battle in the office, with ugliness reducing a man's earnings by 26 percent compared to an average-looking worker.

    Former male model Ian Mitchell, 28, who has a first class degree in history from Edinburgh University and now works for a cosmetics (化妆品) company, told the Sunday Times: "It gives you confidence, and I suspect people tend to warm to you more quickly."

    The study, named Unpacking the Beauty Premium, was the largest exercise of its kind and repeated a survey from 1984 to see if the beauty premium had changed.

    Leigh said the research showed people in the workplace were "lookist (以貌取人的) " and he hoped the findings would encourage employers to remove their prejudice(偏见).

Dear Alcohol,

    You've been around forever. I can remember all the pain you've caused for me.

    Do you remember the night you almost took my father's life? I do. He loves you. Sometimes I think he loves you more than he loves me. He's addicted to you, to the way you promise to rid him of his problems only to cause more of them. You just sat back and laughed as his car went spinning through the street, crashing into two other cars. He wasn't the only one hurt by you that night.

    Do you remember the night of my first high school party? You were there. My friends were intrigued by you. They treated you as if they were never going to see you again, drinking all of you that they could. I spent two hours that night helping my friends who had fallen completely. "I'm so embarrassed," they said as I held their hair back so that they could vomit (呕吐). "I'm sorry," they said when I called taxies for them, walking them out and paying the driver in advance. "This won't happen again," they said as they were sent to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. Two 15-year-old girls slept in hospital beds that night thanks to you.

    Do you remember the night when you took advantage of my 17-year-old neighbor who had to drive to pick up his sister from her dance lessons? Do you know how we all felt when he hit another car and killed the two people in the other car? He died the next morning too. His sister walked home from her dance lesson, and passed police cars and a crowd of people gathering on the sidewalk just two blocks away from the dance studio. She didn't realize her brother was in the midst of it all. She never saw him again. And it's all your fault.

    I wish you'd walk out of my life forever. I don't want anything to do with you. Look at all the pain you've caused. Sure, you've made people happy too from time to time. But the damage you've caused in the lives of millions is inexcusable. Stop luring (引诱) in the people I love. Stop hurting me, please.

Sincerely,

Anonymous

    Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci ... the art world has never lacked talent. And now, a new painter is ready to join the list although this one isn't even human.

    Next month, auction house Christie's Prints and Multiples will make history by offering the first piece of art created by artificial intelligence (AI) for sale. The painting is a portrait of a man called Edmond De Bela- my, and is expected to be sold for up to $10,000.

    The work, which features a man with a mysterious look on his face, was created by software developed by the French art group Obvious. Laugero-Lasserre, an art collector, called the work "grotesque and amazing at the same time". This isn't the first example of Al-produced artwork, as AI has already been used to write poems and compose .songs. However, many people doubt whether it should be called art at all.

According to Russian writer Leo Tolstroy (1828 -1910), art is about creating emotion (情感). It's "a means of …joining people together in the same feelings' he once said.

So, if the emotion behind art is what makes it, the ability to create and use tools is what makes human Icings different from other species. And as a tool itself, the AI technology used to create the portrait is the result of a lot of effort made by several designers. Together, they "fed" the AI a huge collection of paintings from the 14th to the 18th centuries, until it was able to work out how to make similar paintings of its own.

    The introduction of AI art could be the beginning of a new artistic movement. However, not everyone is ready to welcome these high-tech artists just yet.

    "The human mind is what's behind the AI technology. And the human mind is not a cold, hard fact," said Oscar Schwartz, a professor of AI. "Rather, it in something that's created with our opinions and something that changes over

    Children have their own rules in playing games. They seldom need a referee (裁判) and rarely trouble to keep scores. They don't care much about who wins or loses, and it doesn't seem to worry them if the game is not finished. Yet, they like games that depend a lot on luck, so that their personal abilities cannot be directly compared. They also enjoyed games that move in stages, in which each stage, the choosing of leaders, the picking-up of sides, or the determining of which side shall start, is almost a game in itself.

    Grown-ups can hardly find children's game exciting, and they often feel puzzled at why their kids play such simple game again and again. However, it is found that a child plays games for very important reasons. He can be a good player without having to think whether he is a popular person, and he can find himself being a useful partner to someone of whom he is ordinary afraid. He becomes a leader when it comes to his turn. He can be confident, too, in particular games, that it is his place to give orders, to pretend to be dead, to throw a ball actually at someone, or to kiss someone he has caught.

    It appears to us that when children play a game they imagine a situation under their control. Everyone knows the rules, and more importantly, everyone plays according to the rules. Those rules may be childish, but they make sure that every child has a chance to win.

    Before you make friends, you have to decide who you want to be your friends.

    Most people like to have friends who like to do the same kind of things they do.

    The quickest way to make a friend is to smile. When you smile, people think you are friendly and easy to talk to. It may not be easy at first to smile, but remember most people will stay away from a scaled or angry looking.

    One easy way to start a conversation with someone is to say something nice about him. Think about how great you feel when someone says something nice to you. Doesn't it make you want to keep talking to that person?

    Ask your new friends questions about themselves. Who's their favourite singer, where do they live, what do they do after school are all good questions to start a conversation. Make sure you have something to add to the conversation, too. Then someone asks you a question, do have an answer for it. There is nothing that will stop a conversation quicker than a shrug for an answer.

    Kids who show an interest in other kids and who are kind and friendly make good friends. Remember, everyone wants to be around people who like to do similar things and people who are nice to them.