My friend BJ Gallagher told me a great story recently, about her own experience with resentment (愤恨). She once worked as the training manager for a large newspaper, where she found the corporate culture extremely frustrating. The company was a hundred years old and their past success ha d blinded them to the need for change. Finally, after butting heads with several senior executives (主管) many times, she left the company. But she found that she hadn't left her resentment, frustration, and anger behind when she resigned.

    “I finally decided to write about my experiences and my feelings at the newspaper. I wanted to be rid of that company and those people, once and for all. So I wrote and I wrote. It wasn't just a story that poured out; it was a whole book! We called it A peacock in the Land of Penguins. I was the peacock and those newspaper executives were the penguins.”

    “It took me several more years to finally get over my negative emotions. Through a lot of soul-searching and reflection, I finally was able to let go of my resentment. I came to see that there was nothing personal in the way they treated me, and they were good people doing what they thought best for the company. I was the one who had made it personal. I thought they were making my life miserable on purpose.”

    “Finally, the time came when I decided to make amends (弥补) for the sharp, angry things I had said about the company. I invited my former boss to dinner and made my apology. It was a great healing process for me. I finally felt free of the resentment that had been eating me up.”

    “What was the final outcome?” I asked her.

    “Gratitude,” she replied. “Not only wasn't I resentful any more, I was grateful to the company. If I hadn't had those painful experiences, I would never have written a book. And the book became hugely successful – now published in 21 languages; it transformed my business.”

    It's holiday season and time for shopping. There are a bunch of items on your shopping lists ranging from small gifts, toys and festive decorations to Christmas and New Year cards. What's your first react ion to products labeled “Made in China”? If you still tend to relate “Made in China”to poor quality. You need to update your ideas. China's ability to produce high-quality product s has been recognized by a growing number of foreigners. It's a misunderstanding to associate low quality with“Made in China”.

    Cameron Purdy, a Web user, says that China manufactures poor-quality products does not mean it cannot manufacture high-quality product s. He explains that the poor-quality products one purchases in the US for example, are made in the quality that the American companies ask for. “The price that you pay for the product has no relationship to the cost of its manufacturing,” suggested Purdy. For example, for an item priced at $20 in the US, the cost of manufacturing it paid by the American company is usually less than $1. To guarantee the room for profit, the Chinese co-manufacturer spends less than $1to produce the item.

    Amanda Wu, who lives in Shanghai, noted that many top brands have manufacturing factories located in China, and the most convincing example of China's manufacturing quality is Apple products. On the back of the iPhone, one can find the product is Made in China—“Designed by Apple in California. Assembled (装备) in China. ”Chinese and foreign Web users commented that some Chinese pro ducts with good reputations around the world are Haier, Lenovo, GREE, Huawei and China Railway High-speed.

    On the other hand, foreign misunderstandings can sometimes affect Chinese people's minds. For instance, when Chinese people travel abroad, some would still avoid buying products Made in China. It's time for the world to stop relating Made in China with low-quality products. Just remember, you get what you pay for.

    Soda is refreshing and delicious, but it is not part of a healthy, balanced diet. Most sodas are packed with sugar. In fact, a can of soda can be hiding up to 10 teaspoons of sugar! The sugar does make soft drinks delicious, but definitely not nutritious. Too much sugar in a person's diet can lead to diabetes (糖尿病), heart disease, and tooth problems. One of the biggest sugary soda problems is that drinking much can lead to weight gain and even obesity.

    There are diet options available for almost every kind of pop (汽水), which means that you don't have to drink all that sugar in order to enjoy a can of soda. Many studies have been done on whether or not aspartame (甜味剂), the sugar substitute in diet soda, is bad for you. Up to now, there are still conflicting opinions on this issue. The European Food Safety Authority recently concluded that aspartame is safe for most people, even in fairly large amounts. Aspartame still might not be good for you, though. Studies have shown that people who drink diet sodas may actually gain more weight than those who drink regular soda, perhaps because, strangely enough, drinks loaded with fake sugar may actually make you want to eat more.

    Maybe you've decided it's time to cut down on your soda drinking, but what should you drink instead? Water is absolutely the healthiest thing that you can drink. Your body needs water to stay hydrated (水合物) and function properly, and water contains no calories or fat. Drinking fruit juice occasionally is not a bad thing, but you should be careful what juice and how much juice you're drinking. Fruit juices can contain almost as much sugar as pop!

    As with most things to do with your health, moderation is really at the base of any healthy diet. You can totally drink soda, even the sugary kind just, make sure you're not drinking too much!

    Charles Dickens' joy at first arriving in Boston Harbor in 1842 reads like Ebenezer Scrooge's awakening on Christmas morning. Biographer Peter Ackroyd reports that he flew up the steps of the Tremont House Hotel, sprang into the hall and greeted a curious crowd with a bright "Here we are!" He took to the streets that twinkling midnight in his shaggy fur coat, shouting out the names on shop signs, pulling bell-handles of doors as he passed—excited with laughter—and even screamed with (one imagines) astonishment and delight at the sight of the old South Church. He had set at last upon the shores of "the Republic of my imagination."

    Though not quite 30, Dickens was a literary rock star, the most famous writer in the world, who landed like a conquering hero in a country swept up in an extreme "Boz-o-mania". He wrote to his best friend, John Forster, that he didn't know how to describe "the crowds that pour in and out the whole day; of the people that line the streets when I went out; of the cheering when I went to the theatre; letters of congratulations, welcomes of all kinds, balls, dinners, assemblies without end." When Bostonians renamed their city "Boz-town", New Yorkers determined to "outdollar…and outshine them". Their great Boz Ball boasted flags, flowers, a huge portrait of the author with a bald eagle overhead, 22 tableaux (场景) from the great author's works. "If I should live to grow old," Dickens said, "the scenes of this and other evenings will shine as brightly to my dull eyes 50 years hence as now." ①

    The Spirit of the Times wrote of it: "This most extraordinary, fashionable, brilliant, unique, eye-dazzling, heart-delighting, superb, foolish and ridiculous celebration…came off at the Park Theatre, New York, on Monday evening." But, the reporter predicted, "Such were silly-minded Americans, and such the ridiculous respect paid to a foreigner, who will probably return home and write a book abusing the whole nation for the excesses of a few fools." ②

    In fact, Dickens wrote two.

    ③ Apart from the country's great writers, he found Americans ill-mannered and invading his privacy. "I am so surrounded by people that I am exhausted from want of air." Dickens complained to Forster. "I go to church for quiet, and there is a violent rush to the neighborhood of the bench I sit in. I take my seat in a railroad car, and the very conductor won't leave me alone. I can't drink a glass of water without having a hundred people looking down my throat."

    ④ He disliked Americans' table manners and the tobacco spit everywhere he looked—on even the sidewalks of the nation's capital, where he found party politics corrupting everything, its leaders "the lice (虱子) of God's creation," and "despicable (卑鄙的) trickery at elections."

    Even worse, everyone wanted a piece of the action, from Tiffany's selling unauthorized copies of his bust (半身像) , to a barber selling locks of his hair. "I never knew what it was to feel disgust and contempt (蔑视)," Dickens said, "till I traveled in America." When he departed in June, he left behind all notions of an Arcadian realm he now regarded as "a vast counting house" full of nothing but "cheaters and bores." (See: A Christmas Carol.)

    Americans had soured on him, too. Dickens never missed an opportunity to accuse American publishers of openly pirating his novels to sell for mere pennies, with no recompense to the author at all. The press took offense. Within a month of his arrival, Dickens were laughed at for his "foppish" clothing and effeminate hair, described as "no gentleman," "a contemptible Cockney (伦敦佬)."

    "Dad," I say one day, "Let's take a trip. Why don't you fly and meet me?"

    As a manager from IBM, my father's job filled his day, his thought, his life. While he woke up and took a warm shower, I had fun under the Eiffel Tower. While he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.

    My father sees me travelling without a purpose, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down (安定下来), but now I want him to explore the world.

    He agrees and we meet four weeks later in Rapid City.

    "What is our first stop?" asks my father.

    "What time is it?"

    "Still don't have a watch?"

    Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he looks up at sculptures of the four Presidents in granite(花岗岩), his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of little boy.

    "Amazing," he says, "How was this done?"

    A film in the information center shows sculptor(雕塑家) Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculptures.

    We look up and I ask myself, "Can I devote my life to anything?"

    No directions, no purpose. I always used to hear those words in my father's voice. Now I hear them in my own.

    The next day we're at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.

"Did you ever travel with your dad?" I ask.

    "Only once," he says. "I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other—but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave."

    The last sentence—it's probably the same thing I will say about my father. And what I want my child to say about me.

    In Glacier National Park, my father says, "I've never seen water so blue." I have, in several places of the world. I can keep traveling. I realize— and maybe a fixed job won't be as boring as I think.

    Weeks after our trip, I call my father. "The photos from the trip are wonderful," he says. "We have got to take another trip like that sometime." I tell him I've decided to settle down and find a fixed job, and I'm wearing a watch.

With a brain the size of a pinhead, insects perform fantastic navigational （导航的）abilities. They avoid obstacles and move through small openings. How do they do this, with their limited brain power? Understanding the inner workings of an insect's brain can help us in our search towards energy-efficient computing, physicist Elisabetta Chicca of the University of Groningen demonstrates with her most recent result: A robot that acts like an insect.

In search of the neural（神经的） mechanism that drives insect behaviour, PhD student Thorben Schoepe developed a model of its neuronal activity and a small robot that uses this model to navigate. Schoepe's model is based on one main principle: always steer towards the area with the least apparent motion.

He had his robot drive through a long "corridor"—consisting of two walls with a random print on it—and the robot centred in the middle of the corridor, as insects tend to do. In other virtual environments, such as a space with obstacles or small openings, Schoepe's model also showed similar behaviour to insects.

"The model is so good," Chicca concludes, "that once you set it up, it will perform in all kinds of environments. That's the beauty of this result."

The fact that a robot can navigate in a realistic environment is not new. Rather, the model gives insight into how insects do the job, and how they manage to do things so efficiently.

Chicca explains, "Much of robotics is not concerned with efficiency. We humans tend to learn new tasks as we grow up and within robotics. This is reflected in the current trend of machine learning. But insects are able to fly immediately from birth. An efficient way of doing that is hardwired in their brains. In a similar way, you could make computers more efficient."