La Tomatina, Spain

    Tomato juice flows through the streets of Bunol on the last Wednesday of August as the worlds largest tomato fight happens. Festivities begin in the town square where there is a huge pole covered in soap and with a leg of ham at the top. Participants try to climb up the pole to get the ham as watchers throw buckets of water to them. After a gun is fired to signal the beginning of the fight, people catch the tomatoes and throw each other in the streets until the gun sounds again, marking the end of the event.

    Holi, India

    This spring festival is celebrated throughout the country in late February or early March. The two-day event celebrates the legend of Prahlad, who escaped unharmed from the fire of the evil Holika Dahan. People mark the event by lighting fires and throwing colored powder on one another Children load colored water into toy pistols called pichkari and take aim at passers-by. Holi is known as a happy celebration of the victory of good over evil.

    Burning Man, Nevada

    This infamous festival began in 1986 with the burning of a large figure to mark the summer solstice (夏至). It's since grown into a week-long annual event that draws more than 48,000 people to the Black Rock Dessert. It is held during the week before Labor Day. Participants set up camp in the desert to celebrate art.

    Songkran, Thailand

    This festival marks the Thai New Year, which is celebrated in the second week of April. This is the hottest time of the year in Thailand, so it makes sense that the biggest Songkran tradition is to throw water on people. Thais of all ages join in water fights, using buckets, hoses (软管) and water guns to celebrate the event.

    I was working the overnight shift in a remote hospital in the Rocky Mountains. Late in the evening, a young African teenager was brought into the emergency department. He lived at sea level and had never been in the mountains. After skiing all day, he felt really ill. Everyone assumed it was altitude sickness.

    He was sweating and had abdominal (腹部的) pain. His heart rate increased. We sent off his lab work, and his blood sugar came back at almost 600 — normal is less than 100. His platelets (血小板), necessary for stopping bleeding, came in at 10,000; they should have been over 150,000. I did an ultrasound of his abdomen, and it looked like his belly was full of blood. This wasn't altitude sickness. And in the short time I'd been trying to figure out what was wrong, he was getting sicker. The friends he was traveling with were terrified, and rightly so.

    The mystery was finally solved with an old-fashioned microscope. When we looked at his blood, we saw some sickled (镰形的) red blood cells. That's how we were able to diagnose sickle cell trait. If you have sickle cell trait — which means you got the sickle cell gene from just one parent instead of two — you have no symptoms at low altitude, but high altitude can sometimes cause the red blood cells to turn into sickle shapes and take oxygen from vital organs. This teenager didn't know he had it, but the effect of the altitude on his blood cells was so extreme that after just a short time in the mountains, he suffered great pain.

    He needed platelets immediately, but we didn't have enough at the remote hospital. And there was a snowstorm, so the medical helicopters couldn't fly. It was a scary night. Just as we were abandoning all hope, we met an ambulance that drove halfway up from the city with blood products and transferred him to the city hospital for emergency surgery. The story has a happy ending: He recovered fully.

    Terrafugia Inc. said Monday that its new flying car has completed its first flight, bringing the company closer to its goal of selling the flying car within the next year. The vehicle — named the Transition — has two seats, four wheels and wings that fold up so it can be driven like a car. The Transition, which flew at 1,400 feet for eight minutes last month, can reach around 70 miles per hour on the road and 115 in the air. It flies using a 23-gallon tank of gas and burns 5 gallons per hour in the air. On the ground, it gets 35 miles per gallon.

    Around 100 people have already put down a $10,000 deposit（定金） to get a Transition when they go on sale, and those numbers will rise after Terrafugia introduces the Transition to the public later this week at the New York Auto Show. But don't expect it to show up in too many driveways. It's expected to cost as much as $279,000. And it won't help if you're stuck in traffic. The car needs a runway.

    Inventors have been trying to make flying cars since the 1930s, according to Robert Mann, an airline industry expert. But Mann thinks Terrafugia has come closer than anyone to making the flying car a reality. The government has already permitted the company to use special materials to make it easier for the vehicle to fly. The Transition is now going through crash tests to make sure it meets federal safety standards.

    Mann said Terrafugia was helped by the Federal Aviation Administration's (联邦航空管理局) decision five years ago to create a separate set of standards for light sport aircraft, which are lower than those for pilots of larger planes. Terrafugia says an owner would need to pass a test and complete 20 hours of flying time to be able to fly the Transition, a requirement pilots would find relatively easy to meet.

    It's time for those who are about to graduate to look for jobs since graduation season is drawing near. Competition is tough, so job seekers must carefully consider their personal choices. Whatever we are wearing, our family and friends may accept us, but the workplace may not.

    A high school newspaper editor said it is unfair for companies to discourage visible tattoos (文身), nose rings, or certain dress styles. It is true you can't judge a book by its cover, yet people do "cover" themselves in order to convey (传递) certain messages. What we wear, including tattoos and nose rings, is an expression of who we are. Just as people convey messages about themselves with their appearances, so do companies. Dress standards exist in the business world for a number of reasons, but the main concern is often about what customers accept.

    Others may say how to dress is a matter of personal freedom, but for businesses it is more about whether to make or lose money. Most employers do care about the personal appearances of their employees, because those people represent the companies to their customers.

    As a hiring manager I am paid to choose the people who would make the best impression on our customers. There are plenty of well-qualified candidates, so it is not wrong to reject someone who might disappoint my customers. Even though I am open-minded, I can't expect all our customers are.

    There is nobody to blame but yourself if your set of choices does not match that of your preferred employer. No company should have to change to satisfy a candidate simply because he or she is unwilling to respect its standards, as long as its standards are legal.

    I was getting ready to go to bed when the phone rang. This could not be good. My mind raced through the list of family members who might need help, but the voice was hardly familiar.

    "Linda, this is Lesley." I didn't know Lesley well. We did occasionally speak with each other, but to say we were friends was not appropriate. I asked what she needed. Perhaps something really awful caused her to reach someone she barely knew. Instead, she asked me, "Do you have room for a turkey? In your freezer?" We had lots of room in our freezer, and in fact, too much. "Sure," I responded, "did your freezer break down?" "Not exactly," Lesley replied, "but I will explain when I arrive."

    Minutes later came a huge freezer truck. Lesley stepped down and explained the lease (租约) of the grocery store her husband serviced had run out and that they had to empty all the freezers that night. Thinking it was a shame to throw away all this good food, they decided to drop off food to anyone she could think of. Noticing our freezer was pretty empty, Lesley asked to fill it up. Our home was their last stop and anything left would have to be put in our freezer. An hour later, everything finished, I asked her, "When will you come back for all this?" Lesley laughed, "We don't want it back. It is yours! Thanks for helping us out!" Then they waved goodbye and drove away.

    "For helping them out?" We opened our freezer door. Inside were all expensive foods we never bought but often longed to try. We were struggling to buy groceries, yet it was not something we shared with anyone. However, our needs were met in an unexpected way by that call.

    When a rather dirty, poorly dressed person kneels at your feet and puts out his hands to beg for a few coins, do you hurry on, not knowing what to do, or do you feel sad and hurriedly hand over some money? What should our attitude to beggars be? There can be no question that the world is full of terribly sad stories. It must be terrible to have no idea where our next meal is going to come from. It seems cruel not to give some money to beggars.

    Certainly, most of the world's great religions (宗教) order us to be open-hearted and share what we have with those less fortunate than ourselves. But has the world changed? Maybe what was morally (道德方面) right in the old days, when one knew exactly who in the village had suffered misfortune and needed help, is no longer the best idea. Quite a few people will not give to beggars. Let us look at their arguments.

    First, some believe that many city beggars dress up on purpose to look pitiable and actually make a good living from begging. Giving to beggars only encourages this sort of evil (恶行). Secondly, there is the worry that the money you give will be spent on beer, wine or drugs. Thirdly, there is the opinion that there is no real excuse for begging. One might be poor, but that is no reason for losing one's sense of pride and self-dependence.

    Related to this is the opinion that the problem should be dealt with by the government rather than ordinary people. Some people think beggars should go to the local government department and receive help.

    It is hard to come to any final conclusion; there are various cases and we must deal with them differently. A few coins can save a life in some situations, and even if the money is wasted, that does not take away the moral goodness of the giver.