Two thieves came to a house to steal something, they dug a hole in the wall of the house.

    There lived many mice in the house. The woman in the moonlight saw a mouse crawl (爬行) into the house. “Look! In comes one,” she said to the man in the house. He was so frightened that he hurriedly crawled out of the house and said to the one waiting outside, “She found me when I was just in.” But the thief outside didn't believe him, so he said, “Let us two try to crawl into the house together.” At that time two mice happened to crawl into the house, too. The woman saw the mice and shouted, “In come two, catch them!” The two thieves were terribly frightened. The man in the house said, “You saw them come in but where are they? I will catch them tonight.” The two thieves started running away at once.

    The two thieves wanted to make it clear whether they had been found or not the night before. The next day they acted as men selling sweet potatoes and came before the house. The man and the woman were ploughing in their fields. The rein (缰绳) broke and the woman came home for a rope. She saw two men selling sweet potatoes and wanted to buy some. She picked out two which looked like mice. At the time the man couldn't wait for her any longer in the fields and he ran back from the fields to hurry her up. The woman showed the sweet potatoes to the man and said, “How they look like the two of last night.” The man said, “I asked you to fetch a rope, why don't you hurry for it?” The two thieves ran away very quickly without their sweet potatoes.

    It's time to stop complaining. The economy might be melting down like butter in a hot pot, but for some people — you , maybe? — this could be a very good thing.

    Here's why. At no other time in recent history has it been easier or cheaper to start a new kind of company. Possibly a very profitable company. Let's call these start-ups LILOs, for “a little in, a lot out;” These are Web-based businesses that cost almost nothing to get off the ground yet can turn into great moneymakers.

    How do you get started? All that's required is a great idea for a product that will fill a need in the 21st century. These days you'd do best if your idea either makes people money or saves them money. And launching now will make your company stronger later — you'll learn to survive on fumes until the economy improves.

    That's what John Tayman is doing. He's an author who lives in San Francisco, where I met him; he wrote reviews for a business magazine I edited. Tayman knew little about technology and even less about business. And yet he dreamed of a website that would summarize car reviews from other sources and rank every model of new car. “It'll be like RottenTomatoes.com meets Kelley Blue Book,” he explained to me during lunch one day last June. Tayman said he intended to build the site on the side while continuing to write for a living. He'd work on his new company only at night and on weekends. Oh, yes, and he had only about $10,000. “Good luck with that!” I thought. Ideas are much easier to produce than they are to put into practice.

    Tayman went to work with nothing more than his PowerBook laptop. A very well-organized fellow, he quickly discovered a bunch of free stuff online — instructional manuals and sites that walk you through the process from start to finish. Within months, Tayman had a staff of 20 employees working for him in five different countries. MotorMouths.com went live in January. Tayman figures he has worked about 10 hours a week on it and hasn't spent a cent on marketing or advertising. Growth is modest but steady: nearly 10,000 people visit each week.

    My daughter Alisa was born blind in her right eye and was bullied (欺侮）pretty severely in school. So I quitted my job as a babysitter and then schooled my daughter heart and soul at home.

    A year ago a boy of 14 befriended my daughter on Facebook after reading something Alisa wrote about bullying. Today he messaged her and asked if she would like six tickets to a Colorado Rockies baseball game. They have never met in person but she said, “Sure! That would be great.”

    Then I received a call from his mother explaining why her son had chosen my daughter. She said he thought my daughter deserved them because of all the good she does in the community. Her son, she explained, had experienced a similar situation and was also home schooled.

    What she said is true. Now my daughter Alisa continues to teach groups of girls in trouble in our community how to look within themselves for the positive and how to be their own person.

    Everything taken into consideration, we decided to meet the mother and the boy at a local bike shop. After meeting, the boy approached my car and my daughter gave him a hug and thanked him for his generosity. She told him that she had never been to a baseball game and that she was going to take her entire family, including myself, her dad, little sister, her cousin and an aunt who has brain cancer.

    We all thanked one another, got in our car, and went our way. As we drove home my daughter opened the envelope. Inside it were the tickets and ＄100 each to buy hot dogs, pay for parking and not have any worries but a great time.

    My daughter has always been the giver and now she and our family are the receivers and I can not tell you how incredibly honored we feel to be on the other end. What an incredible young man to have such a kind idea.

    A court battle between German and Israeli archives （档案馆） over Kafka's manuscripts （手稿）raised literary, not just legal, questions. At the time of his death, Kafka hardly seemed like a candidate for world fame. He had a minor reputation in German literary circles. He published a few stories in magazines, but they received little attention.

    After he died in 1924, his friend Max Brod collected, edited and published his works - despite Kafka's own instructions in his will ordering the manuscripts to be destroyed - thus making Kafka a household name after his death. When the Nazis invaded Prague, Brod escaped to Israel, bringing the manuscripts with him. When he died in 1968, his manuscripts, together with those of Kafka, were transferred to his secretary Esther Hoffe.

    Even though Brod asked in his will that the manuscripts be given to a public archive, Hoffe sold some of them abroad for a great deal of money. Many of them eventually made it to the German Literature Archive. In 2007, she died and left her properties to her daughters. Then the case about the manuscripts started after the death of one of her daughters. The court said Hoffe had no rights, and could not have any such rights for the documents Brod took from Kafka's apartment after his death.

    Ironically, Kafka's stubborn homelessness and non-belonging in his works were accurately what ensured his place at the center of 20^th-century literature. W. H. Auden proposed that Kafka was to the cold, absurd 20^th century what Dante or Shakespeare had been to their times - the writer who captured the spirit of the age. That is why, in the end, it hardly matters whether Kafka's manuscripts stay in Germany or Israel. What counts is that we are all living in Kafka's world.

    If you frequently travel for business, Staybridge Suites offer you a range of home comforts. Four recent visitors to Staybridge Suites explain why they booked, what they enjoyed and what made them want to return.

Claire Metcalf

    "The concept is great, but the staff are the ones who really make it." she says. "It takes a lot of discipline to always be friendly, but the staff at Staybridge Suites do that. They genuinely care about you. "

Andrew Roberts

    "One of the best things is having my own kitchen. I often end up working late and I don't fancy eating in a restaurant on my own, so cooking for myself is a big drawcard. "

    "The main thing for me is being able to cook and have my own little flat. The staff are amazing. It is great to be recognized by them, "he says.

Pauline Robinson

    "What I love about it is the way that you are treated by the staff," she says. "Some of the staff have been there all that time and they do look after you well. As a woman staying on my own, it is reassuring that they look out for you, and recently when I was poorly depressed they even brought things I needed to my room. "

Ryan Ruckledge

    "The fully-equipped kitchen is great. I always have a one-bed apartment so I have a separate kitchen and dining room and I'm able to relax and cook some meals. Eating out can feel a bit much when you do it day in and day out—it makes you hate what you do—and I don't want that. "