Sue Hendrickson is a self-taught fossil（化石）hunter. As a kid, Sue Hendrickson often walked with her head down. “People said, 'Look up. Smile!” she says. “Now, I realize I was born to look for things and just didn't know it.”

    Sue Hendrickson does more than look—she finds valuable things: Shipwrecks（沉船）with treasure, ancient sunken cities, and in 1990, she found Sue, the world's largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex（霸王龙）. Is Hendrickson lucky? Well, maybe. But she also knows how to look.

    “I limit the area where I'm going to look,” she says. No one knew the location of the sunken ship San Diego in the Philippines. For a year, Hendrickson and other researchers searched papers and sailors' diaries. “The descriptions of the ship's sailors led us to the wreck,” she says. The team also used a tool that can respond to metal. This tool found the San Diego. All the work paid off. The 400-year-old ship was complete, with valuable gold and silver coins.

    To find the dinosaur she calls “the biggest animal that ever walked on earth,” Hendrickson started with maps made to search for oil. What Hendrickson found was the largest and most complete T-rex found to date. The T-rex is 42 feet long with 200 bones! Because it is so complete, scientists were able to infer that Sue walked at about 6 miles per hour and did not run faster than 15 miles an hour. Before Sue was discovered, they thought T-rex was much faster. To learn more about T-rex Sue, go to the Field Museum in Chicago.

    There's plenty left to be found, Hendrickson says, including answers to mysterious such as how T-rex lived. “I tell kids that they need to grow up and work them out because all of us old persons haven't yet!”

    My sister and I were flying by ourselves from our home in Kansas to a summer camp in Minnesota. Our plane had a two-hour stop at the airport in Omaha, Nebraska. A flight attendant took us to a souvenir shop, where a toy airplane looked just like the plane my sister and I were flying on. I really wanted that airplane. I had $10 and the plane cost $8. I had no idea what I needed to buy at camp, but I bought the plane anyway. When we reached the camp, I discovered that there were no showers! Instead, we bathed in a lake every night. I needed to buy special soap because the regular soap I brought had chemicals that could harm the fish. The special soap cost $4 at the camp store. However, I had only $2 left.

    What upset me was that I couldn't get clean without the soap, which was soon found by my teacher, Sally. I had to tell her that I had spent most of my money on a toy airplane. She laughed and explained to me that a budget was necessary and it was a plan for spending money to help make sure you set aside enough for things you need, like soap, before you buy fun things, like toys.

    Sally gave me one of her extra(额外的) bottles of special soap. When I returned home, I decided to budget. I spent several weeks writing down everything I bought, just to get an idea of how I was already spending my money. Then I made my first weekly budget. My budget wasn't always the same each week. For some weeks, I would have more in my “Money In” account because I did some jobs around the house. Once summer vacation started, I didn't need to buy school lunches, so I had extra money to go to the neighborhood swimming pool or to give to the town animal shelter.

    Budgeting was hard, sometimes. Whatever week it was, I always made sure that “Money In” equaled “Save and Spend.” That's called making ends meet, and it's how you make sure that the money you have will always be enough to cover your plans to spend and save.

    As anyone who freelances(做自由职业) knows, there are lots of advantages of working at home alone. But there are drawbacks too, like the potential loneliness. No wonder co-working spaces are becoming so popular: they permit self-employed individuals to feel like they are part of all office environment, while making them get some work done too. But renting a co-working space does cost money.

    Now a Swedish project is aiming to change that by turning people's under-used homes into temporary co-working spaces, available to freelancers for free. Hoffice was started by freelancers Christofer Gradin Franzen and Johline Zandra about a year ago in Stockholm when they invited a few people into their home office to work together. It was a great success, and the project has since spread to a number of cities in Europe, North and South America, Australia, India and Japan. Anyone can sign up and offer their home space as a free co-working space, or go to find a Hoffice near them.

    On a Hoffice day, everyone arrives and starts work at a certain hour. After 45 minutes, everyone gets up to take a break, stretch, do qigong or yoga for 10 to 15 minutes. Afterwards, people can gather around again, and restate their intentions and goals for the rest of the workday, as a way to motivate each other. Meals can be eaten together at a certain hour, potluck-style(家常饭) or by bringing your own lunch.

    This process creates an encouraging and supportive work environment. As some freelancers describe,“By working at Hoffice, we give ourselves and each other the gift to spend our days in a social working environment, where we are extremely productive without ignoring our other human needs. We also make sure to give us and each other what we need to feel calm, happy, inspired and creative during the working day.”

    So Hoffice is not just about sharing space; it's also about a free exchange of ideas. And perhaps the best thing is that Hoffices are free to use.

    In China, chain restaurants especially the big multinational ones are cool. Going to Starbucks, for example, is a status symbol. It not only says, "I'm rich enough to buy this overpriced coffee, "but also, "I'm cosmopolitan (见多识广的) enough to be part of globalization."

    Where I come from in the UK, however, chains are neither fashionable nor gourmet (美食的). Chains are where you go on New Year's Day when nowhere else is open, or when you are 5 years old and your parents can't stand hearing, "I'm hungry!" any longer. In my own case (with regards to McDonald's), a chain is where you are taken on your first "date". Even at the age of 13, I knew to give the guy the "let's just be friends" phone call the next day.

    In the UK, independent cafes and restaurants are making a comeback on the fashion scene. Nowadays, a Londoner who says "let's meet for a coffee at Monmouth" (an independent café) is much cooler than one who says "let's go to Starbucks". Even if Monmouth's coffee is a little more expensive, there's a satisfaction in knowing your pounds aren't going straight to the big corporations.

    Of course, there are chain stores all over the UK; you can't go five minutes without spotting a Costa Coffee. But numbers do not add up to good taste.

    I do, however, have a confession (坦白). After moving to China I had moments when all the rice and Kung Pao Chicken became too much. I, too, have retreated to McDonald's.

    One of my wonderful memories is about a Christmas gift. Unlike other gifts, it came without wrap(包装).

    On September 11^th, 1958. Mum gave birth to Richard. After she brought him home from hospital, she put him in my lap, saying. "I promised you a gift, and here it is." What an honor! I turned four a month earlier and none of my friends had such a baby doll of their own. I played with it day and night. I sang to it. I told it stories. 1 told it over and over how much I loved it!

    One morning, however, I found its bed empty. My doll was gone! I cried for it. Mum wept and told me that the poor little thing had been sent to a hospital. It had a fever. For several days, I heard Mum and Dad whispering such words as "hopeless", "pitiful", and "dying", which sounded ominous.

    Christmas was coming. "Don't expect any presents this year." Dad said, pointing at the socks I hung in the living room. "If your baby brother lives, that'll be Christmas enough." As he spoke, his eyes filled with tears. I'd never seen him cry before.

    The phone rang early on Christmas morning. Dad jumped out of bed to answer it. From my bedroom I heard him say. "What? He's all right?" He hung up and shouted upstairs. "The hospital said we can bring Richard home!" "Thank God." I heard Mum cry.

    From the upstairs window, I watched my parents rush out to the car. I had never seen them happy. And I was also full of joy. What a wonderful day! My baby doll would be home. I downstairs. My sacks still hung there flat. But I knew they were not empty; they were filled with love!

    A Japanese telecom company has designed a robot that it says has emotions (情绪). But rather than run in fear from it, we've welcomed it into our homes: Pepper, the "emotional robots" sold out within a minute of going on sale.

    Created by Aldebaran Robotics and Japanese mobile giant SoftBaok, Pepper went on sale to the general public in Japan on June 20. It is "the first humanoid (类人的) robot designed to live with humans, " Aldebaran says on its website. Pepper costs about $ 1, 600. And like all good mobile products, there's a $ 120 per month data fee, as well as an $80 per month damage insurance fee. According to a news report, Pepper can pick up on human emotions and create his own using a "multi - layer neural (神经的) network." Pepper's touch sensors and cameras are said to influence its mood, which is displayed on the tablet-sized screen on its chest.

    Pepper will sigh when unhappy, and can go around your house recording your family's daily activity. Aldebaran says Pepper can feel "joy, surprise, anger, doubt and sadness," but it doesn't say how strongly it can feel these emotions. What happens when Pepper is having a bad day? Will it, like many humans, become uncooperative? Will it ask for some time alone? What happens if it knows that its purpose in life is just to take part in small talk? Thankfully, Pepper is only about four feet tall, with roller balls instead of legs, so if it is angry with and even turns on its owners, you'll be safe if you can make it upstairs.

    Aldebaran says in reality, they're probably quite a few years away from artificial intelligence that could create real emotions. Aldebaran wasn't immediately able to tell when Pepper will be available out of Japan, but additional sales are scheduled for July after the first 1, 000 units sell out. SoftBank currently uses the robots in its stores as greeters, and it plans to offer Pepper to other stores in the future. Hopefully "boredom" is not an emotion Pepper can feel.