In the mid-1950s, I was a somewhat bored early-adolescent male student who believed that ________________________ One day, this approach threw me into embarrassment

    In Mrs. Totten's eighth-grade math class at Central Avenue School in Anderson, Indiana, we were learning to add and subtract decimals (小数).

    Our teacher typically assigned daily homework, which would be recited in class the following day. On most days, our grades were based on our oral answer to homework questions.

    Mrs. Totten usually walked up and down the rows of desks requesting answers from student after student in the order the questions had appeared on our homework sheets. She would start either at the front or the back of the classroom and work toward the other end.

    Since I was seated near the middle of about 35 students, it was easy to figure out which questions I might have to answer. This particular time, I had completed my usual two or three problems according to my calculations.

    What I failed to expect was that several students were absent, which threw off my estimate. As Mrs. Totten made her way from the beginning of the class，I desperately tried to determine which math problem I would get. I tried to work it out before she got to me, but I had brain freeze and couldn't function.

When Mrs. Totten reached my desk，she asked what answer I'd got for problem No. 14. “I…I didn't get anything,” I answered，and my face felt warm.

    “Correct,” she said.

    It turned out that the correct answer was zero.

What did I learn that day? First, always do all your homework. Second, in real life it isn't always what you say but how you say it that matters. Third，I would never make it as a mathematician.

    If I could choose one school day that taught me the most, it would be that one.

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项 （A 、B 、C  和 D ）中，选出最佳选项。

    Heroes of Our Time

    A good heart

    Dikembe Mutombo grew up in Africa among great poverty and disease. He came to Georgetown University on a scholarship to study medicine — but Coach (教练) John Thompson got a look at Dikembe and had a different idea. Dikembe became a star in the NBA, and a citizen of the United States. But he never forgot the land of his birth, or the duty to share his fortune with others. He built a new hospital in his old hometown in the Congo. A friend has said of this good-hearted man: “Mutombo believes that God has given him this chance to do great things.”

    Success and kindness

    After her daughter was born, Julie Aigner-Clark searched for ways to share her love of music and art with her child. So she borrowed some equipment, and began filming children's videos in her own house. The Baby Einstein Company was born, and in just five years her business grew to more than $20 million in sales. And she is using her success to help others — producing child safety videos with John Walsh of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Julie says of her new program: “I believe it's the most important thing that I have ever done. I believe that children have the right to live in a world that is safe.”

    Bravery and courage

    A few weeks ago, Wesley Autrey was waiting at a Harlem subway station with his two little girls when he saw a man fall into the path of a train. With seconds to act, Wesley jumped onto the tracks, pulled the man into the space between the rails, and held him as the train passed right above their heads. He insists he's not a hero. He says: “We have got to show each other some love.”

    Where can you find a nice place to relax on holiday for both you and your children? Well, I suggest you try the beautiful and green Isle of Wight (IOW). The Isle of Wight is one of the main tourist attractions. Here is some information on a few of the attractions on the IOW.

Dinosaur Isle

    It is located in Sandown, a seaside town on the southeast coast. It's a large, lovely museum, both fun and educational. Here you can see a large fossil collection of all kinds of dinosaurs, as well as a gift shop. You can walk into the past and then the future, learning about the history and the development of the civilization of dinosaurs that lived 120 million years ago.

Robin Hill Country Park

    The park is in the beautiful countryside, and is suitable for children's parties and games. It has five new gardens, and offers great opportunities to see and take pictures of the rare red squirrels.

The West of the Wight

    Here we have the Marine Aquarium, the Archaeology Exhibition and the Model Railway. They offer another opportunity to combine fun with learning. This is a great place to see ancient boats crossing the narrow strait between the island and the mainland.

The Wight Bus Museum

    This museum is run completely by unpaid volunteers. It has a bus collection stored in what was once a warehouse（仓库）. Most of the buses in the museum date back to around the 1910's.

    With all of these choices, what are you waiting for? IOW Tourism welcomes you!

    Philadelphia offers a ton of attractions that are suitable for people of every age and here are some family—friendly attractions.

    Spruce Street Harbor Park

    Spruce Street Harbor Park, one of the best urban beaches in America, is an outdoor heaven on the Delaware River waterfront. Visitors can relax in a hammock, play on the playgrounds, and play games like table tennis and giant chess. Don't miss out on the park at night, when colorful LED lights hanging from treetops make the entire area bright.

    Blue Cross River Rink

    Offering ice skating in the winter and roller skating in the summer, Blue Cross River Rink creates a fun, outdoor experience for the whole family. Visitors can play on the nine-hole mini-golf course during the summer, and enjoy eats and drinks from the on-site bar and restaurant all year round.

    Sesame Place

    Big Bird, Elmo and the other stars of Sesame Street come out and play at Sesame Place, the only theme park in the nation starring the popular TV show's most lovable characters. A water park, interactive activities, parades, fireworks and shows add to the fun.

    Once Upon a Nation Storytelling Benches

    On summer days, uniformed and professional storytellers at 13 storytelling benches throughout Philadelphia's Historic District entertain visitors with true, free, three-to-five minute tales about the colonial era as part of Once Upon a Nation. Children can pick up a Story Flag at any storytelling bench, and then collect a star from every storyteller on their journeys. Flags with all the stars can get free rides on the Parx Liberty Carousel at Franklin Square.

    We bet that on cold winter days, many of you love to stay in your warm home and, every now and then, come out into the kitchen for a snack. Unfortunately, plenty of small insects like to do the same thing! Winter is the time when small insects enter your house without an invitation. The season can be difficult for such creatures. In winter the air is cold, the ground is hard and many trees have no leaves. So small insects do what they have to do to survive.

    Monarch butterflies head south to warmer climates. Ants crowd in deep underground colonies and eat food they have been storing all year. Many insects go into a deep sleep called diapauses. There're different kinds of diapauses, but all are similar to hibernation, a time when bigger animals become inactive in the cold. Insects go into an inactive period, too, but it often isn't when the temperature drops.

    They rely on more dependable signals in the environment. For example, many insects can tell how much sunlight there's each day. They use that to tell themselves when to shut down. Insects are cold-blooded, meaning that their inside temperature is the same as the outside. They can't move much when it gets below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. So they search for any warm place.

    They're looking for protection. These guys have been doing this for 300 million years, so they don't really know they're coming into your house. The home is a recent event in terms of their evolutionary (进化的) behavior. They enter through tiny cracks or come in unnoticed on your clothes or shoes. Remember that they may be entering your homes for warmth and food, but they don't care about humans.

    Today, we are constantly bombarded with media reports about research on the right diet to follow to help us maintain a healthy lifestyle or lose weight—but it's hard to know which one to pick and, once chosen, it's harder still to stick to it. And now there's another choice to get our teeth into.

    A flexitarian(弹性素食者)diet involves eating plant—based foods and only occasionally eating meat and fish. This eating style allows you to supplement some ingredients that you wouldn't get in a stricter vegan(素食主义者)diet—another trend growing in popularity. And like veganism, flexitarianism isn't about eating carefully to help you lose a few pounds—it's something people choose for ethical reasons, to help the planet. And a study into the global food system and how it affects the climate, has found that eating mainly plant-based foods is one of three key steps towards a sustainable future for all by 2050.

    This research found that food waste will need to be halved and farming practices will also have to improve to achieve this. But without a single solution, a combined approach is needed. Dr Marco Springmann from the University of Oxford was one of the lead authors of the report. He told the BBC “We really found that a combination of measures would be needed to stay within environmental limits and those include changes towards healthier more plant—based diets.”

    But whereas vegans think it's wrong for animals to be killed for food, flexitarians believe eating meat once in a while is acceptable. And Dr Springmann agrees—as long as we “treat it as a luxury, it's probably OK but you shouldn't have more than one serving of red meat, which includes beef and pork, per week.” And here's another fact to digest: If we moved to this type of diet, the study found that greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture would be cut by more than half.