Energy independence. It has a nice ring to it. Doesn't it? If you think so, you're not alone, because energy independence has been the dream of American president for decades, and never more so than in the past few years, when the most recent oil price shock has been partly responsible for kicking off the great recession.

    “Energy independence” and its rhetorical (修辞的) companion “energy security” are, however, slippery concepts that are rarely though through. What is it we want independence from, exactly?

    Most people would probably say that they want to be independent from imported oil. But there are reasons that we buy all that oil from elsewhere.

    The first reason is that we need it to keep our economy running. Yes, there is a trickle（涓涓细流）of biofuel available, and more may become available, but most biofuels cause economic waste and environmental destruction.

    Second, Americans have basically decided that they don't really want to produce all their own oil. They value the environmental quality they preserve over their oil imports from abroad. Vast areas of the United States are off-limits(禁止) to oil exploration and production in the name of environmental protection. To what extent are Americans really willing to endure the environmental impacts of domestic energy production in order to cut back imports?

    Third, there are benefits to trade. It allows for economic efficiency, and when we buy things from places that have lower production costs than we do, we benefit. And although you don't read about this much, the United States is also a large exporter of oil products, selling about 2 million barrels of petroleum products per day to about 90 countries.

    There is no question that the United States imports a great deal of energy and, in fact, relies on that steady flow to maintain its economy. When that flow is interrupted, we feel the pain in short supplies and higher prices, At the same time, we derive(得到，获得) massive economic benefits when we buy the most affordable energy on the world market and when we engage in energy trade around the world.

    When another old cave is discovered in the south of France, it is not usually news. Rather, it is an ordinary event. Such discoveries are so frequent these days that hardly anybody pays heed to them. However, when the Lascaux cave complex was discovered in 1940, the world was amazed. Painted directly on its walls were hundreds of scenes showing how people lived thousands of years ago. The scenes show people hunting animals, such as bison or wild cats. Other images depict birds and, most noticeably, horses, which appear in more than 300 wall images, by far outnumbering all other animals.

    Early artists drawing these animals achieved a monumental and difficult task. They did not limit themselves to the easily accessible walls but carried their painting materials to spaces that required climbing steep walls or going on hands and knees into narrow passages in the Lascaux complex.

    Unfortunately, the paintings have been exposed to the destructive action of water and temperature changes, which easily wear the images away. Because the Lascaux caves have many entrances, air movement has also damaged the images inside.

    Although they are not out in the open air, where natural light would have destroyed them long ago, many of the images have deteriorated and are hardly recognizable. To prevent further damage, the site was closed to tourists in 1963, 23 years after it was discovered.

    It may not come as a surprise but the world as a whole is getting richer. Some people have more disposable(可支配的) income to spend on luxuries such as holidays, cars, TVs and smartphones. Recent data has shown that the number of people living in extreme poverty(贫穷) has halved in recent decades. So should we celebrate the fact that more of us now have a better standard of living?

    Maybe not. Whilst the gap between rich and poor in some countries is narrowing, there is still a lot of inequality in other places-some people have a lot of money and opportunities and others don't. A recent report by Oxfam and Credit Suisse revealed how divided many of us are when it comes to wealth. A lot of the money in the world is in the hands of very few people. In fact, 48% of global wealth is owned by the richest 1% of the population.

    But some countries are attempting to reduce this inequality and make the poor, less poor. According to David Bryer from Oxfam, Brazil has been taking "some really sensible measures-measures around having more progressive(逐步发展的) tax, around investing in a higher minimum wage and investing in central public services." Having a higher minimum wage, can help people eat better and seek a better education. And more people with more money buy more things-and factories can produce more. In turn, a factory which produces more will need more workers. So, more jobs are created.

    Other wealthy individuals are doing their bit to help reduce inequality. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, earned a lot of money from his company but when he retired, he and his wife Melinda, created a foundation to help the poor. He thinks that rich people should, of course, pay their taxes but he also advises that they should all "look at taking their wealth and being philanthropic, both in their own country and to help the global poorest."

    Bill Gates feels that giving money to help poor people is "fulfilling". But if other super-rich people don't want to experience this fulfilment then, according to Oxfam, very soon the wealthiest 1% will soon own more money than the rest of the world's population.

    A new collection of photos brings an unsuccessful Antarctic voyage back to life. Frank Hurley's pictures would be outstanding — undoubtedly first-rate photo-journalism — if they had been made last week. In fact, they were shot from 1914 through 1916, most of them after a disastrous ship wreck (海滩) by a cameraman who had no reasonable expectation of survival Many of the images were stored in an ice chest under freezing water, in the damaged wooden ship.

    The ship was the Endurance a small tight Norwegian-built three-master that was intended to take Sir Ermest Shackleton and a small crew of seamen and scientists, 27 men in all, to the southernmost shore of Antarctica's Weddell Sm. From that point Shackleton wanted to force a passage by dog sled across the continent. The journey was intended to achieve more than what Captain Robert Falcon Scott had done. Captain Scott had reached the South Pole early in 1912 but had died with his four companions on the march back.

    As writer Caroline Alexander makes clear in her forceful and well-researched story The Endurance、adventuring was then a thoroughly commercial effort Scott's last journey, completed as he lay in a tent dying of cold and hunger, caught the world's imagination, and a film made in his honor drew crowds Shackleton, a onetime British merchant-navy officer who had got to within 100 miles of the South Pole in 1908,started a business before his 1914 voyage to make money from movie and still photography. Frank Hurley，a confident and gifted Australian photographer who knew the Antarctic, was hired to make the images most of which have never before been published.

    In many developed countries, people who have high degrees begin to work longer than those who don't. About 65% of American men aged 62－74 with a professional degree are in the workforce (劳动人口), compared with 32% of men who only finish high school. This gap is part of a deepening divide between the well-educated wealthy and the unskilled poor. Rapid technological advance has raised the incomes of the highly skilled while squeezing those of the unskilled. The consequences, for individuals and society, are profound (意义深远的).

    The world is facing an astonishing rise in the number of old people, and they will live longer than ever before. Over the next 20 years the global population of those aged 65 or more will almost double, from 600 million to 1.1 billion. The experience of the 20th century, when greater longevity (长寿) translated into more years in retirement rather than more years at work, has persuaded many observers that this shift (变化) will lead to slower economic growth, while the swelling (渐增的) ranks of pensioners will create government budget problems.

    Policies are partly responsible. Many European governments have abandoned policies that used to encourage people to retire early. Even the better-off must work longer to have a comfortable retirement. But the changing nature of work also plays a big role. Pay has risen sharply for the highly educated, and those people continue to reap (获得) rich rewards into old age because these days the educated elderly are more productive than the preceding (先前的) generation. Technological change may well reinforce (强化) that shift: the skills that complement (补充) computers, from management know-how to creativity, do not necessarily decline with age.

    For the past few months, my three-year-old daughter has spent an hour every week learning a foreign language. She walks into a small room in a local school, where she and a handful of three and four-year-old spend the next hour dancing to ^“La Vaca Lola”, a song about a Spanish cow, creating finger puppets(木偶) to voice what they like and don't like (me gusta, no me gusta) and shouting out which animals are big (grande) or small (pequeno).

    She tells us little about the classes. In fact, for the first few weeks, nothing at all. I begin to wonder if it was a huge mistake (each lesson works out at about £9) but then I show her “La Vaca Lola” on YouTube. She shouts vaca with enthusiasm and with what I hope is a Spanish accent.

    The wish to enroll(使……加入) her in language lessons came, like most things, gradually and then in a sudden rush. In my day job, I read and edit stories about the Chinese economy. For a long time, I felt that it would be good for her to learn another language but I had no great plan as to when.

    Then I read Edward Luce's The Retreat of Western Liberalism and all my thoughts and worry about the economy combined into a panic. Waking in a sweat, it seemed obvious that if my daughter was to have any kind of future, she would have to learn another language. Ideally (理想地) immediately.

    I thought about Mandarin Chinese, one of the top 10 languages most important for our future, according to the British Council (others include Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Dutch and Japanese). But there were no classes for young children nearby. There were, however, local Spanish classes—the number-one language on the list. When she started to sing "Incy Wincy Spider" in Spanish and English—helped by a Spanish nursery worker-our decision was made.