In my living room, there is a plaque(匾) that advises me to “Bloom(开花) where you are planted.” It reminds me of Dorothy. I got to know Dorothy in the early 1980s，when I was teaching Early Childhood Development through a program with Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky. The job responsibilities required occasional visits to the classroom of each teacher in the program. Dorothy stands out in my memory as one who “bloomed” in her remote area.

    Dorothy taught in a school in Harlan County, Kentucky, Appalachian Mountain area. To get to her school from the town of Harlan, I followed a road winding around the mountain. In the eight-mile journey, I crossed the same railroad track five times, giving the possibility of getting caught by the same train five times. Rather than feeling excited by this drive through the mountains, I found it depressing. The poverty level was shocking and the small shabby houses gave me the greatest feeling of hopelessness.

    From the moment of my arrival at the little school, all gloom(忧郁) disappeared. Upon arriving at Dorothy's classroom, I was greeted with smiling faces and treated like a queen. The children had been prepared to show me their latest projects. Dorothy told me with  a big smile that they were serving poke greens salad and cornbread for “dinner” (lunch). In case you don't know, poke greens are a weed-type plant that grows wild, especially on poor ground.

    Dorothy never ran out of reports of exciting activities of her students. Her enthusiasm never cooled down. When it came time to sit for the testing and interviewing required to receive her Child Development Associate Certification, Dorothy was ready. She came to the assessment and passed in all areas. Afterward, she invited me to the one-and-only steak house in the area to celebrate her victory, as if she had received her Ph.D. degree. After the meal, she placed a little box containing an old pen in my hand. She said it was a family heirloom (传家宝), but to me it is a treasured symbol of appreciation and pride that cannot be matched with things.

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    Nov. 21 is World Hello Day. It began back in the 1970s as part of an effort to make the world more peaceful. It was created by the United Nations just after the war between Israel and Egypt in 1973. The philosophy (理念) behind it is: Say “Hello” and stop war.

    It sounds like a fine idea, but most of us know that simply saying “Hello” won't bring about world peace. Still, on a smaller range, the simple act of saying hello to someone can make a lot of difference.

    This might not be obvious. After all, it's such a casual thing and requires so little effort. You raise your head to someone as you pass by them in the school corridor (走廊), say “Hello' then it's over.

    Although we might not realize it, a small thing like a greeting can mean a lot to a person. Many people are lonely because they're shy. They find it difficult to communicate with people, even though they want lo. It leads to them feeling cut off.

    On this basis, maybe it's a good idea, not just on Nov. 21, but every day, to remember to say “Hello” to as many people as we can. The stranger who hears your greeting may secretly smile in their heart. You might even make their day.

    Greeting other people is the easiest way to be polite. Politeness is the way we individual humans link up with the rest of the human world outside of our circles of family and friends. Politeness is one of the aspects of culture that make us a society rather than just many individuals living in the same space.

    No one said it better than the French author Joseph Joubert: “Politeness is the flower of humanity''. A “Hello” to a stranger is a small thing, and often neglected (忽视), but through it we can make the world better for another person.

    The human beings seem to be facing a crisis （危机）． After Our best Go players were defeated one by one by the artificial intelligence (AI) AlphaGo, we lost our pride of being at the top of the intelligence chain. And in October，when Saudi Arabia gave citizenship to a robot named Sophia, another privilege of being human was take away．It looks like everything that separates humans and AI is at risk fight now．

    But we keep hoping that instead of “everything ”, there's still something left in us that makes us irreplaceable.

    To Hao Jingfang, winner of the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, that “something” is our consciousness. “AlphaGo is intelligent in a certain way, but not intelligent enough to ask the important questions – Do I like playing Co? Do I want to play Go today? Why do I have to play Go when you tell me to?” she once said．In other words, computer programs don't have a choice to say “no”． They probably don't even know what a “choice” is – all they ever do is calculate．

    And to He Huaihong，a philosophy (哲学) professor at Peking University，imagination and creativity are also what make us special. A machine couldn't have come up with the theory of gravity just because it was hit by a falling apple，he said．It's human imagination that connects what seem to be completely random and irrelevant concepts，something that a machine—which works by fixed rules only—can't do，at least for now．

    This is why BBC reporter Viktor Mayer-Schonberger suggested that instead of focusing on how computers have overshadowed us on calculating abilities than humans，we should probably “consider our quality at a different end of the spectrum (光谱)：creativity，originality (原创性)，even plain illogical craziness，instead of hard-nosed (顽固的) logic”，he wrote．

    So maybe in the future，as artificial intelligence becomes even more intelligent，humans and A1 will learn to use each other's talents for good．If AI can handle the boring tasks like calculating and driving for us，we'll have more time to create，think，and be busy with “being human”．

    When you see someone you know, the easiest way to recognize them is by their face—but not everyone can do this. Many people have prosopagnosia, or face blindness, which is a neurological（神经病学的）condition where the part of the brain that recognizes faces fails to develop. It can stop people recognizing partners, family members, friends or even their own reflection. It was once thought to be caused by brain injury (acquired prosopagnosia) but now a genetic link has been proved (development prosopagnosia).

    Acquired prosopagnosia is a very rare but as many as one in 50 people may have developmental prosopagnosia. There's no specific treatment, but training programmes are being developed to help improve facial recognition.

    For many, the situation can be dangerous. I've heard stories of people being robbed by strangers claiming to be family members, or of children wandering off strange men.

    It was only is this century that researchers began to realize exactly how many people in this world were quietly living with the condition.

    Like a blind person who can recognize family members by their footsteps, prosopagnosics are forced to develop unusual ways of discovering who it is they're meeting or talking to. From the obvious markers like hair and voice, to the way one sits, stands or walks, they rely on dozens of means to get through ordinary life.

    Faces are an important part of identity. Not to be recognized feels terrible—it's as if you've been overlooked, like someone's saying you don't matter. But it's nothing to the pain of knowing that you're hurting people's feelings constantly, and yet being completely unaware that you're doing it in the moment. To be alienated（隔离的）from the world of faces is a strange position to be in, but I'm comforted by the thought that articles like this will do a little to help people forgive me and others like me.

    While faking and fierce looks are among animals great defenses, many species know that everyone runs from a big stink (臭气) too.

    Vulture (秃鸳)

    Vultures, are street sweepers that feast on the rotting flesh of dead animals, which benefits us by ridding our highways and landscapes of animal bodies and the bacteria they might carry. When vultures feel threatened they vomit, and the smell of vomited-on dead bodies puts of most predators. Throwing up allows the vulture to fly away more quickly-and the vomit can hurt the aggressor's eyes and face.

    Opossum (负鼠)

    In some ways opossums have it easy. In order to become "dead", they don't have to fax anyone a death certificate. They just lie there with their tongues hanging out with the smell of dead flesh, sometimes for hours, effectively convincing potential predators they can find a much fresher meal elsewhere. Even if they keep getting attacked, they won't move any more than a human statue until the threat has passed.

    Hoatzin (磨雉)

    Hold your nose and meet the hoatzin, a bird of distinctions, not the least of which is that it smells like fresh cow shit. The animal mostly eats leaves and it's the only bird known to digest by fermentation, like a cow. This process is what causes its smell and has earned it the nickname the "stink bird

    Millipedes (千足虫)

    Millipedes are tricky. For starters they look wormy. Their name is deceptive, too: Their legs number about 750. Their major defense is to curl up into a ball. They, though, also release a harm eyes, and leave a horrible smell on their attackers.

    Sea Hare (海兔)

    The graceful sea hare is plain in taste in the first place, so it's not the most popular dish in the seafood chain. Nonetheless this type of sea creature has a pretty creative smell-related defense that is almost the opposite of its smelly companions on this list. The sea hare gives out a slimy, purple ink, the substance which makes food less palatable to predators.

    Researchers using lobsters (2-f) as model predators found that the sea blocks the lobsters receptive mechanism. In other words, the sea hare gives its attacker the equivalent of a stuffy nose so they don't know how appealing it is.