Once a boy came to ask a fisherman how to become cleverer, because his mother always called him “foolish boy”.

    “That's easy,” answered the fisherman. “I know one way to make you become cleverer.”

    “Really?”

    “Of course. It is said a fish head is good for brain. If you eat one, you'll become cleverer indeed. Pay only three pounds for one fish head.” The boy paid him three pounds and the fisherman cut off a fish head and handed it to him.

    A raw fish head is not good—not even for a hungry boy to eat but the boy ate it up in  two gulps.

    “Do you feel anything?” asked the fisherman.

    “Not in my head,” said the boy.

    The boy lay on the ground and thought. “One whole fish costs only two pounds. I have paid him three pounds for the fish head. Why couldn't I have the whole fish for soup, a head for brain and one pound left over?” He jumped up and shouted at the fisherman. “You thief! You are fooling me!” The fisherman laughed, saying, “The fish head works now, you see.”

    Memory, they say, is a matter of practice and exercise. If you have the wish and really made a conscious（自觉的）effort, then you can quite easily improve your ability to remember things. But even if you are successful, there are times when your memory seems to play tricks on you.

    Sometimes you remember things that really did not happen. One morning last week, for example, I got up and found that I had left the front door unlocked all night, yet I clearly remember locking it carefully the night before.

    Memory “trick” work the other way as well. Once in a while you remember not doing something, and then find out that you did. One day last month, for example, I was sitting in a barber（理发师）shop waiting for my turn to get a haircut, and suddenly I realized that I had got a haircut two days before at the barber shop across the street from my office.

    We always seem to find something funny and amusing（有趣的）in incidents caused by people's forgetfulness or absent-mindedness. Stories about absent-minded professors have been told for years, and we never got tired of hearing new ones. Unfortunately, however, absent-mindedness is not always funny. There are times when “trick” of our memory can cause us great trouble.

    Our mother earth is going through a very tough situation and we, the entire human race, are destroying our environment or unconsciously without even realizing its consequences. Now we have to act very smartly and plan something to sustain what we still have, getting all necessary support from nature to lead healthy lives.

    Gardening is always an excellent and environmentally friendly idea. If you can go for sustainable gardening, then it will be even more useful for all. Gardening is a favorite hobby for many. It is time to channelize your hobby towards a more meaningful motivation.

    When we do gardening we need to use different ingredients to grow plants. Some of them are natural resources like water, soil, sunshine, and many things like this. Using these resources smartly is a part of sustainable gardening. Some simple techniques include: use less water and organic things to grow plants; try to store rainwater so that you can use them for gardening; try using less energy to drive devices; avoid using plastics in any form while gardening; reuse the leaves from your garden to fertilize them. These are the basic sustainable measures. To do so we need to have proper knowledge about gardening and its requirements so that we can use proper resources without wasting any of them.

    In today's busy life we don't get much time to spend on our environment. Gardening gives us a chance to do so. We can also have some pesticide-free and fresh food if we grow them in our garden. This is the right time to do some good to protect our own environment and gardening is one of the easiest ways. Do you want to start gardening, but you're not sure how? Click here: http://www. Garden how to.come.

    Have you ever thought of quitting your job when you feel exhausted? Maybe most of you would say "yes". After a particularly busy period at work, I decided to get away from it all by going on a hike in the mountains in southern France.

    Before I left, I read an interesting story in a magazine. It read, "Once, while I was riding on a crowded bus, the man sitting next to me threw his cell phone out of the window when his phone rang. I was surprised. He looked at me, shrugged (耸耸肩) and looked away. I had no idea whether it was his or stolen or whether he even knew what a cell phone was or not, but he clearly wanted to be free of it, because it clearly troubled him."

    Billions of people across the world use cell phones. Though cell phones are a wonderful way for communication, they often do the exact opposite. Using cell phones can increase stress within families and friends.

    So when I recently returned home, I got rid of my cell phone. Now I go outside without taking my phone with me. I've noticed things in my neighborhood I never noticed before, such as gardens. I've met new people, started conversations with neighbors I didn't speak to before and talked with some of my friends face to face instead of chatting over the phone.

    Instead of keeping me off from the world, stopping using my cell phone has helped me get even closer to my family and friends.

    "I will need to open your neck to remove the tumor," the surgeon told me on a hot summer day. The words turned into white noise. "So, an ugly scar across my neck, then?" I asked. The nurse said: "Don't worry. The closure is like his signature. Just like you want a perfect scar, he wants to give you one. You'll barely see it." I found some comfort in that.

    I googled "cancer surgery scar" and was presented with neck images: necks with red and purple lines, closed with stitches or glue; necks with multiple scars....It was enough to make me shut my Macbook, as anxiety pulsed through my body. In the mirror, I admired my neck, running my finger across a gold chain I wore. Then a tiny voice said:" Mummy!"

    My then fie-year-old son. Jack, appeared in the mirror behind me. Our reflection was a big reality check. See, my son didn't know I had cancer and was having surgery. I'm a single mom. Jack lives with me and doesn't have a relationship with his father. I'm his hero. I'm the homework helper, nurse, chef, taxi driver, and every other variation of parent. I knew I couldn't lose heart over cancer or some scar on my neck --I'm this kid's life!

    So I did the next best thing I could think of: I made an appointment to get my hair done a few days before the first surgery. My goal was simple: golden hair to frame my scar. If I couldn't hide it, I might as well show it off. I never had any intentions of hiding the scar. I didn't want my son to think my scar was something to be ashamed of. I'm his role model and I needed to set a good example. Bad things can happen, but it's how you deal with them that matters.

    The scar proves I faced my fear and won. If I got through that I can get through all the hardships, land on my feet and live boldly.

When looking at fashion shows or the latest magazine trends, you might think you've seen it all before. It seems that designers often revisit past concepts （概念）. However, to glimpse the future of fashion, one must turn to the meeting point of fashion and technology, where innovative ideas are born.

For several years now, people have been talking about "wearable technology" as the next big development. You can already buy watches that do everything your smartphone can do, or glasses with computers that follow your eye movements and feed information to you as you walk around. But there's much more to wearable technology than that.

Sports clothing is one of the areas. Runners already wear small computers on their wrists（手腕） that give them continuous information about how fast they're running, how hard their bodies are working, and so on. Experts agree that it's often sportspeople （usually young men） who are the first to take up new fashion ideas. Others then follow.

Women, it seems, are usually more interested in what clothes look like than what they can do, and technology has a part to play here too. Designers are making clothes that can change color with how you feel, or react to sound. And if you think that sounds unlikely, just think of all the things we accept as quite normal today that seemed impossible or silly only ten years ago.

The primary reason such items aren't available in mainstream stores is their high cost. However, like all technological products, their prices are likely to decrease rapidly, as technological clothing doesn't necessarily have to be costly.