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      A new collectionof 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 shipwreck(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 theEndurance, a small, tight, Norwegian-built three-master that was intended to take Sir Ernest Shackleton and a small crew of seamen and scientists, 27 men in all, to the southernmost shore of Antarctica's Weddell Sea. From that point Shackleton wanted to force a passage by dog sled(雪橇) 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 even then a thoroughly commercial effort. Scott's last journey, completed as be 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.

    My elder brother Steve, in the absence of my father who died when I was six, gave me important lessons in values that helped me grow into an adult.

    For instance, Steve taught me to face the results of my behavior. Once when I returned in tears from a Saturday baseball game, it was Steve who took the time to ask me what happened. When I explained that my baseball had soared through Mrs. Holt's basement window, breaking the glass with a crash, Steve encouraged me to apologize to her. After all, I should have been playing in the park down Fifth Street and not in the path between buildings. Although my knees knocked as I explained to Mrs. Holt, I offered to pay for the window from my pocket money if she would return my ball. I also learned from Steve that personal property(财产) is a sacred thing. After I found a shiny silver pen in my fifth-grade classroom, I wanted to keep it, but Steve explained that it might be important to someone else in spite of the fact that it had little value. He reminded me of how much I'd hate to lose to someone else the small dog my father carved from a piece of cheap wood. I returned the pen to my teacher, Mrs. Davids, and still remembered the smell of her perfume as she patted me on the shoulder. Yet of all the instructions Steve gave me, his respect for life is the most vivid in my mind.

    When I was twelve, I killed an old brown sparrow in the yard with a BB gun. Excited with my skill, I screamed to Steve to come from the house to take a look. I shall never forget the way he stood for a long moment and stared at the bird on the ground. Then in a dead, quiet voice, he asked, “Did it hurt you first, Mark?” I didn't know what to answer. He continued with his eyes firm, “The only time you should even think of hurting a living thing is when it hurts you first. And then you think a long, long time.” I really felt terrible then, but that moment stands out as the most important lesson my brother taught me.

    Every week in China, millions of people will sit in front of their TVs watching teenagers compete for the title Character Hero, which is a Chinese-style spelling bee (拼写大赛). In this challenge, young competitors must write Chinese characters by hand. To prepare for the competition, the competitors usually spend months studying dictionaries.

    Perhaps the show's popularity should not be a surprise. Along with gunpowder and paper, many Chinese people consider the creation of Chinese calligraphy (书法) to be one of their primary contributions to civilization. Unfortunately, all over the country, Chinese people are forgetting how to write their own language without computerized help. Software on smart phones and computers allows users to type in the basic sound of the word using the Latin alphabet. The correct character is chosen from a list. The result? It's possible to recognize characters without remembering how to write them.

    But there's still hope for the paint brush. China's Education Ministry wants children to spend more time learning how to write.

    In one Beijing primary school we visited, students practice calligraphy every day inside a specially decorated classroom with traditional Chinese paintings hanging on the walls. Soft music plays as a group of six-year-olds dip brush pens into black ink. They look up at the blackboard often to study their teacher's examples before carefully attempting to reproduce those characters on thin rice paper. “If adults can survive without using handwriting, why bother to teach it now?'' we ask the calligraphy teacher, Shen Bin, “The ability to write characters is part of Chinese tradition and culture,” she reasons. "Students must learn now so they don't forget when they grow up.” says the teacher.

    It was one of those days when there was way too much to do. I had fallen behind in most of my household chores.

    After breakfast, I sat down at the computer to write an article. My youngest daughter, Julia, walked toward me. "But, Mommy, I thought we were going to do something fun today," she said. "Since it's our day off from school." "I know it's your day off, but it's not Mommy's day off," I explained.

    "Can you play a game with me?" she begged. "Like Candy Land? Or beauty shop?" I sighed. I really didn't have time to play. I desperately needed to get some work done. But then I had an idea. "Can we play beauty shop while I work?" So I got my article done, and my toenails(脚趾甲) painted at the same time. My oldest, Austin, volunteered to fix lunch so I could keep working. Shortly after lunch, we went to the grocery store and I got what I needed. Back at home, the kids decided to play "grocery store". For the remainder of the afternoon, I cleaned house, folded laundry, and started dinner. The kids continued with their game until my husband, Eric, walked through the door.

    He saw me and smiled. "So how was the kids' big day off today?" I began to explain that we hadn't done anything special. But my two middle kids, Jordan and Lea interrupted me. They told their dad, "We had such a special day today, Dad! It was a blast!" I looked at my children's faces. They were lit up with excitement.

    I nodded, realizing how right he was. Happiness is far more about our attitude than our circumstances. I hugged my kids and thanked them for reminding me to look for happiness in the little things. Julia smiled and said, "And the little things that make you the happiest are us, right, Mommy?" Wow, my kids sure are smart.

The World's Largest Insect

    This giant insect can be used as a toy.

    A child ties one end of a string to a stick and the other end around the "neck" of an insect. Holding the stick, the child lets the insect go. With a loud whirring sound, the insect takes off, pulling the string in a large curve over the child's head. The child laughs as the stick jumps around.

    The child is African, and the toy is the African Goliath beetle, the largest insect in the world.

    The Goliath is a true insect because it has six legs and a body that is divided into three parts. Like all beetles, it has two pairs of wings. The front pair are thick and stiff and protect the back pair, which are soft. It is these soft back wings that make the beetle fly forward. They also cause the loud whirring sound the beetle makes when it flies. To steer, the beetle twists and turns its legs the same way you steer a bike by turning its front wheel.

    African children often use the Goliath beetle as a toy. Although it is over 15 centimeters long, it is quite harmless.

    Buster used to be a lovely dog playing and running on a farm all day. His life had a big change after his handler Will's presence because Will found he did extremely well in sniffing tests. Will thought Buster had a special talent and decided to let him become a member of RAF police working dogs. Buster began working with Will in 2007, and the pair was sent to Afghanistan's deadly Helmand province. There, Buster saved countless lives by sniffing out explosive devices (IEDs), as well as weapons. He joined his comrades repeatedly on foot patrols hunting Taliban terrorists and tracking down bombs. He also acted as a useful diplomatic tool, due to his friendly approach to local children. The RAF soon had a long train of children in tow, as Buster drew in his crowd and entertained them.

    After his glittering service with the RAF, Buster retired in 2011,and died in 2015 at the age of 13 at the home of his handler, Will, in Lincolnshire where he had been enjoying retirement with his handler Will, his wife Tracy and their two dogs who will inherit (继承) their father's career.

    Over the course of his career, Buster is thought to have saved more than 1,000 lives. He also helped patrol British bases and searched vehicles at check points, and upon retirement was made the official RAF Police mascot (吉祥物). Buster's brave exploits were even documented in Will's book, which was published in January and soon became a best-selling one.

    Buster completed five tours of duty in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq and earned a row of campaign medals, and it was because of his great efforts in these austere environments full of wars and confrontations that he would be remembered. It was the saving of countless lives by searching out IEDs that saw the honor of official lifetime mascot of the RAF Police bestowed (授予) upon Buster. The RAF police are now planning to commemorate Buster as part of a special event to celebrate RAF Police Working Dogs.