Dear Mr. Rupp,

    The day I met you was the first day of high school. We liked each other immediately. You gave me a lot of advice over the next four years, like how I should get my ass to Berkeley where I belonged. I'm still there, by the way. I wish you were still around, too.

    I remember your laugh, which would start with a rough guffaw(狂笑) and end with a hacking smoker's cough that would make even the most rebellious (叛逆的) teenager decide to lay off the cigarettes. I remember the way you didn't lower your standards, yet still refused to give up on us. You were tough on us, and we were tough on you. Love is tough sometimes.

    The last time I wrote you a letter, it was 2005—four years after I graduated. I had just become a teacher, like you, and it had given me a new appreciation for the work you did with countless high school students over the years.

    It's hard to say what I'll miss the most about you. There are simply too many memories to sort through those four years, and it hurts to think you'll never read this letter. I want to believe that you knew how much you meant to your family, your students, your community, and your colleagues, but that would be a lot of realization to handle, even for you.

    You changed the lives of everyone around you. Even now, you are reminding me to cherish life and its brevity and beauty, and to tell the people I love how much they mean to me before it is too late.

    Dear teacher, dear mentor, and dear friend—I miss you and all that is about you. God bless you in Heaven.

To infinity and beyond,

Teresea

    Why do Americans struggle with watching their weight, while the French, who consume rich food, continue to stay thin? Now a research by Cornell University suggests how life style and decisions about eating may affect weight. Researchers concluded that the French tend to stop eating when they feel full. However, Americans tend to stop when their plate is empty or their favorite TV show is over.

    According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, a health expert, the French see eating as an important part of their life style. They enjoy food and therefore spend a fairly long time at the table, while Americans see eating as something to be squeezed between the other daily activities. Mercola believes Americans lose the ability to sense when they are actually full. So they keep eating long after the French would have stopped. In addition, he points out that Americans drive to huge supermarkets to buy canned and frozen foods for the week. The French, instead, tend to shop daily, walking to small shops and farmers' markets where they have a choice of fresh fruits, vegetables, and eggs as well as high-quality meats for each meal.

    After a visit to the United States, Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women Don't Get Fat, decided to write about the importance of knowing when to stop rather than suggesting how to avoid food. Today she continues to stay slim and rarely goes to the gym.

    In spite of all these differences, evidence shows that recent life style changes may be affecting French eating habits. Today the rate of obesity — or  extreme overweight — among adults is only 6%. However, as American fast food gains acceptance and the young reject older traditions, the obesity rate among French children has reached 17% — and is growing.

    The following are four famous malls in the world where you can not only purchase things but also enjoy entertainment.

    Mall of America (Minnesota, USA)

    This Mall has a theme park and a wedding church, where more than 5,000 couples have been married since its opening. The mall of America opened in 1992 and is the third largest mall in North America.

    The mall of America is the most visited shopping mall in the world, with more than 40 million visitors annually. Spending 10 minutes in every store would take shopper more than 86 hours to complete their visit to the Mall of America.

    Mall of the Emirates (Dubai)

    The mall of the Emirates is an entertainment and shopping resort located in Dubai. It offers a full range of shopping, leisure and entertainment facilities.

    This shopping center is home to over 450 retailers（零售商）and also features a complete range of entertainment options, including Ski Dubai, the first indoor ski destination in the middle East.

    West Edmonton Mall (Alberta, Canada)

    The fifth largest mall in the world and the largest in North America, it has the largest indoor water park, which has the biggest wave pool in the world.

    The mall has a theme park called Galaxyland, with a number of attractions, including a roller coaster. In addition, the mall has an indoor lake, which is home to four sea lions.

    The Dubai Mall (Dubai)

    The Dubai Mall is the world's largest mall in total area.

    The mall has 1,200 shops and houses an aquarium（水族馆）which earned the Guinness World Record for the world's "largest Acrylic Panel". The mall is also home to an ice rink（溜冰场）, a 250-room luxury hotel and 22 cinema screens, plus 120 restaurants and cafes. It's also famous for the unique "malls-within-a-mall" concept, with themed shopping area like Gold Souk, Fashion Island and The Grove, an indoor-outdoor streetscape with a fully retractable（可缩回的）roof.

    My teacher held up a piece of broken glass and asked, "Who broke this window?"

    Thirty boys tried to think about not only what they had done, but also what our teacher may have found out. She seldom became angry, but she was this time.

    "Oh," I thought. I was the one who broke the window. It was caused by a naughty throw of a baseball. If I admitted guilt, I would be in a lot of trouble. How would I be able to pay for a big window like that? I didn't even get an allowance. "My father is going to have a fit." I thought. I didn't want to raise my hand, but some force much stronger than I was pulled it skyward. I told the truth. "I did it." It was hard enough to say what I had.

    My teacher took down a book from one of our library shelves and I had never known my teacher to strike a student, but I feared she was going to start with me.

    "I know how you like bird," she said as she stood looking down at my guilt-ridden face. "Here is that field guide about birds that you are constantly checking out. It is yours now. It's time we got a new one for the school anyway. You will not be punished as long as you remember that I am not rewarding you for your misdeed, I am rewarding you for your truthfulness."

I couldn't believe it! I wasn't being punished and I was getting my own bird field guide—the very one that I had been saving up money to buy.

    All that remains of that day is my memory and the lesson my teacher taught me. That lesson stays with me every day, and it will echo forever.

    Google's new camera, called Clips, is a small, smart device. It comes with a case that has a clip (夹子), but it's not designed to be worn on your clothing. Most interestingly, it uses artificial intelligence to take photography out of your hands so it can capture moments on its own.

    This roughly 2-inch by 2-inch camera, with a three-hour battery life and Gorilla Glass for toughness, is intended for candid moments, like when a child does something cute that may happen too quickly for you to pull out your smartphone.

    Onboard the Clips device, it uses machine learning algorithms (计算程序) to help capture scenes. Those algorithms include face recognition. "Once it learns that there's a face you see frequently, it'll try to get nice photos of those faces," said Juston Payne, the device's product manager. And they also want it to recognize facial expressions, which involved "training it to know what happiness looks like". The Google team also trained it to recognize what not to shoot—like when a child's hand is over the lens, or if it is tossed in a dark purse.

    The only way to see the images is by connecting the camera with your phone, as it has no screen for viewing or editing.

    Were people concerned it could seem strange? Yes, Payne admitted. But they said they addressed that by making it obvious what it is. A green light on the front signals that it is on. Besides, unlike a camera meant to monitor your home, it is not connected to the Internet.

    "This product is only possible because of the way that silicon has advanced" Payne said, noting that it was only in the past year or so that they could squeeze the technology down into a device this size. Going forward, we're likely to get more assistance from the artificial intelligence packed into our apps and gadgets.

English businessman Richard Branson made history on July 11, 2021 as he and three other crewmates became the world's first space tourists. The flight was made by a spacecraft named VSS Unity that was built by Branson's company, Virgin Galactic. The flight lasted slightly more than an hour, and took Branson and crew to an altitude（海拔） of 53. 5 miles above the Earth, just a little above the boundary（边界） of space which lies 50 miles above the Earth.

At that height, the atmosphere turns into the black of outer space and the Earth becomes a bent ball of blue. Travelers also exhibit weightlessness as there is no gravity, the force that keeps our bodies walking on the Earth's surface. Therefore, Branson and his fellows were able to float around in VSS Unity while enjoying the views. They were able to do that for three minutes before the spacecraft began its downward journey. It landed back at Virgin Galactic's space port in New Mexico, United States, which is the same place from where it took off 90 minutes ago.

On landing back, Branson said, "I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid but honestly, nothing could prepare you for the view of the Earth from space. It was just magical. I'm just taking it all in, and it's unreal."

July 11's flight is the start of space tourism for one and all. In early 2022, customers who could afford a ticket for a quarter of a million dollars could line up for a seat on a trip to space. And guess what—they will have a choice of spacecraft. Jeff Bezos, who owns a famous company, is all set to launch himself into space on July 20 on board a spacecraft built by his new branch company Blue Origin. Blue Origin will also carry tourists to space.