The Bowler family had a very unusual experience this year. It was one of more than 400 families who applied to 1900 house, a reality TV show which took a typical family back a hundred years to see how people lived in the days before the internet, computer games and even electricity.

    The Bowler family spent three months in a London home without a telephone, computers, TV, or fast food. The bowlers wore clothes from 1900, ate only food available in England at that time, and cooked their meals on a single stove. Paul Bowler still went to work every day in a then uniform. The children changed their clothes on the way to and from school and their classmates didn't know about their unusual home life. Joyce stayed at home, cooking and cleaning like a typical housewife of the time, though everything took three times as long.

    So does Joyce think that people's lives were better in the old days?

    “I think people in the old days had just as many troubles and worries,” Joyce said. “And I don't think their life was better or worse, there were lots of things back then that I'm happy I don't have to deal with nowadays, but on the other hand life was simpler.” “We had a lot more time with our family, and it was hard being nice to each other all the time,” eleven-year-old Hilary said.

    So what did the Bowler family miss most about modern life while living in the 1900 house?

Paul, 39: “telephone and a hot shower”

Joyce, 44: “a quick cup of tea from a kettle you could just turn on”

Hilary, 11: “rock CD”

Joseph, 9: “hamburger and computer games”

A few months after we moved to a small city in France, I wanted to meet my husband for lunch at the university where he worked. I got lost. I had to call him for help. One of his friends said to him later, "How could she get lost? She just needed to go straight."

Well, no. That's the problem. You never "just go straight", because France is the land of roundabouts (弯道). Highways, major streets, little village lanes – if you go straight long enough, you'll end up going in circles.

    Even after a year here, I'd still get lost going to the grocery store, or just about anywhere that wasn't within a hundred yards of my house.

I admit I have a horrible sense of direction, can't read a map, and am not such a good driver. Plus, I've been spoiled (宠坏) by living in American cities, where you just indeed need to "go straight". But in France, driving became my nightmare — the roads are roundabouts within roundabouts.

    Finally I found a solution: a GPS program on my smart phone. I rely on it to get anywhere, even places I've been.

    But it does leave me feeling very bad and helpless when, often, the program doesn't work, can't find a GPS signal, or gives wrong information. I'd have to wait until my GPS gets recovered, or else I use my old solution: I call my husband. Is the GPS making us more stupid, or helping us going around more? In my case, it's probably both.

    Mr. Peter Johnson, aged twenty- three, battled for half an hour to escape from his trapped car yesterday when it landed upside down in three feet of water. Mr. Johnson took the only escape route—through the boot (行李箱).

    Mr. Johnson's car had finished up in a ditch (沟渠) at Romney Marsin, Kent, after skidding on ice and hitting a bank. "Fortunately, the water began to come in only slowly," Mr. Johnson said. "I couldn't force the doors because they were jammed against the walls of the ditch and dared not open the windows because I knew water would come flooding in."

    Mr. Johnson, a sweet salesman of Sitting Home, Kent, first tried to attract the attention of other motorists by sounding the horn and hammering on the roof and boot. Then he began his struggle to escape.

    Later he said, "It was really a half penny that saved my life. It was the only coin I had in my pocket and I used it to unscrew the back seat to get into the boot. I hammered desperately with a hammer trying to make someone hear, but no help came."

    It took ten minutes to unscrew the seat, and a further five minutes to clear the sweet samples from the boot. Then Mr. Johnson found a wrench (扳手) and began to work on the boot lock. Fifteen minutes passed by. "It was the only chance I had. Finally it gave, but as soon as I moved the boot lid, the water and mud poured in. I forced the lid down into the mud and scrambled clear as the car filled up."

    His hands and arms cut and bruised，Mr. Johnson got to Beckett Farm nearby, where he was looked after by the farmer's wife, Mrs. Lucy Bates. Trembling in a blanket, he said, "That thirty minutes seemed like hours." Only the tips of the car wheels were visible, police said last night. The vehicle had sunk into two feet of mud at the bottom of the ditch.

Work and the Young: Generation Jobless

    “YOUNG people ought not to be idle (闲置的) . It is very bad for them," said MargaretThatcher in 1984. She was right: there are few worse things that society can do to its young than to leave them ignored.

    Yet more young people are idle than ever. The International Labour Organization reports that 75m (m=million) young people globally are looking for a job. World Bank surveys suggest that 262m young people are economically inactive. The number of young people without a job is nearly as large as the population of America (311m).

Two factors play a big part. First, the long slowdown in the West has reduced demand for labour, and it is easier to put off hiring young people than it is to fire older workers. Second, inemerging economies population growth is the fastest in countries with disordered labour markets, such as India and Egypt.

    One possible way to settle this problem is to stimulate growth. That is easier said than done in a world suffering from debt, and is anyway a possible answer. The countries where the problem is worst (such as Spain and Egypt) suffered from high youth unemployment even when their economies were growing. Throughout the recession ( 经济不景气)，companies have continued to complain that they cannot find young people with the right skills. This underlines the importance of two other solutions: reforming labour markets and improving education.

    Youth unemployment is often at its worst in countries with inflexible labour markets. High taxes on hiring, strict rules about firing, high minimum wages: all these help force young people to the street corner. South Africa has some of the highest unemployment, in part because it has powerful trade unions and inflexible rules about hiring and firing. Many countries with high youth unemployment rate have high minimum wages and heavy taxes on labour. India has around 200 laws on work and pay.

    Across the OECD (经合组织) , people who left school at the earliest opportunity are twice as likely to be unemployed as university graduates. But it is unwise to conclude that governments should simply continue increasing the number of people who graduate from university. In both Britain and the United States many people with arts degrees are finding it impossible to get appropriate jobs. In North Africa university graduates are twice as likely to be unemployed as non-graduates.

    What matters is not just number of years of education people get, but its content. This means expanding the study of science and technology and closing the gap between the world of education and the world of work-for example by upgrading vocational education and by building closer relations between companies and schools. Germany, which has the second lowest level of youth unemployment in the rich world, owns long-history system of vocational schooling and apprenticeships (学徒制).

    The problem of youth unemployment has been getting worse for several years. But there are at last some reasons for hope. Governments are trying to address the mismatch between education and the labour market. Companies are beginning to take more responsibility for the young. The world has a real chance of introducing an education-and-training revolution worthy of the solution to the problem.

    An 80-year-old man was sitting on the sofa in his house along with his 45-year-old highly educated son.

    Suddenly a crow (乌鸦) perched on the tree near their window.

    The father asked his son, "What is this?"

    The son replied, "It is a crow."

    After a few minutes, the father asked his son the second time, "What is this?"

    The son said, "Father, I have just now told you. It is a crow!"

    After a little while, the old father again asked his son the third time, "What is this?"

    "It's a crow, a crow, a crow!" said the son loudly.

    A little after, the father again asked his son the fourth time, "What is this?" This time the son shouted at his father, "Why do you keep asking me the same question again and again? 'IT IS A CROW'. Are you not able to understand this?"

    A little later the father went to his room and came back with an old diary, which he had kept since his son was born. On opening a page, he asked his son to read that page. When the son read it, the following words were written in the diary:

    "Today my little son aged three was sitting with me on the sofa, when a crow was sitting on the window. My son asked me 23 times what it was, and I replied to him all 23 times that it was crow. I hugged him lovingly each time he asked me the same question again and again for 23 times. I did not at all feel annoyed; I rather felt affection for my innocent child."

    A great number of species make their home in the vast waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Although the entire ocean makes up an ecosystem, many smaller habitats are found within, including an open-water habitat off the coast of the Northern Atlantic Ocean known as the Sargasso Sea. Sargassum is an alga(海藻) that floats in masses that can continue for miles. The waters of the Gulf Stream push the water in a northward move into this area. This constant move and varying temperature support the accumulation of the brown-colored seaweed.

    The Sargasso Sea is so enormous that one method of information collection has not been enough for scientists to obtain an accurate picture of what takes place within this ecosystem. Researchers have needed to employ several methods of sampling. Methods such as dragging nets over the surface of the water and videotaping beneath areas of sargassum have served scientists well. Information collected has shown that the Gulf Stream pushes brown algae from open water into the Sargasso Sea area, creating a diverse floating habitat in an area that would otherwise not support that wildlife.

    In the most recent study of the sargassum community off the shores of North Carolina, eighty-one fish species were documented as using the area as a microhabitat. This is an increase from previous studies. The types of fish found here are both commercially and environmentally important. The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council is working to regulate the harvesting of sargassum. The Council hopes to have the area classified as an Essential Fish Habitat. Which would afford it certain protections.

    Further research needs to be done before scientists understand how to best protect the Sargasso Sea as well as understand how it goes about supporting so many important types of wildlife.