Cleverness is a gift while kindness is a choice．Gifts are easy—they're given after all．Choice can be hard．

    I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago．I came across the fact that the Internet usage was growing at 2300 percent per year．I'd never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast，and the idea of building all online bookstore with millions of titles was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old，and I'd been married for a year．I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go to do this crazy thing that probably wouldn't work since most start-ups don't and I wasn't sure what to expect．MacKenzie told me I should go for it．As a young boy，I'd been a garage inventor．I'd always wanted to be all inventor，and she wanted me to follow my passion．

    I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired．I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet．He took me on a long walk in Central Park，listened carefully to me，and finally said，“That sounds like a really good idea，but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job．”That 1ogic made some sense to me，and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision．Seen in that light,it really was a difficult choice，but finally，I decided I had to give it a shot．I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing．And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all.

    After much consideration ，I took the less safe path to follow my passion ，and I'm proud of that choice．For all of us，in the end，we are our choice．

    Nancy Wake was born in New Zealand, in 1912. The family moved to Australia in 1914 and after being educated in Sydney, she travelled to Europe where she worked as a journalist. In Nazi (纳粹的) Germany she saw the rise of Adolf Hitler and Anti-Semitism. On one occasion in Vienna she witnessed Jews being whipped by members of the Sturm Abteilung (SA). In 1939 Nancy married the wealthy French industrialist, Henri Fiocca, in Marseilles. Nancy was in France when the German Army invaded in May 1940. After the French government surrendered, Nancy joined the French Resistance. She worked with Ian Garrow's group helping British airmen shot down over France to escape back to Britain.

    In December 1940 the network was betrayed and Nancy was forced to go into hiding. She continued to work for the French Resistance and was eventually arrested while in Toulouse. However, the authorities did not realize they had captured the woman known as the “White Mouse” and she was set free after four days.

    It was now too dangerous to remain in occupied France and Nancy crossed the Pyrenees into Spain before travelling to Britain. She now joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and agreed to become a British special agent (特工).

On 29th April 1944, Nancy was parachuted into the Auvergne region of France. Her main aim was to locate local soldiers and to provide them with some guns that were being dropped by parachute by the Royal Air Force four times a week.

Nancy had the task of helping the resistance to prepare for the armed uprising that was due to coincide with the D-Day landings. She also led an attack against the Gestapo headquarters in Mountucon and a German gun factory. Henri Tardivat, one of her comrades in the resistance later said that: “She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then she is like five men.”

    After the war, Nancy worked for the Intelligence Department at the British Air Ministry. In 1960 she married John Forward and returned to Australia to live.

Hi Judy!

    You often complain to me that you always buy goods unreasonably on sale promotion（促销）and feel it shameful after going back to your school dormitory with new things not needed, considering all the money you spend is your parents' income.

    In fact, this is a common phenomenon, called impulsive buying, a buying unplanned and hard to control. It usually happens when a store offers discounts（打折）or sales promotion—a special way used by stores to get more customers, which means you may fall into its traps even without notice. ,

    Stores, with a good knowledge of customers' psychology（心理）, make use of it to drive business. Avoiding all the impulsive buying is a hard thing. However, knowing our psychology behind it and reducing the times when influenced by sales promotion may be useful. So you should keep calm when facing the sales promotion by keeping in mind what you really need.

    Find out the conditions where you are likely to buy things blindly. When seeing a dress advertised at 20% off, do not concentrate on the discount, but warn yourself against falling into the trap of “saving money''.

    Besides, do not forget the long-term effects of your choice when meeting a sales promotion. Short-term benefits, like excited feeling just after buying items encourage impulsive buying. But the long-term costs such as waste of money and the sense of shame really annoy you. When seeing the advertisements, remember what you really want to buy originally and warn yourself of that terrible feeling. Only in this way can you save money for really needed things.

Yours,

Rachel

    Have you ever learned about F. Scott Fitzgerald? F. Scott Fitzgerald, born on September 24, 1896, an American novelist, was once a student of St. Paul Academy, the Newman School and attended Princeton. University for a short while. In 1917 he joined the army and was posted in Alabama, where he met his future wife Zelda Sayre. Then he had to make some money to impress her.

    His life with her was full of great happiness, as he wrote in his diary:" My own happiness in the past often approached such joy that I could share it even with the person dearest to me but had to walk it away in quiet streets and take down parts of it in my diary."

    This side of paradise, his first novel, was published in 1920. Encouraged by its success, Fitzgerald began to devote more time to his writing. Then he continued with the novel the Beautiful and Damned (1922), a collection of short stories Thales of the Jazz Age (1922), and a play The Vegetable (1923). But his greatest success was The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, which quick brought him praise from the literary world. Yet it failed to give him the needed financial security. Then, in 1926, he published another collection of short stories All the Sad Young Men.

    However, Fitzgerald's problems with his wife Zelda affected his writing. During the 1920s he tried to reorder his life, but failed. By 1930, his wife had her first breakdown and went to a Swiss clinic. During this period he completed novels Tender Is the Night in 1934 and The Love of the Last Tycoon in 1940 while his wife was in hospital in the United States, he got totally addicted to alcohol. Sheila Graham, his dear friend, helped him fight his alcoholism.

Rotnest Hostel Guide

    The Rottnest Island Hostel is a great low budget option for guests visiting The Rottnest Island.

    The hostel has 50 beds (including family rooms and dormitories, a fully equipped kitchen and a lounge with television. Public shower facilities (设施) are available on each floor. Hostel beds are supplied with beddings but guests will need to bring their own towels or hire them by contacting Rottnest Island Reservations at least 48 hours ahead of arrival.

    The hostel family rooms have recently had an upgrade to include a small fridge, wardrobe and shelf storage facility. There is also additional outside seating for those using the public kitchen and BBQ areas.

    Room Cost:

    Family Room: From $80 to $117 depending on season

    Dormitory: From $45 to $53 depending on length of stay

    Buffet Breakfast: 7.00 am- 9.00 am

    Cost: Pre-booked $15 per person ($18.50 walk-in).

    Pre-booked $40 per family of 2 adults & 2 children up to 14yrs ($45 walk-in).

    Buffet Dinner: 5.45 pm- 9.00 pm

    Main Course: Roast Pork or Roast Beef, Curries, Pasta. Vegetarian Stir Fry. Steamed Rice, Salad, Roast Potatoes, Garlic or Cheese Bread

    Dessert: Ice Cream & Fruit Salad

    Drink: Water & Coffee or Tea

    Cost: Pre-booked $25 per person ($30 walk-in).

    Pre-booked $50 per family of 2 adults & 2 children up to 14yrs ($55 walk-in).

    To pre-book your meals, please call RIA Reservations on 9432 911.

    Please Note:

    Public showers are limited to 20 minutes.

    Bookings for the dormitories cannot be made online.

    Alcohol is not permitted within the dorms, hostel and BBQ areas.

    Wood has many great characteristics that make it the perfect building material. It is cheap, durable, easily available, and most importantly, environmentally sustainable. The one thing it is not, is transparent! Now thanks to a team of scientists at Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology the material may even be able to add that feature to its already impressive list.

    Lead researcher Dr, Lars Berglund said he was inspired to create the transparent wood after learning how Japanese researchers had developed a see-through paper for use in flexible display screens for electronic devices. The team began by pulling out the wood's lignin(木质素). The lignin-free wood was then dipped into a polymer(聚合物)and baked at a temperature of 158°F for four hours. The result was a hybrid product that was not only stronger and lighter than the original wood but also, almost transparent. The researchers were able to adjust the level of transparency by varying the amount of the polymer injected and also by changing the thickness of the wood.

    While scientists have previously created a see-through wood for small-scale applications like computer chips, the transparent wood is the first one being considered for large scale applications. The researchers, who revealed their findings in Biomacromolecules on April 11, picture using the transparent wood in buildings to allow for more natural light, or to create windows that let in the desired amount of light without sacrificing privacy.

    Wood that allows light to pass through could lead to a brighter future for homes and buildings. Berglund also thinks the wood could play a significant role in the design of solar panels. The semitransparent material would be able to keep light longer and give it more time to interact with the conductor, thus resulting in better solar efficiency. Additionally, substituting the currently used glass with this new product would help solar energy manufacturers improve their carbon footprint and lower the cost. They are now experimenting with ways to scale up the manufacturing process so that the transparent material is cost-effective to make and easy to use.