One moment it was quiet and calm in the forest, the next, the air was charged with tension. The elephant had heard the distant alarm calls of animals and her mood suddenly changed. I urged the elephant deeper into the forest. We sounded like a forest fire — cracking, snapping, trailblazing. But through all the noise came a sharp warning cry. The elephant stopped and we heard it again — the tell-tale call of a spotted deer.

    I looked quickly around the shadows of the forest. Rays of sunlight shone through tree branches, beneath which the patchwork（交错）of green plants and shadows-within-shadows would make tiger stripes（条纹）look more attractive. Apart from an occasional noise from the elephant's stomach, the forest was silent.

    Gradually, the tension slipped from our bodies. The elephant seized a nearby branch and put it into its mouth. I reached forward and gently moved my hand over the elephant's neck; there was a soft part, free of wrinkles and hairs, behind her ear.

    This was my fourth time to sense the aura of the forest in Corbett, although I saw no tigers in the end. Located at the foot of the Himalayan mountains, Corbett is home to about 135 Bengal tigers, but the forest seemed to be guarding their whereabouts（出没处）, a silent reminder of their secrecy and rarity. Still, I was happy enough touching the elephant behind the ear. If I had so desperately wanted to see a tiger, I could have gone to a zoo. After all, spotting tigers merely confirms their beauty; tracking them can make you aware of something more.

    It was dawn of March 21, 2018. Gary Messina was on his morning run along New York City's East River. Suddenly something caught his eye – a large 60-year-old man balancing on the four-foot-high fence that guarded the path from the water. As Messina got closer to the scene, the man took a step forward and slipped into the dark river below.

    When Messina reached nearer, the man was struggling in the water, clearly unable to swim. Other joggers also heard the man's cry. David Blauzvern and John Green dropped their phones and keys on land and jumped in. “People had called the police, but it was unclear when they'd get there.” says Green. “We just reacted.” Messina joined them in the river. Just as the jumper was losing strength, Blauzvern take hold of him. The pair were about 30 yards from the seawall when Messina and Green caught up to them. They seized the man, with Blauzvern supporting his back and Messina and Green holding him up from either side. As the men made their toward the concrete seawall that stretched (延伸) for blocks in each direction, Blauzvern had an awful realization: there was no way out of the river.

    By now, a crowd had gathered on land. “A rescue boat is on its way,” someone yelled to them. Swimming forward was getting tougher by the minute. The jumper, who was six foot two and weighed around 260 pounds, was heavy in his rescuers' arms. After ten minutes, they managed to get to the river's edge. “I've never been so out of breath,” says Blauzvern.

    Fifteen minutes after the men had jumped into the river, the two-man rescue boat appeared. But because it couldn't risk getting too close to the seawall, the men had to swim out to it. “I was completely out of energy at this point,” says Blauzvern. The men in the water pushed the jumper while the men in the boat pulled him up and, finally, to safety. The man they had saved was taken to the hospital for evaluation(评估). Details on his condition have not been known. As for the rescuers, each of them was at work by 10:30 a.m. “I was a bit late,” admits Blauzvern, smiling. “But I had a good excuse.”

    The Dunning-Kruger effect is a type of cognitive bias (偏见) in which people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are. Essentially, low ability people do not possess the skills needed to recognize their own incompetence. The combination of poor self-awareness and low cognitive ability leads them to overestimate their own capabilities. This phenomenon is something you have likely experienced in real life, perhaps at a holiday family gathering. Throughout the course of the meal, a member of your extended family begins spouting off on a topic, boldly announcing that he is correct and that everyone else's opinion is stupid, uninformed, and just plain wrong. It may be plainly evident to everyone that this person has no idea what he is talking about, but he talks continuously, blithely oblivious (忘乎所以) to his own ignorance.

    The effect is named after researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger, two social psychologists. They found incompetent people are not only poor performers, they are also unable to accurately assess and recognize the quality of their own work. These low performers were also unable to recognize the skill and competence levels of other people, which is part of the reason why they consistently view themselves as better, more capable, and more knowledgeable than others.

    This is the reason why students who earn failing scores on exams sometimes feel that they deserved a much higher score. They overestimate their own knowledge and ability and are incapable of seeing the poorness of their performance.

    “In many cases, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, encouraged by something that feels to them like knowledge.” Dunning and his colleagues have also performed experiments where they ask respondents if they are familiar with terms related to subjects including politics, biology, physics, and geography. Along with genuine concepts, they added completely made-up terms. In one such study, approximately 90 percent of respondents claimed that they had at least some knowledge of the made-up terms.

    So what can you do to gain a more realistic assessment of your own abilities? Instead of assuming you know all there is to know about a subject, keep digging deeper. Once you gain greater knowledge of a topic, the more likely you are to recognize how much there is still to learn. Another effective strategy involves asking others for constructive criticism. While it can sometimes be difficult to hear, such feedback can provide valuable insights into how others perceive your abilities. Even as you learn more and get feedback, it can be easy to only pay attention to things that confirm what you think you already know. In order to minimize this confirmation bias, keep challenging your beliefs and expectations and seek out information that challenges your ideas.

    In 1973, I was teaching elementary school. Each day, 27 kids entered "The Thinking Laboratory." That was the name students voted for after deciding that "Room 104" was too dull.

    Freddy was an average student, but not an average person. He had the rare balance of fun and compassion(同情). He would laugh the loudest over fun and be the saddest over anyone's misfortune.

    Before the school year ended, I gave the kids a special gift, T-shirts with the words "Verbs Are Your friends" on them. I had advised the kids that while verbs may seem dull, most of the fun things they do throughout their lives will be verbs.

     Through the years, Pd run into former students who would provide updates on old classmates. I learned that Freddy did several jobs after his graduation from high school and remained the same caring person I met forty years before. Once, while working overnight at a store, he let a homeless man sleep in his truck. Another time, he lent a friend money to buy a house.

    Just last year, I was conducting a workshop when someone knocked at the classroom door. A woman excused the interruption and handed me an envelope. I stopped teaching and opened it up. Inside were the "Verbs" shirt and a note from Freddy's mother. "Freddy passed away on Thanksgiving. He wanted you to have this."

    I told the story to the class. As sad as it was, I couldn't help smiling. Although Freddy was taken from us, we all took something from Freddy.

    Join us for an exciting day of music at the UNI Dome with the Panther Marching Band!

    Band Day is perfect for high school band students in grades 9—12. Come and join us for an outstanding, positive and friendly musical and social experience for high school band students! We hope you'll enjoy the fellowship with other band students throughout the state and the fantastic performances of bands!

    Directors who wish to bring their full bands or a smaller group of band students should find this to be an easy and fun event to organize and attend! Individual students who wish to participate as single performers are strongly encouraged to attend! You'll have a chance to meet our fantastic students and perform in a friendly and welcoming environment!

    Date: November 9

    Music: A link to download music will be included in your confirmation email after you register.

    Music will be available at that link no later than September 1.

Registration:

    Band directors registering full bands or groups of students from the same band should register here: https：//bands, uni.edu/band-day-group-registration

    Individual students registering independently may register here: https //bands,uni.edu/panther-band- day-individual-registration

    Cost: $ 10. 00 per student includes: admission to the game, pizza dinner, music and a Band Day T-Shirt.

    Notes:

    We've changed our payment method to improve the registration process. Individual students must pay using a credit card at the time of registration. Band directors may either pay with credit card or mail a check made out to Panther Marching Band.

    Final deadline for registration submissions is Monday, October 14.

    Due to space limitations, band/individual students may be limited to a first-reply basis.

Born in France, but raised in Spain,linguistics and literature professor Juan José Ciruela Alférez from the University of Granada is passionate about Chinese literature and has been doing some research about it. With painstaking effort, his Spanish translation of a Chinese classic was published last year. 

Ciruela said translating the novel was an interesting challenge. In recent years, many Chinese works have been introduced to Spain. However, as most of them had been translated first into English and then from that language into Spanish, much of the originality,was lost. For this reason, when the Spanish publishing house Kailas contacted Ciruela to translate it directly from Chinese, he accepted the mission immediately, even if it presented difficulties like a heavy workload within a short time limit.  

"I encountered various difficulties, especially at the beginning of the task," said Ciruela in an interview. "This novel, in particular, needs a prior reading process in which the translator gets into the plot and the characters, since at first it is difficult to enter the world that the novel constantly raises. So I read the novel first in Chinese, paying attention to all those details and how all of that could be translated in a way that the Spanish readers would understand."

For Ciruela, the most important criterion when translating is fidelity(忠诚) to the original text. While it is true that one cannot always be strictly faithful, he believes translators should not be too far from original texts. For example, the translation of culturemes (expressions of culture in language) is quite complicated due to the cultural gap between Spanish and Chinese. Ciruela believes that these must always be appropriate to the specific function they perform within the text, in each specific case and moment.