Teary-Eyed Stories from Strangers

    The Man at the Market

    When the supermarket clerk summed up my groceries, it was $12 over what I had on me. I began to remove items from the bags, when another shopper handed me a $20 bill. “Please don't put yourself out,” I told him.

     “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “My mother is in hospital with cancer. I visit her every day and bring her flowers. I went this morning, and she got mad at me for spending my money on more flowers. She demanded that I do something else with that money. So, here, please accept this. It is my mother's flowers.”

    A Family's Food Angel

    Since my mother lost her job, our family troubled new worries: no income, the same bills, and no way to afford groceries. It was around this time that she started finding boxes of food outside our door every morning. This went on for months, until she was able to land a job. We never did find out who it was and who left the groceries for us, but they truly saved our lives.

    Seven Miles For Me

    Leaving a store, I returned to my car only to find that I'd locked my keys and cell phone inside. A teenager riding his bike saw me kick a tire and say a few choice words. “What's wrong?” he asked.

    I explained my situation. “But even if I could call my wife,” I said, “she can't bring me her car key, since this is our only car.” He handed me his cell phone. “Call your wife and tell her I'm coming to get her key.”

    “That's seven miles round trip.”

    “Don't worry about it.”

    An hour later, he returned with the key. I offered him some money, but he refused. “Let's just say I needed the exercise,” he said. Then, like a cowboy in the movies, he rode off into the sunset.

    Breaking Bread

    Last December, before work, I stopped at a deli (熟食店) and ordered an everything bagel with cream cheese. It was toasty warm, and I couldn't wait to dig in. But as I left the store, I noticed an older indigent gentleman sitting at the bus stop. Knowing it would probably be his only warm meal of the day, I gave him the bagel.

    But all was not lost for me. Another customer from the deli offered me half of her bagel. I was so delighted because I realized that in one way or another, we are all looked after.

    Pappadavada, a popular restaurant in Kochi, India, is urging customers and the community to put their leftover food in a fridge located outside of the restaurant for the hungry to take.

    People who are in need of a meal are encouraged to take from the fridge at any time, for any reason. Minu Pauline, who runs Pappadavada, has nicknamed the fridge, which was placed there on March 23 and is shaded by a neighboring tree, "tree of goodness".

    The fridge is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and stays unlocked. Pauline asks that people write the date they left the food, so those who take know how long it's been there. But most food doesn't stay in the fridge for long. In spite of a huge response from the community and plenty of donations, the fridge needs to be brought more in to replace in time. Pauling herself adds around 75% to 80% of food from Pappadavada a day in the fridge.

    The idea to put a fridge on the street came to Pauline late on night when she saw a lady searching in a dustbin for food. She was especially saddened because that particular night, her restaurant had made a ton of food that they could have easily given the woman, instead of her searching for it. She felt like she contributed to waste, and avoiding waste is what Pauline pays her attention to.

    "The only thing I want to say no is that people are actually buying food and putting it in the fridge. But I'd rather people put their food they bought but aren't going to eat in the fridge instead of the dustbin," she said.

    Pigeons may only have a brain the size of a thimble (顶针), but it appears that pigeons can categorize and name objects in the same way human children learn new words.

    A new study from the University of Iowa has shown that the birds are capable of learning to categorize 128 different photographs into 16 basic categories.

    Scientists taught three pigeons to sort out different kinds of dogs or types of shoes, for example by using a particular symbol in exchange for a reward. When they were shown black and white pictures of previously unseen dogs or shoes, the birds were able to correctly match these with the corresponding symbols.

    The scientists behind the project say this is a similar approach taken by young children when they are first learning words for objects. However, the researchers said it took their birds around 40 days to perfect the task of learning just 16 categories.

    Professor Edward Wasserman, who led the work, said: "Our birds' rate of learning appears to have been quite slow. Would children learn faster than pigeons? Almost certainly. However, our pigeons came to the experiment with no background knowledge at all. Thus, the more relevant comparison group may be newborn babies, who indeed take 6–9 months to learn their first words."

    Writing in the journal Cognition, the researchers said their experiment was a very simple mirror of the way children are taught words — by their parents pointing to pictures and asking them to name the object.

    Pigeons are known to be smarter than many birds. Professor Bob McMurray, who also took part in the study, said the results showed that human learning is not as unique as was previously believed.

    He said: "Children are facing a huge task of learning thousands of words without a lot of background knowledge to go on. For a long time, people thought that such learning is special to humans. What this research shows is that the ways in which children solve this huge problem may be shared with many species.

    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 recent decades there has been a strong push in American education to prepare all high school students for college. As a result, fewer and fewer young people are pursuing careers as skilled tradesmen. But teens should be encouraged to consider learning a trade.
    The average cost of a bachelor's degree is $127,000 and 70 percent of students apply for some form of student loans to help cover this cost. On average, loan borrowers graduate with $37,172 in debt. The average trade school degree, on the other hand, costs only $33,000 – less than what many four-year degree holders will still owe after graduation.
    I have a friend who is a highly educated college professor. He makes a comfortable living, and of course he loves his work, but recently as we discussed his own children's future career plans, it was my friend who raised the idea of pursuing a trade school degree. He told me that every time he calls his plumber (水暖工), the plumber answers his phone from his yacht(游艇).
    Of course not every tradesman can earn a yacht-buying salary, but there are a number of skilled professionals that can earn six figures.
    It's widely believed that academics are more valuable than physical or skilled work. Fortunately, there has been an effort to change that message in recent years and to restore dignity to trade education and tradesmen. Still, that message is going to be reinforced in classrooms and at home so that all students will recognize the beauty and value of possessing a skill, of being able to make something with one's own hands, and of offering a service that makes other people's lives not only better, but in many cases, possible.

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