Every man wants his son to be somewhat of a clone,not in features but in footsteps.As he grows you also age, and your ambitions become more unachievable.You begin to realize that your boy,in your footsteps,could probably accomplish what you hoped for.But footsteps can be muddied and they can go off in different directions.

    My son Jody has hated school since day one in kindergarten.Science projects waited until the last moment.Book reports weren't written until the final threat.

    I've been a newspaperman all my adult life.My daughter is a university graduate working toward her master's degree in English.But Jody? When he entered the tenth grade he became a “vo-tech” student(技校学生).They're called “motorheads” by the rest of the student body.

    When a secretary in my office first called him “motorhead”,I was shocked.“Hey,he's a good kid,” I wanted to say.“And smart,really.”

    I learned later that motorheads are,indeed,different.They usually have dirty hands and wear dirty work clothes. And they don't often make school honor rolls(光荣榜).

    But being the parent of a motorhead is itself an experience in education.We who labor in clean shirts in offices don't have the abilities that motorheads have.I began to learn this when I had my car crashed.The cost to repair it was estimated at $800.“Hey,I can fix it,” said Jody.I doubted it ,but let him go ahead,for I had nothing to lose.

    My son ,with other motorheads,fixed the car.They got parts(零件）from a junkyard,non-toasting toaster have been fixed.Neighbours and co-workers trust their car repair to him.

    Since that first repair job,a broken air-conditioner,a non-functioning washer and a non-toasting toaster have been fixed.Neighbors and co-workers trust their car repairs to him.

    These kids are happiest when doing repairs.They joke and laugh and are living in their own relaxed world.And their minds are bright despite their dirty hands and clothes.

    I have learned a lot from my motorhead: publishers need printers,engineers need mechanics,and architects need builders.Most important,I have learned that fathers don't need clones in footsteps or anywhere else.

    My son may never make the school honor roll.But he made mine.

    What's the biggest online shopping day in the world? Not Valentine's Day. Not Cyber Monday or Black Friday. The winner is China's Singles' Day, celebrated on November11, or 11.11.

    Singles' Day began as a day for unmarried or uncoupled people to celebrate their lives. Single students, looking for an excuse to buy themselves presents, started it on November11,1993, reported The Guardian. It is symbolized by the four mumber ones in the date of November11 and is also called Double Eleven, in reference to the day it was started, said the BBC. It became a major shopping day in 2009. The CEO of an online shopping site --Alibaba-- tried to increase sales at the e-commerce company. The CEO, Daniel Zhang, launched an annual online sale on that day, said Fortune. When it first began, "Sigles' Day was very much an offline comfort to actual single people," noted the website atlas Obscura."A small group of students at Nanjing University are said to have chosen 11.11 as a day that singles could do activities like karaoke together." It quickly became a cultural phenomenon.

    Last year, Alibaba sold more than $1 billion worth of products in the first three minutes of the sales, reported Bloomberg News. Total sales on Singles' Day soared to $9 billion within 24 hours. That's four times bigger than Cyber Monday in the U.S., which is the Monday after Thanksgiving and traditionally a big shopping day. By comparison, online sales in the U.S. last year on Black Friday were just $1.5 billion, reported TechCrunch.

    Today, Singles' Day is very successful. Analysts say that this year, sales on China's Singles' Day will increase to a new high. In the U.S., Jennifer Wang, a co-founder of a company targeting Chinese-Americans, said, "We expect to have 3 million people coming to click Dealmoon for the Singles' Day launch." Some observers think Singles' Day could catch on globally.

    When the residents of Buenos Aires want to change the pesos they do not trust into the dollars they do, they go to an office that acts as a front for thriving illegal exchange market.

    As the couriers carry their bundles of pesos around Buenos Aires, they pass grand buildings like the Teatro Colon, an opera house that opened in 1908, and the Retiro railway station, completed in 1915. In the 43 years leading up to 1914, GDP had grown at an annual rate of 6%, the fastest recorded in the world. In 1914 half of Buenos Aires's population was foreign-born. Its income per head was 92% of the average of 16 rich economies.

    It never got better than this. Its income per head is now 43% of those same 16 rich economies; it trails Chile and Uruguay in its own backyard.

    The country's dramatic decline has long puzzled economists. “If a guy has been hit___shots it's hard to work out which one of them killed him.” says Rafael di Tella. But three deep-lying explanations help to throw light on the country's decline. Firstly, Argentina may have been rich 100 years ago but it was not modern. The second theory stresses the role of trade policy. Thirdly, when it needed to change, Argentina lacked the institutions to create successful policies.

    Argentina was rich in 1914 because of commodities; its industrial base was only weakly developed. The landowners who made Argentina rich were not so bothered about educating it: cheap labor was what counted.

    Without a good education system, Argentina struggled to create competitive industries. It had benefited from technology in its Belle Epoque period, but Argentina mainly consumed technology from abroad rather than inventing its own.

    Argentina had become rich by making a triple bet on agriculture, open market and Britain, its biggest trading partner. If that bet turned sour, it would require a severe adjustment. The First World War delivered the initial blow to trade. Next came the Depression, which crushed the open trading system on which Argentina depended. Dependence on Britain, another country in decline, backfired(失败) as Argentina's favored export market signed preferential deals with Commonwealth countries.

    After the Second World War, when the rich world began its slow return to free trade with the negotiation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, Argentina had become a more closed economy. An institution to control foreign trade was created in 1946; the share of trade as a percentage of GDP continued to fall. High food prices meant big profits for farmers but empty stomachs for ordinary Argentines. Open borders increased farmers' taking but sharpened competition from abroad for domestic industry. Heavy export taxes on crops allow the state to top up its decreasing foreign-exchange reserves; limits on wheat exports create surpluses(过剩) that drive down local prices. But they also dissuade farmers from planting more land, enabling other countries to steal market shares.

    “There's a mother in PICU (儿童重症监护病房) who wants to talk about a kit she received.” the nurse told me. “Something about it made her cry.”

    I've been a child-life specialist at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital since 2000. I help families understand diagnoses and treatment plans and manage the ups and downs that come with caring for a sick child. Tough talks with parents are part of the job, it still makes me feel nervous.

    The kits the nurse was talking about were something I had recently introduced to the hospital: Comfort Kits from Guideposts. They were supposed to make a child's experience here easier, not upsetting.

    When I came across the kits at a conference, I fell in love with them. A treasure box of items designed not only to entertain kids, but to comfort and inspire them. There's a coloring book, a stress ball, a CD of relaxing music, a hairy star named Sparkle, a journal and much more. I really believed these kits would help kids. I wished I hadn't been mistaken.

    At the patient's room in PICU I saw a little girl, sleeping soundly, surrounded by tubes and machines. My eyes met her mother's. The kit was open on her lap and tears were running down her cheeks.

    “I'm Shannon. I manage the Child Life Department.” I said. “I'm sorry if the kit upset you. It's a new item…”

    The mother shook her head. “This has been one of the worst days of my life. I felt so scared and alone. Then I was handed this box. I know it's for my daughter, but it's just the comfort I needed. I wanted to say thank you.”

    With that I knew Comfort Kits belonged here. We've been using them for almost three years now. Each child who's admitted to the hospital receives one. Every day I see kids coloring, journaling, playing with Sparkle.

    But as this mom showed me Comfort Kits aren't just for kids. The hope they bring, which can be in short supply in hospitals sometimes, is felt by the whole family.

    My first impression of Miss Vicki was a highly authoritative(权威的) person towering over me. She spoke in a loud voice and the earth shook whenever she marched. That was in the first year of high school. She was a knowledgeable literature teacher then. However, during my first year in school, she struck terror into my heart(使我胆战心惊). And everyone else's of course. Just the mention of her name made the most unruly classes silent.

    Nevertheless, the two years of junior high passed by rather quickly. Soon, I went to senior high class. I had worked hard and gotten the subject combination that I wished for. Together with a group of old friends, I soon settled down in class comfortably.

    To everyone's surprise, she was fortunate enough to be my teacher that year. I was shocked when I heard the news. This time round, however, I decided not to hide in terror whenever she was near. I decided to face the fact that we were going to meet each other for the next 365 days. Instead of trying too hard to lick her boots, I tried my best to my natural self in front of her.

    Still, I could not shake off the ice-cold impression that she put in my heart. True, her jokes sometimes sent me into fits of laughter, yet at other times these jokes simply fell flat the moment she told them. My lovely class, however, was already ready to laugh at the right time of her amusing stories. After all, we would not want to run the risk of provoking(激怒) her.

    Unluckily, life was not to remain boring. One day we received news that Miss Vicki was to leave Singapore for the Philippines where she would take part in a voluntary teaching program for the poor. We did not know what to say actually. All of us cried at the airport.

    As smog forced students to stay home, the online learning industry saw a sharp increase in consumers.

    During the air pollution red alert from Dec. 8 to 10 last winter, the Beijing Commission of Education ordered all kindergartens, primary schools and middle schools to suspend classes (停课). But the commission urged that, "Teachers should guide students to make full use of digital materials and conduct online learning at home".

    According to the China Education and Research Network, the number of new users of 17zuoye. com, an online homework platform, tripled (增至三倍) on Dec. 8 compared to the previous day.

    Online courses companies also adopted special measures to meet students' demand for Internet learning during the red alert period. For example, New Oriental offered free online English classes for three days for school students as well as online question answering services.

    Recent years have seen the popularity of online courses increase sharply in China. Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC), for example, originated in the United States but have become widespread in China since 2013. Some Chinese universities, including Tsinghua University and Peking University, have started their own MOOC platforms. "MOOCs have enlarged the time and space of teaching, fired up learners' interest, helped more people benefit from high quality educational resources and accelerated reform in many aspects of teaching," an official at the Ministry of Education told China Daily.