He says the problem with teachers is, “What will a kid learn from someone who chose to become a teacher?” He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about teachers: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

    I decide to bite my tongue instead of biting his and stop myself from reminding the other dinner guests that it's also true what they say about lawyers—that they make money from the misfortune of others.

    “I mean, you're a teacher, Taylor,” he says to me. “Be honest. What do you make?”

    I wish he hadn't asked me to be honest, because now I have to teach him a lesson.

    You want to know what I make?

    I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.

    I can make a C+ feel like a great achievement and an A－ feel like a failure.

    How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best?

    I make parents tremble in fear when I call them: I hope I haven't called at a bad time, I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.

    Billy said, “Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don't you?”

    And it was the bravest act I have ever seen.

    I make parents see their children for who they are and what they can be.

    You want to know what I make?

    I make kids wonder.

    I make them question.

    I make them criticize.

    I make them think.

    I make them apologies and mean it.

    I make them write, write, write.

    And then I make them read.

    I teach them to solve math problems that they once thought impossible.

    I make them understand that if you have brains then you follow your heart and if someone ever tries to judge you by what you make, you teach them a lesson.

    Let me make this simple for you, so you know what I say is true;

    I make a great difference! What about you?

    Here is an astonishing and significant fact：Mental work alone can't make us tire. It sounds absurd．But a few years ago, scientists tried to find out how long the human brain could labor without reaching a stage of fatigue(疲劳). To the amazement of these scientists, they discovered that blood passing through the brain, when it is active, shows no fatigue at all!

    If we took a drop of blood from a day laborer, we would find it full of fatigue toxins (霉素) and fatigue products. But if we took blood from the brain of an Albert Einstein, it would show no fatigue toxins at the end of the day.

    So far as the brain is concerned, it can work as well and swiftly at the end of eight or even twelve hours of effort as at the beginning. The brain is totally tireless. So what makes us tired?

    Some scientists declare that most of our fatigue comes from our mental and emotional (情绪的)attitudes. One of England's most outstanding scientists, J. A. Hadfield, says, “The greater part of the fatigue from which we suffer is of mental origin. In fact, fatigue of purely physical origin is rare. ”Dr. Brill, a famous American scientist, goes even further, He declares, “One hundred percent of the fatigue of sitting worker in good health is due to emotional problems.”

    What kinds of emotions make sitting workers tired? Joy? Satisfaction? No! A feeling of being bored, anger, anxiety, tenseness, worry, a feeling of not being appreciated— those are the emotions that tire sitting workers. Hard work by itself seldom causes fatigue. We get tired because our emotions produce nervousness in the body.

    What a lesson for me! It was August and it was hot. I had to wear a tie to do a survey door by door in this neighbourhood, but I was always refused. I finally caught on and began with “Before you close the door, I am not selling anything and I just need to ask a few questions about yourself and the community”.

    The young woman inside the doorway stopped for a moment, confused by my rude introduction and finally said, “Sure. Come on in. Don't mind the mess. It's hard to keep up with my kids.”

    “I just need to ask a few questions about yourself and your family. Although this may sound personal, I won't need to use your names. This information will be used.” She interrupted me. “Would you like a glass of cold water? You look like you've had a rough day.” “Why yes!” I said gratefully. Just as she returned with the water, a man came walking in the front door. It was her husband. “Joe, this man is here to do a survey.” I stood and politely introduced myself.

    “Joe works for the town,” she said. “What do you do?” I asked. She jumped right in not letting him answer. “Joe collects garbage. You know I'm so proud of him.”

    There was a silence. I didn't know what to say. I shook my head searching for the right words. “That's unbelievable! Most people would not be satisfied with a job like that. It certainly is a difficult one. But your attitude about it is amazing.” I said.

    She walked over to the shelf. As she returned she held a small framed（装裱）paper, walking toward Joe. “I have always been proud of him and always will be. You see I don't think the job makes the man, but the man makes the job!” she said as she handed me the paper.

    It said: If a man is called to be a cleaner, he should clean streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great cleaner who did his job well.”

    A thrilling polar competition between two adventurers to cross Antarctica alone, unsupported and unassisted had a happy ending with both explorers achieving the unprecedented feat (功绩). American professional athlete Colin O'Brady and British Army Captain Louis Rudd set off a mile apart at the same time on November 3, 2018, from the Atlantic coast with the aim to become the first person to ski across the remote continent alone.

    Louis Rudd maintained the lead at first. However, O'Brady caught up with Rudd on November10 and never let the British man get close to him again. O'Brady was the first to conquer the 930 mile icy land, arriving at the Ross Ice Shelf on the Pacific coast by way of the South Pole on December 26, 2018. The 33-year-old spent 54 days skiing the world's coldest continent while pulling a 300-pound sled(雪橇) with supplies.

    Instead of leaving the harsh environment after completing the historic adventure, the explorer set up a tent on the world's largest ice sheet and waited patiently for Rudd to complete the great undertaking. On December 29, just three days after O'Brady arrived, the British explorer finished his adventure, becoming the world's second person to complete the solo crossing of the frozen continent.

Rudd was not disappointed at being second since he never considered it to be a     "race". Besides, the 49-year-old British Army Captain had a more selfless motive for attempting the feat. He was doing it in memory of his friend Henry Worsley, who had introduced him to polar exploration. The disaster happened while Worsley was trying to cross the continent alone in 2016. Rudd said, "I didn't want to get drawn into a race. All that mattered to me was that I completed it, and that I skied solo and unsupported, carrying the flag with Henry's name on it."

    After spending a few days camping 10 feet away from each other, the two adventurers were picked up by a helicopter to the South Pole scientific research station.

    You may have heard that humans only use ten percent of their brain, and that if you could unlock the rest of your brainpower, you could do so much more. You could become a super genius, or acquire psychic powers like mind reading.

    This "ten-percent myth" has inspired many references in the cultural imagination. In the 2014 movie Lucy, for example, a woman develops godlike powers thanks to drugs that release the previously inaccessible 90 percent of her brain.

    Contrary to the ten-percent myth, however, scientists have shown that humans use their entire brain throughout each day.

    Over the years, brain scientists have shown that different parts of the brain are responsible for specific functions, whether it's recognizing colors or problem solving. Contrary to the ten-percent myth, scientists have proven that every part of the brain is integral for our daily functioning.

    Research has yet to find a brain area that is completely inactive. Even studies that measure activity at the level of single neurons(神经元) have not revealed any inactive areas of the brain.

    Many brain imaging studies that measure brain activity when a person is doing a specific task show how different parts of the brain work together. For example, while you are reading this text on your smartphone, some parts of your brain, including those responsible for vision and reading comprehension, will be more active.

    A more direct counter to the ten-percent myth lies in individuals who have suffered brain damage – like through a stroke(中风)– and what they can no longer do, or do as well, as a result of that damage. If the ten percent myth is true, then damage too many parts of our brain shouldn't affect your daily functioning. Studies have shown that damaging a very small part of the brain may have devastating consequences.

    If someone experiences damage to Broca's area(布罗卡氏区), for example, they can understand language but can't speak fluently.

    In one highly publicized case, a woman in Florida permanently lost her" capacity for thoughts, perceptions, memories, and emotions that are the very essence of being human" when a lack of oxygen destroyed half of her brain.

    Like infectious diseases, ideas in the academic world are epidemic (传染的). But why some travel far and wide while equally good ones has been a mystery? Now a team of computer scientists has used an epidemiological model to simulate (模仿) how ideas move from one academic institution to another. The model showed that ideas originating at famous institutions caused bigger "epidemics" than equally good ideas from less famous places, explains Allison Morgan, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

    "This implies that where an idea is born shapes how far it spreads," says senior author Aaron Clauset.

    Not only is this unfair— "it reveals a big weakness in how we're doing science," says Simon DeDeo, a professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon university, who was not involved in the study. "There are many highly trained people with good ideas who do not end up at top institutions. They are producing good ideas, and we know those ideas are getting lost," DeDeo says. "Our science, our scholarships, is not as good because of this."

    The Colorado researchers first looked at how five big ideas in computer science spread to new institutions. They found that hiring a new faculty member accounted for this movement a little more than a third of the time--and in 81 percent of those cases, transmissions took place from higher – to lower-prestige (声望) universities. Then the team simulated the spread of ideas using an infectious disease model and found that the size of an idea "epidemic" depended on the prestige of the originating institution.

    The researchers' model suggests that there "may be a number of quite good ideas that originate in the middle of the pack, in terms of universities." Clauset says. There is a lot of good work coming out of less famous places, he says: "You can learn a huge amount from it, and you can learn things that other people don't know because they're not even paying attention."