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British "Angle of the Beach" named Child of the Year

Tilly Smith, the 11-year-old British girl, who was called as "Angle of the Beach", saved 100 tourists from a Thai beach hit by last year's tsunami and has been named Child of the Year by readers of a French children's newspaper.

She came ahead of a South African Aids orphan, a six-year-old girl who survived a kidnapping by paedophiles and a young Parisian pop singer to win the Mon Quotidien award.

Tilly had studied tsunamis with her geography teacher, Andrew Kearney, shortly before flying to Thailand for a holiday with her parents and younger sister last year.

As she watched the waves suddenly begin to recede, and the sea was bubbling,she warned her mother, Penny, that the beach was about to be struck by a tsunami. Mrs Smith and her husband, Colin, alerted other holidaymakers and hotel staff and scores of people were cleared from Maikhao beach at Phuket.

Tilly, now 11, and back in Thailand for anniversary commemorations of the disaster, said: "It's really good, just to know about tsunamis or any natural hazard in case you are in one.

"I'm very glad that I was able to say on the beach that a tsunami was coming. And I'm glad that they listened to me."

She had earlier said that the state of the sea, which was "sizzling and bubbling" was "exactly the same as in my geography lesson".

Tilly read a Thai poem entitled Tsunami at a candle-light vigil（守夜） to commemorate victims of the disaster.

She is unaware of her remarkable popularity among French children. Her picture appears on the front page of Mon Quotidien, which is read by 10 to 14-year-olds.

"Our readers chose Tilly because they could identify with her," said Fran?ois Dufour, the editor-in-chief. "To be a pop star at 11 seems impossible, and the idea of having Aids or being kidnapped is remote from their lives."

Born Sofia Scicolone, on Sept. 20, 1934, in Rome. An illegitimate child of Romilda Villani and Riccardo Scicolone, she grew up in dire poverty, in the slums of Pozzuoli, just outside Naples during wartime.  Her mother, a frustrated actress, instilled starring aspirations in the skinny little Sofia (she was nicknamed Stechetto--the stick--at the time).  Her first taste of glamour came at fourteen when she was crowned one of twelve "Princesses of the Sea" in a beauty contest ---- an honor for which she earned a railroad ticket to Rome, and 23,000 lira (about $35).
　
 
　


Sofia met producer and future husband Carlo Ponti while competing in another beauty contest. Though she placed second, Ponti gave her a screen test and he advanced her career in a succession of low-budget Italian productions.  Sofia Lazzaro, as she was then known, became Sophia Loren in 1952. Sophia then came to Hollywood. She signed a contract with Paramount for her first English-speaking role. Once on the set, she fell in love with her co-star Cary Grant.
　
 
Though she had been involved romantically with Carlo Ponti (he was married with two children) from the age of eighteen, Sophia had suffered through years of frustration while he attempted to obtain an annulment from the church.  Loren and Ponti, 24 years her senior, were married in 1957, following his Mexican divorce from his estranged wife. In 1961 she received an Academy Award for "La Ciociara" ("Two Women").  This beautiful lady then became one of the major sex symbol of the sixties, competing with Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda.
　


Unfortunately the Italian law did not recognize the divorce and charged them with bigamy. They were forced to have their marriage annulled in 1962, and after four more years of frustration turned in their Italian passports and became citizens of France, where they were finally legally married in 1966.  Sophia gained wider respect with her later movies like "Cassandra Crossing" (1976), "Una Giornata Particolare" (1977) and "Pret a Porter" (1994). A lot of her movies were produced by her husband.

Ted Turner

--the founder of CNN

The walls of Ted Turner's international headquarters，14　floors above downtown Atlanta，are lined with Oscar statuettes．If you try to pick one up，for example，the actual best-production award for Casablanca，you will discover that they are all firmly bolted to their glass display shelves，and Turner's aides will break their frowns to laugh at you．


Turner is the 63-year-old multibillionaire founder of CNN，former champion sailor，Rhett Butler lookalike and record－breaking philanthropist．

Turner has just emerged from the worst two years of his life -- years that he has said left him feeling"suicidal"．In spring 2000，he was suddenly sidelined from the broadcasting company he had built from scratch．Then his wife of eight years，the actress Jane Fonda，came home one night and informed him that she was now a born－again Christian；they divorced last year．Two of his grandchildren developed a rare genetic disorder，and one died．Turner's friends said he was inconsolable．Then，just when he felt it could get no worse，he brought the wrath of America upon himself by a speech in Rhode Island saying that the September 11 hijackers had been"brave"．


Then he threw himself into his charity work．Turner's UN Foundation，the biggest of his three charities，recently spent ＄22.2 in one month combating intestinal parasites in Vietnamese children，reducing China's greenhouse-gas emissions and helping women from Burkina Faso start businesses selling nut butter．




Nigel Pritchard，CNN's head of international public relations，who is sitting beside me，has prepared a memo outlining some things his boss might like to consider not saying．It politely suggests that he might steer clear of talking about AOL Time Warner，and，specifically，he might like to avoid reference to that Rhode Island speech．Turner is notorious for doing as he pleases．Early in his career，he made a pitch wearing no clothes to advertising executives；later，he went to Cuba to get Fidel Castro to tape a promotional slot for CNN．

He has various worldsaving projects：from preventing the extinction of the Chiricahua leopard frog in the wilds of New Mexico to founding an influential nuclear non－proliferation institute．Turner really does seem to see himself as locked in a personal battle against apocalypse．He doesn't just give money：his staff are sometimes taken aback to see him skulking in the streets nearby，picking up litter．





When Turner gave his first billion to the UN，he dropped 67 laces on the Forbes 500 rich list，out of the top 10 for ever．（His fortune now stands at$ 3.8 bn．）

  It isn't hard to see how Turner's childhood might have instilled this sense of permanent crisis，of desperate insecurity，behind the frenzied activity that is his trademark．His father，from whom he inherited an advertising business that he turned into CNN，was prone to fits of rage，and beat him with a coathanger；he committed suicide when Turner was24．Even before that，his younger sister had died from an immune disease when she was 12，and Ted was sent to a boarding school he hated．His father，he has said，not without admiration，believed that instilling insecurity in his son would help him to achieve．All in all，Turner seems to have been a well-qualified candidate for total psychic collapse．"But when everything goes wrong，"he says today，"you can either give up or you can try to fight．I tried to fight．"



  After a brief spell in the armed forces，he ploughed his energies into his father's billboard business，purchasing a radio station and using empty billboards to advertise it．His radio empire grew，and expanded to local television．By 1980，he was launching CNN，although it was not until the Gulf war that the often－derided channel came into its own．He created the Cartoon Network，and bought hundreds of old MGM films，which he recycled on another lucrative channel，Turner Classic Movies．His firm eventually merged with Time Warner．But then came AOL，and Gerald Levin，the chief executive of the new giant，decided he didn't need Turner -- or perhaps couldn't tolerate his unpredictability．Levin is gone now，and his replacement，Richard Parsons，has brought Turner back into the fold in a new vice-chairman position．The line from corporate communications is that Turner is back in the saddle．But this is not how Turner sees it．

George Soros -- the financial crocodile

George Soros wants to be the Bono of the financial world. The speculator whose assault on sterling ejected Britain from the European exchange rate mechanism that September of 10 years ago has a mission－－to use his esti－mated ￡5 bn fortune and his fame to help tackle what he sees as the failures of globalisation. The idea that a man who made billions betting on the financial markets sides with the anti－globalisation movement might strike some as ironic. Soros is clearly genuinely appalled at the damage wrought on vulnerable economies by the vast sums of money which flow across national borders every day.



"The US governs the international system to protect its own economy. It is not in charge of protecting other economies, "he says. "So when America goes into recession, you have anti－recessionary policies. When other countries are in recession, they don't have the ability to engage in anti－recessionary policies because they can't have a permissive monetary policy, because money would flee. "In person, he has the air of a philosophy professor rather than a gimlet－eyed financier. In a soft voice which bears the traces of his native Hungary, he argues that it is time to rewrite the so－called Washington consensus－－the cocktail of liberalisation, privatisation and fiscal rectitude which the IMF has been preaching for 15 years. Developing countries no longer have the freedom to run their own economies, he argues, even when they follow perfectly sound policies. He cites Brazil, which although it has a floating currency and manageable public debt was paying ten times over the odds to borrow from capital markets.


　

　　Soros, who at one stage after the fall of the Berlin Wall was providing more assistance to Russia than the US government, believes in practising what he preaches.His Open Society Institute has been pivotal in helping eastern European countries develop democratic societies and market economies. Soros has the advantage of an insider's knowledge of the workings of global capitalism, so his criticism is particularly pointed. Last year, the Soros foundation's network spent nearly half a billion dollars on projects in education, public health and promoting democracy, making it one of the world's largest private donors.




　　Soros credits the anti－globalisation movement for having made companies more sensitive to their wider responsibilities."I think [the protesters] have made an important contribution by making people aware of the flaws of the system, "he says."People on the street had an impact on public opinion and corporations which sell to the public responded to that."Because the IMF has abandoned billion dollar bailouts for troubled economies, he thinks a repeat of the Asian crisis is unlikely.The fund's new"tough love"policy－－for which Argentina is the guinea pig －－ has other consequences. The bailouts were a welfare system for Wall Street, with western taxpayers rescuing the banks from the consequences of unwise lending to emerging economies. Now the IMF has drawn a line in the sand, credit to poor countries is drying up."It has created a new problem－－the inadequacy of the flow of capital from centre to the periphery, " he says.




The one economy Soros is not losing any sleep about is the US."I am much more positive about the underlying economy than I am about the market, because we are waging war not only terrorism but also on recession, "he says."Although we don't admit it, we are actually applying Keynesian remedies, and I am a confirmed Keynesian. I have not yet seen an economy in recession when you are gearing up for war."He worries that the world's largest economic power is not living up to its responsibilities."I would like the United States to live up to the responsibilities of its hegemonic power because it is not going to give up its hegemonic power, "he says."The only thing that is realistic is for the United States to become aware that it is in its enlightened self－interest to ensure that the rest of the world benefits from their role."

Bringing Back Honor

When Ensign Andrew Lee Muns suddenly vanished nearly 34 years ago, the U.S. Navy branded him a deserter and a thief. It was 1968; the U.S. was waging an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam and sailors went missing all the time. Muns was the new paymaster aboard the USS Cacapon, a refueling ship based at Subic Bay in the Philippines. When he dissapeared, the Navy discovered that $8,600 was missing from the ship's safe; since Muns had access to safe, officials decided that he had taken the money and run. Case closed.

But Muns' sister, Mary Lou Taylor, couldn't accept the official version of her brother's disappearance. She vowed to uncover the truth and restore her family's honor. "It broke my father's heart … He literally had a heart attack three years later," said Taylor." I'm not blaming the Navy for his heart attack, but it was harder than just losing a son."


In the mid-1970s, after years of holding out hope that Muns might return, his family decided to have him declared legally dead. But when they asked the Navy to supply an American flag to present to his family at the memorial service, the Navy refused .

Eventually, Taylor decided to change that. She turned to the Internet, posting a message on a Vietnam veterans' message board looking for sailors who served with her brother on the Cacapon.

In a stroke of luck, a former member of that crew, Tim Rosaire, had just logged on to the bulletin board for the first time.

"I instantly knew what it was," he said. "I wrote her back saying, 'Yes, and I may have been one of the last people to see him." "I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't have stolen the money," said Rosaire, who supplied Taylor with names and some photographs of other crew members.

Taylor tracked down the ship's captain, only to learn that he had recently died. But his widow told Taylor her husband had been haunted by Muns' disappearance, suspecting that Muns may have been the victim of foul play.

Taylor combed through the Navy's original reports of the investigation, and found things that didn't add up. "There were people on the ship who were deliberately lying to create a motive for why Andy would have left," she concluded. And while $8,600 was missing, there was $51,000 left the safe. If her brother had stolen the money, why not all of it?

The Muns family wanted the case reopened, but the Navy said substantial new evidence was needed to do so.

So in the mid-1990s, Taylor set out to find that evidence. She found the agent who had originally investigated the case for the Naval Investigative Service, Ray McGady. McGady helped Taylor get the attention of Pete Hughes, head of the newly created "cold-case" squad at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.



Hughes soon agreed that there were a number of questions that remained unanswered. Thirty years later, for the first time, the focus now shifted from a theft to a homicide. Hughes assembled a team of homicide investigators, including a criminal profiler. They studied the statements from 1968 and began reinterviewing crew members.

Suspicion began to focus on several former crew members, including Michael LeBrun, He had access to the safe and was one of the first to suggest that Muns might have deserted.

Eventually, LeBrun's defenses crumbled, and he described in detail how he had strangled Muns. He said that he had stolen the money and that Muns had caught him. LeBrun said he panicked and killed the ensign. Lebrun explained how he dumped the body in one of the ship's huge oil tanks. Muns' body was never found.

The interview was recorded on videotape. Lebrun was charged with murder. But he pleaded not guilty and is out on bail.



A federal judge has agreed, in part, ruling that prosecutors cannot use the videotaped confession because LeBrun's constitutional rights were violated. Without a legal and reliable confession, the government does not have much of a case.

But Taylor said she finally got what she was looking for. 33 years after Muns disappeared aboard the Cacapon, a ceremonial casket covered with an American flag made its way to a gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery. Friends, family and naval criminal investigators came from around the country to watch as Muns was given full honors in recognition of his service to the Navy and his country.

The Century’s Greatest Minds

Albert Einstein


The scientific touchstones of the modern age——the Bomb, space travel, electronics, Quantum physics——all bear his imprint.



Einstein had conjured the whole business, it seemed. He did not invent the “thought experiment”, but he raised it to high art. Imagine twins , wearing identical watches; one stays home, while the other rides in a spaceship near the speed of light … little wonder that from 1919, Einstein was——and remains today——the world’s most famous scientist.





In his native Germany he became a target for hatred . As a Jew, a liberal, a humanist, an internationalist, he attracted the enmity of rationalist and anti-semites. His was now a powerful voice, widely heard, always attended to , especially after he moved to the U.S. He used it to promote zionism, pacifism, in his secret 1939 letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the construction of a uranium bomb.



Meanwhile, like any demigod, he made bits of legend: that he failed math in school (not true). That he opened a book and found an uncashed $1,500 check he had left as a bookmark (maybe---he was absentminded about everyday affairs).That he was careless about socks, collars, slippers … that he couldn’t even remember his address: 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, where he finally settled.


He died there in 1955 And after the rest of Einstein had been cremated, his brain remained, soaking for decades in a jar of formaldehyde belonging to Dr. Thomas Harvey. No one had bothered to dissect the brain of Freud, Stravinsky or Joyce, but in the 1980s, bits of Einsteinian gray matter were making the rounds of certain neurobiologists, who thus learned … absolutely nothing. It was just a brain——the brain that dreamed a plastic fourth dimension, that banished the ether, that released the pins binding us to absolute space and time, that refused to believe God played dice.





In embracing Einstein, our century took leave of a prior universe and an erstwhile God. The new versions were not so rigid and deterministic as the Newtonian world. Einstein’s. God was no clockmaker, but the embodiment of reason in nature. This God did not control our actions or even sit in judgment on them. (“Einstein, stop telling God what to do,” Niels Bohr Finally retorted.) This God seemed rather kindly and absentminded, as a matter of fact . Physics was free, and we too are free, in the Einstein universe which is where we live.





Einstein’s Theory of Relativity



Special Relativity



Relativity says that light always moves in a straight line through empty space, and always at the same speed in a vacuum, no matter what your observation point. From these simple claims follow bizarre consequence that challenge common sense and our perception of reality.



* A moving clock runs slower than a stationary one from the perspective of a stationary observer.



* A moving object appears to shrink in the direction of motion, as seen by a stationary observer



General Relativity



In general relativity, time is considered a dimension like height, width and depth, creating a four dimensional universe called space-time. Einstein argued that gravity is really a warping of space-time,with the greatest distortions near the most massive objects. Because light travels in a straight line through the contours of space-time, a light beam will curve where space-time curves, this curving was first measured in 1919

The Master of Investment: Warren Buffett

  For someone who is such an extraordinarily successful investor, Warren Buffett comes off as a pretty ordinary guy. Born and bred in Omaha, Nebraska, for more than 40 years Buffett has lived in the same gray stucco house on Farnam Street that he bought for $31,500. He wears rumpled, nondescript suits, drives his own car, drinks Cherry Coke, and is more likely to be found in a Dairy Queen than a four－star restaurant.




But the 68－year－old Omaha native has led an extraordinary life. Looking back on his childhood, one can see the budding of a savvy businessman. Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930, the middle child of three. His father, Howard Buffett, came from a family of grocers but himself became a stockbroker and later a U. S. congressman.


Even as a young child, Buffett was pretty serious about making money. He used to go door－to－door and sell soda pop. He and a friend used math to develop a system for picking winners in horseracing and started selling their"Stable－Boy Selections"tip sheets until they were shut down for not having a license. Later, he also worked at his grandfather's grocery store. At the ripe age of 11, Buffett bought his first stock.


　　When his family moved to Washington, D. C. , Buffett became a paperboy for The Washington Post and its rival the Times－Herald. Buffett ran his five paper routes like an assembly line and even added magazines to round out his product offerings. While still in school, he was making $175 a month, a full－time wage for many young men.


When he was 14, Buffett spent $1,200 on 40 acres of farmland in Nebraska and soon began collecting rent from a tenant farmer. He and a friend also made $50 a week by placing pinball machines in barber shops. They called their venture Wilson Coin Operated Machine Co.


Already a successful albeit small－time businessman, Buffett wasn't keen on going to college but ended up at Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania－－his father encouraged him to go. After two years at Wharton, Buffett transferred to his parents'alma mater, the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, for his final year of college. There Buffett took a job with the Lincoln Journal supervising 50 paper boys in six rural counties.



Buffett applied to Harvard Business School but was turned down in what had to be one of the worst admissions decisions in Harvard history. The outcome ended up profoundly affecting Buffett's life, for he ended up attending Columbia Business School, where he studied under revered mentor Benjamin Graham, the father of securities analysis who provided the foundation for Buffett's investment strategy.



From the beginning, Buffett made his fortune from investing. He started with all the money he had made from selling pop, delivering papers, and operating pinball machines. Between 1950 and 1956, he grew his $9,800 kitty to $14,000. From there, he organized investment partnerships with his family and friends, and then gradually drew in other investors through word of mouth and very attractive terms.



Buffett's goal was to top the Dow Jones Industrial Average by an average of 10% a year. Over the length of the Buffett partnership between 1957 and 1969, Buffett's investments grew at a compound annual rate of 29.5%, crushing the Dow's return of 7.4% over the same period.

Buffett's investment strategy mirrors his lifestyle and overall philosophy. He doesn't collect houses or cars or works of art, and he disdains companies that waste money on such extravagances as limousines, private dining rooms, and high－priced real estate. He is a creature of habit－－same house, same office, same city, same soda－－and dislikes change. In his investments, that means holding on to "core holdings"such as American Express, Coca－Cola, and The Washington Post Co. "forever. "





Buffett's view of inherited money also departs from the norm. Critical of the self－indulgence of the super－rich, Buffett thinks of inheritances as"privately funded food stamps"that keep children of the rich from leading normal, independent lives. With his own three kids, he gave them each $10,000 a year－－the tax－deductible limit－－at Christmas. When he gave them a loan, they had to sign a written agreement. When his daughter, also named Susie like her mother, needed $20 to park at the airport, he made her write him a check for it.

  As for charity, Buffett's strict standards have made it difficult for him to give much away. He evaluates charities the same way he looks for stocks：value for money, return on invested capital. He has established the Buffett Foundation, designed to accumulate money and give it away after his and his wife's deaths－－though the foundation has given millions to organizations involved with population control, family planning, abortion, and birth control. The argument goes that Buffett can actually give away a greater sum in the end by growing his money while he's still alive.





One thing's for sure about Buffett：He 's happy doing what he's doing. "I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year, "he says. "I get to do it with people I like, and I don't have to associate with anybody who causes my stomach to churn. I tap dance to work, and when I get there I think I'm supposed to lie on my back and paint the ceiling. It's tremendous fun." It's fun to watch the master at work, too.

Marathon boy, four, runs into storm of exploitation claims

For his armies of cheering fans in India's slums(在印度贫民窟中众多兴奋的仰慕者看来), he is a small but nimble miracle, destined to run his way into history as one of the world's greatest athletes.

Budhia Singh, a four-year-old urchin, can complete a 26-mile marathon faster than many runners who are twice his height and many times his age.

But just as fame and fortune beckon - and a trip to Britain to star in a television documentary(电视记录片) - doctors who have examined the child phenomenon have laid down an early finishing line to his career(提前为其运动生涯划上了句号).

Alarmed at television footage of him collapsing in the final stages of a record-breaking 43-mile run, Indian health officials ordered police to take him into hospital on Friday for tests to see if the intense exercise was damaging his young body.

Results delivered yesterday confirmed those fears - with doctors warning that he will soon be a physical wreck.

"Making a child this age run marathons on a regular basis will lead to him being physically burnt out in a few years", said Dr Manabendra Bhattacharya of the Sports Authority of India, who discovered that Budhia had abnormally high pulse and blood pressure readings. "It's not desirable to submit such a young body to so much stress and strain. Those who think they're doing the child a service by promoting him to run such long distances are causing him terrible damage."

Budhia - hailed as the world's youngest marathon runner, although he has no birth certificate to prove his age - is now the subject of a legal wrangle between the state authorities and his coach, who stands accused of exploiting and maltreating the boy.

The controversy is being played out amid huge media interest in the boy's story, a tale of rags to riches that has transfixed the Indian public. The son of an illiterate dishwasher mother and an alcoholic beggar father, Budhia was sold for 800 rupees (£10) to a street hawker after his father died three years ago.

His physical stamina was spotted by a judo coach, Biranchi Das, who caught him bullying another child near his club one day and ordered him to him run round an athletics track as a punishment. When he returned five hours later, expecting the child to be long gone, he found him still doing laps.

Since then Mr Das, who claims to have legally adopted him, has been training him up, feeding him a high-protein diet of meat, eggs, milk and soya beans. He runs up to 20 miles every second day, and has taken part in six big races, bringing offers of lucrative sponsorship deals, according to Mr Das.

But his achievements have been less well received by some government officials, who are anxious to counter India's image as a country that turns a blind eye to child exploitation. Pramila Malik, a minister of state for women and child welfare, accused Mr Das of turning the boy into "a performing monkey".

Mr Das, 39, said that he was making no money out of Budhia and insisted he only had the child's interests at heart. "I have a doctor check on him every few days and he's fine," he said.

He has the backing of Budhia's mother, Sukanti Singh, 35, and her son is likewise unconcerned. "I love running, I never get tired," he said.

Budhia is due to fly to London on May 15 at the behest of British-based Touch Productions, which is making a documentary about him for Five and the Discovery Channel. Touch says that it is paying the expenses of the trip but that no fee is being paid to the boy, his mother or carers.

British experts sided with Dr Bhattacharya. Richard Godfrey, a sports science lecturer and former chief physiologist at the British Olympic Medical Centre, said: "This lad will probably stop growing soon because the impact from his running will have damaged the ends of his bones."

Malcolm Brinkworth, the executive producer of Touch Productions, stressed that the health concerns would be raised. "We are making an objective documentary, looking very carefully at the issues involved. We're not trying to be part of any process of exploiting this child," he said.

Rags to Riches

Chris Gardner tells 20/20 how he worked to move himself from a life of homelessness to a successful life as a businessman.

Gardner is the head of his own brokerage firm and lives in a Chicago Townhouse--one of his three homes with a collection of tailored suits, designer shoes, and Miles Davis albums.

His path to this extraordinary success took a series of extraordinary turns. Just 20 years ago, Gardner was homeless and living, on occasion, in a bathroom at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station in Oakland, Calif.

Gardner was raised by his mother, a schoolteacher. He says he never knew his father while he was growing up. But his mother had a way of keeping him grounded when he dreamed of things like being a jazz trumpeter.

"Mothers have a way of saying things," Gardner said, "She explained to me, 'Son, there's only one Miles Davis and he got that job. So you have to do something else. But what that something else was, I did not know.'"


Gardner credits his uncles with providing the male influence he needed. Many of them were military veterans. So, straight out of high school, he enlisted in the Navy for four years. He says it gave him a sense of what was possible.


A Red Ferrari and a Turning Point

After the military, Gardner took a job as a medical supply salesman. Then, he says, he reached another turning point in his life. In a parking lot, he met a man driving a red Ferrari." He was looking for a parking space. And I said, 'You can have mine. But I gotta ask you two questions.' The two questions were: What do you do? And how do you do that? Turns out this guy was a stockbroker and he was making $80,000 a month."

Gardner began knocking on doors, applying for training programs at brokerages, even though it meant he would have to live on next to nothing while he learned. When he finally was accepted into a program, he left his job in medical sales. But his plans collapsed as suddenly as they had materialized. The man who offered him the training slot was fired, and Gardner had no job to go back to.

Things got worse. He was hauled off to jail for $1,200 in parking violations that he couldn't pay. His wife left him. Then she asked him to care for their young son without her. Despite his lack of resources, Gardner said, "I made up my mind as a young kid that when I had children, my children were gonna know who their father was." Although a broker finally helped him enter a training program, Gardner wound up with no place to live. He was collecting a meager stipend as a brokerage trainee, and, like many working poor in America, he had a job but couldn't make ends meet.


The Kindness of Strangers

When he could afford it, he stayed with his son, Chris Jr., in cheap motels. When they returned home at night, Gardner says, he received help from some unexpected sources. “The ladies of the evening were beginning their shift. And they would always see myself, this baby and the stroller.

”So they started giving him $5 bills. Without their help, Gardner said, there would have been nights when he couldn’t have fed his son. The Rev. Cecil Williams, founder of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, remembers the first time he saw Gardner, who had gone to the church with his son to stand in a meal line. He said, “I wondered, ‘What in the world is a man doing with a baby?’

Even to Williams, it was an unusual sight. The Urban Institute estimates that children make up 25 percent of the nation’s homeless population, but most are living with a single mother,not the father.


It Is a Green Thing

With Williams’ help and a room supplied by Glide Memorial when he needed it, Gardner not only made it through the brokerage training program, he passed his licensing exam on the first try.

Gardner went to work making cold calls at the firm of Dean Witter. He says no one at the firm knew he was homeless. “I was the first one at work, I was the last one to leave。 I’d be on the phone, 200 phone calls a day. That’s what they noticed,” he said. “Every time I picked up that phone, I was digging my way out of this hole.”

” Gardner moved on to Bear, Stearns. As he learned the business, he also learned that it came with some unpleasant baggage. Because African-American brokers were rare, one phone customer, assuming that Gardner was white, told racist jokes as he placed his orders. When the client came for a face-to-face meeting, Gardner says, “He was either gonna close his account with me or I was gonna get all his business.”

Gardner kept the account.“That’s when I learned in this business it’s not a black thing, it’s not a white thing, it’s a green thing. If you can make me money, I don’t care what color you are.”

In 1987, with $10,000 in capital, Gardner started his own company in Chicago，operating at first from his home. His company is now an institutional brokerage firm with offices in Chicago’s financial district.

Ironically, when San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit System issued new bonds to raise money a few years ago, one of the underwriters was Gardner's company run by a man who, when he was homeless, had bathed his son in the bathroom of one of its train stations. 


No Books, No Bucks

He has donated money to educational projects in memory of his mother. And he has been honored for his work on behalf of an organization called Career Gear, which helps clothe and advise young people who are applying for jobs.

When he speaks at high schools he keeps his message simple, telling students: “No books, no bucks. That’s it.” 

He also has returned many times to Glide Memorial in San Francisco, not only to donate money, but to work on the food line where he used to stand. “I see me, I see my son 20 years ago,”he said. “And I know how important this meal is to that individual, to that man, that woman.”

最后发点励志名言~

Knowledge is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.  -- Emerson 

Real knowledge, like everything else of value, is not to be obtained easily, it must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and more than all, must be prayed for. -- Thomas Arnold 

Knowledge comes from experience alone. 

Knowledge makes humble, ignorance makes proud. 

Knowledge is power. -- Bacon 

Knowledge is a treasure, but practice is the key to it.

Knowledge is the food of the soul. -- Plato 

Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams. -- Daniel Webster 

Knowledge without practice makes but half an artist. 

Learning is the eye of the mind. 

Learn young, learn fair. 

What is learned in the cradle is carried to the grave. 

Learn from the mistakes of others and prevent your own. 



最后祝大家SAT考试出色发挥哈~~嘿嘿~~加油！

Done.