It is a rough world out there. Step outside of a shopping mall and you could break your leg     1    (slip)on the doormat. Luckily, if the doormat failed to warn of coming danger, a successful lawsuit(官司) might compensate you for your troubles. Since the early 1980s, juries have begun holding more companies responsible for the customers' misfortunes.

Feeling threatened, companies responded by writing longer warning labels, trying to anticipate every possible accident. Today, even ladders carry a label several inches long that     2    (warn) among other things, that you might fall off. While warnings are often necessary for companies, many still feel uncertain whether those labels can protect     3     from legal responsibility if a customer is injured. Actually, about 50% of the companies lose when     4    (take) to court by the injured customer.

Now the tide appears to be turning     5     personal injury claims continue to grow, some courts are beginning to side with defendants(被告), especially in cases    6     a warning label probably wouldn't have changed anything. In May, Julie Nimmons, president of Schutt Sports successfully fought a lawsuit    7    (involve)a footballer who was paralyzed (t )in a game while wearing a Schutt helmet. " We are really sorry he has become paralyzed,     8     helmets aren't designed to prevent those kinds of injuries, "says Nimmons. The jury finally agreed that the nature of the game, not the helmet, was the reason for the injury. Meanwhile, the American Law Institute, a group of judges and lawyers, issued new guidelines stating that companies needn't warn customers of obvious dangers or annoy them with a lengthy list of possible ones     9    information won't get buried in a sea of trivialities ( 琐事). If the moderate end of the legal community has its way, the information on products might actually be provided for the benefit of customers and not    10     a protection against legal responsibility.

The ability to write well is not a gift. Sure, the special something setting apart Shakespeare or Tolstoy is a talent    11     of disposition(性情), experience and commitment. But just being able to communicate clearly with written words is a learned skill. Because the words we use to write with are the same words we use to think with, learning to write well has implications going beyond the merely technical. As we improve our writing ability, we improve our ability to think--to build an argument, to frame issues in forceful ways, to     12     seemingly unrelated facts into a coherent whole.

And despite the recurring pessimistic opinions about the "end of literacy" and the "death of the     13     word", the reality is that we write more than ever these days. While it's a rare person who sits down with pen and paper in hand and writes a letter to a friend or loved one, we    14     emails at an astounding rate. We also frequently write letters, proposals, memos, speeches and dozens of more    15     types of documents In a word, we are     16     writing creatures.

It's no wonder that businesses repeatedly cite "communication skills" as the single most     17     trait in new employees. The problem, though, is that we are as a society     18     bad at writing. That is a great danger. Out classroom is filled with unmotivated students who could care less about writing. But being able to write well vastly improves students' potential for success as it helps them to think through problems and express their ideas more effectively

The good news is that writing well is not a gift    19    for the few but a set of skills that can be mastered by anyone. Here are some tips to help you move from being     20     capable to being an excellent writer. First, start a journal or a blog to get you writing regularly. Then read it so that you can find the awkward parts. Finally, be open to others' comments So if you worry about your writing ability, commit yourself now.to becoming a solid writer in the year to come.

If you examine the birth certificate of every soccer play in the last World Cup tournament, you will most likely find the excellent players were born in the earlier months of the year. If you then examine the European national youth teams that feed the World Cup, you will find this phenomenon even more ________.

What might account for this strange phenomenon? Some guess a certain astrological sign (星座) ________ superior soccer skills; others maintain that winter-born babies have higher oxygen capacity, which increases soccer stamina (耐力). But Anderson Ericsson, a 58-year-old professor who is called the expert on experts, believes in neither. His first experiment, nearly 30 years ago, involved ________: training a person to hear and repeat a random series of numbers. "With the first subject, after 20 hours of training, his digital span rose to 20", Ericsson recalls, "and after about 200 hours of training he could repeat up to 80 numbers."

This success, coupled with later research showing memory itself is not ________ determined, led Ericsson to conclude that the act of memorizing is a cognitive exercise, which means whatever inborn differences two people may exhibit in their abilities to memorize, those differences are ________ by how well each person encodes the information. And the best way to learn how to encode information meaningfully, Ericsson determined, was a process known as ________ practice. It involves more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, ________, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. ________, it involves stepping outside your comfort zone, setting specific and well-defined goals, focusing on ________ areas of expertise, obtaining immediate feedback from professionals and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.

Ericsson and his colleagues have thus taken to studying high achievers in a wide range of ________, including soccer, golf, chess, piano playing and darts. They gather all the data they can and make a rather shocking statement: the trait we commonly call talent is highly ________. And yes, expert performers are nearly always made.

Ericsson's formula seems appealing to many tiger parents: "practice makes perfect" is naturally ________ to genetic determination. By ________ innate ability as insignificant, many are confident they can make a concert-level pianist or an Olympic figure skater of their kids as long as they push them hard enough. Ericsson, ________, believes what parents should learn from the science of expertise is not the effect of logging thousands of hours, but how to get kids to ________ the importance and challenge of effective practice.

I was at the funeral of my dearest friend-my mother. She finally had lost her long battle with cancer. The hurt was so intense; I found it hard to breathe at times. Always supportive, Mother clapped loudest at my school plays, held the box of tissues while listening to my first heartbreak, comforted me at my father's death, and prayed for me my entire life

When mother's illness was diagnosed, my sister had a new baby and my brother had recently married his childhood sweetheart, so it fell on me the 27-year-old middle child, to take care of her. I counted it an honor. My place had been with our mother, preparing her. meals, taking her to the doctor, reading the Bible together. Now she was in heaven. My work was finished, but I was alone

Deep in sorrow, suddenly, I heard a door open and slam shut at the back of the church. Quick footsteps hurried along the carpeted floor. A young man looked around briefly and then sat next to me. He folded his hands and placed them on his lap. His eyes started to be filled with tears.

"I’m late”, he explained, though no explanation was necessary."

After several eulogies(悼词), he leaned over and commented, "Why do they keep calling Mary by the name of Margaret?

"Because, that was her name, Margaret. Never Mary.” I whispered, wondering who the stranger was anyway.

"Isn't this the Lutheran church?"

"No, the Lutheran church is across the street."

"I believe you're at the wrong funeral, Sir."

The solemnness (庄重) of the occasion mixed with the realization of the man's mistake bubbled up inside me and came out as laughter: Sharp looks from other mourners(x # 4) only made the situation seem more stupid. I peeked at the confused, misguided man seated beside me. He was laughing too, as he glanced around, deciding it was too late for an uneventful exit. I imagined Mother laughing.

At the final 'Amen, we rushed out a door and into the parking lot. "I do believe we'll be the talk of the town. By the way, my name is Rick. he smiled

That afternoon began a lifelong journey for me with this man who attended the wrong funeral, but was in the right place. A year after our meeting, we were married at a country church. This time we both arrived at the same church, right on time.

In my time of sorrow, God gave me laughter. In place of loneliness, God gave me love. This past June, we celebrated our twenty-second wedding anniversary. whenever anyone asks us how we met Rick tells them, Her mother and my Aunt Mary introduced us, and it's truly a match made in heaven

The close relationship between speakers and their speech has led some scholars to suggest that language determines the view we have of the world around us. Different languages segment natural phenomena differently. We name seven colors in the rainbow: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. Speakers of other languages may see only four, as did Turkish before our system was introduced, or even as few as two, roughly the lighter shades versus the darker. There is nothing in nature to demonstrate how we should chop up the spectrum of the rainbow, but when we have learned a given language, we distinguish the shades it designates, both in the rainbow and elsewhere students of language assume from such a situation that language determines much of the and patterns we see in the world around us, and that it directs our concepts and actions

Changes in the choice of language, then, might modify behavior. Today gasoline trucks are generally labeled" flammable(易燃的)". The in-prefix was taken as equivalent to that of words like "inactive", where in- means not". It is actually the in- of words like "intense", where it strengthens the meaning. The word "inflammable", then, means "highly flammable" The faulty interpretation of language, however, determined the attitudes of many speakers, who then adjusted their behavior in relation to the language. Prudent truck owners have taken notice and changed the warning to“ flammable"

Such observations led Whorf to a concept with deeper patterns of language, such as the use of tenses in the language of Europe. Tense is the linguistic expression or time. English and other European languages generally require their speakers to identify the time of an event, whether present: It is raining; past: It rained; or future: It will rain. By contrast, many languages, such as the Hopi language of New Mexico, lack expression for tense. Nor do such languages objectify time. In Hopi one cannot count days, minutes, years as though they were objects like stones. Everyday expressions like "Three years went by" are impossible in Hopi.

Comparing such languages, Whorf proposed that "our use of tense or our objectified view of time is favorable to historicity se t)and to everything connected with the keeping of records." That is to say, because of the patterns for referring to time in English and other languages, their speakers maintain records and emphasize bookkeeping, accounting, and the like. In accordance with it, ones conception of the world is relative to the language one learns

While the relativity hypothesis(假设) has attracted considerable attention, it has never been experimentally demonstrated to the valid. a large scale attempt to test the outlook of Hopi-speaking children versus English speaking children turned out to be inconclusive. It remains a task of future scholars to determine whether the hypothesis is valid and also whether one should assume a weak or strong position with regard to it. Clearly we are deeply tied to our native language. But whether it regulates our perceptions or our view of the world Is still an open question

Freedoms challenge in the Digital Age is a serious topic. We are facing today a strange new world and we are all wondering what we are going to do with it.

Some 2,500 years ago Greece discovered freedom. Before that there was no freedom. There were great civilizations, splendid empires, but no freedom anywhere. Egypt and Babylon were tyrannies, one very powerful man ruling over helpless masses In Greece, in Athens(雅典) a little city in a little country, there were no helpless masses.

And Athenians willingly obeyed the written laws which they themselves passed, and the unwritten, which must be obeyed if free men live together. They must show each other kindness and pity and the many qualities without which life would be very painful unless one chose to live alone in the desert. The Athenians never thought that a man was free if he could do what he wanted A man was free if he was self-controlled. To make yourself obey what you approved was freedom. They were saved from looking at their lives as their own private affair. Each one felt responsible for the welfare of Athens, not because it was forced on him from the outside, but because the city was his pride and his safety. The essential belief of the first free government in the world was liberty for all men who could control themselves and would take responsibility for the state.

But discovering freedom is not like discovering computers. It cannot be discovered once for all. If people do not prize it, and work for it, it will go. Constant watch is its price. Athens changed. It was a change that took place without being noticed though it was of the extreme importance a spiritual change which affected the whole state. It had been the Athenians pride and joy to give to their city That they could get material benefits from her never entered their minds. there had to be a complete change of attitude before they could took at the city as an employer who paid her citizens for doing her work. Now instead of men giving to the state, the state was to give to them. What the people wanted was a government which would provide a comfortable life for them; and with this as the primary object, ideas of freedom and self-reliance and responsibility were neglected to the point of disappearing: Athens was more and more looked on as a cooperative business possessed of great wealth in which all citizens had a right to share

Athens reached the point when the freedom she really wanted was freedom from responsibility

There could be only one result. If men insisted on being free from the burden of self-dependence and responsibility for the common good, they would cease to be free. Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom. It is to be had on no other terms. Athens, the Athens of Ancient Greece, refused responsibility; she reached the end of freedom and was never to have it again.

But "the excellent becomes the permanent, Aristotle said. Athens lost freedom forever, but freedom was not lost forever for the world. a great American, James Madison, referred to the capacity of mankind for self-government. No doubt he had not an idea that he was speaking Greek. Athens was not in the farthest background of his mind, but once man has a great and good idea, it is never completely lost. The Digital Age cannot destroy it. Somehow in this or that man s thought such an idea lives though unconsidered by the world of action. One can never be sure that it is not on the point of breaking out into action, only sure that it will do so sometimes

No one enjoys the moment. You are stuck at the back of a queue and as those in other lines move ahead and get served, the time to decide arrives.     47    

This question has now been solved by researchers at Harvard Business School. According to what they have found in a new study, they suggest people think twice before switching queues.

The research was led by Ryan Buell, an expert in service management. He looked into consumer queuing behavior after working with economists on what is known as “last-place aversion,” the discomfort people feel when they know they earn less than others or consider themselves at the bottom of the social pile for some other reason. As a result of this aversion to being the last, when a person finds himself at the end of a queue, he can make decisions that he will later regret.

Buell began by observing people at a multi-checkout grocery store and then set up an online survey. People who took part in the survey were told it would take about five minutes. In reality, it took only one minute, but when participants logged in for the survey, they were forced to wait in a virtual queue displayed on the screen. They started at the back and could wait, switch to a second queue or choose to leave.

    48     On average, however, those who switched waited 10 percent longer than if they had stayed put. Those who switched twice ended up waiting 67 percent longer than if they had never moved.

“When we join a queue, we tend to make the most rational choice we can, which means joining the shortest queue.     49     Unfortunately, we can often get it wrong,” said Buell.

    50     After that, the aversion fades. The researcher suggests people have a chat with the person in front so that they can pass the time more comfortably until someone else joins behind them. “Remember that the person in front of you was the last until you arrived, so someone will show up if you hang around long enough,” Buell said.