【推荐1】LONDON- Britain prepares for a vote Thursday that will decide whether it leaves the European Union. The debate has centered on immigration and economic security. Both sides have lowered the tone of their arguments after a three-day suspension(暂停) of campaigning that followed the murder of an anti-Brexit lawmaker, an incident that polls(民意调查) suggest has shocked many previously undecided voters who now say they will vote to remain.

These are uncertain times in a nation whose economy is the second largest in the European Union. The risks are huge. There are warnings that leaving the 28-member group may cause the British pound to lose 15 percent of its value and bring the resignation(辞职) of David Cameron, the country's prime minister; his stay or not depends on whether Britain listens to him and votes to remain.

For months, the Leave campaign has been hitting the streets. Its arguments are based largely on immigration, and the belief that Britain has handed control of its borders(边界) to a European super state: "The U.K. has lost control over migration. We have to accept anyone into this country if they have an EU passport, no matter if they have a criminal record or not. We are not allowed to say 'no' to people and that is damaging for the security of the U.K., but it is also putting pressure on jobs and opportunities for young people," said Tom Harwood, a Brexit campaigner.

The murder of Jo Cox, an anti-Brexit, pro-immigrant lawmaker by a far right extremist(极端分子) with a history of mental problems had a serious effect on both campaigns, and on voters.

Polls since the June 16th murder showed the Leave camp losing ground, but with both sides still very close on a referendum(全民投票) that many believe could change the course of European history.

【推荐2】We human beings need to stay in touch with nature-many studies show how much better people feel when in sight of trees. Yet even more importantly，nature itself needs us to stay in touch. Many politicians and scientists have told us that we can "conquer" nature，but in reality nature will always be beyond our control---we do have the power to destroy it. The fate of all the animals and their habitats depends largely on our attitude towards them. Whether or not we ourselves survive depends on how well we look after the rest. For our sake as well as theirs，we need to consider it seriously.

But how can we care at all if we spend our lives indoors？Born in South London at the end of the Second World War，at least I knew what a sparrow was（they're rare now）and you couldn't put a spade into our tiny garden without cutting a worm in half. We knew，too，that milk comes from cows and that old men can grow amazing carrots on poor land. Ultra-urban（极度城市化）as we may have been，at least we were in touch.

"Now we have a generation who frankly are not in touch. So how can they care if the countryside is sold off to the highest bidders，and used to park helicopters，and our crops come free from Monsanto and our livestock live in factories？They will know no other way.

But if we settle for the ultra-urban life，if we allow all wilderness to be compromised and hand our farming over to industrial chemists then，quite simply，the world will fall apart--as it has been doing already. We have to rethink what agriculture is really for，and why conservation matters to us，as well as to other creatures. Changes of strategies begin with attitude and attitude begins with awareness.

【推荐3】It is fashionable to say that tech firms will conquer the financial services industry. Yet in the case of Apple, it seems that the opposite is happening and finance is taking over tech by stealth(悄然). Since the death of Steve Jobs, its co-founder, in 2011, the world’s biggest firm by market value has sold hundreds of millions of phones with bionic chips (仿生芯片)and know-it-all digital assistants. But it has also grown a financial operation that is already, on some measures, roughly half the size of Goldman Sachs.

Apple does not organize its financial activities into one subsidiary, but Schumpeter has lumped them together. The result—call it “Apple Capital”—has $262bn of assets, $108bn of debt, and has traded $1.6trn of securities since 2011. It appears to be run fairly cautiously and is part of a thriving firm, but it still deserves scrutiny. Companies have a history of being hurt by their financial arms; think General Electric (GE) or General Motors (GM).

Apple Capital has lots of responsibilities but three stand out. It invests the firm’s mountain of surplus profits, mainly in “highly rated” instruments (this task seems to fall to Braeburn Capital, a subsidiary in Nevada, which uses some external fund managers). Apple Capital also uses derivatives (衍生品)in order to protect the firm against currency and interest-rate gyrations. And it manages America’s fifth-biggest corporate-debt pile by issuing Apple bonds as part of an elaborate strategy to limit tax bills.

Apple Capital has become important to its parent. Since Jobs died, its assets have risen by 221%, twice as fast as the company’s sales, reflecting Apple’s huge build-up of profits. Its investments are worth 32% of Apple’s market value, and its profits (investment income, plus gains on derivatives, less interest costs) have been 7% of Apple’s pre-tax profits so far this year. It is also sizeable compared with other financial firms. Consider four measures: assets, debt, credit exposure and profits. Depending on the yardstick, Apple Capital is 30-85% as big as Goldman Sachs. It is 22-42% as large as GE Capital was at its peak in 2007, just before things went down the tubes during the subprime crisis.

Apple Capital is different from these firms in important ways. It does not take deposits and has much lower leverage. In their prime Goldman and GE Capital were run by hard-charging financiers, and made lots of loans. By contrast, Apple Capital does not make loans, and is not meant to be a profit centre in its own right.

Apple’s core business is so profitable that it is—almost—incredible that a blow-up at Apple Capital could lead to it needing taxpayer or central-bank support, as was the case for GM and GE. Still, it is easy to imagine how Apple Capital could hurt its parent. A market shock could lead to losses on its portfolios. A two-percentage-point rise in interest rates would result in a loss of $10bn. If bond markets dried up, Apple might struggle to issue so much debt and have to bring home funds, incurring a big tax bill. It might also become tricky to run such a big derivatives portfolio.

According to a former manager who left in 2012, Apple’s financial gurus were careful because “nobody wanted that 3am call from Steve Jobs”. But Jobs isn’t there any more. In any case, a fear of rebuke is not enough. If the tax laws change Tim Cook, Apple’s boss should wind down the structure that the firm has created. Tech firms should seek to disrupt finance, not be seduced by it.

【推荐1】By now you’ve probably heard about the “you’re not special” speech, when English teacher David McCullough told graduating seniors at Wellesley High School: "Do not get the idea you're anything special, because you're not." Mothers and fathers present at the ceremony — and a whole lot of other parents across the internet — took issue with McCullough's ego-puncturing words. But lost in the anger and protest was something we really should be taking to heart: our young people actually have no idea whether they're particularly talented or accomplished or not. In our eagerness to elevate their self-esteem, we forgot to teach them how to realistically assess their own abilities, a crucial requirement for getting better at anything from math to music to sports. In fact, it's not just privileged high-school students: we all tend to view ourselves as above average.

Such inflated (膨胀的) self-judgments have been found in study after study, and it's often exactly when we're least competent at a given task that we rate our performance most generously. In a 2006 study published in the journal Medical Education, for example, medical students who scored the lowest on an essay test were the most charitable in their self-evaluations, while high-scoring students judged themselves much more strictly. Poor students, the authors note, "lack insight" into their own inadequacy. Why should this be? Another study, led by Cornell University psychologist David Dunning, offers an enlightening explanation. People who are incompetent, he writes with co-author Justin Kruger, suffer from a "dual burden": they're not good at what they do, and their wry ineptness (笨拙) prevents them from recognizing how bad they are.

In Dunning and Kruger's study, subjects scoring at the bottom of the heap on tests of logic, grammar and humor "extremely overestimated" their talents. Although their test scores put them in the 12^th percentile, they guessed they were in the 62^nd. What these individuals lacked (in addition to clear logic, proper grammar and a sense of humor) was "metacognitive skill" (元认知技巧): the capacity to monitor how well they're performing. In the absence of that capacity, the subjects arrived at an overly hopeful view of their own abilities. There's a paradox (悖论) here, the authors note: “The skills that develop competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain. "In other words, to get better at judging how well we’re doing at an activity, we have to get better at the activity itself.

There are a couple of ways out of this double bind (两难). First, we can learn to make honest comparisons with others. Train yourself to recognize excellence, even when you yourself don't possess it, and compare what you can do against what truly excellent individuals are able to accomplish. Second, seek out feedback that is frequent, accurate and specific. Find a critic who will tell you not only how poorly you're doing, but just what it is that you're doing wrong. As Dunning and Kruger note, success indicates to us that everything went right, but failure is more ambiguous: any number of things could have gone wrong. Use this external feedback to figure out exactly where and when you screwed up.

If we adopt these strategies — and most importantly, teach them to our children — they won't need parents, or a commencement(毕业典礼) speaker, to tell them that they're special. They'll already know that they are, or have a plan to get that way.

【推荐2】The world we live in is becoming increasingly complex and uncertain. And with it, the conventional thinking of yesterday is no longer sufficient. Creating real breakthrough opportunities requires a fundamental change in our thinking. As Einstein said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

There's no better example of this than the myth of the four-minute mile.

For centuries, runners had been attempting to run a mile in under four minutes. In the 1950s, the attempt to break the barrier took on renewed importance, and a number of famous runners publicly and unsuccessfully attempted the challenge. Many of the newspapers of the day began to question whether humans would ever be able to run a sub-four-minute mile. Then, in 1954, a man named Roger Bannister did the unthinkable. He broke through the imaginary barrier, running the mile in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds. It was an amazing achievement.

But here's what's really interesting: it was only forty-six days later that another runner broke Bannister's record. And the following year, two new runners broke the four-minute mark in the same race. Dozens followed, and as of this writing, more than 1,400 runners have accomplished the goal, including one runner who ran two miles in less than eight minutes.

Did something change with respect to human body, track conditions, weather patterns, running shoes, or the human diet between the start of Bannister's race and the few years that followed? No. So what explains the sudden and dramatic explosion of athletic achievement?

The myth's unimaginable power over runners had lifted. What Bunnister had done was not just break the four — minute — mile barrier; he shattered(粉碎)the myth that created the barrier in the first place. This paradigm (榜样)had offered a set of actions available for runners to take. Runners were really free to run through the invented boundary.

Creating breakthroughs requires shattering the myths that limit our imagination and lock us into conventional thinking. Think about your own situation. What myths are you stuck in? And what would be possible if you had the courage to challenge the myths?

【推荐3】Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, believed that men are divided into three classes: gold, silver and bronze. Vifredo Pateto, an Italian economist, argued that “the vital few” account for most progress. In the private sector, best companies struggle relentlessly to find and keep the vital few. They offer them fat pay packets, extra training, powerful mentors and more challenging assignments.

As the competition in business is getting increasingly fierce, companies are trying harder to nurture raw talent, or to poach it from their vitals. Private-equity firms rely heavily on a few stars. High-tech firms, for all their egalitarianism (平均主义), are ruthless about recruiting the brightest. Firms in emerging markets are desperate to find young high-flyers to cope with rapid growth and fast-changing environment.

Bill Conaty and Ram Charan’s recent book The Talent Masters provides a nice mix of portraits of well-known talent factories along with sketches of more recent converts to the cause. “Talent masters” are proud of their elitism. GE divides its employees into three groups based on their promise. Hindustan Unilever compiles a list of people who show innate leadership qualities. “Talent masters” all seem to agree on the importance of two things: measurement and differentiation. The best companies routinely subject employees to various “reviews” and “assessments.” But when it comes to high-flyers they make more effort to build up a three-dimensional picture of their personalities and to provide lots of feedback.

A powerful motivator is to single out high-flyers for special training. GE spends $1 billion a year on it. Novartis sends high-flyers to regular off-site training sessions. Many companies also embrace on-job training, speaking of “stretch” assignments or “baptisms by fire.” The most coveted are foreign postings: these can help young managers understand what it is like to run an entire company with a wide range of problems.

Successful companies make sure that senior managers are involved with “talent development.” Bosses of GE and P&G spent 40% of their time on personnel. Intel obliged senior managers to spend at least a week in a year teaching high-flyers. Involving the company’s top brass (高级职员) in the process prevents lower-level managers from monopolizing high-flyers and crates dialogues between established and future leaders. Successful companies also integrate talent development with their broader strategy to ensure that companies are more than the sum of their parts. P&G likes its managers to be both innovative and worldly. Goodyear replaced 23 of its 24 senior managers in two years as it shifted its target-consumers from carmakers to motorists.

Meanwhile, in their rush to classify people, companies can miss potential stars. Those who are singled out for special treatment can become too full of themselves. But the first problem can be fixed by flexibility; people who are average in one job can become stars in another. And people who become too smug can be discarded.

Innocence is such a precious gift. It’s explained as freedom from guilt or wrong doing. Just imagine never having to worry about anything and having a guilt free mind. Some people wish to save this kind of innocence from being lost from childhood to adulthood.

What would the world be like if innocence were never lost? One way it would benefit humanity is the lack of hatred （仇恨）among the world. During youth, there may be an occasional argument, even a little physical fight, but nothing like firing a handgun at a fellow human being. And children are blind towards the racial differences of others. A kid will hang out with any other kid. It is the lack of innocence and the ignorance we learn from adults that influence children otherwise. Another benefit is the constant desire for fun and adventure. With very little if any time at all for fun，the adventurous mind is lost in time with the responsibilities placed upon adults. If innocence were kept alive, these ambitions would never depart from our lives.

However, other people actually hate the idea of innocence lasting for ever. They feel that the lack of organization and mental power of those with innocence would cause extremely destructive consequences to society in general. A large number of individuals would never have the urge to learn, work, and act upon the necessary needs for humanity to survive. Without a proper education which is usually provided by those who no longer live in a world of innocence, people would not have the desire to succeed, get a good job in life, or provide income for their families, which would hurt the lives of children.

The lack of a good education and career would also harm the economy. As long as innocence is kept alive, no one would be terribly angered at the lack of effort people put out in the workplace, resulting in a strong decline in production and quality of needed goods.

Maybe it is wrong in wanting to save innocence. It sure is a nice thought, though. Perhaps innocence was meant to be lost. It was God’s will to make things the way they are, and there is a good purpose for everything. All that remains to be said about innocence is to enjoy it while it lasts.

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【推荐2】If you’re reading this, it’s safe to assume you arrived by internet.

Maybe you caught the headline as it raced by on Twitter. Or you might be taking a break from watching a boring movie on Netflix.

It doesn’t matter. Because according to a new study, it all adds up to the same thing: one distraction（分心的事情）after another.

And the thing is, they’re welcome distractions. Because, as the research — published this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology — notes, people will do just about anything to avoid being left to their own thoughts.

For their study, researchers designed a sample test for more than 2,557 participants in 11 countries. They divided their test subjects into two groups. In the first group, people were asked to spend 10 to 15 minutes “entertaining themselves with their thoughts as best they could.”

Just sit back and think about things. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, not really. The second group — the one where people were told to surf the Net, play a video game, or even read a book — reported having much more fun. They scored more highly on entertainment and lower on boredom. And the preference for distraction seemed to be a global phenomenon, which may come as a surprise to Italians who are famously brilliant at doing nothing.

“The preference for doing external（外部的）activities such as reading, watching TV, or surfing the internet rather than ‘just thinking’ appears to be strong throughout the world,” the researchers note in the study.

But there does seem to be an important thing that hasn’t been included in the study. Shouldn’t the quality of thoughts matter? If you’ve got something positive to think about — say, how you’re going to spend your vacation or the great screenplay you’ve already half-written in your head — why are you reading this?

On the other hand, if you are always bothered by negative thoughts — a sad or painful experience, perhaps — by all means, keep scrolling（翻网页）.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to take up much of your time here; it’s a short study that gets to the point in a hurry. Don’t worry though. There’s a whole world of distractions out there. Say, have you seen that ship teetering at the brink of Niagara Falls? And how about those charming cows? Bet you didn’t know they could smell you from six miles away.

And that’s something to think about.

【推荐3】Last summer, two nineteenth-century cottages were rescued from remote farm fields in Montana, to be moved to an Art Deco building in San Francisco. The houses were made of wood. These cottages once housed early settlers as they worked the dry Montana soil; now they hold Twitter engineers.

The cottages could be an example of the industry’s unusual love for “low technology”, a concept associated with the natural world, and with old-school craftsmanship（手艺）that exists long before the Internet era. Low technology is not virtual (虚拟的) —so, to take advantage of it, Internet companies have had to get creative. The rescued wood cottages, fitted by band in the late eighteen-hundreds, are an obvious example. Other companies are using a broader interpretation（阐释）of low technology that focuses on nature.

Amazon is building three glass spheres filled with trees, so that employees can “work and socialize in a more natural, park-like setting.” At Google’s office, an entire is carpeted in glass. Facebook’s second Menlo Park campus will have a rooftop park with a walking path.

Olle Lundberg, the founder of Lundberg Design, has worked with many tech companies over the years. “Our tech engineers are the ones who feel impoverished, because they’re surrounded by the digital world,” he says. “We’ve found that introducing real crafts is one way to regain their individual identity.”

This craft-based theory is rooted in history. William Morris, the English artist and writer, turned back to pre-industrial arts in the eighteen-sixties, just after Industrial Revolution. The Arts and Crafts movement defined itself against machines. “Without creative human occupation, people became disconnected from life.” Morris said.

Research has shown that natural environments can restore our mental abilities. In Japan, patients are encouraged to “forest-bathe”, taking walks through woods to lower their blood pressure.

These health benefits apply to the workplace as well. Rachel Kaplvin, a professor of environmental psychology, has spent years researching the restorative effects of natural environment. Her research found that workers with access to nature at the office - even simple views of trees and flowers - felt their jobs were less stressful and more satisfying. If low-tech offices can potentially benefit the brains and improve the mental health of employees then, fine, bring on the cottages.