Going to extremes

James Kevin recently jumped out of a plane over a mountain, and then snow boarded down it.     1     You might think James is crazy, but he’s one of a growing number of extreme sports fans. These sports are being invented and developed all the time. And one thing they all share is high risk factor. Why would anyone want to take such risks and push themselves beyond their limits?

One popular theory is that extreme sports have evolved as a reaction to our increasingly safe lifestyles. In the past, just staying alive and finding enough food to eat was a daily challenge but now in most developed countries, that is no longer the case.     2     In developing countries where life is more difficult and people’s time is dedicated to the basics of day-to-day living or simply surviving, there is no time, inclination or necessity for them.

Another theory argues that extreme sports attract adrenaline junkies.     3     Adrenaline is a chemical released in the body as a response to stress and danger, but for some people, the feeling gives a heightened sense of being alive, a feeling they want to experience again and again. For some athletes, reaching the same goal many times doesn’t bring the same excitement or satisfaction as before. For this reason, they need a big risk, a new target to reach and extreme sports are the perfect solution.

However, for psychologist Eric Brymer, neither of these theories is accurate. Having interviewed many extreme sports men and women, he doesn’t believe they are thrill-seekers who risk their lives for an adrenaline high, or people who find modern life too safe so feel the need to take risks.     4     They understand the environment, task, and their own level of skill and ability-emotional, physical and psychological- so well that for them the focus is on controlling all these things and developing as individuals. Extremes sports are their way of enjoying life to the full and being the best they can be. They are expressing a wish for life, not a foolish death wish- something they cannot do in their normal work roles.

It seems that extreme sports participants may have been given a bad press. Whichever theory you believe, you may be able to benefit from some extreme sports. They aren’t all as dangerous as base jumping. So why not give one a go？

【推荐2】A recent study points out a so-called “gender-equality paradox(性别平等悖论)”: there are more women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) in countries with lower gender equality. Why do women make up 40 percent of engineering majors in Jordan, but only 34 percent in Sweden and 19 percent in the U.S.? The researchers suggest that women are just less interested in STEM, and when liberal Western countries let them choose freely, they freely choose different fields.

We disagree.

From cradle to classroom, a wealth of research shows that the environment has a major influence on girls’ interest and ability in math and science. Early in school, teachers, unconscious prejudice push girls away from STEM. By their preteen years, girls outperform boys in science class and report equal interest in the subject, but parents think that science is harder and less interesting for their daughters than their sons, and these misunderstandings predict their children’s career choices.

Later in life, women get less credit than men for the same math performance. When female STEM majors write to potential PhD advisors, they are less likely to get a response. When STEM professors review applications for research positions, they are less likely to hire “Jennifer” than “John,” even when both applications are otherwise identical—and if they do hire “Jennifer,” they pay her $4,000 less.

These findings make it clear that women in Western countries are not freely expressing their lack of “interest” in STEM. In fact, cultural attitudes and discrimination are shaping women’s interests in a way that is anything but free, even in otherwise free countries.

“Gender-equality paradox” research misses those social factors because it relies on a broad measure of equality called the Gender Gap Index (GGI), which tracks indicators such as wage difference, government representation and health outcomes. These are important markers of progress, but if we want to explain something as complicated as gender representation in STEM, we have to look into people’s heads.

Fortunately, we have ways to do that. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a well-validated tool for measuring how tightly two concepts are tied together in people’s minds. The psychologist Brian Nosek and his colleagues analyzed over 500,000 responses to a version of the IAT that measures mental associations between men/women and science, and compared results from 34 countries. Across the world, people associated science more strongly with men than with women.

But surprisingly, these gendered associations were stronger in supposedly egalitarian (主张平等的) Sweden than they were in the U.S., and the most pro-female scores came from Jordan. We re-analyzed the study’s data and found that the GGI’s assessment of overall gender equality of a country has nothing to do with that country’s scores on the science IAT.

That means the GGI fails to account for cultural attitudes toward women in science and the complicated mix of history and culture that forms those attitudes.

【推荐3】When I was very young, I usually watched my grandma throwing out the crusts of the bread that were not fresh for the birds. Not surprisingly, this attracted few birds apart from the odd sparrow or starling. Later on, we discovered packets of "wild bird food" at the local store, which brought in more interesting species. Since then feeding garden birds has come a long way for me. Today, I can enjoy a wide variety of birds.Sometimes I wonder if we might be feeding our garden birds better than our kids.

All this comes at a cost to us of an estimated £200 million a year. But I firmly believe what the scientists from a university said, “Our generosity is having a major effect on the behavior, ecology and even evolution of these familiar species. ” Take the goldfinch for example. When I began birding in the 1960s, this was a fairly rare bird, found along low bushes or in fields with weeds. Today, they can be seen in four out of five gardens.

During the bitter winter of 1890-1891, workers in London gave the small amount of their packed lunches to starving songbirds. And in the 1980s, the British were encouraged to offer food to garden birds. Then, in 2005, came Springwatch, who put paid to the widespread belief that we should only feed garden birds during the winter. In fact, we should provide food all year round： the most crucial time is the early spring, when natural resources are at their lowest.

Some argue with greater reasons that because most birds coming to feeders are the larger, commoner and more aggressive species, they will gain an unfair advantage over the smaller and weaker ones. But this ignores one major benefit of feeding garden birds 一 the way it connects millions of people to the natural world. This is especially important for people who may find it hard to gain access to the wider countryside, including young children and sick, old, disabled people who prefer to stay at home most of time.

【推荐3】Like a tired marriage, the relationship between libraries and publishers has long been dull. E-books, however, are causing heartache. Libraries know they need digital wares, but many publishers are too cautious about piracy (盗版) and lost sales to co-operate. Among the big six, only Random House and Harper Collins license e-books with most libraries.

Publishers are wise to be nervous. Owners of e-readers are exactly the customers they need: book-lovers with money. If these people switch to borrowing e-books instead of buying them, what then? Electronic borrowing is awfully convenient. Unlike printed books, which must be checked out and returned to a physical library miles from where you live, book files can be downloaded at home.The files disappear from the device when they are due.

E-lending is not simple, however.There are lots of different and often incompatible (不兼容的) e-book formats, devices and licenses.Most libraries use a company called OverDrive, which secures rights from publishers and provides e-books and audio files in every format. Yet publishers and libraries are worried by OverDrive’s global market dominance, as the company can control fees and conditions. Publishers were annoyed when OverDrive cooperated with Amazon. the world’s biggest online bookseller, last year. Owners of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader who want to borrow e-books from libraries are now redirected to Amazon’s website, where they must use their Amazon account to secure a loan.

According to Pew, an opinion researcher, library users are a perfect market for Amazon. Late last year Amazon introduced its Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which lets its best customers borrow free one of thousands of popular books each month.

Library supporters argue that book borrowers are also book buyers and that libraries are vital spaces for readers to discover new work. Many were cheered by a recent Pew survey, which found that more than half of Americans with library cards say they prefer to buy their c-books.

So publishers keep adjusting their lending arrangements in search of the right balance.

Random House raised its licensing prices earlier this year, and Harper Collins limits libraries to lending its titles 26 times. The story of the library e-book is a nail-biter.