1 . You throw a flying disc (飞盘). Your friend catches it. Well done!

Flying discs are fun toys. They are becoming popular in China. On the Internet, there are more than thousands of posts about disc games, talking about things like rules and dress codes.

Flying discs are very beginner-friendly. It is easy for anyone to throw a disc almost anywhere they want to, from a field to a beach. No special skills are needed. Boys and girls can also play together, making it a good activity to socialize.     1    

For those who want to compete, there are many choices. They can try the team disc sport called “ultimate”.     2     There are no judges. You must overcome your desire to cheat. Put simply, it makes us better people. In another game called “disc golf”, players try to hit faraway targets with a disc. Like in golf, the lowest number of throws wins.

    3     They started with pie tins (烤盘), which inspired the birth of the toy. After enjoying the pies, some university students soon found that the empty pie tins could be tossed (扔)around. They had great fun with them in the 1930s. In 1948, a man named Walter made a plastic disc with his partner Warren.     4     The discs quickly became popular.

2 . Making a Backup Plan Weakens Performance

There are certainly important benefits to making backup plans. One is the psychological comfort it brings: People think, “I’m going to be Okay, even if I fail because I can then do X or Y.” Another benefit is that if you fail, you won’t keep thinking about it; you can quickly implement your backup plan.     1     Jihae Shin of Wisconsin School of Business believes that acknowledging the costs and benefits can lead to better and more informed decision making.

She gave 160 university students a sentence-unscrambling (理清句子) task and promised an energy bar to those who performed it well.     2     People encouraged to think about those backup plans unscrambled significantly fewer sentences on average than people who hadn’t been asked to formulate a plan B.

In the follow-up experiment, Shin took the same approach but offered people different rewards — an extra dollar. “We think that when achieving a goal requires work, not luck, making a backup plan can hurt performance by reducing the desire for the goal.” said professor Shin. “In the third study in which participants were asked about how much they wanted the promised reward of one dollar, those who had been asked to think through backup plans reported that they wanted the cash less than others.     3     So they put in less effort which hurt their results.

The participants in the lab studies spent less than 10 minutes, thinking about their backup plans -- a tiny investment of their attention -- yet it significantly affected their motivation and performance on goal pursuit. In real life when the stakes are higher, people would be expected to devote more time and energy to mapping out the detailed backup plans.     4    

The practical advice from the researchers is: Hold off on making back up plans until you’ve put as much effort as possible into your primary goal.

3 . What My Year Abroad Taught Me About Cultural Differences

Imagine going to study abroad. You walk into the local shop and bam!, Golliwogs (黑面木偶) everywhere. I’m talking salespeople dressed as Golliwogs. Surprised, you go to the junk food section as that’s the only thing that will give your body the sugar rush it needs to shock your body out of the state of bewilderment (困惑). And there they were: Golliwog cookies.

I’m using the word “Golliwogs” because to a British person abroad that’s what they are. But in the Netherlands and Belgium the image is known as Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). There has been much discussion about whether or not it’s racist.     1     Zwarte Piet is understood by most in the Netherlands to be Santa’s helper whose black face was due to his delivering presents through the chimney.

Working as a trainee with the European Commission, I met people from all over the world, not just Europe. Working alongside my German, Spanish and Italian colleagues, I learned some valuable lessons.     2     You shouldn’t wait to say “excuse me,” or wait for a gap in the conversation to give your opinion, because you’ll walk out at the end of the meeting wondering how three hours have passed without you managing to say anything. I learned how to stop my colleagues and interject (插话) my thoughts.

Another lesson was the value of the coffee break. Coffee breaks in Brussels were not just time to get coffee. It was a chance to develop new ideas with colleagues in a more informal setting. At first I declined the invitation to attend, but after a while I began to notice that almost everyone went on these trips to the coffee machine and decided to join them.     3    

Graduates and students who have worked abroad gain an understanding of what it means to be truly European and how this can benefit you at work. Not only do you bring home experiences, skills and practices from other countries, but you also seek to take your work further afield (向远方).

    4     Remember the Golliwog cookies? All I really wanted were some Mr. Kipling’s cakes but they’re nearly impossible to find abroad. When I finished my trainee ship with the Commission, I came home and started a business called Packed Munches, a service sending boxes of British snacks to Britons all over the world. And to think, it all started with Zwarte Pict.

4 . Water is a key ingredients in a healthy diet and lifestyle.There are many health benefits of drinking water. It helps flush impurities and toxins out of our systems.     1     In fact, nearly every system in our bodies relies on water for proper functioning. But what will happen if the water you drink every day is unhealthy?

In past decades, concerns about tap water and its impact on overall health led some people to tun to bottled waters. You could pay to have a company deliver large bulky plastic bottles of water for the water cooler. Or you could purchase gallon jugs of distilled or “drinking water” at the grocery store.

In recent years, there has been an explosion in the number of different bottled waters available, with big distributors such as Coke and Pepsi jumping on the bandwagon. But are bottled   drinking waters like Coke’s Dasani brand, Pepsi’s Aquafina, or Wal-Mart’s store brand really any healthier than your tap water?     2    

As we have learned more about the water we drink,the technology behind drinking water filters and purification systems has improved dramatically. There are filters to remove impurities, chemicals,heavy metals, bacteria and almost every contaminant you can think of.With the right size and filter combination for your specific home, your tap water can be exceptionally pure and healthy.

    3     Although the initial cost of a whole house system usually amounts to several hundred dollars,that cost is often less than $100 a year if spread out over the life of the system.

There may be additional expenses to replace carbon filters or lamps in an ultraviolet light water treatment device. These expenses can add another $100 or so to the annual cost of operating drinking water filters and purification systems.

While some people may hesitate to spend so much each year for clean, safe drinking water, they are probably paying more for bottled drinking water. They understand that it is more expensive, but they are still willing to pay the extra money because bottled water is thought to be safer and healthier than filtered drinking water.     4     In reality, however, few bottled waters come from natural springs,and most of them use municipal tap water.

5 . What Makes a Nobel Laureate?

Are there any predictors that point to who will be selected as Nobel laureates?

Is brilliance in childhood a predictor? When the 2006 chemistry laureate, Roger Kornberg, was asked what he wanted for Christmas, he said, “A week in the lab.”     1    . Mario Capecchi (medicine, 2007) was an abandoned child on the streets of wartime Italy.

    2    . Five of Enrico Fermi’s (physics, 1938) postdoctoral students went on to win the Nobel Prize. Otto Warburg (medicine, 1931) advised an American doctoral student, “If you wish to become a scientist, you must ask a successful scientist to accept you in his laboratory.”

Experts often recommend that people specialize in one field of work or research to maximize their chances of success.     3     If you look at the careers of Nobel Prize winners, you’ll find that they are unusually likely to be “creative polymaths.” That is, they purposely integrate formal and informal expertise from widely varied disciplines to yield new and useful ideas and practices.

There remains one quality that is essential. It is what Leon Lederman (physics, 1988) called “compulsive dedication.”     4    . Take Marie Curie (physics, 1903; chemistry, 1911) and her husband Pierre (physics, 1903). The Curies were assigned a shed with a leaking roof and a dirt floor, where they worked for years, freezing in winter and sweltering in summer. “And yet,” Marie Curie wrote in her biography of her husband, “it was in this miserable old shed that the best and happiest years of our life were spent, entirely dedicated to work.”

6 . Be a Lifelong Learner

We live in a world that prizes education. But most people think of education only in terms of formal classes. When people graduate from high school or college, they usually think their education is complete. But it is possible to continue learning after finishing school.     1    

On a personal level, learning can be fun. It can deepen your conversations by giving you something interesting to talk about. And it’s good for your brain. Hobbies that require thought can help you keep your mental abilities as you age. Just as exercise makes your muscles stronger, your mind becomes sharper when you use it.

Being a lifelong learner can also help your career. Becoming an expert in an area outside of your present job gives you freedom. It allows you to take a job in another field if you want to. Also, knowledge in other areas can help you develop creative ideas in your current job.

    2     It starts with making a conscious decision to do so. You need to be determined to keep making the effort to learn when it isn’t easy. It may help to find friends who will encourage your learning. It might also help to set aside specific times to study.

Try finding time to learn throughout your day. Carry a book with you, and read when you have to wait. Audiobooks and podcasts are also helpful resources. You can listen to them while traveling or doing chores.

    3     If you want to learn how to fix appliances, try fixing some at home. If you’re learning a foreign language, find someone who speaks that language to talk to. If you’re learning facts about economics or science, explain what you’re learning to someone else.     4    

7 . Taking responsibility for yourself and your actions is an important part of personal growth. It’s never too late to start practicing the positive habit of accepting responsibility for yourself.     1    

Improve your confidence.     2     If you can’t think of any, ask loved ones to help. You can also write down your goals, create a plan for achieving them and learn to accept positive feedback.

Remove the excuses. To break the harmful habit of excuse-making, ensure you’re honestly acknowledging what really happened. Next time you’re faced with the negative result of a situation, ensure you say something like “Sorry, I messed it up. How can I make up for it?”     3    

Take positive actions. If you want your family and friends to show more interest in your life, get interested in theirs. If you want a more satisfying job, figure out what you need to do to achieve it. Your actions will affect what you get out of life, so ensure you’re acting in a way you get what you want.

    4     If you often see yourself as a powerless man, this might be because you are experiencing hardships in your own life. And this feeling will be strengthened by the way you communicate with yourself and others. So look out for passive, self-destroying thoughts like “Why is this happening to me?” and learn to take responsibility.

8 . Man’s Existential Dilemma

We always knew that there was something peculiar about man, something deep down that characterized him and set him apart from the other animals.     1     For ages, when philosophers talked about the the core of man they referred to it as his “essence”, something fixed in his nature, deep down, some special quality or substance. But nothing like it was ever found and man’s peculiarity still remained a dilemma. The reason it was never found, as Erich Fromm (艾瑞克·弗洛姆，精神分析心理学家和人本主义哲学家) put it in an excellent discussion, was that there was no essence, that the essence of man is really his paradoxical(悖论的)nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic.

We might call this existential paradox the condition of individuality within finitude (有限性). Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history.     2     He can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immerse expansion, this competence, this self-consciousness gives to man almost the status a small god in nature.

    3     This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it: he is dual, up in the stars’ and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways - the strangest and most unpleasant way being that is aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.

The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb beings. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don’t know that death is happening and continue gazing while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over.     4    

Quoted from Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death

9 . Which Languages Take the Longest to Learn

The difficulty in learning a foreign language lies not only in its inherent complexity. The main reason a language is hard is that it is different from your own. What underlies the difficulty of such languages for an English-speaker?

The first thing many learners will think of is the writing system.     1     Chinese stands out for its difficulty. It is commonly said that a learner must memorize around 2, 000 characters to be able to read a newspaper. But even this estimate is criticized. Someone with 2, 000 characters will still have to look up unfamiliar ones in every few lines of text.

A second way languages can be hard is with sounds and distinctions that do not exist in the learner's language. To an English-speaker, the novelties include the clicks of many African languages.     2     Mandarin and Cantonese have tones, meaning ma with an even pitch and ma with a falling one are different words.

The vocabulary obviously matters too. Most European languages share an ancestor (called proto-Indo European) and so their words, too,   often come in related pairs.   If you know water in Spanish is agua, it is easy to figure out Italian acqua and English aquatic. Languages unrelated to the European ones (Arabic from the Semitic   family, or Chinese from the Sino-Tibetan one) will not only lack the “genetic” overlap in vocabulary.     3    .

Finally,   there is grammar.   Many people associate tricky grammar with long lists of endings that change according to a word's use in a sentence. Many languages even feature an ending on verbs indicating how the speaker knows the information to be true.

    4     If you want to learn a language just for fun,   start with Swedish. If you want to accumulate an impressive number, stay in Europe.   But if you really want to impress, mastering Mandarin is the sign of the true linguistic Ironman.

10 . How to Appreciate Impressionist Paintings

The Impressionist Movement began in the late 19th century as a group of rebellious young artists based in Paris looked for new ways to use light and color. Known for painting quickly and spontaneously (自发地), Impressionists explored how the viewers’ eye interprets objects.

And when would be a better time than now to see with your own eyes some of the best impressionist masterpieces as dozens of paintings by Monet are on display in Shanghai?     1    

Consider the subject matter. Impressionist painters broke away from the standard subject matter of royalty, mythology and historical realism.     2     Impressionists departed from the norm by painting ordinary people engaged in everyday activities.

Examine the light sources. The exploration and translation of light onto the canvas (画布) was the core of Impressionist painting. Look particularly at unusual displays of light, such as filtering through tree branches or reflecting off water.

    3     Unlike the traditional schools of painting, which were careful to smooth the paint, impressionists used short, strong strokes and were unconcerned if the brush stroke was visible. Observe how the brush stroke reflects light.

Observe the colors in the painting. Impressionists painted with many colors, mostly in bright shades. Rather than mixing colors before applying to the canvas, they placed the colors directly on the canvas and allowed the viewer’s eye to mix the colors.     4    

Allow the eye to view the painting as a whole. Rather than look at each item in the painting, look for an overall mood and feeling, determine which emotion the painting arouses, such as peacefulness, exhaustion or joy.