2 . Americans use many expressions with the word “dog”. People in the United States love their dogs and treat them well.     1     However, dogs without owners to care for them lead a different kind of life. The expression, to lead a dog’s life, describes a person who has an unhappy existence.

Some people say we live in a dog eat dog world.     2     They say that to be successful, a person has to work like a dog. This means they have to work very, very hard. Such hard work can make people dog tired. And, the situation would be even worse if they became sick as a dog.

    3     This means that every person enjoys a successful period during his or her life. To be successful, people often have to learn new skills. Yet, some people say that you can never teach an old dog new tricks. They believe that older people do not like to learn new things and will not change the way they do things.

    4     People who are unkind or uncaring can be described as meaner than a junkyard dog. Junkyard dogs live in places where people throw away things they do not want. Mean dogs are often used to guard this property. They bark or attack people who try to enter the property. However, sometimes a person who appears to be mean and threatening is really not so bad. We say his bark is worse than his bite.

Dog expressions are also used to describe the weather. The dog days of summer are the hottest days of the year. A rainstorm may cool the weather. But we do not want it to rain too hard.     5    

3 . Have you ever wondered about the universal layout (布局) of supermarkets? Smart designers are behind it, subtly tempting you to walk through each aisle and fill your cart without even realizing it.

Grocery store design is a carefully crafted art from both psychological and marketing standpoints, according to Reeves Connelly, who studied architectural design at the Pratt Institute. He explained there is a specific reason why fruit and vegetables are often located at the front of the store, “You’ll grab the fruits and vegetables first and then hopefully feel less guilty about buying junk food later on.” Meanwhile, essential items such as milk and eggs are placed at the back of the store to ensure customers walk through other aisles with many unhealthy options like snacks and sodas, potentially increasing the likelihood of impulse purchases.

There’s also a reason why you often feel lost in local supermarkets. Shockingly, they move things around. Reeves explained, “They are very much aware that these strategies become less effective after you visit the store a few times and get a better sense of where everything is, so they’ll regularly move the products to different aisles to confuse you. The practice is not limited to a specific store but is employed across various retail chains.”

“Their little tricks always work on me,” one regular shopper admits, “I walk in to get three things and end up spending $300; that’s why I hate grocery shopping,” he said. On the other hand, some shoppers are proud to declare they have never fallen into the trap. “That’s why I always keep a shopping list on me,” another shopper shared. “I’ve started having my groceries delivered. If I have to go to the store, I never grab a cart. If I can’t carry it, I’m not buying it,” he added.

4 . If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal (夜间活动的) species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.

The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequence called light pollution whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels and light rhythms to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life is affected.

In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze (霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We’ve grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night—dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadow on Earth—is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.

We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.

Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses. Humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs. Like most other creatures, we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.

Living in a glare of our making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead.

6 . We’ve all been there: in a lift, in line at the bank or on an airplane, surrounded by people who are, like us, deeply focused on their smartphones or, worse, struggling with the uncomfortable silence.

What’s the problem? It’s possible that along with the rapid development of society, we all focus on our phone and desktop, and therefore it results in our compromised conversational intelligence. However, it’s more likely that none of us start a conversation because it’s awkward and challenging, or we think it’s annoying and unnecessary. But the next time you find yourself among strangers, consider that small talk is worth the trouble. Experts say it’s an invaluable social practice that results in big benefits.

Dismissing small talk as unimportant is easy, but we can’t forget that deep relationships wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for small conversation. “Small talk is the grease (润滑剂) for social communication,” says Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast. “Almost every great love story and each big business deal begins with small talk,” he explains. “The key to successful small talk is learning how to connect with others, not just communicate with them.”

In a 2014 study, Elizabeth Dunn, associate professor of psychology at UBC, invited people on their way into a coffee shop. One group was asked to seek out an interaction with its waiter; the other, to speak only when necessary. The results showed that those who chatted with their server reported significantly higher positive feelings and a better coffee shop experience. “It’s not that talking to the waiter is better than talking to your husband,” says Dunn. “But interactions with peripheral (边缘的) members of our social network matter for our well-being also.”

Dunn believes that people who reach out to strangers feel a significantly greater sense of belonging, a bond with others. Carducci believes developing such a sense of belonging starts with small talk. “Small talk is the basis of good manners,” he says.

7 . The twilight time between full wakefulness and being sound asleep may be packed with creative potential. In a new experiment, people who went into a light sleep were better problem solvers later.

It is said that the famous inventor, Thomas Edison, used to fall asleep in a chair holding two steel balls. As he nodded off, the balls fell into metal pans. The resulting noise woke him. Then, he could write down his inventive ideas before he fell into a deep sleep and forgot them.

Researchers tested Edison’s method of cultivating creativity with 103 healthy people. Volunteers came to the lab to solve a tricky number problem. They were asked to change a string of numbers into a shorter sequence. They were told to follow two simple rules. What the volunteers weren’t told was that there was an easy trick to do this task. The second number in the sequence would always be the correct final number. Once discovered, this trick dramatically cut the solving time.

After doing this task 60 times, the volunteers earned a 20-minute break. This downtime was spent in a quiet, dark room. Volunteers sat in chairs and held a version of the steel balls that Edison used as “alarm clocks” — it was a light drinking bottle in one dangling hand. The researchers told participants to close their eyes and rest or sleep if they desired.

About half of the participants stayed awake. Twenty-four fell asleep and stayed in the shallow, twilight stage of sleep called N1. Fourteen others progressed to N2, a deeper stage of sleep.

After their rest, participants returned to their number problem. The researchers saw a clear difference between the groups. People who had fallen into a shallow sleep were 2.7 times as likely to spot the hidden trick as people who stayed awake. Shallow sleepers were 5.8 times as likely to spot the trick as people who reached the deeper N2 stage.

9 . There are two drive-in campgrounds in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Nāmakanipaio and Kulanaokuaiki.

Nämakanipaio

Nämakanipaio Campground is operated by Hawaii Volcanoes Lodge Company. It is a large, open grassy area with tall trees. This campground has restrooms, water, picnic tables and barbeque pits. Campfires are permitted in the barbeque pits only. Maximum stay is 7 days.

Fees:

There is a pay station on site. Drive-in sites — $15.00 per night.

If there are more than two people in your party, you can expand to four people per site with another tent.

Weather may be cool all year round. Daytime temperature range: 60s to 80s F. Nighttime temperature range: 30s to 50s F. We suggest that you use a tent with a good rainfly and bring warm clothing for cool days and evenings. Reservations are required.

Kulanaokuaiki

Kulanaokuaiki Campground is located about five miles down the Hilina Pali Road. The nine campsites at Kulanaokuaiki have picnic tables and tent pads, and are available on a first come, first served basis. There is NO WATER at this location. Checkout time is 11:00 a. m. Fires are prohibited.

Fees:

$10.00 a night per site; stay limit of seven consecutive days.

$6.00 a night per site for campers who hold the Interagency Senior (Golden Age) and Golden Access passes.

Fees may be paid at the campground’s self-registration station.

Pets are not allowed in the campground or anywhere on Hilina Pali Road. Nighttime temperature range: 40s to 60s F. Daytime temperature range: 60s to 80s F. We suggest that you use a tent with a good rainfly and bring warm clothing for cool days and evenings. Reservations are required.

10 . Do you have a suit or dress in the closet that you haven’t worn for years but are reluctant to get rid of? Maybe you say, “I can’t throw that away because I paid good money for it.” If you recognize this in yourself, then you are suffering from commitment to the sunk cost fallacy (谬论). It occurs when we feel that we have invested too much to quit. This psychological trap causes us to stick with a plan even if it no longer serves us and the costs clearly outweigh the benefits.

Arkes and Blumer conducted a survey revealing that people are influenced by sunk cost fallacy in their decisions. Participants were asked to imagine a situation where they accidentally booked two ski tickets for the same date, spending $100 on a ski trip to Michigan and $50 on Wisconsin. They were also told the latter would be more enjoyable. It turned out that 54% chose Michigan despite the reasonable choice being Wisconsin, because they had made a greater initial investment.

Sunk cost fallacy takes place when we let emotions cloud our decisions. Once we’ve invested in a choice, we feel guilt or regret if we don’t follow through, without realizing that past investments won’t be recovered. Instead, we base decisions on past costs, ignoring present and future costs and benefits. This may be due to loss aversion (厌恶), where people place more weight on losses than on gains. As a result, our decisions often aim to avoid losses instead of seeking the benefits gained if we let go of the past commitment.

No one can deny the fact that we benefit a lot from perseverance. So our society loves to emphasize perseverance. Never give up! Don’t waste. But only you know the right path for you. Sometimes walking away is the hardest choice of all. You might realize a path you’re on is no longer the right one or never was. That’s a painful realization.