1 . Neighbors used to wave to Timothy Masters whenever he stood outside his barn (谷仓). Across his soybean fields in this small town about ten miles north of Niagara Falls, they trade hellos every morning. That ended about a year ago, when a field of solar panels was set up on 18 acres of Masters’ land.

Masters is among a growing number of landowners trying to cash in on New York State’s push toward renewable energy. The solar company now using his land, he said, pays him 20 times more than the soybean farmer who had previously rented it. However, by replacing soybean plants with rows of silicon and metal solar panels, Masters has found himself the target of a growing backlash against the spread of solar farms in rural areas.

The tension over solar plants often resembles not-in-my-backyard, or NIMBY, disputes. “You’ll have people that get up and say, ‘I am green,’ ‘I’m for the environment,’ and ‘I’m pro this whole-green agenda.’ But then, all of a sudden, whenever one comes in, it changes.” Masters said. “What I notice is that people have ideals and values that they will put forth—until it comes around their own house.”

Opponents in New York cite a wide range of reasons. There are practical ones, like the danger of glare (刺眼的光) for drivers passing by. Some are about aesthetics (美学), such as the impact of solar panels on the rural landscape. There is even concern for endangered short-eared owls that may struggle to find field mice to eat amongst the panels. Small farmers who rent land from bigger farmers or landowners, meanwhile, have resisted for economic reasons. They fear they will be squeezed out by energy companies willing to pay more to use farmland for their solar panels.

Across western New York, anti-solar sentiment has surfaced on lawn signs and in Change. org petitions (请愿书). The movement has had some effect. At least a dozen towns in New York State have suspended new solar projects. Several others are weighing temporary bans. Local officials have said they need time to study the potential impact of solar farms.

The pushback is not unique to New York. In Virginia, anti-solar campaigners successfully blocked the plan of an 80-megawatt solar farm last year. This has inspired the launch of a nonprofit with a mission to help communities across the country to stop solar farms. The grass-roots backlash against solar farms has become so widespread that the U. S. Solar Energy Industries Association last year developed a manual that included coping with community sensitivities, in a move to fight increasing negativity.

4 . Volunteers are the backbone of the NHS (National Health Service). Time and time again I have seen the extraordinary impact they have on patient care. Without them, I do not think the NHS would survive. Yet they are often the unsung heroes of the health service. They go about their work quietly and with devotion, but often we overlook quite how important they are. Volunteers do the kind of work that doctors and nurses are unable to do, but is so important for the patients. Sometimes medicine can be too focused on the biological side of things — the diagnosis (诊断), the treatment, the pills and operations — and forgets that there is a social aspect that is just as important This is where volunteers can step in.

They have plenty of time to spend with patients, ensuring that they are comfortable, talking to them and listening to them in a way that many staff would love to do, but sadly just never have enough time. I remember an elderly woman who had come into hospital after she broke her leg, She was in pain, unable to walk and scared. Yet the thing that was causing her the most worry was the thought of her Yorkshire terrier at home, alone, without any food. From a medical perspective, this wasn’t a concern — it’s not something that the surgeons are going to prioritise (优先处理) worrying about when faced with someone so seriously unwell. The nurses on the ward have more than enough to do without thinking about a dog. Yet for the patient, this was the most important thing and there is no way she would have been able to focus on getting better until she knew her dog was looked after. In stepped Andy, a volunteer.

“Don’t worry. ” he reassured her, “I’ll sort everything out. ” He went round, checked on the dog and fed him and then sat and arranged for a charity which provides temporary homes to pets while their owners are in hospital. He even got regular photograph updates from the temporary parents that he showed the patient while she recovered to reassure her that her beloved dog was fine. It allowed the patient peace of mind to focus on getting better.

6 . If you were to rate the most walkable cities in the world, what would you look for? Would it be how shaded the sidewalks are? How many benches there are along the way to your destination? Or maybe how close you are to shops or local attractions?

Well, the researchers at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), located in New York. US, wanted to know which of the world’s cities were the best for pedestrians (行人). So, they did just that.

To determine which cities were the most walkable, they rated cities based on factors such as how close citizens were to car-free areas like public parks, how close citizens lived in relation to schools and hospitals, and how short their journeys were overall.

According to the study, they found that the most walkable cities in the world are London, Paris, Bogota and Hong Kong. Overall, London was at the top of the list, outranking (超过) nearly 1, 000 cities around the world on these key factors.

“In order to provide safety and inviting walking conditions for all city residents, it is essential to shift the balance of space in our cities away from cars, providing more travel options for people,” CEO of ITDP Heather Thompson told the magazine Cities Today. She continued, “We have so much to gain-from cleaner air to better health to stronger local economies and deeper bonds within communities, and we all need that now more than ever. ”

Unfortunately, it seems that very few cities make pedestrians a priority, though.

“Our city streets across the planet are already full of cars. If you really want to see the worst for walkability, it is the really sprawling (杂乱无序伸展的) cities of the US, ” commented Taylor Reich, a research associate at ITDP and the primary author of the guide to making cities more walkable.

So, what can cities do to make their streets friendlier for pedestrians?

“There’s no one secret sauce; there’s no one thing you can do to make a city walkable, ” Reich said. “It’s many decisions that are made at all levels from individual streets all the way up to the city design.”

7 . The fear that a strength-based approach will cause narcissism also occurs because we unknowingly fall prey to binary (非此即彼) thinking. We mistakenly believe that one cannot be both confident and humble. We focus on Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian rather than Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. There's no way that Gandhi and Mother Teresa could have achieved what they did without confidence in their strengths, and yet they are both pillars of modesty and selflessness.

When we assume that strength-focus is the same as a self-focus, We fail to entertain the idea that people who know their strengths are, actually, more likely to be pro-social and focus on helping others.

8 . Opening day at the nation’s second-largest school district unfolded with a mix of emotions: frustration over long waits, anxiety over health protocols and concern for how things would go for children who have been learning online for a year and a half. But for many, the sense of joy and relief at being together again eased the worries.

In the early morning at John Marshall High, lines of students waiting to enter extended two blocks. By 9 a.m., some students were still waiting, having missed part of the first class.

10 . The tendency to look for some outside group to blame for our misfortunes is certainly common and it is often strengthened by social prejudice. There seems to be little doubt that one of the principal causes of prejudice is fear — in particular the fear that the interests of our own group are going to be endangered by the actions of another. This is less likely to be the case in a stable, relatively unchanging society in which the members of different social and occupational groups know what to expect of each other and know what to expect for themselves. In times of rapid racial and economic change, however, new occupations and new social roles appear, and people start looking jealously at each other to see whether their own group is being left behind.

When a community begins to feel unsure of its future, it becomes especially likely to turn in upon itself, to imagine that surrounding groups are threatening and unfriendly. At a time like this, distorted (扭曲的) ideas about the other community are readily believed and are passed on as statements of fact. One of the tragic things about intercommunal (社区间的) conflict is that both parties quickly find themselves “moral rationalization (合理化解释).” Each side insists and believes that its own actions are inspired by noble ideals, even when they are really acting out of pure self-interest. To a third party, neutral to the conflict, it may seem obvious that both are behaving unreasonably; but when one’s emotions are involved, and especially the emotion of fear, it is extremely difficult to remain sensible.

Once prejudice develops, it is hard to stop, because there are often social forces at work which actively encourage unfounded attitudes of unfriendliness and fear towards other groups. One such force is education: We all know that children can be taught history in such a way as to keep alive old hatred and old prejudices between racial and political groups. Another social influence that has to be taken seriously is the pressure of public opinion. People often think and act differently in groups from the way they would do as individuals. It takes a considerable effort of will, and often calls for great courage, to stand out against one’s fellows and insist that they are wrong.

Why is it that we hear so much more about the failures of relationships between communities than we do about the successes? I am afraid it is partly due to the increase in communication which radio, television and the popular press have brought about. In those countries where the media of mass communication are commercial enterprises, they tend to measure success by the size of their audience; and people are more likely to buy a newspaper, for instance, if their attention is caught by something dramatic, or something that can arouse their anxiety or interest as much as failures of intercommunal relationships do. And popular public speakers, especially if they are politicians addressing a relatively innocent audience, know that the best way to arouse such an audience is to frighten them.

Where there is a real or imaginary threat to economic security, this is especially likely to arouse group prejudice. It is important to remember economic factors if we wish to lessen prejudice between groups, because unless they are dealt with directly, it will be little use simply advising people not to be prejudiced against other groups whom they see as their competitors, if not their enemies.