1 . The clock rules our lives. The more we try to save time, the less time we seem to have. In every area of our lives we are doing things faster. And many of us live in towns and cities which are getting noisier and more stressful as each day passes. But now a worldwide movement, whose aim is to slow life down, has started. Its supporters are people who believe that a happier and healthier way of life is possible.

The Slow Food movement was founded the day that an Italian journalist, Carlo Petrini, saw that McDonald’s had opened a restaurant in a beautiful square in Rome. He thought it was sad that many people today live too quickly to sit down for a proper meal and only eat much fast food. He decided that he had to try to do something about it and so he started the Slow Food movement. Slow Food has become a global organization ever since and now has more than 80,000 members in 100 countries.

Slow Food also encourages people to eat local and regional food, to use local shops and markets, to eat out in small family restaurants, and to cook with traditional recipes.

The idea of Slow Cities was inspired by the Slow Food movement. The aim of Slow Cities is to improve people’s quality of life. Towns which want to become a Slow City have to reduce traffic and noise, increase the number of green areas, plant trees, build pedestrian zones, and promote local businesses and traditions. Now it has spread to other countries all over the world, from the UK to Japan and Australia. There are now 135 Slow Cities in 24 countries across the world that have been named since founding of the organization in 1999. Gao Chun County, in east China’s Jiangsu Province, is expected to be named the first “Slow City” in China next year.

“Slow Cities are about having a community life in the town,” said a local resident. “It is not ‘slow’ as in ‘stupid’. It is ‘slow’ as in the opposite of ‘worried’ and ‘stressful’.”

But not everybody is happy. For teenagers, who have to go 25km to Norwich, the nearest city, to buy CDs, living in a Slow City is not very attractive. “It’s all right here for adults,” says Lewis Cook, 16. “But if you want excitement, you have to go to Norwich. We need more things here for young people.”

5 . Shrinkflation has made British shoppers unhappy. For years, producers have quietly shrunk product sizes rather than rise prices. A multipack(合装包)of Fazzles, used to cost £1 ($1.36) and contain eight bags. Now it contains six. Cadbury’s Creme Eggs used to come by the half-dozen; now they come in fives. Quality Street, a chocolate box, weighed 1.2kg in 2009; today, just 650g.

The logic of Shrinkflation is that consumers are less likely to notice it than its alternative: higher prices. For years, the government has worked on the same principle. Taxpayers paid roughly the same, but government services became worse. Now an era of price increases in the form of tax rises has begun. In a nasty combination of inflation and shrinkflation, voters will be expected to pay more for less.

It will be an awkward shift. Since coming to power in 2010, the Conservatives (保守党) have used shrinkflation just as retailers do. In the early austerity (财政紧缩) years, the government shrank (收缩，减少), but its cost did not. As a percentage of GDP, it fell from a peak after the financial crisis of 46% of GDP to 39%. Taxes stayed around their historic norm of about 32% of GDP. But citizens received fewer services.

And, as when shoppers fail to notice the missing packet of Frazzles, voters did not care much at first. Weekly bin collections became fortnightly or monthly. Once-generous legal aid became mean; in-work benefits fell; police solved fewer crimes. But eventually voters and shoppers start to feel confused. Was a box of Quality Street always so small? Were the police always so used to fraud (诈骗)? Moreover, shrinkflation cannot continue forever. Just as people will not buy an empty packet of Frazzles, taxpayers will not pay for government services that are not provided at all. Eventually prices must rise — as the Conservatives are discovering. By 2026 the tax burden will be 36% of GDP, the highest since the post-war era, under Clement Atlee. This will cause several problems such as one of expectations. Atlee’s government promised a new Jerusalem (耶路撒冷): voters accepted higher taxes in return for a welfare(福利)state. Similarly, when New Labour governments raised taxes in the 2000s, they provided more in return. They increased national insurance, in order to bring heath care spending in line with other European countries. Schools were rebuilt and repaired; civic art, though sometimes of questionable quality, appeared in town squares.

Unfortunately, this time higher spending will at best stop things getting worse. Sajid Javi, the health secretary, admits that the health-and social-care systems will struggle even after a 2.5 percentage-point rise in national insurance,

“Is that all we get for £12bn” asked the Daily Mail, a newspaper that lends to see eye-to-eye with the Conservatives, when the plan to cut hospital waiting-lists was announced. British voters are often said to want American taxes and a European welfare government. Instead, they face paying European taxes for services as insufficient as those in American.

6 . Downey, a professor of sociology at The Ohio State University, had an argument with his son, Nick. “I explained to him how bad his generation’s social skills were because they spent so much time on screens,” Downey said. “Nick asked me how I knew that. And when I checked, there really wasn’t any solid evidence. It then occurred to me that something is needed.”

Downey, with his colleague, started to investigate before long. They used data from early childhood studies. They compared how teachers and parents rated social skills of children who started kindergarten in 1998 with data on those who started school in 2010, when the first iPad appeared. Downey was surprised to find despite the time spent on smartphones and social media, young people today are as socially skilled as those from the previous generation.

Results showed both groups of kids were rated similarly on interpersonal skills, such as the ability to form and maintain friendships and get along with different people. They were also rated similarly on self-control, such as the ability to control their temper (脾气). In fact, the evaluations of children’s interpersonal skills and self-control tended to be slightly higher for those in the 2010 group than those in the 1998 group. The results showed that even the children with the most screen exposure in both groups experienced similar development in social skills compared to those with less screen exposure. There was one exception: The skills were a bit lower for children who accessed online gaming and social networking sites many times a day. “But even that was a pretty small effect,” Downey said. In general, there was little evidence that screen time damages most children’s social skills.

There is a tendency for every generation at my age to worry about the younger generation. It is an old story. Now we know we really shouldn’t have been so,” said Maggie, one of the parents providing evaluation. Fears for screen-based technology represent recent panic in response to technological change. If anything, new generations are learning that having good social relationships means being able to communicate successfully both face-to-face and online, Downey said.

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Yours,

Li Hua

8 . Being in college, coupled with being immersed (沉浸的) in social media means students are constantly surrounded by peers and their profiles (个人资料). “I am so pleased to announce that I have received an internship (实习工作).” If I opened my LinkedIn（a social network for job seekers, professionals and business）right now, the probability of me seeing posts of this kind is 100 percent.

I know the idea of comparison via social media has been studied and discussed a lot, but what we don’t put enough emphasis on is the physical and personal impact it can have on students. When students look at achievements and positions held by their peers, it is easy to feel as though they are not doing enough. When we go to career fairs and stand in lines for hours to not receive an interview, it is easy to feel as though there isn’t a bright future ahead. When we study in the library to improve our GPA (Grade Point Average) so as to get a job, it is easy to feel as though we have no fun.

It is easy to feel this way when we are immersed in what we think our peers’ lives and achievements look like. It can be easy to assume that the girl, who is doing two jobs, is a leader in three clubs, is taking 22 credit s and has an awesome internship lined up for the summer, is so happy and it’s going to be successful. However, what we don’t see are the three hours of sleep she gets each night or the lack of nutrition in her meals or that she is unable to keep up with her social relationships.

“One of the people we judge the most is ourselves. When we compare, we build on that judgment we make on ourselves in a negative way,” says Teri Pipe, Arizona State University’s chief well-being officer. This is not to say that it is impossible to do all those things, but it also important to know yourself and what you value when deciding what you want to do. “We should come back to the balancing point to understand that each of us has something important to do and serve in the world, which is as unique as your fingerprint,” says Pipe. By removing yourself from other people’s lives and things that have happened in the past or could happen in the future, you can allow yourself to be fully immersed in the present to enjoy and cherish what you’re doing.

The mental impacts of stress can also lead to physical pain. “When you are comparing yourself to someone, you start questioning yourself, and so you either make some changes blindly or feel defeated, and stop doing critical thinking,” says Jamie Valderrama. She is a lecturer in the university’s Schools of Social Work, which is one of the largest and most diverse social work program s in the US. “You might start feeling happiness in your heart, or your breathing and heart rate might accelerate. By paying attention to the body, you can take a step back and take preventive measures to make sure you calm the reaction down to handle the issue quickly in a positive way.”

10 . I strongly believe that it is rather important to be a good listener. And although I have become a better listener than I was ten years ago, I have to admit I’m still only an ________ listener.

Effective listening is more than simply ________ the bad habit of interrupting others while they are speaking or finishing their sentences. It’s being ________ to listen to the entire thought of someone ________ waiting impatiently for your chance to respond. In some ways, the way we fail to listen is symbolic of the way we live. We often treat communication as if it were a ________. It’s almost like our goal is to have no time ________ between the conclusion of the sentence of the person we are speaking with and the beginning of our own. My wife and I were recently at a cafeteria having lunch, overhearing the conversation around us. It seemed that no one was really listening to one another. ________, they were taking turns not listening to one another. I asked my wife if I still did the same thing. With a smile on her face she said, “only sometimes.”

Slowing down your responses and becoming a better listener ________ you in becoming a more peaceful person. It takes ________ from you. If you think about it, you’ll notice that it takes an enormous amount of energy and is very stressful to be sitting at the edge of your seat trying to ________ what the person in front of you (or on the telephone) is going to say so that you can ________ your responses. But as you wait for the person you are communicating with to finish, as you simply listen more ________, to what is being said, you’ll notice that the pressure you feel is off. You will immediately feel more ________and so will the people you are talking to. They will feel safe in slowing down their own responses because they won’t feel in ________ with you for “air time”! Not only will becoming a better listener make you a more patient person, it will also ________ the quality of your relationships. Everyone loves to talk to someone who truly listens to what they are saying.