In China, there are usually two reasons why people receive messages from friends and relatives from whom they haven’t heard for a while. The first is about New Year greetings, which are always welcome. The second reason is often less pleasant, however; people are increasingly contacting long lost friends, or even casual acquaintances(泛泛之交), and urging them to cast online votes for their children or grandchildren in competitions.

The practice, which has been growing rapidly, has now reached the point where people are becoming tired and may even feel annoyed.

The results of a recent survey conducted by the Jinhua Evening News in East China’s Zhejiang Province show that 94 percent of 384 interviewees were once asked by friends or relatives to cast votes online for their children. The contests range from the cutest baby to dancing competitions. Most people receiving the messages haven’t heard from the sender for a long time and have never met the child involved.

Although the competitions may appear to be fun, some education professionals are concerned that they could have a negative effect on children.

Tang Sulan, a member of the CPPCC’s National Committee (全国政协)，proposed a ban on online competitions featuring children to prevent future psychological issues. She was also concerned that publicdisclosureof a child’s personal information and publication of photos cause a potential(潜在的) risk to the child’s safety.

Li Hongyan, the mother of an l1-year-old girl and an 18-month-old boy in Beijing, said she has never urged others to vote for her children. Although on the surface the children are competing among themselves via(通过) their parents’ social networks, the competitions are also about parents seeking a “sense of victory” for themselves, she said. “It feels as though parents are using their babies as tools to win glory for themselves, rather than truly respecting their kids’ dignity and nature.” However, despite her dislike of the contests, she has twice voted for the babies of close friends because “it would be embarrassing to say no”.

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Goldfish have pretty boring lives, so maybe it’s a good thing they can only concentrate for nine seconds! But according to new research, humans are becoming like goldfish. Our attention span（时长）is getting shorter... and it’s all because of technology.

“We move quickly from one site to another on the web,” says Doctor Ted Selker, a computer scientist from Massachusetts, “and we are losing the ability to concentrate.” With millions of websites to choose from, the attention span of the average internet user is just seconds. There are other digital distraction（分心）too: email, instant messaging and quickie moves on websites.

Some people are worried about the effect on young people. “You need time to understand and think about what you read,” says Julia Wood, from London. “Young people search the net all the time and their brains become full of useless information but there is no time to make sense of it. I am trying to persuade my pupils to read more books, so that they concentrate on one subject for longer.”

Other teachers are trying more unusual methods to improve students’ concentration. Anne Savan, from Wales, was so worried about her students that she started playing Mozart during her science lessons. She says that it had an amazing effect: “The music made them calmer, and their concentration was much better.”

But not everyone believes that there is a problem. Ray Cole, an educational psychologist says: “On the web, young people learn to make quick decisions about what is and isn’t worth reading. They might look at five unhelpful websites very quickly, before stopping and reading a sixth useful website more carefully. In a world with so much information available, this is an important skill.”

In his book The Tipping Point Canadian author Malcolm Gladwell explains how a trend can take many forms. It can be a general change in social behavior, an idea or a fashion. However, why do some trends catch on and others not? What makes one particular brand of training shoe suddenly become the must-have product? How do people find out about trends and what makes people want to buy into them? Is it simply a question of keeping up with other people?

In his new work, Gladwell explores the moment when something becomes common and how products, ideas, messages and forms of behavior spread. He looks at the reasons why trends are similar in the way they develop to outbreaks of disease, or medical epidemics(流行病) .

Epidemics, like trends, start in a very small way, maybe from a single person with a virus, then spread very quickly until they take over the population and appear to be everywhere. Eventually, they will slow down gradually or die out suddenly. Gladwell shows how these changes happen not gradually but at one sudden moment.

Gladwell identifies three types of people who are influential in the development of these kinds of social epidemics:

Connectors are people in a community who have wide social circles. They know a lot of people and like to introduce people to each other. The people they know often come from a variety of social, cultural, professional and economic circles.

Mavens are people with a lot of knowledge or experts in a particular field. They wish to pass on their knowledge to others. Mavenscollect and gather information, so they are the first to pick up on new trends.

Salesmen are people with charisma. They have a “soft” influence over people rather than actual power. This means they are influential because people want to imitate them.

Overall, Gladwell’s book is a thought-provoking read for anyone interested in the origins of trends. What’s more, he writes in a clear style so even the most difficult ideas are easy to understand.

 We know a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of reading a hard-copy book vs reading electronically. The problem is, many of us refuse to listen.

   Don't get me wrong: Digital reading has some real. advantages. Ask people what they like most about reading on digital screens, and you hear over and again about convenience. More points for digital reading: e-books tend to be cheaper. There's also the environmental argument. Think of the trees!

   Yet the soundness of this case is arguable. The earth metals to build e-readers are not just rare but highly poisonous. And think about all that energy needed to run servers and cooling fans. And remember, trees are a renewable resource.

   Then, there's the appeal of a hard copy. Many people prefer print when reading both for pleasure and for school or work. Drawing examples from my own research, some of the reasons are aesthetic(美学的). Others involve a sense of accomplishment, ease of annotation ("I can write on the pages"), and navigation ("easy to locate where I was"). Meanwhile, I hear abundant complaints about eye strain(干涩) and headaches when using screens.

   Much of what students liked about reading print involved their minds. They say "it's easier to focus." Some also acknowledged they took more time with printed text and read more carefully.

   But what makes the failure of electronic reading is concentration. More than 92 percent of those I surveyed said they concentrate best when reading a hard copy. When a digital device has an Internet connection, it's hard to resist the temptation(诱惑).

   So if digital interruptions don't threaten your enjoyment or understanding of a text, then medium may not matter. Casual reading like David Baldacci? If you break to check sports scores, little harm done. But just don't expect to understand Joyce's novels this way.

Cell Phone Are the New Cigarette

When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you are at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get in to a lift, you play with it.

Cigarette? Cup of coffee? No, it’s the third most addictive thing in modern life, the cell phone. Experts say that it is becoming more difficult for many people to curb their longing to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships.

With its shiny surface and its smooth and satisfying touch, the cell phone connects us to the world even as it disconnects us from people three feet away. In just the past couple of years, the cell phone has challenged people in ways its inventors in the late 1940s never imagined.

The costs are becoming even more obvious, and I don’t mean just the monthly bill. Dr. Chris Knippers, working at the Betty Ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem not much different from other harmful addictions: a problem that limits one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality.

Sounds extreme, but weˈve all witnessed the evidence: the person at restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table; the women who talks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband; the teen who texts messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him.

Is it just rude, or is it a kind of unhealthiness? And pardon me, but how is this improving the quality of life?

Jim Williams, an industrial sociologist based in Massachusetts, notes that cell-phone addiction is part of a set of symptoms in a widening gulf of personal separation. He points to a study by Duke University researchers that found one-quarter of Americans say they have no one to discuss their most important personal business with, Williams says studies show that we donˈt have as many friends as our parents. “Just as more information has led to less wisdom, more acquaintances via the Internet and cell phones have produced fewer friends.” he says.

An old lady was walking with her basket down the middle of a street in Petrograd to the great confusion of the traffic and with no small danger to herself.It was pointed out to her that the pavement was the place for pedestrians, but she replied:“I’m going to walk where I like.We’ve got liberty now.”It did not occur to the dear old lady that if liberty entitled（授权）the pedestrian to walk down the middle of the road,then the end of such liberty would be universal chaos.Everybody would be getting in everybody else’s way and nobody would get anywhere.Individual liberty would have become social chaos.

There is a danger of the world getting liberty-drunk in these days like the old lady,and it is just as well to remind ourselves of what the rule of the road means.It means that in order that the liberties of all may be preserved, the liberties of everybody must be limited.When the policeman steps into the middle of the road and puts out his hand,he is the symbol not of tyranny（暴政）,but of liberty.

Liberty is not a personal affair only,but a social contract（契约）.In matters which do not touch anybody else’s liberty,of course,I may be as free as 1 like.If I go down the street dressed strangely,who shall say me no?We have a whole kingdom in which we rule alone and can do what we choose.But directly we step out of that kingdom,our personal liberty of action becomes qualified by other people’s liberty.

We all tend to forget this.A reasonable consideration for the rights or feelings of others is the base of social conduct.