I travel a lot, and I find out different “styles”  of directions every time I ask “How can I get to the post office?”

Foreign tourists are often confused in Japan because most streets there don’t have names; in Japan, people use landmarks in their directions instead of street names. For example, the Japanese will say to travelers, “Go straight down to the corner. Turn left at the big hotel and go past a fruit market. The post office is across from the bus stop.”

In the countryside of the American Midwest, there are not usually many landmarks. There are no mountains, so the land is very flat; in many places there are no towns or buildings within miles. Instead of landmarks, people will tell you directions and distances. In Kansas or Iowa, for example, people will say, “Go north two miles. Turn east, and then go another mile.”

People in Los Angeles, California, have no idea of distance on the map; they measure distance in time, not miles. “How far away is the post office?” you ask. “Oh,” they answer, “it’s about five minutes from here.” You say, “Yes, but how many miles away is it?” They don’t know.

It’s true that a person doesn’t know the answer to your question sometimes. What happens in such a situation? A New Yorker might say, ‘Sorry, I have no idea.” But in Yucatan, Mexico, no one answers “I don’t know.” People in Yucatan believe that “I don’t know” is impolite, They usually give an answer, often a wrong one. A tourist can get very, very lost in Yucatan!

“Everyone is entitled（有权）to their opinion" is a remark commonly heard in our society. We value free speech and the rights of the individual. The private preferences we keep, as long as they do not bother with the rights and freedoms of others, are ours to do with as we wish.

Children learn this central principle early on and soon become expert at using it effectively to suit their own purposes. The phrase "well, it's just my opinion" can act as a get-out clause which avoids further questioning or the need to give an explanation. A student may well prefer to put up a brick wall and so avoid the difficult task of providing a justification（正当的理由）for their view. They know the holy position freedom of speech holds for all of us and they know the taboo（禁忌）around challenging the opinions of others when they do not produce unfavorable effects on anyone else.

This can make things hard for the teacher. We want to promote tolerance and respect in our classrooms and give young people a sense: this is how one ought to behave. Yet, we are also seeking to develop reasoning and critical thinking. To some extent, there is an idea that people's views carry equal weight because all individuals ought to be treated equally. Treating people equally is different from treating what they say with equal weight, though. We need to make clear to students that the right to one's opinions does not ignore the need to support them with argument when called to do so.

Justification is the signal difference between opinion and argument. Opinions are stated;　arguments are advanced. Opinions are given; arguments are proposed. When we ask a student to explain themselves, we are asking them to give us something that will lend evidence to what they have said. We are asking them to convince us, to persuade us, to show us the reasonableness of what it is they are saying.

    D

     About 35 percent of British adults sleep with teddy bears. Many more share a bed with a partner or spouse(配偶). Others still co-sleep,alongside children in a family bed.

     But snuggling up(依偎) with your iPad? A recent survey by marketing agency Rosetta found that 68 percent of tablet(平板电脑) owners use the device in the bedroom, more than in any other location. The living room took a close second place, at 63 percent,reports AdAge.com, and only 45 percent of respondents said they use their tablets on the go.

     But bringing devices into the bedroom is a bad idea, if quality rest is your goal. One of the most important triggers(触发物) of sleepiness is darkness, which signals to the brain that it’s time to start speeding up production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin(荷尔蒙褪黑素). But, as the New York Times points out, in our modern world,we are exposed to light long after the sun sets. While any type of light can disturb your sleep, the blue wavelength light given off by cell phones, laptops, tablets and other gadgets(小玩意) is particularly troublesome. Research shows that this blue light triggers alertness--so decisively that it can actually be used to fight tiredness.

    According to the National Sleep Foundation, 95 percent of Americans use some device, whether it’s a TV, laptop, cell phone or other e-products, within an hour of killing time.  “Artificial light exposure between dusk and the time we go to bed at night push our sleeping sense to a later hour—making it more difficult to fall aleep,” said Charles Czeisler, Ph.D., M.D., chief of the division of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

    Instead, experts recommend turning off all devices an hour before bedtime and finding another method for relaxation, like reading a book, taking a warm bath or performing a series of calming yoga poses. It’s also a good idea to exercise and lay off the caffeine several hours before bedtime.

“People are ruder today because they are rushed and more ‘time poor’ than ever before,” says Patsy Rowe, “ Manners have fallen off the radar(雷达).” Due to our strong attraction to electronic equipment it is a wonder more people don’t wake up each morning and greet the singing birds with a complaint（抱怨）about the noise. Here are some examples of rudeness.
    Some people prefer to do almost everything over the internet. To them, dealing with an actual human is like an evolutionary step backward. It feels very slow because humans don’t work at 4G speeds. When you have dinner with friends, you will often notice someone paying more attention to his mobile phone. We have programmed ourselves to think that every new message brings life-changing news, so taking calls and checking our texts are more important than talking to the people we are with. What is worse, some people even tend to send anonymous（匿名的）rude messages by email.
    However, rudeness is never acceptable. Don’t assume it is OK to be rude if the person you’re in touch with won’t recognize you. If you have something awful to say, have the courage to face the person and say it, write a letter or email and sign it, or forget it. Upsetting people with unsigned messages is cruel and disgusting.

We shouldn’t blame technology for our shortcomings. Technology is here to help us, but we should not allow it to take over our lives. An important step is acknowledging our shortcomings. People spend a lot of time pointing out bad manners but it would be even more helpful if we′d publicly acknowledge good manners when we see them.

Traditionally, fashion retailers (零售商) had four collections per year, one for each season, but nowadays fast-fashion companies can design and manufacture (大量生产) clothes in as little as four weeks. Fast fashion means that the latest designs that appear at the fashion shows in Paris, London, etc. can be copied and shown within a month.

    The advantages of rapidly changing fashions are clear. Shortening the product life cycle means if a design doesn't sell well within a week, it is taken out of the shops and a new design is chosen. This is good for the manufacturer as it means vaster sales, and good for the customer as they can keep up with fast-moving trends cheaply — and every time they visit the store, there is something new.

    However, there are also a number of disadvantages to this approach. One of them is the theft of ideas. Fashion houses spend a lot of time and money on new ideas, only to see these ideas copied for free by fast-fashion companies. Perhaps the greatest concern is the influence on the environment of wasted clothes. Buying twelve new sets of clothes rather than four means that more clothes will be thrown away. In addition, with fashions changing so quickly, cotton growers need to produce more cotton more cheaply, and that means using more chemicals.

    At the other end of the fashion industry is designer clothing. At the same time as fast fashion is taking off in the West, Asian consumers are buying more and more expensive, luxury (奢侈) brands. Many buy branded clothes just to show that they can afford them but others choose them for quality. What's your choice? We'd like to hear your comments about the fashion industry today.

If you see a group of people dancing and singing on the street or in the railway station, you don’t need to feel surprised. They are a flash mob(暴民). Who are they? Are they mobs? Don’t be confused by their name. Actually, a flash mob is a group of people who gather suddenly in a public place, do something unusual for a brief period of time, and then quickly disappear.

They are usually organized with the help of the Internet or other digital communications networks. The messages may be sent to friends, who send to more people. At a predetermined time, they gather and perform some activities such as exchanging books, coming together to look at the sky, waving their hands and yelling something at the top of their voice for 30 seconds. Then, they quickly disappear before the police can arrive. Using mobile phones, the flash mob can change its place if the first one has been cancelled for any reason.

Bill Lasik, senior editor of Harper’s Magazine, organized the first flash mob in Manhattan in May 2003 and the first successful flash mob came together on June 3, 2003. Wasik claimed that the he created the flash mob as a social experiment designed to laugh at fashion seekers and stress the cultural atmosphere of wanting to be an insider or part of “ the next big thing”.   

Flash mob gatherings can sometimes shock people. Such an activity might seem amusing and magical, but it also might frighten people who are not aware of what is taking place. Undoubtedly, flash mob can serve as good political tools and have great potential, such as using flash mobs to advertise a product.

 The flash mob is now becoming more and more popular. People use it to do many things. For example, in 2009, Michael Jackson’s fans took part in a flash mob to remember him. Hundreds of his fans gathered singing and dancing Michael’s famous song “Beat It” together. Flash mobs give people from all walks of life an opportunity to come together to create a memory.

      Bad news sells. If it bleeds, it leads. No news is good news, and good news is no news. Those are the classic rules for the evening broadcasts and the morning papers. But now that information is being spread and monitored (监控) in different ways, researchers are discovering new rules. By tracking people’s e-mails and online posts, scientists have found that good news can spread faster and farther than disasters and sob stories.

      “The ‘if it bleeds’ rule works for mass media,” says Jonah Berger, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. “They want your eyeballs and don’t care how you’re feeling. But when you share a story with your friends, you care a lot more how they react. You don’t want them to think of you as a Debbie Downer.”

         Researchers analyzing word-of-mouth communication—e-mails, Web posts and reviews, face-to-face conversations — found that it tended to be more positive than negative(消极的), but that didn’t necessarily mean people preferred positive news. Was positive news shared more often simply because people experienced more good things than bad things? To test for that possibility, Dr. Berger looked at how people spread a particular set of news stories: thousands of articles on The New York Times’ website. He and a Penn colleague analyzed the “most e-mailed” list for six months. One of his first findings was that articles in the science section were much more likely to make the list than non-science articles. He found that science amazed Times’ readers and made them want to share this positive feeling with others.

          Readers also tended to share articles that were exciting or funny, or that inspired negative feelings like anger or anxiety, but not articles that left them merely sad. They needed to be aroused(激发) one way or the other, and they preferred good news to bad. The more positive an article, the more likely it was to be shared, as Dr. Berger explains in his new book, “Contagious: Why Things Catch On.”

A

    If you have a chance to go to Finland, you will probably be surprised to find how "foolish" the Finnish people are.

    Take the taxi drivers for example. Taxis in Finland are mostly high-class Benz with a fare of two US dollars a kilometer. You can go anywhere in one, tell the driver to drop you at any place, say that you have some business to attend to, and then walk off without paying your fare. The driver would not show the least sign of anxiety.

    The dining rooms in all big hotels not only serve their guests, but also serve outside diners. Hotel guests have their meals free, so they naturally go to the free dining rooms to have their meals. The most they would do to show their good faith is to wave their registration card to the waiter. With such a loose check, you can easily use any old registration card to take a couple of friends to dine free of charge.

    The Finnish workers are paid by the hour. They are very much on their own as soon as they have agreed with the boss on the rate (价钱). From then on, they just say how many hours they have worked and they will be paid accordingly (相应的).

    With so many loopholes (漏洞) in everyday life, surely Finland must be a heaven to those who love to take "petty advantages". But the strange thing is, all the taxi passengers would always come back to pay their fare after they have attended to their business; not a single outsider has ever been found in the free hotel dining rooms. And workers always give an honest account of the exact hours they put in. As the Finns always act on good faith in everything they do, living in such a society has turned everyone into a real "gentleman".

    In a society of such high moral practice, what need is there for people to be on guard against others?

         In the past, people who graduated from college felt proud of their academic(学业的) achievements and felt confident that their degree（学位）would help them to find a good job.

        However, in the past four years, the job market has changed greatly. This year’s college graduates are facing one of the worst job markets. For example, Ryan Stewart, a graduate of San Jose State University, got a degree in religious studies, but no job prospects. He points out that many people already working are getting laid off and don’t have jobs, so it’s even harder for new college graduates to find jobs.

        Four years ago, the future looked bright. There were many high-tech job chances. Graduates received many job offers（工作机会）, and they were able to get jobs with high salaries and benefits. However, “Times have changed and it’s a new market.” according to an officer of the San Jose State Career Center.

       Many students started preparing for their future jobs two years ago. They worked during summer vacations, they have had several short-time jobs, and they’ve majored in one of the few fields that are still hot, like chemical engineering, accounting, or nursing, where average starting salaries have actually increased over last year. Other popular fields (like information system management, computer science, and political science) have seen big declines(下降) in starting salaries.

      In conclusion, these days a degree may not be a ticket to instant wealth for some students. For now, they can only hope the value of their degree will increase over time.

Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for family, health, and life in general. However, Black Friday has turned it into a business.

Traditionally, the true value of Thanksgiving lies at home not the shopping centers. However, Black Friday has nowadays allowed society to ignore this as individuals long for something that they do not need or even truly want. Shopping on Black Friday becomes a sign of a shift into a culture that values material wealth over spending time with loved ones. People are willing to force their way through the crowds in their desperate search for marked­down sweaters and necklaces.

In recent years, Thanksgiving has become a pre­Black Friday holiday for many families. They are devoted to mapping out shopping routes and making organized schedules for which stores to hit first. By drawing individuals out to shopping centers with “matchless savings”, businesses encourage this behavior of ignoring Thanksgiving. Many families take their home­cooked meals while camping out atthe door of shopping centers. With each new year, Thanksgiving is becoming victim toover­commercialization—switching from a meaningful time of thanks and family to a day devoted to products and profit.

Black Friday has shown that with current common standards, people cannot even set aside a single day to appreciate what they already have without immediately buying more. Families have lost sight of what is truly important in life, and have found reasons in debating between a low cost HD television and an appreciation for what they already have. Remember, Thanksgiving should be a day in which people are grateful for all that they have.