Sunday is more like Monday than it used to be. Places of business that used to keep daytime“business hours” are now open late into the night. And on the Internet, the hour of the day and the day of the week have become irrelevant（不相关的）. A half century ago in the United States, most people experienced strong and precise dividing lines between days of rest and days of work, school time and summer time. Today the boundaries still exist, but they seem not clear.

    The law in almost all states used to require stores to close on Sunday; in most, it no longer does. It used to keep the schools open in all seasons except summer; in most, it still does. And whether the work week should strengthen its legal limits, or whether it should become more “flexible,” is often debated. How should we, as a society, organize our time? Should we go even further in relaxing the boundaries of time until we live in a world in which every minute is much like every other?

    These are not easy questions even to ask. Part of the difficulty is that we rarely recognize the “law of time” even when we meet it face to face. We know as children that we have to attend school a certain number of hours, a certain number of days, a certain number of years — but unless we meet the truant officer (学监), we may well think that we should go to school due to social custom and parents' demand rather than to the law. As adults we are familiar with “extra pay for overtime working,” but less familiar with the fact that what constitutes（构成）“overtime” is a matter of legal definition. When we turn the clock forward to start daylight-saving time, have we ever thought to ourselves: “Here is the law in action”? As we shall see, there is a lot of law that has great influence on how we organize and use time: compulsory education law, overtime law, and daylight-saving law — as well as law about Sunday closing, holidays, being late to work, time zones, and so on. Once we begin to look for it, we will have no trouble finding a law of time to examine and assess.

    China, org. cn selected its top 10 people who moved China in 2012. These heroes included a jet engineer, a businessman, a teacher, as well as nurses and migrant workers. Here are the accounts of the exemplary deeds of Zhang Lili, a teacher. Zhang Lili is a teacher at the No. 19 Middle School in Jiamusi, Heilongjiang Province. She suffered from serious injuries after saving two students from being hit by an oncoming bus on May 8.

    Zhang and her students were crossing the road just outside the school gate when suddenly a runaway school bus changed direction towards the students. Zhang managed to push both students out of the vehicle's destructive (破坏的，毁灭性的）path, but she herself did get run over. Her legs were crushed and later had to be cut off above the knee.

    Bom on Jan. 19, 1984，in Jiamusi, Zhang was a 168cm-tall lively and cheerful young woman who had devoted herself entirely to her job. She got married in 2009. The couple planned on having a baby after the graduation of her class.

    Zhang's act of heroism has moved a large number of people. She was even named “the most beautiful teacher” by netizens. She was awarded the “May I Labor Medal” and given the title of “Female Pace-setter” by authorities. She became a Party member in July.

    Writing it down

    Unlike some other European languages, English is a little tricky when it comes to writing. How a word is pronounced and how it is actually spelt can be very different things.

    Same spelling, different meanings

Imagine, then, a situation where two words are spelt and pronounced exactly the same way, but have completely different meanings. Welcome to the world of homonyms（同形同音异义词）. Take, for example, the word "fair"—it can be a kind of festival, an adjective to describe the colour of your hair or how you should play a game. Or "leg", which can be attached to a person, or a table and can also be a distance you travel, or a part of a competition.

Don't take it literally（字面意思）

So how do you know which meaning someone is referring to? You don't, except by the context. Obviously, if someone asks you to "give them a hand", they don't want you to remove what is at the end of your arm.

What's in a name?

    Sometimes even the context doesn't help much—the result can be amusing. These sentences play with the double meaning of a noun:

    Sentence 1: I used to be a banker, but I lost interest.

Sentence 2: A small boy swallowed some coins and had to go to hospital. When his grandmother phoned to ask how he was, the nurse said: "No change yet".

    More ambiguity（歧义）

    Sentence 3 plays with the different meanings of a verb:

    Sentence 3: I wondered why the ball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Double trouble

    And sometimes a word can be a noun and a verb, but have different meanings. Can you work this one out?

    Sentence 4: Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

    If you like these homonyms, you will be pleased to know that English has plenty more!

    There was a time in the 1960's and 1970's when some people believed that coffee would replace tea as Britain's favourite drink, but that did not happen, and today, tea remains Britain's favourite drink.

    To say that the British are fond of tea is something of an understatement. From the Royal(皇室的) Family down to the homeless and the out-of-work, tea is more than just a pleasure. It is an important part of life!

    The popularity of tea in the United Kingdom has a long history. It was in 1657 that Thomas Garway, the owner of a coffee house, sold the first tea in London. The drink soon became popular as another choice besides coffee.

    In those days, however, tea was not something for anyone. For a century and a half, it remained an expensive drink. Many bosses served a cup of it to their workers in the middle of the morning, thus inventing a lasting British tradition, the “tea break”. But as a social drink outside the workplace, tea was served for the nobility(贵族) and for the growing middle classes. Among those who had the money for tea, it became very popular as a drink to be enjoyed in cafés and “tea gardens”.

    It was the 7th Duchess of Bedford who, in around 1800, started the popular “afternoon tea”, which took place at about four o'clock. At about the same time, the Earl of Sandwich popularized a new way of eating bread with something (e. g. jam) between them, and before long, a small meal at the end of the afternoon with tea and sandwiches had become part of a way of life.

    As tea became much cheaper during the nineteenth century, its popularity spread right through British society. In working-class households, it was served with the main meal of the day, eaten when workers returned home after a day's labour. This meal has become known as “high tea”.

    Today, tea can be drunk at any time of day. Most people in Britain drink tea for breakfast. The mid-morning “tea break” is an institution in British offices and factories. Later in the day, “afternoon tea” is still a way of life in the south of England and among the middle classes, while “high tea” has remained a tradition in the north of Britain.

Western monarch butterflies(帝王蝶)spend their winters on the central California coast. A few months later, they produce young in the Central Valley and as far north and east as Idaho. But where they go in between remains an open question to biologists. Therefore, a group of biologists call on anyone who spots a monarch north of Santa Barbara this spring to get a quick shot(镜头)and email them the photo with a date and a location.

"Something's going on in early spring," said Cheryl Schultz, a professor at Washington State University Vancouver. "Winter survival isn't the problem in the short term, but they don't know whether the monarchs are not making it producing places, not finding plants to feed themselves along the way," she said.

The Western monarch population stood in the millions in the 1980s. In 2017, an annual count found 200,000 butterflies. In 2018, the number fell to about 30, 000-a figure that held steady last year. The monarchs' decline is part of a large trend among dozens of butterfly species in the West. What exactly caused the decline? Biologists attach it to a variety of reasons. Many chemicals are sprayed on the milkweed(乳草)monarchs will feed on. Climate change also plays a role in challenges facing monarchs. Yet, they're not nearly as threatening as those leading to loss of their living room. Farms used to have rough borders that were grounds for the plants monarchs love and live in. However, newly applied practices pushed crops to the edge of fields.

"Butterflies often have good and bad years. We do think there's potential to turn the situation around." Dr. Schultz said. And she said she saw two reasons for that. First, the population decline seen in 2017 ~ 2018 wasn't repeated last year. And second, she's seen butterfly populations recover before.