A man walked into a small Irish pub and ordered three beers. Bartender was surprised, but he served that man three beers. One hour later the man ordered three beers again. The very next day that man ordered three beers again and drank quietly at a table. This repeated several times and shortly after the people of the town were whispering about the man, who was ordering three beers at once.

    A couple of weeks later, the bartender decided to clear this out and inquired: “I do not want to pry, but could you explain, why do you order three beers all the time?” The man replied: “It seems strange, isn't it? You see, my two brothers live abroad at the moment, one – in France and another – in Italy. We have made an agreement, that every time we go to pub each of us will order extra two beers and it will help keeping up the family bond”.

    Soon all the town have heard about the man's answer and liked it a lot. The man became a local celebrity. Residents of the town were telling this story to newcomers or tourists and even invited them to that pub to look at Three Beer Man.

    However, one day the man came to pub and ordered only two beers, not three as usual. The bartender served him with bad feeling. All that evening the man ordered and drank only two beers. The very next day all the town was talking about this news, some people pray for the soul of one of the brothers, others quietly grieve.

    When the man came to pub the next time and ordered two beers again, the bartender asked him: “I would like to offer condolences to you, due to the death of your dear brother”. The man considered this for a moment and then replied: “Oh, you are probably surprised that I order only two beers now? Well, my two brothers are alive and well. It's just because of my decision. I promised myself to give up drinking.”

    Were dinosaurs (恐龙) warm-blooded or cold-blooded? According to a new study, scientists have found that they were somewhere in the middle. This new study shows that dinosaurs were very different from most of today's animals that are either warm or cold-blooded.

    “I think we were all surprised by this,” said Felisa Smith from the University of New Mexico. “The idea certainly took some getting used to.”

    A study by a team of scientists led by John M. Grady of the university studied many different kinds of dinosaurs in their research. They looked at growth rate (比率), body temperature and body size of different kinds of dinosaurs.

    How are warm-blooded animals different from cold-blooded animals? Warm-blooded animals like humans can control their body temperature. They eat a lot, and burn calories (卡路里) quickly. They have a more active lifestyle than cold-blooded animals. While cold-blooded animals such as snakes do not control their body temperature. Instead, they must use sunlight to keep warm, and they move much more slowly. Cold-blooded animals do not need to eat very much. Their bodies slow down in colder temperatures.

    Besides dinosaurs, there are other animals that are not completely warm-blooded or cold-blooded, such as great white sharks.

    Ever since it was created 30 years ago, The Simpsons, the longest running prime-time (黄金时段) TV show in the country, has become part of US life. So when TV critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz ranked the 100 greatest comedies and dramas broadcast in the US, it came as no surprise that The Simpsons was their top choice.

    This was the show that changed the very concept (概念) of cartoons in Western society. Before it appeared, cartoons were considered a way to learn and have fun, not serious adult entertainment. The Simpsons changed this. The genius (过人之处) of the show is that it has something to offer both adults and children.

    It's a hugely entertaining program that's also full of satire (讽刺) and clever humor. A remark by Chitra Ramaswamy in The Guardian gave a sense of the esteem (敬重) in which The Simpsons is held: “Nothing before or since has matched its capacity to be at once so profoundly (深刻地) clever and so unbelievably stupid.”

    The show's creator Matt Groening, and the brilliant team that work with him, make fun of the US government, social customs, and of course, the idea of family life. But unlike classic US prime-time TV characters, the Simpsons are a dysfunctional (功能失调的) family.

    Bart, the boy, is always in trouble – both at home and at school. That may be in part because of his paternal (父亲的) example. Homer Simpson, perhaps the most iconic character, is a beer-swilling (喝着啤酒的), overweight slob (懒汉) who is normally found in front of the TV. And Marge, Homer's wife and the mother of the family, spends most of her time cooking, cleaning or trying to fix the messes that Bart and Homer make.

    The smartest member of the family is daughter Lisa, who excels (表现卓越) at school but is no goody-goody (讨好卖乖的人): Lisa never misses an opportunity to challenge authority. The youngest member of the family is baby Maggie, who will likely be as much a trouble as her brother and sister when she grows up – if she ever grows up, that is.

    But although the Simpsons are a problem family, viewers are always on their side. One of the reasons the show has remained so popular all these years is that the characters are so likeable. Millions of us identify with (同情) them. They are a working class family struggling to make ends meet. They aren't perfect, but then, who is? And after 30 years, this is still what strikes a chord (引起共鸣) with millions of viewers worldwide.

    Public transport is declining in the rich world. To those who have to squeeze onto the number 25 bus in London, or the A train in New York, the change might not be noticeable. But public transport is becoming less busy in those places, and passenger numbers are flat or falling in almost every American city. That is despite healthy growth in urban populations and employment.

    Although transport agencies blame their unpopularity on things like road works and broken signals, it seems more likely that they are being outcompeted. App-based taxi services like Uber and Lyft are more comfortable and convenient than trains or buses. Cycling is nicer than it was, and rental bikes are more widely available. Cars are cheap to buy, thanks to cut-rate loans, and ever cheaper to run. Online shopping, home working and office-sharing mean more people can avoid travelling altogether.

    The competition is only likely to grow. More than one laboratory is developing new transport technologies and applications. Silicon Valley invented Uber and, more recently, apps that let people rent electric scooters(滑板车) and then abandon them on the pavement. China created sharing-bicycles and battery-powered "e-bikes", both of which are spreading.

    Transport agencies should accept the upstarts, and copy them. Cities tend either to ignore app-based services or to try to push them off the streets. That is understandable, given the rules-are-for-losers attitude of firms like Uber. But it is an error.

    It is doubtful that most people make hard distinctions between public and private transport. They just want to get somewhere, and there is a cost in time, money and comfort. An ideal system would let them move across a city for a single payment, transferring from trains to taxis to bicycles as needed. Building a platform to allow that is hard, and requires much sweet-talking of traditional networks as well as technology firms. It is probably the secret to keeping cities moving.

    On a hot summer weekend, Jorge Ayub saw the public beach north of Boston already crowded with nearly 1 million people drawn to the annual sand sculpture festival. Traffic on the nearby road was heavy, bands played music loudly, and later that night fireworks would light up the beach.

    And on the sand were four pairs of tiny shorebirds. These chicks(小鸟) were still too young to fly and a precious addition to the national endeavor to save a bird once down to 139 pairs in Massachusetts. It was Mr. Ayub's job. "Everyone made it," Ayub, a coastal ecologist reported at the end of the long weekend over the nests.

    Once common, piping plovers(笛鸻) were hunted and then squeezed out of their habitats(栖息地) by coastal development until, in 1986, the federal government listed the Atlantic Coastal birds as threatened. The bird's recovery has been halting. After three decades, the Atlantic population stands just under the 2,000-pair goal set by federal law.

    But the star has been Massachusetts, which has seen plovers increase to 687pairs from 139 pairs in 1986. One reason for that: "chick-sitting" in which conservationists sometimes spend all day watching over the birds.

    That progress has made Massachusetts the only East Coast state that decided to relax some Endangered Species Act restrictions: for example, to reduce the fenced-off areas and vehicle limits that have annoyed residents(居民).

    “Look at the stretch(一片土地), "Anyb says. "We had six nesting pairs between here and that bathhouse 600 yards away. By regulation, each nest should have 100 yards of fencing. We could have put up fencing and closed the beach all the way to the bathhouse."

    Instead, the plovers are surrounded in much smaller areas by "symbolic fencing". None of the 52 seawall entrances to the beach are closed. "If we put up too much fencing, people will be upset, and they are going to destroy it or walk right through the nesting areas," Ayub says. "By opening the beach, people are happier and the species does better."

    If you want to spark a heated debate at a dinner party, bring up the topic of genetically modified foods. For many people, the concept of genetically altered, high-tech crop production raises all kinds of environmental, healthy, safety and ethical questions. Particularly in countries with long a grain traditions—and vocal green lobbies—the idea seems against nature.

    In fact, genetically modified foods are already very much apart of our lives. A third of corn and more than half the soybeans and cotton grown in the U. S. last year were the product of biotechnology, according to the Department of Agriculture. More than 65 million acres of genetically modified crops will be planted in the U. S. this year. The genetic genie(鬼怪) is out of the bottle.

    Yet there are clearly some very real issues that need to be resolved. Like any new product entering the food chain, genetically modified foods must be subjected to rigorous testing. In wealthy countries, the debate about biotech is tempered by the fact that we have a rich array of foods to choose from and a supply that far exceeds our needs. In developing countries desperate to feed fast-growing and underfed populations, the issue is simpler and much more urgent: Do the benefits of biotech outweigh the risks？

    The statistics on population growth and hunger are disturbing. Last year the world's population reached 6 billion. The U. N. estimates that nearly 800 million people around the world are undernourished. The effects are devastating. About 400 million women of child-bearing age are iron deficient, which means their babies are exposed to various birth defects. As many as 100 million children suffer from vitamin A deficiency, a leading cause of blindness.

    How can biotech help? Biotechnologists have developed genetically modified rice that is fortified with beta-carotene—which the body converts into vitamin A—and additional iron, and they are working on other kinds of nutritionally improved crops. Biotech can also improve farming productivity in places where food shortages are caused by crop damage attributable to pests, drought, poor soil and crop viruses, bacteria or fungi.