Whether you love happy endings or a dark reality in TV dramas,you could soon be able to decide what you get. Netflix,the TV-streaming company behind hit shows such as The Crown and House Of Cards,is working on ways to give viewers control of key plot decisions.

    Some of the storylines will be simple and linear,like the Choose Your Own Adventure books that many grew up with.For example,viewers might decide whether a prisoner in the drama Orange Is The New Black joins a gang (黑帮) or not.

    The technology could also potentially be used to allow Princess Margaret to marry Peter Townsend in The Crown,instead of having her relationship with the divorcee (离婚者) blocked by the Establishment.Other storylines will be much more complex,allowing viewers to connect plot points in a variety of ways using their TV remotes.

    A source said,"We're doing work on branch narratives (叙事) so you are actually making choices as you watch. All the content will be there,and then people will have to get through it in different ways.We'll see how it plays out. It's an experiment.We'll see if it gets much success.For creators,it's a new field."

    Actors would film numerous alternate plot segments (片段) in advance,letting viewers choose which route to take through the story.Netflix will run a trial with choose-your-own-adventure shows for children later this year, based on an established character.If they are successful,it will use the format for TV programmes aimed at adults. Netflix president Reed Hastings confirmed that the company is working on interactive shows,saying,"Once you have got interactivity,you can try anything."

    At least five million UK households are thought to be signed up to Netflix,and it is challenging traditional broadcasters.Earlier this year,BBC boss Lord Hall promised to reinvent the iPlayer so that it overtakes Netflix as a destination in its own right,rather than a catch-up service.

    Decision-thinking is not unlike poker—it often matters not only what you think, but also what others think you think and what you think they think you think. The mental process is similar. Naturally, this card game has often been of considerable interest to people who are, by any standards, good thinkers.

    The great mathematician John von Neumann was one of the founders of game theory. In particular , he showed that all games fall into two classes : there are what he called games of “ perfect information ”,games like chess where the players can't hide anything or play tricks : they don't win by chance , but by means of logic and skills . Then there are games of “imperfect information”, like poker, in which it is impossible to know in advance that one course of action is better than another.

    One mistaken idea about business is that it can be treated as a game of “perfect information”. Quite the reverse, business, polities, life itself are games which we must normally play with very imperfect information. Business decisions are often made with many unknown and unknowable factors, which would even puzzle the best poker players. But few business people find it comfortable to admit that they are taking a chance, and many still prefer to believe that they are playing chess, not poker.

    However wealthy we may be, we can never find enough hours in the day to do everything we want. Economics deals with this problem through the concept of opportunity cost, which simply refers to whether someone's time or money could be better spent on something else.

    Every hour of our time has a value. For every hour we work at one job we could quite easily be doing another, or be sleeping or watching a film. Each of these options has a different opportunity cost—namely, what they cost us in missed opportunities.

    Say you intend to watch a football match but the tickets are expensive and it will take you a couple of hours to get to and from the stadium. Why not, you might reason, watch the game from home and use the leftover money and time to have dinner with friends? This—the alternative use of your cash and time—is the opportunity cost.

    For economists, every decision is made by knowledge of what one must forgo—in terms of money and enjoyment—in order to take it up. By knowing precisely what you are receiving and what you are missing out on, you ought to be able to make better-informed, more reasonable decisions. Consider that most famous economic rule of all: there's no such thing as a free lunch. Even if someone offers to take you out to lunch for free, the time you will spend in the restaurant still costs you something in terms of forgone opportunities.

    Some people find the idea of opportunity cost extremely discouraging: imagine spending your entire life calculating whether your time would be better spent elsewhere doing something more profitable or enjoyable. Yet, in a sense it's human nature to do precisely that—we assess the advantages and disadvantages of decisions all the time.

    In the business world, a popular phrase is “value for money.” People want their cash to go as far as possible. However, another is fast obtaining an advantage: “value for time.” The biggest restriction on our resources is the number of hours we can devote to something, so we look to maximize the return we get on our investment of time. By reading this passage you are giving over a bit of your time which could be spent doing other activities, such as sleeping and eating. In return, however, this passage will help you to think like an economist, closely considering the opportunity cost of each of your decisions.

    Gift buying for 11 to 14-year-olds can produce memories of that classic complainer. “This gift is too old.” “This gift is too young.” “This gift was popular, like, five minutes ago.” Don't stress. Our fun gifts are sure to make you smile.

—Judy Sutton Taylor

    Snowball Launcher

The kids on your list will be happy to drop their electronic devices and head outside during the next big snowstorm thanks to this gift that launches snowballs up to 70 feet. A practice target is included to ensure they're ready for a hard battle. $16.97 at amazon.com

    Nintendo Switch

    Gamers went crazy for this mixed gaming system when it was released last spring, and it was in consistently short supply until now. The device allows users to play solo or with a friend, connect it to a TV to play on a big screen, unfold the stand for tabletop competitions, or use it for hand-held play. $299.99; links to licensed retailers at nintendo.com or amazon.com

Mertritte Animal Headphone

    Tunes will no doubt sound sweeter to lovers of any music genre when they5re coming from these cute-as-can-be headphones designed by celebrity stylists Emily Current and Merritt Elliott. The gold finish adds some fun flare (闪光装置) that is sure to inspire copycats. $59 at pbteen.com

BBOP Balls

    If there's a more entertaining way to settle sibling differences than having warring brothers and sisters bump into each other putting on mega-sized bubble armor (盔甲), we'd like to know about it. Chances are, even what may seem like the most catastrophic conflicts will end in belly laughs after a few rounds wearing these. $69.98 for a set of two at hearthsong.com or amazon.com.

    Empathy is the ability to share and understand the emotions of others. It is a construct of multiple components, each of which is associated with its own brain network. New research has found empathy may have a genetic component that affects personality, and cognition, psychiatric (relating to mental illness) conditions. The findings are highlighted in a new study led by researchers at the University of Cambridge, the University Paris Diderot and the Institute Pasteur, and 23andMe.

    Published yesterday in Molecular Psychiatry, the first study found evidence that genes influence our ability to read and understand emotions in others. The team at the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge analyzed data from 89,000 individuals worldwide, the majority of whom were 23andMe customers, who were willing to be researched.

    Participants completed a “Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test”, in which they were shown photos of the area around the eyes and asked to identify one of two possible emotions. This assessed Theory of Mind and the ability to recognize and appreciate another person's mental state. Researchers identified that women with certain genetic variants（变异）on chromosome（染色体）3 performed better, with higher levels of empathy. Interestingly, male performance on the test was not associated with a genetic variant. Overall, women consistently performed better than men, exhibiting higher levels of empathy.

    The genetic variant associated with empathy in women is near the gene LRRN1(Leucine Rich Neuronal 1) on chromosome 3, which is highly active in an area of the human brain. Brain scans have indicated that this section of the brain may play a role in cognition empathy.

    This is also the unprecedented study that relates measures of empathy with variation in the human genome（基因组）. Previous research that has attempted to assess the genetic associations of personality and psychological traits has sometimes been unreliable, due to their small sample size. 23andMe's large data offering enables scientists to gain insight into the biology behind features such as empathy.

    23andMe is committed to furthering such research and approximately 85 percent of customers agrees to allow their de-identified（去识别的）data to be made available for study. By allowing scientists access to its unique and powerful research resource engine, 23andMe helps open up genetics to qualified researchers, providing novel insights into individuals' features, genetic diseases and a variety of other conditions.

    A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

    A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.

    There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two - headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying hi story. I find such people, I must say so peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girlfriend.

    No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.