Weddings in the United States vary as much as the people do. There are church weddings with a great deal of fanfare(仪式上的短曲); there are weddings on mountain tops with guests barefooted; there have been weddings on the ocean floor with oxygen tanks for the guests. But many weddings, no matter where or how they are performed, include certain traditional customs.

    Before a couple is married, they become engaged. And then invitations are sent to those who live nearby, their close friends and their relatives who live far away. When everything is ready, then comes the most exciting moment.

    The wedding itself usually lasts between 30 and 40 minutes. The wedding party enters the church while the wedding march is played. The bride carrying a bouquet enters last with her father who will “give her away”. The groom enters the church from a side door. When the wedding party is gathered by the altar, the bride and groom exchange vows(誓言). It is traditional to use the words “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.” Following the vows, the couple exchange rings. Wearing the wedding rings on the fourth finger of the left hand is an old custom.

    After the ceremony, there is often a party, called a “reception” which gives the wedding guests an opportunity to congratulate the new couple.

    The car in which the couple leaves the church is decorated with balloons. The words “Just Married” are painted on the trunk or back window. And then the couple go in their honeymoon.

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    The first time she saw Bryce Loski, she flipped. The first time he saw Juli Baker, he ran. For six years of living close by, they had played the same game of cat-and-mouse (Juli was the cat; Bryce was the unfortunate mouse).

    For years Juli dreamed of one thing: her first kiss from the boy. Nothing else seemed to matter. But when Juli's favorite sycamore tree is threatened by developers, things begin to change. She begins to see things and places and people in a different light. Things, for years, she thought to be important, become things she can live without; and people she thought to be the center of her universe, become nothing more than a star in a faraway galaxy.

    Things begin changing with Bryce also. It all begins with the eggs…which then cause a domino effect of changes with his relationships with his best friend, his father, the Bakers and, ultimately, Juli.

    I had seen this book on the shelf at bookstores for years, but never bothered to pick it up because it looked to be another book from Jerry Spinelli (not exactly my favorite author in the world) and so, continually, I would walk past it without giving it a second glance. If by chance I had picked it up, I most likely would not have read it, since the summary on the back didn't seem too appealing. It wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that I heard about Flipped the movie. I read an interview with Callan McAuliffe (the actor who portrays Bryce) and thought that Flipped was a romance right up my alley; cute, innocent and as far from Jane Austin as you could get. After reading the interview and a summary of the movie, I found the plot-line to be somewhat appealing and a definite breath of fresh air opposed to the dark material I have been recently reading and writing. I found the book a few days later in a Goodwill bookstore and finished it in three days.

    The story isn't what you would consider deep…it isn't shallow and pointless either…I guess you could say it's the perfect balance of life-lessons and innocence.

    You read about Bryce and Juli (each from their own points of view) and how, throughout six years, their lives and views and opinions change and develop. Flipped is somewhat of a coming of age story about two kids learning to see life from the other's point of view and learning that growing up isn't about staying the same, but changing; changing likes and dislikes; changing friends and crushes and views on family.

Uniquely written, every other chapter showing the same scenes and events, only from the other's point of view, you see how the saying, "Two sides to every story," is true. You are able to see both Juli and Bryce's reasons for doing what they do and saying what they say…not just what the other sees.

    It will be interesting to see how this writing style comes into play in the movie. Overall I thought this story was incredibly cute and light-hearted, although it didn't entirely meet my expectations. Especially the ending. I felt as though it ended quite abruptly and that there was more story that needed to be told.

    But even with that, after having taken a step back and taken my mind off of Flipped, I find the story has stuck with me and stayed in the back of my mind, making me highly anticipate seeing this book turned to a film. I understand why it has been so popular for almost two decades and am looking forward to seeing Flipped on the big screen soon.

    Self-driving vehicles have been proposed as a solution for the rapidly increasing number of fatal traffic accidents, which now cause 1.3 million deaths each year.

    While we have made great progress in advancing self-driving technology, we have yet to explore how autonomous vehicles will be programmed to deal with situations that endanger human life, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

    To understand how self-driving cars might make these judgments, the researchers looked at how humans deal with similar driving dilemmas.

    When faced with driving dilemmas, people show a high willingness to sacrifice themselves for others, make decisions based on the victim's age and turn onto sidewalks to minimize the number of lives lost. Ethical（伦理的）guidelines tend to disagree with human instincts（本能） in this case, saying that no life should be valued above another.

    “The technological advancement and adoption of autonomous vehicles are moving quickly but the social and ethical discussions about their behavior are lagging behind,” says lead author Lasse T. Bergmann from University of Osnabrück, Germany.

    Automated vehicles will eventually outperform their human counterparts, but there will still be circumstances where the cars must make an ethical decision to save or possibly risk losing a human life.

    The study is especially relevant considering earlier this year a self-driving Uber car struck and killed a passenger in Arizona, in an incident widely regarded as the first death resulting from an autonomous vehicle.

    An ethics commission launched by the German Ministry for Transportation has created a set of guidelines, representing its members' best judgement on a variety of issues concerning self-driving cars. These expert judgments may, however, not reflect human instinct.

    Bergmann and colleagues developed a virtual reality experiment to examine human instinct in a variety of possible driving situations. It was based on the well-known ethical thought experiment—the trolley problem.

    In this experiment, there is a trolley running down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up, unable to move, and the trolley is headed straight for them. A person is standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever（操作杆）.If he pulls this lever, the trolley will turn to a different set of tracks. However, there is one person tied up on the side track. Does the person choose to pull the lever and kill one person, or do nothing and let five people die?

    Bergmann recognized that the majority of people would not approve of the proposal made by the ethics commission that a passenger in the vehicle should not be sacrificed to save more people. “We find people chose to save more lives, even if this involves turning onto the sidewalk, endangering people uninvolved in the traffic incident,” said Bergmann, “Furthermore, subjects considered the factor of age, for example, choosing to save children over the elderly.” He also realized further discussion and research were needed. “Driving requires a complex weighing of risks versus rewards, for example, speed versus the danger of a critical situation,” Bergmann explained.

    Three miles is short by car, but when the three miles consists of an old wooden fence on a cattle farm that requires a fresh coat of paint, it's not a short distance any more. For the final week of summer heading into my first year of college, painting this fence was a disaster for me. At first it seemed like the most boring way to spend the last week of my wonderful freedom from school, but it actually turned out to be something intriguing.

    Luckily, I wasn't alone in this task; I got the help of Rob, the farm manager. When two people were stuck under the sun of August in the middle of rural Kentucky for ten hours a day, there wasn't much to do to help pass the time. Standing in front of this fence was the last thing on Earth I wanted to do. I worked with Rob all these days, spending over hours with him with nothing to do but a boring task, and all we had for amusement was conversation. In a society filled with constant entertainment, this was a huge contrast.

    It started out simply, and we talked about the weather, sports, and how annoying it was to get the fence painted. As the week progressed, so did our topics of discussion. From family and funny childhood stories to our hobbies and dreams, we began to know more about each other. We shared personal stories with each other, little pieces of our past and ourselves. I had spent plenty of time with people whether it was about sporting events, movies, or concerts, but never had I spent so much time with one person with absolutely nothing to break the silence. It was uncomfortable at first, but things changed.

    Sometimes we tried to keep ourselves busy, entertained, or from getting bored. There is a deeper connection you get with people when all you're doing is talking. For a moment, you get an inside look into their mind, heart and soul. This is what humans are good at—sharing themselves. Whether we realize it or not, this is happening all the time all around us.

    A young woman carrying a three-year-old child got on a bus. The conductor hurried to give her a warm welcome and then kindly asked the other passengers to make more room for the woman and her kid. On seeing this, people were surprised and began to talk." You know this conductor used to be very rude. Now suddenly he has changed his bad behavior, "said a middle-aged man.

    "Yes, he should be praised and we must write a letter to the company," said a second passenger." That's right," another lady said, "I wish a newspaper reporter were here so that more people could learn from this conductor."

    Just then a gentleman who looked like a teacher turned to the conductor and said, "Excuse me, but can I know your name, please? Your excellent service must be praised…"

    Before he could open his mouth, the three-year-old kid sitting on the young woman's lap interrupted, "I know his name; I call him Dad."