How to deal with waste has been a problem since humans started producing it. As more and more people choose to live close together in cities, the waste-disposal (处理) problem becomes increasingly difficult.

    During the eighteenth century, it was usual for several neighboring towns to get together to select a faraway spot as a dump site. Residents or trash haulers (垃圾拖运者) would transport household rubbish, rotted wood, and old possessions to the site. Periodically (定期的) some of the trash was burned and the rest was buried. The unpleasant sights and smells caused no problem because nobody lived close by.

    Factories, mills, and other industrial sites also had waste to be disposed of (处理). Those located on rivers often just dumped (倾倒) the unwanted remains into the water. Others built huge burners with chimneys (烟囱) to deal with the problem.

    Several facts make these choices unacceptable to modem society. The first problem is space. Dumps, which are now called landfills, are most needed in heavily populated areas. Such areas rarely have empty land suitable for this purpose. Property is either too expensive or too close to residential (住宅区的) neighborhoods. Long-distance trash hauling has been a common practice, but once farm areas are refusing to accept rubbish from elsewhere, cheap land within trucking distance of major city areas is almost nonexistent (不存在).

    Awareness (意识) of pollution dangers has led to more strict rules of waste disposal. Pollution of rivers, ground water, land and air is a price people can no longer pay to get rid of waste. The amount of waste, however, continues to grow.

    Recycling efforts have become commonplace, and many towns require their people to take part. Even the most efficient recycling programs, however, can hope to deal with only about 50 per cent of a city's reusable waste.

    It's generally believed that people act the way they do because of their personalities and attitudes.They recycle their garbage because they care about the environment.They pay $5 for a caramel brulee latte because they like expensive coffee drinks.

    It's undeniable that behavior comes from our inner dispositions（性情）,but in many instances we also draw inferences about who we are,as suggested by the social psychologist Daryl Bern,by observing our own behavior.We can be strangers to ourselves.If we knew our own minds,why would we need to guess what our preferences are from our behavior?If our minds were an open book,we would know exactly how much we care about the environment or like lattes.Actually,we often need to look to our behavior to figure out who we are.

    Moreover,we don't just use our behavior to learn about our particular types of character—we infer characters that weren't there before.Our behavior is often shaped by little pressures around us,which we fail to recognize.Maybe we recycle because our wives and neighbors would disapprove if we didn't.Maybe we buy lattes in order to impress the people around us.We should not mistakenly believe that we always behave as a result of some inner disposition.

    Whatever pressures there can be or inferences one can make,people become what they do,though it may not be in compliance（符合）with their true desires.Therefore,we should all bear in mind Kurt Vonnegut's advice:"We are what we pretend to be,so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

    One of the most exciting and interesting international cities to visit is London, England. Here is a look at four free things to do during a vacation to London.

    Visit the Trafalgar Square

    Built more than 200 years ago, Trafalgar Square is a popular gathering place for locals and travelers, too. The area is close to good shopping and dining opportunities, and there are usually some sorts of public events or celebrations going on there during most weekends.

    Wander Along the Thames

    Visitors wanting to see some great architecture, attractions and views should spend an afternoon walking along the River Thames. The best place to start is at the world-famous London Bridge crossing over the river and you can walk all the way to Westminster Bridge a short distance away. Travelers doing this will find themselves passing by a great many historic buildings.

    Explore the Local Markets

    While purchasing items at any of the open markets in London is not necessarily free, walking through them to view the merchants, their products and the other shoppers is of great fun. Some of the popular open markets in London worth visiting include Spitafields Market, Portobello Road Market and Leadenhall Market.

    Visit the British Museum

    One of the top museums in the entire United Kingdom can be found in London, and it charges no admission for entry. This museum is so highly regarded that it is not only popular with locals and tourists, it is also seen as a major and valuable scholarly resource.

    In Europe many people died during the Second World War. As a result, at the end of the war there were many orphans (孤儿) there. A man called Hermann Gmeiner wanted to help these children. His idea was simple. He wanted orphans to have a home, and he wanted them to have the care and kindness of parents. Gmeiner asked people to give him some money. With this money he built the first SOS Children's Village at Imst, in Austria. It opened in1949. This is how the SOS stand for “Save Our Souls（灵魂）.” This means, “Please help us!” An SOS Children' village gives help to orphans. Hermann Gmeiner's idea for helping orphans soon spread（传播）all over the world. By 1983 there were 170 SOS Children's Villages in the world. People in many countries give money to help the villages.

    Today the children from the first village have grown up. Now some of them work in other SOS Children's Villages. In SOS Villages orphans live in family groups. There are several houses in each village. The biggest village has 40 or 50 houses! Between seven and ten children live in a house. A woman lives with each group of children and looks after them. She gives the children a lot of love and kindness. She cooks meals for them and makes comfortable, happy home for them.

    Of course, the children don't spend all their time in the village. They go to school; they go out with their friends. But the village gives them a home—sometimes for the first time in their lives.

    Putting a dinosaur skeleton(骨架)together is not easy. The skeletons are usually very incomplete. Many dinosaur fossils(化石) are discovered badly damaged. Bones are often found crashed (压碎) or bent by the great weight of the dirt and rock above. Sometimes parts from different creatures are mixed together. This just adds to the confusion.

    Unfortunately, some scientists have not been careful enough in their descriptions of dinosaurs. They have told grand stories of how dinosaurs looked and behaved. All of these descriptions are based on guesswork – the imaginations of people who have never seen a living dinosaur. Some scientists have made complete pictures of dinosaurs based on just a single bone or tooth or leg. Such pictures are based on many guesses and very little facts. The scientists' ideas often turn out to be wrong when more facts are discovered.

    Dinosaur fossils are not found with labels attached showing what the animals looked like. That is why no pictures of dinosaurs are exactly right. Every dinosaur painting is sure to contain at least some wrong information. No artist in the twentieth century ever saw the living, breathing animals -- complete with skin, flesh, and color.

    For instance, imagine never having seen or heard of a peacock. One day you find the jumbled bones of it buffed in the ground. You try to put the bones together to form a skeleton. And then you try to draw a picture of what the animal looked like when it Was alive. But bones cannot tell the whole story. Even if you are a very good artist, it would be a miracle if you drew a tree picture of a peacock just from the bones and your imagination.

    The belief that new technologies are causing the death of work is the idea that never goes away. Despite evidence to the contrary, we still view technological change today as being more rapid and dramatic in its consequences for work than ever before. But this is nothing new. People have always viewed the technological changes that take place during their lives as the most dramatic and dangerous that ever happened in history.

    In the 1930s, the British economist(经济学家) John Maynard Keynes predicted the widespread use of electricity would produce a world where people spend most of their time doing nothing. In the United States during the 1960s, the government repeatedly investigates fears that automatic machines would permanently reduce the amount of work available. In 1988, one Australian historian claimed that at least a quarter of the workforce would be without jobs within 10 years because of computers.

    Of course, none of these disasters came to pass in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, or anywhere else.

    Yet today, we are seeing the return of these predictions, with some experts claiming the world of work is once more undergoing radical(激进的)and unprecedented(前所未有的) change. They argue that robots and other workplace technologies are causing a reduction in the total amount of work available, or are bringing a more rapid pace of substitution of machines for humans than has been seen previously.

    But there is a little evidence to support such beliefs. Statistics show that the percentage of people in work, the number of hours they work, and how frequently they change jobs have remained remarkably constant over the past 20 years.

    This stability should not come as a surprise. There are good reasons why we should not expect new technologies to cause the death of work. New technologies always cause job losses, but that is only part of the story. What also needs to be understood is how they increase the amount of work available.

    One way this happens is through the increases in incomes that accompany the use of new technologies. With the introduction of these technologies, goods and services can be produced faster, which results in higher real incomes for workers. Higher incomes then increase demand for other products and consequently more workers are needed to make them. Additionally, while new technologies are likely to substitute for some types of workers, they will also increase demand for other types of workers, especially those with higher level skills and expertise.

    So, the end of work is no closer today than at any time in the past. But there is still a need to keep disproving the prediction, to reduce people's fears.