Some people believe that a Robin Hood is at work, others that a wealthy person simply wants to distribute his or her fortune before dying. But the donator who started sending envelopes with cash to deserving causes，accompanied by an article from the local paper, has made a northern German city believe in fairytales (童话）

    The first envelope was sent to a victim support group. It contained €10,000 with a cutting from the Braunschtveiger Zeitung about how the group supported a woman who was robbed of her handbag； similar plain white anonymous (匿名）envelopes, each containing €10,000, then arrived at a kindergarten and a church.

    The envelopes keep coming, and so far at least €190,000 has been distributed. Last month, one of them was sent to the newspaper's own office. It came after a story it published about Tom, a 14-year-old boy who was severely disabled in a swimming accident. The receptionist at the Braunschweiger Zeitung opened an anonymous white envelope to find 20 notes of €500 inside , with a copy of the article. The name of the family was underlined.

    "I was driving when I heard the news,” Claudia Neumann, the boy's mother, told DerSpiegel magazine. “I had to park on the side of the road； I was speechless. ”

    The money will be used to make the entrance to their house wheelchair-accessible .and for a course of treatment that their insurance company refused to pay for.

     “For someone to act so selflessly, for this to happen in such a society in which everyone thinks of himself, was astonishing," Mrs. Neumann said. Her family wonder whether the donator is a Robin Hood character, taking from banks to give to the needy.

    Henning Noske, the editor of the Braunschweiger Zeitung, said： “Maybe it is an old person who is about to die. We just do not know. ” However, he has told his reporters not to look for the city's hero, for fear that discovery may stop the donations.

    We've considered several ways of paying to cut in line: hiring line standers, buying tickets from scalpers (票贩子), or purchasing line-cutting privileges directly from, say, an airline or an amusement park. Each of these deals replaces the morals of the queue (waiting your turn) with the morals of the market (paying a price for faster service).

    Markets and queues—paying and waiting—are two different ways of allocating things, and each is appropriate to different activities. The morals of the queue, “First come, first served, have an egalitarian (平等主义的) appeal. They tell us to ignore privilege, power, and deep pockets.

    The principle seems right on playgrounds and at bus stops. But the morals of the queue do not govern all occasions. If I put my house up for sale, I have no duty to accept the first offer that comes along, simply because it's the first. Selling my house and waiting for a bus are different activities, properly governed by different standards.

    Sometimes standards change, and it is unclear which principle should apply. Think of the recorded message you hear, played over and over, as you wait on hold when calling your bank: “Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” This is essential for the morals of the queue. It's as if the company is trying to ease our impatience with fairness.

    But don't take the recorded message too seriously. Today, some people's calls are answered faster than others. Call center technology enables companies to “score” incoming calls and to give faster service to those that come from rich places. You might call this telephonic queue jumping.

    Of course, markets and queues are not the only ways of allocating things. Some goods we distribute by merit, others by need, still others by chance. However, the tendency of markets to replace queues, and other non-market ways of allocating goods is so common in modern life that we scarcely notice it anymore. It is striking that most of the paid queue-jumping schemes we've considered—at airports and amusement parks, in call centers, doctors' offices, and national parks—are recent developments, scarcely imaginable three decades ago. The disappearance of the queues in these places may seem an unusual concern, but these are not the only places that markets have entered.

    In many situations, the quality of your travel experience is directly affected by your ability to understand the local language. For some travelers, the challenge of learning a new tongue is one of the joys of travel, and as a result, they spend much of their time in conversations with local citizens. Others will find that just learning to read the most common signs and use every-day greetings is enough.

    No matter which view you agree with, it's necessary to take some time to learn some of the simple phrases of the new language before you go. One way of finishing this task is by listening to the new language. A phrase book can help expand your vocabulary, but hearing the sounds of the different spoken words is an excellent activity that can be done right in the comfort of your home. You can see movies in the new language or listen to the tapes or CDs. You can also download some listening material from the Internet. Just spending 15 minutes a night will improve your language skills.

    When you arrive in the new land, begin by greeting new friends in their own tongue. This may come easy or it could take some time to learn, but it's interesting. If you can't do this, then it means that you will need more practice and patience to learn these very important words. You can go out during the day and begin one-on-one conversations with shop owners, business-men and taxi drivers. This should not be done until you have learned some of the most common phrases, but once you begin to go shopping in a second language your communication skills will start to improve rapidly. You can also watch the local TV or listen to the local radio. For example, the advertisements will help you recognize the correct pronunciation of local street names.

    Modern day robots may not be as entertaining as R2D2 or the robot from Lost in Space, but robots are very important to space exploration and are being used in a variety of different ways for several important reasons.

    Robots make great explorers on planets, moons, and other landing areas. Aside from the earth, just about every surface in the solar system is unsafe for humans to explore. The air on most other planets is insufficient fortunate for humans to explore. The air on most other planets is insufficient for humans to breathe, making it necessary to wear a space suit and oxygen equipment. The temperatures on these surfaces are much too hot or much too cold for any humans to withstand. Plus there would be complications with radiation, weather, and a lack of gravity. Robots have much less limitation in these areas and can survive much longer under these conditions.

    Robots are designed for collecting scientific data. Robots are also able to perform many tasks at one time and can process information much quicker and more efficiently. Important scientific projects from detecting minerals, analyzing ground samples, to finding water are all performed much quicker and accurately by robots.

The use of robots has made the cost of space exploration much less expensive than it would cost for humans to do the work. In order to successfully send humans into space we would need to build a vehicle that can not only carry humans, but also enough | food and water to keep them alive for the duration of the trip. Moreover, robots have no problems working for hours on end. Robots never complain, they don't require food or water, and they never need a bathroom break.

    Over the past 30 years or so there have been many different types of robots used successfully in the exploration of space. Perhaps the most famous and successful robots are Spirit and Opportunity who have both been exploring the surface of Mars. They have both been very successful with experiments on soil and rocks and have even found evidence of water in Mars' history.

    When my vision-challenged daughter was 3, and I was pregnant with my second child, we got her glasses. It was a long process involving many different opticians (配镜师)over the course of a year, because of my daughter's overwhelming desire to scream and fly into a temper any time we tried to have her eyes examined. The fourth optician was amazing while my daughter didn't cooperate, she performed various miracles and managed what she called a “best guess” at her prescription.

    “Start with this,” she said. “When she realizes she can see better, bring her back, and we can try for something more accurate.”

    I didn't want to pay $300 for glasses that might be replaced in a month's time, so I decided to bring her straight to a Walmart optical. Things were going on well, until the optician needed to take an additional measurement, which would involve holding a ruler up to her eyes and measuring the distance between the outer corner of one eye and the inner corner of the other.

    “Are you sure you need the measurement?” I asked. “She's really not cooperative when it comes to the eye-testing stuff.”

    “We definitely need to have it, we can't fill her prescription without it.” the optician said.

    But my daughter would not let the optician anywhere near her face with the small plastic ruler. She started yelling and crying, and we took her off to the side and promised we'd get ice cream afterward if she let the nice lady hold the ruler near her nose! The optician gave us the ruler, thinking we would have an easier time, but when my daughter knew we needed to hold the ruler near her face, which, in toddler logic, meant a life-or-death situation, she prevented us from getting anywhere near her.

    Finally, my husband and I agreed that one of us would have to hold her down and the other would take the measurement. I sat on the floor trying to hold her head still while my husband tried to get an accurate reading on that stupid ruler. Despite her struggle and scream, we finally got it. My daughter stopped crying three seconds later and went back to play as if nothing had happened.

    There is no version of this story where I feel comfortable us even if it was for her own good. I felt awful wondering, if magically know what to say to get her cooperation? The weeks spent with a special book about wearing glasses, telling her how great glasses were... I could feel tears welling up and I thought, “I can't cry. I'm sitting on the floor of a Walmart optical centre. I can't cry here.”

    And there it was the final thing I could not bear. It w already reduced me to sitting on the floor of a Walmart optical p toddler down to press a ruler against her face and do it for the packed Saturday audience of all the Walmart checkout counters. I cried. Big, shoulder-shaking sobs. Sitting right there on the floor of a Walmart, behind the optical counter.

    Five days later, the Walmart optical centre called. They said my daughter's glasses were ready for pickup and I should schedule an appointment with the optician so that we can have them properly fitted. I said I'd be picking up the glasses alone and we would do the fitting another day. She insisted that the fitting was crucial, to which I replied, “I don't know if you were working last Saturday, but my daughter is really not cooperating on this whole glasses thing. I'd prefer to just pick them up.” Silence. Then she said, “I was there last Saturday, I remember you. Absolutely, you can pick them up any time.”

    Once upon a time, two brothers who lived on neighboring farms fell into conflict(冲突) . It was the first serious one between them in 40 years of farming peacefully side by side. In the end, they fell apart.

    One morning, a man with a carpenter's toolbox came for some work. The elder brother said, "I have a job for you. Look at the farm across the creek(河沟). My younger brother lives there. It was he who used his bulldozer(推土机)to dig the creek last week to spite(刁难) me. So I want you to build me a fence, an 8 – foot – high fence, in order not to see his place any more." The carpenter smiled and said, "I see. I'll try to do a job that satisfies you." Then the elder brother went downtown.

    At sunset when the farmer returned, the carpenter had just finished his job. The farmer's eyes opened wide! To his surprise, there was no fence there at all! Instead, there was a bridge stretching from one side of the creek to the other! A fine piece of work! He saw his younger brother coming to him with the hands outstretching. The brothers stood at each end of the bridge, and then they met in the middle, taking each other's hands. They turned to see the carpenter lift his toolbox on his shoulder.

"No, wait! Stay a few days. I've a lot of other work for you," said the elder brother. "I'd love to stay on," the carpenter said, "but I have so many more bridges to build."