Are we getting more stupid? According to Gerald Crabtree, a scientist at Stanford University in the US, we are.  You may not want to hear this, but Crabtree believes that human intelligence reached its peak more than 2,000 years ago and ever since then has been going downhill. “If an average Greek from 1,000 BC were transported to modern times, he or she would be one of the brightest among us,” Crabtree told The Guardian.

    At the heart of Crabtree's thinking is a simple idea. In the past, intelligence was critical for survival when our ancestors had to avoid dangerous animals and hunt for food. The difference of being smart or stupid is often life or death. However, after the spread of agriculture, when our ancestors began to live in dense ( 稠密的）farming communities, the need to keep their intelligence in peak condition gradually reduced. This is not hard to understand. Most of the time,pressure is what keeps us going – you need the pressure from your teachers to finish your homework; the pressure of looking pretty prompts(促使) you to lose weight when summer comes. And the same is also true of our intelligence – if we think less, we become less smart.

    These mutations(变) are harmful to our intelligence and they were all developed in the past 3,000 years. The other evidence that Crabtree holds is in our genes. He found that among the 2,000 to 5,000 genes that we have that determine human intelligence , there are two or more mutations in each of us. However, Crabtree's theory has been criticized by some who say that early humans may have better hunting and surviving abilities, but people today have developed a more diverse intelligence. For example, spearing a tiger doesn't necessarily require more brainpower than playing chess or writing a poem. Moreover, the power of modern education means a lot more people have the opportunity to learn nowadays. “You wouldn't get Stephen Hawking 2,000 years ago. He just wouldn't exist,” Thomas Hills of the University of Warwick, UK, told Live Science. “But now we have people of his intellectual capacity doing things and making insights(洞察力) that we would never have achieved in our environment of evolutionary adaptation.”

    Scientists have been interested for years in the observation that ratios(比率）of finger lengths differ in men and women. In men, the ring (fourth) finger is usually longer than the index (second); their so-called 2D :4D ratio is lower than 1. In females, the two fingers are more likely to be the same length. Because of this sex differences, some scientists believe that a low ratio could be a marker for higher prenatal hormone(产前激素）levels, although it's not clear how the hormone might influence finger development. The 2D : 4D ratio has also been fingered in connection with brain-related characteristics—most often in males--such as depression, left-handedness, musical ability, and homosexuality.

    In the latest such study, psychologist Mark Brosnan and colleagues at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom photocopied the hands of 74 boys and girls aged 6 and 7.They compared the measurements of the second and fourth fingers with the children's scores on a standard UK test of math and literacy. In boys, the lower the ratio, the better their math score, the team reports in the May issue of the British Journal of Psychology, The boys with the lowest ratios also were the ones whose abilities were most skewed in the direction of math rather than literacy. These differences are small but significant, says Brosnan. With the girls, there was no correlation between finger ration and numeracy, but those with higher ratios—probably indicating low hormone levels—had better scores on verbal abilities.

    These sex-specific correlations show how tricky it is to define the roles of sex hormones, says psychologist S .Marc Breedlove of Michigan State University in East Lansing. The range of normal levels of the hormone is different in males and females, so comparable levels would have very different meanings depending on the sex of the individual. And the timing of hormone surges is as important as levels.

    Nevertheless, Brosnan believes finger measurements might be useful for predicting cognitive abilities—although he acknowledges that “we are not suggesting that finger length measurements could replace SAT tests”. Others are more cautious, pointing out that scientists still have not confirmed that finger ratio is a reliable marker for prenatal hormone levels.

    What would work be like if you had no boss?Imagine you could make all your own decisions and no one told you what to do.

    A Swedish software company,Crisp,decided to get rid of their CEO.First,they needed to find out what a CEO actually did.Then they shared those duties among staff and board members,which is exactly what they did.And the employees believes it's been a good change.An employee named Heinrik Kniberg says the company can now act faster,"If you want to get something done,you stand up and start driving that.Workers are also more active and satisfied."And any big decisions are made during the all-member meetings several times a year.

    So,if it's working well for Crisp,could this model become more widespread? Online retailer（零售商）Zappos tried out a similar plan but had unpleasant results.Almost a fifth of its staff decided to leave,and CEO Tony Hsieh admitted that "self-management is not for everyone".Mr Houston,founder of file-sharing service Drew Dropbox,says that total freedom doesn't always feel good,because you no longer know what you're supposed to do,what is important and you're bumping up against other people."

    Would you like to work somewhere with no boss?

    Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and I wished her every success. But part of me didn't. I actually wanted her to fail in some ways because I believe that failure can be good for our learning process. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or doing something correctly the first time, which can often be a problematic victory. First-time success is usually a luck. First-time failure, however, is supposed to be the natural order of things. Failure is how we learn.

    In Africa they describe a good cook as “she who has broken many pots”. If you've spent enough time in the kitchen to have broken a lot of pots, probably you know a fair amount about cooking. I once had dinner with a group of cooks, and they spent time comparing knife wounds and bum scars. They knew how much their failures gave them.

    I earn my living by writing a daily newspaper column. Each week I know that one column I write is going to be the worst column. I try my best every day. I have learned to love that column. A successful column usually means that I am discussing my familiar topic, writing in a style I am used to or saying the same things as anyone else but in a better way.

    My younger daughter is a trapeze artist（荡秋千演员）. She spent three years practicing a show, and she did it successfully for years. There was no reason for her to change it but she did anyway. She said she was no longer learning anything new and she was bored. She risked failure and great public embarrassment in order to feed her soul.

    My granddaughter is a perfectionist. She will feel her failures, and I will want to comfort her. But I will also, I hope, remind her of what she learned, and how she can do better next time.

    It was a cold winter day. A woman drove up to the Rainbow Bridge tollbooth (收费站). “I'm paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me,” she said with a smile, handing over seven tickets. One after another, the next six drivers arriving at the tollbooth were informed, “Some lady up ahead already paid your fare.”

    It turned out that the woman, Natalie Smith, had read something on a friend's refrigerator: “Practice random(随意的，随机的) kindness and aimless acts of beauty.” The phrase impressed her so much that she copied it down.

    Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase on a warehouse wall far away from home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. “I thought it was beautiful,” she said, explaining why she'd taken to writing it at the bottom of all her letters, “like a message from above.” Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the classroom wall for his students, one of whom was the daughter of Alice Johnson, a local news reporter. Alice put it in the newspaper, admitting that though she liked it, she didn't know where it came from or what it really meant.

    Two days later, Alice got a call from Anne Herbert, a woman living in Marin. It was in a restaurant that Anne wrote the phrase down on a piece of paper, after turning it around in her mind for days.

    “Here's the idea,” Anne says. “Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly.” Her fantasies (imagination) include painting the classrooms of poor schools, leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in the poor part of town, and giving money secretly to a proud old lady. Anne says, “Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can.”

    The acts of random kindness spread. If you were one of those drivers who found your fare paid, who knows what you might have been inspired to do for someone else later. Like all great events, kindness begins slowly, with every single act. Let it be yours!

    Some people have the feeling that nothing can be done about their poor reading ability(能力）. They feel hopeless about it. Can you learn to read better or must you agree that nothing can be done about it?

    To be sure, people are different. You cannot to do everything as well as certain other people do. All the students in a class tried out for basketball, some would be very good players; others would be very poor; and many would be in between. But even the very poor players can become much better players if they are guided in the right way, and with plenty of practice. It is the same with reading. Some seem to enjoy reading and to read well without any special help. Others find reading a slow and tiring job. In between, there are all degrees of reading ability.

    Many experiments have shown that just about every poor reader can improve his reading ability. In these experiments, the poor readers were given tests of reading ability. After some of the causes of their poor reading were discovered, they were given special instruction and practice in reading. After a few months, another test of the same kind was given. In nearly all cases, these people had raised their reading scores.