The Brown Bear

    My wife Laura and I were on the beach, with three of our children, taking pictures of shore birds near our home in Alaska when we spotted a bear. The bear was thin and small, moving aimlessly.

Just a few minutes later, I heard my daughter shouting, “Dad! The bear is right behind us!” An aggressive bear will usually rush forward to frighten away its enemy but would suddenly stop at the last minute. This one was silent and its ears pinned back— the sign (迹象) of an animal that is going in for the kill. And it was a cold April day. The bear behaved abnormally, probably because of hunger.

    I held my camera tripod (三脚架) in both hands to form a barrier as the bear rushed into me. Its huge head was level with my chest and shoulders, and the tripod stuck across its mouth. It bit down and I found myself supporting its weight. I knew I would not be able to hold it for long.

    Even so, this was a fight I had to win: I was all that stood between the bear and my family, who would stand little chance of running faster than a brown bear.

    The bear hit at the camera, cutting it off the tripod. I raised my left arm to protect my face; the beast held tightly on the tripod and pressed it into my side. My arm could not move, and I sensed that my bones were going to break.

Drawing back my free hand, I struck the bear as hard as I could for five to six times. The bear opened its mouth and I grasped its fur, trying to push it away. I was actually wrestling (扭打) with the bear at this point. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the fight ended. The bear moved back toward the forest, before returning for another attack—- The first time I felf panic.

    Apparently satisfied that we caused no further threat, the bear moved off, destroying a fence as it went. My arm was injured, but the outcome for us could hardly have been better. I'm proud that my family reminded clear-headed when panic could have led to a very different outcome.

    You're out to dinner. The food is delicious and the service is fine. You decide to leave a big fat tip. Why? The answer may not be as simple as you think.

    Tipping, psychologists have found, is not just about service. Instead, studies have shown that tipping can be affected by psychological reactions to a series of different factors from the waiter's choice of words, to how they carry themselves while taking orders, to the bill's total. Even how much waiters remind customers of themselves can determine how much change they pocket by the end of the night.

    “Studies before have shown that mimicry(模仿) brings into positive feelings for the mimicker,” wrote Rick van Baaren, a social psychology professor. “These studies show that people who are being mimicked become more generous toward the person who mimics them.”

    So Rick van Baaren divided 59 waiters into two groups. He requested that half serve with a phrase such as. “ Coming up !” Those in the other hall were instructed to repeat the orders and preferences back to the customers. Rick van Baaren then compared their take-home pay. 'The results were clear—it pays to mimic your customer. The copycat(模仿者) waiters earned almost double the amount of tips to the other group.

    Leonard Green and Joel Myerson, psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis, found the generosity of a tipper maybe limited by his bill. After research on the 1,000 tips left for waiters, cabdrivers, hair stylists, they found tip percentages in these three areas dropped as customers' bills went up. In fact, tip percentages appear to plateau(稳定期) when bills topped $100 and a bill for $200 made the worker gain no bigger percentage tip than a bill for $100.

    “That's also a point of tipping,” Green says. “You have to give a little extra to the cabdriver for being there to pick you up and something to the waiter for being there to serve you. If they weren't there, you'd never get any service. So part of the idea of a tip is for just being there.”

    Katie was in big trouble. She was such a sweet kid; a third­grade teacher always dreamed of having a classroom filled with Katies; she has never had a discipline(纪律) problem. I just couldn't imagine why she had made her parents so angry.

    It seemed that Katie had been running up sizable charges in the lunch room. Her parents explained that Katie brought a great homemade lunch each day, and there was no reason for her to buy school lunch. They assumed a sit­down with Katie would solve the problem, but failed. So they asked me to help them get to the bottom of this situation.

So the next day, I asked Katie to my office."Why are you charging lunches, Katie? What happened to your homemade lunch？" I asked. "I lose it，" she responded. I leaned back in my chair and said, "I don't believe you, Katie." She didn't care." Is someone stealing your lunch, Katie？" I took a new track. "No. I just lose it." she said. Well, there was nothing else I could do.

The problem was still unsolved the next week when I noticed a boy who was new to the school sitting alone at a lunch table. He always looked sad. I thought I would go and sit with him for a while. As I walked towards him, I noticed the lunch bag on the table. The name on the bag said " Katie " .

    Now I understood and I talked to Katie. It seemed that the new boy never brought a lunch, and he wouldn't go to the lunch line for a free lunch. He had told Katie his secret and asked her not to tell anyone that his parents wanted him to get a free lunch at school. Katie asked me not to tell her parents, but I drove to her house that evening after I was sure that she was in bed. I had never seen parents so proud of their child. Katie didn't care that her parents and teacher were disappointed in her. But she cared about a little boy who was hungry and scared.

    Katie still buys lunch every day at school. And every day, as she heads out of the door, her mom hands her a delicious homemade lunch.

    Regulating a complex new technology is hard, particularly if it is evolving rapidly. With autonomous vehicles(AVs) just around the corner, what can policymakers do to ensure that they arrive safely and smoothly and deliver on their promise?

    The immediate goal is to make sure that AVs are safe without preventing innovation. In America, experimental AVs are allowed on the road in many states as long as the companies operating them accept responsibility. Chris Urmson of Aurora says American regulators have got things right, working closely with AV firms and issuing guidelines rather than strict rules that might prevent the progress of the industry. “It's important that we don't jump to regulation before we actually have something to regulate.” he says.

    On the other hand, Singapore's government has taken the most hands-on approach to preparing for AVs, says Karl Iagnemma of Nutonomy, an AV startup that has tested vehicles in the city-state. For example, it has introduced a “driving test” that AVs must pass before they can go on the road. This does not guarantee safety but sets a minimum standard.

    Elsewhere, regulators have permitted limited testing on public roads but want to see more evidence that the vehicles are safe before going further, says Takao Asami of the Renault issan-Mitsubishi alliance(联盟). “Simple accumulation of mileage(里程) will never prove that the vehicle is safe.” he says. Instead, regulators are talking to car makers and technology firms to develop new safety standards. Marten Levenstam, head of product strategy at Volvo, compares the process to that of developing a new drug. First, you show in the laboratory that it might work; then you run clinical trials in which you carefully test its safety and efficiency; and if they are successful, you ask for regulatory approval to make the drug generally available. Similarly, autonomous cars are currently at the clinical-trial stage, without final approval as yet. It is not possible to prove that a new drug is entirely safe, but the risk is worth taking because of the benefits the drug provides. It will be the same for AVs, he suggests. After all, nowadays human-driven vehicles are hardly risk-free.

    Climate change is perhaps the key issue of our time. Often, however, it is presented to us as being so abstract that it seems impossibly distant. For those of you looking for something a little more concrete, a new report suggests that the effects of climate change may significantly affect coffee.

    The report, put out by The Climate Institute, describes the effects of climate change on various coffee-growing nations and the resultant effects on the plants and those who grow them.

    Coffee Arabica plants, which produce 70% of all commercial coffee, can be adversely affected by even a half-degree change in typical weather conditions. This sensitivity to temperature puts the plant at increased risk of the effects of climate change.

    In Central America the average temperature has risen by a full degree Celsius since 1960. In Ethiopia the average temperature has increased by 1. 3 degrees. This increase is enough to have notable effects on the plants. In Tanzania the productivity per hectare of coffee has fallen by half since the 1960s due to changes in temperature.

    Indeed, studies claim that by 2050 the area of the world suitable for growing coffee will be cut by half. Coffee production is likely to then be pushed to higher elevations (海拔) to take advantage of lower temperatures, but this will not be enough to make up for lost lowland areas.

    Coffee is the second most traded goods by developing nations, and the inability of producer nations to export it could cause dramatic chain reactions in their economies. Millions of people make a living in the production, processing, transport, and sale of coffee; their livelihoods would stand to take a blow as growing areas decrease and prices rise.

    As the temperature keeps rising, your cup of coffee will become much more expensive, and it may also carry an aftertaste bitterer than usual, for all those workers in the coffee belt left without the means to make a living as conditions worsen. Not only that, but the economic effects will cost the West millions in increased foreign aid.

    All around the world, lawyers generate more hostility(敌视) than the members of any other profession-with the possible exception of journalism. But there are few places where clients have more grounds for complaint than America.

    During the decade before the economic crisis, spending on legal services in America grew twice as fast as inflation. The best lawyers made skyscrapers-full of money, tempting ever more students to pile into law schools. But most law graduates never get a big-firm job. Many of them instead become the kind of nuisance-lawsuit filer that makes the tort system a costly nightmare.

    There are many reasons for this. One is the excessive costs of a legal education. There is just one path for a lawyer in most American states: a four-year undergraduate degree in some unrelated subjects, then a three-year law degree at one of 200 law schools authorized by the American Bar Association and an expensive preparation for the bar exam. This leaves today's average law-school graduate with $100,000 of debt on top of undergraduate debts. Law-school debt means that they have to work extremely hard.

    Reforming the system would help both lawyers and their customers. Sensible ideas have been around for a long time, but the state-level bodies that govern the profession have been too conservative to implement(实施)them. One idea is to allow people to study law as an undergraduate degree. Another is to let students sit for the bar after only two years of law school. If the bar exam is truly a strict enough test for a would-be lawyer, those who can sit it earlier should be allowed to do so. Students who do not need the extra training could cut their debt mountain by a third. The other reason why costs are so high is the restrictive guild-like(行会) ownership structure of the business. Except in the District of Columbia, non-lawyers may not own any share of a law firm. This keeps fees high and innovation slow. There is pressure for change from within the profession, but opponents of change among the regulators insist that keeping outsiders out of a law firm isolates lawyers from the pressure to make money rather than serve clients ethically.

    In fact, allowing non-lawyers to own shares in law firms would reduce costs and improve services to customers, by encouraging law firms to use technology and to employ professional managers to focus on improving firms' efficiency. After all, other countries, such as Australia and Britain, have started liberalizing their legal professions. America should follow.