Some people are pessimistic(悲观的) when they think about the future. They say that, a hundred years from now, we will have used up most of the earth's resources. We will have made our seas so dirty that we will not be able to eat fish from them. There will be so many people in the world that we will have to use all the countryside for housing; there will be no farmland left.

    Other people have a different idea about the future. In their view, the city of the future will be a huge pyramid-shaped(金字塔形的) building, which will be floating on the surface of the sea. About 5,000 families will live there, and there will also be schools, shops in it.

In a hundred years' time, people will not need to use oil. They will heat their homes with power from the sun.

    Think of space. Perhaps a station will be set up on the moon; people will be able to visit the moon as tourists. They may even spend their holidays in space, travelling from planet to planet.

What an interesting picture!

    Many people don't think about the future. “I don't care. I'll be dead. ”they say. But it is our duty to care because the world of a hundred years' time will be the world of our children's and their children after them.

    Online shopping has become more and more popular these years. Women have jumped ahead of men for the first time in using the Internet to do their holiday shopping, according to a study published last week in the US.

    For years men have been more likely to shop on the Internet than women, but during the 2013 holiday season 58 percent of those shopping online were women.

    “It shows how popular the Internet is becoming,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project group, which carried out the study. Rainie said it was only a matter of time before women shoppers caught up with men. This is because women traditionally make decisions about spending.

    Users were more likely to shop online to save time. Internet users between the ages 18 and 29 were responsible for some of the surprising increase in the online gift-buying population this time around.

    However, three-quarters of the US Internet users did not buy holiday gifts online in 2013. They worried about credit card security(信用卡安全), or just compared online prices with off-line prices, then dashed off to the shops to get the best deals.

    “But even if shoppers don't buy online, websites are becoming promotion(促销) tools for stores,” said Dan Hess' vice president of Com Score Network Inc. Hess said that actually most stores, websites can make customers fully believe the security of their credit card numbers. And most are able to ensure that gifts arrive on time.

    “It's all about making the shopping experience more efficient(效率高的), more reliable and more comfortable.” Hess said.

    Feeling blue about the world? “Cheer up.” says science writer Matt Ridley. “The world has never been a better place to live in, and it will keep on getting better both for humans and for nature.”

    Ridley calls himself a rational optimist—rational, because he's carefully weighed the evidence; optimistic, because that evidence shows human progress to be both unavoidable and good. And this is what he's set out to prove from a unique point of view in his most recent book, The Rational Optimist. He views mankind as a grand enterprise that, on the whole, has done little but progress for 100,000 years. He backs his findings with hard facts gathered through years of research.

    Here's how he explains his views.

    1) Shopping fuels invention

    It is reported that there are more than ten billion different products for sale in London alone. Even allowing for the many people who still live in poverty, our own generation has access to more nutritious food, more convenient transport, bigger houses, better cars, and, of course, more pounds and dollars than any who lived before us. This will continue as long as we use these things to make other things. The more we specialize and exchange, the better off we'll be.

    2)Brilliant advances

    One reason we are richer, healthier, taller, cleverer, longer­lived and freer than ever before is that the four most basic human needs—food, clothing, fuel and shelter—have grown  a lot cheaper. Take one example. In 1800 a candle providing one hour's light cost six hours' work.  In the 1880s the same light from an oil lamp took 15 minutes' work to pay for.  In 1950 it was eight seconds. Today it's half second.

    3) Let's not kill ourselves for climate change

    Mitigating (减轻) climate change could prove just as damaging to human welfare as climate change itself.  A child that dies from indoor smoke in a village, where the use of fossil­fuel (化石燃料) electricity is forbidden by well­meaning members of green political movements trying to save the world, is just as great a tragedy as a child that dies in a flood caused by climate change. If climate change proves to be mild, but cutting carbon causes real pain, we may well find that we have stopped a nose­bleed by putting a tourniquet (止血带) around our necks.

    One half of the brain remains on high alert during the first night of sleep in a new space.

    Over the course of three experiments on 35 young, healthy volunteers, researchers measured brain activity during two nights of sleep. They found that part of the left side of the brain remained more active than the right side only on the first night, specifically during a deep sleep stage.

    “When you sleep in a new place for the first time, a part of one side of the brain seems to stay awake, so you could wake up faster if necessary,” said senior study author Yuka Sasaki of Brown University.

    While this may be bad news for business travelers who regularly make brief overnight trips, it may not be as troublesome for people who go away for longer periods of time, Sasaki added by email.

    To see how being in a strange place affects sleep, Sasaki and colleagues performed a series of lab tests on their subjects.

    When they stimulated（刺激） the left side of the brain with sounds in the right ear during deep sleep on the first night, that led to greater possibility of waking and faster action upon waking, than if sounds were played in the left ear to affect the right side of the brain. On the second night, there wasn't any difference in reactions to tests between the left and right sides of the brain, even during deep sleep. This suggests that there is a first-night-only effect specifically in one side of the brain during deep sleep, the authors conclude.

    One limitation of the new study is its focus on healthy volunteers, which means the results may not apply to people with sleep disorders, the authors note.

    While it's possible that the findings may explain poor sleep among frequent travelers, the study wasn't designed to test whether these “first night effects” continue to happen to people every time they hit the road, said Patrick Finan, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

    Sweat (汗水)rail its way down my cheek. It was hot, but the air was still and wet. One final play and the State Softball Championship was ours.

    I looked towards people who were watching the game. Sure enough, I found my mom. I always wished my dad were here. The farm needed his full attention, but I did not care.

    Finally, we won! State Champs! I let out a scream of happiness, fall of tears. My mom made a “V” to celebrate my success and smiled. I smiled back at her.

    We all received medals (奖牌), but I cannot remember any of it. I concentrated my thoughts on my dad, I ran to my mom, asking for her cell phone. I had to tell my dad about the happiest day of my life, and complained (抱怨）about how he did not care.

    The phone rang twice, and no one answered. My heart sank with sadness, but I tried again anyway.

    “Hello?” My dad answered.

    “Dad!” I cried. “We won State!” Silence.

    “Dad?” I could hear something on the other end. “Are you crying?”

    “I'm just really happy for you, Meggie,” he said. “And I'm sorry I couldn't be there.”

    An apology（抱歉）was all I needed. I hung up the phone feeling relaxed, and I began to understand how it must feel to be a father. I forgave him for never being there. He worked so I could play. My father loved me enough to let me experience life^ happiest moments without him.

    When Shakespeare was twenty-one, he went to London, a very interesting place, to try his fortune.

    There was the famous London Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral, and palaces and markets and long streets full of shops.

    Then, too, there were the daily crowds where could be seen people from all over the world. Knights, scholars and the highwayman (拦路强盗）or thieves, who had been infamous for their clever robberies, passed by each other.

    Here, also, were noblemen dressed in gold, from Italy and Spain and France; slaves from Spanish America, sea captains and ministers, soldiers and servants—all held by chances or interests within the gray walls which circled London, and whose gates gave welcome to as strange a crowd as could be found in the world.

    Into this curious crowd came Shakespeare, quick to see and eager to learn. And before long all these strange sights were as familiar to him as the faces of his own town's residents. Each one told its story to him so plainly that, as before he had learned the secrets of the fields and woods, so now he learned men and men's interests that make up the great world.

    And he learned these lessons so well that when he came to write his plays, he made such use of them as no writer ever made before or since; for it is the use of this knowledge of the world, combined with his own genius, that makes Shakespeare the greatest dramatist that has ever lived.