How would you like to have been born without any ability to feel pain? There are such people. One of them is being studied by doctors at a hospital in New York City. He is a 22-year-old clerk who really does not know the meaning of pain. But he wishes he did.

    Not long ago a packet of matches flared up(骤然烧起) in his hand. Luckily the burn was not serious. It caused large blisters(水泡) but still did not bother him. He said the burn felt like a fly crawling(在……上爬行) on his fingers. It has been the same story as far back as he can remember. He has never had headaches or sore(疼痛的) muscles. Bee stings, cuts and bruises(疼痛的) do not hurt.

    Being free from pain is not as wonderful as you may think. The young man has had to have rotted teeth pulled because he never felt toothache warnings. A sudden attack of appendicitis(阑尾炎) could be deadly. Life without pain is as risky as trying to run a cruise ship without fire alarms.

    Bike Share Toronto is the city's official bike share program, designed to give locals and visitors a fun, affordable and convenient alternative to walking, taxis, buses and the subway. There are 200 Bike Share Toronto stations and 2,000 bikes across the city, making Bike Share the most accessible way to get around and explore.

How it works

    Become an Annual Member or buy a day Pass to access the system.

    Find an available bike nearby, and get a ride code or use your member key to unlock it.

    Take as many short rides as you want while your pass or membership is active.

    Return your bike lo any station, and wait for the green light on the dock（停靠点）to make sure it's locked.

    Choose a plan

    For visitors

    Day Pass: $7.Unlimited 30-minute rides in a 24-hour period.

    3-Day Pass: $15.Unlimited 30-minute rides in a 72-hour period.

    For locals

    Monthly Pass: $25.Unlimited 30-minute rides for a month.

    Annual Membership: $90.Unlimited 30-minute rides for a whole year. The Annual Membership is the best deal for locals of Toronto and other frequent riders.

    The first 30 minutes of each ride is included with the membership or pass price. Avoid extra fees by dropping off your bike every 30 minutes at any other station. If you keep a bike out for longer than 30 minutes at a time, you will be charged an extra $1.50 for the first 30 minutes over, $4 for the next 30 minutes, and $7 for each additional 30 minutes after that.

    Contact us

    Customer Service: (855)898-2388

    Repair Service: (855)-2378

    Corporation Partners: (855)898-2398

    Employment Opportunities: (855)898-2498

    If you have a chance to go to Finland, you will probably be surprised to find how “foolish” the Finnish people are.

    Take the taxi drivers for example. Taxis in Finland are mostly high-class Benz with a fare of two US dollars a kilometer. You can go anywhere in one, tell the driver to drop you at any place, say that you have some business to attend to, and then walk off without paying your fare. The driver would not show the least sign of anxiety.

    The dining rooms in all big hotels not only serve their guests, but also serve outside diners. Hotel guests have their meals free, so they naturally go to the free dining rooms to have their meals. The most they would do to show their good faith is to wave their registration card to the waiter. With such a loose check, you can easily use any old registration card to take a couple of friends to dine free of charge.

    The Finnish workers are paid by the hour. They are very much on their own as soon as they have agreed with the boss on the pay. From then on, they just say how many hours they have worked and they will be paid accordingly.

    With so many loopholes (漏洞) in everyday life, surely Finland must be a heaven to those who love to take “petty advantages”. But the strange thing is, all the taxi passengers would always come back to pay their fare after they have attended to their business; not a single outsider has ever been found in the free hotel dining rooms. And workers always give an honest account of the exact hours they put in. As the Finns always act on good faith in everything they do, living in such a society has turned everyone into a real “gentleman”.

    In a society of such high moral practice, what need is there for people to be on guard against others?

    My timing has always been a little off with Elizabeth Strout. I've read and pretty much admired everything she's written, but, for whatever reason, the books of hers I've picked to review have been the good ones, like Amy and Isabelle andThe Burgess Boys, rather than the extraordinary ones, like Olive Kitteridge, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. Anything Is Possible is Strout's latest book and it's gorgeous. Like Olive Kitteridge, Anything Is Possible reads like a novel constructed out of linked stories. In fact, it's hard to know exactly what to call this — a novel or a short story collection. In any case, these stories are animated (栩栩如生) by Strout's signature themes: class humiliation, loneliness, spiritual and, sometimes, reawakening. When Strout is really on her game, as she is here, you feel like you've been carefully lowered into the unquiet depths of quiet lives.

    Strout began working on Anything Is Possible at the same time she was writing her novel My Name Is Lucy Barton, which was published last year. Lucy, a dirt-poor child who grows up to become a celebrated writer, floats in and out of these interlocking stories. Some characters catch a glimpse of her being interviewed on TV; one travels to see her at a bookstore. An older Lucy even appears “in the flesh” in one story when she returns home to the small town in rural Illinois where most of these tales are set to visit her troubled brother; but Anything Is Possible also stands on its own. Indeed, a few of the characters here would be ticked off if they thought their stories depended in any way on that Barton girl. Strout's writerly eye works like a 360 degree camera, so that a character or place that's on the margins of one tale takes center stage in a later one. This technique sounds contrived, but Strout carries it off lightly.

    ①One of the most powerful stories here is called “Dottie's Bed & Breakfast,” which is an establishment we readers glimpse earlier in the book. Dottie desires to be middle-class and she harbors a grudge (怨恨) against life because she's had to rent out rooms to make a living. Dottie also possesses a sensitive nose for sniffing out the lower-class origins of some of her guests.

    ②“Shoes always gave you away,” comments a woman in a story called “Cracked” about a houseguest's too-high cork wedges(坡跟鞋). And, in the final story here, called “Gift,” a once-poor man made good says, “The sense of apology did not go away, it was a tiring thing to carry.”

    ③But, back to Dottie. When an elderly doctor and his wife come to stay at her guesthouse, Dottie bonds over tea with the wife, Shelley, who shares a story about a long-ago social humiliation.

    ④At breakfast the next morning, however, Shelley obviously regrets that confidence and becomes the Doctor's wife again. She freezes Dottie out and puts her back in her place as the inn-keep.

    There's comic satisfaction in seeing Dottie secretly spitting into the breakfast jam, but the more profound rewards of this story have to do with its recognition of the many varieties of human insecurity — or, as Lucy Barton herself more bluntly puts it, the many ways “people are always looking to feel superior to someone else.”

    Other stories have to do with sexual shame, or with the tragic ways close neighbors or family members misread each other; but I'm making Anything Is Possible sound too grim when, in fact, so many of these stories end in an understated (低调的) gesture of forgiveness. Strout is in that special company of writers like Richard Ford, Stewart O'Nan and Richard Russo, who write simply about ordinary lives and, in so doing, make us readers see the beauty of both their worn and rough surfaces and what lies beneath.

    For many families, a night at the ballpark is a treat. But it can be a terrible experience for those with autistic(自闭症的)children, who are sensitive to light and noise and usually become upset and scared.

    For these families, fear of how their child will react to new situations­and how others will react to them-keeps them from gaining everyday experiences others get to have.

    Dr. Wendy Ross was heartbroken to see that. The pediatrician(儿科医生)in Philadelphia also knew that separation from the community didn't serve her patients well in the long run.

    "If kids are not in the community, building their skills from very young ages, then there's no reason to expect them to be independent one day," Ross said. "It's a social disability. It needs to be addressed in a social setting."

    So in 2007, Ross set out to do just that. Today, her nonprofit, Autism Inclusion Resources, helps families affected by autism deal with challenging social situations, such as sporting events, airport travel and museum visits.

    Many Major League Baseball teams hold annual 44autism awareness nights", when they take temporary measures such as lowering the volume (音量)on the public address system. But Ross wanted to do more. "You can't turn down the volume of the world," Ross said. "It's nice to do it for one night, but our goal is for families to be able to go to a game on any night."

    To that end, Ross partnered with the Philadelphia Phillies to develop a creative program.

    She armed all the Phillies players and game-day staff with knowledge about autism and how to interact with individuals who have the disorder. Each family is also provided a clinician at the game who gives additional support if problems arise. She also helps prepare the families for the event.

    Ross has also found her airport travel program to be successful for families. Using the same principles, she trains airline and security staff at major airports and then guides families through the travel experience, including checking in, going through security and boarding a plane.

    Ross hopes that the tools she gives families can help them explore other settings on their own. "We really see it as a stepping stone to a brighter future," she said.

    Demand for the Chinese tech company's devices(设备) is red hot even though the country's overall market for smartphones is getting smaller Huawei's China sales rocketed more than 20% in the final quarter of 2018, and experts say that's partly due to the US govenment's global campaign against the company.

    "The latest tension between the US and China raised the patriotism(爱国主义) in Chinese consumers, said Jusy Hong, an analyst at research firm IHS Markit

    He pointed out that some Chinese companies encouraged employees to buy Huawei phones late last year. The moves were a gesture of support after the firm's chief financial officer was arrested in Canada in early December at the request of the United States.

    Huawei's booming sales show how major parts of its business continue to increase even as the United States tries to persuade other countries to shut Huawei products out of 5G wireless networks and pursues(追究) criminal charges against it. The company expects to overtake Samsung as the world's biggest smartphone maker by next year.

    Huawei sold 30 million phones in China in the last three months of 2018, nearly three times as many as Apple(AAPL), according to data published this week by research firms Canalys and IDC. Apple's sales plunged almost 20%.

    Huawei's success in China, the world's largest smartphone market, is more than about geopolitics(地缘政治). Chinese consumers love its flagship, high -end- phones because they have great cameras, cutting edge technology and cost less than the latest iPhones, according to analysts. And by offering a selection of cheaper phones, Huawei is able to target a bigger market.

    It also benefited from the troubles this year at ZTE (ZTCOF), a rival Chinese smartphone and telecommunications equipment maker. ZTE was banned by the US government from buying vital American parts for months last year.