Who's in control of your life? Who's pulling your strings? For the majority of us, it's other people-society, colleagues, friends, family or our community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. As Oscar Wilde puts it," Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

    So when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We long for this good feeling like a drug-we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. Therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, failing to do the things we really want to. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsened lives to keep getting their fix(成瘾物)we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.

    But, just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom-the freedom to be ourselves. The truth is that we cannot control what other people think. People have their own agenda, and they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they're more interested in themselves than in you. Furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted (tired) and probably pleasing no one in the process.

    So how can we take back control? I think there's only one way-make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think. We should guide ourselves by means of a set of values- not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life.

    One evening in February 2007, a student named Paula Ceely brought her car to a stop on a remote road in Wales. She got out to open a metal gate that blocked her path. That's when she heard the whistle sounded by the driver of a train. Her Renault Clio was parked across a railway line. Seconds later, she watched the train drag her car almost a kilometre down the railway tracks.

    Ceely's near miss made the news because she blamed it on her GPS device. She had never driver the route before. It was dark and raining heavily. Ceely was relying on her GPS, but it made no mention of the crossing. "I put my complete trust in the device and it led me right into the path of a speeding train," she told the BBC.

    Who is to blame here? Rick Stevenson, who tells Ceely's story in his book When Machines Fail Us, points the finger at the limitations of technology. We put our faith in digital devices, he says, but our digital helpers are too often not up to the job. They are filled with small problems. And it's not just GPS devices: Stevenson takes us on a tour of digital disasters involving everything from mobile phones to wireless keyboards.

    The problem with his argument in the book is that it's not clear why he only focuses on digital technology, while there may be a number of other possible causes. A map-maker might have left the crossing off a paper map. Maybe we should blame Ceely for not paying attention. Perhaps the railway authorities are at fault for poor signaling system. Or maybe someone has studied the relative dangers and worked out that there really is something specific wrong with the GPS equipment. But Stevenson doesn't say.

    It's a problem that runs through the book. In a section on cars, Stevenson gives an account of the advanced techniques that criminals use to defeat computer-based locking systems for cars. He offers two independent sets of figures on car theft; both show a small rise in some parts of the country. He says that once again not all new locks have proved reliable, Perhaps, but maybe it's also due to the shortage of policemen on the streets. Or changing social circumstances. Or some combination of these factors.

    The game between humans and their smart devices is amusing and complex. It is shaped by economics and psychology and the cultures we live in. Somewhere in the mix of those forces there may be a way for a wiser use of technology.

    If there is such a way, it should involve more than just an awareness of the shortcomings of our machines. After all, we have lived with them for thousands of years. They have probably been fooling us for just a. s long.

    Sometimes just when we need the power of miracles to change our beliefs, they materialize in the places we'd least expect. They can come to us as a great change in our physical reality or as a simple coincidence in our lives. Sometimes they're big and can't be missed. Other times they're so subtle that if we aren't aware, we may miss them altogether. They can come from the lips of a stranger we suddenly and mysteriously meet at just the right instant. If we listen carefully, we'll always hear the right words, at the right time, to dazzle (目眩) us into a realization of something that we may have failed to notice only moments before.

    On a cold January afternoon in 1989, I was hiking up the trail that leads to the top of Egypt's Mt. Horeb. I'd spent the day at St. Catherine's Monastery and wanted to get to the peak by sunset to see the valley below. As I was winding up the narrow path, I'd occasionally see other hikers who were coming down from a day on the mountain. While they would generally pass with simply a nod or a greeting in another language, there was one man that day who did neither.

    I saw him coming from the last switchback on the trail that led to the backside of the mountain. As he got closer, I could see that he was dressed differently from the other hikers I'd seen. Rather than the high-tech fabrics and styles that had been the norm, this man was wearing traditional Egyptian clothing. He wore a tattered, rust-colored galabia and obviously old and thick-soled sandals that were covered in dust. What made his appearance so odd, though, was that the man didn't even appear to be Egyptian! He was a small-framed Asian man, had very little hair, and was wearing round, wire-rimmed glasses.

    As we neared one another, I was the first to speak, "Hello," I said, stopping on the trail for a moment to catch my breath. Not a sound came from the man as he walked closer. I thought that maybe he hadn't heard me or the wind had carried my voice away from him in another direction. Suddenly he stopped directly in front of me on the high side of the trail, looked up from the ground, and spoke a single sentence to me in English, "Sometimes you don't know what you have lost until you've lost it." As I took in what I had just heard, he simply stepped around me and continued his going down the trail.

    That moment in my life was a small miracle. The reason is less about what the man said and more about the timing and the context. The year was 1989, and the Cold War was drawing to a close. what the man on the trail couldn't have known is that it was during my Egyptian pilgrimage (朝圣), and specifically during my hike to the top of Moses's mountain, that I'd set the time aside to make decisions that would affect my career in the defense industry, my friends, my family, and, ultimately, my life.

    I had to ask myself what the chances were of an Asian man dressed in an Egyptian galabia coming down from the top of this historic mountain just when I was walking up, stopping before me, and offering his wisdom, seemingly from out of nowhere. My answer to my own question was easy: the odds were slim to none! In a meet that lasted less than two minutes on a mountain halfway around the world from my home, a total stranger had brought clarity and the hint of a warning, regarding the huge changes that I would make within a matter of days. In my way of thinking, that's a miracle.

    I suspect that we all experience small miracles in our lives every day. Sometimes we have the wisdom and the courage to recognize them for what they are In the moments when we don't, that's okay as well. It seems that our miracles have a way of coming back to us again and again. And each time they do, they become a little less subtle, until we can't possibly miss the message that they bring to our lives!

The key is that they're everywhere and occur every day for different reasons, in response to the different needs that we may have in the moment. Our job may be less about questioning the extraordinary things that happen in our daily lives and more about accepting the gifts they bring.

    Teenagers who talk on the cell phone a lot, and hold their phones up to their right ears, score worse on one type of memory test. That's the finding of a new study. That memory impairment might be one side effect of the radiation (放射线) that phones use to keep us connected while we're on the go.

    Nearly 700 Swiss teens took part in a test of figural memory. This type helps us remember abstract (抽象的) symbols and shapes, explains Milena Foerster. The teens took memory tests twice, one year apart. Each time, they had one minute to remember 13 pairs of abstract shapes. Then they were shown one item from each pair and asked to match it with one of the five choices. The study volunteers also took a test of verbal memory. That's the ability to remember words. The two memory tests are part of an intelligence test. The researchers also surveyed the teens on how they use cell phones. And they got call records from phone companies. The researchers used those records to figure out how long the teens were using their phones. This allowed the researchers to work out how big a radiation exposure (接触) each person could have got while talking.

    A phone user's exposure to the radiation can differ widely. Some teens talk on their phones more than others. People also hold their phones differently. If the phone is close to the ear, more radiation may enter the body, Foerster notes. Even the type of network signal that a phone uses can matter. Much of Switzerland was using an older "second-generation" type of cell phone networks, the study reports. Many phone carriers (通讯公司) have moved away from such networks. And more companies plan to update their networks within the next few years.

    The teens' scores in the figural memory tests were roughly the same from one year to the next. But those who normally held their phones near the right ears, and who were also exposed to higher levels of radiation, scored a little bit worse after a year. No group of teens showed big changes on the verbal memory test. Why might one type of memory be linked to cell phone use, but not another? Foerster thinks it could have to do with where different memory centers sit in the brain. The site that deals with the ability to remember shapes is near the right ear.

    "A bird with a broken wing will never fly as high. " I'm sure T. J, Ware was made to feel this way almost every day in school.

    By high school, T, J. was the most celebrated troublemaker in his town. Teachers literally cringed when they saw his name posted on their classroom lists.

    I met T. J. for the first time when all the students at school were attending ACE training. At first, he showed no interest in the discussion. But slowly, the interactive games drew him in. T. J. had some brilliant thoughts on those situations, which were welcomed by his group. By the end of the activity, the other students on the team were impressed with his concern and ideas and elected T. J. co-chairman of the team.

    When T. J. showed up at school on Monday morning, a group of teachers were expressing their disagreements to the school principal about his being elected co-chairman. The principal reminded them that the purpose of the program was to uncover any positive feeling and strengthen its practice until true change can take place. The teachers left the meeting, firmly convinced that failure was unavoidable.

    Two weeks later, T. J. and his friends led a group of 70 students to collect food They collected a school record: 2,854 cans of food in just two hours. The local newspaper covered the event with a full-page article the next day. That newspaper story was posted on the main bulletin board at school, where everyone could see it. 

    T. J. ,s picture was up there for doing something great.

    T. J. started showing up at school every day and answered questions from teachers for the first time.  The event he started now yields 9,000 cans of food in one day, taking care of 70 percent of the need for food for one year.

    T, J. reminds us that a bird with a broken wing only needs mending.  But once it has healed, it can fly higher than the rest. T. J. got a job. He became productive. He is flying quite nicely these days.

Once upon a time, science fiction was just a style among other styles. There were crime stories, there were horror stories, there was literary fiction, and there was science fiction. But today science themes dominate these other styles. It's difficult to think of much modern crime, horror or "serious" fiction that doesn't involve science.

And its not just books. With every second movie and computer game having a sci-fi element, science fiction seems to have controlled our entire entertainment culture. It's clear that if we want to define science fiction, we should relate it to the role that science plays in our lives.

Although some experts have claimed to be able to trace sci-fi back to ancient times, it is more reasonable to find it in initial form in the 19^th century, when industrial societies arose. One of the features that set industrial societies apart from other kinds was the increasing part that science played in everyday life. Factories with vast machines turned out huge quantities of goods, which were transported by trains, motor vehicles and ships all over the world. Cities were built on the back of technology, with electricity in homes and hospitals helping everyone to lead healthier, more convenient lives. All of these changes had great effects not only on people's real lives, but on their imaginative ones.

Writers began to describe these changing physical and mental landscapes, eventually giving science fiction a large and devoted fan base of especially young readers, who found that it spoke to their curiosity about the future that science would create.

But sci-fiction reflected fears about science more than it did hopes. These typical early science fiction novels might be a UK novel like H. G. Wells' The War of the worlds (1897). With great skill, Wells played upon the fears of technology by imagining Earth under threat by a civilization-that of men from Mars.

The science fiction of today expresses the impact of the computing revolution, robotics and our environmental challenges, while it is less concerned with "little green men from Mar" and other themes of past sci-fiction.

Given that science, technology and polities are always intertwined, contemporary science fiction often has a great deal to say about power. Many recent novels-like American Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (2008)-are concerned with government and security service "conspiracies (阴谋)" against the people, particularly as the revelations of whistleblowers like Edward Snowden sink in. This can give sci-fi writing a "skeptical (怀疑的)" feel.

This underlines one of the features that remains constant between the beginnings of the empire of science fiction and its state today.

As then, so now: We want to read about how fearful the future will be, not how it will be a paradise.