Is pricing a plane ticket based on the passenger's weight fair? If you're taking an international flight on Samoa Air today, your fare will be based on your weight, along with that of your luggage. The cost is 93 cents to $1.06 for each kilogram.

    The average American woman weighs 75.5 kilograms, far from the ideal weight for her average height. Her ticket on Samoa Air, at the $1 a kilogram rate, would cost $75.50. But let's be honest here. Since the average American woman is overweight, the ticket will cost her more.

    Samoa Air Chief Executive Chris Langton said, “Planes are run by weight and not by seat. The plane can only carry a certain amount of weight and that weight needs to be paid.”He believes other airlines should adopt the policy.

    It' s not a new idea. I remember a newspaper columnist years ago who put forth the idea that the heavier among us should pay more for their seats on planes, trains and buses. Who hasn' t been squeezed into a middle seat between two plus-sized folks on a flight? It's happened to me; one time my married seatmates had purposefully chosen their seats to have more space until a sold-out flight put me between them. Not one of my better flying experiences.

What if such a policy is adopted by some airlines in the United States? Could such pricing provide a much-needed motivation for Americans to reduce body weight? I hope so. But, as we know, more than one-third of us are obese and another third are overweight. The high probability is that the heavy customers will not suddenly lose weight or stop flying, but will instead choose a different airline, simply moving the supposed problem elsewhere.

    There's no doubt that the heavier will suffer more discrimination (歧视). Discrimination against the overweight in the United States has increased by 66 percent over the last decade —“and is comparable to rates of racial discrimination, especially among women,”wrote Yale University researcher Rebecca M. Puhl. Your weight can affect your salary, your chances for employment, how others view you and even, now, your air fares.

     “If the policy succeeds it may encourage the spread of body discrimination across different industries and the wider culture,” said one British editorial writer. He holds that it is companies' duty to provide equipment that meet the needs of their customers.

And we'll see how effective it is as a business model.

    Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. We do not know who first set a broken leg, or launched a seaworthy boat, or calculated the length of the year, or manured(施肥)a field; but we know all about the killers and destroyers. People think a great deal of them, so much so that on all the highest pillars (纪念柱) in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a general or a soldier. And I think most people believe that the greatest countries are those that have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them as conquerors. It is just possible they are, but they are not the most civilized.

    Animals fight; so do savages (野蛮人); hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Even being good at getting other people to fight for you and telling them how to do it most efficiently －this, after all, is what conquerors and generals have done －is not being civilized. People fight to settle quarrels. Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their disputes other than by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the other side, and then saying that that side which has killed most has won. And it not only has won, but, because it has won, has been in the right. For that is what going to war means; it means saying that might is right.

    That is what the story of mankind has on the whole been like. Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars in history, in which millions of people were killed or disabled. And while today it is true that people do not fight and kill each other in the streets －while, that is to say, we have got to the stage of keeping the rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life － nations and countries have not learnt to do this yet, and still behave like savages.

    The World Health Organization report compared the “obesity-related behaviors” for youngsters across 42 nations. And it reveals UK kids are among the laziest.

    Among teenage girls, the Scots topped the league table for most screen time, with 80 per cent spending at least two hours a day on computers. Wales came fourth with 76 per cent, and England seventh with 75 per cent. Girls in Armenia and Albania were least likely to spend hours idling online.

    Screen time figures for boys were even higher. Wales was second in the European “couch potato” league, with 85 per cent glued to their screens for at least two hours. Scotland was third with 84 per cent, and England 15th with 77 per cent. Boys in Switzerland and Portugal were least likely to dedicate two hours a day to sitting in front of a computer.

    Lead researcher Dr. Jo Inchley, from the University of St Andrews, said social media was impacting on kids' health. She said,“ We know there are risks, such as cyber bullying and impact on mental health. Also, there are longer-term impacts on physical health from being sedentary. One of the main challenges is that this kind of activity (social media and computer use) is so much part of young people's lives these days.” She said more needs to be done to get kids moving throughout the day.

    Dr. Steven Mann, research director for UK Active said the findings were “alarming”. He said, “Modern life has changed, but when teens are spending hours having fun with Facebook, Instagram and videogames, they simply aren't getting the exercise that they need. These alarming inactivity figures show that playtime is over before it has started for too many children, putting them at far greater risk of future conditions like heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes.”

    Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, warned Brit teens are now “slaves to hand-held devices”. And the WHO warns four in five fat teens will continue to struggle with their weight throughout life. The report also shows less than half of UK youngsters consume fruit or veg daily.

    On a cold morning in 2015, five-year-old Lucas stood on the bank of Blue Star River, hugging a dead salmon（鲑鱼）against his thick yellow coat. He looked up at his father, Steve, who nodded encouragingly. "Go ahead," he said. "Put it in." The young boy dragged his feet forward and held the fish as far as he could into the shallow water. "It's floating!" Lucas yelled, delighted. For a moment, it's almost as if the handsome salmon could come back to life.

    Lucas' salmon was just one of 100 or so dead bodies that will land in Blue Star River in a half-hour activity this morning, delivered by dozens of volunteers. None of the salmon will rise from the dead, but Andy, president of the Fish Rescue Society, who has promoted this gathering, is carrying out the resurrection （复活）project of salmon.

    Andy led the group's campaign to recover this urban waterway's salmon population. "The Fish Rescue Society started exploring the possibility of recovering the salmon in the river in the mid-1990s, and they also focused on river recovery in cities worldwide."

    Andy and his group are devoted to giving the river a full make-over. This monumental repair job, supported by approximately $95,000 of funding from the Pacific Salmon Foundation over the past 15 years, has involved recovering the river-habitat of salmon and preventing it from wearing away. Work on the river's final section was completed in October 2016.

    Our summer vacation begins on July 15th and lasts nearly two months. Considering that my brain needs rest after a period of hard work, I, together with my family, went to our countryside, a very small farmhouse in which my grandparents used to live, to spend the summer. Obviously, life in the country is very different from that in the city.

    Early in the morning I took a walk along the field side. The air was fresh and pure. With a dog following, sometimes I ran a race in the meadows covered with tall grass. Sometimes I climbed up the hill to see the sun slowly yet steadily rise from the eastern horizon. The birds also sang restlessly among the bushes. In order to appreciate the quietness of the country, I gave myself entirely to nature, with a light heart and a happy mind.

    Sometimes in the afternoon I, together with my cousins, took a rod and went to the river to fish. It made the family happy when they saw me returning with a basketful of large fresh fish. When night came, I would sit at the door and tell the most wonderful and interesting stories to my cousins, who listened to the tale of wonder with open eyes and mouth.

    I wish I could enjoy such calm, pure and beautiful rural life forever.

    In today's society, language plays a key role in defining gender (性别) by vocabulary, and also their non-verbal (非语言的) vocabulary. Each one of these different types of ways of communicating is obviously different between men and women.

    Many different studies show that men tend to talk much more than women. It has also been proven that women tend to speak faster than men; this is due to the fact that women tend to be interrupted more often than men are, and also have the ability to speak more clearly, precisely, and more quickly than men. In one study it was found that women spoke for an average of three minutes describing a painting, as opposed to the thirteen-minute average it took men to describe it.

    Men and women also tend to have a very different non-verbal way of communicating, which can also make it very hard for one another to understand what the opposite sex is trying to say. Men's body language is much more reserved when talking to women. Men tend not to make as much eye contact and they generally stay farther away from women when talking to them. Men avoid other people's body space while talking, and they also tend to sit back when talking. All of these have given off the impression of disinterest or boredom. Women are by far better listeners and much more enjoyable to talk with and they tend to raise more topics for conversation.

    Women also make it clearer whether or not the conversation is going somewhere or just stuck in neutral. After learning about our styles of communicating with each other, I have decided that although men have not quite mastered communicating, what fun would it be if we all spoke the same "language"? The little games men and women play with each other while conversing would be lost. The question everyone asks himself or herself after talking with someone of the opposite sex, "I wonder if there's something there?" would no longer exist.