The universe looks like a pretty quiet place to live. But the universe is filled with dangerous things, all struggling to be the one to wipe us off the planet. Happily for us, they're all pretty unlikely, but if you wait long enough, one of them is certain to get us. But which one?

1). Death by Asteroid (小行星)

    Of all the ways we might meet our untimely death, getting wiped out by an asteroid is the most likely. Why? Because we sit in a universal shooting gallery, with 100 tons of material hitting us every day. The problem, though, occurs every few centuries when something big this way comes. If you could ask a dinosaur, I'd imagine they would tell you to take this seriously.

2). Death by Exploding Star

    When a huge star ends its life, it does so with a bang, which sends death spreading across space in the form of high-energy radiation. Many studies show that the bang would have to be closer than about 75 light years to do us any harm. The good news: no stars so close are able to do the deed.

3). Death by Dying Sun

    The sun is important to us; without it, we'd freeze. But the sun is also middle-aged, already halfway to running out of fuel, expanding into a red giant, and cooking us to a fine crisp. Even long before then, it'll warm up enough to raise our average temperature and cause a runaway greenhouse effect, boiling our oceans. Happily, that's a long time from now.

4). Death by Black Hole

    Black holes are misunderstood. They don't wander the galaxy looking for tasty snacks in the form of planets and stars; they turn around the Milky Way just like the hundreds of billions of other stars do. But it's possible that one could wander too close to us. If it did, planetary paths would be disturbed, causing the Earth to drop into the sun or be thrown out into deep space.

    Given that it could be trillions of years or more before even that happens, we don't have to worry too much about black holes.

    My advice? Go outside, look up, enjoy the sun, the moon, and the stars. They may be there forever as far as any one of us is concerned...and forever is a long, long time.

    Thousands of taxi drivers in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, reportedly blocked streets with their vehicles on Sunday in protest against unlicensed vehicles using taxi-hiring apps(打车软件) and apps-based car rental companies providing passenger services, including high-end cars. Although the drivers also complained about the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy (补贴) by the government, their main complaint was the loss of business because of the rising number of Internet-based car services companies.

    On Wednesday, news reports came that Beijing transport authorities will take measures to stop the illegal “taxi business” of private cars through the newly rising Internet apps, following the footsteps of Shenyang and Nanjing.

It is not yet clear how the Shenyang city government will handle the issue and whether it will declare the services offered by market leaders such as Didi Dache, a taxi-hiring app provider backed by Tencent Holdings, and Kuaidi Dache illegal. But Shanghai transport regulators have set a rule, by banning Didi Zhuanche, or car services offered by Didi Dache in December.

    Such regulations will cause a setback to the car-hiring companies and investors that are waiting to cash in on the potentially booming business. Just last month, Didi Dache got $700 million in funding from global investors, including Singapore state investment company Temasek Holdings, Russian investment company DST Global and Tencent. Besides, the market is uncertain that Kuaidi Dache is about to finalize its latest round of funding after getting $800 million from global investors.

    Regulatory uncertainties, however, could cast a shadow on the future of the Internet-based car-hiring services, which have become popular in most of China's big cities. To be fair, these companies' business model is anything but bad. For example, Didi Zhuanche works side by side with established car rental companies to provide high-end car service mainly for businesspeople through the Internet and mobile phone apps.

    Every link in this business model chain has legal companies and services. Therefore, it is hard to define it as illegal and ban it.

    A parent might place his daughter's drawing on the fridge out of a love for his child rather than for the wonderful image, but for many people, that children art is actually quite amazing. In fact, adult artists were often inspired by children's drawing. For the museum-goers out there who tend to point to a piece of modern art and say, “My kid could have made that !”It's worth remembering that often, that's actually just what the artist had in mind.

    For many kids, drawing is exciting not because of the final product it leads to, but because they can live completely in the world of their drawing for a few minutes. Even children are scribbling(涂鸦), they're representing through action, not through pictures. Liane Alves, a prekindergarten teacher, recalled a student who presented her with a drawing featuring a single straight line across the page. Alves assumed the child hadn't given too much thought to the drawing until he explained that the line was one of the stems (茎) from The Princess and the Pea, one of the fairy tales they read in class.

    Maureen Ingram, who's a preschool teacher at the same school,said her students often tell different stories about a given piece of art depending on the day, perhaps because they weren't sure what they intended to draw when they started the picture. “We as adults will often say, 'I'm going to draw a horse, 'and we set out. . . and get frustrated when we can't do it, ”Ingram said. “Children seem to take a different approach, where they just draw, and then they realize, 'it is a horse. '”

    And what about those odd or scary-looking drawings? Does that mean kids are telling themselves stories that are odd or scary? It's hard to say, but it's rarely a good idea to over-interpret it. Ellen Winner, a psychology professor, pointed to parents who worry when their kid draws a child bigger than the adults. What's most important to remember is that“children's art has its own logic,” Winner said. “Children are not being crazy. ”

    Can you be too beautiful? It is hardly a problem that most of us have to bother — as much as we might like to dream that it were the case.

    Yet the blessings and curses of beauty have been a long-standing interest in psychology. Do those blessed with shiny faces and an attractive body live in a cloud of appreciation — or does it sometimes pay to be ordinary?

    At the most basic level, beauty might be thought to carry a kind of halo (光环) around it; we see that someone has one good quality, and by association, our deep mind may assume that they have other good ones too.

    Even in the courts, a pleasing appearance can work its magic. Attractive criminals are likely to get less strict sentences, or to escape punishment entirely; attractive plaintiffs (原告), meanwhile, are more likely to win their case and get bigger financial settlements. "It's an effect seen everywhere," says Walker.

    But if beauty pays in most circumstances, there are still situations where it can have opposite results. While attractive men may be considered better leaders, for instance, hidden sexist prejudices (偏见) can work against attractive women, making them less likely to be hired for high-level jobs that require power. And as you might expect, good-looking people of both sexes run into envy — one study found that if you are interviewed by someone of the same sex, they may be less likely to employ you if they judge that you are more attractive than they are.

    More worryingly, being beautiful or handsome could harm your medical care. We tend to link good looks to health, meaning that illnesses are often taken less seriously when they affect the good-looking. When treating people for pain, for instance, doctors tend to take less care over the more attractive people.

    Ultimately, scientists point out that focusing too much on your appearance can itself be harmful if it creates stress and anxiety — even for those already blessed with good looks. "If you are crazy about attractiveness, it may affect your experience and interactions," she says. It's an outdated saying, but no amount of beauty can make up for a bad personality. As the writer Dorothy Parker put it so elegantly: "Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone."

    At times my mom has been uncomfortable seeing these qualities in me. For example, when I was 12, I went to Puerto Rico all by myself to stay with my grandmother for the summer. My mom was extremely nervous about it. She kept telling me how things were different in Puerto Rico, to always put on sunscreen， not to wander away from my grandmother, and other warnings. She helped me pack and did not leave the airport until she saw my plane take off.

    But despite her worries, she let me go on my own. As I moved into my teens, she continued to give me space to grow and learn, even when it might have been difficult for her. When I reached my senior year, I decided to move away for college. Once again I found that I differed from my peers. While many of them wanted to stay close to home, I couldn't wait to be out in the world on my own. While my mom may not have been happy at the thought of my going away, she was supportive and excited for me.

    One big thing I realized during my senior year, as my mom granted me more freedom, was that she actually believes in me and trusts me. That means a lot. Most of my life, and especially when I was little, the main person I tried to impress in my schoolwork or other things was my mother. I knew she expected nothing but the best from me. Sometimes it was hard to live up to her standards: getting a single B on my report card would make me feel bad because I knew she wanted me to have all As.

    I know that her high standards have helped me stay focused on what's important, like education, and made me who I am. I am thankful for her support and involvement in my life. Most of all I respect her. She is the strongest woman I know and that's why I have turned out so strong and independent.

    The associates I hired in my bicycle and lawn mower shop like myself were never perfect; however, they were excellent. Working with them as they improved taught me new ways to show forgiveness, understanding, and patience.

    One day the placement officer asked me to interview a young man who was having trouble finding a job. He told me that David was a little shy, did not talk much and was afraid to go on with interviews. He requested that I give David an interview just for practice. He plainly told David that I had no positions open at the time and the interview was just for practice.

    When David came in for the interview, he hardly said a word. I told him what we did at the bicycle shop and showed him around. I told David to keep showing up because the number one thing an employer wanted in an associate was dependability. David was very quiet (he was evaluated as a slow learner in school).Every ten days or so, for weeks after the interview, David walked into the bicycle shop and stood by the front door. He never said a word, just stood by the door.

    One day, shortly before Christmas, a large truck came to the shop, packed with 250 new bicycles. It had to be unloaded right away or the driver would leave. It was raining. Some of my workers (without physical limitations) chose not to brave the weather to get into work, so I was short-handed. It seemed everything was going wrong and on top of it, David came in the front door and just stood there. I looked at him and shouted,“Well, all right! Fill out a time card and help me unload this truck!”

    David worked for my bicycle shop for eighteen years. He came to work every day thirty minutes early. He could talk; however, he rarely chose to. He drove my truck and made deliveries. The customers would praise David, saying,“He doesn't talk, but he really shows you how to operate a lawn mower!”