My wife and I owned two doge that we had owned before we met and brought into the marriage. Her dog was a pit bull(斗牛犬) named Zack, and he hated me. When our daughter was born, I was worried that the family pit bull would be dangerous to have around our young daughter. I warned my wife that the dog would have to go at the first sign of trouble. I said, “If he nips(啃咬) at the baby, he's gone.”

    We brought our daughter home in a car seat, and both dogs sniffed(嗅）and licked her, tails wagging. I had to pull Zack away from her because he wouldn't stop licking her. Zack immediately became my daughter's protector, and when she was lying on a blanket on the floor, he always had one foot on the blanket.

    Zack loved my daughter extremely, and when she became a little older always walked her to bed, and then slept on the bed with her. He somehow knew whenever it was time to go upstairs, and he would wait at the bottom of the stairs for her, and then follow her up to bed.

    Zack was poisoned by some neighbor kids, and we had one of the worst days of our lives. Watching my daughter say goodbye to him as he lay still on the kitchen floor, my wife and I were both sobbing.

    At 8:00 that night, my daughter walked to the stairs to go to bed. At that moment, all three of us realized what was about to happen. My daughter looked at her mother and me with a look of horror and panic. It was at that moment that my dog, Sam who loved my daughter dearly, stood up, walked over to her, and nudged her with his head. He put his foot on the stairs, and looked up at her. They walked up to bed, with my daughter holding his neck tightly.

    For the next six years, until he died, Sam waited for her by the stairs each night.

    Most heroes are not super. They don't appear in comic books, on television, or in movies. They just do what they believe needs to be done to make their world a better place. Bike Batman is one of them.

    Bike Batman is a 30-year-old married engineer who lives in Seattle, Washington. He's a cyclist who also buys and sells bikes as a hobby.

    About three years ago, he was looking for a bike for his wife. He found one on Craigslist, a website where people list things they want to sell. As he often does, he also looked at Bike Index, a popular website that allows users to register their bikes and post reports when they're taken. The bike, which he was considering purchasing, clearly matched one reported stolen on Bike Index. Then he called the person who claimed to be the bike's owner and arranged to meet him— supposedly to complete the sale. When the two men met, Bike Batman told the thief, "You've got two options. You can wait until a police officer gets here, or you can just get out of here." You can imagine what the thief did.

    After that first success, Bike Batman developed a safer routine. When he sees questionable bike ads on Craigslist, he cross-references(对照) the image with bikes reported on Bike Index. Once he has confirmed it with the owner, he arranges a meet-up with the thief and will call the Seattle police department so that officers can participate in the action. In more than half of the 22 cases in which he has got back and returned bikes, the thieves have been arrested. In one case, Bike Batman even helped a family recover a wide range of prized possessions that suspects had stolen during a home burglary.

    His nickname came from a discussion with a police officer who suggested he be called "Robin Hood". Since he wasn't exactly stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, "Batman" seemed a better fit. The idea of a superhero punishing criminals feels pretty silly to him, but the main reason he continues his work is to keep up Seattle's reputation as a friendly city.

    Can you remember the day when you spoke your first word? If you can, you are unusual. Try to imagine what first few months of your life were like. I am sure you just spent most of your time eating, sleeping and crying. As you grew older, you were awake more of the time. It took your parents more time to play with you and talk to you. You watched and listened curiously (好奇). You began to know that people made certain sounds to go with certain things.

    Then you began to try making the sounds you heard. And step by step you were able to make the right sound for one thing. On that day you came to understand the secret of language. The secret is that a certain sound means a certain thing. One sound might be as good as another. But it is no good as a word unless everybody agrees on its meaning. Only when a group of people use the same set of sounds of things, can they understand each other. Then, and only then do these people have a LANGUAGE.

    After you found the secret of language, you learned words. Some of the words meant things, such as BOOKS, CHAIRS and SHOES. Some words meant doing things, such as GO and SWIM, and other words describe things, such as GOOD and DIRTY. Soon you learned to put words together to express your idea, such as “I want to go out and play with my friends.” This is language. By means of language people can communicate. So we say languages are means of communication.

    In the classic marriage vow (誓约), couples promise to stay together in sickness and in health. But a new study finds that the risk of divorce among older couples rises when the wife－not the husband－becomes seriously ill.

    "Married women diagnosed with a serious health condition may find themselves struggling with the impact of their disease while also experiencing the stress of divorce." said researched Amelia Karraker.

    Karraker and co-author Kenzie Latham analyzed 20 years of data on 2,717 marriages from a study conducted by Indiana University since 1992. At the time of the first interview, at least one of the partners was over the age of 50.

    The researchers examined how the onset (发生) of four serious physical illnesses affected marriages. They found that, overall, 31% of marriages ended in divorce over the period studied. The incidence of new chronic (慢性的) illness onset increased over time as well, with more husbands than wives developing serious health problems.

    "We found that women are doubly weak when their marriage breaks up in the face of illness," Karraker said. "They're more likely to be widowed, and if they're the ones who become ill, they're more likely to get divorced."

    While the study didn't assess why divorce is more likely when wives but not husbands become seriously ill, Karraker offers a few possible reasons. "Gender roles and social expectations about caregiving may make it more difficult for men to provide care to sick spouses." Karraker said. "And because of the imbalance in marriage markets, especially in older ages, divorced men have more choices among potential partners than divorced women."

    Given the increasing concern about health care costs for the aging population, Karraker believes policymakers should be aware of the relationship between disease and risk of divorce.

    "Offering support services to spouses caring for their other halves may reduce martial stress and prevent divorce at older ages." she said. "But it's also important to recognize that the pressure to divorce may be health-related and that sick ex-wives may need additional care and services to prevent worsening health and increased health costs."

    I'm not so sure I like my friends any more. I used to like them — to be honest. We'd have lunch, talk on the phone or exchange e-mails, and they all seemed normal enough. But then came Facebook and I was introduced to a sad fact: many of my friends have dark sides that they had kept from me.

    Today my friends show off the more unpleasant aspects of their personalities via Facebook. No longer hidden, they're thrown in my face like TV commercials — unavoidable and endless advertisements for the worst of their personalities.

    Take Fred. If you were to have lunch with him, you'd find him warm, and down-to-earth. Read his Facebook and you realize he's an unbearable, food-obsessed bore. He'd pause to have a cup of coffee on his way to save a drowning man — and then write about it.

    Take Andy. You won't find a smarter CEO anywhere, but now he's a CEO without a company to lull. So he plays Mafia Wars on Facebook. He's doing well — level 731. Thanks to Facebook, I know he's playing about 18 hours a day. Andy, you've run four companies — and this is how you spend your downtime(业余时间)? What happened to golf? What happened to getting another job?

    Take Liz. She is positive that the H1N1 vaccine(甲流疫苗) will kill us all and that we should avoid it. And then comes Chris who likes to post at least 20 times a day on every website he can find, so I get to read his thoughts twice, once on Facebook and once on Twitter.

    In real life, I don't see these sides of people. Face to face, my friends show me their best. They're nice, smart people. But face to Facebook, my friends are like a blind date which goes horribly wrong.

    I'm left with a dilemma. Who is my real friend? Is it the Liz I have lunch with or the anti-vaccine lunatic(狂人)on Facebook? Is it the Fred I can grab a sandwich with or the Fred who weeps if he's at a party and the wine isn't up to his standards?

When we are kids, we are constantly being compared to others. Our parents may compare us to our siblings (兄弟姐妹). Our teachers probably compared us to other students. Kids compared us to other kids.

Those comparisons created either a sense of humiliation or a sense of pride. Either way, it has become second-nature. Everything we'd done has been followed by looking around and seeking validation (确认感).

Midway through my psychology PhD program at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, I felt that I lacked whatever magical ability is required to finish and publish a project. It seemed as though other graduate students were authoring several papers in the time it took me to complete a single experiment. I worked as hard as I could, but my progress seemed to be incremental (渐进式增加的) compared with theirs. When I shared these concerns with my adviser, she had a different take on the situation. "You're not doing anything wrong," she assured me, "you're just pursuing a different kind of research."

Comparing yourself to others is not necessarily a bad thing.

When you catch yourself comparing yourself to others, get curious about the feeling that is being triggered (引起). Is it jealousy? Is it obsession? Is it admiration? Is it love? Is it inspiration? Your triggered feelings will give you a clue as to what is going on within you.

Most likely, you are jealous because you wish you had what it takes to achieve what the other has achieved or to have what they have. Get curious and figure out why you still don't have it and what would it take to get there. It is never a good idea to make yourself wrong for comparing yourself to others or to make yourself wrong for not getting where you wish to be.

But if all this comparison mounts to is bitter jealousy, then your problem is bigger than a simple comparison. Always bear in mind that your only competition is the one in the mirror and—believe me—it is the toughest competition of all.