“People are ruder today because they are rushed and more ‘time poor' than ever before, ” says Patsy Rowe, “ Manners have fallen off the radar(雷达). ” Due to our strong attraction to electronic equipment it is a wonder more people don't wake up each morning and greet the singing birds with a complaint（抱怨）about the noise. Here are some examples of rudeness.

    Some people prefer to do almost everything over the internet. To them, dealing with an actual human is like an evolutionary step backward. It feels very slow because humans don, t work at 4G speeds. When you have dinner with friends, you will often notice someone paying more attention to his mobile phone. We have programmed ourselves to think that every new message brings life-changing news, so taking calls and checking our texts are more important than talking to the people we are with. What is worse, some people even tend to send anonymous（匿名的） rude messages by email.

    However, rudeness is never acceptable, Don, t assume it is OK to be rude if the person you, re in touch with won, t recognize you. If you have something awful to say, have the courage to face the person and say it, write a letter or email and sign it, or forget it. Upsetting people with unsigned messages is cruel and disgusting.

    We shouldn′t blame technology for our shortcomings. Technology is here to help us, but we should not allow it to take over our lives. An important step is acknowledging our shortcomings. People spend a lot of time pointing out bad manners but it would be even more help if we′d publicly acknowledge good manners when we see them.

    Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become a lot more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.

    While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like companions than mere tools. For example, these robots will be able to distinguish when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more appropriately to the user.

    The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn't just deliver general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each individual in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.

    Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these spaces.

Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company's “Oshbot” robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product's location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.

    The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not intended to replace workers, but to work alongside other employees.“We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us,” said Breazeal.

    People with an impulsive personality refer to those who tend to do things without considering the possible dangers or problems first. According to a new study by researchers at the University of Georgia, such people may be more likely to have food addiction. The study found that people exhibiting impulsive behavior weren't necessarily overweight, but impulsiveness was related to a direct relationship with food, and therefore, less healthy weight.

    Food addiction has been compared to addictive drug use. Studies have linked the dopamine (多巴胺) release that occurs after tasting delicious food to the dopamine release that happens when people consume other addictive substances.

    Impulsive behavior involves several personality traits (特点). Two of these traits, known as negative urgency and lack of perseverance, were particularly associated with food addiction and high BMI (身体质量指数) during the study.

    Negative urgency is characterized by the tendency to behave impulsively when experiencing negative emotions. Some people might drink alcohol or take drugs. For others, it could mean eating to feel better. Lack of perseverance is when a person has a hard time finishing hard or boring tasks. People with a lack of perseverance might have difficulty attempting to change addictive eating behavior, which could also cause obesity.

    “Impulsiveness might be one reason why some people eat in an addictive way despite motivation to lose weight,” said Dr. Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychologist. He was involved in developing the Yale Food Addiction Scale in aid of those people. “We are theorizing that if food addiction is really a thing, then our measure, the Yale Food Addiction Scale, should be related to helping control impulsive action,” said Gearhardt.

    Clinical psychologist Dr. James MacKillop, whose lab was conducting the study, believes that therapies used to treat addictive drug behavior could help people who suffer from addictive eating habits.

    “Most of the programs for weight loss at this point focus on the most obvious things, which are clearly diet and exercise,” MacKillop said. “It seems that managing strong desires to eat would naturally fit in with the skills a person would need to eat healthily.”

Dark Sky Parks around the World

    Warrumbungle National Park

    Situated in the central west slopes of New South Wales is Australia's only dark sky park, Warrumbungle. The park has served as a dark sky park since July 2016. Its crystal-clear night skies and high altitude make it a natural, educational, and astronomical heritage site in the southern half of the earth. Tourists can use Australia's largest optical telescope within the park boundaries to view the auroras (极光), the Milky Way, and faint shooting stars.

    Sark

    Sark is a Channel Island near the coast of Normandy under the protection of the UK. It was the World's First Dark Sky Island set up in January 2011. Its historical and cultural blend attracts over 40,000 tourists annually. With no motor vehicles and public lighting on the island, there is an exceptional view of the dark skies. A rich Milky Way is visible in the dark night skies from the shores of the island.

    Pic du Midi de Bigorre

    Pic du Midi de Bigorre in France was designated as a dark sky park in December 2013 making it the second largest dark sky park in the world. The park covers 3. 112 square kilometers spread across the Pyrenees National Park and UNESCO's World Heritage site, Pyrenees-Mont Perdu. The park attracts over one hundred star watchers every year. The Observatory Midi-Pyrenees, which was built in 1870, is one of the world's highest museums at a height of 2,877 meters above sea level.

    Ramon Crater/Makhtesh Ramon

    Ramon Crater is a unique 1,100-square-kilometer nature reserve located in the Negev Desert in Israel. In 2017, the Ramon Crater became the first designated dark sky park in the Middle East. Its location, rough climate, and forbidding landscape that are characteristic of the Negev have largely defeated historical attempts for human settlement, making it a great place to view the night skies. Stargazers usually camp in the desert to have an uninterrupted view of the stars, planets, and the Milky Way.

    There's a man in the habit of hitting me on the head with an umbrella. At first I couldn't stand it, now I'm used to it.

    I don't know his name. I know he's average in appearance, wears a gray suit, and has a common face. I met him five years ago one hot morning when I was sitting on a tree­shaded bench in Palermo Park, reading the paper. Suddenly I felt something touch my head. It was the very same man who now, as I'm writing, keeps hitting me, mechanically (机械地) and impassively, with an umbrella.

    On that occasion I turned around filled with anger. He just kept on hitting me. I asked him if he was crazy, he didn't even seem to hear me. Then I threatened to call a policeman. Calmly, cool as a cucumber, he stuck with his task. After a few moments of hesitation, and seeing that he was not about to change his attitude, I stood up and hit him on the nose. The man fell down, but he immediately got back on his feet, obviously with great effort, and without a word again began hitting me on the head with the umbrella. His nose was bleeding and, at that moment, I felt sorry for him. I felt regret for having hit him so hard. After all, the man wasn't exactly hitting me; he was merely tapping me lightly with his umbrella, not causing any pain at all. Of course, those taps were extremely bothersome. As we all know, when a fly lands on your forehead, you don't feel any pain; what you feel is annoyance. Well then, that umbrella was one huge fly that kept landing on my head time after time.

    Convinced that I was dealing with a madman, I tried to escape. But the man followed me, wordlessly continuing to hit me. So I began to run (I should point out that not many people run as fast as I do). He took off after me, trying to land a blow. The man was out of breath so that I thought, if I continued to force him to run at that speed, he would drop dead right then and there.

    Big Ben is not the name of a man. It is the name of a huge(庞大的)clock in London. London is the capital of England. This clock has four faces. So，no matter where you stand, you can read the time on the face of Big Ben. Each face is the size of a double decker(层)bus. The hands are about four metres long. It is about the size of two people standing on top of each other. If you go to London, you may want to visit the Houses of Parliament(国会大厦). There you will find Big Ben sits at the top of the clock tower(塔)in the Houses of Parliament. Maybe you will hear it as well as see it. The huge clock makes such a loud noise. "Ding dong, ding dong, "it goes every quarter of an hour.

    The clock was named after a big man. He was Sir Benjamin Hall. This man did much building work in London many years ago.