Every day when Glen Oliver orders his morning coffee at the drive-through window of a local cafe, he insists on paying for the order of the person behind him. He also asks the restaurant workers to tell the customer to have a great day, in case they're not already having one.

    Oliver has never made a big deal out of his own generous actions until a letter was published by a news website in November. He found out that he had not just bought someone his breakfast —he had saved a life.

    According to the website, someone had written a letter stating that on July 18th, he was planning on committing suicide. The writer said that while he was at the drive-through window, he was planning on going home, writing a note and ending his life. When he went to pay for his coffee and muffin, however, the cashier told him that the man in the SUV in front of him had picked up the tab and told him to have a great day.

    “I wondered why someone would buy coffee for a stranger for no reason,” said the writer. “Why me? Why today? If I were a religious man, I would take this as a sign. This random act of kindness was directed at me on this day for a purpose.”

    When the writer arrived home, he couldn't hold back his tears and started to think about the simple good deed that had affected him so deeply. “I decided at that moment to change my plans for the day and do something nice for someone. I ended up helping a neighbor take groceries out of her car and into the house.”

    The writer says that in the months following that fateful event, he does at least one kind thing for others every day. “To the nice man in the SUV, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Please know your kind gesture has truly saved a life,” he said. “On July 18, 2017, I had the greatest day.”

    Suddenly another thought went through Kate's mind like an electric shock. An express train was due to go past about thirty minutes later. If it were not stopped, that long train, full of passengers, would fall into the stream. “Someone must go to the station and warn the station-master,” Kate thought. But who was to go? She would have to go herself. There was no one else.

    In wind and rain she started on her difficult way. Soon she was at the bridge that crossed the Des Moines River, a bridge also built of wood, just like the bridge across Honey Creek. The storm had not washed this away, but there was no footpath across it. She would have to cross it by stepping from sleeper(枕木) to sleeper. With great care she began the dangerous crossing, sometimes on her hands and knees, hardly daring to look down between the sleepers into the wild flood waters below. If she should slip, she would fall between the sleepers, into the rapidly flowing stream.

    At last-she never knew how long it had taken her-she felt solid ground under her feet. But there was no time to rest. She still had to run more than half a mile and had only a few minutes left. Unless she reached the station before the express did, many, many lives would be lost.

    She did reach the station just as the train came into sight. Fortunately the station-master was standing outside. “The bridge is down! Stop the train! Oh, please stop it!” Kate shouted breathlessly.

    The station-master went pale. He rushed into the station building and came back with a signal light. He waved the red light as the train came into the station. It was not a second too early.

    Are people less happy or more happy the older they get? A study found that people generally become happier and experience less worry after age 50. In fact, it found that by the age of 85, people are happier with their life than they were at 18.

    The finding came from a Gallup survey of more than 340,000 adults between the age of 18 and 85 in the United States.

    Arthur Stone in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook University in New York led the study. His team found that levels of stress were highest among adults between the ages of 22 and 25. Stress levels dropped sharply after people reached their fifties.

    Happiness was highest among the youngest adults and those in their early seventies. But the people least likely to report feeling negative emotions were those in their seventies and eighties. The survey also found that men and women had similar emotional patterns as they grow older. However, women at all ages reported more sadness, stress and worry than men did.

    The researchers also considered possible influences like having young children, being unemployed or being single. But they found that influences like these did not affect the levels of happiness and well-being related to age.

    So why would happiness increase with age? One theory is that, as people get older, they become more thankful for what they have and have better control of their emotions. They also spend less time thinking about bad experiences.

    The original goal of the study was to confirm the popular belief that aging is connected with increased sleep problems. The survey did find an increase during middle age, especially in women. But except for that, people reported that they felt their sleep quality improved as they got older.

    When people see machines that respond like humans, or computers that perform amazing feats of strategy, they sometimes joke about a future in which humanity will need to accept robot overlords. But buried in the joke is a seed of unease. Science fiction writing and popular movies have shown us about artificial intelligence (AI) that exceeds the expectations of its creators and escapes their control, eventually outcompeting and enslaving humans or targeting them for extinction(灭绝).

    Even in the real word, not everyone is ready to welcome AI with open arms. In recent years, as computer scientists have pushed the boundaries of what AI can accomplish, leading figures in technology and science have warmed about the frightening dangers that artificial intelligence may pose to humanity, even suggesting that AI capabilities could destroy the human race.

    But why are people so frightened about the idea of AI?

    Elon Musk is one of the famous voices that have raised red flags about AI, In July 2017. Musk told attendees at a meeting of the National Governors Association, I have exposured to the very cutting-edge Al, and I think people should be really concerned about it. I keep sounding the alarm bell. But until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don't know how to react, because it seems so impossible."

    Earlier, in 2014, Musk had labeled AI "our biggest existential threat," and in August 2017, he declared that humanity faced a greater risk from AI than the terrorists. Physicist Stephen Hawking, who died on March14, also expressed concerns about AI, telling the BBC in 2014 that "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.

    Being attractive isn't usually considered much of a disadvantage in today's world. Actually, there is the endless potential benefit about it, but researchers have found one area that being pretty makes life a challenge securing yourself a boring, low­paying job.

    This stands in contrast to a large body of research that attractiveness, in general, helps candidates in the selection process. For the most part good looks is a blessing. We treat pretty people more favorably in general, often vote for them more in elections, and pay them more in their professions. The research suggests that attractive people may be discriminated against in selection for relatively less desirable jobs.

    Researchers carried out four experiments involving more than 750 participants, including university students and managers who make hiring decisions in the real world. Participants were shown photos of two potential job candidates, one attractive and the other unattractive. Participants were then asked a series of questions designed to measure their opinions of the job candidates and whether they would hire these candidates for a less­than­desirable job.

    The less desirable jobs included a warehouse worker, housekeeper, customer service representative and the more desirable jobs included things like a manager, project director, IT elite(精英). In all experiments where they were asked, participants were significantly less likely to hire the attractive candidate for the less desirable job and more likely to hire the attractive candidate for the more desirable job.

    Ms Lee said, "In the selection decision for an undesirable job, decision makers were more likely to choose the unattractive individual over the attractive individual. Co­author Dr Madan Pillutla said, "It is interesting that decision makers consider others' opinions in their decisions. They thought that attractive individuals would want better outcomes, and therefore would be less satisfied, so they favored unattractive candidates when selecting for a less desirable job."

    The research also suggests the established view that attractive candidates are favored when applying for jobs might be limited to high­level jobs.

    You probably know the basics of how comparatives(比较级) and superlatives(最高级) work in the English language. When comparing something, you often add an "-er" to the end of the comparative adjective. The general rule is that one-syllable(音节) words get the suffix(后缀), and polysyllabic words get "more" or "most." That is, unless the two-syllable word ends in a "y"; if that's the case, you will add the suffixes and change the "y" to an "i".

    But what about the word "fun"? This simple adjective only has one syllable, so you'd think you'd add suffixes on it to create superlatives. But if you were to say "I think Magic Kingdom is a funner park than Epcot." or "Disney World was the funnest vacation ever!" you might get some strange looks. It doesn't sound quite right. But…why? "Fun" is one syllable, so why do we choose "more fun" as the comparative—especially considering that the similar word "funny," which has more syllables than "fun," uses the suffixes with no problem?

    Well, the problem comes from the fact that the word "fun" was not originally an adjective. Until the early 19th century, it was mostly just a noun, and it gained its meaning as "amusement" in the 18th century. But as early as the 1800s, people began using it as an adjective, the way we'd describe "a fun time" or "a fun place" today.

    Basically, language is still developing. Grammarians have mostly come around to the use of "fun" as an adjective (though some dictionaries still call it informal). There was (and remains) an agreement of "Fine, you can use ‘fun' as an adjective…but, like, it's not really one, so it can't follow the rules of real adjectives." So they also agree that the answer to "is funner a word?" is yes. If you want to consider "fun," as an adjective, then "funner" is indeed a word, as is "funnest". But this doesn't mean that "more fun" and "most fun" are incorrect, though; in fact, in formal writing, you'll probably still want to use those instead of "funner" and "funnest."

    The English language is chock-full of uncertain grammar rules; there's no need to insist that a word breaks the common rules of language just because we didn't used to use it in a way we do now.