Science has a lot of uses. It can uncover laws of nature, cure diseases, make bombs, and help bridges to stand up. Indeed science is so good at what it does that there's always a temptation(诱惑) to drag it into problems where it may not be helpful. David Brooks, author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character,and Achievement, appears to be the latest in a long line of writers who have failed to resist the temptation.

        Brooks gained fame for several books. His latest book The Social Animal, however, is more ambitious and serious than his earlier books. It is an attempt to deal with a set of weighty topics. The book focuses on big questions: What has science revealed about human nature? What are the sources of character? And why are some people happy and successful while others aren't?

        To answer these questions, Brooks surveys a wide range of disciplines（学科）. Considering this, you might expect the book to be a dry recitation of facts. But Brooks has structured his book in an unorthodox(非常规的), and perhaps unfortunate, way. Instead of introducing scientific theories, he tells a story, within which he tries to make his points, perhaps in order to keep the reader's attention.So as Harold and Erica, the hero and heroine in his story, live through childhood, we hear about the science of child development and as they begin to date we hear about the theory of sexual attraction. Brooks carries this through to the death of one of his characters.

On the whole, Brooks's story is acceptable if uninspired. As one would expect, his writing is mostly clear and, to be fair, some chapters stand out above the rest. I enjoyed, for instance, the chapter in which Harold discovers how to think on his own. While Harold and Erica are certainly not strong or memorable characters, the more serious problems with The Social Animal lie elsewhere. These problems partly involve Brooks's attempt to translate his tale into science.

    Even if trees cannot walk, they are still on the move.

    In parts of the Arctic, entire forests are moving northward. Across the Arctic, temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else in the world. As that happens, the tree line that marks where forests stop and the treeless tundra (冻原) starts has been shifting northward. Trees growing along the tree line must protect themselves from the cold wind. To dothis, plants tend to grow horizontal (水平的) branches low to the ground. The energy it takes for trees to grow this way means they don't have enough energy to make seeds.

    But as Earth's climate has been warming, trees no longer have to just grow horizontally. Many can instead grow up toward the sky. This takes less energy. And with all that leftover energy, these trees have started producing more seeds. This happens especially in places where white spruce (白云杉) grows.

    White spruce, which is a North American tree, is quite able to produce a lot of seeds, which can move long distances in the wind. When wind­blown seeds end up on the tundra beyond the tree line, they eventually can sprout(发芽) new trees. This explains how a forest can move. Of course, the process would work only if the tundra were warm enough. But in recent years, the whole planet has been warming.

    New trees will provide shelters for some snow. Keeping the sun's rays from making the white surface disappear. Instead, the trees absorb the sun's heat. This warms the surrounding air. The extra warmth encourages even more trees to produce seeds. That further boosts a forest's ability to expand. In addition, more trees will trap more snow, preventing much of it from being blown away. Snow can trap heat in the soil below, which encourages trees to grow. The recent rise of temperatures has helped more trees grow past the tree line. People worry about impacts on the animals that depend on frozen conditions for food and shelter.

My Favourite Travel Books

    The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux

    Choosing my favorite Paul Theroux book is like picking my favorite place in the world: It's impossible to settle on just one. But The Old Patagonian Express, which is about a train journey Theroux made from Boston, USA to southern Argentina, is right up there at the top of my list. Theroux has a wicked sense of humor. He brings so much wisdom and experience to his travels.

    Walden by Henry David Thoreau

    If he were alive today, Thoreau would probably frown if he heard someone refer to Walden as a travel book. But I regard it as a travel-writing masterpiece. I went into the woods, he writes, because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. That's the same spirit of discovery that defines so many great contemporary travel records.

    The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

    Like so many people, I fell in love with Kerouac's novels in my late teens and early 20s. On the Road gets all the press, but I always love The Dharma Bums. Kerouac beautifully captures the romance of California trains, Berkeley, and backpacking in the Sierras. It's hard to read this book without wanting to leave for the mountains to brainstorm bad haikus on the trail and cook canned macaroni and cheese over a crackling campfire.

    Confucius Lives Next Door by T. R. Reid

    This is sort of A Year in Provence in Japan, only the cross-cultural differences are much greater. Reid and his family moved to Tokyo when he became the chief for The Washington Post, enabling him to uncover truths about the country. Among the highlights are his observations about Japanese schools, including Yodobashi No. 6 Elementary School, where his daughters were greeted by the whole school staff.

     Many of us feel uneasy when someone stands too close to us, talks to us too loudly or makes eye contact(接触) with us for too long. But have you ever wondered why those things make you uncomfortable?
      It's all about personal peace, which means not only an imaginary space around the body, but also the space around all the senses. People feel that their space is being violated(侵犯) when they meet with an unwelcome sound, smell or look. This is probably why a man on a crowded bus shouting into his mobile phone or a woman next to you putting on strong perfume(香水) makes you feel angry.

    Whether people have had a stronger wish to protect their personal space in recent times is hard to say. Yet studies of airlines show that people have a strong desire to have space to themselves. In a survey by Trip Advisor, a travel website, people said that if they had to pay more for some extra service, they would rather have larger seats than extra food.

    Although people may need their personal space, some hardly realize it. For example, people on a bus who hold newspapers in front of their faces to read in fact keep a distance from strangers.

    Go and watch a library table. You will notice that one of the corner seats will usually be taken first, because they are the farthest way. What if someone sits opposite to you? Maybe you will pile up books as if to make a wall.

    Preference for personal space is different from culture to culture. Scientists have found that Americans generally prefer more personal space than people from other cultures. In Latin cultures, however, people are more comfortable standing close to each other.

    Pizza is a pretty universal treat, but where did it start? Here are three things you probably didn't know about pizza.

    1: Pizza's Origins Are Half-Baked.

    The Neapolitans（那不勒斯人）in Italy are proud of saying they invented pizza, but it's probably more accurate to say, they perfected it. The idea of putting toppings on a flatbread and baking it started in the 6th century B. C. But the people of Naples were the first to put tomato on a flatbread in the 16th century. From its start, pizza was a food of the poor, as it was cheap, filling and easy to eat on the run. In Italian, the word “pizza” refers to anything that is made and then pressed flat.

    2: Pizza Margherita Is Not Exactly a Symbol of Italy.

It was said some day in 1889, a local baker named Raffaele Esposito created three pizzas for Queen Margherita when she was on a tour of Italy. The queen loved the version that had tomato, basil and mozzarella cheese— and just happened to match the colors of the Italian flag. So Esposito named the pizza after her.

    But Pizza historian Scott Wiener points out that Italy was unified in name only in 1889 so it was unlikely any Neapolitan baker would want to celebrate “the Northern conquerors.” Further, the letter of gratitude for the pizza from the royal household that Pizzeria Brandi displays appears to be a fake（赝品）and may just have been a marketing plan.

    3: Hawaliian Pizza Invented by a Canadian.

    Sam Panopoulos, from Greece originally moved to Canada at the age of 20. In 1962, he decided to put some ham and pineapple on a pizza at one of his restaurants in Ontario.

    “We just put it on for fun to see how it was going to taste,” he told the BBC in 2017. Panopoulos named it the Hawaiian pizza after the brand of canned pineapple he used. The mix of sweet and savory toppings caught on with a certain part of the pizza-loving public. The inventor died in 2017.

    Almost every day we come across situations in which we have to make decisions one way or another. Choice, we are given to believe, is a right. But for a good many people in the world, in rich and poor countries, choice is a luxury, something wonderful but hard to get, not a right. And for those who think they are exercising their right to make choices, the whole system is merely an illusion, a false idea created by companies and advertisers, hoping to sell their products.

    'The endless choice gives birth to anxiety in people's lives. Buying something as basic as a coffee pot is not exactly simple. Easy access to a wide range of everyday goods leads to a sense of powerlessness in many people, ending in the shopper giving up and walking away, or just buying an unsuitable item that is not really wanted. Recent studies in England have shown that many electrical goods bought in almost every family are not really needed. More difficult decision-making is then either avoided or trusted into the hands of the professionals, lifestyle instructors, or advisors.

    It is not just the availability of the goods that is the problem, but the speed with which new types of products come on the market. Advances in design and production help quicken the process. Products also need to have a short lifespan so that the public can be persuaded to replace them within a short time. The typical example is computers, which are almost out-of-date once they are bought. This indeed makes selection a problem. Gone are the days when one could just walk with ease into a shop and buy one thing; no choice, no anxiety.