Travis is the manager of G&G where he is responsible for forty employees (雇员)and profits (利润) of over $2 million per year. He's never late to work. He does not get upset on the job. When one of his employees started crying after a customer screamed at her, Travis took her away. "Your working uniform is your shelter," he told her. "Nothing anyone says will ever hurt you. You will always be as strong as you want to be."

    Travis picked up that lecture in one of his G&G training courses, an education program that began on his first day and continues throughout an employee's occupation. The training has, Travis says, changed his life. G&G has taught him how to live, how to focus, how to get to work on time, and how to master his emotions (情绪). Most importantly, it taught him willpower.

    At the center of that education is an extreme focus on an all-important habit; willpower. Dozens of cases show that willpower is the single most important habit for a person's success.

    And the best way to strengthen willpower is to make it into a habit. "Sometimes it looks like people with great self-control aren't working hard—but that's because they've made it automatic," Angela Duckworth, one of the University of Pennsylvania researchers said. "Their willpower occurs without them having to think about it."

    The company spent millions of dollars developing programs of study to train employees on self-control. Managers wrote workbooks that serve as guides to how to make willpower a habit in workers' lives. Those courses arc, in part, why G&G has grown from a sleepy company into a large one with more than seventeen thousand stores and profits of more than $10 billion a year.

    I've seen a couple of the other Fast Furious films but this one is definitely best. Dominic Toretto (played by Vin Diesel), Brian O' Conner (Paul Walker) and Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) are planning to steal $100 million from businessman Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida). At the same time, agent (联邦特工) Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is chasing after them. The story's pretty fast-moving and the car chase at the end is amazing.

—Derek

    Well, if I'd known it was an action film, I wouldn't have gone to see it. I mean, I can't stand action films. And I'll tell you another thing – I can't stand Vin Diesel. I mean he can't act to save his life. The film would have been much better with someone like Mau Damon or George Clooney. The only good thing about it was the soundtrack (电影配乐) which was pretty good. And I won't be going to see any other Fast & Furious movies either!

—Zoe

    Well it started off all right, but the romance between Mia and Brian was a bit inadequate (不足的) and the whole thing lost its way. It was as if the director couldn't decide whether he was making a thriller, an action movie or a romantic comedy (喜剧), so he ended up making none of them.

—Mario

    It was amazing! I can't believe it was really over two hours long. It just flashed by. The direction was superb； Justin did a really good job. And the acting was great. I know Vin Diesel isn't going to win an Oscar or anything like that but he's good at what he does. And the plot! I laughed out loud quite a few times. The funny thing is, I wouldn^'t have bothered seeing it if my friend hadn't suggested going.

—Megan

A

    “My wife of 24 years, Marie Roberts, was raised in New York City, worked in the fashion industry, and never got her hands dirty,” said Keith Roberts. “Then, nine years ago, I wanted to move to Florida and reconnect to my country life, but how would I inspire（激发）the same feeling in, well, a city woman? I brought her a two-month-old potbellied pig.”

    At first sight, Marie, then 46, was smitten. So soon she took in another abandoned（遗弃）pig. And thus began Sugarloaf Mountain Farm, her animal shelter in central Florida. With the couple's two children grown up, these animals would now be Marie's babies.

    The Farm now has 300 rescues, from alpacas to donkeys, each with its own story. “A gentleman had a litter of eight pigs, and all but one died,” says Marie. “She weighed one pound and suffered great pain. For three weeks straight, I fed that baby every hour, day and night, seldom sleeping.” Till now, Marie still gets five to ten requests a day to save animals and has to turn most down. “If she can't rescue the animal, she works with that person to find a solution,” Keith says. “She's not only saving animals; above all, she's giving their owners peace of mind.”

    “A woman called from her nursing home,” Marie remembers. “Her pigs would be abandoned if she couldn't find a suitable home. 'I only have a few months, and I need to know that they'll be safe,' she said.” So Marie drove three hours and got them. Soon after, Marie received a note from the woman's daughter. “Dear Marie,” she wrote. “My mom went peacefully, as she went knowing that they are forever loved. Thank you for being Mom's angel.”

    “She is a ball of energy,” Keith adds. “A few times she's gone so far in some situations, like when she locked herself in the chicken coop（鸡舍）. I found her sitting in it with ten chicks nestled in her lap.” That is exactly what you'd expect from a true mother hen.

    Home from the Navy, I started school at Greenville College in my hometown of Illinois. I'd been out of high school for four years, but my high school headmaster, Mr. Gardner, invited me to a Valentine's Day dance party at school. The thought of seeing my former teachers was exciting. So I agreed.

    When Friday came, I cleaned up, dressed up and drove to the high school gym. I chatted with my teachers and approached Mr. Gardner to thank him before leaving. Just then, the band started playing and a young girl stood up to sing. One look at and I was crazy—I had never seen such a beautiful girl!

    I asked Mr. Gardner who she was, and he answered, “That's Marilyn Riley, Cut Riley's daughter.” I was shocked to say the least. They lived just around the corner from me. I walked across the gym floor to introduce myself, “Hi, I'm Jack Joseph.”

    “I know who you are,” was her not-too-friendly response.

    “Would you like to dance?” I asked. “No! I'm working,” she shot back.

    “Can I call you next week for a movie date?” I asked. “No,” was her response.

    For the next month I phoned, trying to set up a date. She always had the same answer: No. then one rainy afternoon in March as I was driving home after basketball practice, I saw Marilyn, walking with no umbrella, no raincoat, no hat. I pulled alongside her and asked if she needed a ride, half expecting her to say no. instead, she stepped over the roadside and sat down on the seat next to me. It was only a few blocks to her house, but after pulling into her driveway we talked for 45minutes. It was magic from then on.

Emilia Dobek traces her interest in space and the universe back to third grade when she and her father watched a blood moon—a total lunar eclipse (月蚀)—on the roof of their house.

    Now a seventh-grader at East Prairie Elementary School, Dobek recently won the national Discovery Education Lockheed-Martin Beyond Challenge by designing a space station for travelling to Mars.

    She says that night watching the lunar eclipse started a strong desire in her that has yet to run out of fuel. So when her teacher Andrea Smeeton received information about the national challenge, Smeeton said she immediately had one student in mind.

    "I knew she would love the challenge and that she would go way beyond in her search," Smeeton said. "She immediately started researching bone density (密度) of astronauts and how to have food on Mars."

    "My design will ensure the safety of the astronauts but also make sure their comfort is out of this world," Dobek says.

    Dobek's design calls for building the MSS or Mars Storage Station to put the supplies in. It also includes the SGF or Self-Crowing Farm, and she details how it would work with the elements on Mars.

    Then there is physical and leisure activity for the astronauts under Dobek's design. A simulation (模拟装置) allows astronauts to choose their exercise machine and virtual (虚拟的) reality environment. Rooms have circular ceilings so astronauts will be able to watch downloaded shows and even see places on Earth, such as their homes.

    "I want to tell other kids to follow their passions." Dobek said. "Whatever they want to do they should push for it and always try their best."

In life, once on a path, we tend to follow it, for better or worse. What's sad is that even if it's the latter, we often accept it anyway because we are so used to the way things are that we don't even recognize that they could be different. This is a phenomenon psychologist call functional fixedness.

This classic experiment will give you an idea of how it works and a sense of whether you may have fallen into the same trap: People are given a box of tacks (大头钉) and some matches and asked to find a way to attach a candle to a wall so that it burns properly.

Typically, the subjects try tacking the candle to the wall or lighting it to fix it with melted wax. The psychologists had, of course, arranged it so that neither of these obvious approaches would work. The tacks are too short, and the paraffin (石蜡) doesn't stick to the wall. So how can you complete the task? The successful technique is to use the tack box as a candle-holder. You empty it, tack it to the wall. and stand the candle inside it. To think of that, you have to look beyond the box's usual role as a receptacle just for tacks and re-imagine it serving an entirely new purpose. That is difficult because we all suffer to one degree or another from functional fixedness.

The inability to think in new ways affects people in every corner of society. The political theorist Hannah Arendt coined the phrase" frozen thoughts" to describe deeply held ideas that we no longer question but should. In Arendt's eyes, the self- content reliance on such accepted "truths" also made people blind to ideas that didn't fit their worldview, even when there was plenty of evidence for them.

Frozen thinking has nothing to do with intelligence. She said," It can be found in highly intelligent people."