“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.

    The sky is large place, and though it has been carefully examined for centuries, new features still turn up. Last March it was the rule of Uranus (天王星), and last week astronomers announced what may turn out to be a new planet, though a very small one, in the solar system.

    The object was first sighted last month by Charles Kowal, an astronomer at the Hale Observatories in Pasadena, Calif. Mr. Kowal observed a faint trail of light on photographic plates, indicating that something was moving in relation to the background of stars. Other observers have confirmed the discovery.

    The “mini-planet”, identified for the time being as “Object-Kowal”, appears to be about 1.5 billion miles away, between the orbit of Saturn and Uranus, and its diameter (直径) has been estimated at between 100 and 400 miles. Its orbit has not been determined yet, but if the orbit proves to be roughly circular, like that of the major planets, the new object would probably take 66 to 70 years to make a circuit of the sun.

    Some astronomers have speculated that Mr. Kowal's discovery may be the first indication of an asteroid (小行星) belt beyond Saturn.

    Recently, we've been talking about how we need better teachers. There's no doubt that great teacher can help in a student's learning but here's what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents.

    Every three years, the organization called O.E.C.D. organizes exams as part of the Program for International Student Assessment(评估), or PISA, which tests 15-year-olds on their abilities to deal with real problems. America's 15-year-olds have not done as well as students in Singapore, Finland and Shanghai in the PISA exams.

    To better understand the reasons, the PISA team, starting with four countries in 2006, and then adding 14 more in 2009, went to the parents of 5,000 students. They interviewed them about how they raised their kids and then compared it with the test results for each of those years. Two weeks ago, the PISA team published the main finding of its study.

    Fifteen-year-olds whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school get much higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents don't often read with them or not at all. Parents' concern for their children is strongly connected with better results in PISA.

    According to Schleicher, the leader of the team, just asking your children how their school    day was and showing great interest in their learning can help a lot. It is something every parent can do, no matter what their education level is.

    The study found that getting parents concerned about their children's learning at home is more powerful than parents attending parent-teacher meetings, volunteering in classrooms,   taking part in money-raising, and showing up at back-to-back nights.

    To be sure, nothing can replace a good teacher. But let's stop putting the whole duty on teachers. We also need better parents. Better parents can make teaching more beneficial.

    Climbing Without Ropes

    The popular image of the mountain climber is of a person carefully climbing a steep cliff with a network of safety ropes, but it is not the only kind. Many climbers now enjoy bouldering. It's more accessible and better for the environment.

    Here is an example of a climber addressing a bouldering problem.

    Figure 1: The climber has two routes she could take, one to the left and one to the right. The left one appears easier because it has a jug within easy reach, but look what happens if she chooses that direction. She gets stuck on the rock and has to go back down. Sometimes that is even more difficult than going up.

    Figure 2: The climber takes the one to the right this time. Using a foothold and placing her right hand in a crimp, she is able to lift herself up and locate other handholds. After only a few moves, she is able to throw her leg over the top of the boulder and pull herself up.

    As businesses and governments have struggled to understand the so-called millennials—born between roughly 1980 and 2000—one frequent conclusion has been that they have a unique love of cities. A deep-seated preference for night life and subways, the thinking goes, has driven the revitalization of urban cores across the U.S. over the last decade-plus.

    But there's mounting evidence that millennials' love of cities was a passing fling(放纵). Millennials don't love cities any more than previous generations.

    The latest argument comes from Dowell Myers, an urban planning professor at USC. As they age, says Myers, millennials' presence in cities, will "be evaporating(蒸发) through our fingers, if we don't make some plans now." That's because millennials' preference for cities will fade as they start families and become more established in their careers.

    It's about more than aging, though. Demographer William Frey has been arguing for years that millennials have become stuck in cities by the 2008 downturn and the following slow recovery, with poor job prospects and declining wages making it harder for them to afford to buy homes in suburbia.

    Myers, too, says observers have confused young people's presence in cities with a preference for cities. Survey data shows that more millennials would like to be living in the suburbs than actually are. But the normal career and family cycles moving young people from cities into suburban houses have become, in Myers' words, "a plugged up drain."

    But unemployment has finally returned to healthy lows (though participation rates and wages are still largely stagnant), which Myers says should finally increase mobility for millennials.

    Other trends among millennials, supposedly matters of lifestyle preference, have already turned out to have been driven mostly by economics. What was once deemed their broad preference for public transit may have always been a now-reversing inability to afford cars. Even decades-long trends towards marrying later have been accentuated as today's young people struggle for financial stability.

    Investors are already taking the idea that millennials will return to old behavior patterns seriously, putting more money into auto manufacturers and developers. But urban lifestyles, up to and including trendy bars, aren't just hip—they're a part of what powers a city's economic engines, bringing people together to explore new ideas, create companies, and build careers.

    From the 1960s to the 1990s, we saw that suburbanization(城市郊区化)also means an economic and social hollowing out for cities. Now that the economic shackles are coming off today's young city residents, cities that want to stay vibrant(充满生机的) have to figure out how to convince them—and their growing families—to stick around.

    You probably know who Marie Curie was, but you may not have heard of Rachel Carson. Of the outstanding ladies listed below, who do you think was the most important woman of the past 100 years?

    Jane Addams(1860-1935)

    Anyone who has ever been helped by a social worker has Jane Addams to thank. Addans helped the poor and worked for peace. She encouraged a sense of community(社区)by creating shelters and promoting education and services for people in need . In 1931, Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

    Rachel Carson(1907-1964)

    If it weren't for Rachel Carson, the environmental movement might not exist today. Her popular 1962 book Silent Spring raised awareness of the dangers of pollution and the harmful effects of chemicals on humans and on the world's lakes and oceans.

    Sandra Day O'Connor(1930-present)

    When Sandra Day O'Connor finished third in her class at Stanford Law School, in 1952, she could not find work at a law firm because she was a woman. She became an Arizona state senator(参议员) and ,in 1981, the first woman to join the U.S. Supreme Court. O'Connor gave the deciding vote in many important cases during her 24 years on the top court.

    Rosa Parks(1913-2005)

    On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rasa Parks would not give up her seat on a bus to a passenger. Her simple act landed Parks in prison. But it also set off the Montgomery bus boycott. It lasted for more than a year, and kicked off the civil-rights movement. "The only tired I was, was tired of giving in," said Parks.