In 1973, I was teaching elementary school. Each day, 27 kids1“The Thinking Laboratory.”That was the 2 students voted for after deciding that “Room 104” was too3.

    Freddy was an average4, but not an average person . He had the rare balance of fun and compassion（同情）. He would5  the loudest over fun and be the saddest over anyone's6.

    Before the school year7, I gave the kids a special 8, T-shirts with the words “Verbs Are Your9 “ on them. I had advised the kids that while verbs（动词）may seem dull , most of the10 things they do throughout their lives will be verbs.

    Through the years, I'd run into former students who would provide 11 on old classmates. I learned that Freddy did several jobs after his 12 from high school and remained the same 13person I met forty years before. Once, while working overnight at a store, he let a homeless man 14in his truck. Another time, he15a friend money to buy a house .

    Just last year, I was16 a workshop when someone knocked at the classroom door. A woman17 the interruption and handed me an envelope. I stopped teaching and 18 it up. Inside were the “Verbs” shirt and a 19 from Freddy's mother. “Freddy passed away on Thanksgiving. He wanted you to have this.”

    I told the story  to the class. As sad as it was, I couldn't help smiling . Although Freddy was taken from us, we all20something from  Freddy.

A Good Man

    It's a late Saturday afternoon in early March, and I am sweating in search of the only gift my son wants from Los Angeles: a 1 to the homes of the stars such as Brad Pitt and Jet Li.

    A cheerful taxi driver says, “No problem. Map sellers are everywhere!” When the taxi stops, a fellow 2 with a thin folded sheet and says: “Ten dollars.”

    Ten dollars! With absolute 3I inform him, “That's too much.” The map man leaves. I begin walking, certain I'll find a (an)4 star map soon.

    I am 5. There's hardly anybody on the street. There don't seem to be many real stores, just cars and bars. No maps. No stars. Blocks pass. The sun begins to sink. At the edge of West Hollywood6fellow wanders ahead, selling star maps to some teenage girls.

    Ten dollars7. Forget it. My son will 8.

    That night, I call my wife. “Did you get one of those maps to the stars? He's been talking about 9else.”

    This10is hard to ignore. It's late. At all-night markets: no maps. I head back to the hotel. Morning is coming. There will be one last11. After I check out, I take a taxi. But at nine in the morning, map sellers are 12 to be found.

    “You know,” says the driver, “The guys with the maps just aren't up yet!” He's right.

    “Forget it. Let's go to the airport.”

    “Well,” says the driver, “I could 13 you one if you like.”

    Sure. Trust this guy? I might as well throw cash onto the freeway. But exiting the taxi, I14 my last chance. I hand him $13 and my business card. Three weeks pass. I've15 on the star map. My son has stopped mentioning it.

    Then one afternoon, sticking out from under piles of flyers, there it is: a big white envelope. There is a small note. I can hardly read it16 I make out a few phrases一“forgive17 “taxi's been down” and, finally, “here's map for your son.” There's no return address. It's signed, “kind regards, M.”

    I hold the note in my hand18 what my son said to me when I got back from Los Angeles.

    “Did you meet any 19 Dad?” he asked.

Now I know what to tell him.

    “Yes, I did. I met a guy named M.”

    If you never 20 anybody, you'll never find the good guys.

    A nurse took a tired and anxious soldier to the bedside of an old man, “Your 1 is here.” She had to repeat the words several times 2 the patient's eyes opened.

    Heavily drugged with sleep because of the 3 of his heart attack, the old man could 4 see the uniformed soldier. The soldier held the old man's hand, expressing a(an) 5 of love and encouragement. All through the night the soldier sat there beside the bed, 6 him words of love and strength. Now and then the soldier said a few 7 words. Along towards dawn, the old man 8.

    Finally, the nurse offered words of sympathy（同情）, but the soldier 9 her.

    “Who was that man?” he asked.

    The nurse was 10. “He was your father,” she answered.

    “No, he wasn't,” the soldier replied. “I never saw him before.”

    “Then 11 didn't you say something as I took you to him?” asked the nurse.

    “I knew 12 there had been a mistake, but I also knew he 13 his son for his last moment, and his son just wasn't here. Knowing he was too 14 to tell whether or not I was his son, knowing how much he needed me, I15.”he answered.

    Hello, Mr. Wi-Fi. Life without you is next to impossible now. We're happy to sing your name from morning till evening, sometimes till dawn. 1 I know you help me, sometimes you're making me do things with 2 attention. Many times I promise myself that I'll 3 my feelings towards you, but you're 4 me closer and closer...You've entered both my home and my 5, You're just a window for our 6 and information. But we people aren't 7 only with the window. So we open all our 8 for you. Is this a(n) 9 or some kind of attachment? If this is an illness, is it curable？And if this is an attachment, will you 10 me the lifelong togetherness?

    We want you all the time. Can't you take a few days off so that both you and I can   11？You're a poison—not a slow one but a super 12 poison which holds our mind and makes us dance 13 its tune. Nowadays you're so 14 that anyone can buy and make you our 15. You'll never worry about our health but we'll 16 be concerned about your “health”.Because you accompany us everywhere and never let us be alone.

    If you were a 17 person made of flesh and blood (血肉之躯) would we love you the same? You 18 us with your great talents and we even can't get rid of you. We're all your 19. Sometimes I wonder how people in the previous generations 20, but if they did why can't we?

    Two weeks earlier, my son, Ben, had got in touch .he'd moved to England with his mum when he was three and it had been 13 years since I'd 1seen him. So imagine my 2when he emailed me saying he wanted to come to visit me.

    I was 3 ! I arrived early at Byron Bay (海湾)where we were supposed to 4. The bay was 5 in sunshine, and there was a group of kayakers around 150m off the shore. Getting a little 6, I realized one kayak（皮划艇）was in7. "Something's not 8!" I took off my T-shirt and 9 into the water. I saw there were two instructors on board and a man lying across the middle. He was 10 violently. Linking arms with one of the instructors, I helped 11 the young man out of the water. He was unconscious and as I looked at his face, something 12 to me. Those brown eyes were very 13. "What's his name?" I asked the instructor. "Ben," he replied, and immediately I 14.That stranger was my son!

    The instructors called for an ambulance.15 , after a brief stay in hospital, Ben was well enough to be allowed to 16and later the family met up for dinner. We chatted about everything and then Ben 17 to me. "I just want to say thank you," he said, "You 18 my life!"

    I still can't believe what a 19it was. I'm just so glad I was there 20to help my son.

We all know how it feels to get lost in a great book. But what's happening in our brains as we dive into it? How is it different from what happens as we experience real life? Now, a new study led by Dr Leila Wehbe and Dr Tom Mitehell of Carnegie Mellon University have provided partial answers to these questions. 

Since reading comprehension is a highly complex process, earlier studies tried to break that process down and focus on just one aspect at a time: mapping fMRI signatures（特征）associated with processing a single word or sentence, for example. "It's usually not like reading a book, and usually the stimulus（刺激物）consists of out-of-context sentences designed specifically for the experiment"

To address these issues, the researchers developed a computer program to look for patterns of brain activity that appeared when people read certain words, specific grammatical structures, particular characters" names and other aspects of the story—a total of 195 different "story features". In the study, they first asked eight volunteers to read Chapter 9 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and recorded their brain activity using an fMRI scanner（扫描仪）. Then the researchers fed the volunteers' fMRI data into their computer program and had the program identify the responses of different brain regions to the 195 features mentioned above. 

The result showed that when the volunteers read descriptions of physical movement in the story, there was significantly increased activity in the posterior temporal cortex, the region involved in perceiving real-world movement. Besides dialogue was specifically related with the right temporoparietal junction, a key area involved in imagining others thoughts and goals. "This is truly shocking for us as these regions aren't even considered to be part of the brain's language system," Wehbe says. 

Next, Wehbe and Mitchell hope to study how and why language processing can go wrong. "If we have a large enough amount of data", Wehbe says, "we could find the specific ways in which one brain—for example, the brain of a dyslexic（诵读困难的）person—is performing differently from other brains." And this, the researchers think, may someday help us design individually tailored（特制的）treatments for dyslexia and other reading disorders.