It is now mandatory(强制) for drivers or passengers to wear seatbelts while in a car in all states. In addition, it is also mandatory for kids of be in some kind of specialized car seat. Given the strict requirements in other vehicles, why don't buses have seatbelts?

    The main answer, at least for school buses, is that seatbelts do not make school buses safer. Overall, traveling on school buses is the safest way to travel—40 times safer than riding in a car—with only a handful of deaths occurring to passengers on school buses every year. The seats on the school bus are placed very close to each other and have high backs that are thickly padded. As a result, in an accident the students would be propelled forward a very short distance into a padded seatback that in a way is like an airbag. In addition, the fact that people sit high off the ground on school buses also makes it safer to travel on them.

    While school buses feature high backed seats and elevated seating locations, the same cannot be said of city buses. However, from a practical angle, there's little need to require seatbelts on city buses. Although the design of the modern low—floor city bus is less safe than the design of school buses, the fact that city buses rarely travel at speeds greater than 35 miles per hour means that any collision is likely to be small, Also, given that most trips on city buses are short and that many trips have standing passengers, the presence of seatbelts will make even less of a difference.

    Another answer why buses do not have seatbelts is cost. It is estimated that adding seatbelts to buses would add between $8,000 and $15,000 to the cost of each bus. In addition, seatbelts would take up room currently used as seats, meaning that each bus would have fewer seating places. The additional room in the bus taken up by seatbelts would mean that bus fleets would have to increase by as much as 15% just to carry the same number of people. Such an increase would be especially difficult in cities that experience overcrowding on their vehicles.

    Regardless of whether their passengers have seatbelts, all buses provide seatbelts for drivers and most bus companies make their drivers wear seatbelts in order not to be influenced by a collision.

How to become a professional athlete?

    Everyone wants to be a superstar athlete. However, there is a lot of competition to make it. So if you want to be a professional athlete, you have to know all the tricks of the trade to rise up above the rest.

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    To play your sport better than anyone else, you have to practice your skills with lots of repetition. For example, you have to shoot 100 free throws every day for basketball.

    Make steady improvements

    If you are a baseball pitcher (投手) and your fastball is stuck at about 60 miles per hour, change it up! Try to walk your first step a little bit longer, bring in your elbow a little bit tighter, or try to reach higher when you're following through{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

Quality coaches

    Have you ever noticed that a lot of kids with parents who are professional athletes will often become professional athletes in the same sport? They have access to a professional athlete's tips and tricks{#blank#}3{#/blank#} You should try to find coaches or professional athletes that are willing to answer your questions.

Diet of champions

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} If you can change your diet to a healthy one, you're going to be stronger.

    Friends and enemies

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} By having great teammates or competitors, it pushes you to try harder and that always results in getting better.

A. Practice makes perfect

B. Better late than never

C. The big secret to advancing your skills above anyone else is to improve.

D.The biggest thing that most kids often ignore is their diet.

E.Surrounding yourself with quality teammates and competitors is the best way to get better.

F. These little improvements are things that will help you advance your skills.

G.But don't get discouraged if you don't have parents who were professional athletes.

    There's a contradiction in the way many of us behave online: we know we're being watched all the time, and disapprove of the monitor by Google and the government. But the bounds of what's considered too personal to be uploaded or shared online seems to shrink by the day.

    I complain about the lack of privacy, for example, and yet I willingly and routinely trade it for convenience. I no longer run the risk of unforeseen delays on public transport; Google Maps will inform me of the fastest route to my destination; I no longer need to remember my friends' birthdays; Facebook will urge me, and invariably appeal to me to post an update to remind people I exist. All I have to do is make my location, habits and beliefs transparent to their parent companies whenever they choose to check in on me.

    So what's going on? “Visibility is a trap,” explained the French philosopher Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison(1975). Allowing oneself to be watched, and learning to watch others, is both attractive and dangerous. He took for example “Panopticon”, a prison where prisoners were observed from a tower manned by an invisible occupant. The prisoners would believe in the presence of the mysterious watchman, whether or not anyone was actually inside, and behave themselves.
    According to Foucault, the dynamics of the Panopticon are similar to how generally people self-monitor in society. In the presence of ever-watching witness, people police themselves. They don't know what the observers are looking for, or what the punishments are for disobedience (不顺从). But they willingly accept and follow this invisible discipline.
    Foucault claimed that such monitoring is worrisome, not just because of what companies and states might do with our data, but because the act of watching is itself a terrible exercise of power, which may influence behavior without our fully realizing it.
    But something's not right here. Why does the self-display continue when we are sure that we are watched from everywhere and nowhere?
    Social media provides a public space that often operates more like a private one, where many people hold the belief that there they won't suffer the consequences of what they say online, as if protected by technology.
    Plato would be alarmed by the lack of shame online. His point about moral knowledge is this: we already know the right way to live a just and fulfilling life, but are constantly distracted(转移) from that noble aim. For him, then, shame helps us be true to ourselves and to pay attention to the moral knowledge within. A man without shame, Plato says, is a slave to desire — for material goods, power, fame, respect. Such desire, by its nature, cannot be satisfied.

注意：每个空格只填1个单词。

Time for Americans to act on climate change

    The climate crisis is worsening at a rate that is becoming harder and harder to ignore. For more than two decades, scientific reports have made it clear that global warming is real, that humans cause it and that the consequences will be disastrous.

    The scientific community has become increasingly panicked over the past year. The latest assessment from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painted a far more terrible picture than its previous analyses, and the long-awaited National Climate Assessment made clear that climate change represents a severe threat to human health as well as our economic security. Out of this panic came the treaty(条约)reached this past weekend by world leaders to keep the Paris climate agreement alive.

    Yet many Americans still don't regard the threat as a key priority for our government, and support President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris treaty. Campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies have convinced elected officials to look the other way. A certain amount of despair has resulted in widespread apathy(漠然).

    But there is another reason that has been discussed far less openly. While a growing number of people understand that climate change will have significant worldwide consequences, many Americans have an intuitive(直觉的)belief that their nation is more capable than others of adapting to a changed environment. Why? Because they have before.

    This historical success, however, resulted from the federal government taking science seriously, and making investments to urge revolution and innovation.

    But these innovations did not happen by themselves, or simply because of the United States' rich resources. They depended on consistent support from the leaders about the need to take action when faced with crises. This has been especially true in the environmental crisis.

    President Bill Clinton had a shockingly modest record of advancing climate security, particularly given that his vice president, Al Gore, had been one of the most outspoken environmentalists in Congress. By far Clinton's biggest accomplishment was assigning Gore to participate іn thе Куоtо Рrоtoсоl negotiations. Сlіntоn сhоѕе, hоwеvеr, tо аvоіd whаt ѕurеlу wоuld have been a terrible fight in the Senate to gain approval of the treaty. While this effort probably would have failed, it would have signaled to the American people how seriously the Democratic Party took climate change.

    Thus, the time has clearly arrived for progressive candidates to start campaigning on a platform built around the need for a sustainability revolution. Such a plan should include a carbon tax, well-funded clean energy research, evolved agricultural policies and smarter public transport. Given that Generation X and millennials(千禧一代)never bought into the fiction that the United States is immune to the dangers of global warming, the time is ripe to make climate security a crucial government responsibility. Only by doing so can we begin the long-overdue(拖延好久的)campaign to save the planet.

Time for Americans to act on climate change

    Taking good notes is a time-saving skill that will help you to become a better student in several ways. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Second, your notes are excellent materials to refer to when you are studying for a test. Third, note-taking offers variety to your study time and helps you to hold your interest.

    You will want to take notes during classroom discussions and while reading a textbook or doing research for a report. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Whenever or however you take notes, keep in mind that note-taking is a selective process. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    The following methods may work best for you.

    ●Read the text quickly to find the main facts and ideas in it.

    ●Carefully read the text and watch for words that can show main points and supporting facts.

    ●Write your notes in your own words.

    ●{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    ●Note any questions or ideas you may have about what was said or written.

    As you take notes, you may want to use your own shorthand (速记). When you do, be sure that you understand your symbols (符号) and that you use them all the time. Otherwise, you may not be able to read your notes later.