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    I read somewhere that we spend a full third of our lives waiting. But where are we doing all of this waiting, and what does it mean to an impatient society like ours? To understand the issue, let's take a look at three types of “waits”.

    The very purest form of waiting is the Watched-Pot Wait. It is without doubt the most annoying of all. Take filling up the kitchen sink(洗碗池) as an example. There is absolutely nothing you can do while this is going on but keep both eyes fixed on the sink until it's full. During these waits, the brain slips away from the body and wanders about until the water runs over the edge of the counter and onto your socks. This kind of wait makes the waiter helpless and mindless.

    A cousin to the Watched-Pot Wait is the Forced Wait. This one requires a bit of discipline. Properly preparing packaged noodle soup requires a Forced Wait. Directions are very specific. “Bring three cups of water to boil, add mix, simmer three minutes, remove from heat, let stand five minutes.”I have my doubts that anyone has actually followed the procedures strictly. After all, Forced Waiting requires patience.

    Perhaps the most powerful type of waiting is the Lucky-Break Wait. This type of wait is unusual in that it is for the most part voluntary. Unlike the Forced Wait, which is also voluntary, waiting for your lucky break does not necessarily mean that it will happen.

    Turning one's life into a waiting game requires faith and hope, and is strictly for the optimists among us. On the surface it seems as ridiculous as following the directions on soup mixes, but the Lucky-Break Wait well serves those who are willing to do it. As long as one doesn't come to rely on it, wishing for a few good things to happen never hurts anybody.

    We certainly do spend a good deal of our time waiting. The next time you're standing at the sink waiting for it to fill while cooking noodle soup that you'll have to eat until a large bag of cash falls out of the sky, don't be desperate. You're probably just as busy as the next guy.

    Why is pink or purple a color for girls and blue or brown for boys?

The answer depends largely on cultural values as well as personal experiences. To the Egyptians, green was a color that represented the hope and joy of spring, while for Muslims, it means heaven. Red is a symbol of good luck in many cultures. In China, children are given money in a red envelope to bring good fortune in the New Year. For many nations, blue is a symbol of protection and religious beliefs. Greek people often wear a blue necklace hoping to protect themselves against evils (灾祸).

    People's choice of colors is also influenced by their bodies' reactions (反应) toward them. Green is said to be the most restful color. It has the ability to reduce pain and relax people both mentally and physically. People who work in green environment have been found to have fewer stomachaches.

Red can cause a person's blood pressure to rise and increase people's appetites (食欲). Many decorators will include different shades of red in the restaurant. Similarly, many commercial (商业的)websites will have a red “Buy Now” button because red is a color that easily catches a person's eye.

    Blue is another calming color. Unlike red, blue can cause people to lose appetite. So if you want to eat less, some suggest that eating from blue plates can help.

    The next time you are deciding on what to wear or what color to decorate your room, think about the color carefully.

    Every week in China, millions of people will sit in front of their TVs watching teenagers compete for the title Character Hero, which is a Chinese-style spelling bee (拼写大赛). In this challenge, young competitors must write Chinese characters by hand. To prepare for the competition, the competitors usually spend months studying dictionaries.

    Perhaps the show's popularity should not be a surprise. Along with gunpowder and paper, many Chinese people consider the creation of Chinese calligraphy (书法) to be one of their primary contributions to civilization. Unfortunately, all over the country, Chinese people are forgetting how to write their own language without computerized help. Software on smart phones and computers allows users to type in the basic sound of the word using the Latin alphabet. The correct character is chosen from a list. The result? It's possible to recognize characters without remembering how to write them.

    But there's still hope for the paint brush. China's Education Ministry wants children to spend more time learning how to write.

    In one Beijing primary school we visited, students practice calligraphy every day inside a specially decorated classroom with traditional Chinese paintings hanging on the walls. Soft music plays as a group of six-year-olds dip brush pens into black ink. They look up at the blackboard often to study their teacher's examples before carefully attempting to reproduce those characters on thin rice paper. “If adults can survive without using handwriting, why bother to teach it now?'' we ask the calligraphy teacher, Shen Bin, “The ability to write characters is part of Chinese tradition and culture,” she reasons. "Students must learn now so they don't forget when they grow up.” says the teacher.

    A Song of Ice and Fire is a seven-part series of fantasy written for adults. George R. R. Martin writes each chapter from the perspective of a specific character, providing a limited point of view for each section. The reader is able to understand the inner workings of the individual, but the reader is barred from a whole understanding of the text. The world he has created has magic, but there is much more than that. While magic exists, it exists on the edge, and the inner unrest of the characters is much more important.

    His work also has a level of realness that is astonishing in a work of fantasy. Characters are imperfect, and many make questionable moral choices. In the end, however, Martin shows that both good and bad happen to both the people of high moral standard and the corrupt. He has made it clear that any character can die at any point, which has led to a lot of heartbreak from readers.

    In 2011, A Song of Ice and Fire became a television series titled Game of Thrones. Martin has been closely involved with the production. It has currently run for seven seasons, and viewers anxiously await the eighth season to answer their questions from the season seven finale.

    His fans are also waiting for The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring, the next books in the series, to answer the questions Martin and the television show have not yet addressed. Martin, however, has no plans to rush. He has made it clear that he will continue to write the books while working on the television show and writing other novels.

    But how will the story continue? What is going to happen in Westeros, and more importantly: when are we going to find out? Martinis skill as a writer has kept readers and viewers spellbound. Many hope he will finish the next book before the next season of the show begins, but no one knows with Martin. He always keeps his readers guessing.

    It's surprising how much simple movements of the body can affect the way we think. Using expansive gestures with open arms makes us feel more powerful, crossing your arms makes you more determined and lying down can bring more insights(领悟).

    So if moving the body can have these effects, what about the clothes we wear? We're all well aware of how dressing up in different ways can make us feel more attractive, sporty or professional, depending on the clothes we wear, but can the clothes actually change cognitive (认知的) performance or is it just a feeling?

    Adam and Galinsky tested the effect of simply wearing a white lab coat on people's powers of attention. The idea is that white coats are associated with scientists, who are in turn thought to have close attention to detail.

    What they found was that people wearing white coats performed better than those who weren't. Indeed, they made only half as many errors as those wearing their own clothes on the Stroop Test (one way of measuring attention). The researchers call the effect “enclothed cognition,” suggesting that all manner of different clothes probably affect our cognition in many different ways.

    This opens the way for all sorts of clothes-based experiments. Is the writer who wears a fedora more creative? Is the psychologist wearing little round glasses and smoking a cigar more insightful? Does a chef's hat make the resultant food taste better?

    From now on I will only be editing articles for PsyBlog while wearing a white coat to help keep the typing error count low. Hopefully you will be doing your part by reading PsyBlog in a cap and gown (学位服).

    Moving smoothly and silently through Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's futuristic "FlyZoo" hotel, black disc-shaped robots about a metre in height deliver food and drop off fresh towels.

    The robots are part of a set of high-tech tools that Alibaba says strongly cuts the hotel's cost of human labour and eliminates the need for guests to interact with other people.

    Formally opened to the public last month, the 290-room FlyZoo is an incubator for technology Alibaba wants to sell to the hotel industry in the future and an opportunity to showcase its prowess in artificial intelligence. It is also an experiment that tests consumer comfort levels with unmanned commerce in China.

    Inside the hotel, softly-lit white panelled walls bring to mind the interiors of Hollywood spaceships. Guests check in at podiums that scan their faces, as well as passports or other ID. Visitors with a Chinese national ID can scan their faces using their smartphones to check in ahead of time.

    Elevators scan guests' faces again to verify which floor they can access and hotel room doors are opened with another face scan.

    "It's very quick and safe. I haven't used it much yet, but basically, I can be in my room in one minute, "said guest Tracy Li. Li added that safety was one of her priorities and she was pleased her room could only be entered with a scan of her face.

    In the rooms, Alibaba's voice command technology is used to change the temperature, close the curtains, adjust the lighting and order room service.

    At the hotel's restaurant, taller capsule-shaped robots deliver food that guests have ordered via the FlyZoo app while at a separate bar, a large robotic arm can mix more than 20 different types of cocktails. Facial recognition cameras add charges to the room rate automatically.

    The hotel does employ humans, though Alibaba declined to detail how many. This includes chefs and cleaners as well as reception staff, who will assist with conventional check-in procedures for guests unwilling to have their faces scanned and want to use electronic key cards.