As Alison Gopnik described in her recent book, there are two kinds of parents in modern America: the Carpenter and the Gardener. The “carpenter" thinks that his or her child can 【小题1】(shape). “The idea is that if you just do the right things, get the right skills and read the right books, you're going to be able to turn your child 【小题2】a particular kind of adult," she said.

The “gardener”, however, is seldom concerned about【小题3】(control) what the child will become and instead provides a 【小题4】 (protect) space to expore. The style is all about “creating a rich, nutritious but also variable, diverse, active ecosystem”. Gopnik, a psychology and philosophy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said, “Many parents are carpenters, and【小题5】is really necessary for them to bring up their children.” She spent decades researching children's development and finally【小题6】(find) that parents often focused too much on what their children would be as adults. The harm is that parents and their children may become 【小题7】 (anxiety), tense or unhappy.

“We're so concerned about our children【小题8】we think have difficulties mastering their own future that we're unwilling to allow them to 【小题9】 (free) explore the world," she says. The truth is that the 【小题10】 (little) the parents worry about outcomes, the better their children may live in life.

You might not know yourself as well as you think. According to a new study, people are relatively accurate judges of only some of their behaviors. 【小题1】 most previous studies on how well people know themselves have been done on long-term personality traits, this new study probes how well people understand 【小题2】 they are acting from one moment to the next. Researchers asked participants to wear audio recorders that automatically activated every 9.5 minutes between 7 a.m. and 2 a.m. to record 30 seconds of audio. These participants were then emailed surveys four times a day 【小题3】(ask) them to recall how outgoing, agreeable, or conscientious they were during a particular hour of the day. The study used data from 248 participants, all of 【小题4】 answered questions about their behavior for two consecutive weeks and wore the audio device for one of those weeks.

Six laboratory assistants rated each participant’s audio clips 【小题5】(see) how their observations compared with people’s assessment of 【小题6】. The six assistants were generally in agreement with one another about how the people they were observing 【小题7】(act). Further, participants’ ratings of their own behaviors agreed with observers’ for how outgoing and how conscientious they were being. But the agreement between participants and outside observers was 【小题8】(small) for agreeableness. Some of this discrepancy could be because the observers used only audio clips, and thus could not read cues 【小题9】 body language, but there are probably other explanations, 【小题10】 people should be able to hear when a participant is being kind versus being rude. The weak agreement between how participants thought they were acting and what observers heard could be because people would rather deny rude behavior.

Is Hothouse Earth Avoidable?

Nearly 50 years ago, the Club of Rome’s report “Limits to Growth” warned that if economic growth continued fast without regard for the environment, the world could face ecological and economic collapse in the twenty-first century. Yet that is essentially 【小题1】 has happened. As new research for the Club of Rome shows — and the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states — the world 【小题2】 well be headed towards disaster.

Many wrongly 【小题3】(interpret) the “Limits to Growth” as an attack on uncontrolled economic expansion. In fact, the report argued that 【小题4】 the unlimited-growth pathway was chosen, it would require complementary policies (including funding) 【小题5】 (preserve) the planet’s limited life-support systems.

This argument 【小题6】 (ignore). Instead, the world has continued to pursue fast growth, without regard for the environmental consequences. This has enabled us to make enormous progress in reducing poverty, increasing longevity, and increasing wealth. 【小题7】 it has come at a high cost to the formation of the society and the restoration of the planet.

As scientists have conclusively shown, in the last decade, we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which human activity — in particular, economic activity — has been the dominant factor 【小题8】(influence) Earth’s climate and environment. In the Anthropocene, our planet’s life-support system is changing faster than ever.

Climate change now represents a clear and present danger. If our planet becomes just 2°C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures, we may be placed irreversibly on the path toward “Hothouse Earth” — a situation 【小题9】 temperatures are many degrees warmer than today, sea levels are considerably higher, and extreme weather events are 【小题10】(common) — and more destructive — than ever.