Forcing waiters and waitresses to survive on tips from customers rather than normal wages is a pointless, crude, and unique American custom that, in the past several years, a handful of progressive restaurant owners have attempted to do away with, often with positive results. On Wednesday, one of the most famous names in the dining business says he’s about to join their ranks. Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, has announced that he plans to gradually eliminate tipping at the company’s 13 restaurants and charge higher menu prices in order to pay staff fairly. Diners wont simply be discouraged from leaving a tip; their checks won’t even include a line to write one in.

What, exactly, is wrong with tipping? As Danny Meyer has explained, more or less it’s everything. To start, leaving a waiters pay in the hands of variable customers has a feeling of classism. And in theory, handing restaurant customers the power to tip is at least supposed to motivate better, more attentive service. This fails in practice because humans turn out to be pretty personal about their tipping behavior. Research has shown the amount diners leave has little to do with their level of satisfaction. All of this doesn’t encourage waiters and waitresses to do anything but turn over as many tables as possible.

Tipping is also very unfair to kitchen staff. The law allows restaurants to divide tips between front-of-the-house workers like waiters, hosts and hostesses, but not cooks. This creates a system in which the people serving the food in a restaurant can earn more than the people preparing it.

Unlike some restaurant owners who have taken an anti-tipping stand, Meyer won’t simply add a standard extra charge to diners’ bills. Rather, Union Square Hospitality Group intends to raise menu prices enough to fully cover the cost of a meal. If Meyer manages to move away from tipping at all without hurting his profits, it would almost certainly set the stage for others to follow suit.

Yawning (打哈欠) is something we all do - maybe because we’re bored carrying out boring tasks or because we’re tired. Sometimes, just seeing other people yawn can set you off. But is this biological function really contagious (传染的), and why do we do it in the first place?

Many of us think we open our mouths when we yawn to take in more oxygen, but in fact it appears there is no clear biological reason. According to BBC Bitesize, new research suggests it might be because yawning cools the brain down and prevents it from overheating, much like the fan in your laptop. This might be why we’re more likely to feel sleepy and yawn in warm temperatures.

What is clear is that we yawn more when we’re exhausted and ready for a nap, and we can’t control when we do it - once we start, there’s no stopping us! But it’s also true that yawning is a very contagious behavior. John Drury, a researcher from Sussex University found in his research that there is a connection with our social group and how close we are to the people in it. If we identify with the person who exhibits the behavior, we are likely to copy it too.

Another research by the University of Nottingham in 2017 found similar results. They asked volunteers to watch other people yawn. They found their ability to resist yawning when others around them yawned was limited. And the urge to yawn was increased when people were told they couldn’t. They also found, when using electrical stimulation, that they were able to increase people’s desire to yawn. These findings, they say, could be useful in treating other conditions like Tourette’s, which involve the same area of the brain.

What is certain is that a yawn can creep up on us at any time even when we think we’re not tired -but, I hope, not when you’re reading this article!

Along with the progress of reform and opening up, the Chinese film industry has also made remarkable achievements and become in a flourishing(繁荣的) state in economic growth. It has recorded social changes in the past decades through the medium of the film. The film market of China has been much better than that of North America, becoming the largest in the world during the first season of 2019.

In the original stage of reform and opening up, old Chinese movies were rescreened and foreign movies dubbed(译制). Audiences’ enthusiasm for movies was lighted up by both these practices. In 1979, the attendance of Chinese moviegoers reached a record high of 29.3 billion. However, televisions and other entertainment activities sprang up in the late 1980s and drew many audiences away from movies when the film market faced a danger.

The employment of a socialist market economy in China in 1992 brought energy again to the film industry. With the introduction of free competition and reforms, it made an abundant recovery and experienced rapid growth. In the same period, China began to introduce overseas movies into the home market, especially those from Hollywood. Despite the argument that foreign movies occupy the space of home-made ones, Chinese movies with increasingly higher quality have gained a firm foothold in the local market with box offices setting several new records.

The development of the Internet has added new energy to the Chinese film industry. In 2015, the powerful Internet companies, one called Tencent and another Alibaba, developed their own film arm and began to adapt popular online stories for movies. With big data, more accurate marketing skills can target specific audiences to satisfy their personal preferences. Yet the development of online cinemas may pose threats to the survival of offline ones. Now the film industry is exploring more advanced film screening technologies to provide audiences with an improved movie experience.