In 1914, Thomas Edison, at the age of 67, lost his factory, 【小题1】was worth a few million dollars, to a fire. It had very little insurance. No longer a young man, Edison watched his lifetime effort 【小题2】(go) up in smoke and said, “There is great value in disasters. All our mistakes are burnt up. Thank God we can start anew.” In spite of disasters, three weeks later, 【小题3】 invented the phonograph(留声机). What 【小题4】 attitude!

Below are more examples of successful people 【小题5】 had failed before succeeding.

Thomas Edison failed 【小题6】(approximate) 10,000 times while he worked on the light bulb. Henry Ford fired Lee Iacocca 【小题7】 the age of 54. Young Beethoven 【小题8】(tell) that he had no talent for music, 【小题9】 he gave some of the best music to the world.

Setbacks(挫折) are inevitable in life. A setback can act as a driving force and also teach us humility. In grief you will find the courage and faith 【小题10】(overcome) the setback.

First thing in the morning, I check the social networking website Facebook, only to see how I’ve already fallen behind. A workmate has written a new book. Two of my 【小题1】 (hero) have completed a big project. One of my old college friends posted a video for an online program she 【小题2】 (take)at the moment. She looks successful, shiny and 【小题3】 (charm) while I’m still in bed, bleary-eyed.

Am I really falling behind? Did these people post any of these things 【小题4】 (make) me feel bad? Of course not. But if I'm not careful, it's【小题5】 (terribl) easy to see social media as 【小题6】 reminder of all the things i'm not doing and dreams I'm not fulfilling.

But 【小题7】 isn't a social media problem. It's a comparison problem. it's all about how I think about it.

And I know it's not just me. Our culture is full of comparisons, and it's hard not to look around 【小题8】 what other people are doing with their short time, and ask, "What about me?"

But all these years I've learned one thing: don't compare your insides with someone else's outsides. You have no idea 【小题9】 it took for other people to get where they are. Don't act as if it was effortless or pure luck. it's much 【小题10】 (easy) to look at someone "up there" and be jealous of what they have than to be happy for them and make yours better.

In 1818 Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, the story of a scientist who tries to create a superior, being and instead creates a monster. In the last two centuries, this story 【小题1】 (tell) over and over again in countless variations. At first sight, the Frankenstein story appears to warn us that if we try to play God and engineer life we will be punished severely. Yet the story has a 【小题2】 (deep) meaning.

The Frankenstein myth confronts. Homo sapiens (智人) with the fact that the last days are fast approaching. 【小题3】 some nuclear or ecological disaster strikes, the pace of technological development will soon lead to the replacement of Homo sapiens by completely different beings who possess not only different physiques, but also very different cognitive and emotional worlds. This is something most Sapiens find extremely worrying. We like to believe that in the future people just 【小题4】 us will travel from planet to planet in fast spaceships. We don’t like to think about the 【小题5】 (possible) that in the future, beings with emotions and identities like ours will no longer exist, and our place will be taken by alien life forms 【小题6】 abilities beat our own.

We seek comfort in the fantasy that Dr. Frankenstein can create only terrible monsters, whom we would have to destroy in order to save the world. We like to tell the story that way because it implies that we are 【小题7】 best of all beings, that there never was and never will be anything better than us. Any attempt 【小题8】 (improve) us will inevitably fail, because even if our bodies might be improved, you cannot touch the human spirit.

We would have a hard time 【小题9】 (accept) the fact that scientists could engineer spirits as well as bodies, and that future Dr. Frankenstein could therefore create something 【小题10】 (true) superior to us, something that will look at us as condescendingly (居高临下地) as we look at the Neanderthals (穴居人).