travel bag duffel bag trolley bag
A team of US psychologists have found that talking to another person for 10 minutes a day improves memory. Researchers discovered that "socializing was just as effective as more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance," lead author Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, said in a statement. In one investigation, they analyzed data on 3,610 people, ages 24 to 96. They found that the higher their level of social interaction, the better their cognitive functioning. Social interaction included getting together or having phone chats with relatives, friends and neighbors. In another experiment, the researchers conducted lab tests on 76 college students, ages 18 to 21, to assess how social interactions and intellectual exercises affected the results of memory and mental performance tests. The students were divided into three groups: The social interaction group had a discussion of a social issue for 10 minutes before taking the tests; the intellectual activities group completed three tasks （including a reading comprehension exercise and a crossword puzzle） before the tests; and a control group watched a 10-minute clip of the Seinfeld television show. "We found that short-term social interaction lasting for just 10 minutes boosted participants' intellectual performance as much as engaging in so-called 'intellectual' activities for the same amount of time," Ybarra said. The study was expected to be published in the February 2008 issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
2008年12月11日星期四
Female Stress Diet travel bag
travel bag duffel bag trolley bag This is a specially formulated diet, designed to help you copewith the stress that builds up during the day:BREAKFAST:1 grapefruit1 slice whole wheat toast1 cup skim milkLUNCHSmall portion lean, steamed chicken with acup of spinach1 cup herbal tea1 chocolate biscuitAFTERNOON TEAThe rest of the chocolate biscuits in the packet 1 tub of Rocky Road ice cream with Choc-ice topping1 jar nutellaDINNER4 bottles of red wine2 loaves garlic bread1 family size supreme pizzaLATE NIGHT SNACKWhole frozen Sara Lee cheesecake (eatendirectly from freezer)DIET RULES:1. If no-one sees you eat something, it has no calories2. When drinking a diet-coke with a chocolate bar, the fat in thechocolate bar is cancelled out by the diet-coke.3. When you eat with someone else, caloriesdon't count if you do not eat more than they do.4. Food used for medicinal purposes does NOT count. (for example:chocolate, toast, cheesecake and vodka)5. If you fatten up the people around you,you will look thinner.6. Cinema-related foods have a zero calorie count as they are partof the entertainment package and not counted as food intake.(this includes: popcorn, minties, maltesers, jaffas and frozen cokes)7. Biscuit pieces have no calories because breaking the biscuits upcauses calorie leakage.8. Food licked from knives and spoons hasno fat if you are in the process of cooking something.9. Foods that are the same colour have the same amount of fat.Examples are: spinach and peppermint ice-cream;apples and red jelly snakes.10.Chocolate is a food-colour wildcardand may be substituted for any other colour.11.Anything eaten while standing has no calories due to gravityand the density of calorie mass.12.Food consumed from someone else's plate has no fat as itrightfully belongs to the other person and the fat will cling to his/her plate.And remember:STRESSED SPELT BACKWARDS IS DESSERTS
People Born in Autumn Live Longer travel bag
travel bag duffel bag trolley bag People born in the autumn live longer than those born in the spring and are less likely to fall chronically ill when they are older, according to an Austrian scientist. Using census data for more than one million people in Austria, Denmark and Australia, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in the northern German town of Rostock found the month of birth was related to life expectancy over the age of 50. Seasonal differences in what mothers ate during pregnancy, and infections occurring at different times of the year could both have an impact on the health of a new-born baby and could influence its life expectancy in older age. "A mother giving birth in spring spends the last phase of her pregnancy in winter, when she will eat less vitamins than in summer," said Gabriele Doblhammer, one of a team of scientists who carried out the research. "When she stops breast-feeding and starts giving her baby normal food, it’s in the hot weeks of summer when babies are prone to infections of the digestive system." In Austria, adults born in autumn (October-December) lived about seven months longer than those born in spring (April-June), and in Denmark adults with birthdays in autumn outlived those born in spring by about four months. In the southern hemisphere, the picture was similar. Adults born in the Australian autumn - the European spring - lived about four months longer than those born in the Australian spring. The study focused on people born at the beginning of the 20th century, using death certificates and census data. Although nutrition at all times of the year has improved since then, the seasonal pattern persists, Doblhammer said.
Happiness and Wealth travel bag
travel bag duffel bag trolley bag
Living standards have soared during the twentieth century, and economists expect them to continue rising in the decades ahead. Does that mean that we humans can look forward to increasing happiness?
Not necessarily, warns Richard A. Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California, in his new book, Growth Triumphant: The Twenty-first Century in Historical Perspective. Easterlin concedes that richer people are more likely to report themselves as being happy than poorer people are. But steady improvements in the American economy have not been accompanied by steady increases in people‘s self-assessments of their own happiness. "There has been not improvement in average happiness in the United States over almost a half century----a period in which real GDP per capita more than doubled," Easterlin reports.
The explanation for this paradox may be that people become less satisfied over time with a given level of income. In Easterlin‘s word: "As incomes rise, the aspiration level does too, and the effect of this increase in aspirations is to vitiate the expected growth in happiness due to higher income."
Money can buy happiness, Easterlin seems to be saying, but only if one‘s amounts get bigger and other people aren‘t getting more. His analysis helps to explain sociologist Lee Rainwater‘s finding that Americans‘ perception of the income "necessary to get along" rose between 1950 and 1986 in the same proportion as actual per capita income. We feel rich if we have more than our neighbors, poor if we have less, and feeling relatively well off is equated with being happy.
Easterlin‘s findings, challenge psychologist Abraham Maslow‘s "hierarchy of wants" as a reliable guide to future human motivation.
Maslow suggested that as people‘s basic material wants are satisfied they seek to achieve nonmaterial or spiritual goals. But Easterlin‘s evidence points to the persistence of materialism.
"Despite a general level of affluence never before realized in the history of the world." Easterlin observes, "Material concerns in the wealthiest nations today are as pressing as ever and the pursuit of material need as intense." The evidence suggests there is no evolution toward higher order goals. Rather, each step upward on the ladder of economic development merely stimulates new economic desires that lead the chase ever onward. Economists are accustomed to deflating the money value of national income by the average level of prices to obtain "real" income. The process here is similar----real income is being deflated by rising material aspiration, in this case to yield essentially constant subjective economic well-being. While it would be pleasant to envisage a world free from the pressure of material want, a more realistic projection, based on the evidence, is of a world in which generation after generation thinks it needs only another 10% to 20% more income to be perfectly happy.
Needs are limited, but not greeds. Science has developed no cure for envy, so our wealth boosts our happiness only briefly while shrinking that of our neighbors. Thus the outlook for the future is gloomy in Easterlin‘s view.
"The future, then, to which the epoch of modern economic growth is leading is one of never ending economic growth, a world in which ever growing abundance is matched by ever rising aspirations, a world in which cultural difference is leveled in the constant race to achieve the goods life of material plenty, it is a world founded on belief in science and the power of rational inquiry and in the ultimate capacity of humanity to shape its own destiny. The irony is that in this last respect the lesson of history appears to be otherwise: that there is no choice. In the end, the triumph of economic growth is not a triumph of humanity over material wants; rather, it is the triumph of material wants over humanity."
Living standards have soared during the twentieth century, and economists expect them to continue rising in the decades ahead. Does that mean that we humans can look forward to increasing happiness?
Not necessarily, warns Richard A. Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California, in his new book, Growth Triumphant: The Twenty-first Century in Historical Perspective. Easterlin concedes that richer people are more likely to report themselves as being happy than poorer people are. But steady improvements in the American economy have not been accompanied by steady increases in people‘s self-assessments of their own happiness. "There has been not improvement in average happiness in the United States over almost a half century----a period in which real GDP per capita more than doubled," Easterlin reports.
The explanation for this paradox may be that people become less satisfied over time with a given level of income. In Easterlin‘s word: "As incomes rise, the aspiration level does too, and the effect of this increase in aspirations is to vitiate the expected growth in happiness due to higher income."
Money can buy happiness, Easterlin seems to be saying, but only if one‘s amounts get bigger and other people aren‘t getting more. His analysis helps to explain sociologist Lee Rainwater‘s finding that Americans‘ perception of the income "necessary to get along" rose between 1950 and 1986 in the same proportion as actual per capita income. We feel rich if we have more than our neighbors, poor if we have less, and feeling relatively well off is equated with being happy.
Easterlin‘s findings, challenge psychologist Abraham Maslow‘s "hierarchy of wants" as a reliable guide to future human motivation.
Maslow suggested that as people‘s basic material wants are satisfied they seek to achieve nonmaterial or spiritual goals. But Easterlin‘s evidence points to the persistence of materialism.
"Despite a general level of affluence never before realized in the history of the world." Easterlin observes, "Material concerns in the wealthiest nations today are as pressing as ever and the pursuit of material need as intense." The evidence suggests there is no evolution toward higher order goals. Rather, each step upward on the ladder of economic development merely stimulates new economic desires that lead the chase ever onward. Economists are accustomed to deflating the money value of national income by the average level of prices to obtain "real" income. The process here is similar----real income is being deflated by rising material aspiration, in this case to yield essentially constant subjective economic well-being. While it would be pleasant to envisage a world free from the pressure of material want, a more realistic projection, based on the evidence, is of a world in which generation after generation thinks it needs only another 10% to 20% more income to be perfectly happy.
Needs are limited, but not greeds. Science has developed no cure for envy, so our wealth boosts our happiness only briefly while shrinking that of our neighbors. Thus the outlook for the future is gloomy in Easterlin‘s view.
"The future, then, to which the epoch of modern economic growth is leading is one of never ending economic growth, a world in which ever growing abundance is matched by ever rising aspirations, a world in which cultural difference is leveled in the constant race to achieve the goods life of material plenty, it is a world founded on belief in science and the power of rational inquiry and in the ultimate capacity of humanity to shape its own destiny. The irony is that in this last respect the lesson of history appears to be otherwise: that there is no choice. In the end, the triumph of economic growth is not a triumph of humanity over material wants; rather, it is the triumph of material wants over humanity."
Microsoft finds inside resistance travel bag
travel bag duffel bag trolley bag
Some Microsoft Corp shareholders say the software maker's 44.6 billion U.S. dollars bid for Yahoo! Inc may backfire and reduce its ability to compete with Google Inc in Internet consumer services and advertising."This is a stupid deal, and I'm not happy," said Jane Snorek, who helps manage more than 70 billion dollars in assets at First American Funds in Minneapolis. She told Bloomberg News that the firm began selling much of its Microsoft position on Thursday when the stock dropped 6.6 percent, the most since April 2006. "I'm expecting slow market-share erosion from Microsoft and Yahoo!"
Microsoft announced an unexpected 44.6-billion-dollar bid for Yahoo Friday. Some Microsoft Corp shareholders say the software maker's bid for Yahoo! Inc may backfire and reduce its ability to compete with Google Inc in Internet consumer services and advertising. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer is attempting the biggest technology takeover on record after his own efforts failed to narrow the gap with Google.Acquiring Yahoo! would still leave Microsoft with a smaller share of the Web search market, and Ballmer would face the distraction of combining the businesses, said Colin Gillis, an analyst at Canaccord Adams in New York."Sergey and Larry are going to have no problems sleeping," Gillis said, referring to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. "I don't see them tossing in their beds tonight."Gillis recommends buying Google shares, has a hold rating on Yahoo!, and doesn't cover Microsoft. He doesn't own shares in the companies.The 31-dollar--a-share bid of cash or Microsoft stock is 62 percent more than Yahoo!'s closing price on Thursday. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, fell 2.15 dollars, to 30.45 dollars on Friday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.Ballmer, 51, has presided over a 44 percent drop in Microsoft shares since taking over as CEO in January 2000.
Yahoo!, which reported its eighth straight quarter of declining profit this week, had dropped 18 percent this year before the offer was announced. The shares rose 9.20 dollars, or 48 percent, to 28.38 dollars on Friday.Holders of Yahoo! stock would be able to choose to take 31 dollars in cash or 0.9509 of a Microsoft share for each Yahoo! share. Microsoft will pay for half the purchase with cash and half with stock, the company said.Yahoo!, based in Sunnyvale, California, has also failed to break Google's hold on the market, losing Internet search users and share of the online ad market. The stock had lost almost half its value in the past two years before the deal was announced."Yahoo! has struggled mightily to compete against Google," said Dave Stepherson, a fund manager at Hardesty Capital Management in Baltimore, which holds about 281,000 Microsoft shares in its 650 million dollars under management. "That is not going to change just because they're pairing up with Microsoft."
The price is "incredibly expensive," and Microsoft may have done better by making smaller purchases to build out its own business, he said.Ballmer himself told analysts in July 2006 that buying Yahoo! wouldn't help Microsoft improve its search business, because only Google has a better quality product than Microsoft.
Some Microsoft Corp shareholders say the software maker's 44.6 billion U.S. dollars bid for Yahoo! Inc may backfire and reduce its ability to compete with Google Inc in Internet consumer services and advertising."This is a stupid deal, and I'm not happy," said Jane Snorek, who helps manage more than 70 billion dollars in assets at First American Funds in Minneapolis. She told Bloomberg News that the firm began selling much of its Microsoft position on Thursday when the stock dropped 6.6 percent, the most since April 2006. "I'm expecting slow market-share erosion from Microsoft and Yahoo!"
Microsoft announced an unexpected 44.6-billion-dollar bid for Yahoo Friday. Some Microsoft Corp shareholders say the software maker's bid for Yahoo! Inc may backfire and reduce its ability to compete with Google Inc in Internet consumer services and advertising. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer is attempting the biggest technology takeover on record after his own efforts failed to narrow the gap with Google.Acquiring Yahoo! would still leave Microsoft with a smaller share of the Web search market, and Ballmer would face the distraction of combining the businesses, said Colin Gillis, an analyst at Canaccord Adams in New York."Sergey and Larry are going to have no problems sleeping," Gillis said, referring to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. "I don't see them tossing in their beds tonight."Gillis recommends buying Google shares, has a hold rating on Yahoo!, and doesn't cover Microsoft. He doesn't own shares in the companies.The 31-dollar--a-share bid of cash or Microsoft stock is 62 percent more than Yahoo!'s closing price on Thursday. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, fell 2.15 dollars, to 30.45 dollars on Friday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.Ballmer, 51, has presided over a 44 percent drop in Microsoft shares since taking over as CEO in January 2000.
Yahoo!, which reported its eighth straight quarter of declining profit this week, had dropped 18 percent this year before the offer was announced. The shares rose 9.20 dollars, or 48 percent, to 28.38 dollars on Friday.Holders of Yahoo! stock would be able to choose to take 31 dollars in cash or 0.9509 of a Microsoft share for each Yahoo! share. Microsoft will pay for half the purchase with cash and half with stock, the company said.Yahoo!, based in Sunnyvale, California, has also failed to break Google's hold on the market, losing Internet search users and share of the online ad market. The stock had lost almost half its value in the past two years before the deal was announced."Yahoo! has struggled mightily to compete against Google," said Dave Stepherson, a fund manager at Hardesty Capital Management in Baltimore, which holds about 281,000 Microsoft shares in its 650 million dollars under management. "That is not going to change just because they're pairing up with Microsoft."
The price is "incredibly expensive," and Microsoft may have done better by making smaller purchases to build out its own business, he said.Ballmer himself told analysts in July 2006 that buying Yahoo! wouldn't help Microsoft improve its search business, because only Google has a better quality product than Microsoft.
2008年12月5日星期五
Reason, Season and Lifetime travel bag
travel bag duffel bag trolley bag
People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.When you figure out which it is, you know exactly what to do.When someone is in your life for a REASON,it is usually to meet a needyou have expressed outwardly or inwardly.They have come to assist you through a difficulty,to provide you with guidance and support,to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually.They may seem like a godsend, and they are.They are there for the reason you need them to be.Then, without any wrong doing on your partor at an inconvenient time,this person will say or do somethingto bring the relationship to an end.Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away.Sometimes they act up or out and force you to take a stand.What we must realize is that our need has been met,our desire fulfilled; their work is done.The prayer you sent up has been answeredand it is now time to move on.When people come into your life for a SEASON,it is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn.They may bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh.They may teach you something you have never done.They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season.LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons;those things you must build uponin order to have a solid emotional foundation.Your job is to accept the lesson,love the person/people (anyway);and put what you have learned to use in allother relationships and areas of your life.It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.
People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.When you figure out which it is, you know exactly what to do.When someone is in your life for a REASON,it is usually to meet a needyou have expressed outwardly or inwardly.They have come to assist you through a difficulty,to provide you with guidance and support,to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually.They may seem like a godsend, and they are.They are there for the reason you need them to be.Then, without any wrong doing on your partor at an inconvenient time,this person will say or do somethingto bring the relationship to an end.Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away.Sometimes they act up or out and force you to take a stand.What we must realize is that our need has been met,our desire fulfilled; their work is done.The prayer you sent up has been answeredand it is now time to move on.When people come into your life for a SEASON,it is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn.They may bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh.They may teach you something you have never done.They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season.LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons;those things you must build uponin order to have a solid emotional foundation.Your job is to accept the lesson,love the person/people (anyway);and put what you have learned to use in allother relationships and areas of your life.It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.
Three Peach Stones travel bag
travel bag duffel bag trolley bag
Observe a child; any one will do. You will see that not a day passes in which he does not find something or other to make him happy, though he may be in tears the next moment. Then look at a man; any one of us will do. You will notice that weeks and months can pass in which day is greeted with nothing more than resignation1, and endure with every polite indifference. Indeed, most men are as miserable as sinners, though they are too bored to sin-perhaps their sin is their indifference2. But it is true that they so seldom smile that when they do we do not recognize their face, so distorted is it from the fixed mask we take for granted3. And even then a man can not smile like a child, for a child smiles with his eyes, whereas a man smiles with his lips alone. It is not a smile; but a grin; something to do with humor4, but little to do with happiness. And then, as anyone can see, there is a point (but who can define that point?) when a man becomes an old man, and then he will smile again. It would seem that happiness is something to do with simplicity, and that it is the ability to extract pleasure form the simplest things-such as a peach stone, for instance. It is obvious that it is nothing to do with success. For Sir Henry Stewart was certainly successful. It is twenty years ago since he came down to our village from London , and bought a couple of old cottages, which he had knocked into one. He used his house a s weekend refuge5. He was a barrister. And the village followed his brilliant career with something almost amounting to paternal pride. I remember some ten years ago when he was made a King's Counsel6, Amos and I, seeing him get off the London train, went to congratulate him. We grinned with pleasure; he merely looked as miserable as though he'd received a penal sentence. It was the same when he was knighted; he never smiled a bit, he didn't even bother to celebrate with a round of drinks at the "Blue Fox"7. He took his success as a child does his medicine. And not one of his achievements brought even a ghost of a smile to his tired eyes. I asked him one day, soon after he'd retired to potter about his garden,8 what is was like to achieve all one's ambitions. He looked down at his roses and went on watering them. Then he said "The only value in achieving one's ambition is that you then realize that they are not worth achieving." Quickly he moved the conversation on to a more practical level, and within a moment we were back to a safe discussion on the weather. That was two years ago. I recall this incident, for yesterday, I was passing his house, and had drawn up my cart just outside his garden wall. I had pulled in from the road for no other reason than to let a bus pass me. As I set there filling my pipe, I suddenly heard a shout of sheer joy come from the other side of the wall. I peered over. There stood Sir Henry doing nothing less than a tribal war dance9 of sheer unashamed ecstasy. Even when he observed my bewildered face staring over the wall he did not seem put out10 or embarrassed, but shouted for me to climb over. "Come and see, Jan. Look! I have done it at last! I have done it at last!" There he was, holding a small box of earth in his had. I observed three tiny shoots out of it. "And there were only three!" he said, his eyes laughing to heaven. "Three what?" I asked. "Peach stones", he replied. "I've always wanted to make peach stones grow, even since I was a child, when I used to take them home after a party, or as a man after a banquet. And I used to plant them, and then forgot where I planted them. But now at last I have done it, and, what's more, I had only three stones, and there you are, one, two, three shoots," he counted. And Sir Henry ran off, calling for his wife to come and see his achievement-his achievement of simplicity.
Observe a child; any one will do. You will see that not a day passes in which he does not find something or other to make him happy, though he may be in tears the next moment. Then look at a man; any one of us will do. You will notice that weeks and months can pass in which day is greeted with nothing more than resignation1, and endure with every polite indifference. Indeed, most men are as miserable as sinners, though they are too bored to sin-perhaps their sin is their indifference2. But it is true that they so seldom smile that when they do we do not recognize their face, so distorted is it from the fixed mask we take for granted3. And even then a man can not smile like a child, for a child smiles with his eyes, whereas a man smiles with his lips alone. It is not a smile; but a grin; something to do with humor4, but little to do with happiness. And then, as anyone can see, there is a point (but who can define that point?) when a man becomes an old man, and then he will smile again. It would seem that happiness is something to do with simplicity, and that it is the ability to extract pleasure form the simplest things-such as a peach stone, for instance. It is obvious that it is nothing to do with success. For Sir Henry Stewart was certainly successful. It is twenty years ago since he came down to our village from London , and bought a couple of old cottages, which he had knocked into one. He used his house a s weekend refuge5. He was a barrister. And the village followed his brilliant career with something almost amounting to paternal pride. I remember some ten years ago when he was made a King's Counsel6, Amos and I, seeing him get off the London train, went to congratulate him. We grinned with pleasure; he merely looked as miserable as though he'd received a penal sentence. It was the same when he was knighted; he never smiled a bit, he didn't even bother to celebrate with a round of drinks at the "Blue Fox"7. He took his success as a child does his medicine. And not one of his achievements brought even a ghost of a smile to his tired eyes. I asked him one day, soon after he'd retired to potter about his garden,8 what is was like to achieve all one's ambitions. He looked down at his roses and went on watering them. Then he said "The only value in achieving one's ambition is that you then realize that they are not worth achieving." Quickly he moved the conversation on to a more practical level, and within a moment we were back to a safe discussion on the weather. That was two years ago. I recall this incident, for yesterday, I was passing his house, and had drawn up my cart just outside his garden wall. I had pulled in from the road for no other reason than to let a bus pass me. As I set there filling my pipe, I suddenly heard a shout of sheer joy come from the other side of the wall. I peered over. There stood Sir Henry doing nothing less than a tribal war dance9 of sheer unashamed ecstasy. Even when he observed my bewildered face staring over the wall he did not seem put out10 or embarrassed, but shouted for me to climb over. "Come and see, Jan. Look! I have done it at last! I have done it at last!" There he was, holding a small box of earth in his had. I observed three tiny shoots out of it. "And there were only three!" he said, his eyes laughing to heaven. "Three what?" I asked. "Peach stones", he replied. "I've always wanted to make peach stones grow, even since I was a child, when I used to take them home after a party, or as a man after a banquet. And I used to plant them, and then forgot where I planted them. But now at last I have done it, and, what's more, I had only three stones, and there you are, one, two, three shoots," he counted. And Sir Henry ran off, calling for his wife to come and see his achievement-his achievement of simplicity.
订阅：
博文 (Atom)
