Firefly

Evaporative cooler

2008-06-18T22:01:00.001-07:00

Before refrigerators, homes usually had ice boxes. But another way to keep food cool without the need for electricity is to use an evaporative cooler. This is easy to make and does not even use ice.

A common design is a tall box with food placed on several shelves inside. The shelves are pieces of metal with many small holes through them. The sides of the box are covered with pieces of thick cloth. Containers of water are placed at the top and bottom of the cooler. The ends of each piece of cloth lie in the water so the cloth stays wet.

Put the cooler in the open air but not in the sun. Air will pass through the wet cloth. The inside of the box will stay several degrees cooler than the outside air temperature. And this may be cool enough to keep foods fresh at least for a short time.

Cold storage in a freezer, however, can keep foods in good condition for months after the growing season. Yet foods can be damaged if they are kept too cold. The British development group Practical Action says the best way to prepare foods for storage is at harvest time while still in the field. Use a sharp knife to avoid damage.

Drought-resistant crops

2008-06-10T22:58:00.001-07:00

One cause of the current food crisis is drought. Food prices are high in part because of dry weather in places as far distant as Spain and Australia.

Around the world, the amount of land affected by drought has doubled in the past thirty years. So says the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the United States. And scientists concerned about climate change believe it will cause more drought in many areas in the future.

A lot of research is going into efforts to develop drought-resistant crops. One project involves tobacco plants genetically engineered to keep their leaves during water shortages.Eduardo Blumwald and Rosa Rivero at the University of California, Davis, led a team from the United States, Japan and Israel. Rosa Rivero says they chose tobacco because it has big leaves. Also, it grows fast and has structural similarities with some other plants.

The researchers did an experiment with two groups of tobacco plants. They worked with a set of normal plants and a set of transgenic plants. These had a gene added to interfere with the biological causes of leaf loss during drought.

complaint exersize

2008-06-08T23:06:00.001-07:00

Letters complaint agency:

I’m worrying about the drinking and driving. Last week, the XinMing Journey reported that: In the Golden week, the number of drunk driver rose by 15%. It’s a dangerous sign which describe the rise of injured rate these days.

This phenomenon is originally due to the ignorance of the drivers. They just hide behind wheel and never consider the benefit of other road users. But the government still has the responsibility. In other Asian countries, the legal limit is much lower than us. So I strongly recommend a lower alcohol limit. It will help drivers think twice on the drinking and driving.

Please give me an acknowledgement. I’ll concentrate on the progress of the action.

A citizen

Direction

2008-06-08T21:03:00.001-07:00

cab: pick up / drop

corner / intersection / interstate / roundabout /pedstrain crossing

We are short of drivers ourselves right now.

In that case, I reckon I may by able to help.

You go straight till you get to the first intersection(till you see a sign that says "freeway"). than you take the freeway, going north bend.

Then you pass the second intersection.

And you take the fourth exit after that.

Then you follow the signs for the New Camford freeway.

runs a garage

on the bypass

take a right at the next set of lights

Don't mention it.

I'll have 20 dollars' worth of unleaded, please.

stop him for speeding

I can drop you off at the hairdresser's on my way home.

You should never overtake on a bend.

Will you pull over immediately and let me out.

negotiate

2008-05-23T11:08:00.001-07:00

I'm privy to the confidential information

persuade/ convince

force it through

Mike deserved that raise

major desicion

negotiate a bussiness deal

economic climate

good at accounting

too many debts to settle

profit sharing scheme for the workforce

The decision to reprimand Randall for unilateral offering Alice a pay raise was made by a consensus by the managers.

Most companies like to offer their employees such perks like company cars or vacaions, as incentives to work hard.

offer her incentives to stay with us

interpreter

do not create a good impression within the company

whether this pay raise will go through or not

rival

defect to a competitor

commodity

fluctuate

portfolio

itinerary

travel allowance

speculator

roundtrip

make a killing

viable / feasible

endoscope surgery

2008-05-21T18:46:00.001-07:00

Medical researchers keep looking for less invasive ways to perform operations. The aim is to cut less and to reduce pain and recovery time. Some researchers see a future in NOTES. NOTES is short for Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery.

In simple terms, what this means is the removal of diseased organs through the body's natural openings. For example, a man in California recently had his appendix removed through his mouth.Twenty-five years ago, having your appendix removed meant staying in the hospital for as long as a week. Patients returned home with an ugly and permanent scar on their abdomen.

But since the late nineteen eighties, laparoscopic surgery has gained popularity. It leaves only small marks where holes were made in the skin. The doctor works with a system called a laparoscope, usually connected to a video camera. Laparoscopic surgery rarely requires a hospital stay.

With the newest kind of surgery, doctors make a small cut in the patient's belly button. A camera is placed through the hole to help guide the surgical instrument.

national teacher

2008-05-16T00:23:00.001-07:00

A science teacher from Prineville, Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest, is the new National Teacher of the Year.

Michael Geisen is thirty-five years old. He was a forester. But he decided he would rather work with growing minds than with growing trees. Seven years ago, he got a master's degree in teaching and a job at Crook County Middle School. Crook County has high rates of poverty.

He brought new energy to the science department. He also created school projects to get parents involved in their children's work. One girl who was recently in his class said he could probably make it interesting to watch grass grow.

During lunch, his students come to his room to talk, get help, visit his turtle and sometimes join him in playing guitar. He writes songs and develops games about science. He says one of his goals as a teacher is to create people who will continue to learn throughout their lives.

Michael Geisen studied forest resource management and graduated with high honors from the University of Washington. He says he tries to be creative with each activity. He does not like to use textbooks much. When students know that the work is local and useful to their lives, he says, they start to ge

investment

2008-05-15T22:30:00.001-07:00

make a killing

privatized

portfolio

bricks- and- mortar

every one wants to be a stag.

this section is saturated

triple

I'm a conservative

is not your best bet

bankrupt

flotation

initial public offering

equity (stock)

stock broker

dealer

bear/bull/stag

corriki.org

2008-05-11T00:27:00.001-07:00

Wikis are Web sites designed for cooperative work. Users can easily create or change the content. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, is the best known wiki. A newer example is Curriki, a curriculum wiki. Curriki.org is a learning community for developing and sharing educational materials for free. It says it has forty thousand members in two hundred countries

The materials are for kindergarten through grade twelve. The subject areas are mathematics, science, technology, reading, language arts and languages. In addition to English, there are some materials in French, German, Hindi, Portuguese and Spanish. A curriculum-building tool helps educators create lesson plans on the site. The idea is for members to donate resources that represent best practices.

Curriki's partners include Sesame Workshop, which has created videos and lesson plans to teach children about cultural differences. Another company, Atomic Learning, has provided videos for teaching about technology.

Members who donate materials are listed on the site. Comments and criticisms about materials are also posted. Anyone can use Curriki.org to teach others or themselves. The materials can be printed or saved to a CD.

Curriki is also working on several international projects. One of them involves teacher training for Indonesia. In South Africa, Curriki has been working on a research project on the process of building free and open curriculum.

In two thousand four, the Sun Microsystems company launched the Global Education and Learning Community. Two years later, Sun established it as an independent nonprofit organization and changed the name to Curriki.

Bobbi Kurshan is the executive director. She says a team of experts rates material on Curriki on a scale of one to three. The volunteers judge if the information is complete, if it is right for the age level and if it is written well.

The name "wiki" comes from a Hawaiian word for "quick." But Bobbi Kurshan says she recognizes that many teachers may not be quick to trust free, open-source materials. She says people should trust the educational community on Curriki to do the right thing. In her words, "We're changing the way we build curriculum."

wildlife services

2008-05-07T01:11:00.001-07:00

The United States Department of Agriculture has a program called Wildlife Services. Its job is to help protect agricultural and other resources from threats and damage by wildlife. Often that means helping farmers deal with unwelcome visitors.

One example from Wildlife Services of its work involved a farmer in Washington state, in the Pacific Northwest. Several years ago, thousands of Canada geese landed on his fields. The geese began to eat his carrot crop.

Biologists from the program suggested that the farmer use noise-making devices and other measures to scare the large birds away. These efforts apparently succeeded.

Wildlife Services also has a livestock protection program. The agency kills foxes, badgers and other predators. Critics, however, say too many animals are killed that do not threaten livestock.

The Wildlife Services program is part of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS. APHIS offers some suggestions of ways to keep away predators.

Game and donate

2008-05-04T23:07:00.001-07:00

Whoever thought learning new words could feel socially responsible? A Web site called FreeRice.com is an English vocabulary game. It explains its purpose like this: "For each word you get right, we donate 20 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program to help end hunger."

The site began in October. It says thirty billion grains of rice have been donated so far. The United Nations World Food Program does not really get rice. The donations are given in the form of money. Advertisers whose names appear with links at the bottom of the game pay for the rice. Individuals can also become sponsors.

Words are presented with four choices of answers. Players click on the one that best defines the word. If they answer correctly, they get a harder word. If they choose wrong, they get an easier word. Spoken pronunciations are also provided.

Currently, the FreeRice game has fifty-five levels of difficulty. Players rarely get past level forty-eight."Does FreeRice make any money from this?" That is one of the frequently asked questions on the site. "No, it does not. FreeRice runs the site at no profit," says the answer.

Internet businessman John Breen created FreeRice. Since October, five hundred seventy metric tons of rice have been donated, enough to feed about a million and a half people for one day.The game is said to be especially popular with college students and young people who visit social networking sites.

Jennifer Parmelee is a World Food Program spokeswoman in Washington. She says cash donations help the agency to buy food locally and transport it quickly to where it is needed.

For example, with donations from the site, rice for Nepal was recently bought in the area at half the world market price. Bangladesh, Cambodia and Uganda also have received food through FreeRice.

Over the last nine months, though, the cost to secure food aid has increased fifty-five percent. Jennifer Parmelee says this is the biggest crisis the World Food Program has faced in its forty-five year history. She says creative projects like FreeRice are badly needed right now.

Physical acitvity

2008-05-03T21:33:00.001-07:00

Common sense would tell us that physically active children may be more likely to become active and healthy adults.

In the United States, elementary and middle schools are advised to give students two and a half hours of physical activity a week. That is what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Heart Association recommend. They say high schools should provide about four hours of physical activity each week.

Yet many schools across the country have reduced their physical education programs. Criticism of the cuts has led in some places to efforts to give students more time for exercise, not less. The future health of Americans may depend on it.

Just this week, a study reported that life expectancy has fallen or is no longer increasing in some parts of the United States. The situation is worst among poor people in the southern states, and especially women. Public health researchers say it is largely the result of increases in obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. They also blame differences in health services around the country.

malaria treatment

2008-05-01T23:39:00.001-07:00

A Brazilian drug company and a nonprofit group have developed a new, simplified malaria treatment. Patients have to take only one tablet a day for three days for some ages, or two tablets a day for three days for other ages.

The medicine combines two existing malaria drugs, artesunate and mefloquine. This combination has been widely used in recent years in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

The Brazilian government will make the new treatment available throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia over this year and next. The fixed-dose drug will be offered to public agencies at a target price of two and a half dollars for the full adult treatment.

Bernard Pecoul is head of the nonprofit group, called the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative. He says the new formulation is safe and fast-acting, and effective for children and adults.

The World Health Organization says artemisinin-based combination treatments are the best way to treat common malaria. Research shows that the simpler the treatment, the more likely people are to complete it. People increase the risk of drug resistance when they do not complete a full treatment.

eHold

2008-05-01T19:04:00.001-07:00

eHold was founded in 1987 by Pere Petain and Claire Clemenceau, both of whom had previously worked in the research and development section of the hardware division of HAL, the multinational computer giant. They were interested in starting up a company that would satisfy the needs of home and small business users, focusing on imaging devices and sound devices. They began the company with less than $1 million in start-up capital, in a small rented space in the outskirts of Paris, and with two part-time employees.
The company grew quickly from these humble beginnings. By 1993 it employed more than four hundred people while producing a product line that included hand-held and table-top scanners, sound cards, digital mixing boards, midi keyboards, and laptop computers. At this time it went public; it is now traded on the Paris Stock Exchange.
By the late 90s eHold had changed its focus in order to play a pioneering role in a number of new and promising technologies: sub-laptop computers, including palm-sized and pocket-sized devices, web cams and other digital cameras, external storage media and reading devices for them, and infrared port systems and improved USB hubs to facilitate transfer of data from peripheral devices to base units.
eHold is the third largest producer of non-printer peripheral devices in the European Union. Today it has more than four thousand employees working at seventeen centers in six countries besides France. The annual turnover of the company is more than €7 billion ($6.3 billion).
Gross profits for the last fiscal year were up more than 25% compared to the previous year, while net income rose more than 30%, as a result of increased efficiency in distribution. It is expected that revenue will continue to rise in the coming years, as recent research projects begin to bear fruit in the sale of new products.

Quotation

2008-05-01T18:57:00.001-07:00

I'm sure this operation will be viable. (feasible)

eHold was founded in 1987 by Pere.

Starting up a company requires people, start-up money, and ideas.

The annual turnover of the company is $7 millions.

gross profit / net income

fiscal

The company's revenue is expected to continue to rise in the next few years.

Report

2008-04-29T01:57:00.001-07:00

This report is a summary of research carried out for the SPDB Tower property management team to:

1. Look into new power devices currently available.

2. Consider their suitability for SPDB building.

3. Recommend which devices should be invested.

4. Finding.

The oil prices have doubled last year. And my country is lack of oil. Investing some kinds of new energy devices is economical and available. There are two products on the current market:

1、 Toshiba’s building “Micro Nuclear" reactor. The dimensions are 6-meter by 3-meter. It would supply 200 kilowatt for 40 years.

2、 Setup a Dubai wind power station at the top of the building. This device has three 50-meter leafs. It would be 2000 kilowatt.

Although these products are expensive, they are top-of-the-range devices which will improve our company’s reputation and save money in a long turn.

We suggest our building investing the Dubai wind power station, It’s more safe and more powerful.

Business

2008-04-28T23:02:00.001-07:00

It's never a good idea to go into business with friends.

It's been great doing business with you.

Let's get down to business! There are a lot of items on the agenda today.

Prepositions

2008-04-28T20:34:00.001-07:00

You'll have to get used to working under pressure.

I'd like to call a meeting for tomorrow to discuss our new campaign.

We're still working on the Mac compatibility.

I work for a nice boss.

I insist on talking to your boss that I'd like to meet him tomorrow.

We're impressed with the work that you've down on this project.

Size

2008-04-28T00:05:00.001-07:00

How much does it weight?

What does it hold?

What size/color/shape is it?

What are the dimensions?

How big/heavy/long/wide is it?

What's it made of?

What are its special features?

What's that in centimeters?

What's the timeframe for delivery of the new computers?

Is it water-resistant?

inch, foot, yard, mile

ounce, pound, stone

pint, gallon

Tax cuts

2008-04-27T23:33:00.001-07:00

High food and fuel prices. Housing and credit problems. Job losses. Worries about a recession. No wonder the economy is a top issue for American voters.

Senator John McCain says tax cuts are needed for growth. The Republican presidential candidate set out his economic plan in a speech this week in Pennsylvania. He would push Congress to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent. And he would aim to lower the top rate of income tax for businesses, from thirty-five percent to twenty-five percent.

In all, Senator McCain proposes about two hundred billion dollars in new tax cuts for businesses and individuals. To help pay for them, he would cut earmarks, those special interest projects added to spending bills.He would also hold federal spending at most agencies to current levels and cut wasteful programs. But many experts say it is unlikely these cuts would equal the cost of the tax cuts.

The campaigns of Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton dismissed the McCain plan as a continuation of George Bush's policies. Both Democrats say they are against tax cuts for the wealthy. They propose moderate tax cuts for the middle class.

order

2008-04-27T03:34:00.001-07:00

right-hand woman

After hearing your preliminary proposal,..

adapted to your specifications

illustration of the model

They are not draw to scale.

gray scale, resolution, pixels,

portable

what's the final dimensions.

ounce

feature

It won't be functional until you registered it.

water-resistant, shock proof

This new project does not justify spending that amount of money. I'm so sorry, but I am not going to approve this proposal.

I know you are under pressure, but that doesn't justify your horrible temper.

quoted

is compatible with every operating system

work out their differences and come to an agreement

work out a cheaper way

it can be hooked on a modem as peripheral

What's the timeframe for delivery of the first units?

elevated oil prices

2008-04-26T23:46:00.001-07:00

American motorists appear to grow more dismayed every time they go to a gasoline station. The average price for a gallon of fuel rose nearly six cents in the past week alone, and is more than 50 cents higher than a year ago.

While consumers complain, others are pointing fingers.

For Ray Carbone, who heads the New York-based energy trading firm Paramount Options, the issue boils down to three words: supply and demand. He notes that the world is consuming more fossil fuel each day, led by large, rapidly developing countries like China and India, at a time when global oil production is stagnant.

"The demand numbers coming out of Asia, although slower than a year or two ago, have certainly put into the fore that the U.S. is not the big, big driver in demand that it used to be, And that seems to be what people are having trouble coming to grips with, I think."

Despite rising oil consumption, the world's largest oil cartel, OPEC, has resisted calls to boost production. But OPEC officials are offering no apologies, and scoff at the theory that inadequate supply to meet rising demand lies at the heart of today's elevated oil prices.

Lack Of Food

2008-04-23T00:31:00.001-07:00

Food inflation has led to growing protests in developing countries. In Haiti, the government fell Saturday after riots in which several people died.

Some rice-producing countries have cut exports to protect their own supplies. World Bank President Robert Zoellick said last week that rice prices have risen around seventy-five percent in just two months, to near historical levels. Wheat prices have risen one hundred twenty percent in the past year.

Farmers are planting more wheat and rice. But population growth is raising demand. So is the use of food crops to produce biofuels. At the same time, record oil prices have meant higher costs for petroleum-based fertilizers and for energy and transportation.

Food also costs more because more people are eating meat and dairy products in growing economies like India and China. More grain is going to feed cattle. Weather has also pushed up prices. For example, Australia, a major wheat exporter, faces a drought.

High food prices hit the poor the hardest. Agricultural economist Christopher Barrett at Cornell University says many poor farmers use more of their crops than they sell. He says more investment is needed in agricultural research.

learn math

2008-04-17T09:55:00.001-07:00

A committee has released its final report on ways to improve math education for American students. President Bush created the National Mathematics Advisory Panel two years ago.

The panel examined thousands of reports, along with survey results from more than seven hundred algebra teachers. Yet the report, released last month, is short on detailed advice. It says existing research does not show just what knowledge or skills are needed for effective math teaching. The solution? More research.

The report does say basic math skills must be taught completely in the early years of school. Children should be able to add and subtract in the third grade. By the end of fifth grade, they should be able to multiply and divide. Teachers should avoid revisiting skills year after year. And, the experts say, it is wrong to think children are "too young" or "not ready" to learn certain content at certain ages.

The report says a major goal for kindergarten through eighth grade should be understanding fractions. These skills are needed for algebra. Yet, the report says, at the present time they seem to be severely underdeveloped in American students.

Airport

2008-04-16T00:00:00.001-07:00

departure lounge

check-in desk

security check

duty-free shopping

gate

ground stuff

passport control

baggage carousel

customs hall

arrivals hall

Belly fat

2008-04-14T23:57:00.001-07:00

Being overweight can lead to high blood pressure, diabetes and heart attacks. But now there may be another reason to lose the fat, especially around the middle of the body. A recent study suggested that people in their forties with belly fat have an increased risk of dementia later in life.

Dementia is the name for a group of brain disorders that affect memory, behavior, learning and language. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause. Dementia rarely appears before the age of sixty. The new study added to growing evidence that people with large stomachs can face greater health risks than others who are overweight.

The study involved more than six thousand northern California members of Kaiser Permanente, a health care organization. Researchers looked at the patients' medical records from between nineteen sixty-four and nineteen seventy-three. The people were in their early to mid-forties at the time. They were all part of a long-term health study that included measurements of belly fat.

The researchers compared the records with those from when the patients were in their seventies. By that time, almost one out of six of them had dementia. The researchers found that dementia was more common in those with wider bellies.

Investment

2008-04-13T23:21:00.001-07:00

fluctuate - stabilize

soar - plunge

gamble = speculate

safe bet - high risk

inflation, stagflation

commodity, currency, stock, share

future = derivative

Business training for women

2008-04-13T20:39:00.001-07:00

Goldman Sachs Group, the international investment banking company, has launched a new program to provide ten thousand poor women with business education. The program, called 10,000 Women, will support partnerships between American and European universities and business schools in mostly developing countries. Partners will work together to establish or expand education programs lasting from five weeks to six months. Several partnerships may also offer full college degrees in business.

The 10,000 Women program hopes to expand into the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and throughout Africa. Sixteen schools have agreed to take part in the program so far. They include Columbia, Harvard and Stanford Universities in the United States. Other schools are in India, Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania.

The Pan-African University in Lagos, Nigeria is also a partner. Peter Bamkoleh heads that university's Enterprise Development Services. He says about fifty women will receive training at the school every year. The women will take classes several times a week, then use what they have learned.

50% ungraduated

2008-04-10T21:01:00.001-07:00

A new report says only about half of all students in the main school systems of America's largest cities finish high school. The report notes higher rates of graduation – more than seventy percent -- in areas surrounding the cities.

The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center prepared the report.

Researchers studied high school graduation rates from the two thousand three, two thousand four school year. They also identified the nation's fifty largest cities. The largest, New York City, had a population of more than eight million. The smallest city was Wichita, Kansas. It had about three hundred sixty thousand people.

Researchers used a system of measurement called the cumulative promotion index to find graduation rates. School officials in many of the cities studied say the resulting numbers were too low. That is because different areas use different methods to find graduation rates. Critics say many methods do not give a true picture of the number of students who leave high school before finishing.

Climate change

2008-04-08T20:40:00.001-07:00

Next Monday is World Health Day, observed by the World Health Organization. The objective chosen for this year is to get people involved in the campaign to protect against the health effects of climate change.

The World Health Organization is a United Nations agency. The W.H.O. says there is already evidence of health problems related to climate change. It says more people are dying from extreme heat, and that diseases spread by insects are also on the rise. And it says climate change has increased the risk of natural disasters, especially severe dry weather, wildfires, major storms and floods.

Disasters like these can kill directly or indirectly. People can die or get sick from food shortages or conditions like the spread of disease. Several years ago, the W.H.O. blamed climate change for two percent of diarrhea cases worldwide in the year two thousand.

Last month, researchers in Canada predicted that temperature increases there will spread insects like ticks and mosquitoes farther north. These insects can carry disease.

The scientists also predict that climate change will lead in Canada to an increase in outbreaks of diseases that can be carried in water and food. They note that flooding, heavy rains and warmer temperatures are linked to the spread of bacteria, viruses and other organisms. This is true even in the presence of water treatment systems, they say.

The report by scientists at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

World Health Day marks the establishment of the World Health Organization on April seventh, nineteen forty-eight. One goal this year is to call for local and international partnerships that will seek to improve health through efforts to stabilize climate change. The W.H.O. says it aims to put public health at the center of U.N. efforts on climate change.

A major message of this World Health Day is that the health of poor people will be hurt the most. The W.H.O. says different areas of the world will experience different problems from climate change. But it says countries with high levels of poverty and underdevelopment will be the least prepared to deal with them.

charting 40

2008-04-08T02:44:00.001-07:00

I can't see you tomorrow morning ,because I'm going to a meeting.(* I'll go)

Had the TV mended.

Look, please don't go on about it; it really isn't that interesting.(*with)

I'm really shouldn't bother you, you're so busy.(*wouldn't)

At the bottom of the stairs.

I'm cooking you something.

Here you are! I've been looking for you.

When you were on the phone, the mailman brought the letter.

There is no point in staying here.

But I'm at the point of finishing it now.

excursion

settler/inhabitant/immigrant

I want to go to Malta, but my wife would rather go to Spain.

Please put me through to Tracy Lee.(?)

charting 39

2008-04-06T20:38:00.001-07:00

How do you find it?
It's not the greatest hotel in the world.

I hope everything's OK as far as your accommodation goes.
I'm staying at the Windsor hotel. Do you know it?

Do I need to buy a ticket then?

And where do you suggest we meet tomorrow?
I reckon that Kennedy Plaza would be the best place.

How will I recognize you?
I'll be wearing a black jacket.

I've enjoyed meeting you too, Bill. So long for now.
Nice to meet you. I hope we meet again.

Really?I'd never have guessed.

Ah, here you are, at least.
Look, I'm so sorry I'm late, I had to wait ages for the bus.

So what about meeting again some time,then?
I'll be in touch, OK?

Give you a bad impressing of Washton hotel.

Tom caught cold. He isn't likely to come to the party.

Are you intending to leave school?

This is strictly between me and Jane; It doesn't concern you.
As far as I concerned, you can do what you like.

I've never had any problems with my mother-in-low; we get along very well together.

What's your reason for applying for this post?

There is not much demand for large, uneconomical cars these days.

Yes, Mr Brown and I have met on a number of occasions.

You and John can come in our car; we've got room.

I can't see any point at all in answering all these stupid questions, can you?

I'm working for a IT firm.

I'm hungry; I feel like eating something.

AIDS in Asia

2008-04-06T19:07:00.001-07:00

A new study says Asia must do more to prevent AIDS, or the number of people infected with H.I.V. could double by two thousand twenty. Today about five million people in Asia are living with the virus that causes AIDS.

An estimated three hundred thousand people died of H.I.V.-related diseases in Asia last year. At current rates, that number could rise to almost five hundred thousand.The United Nations program on H.I.V./AIDS requested the study, led by Indian economist Chakravarthi Rangarajan.

The report says three main groups are driving the spread of AIDS in Asia. One group is sex workers and the men who use them. Another is injection drug users who share needles. And the third group are men who have unprotected sex with other men.

Researchers estimate that as many as ten million women in Asia sell sex. At least seventy-five million men buy on a regular basis. In many Asian countries, these men, and their female partners, represent the largest group of people living with H.I.V. The study found that AIDS is the most likely cause of death and lost work days for people in Asia between the ages of fifteen and forty-four.

The report says prevention programs can be effective if governments invest at least thirty cents a year per person.For more than twenty years, scientists have been trying to develop a vaccine to prevent H.I.V. infection. The latest failures came last September. Researchers halted two studies of an experimental AIDS vaccine from the drug company Merck.

Early results showed that the vaccine not only failed to protect, it appeared to put some people at higher risk of infection.

Last Tuesday, several hundred researchers and activists met in Bethesda, Maryland, for a Summit on H.I.V. Vaccine Research and Development. They debated what to do now.Many of the scientists agreed that experimental vaccines should continue to be tested on humans. But many said there should be less dependence on human trials.

Anthony Fauci is head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which called the meeting. He and others said there should be more tests on animals, to add to discoveries from human studies.

There also were calls for a return to more basic science, first identifying and answering major scientific questions. But Doctor Fauci said the search for an AIDS vaccine will not stop.

Housing bubble burst

2008-04-05T19:40:00.001-07:00

This week, the National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes in the United States increased almost three percent in February. It was the first increase since last July.

But fueling that increase was a drop in prices. The S&P/Case-Shiller index of twenty major markets showed that home prices fell almost two and a half percent in January. Prices were down almost eleven percent from a year before.

And still another report this week showed that sales of new single-family houses fell in February. Sales were down almost two percent from January, to a thirteen-year low. The Commerce Department estimated there was a ten-month supply of newly built houses waiting to be sold.

Experts say prices in many markets will have to fall further before more people are willing or able to buy. Prices went up and up in recent years, before the housing bubble burst. Many buyers now struggling to make payments took out loans that were too big. They thought prices would keep rising and they could sell their home for a nice profit.

Rising values meant that people could also take out home equity loans and lines of credit. They used their home as a cash machine by borrowing against its value.

Now, as those values fall, some people owe more than their home's worth. Many buyers, often with risky credit histories, took out adjustable-rate mortgages, which started out low but later reset to higher rates.

About two percent of all home loans are in foreclosure. Of course, that means ninety-eight percent of homes are not being reclaimed by lenders. Still, this is the highest rate since the Mortgage Bankers Association began keeping records in nineteen seventy-nine.

The weak housing market is largely responsible for an economic crisis that is leading to new government steps in the financial system.Last week, the Federal Reserve pushed through a deal for J.P. Morgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns for two dollars a share. Bear, the nation's fifth-largest investment bank, was near collapse after big losses on its mortgage-backed securities. To help make the deal, the Fed agreed to take responsibility for up to thirty billion dollars in those securities.

But J.P. Morgan faced a rebellion by Bear shareholders, so this week it increased its offer to ten dollars a share. It also agreed to take responsibility for one billion dollars of Bear's hard-to-sell securities.

supply and demand

2008-04-05T19:07:00.001-07:00

The Bear’s shareholders are bound to be crying day and night. Last year it’s worth 170 dollars apiece. Even the day before the collapse was claimed, it’s worth 40 dollars apiece. And, the book value of Bear Stearns is still more than 80 dollars a share! But why J.P. Morgan could buy Bear on such an incredible price? The result is ‘liquidity’. For instance, you have 1kg gold in knapsack, it’s great. But unfortunately you’re in desert. There is no way you can find to exchange the gold for your needs. The gold will be the most illiquid assets when you crawl on the desert, it’s useless. You also can explain it under ‘supply and demand’ theory.

rewards

2008-04-02T22:10:00.001-07:00

Some of American schools pay teachers more if their students improve on tests. Now there is a growing movement to pay the students in some cases even just for coming to class. Students at one school in New Maxico can earn upto 300 dollars a year for good attendance. A program in New York city pays upto 500 dollars for good attendance and high test scores. In Baltimore, Maryland, high scores on state education tests can be worth more than 100 dollars. And New Jersey school system plans to pay students 50 dollars per week to attend after school tutoring program. Schools that pay students can be found in more than 1/4 of the 50 states. Other schools pay students with foods or other rewords. Robert Schaefer is public education director for the National Center for Fair and Open testing and activist group. He says paying may improve performence in short turn, but students develop false expectations for the future. He sees a lack of long turn planning in these programs, because the pressure on schools to raise test scores.

Public schools need to show improvement under the education reform law signed by President Bush six years ago. Low-performing schools may lose their federal money; teachers and administrators may lose their jobs. Often these schools are in poor neighborhoods where getting students to go to school can be a continual problem.

Critics say paying students sends a message that money is the only valuable reward. But some students say it makes school more exciting. And some teachers have reported getting more requests for extra help.

In two thousand four, the city schools in Coshocton, Ohio, launched a program. They wanted to see if paying elementary school students as much as one hundred dollars would help in passing state exams.

Now, Eric Bettinger of Case Western Reserve University has reported mixed results. Math scores increased, but only while students were able to get paid. And there was no evidence of higher scores in reading, social studies and science. Officials will decide later this year whether to continue the program. Yet adults get paid for their work. And if teachers can be rewarded for their students' work, then why not the students themselves? This is what some people say.

about parties

2008-04-02T00:56:00.001-07:00

Andy is working for a technical department. So his social relationship is simple. Except his best friends, no one writes his name on the 'must invite' list. Andy is friendly and has sense of humor. But he doesn't focus on maintaining the relationship. So he might forget anyone's name. This problem has confused him for several years.

HIV

2008-04-01T19:02:00.001-07:00

South Africa has the highest number of HIV cases of any country in the world. An estimated 5 and a half million people are infected with the virus that causes ADIS. 55% of them are women. Last May, the cabinet of president Thabo Mbeki approved 5 years plan to guide efforts against ADIS in South Africa. For the plan to succeed, officals agreed the nation had to deel with the poverty, violence and discrimination facing women. Now a report from Amnesty international, looks at the struggles of poor rural women living with HIV in South Africa. The humen rights group says, the women face oppression and a human right abuses. And it says other woman who feel socially and ecnomicly weak, all at higher risk of becoming infected with HIV.

Amnesty researcher Marry Rayner says rural women have little control their relationship with men. Amnesty gathered statements from 37 women in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu Natal provinces. They said that sometimes when they tried to ask their sexual partners to use protection, they might exprense verbal aggression or violence. The report says many rural women with HIV do not even have enough money to travel to health centers for treatment. They might not have enough money for food. Unemployment is a major problem. Amnesty International released this report in London last week. Also in London Scottish singer Anne Lennox promoted her new charity single called sing . The aim is to raise money for the treatment action Campaign,an HIV AIDS orgnization in South Africa.

sing are sister sing, let your voice be heard, what won't kill you make you strong, sings are sister sing.....

schistosomiasis

2008-04-01T18:59:00.001-07:00

Scientists think there's a step closer to a new drug to treat schistosomiasis. More then 200 million people suffer from this parasitic worm disease. Most live in developing nations in tropical climates. About 10% victims become seriously disabled from internal bleeding, iron loss, organ damage or other effects. A team in the United States has found that chemical compounds known as oxadiazoles can target an enzyme needed for the survival of schistosomiasis. This is a group of flatworms cause schistosomiasis. The Scientists tested oxadiazoles on laboratory mice. They found that one compound killed parasite at every level of development from larva to adult. The study also shows that compound active against all 3 major species of Schistosoma worms that infect humans. the national Institutes of health supported research. Scientists for Illinois State University and Chemical Genomics center at N.I.H reported their findings in the journal Nature Medicine. Biology professor David Williams led the research, he says the Schistosoma parasite needs oxygen to servive.

Test，拆墙了没？

2008-04-01T18:56:00.001-07:00

Seeing Pressures but Also Possibilities in Urban Growth 1

2007-07-13T01:50:00.001-07:00

Soon more of us will be living in cities, than in rural areas.
Population experts at the United Nations had thought that would happen by this years.
Lately their estimate is that in 2008 for the first time in history, more than half of the world population will be in urban ares.
The United Nations Population Fund just released its yearly "State of World Population" report.
Researchers say 3 and a 3rd billion people will be living in the urban areas next year.
By 2030 the estimate is almost 5 billion.
The fastest growth will be in Asia and Africa.
Poor people will make up most of the urban growth.
And nature increase will be the main cause of that growth, not migration from the rural areas.
Report says mega-city is of more than 10 million people have not grown to the sizes once expected.
Most growth is expected instead in smaller towns and cities.
The experts urge goverment to improve social services and city planing policies, for example report calls for better land use so poor peaple do not have to live in slums.
Today an estimated 1 billion live in these often polluted and dangerous enviroments, 90% of the people are in developing country.

《卖桔者言》中的读书方法

2007-07-09T01:39:00.001-07:00

By MetalDudu on 读书

《卖桔者言》是张五常的一本书，书末谈到一些读书的方法，转贴如下：

一、理解代替记忆

　　很多人都知道明白了的课程比较容易记得。但理解其实并不是辅助记忆——理解是记忆的代替。强记理论不仅是很难记得准确：当需要应用时，强记的理论根本无济于事。明白了理论的基本概念及含义，你会突然觉得你的记忆力如有神助。道理很简单，明白了的东西就不用死记。但理论的理解有不同的深度，也有不同的准确性。理解愈深愈准确，记忆就愈清楚，而应用起来就愈能得心应手。所以读书要贯通——理论上的不同重点的联带关系要明白；要彻底——概念或原则的演变要清楚。

二、兴趣是因思想的集中而燃烧起来的

将一只手表放在书桌上。先看手表，然后开始读书或做功课。若你发觉能常常在30分钟内完全不记得手表的存在，你的集中力已有小成。能于每次读书对都完全忘记外物1小时以上，你就不用担心你的集中力。

三、问比答重要

很多学生怕发问的原因，是怕老师或同学认为他问得太浅或太蠢，令人发笑。但学而不问，不是真正的学习。发问的第一个黄金定律就是要脸皮厚！就算是问题再浅，不明白的就要问；无论任何人，只要能给你答案，你都可以问。
第一、问题可分三类——A、“是甚么”（What），B、“怎样办”（How?），C、“为甚么”（why）。学生要先断定问题是那一类。A类问的是事实；B类问的是方法；C类问的是理论。问题一经断定是那一类，学生就应立刻知道自己的“不知”是在那方面的，因而可免却混淆。若要问的问题包括是多过一类的，就要将问题以类分开。这一分就可显出自己的“不知”所在。第二、要尽量去将问题加上特性。换言之，你要问的一点是愈尖愈好。第三、在问老师之前，学生要先问自己问题的答案是否可轻易地在书本上找到。若然，就不应花老师的时间。大致上，用以上的步骤发问题，答案是自己可以轻而易举地找到的。若仍须问老师的话，你发问前的准备工作会使他觉得你是孺子可教。

四、书分三读——大意、细节、重点

第一读是快读，读大意，但求知道所读的一章究竟是关于甚么问题。快读就是翻书，跳读；读字而不读全句，务求得到一个大概的印象。翻得惯了，速度可以快得惊人。读大意，快翻两三次的效果要比不快不慢的翻一次好。第二读是慢读，读细节，务求明白内容。在这第二读中，不明白的地方可用铅笔在页旁作问号，但其他底线或记号却不可用。第三读是选读，读重点。强调记号是要到这最后一关才加上去的，因为哪一点是重点要在细读后才能选出来。而需要先经两读的主要原因，就是若没有经过一快一慢，选重点很容易会选错了。

政治改革

2007-07-06T03:03:00.001-07:00

《经济研究参考》是财政部主管、经济科学出版社主办的杂志，近日，其最新一期以全部56页中将近一半的篇幅刊登了中共中央党校三年前完成的一份政治改革研究报告。这篇研究报告是由中共中央党校研究室副主任周天勇执笔完成，报告提出，其提议的改革措施将可以在未来20年中完成。报告建议：允许党员放弃无神论立场；缩减官僚机构的层级，包含将目前中共政府五级体制删去两级；支持非政府组织的发展；强化人大代表的竞选机制，不再由党在幕后主导一切，而人大代表员额必须缩减成目前的15%，并允许人大代表在会议间的真正辩论；不再让政府官员兼任人大代表。在十七大即将召开之前，这篇研究报告再度得到官方重视，引起各界瞩目。实际上，报告的上述建议有的已经在一定程度上得到贯彻实施，如目前已施行废除乡镇政府的试点，也减缩了省级党委及更低阶党委的人员编制，裁撤了数万名地方党委副书记职缺。另一方面，目前国家虽然表面上鼓励非政府组织，但实际上仍担心非政府组织发展成为一股不容忽视的反对力量。现在离该报告预计的目标完成时间还有17年，从已经得到验证的一些改革来看，或许今后中国的体制改革就将沿着该报告设计的轨迹前进。（ZAB）TOP

随摘

2007-07-06T02:01:00.001-07:00

湊大一個子女鮋費用約三百萬

佘當奴希望香港人口增加到一千萬，有上述人口才有能力同紐約、倫敦競爭。其實，要求港人生三個係不切實際鮋，因為財政壓力唔細也，湊大一個子女鮋費用約三百萬，珊珊則話要四百萬（依家港人家庭普遍只有一個子女）

控制土地供應樓價焉能不升
　　內地連續四年鮋房地產宏觀調控，結果係點？只能進一步證明樓價係由供求關係決定。2005及06年某D城市每年銷售面積係完工面積鮋兩倍，住房供應不足背後因素是土地供應不足，因為土地轉化為住房用地方面出現瓶頸。例如去年國六條及九部委意見出台後，受九十平方米佔總供應量70％鮋政策影響，北京就有五百多個項目約三千萬平方米樓面因唔到建設用地規劃許可證而暫時擱置。大量宏觀調控出台，結果反令北京2004和05年公開出售土地建築面積只及當年銷售面積鮋五分一。例如去年出售用地一千零三十一公頃，亦只及去年銷售面積36％。除上述因素外，超過50％土地供應鰠北京郊區，而需求卻集中鰠城區內（上述情況亦粛廣州出現），試問樓價點能夠唔升？
　　根據統計，1986至2006年北京常住人口平均年增加二十七萬七千人，近三年升幅更達四十一萬五千人，可見北京房屋需求壓力有幾大。
　　二十一世紀不動產分析師認為，今年首季全國新建商品住宅銷售面積大於完工面積一點九倍，粛咁鮋情況下，全國樓價點樣回落?!
　　SOHO中國聯席主席潘石屹認為，近幾年房屋供應量相對減少，係促使房價上升鮋理由；房屋供應量減少，係前幾年土地供應量減少所形成。土地供應跟唔上房屋需求，係造成樓價上升鮋主因。自1996年開始，中國每年城市化率上升1.4％，加上家庭結構不斷縮細，令每年城市人口對新屋需求達六百萬套。除 2004年供應四百萬套外，其餘每年只有三百萬套左右，長期供不應求，引發2003年起樓價上升潮。5月份全國七十個大中城市房屋銷售價格指數為 106.4，創十八個月內新高，平均升幅6.4％；北京、深圳等五個大城市升幅更超過10％（深圳升12.3％、北京10.3％、北海15.2％、溫州升 10.9％、蚌埠升10.2％、南京升9.5％）。至於二手房升幅，北海升15.1％、深圳升13.9％、蚌埠升10.9％、北京升9.7％、鄭州升 9.7％，大連升8.2％。

所有加息都只係冷卻措施

有人問港元係咪需要加息？答案相信幾肯定。但加息後股市點睇，又係另一回事。過去我老曹已一再批評「加息股市跌、減息股市升」鮋理論，因為減息是由熊市引發（經濟唔好先至要減息），加息則由牛市引發；在牛市中，我地一定面對不斷加息，直到最後一次加息令牛市死亡為止；至於係哪一次？最低要求係存款利率高出 CPI增長率二厘。在未到達呢個水平前，所有加息都只係冷卻措施，情況有如熱天沖凍水涼，冷卻一纒，之後股市又再升過。

國家統計局可能低估國民收入35％

　　據報道，中國經濟研究中心鮋研究結果，國家統計局可能低估國民收入35％，即內地中產階級人均收入較統計局鮋公布數字為高。例如重慶啤酒廠發現，高價啤酒（售價較低價啤酒貴五倍）進入高增長期，花旗因此推介青島啤酒（168），並認為豬肉價上升，應對雨潤食品（1068）有利。有關研究發現，70％中國人面對政府機關調查員時，係唔願透露真正收入；如作以上修正，新數據係2005年中國最高收入10％人口已達九萬七千元人民幣一年！部分收入可能來自貪污，亦可能係兼職收入。因此，花旗進一步睇好內地零售股如銀泰百貨（1833）、金鷹商貿（3308）、國美電器（493）等，亦推介內地汽車股如華晨汽車（1114）、駿威汽車（203）、東風集團（489）、吉利汽車（175）及長城汽車（2333）等。

投資股票係低風險項目

　　好多人唔明白風險與回報鮋關係。其實，人生最大風險係：一、結婚；二、買樓；三、自己做生意。反之，風險最細係揀股，因為揀錯股份後損失15％可以止蝕賣出去，損失受局限。反之，買樓時做錯決定（由於大部分收入作供樓），再將它賣出去可以損失慘重，而結錯婚更加係一生一世。但大部分人唔視結婚為高風險行為，亦唔認為買樓涉及很大風險；反之，投資股票卻視為高風險，真是奇哉怪也！其實，只要事前做足功課，投資股票絕對係低風險項目，起碼較結婚、買樓或自己做生意風險低許多。

大量訂單在手未必好事
　　今年中國造船業大量訂單鰠手亦非好事，因人民幣每升1％，全國造船成本上升二十億元，因為接單係以美元計，開支唔少係人民幣計。依家手上三百三十億美元合約，最遠期可到2011年，到時可能係蝕本生意亦唔奇。仲有鋼價上漲問題及出口退稅可能取消，小心中國重蹈1975至88年日本造船業鮋覆轍。南韓及日本造船業早已擔心本國貨幣升值而少接單，中國造船業可能未曾經歷過外礇因素，大量接入遠期訂單，種下未來危機。

百萬富翁

1967年我老曹剛離開學校踏足社會做事之時，一百萬係一個幾驚人鮋數字，所謂「百萬富翁」。四十年過去，今年如果你退休之時只有一百萬，便必須過幾克己鮋生活。由此可見通貨膨脹鮋威力，鰠四十年內將一百萬購買力蠶食鰦97％。今天要過相當於1967年做百萬富翁鮋生活水平，閣下需要三千二百萬財富至得。

　　大部分人認為退休後開支可以慳番D，事實並非如此。以我老曹為例，家纒一星期工作七天，根本上冇時間消費；一旦退休，消費肯定不減反升。據麥健時報告，擁有一百萬美元或以上鮋人退休後鮋消費較打工時多100％，而非一般人以為退休後開支係退休前鮋65％。另一誤會係以為退休後可以唔再賺錢。麥健時報告同時指出，高收入階級退休後只係唔再返工而有更多時間理財，粛投資方面回報較未退休前更多，61％美國人退休後仍然繼續賺錢，只係改用腦力賺錢，較少用勞力賺錢而已。
　　換言之，退休人士分兩類：一、普通打工仔退休後為節省一D，開支係未退休前鮋65％。二、擁有一百萬美元或以上（唔計自住物業）鮋人退休後開支大幅上升100％，佢地大部分繼續理財，讓財富保持健康增長，退休後因為更專心理財，因此所賺蚊年可能較退休前更多。

美國總統

　　1980年列根當選美國總統，未上任已委派雪茄伏接掌聯儲局。雪茄伏將利率大幅提升，從此改變鰦全球鮋高通脹期。老殊接手後，通脹率曾欲抬頭，可惜連任失敗。克仔上台，同俄羅斯關係良好，來自俄羅斯鮋天然資源，令全球天然資源價格抬唔起頭。殊仔接手後，欲利用伊拉克鮋石油資源泛濫全球，所以2001年油價曾大跌，點知入侵伊拉克成功控制該國石油資源卻失敗，油價上升同時創新高價，推動所有天然資源價上升；再加上推出低利率政策令美元礇價回落，自然更加火上加油。由此可見，美國由邊個當總統，影響會好深遠，明年由邊個做總統呢？

追求優質生活享受

　　展望將來，中國人正由追求最基本生活需要，進入追求優質生活享受，情況有如八十年代鮋香港人。估計最少有一億五千萬中國人已擺脫貧窮，漸漸成為中產階級，此改變引發2003年內地房地產上升潮、2005年股市上升潮、內地消費熱及旅遊熱。單單鰠今年，中國將建成六百二十六幢摩天大廈，有D作商業用途，有D作住宅用途，令全球水泥、鋼鐵、銅等出現供不應求（上述仍未計基建項目需要）。

男人四十擔子最重
　　理財愈年輕開始愈好，因為本小蝕鰦亦好容易翻身；二十六歲鰟年我老曹亦曾將賺返鈬鮋五十萬元蝕掉（1974年可以買四個住宅單位），依家又如何？太早失去反而令自己學曉投資應謹慎，過去三十年我老曹再冇輸過大錢（因已學曉止蝕）。男人四十歲通常係負擔最重鮋時期（仔細老婆嫩），甚至會影響理財（因生活擔子重，但千祈唔好放棄）。進入五十歲擔子漸輕，到時理財便十分容易。你可以選擇五十五到六十五歲任何一年退休，但退休後仍須理財。有人問理財幾時開始最好？答案係二十一歲，或你離開學校進入社會做事鮋第一年。把理財視作一生一世鮋事（理財冇退休年齡）。二十一歲前心智未成熟，以儲蓄為主，令自己養成正確鮋消費態度（例如支出佔總收入80％）。二十一至三十歲宜學習理財。儲蓄與理財最重要講紀律，如果連自己鮋行為（例如讀書時拍丸仔，一定難以成功儲蓄或理財）都控制唔到，又點樣理財？另一危機係四十歲鮋男士，可能突然希望尋回青春而大搞婚外情，到時會令到自己整個理財計劃陷入危機（除非到時你已經好有米）。前人話小富由儉，粛高通脹期，勤儉作用十分有限，應改為小富由懂得理財開始。今年通貨膨脹會否再次成為無聲狗？最近債券息率已升至2004年以來新高，會否威脅股市下半年表現？過去五年，每當十年期債券孳息率升至五厘以上，股市便受壓，例如去年5月至8月。最近三個月十年期債券孳息率由四厘半升上五厘三三，今年7月股市表現又點？

內地A股已進入尋頂期

　　根據Hulbert Financial Digest研究所得，股市在大部分分析員睇淡之時表現較出色、在大部分分析員睇好之時表現較差。例如2001年2月美國睇好情緒指數達79.7％（本港亦因利率下降，市場瀰漫一片樂觀氣氛）。二十一世紀最多人睇淡係2002年10月，睇好情緒指數降至33％（本港係2003年4月）。大部分所謂投資專家，在大部分時間內都係睇錯市！不過，又唔係經常準確，例如去年11月及12月股市便在一片睇好聲中上升，個人忠告：專家意見可供參考，但不可盡信。請記住影響經濟的是政策而非專家意見。以日本九十年代經濟泡沫化為例，背後根源係廣場協定。羅浮協定後，G6聯手逼日圓升值，但日本大藏省力拒日圓升值而大量增加貨幣供應，令日本經濟捲入流動性資金陷阱的漩渦裏而不能自拔，一度令東京市房地產市值總和超過整個美國，日本銀行才驚覺問題嚴重性，急急抽緊銀根刺破這個泡沫，因而引發十三年通縮期。自2002年起，美國雖然一再要求人民幣升值，但中國仍是外礇管制國家，資金流入並不容易，流走更困難。中國人民銀行面對升值壓力主要來自外貿盈餘資金不似日本是國際熱錢。人行近年亦沒有為抗拒人民幣升值而濫發貨幣，反而一而再收緊銀根及加息；中國近年房價及股市上升，但同八十年代日本比較，內地樓價並非漲至三代人供唔起；內地A股O最高亦只有五十倍而非八十倍；2007年的中國唔係1989年的日本。股市平均O一旦高出二十二倍，便有泡沫成分，內地A股當然亦唔例外。現在內地A股估值已過高，即抵受國際衝擊能力較弱；反之，恒生指數O目前只有十五、十六倍，甚至內地A股暴跌，對恒生指數影響仍然唔大，因為在此O水平，承受國際衝擊能力十分好。內地A股現水平O有賴一、供求失衡；二、企業純利保持高增長去支持，缺一不可。近日內地大量新股上市最終必改變供求失衡因素、令內地A股回落。至於企業純利高速上升期、2007年下半年中國GDP增長率會否唔及上半年？2008年中國GDP增長率又如何？換言之，內地A股已進入尋頂期，股價早已透支了公司業績，只要一點點風吹草動，內地A股將十分麻煩，因為股價早已脫離公司業績，全賴供不應求支持，有如1997年7月前本港樓價（因每年限制賣地五十公頃令土地供應出現長期短缺，一旦供應恢復正常，樓價立即大跌）。流動性資產過剩只是周期性，一旦面對全球性抽緊，可以一天之內完全改變（例如1997年7月2日亞洲金融風暴）。特別是處於一個經濟繁榮期尾段，鬥傻遊戲中如搵唔到另一傻瓜接手，自己就係傻瓜。成功將資金變倍的投機者只佔10％，打和機會係30％，其餘60％都係輸家，即每一個贏家背後有六個輸家。

上海樓市又再火爆

上海樓市又再火爆，例如鉑金華府每平方米售價由一萬元升至一萬一千元；海上海由一萬七千元升至一萬九千元；陽城貴都由一萬元漲至一萬二千元；香港花園本周宣布每平方米再漲五百元。過去6月份係上海樓市淡季，今年卻由5月份起回暖，6月火爆；估計6月大幅加價後，7月份成交額會減少，但樓價唔會下跌。
三「C」

西方社會值得東方人學習鮋地方，主要係三「C」。第一個「C」係資本主義（capitalism），一種保障生產、貿易、產權鮋制度。由私人擁有財富可自由買賣、唔受政府干涉、容許自由競爭，係能者居之鮋制度。第二個「C」係憲法、法律或政治體制（constitution），由英國鮋君主立憲到美國大憲章、法國鮋自由民主博愛。透過立憲，政府有Ｄ事可以做，有Ｄ事不能做，因為違憲。人民之間爭拗由法律去解決，政府透過立法規限，人民有Ｄ事可以做，有Ｄ事不能做，因為違法。即政府與人民鮋關係由憲法規定，人與人之間受法律規限，政府不能違憲，人民不能違法。第三個「C」係基督精神（Christianity），即對社會鮋回饋、對窮人鮋幫助、對真理鮋追求，所以各位見到外國許多大富豪將自己大部分財富回饋社會幫助窮人，就係發揮基督精神。
中國已接受第一個C
　　1978年中國政府實施改革開放政策後，對西方社會第一個「C」（資本主義）愈來愈接受，只係美其名為「市場經濟」。但對第二個「C」即憲法、法律及政治體制鮋接受仍然唔順利，政府（尤其地方政府）往往有法不依，人與人之間講人情、講面子而少講法律，無論政府或普通人，鰠守法方面較西方社會仍差得遠。至於第三個「C」所謂基督精神似乎剛開始，中國人鮋捐錢文化仍未普及，香港係中國社會中最有基督精神鮋地方，但同西方比較仍差很遠。
　　香港欲在政制上有突破，必須中國政府漸接受第二個「C」，即政府不再違憲、人民人人守法，做個「文明政府」、做個「文明人」才可。至於第三個「C」更加難求，只有寄望我地下一代。

港人內地置業高峰近在眼前
　　據《南方日報》報道，自廣州樓市開始進入個人購房時代後，港人便成為廣州樓市置業鮋主力軍。港人鰠深圳置業數量排第一、鰠廣州排第二，佔港人內地置業 17％，近年每年約四千套房子被港人買走。香港地產中介機構2000年估計，港人鰠內地購入物業數量高達一百四十六萬至一百五十五萬個單位，2006年港人鰠內地置業投資房地產單位達到二百二十五萬至二百三十六萬個，數字極大！
　　鰠廣州置業鮋港人分四種：一、鰠廣州經商或工作，鰠假日才回港；二、退休老人，鰠廣州置業安度晚年；三、鰠香港工作，到廣州度假；四、投資客到廣州置業，博樓價攀升者。
　　換言之，今天港人鰠內地擁有鮋物業較粛香港仲要多。香港私人住宅單位不外百多萬個，在內地已多達二百二十多萬個（唔少粛香港居住公屋鮋人士亦鰠內地有物業）。香港二百四十多萬個家庭，可能90％左右鰠內地有物業（當然上述係平均數，不乏有人鰠內地擁有大量物業）？如上述數字準確，港人內地置業高峰期可能已近在眼前。

中產階級對社會影響最大
　　富有、中產與窮人之間嘅分別係，富有家庭以投資為財富主要收益來源，得失由投資成敗決定（可以係股票或係自己做生意，亦可以係物業）。中產階級主要係擁有自住物業，因此樓價升中產肥、樓價跌中產窮，甚至可以較窮人更貧窮，因為可以係負資產。窮人則係手停口停，因為儲蓄少，如獲加人工，收入上升，生活自然改善；如減人工或失業便好麻煩。換言之，三大階級因財富來源唔同，所受影響各異，但亦互為影響。今天恒生指數較1997年7月1日前高，代表有錢階級手上財產較1997年7月1日前更多。今年香港中價樓樓價唔及1997年7月1日前，代表中產階級大部分仍未復原。至於窮人，除非脫貧進入另一階級，不然過去十年則冇好過。富人投資如蝕大本，對社會經濟影響唔大，一來人數少，二來爛船總有三斤釘。如1997年7月前擁有十億元，依家只剩番一億元，亦只影響佢同佢家人嘅心情（連日常消費亦可能不變）。窮人喺現今社會受政府福利制度保障，至今已經冇餓死人呢回事。
　　對社會影響最大嘅反而係中產階級，因為佢地嘅消費係造成經濟盛衰嘅主要原因。零售業、飲食業及許多許多行業，都受佢地消費力多少所影響。2003年4 月至今薪金升幅有限，代表窮人生活改善亦有限；反之，本港樓價上升60％，則令中產家庭感覺上富有咗，佢地增加消費，即刻令社會亦立即繁榮起來。至於自由行只佔本港總消費20％，香港真正消費力仍來自中產階級。

　　1997年7月至今，香港主權回歸十年，香港已分裂成為兩個社會：甲、富人社會；乙、中產及窮人社會。來自唔同階級，心態完全唔同。例如我老曹因 1967年夏天離開學校到社會做事，香港經濟由1967至97年高潮迭起，自然認為「只要你努力，定有美好明天」；反之，1997年夏季才離開學校到社會做事嘅下一代卻告訴我老曹：任你點努力，明天都唔知會變成點。佢地一離開學校便面對亞洲金融風暴，連「做好呢份工」嘅機會都冇便失業；好唔容易撑過去，再來一次2000年科網股泡沫爆破；最後有份較穩定嘅工，希望安居樂業時，本港樓價早已上升60％又點供？點叫佢地相信「明天香港更美好」？

群眾往往睇錯市

　　上半年投資者對後市普遍淡睇，終於喺上兩周結束。上周睇好者佔56.7％（再上一周52.2％），睇淡者只佔21.1％（再上一周佔22.8％），係2005年8月以來最少人睇淡嘅一周，反而令我老曹較為擔心下半年股市（群眾往往睇錯市）。

美債息再次低於五厘
　　點樣喺沙堆中挑選鑽石？眾多細價股中，邊D係是十年後嘅思捷或利豐？Stock picker認真唔易做。喺趨勢形成時加入，响趨勢結束退出，講易過做。點樣喺市場嘅大趨勢中獲巨利、點樣逃過大崩潰？事後人人曉講，事前80％人唔知道。
　　美國十年期債券息率又再低於五厘，代表短期股市冇事。每次股市大跌前，美國十年期債券息率都喺五厘二五以上。上述係幾重要嘅訊號，只要長債息率唔高於五厘二五，資金便唔肯返回銀行做存款，金融市場便繼續有得炒。

流動性資金過剩

　　流動性資金過剩係近年流行嘅名詞（雖然此名詞由來已久）。乜嘢係流動性資金過剩？根據英國出版嘅《經濟與商業辭典》解釋，流動性資金過剩係指銀行自願或被迫把資金趕出去，即銀行再唔願吸收存款，理由係銀行吸收到嘅存款好難借番出去，因此銀行唔再積極吸收存款，反而鼓勵貸款（甚至有人利用貸款去投機亦視而不見）。從宏觀經濟角度睇，係貨幣增長率已超過GDP增長率，存款增長率大大超過貸款增長率，形成愈來愈多資金閒置响銀行。例如中國去年L增長率 16.5％，超過GDP增長率六個百分點；今年第一季L增長率更達17.3％，亦超過GDP增長六點三個百分點，出現較嚴重性流動嘅資金過剩。

　　流動性資金過剩有乜害處？一、過剩資金推動投資過熱（例如1990至97年嘅香港、1985至89年嘅日本及2004年起嘅中國），導致資產價格上升。一旦流動性資金過剩情況逆轉，又導致資產價格大幅滑落（例如1997年8月至2002年嘅香港、1990年至2003年嘅日本）。二、資源錯配、低效投資及浪費。大量資金流入股市樓市，但實體經濟卻缺乏資金支持；企業因為較容易獲得資金（透過上市或發行新股）而作出大量投資或低效益投資甚至浪費資金，並非實體經濟所需，例如內地鋼鐵業、水泥業等已出現上述問題。三、央行貨幣政策有效性及獨立性受影響。例如去年起人行連續六次加息都未見成效。四、商業銀行過度擴充貸款業務，而放大信貸風險。例如香港銀行喺物業貸款上利率一減再減，而且喺審批貸款過程中寬鬆，都在放大銀行信貸風險。五、最大害處係催生資產泡沫，大量資金由銀行湧入資產市場刺激投機氣氛，令投資者忽視金融風險加入追逐短期利潤，例如內地A股市場响年半時間上升130％。
　　解決之道：A、減少貿易順差。透過人民幣有秩序地升值、出口退稅逐步減少或取消部分產品出口退稅。B、增加消費刺激入口，經濟增長由出口帶動轉為內部消費推動；未來積極擴大進口係中國對外經濟嘅工作重點。C、解決商業銀行流動資金過剩問題，包括提高存款保證金率；人民銀行向商業銀行發債；鼓勵及支持銀行業產品創新；QDII及鼓勵資金「走出去」。D、利用家吓環境提升高科技行業補貼，淘汰低附加值、污染嚴重、耗能較高嘅行業，目的唔係減少流動資金，而係有效咁疏導資金，令資金轉為有利經濟結構嘅優化方向。今時今日才入市想撈一筆嘅投資者，小心結果變成筲箕打水（辛苦過後唔見水）。

瑞士

2007-07-05T23:57:00.001-07:00

　　瑞士人口七百四十萬，較香港多一DD，但人均收入四萬九千六百多美元，較港人高出一倍！瑞士連海口都冇、缺乏天然資源，本土市場十分有限，唔似香港有強大中國做後盾，點解瑞士人民收入係港人鮋一倍？
瑞士鬥精不鬥平
　　1970年前瑞士仲係以工業為主，今天瑞士表雄霸全球高檔市場。瑞士生產一隻名貴手表鮋價值，可能較四部日本汽車售價更貴！加上1969年起瑞士決心做好環保，今天瑞士迷人鮋風景區，又成為國家另一重要收入來源，成為全球有銀士鮋度假場所。瑞士鮋河裏到處都係魚，加上河水清澈無污染，人們到瑞士乘船遊覽兼垂釣，晚上入住五星級酒店或到瑞士滑雪，旅遊收入成為瑞士三大收入來源之一。瑞士鮋金融服務更係少數能與美國大證券行抗衡者，佢地服務鮋對象一樣以全球有銀士為主。
　　瑞士不但手表技術愈做愈精，其他方面亦一樣，例如汽車裏面鮋氣囊口亦由瑞士製造。因為氣囊鰠乜№時候打開好重要，瑞士生產鮋氣囊口可以鰠危急關頭即時打開，冇一次出錯，因此全球風行。粛製藥、電子、冶金、化學方面，瑞士亦達到世界一流水平！瑞士職業培訓學校唔係訓練技工，而係訓練技師，畢業後可到蘇黎世聯邦理工大學繼續深造。佢地敢於創新及將產品改良，以達到最高水準，過去已產生二十一位諾貝爾獎得主（香港一個都冇也）。
　　過去三十五年瑞士走鮋路，係唔同別人鬥平，而係同別人鬥「精」。世人願花十萬美元買一隻瑞士名表；瑞士生產鮋醫藥亦係世界出名；瑞士朱古力亦非常著名；瑞士粛全球生產鮋食品（例如雀巢品牌）、瑞士金融業所提供鮋服務，都走高質素路線。反觀香港過去十年，實在令港人自己亦汗顏，除鰦金融業好DD之外，其他都一塌糊塗。未來十年深圳將大力發展金融業，到時我地仲有乜№強項？回歸十年，我地鮋成就就係興建迪士尼主題公園及昂坪360墮地吊車?!

Wells Fargo Today: Company Overview – 1st Quarter 2007

2007-05-29T00:59:00.001-07:00

Learn about our businesses

WHO WE ARE

Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a diversified financial services company providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance through more than 6,000 stores, the Internet and other distribution channels across North America and internationally.

We're headquartered in San Francisco, but we're decentralized so every local Wells Fargo store is a headquarters for satisfying all our customers' financial needs and helping them succeed financially. Wells Fargo has $486 billion in assets and 159,000 team members across our 80+ businesses. We're one of the United States' top-40 largest private employers. We ranked fifth in assets and fifth in market value of our stock among our peers as of March 31, 2007.

Our vision: satisfy all our customers' financial needs, help them succeed financially, be known as one of America's great companies and the number-one financial services provider in each of our markets.

Reputation

FORTUNE
Ranked 41st in revenue among all companies in all industries
World's 19th most profitable company

Barron's
Ranked 12th most admired company in the world

CRO magazine (Corp Responsibility Officer
Ranked top 50 corporate citizen

BusinessWeek
Among top 25 Best Places to Launch a Career

Forbes
Ranked nation's 5th most Generous Corporate Foundation

Moody's
“Aaa” credit-rated U.S. bank

Standard & Poor's
Ratings Services
Only bank in the U.S. to be rated “AAA”

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
No. 1 Purchaser of Renewable Energy in the U.S.

Diversity Inc.
Among top 20 companies in all industries for diversity

Mergent, Inc.
“Dividend Achiever” (publicly-traded companies that increased dividends for last 10+ consecutive years; Wells Fargo has increased dividends for 18 consecutive years; 23 increases since 1988)

LATINA Style
Among top 50 U.S. companies for Latinas

Points of Light
Foundation
Excellence in Workplace Volunteer Programs

Working Mother
Magazine
Among 100 best companies for working mothers

Mortgage Bankers Association
#2 largest U.S. Commercial Real Estate by Volume

Essence magazine
Top 25 Great Places to Work for African American Women

CIO
CIO 100 Winner for Wholesale Internet and Treasury Solutions

KeyNote
WebExcellence
Wells Fargo Mortgage Web site ranked #1 for Ease of Use and Privacy/Security

KEY FACTS (3/31/07)
INDUSTRY RANKINGS

Assets
$486 billion
Retail banking cross-sell
#1

Full-time team Members
159,000
Small business lender
#1

Stores
6,027
Agricultural lending
#1

ATMs
6,800
Cross-channel customer experience
#1

Market value of stock
$117 billion
Insurance brokerage sales*
#1

Retail home mortgage lender
#1

*Wells Fargo owns the largest bank-affiliated insurance broker.

DIVERSITY OF BUSINESSES *

Our diversity of business lines makes us much more than a bank. We're a diversified financial services company. Our diversity helps us weather downturns that inevitably affect any one segment of our industry.
* Based on historic averages and near future year expectations

POWERFUL DISTRIBUTION

#1 in total stores (6,027 stores)
#3 in banking stores (3,230 stores in 23 states)
#1 in mortgage stores (presence in more than 2,400 stores)
Supermarket stores (598 stores)
Consumer Finance (1,150 stores)
Nation's first bank to provide online account access
#1 personal credit market share in Wells Fargo's banking states
One of nation's largest telephone banking networks (20 million calls monthly)
#3 branded bank ATM owner (6,800 ATMs)
#2 debit card issuer
#1 prime home-equity lender in Wells Fargo's banking states
Among the nation’s top-20 mutual fund companies

The Vision & Values of Wells Fargo

2007-05-29T00:48:00.001-07:00

Our product: SERVICE. Our value-added: FINANCIAL ADVICE. Our competitive advantage: OUR PEOPLE

by Richard M. Kovacevich

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

The "Next Stage" : Going from Good to Great

This is about the “Next Stage” for you and our company. It’s about who we are, where we’re headed and about how you—as a valued Wells Fargo team member—can help us get there and share in our collective success.

We are a big company. We’re the largest financial institution headquartered in the western U.S. We span all of North America. Our stock market value exceeds $110 billion. Forbes ranks us as the world’s 26th leading company based on a composite of sales, assets, profits and market value. We’re in the top 20 among all U.S. companies in profits and market value. We’re one of America’s 40 largest private employers, with more than 155,000 team members. We’ll continue to grow—not to become bigger but as a result of getting better.

Regardless of how big we are and how much territory we cover, we share, as one team, certain values that hold us together wherever we are and whatever we do. It doesn’t matter what our responsibilities are, our levels or titles, what businesses we’re part of, or where we live and work. We all should know our vision. We all should know how we contribute to achieving that vision. We all should be passionate about our values and share them with others. We believe everyone on our team is important and deserves respect. We believe everyone contributes to Wells Fargo being known as one of America’s great companies.

Security Policy

2007-05-24T03:09:00.001-07:00

Why security is important

Security, quite simply, protects the confidentiality of your financial information and prevents theft of your assets. There is nothing more important to us and our customers than knowing that Internet Banking transactions are private and secure. Our system's sophisticated security architecture keeps unauthorized users from accessing any of your financial information through the Internet.

Internet security overview

One of the basic tools used to ensure Internet security is encryption. Encryption happens as follows: When you go to the sign-on page for online banking, your browser establishes a secure session with our server. The secure session is established using a protocol called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encryption. This protocol requires the exchange of what are called public and private keys. Keys are random numbers chosen for that session and are only known between your browser and our server. After the keys are exchanged, your browser will use the numbers to scramble (encrypt) the messages sent between your browser and our server. Both sides require the keys because they need to de-scramble (decrypt) the messages when they are received. The SSL protocol not only ensures privacy, but also ensures that no other browser can "impersonate" your browser, nor alter any of the information sent. You can tell whether your browser is in secure mode by looking for the secured lock symbol at the bottom of your browser window. The numbers used as encryption keys are analogous to combination locks. The strength of encryption is based on the number of possible combinations that a lock can have. As the number of possible combinations grows, it becomes less likely that anyone would be able to guess the combination in order to decrypt the message. Current versions of today's browsers offer 128-bit encryption, which results in 2128 possible combinations. Older browser versions may only offer 40-bit encryption, which we feel is not sufficient in today's world of sophisticated technology. Our servers require the use of 128-bit capable browsers.

It is also important to verify that only authorized users log into the online banking system. We use password verification to ensure user authorization. When you submit your password, it is compared with the password we have encrypted and stored in our secure data center. We limit the number of times you can enter your password incorrectly. We monitor and record "bad-login" attempts to detect any suspicious activity (i.e., someone trying to guess your password). You play a crucial role in preventing others from logging on to your account. Never use passwords that are easy to guess. Examples of bad passwords are: birth dates, first names, pet names, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, etc. Never reveal your password to another person. You should periodically change your password while logged in to our online banking system.

We also "time out" an Internet Banking session after a specified period of inactivity. This keeps others from viewing or continuing Internet Banking activity if you leave your PC unattended. However, we recommend that you always sign off (log out) when you have finished your online banking.

All systems are secured with multiple layers of encryption, firewalls, screening, and filtering routers.

All sensitive data is protected from direct access from the Internet.

The following measures are employed:

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encryption provides a secure channel for data transmission across computer networks using public key cryptography.
For added security, we maintain Strong Password Requirements, meaning we require one letter, one numeric character, and a longer password of 7 - 16 characters.
Firewalls and Redundant Screening/Filtering Routers are gateways that verify the source, destination, and protocol of each data packet before it is sent.
Security procedures are audited by a Certified Public Accounting firm on an annual basis. Federal Bank examiners review the results of this audit. In addition, an independent security firm routinely performs penetration and security testing on Internet Banking systems.

Electronic Mail

Messages sent by e-mail may not be secured, may be intercepted by third parties and may not be immediately received by the appropriate department at Bank of San Francisco. Please do not use e-mail to send us communications that contain confidential information, which we require in writing or which need our immediate attention. Please call us instead at 415-744-6700. Be aware that a "receipt" acknowledgment on an e-mail message means only that the message has routed into the Internet, not that the message has been received by Bank of San Francisco. Upon receipt, the bank will respond to your message within one business day.

Web Site Links

The links in this web site will let the user leave Bank of San Francisco's site. The linked sites are not under the control of Bank of San Francisco, and Bank of San Francisco IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT AVAILABLE ON OTHER INTERNET SITES. These links are provided as a convenience to users. Access to any other Internet sites linked to this web site is at the user's own risk. The inclusion of any link does not imply a recommendation or endorsement by Bank of San Francisco of the linked site.

About "cookies"

Cookies are commonly used on web sites and do not harm your system. By configuring your preferences or options in your browser, you determine if and how a cookie will be accepted. We use cookies on our Internet Banking system to display information more effectively to you.

源文档 <http://www.bankofsf.com/security.html>

Cash management

2007-05-24T02:32:00.001-07:00

Cash
management

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

In United States banking, cash
management, or treasury management, is a marketing term for certain services offered primarily to larger business customers. It may be used to describe all bank accounts (such as checking accounts) provided to businesses of a certain size, but it is more often used to describe specific services such as cash concentration, zero balance accounting, and automated clearing house facilities. Sometimes private bank customers are given cash
management services.

[edit] Cash
Management Services Generally offered

The following is a list of services generally offered by banks and utilised by larger businesses and corporations:

Account Reconcilement Services: Balancing a checkbook can be a difficult process for a very large business, since it issues so many checks it can take a lot of human monitoring to understand which checks have not cleared and therefore what the company's true balance is. To get around this, banks have developed a system which allows companies to upload a list of all the checks that they issue on a daily basis, so that at the end of the month the bank statement will show not only which checks have cleared, but also which have not. More recently, banks have used this system to prevent checks from being fraudulently cashed if they are not on the list, a process known as positive pay.
Advanced Web Services: Most banks have an Internet-based system which is more advanced than the one available to consumers. This enables managers to create and authorize special internal logon credentials, allowing employees to send wires and access other cash
management features normally not found on the consumer web site.
Armored Car Services: Large retailers who collect a great deal of cash may have the bank pick this cash up via an armored car company, instead of employees depositing the cash.
Automated Clearing House: services are usually offered by the cash
management division of a bank. The Automated Clearing House is an electronic system used to transfer funds between banks. Companies use this to pay others, especially employees (this is how direct deposit works). Certain companies also use it to collect funds from customers (this is generally how automatic payment plans work). This system is the subject of the ire of some consumer groups, because under this system all banks assume that the company initiating the debit is correct until proven otherwise.
Balance Reporting Services: Corporate clients who actively manage their cash balances usually subscribe to secure web-based reporting of their account and transaction information at their lead bank. These sophisticated compilations of banking activity may include balances in foreign currencies, as well as those at other banks. They include information on cash postitions as well as 'float' (e.g., checks in the process of collection). Finally, they offer transaction-specific details on all forms of payment activity, including deposits, checks, wire transfers, ACH (automated clearinghouse debits and credits), investments, etc.
Cash Concentration Services: Large or national chain retailers often are in areas where their primary bank does not have branches. Therefore, they open bank accounts at various local banks in the area. To prevent funds in these accounts from being idle and not earning sufficient interest, many of these companies have an agreement set with their primary bank, whereby their primary bank uses the Automated Clearing House to electronically "pull" the money from these banks into a single interest-bearing bank account.
Lockbox services: Often companies (such as utilities) which receive a large number of payments via checks in the mail have the bank set up a post office box for them, open their mail, and deposit any checks found. This is referred to as a "lockbox" service.
Positive Pay: Positive pay is a service whereby the company electronically shares its check register of all written checks with the bank. The bank therefore will only pay checks listed in that register, with exactly the same specifications as listed in the register (amount, payee, serial number, etc.). This system dramatically reduces check fraud.
Sweep Accounts: are typically offered by the cash
management division of a bank. Under this system, excess funds from a company's bank accounts are automatically moved into a money market mutual fund overnight, and then moved back the next morning. This allows them to earn interest overnight. This is the primary use of money market mutual funds.
Zero Balance Accounting: can be thought of as somewhat of a hack. Companies with large numbers of stores or locations can very often be confused if all those stores are depositing into a single bank account. Traditionally, it would be impossible to know which deposits were from which stores, without seeking to view images of those deposits. To help this problem, banks developed a system where each store is given their own bank account, but all the money deposited into the store account is automatically moved into the company's main bank account. This allows the company to look at individual statements for each store. US Banks at the present time, however, are almost all converting their systems so that companies can tell which store made a particular deposit, even if these deposits are all being done into one account. Therefore, zero balance accounting is being used less frequently.
Wire Transfer: A wire transfer is an electronic transfer of funds. Wire transfers can be done by a simple bank account transfer, or by a transfer of cash at a cash office. Bank wire transfers are often the most expedient method for transferring funds between bank accounts. A bank wire transfer is a message to the receiving bank requesting them to effect payment in accordance with the instructions given. The message also includes settlement instructions. The actual wire transfer itself is virtually instantaneous, requiring no longer for transmission than a telephone call.

In the past, other services have been offered the usefulness of which has diminished with the rise of the Internet. For example, companies could have daily faxes of their most recent transactions or be sent CD-ROMs of images of their cashed checks.

源文档 <http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:nRLKoiHkxWUJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_management+Cash+Management&hl=zh-CN&newwindow=1&strip=1>

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

2007-05-24T01:11:00.001-07:00

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

Comprehensive information about public transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area is available at http://www.transitinfo.org/. The main transit systems are:

UC Campus Shuttles (http://public-safety.berkeley.edu/p&t/transit.html) run around the Berkeley campus and local neighborhood throughout the day and night. These cost 25 cents a ride, or are free with the student Universal Class Pass (see below). The convenient "Perimeter Shuttle" circles the campus every 12 minutes during the day, stopping in downtown Berkeley (in front of Bank of America on Shattuck Ave.) and includes a stop right in front of International House.
Alameda-Contra Costa Transit or AC Transit (510-817-1717 ext. 1111 or 510-477-0192, http://www.actransit.org) operates buses in the East Bay and to San Francisco's Transbay Terminal in the San Francisco Financial District. Riding an AC Transit bus requires exact fare.
Bay Area Rapid Transit or BART (510-465-2278, http://www.bart.gov) is our local subway system, with trains running throughout the East Bay and through San Francisco. The fare depends on how far you ride. For information and hours of operation check the website or pick up the schedule at any BART station.
The Municipal Railway or MUNI (415-673-6864, http://sfmuni.com) in San Francisco operates buses, trolleys, and cable cars throughout that city. You can purchase a MUNI map at San Francisco bookstores. Check the website or check the map in the front of the San Francisco phone book "Yellow Pages".
Other transportation systems serve the areas north and south of San Francisco. See below for other transit information, including buses, trains and ferries.

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UNIVERSAL CLASS PASS

This pass, available only to registered UC Berkeley students, allows free, unlimited rides on AC Transit (including to San Francisco) and on the UC campus shuttle system. Just show the bus driver your Cal Photo ID with the Class Pass sticker. You can apply for the sticker online at http://public-safety.berkeley.edu/p&t/ and it will be mailed to you, or check the website for picking it up during the first week of each semester.

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TRANSIT INFORMATION

The Berkeley TRIP store (510-643-7665, http://public-safety.berkeley.edu/trip/) is the campus center for transportation information, discount tickets, and helpful advice. They are located at 2033 Center Street near Shattuck, Tuesday through Friday 12:00 noon to 5:30 p.m., closed Mondays, and at their Satellite Berkeley TRIP Office at 2543 Channing Way (within UC Berkeley's Parking and Transportation Permit Services Unit) open Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

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BICYCLES

Rolling Through Berkeley published by the UC Police Department, has helpful information about all aspects of bike ownership. Information is also available at: http://public-safety.berkeley.edu/trip/bike.html. All bicycles in Berkeley must be registered. Registration is done by the Campus Police Department at the Bike Bureau located at 2427 Dwight Way. Call 642-4936 for times and fees for bike registration. Bicycle theft is common! Always lock your bike with a heavy-duty "U" shaped lock (recommended brands: Citadel, Kryptonite). The website has information about getting a $15 discount on a "U" lock. Bicycles are subject to the rules and regulations of the California Vehicle Code; obey stop signs and red lights, and signal properly when making turns, or you may be ticketed by the police. Be smart--ride defensively, wear a helmet and be aware that most drivers are "blind" to cyclists

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SCOOTERS, MOPEDS, AND MOTORCYCLES

Many students use these because they are cheaper to purchase and operate than cars, easier to park, and quicker than bicycles. Scooters, however cannot be taken on the freeways. Look in the yellow pages of the phone book under "Motorcycles" for dealers who sell both new and used scooters, mopeds and motorcycles. Also check the classified ads in local newspapers. Contact the Department of Motor Vehicles for information about registration and the license needed to drive a particular vehicle. Helmets are required (and smart) for anyone riding a scooter, moped, or motorcycle.

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TRANSPORTATION FOR SIGHTSEEING IN THE BAY AREA

There is public transportation to areas of tourist and recreational interest. Check the main Bay Area transit website (http://www.transitinfo.org/) or contact Berkeley TRIP for guidance about accessing places of interest. For instance, Golden Gate Transit (GGT: www.goldengate.org) has bus service to Marin County and Sonoma counties from San Francisco and the Richmond or El Cerrito Del Norte BART stations, and they have buses to Stinson Beach and Point Reyes.

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FERRIES

Ferry boat travel is a great way to see the beautiful San Francisco Bay and to travel to recreational destinations in the Bay Area. Many of the fares are comparable to bus or BART fares.

Alameda-Oakland Ferry (510-522-3300, http://www.eastbayferry.com) operates between Oakland and San Francisco, Alameda and San Francisco, with trips to Angel Island and Pac Bell Park Stadium.
The Red and White Fleet (415-673-2900, http://www.redandwhite.com) has ferries for Bay cruises, ferries from Richmond to SF and to PacBell Park Stadium.
Blue and Gold Fleet (415-705-5555, http://www.telesails.com) offers narrated bay tours from San Francisco, and has ferries travelling to Oakland, Alameda, Sausalito, Angel Island, Vallejo and Tiburon.
Golden Gate Ferry (415-923-2000, http://www.goldengateferry.org) has ferry service from SF to Larkspur and SF to Sausalito.

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TRAINS/LONG DISTANCE BUSES

Caltrain/SAMTRANS ((800-660-4287, http://www.caltrain.com, http://www.samtrans.com/samtrans) is a commuter train that runs from San Francisco to San Jose, stopping at many cities along the way.
AMTRAK--(800-872-7245, http://www.amtrak.com) is the train service that operates across the United States, including many cities within California. They have some low cost special fares to certain destinations.
Greyhound--(800-229-9424, http://www.greyhound.com) buses go throughout California and the United States from Oakland or San Francisco.

There are also private bus firms that travel to tourist destinations in the Bay Area, California and out-of-state. Check the internet or yellow pages under "Buses, Charter."

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RENTING A CAR

Check the phonebook Yellow Pages for "Automobile, Rentals." Many rental agencies offer a better price for a full week's rental; also, be sure to ask about any mileage restrictions or costs. Some common restrictions found among car rental agencies include not renting to customers under 25 years old, or without some type of credit card. Be sure to inform the agency if you plan to drive into Mexico or Canada about. If you are here as a tourist, you can drive using an International Drivers License, but you should ask the rental agencies about any restrictions.

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TAXIS

Private taxi service is available in any city from several companies listed in the phone book yellow pages. Taxis are the most expensive form of transportation, but can be reasonable and convenient if there is a small group. Taxi drivers are generally tipped 10-15% of the fare.

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A WORD ABOUT HITCHHIKING: DON'T!

Unlike many countries of the world, hitchhiking is generally not safe in the United States. A safer and inexpensive alternative for traveling by car might be to share the cost of a rental with several friends, or check student bulletin boards for people wanting riders to share gas costs/driving to specific destinations.

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源文档 <http://ias.berkeley.edu/siss/practicalinfo/bikesetc.htm>

Money and Banking

2007-05-24T00:55:00.001-07:00

University of California, Berkeley

Services for International Students and Scholars

Money and Banking

Practical information | SISS

BANKING

There are two basic kinds of accounts: checking accounts, for payment of regular bills and shopping needs; and savings accounts where money you do not need to use immediately can earn interest. Banks also offer a variety of other types of accounts and financial services.

Before you open an account at a bank, be sure to visit several banks to compare their services and fees. Most will be similar, but there can be important differences. To open a bank account is fairly easy; deposit your funds and complete any required bank forms. (Be aware that if you are making a deposit with an overseas check or bank draft, you may have to wait three days to three weeks before your money will be available to you.) Some banks will want you to have a Social Security Number when you open the account. SISS has information about how to get a number or alternatives.

Checking accounts. When opening a checking account, be sure to ask about different types of checking accounts. All banks have several kinds of accounts and most have checking accounts which accrue interest if a minimum balance is maintained. Be sure to look at the account fees and when they may be charged. After opening an account you will be given a book of temporary checks, but you should order checks with your name and local address printed on them. Most businesses will only accept a check that has the printed information.

Writing a check: Checks should be filled out at the time you are making a payment. Fill in all blank spaces on your check. The amount should be written numerically and in longhand. Draw a line through any unused blank spaces. Never sign a check before you are ready to use it, since it can be cashed as soon as your signature is on it. Most merchants will require that you show one or two pieces of photo ID to accept your check. These can be a California Driver's License or Identity Card, a passport, or other official ID. Merchants near campus will also accept a UC student photo ID card.

Savings accounts. Savings accounts, which earn interest on the balance, are available at all banks. If you have larger sums of money which you do not need for your routine living expenses, a savings account is a safe way to keep it. Certificates of Deposit (CDs) earn higher rates of interest than regular savings accounts, but your funds must remain on deposit for a designated period of time. An early withdrawal from a CD will incur a penalty fee. Check with each bank to compare their special services and their interest rates.

Deposits. Deposits to your accounts can be made with a bank teller or at an ATM. It is best to use a deposit slip when making a deposit (pre-printed from your bank or a filled out slip). Always use a deposit slip if depositing cash. To deposit a check made out to you, you must first "endorse" or sign the check on the back. You should also print "For Deposit Only" and your account number after your signature. After you endorse a check, it is as good as cash and can be used by anyone unless you have added the deposit notation and account number.

ATM (Automated Teller Machine) Cards/Debit Cards. An ATM card is used for two purposes: as a banking tool to access your bank accounts and as a debit card. Most cards can be used at any ATM anywhere, and can be used for purchases. Many businesses now accept debit cards for payment. A debit card works very much like a check because it takes money directly out of your bank account to make a payment. Note that some banks have fees for the debit use of a card and if an ATM at another bank is used.

When you open an account at a bank, you will be issued an ATM card (the card will come in the mail). The card is directly linked to your bank accounts. At the bank, you must think of a Personal Identification Number (PIN) to be linked to your ATM card. Use a PIN that is easy to remember. Never write your PIN down, and never give or tell your PIN to anyone -ever-, not even to a bank employee. When using an ATM be sure that no one sees your PIN. If your ATM card is ever lost or stolen, notify your bank immediately.

Record-keeping. Always keep good records of any transactions made on your bank accounts. Be sure to record all transactions in your account register. Keep all deposit and ATM receipts until you receive your monthly statement. Avoid overdrawing your account. If you write a "bad check", it will be returned to you and you will be charged large fees from your bank and the person or business to which you wrote the check (their bank may charge a fee too!). Some banks offer "overdraft protection" which will transfer funds from your other accounts to cover your check, but you will still be charged an extra fee, although smaller than the fee for a bad check.

Each month you will receive a statement from your bank for each account you hold. The statement will include your past balance, new balance on the date of the statement, a list of all transactions on your account in the month, and any fees or interest earned. You should always "balance" your statement with your own records to be sure that they agree and to record any fees or interest for that month. By balancing your accounts each month, you can prevent unpleasant surprises in the future. After you have balanced your accounts, you can throw away past receipts, but always keep your statements.

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LOCAL BANKS

Bank of America, http://www.bankamerica.com, 2129 Shattuck Ave. or 2347 Telegraph Ave., (510) 649-6600, (510) 273-5210
California Federal (CalFed), http://www.calfed.com, 2000 Shattuck Ave., (800) 843-2265
Citibank, http://www.citibank.com, 2323 Shattuck Ave., (510) 843-0600, (800) 756-7047
CSE Credit Union #9, http://www.calstate9.com, 2033 Shattuck Ave., (510) 849-2270, (800) 292-3966
Mechanics Bank, http://www.mechbank.com, 2301 Shattuck Ave., (800) 797-6324, (510) 647-0720
Union Bank, http://www.uboc.com, 2333 Shattuck Ave., (510) 843-6353
Washington Mutual, http://www.wamu.com, 2150 Shattuck Ave., (800) 788-7000, (510) 649-4041
Wells Fargo Bank, http://www.wellsfargo.com, 2144 Shattuck Ave., (510) 464-2115, (800) 869-3557

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CREDIT CARDS

Establishing credit and getting a credit card can be difficult if you are new to the U.S. You may be able to get a credit card through your home country bank, your local bank, or through other banks. If you are not able to get a regular credit card, you may be able to get a "secured" credit card which is backed by a deposit. With any kind of credit card, you should always read any information or disclosures so that you fully understand the conditions and fees you agree to when you use the card. If your credit card is ever lost or stolen, notify your bank immediately. Most people only need one or two credit cards. However, many large businesses or stores also offer their own credit cards. Be careful of high fees or special conditions with these cards.

The cost of credit can be very high. Do your best to avoid interest charges by paying your credit card bill in full by the due date. A "cash advance" will usually be charged fees and/or interest immediately without the usual grace period. When making a purchase by phone, always make your order from written materials. Never give your credit card number to anyone who calls you. As with your banking, keep all receipts and records of your credit card transactions. When you receive your monthly statement, you should balance it just as you would with your bank statement. Keep your statements.

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A FEW MONEY MANAGEMENT TIPS

Make a budget and stick with it. Be realistic when making your budget.
Keep track of your income and expenses, and all of your banking transactions. Balance your statements.
Use credit responsibly. Credit is expensive. If you don't already have the money in the bank, you can't afford it.
Don't carry large amounts of cash.
Never give a credit card number, or any bank or ID information to someone who calls you.

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Have questions? Email SISS.

Practical information | SISS

源文档 <http://ias.berkeley.edu/siss/practicalinfo/banking.htm>

33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity

2007-05-03T00:28:00.001-07:00

May 1st, 2007 by Steve Pavlina

Heuristics are rules intended to help you solve problems. When a problem is large or complex, and the optimal solution is unclear, applying a heuristic allows you to begin making progress towards a solution even though you can't visualize the entire path from your starting point.

Suppose your goal is to climb to the peak of a mountain, but there's no trail to follow. An example of a heuristic would be: Head directly towards the peak until you reach an obstacle you can't cross. Whenever you reach such an obstacle, follow it around to the right until you're able to head towards the peak once again. This isn't the most intelligent or comprehensive heuristic, but in many cases it will work just fine, and you'll eventually reach the peak.

Heuristics don't guarantee you'll find the optimal solution, nor do they generally guarantee a solution at all. But they do a good enough job of solving certain types of problems to be useful. Their strength is that they break the deadlock of indecision and get you into action. As you take action you begin to explore the solution space, which deepens your understanding of the problem. As you gain knowledge about the problem, you can make course corrections along the way, gradually improving your chances of finding a solution. If you try to solve a problem you don't initially know how to solve, you'll often figure out a solution as you go, one you never could have imagined until you started moving. This is especially true with creative work such as software development. Often you don't even know exactly what you're trying to build until you start building it.

Heuristics have many practical applications, and one of my favorite areas of application is personal productivity. Productivity heuristics are behavioral rules (some general, some situation-specific) that can help us get things done more efficiently. Here are some of my favorites:

Nuke it! The most efficient way to get through a task is to delete it. If it doesn't need to be done, get it off your to do list.
Daily goals. Without a clear focus, it's too easy to succumb to
distractions. Set targets for each day in advance. Decide what you'll do; then do it.
Worst first. To defeat procrastination learn to tackle your most unpleasant task first thing in the morning instead of delaying it until later in the day. This small victory will set the tone for a very productive day.
Peak times. Identify your peak cycles of productivity, and schedule your most important tasks for those times. Work on minor tasks during your non-peak times.
No-comm zones. Allocate uninterruptible blocks of time for solo work where you must concentrate. Schedule light, interruptible tasks for your open-comm periods and more challenging projects for your no-comm periods.
Mini-milestones. When you begin a task, identify the target you must reach before you can stop working. For example, when working on a book, you could decide not to get up until you've written at least 1000 words. Hit your target no matter what.
Timeboxing. Give yourself a fixed time period, like 30 minutes, to make a dent in a task. Don't worry about how far you get. Just put in the time. See Timeboxing for more.
Batching. Batch similar tasks like phone calls or errands into a single chunk, and knock them off in a single session.
Early bird. Get up early in the morning, like at 5am, and go straight to work on your most important task. You can often get more done before 8am than most people do in a day.
Cone of silence. Take a laptop with no network or WiFi access, and go to a place where you can work flat out without distractions, such as a library, park, coffee house, or your own backyard. Leave your comm gadgets behind.
Tempo. Deliberately pick up the pace, and try to move a little faster than usual. Speak faster. Walk faster. Type faster. Read faster. Go home sooner.
Relaxify. Reduce stress by cultivating a relaxing, clutter-free workspace. See 10 Ways to Relaxify Your Workspace.
Agendas. Provide clear written agendas to meeting participants in advance. This greatly improves meeting focus and efficiency. You can use it for phone calls too.
Pareto. The Pareto principle is the 80-20 rule, which states that 80% of the value of a task comes from 20% of the effort. Focus your energy on that critical 20%, and don't overengineer the non-critical 80%.
Ready-fire-aim. Bust procrastination by taking action immediately after setting a goal, even if the action isn't perfectly planned. You can always adjust course along the way.
Minuteman. Once you have the information you need to make a decision, start a timer and give yourself just 60 seconds to make the actual decision. Take a whole minute to vacillate and second-guess yourself all you want, but come out the other end with a clear choice. Once your decision is made, take some kind of action to set it in motion.
Deadline. Set a deadline for task completion, and use it as a focal point to stay on track.
Promise. Tell others of your commitments, since they'll help hold you accountable.
Punctuality. Whatever it takes, show up on time. Arrive early.
Gap reading. Use reading to fill in those odd periods like waiting for an appointment, standing in line, or while the coffee is brewing. If you're a male, you can even read an article while shaving (preferably with an electric razor). That's 365 articles a year.
Resonance. Visualize your goal as already accomplished. Put yourself into a state of actually being there. Make it real in your mind, and you'll soon see it in your reality.
Glittering prizes. Give yourself frequent rewards for achievement. See a movie, book a professional massage, or spend a day at an amusement park.
Quad 2. Separate the truly important tasks from the merely urgent. Allocate blocks of time to work on the critical Quadrant 2 tasks, those which are important but rarely urgent, such as physical exercise, writing a book, and finding a relationship partner.
Continuum. At the end of your workday, identify the first task you'll work on the next day, and set out the materials in advance. The next day begin working on that task immediately.
Slice and dice. Break complex projects into smaller, well-defined tasks. Focus on completing just one of those tasks.
Single-handling. Once you begin a task, stick with it until it's 100% complete. Don't switch tasks in the middle. When distractions come up, jot them down to be dealt with later.
Randomize. Pick a totally random piece of a larger project, and complete it. Pay one random bill. Make one phone call. Write page 42 of your book.
Insanely bad. Defeat perfectionism by completing your task in an intentionally terrible fashion, knowing you need never share the results with anyone. Write a blog post about the taste of salt, design a hideously dysfunctional web site, or create a business plan that guarantees a first-year bankruptcy. With a truly horrendous first draft, there's nowhere to go but up.
30 days. Identify a new habit you'd like to form, and commit to sticking with it for just 30 days. A temporary commitment is much easier to keep than a permanent one. See 30 Days to Success for details.
Delegate. Convince someone else to do it for you.
Cross-pollination. Sign up for martial arts, start a blog, or join an improv group. You'll often encounter ideas in one field that can boost your performance in another.
Intuition. Go with your gut instinct. It's probably right.
Optimization. Identify the processes you use most often, and write them down step-by-step. Refactor them on paper for greater efficiency. Then implement and test your improved processes. Sometimes we just can't see what's right in front of us until we examine it under a microscope.

源文档 <http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/05/33-rules-to-boost-your-productivity/>

Room Color and How it Affects your Mood

2007-04-29T02:49:00.001-07:00

Published April 17th, 2007 in Tips & Tricks

Intro

While most of us may not spend a lot of time thinking about color, it affects every day of our lives. Color can influence our mood and our thoughts. Colors affect people in many ways, depending upon one's age, gender, ethnic background or local climate. Certain colors or groups of colors tend to get a similar reaction from most people - the overall difference being in the shade or tones used. So it's important to choose wisely.

To have a beautiful home, you do not have to worry about trends. Color trends will come and go. The people who live in a home make it beautiful by choosing colors that reflect their likes and their personalities. The trick is to blend those colors you like into a pleasing combination. Choosing color combinations is one of the most intimidating steps for beginners. Color has the power to change the shape and size of furnishings as well as the shape and size of the room itself.

Selecting colors is not difficult if you equip yourself with some basic information about color and its effects, so let's find more about room colors, and how these affect your mood.

Let's begin …

When selecting color for a room, keep in mind that each color has a psychological value. Think about how those colors make you feel. The main color of your room can have an effect on your mood. These colors can make you feel anything from tranquil to rage. So when trying to create peace and harmony in your home choose your colors wisely. Some colors in large amounts will have just the opposite affect on you and your loved ones' moods.

What mood do you want to create? Which colors will help you achieve that mood?

Find clear answers to these questions. If you find this task quite difficult try to look at magazines, decorating books, blogs and websites for ideas, or let your fabric be your guide. In fact, this is a good approach to take even if you're starting from scratch. Fabric, carpeting, furniture and tile are available in a more limited range of colors than is paint, so choose them first and then decide on your paint color. Once you've found what you where searching for limit the number of colors in a room to no more than three or four. Too many colors can make a room look busy or cluttered.

Paint is a fairly inexpensive and transforms a room more quickly than anything else you can do so you can afford to experiment a little.

Room Colors

Understand that colors behave in three basic ways : active, passive, and neutral , and you can easily match every room's colors to your personal desires and taste and to the room's purpose. Light colors are expansive and airy, they make rooms seem larger and brighter. Dark colors are sophisticated and warm; they give large rooms a more intimate appearance.

Now let's find more about some colors.

Red raises a room's energy level. It's a good choice when you want to stir up excitement, particularly at night. In the living room or dining room, red draws people together and stimulates conversation. In an entryway, it creates a strong first impression. Red has been shown to raise blood pressure, speed respiration and heart rate. It is usually considered too stimulating for bedrooms, but if you're only in the room after dark, you'll be seeing it mostly by lamplight, when the color will appear muted, rich, and elegant. Red, the most intense, pumps the adrenaline like no other hue.

Crimson can make some people feel irritable. With red invoking feels of rage and hostility is a color that should be avoided as the main color of a room. Sitting for long periods of time in a room this color will likely breakdown any peace and harmony you are striving to create in your home. Ancient cultures used the color red to stimulate the body and mind and to increase circulation.

Yellow captures the joy of sunshine and communicates happiness. It's perfect for kitchens, dining rooms, and bathrooms, where happy color is energizing and uplifting. In halls, entries, and small spaces, yellow can feel expansive and welcoming.Yellow although is a cheery color is not a good choice in main color schemes of a room. People are more likely to lose their tempers in a yellow room. Babies also seem to cry more in a yellow room. This color tends to create feeling of frustration and anger in people. This color is the most fatiguing on the eyes.In chromotherapy yellow was believed to stimulate the nerves and purify the body.

Blue brings down blood pressure and slows respiration and heart rate. That's why it's considered calming, relaxing, and serene, and is often recommended for bedrooms and bathrooms. Be careful, however: A pastel blue that looks pretty on the paint chip can come across as unpleasantly chilly when it's on the walls and furnishings, especially in a room that receives little natural light. If you opt for a light blue as the primary color in a room, balance it with warm hues in the furnishings and fabrics.

To encourage relaxation in the rooms where people gather family rooms, living rooms, large kitchens consider warmer blues, such as periwinkle, or bright blues, such as cerulean or turquoise. Blue is known to have a calming effect when used as the main color of a room. When going with blue go for softer shades of blue. Dark blue has the opposite effect. Dark blue evokes feels of sadness. So refrain from using darker blues in your main color scheme. Stay with the lighter shades of blue to give you and your loved ones a calm effect.

Green is considered the most restful color for the eye. Combining the refreshing quality of blue and the cheerfulness of yellow, green is suited to almost any room in the house. In a kitchen, a sage or medium green cools things down; in a family room or living room, it encourages unwinding but has enough warmth to promote comfort and togetherness. In a bedroom, it's relaxing and pleasant.Green also has a calming effect when used as a main color for decorating. It is believed to relieve stress by helping people relax. Also believed to help with fertility this is a great choice for the bedroom.

Purple in its darkest values (eggplant, for example) is rich, dramatic, and sophisticated. It's associated with luxury as well as creativity, and as an accent or secondary color, it gives a scheme depth. Lighter versions of purple, such as lavender and lilac, bring the same restful quality to bedrooms as blue does, but without the risk of feeling chilly.

Orange evokes excitement, enthusiasm and is an energetic color. While not a good idea for a living room or for bedrooms this color is great for an exercise room. It will bring all the emotions out that you need when jumping into your fitness routine.In ancient cultures orange was used to heal the lungs and increase energy levels.

Neutrals (black, gray, white, and brown) are basic to the decorator's tool kit. All-neutral schemes fall in and out of fashion, but their virtue lies in their flexibility: Add color to liven things up; subtract it to calm things down. Black is best used in small doses as an accent , indeed, some experts maintain that every room needs a touch of black to ground the color scheme and give it depth.

To make the job easier, you can rely on the interior designer's most important color tool: the color wheel.

Something about Ceiling and Walls

The ceiling represents one-sixth of the space in a room, but too often it gets nothing more than a coat of white paint. In fact, for decades, white has been considered not only the safest but also the best choice for ceilings. As a general rule, ceilings that are lighter than the walls feel higher, while those that are darker feel lower. Lower" need not mean claustrophobic: Visually lowered ceilings can evoke cozy intimacy.

Dark walls make a room seem smaller, and light walls make a room seem larger.

Conclusion

These general guidelines are a good starting point in your search for a paint color. But remember that color choice is a very personal matter. You're the one who has to live with your new paint color, so choose a hue that suits you, your family and your lifestyle.And after investing time to select just the right color, make sure it continues to look that way long-term by investing in a top quality paint.

P.S - If you've found this article useful, you should also read "Things You Should Know before Buying a New Bed"

源文档 <http://freshome.com/2007/04/17/room-color-and-how-it-affects-your-mood/>

Gmail + G-Drive

2007-04-28T18:03:00.001-07:00

We previously mentioned using filters in Gmail to organize anything you uploaded through Gmail Drive. This works simply for documents.

1. Download Gmail Drive
2. Create and organize folders within the Gmail drive on your computer
3. Create Gmail filters with queries such as GMAILFS: /contracts/ and GMAILFS: /receipts/ in the Subject field. This will create labels in Gmail to reflect your folders.

Anything you add to the Gmail drive on your computer will be sent to your Gmail account as an email. With specific filters added, each file will be moved to the corresponding label/folder in Gmail.

源文档 <http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=48954672&site=1842790>

Hangover = Negotiation Gold

2007-04-27T23:42:00.001-07:00

Hangover = Negotiation Gold

By Craig Childs on negotiation

Negotiations are funny and I'll always take any advice regarding the subject. Add the idea that it may be better to drink the night before a big negotiation, and I'm all ears.

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten recalls a situation where his lawyer suggested this theory:

The unpleasant physical effects following the heavy use of alcohol actually work to your advantage during a tough negotiation. Seemingly uninterested you will be slouched in your chair, responding slowly and talking softly and looking generally unhappy with whatever the other party proposes.

Your move, coffee.

Alcohol: a Business Tool? - [Bomega.com]

9 Ways To Be More Positive

2007-04-24T02:24:00.001-07:00

By Craig Childs on happy

Life is easy with a positive attitude, wouldn't you agree? Well, easier at least. One of my favorite sites, The Ririan Project, has a list of ways to perk up that disposition, if you need to.

I've always been amazed by some people's insistance on being in the negative. You can change that, and it's the first step to stepping in a more successful life.

1. Appreciate as much as you can. This is one of those very simple things you can do to bring more positivity in to your life. I have also found appreciation to be a great way to turn an angry, sad and frustrated mood around to a more positive one.

2. Stop comparing yourself to others. If you don´t then you´ll just create a lot of unnecessary pain in your life. If you pass one person then you´ll just find another person more successful than you. And your brief sense of being a winner will transform once again into anxiety, fear, tummy-aches and possibly heart-attacks.

3. Realize that it is possible to choose how you react. You don´t have live your life in reaction. You have a choice. There is always a gap between stimuli and reaction. If you focus on that gap it will widen and although it might seem in the beginning like stimuli and your reaction are tied together that is not the case.

4. Educate yourself. Self-education can be a great help to live a more positive life. Read great books on the areas of your life you want to improve. Maybe it's it your financial situation. Or your health. Or your relationships. Ask people with more success in that area than you what they did to improve.

5. Act as if. Your emotions work backwards too. So even if you don´t feel positive, confident, calm or decisive you can act like it. And after you have done that for a few minutes, guess what happens? You will actually start to feel positive, confident, calm or decisive.

6. Live in the now. Don´t let your thoughts drift into the past or future more than necessary. It's often a sure-fire way to start negative loops of thoughts in your mind.

7. Do some mental rehearsal. This is great way to improve your performance and decrease anxiety in any upcoming situation. Maybe you´re heading into a meeting soon. Then visualize now how great the events will unfold - see and hear it - and also how great will you feel at this meeting.

8. Redefine failure. Michael Jordan once said: "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

9. Focus on what you want, not on what you don´t want. One common problem is to focus your thoughts on what you don´t want rather than what you want. If you do that then it will be hard to get what you want in life. If you want to improve your finances then focus on having a great financial situation rather than your lack of money and your debts.

源文档 <http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=48954672&site=1842790>

Freeing yourself from the daily grind

2007-04-24T01:27:00.001-07:00

Mon Jan 15, 11:00 AM ET

Now is the time of year when most Americans start to daydream about travel. It is, after all, cold outside; the holidays are over. We're all faced with the goals and challenges of a new year, and we start to dream about the exotic, faraway places we've always wanted to visit.

The problem, of course, is that the American workplace isn't exactly set up to provide us with lots of time off for our dream trips. Thus, my principle for getting more time off has always been this: Travel time is something you have to create for yourself.

In my book, Vagabonding, I examine several strategies people use to make time for travel. Short of simply asking for more vacation time, many people negotiate long-term leaves of absence or sabbaticals (paid or unpaid, depending upon the situation) to enable travel. Others fine-tune their careers so that they are doing seasonal or contract work, which frees them up to travel between work engagements. Still others will quit a job and then work a long-term travel stint into their life before accepting a new job.

With the advent of new communication technologies it has also become possible to adopt what has been called a "global mobility lifestyle" — which allows you to redesign your work life in such a way that it can mix in with extended travel. Entrepreneur and Princeton University guest lecturer Tim Ferriss has written a book about this, The 4-Hour Workweek, that will hit bookstores in April. I contacted him by e-mail to get some perspective on making your work work for you (instead of the other way around):

What are the biggest misconceptions people have about work, and making time for travel?

Tim Ferriss: The biggest misconception about work is that you have to spend most of your life doing it.

Take a step back and ask yourself a few questions: How do decisions change if retirement isn't an option? What is the exact dollar amount per month you need to live a well-off mobile lifestyle? The idea of sacrificing 20-30 years in the prime of life should be seen for what it is: absolutely unnecessary.

I've spent the last four years traveling through more than 25 countries interviewing people who have automated income or escaped the office, often without quitting their jobs. Some of them negotiate "working from the home office" while actually trekking in Africa or touring in Europe, satellite phones and Quad-band Treos in hand. Others create simple virtual businesses that enable them to quit the grind and take one-to-three-month "mini-retirements" a few times per year. These people range from Lamborghini-driving 21-year olds, to single mothers who make $40,000 or less per year. Once you control the most valuable currencies in the digital age — mobility and time — $40,000 can get you more luxury lifestyle than a $500,000 per year investment banker who can't escape the office.

True liberation isn't just more time off. It is forever breaking the bonds that confine you to a single location.

So what is the best way to negotiate your way into a mobile work lifestyle?

TF: Whatever you negotiate with a boss, the ground rules are the same: make yourself as expensive as possible to lose — and ask at the right time.

It has to be less painful for them to say "yes" to your request than to risk losing you. Thus, get them to invest as much as possible in you, whether community college training courses (software, selling, database management, whatever), mentoring with senior staff, or otherwise. Demonstrate an upward curve in productivity and then make your request at a time when it would be a disaster to lose you, such as during seasonal crunch time, after other employees have been lost and the company is understaffed, or when a project requires skills only you possess. Don't ask for the time off (or remote work) to start just then; just make them give you an answer when they can't afford to lose you. This gives you all the leverage.

For negotiating a remote working arrangement specifically, there is a great sequence many of my case studies use, called the "hour-glass" approach because it begins with a long period out of the office, returns to a short period, then expands back to a long period. Here's how it works:

1) Use a pre-planned project or emergency (family issue, personal issue, relocation, home repairs, whatever) that requires you to take one or two weeks out of the office.

2) Say that you recognize you can't just stop working, and that you would prefer to work instead of take vacation days.

3) Propose how you can work remotely and offer, if necessary, to take a pay cut for that period (and that period only) if performance isn't up to par upon returning.

4) Allow the boss to collaborate on how to do it so that he or she is invested in the process.

5) Make the two weeks "off" the most productive period you've ever had at work.

6) Show your boss the quantifiable results upon returning, and tell him or her that — without all the distractions, commute, etc. — you can get twice as much done. Suggest two or three days at home per week as a trial for two weeks.

7) Make those remote days ultra-productive.

8) Suggest only one or two days in the office per week.

9) Make those days the least productive of the week.

10) Suggest complete five-day-per-week mobility — the boss will go for it.

My book contains full scripts for negotiating with bosses.

Many people often can't stop thinking about
work minutiae, even when they're far away from the traditional office setting. How do you get your mind, and not just your body, out of the office?

TF: There are two requirements to get the mind out of the office: allowing alternative activities, and reconsidering the concept of time.

Sitting on a beach and sipping margaritas is a relaxing recharge for two or three days, after which it's just plain boring. Lacking an external focus, the mind turns inward on itself and creates problems to solve, even if the problems are undefined or unimportant. Office-think is the default mode for most people. Plan some leisure activities that push your limits and require focus, like diving the Blue Hole in Belize or climbing Mt. Fuji in Japan. Remember that subtracting the bad does not create the good. It leaves a vacuum. Decreasing income-driven work isn't the end goal. Living more — and becoming more — is.

Then there is the question of time. In the experience of those I've interviewed, it takes two to three months just to unplug from work routines and become aware of how much we distract ourselves with constant motion. Can you have a two-hour dinner with Spanish friends without getting anxious? Can you get accustomed to a small town where all businesses take a siesta for two hours in the afternoon? If not, you need to ask: why?

Learn to slow down. If you create a mobile lifestyle, whether through a remote work arrangement or entrepreneurship, escaping the "too-weak vacation" world is as simple as using a few common technologies and believing it can be done. The alternative to binge travel that I recommend — the mini-retirement — entails relocating to one place for one to six months before going home or moving to another locale. This forces the growth-inducing introspection most of us have never had time for.

Above all, remember three things. First, life can end at any time, so don't postpone it. Second, if it doesn't end, the average person works 500 months in their lifetime, so there's no rush to get to the office. Third, people have short memories and are too busy thinking about themselves to worry about you.

Take the journey and leave the office behind.

源文档 <http://travel.news.yahoo.com/b/rolf_potts/rolf_potts19798>

Toilet Training Your Child

2007-04-24T00:40:00.001-07:00

When should I start toilet training my child?

Do not start toilet training until both you and your child are ready. You are ready when you are able to devote the time and energy necessary to encourage your child on a daily basis for at least 3 months.

Your child is ready when he or she can signal that the diaper is wet or soiled, or when your child is able to say that he or she would like to go to the potty. This usually occurs when a child is 18 to 24 months of age. However, it is not uncommon for a child to still be in diapers at 2 and a half to 3 years of age.

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How should I prepare my child for toilet training?

Allow your child to be present when you go to the bathroom and make your child feel comfortable in the bathroom. Allow your child to see urine and bowel movements in the toilet. Let your child play with flushing the toilet.

Before toilet training your child, place a potty chair in your child's normal living and play area so that your child will become familiar with the potty. Consider placing a potty chair on each floor of the house if you live in a multilevel home. Allow your child to observe, touch and become familiar with the potty chair.

Tell your child that the potty chair is his or her own chair. Allow your child to sit fully clothed on the potty chair, as if it were a regular chair. Allow your child to leave the potty chair at any time. Do not force your child to spend time sitting on the chair.

After your child has become used to the potty chair and sits on it regularly with his or her clothes on, try having your child sit on the potty without wearing pants and a diaper. Let your child become comfortable with sitting on the potty without wearing pants and a diaper.

The next step is to show your child how the potty chair is used. Place stool from a dirty diaper into the potty chair. Allow your child to observe the transfer of the bowel movement from the potty chair into the toilet. Let your child flush the toilet and watch the bowel movement disappear down the toilet.

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How do I teach my child to use the toilet?

After your child has become comfortable with flushing the toilet and sitting on the potty chair, you may begin teaching your child to go to the bathroom. Keep your child in loose, easily removable pants.

Place your child on the potty chair whenever he or she signals the need to go to the bathroom. Your child's facial expression may change when he or she feels the need to urinate or to have a bowel movement. Your child may stop any activity he or she is engaged in when he or she feels the need to go to the bathroom.

Most children have a bowel movement once a day, usually within an hour after eating. Most children urinate within an hour after having a large drink.

In addition to watching for signals that your child needs to urinate or have a bowel movement, place your child on the potty at regular intervals. This may be as often as every 1and a half to 2 hours.

Stay with your child when he or she is on the potty chair. Reading or talking to your child when he or she is sitting on the potty may help your child relax. Praise your child when he or she goes to the bathroom in the potty chair, but do not express disappointment if your child does not urinate or have a bowel movement in the potty. Be patient with your child.

Once your child has learned to use the potty chair, your child can begin using an over-the-toilet seat and a step-up stool.

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How long will it take to toilet train my child?

It may take up to 3 months. It is important for you to be patient and supportive. Do not punish your child when he or she has an accident.

If your child is not toilet trained within 3 months, consult your family doctor. The most likely reason your child has not learned to use the potty is that your child is not yet ready for toilet training.

源文档 <http://familydoctor.org/179.xml>

Cloth Diapering: Does It Save Enough Money To Be Worth The Extra Effort?

2007-04-24T00:33:00.001-07:00

By Trent on Frugality

My wife's best friend is a very strong environmentalist - in fact, she's often the inspiration for the more green-tinged posts on The Simple Dollar. When she discovered she was with child several months ago, she decided that she was going to use cloth diapers instead of disposable ones. We asked her to let us know how it was going in terms of cost and effort, because we were somewhat considering the idea for our second child after seeing how her experience went.

Recently, she told us about her experience. I jotted down some notes and here's the scoop on cloth diapering.

Buying the diapers If you have social connections, ask around for any used cloth diapers. Many parents who have abandoned them or have had their child grow out of them will be glad to give them away or sell them at a very cheap price. Our friend reports that between cloth diaper gifts at the baby shower and an abundance of them given to her by a friend whose daughter grew out of them, she didn't have to buy a single diaper. You'll also need several waterproof covers (to keep in the liquid and have the cloth diaper absorb it). The cloth diapers work all the way through, but the waterproof covers vary in size - you'll have to get a new batch of these a few times through.

So, the costs vary widely depending on what you can get as a gift, borrow, buy used, and buy new, but the investment can be quite low.

What's the "best" brand?
BumGenius comes recommended by tons of different sources for simplicity and cleanliness, but they're very expensive. A BumGenius or two is a great baby shower gift for an expectant mom, even if that mom doesn't plan on using cloth diapers. Why? A BumGenius is basically a cloth duplicate of a disposable diaper. Our friend has a small number of these and she claims to save them for nighttime changings because they're incredibly easy.

How many do you need? From my own experience, newborns
go through as many as a dozen a day, so at first, you should have a dozen for the number of days you want to have between laundry loads of diapers. As the baby gets older, (s)he will not go to the bathroom as often, but at some point you'll have to start double diapering because of the greater liquid production from the child.

What about cleaning? Obviously, some of the cost savings from disposables are eaten by laundry, but you're only paying with it with a bit of time, some water, and some laundry detergent. The strategy that was described to me was to wash the poopy diapers alone first with cold water and detergent, then add the wet diapers and run another load with hot water and detergent, then run it through a rinse cycle again with a half-cup of vinegar in the water (for odor removal). Then just dry them like normal clothes. If you estimate that you have a water cost of $0.05 a load, a power cost of $0.09 a load (both washer and dryer), a half cup of vinegar costing $0.10 or so, nd a detergent cost of $0.03 a load (using my science fair tested homemade laundry detergent), cleaning three dozen diapers costs about $0.50.

Does cloth diapering save money? You'll pay about $0.20 a diaper for disposables, which equates to a cost of about $7.20 per three dozen diapers. After startup costs, you spend only about $0.50 per three dozen diapers. You'll repeat this about fifty times before potty training begins, so the total diaper savings is $350 or so with cloth diapers. Of course, your startup costs aren't included here. For example, if you were to buy three dozen brand new BumGenius diapers, they would cost you about $500, but they make cloth diapering as convenient as disposable diapering.

In short, buying new cloth diapers for a single child isn't financially worth it, but if you have the ability to get used cloth diapers on the cheap and/or you plan on having multiple children, cloth diapers can easily recoup your investment and save money. There is additional time required for cloth diaper cleaning, but the tasks are simple and relatively minimal.

源文档 <http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=48058682&site=8031370>

A Frugal Project For A Warm Saturday Afternoon: Starting Your Own Tomato Plant

2007-04-21T18:13:00.001-07:00

A Frugal Project For A Warm Saturday Afternoon: Starting Your Own Tomato Plant

By Trent on Food

I used to live in a very small apartment in the city, and I was very poor. One way I saved money was by growing some of my fruits and vegetables inside the apartment in large tubs, and the easiest and most enjoyable of all was the humble tomato. I just filled up a large tub with dirt, planted a tomato plant in it, sat it by the largest window in the apartment, and watered it about twice a week. It produced about sixty pounds of giant, delicious tomatoes, so many that I couldn't eat them all and used a few simple techniques to save them for winter.

Sound like a good plan? Here's all you need to know to start your own tomato plant. All you need is a couple hours to get started, a window that gets a lot of good sunlight (or even better, a deck), and a reminder to yourself to water it twice a week or so.

Stuff You Need

A pre-started tomato plant Stop by your local gardening store and ask them for a tomato starter. Ask for a variety that requires minimal maintenance and grows well in partial shade. They should be able to point you towards an appropriate variety.

A large pot You should also pick up a large pot while there, one that could hold ten gallons of water or so. This will be your primary growing container.

Soil/dirt If you don't have access to good dirt, then you'll need to also purchase a quantity of potting soil, an amount that will fill the pot roughly three quarters full. Once you have this soil base, it can survive for a very long time with occasional
replenishment.

A tomato cage You won't need this for a month or so.

Miracle-Gro may be needed in future years to replenish the soil; if you want to go organic, you can use another organic fertilizer.

That's all you need.

What Now?

Go home. Put the pot where you want it. Put the soil/dirt in the pot. Put the plant in the soil. Then water it.

How do I water it? Add a quart of water around the plant itself, then wait a day. If the soil is very dry, then that means you'll need to water it with more volume - try putting in two quarts of water. You'll want to find a balance so that you don't overwater it (it's always swampy) and you don't let it go completely dry, either. It'll take some work until you get the touch, so just check it every day and keep adding a little more each time until the surface is still moist the following day (if there's sitting water, you watered it too much - give it a couple of days and don't put in as much). At that point, you can water it every other day; you can keep stretching it more than that, but don't go beyond twice a week if you want a truly healthy plant.

What about the cage? After about a month, you'll need to put the cage around the plant, as it'll be growing rapidly and will need something to guide it. Just put the cage around it and lift the branches so they rest on the cage. Every two weeks or so, try lifting loose branches up gently to higher points on the cage.

You may also want to rotate the plant occasionally, but it's not fully necessary. I used to rotate it 180 degrees about once a week.

Harvest

About three months later, the plant will begin to produce fruit, and if it's healthy, you'll get more than you can believe. Eat them while they're fresh, as much as you can, but with the rest, I really recommend converting them into the most delicious substance on earth, fresh tomato sauce.

It's really easy to do - just wait until you have about twenty pounds of them, cut off the stems, put them all in the biggest pan you have, add a little bit of salt and pepper and any herbs you like, and then turn on a low heat and start slashing open the tomatoes in the pan. Let it simmer for 45 minutes, then use a hand mixer to mix up the floating tomato pieces and make it all homogenous. Let it simmer for a couple hours, then pour it into freezer quart Ziploc bags and toss them in the freezer. One bag will be plenty to make a wonderful tomato sauce for spaghetti, pizza (boil it down to make it really thick for pizza sauce), or anything else you might want.

Then, in the middle of winter, you can have wonderful fresh spaghetti sauce made out of tomatoes you grew and prepared yourself - and the cost was almost nothing!

源文档 <http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=48058682&site=8031370>

ten tips for battling a melancholic mood with free or nearly free things that may help.

2007-04-17T02:33:00.001-07:00

Have fun. Do something that can completely take you away from the feelings of your everyday routine. Turn off your cell phone for a few hours and dive into something with your whole heart. For me, this is actually the library, or else a long walk in the wilderness. Because I'm cut off from the routine and the pressures that go with it, I come back feeling genuinely reinvigorated and ready to meet the challenges of life.

Eat well. Make sure you're getting enough fruits and vegetables in your diet - and, no, the lettuce on your fast food hamburger doesn't count. If you don't prepare food for yourself, try eating food at restaurants that prepare well-balanced meals.

Get some exercise. If you're out of shape, just go for a walk around the block. Stretch yourself out a time or two a day by flexing all of your joints as far as you can. A strong exercise regimen is a big commitment for some, but anyone can take the time to stretch and go for a walk.

Drink lots of water. The USDA recommends eight 8 ounce glasses of water a day, not soda or beer or anything else. Turn on your tap and drink - it's really inexpensive and one of the best things you can do for yourself.

Associate with people that you primarily associated with when you were happy. In other words, try to reconnect with old friends and family members. Sometimes, you'll discover that your social crowd is sometimes responsible for your negative feelings - and if that's the case, you need to make some changes to your social life.

Set small goals - and reach them. Don't go home and sit around in a state of sadness because you can't accomplish anything. Set a very small goal that you can reach in an hour or two, then just try to do it. When you're able to do that, try easing into a productivity plan like GTD which anyone can use and is very effective at making you feel really productive. A sense of achievement is one of life's greatest natural boosts.

Get a normal amount of sleep. For most people, a normal night of sleep is between seven and ten hours. If you're getting significantly less or significantly more than this, try to adjust your sleep so that you're in that range.

Get regular massages. My wife and I give each other massages and it may in fact be the most consistent long-term mood elevator in my life. If you don't have a significant other or a close friend who can give you a gentle massage, it may be worth saving up nickels and dimes to get a professional one.

Don't expect dramatic mood improvement overnight. If you walk around the block, get an endorphin rush, and use that rush to do four or five things that have been nagging you, and suddenly you feel really good, don't despair if the sadness returns. An overall mood, especially an entrenched one, doesn't change overnight. Try doing more of the positive things that made you feel better instead.

Go to sleep thinking about the positive things you did today, not the negative ones. Make it a goal to do at least one positive thing in a day - walking around the block, going to work and getting your tasks done, sweeping the kitchen floor, getting through your GTD inbox, whatever it takes - and then think about that success as you go to sleep at night. It gives your mind something good to focus on as you wind down in the evening and drift off to dreamland.

Learn how to Invest and Make Money by Investing

2007-04-17T01:29:00.001-07:00

This website is primarily made for people that have very little, to none experience in stock investing, want to learn how to invest, and reduce the risk in the stock market. Although even experienced investors will be able to find some useful info, Coolinvesting.com is primarily here to help, guide and educate people who want to get into very rewarding world of investing in the stock market, and to learn how to invest, but do not have enough knowledge and experience to do so.

I have been investing in the stock market for over 7 years. Over that period I have learned many things, that taught me how to invest and that helped me make some good returns in the stock market. Also, I have learned that you do not have to know a lot about investing in order to make an informed decision, you just need to know the right things. There are a lot of people out there just like I was, who want to learn how to invest, but are too afraid, and do not know how. Internet is full of websites that can teach you how to invest, but none of those is so simple and user friendly like mine. See, I made this website to give you good financial advice, show you step by step how to get involved in a world of stock investing, and make money in the stock market. I have never found a website that will in a simplest way explain to me how to invest in the stock market, from scratch, and then move on from there. Most of the financial guides are all overabundant with information, and it's very hard to find exactly what you are looking for, and on top of all, none of them is completely free. Well, that's why this completely free and user friendly website exists. I will show you everything you need you need to know before you make your first investment. I will teach you basics of personal finance, offshore, penny stocks, mutual funds and real estate investing, and other most important things that you can invest in.

So join me in my quest for success!

Why invest?

Well, the answer is very simple. Do you want your money to work for you, or you want to work for money all your life!? Keeping money in the bank is almost like keeping money in the safe at home. I really cannot call an annual return of 3% a return, as that will not even surpass
inflation by much. A return of 3% can be made in a day if you invest in stocks. Yes, there will be some risk included, but did anybody ever made any substantial money without taking any risk? Therefore, you will have to get used to it. If you want to make money in the stock market you have to take some risk. There is no risk free investment. The only difference is that some investments involve more risk, and some less. But usually those investments that carry more risk have greater return. It is pretty exponential, the more risk you take the bigger return you can get. But beating Bank's 3% return should not involve too much risk. In fact, it is possible to make 10-15% annual return on your investment with almost no risk involved.

For example, you can invest in so called "blue chip" stocks. These are stocks of big and well established companies. These companies have a good record of producing continuous earnings and paying dividends to shareholders. They are called blue chip because the blue chip is the highest valued chip in Poker. If you diversify and invest in 5-10 different blue chip stocks, (preferably you should diversify over different industries as well) a risk of losing money is extremely slim. For example, there is a big chance that all of these companies will continue to grow in the coming years, as they have been growing for decades. So even if 1 or 2 companies do not do good in the current year, by diversifying, you will be able to make money out of the investment, because the other companies you invested in did well.

However, investing in this many different companies requires a lot of research and money, therefore your best bet would be a mutual fund.

Mutual fund gives the best risk/return ration, and requires the least time on your part. But do not forget that with mutual fund you will generally make up to 15% return annually, if that. Which is still nice if you plan to invest in a long term.

One downside of diversification is that if one company does really good, you will not gain a big return, as you will have 70-90 percent of money invested elsewhere. There is a correlation between the risk and return. If you invest in only one company you will be taking greater risk, but if that company strikes gold, you will as well. So forget about putting your hard earned money in the Bank. If you are willing to take a little bit of risk, reward can be much greater. Get educated and make your money work for you.

Personal Finance

Budgeting Your Personal Finance - Many people go through an entire lifetime constantly worrying about their finances, while others take control of their finances and become financially independent. Maintaining your personal finance can be a maddening process. A simple mistake such as a lost receipt, not remembering a payment, or even a sudden hike in gas prices can have your family eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a week, not to mention causing unnecessary stress.

Are you having fun yet?

2007-04-17T00:20:00.001-07:00

Try these nine ideas and start making your work fun again

I just came across a web site dedicated to "The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun." It's not specifically about the workplace, but the principles it suggests would work really well there. Most of them fit closely with the basic principles of Slow Leadership, so I've taken the liberty of listing them here, with my own, workplace-oriented comments. I also added a ninth principle of my own:

Stop hiding who you really are. So many people do this. They pretend to be someone else: someone more acceptable to the boss; someone more serious and determined; someone who might appear to be a high-flier; someone who "fits in." Even professional actors need to take a break sometimes and just be themselves. Can you imagine the stress that you're putting on yourself, trying to be someone that you aren't, every hour of every working day? And what's the point anyway? You are who you are. Totally unique in space and time. Who says you aren't good enough? Don't fall for that rubbish. All that matters for a satisfying life is to be the best possible version of whoever and whatever you are: to develop your unique talents, express your special personality, and contribute all that you can to the life and people around you. Never, never, accept that you aren't "worthy." That's crazy talk. Being yourself, openly and with joy, is essential to having fun anywhere—and especially at work.
Start being intensely selfish. I'm not quite sure about "intensely selfish," but I see what they are getting at. I would rephrase this as: "Start standing up for yourself and what you believe in." No one will ever have the same degree of interest and investment in your life and future as you. No one will ever care as much as you do. No one will ever understand your needs as well, or know what it is like to be you and do what you do. People are always trying to make us into the kind of people they want us to be; to make us fit the mold and conform to their views. Do they do this for our benefit? No way! It's for them: to stop us causing them trouble, messing up their neat lives, asking for things they don't want us to have. This isn't the same as people who give us good advice or share their experiences to stop us making bad mistakes. I'm talking about those who will compel us to fit in, if they are able. Focus on yourself and your own needs. At work, it's likely that no one else will.
Stop following the rules. Yea! Those rules are there to force you into conformity. The more you follow them, the less creative, individual, interesting, and open-minded you will become. There are two kinds of workplace rules: necessary ones (like rules for safety) and the rest. The first account for probably less than 10% of all the rules around. You'll never have fun by following the rules. You'll just become a grey, boring, wage slave, with not a single difference from all the other wage slaves around you. You won't even advance your career much. No one ever promoted someone who didn't stand out from the crowd in at least some way.
Start scaring yourself. To learn, to grow, to develop who you are, to find excitement and fun, you have to take risks. If it doesn't scare you, it isn't a risk. Fun is all about taking risks—look at all the theme parks with their scary rides. Look at all the people who go surfing, or snow-boarding, or climb scary mountains, or challenge their minds with reading and listening to great music. Don't wait for the universe to start scaring you. It may well do so in ways you really don't want. Start scaring yourself. At work, this means taking on new and scary challenges, volunteering for jobs that you aren't sure that you can do, taking on learning opportunities that scare you. Dare to do what you've never done before. Practice "conscious incompetence." Just do it!
Stop taking it all so damn seriously. Especially yourself. The most boring, least fun people around are all those who take themselves so seriously it hurts. They drone on and on about whatever tedious things they are involved in. They get hung up with never losing face or admitting they are wrong. They demand constant reassurance about their inflated sense of self-importance. There's one life. It's far from perfect, but it's all there is. Crap happens—often. The more seriously you take it, they more it will worry you, and the more pain you'll suffer as a result. Most of the misery in the world that humans cause (and that's an awful lot of it) comes from people trying to control their lives down to the most minute details. They think they're so damned important that everyone, and everything, else has to be lined up for their convenience. It will never happen. Give it up, sit back, and enjoy your ride around the sun. You might as well, since there's usually damn all you can do about it anyway.
Start getting rid of the crap. I am constantly amazed at how much crap people collect around them, especially in the workplace. Pack rats look tidy by comparison. All those electronic gizmos to stay in touch, all the "to do" lists, the constant meetings, the endless e-mails and memos. How much of it ever accomplishes anything? My guess is that 80% of it is simply distraction and a waste of time. People complain that they have no time to do their jobs, yet waste most of the time that they have reading e-mails, attending pointless meetings, and contributing to the tide of organizational crap engulfing them by producing e-mails and calling meetings of their own. Give it up. You'll be amazed how much time you have suddenly; and how much fun you can pack into it, in place of all the "stuff" that was there before.
Stop being busy.
Constant busyness is the curse of our generation. People believe that if you aren't constantly busy, you're not pulling your weight. The curse of the Puritan Work Ethic hangs over us, like a cloud full of misery and drizzle. Busy is not the same as productive. Busy doesn't mean "good" or "worthy." Mostly it means "doing things for the sake of convincing others that I am worth keeping on here." When lay-offs started becoming commonplace, people began extreme efforts to appear busy every moment of the day. As Hamburger Management became conventional, bosses starting measuring activity, because they had no idea how to measure effectiveness, and they thought they should measure something. The result is people who are too busy to have fun, too busy to live their lives, too busy to enjoy anything. Don't join them. Life has enough misery without adding to it.
Start something. I can't do better than quote a comment from an earlier post: "Trying something new is like catnip—irresistible fun. Getting better and better at something that I initially did badly—THAT breeds enthusiasm." Don't wait for others, or you'll wait for ever. Start it yourself.
Don't worry what others will think about you. This is my "extra" principle. All too many people are stuck because they're worried what others may think. The truth of the matter is that others are mostly doing what we all do most of the time—thinking about themselves. They aren't concerned with you at all. A lot of the time, they aren't even aware of your existence. So if, from time to time, they drag themselves away from self-absorption just long enough to disapprove of whatever you're doing, ignore them. It's your life, not theirs. Self-doubt and fear of embarrassment are major dampeners on any kind of fun. Throw them away. They aren't worth the time of day.

When do people perform best at any task, from sport to nuclear physics? When they're relaxed, intent on what they're doing and more of less oblivious of everything else. When they're having fun. So loosen up and enjoy your life.

An Average Day: Ten Tweaks I Made To My Daily Routine To Start Saving Money

2007-04-17T00:12:00.001-07:00

March 5, 2007 @ 10:30 am - Written by Trent

Categories: Getting Started, Frugality

Bookmarks: del.icio.us, digg, reddit

I was reading through some of my older journals and notes on various things when I came across a little thing I assembled when I was first digging myself out of debt. It was basically a list of little things I was changing in my life - what I did before, and what I did after the change. At this point, the "after" column feels so normal that I can barely remember the "before" column at all. I thought it was a great illustration of how little things during the day can bleed you dry.

Before:
I stopped for breakfast on my way into work, usually for a giant orange juice and a bagel.

After: I started taking a bottle of orange juice and a bagel (or cereal bar) with me when I left in the morning. Four or five of these bottles (which I refill out of a huge jug) are the same cost as just one of the glasses, and the bagels are maybe one tenth of what I would spend at the shop.

Before:
I would speed like crazy to get to work on time, burning gas.

After: Since I don't have to stop for breakfast, I now drive a much more leisurely pace, and my truck's MPG has gone up as a result.

Before:
I'd drink a latte in the morning - and another in the afternoon.

After: I drink one about once a week. I replaced it with the coffee in the office or, now, water, since I'm working on breaking my caffeine addiction.

Before:
I would go out to lunch with coworkers every day.

After: Now, I dine in every day with a different batch of coworkers. I still get the same networking and information gathering done, but it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg.

Before:
I'd hit the vending machine two or three times a day.

After: I keep beverages at my desk that I brought in from home. This saves money on each drink. Plus, now that I'm focusing on breaking the caffeine addiction, I'm barely drinking these and drinking water instead, which is free.

Before:
I'd stop for takeout on the way home.

After: Almost every meal is cooked at home now - it's cheaper and massively healthier.

Before:
I'd throw out the leftover food.

After: I save the leftovers and pack them for lunch the next day, reusing the food we already have and saving more money.

Before:
I'd leave my computer and peripherals on all day and all night.

After: I almost exclusively use a laptop, which is powered off except when I'm using it. The only time any peripherals go on is when I use them, too, like the printer. This results in massive energy use reduction.

Before:
I'd watch television on our 32″ CRT unit for three or four hours.

After: Most evenings, we don't watch any television at all. When we do watch something, the television is on for long enough to watch the program, then it goes off. We fill the time with our child, with reading, and (for me, at least) with blogging.

Before:
If we were bored in the evening, we'd go shopping.

After: If we're bored in the evening, we go to the library or go on a walk or play a game.

Perhaps these ideas will inspire you to find some little ways to trim the financial fat from your daily routine.

Challenge Yourself To A Money-Free Weekend

2007-04-17T00:06:00.001-07:00

By Trent on Frugality

For the last few months, my wife and I have been doing something every other weekend or so that we call a "money free" weekend, in an effort to live more frugally. It's actually quite fun - here's how we do it.

We are not allowed to spend any money on anything, no matter what. In other words, we can't make a run to the store to buy food, we can't spend money on any sort of entertainment, and so on. Since we often do our grocery shopping on Saturdays, on a "money free" weekend, we delay it to Monday or Tuesday.

We can use our utilities, but no extra expenses on these utilities. No renting movies on cable, no text messages that aren't already covered by our cell phone plan, and so on.

An extra challenge: no television. Most of the weekends, we also did not turn on our television from the time we arrived home from work on Friday until at least Monday after work.

It's an interesting challenge, and it teaches us several things about how expensive our lives really are.

First of all, it exposes how many fun activities we can do that are free. We go on walks, play in the park (with our toddler-aged son), play board games with friends (our current obsession is Ticket to Ride: Europe), read a lot, get household chores done, and so forth. Sometimes after these weekends, when we go back and do something expensive, we both question the reasoning for it - in other words, because of these weekends, our values are slowly shifting.

Second,
we've become much more effective in milking real value out of our foods. Since we don't go grocery shopping before the weekend, we usually spend Saturday morning taking an inventory of what we have on hand and making meals out of that. This often means some strange concoctions, but it also means that we're digging into the back of the cupboard and using stuff we haven't thought about in a while instead of just letting it go to waste.

Third, quality time with our child doesn't revolve around consumerism. Instead of taking him to a toy store or something, we take him to the park or to the free public zoo or to the public gardens. He wanders around these, admiring the natural beauty and asking fifty million questions. Instead of stopping at McDonalds and tossing a bunch of garbage into him, we take a picnic basket to the park, spread out a blanket, and have a nice meal outside. We'll go home and read him a few books, then he plays in the living room while we read or do something constructive. In other words, we spend our time doing activities that instill values we want in our child.

In a nutshell, weekends like this directly save us money, but the indirect benefits are even greater: it works on making our values and our sense of "normal" much more frugal, plus it also shows our son that you don't have to just throw money up in the air and watch it blow away in order to have fun.

Give a money-free weekend a try sometime soon - and maybe try making a regular habit out of it. Your wallet will thank you, and you may just find that your values start to shift as well.

1月29日正则表达式实在是太强了

2007-01-28T23:40:00.000-08:00

第一次用正则表达式，这个工具实在是太强了！！！

以下正则表达式用于将

SUPERMEMO格式的COLLINS分级词典，改为SMARTMEMO格式

一边可以支持SMARTPHONE。

^Q:.*> *(.*) *<.*Plain">(.*)<.*\p

\1\p`@$\2$\p

^Q:.*> *(.*)<.*\p

\1\p

^A:

1月15日看看你是否有会计头脑

2007-01-14T18:33:00.000-08:00

一道算术题绝对经典

有3个人去投宿,一晚30元.

三个人每人掏了10元凑够30元交给了老板.

后来老板说今天优惠只要25元就够了,拿出5元命令服务生退还给他们,

服务生偷偷藏起了2元,

然后,把剩下的3元钱分给了那三个人,每人分到1元.

这样,一开始每人掏了10元,现在又退回1元,也就是10-1=9,每人只花了9元钱

3个人每人9元,3 X 9 = 27 元服务生藏起的2元

这样 27+2=29元，还有一元钱去了哪里？？？

这道题能看出你有没有会计头脑。

1月15日别被“中国治疗乙肝研究获突破进展”的新闻给骗了

2007-01-14T18:31:00.000-08:00

父亲最近化学性肝损伤住院，这已经是他服用抗癌药物一年来的第二次住院了。

结果今天我在中新网首页上看到了这条消息：

中国治疗乙肝研究获突破进展成功治愈百余患者

大意是说：我国首次彻底治愈103名慢性乙肝患者。中华医学会肝病学分会、中国肝炎防治基金会在三亚召开的"二00七年三亚肝病论坛"上，为内地近二千万乙肝患者提供的信息是：只要你的病情没有发展到肝硬化，就可通过免疫重建，获得表面抗原血清学转换，得到彻底治愈。
首都医科大学附属北京佑安医院陈新月教授称，这些临床治愈的成功案例结束了乙肝甩不掉的历史。
陈教授采用免疫重建的派罗欣治疗方案，临床治愈的患者达二十三例。中国工程院院士闻玉梅教授提出，"慢性乙型肝炎与机体免疫功能受损有重大关联，重视治疗中免疫控制这个根本问题，是帮助患者恢复健康的关键环节。百分之九十五的成人感染乙肝病毒会自愈，而百分之九十以上的儿童感染乙肝病毒后转为慢性乙肝就是这个原因。"

源文档 <http://finance.jrj.com.cn/news/2007-01-13/000001919070.html>

看到这条消息我自然是一激动。随后有一些疑惑，既然是中国的突破性进展，药怎么取了一个外国名字？？？

结果，还没等我回味一下，就又在红网看到了一条针对性地消息：

湖南专家：目前治疗慢性乙肝还没有特效药物

大意是说：我国首次彻底治愈103名慢性乙肝患者的消息引起了很多乙肝患者的质疑。对此，我省有关专家表示，治愈103人没有实质意义，目前治疗慢性乙肝还没有特效药物，但乙肝病情是可以得到控制的。

湘雅医院传染科主任谭德明教授表示，目前乙肝治愈率大约在10％左右，我国还没有达到20％的水平。用派罗欣治疗乙肝患者，一年的治疗费用就达到7万元，一般人是用不起的。乙肝表面抗原阳性"转阴"率很低，乙肝患者千万不要盲目服药。

源文档 <http://china.rednet.cn/c/2007/01/15/1096383.htm>

明眼人一对比就知道第一则新闻的真正目的。

能无耻到这样的地步，XXX，我真的要骂人了，不要劝我。

1月10日与疯子博傻

2007-01-09T21:54:00.000-08:00

股市疯了，1300-1600-1800-2200-2800，一轮接一轮逼空。

没有人想到会这样，但从现在来看，这也不难理解：因为今年的股市中多了一群疯子！

管理层曾经说：培养基金稳定股市。

这句话只对了一半：在下跌时，基金确实不怕亏，敢买；上涨时他更是不怕死，敢追！

归根结底3点：

1、基金玩的是别人的钱，不怕亏，因此市场里没有比他们更牛比，更大胆的了。

2、目前只有上涨才能赚钱，因此不怕死的基金绝对是一群超级敢死队，没人敢比他们更疯狂！

就一个字：利益。

基金的利益来源与不断地买入、买入、买入。

因此大盘股不断地上涨、上涨、上涨。

股市有风险吗？

对股民来说，有，而且很大；但是是对基金来说，完全没有风险，看到的只有到手的手续费。

3、现在，当基金手握1万亿，而沪深股市流通市值总共才只有区区3万亿的时候。

任何的疯狂都是可以想象的！

不需要分析来分析去。

关键是，一个正常人如何与一个力量大你百倍的疯子博傻？

跟着他一起疯？可能是一种方法。

那就买指数权重股。因为要拉，自然是"万般皆下品惟有指数高"。

但工行对比港股的溢价已经超过20%，人寿更是接近80%，玩自己钱的人没有不怕的。

于是有人安慰说，泡泡是管理层让吹的。

也许，但即便如此也不代表没有破的一天！

不过现在，害怕踏空的增量资金源源不竭，令人钦佩。

特别是当增量资金被疯子掌握的时候，股市就只剩一条路了：

拉呀拉呀拉皮筋。

1月10日Outlook 2007 打开附件的临时文件夹

2007-01-09T19:10:00.000-08:00

当您打开被视为安全的文件附件时，作为一项额外的防范措施，Outlook 2007 会将这些附件放在 Internet 临时文件目录下的子目录中。当 Outlook 2007 第一次尝试使用临时文件时，它会检查注册表以确定以下值是否存在：

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Security

1月3日成长不完全宣言

2007-01-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

By Hi-iD on DESIGN

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,Bruce Mau写于1998年.(via:Brand Autopsy),摘抄简译如下:

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

让事件来改变你.你必须渴望成长,它区别于其他撞上门的东西.你创造它,你激活它.成长的必备条件:坦率地去经历,渴望被它们改变.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

忘掉好.好是已知晓的标准,是我们所有人赞同的.成长不一定就是好.而成长是对未知的探索,它也许是也许不是我们所探寻的结果.如果你恪守"好",你永远无法真正成长.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we're going, but we will know we want to be there.

过程重于结果.结果驱使过程,只能达到已达到,如果是过程驱使结果,我们也许不知道我们去向何方,但我们会知道那里就是我们想去的.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

爱你的体验(如同你是一个笨小孩).乐趣是成长的动力.自由体验工作各种状态如美好经历,负担,企图,尝试和错误.长远的视角,每天体验失败的乐趣.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

深掘.,挖得越深,值钱的越多.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

抓住事故.错误的答案会变成正确的答案,当你在探寻不同的问题时,把收集错误的答案当作过程的一部分.问不同的问题.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

学习.工作室是一个学习的地方,把必须的工作当作学习的理由,每个人都会受益.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

漫游.,允许自己漫无目的的发呆,探寻邻近,不作决定,延迟评价.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

随时开始.John Cage告诉我们无从着手是搁浅的常见缘由,他的建议是:随时随地开始.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

每个人都是领导.成长开始,无论它是从何开始的,让它浮现,当有感觉时学会遵循,让每一个人(每一样东西)来领导.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

捕获创意并应用.创意生活在动态,流动,丰富的环境中,而应用需要严格的评判.提高创意的应用率.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

保持运动.市场经营有增强成功的驱动力,阻止它.让失败和变迁成为实践的一部分.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

慢下来.从标准规律中解脱,你会惊奇于机会自动呈现.

14. Don't be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

别耍酷.,酷是穿着黑衣的保守主义恐惧,从这一点解脱出来.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

问愚蠢的问题.成长是由愿望和纯洁填满的,评价答案,而不是评价问题.像你儿童时期一样来想象学习.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

合作.,一起工作的人们之间充满了斗争,摩擦,争吵,愉快,欢欣和巨大的潜在创新.

17. ______. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven't had yet, and for the ideas of others.

______.这些留出的空格是让你填充你还没取得的创意,或者其他人的创意.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you've gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

熬夜.当你走很远,坚持太久,工作太努力,你和世界孤立的时候,奇异会发生.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

用比喻.每样东西都有代表其他东西的能力,思索它代表什么.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

小心冒险.时间是乘前即后的,今天是昨天的儿子,是明天的老子.今天的工作会创造未来.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don't like it, do it again.

重复你自己.,你喜欢它,再做一次;你不喜欢它,再做一次.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

创造你自己的工具.,为做一个独一无二的东西,综合应用你的工具.你自己的一个简单工具会把你带向全新的领域.记住: 工具增强我们的能力,一件小工具会创造完全不同的局面.

23. Stand on someone's shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

站在某人的肩膀上.站的高,看得远.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

回避软件.,因为每个人都有.

25. Don't clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can't see tonight.

不要收拾桌面.,也许早上你会发现昨晚没发现的东西.

26. Don't enter awards competitions. Just don't. It's not good for you.

别参加奖项竞赛.就是别参加,对你没好处.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."

只读左边一页.麦克卢汉是这样做的.减少信息量,把空间留给我们叫做"面条"的东西.

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

创造新词,扩大词典.新的条件需要新的思维方式,新的思想需要新的表达,新的表达创造新的条件.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

用心灵来思考,忘记技术.创造力不是依赖于器具.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

组织=解放.设计中或其他领域真正的创新,是发生在情景中的.情景通常是和同协作的形式.比如只有Frank Gehry能建造毕尔堡博物馆,因为他的工作室能够按预算提交方案.分开"创新"和"策略"的神秘东西就是Leonard Cohen所说的'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don't borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry's advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It's not exactly rocket science, but it's surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

别借钱.还是Frank Gehry的建议,通过控制财政来管理创新控制,虽然这不是航天科技,但是来管理这一条信念是多么出奇的艰难,有多少人就在这一点失败.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

仔细聆听.每一个参与者都会为我们带来一个他的世界,比我们凭空想象的要复杂和奇怪.聆听他们细节,他们的需求,抱负的精妙.把他们的世界包容进我们自己的,而不是部分,否则会是一模一样.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

到野外散步.世界的带宽远远大于我们的电视机,互联网,还有那些完全的,交互的,动态渲染的,基于物体的,实时的计算机模拟环境.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn't my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

快速制造错误.这一点我是从Andy Grove那里借来得.

35. Imitate. Don't be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp's large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

模仿. 不要感到耻辱或害羞,尽可能靠近他.你永远得不到所有的道路(创新),而区别往往是真正让人印象深刻的.把模仿当作一种技术.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

逃避.当你忘词了,就像Ella那样去做:造些其他东西而不是单词.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

打碎它,展开它,弯曲它,碾碎它,弄爆它,包起它.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can't find the leading edge because it's trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

探索另外一边.当我们回避使用技术性的工具时,巨大的自由(空间)呈现.我们不能发现领导性的一边是因为我们把它们踩在脚下.尝试使用旧的过气的工具,会发现潜在的东西.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

来杯咖啡,出去兜风,看看植物.真正的成长经常发生在我们努力前往的外面,空间的间隙.如Dr. Seuss所说的"等待空间".Hans Ulrich Obrist曾经组织过一次科学艺术会议,它有会议的一切部件-与会者,交谈,午餐,接机-但没有真实的会议.看上去那是一次很成功的会议,促成了很多很作.

40. Avoid fields.Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields. 跨越樊篱.规矩准则都在努力抵御创新生命.它们被理解成努力整理那些五花八门,复杂的,展开的过程.我们的工作是跨越它.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

笑.参观我们工作室的人经常会觉得我们笑太多,自从我发现它,就将它作为我们表达自己舒适的气压计.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That's what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

记住.成长是产品历史的唯一可能.没有记忆,创新只是一种新奇事物.历史给成长一个方向,但记忆永远不是完美.每一个记忆都是一个退化物或者当前事物的合成图像.是让我们知晓过去的(还不是现在的)质量,这意味着每一个记忆都是新的,区别于它源头的部件,潜在的自我成长.

43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we're not free.

给人们以权力.只有人们感觉到他们控制了自己的生命,游戏才能开始.如果我们自己不自由我们就无法给予代理者自由.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

翻译只是参考,具体请看原文.

源文档 <http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?folder=13485588>

12月15日国人开发偷用电话电的台灯

2007-01-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

By evakenshin@gmail.com (EVA剑心) on IT

上海一些灯具交易市场和网上商城最近热销一种号称免电的台灯.售价几元、几十元的"免电灯"不用自家电,因而购者踊跃.

"免电灯"实际不免电.上海市通信管理局副局长李振坤说,这种灯用的是电话线的馈电."免电灯"虽然没有电源线,却有一根连着插头的电话线,接上就有了"电源",灯就亮了.附图

据有关专家介绍,"免电灯"实际用的是电信部门的电,可达到15瓦白炽灯的亮度.这种灯通过采用超高亮度LED发光管和内设变阻器,利用电话线路就能发出高亮光.目前电话线的电压在36伏上下,LED发光管刚好能在此范围内工作.

李振坤指出,"免电灯"侵害了电信部门的合法权益,也侵犯了用户正常使用通信业务的权益.上海市通信管理局和上海市电信公司表示将着手调查此事,对电信设备的影响、线路损耗要作出评估,然后提出相关管理措施.

"免电灯"偷了电信部门的电,将产生不良后果.首先"免电灯"的使用会影响电话的通话质量,如果电阻过大,还容易造成电话短路,严重时会影响电话终端设备,加重电信公司设备负荷,造成系统损害;其次,使用人甚至会因为不付电费而开长明灯,造成电力浪费.

法律专家认为,按照有关法律的规定,销售和使用这种"免电灯"属违法行为.

源文档 <http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=13596203&site=2237267>

旺财

2007-01-08T16:51:00.000-08:00

为了宝宝的小名，一家人还曾起过争执，因为叫他"旺财"。

小旺财、小旺财，俗得掉渣，但讨个口彩，小狗小猫好养嘛。

在LP和二姐的大力支持下，家里人被迫接受了。

既然旺财都叫了，再出现什么稀奇古怪的爱称，就不稀奇了。

小笼包子：

一是取"皮薄、肉嫩、汤鲜"特别招蚊子的意思，

二是因为bb发起脾气来眉头一皱，眼睛鼻子都揪在了一起，活脱脱一只小笼包；

小屎包：一天要换十块尿片，包包重过斤；

小笨蛋：到现在11个月了还不会"谢谢"、"再见"，唉，聪敏面孔，笨肚肠啊；

电动马达：BB爬的时候屁股扭动的幅度巨大，频率也很高，一般马达比不上的；

小草鸡："草"通"吵"，每天大早，就是一只吵吵闹闹的小闹钟。

开张啦

2006-03-21T23:47:00.000-08:00

PING一下看看。

Firefly

Evaporative cooler

Drought-resistant crops

complaint exersize

Direction

negotiate

endoscope surgery

national teacher

investment

corriki.org

wildlife services

Game and donate

Physical acitvity

malaria treatment

eHold

Quotation

Report

Business

Prepositions

Category

Size

Tax cuts

order

elevated oil prices

Lack Of Food

learn math

Airport

Belly fat

Investment

Business training for women

50% ungraduated

Climate change

charting 40

charting 39

AIDS in Asia

Housing bubble burst

supply and demand

rewards

about parties

HIV

schistosomiasis

Test，拆墙了没？

Seeing Pressures but Also Possibilities in Urban Growth 1

《卖桔者言》中的读书方法

By MetalDudu on 读书

政治改革

随摘

瑞士

Wells Fargo Today: Company Overview – 1st Quarter 2007

WHO WE ARE

DIVERSITY OF BUSINESSES *

POWERFUL DISTRIBUTION

The Vision & Values of Wells Fargo

Security Policy

Cash management

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

Money and Banking

33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity

Room Color and How it Affects your Mood

Gmail + G-Drive

Hangover = Negotiation Gold

9 Ways To Be More Positive

Freeing yourself from the daily grind

Toilet Training Your Child

Cloth Diapering: Does It Save Enough Money To Be Worth The Extra Effort?

A Frugal Project For A Warm Saturday Afternoon: Starting Your Own Tomato Plant

ten tips for battling a melancholic mood with free or nearly free things that may help.

Learn how to Invest and Make Money by Investing

Are you having fun yet?

An Average Day: Ten Tweaks I Made To My Daily Routine To Start Saving Money

Challenge Yourself To A Money-Free Weekend

1月29日正则表达式实在是太强了

1月15日看看你是否有会计头脑

1月15日别被“中国治疗乙肝研究获突破进展”的新闻给骗了

1月10日与疯子博傻

1月10日Outlook 2007 打开附件的临时文件夹

1月3日成长不完全宣言

12月15日国人开发偷用电话电的台灯

旺财

开张啦