【推荐1】I belong to that classification of people known as wives. I am A Wife. And, not altogether incidentally, I am a mother.

Not too long ago a male friend of mine appeared on the scene fresh from a recent divorce. He had one child, who is, of course, with his ex-wife. He is looking for another wife. As I thought about him while I was ironing one evening, it suddenly occurred to me that I too, would like to have a wife. Why do I want a wife?

I’d like to go back to school so that I can become economically independent. I want a wife who will work and send me to school. And meanwhile take care of my children. I want a wife who is a good nurturing attendant to my children, who arranges for their schooling, makes sure that they have an adequate social life with their peers, etc. I want a wife who takes care of the children when they are sick, a wife who arranges to be around when the children need special care, because, of course, I cannot miss classes at school. My wife must arrange to lose time at work and not lose the job. It may mean a small cut in my wife’s income from time to time, but I guess I can tolerate that. Needless to say, my wife will arrange and pay for the care of the children while my wife is working.

I want a wife who will take care of my physical needs. I want a wife who will keep my house clean. A wife who will pick up after me. I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced, and who will see to it that my personal things are kept in their proper place so that I can find what I need the minute I need it. I want a wife who will plan the menus, do the necessary grocery shopping, prepare the meals, serve them pleasantly, and then do the cleaning up while I do my studying. I want a wife who will care for me when I am sick and sympathize with my pain and loss of time from school.

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If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one. Naturally, I will expect a fresh, new life; my wife will take the children and be solely (单独地) responsible for them so that I am left free.

When I am through with school and have a job, I want my wife to quit working and remain at home so that my wife can more fully and completely take care of a wife’s duties.

My God, who wouldn’t want a wife?

【推荐2】We all have the tendency to achieve various targets, and it is easy for us to accumulate a list of work until it gets too unmanageable.

A lot of us may keep a To-Do List for staying on track of what we are doing, but it is just a bunch of wishing thinking and half of the list will be never be finished and forgotten simply due to the fact that it seems physically impossible to complete it.

Author Jim Collins suggested his way out of this dilemma: don’t focus on the things that you need to do, focus on those that you can stop doing.

Write a “stop doing” list rather than a To-Do List. Steve Jobs once said the success of Apple is largely due to the projects they choose to not do. By considering the things we don’t need to do, we can greatly reduce the number of workload and maximise our benefits and output. But how? Ask yourself 3 questions to distinguish the things that we should do and those we should stop doing.

a. What are you deeply passionate about?

Passion is a really important factor to consider as it is the key to achieving a particular goal. Working on jobs that you are not passionate in is like driving a car without fuel — you won’t get far with it.

b. What are you genetically encoded for — what activities do you feel just “made to do”?

We are all good at doing something. Your strength could be something that I lack. We are also trained to function in different aspects of our society. So choose something that suits you in terms of your ability.

c. What makes economic sense — what can you make a living at?

Sometimes you just have to be a realist. In reality we cannot achieve much of what we want without the sufficient economic power. Dreams will only be dreams when you got no cash. So pick the things that can builds your financial base.

So here comes the answers of what to put into your stop-doing list. If you encounter something that makes you reply “No”,”No” and “No” for these 3 questions. You probably can put it into your “stop doing” list.

【推荐3】Have you ever lost your temper? Did you yell and scream or want to hit someone? If so, you are angry.

Everyone gets angry. Maybe you “lose your cool” or “hit the roof.” Anger can even be a good thing. When kids are treated unfairly, anger can help them stand up for themselves. The hard part is learning what to do with these strong feelings.

Don’t lose control if you get angry. Taking it out on others never solves anything. Instead, admit to yourself that you are angry and try to figure out why. What can you do to keep the situation from happening again?

It helps to talk about your anger with an adult, such as a parent, teacher, or relative. Once you talk about anger, those bad feelings usually start to go away.

Here are some other things you can do when you start to feel angry.

Talk to a friend you can trust

Count to 10

Get or give a hug

Do jumping jacks or another exercise

Draw a picture of your anger

Play a video game

Run around the outside of the house five times as fast as you can

Sing along with the stereo

Pull weeds in the garden

Think good thoughts (maybe about a fun vacation or your favorite sport)

Take a bike ride, go skateboarding, play basketball —do something active!

Never getting angry is impossible. Instead, remember that how you act when you are angry can make the situation better or worse. Don’t let anger be the boss of you. Take charge of it!

【推荐1】A new study of 8,000 young people in the journal of Health and Social Behavior shows that although love can make adults live healthily and happily, it is a bad thing for young people. Puppy love may bring stress for young people and can lead to depression(抑郁). The study shows that girls become more depressed than boys, and younger girls are the worst of all.

The possible reason for the connection between love and higher risk of depression for girls is “loss of self”. According to the study, even though boys would say “lose themselves in a romantic relationship”, this “loss of self” is much more likely to lead to depression when it happens to girls. Young girls who have romantic relationships usually like hiding their feelings and opinions. They won’t tell that to their parents.

Dr. Marianm Kaufman, an expert on young people problems, says 15% to 20% young people will have depression during their growing. Trying romance often causes the depression. She advises kids not to jump into romance too early. During growing up, it is important for young people to build strong friendships and a strong sense of self. She also suggests the parents should encourage their kids to keep close to their friends, attend more interesting school activities and spend enough time with family. Parents should watch for signs of depression—eating or mood changes—and if they see signs from their daughters or sons, they need to give help. The good news is that the connection between romance and depression seems to become weak with age. Love will always make us feel young, but only maturity(成熟) gives us a chance to avoid its bad side effects.

【推荐2】Sara tried to befriend her old friend Steve’s new wife Betty, but Betty never seemed to have anything to say. While Sara felt Betty didn’t hold up her end of the conversation, Betty complained to Steve that Sara never gave her a chance to talk. The problem had to do with expectations about pacing and pausing.

Conversation is a turn-taking game. When our habits are similar, there’s no problem. But if our habits are different, you may start to talk before I’m finished or fail to take your turn when I’m finished. That’s what was happening with Betty and Sara.

It may not be coincidental that Betty, who expected relatively longer pauses between turns, is British, and Sara, who expected relatively shorter pauses, is American. Betty often felt interrupted by Sara. But Betty herself became an interrupter and found herself doing most of the talking when she met a visitor from Finland. And Sara had a hard time cutting in on some speakers from Latin America or Israel.

The general phenomenon, then, is that the small conversation techniques, like pacing and pausing, lead people to draw conclusions not about conversational style but about personality and abilities. These habitual differences are often the basis for dangerous stereotyping. And these social phenomena can have very personal consequences. For example, a woman from the southwestern part of the US went to live in an eastern city to take up a job in personnel. When the Personnel Department got together for meetings, she kept searching for the right time to break in—and never found it. Although back home she was considered outgoing and confident, in Washington she was viewed as shy and retiring. When she was evaluated at the end of the year, she was told to take a training course because of her inability to speak up.

That’s why slight differences in conversational style—tiny little things like microseconds of pause-can have a great effect on one’s life. The result in this case was a judgment of psychological problems—even in the mind of the woman herself, who really wondered what was wrong with her and registered for assertiveness training.

【推荐3】Throughout history, music spread among people of different cultures. In today’s technological advanced society, however, people spread music online, sometimes without an artist’s permission. This can lead to many problems, and music companies are now cracking down on this practice. Sharing music online without permission is theft.

Sharing music online prevents recording companies from making money from their efforts. They say that sharing music online has resulted in a huge drop in profits and sales over the past 10 years. People who find music for free online are not paying for CDs or every MP3 downloaded. To truly understand the influence of music piracy (盗版行为) on creators, one must understand how many people are involved in the recording process. For the sale of each album, profits must be shared between musicians, sound engineers, music producers, managers, advertisers,and the company selling the product. Many people believe sharing music only affects the recording artist, but the reality is that sharing hurts business for all companies involved.

There are many people who don’t see the harm in sharing music online and even think they have the right to do it.One online blogger states that he originally paid for an entire CD and that he should be able to do with the material whatever he wants. While he may have legally paid for the music, he does not have the right to provide permission,which means people like the blogger are thieves.

Although we don’t spread today’s music the same way we did before, there’s no doubt that people around the world love to share music. However, internet piracy would prevent musicians from continuing producing albums for fear of theft. Therefore, if people want to continue listening to their favorite artists, they need to buy their music so that artists will make enough profit to continue their music careers.