【推荐1】I can't remember a winter being as cold as this in Pennsylvania, but I'm sure there were colder days.

Even though the daylight hours are growing longer minute by minute, it's easy to find an excuse not to go out unless you absolutely must, but then again I often have to push myself to accomplish things.

People I speak to have been in all kinds of nasty moods. They say they're “under the weather”, not feeling good about this time of year.

As I stood outside with my two dogs yesterday, it was so cold that my nose, face and ears felt frozen. Of course, that doesn't matter to Ricky and Lucy. They have a routine they must go through to find just the fighting spot no matter how cold or hot it is. So I wait.

But this time it was different. As cold as it was, I suddenly was excited thinking about how wonderful this extreme cold really was.

Then the sun broke through the clouds and memories of summer's extremely hot days flashed through my mind. I could remember standing in the heat of the afternoon, with sweat pouring down my brow and the hot, burning sun against my face. I reminded myself then and there that in the cold of the winter I would wish I had this heat.

I was grateful for the extremes. Without the extremes in my life, I would never appreciate the days when things were just right. Without the extremes, life would be boring.

It's being pushed to one of the extremes that makes us appreciate the middle more. Health challenges remind us that we need to pay more attention to how we live. Financial extremes remind us that when things go smoothly it's also time to save for raining days.

I've come to the conclusion that all too often I find a reason not to be happy with where I am at that moment. Whether it's hot or cold, good health or bad, in the money or out of it, I always want it to be different.

I'm tired of being “Under the Weather！”

【推荐1】Research has found that storing crucial pieces of information on an electronic device does not rot your memory skills and can actually increase your ability to remember things you would otherwise forget. Storing important information or smartphones may free up our own memory to store a larger amount of less crucial information, allowing us to keep more in total across our internal and electronic memory banks.

Researchers took 158 participants aged between 18 and 71 and showed them up to 12 numbered circles on a screen. Some of the circles would briefly appear pink or blue before all fading to a yellow colour, indicating that they had to be dragged to either the pink side or the blue side of the screen at a later point.

Some of the circles were classed as “high value”, some as “low value” and some as zero value. Users had to remember which side of the screen to drag the circles to in order to earn points. In some of the experiments they had to rely on their own memories. In others, they could set an electronic reminder on a device.

Researchers found subjects tended to use digital devices to store information about which were the highest-value circles. This led to an 1896 increase in accuracy when placing these circles. They also found, to their surprise, using electronic reminders for high-value circles led to a 27% increase in accuracy when differentiating from memory between the low and zero-value circles, even when no electronic reminders had been set for these.

The study said that when people store important information on an external device, their brains tend to delete it from their “internal memory”, reallocating (再分配) that space for “low-value content”.

“The results show that external memory tools work. Far from causing digital dementia, using an external memory device can even improve our memory for information that we never saved. But we need to be careful that we back up the most important information. Otherwise, if a memory tool fails, we could be left with nothing but lower-importance information in our own memory.”

【推荐2】Walking is so simple and convenient that it couldn’t possibly count as exercise, right? Wrong. Study after study shows that regular walking can help you lose weight and reduce your risk of heart disease.

The study published in Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice shows that the blood pressure of the overweight men being tested improved and the amount of body fat greatly decreased.

That’s good news, because walking has now become the most popular fitness activity in the United States. Convenient, simple, and gentle on the joints, walking is perhaps the easiest form of exercise to maintain. According to a survey, four out of five women who start a walking program continue to walk, while half of women who attempt other types of aerobic exercise (有氧运动), such as swimming, drop out during the first few months.

Here are some basics for walking exercise.

Walk at a pace that makes you breathe heavily, but still able to talk.

Your goal, first and foremost, is to walk five days a week, 30 minutes a walk. Do that, and you are getting the base-level amount of exercise that research says should maintain your health and vigor (精力).

Walk for as long as you are comfortable the first week, even if it is just to your mailbox and back. Each following week, increase that amount by no more than 10 percent.

Start every walk with five minutes of easy-paced walking, about the same pace at which you do shopping, to get your body warmed up. Then, cool down at the end of each walk with another five minutes of easy-paced walking. This allows your heart rate to gradually speed up and slow down.

【推荐3】Beijing Opera, as one of Chinese traditional opera forms, is regarded as the national opera of China and well received all over the world.

Beijing Opera arose in the late 18th century with a history of more than 200 years whose origin can date back to some old local operas, especially the Anhui Opera. It became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century. Now it's the biggest kind of opera in China, whose popularity spread all over the country, becoming the most popular dramatic (戏剧的) form on Chinese stage.

There are four basic methods employed in a Beijing Opera performance: chang, nian, zuo, da. Generally speaking, chang means singing, and nian recitation (背诵) and oral communication, while zuo means the facial and body expressions and acting and da is Chinese Kungfu. Beijing Opera also has four main types of performers namely Sheng, Dan, Jing and Chou. Sheng and Dan mean the main roles in the opera. The painted face, in Chinese called 'jing', is a name for the role of the man that has some special characteristic or appearance. Chou is easily understood from the role's name as a clown with an ugly appearance, who is to provide light relief and comedy.

In recent years, Beijing Opera has tried to make some changes, including improving the performance quality. Widely spreading all over China with great influence, Beijing Opera contains the spirit of Chinese national culture, but the shortage of funding has become a big problem as the form enters the 21st century. There is no doubt that it is a treasure of Chinese culture!