随着城市的发展，许多历史建筑被夷为平地。这些建筑所承载的文化和历史也随风而去。应该怎样对待这些历史建筑呢？请就此谈谈你的看法。
Vacations are a chance to take break from work, see the world and enjoy time with family. But do they make you happier? Researchers from the Netherlands set out to measure the effect that vacations have on overall happiness and how long it lasts. They studied happiness levels among 1, 530 Dutch adults, 974 of whom took a vacation during the 32-week study period. The study showed that the largest lift in happiness comes from the simple act of planning vacation. In the study, the effect of vacation expectation lifted happiness for eight weeks.
After the vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people. How much stress or relaxation a traveler experienced on the trip appeared to influence post-vacation happiness. There was no post-trip happiness benefit for travelers who said the vacation was “neutral” or “stressful.”
Surprisingly, even those travelers who described the trip as “relaxing” showed no additional jump in happiness after the trip. “They were no happier than people who had not been on holiday,” said the lead author, Jeroen Nawijn, tourism research lecturer at Breda University. The only vacationers who experienced an increase in happiness after the trip were those who reported feeling “very relaxed” on their vacation. Among those people, the vacation happiness effect lasted for just two weeks after the trip before returning to baseline levels.
One reason vacations don’t increase happiness after the trip may have to do with the stress of returning to work. And for some travelers, the holiday itself was stressful. “In comments from people, the thing they mentioned most referred to disagreements with a travel partner or being ill,” Mr. Nawijn said.
Since most of the happiness boost comes from planning and expecting a vacation, the study suggests that people may get more out of several small trips a year than one big vacation, Mr Nawijn said.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Every culture has set rules about how people should act. Patterns of good behavior, or manners, show respect and care for others. Yet the details of how to express respect vary.
Greeting people cheerfully is almost always considered polite. But it’s more important in some cultures than others. For example, when you enter a store in France, you should always greet the person working there. Other cultures also value greeting people. But of course the greetings vary as people speak different languages.
When I was growing up in the United States, I once participated in a performance at my church. Afterward, someone gave me a compliment, but I felt like I had done a bad job. So I tried to refuse the compliment, saying, “No, I didn’t do that well.” My mother got my attention and told me that was very rude. Later I learned that refusing a compliment is accepted and even approved of in China.
Some of the biggest cultural differences have to do with table manners. In North America, it’s polite to eat as quietly as possible. That means chewing with your mouth closed and not slurping（吃东西时发出的声音）your soup. The same goes for burping（打嗝）. But in parts of Asia slurping shows that you are enjoying your meal. And burping is a sign of being full and content.
There are also differences in how people eat across cultures. For example, in North America and Europe people use forks to bring food to their mouths. But in Thailand, a fork is only used to push food onto a spoon. In India and the Middle East, people eat with their hands. But eating with the left hand is forbidden. This is because the left hand is considered unclean.
Yet there are also similar points across cultures. Saying “please” and “thank you”, for example, is almost always polite. If you show appreciation and try to follow local customs, people will generally respond well. Showing kindness can bring people together, no matter what culture they come from.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In the 19th century, there used to be a model of how to be a good person. There were floods of passion flowing through you. Your job, as captain of your soul, was to erect a dam to say no to laziness and greed.
These days that model is out of fashion. Knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it. your will power is no longer like a dam.
The 19th-century character model was based on an understanding of free will Today, we know that free will is bounded. People can change their lives, but ordering change is not simple because many things are beyond our direct control.
Much of our behavior, for example, is guided by unconscious habits. Researchers at Duke University calculated that more than 40 percent of the actions we take are governed by habits, not actual decisions. Researchers have also come to understand the structure of habits- cue, routine and reward.
You can change your own personal habits. If you leave running shorts on the floor at night, that’ll be a cue to go running in the morning. Don’t try to ignore your afternoon snack craving. Every time you feel the cue for a snack, insert another routine. Take a walk. Their research thus implies a different character model, which is supposed to handle the neural networks inside.
To be an effective person, under this model, you are supposed to coolly examine your own unconscious habits. You are supposed to devise strategies to alter the cues and his is a bit disturbing, because the important habitual neural networks are not formed by mere routine, nor can they be reversed by clever cues. They are burned in by emotion and strengthened by strong yearnings.
If you want to change your life, don't just look for a clever cue. Commit yourself to some larger global belief.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The meaning of silence varies among cultural groups. Silences may be thoughtful, or they may be empty when a person has nothing to say. A silence in a conversation may also show stubbornness, or worry. Silence may be viewed by some cultural groups as extremely uncomfortable; therefore attempts may be made to fill every gap with conversation. Persons in other cultural groups value silence and view it as necessary for understanding a person's needs.
Many native Americans value silence and feel it is a basic part of communication among people, just as some traditional Chinese and Thais do. Therefore, when a person from one of these cultures is speaking and suddenly stops, what may be implied is that the person wants the listener to consider what has been said before continuing. In these cultures, silence is a call for reflection.
Other cultures may use silence in other ways, particularly when dealing with conflicts among people or in relationships of people with different amounts of power. For example, Russian, French, and Spanish persons. may use silence to show agreement between parties about the topic under discussion. However, Mexicans may use silence when instructions are given by a person in authority rather than be rude to that person by arguing with him or her. In still another use, persons in Asian cultures may view silence as a sign of respect, particularly to an elder or a person in authority.
Nurses and other care-givers need to be aware of the possible meanings of silence when they come across the personal anxiety their patients may be experiencing. Nurses should recognize their own personal and cultural construction of silence so that a patient's silence is not interrupted too early 'or allowed to go on unnecessarily. A nurse who understands the healing value of silence can use this understanding to assist in the care of patients from their own and from other cultures.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
每年五月的第二个周日是母亲节，你所在的班级准备以母亲节为契机筹划一次班级主题活动，你积极参与筹划并设计了一个活动方案，请你在全班同学面前介绍你的方案。介绍包括以下两个方面:
1、简述你活动方案的主题和内容。
2、谈谈你设计该活动方案的理由。
(文中不能涉及真实信息)
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What comes first: the optimism or the good health?
Optimism, defined as the general expectation that the future will be favorable, could provide ways to improve health, some researchers believe. But scientists remain unsure if optimism goes ahead of health improvements, or vice versa.
A recent study suggests that most people can’t help but to think optimistically. This study was conducted by Ed O’Brien, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The findings suggest that people have a natural tendency to think positively about their future.
Participants were asked to create a list of imaginary personal experiences that would make them happy or unhappy over the course of the next year. They then ranked how difficult it was to plan that list and how happy they believed they would be in the future overall. The easier it was for people to think of positive future experiences, the happier they imagined they would be. However, there was no relationship between easily developing negative future experiences and expecting to be unhappy as a result.
O’Brien concluded that people seem to discount the possibility that future negative events will make them happy overall, suggesting that optimism might come more naturally. “We’re not as used to thinking about the future in terms of things that are going to go wrong.” O’Brien’s study is one of many to find that people are consistently optimistic about their future, predicting pleasant experiences and discounting unpleasant ones. If optimism may lead to better health and people generally tend to think optimistically, what does this mean for the connection between mental and physical health? “If we can make sure that optimism comes before healthy states, we might be able to involve and improve people’s optimism,” Boehm explained. However, it’s difficult to determine what comes first: the optimism or the good health.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
