The people who built Stonehenge in southern England thousands of years ago had wild parties, eating barbecued pigs and breaking pottery. This is according to recent work by archaeologists — history experts who investigate (调查) how human beings lived in the past.
Archaeologists digging near Stonehenge last year discovered the remains of a large prehistoric village where they think the builders of the mysterious stone circle used to live.
The village is about 4,600 years old, the same age as Stonehenge and as old as the pyramids in Egypt. It is less than two miles from the famous ancient landmark and lies inside a massive manmade circular dirt wall, or "henge", known as the Durrington Walls.
Remains found at the site included jewellery, stone arrowheads, tools made of deer antlers, wooden spears and huge amounts of animal bones and broken pottery. "These finds suggest Stone Age people went to the village at special times of the year to feast and party", says Mike Parker Pearson from Sheffield University in England.
He said many of the pig bones they found had been thrown away half-eaten. He also said the partygoers appeared to have shot some of the farm pigs with arrows, possibly as a kind of sport before barbecuing them.
An ancient road which led from the village to the River Avon was also found. Here, the experts think, people came after their parties to throw dead relatives in the water so the bodies would be washed downstream to Stonehenge.
Parker Pearson believes Stonehenge was like a cemetery where ancient Britons buried the dead and remembered their ancestors. "The theory is that Stonehenge is a kind of spirit home to the ancestors."
The recent discovery of the village within the Durrington Walls shows that Stonehenge didn't stand alone but was part of a much bigger religious site, according to Parker Pearson.
People still come to worship and celebrate at Stonehenge today. They meet there when the sun sets on the shortest day of winter and when it rises on the longest day of summer. But the days of barbecuing whole pigs there and throwing family members into the river are a thing of the past.
It's 2035. You have a job, a family and you're about 40 years old! Welcome to your future life.
Getting ready for work, you pause in front of the mirror.
“Turn red,” you say. Your shirt changes from sky blue to deep red. Tiny preprogrammed electronics(智能电子元件) are re-arranged in your shirt to change its color. Looking into the mirror, you find it hard to believe you're 40. You look much younger.
With amazing advances in medicine, people in your generation may live to be 150 years old. You're not even middle-aged! As you go into the kitchen and prepare to pour your breakfast cereal into a bowl, you hear, “To lose weight, you shouldn't eat that.” from your shoes. They read the tiny electronic code on the cereal box to find out the nutrition details. You decide to listen to your shoes. “Kitchen, what can I have for breakfast?” A list of possible foods appears on the counter as the kitchen checks its food supplies.
“Ready for your trip to space?” you ask your son and daughter. In 2005 only specially trained astronauts went into space and very few of them. Today anyone can go to space for day trips or longer vacations. Your best friend even works in space. Handing your children three strawberries each, you add, “The doctor said you need these for space travel.” Thanks to medical advances, vaccination shots(防疫针) are a thing of the past. Ordinary foods contain specific vaccines. With the strawberries in their mouths, the kids head for the front door.
It's time for you to go to work. Your car checks your fingerprints and unlocks the doors. “My office, Autopilot,” you command. Your car drives itself down the road and moves smoothly into traffic on the highway. You sit back and unroll your e-newspaper. The latest news downloads and fills the viewer. Looking through the pages, you watch the news as video film rather than read it.
In an effort to discourage people from using plastics, scientists have been hard at work inventing alternative packaging products. From water bottles made from seaweed to cutlery(餐具) made from rice and wheat, a number of inventions are set to change the way we eat while we are on the go, or having a relaxing picnic in the park.
The idea of using seaweed to make eco-friendly water bottles has been around for a few years. Recently, Ari Jonsson took his invention—a water bottle made from red seaweed—to show off at a festival. The bottles will only hold their shape as long as they are filled. As soon as these bottles are empty they will begin to break down, though they would be perfectly safe to eat. Ari Jonsson's bottles are a step closer to a widely used alternative to the current plastic ones.
The eatable water container is not the only product to add to our image of the future. Narayana Pessapaty has also created eatable spoons. After the success of his spoons, Mr. Pessapaty is ready to expand and introduce forks and chopsticks to his menu. His aim is to largely reduce the amount of plastic waste, which is a huge problem for waste sites all over the world. It is a product that may take up to 500 years to break down, and recycling companies worldwide are struggling to deal with it.
Aside from the obvious benefits to the environment, this new packaging is also cheap to produce and therefore cheap to buy. Even better is the fact that similar eatable cutlery can be made at home, possibly a science project for children or just fun with friends. Why not experiment and create your own recipes?
Years ago, the American writer Kurt Vonnegut often said there was one story that would always make a million dollars: "Cinderella"(《灰姑娘》).
"Cinderella" made more like $70 million in ticket sales when it opened last weekend. But the movie got a mixed reaction. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter praised the movie and said, "Anyone will find something to enjoy in it." Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer called the movie "a winning re-do." Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote that "Disney finally got Cinderella right." Other people were not as happy with the movie. Sara Stewart of the New York Post wrote, "This Cinderella is all dressed up with nowhere very interesting to go."
Although different people think differently towards the movie, what is clear, however, is the movie's business success. It is not only popular in the theaters but also in sale. And Disney has widened its usual market for "Cinderella" products.
There are products connected to the Disney movie targeted(面向) not only at little girls, but women, too. For example, the famous shoe designer Jimmy Choo worked with Disney to create "Cinderella's shoes." You can buy them for about $5,000. At that price, you would not want to lose one at the party, even if that is the way you get your prince(王子).
The makeup(化装品) company MAC quickly sold all its products connected to "Cinderella." HSN is a popular website selling clothing and objects for the home. The marketer is now also selling "Cinderella" products.
So, is there anything left for the children, those people we think of as the traditional audience for the age-old tale? Yes, you can find toys and other children's products at the American store JC Penney. Of course, you can also visit a Disney store.
Why do people lie? Many psychologists agree that it can start from childhood? There are various reasons why children make false statements. They usually tell untruthful stories to cover up the mistakes that they have done in the past. Lying is also a way to avoid receiving punishments from parents. If parents fail to reprimand their children for making up false stories, then there is a possibility that they will continue to lie during their teenage years.
Teenagers lie because they want to be accepted by their friends. This is the main reason why they create stories that are not true just to become presentable and acceptable to other people. In some instances, teenagers tell untruthful statements to avoid criticisms from their families and friends.
As teenagers grow, lying becomes one of your habits. Their knowledge on making up untruthful stories becomes more developed. People lie in workplaces if they fail to meet the deadlines and if they fail to accomplish and do their tasks efficiently. Some of the common lies made in workplaces are getting sick and having emergencies at home. The danger involved in frequent lying is when it, becomes a character. Frequent lying causes the development of the condition known to doctors as pathological（病态的）lying.
Pathological lying is a mental health condition, which is associated with individuals who have the urge to tell untruthful statements. Patients suffering from it make up stories about everything and anything. These individuals lie to meet the standards of other people who they want to please. These patients deceive other people because it gives them an unexplained pleasure. One of the best ways of treating pathological liar is to help them tell true statements and stories at all times. This may be hard for them, but as they are accustomed to it, they will start to realize that they will be more accepted by their families and other people if they stop themselves from making up for stories
Telling fewer lies benefits people physically and mentally. Anita E. Kelly, study author and professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, employed 110 adults for her study. She divided them into two groups and asked one group to stop lying for 10 weeks. Lies included big ones and tiny ones—any false statements—but participants were still allowed to leave out the truth, keep secrets and avoid questions they didn't want to answer, etc. The other group wasn't given any special instructions about lying.
It turned out that both groups reduced their lying, but those who were specifically told to tell the truth improved their health more. "We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies. That in turn was associated with significantly improved health," said Kelly.
When participants in the no-lie group told three fewer white lies than they did in other weeks, they experienced, on average, fewer mental-health complaints and physical complaints. They were less likely to feel tense or sad and also experienced fewer sore throats and headaches. They also reported that personal relationships improved. Additionally, participants found themselves honest about their daily accomplishments, and they stopped making up excuses for being late or failing to complete a task, for example.
"It's certainly a worthy goal to have people be more honest and interact with others in a more honest way,” says University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman. “That would be beneficial. I'm a little doubtful whether it makes us all healthier, but it may make us healthier in a psychological way."
People generally tend to pick out the best-looking fruits and vegetables when shopping for produce, but Canadian supermarket chain Loblaws is attracting customers with badly-shaped and faulty produce at the price of 30% lower than normal-looking ones.
A trial run of the ugly food line, named "Naturally Imperfect", began with only apples and tomatoes to choose from. Consumer demand has been so huge that Loblaws is going to introduce more unsightly vegetables and fruit options like onions and mushrooms. The line is available at other stores, including Real Canadian Superstore and Your Independent Grocer.
All the produce that will be sold through Naturally Imperfect would otherwise have been used in juices, sauces, or soups, or have not been harvested at all. The director Dan Branson explained that this program benefited both food producers who would otherwise have to let abnormal harvest go to waste, and consumers who could buy fresh produce at low prices. And he was right, given how popular the line has become.
"It really went well beyond our expectation," Branson said. "I think it really spoke to the fact that Canadians are out there really looking for some options."
Of course, Canadians know that beauty is more than skin deep, but they also recognize that they can get the same flavor and nutritional benefits in spite of appearances. The positive response to the initial offering of apples and potatoes showed the opportunity to expand the line and offer more options at a greater price to Canadian families.
"If you grow produce in your backyard, there will be a lot of produce that won't look as pretty as what you will see in a grocery store," said Branson. "And nature doesn't grow everything perfectly. I'd like to think if somebody were to take a No Name Naturally Imperfect apple, put right beside a No.1 apple, close their eyes and eat them, there would be no difference."
Engineers in Upstate New York have invented a folded paper device that looks like a decorated art project. But don't be fooled. This is actually a paper-based battery. No, it doesn't look like any of those metal batteries running flashlights or smartphones. In these systems, the battery can be printed on a page. The battery's power consists of living bacteria.
Paper electronics are simple to make and inexpensive, notes study leader Seokheun Choi, an engineer at Binghamton University. They need no electrical outlet to recharge. They just need more bacteria, which can be found everywhere — including dirty water.
"Most batteries use chemicals to generate electricity. Substituting bacteria can be an advantage," Choi says. "They are cheap and self-repairing." What paper-based batteries won't do is generate much power. They do, however create enough to run small devices in faraway or dangerous places — such as a battlefield. They might also find use in medicine. For instance, they might power tiny sensors, such as the types used to measure blood sugar.
This invention is based on an observation made more than a century ago — that microbes (微生物) produce electricity as they digest food. Scientists refer to the bio-batteries based on this principle as microbial fuel cells. A fuel cell generates electricity like a regular battery. But a regular battery stops producing electricity when its inner chemical reactions stop. A fuel cell uses fuel that can be refilled. In this case, bacteria serve as the fuel. By refilling more microbes, as needed, scientists can keep these fuel cells running.
Lab tests have shown that the new battery can produce a current. Now, Choi and his team are looking at ways to increase the power. They're studying different shapes and materials for the anode and cathode (正负极). They're also looking for the best ways to combine batteries for more power. The beauty of the paper devices is that you can simply fold them to connect them. And they surely will be a trend in the near future.
Ireland has had a very difficult history. The problems started in the 16th century when English rulers tried to conquer(征服) Ireland. For hundreds of years, the Irish people fought against the English. Finally, in 1921, the British government was forced to give independence to the south of Ireland. The result is that today there are two "Irelands". Northern Ireland, in the north, is part of the United Kingdom. The Republic of Ireland, in the south, is an independent country.
In the 1840s the main crop, potatoes, was affected by disease and about 750,000 people died of hunger. This, and a shortage(短缺) of work, forced many people to leave Ireland and live in the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada. As a result of these problems, the population fell from 8.2 million in 1841 to 6.6 million in 1851.
For many years, the majority of Irish people earned their living as farmers. Today, many people still work on the land but more and more people are moving to the cities to work in factories and offices. Life in the cities is very different from life in the countryside, where things move at a quieter and slower pace.
The Irish are famous for being warm-hearted and friendly. Oscar Wilde, a famous Irish writer, once said that the Irish were "the greatest talkers since the Greeks". Since independence, Ireland has revived(复兴) its own culture of music, language, literature and singing. Different areas have different styles of old Irish songs which are sung without instruments. Other kinds of Irish music use many different instruments such as the violin, whistles, etc.
London's newest skyscraper (摩天大楼)is called the Shard and it cost about 430 million pounds to build. At a height of almost 310 metres, it is the tallest building in Europe. The Shard has completely changed the appearance of London. However, not everyone thinks that it is a change for the better.
The Shard was designed by the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano. When he began designing the Shard for London, Piano wanted a very tall building that looked like a spire (尖顶)• He wanted the glass surfaces to reflect the sky and the city. The sides of the building aren't regular. So the building has an unusual shape. It looks like a very thin，sharp piece of broken glass. And that is how the building got the name: the Shard. Piano says that the spire shape of the Shard is part of a great London tradition. The shape reminds him of the spires of the churches of London or the tall masts (桅杆) of the ships that were once on the river Thames.
The Shard has 87 floors. At the top, there is an observatory. At the moment the building is empty, but eventually there will be a five-star hotel. There will also be top quality restaurants, apartments and offices.
Before building work began, a lot of people didn't want the Shard though the plans were approved. Now they are still unhappy about the Shard. Some critics say that such a tall skyscraper might be good in a city like New York, but not in London. They say that the best thing about the Shard is its spire shape. But that is the only thing. There is no decoration, only flat surfaces. The Egyptians did that 4,500 years ago. They also think the Shard is too big for London. It destroys the beauty of the city.
Other critics don't like what the Shard seems to represent. They say that the Shard shows how London is becoming more unequal. Only very rich people can afford to buy the expensive private apartments and stay in the hotel. But the people who live near the Shard are among the poorest in London. So the Shard seems a symbol of the division in society between the very rich and the poor.
The Shard now dominates the London skyline. It is not certain, however, that ordinary London citizens will ever accept it as a valuable addition to the city.
Uggs(雪地靴) are certainly ugly, or at least inelegant. The shapeless boots, pulled on in a hurry, can make anyone look like a slob (懒惰的人) , which has made them the target of disrespect. It hasn't been hard to find someone strongly condemning them. "Ugg boots are no sexy," The Independent declared in 2003, "unless you're Mrs. Bigfoot on a lone mission across Antarctic to find Mr. Bigfoot. When wearing the boots, a writer of The Gloss complained, "There's nothing to indicate that you don't have square, horrible shoeboxes in place of human feet." In 2015, one coffee shop on Brick Lane in east London ever banned ugg-wearers.
And yet, over the years, plenty of strange and unattractive shoes have met with the approval of the fashion establishment. The problem with uggs wasn't that they were ugly; it's that they were common.
But a funny thing happened on the way to fashion's tomb: the universal ugg has not gone anywhere. Uggs have quietly stayed here since their best time. Once you start paying attention, you'll be shocked to discover how many people are still wearing them. They are worn by mothers in town and in the country, by teenagers on Saturday shopping trip and by people in fashion.
Perhaps the secret of uggs's unstoppable success is that, if there is a dividing line between public appeal and private style, it might be a pair of cozy boots. They are certainly comfortable, soft and warm, as if your feet were in the hugging of someone who really loves you. At $150 a pair, they are neither cheap nor entirely out of range. They are casual and indulgent (纵容的) .
Somehow uggs, the boots that so many people hate, have managed to challenge the cruel logic of the fashion cycle and carry on whether you approve of them or not.
A car needs gas to run and your body also needs food to work for you. Eating the right kind of food is very important. It can help your body grow strong, so take care of what you eat.
There are four main food groups altogether. The dairy group has food like milk, cheese and sour milk. The other three groups are the meat and fish group, the fruit and vegetable group, and the bread and rice group. Each meal should have at least one food from all four main groups. With all these food together, you will be given enough energy during the day.
It is easy to get into bad eating habits. You may eat your breakfast in a hurry to get to school on time. Or you may not have time for a good lunch. It may seem easy to finish your supper with fish and chips all the time. But you will find yourself tired these days and you can not think quickly.
Watching what you eat will help your body remain healthy and strong. It is also good to take some exercise. It will help you eat more if you take a walk or play games in the open air. Having a good eating habit with some exercise is the key to your health.
World's loneliest marathon
Many of us know about Russia's Lake Baikal from our textbooks, or by listening to Chinese singer Li Jian's hit song, Lake Baikal. But over the past decade, the world's deepest freshwater lake has been in the spotlight for an extreme sport.
Each March since 2005, about 150 people from around the world sign up for the Baikal Ice Marathon. They come to explore the lake's breathtaking beauty and challenge themselves in unpredictable conditions.
The 26-mile (41. 84-kilometers) journey starts on the lake's eastern shore. In March, the ice is a meter thick and iron-hard. Runners cross this frozen surface, finishing on the western side of the lake.
Known as the "blue eye of Siberia", Lake Baikal has exceptionally clear waters. This means its ice is almost perfectly transparent. "Seen from above, a runner on the ice looks as if he or she is jogging through space," The New York Times noted.
The landscape might be beautiful, but it's also harsh. Strong winds blast across the lake and frostbite can occur within half an hour. Runners say the cold climate is what draws them. They want to test their limits.
"When you are in such an environment, you don't have cars around you, you don't have the noise around. I think these extreme races allow you to be alone with nature," Alicja Barahona, a 64-year-old runner from the US, told ABC News.
The location offers some strange and unique characteristics for this marathon. The finish line is visible from the start, but the endless white offers no progress markers. The race also ends with little fanfare (喧闹). Tourists crowding the ice are mostly addicted to snapping selfies (自拍) and just ignore the runners.
For some runners, the absence of spectators (观众) makes the race more challenging, because it's lonely. They must fight with themselves. "You are alone on Baikal. It is your race. You are alone with yourself. All you need to do is to defeat yourself," Veronique Messina, a French runner, told the Telegraph.
Do you want to experience a small town festival in America? Here are some you can consider going to.
National Cherry Festival
The lovely town of Traverse City, Michigan is famous for cherries, and there's no better time to visit than during the National Cherry Festival. You have eight days to try pies, pancakes, and many other foods made with the delicious fruit. You can also enjoy concerts, an air show, and amusement rides. It takes place in July in Traverse City, Michigan.
Maine Lobster (龙虾) Festival
Every summer, over 80,000 visitors eat more than 25,000 pounds of lobsters caught fresh in nearby waters. There are also concerts and the world-famous lobster crate race, in which kids and adults compete to see who can run the fastest. It takes place in August in Rockland, Maine.
Wellfleet OysterFest (牡蛎节)
About twenty years ago, the small town of Wellfleet started its annual OysterFest to bring some of the summer crowds back to Cape Cod by putting food, fun, and music on the half shell. Home to one of the world's great oyster beds, Wellfleet puts on a two-day event that attracts more visitors who come to try oysters nowadays. It takes place in October on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Barbecue Festival
The 19,000 residents of Lexington, North Carolina want the world to know that their hometown has been the capital of barbecue since 1919 when a local resident set up the first BBQ tent. Nowadays when the Barbecue Festival takes over the town's Main Street, it draws nearly a quarter of a million people. At the festival there are also concerts and other entertainments. It takes place in October in Lexington, North Carolina.
After years in the wilderness, the term 'artificial intelligence' (AI) seems to make a comeback. AI was big in the 1980s but vanished in the 1990s. It re-entered public consciousness with the release of AI, a movie about a robot boy. Researchers, executives and marketing people are now using the expression. It is becoming acceptable again to talk of computers performing human tasks such as problem-solving and pattern-recognition. Admittedly, the return of the term has a long way to go, and some firms still prefer to avoid using it. But the fact that others are starting to use it again suggests that AI has moved on.
The field was launched, and the term 'artificial intelligence' was created, at a conference in 1956 by a group of researchers that included Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Herbert Simon and Alan Newell, all of whom went on to become leading figures in the field. The goal they shared was an attempt to capture human abilities using machines. That said, different groups of researchers attacked different problems, from speech recognition to chess playing, in different ways. AI unified the field in name only. But it was a term that captured the public imagination.
Most researchers agree that AI peaked around 1985. For years, AI researchers had implied that a breakthrough was just around the corner. However, thinking computers and household robots failed to materialise. People realized these were hard problems. By the late 1980s, the term AI was being avoided by many researchers. Even in some ways, AI was a victim of its own success. Meanwhile, the technologies that made it onto the market, such as speech recognition, language translation and decision-support software, were no longer regarded as AI. Yet all three once fell well within the umbrella of AI research.
But the tide may now be turning, according to Dr Leake. HNC Software of San Diego, backed by a government agency, reckon that their new approach to artificial intelligence is the most powerful and promising approach ever discovered. HNC claim that their system, based on a group of 30 processors, could be used to spot camouflaged (伪装)vehicles on a battlefield or extract a voice signal from a noisy background-tasks humans can do well, but computers cannot.
"Whether or not their technology lives up to the claims made for it, the fact that HNC are highlighting the use of AI is itself an interesting development," says Dr Leake.
Another factor that may promote the future for AI is that investors (投资者) are now looking for firms using clever technology, rather than just a clever business model, to differentiate themselves. That may mean that more artificial intelligence companies will start to emerge to meet this challenge.
There are now many products and services on the market which are similar in content though produced by different companies. It is vital, therefore, for a company to distinguish itself from its competitors by having a strong company image which is immediately recognizable.
Logos are part of this image. They are symbols which often include a name or initials to identify a company. The logo establishes a visual identity for the company, just as different groups of young people express their identity through hairstyles and clothes. All groups from all cultures and throughout the ages have used colors and symbols to show their identity.
In different cultures, different colors carry different meanings. Some colors may be connected with coldness in one culture and with warmth in another; some colors represent life in one culture but death in another. International companies have, therefore, to make sure that their logos will not be misunderstood in different countries.
The logos of large international companies are instantly recognizable throughout the world. One of the most famous logos is that of Coca-Cola. The design of the words "Coca-Cola" has not changed since 1886, although the surrounding design has been changed from time to time. Many companies have, over the years, renewed their logos to fit in with contemporary design and to present more powerful images. Company logos can be emotive and can inspire loyalty by influencing the subconscious (潜意识的). Some logos include an idea of the product: the steering wheel in the Mercedes logo, for example, and the aero plane tail of Alitalia.
Logos are used on packaging and brochures as well as on the product itself. They may also appear in newspapers or on television as part of an advertising campaign. Companies need to have a strong corporate identity. The logo helps to promote this image and to fix it in the minds of the consumers. Logos, therefore, need to be original and to have impact and style.
David Hare is a British playwright, theatre and film director and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter. He shares the books that have changed him.
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
I fell in love with Oscar Wilde at the age of ten. In 1960,when I was 13,1 was engaged in a puppet (木偶) performance of The Importance of Being Earnest, with two other friends from the Thalia School of Drama in Bex hill-on-Sea. Even heavily cut, it was very hard work. The string work required to pass cucumber sandwiches between puppets was way beyond us. But we loved the dialogue and we raised a fair amount of money for charity. At Cambridge University, much to the horror of the puritanical English department, I did a dissertation (论文) on Wilde. Generous, witty, and original, Wilde's been with me all the way.
The Third Man by Graham Greene
It never had occurred to me that a film script could be published, until, at some time in the late 1960s, the BFI published the full text of The Third Man, illustrated with stills from the film.
It was a revelation, and an education in the profession of screenwriting which I would eventually take up. It's every writer's dream to be both good and popular, but Greene is one of the few who has achieved it in my lifetime. His novel, The End of the Affair, affected me so profoundly because it made me realize how important romantic love would be to me-something of which I, up till then, didn't know.
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
George Steiner at Cambridge used to lecture about Western civilization being terminated at Auschwitz during WW Ⅱ. In those days nobody talked about the camps, where millions of Jews were slaughtered. Meanwhile I finally read Hannah Arendt. I never imagined that a philosopher could so urgently address profound questions which actually mattered in everyday life. Her account of how evil may be done by quite ordinary people has never been surpassed.
Sunday Bakeshop in Oakland, California, makes foods that mix American and Asian cultures. The restaurant makes foods that are cooked or baked in an oven. Many of them are sweet. For example, the shop sells something called a dim sum cookie. It looks like a sugar cookie but has sesame (芝麻) seeds on top and sweetened red beans inside. Dim sum is a word for Cantonese foods from southern China.
The dim sum cookie is Elaine Lau's way of honoring her grandmother who would make a kind of food that had a similar taste. Lau's restaurant also makes Chinese White Rabbit candy cookies. Those sweets would not be found in any bakery in Asia but are a mixture of Asian and Western foods. Lau said she speaks to Asian Americans and others at her store. She said, "We get a lot of comments, for example, ‘The cookies are just like little lovely kitties and puppies.' ‘Oh this took me back to several years ago when I was growing up.'" She added that it was nice to create good memories and feelings with her pastries (糕点).
Bakeries that combine the feeling of growing-up Asians and Americans have been opening up more often in recent years. Traditional Asian ingredients are being mixed with European or American pastries into something new. The creations are a way for young Asian Americans to celebrate their identity.
"Older traditional Asian bakeries make foods that immigrants (移民) miss from their home country. The new bakeries celebrate Asian culture and are part of a natural progression," said Robert Ku, who is an Asian American studies professor at Binghamton University in New York state. He also wrote the book Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Politics of Eating Asian in the USA.
"The bakers are showing that their foods, which mix cultures, are just as American as apple pie. It's sort of the artistic side of Asian American identity that's often ignored," Ku said. "They're instead really trying to combine things together."
When answering a question, your silence might say more than your words. A new psychology study has found pausing before replying, even for just a few seconds, can make you seem more insincere or dishonest. That perception (感知) of dishonesty might not be too inaccurate, either. Numerous studies suggest people are slower to respond when they are not being truthful, possibly because it takes more mental work to block a truthful response or fabricate (编造) an alternative.
What's been less clear is how well our lies have been fooling people. Some studies suggest delayed answers come across as insincere to the listener. Others find no relationship between the two, and still more have found the opposite: A bit of hesitation increases our perception of sincerity. These findings are inconsistent and confusing. They are also mostly based on correlations. Even the few studies that have actually looked at causal relationships often didn't consider confusing factors that could also give away a liar or an insincere speaker.
The new research seeks to improve some of those limitations by examining thousands of people under a variety of conditions. Together, it involves more than 7, 500 individuals in a total of 14 experiments. On the whole, the authors found an immediate response was perceived as more sincere, while a delayed response, even a delay as brief as two seconds, was seen as more insincere. "Evaluating other people's sincerity is an important part of social interactions." says consumer behaviour researcher Ignazio Ziano.
"It would be unfair for the responder, such as a crime suspect, if the response delay was misattributed to (错误地归因于) thought suppression (抑制) or answer fabrication when it was in fact caused by a different factor, such as simply being distracted or thoughtful." explains Ziano.
At the end of my third year at university, I still had over 50 meals left in my dining account. So I swiped my meal card until I had nothing left, packed all of the meals and drove to Center City to give them all out to anyone I could find who needed a meal.
When I returned to campus, I wanted to create a formal meal donation program and after months of meetings, I convinced my university to launch this program. But what started with meals quickly evolved into something much greater when I learned about how much food was also going to waste from grocery stores and restaurants in the area.
Approximately 1/3 of all food produced in the United States (126 billion pounds) is thrown in landfills each year. Meanwhile, 40 million Americans are suffering from food insecurity in the US, and 1 in 5 people are suffering in Philadelphia.
My solution was called Sharing Surplus. Then, our team created a transportation network to pick up surplus food on a regular basis and deliver it to local hunger—relief organizations. In the last twelve months, we have delivered more than 75,000 pounds of food to shelters and soup kitchens fighting food insecurity.
Graduating from college soon, I am ready to pursue Sharing Surplus as my full-time job. Now let's talk about Gen Z (those born between 1996 and 2010). Our generation will soon be responsible for the fate of our planet, which is equally exciting and challenging. More than ever, we must look closely at the problems that our society faces today and try to imagine big ideas that can solve them.
