Dear Ms. Franklin, I am writing regarding your company's job offer. I am very grateful for this opportunity and am strongly considering accepting it. However, I have concerns regarding your request for an answer by December 1, 2015. As you know, accepting this offer would require moving my family across several states. I have a child in elementary school and my wife needs to care for her mother who lives here. As a result, I would like to ask if you might consider giving an additional week to consider your offer. Please let me know if this extension can be made. Thank you. Sincerely, Bradley Markle

One day after grocery shopping, I was sitting at the bus stop. When the bus arrived, I just hopped on. Not until I got home and reached for the house key did I realize that I had left my purse on the bench at the bus stop. My heart started to beat faster because all my cash for the month was in my purse. How can I get by without the money? I said to myself. I rushed to catch a taxi and headed back to the bus stop. On arriving at the bus stop, I started frantically searching for my purse. Right at that moment, something caught my eye from under the bench ― something familiar. It was my purse, and fortunately all my money was still in there.

The fast pace of today's lifestyle has us piling one thing on top of another. But you should know that multitasking doesn't save any time. Very often, multitasking only slows you down, contrary to popular belief. Give your whole focus to what you're doing at the moment no matter what it is. While doing the laundry, just do the laundry: Listen to the sound of the water as it fills the washing machine and feel the clothes in your hand. It doesn't take up any more time than it would when done with your phone pressed to your ear. The same applies to your work. Focus on one task at a time, and you'll accomplish each task better, and probably faster.

We have all had the experience of suddenly noticing that a source of constant background noise, such as a distant jackhammer or music from a store, has just ceased ― yet we hadn't noticed the sound while it was ongoing. Your auditory areas were predicting its continuation, moment after moment, and as long as the noise didn't change you paid it no attention. By ceasing, it violated your prediction and attracted your attention. Here's a historical example. Right after New York City stopped running elevated trains, people called the police in the middle of the night claiming that something woke them up. They tended to call around the time the trains used to run past their apartments.

You might have heard of such stories of expert intuition: the chess master who walks past a street game and announces White mates in three without stopping, or the physician who makes a complex diagnosis after a single glance at a patient. Expert intuition strikes us as magical, but it is not. Indeed, each of us performs feats of intuitive expertise many times each day. Most of us are pitch-perfect in detecting anger in the first word of a telephone call and recognize as we enter a room that we were the subject of the conversation. Our everyday intuitive abilities are no less marvelous than the striking insights of an experienced chess master or physician ― only more common.

Storing medications correctly is very important because many drugs will become ineffective if they are not stored properly. The bathroom medicine cabinet is not a good place to keep medicine because the room's moisture and heat speed up the chemical breakdown of drugs. Storing medication in the refrigerator is also not a good idea because of the moisture inside the unit. Some easily spoiled drugs do require refrigeration, but these should be labeled as needing to be kept in the refrigerator. Light and air can also affect drugs, but dark bottles and air-tight caps can keep these effects to a minimum. A closet is probably your best bet for storage of your medications, as long as you keep them out of the reach of children.

The graph above shows the results of a survey that asked American e-book readers aged 18 and older to choose all the platforms they used for e-book reading. Computers were the most commonly used platform in 2011, whereas e-readers were used the most in 2014. Computers were also the only platform with its usage decreased, from 42 percent in 2011 to 29 percent in 2014. In 2014, the percentage of e-reader users was 28 points as high as that of computer users. The biggest increase in usage between 2011 and 2014 was for tablets. Among the three platforms whose usage increased between the two years, cell phones showed the smallest increase.

Nathaniel Adams Cole was born in Alabama on March 17, 1919. Cole learned piano from his mother, and both he and his older brother Eddie became professional musicians by their teens. As a teenager Cole organized two musical groups, the Rogues of Rhythm and the Royal Dukes. At 15, he dropped out of school to become a full-time jazz piano player. After he found a job as a pianist at the Century Club in Santa Monica, he formed a trio with Oscar Moore and Wesley Prince in 1939. In 1951, however, the trio officially broke up. After that, Cole emerged as a popular solo vocalist. He released more than forty albums and contributed to the introduction of race music to the larger American musical scene.

Come and learn more about our school! 《Slatford High School OPEN HOUSE》 Anyone interested in our school is welcome! Monday, November 23rd, 2015, 4:00-6:00 p.m. Advance reservations are required. This is your opportunity to: • Tour the campus with a guide starting at 5 p.m. in the gym • Take part in our lessons • Meet the staff and ask questions about school programs Only a limited number of parking spaces are available. Please use public transportation. For more information, visit www.slatford.org.

《Shoes with Heart》 Donate your unwanted shoes! We are collecting shoes for homeless children. Our goal is to collect 500 pairs of shoes. All you have to do is put your unwanted shoes in the shoe collection boxes we provide. The boxes are placed in the lobby of Kew Center. All shoes will be repaired and given to children. Just remember, ￭ Skates and Golf Shoes Are Not Accepted! ￭ Shoes Must Be in Pairs. You can contact us at 455-212-7898. Join Us Today!

Foraging is a means of searching for wild food resources. This is a method that has been used for a long time and is possibly the longest method of food searching, tracing back to thousands of years ago. In the past, people commonly foraged for food in forests, riversides, caves, and virtually any place where food could possibly be found. Most of the foods foraged before were root crops, weeds, shrubs, and many more. Now, foraging has become a rising trend. People in today's fast-paced society engage in this either for necessity or for entertainment. Whatever purpose it may be, people are now slowly but surely getting acquainted with foraging. More and more people find it quite a fulfilling task and very beneficial.

Suppose we wish to create a yellow by mixing red and green paints. If we mixed the paints together, we would fail in getting the intended result, probably getting a reddish color instead. This is because the paints were mixed together so that their effects on light interfered with each other. But suppose the red were painted as many small dots of paint. From a distance, it would look like a solid red. Similarly, the green could be painted as many small dots on the same paper, never overlapping the red dots. From up close the many small red and green dots would be seen. From a distance, far enough back so that the individual dots could be invisible, the eye would receive a mixture of red and green light. The light would look yellow.

I found my baby sister! I proudly said, pushing a stroller around so that my mother could see the newest member of our family whom I had just taken. At that time I was not quite three years old, and the toddler was only a few months younger than that, with her hair tied tightly behind her little head. I remember that she was smiling up at me. I must have taken her smile as permission to take the unwatched stroller. No, you haven't! my mother gasped in shock, putting a hand over her own mouth. The child was quickly returned to her worried mother, despite my tearful protests.

Judgements about flavor are often influenced by predictions based on the appearance of the food. For example, strawberry-flavored foods would be expected to be red. However, if colored green, because of the association of green foods with flavors such as lime, it would be difficult to identify the flavor as strawberry unless it was very strong. Color intensity also affects flavor perception. A stronger color may cause perception of a stronger flavor in a product, even if the stronger color is simply due to the addition of more food coloring. Texture also can be misleading. A thicker product may be perceived as tasting richer or stronger simply because it is thicker, and not because the thickening agent affects the flavor of the food.

While a home provides shelter and a place to gather, it is also the safe place where we can express our feelings and enjoy some of the most important and meaningful events in our lives. Therefore, designing a home is a very personal venture. I strongly believe that a home provides a canvas on which we can illustrate who we are; your space should look like you and no one else―even if you are using an interior designer. While some designers love a blank slate and the freedom to do whatever they want, I prefer to work with clients who have an opinion and a story, and I always want the end result to be the best possible version of their taste.

Houses in flames, crops stolen, and hasty graves for the dead. This was the legacy of Attila's Huns, sweeping across northern Italy and causing massive destruction to the remains of the Roman Empire. But they unintentionally left another, more positive legacy as well. Refugees from burning cities were desperate to find safe refuge. As things got worse, more Roman citizens streamed to the wetlands to avoid the mass killings and destruction on the mainland. Over the next few centuries they transformed the tough surroundings into an architectural wonder: Venice! Built out of misfortune, Venice eventually turned into one of the richest and most beautiful cities in the world. Thus harsh necessity can be the mother of glorious invention.

When we discuss the idea of responsibility, we need to make a distinction between responsibility and moral responsibility. Responsibility is when one takes on a task or burden and accepts the associated consequences. For example, if you take on the responsibility of organizing a conference for work, then you not only take on the task of organizing the event, but you are also taking on the responsibility of its outcome; whether it is a success or failure. This is responsibility. Moral responsibility, on the other hand, is responsibility based on one's moral codes. Let's say that none of the speakers can make the conference because of a big snowstorm. You are responsible for the success or failure of the conference, but you may not be morally responsible for its failure.

People are cautioned not to look at the Sun at the time of a solar eclipse because the brightness and the ultraviolet light of direct sunlight are damaging to the eyes. This good advice is often misunderstood by those who think that sunlight is more damaging at this special time. But staring at the Sun when it is high in the sky is harmful whether or not an eclipse occurs. In fact, staring at the bare Sun is more harmful than when part of the Moon blocks it. The reason for special caution at the time of an eclipse is simply that more people are interested in looking at the Sun during this time.

It is said that in ancient Athens the followers of Plato gathered one day to ask themselves the following question: What is a human being? After a great deal of thought, they came up with the following answer: a human being is a featherless biped. Everybody seemed content with this definition until a philosopher burst into the lecture hall with a live featherless chicken. Holding it in his hand, he shouted Look! I present you with a human being. After the stir had died down, the philosophers gathered again and improved their definition. A human being, they said, is featherless biped with broad nails. This curious story from the history of early philosophy shows the kinds of difficulties philosophers have sometimes been faced with when attempting to give abstract, general definitions of what it is to be human.

In prehistoric times, humans faced challenges different from those they face today. For example, a common challenge for prehistoric man may have been to walk outside his cave in the morning and find himself face-to-face with a huge, hungry lion. When confronted with such a threat, the brain would send the signal, Threat! and the body would respond by shooting hormones, such as adrenaline, into the bloodstream at lightning speed. That made the body immediately stronger and faster so the human could either wrestle the lion or run away very fast. When humans either fought or ran away, the physical activity would use up the hormones, and the body chemistry would quickly return to normal.

Fear of sharks has kept many pool swimmers from testing the ocean water. Especially, the 1975 blockbuster movie Jaws, featuring a series of shark attacks in a small beach community, provided vivid images that convinced many people that ocean swimming should be left to the big fish. However, the actual chance of being attacked by a shark is very small. You take a greater risk while driving to and from the beach. According to the International Shark Attack File, the low number of shark attacks indicates that these big fish do not feed on humans by nature. Most shark attacks are simply due to mistaken identity. In 2007, there were 71 reported shark attacks on humans worldwide and only one death, which is significantly lower than the 2007 death rate for bee stings and snake bites.

Clearly there is no shortage of bacteria in our gut, which can make this next statement a little hard to believe. Our gut bacteria belong on the endangered species list. The average American adult has approximately 1,200 different species of bacteria residing in his or her gut. That may seem like a lot until you consider that the average native living in the Amazonas of Venezuela has roughly 1,600 species, a full third more. Similarly, other groups of humans with lifestyles and diets more similar to our ancient human ancestors have more varied bacteria in their gut than we Americans do. Why is this happening? Our overly processed Western diet, overuse of antibiotics, and sterilized homes are threatening the health and stability of our gut inhabitants.

Do animals have a sense of fairness? Researchers decided to test this by paying dogs for giving their paw. Dogs were asked repeatedly to give their paw. Researchers measured how fast and how many times dogs would give their paw if they were not rewarded. Once this baseline level of paw giving was established, the researchers had two dogs sit next to each other and asked each dog in turn to give a paw. Then one of the dogs was given a better reward than the other. In response, the dog that was being paid less for the same work began giving its paw more reluctantly and stopped giving its paw sooner. This finding raises the very interesting possibility that dogs may have a basic sense of fairness, or at least a hatred of inequality.

We can start to help our babies learn to love great foods even before they are born. The latest science is uncovering fascinating connections between what moms eat while pregnant and what foods their babies enjoy after birth. Remarkable, but true. Babies in the womb taste, remember, and form preferences for what Mom has been eating. Consider a fascinating study involving carrot juice. As part of the study, one group of pregnant women drank ten ounces of carrot juice four times a week for three weeks in a row. Another group of women in the study drank water. When their babies were old enough to start eating cereal, it was time to look for a difference between the groups. An observer who didn't know to which group each baby belonged studied the babies as they ate cereal mixed with carrot juice. The babies who lacked this earlier experience of tasting carrot juice in the womb protested and made unhappy faces when they first tasted the juice, whereas the others readily accepted and enjoyed the carrot juice in the cereal. There was a dramatic difference between those who had sampled carrot juice in the womb and those who had not.

Once there were two thieves who worked together. One of the thieves, Jeff, would distract people out on the street while his friend would sneak into their homes and steal clothes from their bedrooms! Socks, shirts, pants, even underwear! One day, they were both caught and taken to the judge. Which of you did the stealing? asked the judge. Um, I did, said Jeff's friend. The judge shook his head and pointed to Jeff. And you distracted the people? Jeff nodded in response to the question. The judge thought for a moment and then said to him, So, how did you do it? Tell me about it. Jeff smiled, thinking the judge was going to let him go since he hadn't stolen anything. Well, Your Honor, I would ask people about the weather, talk about sports scores, and say whatever I could to hold their attention, while that man over there took their things. You see, Your Honor, I never actually stole anything myself. You just distracted people? said the judge. By wasting their time? That's right. The judge cleared his throat. All right then, here are your sentences: The one who stole the clothes must return them and give each person an extra piece of clothing in addition to the ones that he took. Jeff's friend nodded as his sentence was announced. The judge continued, The other man must go to prison for the next ten years. What! cried the lawyer representing Jeff. But Your Honor! I don't understand! Why would you give such a harsh sentence to my client? After all, Jeff just wasted people's time! He never even committed a crime! The judge replied, His crime was greater! I gave these sentences because your client's partner stole something that could easily be replaced ― people's clothes; but your client stole something that can never be repaid ― people's time.