I am deeply shocked to see that there was no mention of the floods in Pakistan. I expected to see some mention of this catastrophe in your magazine which has millions of readers around the world. Millions of dollars have been donated up till now. Even several celebrities have visited the country to create awareness and help the victims. Moreover, many notable organizations from around the world are working actively to gather the helping hands from big-hearted people. I ask you to publish something appropriate about this tragedy in your magazine. I believe this will encourage your readers to check out what they can do to help the victims.

Katie worked at her mother's company. She was very good at her job. Yet she had wanted to be a teacher ever since the fourth grade. She entered college majoring in primary school education. However, her mother talked her out of teaching. She told Katie that she should enter her business, as she had the possibility of taking it over one day. Katie followed her mother's advice, but she always felt unfulfilled in her job. In fact, she arranged her schedule to start at 10 a.m. so that she could volunteer at a local school. When her mother discovered what Katie was doing, she felt regret. She told her daughter to go teach. She had followed her passion. She wanted the same thing for her daughter.

While we don't all have the same amount of money, we do have access to the same twenty four hours in every day. Though some people have much less free time than others, nearly everyone has some opportunity to give. The gift of time can sometimes be more satisfying and more valuable than money. You can see this by watching those who have volunteered at homeless shelters or brought meals on wheels to seniors. If you are willing to volunteer, there are many organizations and projects that will be glad to welcome you. Whatever you do, it will almost certainly be educational, enjoyable, and rewarding.

When I got back to my hotel room after taking a lot of pictures, I was eager to upload the photos to my blog. I plugged my digital camera into my computer, and when the process was complete, no photos were there! Worse, the photos on my memory card were gone. When I told my friend what had happened, he sent me a certain program designed to recover photos that were deleted from flash memory cards by mistake. I tried the program. It filled a folder with most of the photos I had lost. I hope you will never have an occasion to use this kind of program. But you need one to have lost files recovered in case things go wrong.

According to a survey, 93 percent of Americans know that too much exposure to the sun is unhealthy. However, 81 percent of them still think they look good after having been out in the sun. With this reason, people love to go to the beaches for vacations and turn their faces to the sun. If work or school keeps them from getting into the sun for real, they pretend to have gotten it by lying in tanning beds. About 30 million Americans are using tanning beds, and indoor-tanning is becoming a huge industry in America.

One of the most important things to remember before a race is to eat the right foods. Here is my lesson for you. The night before one of my marathons, I was struck by an uncontrollable need for apple butter. I satisfied the hunger that evening but paid a heavy price the next day; the apple butter forced me to make several stops during the marathon. You can bet that I never ate apple butter again before a race. Instead, I concentrate on foods that are part of my normal diet such as pasta and rice: foods that fuel my muscles. You must certainly have similar foods that you eat every day. These foods are the ones you should concentrate on before a race.

Generally speaking, economy is a great virtue in film music, both in duration and in choice of instrument. The musical score should do no more than is necessary to perform its proper function clearly and simply. However, because of some irresistible temptation to dress up scenes with music whether they need it or not, normal films usually end up with too much music rather than not enough. The Hollywood tendency seems to be toward large orchestras, even though smaller combinations can be more powerful in their effect on the film as a whole. The proper amount of music must match the nature of the picture itself.

When you sit down to begin a piece of writing, your first aim ought to be to make a mess. You just make a note of everything that comes to your mind on the subject. You do not have to worry at all about whether your stuff is connected logically. Just play with your subject and do no fine detail work. I believe many writing difficulties come about because people think writing is a neat and clean endeavor. I don't mean that you have to go out of your way to make your writing disorganized or uncommunicative. I'm just saying that you need to control your worry in the first part of the writing process. Start from making a sketch rather than a finished oil painting.

Students join clubs and participate in school activities for a number of very good reasons. They have interests they wish to pursue and skills they wish to develop. Sometimes, especially in high schools, students participate in extracurricular activities because it looks good on a college application or resume. But the underlying reason for joining just about all school activities is to make connections with others . Meeting new people who might be different from you is fun, and it's easy if you share an interest. It can be especially exciting to make friends with people who are not in your immediate social circle.

If you walk up and down a pebbly beach, you will notice that the pebbles are not arranged at random. The smaller pebbles usually tend to be found in a separate zone running along the length of the beach. The larger ones are collected in a different zone. The pebbles have been sorted, arranged, and selected. We might explain that the arranging was really done by the blind forces of physics, in this case the action of waves. The waves have no purposes or intentions. They just randomly throw the pebbles around, and big pebbles and small pebbles respond differently to this treatment, so they end up at different levels of the beach. A small amount of order has come out of disorder.

A photographer may feel he has to travel great distances in order to find an unusual story. Stories are, however, a lot closer at hand than most people realize. Interesting stories surround us. Dig beneath the surface of any common person and the stories will appear. A photographer's resources could be people and every aspect of their lives: their environment, their habits, their families, etc. Thus, the photographer should strive to explore and understand those things rather than look for something special. In other words, he should aim to find out what is happening around him.

According to a memory research, you are less likely to remember the smaller, non-humorous details. Humans in general are quite good at recalling unusual or unexpected events, and a perfect example of this is when you find something funny. For example, if one of your colleagues turned up to a serious business meeting dressed as Mickey Mouse, it's likely you'd remember the funny incident a month later, but probably you would forget about what your other colleagues were wearing, what you had for lunch that day, and perhaps even what important information was presented at the meeting.

By the time I finished my work, the afternoon was nearing its end. It was time for me to enjoy a leisurely moment. I picked up a bottle of water and biscuits, while whistling. I had my meal as I watched the sun's descent in a cloudless sky. The wind blew with a faint, warm breeze and the sea moved about kindly. At that moment, I perceived an orange mass. I jerked my head back. But the orange thing wasn't moving and didn't look right. I looked again. It was a tiger. A shiver went through my body.

Once upon a time, working with technology provided an outlet for brilliant but antisocial people who found comfort in machines by themselves. Now, technology plays the opposite role. In fact, even the solitary act of listening to your own music in headphones is about to become part of a social community. The social uses of technology, with its new emphasis on connection, have far surpassed the antisocial, individual purposes that technology used to serve. Being good at technology was once socially ignored. However, now it is at the center of organizing friends, parties, and the social life of the family.

A research on the ways people personalize their workspaces suggests that personalization is generally good for both employees and employers. People who decorate their offices tend to have higher levels of job satisfaction. So companies that allow their employees to personalize their workspaces should be rewarded with faithful employees. Indeed, the research showed that the degree of personalization in an office is a signal of how loyal an occupant is to the organization. Particularly committed workers tend to display items related to their family and friends. In other words, these dedicated workers combine their private selves with their work lives, rather than keeping the two strictly separate.

Acronyms are words created from the first letters of each word in a series of words. In business, industry, education, and government, they are often used by people working within the same fields. That's fine, as long as everyone involved understands what the acronyms stand for. However, such acronyms may not be comprehensible to those outside your field. And certain acronyms can mean different things to different people, sometimes causing misunderstanding if the contexts are not considered. For example, if a banker overhears a stranger saying ABA in a public place, the banker would take him as another banker thinking the word means the American Banking Association; a bowler in the same situation would think of it as the American Bowling Association.

Often, people report that a good cry can make them feel better and more at peace. In one survey, 85% of women and 73% of men reported feeling less sad or angry after crying. As a result of this kind of information, a scientist conducted a research to discover the chemical makeup of tears. He found that the tears caused by sadness contained more total protein than those caused by cutting a raw onion. He proposes that the emotionally based tears contained high levels of cortisol, which is the primary hormone released during stressful situations. This suggests that we may be literally releasing toxins from our system when we cry, and that crying itself may support our overall wellbeing.

Doing some amount of engaging work offers a comfortable transition between full work mode and full retirement mode, making early semi-retirement a good fit for middle-aged people and their families. With a modest income from part-time work, early semi-retirees may not have to face the dramatic downshifting in spending and lifestyle. Early semi-retirees learn that a bit of work, even unpaid work, keeps them energized, contributing, and sharp. For those who are mentally and financially ready, early semi-retirement can be the ideal course for navigating a long, healthy, and happy life.

The curious-looking chambered nautilus is considered to be a living fossil. This animal reproduces by laying eggs. When a young chambered nautilus first hatches from its egg, it is about an inch in diameter and has a shell with seven chambers. The average lifespan of the chambered nautilus is believed to be about 20 years. It is thought to rely mainly on its sense of smell when searching for food. Their eyesight is very poor because their eyes contain no lenses. Instead, there is only a tiny hole to allow light into the eye. Unfortunately, its population is on the decline due to the harvesting of their beautiful shells.

The SOFIA is a Boeing 747 jet developed jointly by NASA and the German Aerospace Center. Instead of passenger seats, the plane houses a powerful, 17-ton telescope in the rear section of the aircraft. With four high-powered engines, SOFIA can cruise at 520 miles per hour and reach an altitude of about 40,000 feet. Specialized modifications to the plane allow the smooth ride needed for precise observations. There will be about 8 hours of observing time on each flight. SOFIA is expected to have a lifetime of 20 years and observe star-forming regions and nearby galaxies.

The charts above show the result of a survey in nine different countries with the question, Do you text at mealtime? In Malaysia, China, and India, people are more open to texting at mealtime than those from the other countries. Among the countries where more people answered 'No,' Canada is first with 85 percent. Malaysia ranks first on the 'Yes' side with 57 percent. The percentage of the people who answered negatively in the U.S. is the same as the Netherlands. India shows the lowest percentage on the 'Yes' side, and so does Mexico on the 'No' side.

It's natural to believe that external events upset you. When you're mad at someone, you automatically make them the cause of all your bad feelings. You say, You're annoying me! When you think like this, you're actually fooling yourself because other people really cannot make you angry. Some pushy teenagers might crowd in front of you in line at the movie theater. Your boyfriend might always show up late for dates in spite of knowing how important promptness is to you. No matter how unfair others might appear to you, they do not, never did, and never will upset you. The bitter truth is that you're the one who's creating every last ounce of the anger you experience.

Say you're thinking of writing a complaint letter. Your first impulse may be to start it by spinning out your sad story, event by event. But what's your real goal here? If you're like most people, you want the wrong made right. Perhaps you even want an apology. That's where your letter should start: asking for what you want. After all, this is what you most need to communicate, and this is what the reader of your letter first wants to know! If you were in his or her place, would you really want to blindly start reading a list of sad events? You'd want to first know why this person was writing to you; then perhaps you'd be ready for the details.

None of your ideas will change the world if you keep them inside of your head. At some point you will have to persuade someone else to invest, buy, participate, or join. You would be surprised at how many people fail to understand the importance of this step. I often wonder how many truly revolutionary ideas are never given a chance to succeed because the brilliant mind that produced the idea could not tell the story behind it. Don't let poor communication damage the ultimate success of your ideas.

The carpark next to our library uses a pay-and-display system. You feed coins into a meter and then get a ticket for one to two hours to display on your dashboard. A couple of months ago, a woman offered me her ticket as she was leaving; the ticket still had one hour remaining. What a bonus: I didn't have to look for some spare coins. On the next visit, I noticed that the parking fairy had left a ticket with about 45 minutes remaining in the slot of the machine for some lucky person to use. The parking fairy has inspired me to do the same whenever I can. It's a lovely feeling knowing that you could be brightening up someone's day with such a small gesture.

More and more people are switching to a vegetarian diet, and wonder if it's good for their pets, too. Responding to this curiosity, some manufacturers claim that their no-meat foods provide all the nutrients animals need, but many doctors disagree. An expert says that it is hard to create vegetarian diets that are safe for cats. In fact, cats are strictly meat-eating animals. They need taurine, an amino acid found only in meat. Absence of taurine can lead to cats' blindness and even death. In addition, dogs need vitamin D, which may be hard to maintain without meat or dairy. An unbalanced diet can lead to nutritional deficiencies, says vet Andrea Fascetti of the University of California.

Our living space on the Earth is very limited in that we have to give up the vast underwater world as a land-based species. It's not simply that we can't breathe in water, but that we couldn't bear the pressures. Because water is about 1,300 times heavier than air, pressure rises swiftly as you descend. On land, if you rose to the top of a five-hundred-foot height, the change in pressure would be slight. At the same depth underwater, however, your veins would collapse and your lungs would shrink to the size of a soda can. Amazingly, people do voluntarily dive to such depths, without breathing equipment, for the fun of it in a sport known as free diving. For them, the experience of having their internal organs rudely deformed is thought exciting. To reach such depths, however, divers must be dragged down by weights.

When our ancestors began farming and herding, they gave up the advantages of mobility. It's true that domesticating sheep, cattle, or pigs does not bind you as tightly to one place as planting grain does. But it certainly becomes more costly to flee an enemy, who can steal your stores of food. So the beginning of agriculture meant that our ancestors would band together in larger groups than they had previously been used to. Hunter-gatherer families could easily split up once food got scarce or rivalries and tensions grew too difficult to manage, but early farmers knew that splitting up had become a far more dangerous thing to do. It became more than ever essential to learn to live with others and to manage conflict rather than to escape it.

The human brain is not particularly sensitive to the absolute magnitude of stimulation, but it is extraordinarily sensitive to the differences. For example, if you are blindfolded and asked to hold a wooden block in your hand, would you be able to tell if a pack of gum is placed on top of the block? The right answer is It depends, and what it depends on is the weight of the block. If the block weighed only 30 grams, then you'd immediately notice the 500 percent increase in weight when a 150-gram pack of gum is added. But if the block weighed 5 kilograms, then you'd never notice the 0.03 percent increase in weight. There is no answer to the question Can people detect 150 grams? because brains do not detect grams but they detect changes. And the same is true for just about every physical property of an object. Our sensitivity to the relative is not limited to physical properties such as weight, brightness, or volume. It extends to subjective properties, such as value, goodness, and worth as well.

Marilyn Tina was working as a manager overseeing the operations of 320 stores. One day a friend told her FLY, one of the biggest multinational corporations, was planning to open its own stores and CEO Jennifer Lawrence was interested in hiring her to oversee the project. Because Marilyn thought that working for FLY would be a great opportunity, she did some research prior to her meeting. As she did her research, she found out that FLY's products had been far behind comsumer's demand for FLY brand. FLY had simply bought stock goods and just put its own label on them. The company bought clothing from different manufacturers without any consistent standards in size, quality, or color. It didn't reflect the brand of FLY. Marilyn's dilemma was that her desire to work for FLY was in conflict with her professional judgment about the products. She was afraid that if she told Jennifer what she discovered, she wouldn't get the job. When she met with Jennifer, she hesitated at first, but finally told Jennifer that she thought the stores would fail because the products would not reflect what FLY stood for. Then she flew back to California wondering if she had done the right thing. She felt that she had probably lost any chance of getting a job there, but she also felt good about having told the truth. Two weeks later, Jennifer called and told her she had reconsidered what Marilyn had said and agreed with her assessment of the situation. She offered Marilyn the job as vice president of clothing and accessories.