Dear C&G Waste Services, Westwood High School is currently establishing a paper recycling program. With the help of students and staff, we aim to significantly reduce the amount of paper that goes into the trash by recycling paper. We currently have a dumpster that will hold the paper recycling, but we need containers for individual classrooms to meet our goal. We would like to request 20 containers. We also need 2,000 clear trash bags in order to allow students and staff to get the paper to the recycle dumpster. So, we are asking your company if it will donate these items so that we may succeed in conserving our natural resources. Please contact me if you have any questions. We look forward to establishing a partnership with C&G Waste Services. We know that these types of partnerships help us give back to the community and enhance actions our students can take towards helping the environment. Sincerely, Anna Wilson

Mr. Aryeh noticed a young boy coming to school in old worn-out shoes. Clearly he needed a new pair, but Mr. Aryeh also knew that the boy's father, a proud man, would be humiliated and offended if his son were treated as a charity case and given a pair. How does a person with moral imagination provide a boy with shoes, while not paining his father's soul? During a morning recess break, Mr. Aryeh called the boy to his office because, he said, he needed to test him on his English proficiency. He asked the boy several questions, well within the youth's grasp. Wonderful! Mr. Aryeh said when the boy answered correctly. He gave the youngster two notes: one to be brought to a local shoemaker, with instructions to give the boy a good pair of shoes, for which Mr. Aryeh would pay; the second, a note to the boy's father telling him about the prize his son had won.

Most people get trapped in their optimistic biases, so they tend to listen to positive feedback and ignore negative feedback. Although this may help them come across as confident to others, in any area of competence (e.g., education, business, sports or performing arts) achievement is 10% performance and 90% preparation. Thus, the more aware you are of your weaknesses, the better prepared you will be. Low self-confidence may turn you into a pessimist, but when pessimism teams up with ambition it often produces outstanding performance. To be the very best at anything, you will need to be your harshest critic, and that is almost impossible when your starting point is high self-confidence. Exceptional achievers always experience low levels of confidence and self-confidence, but they train hard and practice continually until they reach an acceptable level of competence.

A painter I know can't do anything in her studio without rock'n'roll pounding out of the speakers. Turning it on turns on a switch inside her. The beat gets her going. It's the metronome for her creative life. A writer friend can only write outside. He can't stand the thought of being tied indoors to his word processor while a great day is unfolding outside. So he carries his coffee mug out to work in the warmth of an open porch in his backyard. Mystically, he now believes he is missing nothing. In the end, there is no one ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it.

Our essentially subtropical body isn't well suited to life in the Arctic because we don't have the fur of polar bears or the thick, insulating fat of sea mammals. But we can make fur clothing, shelters to contain warmth, and weapons with which to hunt and defend ourselves. These items are good examples of cultural adaptation, which show how culture is used to survive the natural world. Keep in mind, though, that people must also survive the cultural world they inhabit, and that is just as important. For example, if you don't greet your neighbors the right way, you may cause bad feelings; in the same way, your grandfather may not appreciate your elaborate, back-slapping handshake the way your buddy does. So although culture does help you survive the natural world, it also tells you how to survive the cultural world of social interactions.

When discussing the animal kingdom, each creature belongs to a species scale of generalists to specialists. Specialist creatures like the koala bear can only survive on an extremely limited set of conditions: diet (eucalyptus), climate (warm), environment (trees). Generalists, on the other hand (think mice), are able to survive just about anywhere. They can withstand heat and cold, eat your organic breakfast cereal or seeds and berries in the wild. So, specialist species thrive only when conditions are perfect. They serve a very specific purpose within their particular ecosystem and are good at navigating it. However, should those conditions change — as a result of nature or, more commonly, an outside force — specialist species often become extinct. In contrast, mice can move from spot to spot on the globe, adapt to different cultures, diets and weather systems. And most importantly, they stay alive.

In the 1970s, when schools began allowing students to use portable calculators, many parents objected. They worried that a reliance on the machines would weaken their children's grasp of mathematical concepts. The fears, subsequent studies showed, were largely unneeded. No longer forced to spend a lot of time on routine calculations, many students gained a deeper understanding of the principles underlying their exercises. Today, the story of the calculator is often used to support the argument that our growing dependence on online databases is advantageous. In freeing us from the work of remembering, it's said, the Web allows us to devote more time to creative thought. The pocket calculator relieved the pressure on our working memory, letting us use that critical short-term store for more abstract reasoning. The calculator, a powerful but highly specialized tool, turned out to be an aid to our working memory.

I remember one of the smartest I.T. executives for whom I ever worked strongly resisting the movement to measure programmer productivity that was popular at the time. He was fond of saying that the biggest problem with managing computer programmers is that you can never tell whether they are working by looking at them. Picture two programmers working side by side. One is leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and his feet on the desk. The other is working hard, typing code into his computer. The one with his feet up could be thinking, and the other one may be too busy typing to give it enough thought. In the end, the busy typist could well produce ten times as many lines of code as the thinker, which contain twice as many new problems as the thinker's. Unfortunately, most of the productivity measurement schemes I have encountered measure effort or apparent activity. They would reward him and punish his thoughtful neighbor.

San Miniato is a town of about 26,000 that sits atop three hills in the Arno river valley in Tuscany, Italy. The town's history is deeply rooted in its function as an important stop along the trading route between France and Italy. To protect its historic building character, the city has set detailed criteria for the installation of signs, plaques, and posters and has revised its street signs. To protect views of the town and to limit visual intrusions, the city has made strict regulations about the construction of cell phone towers. To accommodate visitors and tourists and not intrude on the urban layout and design, the town has built an underground parking lot with an elevator to the city center.

Forests have always had a role in human society. They have been a source of building timber and firewood, of wild game and foods like mushrooms. They have not, however, always been considered places of beauty. During the Middle Ages, especially in parts of Northern Europe, they developed a reputation for being places of darkness and fear, the home of evil spirits and wild beasts. In Germany you might have been attacked by werewolves or a semi-human Wild Man, a kind of ogre covered with coarse hair who ate children. Anglo-Saxon folk tales, such as the eighth-century Beowulf, frequently set the action in scary forests, a legacy inherited by the stories of Tolkien, in which friendly hobbits are extremely frightened at the thought of having to pass through the haunted Fangorn Forest. Out of this medieval vision comes our word 'savage', derived from silva, meaning a wood.

Fascinated by how easily fish slip through water, scientists and sportswear designers alike have examined fish skins at the molecular level to determine why they have less friction than humans. Researchers were surprised to discover that shark skin, which is rough enough to be used as sandpaper when dried, is one of the animal skins with the least friction. Shark skin is covered by small, V-shaped bumps, made from the same material as the sharks' teeth. The rough surface actually reduces drag as the shark glides through the ocean, because the bumps efficiently channel the water away from the surface. Copied in fabric form, a shark skin-like system woven into a textile's structure gives the fabric a hydrodynamic advantage.

The graph above shows the trend of blood donation in Korea from 2005 to 2009, in terms of the number of blood donors and blood donation rates. The blood donation rate was 5.3% in 2009, which was the highest during the given period. The blood donation rate was the same both in 2005 and in 2006, and it showed constant increase after it reached the lowest point in 2007. The number of group blood donors was the highest in 2005, and the number of individual blood donors was the highest in 2009. The year 2005 was the only year when the number of group blood donors was larger than that of individual blood donors. The difference between the number of group donors and that of individual donors was the largest in 2009.

Gabe Gabrielson has a nine-year-old son named Colin. Like many nine-year-olds, Colin frequently finds himself in disagreement with parental policies. For example, he protested Gabe's policy that he get fully dressed before coming down to breakfast. Gabe didn't particularly care what Colin wore at the breakfast table, but he worried that if Colin didn't dress first, he'd wind up late for school. But I'm more comfortable in my pajamas! Colin argued. After a few debates that left both of them feeling frustrated, Gabe decided to change strategy, and announced, Okay, Colin, we'll try it your way for three days. But if you're late for school any of those days, then we go back to the old system. Colin, amazed by the change in response, aced the trial run. He wore his pajamas and stayed punctual. As a result, the new practice stuck, and both sides are happier with the outcome.

《BIKES4HOPE SUPPORT NIGHT》 Bikes4Hope is a non-profit organization dedicated to sending bicycles to the children in remote villages in Africa by collecting unwanted and old bicycles. You're invited to our fundraising event. DATE & TIME: • Thursday March 27th, 2014; 7 p.m. - 11 p.m. PERFORMERS: • Musicians: Eli John, Brett Wilson, Green Smith • Magicians: Fun Brothers, Risky Button, Flying People TICKETS: • Pre-sale at www.bikes4hope.org: $20 • On the door on the night: $25 • Children accompanied by an adult: Free Thanks for your support and we truly hope to see you on Thursday night!

Hogan had already been walking for hours along the sand track. He had drunk the last remaining drop of water an hour before. His feet came down regularly one in front of the other, sending up little clouds of dust. The dunes stretched as far as the eye could see, motionless, on either side of the track. Nothing was left but the dazzling sand with its millions of tiny broken grains, and dry stones that crumbled away in layers. No trucks passed. No aircraft ever appeared in the immense sky. The nothingness was so great that it could not even be called solitude any longer. It was like floating on the ocean, thousands of miles from land, while tiny waves sweep forward in ripples.

Languages evolve differences because different groups of people independently develop different words and different pronunciations over the course of time. But the question remains why those diverged languages don't merge again when formerly separated people spread out and re-contact each other at speech boundaries. For instance, at the modern boundary between Germany and Poland, there are Polish villages near German villages, but the villagers still speak a local variety of either German or of Polish, rather than a mix of German and Polish. Why is that so? Probably the main disadvantage of speaking a mixed language involves a basic function of human language: as soon as you start to speak to someone else, your language serves as an instantly recognizable badge of your group identity. It's much easier for wartime spies to wear the enemy's uniform than to imitate convincingly the enemy's language and pronunciation. People who speak your language are your people, whereas someone speaking a different language is apt to be regarded as a potentially dangerous stranger.

Our craving for relief from feeling helpless is illustrated by a study of religious Israeli women, carried out by anthropologists Richard Sosis and W. Penn Handwerker. During the 2006 Lebanon War the town of Tzfat and its environs in the Galilee region of northern Israel were hit by dozens of rockets daily. Although siren warnings alerted Tzfat residents to protect their own lives by taking refuge in bomb shelters, they could do nothing to protect their houses. Realistically, that threat from the rockets was unpredictable and uncontrollable. Nevertheless, about two-thirds of the women interviewed by Sosis and Handwerker recited psalms every day to cope with the stress of the rocket attacks. When they were asked why they did so, a common reply was that they felt compelled to do something as opposed to doing nothing at all. Although reciting psalms does not actually deflect rockets, it did provide the women with a sense of control as they took action in their own way.

Risk management professionals look in the past for information on the so-called worst-case scenario and use it to estimate future risks ― this method is called stress testing. They take the worst historical recession, the worst war, or the worst point in unemployment as an exact estimate for the worst future outcome. But they never notice the following inconsistency: this so-called worst-case event, when it happened, exceeded the worst case at the time. I have called this mental defect the Lucretius problem, after the Latin poetic philosopher who wrote that the fool believes that the tallest mountain in the world will be equal to the tallest one he has observed. The same can be seen in the Fukushima nuclear reactor, which experienced a huge failure in 2011 when a tsunami struck. It had been built to endure the worst past historical earthquake, with the builders not imagining much worse — and not thinking that the worst past event had to be a surprise, as it had no precedent.

Think of how you developed your style of using the brakes on your car. As you were mastering the skill of taking curves, you gradually learned when to let go of the accelerator and when and how hard to use the brakes. Curves differ, and the variability you experienced while learning ensures that you are now ready to brake at the right time and strength for any curve you encounter. The conditions for learning this skill are ideal, because you receive immediate and unambiguous feedback every time you go around a bend: the mild reward of a comfortable turn or the mild punishment of some difficulty in handling the car if you brake either too hard or not quite hard enough. The situations that face a harbor pilot maneuvering large ships are no less regular, but skill is much more difficult to acquire by sheer experience because of the long delay between actions and their noticeable outcomes. Whether professionals have a chance to develop intuitive expertise depends essentially on the quality and speed of feedback, as well as on sufficient opportunity to practice.

The tight bonds we form with our tools go both ways. Even as our technologies become extensions of ourselves, we become extensions of our technologies. When the carpenter takes his hammer into his hand, he can use that hand to do only what a hammer can do. The hand becomes an implement for pounding and pulling nails. When the soldier puts the binoculars to his eyes, he can see only what the lenses allow him to see. His field of view lengthens, but he becomes blind to what's nearby. Nietzsche's experience with his typewriter provides a particularly good illustration of the way technologies exert their influence on us. Not only did the philosopher come to imagine that his typewriter was a thing like me; he also sensed that he was becoming a thing like it, that his typewriter was shaping his thoughts.

Indeed, confusing people a little bit is beneficial ― it is good for you and good for them. For example, imagine someone extremely punctual who comes home at exactly six o'clock every day for fifteen years. You can use his arrival to set your watch. The fellow will cause his family anxiety if he is barely a few minutes late. Someone with a slightly more unpredictable schedule, with, say, a half-hour variation, won't do so. For similar reasons, stability is not good for the economy: firms become very weak during long periods of steady success without failure, and hidden vulnerabilities accumulate silently under the surface ― so delaying crises is not a very good idea. Likewise, absence of 'ups and downs' in the market causes hidden risks to accumulate quietly. The longer one goes without a market trauma, the worse the damage when a real crisis occurs.

My suggestion is to understand and make use of the changes in people's strengths and weaknesses as they grow older. We can say that useful attributes tending to decrease with age include ambition, desire to compete, physical strength and endurance, and capacity for sustained mental concentration. In other words, useful attributes tending to increase with age include experience of one's field, understanding of people and relationships, and ability to help other people without one's own ego getting in the way. These shifts in strengths result in many older workers choosing to devote more of their efforts to supervising, administering, advising, and teaching. For instance, my farmer friends in their 80s spend less time on horseback and on tractors, more time making strategic decisions about the business of farming; my older lawyer friends spend less time in court, more time mentoring younger lawyers.

Plants generate hundreds of compounds that they use to protect themselves from being overconsumed by insects and animals. While some plants use these compounds to reduce all foraging, most plants tolerate, or even enjoy, about an 18 percent foraging rate (10 to 25 percent depending on the plant) before they begin to initiate high levels of protective compounds. Many of the actions of animals when they eat plants (termed herbivory) are necessary for both plant and ecosystem health. Herbivory alters the density, composition, and health of plant communities through eating plants, dispersing seeds, and defecation. Some plants produce an initial series of leaves designed to be eaten, and more luxurious growth only occurs once that has happened. For many plants, metabolism and respiration are all stimulated by animal and insect feeding. It is only after foraging rises above a certain level that many plant defensive compounds are produced in quantity or come into play.

Allen Sherman, the comic songwriter best known for Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah was once in the middle of an intense conversation with his wife when his young son entered to show off a drawing he had just finished. The childish drawing was quickly dismissed by Sherman, who was annoyed at having his conversation interrupted. The boy, hurt by his father's rejection of the picture, threw it down on the floor, rushed up to his room, and slammed the door. The slamming door reminded the now embarrassed Sherman of a door that he had slammed twenty-five years earlier. One morning he had heard his Yiddish-speaking grandmother announce that she needed a football for a large party she would be hosting that evening. Although the young Sherman wondered why his grandmother needed a football, he was determined to obtain one for her. He went around his neighborhood and finally found one boy, a bully who punched him in the nose before agreeing to give over his football in exchange for Sherman's best toys. Sherman took the football home, polished it till it shone, and left it for his grandmother. His mother saw the football first, and became upset with him for leaving his toys around. When he explained that it was for his grandmother's party, his mother burst into laughter: A football for the party? Don't you understand your own grandma? Not a football, fruit bowl. Grandma needs a fruit bowl for the party. The embarrassed boy ran up to his room, slammed the door, and refused to come down to the party. But a little later his mother came up to fetch him. When she brought him downstairs, he saw his grandmother proudly walking around the room with a large bowl filled with a variety of beautiful fruits and, in the middle, the polished football he had brought home. When a guest asked his grandmother to explain what a football was doing in the middle of her fruit bowl, she told him about the gift from her grandson and added, From a child is beautiful, anything.

In the mid-1970s some scientists observed employees of two manufacturing plants in the United States. One plant was located in a large metropolitan area, the other in a rural community with a population of three thousand. On average, the employees had worked at their respective plants for twenty years. Sadly, both plants were scheduled to shut down, and all workers were about to lose their jobs. For months, the men came to work knowing that in only a few weeks they would be unemployed. Anticipating the loss of their workplace was stressful. The anxiety was triggered to a large extent by the uncertainty of what lay ahead. How would they cope with unemployment? Would they find another job? Scientists who followed these workers found that the employees experienced more days of illness before the plants were shut than during the weeks of unemployment that followed. The anxiety induced by anticipating the loss of their jobs damaged their health and well-being. Ironically, once unemployed, the workers became healthier. It's because the uncertainty of how life would be without a job was removed. Anxiety was reduced, and attention turned to finding a new job, rather than worrying aimlessly about what might be.