How to Become a Morning Person?
You have grand ambitions: to start a business, to write a book. But chances are you work long hours, or household responsibilities consume your days. By the time you finish all you have to do, you will have had no energy anything you want to do beyond turning on the TV.
Yet some busy people do make time for their priorities. The secret is giving the most attention to at the very beginning of a day. They get up earlier than they have to. Morning by morning, they make progress on something matters.
It's not fun to force yourself out of bed, but these early hours are often the best time to do things for yourself. With a little schedule reorganization, (become) a morning person is more doable than you think.
I first learned that mornings be transformational years ago, when I was studying a busy lawyer's schedule. She wanted to spend more time with her son, but she had little control over when she left work. This state of affairs kept her sad she realized she and her son were both early risers and the morning time could be made full use of. After thinking it through, the lawyer decided to get up even earlier. Then, when the boy stepped into the dining room, she (finish) preparing a rich breakfast so they two could enjoy the meal to the fullest together.
Mornings are also great for focused thinking. Getup an hour earlier, and you can knock out your most important task of the day. Or you can spare some time for those creative desires (bury) deep in your heart and hard to nurture.
But many will argue：I'm not a morning person! The fact is that there are not so many true night owls. When most people take an honest look at they're spending the hours before bed, they'll find they have wasted much time on the TV programs they don't mean (watch). Also, they often browse through photos on social media of people they didn't like in high school anyway.
A better approach is to sleep earlier, rise earlier and turn unproductive evening hours into productive morning hours.
|
A. necessity |
B. threat |
C. neighbouring |
D. adjusted |
|
E. unlikely |
F. decline |
G. cooperated |
H. questions |
|
I. profitable |
J. imposing |
K. gains |
New York and New Tax
According to a Manhattan Institute survey, more than half of high-earning New Yorkers are working entirely from home and 44% are considering leaving the city. Ned Lamont, Connecticut's governor, has said "the old idea of the commuter(通勤者) going into New York City five days a week may be outdated." It does seem that the tens of thousands commuting from Mr. Lamont's state will continue to do so. The region's governors have well together to deal with the pandemic(流行病), but the friendliness may soon end over taxes.
When people from states like New Jersey and Connecticut commute to New York to work for a New York-based employer, they must pay New York tax on the related earned income. Even those who work from home must pay New York taxes unless the employee is working outside New York by .
Taxpayers and those states are looking closely at this loophole(漏洞). In December, Connecticut and New Jersey applied to the Supreme Court to consider a case which a state's authority to tax non-residents' income while they are working remotely. They think this is definitely a(n) to the city's finances. "Firms have considered leaving the city before, and employees are gradually accepting the idea. They have been working remotely for almost ten months and they've to that idea."
Companies are also watching the progression of the billionaire Mark to Market Tax Act, which would treat capital from billionaires' property as taxable income. New York's Democratic governor said he would reject any laws heavy taxes on the rich, because it would drive out wealthy, mobile residents. It would not take too many moving trucks for the city to feel the economic loss, says Michael Hendrix. A 5% of New Yorkers making about $10,000 would result in an annual loss of $933m—roughly the amount distributed to the city's health department.
Certainty：Over-rated and Over-rewarded
Type the words "kind of" or "perhaps" into an email in Microsoft Outlook and the program might well tell you to think again. If the Al-powered "Microsoft Editor" judges that you are not sounding 1 enough, it will soon give you a word of warning:" Words expressing uncertainty will 2 your impact."
To me, this suggestion precisely expresses something we've got wrong in society. We live in a world that 3 those who speak with confidence-even when that is misplaced-and gives very little opportunity to perform to those who 4 doubt. "We tend to listen to those experts who tell us a simple, clear and confident story. Why? Because that's 5 satisfying," says Dan Gardner, author of Future Babble, "That's saying let me sweep away the uncertainty for you'."
Research shows that the human brain is "programmed" to hate 6: a 2016 study found that when volunteers were given electric shocks, their stress levels were highest when they had no idea whether they were going to be given a shock-higher even than subjects who were told they would 7 get one.
We should first know that while confident-sounding experts might be giving us what our brains desire, the 8 they are providing is probably false. Psychologist Philip Tetlock divided up forecasters into "foxes" and "hedgehogs". Foxes consider all sorts of different approaches sand perspectives, and combine those into distinct conclusions. 9, hedgehogs tend to view the world through the lens of one single defining idea. That makes the hedgehogs 10 forecasters but more likely to get attention.
Perhaps we care less about the truth and more about enjoying some sense of 11 however short-lived that might be. But wouldn't it be better if we held experts to account? Mr. Gardner suggests tagging speakers with some kind of record of previous 12 much as we are given performance statistics for racehorses or baseball players.
Highly confident statements also 13 polarization (两极化), encouraging others to respond in the same kind of language when they disagree. "There's a natural tendency to push back with equal amounts of 14 says Daniel Drezner, a political scientist.
Is it time to give a bit more attention to the 15? Full of certainty on the need to stop paying so much attention to those expressing certainty, I say yes.
Hazel Mayfield usually cooks the Thanksgiving meal for her extended family in Houston, Texas. She usually welcomes friends and neighbors who are eager to taste her fried turkey, green bean casserole, candied yams, homemade cornbread dressing, and dirty rice-just a few of her signature dishes. Known as Sugar Mama, because her grandchildren think she's so sweet, the 91-year-old typically likes to do her own shopping for the ingredients to make her special dishes.
"My mother is the head cook of the family," said Panulette Mouton, Mayfield's daughter. "Because of her reputation, you know, there're people in and out all day and every family comes through. They want to get some of Sugar Mama's cooking, and some of them would like to learn from her how to cook the food."
But Mayfield hasn't been to the grocery store since March. And there is little about Thanksgiving in 2020 that's usual. Because of Covid-19, the deadly virus that has killed millions in the U.S. and spoiled life around the world, everything is different. Since limiting close face-to-face contact with others is the best way to reduce its spread, hundreds of thousands of American families have re-imagined the holiday with virtual celebrations and canceled or delayed travel plans. There can only be small gatherings with people in their households in response to COVID-19.
This year, Mayfield's family members, without exception, are lamenting the absence of a big gathering. They've explained to their young children and grandchildren why this year's Thanksgiving is different. Mayfield's youngest daughter, Michelle Sanders, says it's tough to help her grandchildren understand why they can't see some of their other family members and why they have to stay at home, celebrating Thanksgiving all by themselves.
"It's really hard, trying to explain to them," Sanders said. "When-you're talking to them and they want to come over, you have to tell them no. They really don't know how to be careful." Sanders added, "And, they don't understand that, being three, four, and six, you know they don't really understand that. So, it's...it's really, really hard, and heartbreaking."
Here are four books recommended by one of the most respected editors from Reader's Digest. If you have time to dip yourselves into the books, they can surely offer much food for thought.
Face It
Debbie Harry
HARPERCOLLINS
Picture this: it's the late 1970s and the punk music scene is starting to take hold. The band releases the album ParallelLines, which becomes the greatest hit. Everyone wants to attend her concert and some teenage girls even dream to be her. Now 75, Harry bares all about herself in Face It, starting from her childhood. Part shocking, this book is as humorous, moving and vigorous as its subject.
Scatterbrain
Henning Beck
NEWSOUTHBOOKS
If there is no obvious connection among what we see, the brain will substitute in the rest of the information without you even noticing, Beck says in the chapter Memory. In this "user's guide for your brain", he argues that mistakes are the keys to success. He combines science with brain-boosting advice and real-life stories to take the reader on a fascinating adventure through human memory.
You're Not Listening
Kate Murphy
PENGUINERANDOM HOUSE
When was the last time you listened to someone? Really listened without thinking about what you wanted to say next? And when was the last time someone really listened to you? Compared with talking, listening isn't considered so important, argues journalist Kate Murphy, but she insists it is actually the more powerful position in communication. Her insights could transform your conversations, your relationships and your life.
The Right-Brain Work Out
Russel Howcroft with Alex Wadelton
PENGUIN
In 1968,1600 five-year-olds were given a creativity test. They were retested at ages 10 and 15 and their scores were compared against adults. While 98 per cent of five-year-olds were assessed in the "highly creative" range (genius level), only two per cent of adults could be considered "highly creative". In The Right-Brain Work Out, the authors promise to re-train your brain to be more creative, using 70 questions to challenge you.
Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to name things, or processes which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in terminology (术语). Such special dialects are necessary in technical discussion of any kind. Being universally understood by those engaged or interested in the particular science or art, they have the accurateness of a mathematical formula (公式）. Besides，they save time in these kinds of discussions, for it is much more economical to name a process than to describe it. Thousands of these technical terms are very properly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a whole, they are rather in the suburbs of the English language.
Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts, and other professions, like farming and fishery, which have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very central part of our language. Thus, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood, than most other technical terms. In law, medicine, and philosophy, the special dialects have also become pretty familiar to cultivated persons and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary. Yet among these professions, each one still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion has increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic arts. Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned when they have served their turn. Most of the newly-invented terms are restricted to special discussions, and seldom get into general literature or conversation.
Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close combination. Lawyers, doctors and men of science all communicate freely with others, not in a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called "popular science" makes everybody familiar with modem views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported online, and everybody is soon talking about it-as in the case of AI.
Face up to Reality
Calls to stop the use of face recognition technology are growing louder, but it is already too late. Given its widespread use by tech companies and the police, a permanent roll back is impossible.
The European Commission is considering temporarily banning the use of the technology in public spaces, giving politicians in Europe time to develop measures to reduce the potential risks of face recognition systems. Some US cities, such as San Francisco, have already implemented bans.
Public areas make up a small proportion of the physical spaces we inhabit. What about the many that are privately owned, such as shops, schools and museums, in which face recognition is steadily being rolled out, sometimes without our knowledge?
Most of us now associate face recognition with CCTV cameras（闭路电视摄像机）. Facebook, for example, runs face recognition on users' photos to automatically identify them in other images on the site, which has been functioning for years. Russian search engine Yandex has a smart search function that, given one image of a face, can find pictures online of the same person even in different poses and lighting conditions.
Other concerns relate to the fact that the technology is imperfect. An independent analysis of a face recognition trial by London's Metropolitan Police found that 81 per cent of matches the system flagged to a watch list of suspects were incorrect.
So what is the possible solution? When we consider both the rate at which the technology is developing and its widespread use nowadays, it is crystal-clear that a ban on its use in public spaces would be too little, too late.
A set of effective rules on when and how it can be used needs to be decided quickly. Face recognition technology is here to stay; implementing a temporary ban would be the regulatory equivalent of burying our faces in the sand.
A. This applies to face recognition, as is often the case.
B. As a matter of fact, it is advancing in the online field, too.
C. What face recognition needs is strict and urgent regulation.
D. But the prohibitions are so limited that they are hardly bans at all.
E. And it's even less accurate for some minorities, which risks worsening racial issues.
F. Companies cannot let market make a final decision on the future of new technology.
Wildlife Protection, Anything Wrong?
Some of the Earth's creatures die mainly because of humans' choices. These choices have nothing to do with food or shelter or anything else that helps humans survive. What kills millions of animals all over the world is that humans want to make money by doing so. People use parts of animals for everything from hats to handbags, from jewelry to ashtrays and to make powders that supposedly improve a person's life.
It is comforting to note that in the past decades, saving endangered animals has become a popular cause. Let's take saving elephants as an example. For a long while in the late 1980s, wildlife protection groups made sure everyone saw pictures or films of elephants with their faces cut off for their ivory. These groups also proved that certain populations of elephants are decreasing. As a result, most people stopped buying objects made of ivory. Laws against poaching (偷猎) were made stronger. Many countries made importing ivory illegal. Killing elephants for their ivory became more risky and less profitable.
However, deciding that a species is endangered and protecting it by law are not always enough, as concern for certain species will become weak after a while. In the late 1970s, people protested against the killing of seal babies. Everyone was shocked to see young seals being killed in their icy habitat. The cruel activity stopped. But ten years later, the number of seal babies killed was higher than ever.
Other animal protecting movements have come and gone, such as saving the whales and protecting dolphins. The whale population appears to have increased for now. And the laws are finally changed in America to protect the dolphins that swim with tuna fish in parts of the Pacific Ocean. In the years to come, people's focus will probably turn to some other endangered species. During this time, will the elephants be forgotten?
