I had a very happy childhood.
May 31st, 2010 by Chloe
I went to a very pleasant school n Scotland where the teachers were all kind to the children and the lessons were always interesting. It was in a very beautiful part of the country and it seems to me now that the weather was always fine. I bought it was especially enjoyable in winter when it was exciting to lay in the snow. Our school uniform was very attractive and school dinners were always delicious. I wonder if it was really as wonderful is I think now or if I am just becoming old?
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A Summary of the Pearl
May 29th, 2010 by Chloe
The Pearl was written in 1945 by John Steinbeck, a modern Mexican novelist, who won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. \e Pearl is about a Mexican fisherman named Kino and his wife and i. While hunting for oysters one day, Kino came across a very large oyster lying in a secluded spot at the bottom of the ocean, germ to show his wife, he surfaced quickly. Carefully prying open huge shell, he discovered there in the midst of the oyster's flesh 1 large, perfectly shaped pearl. Unaware of the evil forces about to be unleashed upon them, Kino and his wife returned hoi The news of the pearl had already spread throughout the village into the town itself. Learning that Kino planned to sell his pearl, the prospective buyers worked in collusion to force a quick s; When Kino refused the offer, he was attacked in the night and hut was set on fire. In fear, Kino fled to the mountains, with wife and infant son, but they were tracked closely. One night in mountains Kino was able to shoot and killed the trackers, but unfortunately his infant son was shot to death in the scuffle. Returnin; his village in bitter grief, Kino realized the former bright prom of the pearl had disappeared and only a malignant evil shone from Completely disillusioned by the loss of his son and his attempts to better life, Kino took the pearl and flung it into the ocean.
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Princess of Wales’s trip
May 28th, 2010 by Chloe
It came as something of a surprise when Diana, Princess of Wales, made a trip to Angola in 1997, to support the red Cross's campaign for a total ban on all anti-personnel landmines. Within hours of arriving in Angola, television screens around the world were filled with the images of her comforting victims injured in explosions caused by landmines. "I knew the statistics," she said.
"But putting a face to those figures brought the reality home to me; like when I met Sandra, a 13-year-old girl who had lost her leg, and people liker her. "
The Princess concluded with a simple message: "We must stop landmines. " And she used every opportunity during her visit to repeat this message.
But, back in London, her views were not shared by some members of the British government, which refused to support a ban on these weapons. Angry politicians launched an attack on the Princess in the press. They described her as "very ill-informed" and a "Loose cannon. "
The Princess responded by brushing aside the criticisms; "This is a distraction we do not need. All I'm trying to do is help. "
Opposition parties, the media and the public immediately voiced their support for the Princess. To make matters worse for the government, it soon emerged that the Princess's trip had been approved by the Foreign Office, and that she was in fact very well-informed about both the situation in Angola and the British government's policy regarding landmines. The result was a severe embarrassment for the government.
To try and limit the damage, the Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, claimed that the Princess's views on landmines were not very different from government policy, and that it was "working towards" a worldwide ban. The Defense Secretary, Michael Portillo, claimed the matter was "a misinterpretation or misunderstanding."
For the Princess, the trip to this war-torn country was an excellent opportunity to use her popularity to show the world how much destruction and suffering landmines can cause. She said that the experience bad also given her the chance to get closer to people and their problems.
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College Education and Life
May 27th, 2010 by Chloe
Do you drive a forklift? Those five deflating1 words instantly alerted me that my prep-school background and advanced degrees would mean nothing on the new jobs.
Like thousands last year, I was downsized from one of those sizzling dotcoms, now dot-gone. 2 Faced with a shrinking job market, I turned to manual labor. It's a common trend, now that unemployment is at 5. 8 percent. But the transition is seldom seamless.3
While the new boss was mildly disgusted when I couldn't drive the forklift, he was apoplectic when he tossed me a wrench to open a hydrant and saw me, he exploded. " Lefty loosey; righty tighty. "
I didn't know that. Indeed, there is a whole tool kit of basic skills that Andover, Bates, Columbia and Harvard never equipped me with. But there are moments when I shine. I can read the Latin on every public building we pass. When the truck driver from Quebec arrived with an 18-wheeler of mulch and I began conversing in near-flawless Parisian French about his long journey and breakfast of croissants, my boss's eyes lit up.
In hydro-seeding1, my main responsibility is to guide 200 feet of heavy, serpentine hose while the boss sprays the slime. But there's more to my job than wresting the anaconda.
Sometimes the hose gets clogged. Sometimes the chain comes off the mixer. And sometimes I have to use the side mirror to move the 60,000-pound truck in reverse. All these situations require an all-around mechanical common sense that is as important to the blue-collar worker as the ability to navigate Microsoft Office is to the white-collar one. There are the "value subtracted"3 moments my background has not prepared me for. '
So I'm happy when those occasions arise when I can offer the benefits of my education. Of course, it annoys the hell out of my boss how rarely my skill set actually helps us out. And it amazes him how I'm forever dawdling with my coffee and misplacing it at job sites.
Or how I'm morbidly6 preoccupied with safety like the time, fearing electrocution7, when I refused to hold up a low-hanging cable wire to allow our tall truck to pass beneath. ("It carries a signal, not a current!" he hollered, grabbing it for dramatic effect. )
In some ways, ours is a clash of cultures. On days off, the boss changes the oil in his pickup, retiles his kitchen floor or does brickwork; I take my car through the automatic wash, go bird watching or read "Nichloas Nickleby. " This last tickles him—so mighty are my struggles reading maps.8
But I'm just as strong as he is, and can match him bale for bale, hoisting the 50-pound sacks of seed we fill the truck with. So there is the basis for a bit of grudging respect. And for all of my drawbacks, I am at least reliable—a vestige9, perhaps, of the grim "show up at your desk at all costs (if only to sit there)" ethic.
But still it caught me off guard10 when, with the air now cold and the hydro-seeding season over, the boss inquired recently; "Can you drive a snowplow?"
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To Create Interest and Desire
May 26th, 2010 by Chloe
When you have successfully arrested your readers' attention, you should proceed to create interest and desire. The critical point is to make your goods or services attractive and unique. Attracting attention for attention's sake is easy. Smashing a bottle of commonplace liquor could attract attention equally well, but it took Maotai to win a gold medal.
In order to feature your product or service, you must study the product or service and then choose the right appeal. Appeals mean the strategies you use to present a product or service to your readers. Appeals can be divided into two broad categories: emotional and rational. In emotional appeals, your persuasive efforts are directed to how people feel, taste, smell, hear, and see. They also include strategies that arouse us through love, anger, pride, fear, and enjoyment. In rational appeals, your persuasive efforts are directed to reason — the thinking mind. Such appeals include strategies based on saving money, making money, doing a job better, or getting better use from a product.
In any given case, many appeals are available to you. The choice depends on the product or service, and on your readers. Such products as perfume, candy, and fine food lend themselves to emotional appeals. On the other hand, such products as automobile tires, tools, and industrial equipment are best sold through rational appeals. Automobile tires, for example, are not bought because they are pretty but because they are durable, because they grip the road, and because they are safe. Sometimes we can use both emotional and rational appeals.
How buyers use the product may be a major basis for selecting your sales strategy. Cosmetics might sell well to end-users through emotional appeals. But selling cosmetics to a retailer would require rational appeals because a retailer is more concerned with how much money he can make by reselling the product.
The choice of appeals may have something to do with the product life cycle and marketing strategy. A product has the life cycle of introduction, growth, maturity and decline. During introduction and early growth stages, a product may be viewed as a status marker. Then emotional appeals are more appropriate than rational appeals. You may recall that mobile phone, at its stages of introduction more than two decades ago, was very expensive. It was advertised as the symbol of success. Now it reaches its maturity stage, the ownership is so commonplace that it can no longer serve as a status marker. As a result, rational appeals work better now. Take a look at the following sample sales messages:
The appeal in this example is convenience. A number of stylistic tactics are employed making the message impressive. The most outstanding is that "XP", the name of Microsoft's windows operating system, is interpreted as "experience". You are of course expected to believe what they have to say, but they ask you just the opposite: "Don't take our word for it." What they really want is that you experiment with the system.
Appeals that are not appropriate may backfire. See this extract from a sales letter:
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Defence Mechanism of Plants
May 25th, 2010 by Chloe
Plants are subject to attack and infection by a remarkable variety of symbiotic1 species and have evolved a diverse array of mechanisms designed to frustrate the potential colonists. These can be divided into preformed2 or passive defense mechanisms and inducible'1 or active systems. Passive plant defense comprises physical and chemical barriers that prevent entry of pathogens' . such as bacteria, or render tissues unpalata¬ble'1 or toxic' to the invader. The external surfaces of plants, in addition to being covered by an epidermis'" and a waxy cuticle5', often carry spiky1' hairs known as trichomcs" , which either prevent feeding by insects or may even puncture'" and kill insect larvae13. Other trichomes are sticky and glandular1'1 and effectively trap and immobilize insects.
If the physica barriers of the plant are breached- then preformed chemicals inhibit or kill the intruder, and plant tissues contain a diverse array of toxic or potentially toxic substances, such as resins, tannins, glycosides, and alkaloids, many of which are highly effective deterrenls lo insects that feed on plants. The success of I he Colorado beetle' in infesting potatoes, for example, seems lo be correlated with its high tolerance to alkaloids that normally repel potential pests. Other possible chemical defenses, while not directly toxic to the parasite, many inhibit some essential step in the establishment of a parasitic relationship. For example, glycoproteins1'' in plant cell walls may inactivate enzymes"' that degrade cell walls. These enzymes are often produced by bacteria and fungi1'.
Active plant defense mechanisms are comparable to the immune system of vertebrate animals, although the cellular and molecular bases are fundamentally different. Both, however, are triggered in reaction to intrusion, implying that the host has some means of recognizing the presence of a foreign organism. The most dramatic example of an inducible plant defense reaction is the persensitive response. In the hypersensitive response, cells undergo rapid necrosis—that is, they become diseased and die after being penetrated by a parasite, the parasite itself subsequently ceases to grow and is therefore restricted to one or a few cells a- round the entry site. Several theories have been put forward to explain the basis of hypersensitive resistance.
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“Be like”
May 24th, 2010 by Chloe
The practice as described in the above helps sell products, but doesn't necessarily help people feel better a-bout themselves after buying the product which will, as is promised or hinted, cause consumers to "be like" the person in the ad. And advertisements so intentioned will not be as effective as is expected.
It is true that the "person in the ad" always looks happy, smart, and even "great. " And the message, either loudly announced by the producer, or profoundly understood by the consumer, can be summed up in these; it is this thing (the "product") that has caused him to be so.
So some consumers buy that product out of that trust. When they start to use it, naturally, they never forget that promise or understanding. More importantly, they never fail to make a comparison: do I look as smart as that person? Does it cause me to be as happy? If I am not "great," does it in any way make me appear a little more important than I used to? Then the answer may be, in ninety percent of the cases, a bitter NO.
And the reason is simple;
The person in the ad looks happy, smart, and great, because he IS already so before he appears in the ad, while ninety percent of the consumers are not happy, not smart, and not at all great because they were born to be less happy, less smart, and just ordinary. Nothing on earth can change them, not to mention a few or several hundred dollars' worth of something.
But now they think they know why they are not like the person in the ad: the product is not as good as promised; we have been cheated by the producer.
Some of them will start to write to newspapers, some to report to the authorities, and some (a few, luckily ) will go to law against the producer. And, as living evidence, none of them will fail to present to their relatives and friends a vivid history of how they started to love that product and how ended up hating it. They will conclude, to be sure, with this warning: Never, never buy that product, my dear folks.
Now you know how "effective" that practice is! It helps sell the product to a batch of people who are so vain about themselves and brave enough to try new things. Then it causes some from this same batch to swear never to try them again. And still next it functions to warn a great many never to touch them.
Then, to producers and ad writers, I would like to offer this modest advice-. In your ad never promise the impossible, and never, never say or hint that every person will "be like" the person in your ad, who is your chosen, and God's selected.
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Wedding Congratulation
May 22nd, 2010 by Chloe
Dear Emily,
I am delighted to hear of your recent marriage and would like to send you my warmest congratulations and best wishes for a very happy married life together.
Everything I've heard about Henry points to his having the qualities that make an excellent husband. I can't think of two people more suited to each other than you and Henry.
I am sending you a small present with this letter and I hope you will find it of some use.
With my best wishes to you both,
Cordially, Ann
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The Mid-Autumn Festival
May 21st, 2010 by Chloe
The mid-autumn festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The festival originated in the imperial moon-worshipping ceremonies held when the1 moon was at its fullest. Later on moon worshipping was adopted by nobles ' and high officials. When the practice became prevalent among ordinary people, it became a true national festivity.
It is a grand festival for the Chinese. Celebrations are held at night with moon cakes playing a predominant role. These are small round tarts baked with different fruit fillings date, pear, apple and pomegranate among, others. People used to lay out a feast with good wine. When the moon was rising in a clear sky, they would place the moon cakes and fresh fruit on a table as an offering. Even today a family will sit around the table, enjoying the ' beautiful moon and eating moon cakes and fruit. Those who are away from home try to return for a family reunion, giving the occasion its other name — Family Reunion Festival. Moreover, it is regarded as a thanksgiving celebration, honoring the Soil God and the Crop God.
It is generally believed that the moon of the mid-autumn festival is at her brightest on that night. It is compared to a looking glass or a jade rabbit in Chinese literature. Many poems have been written on it, and poets are never tired of reading and writing such poems. It seems that Chinese literature is far more concerned with the moon than with the sun.
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Nonverbal messages can be broken down into subcategories
May 20th, 2010 by Chloe
Nonverbal messages can be broken down into subcategories. Although this makes the discussion easier, we must be careful not to assume that speakers use nonverbal signals in isolation. In most cases speakers use many different signals at the same time. We may move our hands, nod with our heads, smile, and keep close eye contact, all at the same time. The nonverbal messages that give listeners the most trouble are those which accompany words. It's the tone of voice, the look on someone's face, or the lack of eye contact that makes you wonder if you understood. As we discuss nonverbal conventions in face-to-face encounters, we will start with the nonverbal signals that most closely accompany the verbal message and go on to those which are not connected with words, such as the use of space, appearance, and silence.
To some extent we are able to manipulate the signals consciously: We may smile because that is expected of us even though we may not feel like smiling. In many cases, however, we send nonverbal signals without being aware of doing so. Those signals, the experts agree, are a reflection of our true feelings and reactions. One of the goals in intercultural communication is to interpret all nonverbal signals.
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