To whom it may concern,

    My husband Jim and I got married in 1965. For the first ten years of our marriage, I was very happy to stay home and raise our three children. Then about four years ago, our youngest child went to school, and I thought I might go back to work.

    Jim was very supportive and helped me to make my decision. He started to do all the things I used to do around the house, and said he thought I could be a great success in business.

After several weeks of job hunting, I found my present job, which is working for a small public relation firm. At first, my husband was proud of me and would tell his friends, "My clever little wife can run that company she's working for."

    But, as his joking words were becoming reality, Jim stopped talking to me about my job. I have received several promotions and pay increases, and I am now making more money than he is. I can buy my own clothes and a new car. Because of our combined incomes, Jim can do things that we had always dreamed of doing, but we don't do these things because he is unhappy.

    We fought about little things, and Jim is very critical of me in front of our friends. For the first time in our marriage, I think there is a possibility that our marriage may come to an end.

    I love Jim very much, and I don't want him to feel inferior(较差的), but I also love my job. I think I can be a good wife and a working woman, but I don't know how. Can you give me some advice? Will I have to choose one or the other or can I keep both my husband and my new career?

    Please help.

Yours,

Mary

    What's On?

    Electric Underground

    7.30pm－1.00am   Free at the Cyclops Theatre

    Do you know who's playing in your area? We're bringing you an evening of live rock and pop music from the best local bands. Are you interested in becoming a musician and getting a recording contract(合同)? If so, come early to the talk at 7.30pm by Jules Skye, a successful record producer. He's going to talk about how you can find the right person to produce you music.

    Gee Whizz

    8.30pm-10.30pm   Comedy at Kaleidoscope

    Come and see Gee Whizz perform. He's the funniest stand-up comedian(喜剧演员) on the comedy scene. This joyful show will please everyone, from the youngest to the oldest. Gee Whizz really knows how to make you laugh! Our bar is open from 7.00pm for drinks and snacks(快餐).

    Simon's Workshop

    5.00pm-7.30pm    Wednesdays at Victoria Stage

    This is a good chance for anyone who wants to learn how to do comedy. The workshop looks at every kind of comedy, and practices many different ways of making people laugh. Simon is a comedian and actor who has 10 years' experience of teaching comedy. His workshops are exciting and fun. An evening with Simon will give you the confidence to be funny.

    Charlotte Stone

    8.00pm-11.00pm     Pizza World

    Fine food with beautiful jazz music; this is a great evening out. Charlotte Stone will perform songs from her new best-selling CD, with James Pickering on the piano. The menu is Italian, with excellent meat and fresh fish, pizzas and pasta(面食). Book early to get a table. Our bar is open all day, and serves cocktails, coffee, beer, and white wine.

B

    Steven Stein likes to follow garbage trucks. His strange habit makes sense when you consider that he's an environmental scientist who studies how to reduce litter, including things that fall off garbage trucks as they drive down the road. What is even more interesting is that one of Stein's jobs is defending an industry behind the plastic shopping bags.

    Americans use more than 100 billion thin film plastic bags every year. So many end up in tree branches or along highways that a growing number of cities do not allow them at checkouts(收银台). The bags are prohibited in some 90 cities in California, including Los Angeles. Eyeing these headwinds, plastic-bag makers are hiring scientists like Stein to make the case that their products are not as bad for the planet as most people assume.

    Among the bag makers' arguments: many cities with bans still allow shoppers to purchase paper bags, which are easily recycled but require more energy to produce and transport. And while plastic bags may be ugly to look at, they represent a small percentage of all garbage on the ground today.

    The industry has also taken aim at the product that has appeared as its replacement: reusable shopping bags. The stronger a reusable bag is, the longer its life and the more plastic-bag use it cancels out. However, longer-lasting reusable bags often require more energy to make. One study found that a cotton bag must be used at least 131 times to be better for the planet than plastic.

    Environmentalists don't dispute（质疑） these points. They hope paper bags will be banned someday too and want shoppers to use the same reusable bags for years.

Mark Twain's First Money

      Mark Twain was asked one day if he could remember the first money he ever earned. He thought a long time and then said, "Yes, it was at school. I can remember everything about it. School boys in those days did not take good care of their chairs and desks. There was a rule in our school that if anyone damaged his desk or chair, he would have to pay five dollars or the teacher would beat him in front of the whole school."

    "One day I damaged my desk in some way, I had to pay five dollars or be beaten before the whole school. My father said it would be too bad to have our family disgraced in front of the whole school. He agreed to give me five dollars to hand over the teacher. But before he gave me the money, he took me upstairs and gave me a beating."

    "But as I had one beating and I decided I would take another beating at school and keep the five dollars. So that's what I did. That was the first money I ever earned."

    Learning is so complex that there are many different psychological theories to explain how people learn. A psychologist named Albert Bandura suggested a social learning theory which shows that observation, imitation (模仿), and modeling play a primary role in this process.

    In Albert Bandura's opinion, people can learn through observation. Observational learning doesn't even necessarily require watching another person join in an activity. We can also learn by reading, hearing, or watching the actions of characters in books and films. However, just observing someone else's actions isn't always enough to lead to learning. Your own mental state also plays an important role in determining whether a behavior is learned or not. In addition, though in many cases, learning can be seen immediately when the new behavior is displayed, yet sometimes we can learn things even though that learning might not be immediately obvious, which means people can learn new information without showing new behaviors.

    Not all observed behaviors are effectively learned. Certain requirements need to be related to the observational learning process. For example, you need to be paying attention. Also your retention is an important part of observational learning as you need to pull up information later and act on it during the process. Once you've paid attention to the model and kept the information, it's time to actually perform the behavior you observed. Further practice of the learned behavior leads to improvement. Finally, you have to be motivated to imitate the behavior that has been modeled.

    Social learning theory have many real-world applications. For example, researchers employ it to look into and understand ways that positive role models can be used to encourage desirable behaviors. Besides, it's also applied in the field of education, and today, both teachers and parents recognize how important it is to model appropriate behaviors.

    Director James Cameron went to new depths for his film-making on Sunday by setting the world record for the deepest ocean dive by a single person.

    This type of extreme research is nothing new to the director. Cameron, 57, is most famous for directing Titanic (1997) and Avantar (2009). During the several years of research for Titanic, he famously traveled to the bottom of the ocean to visit the sunken ship. He also visited the deep sea as research for his fictional 1989 film. The Abyss, which is about a submarine that comes across an alien species. "Most people know me as a film-maker," Cameron said. "But the idea of exploring the ocean has always been the stronger drive in my life."

    Cameron and his team had been preparing for the trip for seven years. On Sunday, Cameron took more than two and a half hours to make the dangerous 6.8-mile journey down to the Trench, an area with near-freezing temperatures, no sunlight, and heavy water pressure. Cameron traveled in a 24-foot-long mini-submarine he helped design, equipped with lights and 3D cameras for filming the adventure. It also had a mechanical arm for collecting samples of soil and deep-sea creatures. Humans had not visited the Mariana Trench since two divers first reached the deep-sea spot in 1960. The divers Don Walsh and Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard spent 20 minutes there but could hardly see anything. They took no pictures.

    In his well-equipped submarine, Cameron was able to spend three hours in the Trench, exploring and filming. He plans to use his recordings in a 3D film production for movie theaters and for a National Geographic TV special. "I see this as the beginning," Cameron said. "It's not a one-time deal. This is just the beginning of opening up this new frontier."