Americans always attach great weight to the business of the country. President Coolidge's statement, “the business of America is business.” Still points to an important truth today—that business institutions have more prestige(威望) in American society than any other kind of organization, including the government. Why do business institutions possess this great prestige?

    One reason is that Americans view business as being more firmly based on the ideal of competition than other institutions in society. Since competition is seen as the major source of progress and prosperity by most Americans, competitive business institutions are respected. Competition is not only good in itself, it is the means by which other basic American values such as individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and hard work are protected.

    Competition protects the freedom of the individual by ensuring that there is no monopoly (垄断、垄断者) of power. In contrast to one, all-powerful government, many businesses compete against each other for profits. Theoretically, if one business tries to take unfair advantage of its customers, it will lose to competing business which treats its customers more fairly. Where many businesses compete for the customers' dollar, they cannot afford to treat them like inferiors(下属) or slaves.

    A contrast is often made between business, which is competitive, and government, which is a monopoly. Because is competitive, many Americans believe that it is more supportive of freedom than government, even though government leaders are elected by the people and business leaders are not. Many Americans believes, then, that competition is as important, or even more important, than democracy in preserving freedom.

    Competition in business is also believed to strengthen the ideal of equality of opportunity. Competition is seen as an open and fair where success goes to the swiftest person regardless of his or her social class background. Competitive success is commonly seen as the American alternation to social rank based on family background. Business is therefore world as an expression of the idea of equality of opportunity in America rather than the aristocratic(贵族的) idea of inherited privilege in many other countries

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    In the United States, when one becomes rich, he wants people to know it. And even if he does not become very rich, he wants people to think that he is. That is what “keeping up with the Joneses” is about. It is the story of someone who tried to look as rich as his neighbors.

    The expression was first used in 1913 by a young American called Arthur Momand. He told this story about himself. He began earning $ 125 a week at the age of 23. That was a lot of money in those days. He got married and moved with his wife to a very wealthy neighborhood outside New York City. When he saw that rich people rode horses, Momand went horseback riding every day. When he saw that rich people had servants, Momand and his wife also hired a servant and gave big parties for their new neighbors.

    It was like a race, but one could never finish his race because one was always trying to keep up. The race ended for Momand and his wife when they could no longer pay for their new way of life. They moved back to an apartment in New York City.

    Momand looked around him and noticed that many people do things just to keep up with rich lifestyle of their neighbors. He saw the funny side of it and started to write a series of short stories. He called it “Keeping up with the Joneses” because “Jones” is a very common name in the United States. “Keeping up with the Joneses” came to mean keeping up with rich lifestyle of the people around you. Momand's series appeared in different newspapers across the country for over 28 years.

    People never seem to get tired of keeping up with the Joneses. And there are “Joneses” in every city of the world. But one must get tired of trying to keep up with the Joneses because no matter what one does, Mr. Jones always seems to be ahead.

    FITNESS CENTRE

    The fitness centre offers a variety of activities for members of all ages throughout the week.

    Activities for Monday 12 July, 2017:

    Learn to swim. Classes for preschool children aged five and under start at 10:00 am. Classes last 30 minutes and parents must attend with their children. Don't forget to book in advance, as places are limited, and to pack some warm clothes for after the lesson.

    Woman's aerobics (有氧运动). Sessions are for one hour and begin at 10:45 am, led by Melissa. Come along and join us every Monday for an exhilarating hour of exercise and fun. Leave your kids at the nursery and take time out for yourself. Wear a track-suit or something similar.

    Lunchtime yoga. Take a break at lunchtime (1:00—2:00 pm) for an hour of meditation and yoga. Enjoy the peace and quiet of our meditation room, and relaxing sessions designed for active people with busy lives. Use your own mat for floor work or hire one from us for a small sum.

    Family Shootaround. 10:00—5:30 pm. Family Shootaround is open for members and guests to bring the family out for basketball. Half court games are only during this time. There are no full court games during Family Shootaround hours. All participants must sign in at the front desk and wear a wristband during the play.

    Many people don't consider their breakfast without a glass of milk. Right now, cows, buffalos, goats and sheep provide most of the world's milk. But soon, people could get milk from roaches(蟑螂).

    That isn't as crazy as it might sound. New research shows this “milk” is super-nutritious. What's more, some scientists have already begun referring to a lot of insects as source of milk.

    In 2004, Subramanian Ramaswamy started studying milk crystals found inside the roach. At the time, he was teaching biochemistry at the University of Iowa City.

    To learn more about the milk crystal from roaches, the scientists used X-rays to look at the atoms in it. The data basically revealed the chemical recipe of the roach crystal. They showed that roach milk is a “complete food”. It contains sugar with a fatty acid stuck to it. Fatty acids are the building blocks of fats. The protein in the milk is also full of essential amino(氨基的) acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Since our bodies can't produce the “essential” ones, we need to get them from our food. And so do baby roaches.

    Barbara Stay, a biologist at Iowa University, also worked on the new study. She says the new data show that the roach milk is “three times more nutritious than cow's milk and four times more nutritious than buffalo's milk”.

    Ramaswamy would like to see roach milk turned into a protein supplement to feed hungry people. But not everyone is confident that it can be done.

    Marcel Dicke studies insects as a potential source of human food at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Dicke says this is a “sound study”. However, in his opinion, “Extracting(提取) milk from roaches can only likely be done in a destructive way with only small quantities”. That means you'd have to raise and kill many bugs to get even tiny quantities of the milk.

    Last month, the president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, held an underwater meeting. The purpose of the ocean floor conference is to highlight the effects of global warming on his island nation.

    The Maldives, located in the Indian Ocean, is the lowest-lying country on Earth. Melting glaciers and polar ice are causing sea levels to rise, putting the Maldives and other low-lying areas at risk of being swallowed by the sea within the next 100 years.

    What can be done? Scientists and leaders from 190 nations will try to figure that out at the United Nations climate change conference next month. The main goal of the meeting is to come up with a new climate agreement for 2012 and beyond. That is when the existing plan, the Kyoto Protocol will expire. The agreement was created in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. Since then, it has been ratified(正式批准) by 190 nations. The countries promised to limit the amount of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which they produced each year.

    The debate over who should cut greenhouse emissions has been going on for years. The US has been hesitant to reduce emissions unless fast-growing nations such as China and India also reduce their use of fossil fuels. In recent months, China has taken steps to be greener. But India has been unwilling to change. It argues that it is unfair for rich nations to ask poorer countries to cut down on emissions.

    While world leaders work on a plan in Copenhagen, there are many things you can do to help the planet. You can save fuel by walking or biking instead of riding in a car. You can start a recycling program in your community. You can plant trees. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air and give off oxygen.

    Nowadays women appear to have a positive image of themselves as safer drivers than men.

    In a survey done for insurer MetLife, 51% of women said they drive more safely. The evidence is on their side: Men are 3.4 times more likely than women to get a ticket for careless driving and 3.1 times as likely to be punished for drunk driving. "Women are on average less aggressive and more law abiding (守法的) drivers, which leads to fewer accidents," the report says. However, not all male drivers share the same opinion. Of the men surveyed by MetLife, 39% claimed male drivers were safer. The findings did back them up on one point: automotive knowledge. The report showed that more men are familiar with current safety equipment such as electronic stability control, which helps prevent rollover accidents.

    Auto safety unavoidably matters to money. Insurance companies focus on what classes of drivers have the lowest dollar amounts of claims, and for now, that mainly includes women. In general, women pay about 9% less for auto insurance than men. A study by the website Insweb also showed that auto insurance rates are lower for women in most states. Among individual states, women get the greatest advantage in Wyoming (where they pay 20% less), South Dakota and Washington, D. C. where their insurance costs are 16% lower.

    "More than 11, 900 male drivers died in U. S. traffic accidents in 2009, compared with just under 4, 900 women drivers," according to the study. "Based on miles traveled, men died at a rate of 2.5 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, VS 1.7 deaths for women."