In ancient Egypt, a shopkeeper discovered that he could attract customers to his shop simply by making changes to its environment. Modern businesses have been following his lead,with more tactics（策略）.

One tactic involves where to display the goods. Foe example, stores place fruits and vegetables in the first section. They know that customers who buy the healthy food first will feel happy so that they will buy more junk food（垃圾食品）later in their trip. In department stores, section is generally next to the women's cosmetics(化妆品) section：while the shop assistant is going back to find the right size shoe, bored customers are likely to wander over cosmetics they might want to try later.

Besides, businesses seek to appeal to customers' senses. Stores notice that the smell of baked goods encourages shopping, they make their own bread each morning and then fan the bread smell into the store throughout the day. Music sells goods, too. Researchers in Britain found that when French music was played, sales of French wine went up.

           When it comes to the selling of houses, businesses also use highly rewarding tactics. They find that customers make decision in the first few second upon walking in the door, and turn it into a business opportunity. A California builder designed the structure of its houses smartly. When entering the house, the customer would see the Pacific Ocean through the windows, and then the poll through an open stairway leading to the lower level. The instant view of water on both levels helped sell these $10 million houses.

    Blind tasting is a very strange activity. Contrary to what many people imagine, it has nothing to do with blindfolds. It involves tasting a wine without seeing the label and it can deliver shocking surprises. I tasted seven champagnes (香槟) blind with a group of professionals recently. There was a shock when they discovered the wine most of them preferred carried a label they regarded as their least favorite. That sort of result is especially common with champagne, the most image-driven rather than quality-driven wine of all. But it happens all the time when wine is tasted blind.

    Because I'm interested in how wines really taste instead of how I think they should, I taste wine blind as often as I can, especially when assessing similar young wines. But blind tasting when you know absolutely nothing about the wine in front of you is something completely different. The most difficult Master of Wine exams include three sessions during which you have a dozen glasses in front of you and nothing more helpful than a printed exam paper asking you to identify each wine as closely as possible, and assess its quality.

    Now that the MW is behind me, I taste wine completely blind only very rarely, and never in public. So my blind tastings these days are round the dinner table with good friends and once a year when I act as a judge, with Hugh Johnson, in the Oxford vs Cambridge wine-tasting competition. This is the most extraordinary match, always held before the Boat Race but taken just as seriously nowadays. This year's taste-off took place at the end of last month, as usual in the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall in London.  

    As Canadians we may have a love-hate relationship with snow.We love the opportunities it provides: skiing,snow-boarding,cross-country and snowshoeing（雪鞋健行）.There are the advantages of creating snowmen.The beauty of the snow seems to blanket our community after a fresh snow.However,you may hear  icy roads,getting stuck in snow banks,temperature dropping;roofs collapsing（倒塌）from the weight of snow go in the hate category.

    To find joy with winter I have tried various activities to get me out and playing in it.My new favorite for the past 10 years is snowshoeing.The sport becomes popular because it only requires you to lift your knees up higher, which provides a greater exercise benefit.

    According to the Canadian Icons website,snowshoes have been a common form of transport in this country for hundreds of years thanks to the creativity of the native people.The oldest snowshoes were made by the Ojibwa people.With the snowshoes our deep snow walking would be possible.The snowshoes allowed them to float on top of the deep snow by having the weight of the walker distributed across the surface.The snowshoes allowed people to go across the top of the globe from Central Asia to Canada.

    This past New Year's Eve day my oldest son and I went snowshoeing as a great way to end the year by getting to the mountain top.We enjoyed a snack at the top and our dog Indiana rounded out our party.My son took several photos along the way of the amazing views to send them to his new city friends.We are fortunate to live in such a beautiful part of this amazing country.

    Snowshoeing is a great activity to combine your exercise with visiting with friends and families.Wear layers, bring water and snacks and go play in the snow.And your friends will share his enthusiastic story with you.

    Annie Oakley was born in 1860 in Darke County, Ohio. Her family was very poor. She decided to help family even when she was young, so she learned to use a gun, and began hunting animals for food. She could shoot them without losing the important parts of the meat.

    Soon her shooting ability became well known. When she was sixteen, she was invited to a competition with a famous marksman(神枪手) , Frank Butler. Annie surprised everyone by winning the competition. Later that year she and Frank married.

    In 1882 Annie Oakley and Frank Butler started putting on shows together. Frank Butler was the star of the show and she was his assistant. The famous native American leader, Sitting Bull, thought so highly of her shooting ability that he called her "Little Sure Shot". Later Annie Oakley became the star of the show and Frank Butler was her assistant. Posters （海报）for the show called her the "Champion Markswoman".

    During World War I, Annie Oakley wanted to train a group of women volunteers for the army, but the United States did not accept it. She gave American soldiers shooting lessons, and traveled across the country visiting many training camps. She gave shooting performance and raised money to support the American soldiers.

   Annie Oakley died on November 3, 1926. Eighteen days later, Frank Butler died too.

    China is fondly remembering one of its most famous radio voices, a man whose vivid storytelling was a comfort to millions of people, from commuters stuck in traffic to restless teens struggling to sleep. Shan Tianfang, was a leading performer of the traditional Chinese art form pingshu, which translates as "storytelling".

    Pingshu dates from the Song Dynasty (AD960-1279) when performers would entertain villagers by telling stories in a particularly emotive style. It remains particularly popular in north-eastern China. Performers wear traditional dress and use very basic props - often a folded fan and a gavel. Pingshu is sometimes performed in tea houses and small theatres, but many Chinese associate the art form with radio. And in a country where sleeping problems are commonplace, pingshu is still popular as a way of helping people to wind down at bedtime.

    Shan Tianfang was born in 1934 in Yingkou, in north-eastern Liaoning province. His family introduced him to folk arts from a young age and he began learning pingshu when he was 19. He became known in Liaoning for his work on stage and in local teahouses during the 1950s and 1960s, and performed in an art troupe around the region. From 1966-1976, Shan, along with other pingshu performers like Yuan Kuocheng, was forced to stop work. During the 1980s.Shan made the transition (转型) to state-run radio, and his captivating storytelling became comfort listening for people across the country. By the 1990s, Shan had become a well-known face on state TV, even performing in the annual Spring Festival Gala show. He has died aged 84 following a long illness.

    Shan performed over 12,000 stories on TV and radio. His stories attracted people of all ages. One of his most acclaimed performances is of the Heroes in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. He gave countless performances of the “Four Classic Novels” (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber and Water Margin) and also helped to bring lesser-known classical Chinese literature to new audiences.

    He was able to use the medium to entrance his audience and in the process he helped to popularise classical Chinese literature. As film director Zhang Jizhong told the Global Times newspaper: “He could describe a scene and a character extremely vividly. He once had a long talk with me about adapting the heroic stories he told into films or television shows to help promote Chinese classics and traditional culture.”

    But in his later years, the growth of online and digital media exposed the challenges of keeping his art form alive. Shan turned his efforts towards writing books and opening performance schools to teach pingshu to young people. They included the Shan Tianfang Culture and Media Academy in Beijing, a Shan Tianfang teahouse and “storytelling base” in Anshan in Liaoning province. Meanwhile, modern productions of pingshu reference (引用，参照) contemporary  (现代的) culture to draw in new performers and audiences. Performers like Guo Heming have emerged, putting a modern spin on pingshu by adapting popular works, including the Harry Potter stories.

    Although he wasn't particularly active on social media, he amassed more than one million fans on the Sina Weibo platform.

A memorial was held for him on 15 September but millions of Chinese will miss his voice.

    It was once common to regard Britain as a society with class distinction. Each class had unique characteristics.

    In recent years, many writers have begun to speak the 'decline of class' and 'classless society' in Britain. And in modern day consumer society everyone is considered to be middle class.

    But pronouncing the death of class is too early. A recent wide-ranging society of public opinion found 90 percent of people still placing themselves in particular class; 73 percent agreed that class was still a vital part of British society; and 52 percent thought there were still sharp class differences. Thus, class may not be culturally and politically obvious, yet it remains an important part of British society. Britain seems to have a love of stratification.

    One unchanging aspect of a British person's class position is accent. The words a person speaks tell her or his class. A study of British accents during 1970s found that a voice sounding like a BBC newsreader was viewed as the most attractive voice, Most people said this accent sounded 'educated' and 'soft'. The accents placed at the bottom in this study, on the other hand, were regional city accents. These accents were seen as 'common' and 'ugly'. However, a similar study of British accents in the US turned these results upside down and placed some regional accents as the most attractive and BBC English as the least. This suggests that British attitudes towards accent have deep roots and are based on class prejudice.

    In recent years, however, young upper middle-class people in London, have begun to adopt some regional accents, in order to hide their class origins. This is an indication of class becoming unnoticed. However, the 1995 pop song 'Common People' puts forward the view that though a middle-class person may 'want to live like common people' they can never appreciate the reality of a working-class life.