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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    Ever since I was a kid I had a 6 second rule.That means that if I had something I needed to do but didn't want to, I'd count till 6 and do it anyway.My personal rule was to just never ever break that rule,that at 6,I HAD to get it going.Most of the time I'd use it to get out of bed or get out of the bath.Sometimes I'd also use it to restrict my time playing "ok in 6 seconds I'll stop playing with my dolls."

    As I grew older,I'd use it as a motivation to get it going with my homework,get off messenger,etc.It really worked well,the same rule applied;whatever happens,don't cheat the "rule of 6." Most of the time,I wouldn't even have to count till 6 because I knew it would just mean I have to do it,so I'd just do it anyway.As an adult,I've pretty much conditioned myself to do things by the rule of 6.I've pretty much mastered most usual things in my life but the rule of 6 never fails me when I start something new.Exercising,running,getting cooking,starting reading,it just works for me.

    At the time,when I was 6,6 was my favorite number.So just go ahead and pick a number from 1-10 (although Id suggest 3-10) and try it.The important thing is not just to let yourself down.Like any other trick,it only works if you allow it to.

    Dyslexia(失读症) is a learning disorder, it interferes with the ability to recognise words, and for some readers to understand what they have read.

    Experts say dyslexia affects about five to ten percent of the population of the United State. Researchers have long known that people with dyslexia write or read words and letters backwards in the wrong order.

    But a new study shows that people with dyslexia may have trouble redirecting(重新传入) their attention between senses, from seeing something to hearing something. The study suggests something that might help dyslexic people learn more quickly — play video games.

    Vanessa Harrar of Britain's University of Oxford led the study. She reported the findings in the journal Current Biology. The study suggests that dyslexic people may have trouble moving quickly from what they read to what they hear. Doctor Harrar calls this a "sluggish shifting of attention across the senses."

    "So, if you are trying to read something and then trying to listen to somebody who's reading aloud and you're trying to follow along with what they are reading -- they have to switch their attention from hearing what they are saying to looking at the piece of paper and back again. So we found they have quite sluggish shifting of attention across the senses," said Harrar.

    In the study, Doctor Harrar tested 17 people with dyslexia, and 19 others without reading problems. The volunteers were asked to push a button as quickly as possible when they heard a sound, saw a light or experienced both together. Doctor Harrar compared the speed of their reactions.

    She found that people with dyslexia were just as fast as the others when they saw only a picture or heard only a sound. But the dyslexics had a slower reaction time when they heard a sound and saw a picture at the same time.

    Doctor Harrar feels like playing action video games could help dyslexic people shift from seeing to hearing more quickly. She adds that images in video games force the eyes to move and focus quickly.

    "Video game types of things pop out of here and there, they move your eyes around the screen quite quickly in response to things quite quickly, and the more you play a video game the faster you get that kind of thing. So, the video game is really training the attention system to move quickly," said Harrar.

    The study also shows that dyslexic people have the most difficulty going between what they saw and what they heard, this may have an effect on how dyslexic children are taught how to read.

    When children learn the alphabet, they usually see the letter first and then hear the sound, or they see and hear the letter at the same time. The study shows that dyslexics might learn more quickly if they hear the sound of a letter or word first before seeing it.

B

    In the 1760s, Mathurin Roze opened a series of shops that boasted(享有）a special meat soup called consomme. Although the main attraction was the soup, Roze's chain shops also set a new standard for dining out, which helped to establish Roze as the inventor of the modern restaurant.

    Today, scholars have generated large amounts of instructive research about restaurants. Take visual hints that influence what we eat: diners served themselves about 20 percent more pasta(意大利面食）when their plates matched their food.  When a dark-colored cake was served on a black plate rather than a white one, customers recognized it as sweeter and more tasty.

    Lighting matters, too. When Berlin restaurant customers ate in darkness, they couldn't tell how much they'd had: those given extra-large shares ate more than everyone else, but were none the wiser—they didn't feel fuller, and they were just as ready for dessert.

    Time is money, but that principle means different things for different types of restaurants. Unlike fast-food places, fine dining shops prefer customers to stay longer and spend. One way to encourage customers to stay and order that extra round: put on some Mozart(莫扎特）.When classical, rather than pop, music was playing, diners spent more. Fast music hurried diners out. Particular scents also have an effect: diners who got the scent of lavender(薰衣草）stayed longer and spent more than those who smelled lemon, or no scent.

    Meanwhile, things that you might expect to discourage spending—"bad" tables, crowding, high prices — don't necessarily. Diners at bad tables — next to the kitchen door, say — spent nearly as much as others but soon fled. It can be concluded that restaurant keepers need not "be overly concerned about 'bad' tables," given that they're profitable. As for crowds, a Hong Kong study found that they increased a restaurant's reputation, suggesting great food at fair prices. And doubling a buffet's price led customers to say that its pizza was 11 percent tastier.

    Mid-afternoon on a particularly busy Tuesday, I took leave of my desk at work and walked into a local Starbucks only to find a space where neither my clients nor my children would ask me to do something.

    Inside, I ran into Kate, a co-worker of mine. The topic of parenthood came up. I complained about how packed my schedule was. From the minute I woke up to the minute I fell asleep, I was constantly in demand and always had someone knocking at the door. But a bit of sadness seemed to come over Kate's face.

    "Well, my daughter's in San Francisco and she doesn't seem to need me at all these days," Kate said. It was in that moment that I realized although I might often feel in high demand, there will come a day when I will actually miss that same stress I then complained about.

    And as our conversation continued, it turned to our children's younger years, with Kate smiling proudly, thinking of the little boy and girl she raised who are now a man and a woman. But I noticed her smile was marked with regret. She explained that she often wondered about what she could have done differently when her children were in their earlier years.

    This got me thinking. Is regret an unfortunate footnote (注脚) to parenthood? With that in mind, I asked six older parents one question: What is your biggest regret from your early days as a parent?

    It turned out that all of them thought they could have done it better. But, each of them also has a strong, healthy relationship with their kids. Whatever regrets their parents might have had about their upbringing, one thing is clear —— it didn't affect them in a meaningful way.

    The bottom line is, we all feel like we could be doing this parenting thing better. And quite clearly, years later, we're still going to look back and wish we tried things differently. But the past can't be changed, and neither should it.

    A 3-year-old boy who was lost in the woods for two days is now safe at home with his family. But Casey Hathaway told his rescuers that he was not alone in the rainy, freezing cold woods. He said he was with a friend — a bear.

    The child went missing on January 22. He was playing with friends at his grandmother's house in the southern state of North Carolina. When the other children returned home but Casey did not, the family searched the area for almost an hour before calling the police. Police formed a search and rescue team to look for the young boy in the nearby woods. But two days went by and still — no Casey.

    Then on January 24, someone called the police saying he heard a child crying in the woods. Police followed up on the information and found Casey at about 9:30 that night. They pulled him out of some briar. He was in good health. Casey told the rescuers that he had hung out with a black bear for two days, a bear he called his "friend".

    Sheriff Chip Hughes spoke with reporters from several news agencies. He said Casey did not say how he was able to survive in the woods for three days in the cold, rainy weather. However, the sheriff said, "He did say he had a friend in the woods that was a bear that was with him."

    Hundreds of people helped in the search and rescue efforts, including some 600 volunteers, federal police and members of the military. Officer Hughes told reporters that at no point did he think Casey had been kidnapped.

    His mother Brittany Hathaway talked with reporters from a local news agency and thanked everyone who joined the search for her son. "We just want to tell everybody that we're very thankful that you took the time out to search for Casey and prayed for him, and he's good," said his mother. "He is good, he is up and talking. He's already asked to watch Netflix. So, he's good …"