“Heaven (天堂) is where the police are English, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by the Swiss. Hell (地狱) is where the police are German, the cooks are English, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians.”

    Obviously the national stereotypes (模式化的思想) in this old joke are generalizations (普遍化), but such stereotypes are often said to “exist for a reason”. Is there actually a sliver (裂片) of truth in them? Not likely, an international research team now says.

    “National and cultural stereotypes do play an important role in how people see themselves and others, and being aware that these are not dependable is a useful thing,” said study author Robert McCrae of the National Institute on Aging. “These are in fact unfounded stereotypes. They don't come from looking around you,” McCrae said.

    If national stereotypes aren't rooted in real experiences, then where do they come from? One possibility is that they reflect national values, which may become known from historical events. For example, many historians have argued that the spirit of American individualism (个人主义) has its origins in the experiences of the pioneers on the Old West.

    Social scientists such as psychologist Richard Robins have given several other possible explanations for stereotypes and why they may be incorrect. Robins notes that some stereotypes may have been correct at one point in history and then remained unchanged while the culture changed.

    We may be “hard-wired”, to some degree, to keep incorrect stereotypes, since we are less likely to notice and remember information that is different from our stereotypes. Generally, according to Robins, when we meet people who are different from our stereotypes, we see them as unique individuals rather than typical national or cultural groups.

    He is a lesson to every boy who ever picked up a basketball and dreamed that it would change his life.

    The lights were never brighter and the crowds were never bigger for a homegrown sports hero than they were a quarter-century ago for Ray Hall. But his athletic achievements, as impressive as they are, are to my mind not what is most admirable about the man.

    Known as “Sugar Ray” in his teens, Hall was rated among the country's top 25 high school basketball players. An inner-city kid from a solid family, Hall took on the challenge of lifting Canisius College — still recovering from its failure — back to respectability, rejecting more favorable offers. His status of a savior (救世主) brought more pressure than any 18-year-old should have to handle. However, I watched him mature into the player who led Canisius back to daylight.

    After college Hall played professionally in Italy and Greece for over 10 years until a car accident at 32 ended his basketball career. The news that he would never play again shocked Hall but unlike so many others he was ready for life after basketball. When I met Hall — still fit at 46 — for lunch Monday, he wore a cut-sharp gray suit, designer tie and blazing white shirt that screamed Success. “That was always the question — when the cheers end, where do you go? Who do you turn to?” he said. “It starts and ends with that person in the mirror.”

    Hall got the concept of academics-first from his parents. He graduated from Canisius a semester early. “No matter how good of an athlete you are, you are just one injury away from losing it all,” he said. “But if you take care of things academically, you are prepared until you leave this earth.”

    For the past 14 years, he has been in a computer sales job at Ingram Micro. He married his college sweetheart. They have three kids and a nice house in the suburbs. He figured out early what others learn too late: Athletics is part of a journey, not the destination.

    Congratulations, Ray, you made it. In more ways than one.

    As computers become more popular in China, Chinese people are increasingly relying on computer keyboards to input (输入) Chinese characters. But if they use the computer too much, they may end up forgetting the exact strokes（笔画）of each Chinese character when writing on paper. Experts suggest people, especially students, write by hand more.

    Do you write by hand more or type more? In Beijing, students start using a computer as early as primary school. And computer dependence is more wide-spread among university students. Almost all their assignments and essays are typed on a computer.

    All the students interviewed say they usually use a computer.

    It's faster and easier to correct if using a computer. And that's why computers are being applied more and more often to modern education.

    "When I'm writing with a pen, I find I often can't remember how to write a character, though I feel I'm familiar with it."

    "I'm not in the mood to write when faced with a pen and paper."

    Many students don't feel this is something to worry about. Now that it's more convenient and efficient to write on a computer, why bother to handwrite?

    Many educators think differently. Shi Liwei, the headmaster of a famous primary school in the capital, said, "Chinese characters enjoy both practical and aesthetic（审美的）value. But those characters typed with computer keyboards only maintain their practical value. All the artistic beauty of the characters is lost. And handwriting contains the writer's emotion. Through one's handwriting, people can get to know one's thinking and personality. Beautiful writing will give people a better first impression of them."

    To encourage students to handwrite more, many primary schools in Beijing have made writing classes compulsory（必修的）and in universities, some professors are asking students to turn in their homework and essays written by hand.

How to Drop a Pant Size in a Week

    Dropping one pant size in seven days is a difficult task, but with dedication, exercise and the right diet, you can make it happen.

    Increase your water consumption. Thirst is often misinterpreted as hunger, and if you are drinking the right amount of water, you will find it much easier to avoid snacking. Look to drink at around eight or nine glasses of water every day.

    Lower your calorie count. You can use a calorie calculator to determine how much you need to take in to maintain or lose weight If you take in fewer calories than you burn each day, you will lose weight as a result. As a rule, an average-sized woman needs to take in less than 1.300 calories per day for extreme weight loss, as you'll naturally burn around 2,000. Exact measurements differ based on age, height, weight and activity level.

    Cut the junk food. Chips, soda and candy seem harmless if taken as snacks, but can seriously affect your weight loss, Limit yourself to one or two snacks per day and switch your usual snack foods for baby carrots, apples and grapes.

    Break up your meals. If you want to lose weight, try eating four or five small meals per day instead of two or three large ones. This makes it easier for your body to process what you are consuming. Divide your required calories by the number of meals you'll be eating to determine how large each meal should be Space your meals out two or three hours apart—try meals at breakfast, mid-morning, lunch, afternoon and dinner.

    Doing intense aerobic (需氧的) exercise. You have to encourage your body to bum calories if you want to drop pounds and inches. Running is by far the fastest calorie burner, with the potential for 986 calories per hour. If you're unable to run, use an elliptical machine (椭圆机), jump rope, or participate in a high-impact aerobics class.

    I recently came in contact with celebrity magazines. My family isn't one to give money for pictures of skinny, drunk celebrities with paragraphs about their relationships and shopping cart times. Thus, I was excited to finally get a chance to read about other people's attractive yet troubled lives.

    Right away I noticed how each magazine seemed to be a copy of the other. They had headlines and pictures that were almost the same. Still, the pictures of perfectly constructed faces with cute designers outfits going on with their daily lives made me read on.

Wait, celebrities taking their dogs for walk? Spending an afternoon at a park? All of these things seemed so ordinary—things my own family and I do together often. I suddenly realized how unextraordinary the people in these magazines were. They are simply normal people who happen to have a cool job and much money. For some reason, pictures of them doing things like buying milk at the store appeal to millions of readers. Then, when these regular people mess up, their mistakes is painted onto hundreds of newspapers and internet sites.

    What if every time we made a mistake, it was made public? Have you ever failed a test? Imagine seeing pictures of you on the front of a newspaper with headlines like, "Regular Schooling Isn't Enough". You'd be embarrassed. Now, I'm not necessarily taking the celebrity's side. I'm more realizing the fact that these people we were crazy about are just ordinary human beings with many photographs following them around. Role models? I'd think not. Personally, I'd rather look up to people in any community who have accomplished a lot instead of an ordinary person walking his dog in Berverly Hills.

Is forgiveness against our human nature? To answer our question, we need to ask a further question: What is the essence of our humanity? For the sake of simplicity, people consider two distinctly different views of humanity. The first view involves dominance and power. In an early paper on the psychology of forgiveness, Droll (1984) made the interesting claim that humans' essential nature is more aggressive than forgiving allows. Those who forgive are against their basic nature, much to their harm. In his opinion, forgivers are compromising their well-being as they offer mercy to others, who might then take advantage of them.

The second view involves the theme of cooperation, mutual respect, and even love as the basis of who we are as humans. Researchers find that to fully grow as human beings, we need both to receive love from and offer love to others. Without love, our connections with a wide range of individuals in our lives can fall apart. Even common sense strongly suggests that the will to power over others does not make for harmonious interactions. For example, how well has slavery worked as a mode of social harmony?

From this second viewpoint of who we are as humans, forgiveness plays a key role in the biological and psychological integrity of both individuals and communities because one of the outcomes of forgiveness, shown through scientific studies, is the decreasing of hatred and the restoration of harmony. Forgiveness can break the cycle of anger. At least to the extent the people from whom you are estranged accept your love and forgiveness and are prepared to make the required adjustments. Forgiveness can heal relationships and reconnect people.

As an important note, when we take a Classical philosophical perspective, that of Aristotle, we see the distinction between potentiality and actuality. We are not necessarily born with the capacity to forgive, but instead with the potential to learn about it and to grow in our ability to forgive. The actuality of forgiving, its actual appropriation in conflict situations, develops with practice.