Dear Manager, I have been using your coffee machines for several years. Since your products had never let me down before, I bought your brand-new coffee machine, Morning Maker, on May 18th from your online store. Unfortunately, however, this product has not worked well. Whenever I use this machine, my coffee does not get hot enough. The terms of warranty indicate that if products have any problems, I am entitled to receive a full refund within 2 months. Since it has been less than a month, I want my money back. Enclosed are copies of my receipts and guarantees concerning this purchase. I look forward to your reply and a resolution to my problem. Sincerely, Mike Anderson

Rowe jumps for joy when he finds a cave because he loves being in places where so few have ventured. At the entrance he keeps taking photos with his cell phone to show off his new adventure later. Coming to a stop on a rock a few meters from the entrance, he sees the icy cave's glittering view. He says, Incredibly beautiful! stretching his hand out to touch the icy wall. Suddenly, his footing gives way and he slides down into the darkness. He looks up and sees a crack of light about 20 meters above him. 'Phone for help,' he thinks. But he realizes there's no service this far underground. He tries to move upward but he can't. He calls out, Is anyone there? There's no answer.

If you're an expert, having a high follower count on your social media accounts enhances all the work you are doing in real life. A great example is a comedian. She spends hours each day working on her skill, but she keeps being asked about her Instagram following. This is because businesses are always looking for easier and cheaper ways to market their products. A comedian with 100,000 followers can promote her upcoming show and increase the chances that people will buy tickets to come see her. This reduces the amount of money the comedy club has to spend on promoting the show and makes the management more likely to choose her over another comedian. Plenty of people are upset that follower count seems to be more important than talent, but it's really about firing on all cylinders. In today's version of show business, the business part is happening online. You need to adapt, because those who don't adapt won't make it very far.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of responsibility that you have to deal with in your own life or your own home, you are going to have to figure out a way that you can balance out these responsibilities. For example, is there somebody that you can turn to to tell them that you have too much on your plate and you are feeling too overwhelmed by these responsibilities? If you can find somebody and divide up the labor so that you don't feel so overwhelmed by everything that you are doing, all you have to do sometimes is to ask for help and your life will feel that much better. Many times people will surprise you with their willingness to help you out, so never assume that other people don't care about your stress. Let them know honestly how you are feeling and allow yourself some opportunities to avoid responsibility and give yourself a chance to relax.

You can be perfect, but you need to change the way you think about it. Perfection actually is possible if you delete perfect and insert complete. Imagine a basketball player taking a fifteen-foot shot and the ball going through the net, never touching the rim. Someone is likely to exclaim, That was a perfect shot! And it was perfect. The scoreboard reflects an increase of two points. Now again imagine that same player a few minutes later taking another fifteen-foot shot. But this time the ball hits one side of the rim, rolls around and stands still for half a second, and it finally falls through the net. An announcer might comment on what an ugly shot that was, and she would be right. But basketball games are not won on such criteria as pretty or ugly. In this instance the ball went through the net and the scoreboard increased by two points. In that sense, the second shot was as perfect as the first.

In this world, being smart or competent isn't enough. People sometimes don't recognize talent when they see it. Their vision is clouded by the first impression we give and that can lose us the job we want, or the relationship we want. The way we present ourselves can speak more eloquently of the skills we bring to the table, if we actively cultivate that presentation. Nobody likes to be crossed off the list before being given the opportunity to show others who they are. Being able to tell your story from the moment you meet other people is a skill that must be actively cultivated, in order to send the message that you're someone to be considered and the right person for the position. For that reason, it's important that we all learn how to say the appropriate things in the right way and to present ourselves in a way that appeals to other people ― tailoring a great first impression.

Take the choice of which kind of soup to buy. There's too much data here for you to struggle with: calories, price, salt content, taste, packaging, and so on. If you were a robot, you'd be stuck here all day trying to make a decision, with no obvious way to trade off which details matter more. To land on a choice, you need a summary of some sort. And that's what the feedback from your body is able to give you. Thinking about your budget might make your palms sweat, or your mouth might water thinking about the last time you consumed the chicken noodle soup, or noting the excessive creaminess of the other soup might give you a stomachache. You simulate your experience with one soup, and then the other. Your bodily experience helps your brain to quickly place a value on soup A, and another on soup B, allowing you to tip the balance in one direction or the other. You don't just extract the data from the soup cans, you feel the data.

The above graph shows the global internet usage rate in 2017, sorted by gender and region. Among the five regions, both male and female internet usage rate was the highest in Europe, accounting for 83% and 76% respectively. In each region, the male internet usage rate was higher than the female internet usage rate except for in the Americas. The percentage point gap of internet usage between males and females was the highest in the Arab States. The internet usage rate of males in the Arab States was the same as that of males in Asia Pacific. The percentage of female internet usage in Africa was the lowest among the five regions, but it was lower than half that of female internet usage in Asia Pacific.

Thomas Nast was born on September 27, 1840, in Landau, Germany, and moved with his mother and sister to New York in 1846. Young Nast was a poor student — he never learned to read or write — but showed an early talent for drawing. When he was about 13 years old, he quit regular school and the next year he studied art with Theodore Kaufmann, a photographer and painter. In 1862 he joined the staff of Harper's Weekly, where he focused his efforts on political cartoons. Nast made lasting contributions to the American political and cultural scene. He created the elephant as the symbol for the Republican Party and the modern version of Santa Claus. He also played an important role in the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

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《Bristol Aquarium》 Dive into the ocean and discover thousands of amazing aquatic creatures right in the heart of Bristol. Opening Hours: ∙ Weekdays: 10:00 am-4:00 pm ∙ Weekends: 10:00 am-5:00 pm - Last entry is one hour before closing. - We are open on all holidays except Christmas Day. Ticket Prices: Ticket Type: Adult - Standard Admission: $20 Ticket Type: Child (Under 12) - Standard Admission: $10 Ticket Type: Family (2 Adults & 2 Children) - Standard Admission: $50 - Get tickets online at 10% off. Notice: ∙ Taking pictures is allowed. ∙ Do not touch the glass! It scares the fish.

Trying to produce everything yourself would mean you are using your time and resources to produce many things for which you are a high-cost provider. This would translate into lower production and income. For example, even though most doctors might be good at record keeping and arranging appointments, it is generally in their interest to hire someone to perform these services. The time doctors use to keep records is time they could have spent seeing patients. Because the time spent with their patients is worth a lot, the opportunity cost of record keeping for doctors will be high. Thus, doctors will almost always find it advantageous to hire someone else to keep and manage their records. Moreover, when the doctor specializes in the provision of physician services and hires someone who has a comparative advantage in record keeping, costs will be lower and joint output larger than would otherwise be achievable.

Our culture is biased toward the fine arts — those creative products that have no function other than pleasure. Craft objects are less worthy; because they serve an everyday function, they're not purely creative. But this division is culturally and historically relative. Most contemporary high art began as some sort of craft. The composition and performance of what we now call classical music began as a form of craft music satisfying required functions in the Catholic mass, or the specific entertainment needs of royal patrons. For example, chamber music really was designed to be performed in chambers — small intimate rooms in wealthy homes — often as background music. The dances composed by famous composers from Bach to Chopin originally did indeed accompany dancing. But today, with the contexts and functions they were composed for gone, we listen to these works as fine art.

Psychologists Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, and sociologist Kurt Back began to wonder how friendships form. Why do some strangers build lasting friendships, while others struggle to get past basic platitudes? Some experts explained that friendship formation could be traced to infancy, where children acquired the values, beliefs, and attitudes that would bind or separate them later in life. But Festinger, Schachter, and Back pursued a different theory. The researchers believed that physical space was the key to friendship formation; that friendships are likely to develop on the basis of brief and passive contacts made going to and from home or walking about the neighborhood. In their view, it wasn't so much that people with similar attitudes became friends, but rather that people who passed each other during the day tended to become friends and so came to adopt similar attitudes over time.

As entrepreneur Derek Sivers put it, The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader. If you were sitting with seven other people and six group members picked the wrong answer, but the remaining one chose the correct answer, conformity dropped dramatically. The presence of a supporting partner depleted the majority of much of its pressure, Asch wrote. Merely knowing that you're not the only resister makes it substantially easier to reject the crowd. Emotional strength can be found even in small numbers. In the words of Margaret Mead, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. To feel that you're not alone, you don't need a whole crowd to join you. Research by Sigal Barsade and Hakan Ozcelik shows that in business and government organizations, just having one friend is enough to significantly decrease loneliness.

At the pharmaceutical giant Merck, CEO Kenneth Frazier decided to motivate his executives to take a more active role in leading innovation and change. He asked them to do something radical: generate ideas that would put Merck out of business. For the next two hours, the executives worked in groups, pretending to be one of Merck's top competitors. Energy soared as they developed ideas for drugs that would crush theirs and key markets they had missed. Then, their challenge was to reverse their roles and figure out how to defend against these threats. This kill the company exercise is powerful because it reframes a gain-framed activity in terms of losses. When deliberating about innovation opportunities, the leaders weren't inclined to take risks. When they considered how their competitors could put them out of business, they realized that it was a risk not to innovate. The urgency of innovation was apparent.

The whole history of mathematics is one long sequence of taking the best ideas of the moment and finding new extensions, variations, and applications. Our lives today are totally different from the lives of people three hundred years ago, mostly owing to scientific and technological innovations that required the insights of calculus. Isaac Newton and Gottfried von Leibniz independently discovered calculus in the last half of the seventeenth century. But a study of the history reveals that mathematicians had thought of all the essential elements of calculus before Newton or Leibniz came along. Newton himself acknowledged this flowing reality when he wrote, If I have seen farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. Newton and Leibniz came up with their brilliant insight at essentially the same time because it was not a huge leap from what was already known. All creative people, even ones who are considered geniuses, start as nongeniuses and take baby steps from there.

People often assume erroneously that if a Hadza adult of Tanzania does not know how to solve an algebraic equation, then he must be less intelligent than we are. Yet there is no evidence to suggest that people from some cultures are fast learners and people from others are slow learners. The study of comparative cultures has taught us that people in different cultures learn different cultural content (attitudes, values, ideas, and behavioral patterns) and that they accomplish this with similar efficiency. The traditional Hadza hunter has not learned algebra because such knowledge would not particularly enhance his adaptation to life in the East African grasslands. However, he would know how to track a wounded bush buck that he has not seen for three days and where to find groundwater.

Without money, people could only barter. Many of us barter to a small extent, when we return favors. A man might offer to mend his neighbor's broken door in return for a few hours of babysitting, for instance. Yet it is hard to imagine these personal exchanges working on a larger scale. What would happen if you wanted a loaf of bread and all you had to trade was your new car? Barter depends on the double coincidence of wants, where not only does the other person happen to have what I want, but I also have what he wants. Money solves all these problems. There is no need to find someone who wants what you have to trade; you simply pay for your goods with money. The seller can then take the money and buy from someone else. Money is transferable and deferrable ― the seller can hold on to it and buy when the time is right.

Brain research provides a framework for understanding how the brain processes and internalizes athletic skills. In practicing a complex movement such as a golf swing, we experiment with different grips, positions and swing movements, analyzing each in terms of the results it yields. This is a conscious, left-brain process. Once we identify those elements of the swing that produce the desired results, we rehearse them over and over again in an attempt to record them permanently in muscle memory. In this way, we internalize the swing as a kinesthetic feeling that we trust to recreate the desired swing on demand. This internalization transfers the swing from a consciously controlled left-brain function to a more intuitive or automatic right-brain function. This description, despite being an oversimplification of the actual processes involved, serves as a model for the interaction between conscious and unconscious actions in the brain, as it learns to perfect an athletic skill.

You are in a train, standing at a station next to another train. Suddenly you seem to start moving. But then you realize that you aren't actually moving at all. It is the second train that is moving in the opposite direction. The illusion of relative movement works the other way, too. You think the other train has moved, only to discover that it is your own train that is moving. It can be hard to tell the difference between apparent movement and real movement. It's easy if your train starts with a jolt, of course, but not if your train moves very smoothly. When your train overtakes a slightly slower train, you can sometimes fool yourself into thinking your train is still and the other train is moving slowly backwards.

You're probably already starting to see the tremendous value of network analysis for businesspeople. In the business world, information is money: a tip about anything from a cheap supplier to a competitor's marketing campaign to an under-the-table merger discussion can inform strategic decisions that might yield millions of dollars in profits. You might catch it on TV or in the newspaper, but that's information everyone knows. The most profitable information likely comes through network connections that provide inside information. And it isn't just information that travels through network connections ― it's influence as well. If you have a connection at another company, you can possibly ask your connection to push that company to do business with yours, to avoid a competitor, or to hold off on the launch of a product. So clearly, any businessperson wants to increase their personal network.

Intergroup contact is more likely to reduce stereotyping and create favorable attitudes if it is backed by social norms that promote equality among groups. If the norms support openness, friendliness, and mutual respect, the contact has a greater chance of changing attitudes and reducing prejudice than if they do not. Institutionally supported intergroup contact ― that is, contact sanctioned by an outside authority or by established customs ― is more likely to produce positive changes than unsupported contact. Without institutional support, members of an in-group may be reluctant to interact with outsiders because they feel doing so is deviant or simply inappropriate. With the presence of institutional support, however, contact between groups is more likely to be seen as appropriate, expected, and worthwhile. For instance, with respect to desegregation in elementary schools, there is evidence that students were more highly motivated and learned more in classes conducted by teachers (that is, authority figures) who supported rather than opposed desegregation.

One cannot take for granted that the findings of any given study will have validity. Consider a situation where an investigator is studying deviant behavior. In particular, she is investigating the extent to which cheating by college students occurs on exams. Reasoning that it is more difficult for people monitoring an exam to keep students under surveillance in large classes than in smaller ones, she hypothesizes that a higher rate of cheating will occur on exams in large classes than in small. To test this hypothesis, she collects data on cheating in both large classes and small ones and then analyzes the data. Her results show that more cheating per student occurs in the larger classes. Thus, the data apparently support the investigator's research hypothesis. A few days later, however, a colleague points out that all the large classes in her study used multiple‐choice exams, whereas all the small classes used short answer and essay exams. The investigator immediately realizes that an extraneous variable (exam format) is interfering with the independent variable (class size) and may be operating as a cause in her data. The apparent support for her research hypothesis may be nothing more than an artifact. Perhaps the true effect is that more cheating occurs on multiple-choice exams than on essay exams, regardless of class size.

Six months ago, 55-year-old Billy Ray Harris was homeless. He lived on a street corner in Kansas City, holding out a cup and asking passersby for spare change. But then, one day, his life changed. In February, Sarah Darling passed Harris at his usual spot and dropped some change into his cup. But she also accidentally dropped in her engagement ring. Though Harris considered selling the ring — he got it appraised for $4,000 — a few days later, he returned the ring to Darling. I am not trying to say that I am a saint, but I am no devil either, he said at the time. As a way to say thank you, Darling gave Harris all the cash she had with her. Then her husband, Bill Krejci, launched a Give Forward page to collect money for Harris. As of mid-morning Tuesday, close to $152,000 had been donated. Over the weekend, he spoke with Harris about what he's planning to do with the donations, and knew that he had a very solid plan of making it happen. The fund raised far more than any of them expected — in just three months, people donated more than $190,000. Harris talked to a lawyer, who helped him put the money in a trust. Since then, he's been able to buy a car and even put money down on a house, which he's fixing up himself. And that's not all: After he appeared on TV, his family members who had been searching for him for 16 years were able to find him. They were happily reunited, and Harris is now working on his relationship with them. And the Kansas City community hasn't forgotten about Harris and his good deed. I still see some of the same people, he says, but only now, instead of coming up and giving me change, they're coming up shaking my hand and saying, 'Hey, good job'. Since the fateful day that Darling's ring landed in his cup, Harris's life has turned completely around. I want to thank all the people that helped me out, he says.