2009/03/21

9 Reasons People Cheat


Why do I find it so easy not to cheat?Maybe I'm not very attractive, so my options are limited. Maybe I'm too jaded to go for the cheating opportunities. Maybe I still have some mental wounds lingering from when my dad temporarily moved out because he had met another woman. Maybe I'm too afraid that I've reached my sin quotient and one more big sin will keep me out of heaven.
Cheating is not a caught in the moment thing if you are really into your significant other, you miss them when you are not with them, you don't look for a way to hurt or deceive them.I am just now patching up a friendship with someone I was seeing while they had a boyfriend (that may make me a cheater). At different points she told me that she had broken up with her boyfriend, that they were back together, and that he was boring and I was fun. It was total confusion.I told her she wasn't being fair to herself, me, or him.Finally, she said, "you just don't understand, there are things you don't know." Thing is she's been cheating on him for a couple of years with different guys, and he keeps taking her back.So, are cheaters born cheaters, or do certain situations cause people to cheat? Probably a little bit of both. Here are some situations that make people cheat:1. BoredI'd say this is the most common reason that people cheat.It's tough to keep that edge throughout a relationship. Things start off grand and then level off and then you both realize that it's still real life. When you meet someone else, that inaugural excitement of a new relationship kicks back in.2. DependenceAt first glance, cheating seems like independent behavior. It could be interpreted as doing what you want, when you want. But I would argue that cheating is a dependent behavior. A cheater is dependent because they are not strong enough to break up with their significant other in order to get with the new person.
3. ConfusionSometimes life or a particular situation can get to you. When the perfect storm of confusion is going on in your head, you make mistakes.4. Because They Let YouIf any girl ever cheated on me, I'd break up with her immediately. Forgiving a cheater is putting up with it, and starts a vicious cycle. That person who cheated may lose respect for you and might continue to cheat-because they know they can get away with it, because you'll continue to take them back.5. NurturingIf someone is mistreating you, then your first instinct is to get away from him or her. But sometimes it's not that simple-maybe you are raising kids together. If you feel trapped in a bad relationship, it's only natural that you will run to the open arms of a person who treats you well.6. RevengeThis is quite simple- an eye for an eye. Cheat on them if they cheat on you. If they continuously hurt you or abuse you in some way, you do it to get them back.7. Confirmation of AttractivenessSometimes when you're in a long relationship, or if your significant other is taking you for granted, you begin to wonder if you're still attractive. Perhaps, because you were out on the dating circuit, you felt more attractive when you were single. If you have an affair, you've proven that a new person can be attracted to you.8. The ThrillSome people just enjoy the thrill of cheating: running around secretly, risking getting caught, andcreating thrilling moments with a forbidden romance.9. They Don't Consider It Cheating, Even Though You MightRelationships have that grey area, usually right before you become exclusive. He thinks date #4 is when you're "together," and you think date #2 is when you're "together." If you haven't talked about exclusivity, someone may think they are well within their rights to see other people, even though the other person in the relationship may not.I don't understand why people don't break up as soon as they have an urge to cheat. Is it natural to have temptation, or is temptation a sign that the relationship is losing its fire? What reasons would you add to this list, and do you disagree with any? If you've ever cheated, why did you do it? Could you forgive a cheater? If you are single, but seeing a person who is in a committed relationship, does that make you a cheater?

2009/03/11

Jasonwood­­­­­ ­— I like it!



































Like many girls, I enjoy the process of shopping and I have a deep desire to find something beautiful, interestingand special. Now shopping has become an important role in my daily life. No matter where I go, my eyes will be fixed on the stores in the street.

Most of the college students like jeans, because it makes us look fashion and wears comfortably. But which brand of jeans is good for our students? We face the fact that the price of the top jeans brands, such as Levi’s, is too high and few of us can afford it, while we always don’t like the style of those jeans in some unknown stores. Here, I would like to command a good jeans brand to you. It is Jasonwood­­­­­! I believe it is the best choice for you!

Jasonwood­­­­­ holds the view of “Individuality, Fashion, Originality,Orient ” and combines the culture of the east with the jeans spirit of the west and designs the jeans filled with individuality and fashion to meet our youngsters’ needs. Now,it has many stores in Suzhou and you will be treated well in it.Thanks to Jasonwood­­­­­, we can own well designed jeans which the price is not too high.

I just like to say, Jasonwood­­­­­ ­— I like it!






















2009/03/08

The Economy: It’s on Everyone’s Mind


John D. Geanakoplos and Susan P. Koniak are right to worry about the fate of borrowers whose mortgage loan principals exceed the market value of their homes. But the article’s argument for getting government (and community banks) involved in writing down these principals, although important, seems incomplete.
If, as claimed, such write-downs are truly “win-win” moves — allowing borrowers to keep their homes and giving mortgage holders a higher return than foreclosure — they may not need the government’s assistance.
Mr. Geanakoplos and Ms. Koniak contend that servicers, the agents who manage the loans for mortgage holders, currently have contracts giving them the incentive to foreclose rather than rewrite loans. But if so, then mortgage holders themselves have strong motivation to renegotiate those contracts, so that the servicers’ incentives are corrected.
That would be a win-win-win move (for mortgage holders, servicers and borrowers), and to complete their argument, the writers must show why it won’t happen.
Eric MaskinPrinceton, N.J., March 6, 2009
The writer, a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study, is a 2007 Nobel laureate in economics.

To the Editor:
John D. Geanakoplos and Susan P. Koniak present a compelling case for their plan to reverse the tide of foreclosures. The trouble is, nearly every recommendation I’ve read makes a compelling case — and they never seem to agree.
The fact is, nobody really understands the financial system we’ve built, and thus nobody really understands how to fix it. What is completely lacking is a deep and robust professional, institutionalized knowledge of how this creaky machine we’ve built operates.
We need a cadre of professional regulators. People who train in the profession of understanding, overseeing and regulating our financial system. And for that, we need to develop a new field of study, new training programs, new professional bodies akin to those that underpin the legal, medical and engineering professions.
Developing this new profession won’t solve the immediate crisis, but it will help avoid the next one.
Wayne BuckHamden, Conn., March 5, 2009

To the Editor:
I am one of the responsible people who would be enraged to see my irresponsible neighbors get a break on their mortgages. Nonetheless, I could sign on to the Geanakoplos-Koniak plan if one element were added: a Congressional and presidential guarantee that an ironclad regulatory system will be crafted so that these abuses can never happen again.
Sadly, the coddling of those who got us into this mess strongly suggests that neither branch has the desire or the will to do so.
James FlemingPotomac, Md., March 5, 2009

To the Editor:
Re “U.S. Sets Big Incentives to Head Off Foreclosures” (front page, March 5):
My wife and I both work in Manhattan and have been married for 10 years. We have two extraordinary children and rent in Queens. We first worked our way out of student loan debt, then credit card debt, and now pay all bills on time, while saving a little each month for retirement and college.
We live on the budget we have. We could never save enough to make a down payment on a house, so we never considered taking out a mortgage even during the “no money down” times because those came with future adjustable interest rates and it seemed foolish to make decisions based on imagined earnings.
Do we want to own a house? Yes. Do we expect help from the government? No. Clearly we are not part of the “new” America.
Michael RoyceForest Hills, Queens, March 5, 2009

To the Editor:
Financial arrangements so incomprehensible that government regulators could not understand them, much less oversee them, contributed significantly to the current economic crisis. Treasury officials should try to explain to the average homeowner the new complex, possibly inequitable rules intended to stave off foreclosures.
Transparency still hasn’t taken hold in Washington.
Joel MandelbaumNew York, March 5, 2009

2009/03/04

Turning to Cube Steak, and Back to Childhood


There. It’s out. My madeleine is a piece of round steak mechanically mashed into submission.
The realization came to me not too long ago, when I found a package in the grass-fed beef bins where I buy my groceries. I took them home, patted them with some seasoned flour and slipped them into a hot skillet. Six minutes later I was right back at my childhood dinner table, when cube steaks on a Tuesday night meant life was safe, steady and predictable.
But my feelings for the cube steak are more than nostalgic. That I can get grass-fed cube steaks for about $8 a pound (half that if I go for conventionally raised beef) is a comfort to my budget, too.
The cube steak is suddenly one of the hottest cuts of beef in the country, according to figures from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The amount of cube steak sold during the last quarter of 2008 was up by almost 10 percent over the same period a year earlier. The overall amount of beef sold went up only 3 percent.
It doesn’t take a wizard to figure out that the economy’s swan dive has much to do with the cube steak’s resurgence. But even before kitchen budgets became tight, the cube steak had its fan base.
Through good times and bad, it has remained a wallflower among meat cuts. Old-fashioned and a little mysterious, it’s a steak without pretension, or maybe a hamburger with humble aspirations.
But tell people you’re on a little cube-steak jag, and the reactions you get — either pro or con — are surprisingly powerful considering we’re talking about a cutlet.
“I feel sad and sick whenever I hear the term ‘cube steak,’ ” said a friend whose mother used to bake them into greasy, grim casseroles studded with string beans. The cube steak represents all that was unstylish and lacking in her childhood.
Bill Niman, the boutique beef man from California, has a strong reaction to the cube steak, too. It’s not all bad. He appreciates that the cube steak once served as the convenience food for an entire generation. And he likes that the tenderizing method helps make use of the whole animal, which is especially helpful for small-scale grass ranchers with tiny profit margins.
But when Mr. Niman fixed one for himself recently, it only served to remind him of the gloopy, tomato-soaked Swiss steaks of his childhood.
“I fed it to the dogs,” he said.
But other people jumped on me like I was a long-lost sorority sister when I brought up my appreciation of the cube steak.
“Oh, I just really love them,” gushed Kathy Sullivan, 66. A Rhode Island resident, she has warm memories of cube steaks served alongside her father’s homemade piccalilli relish. Later, she pan-fried them for her own children. But only good ones, she said, made from slices of sirloin or round steak she had the butcher cube by hand.
Susan Schultz, who lives in Fort Atkinson, Wis., fondly described the slightly pink centers of cube steak sautéed in nothing more than butter and seasoned with a little salt and pepper.
“It was kind of an upgraded hamburger if you couldn’t afford steak,” said Mrs. Schultz, who raised two children on pan-fried cube steaks. “I’m going to have to have one now.”
The term “cube” can be a little murky. It doesn’t refer to the shape of the meat, which is usually beef but is sometimes made from pork, elk or other animals. Rather, it refers to both the shape of the dimples that checkerboard the surface of cube steak and the process that puts the dimples there.
Although pounding tough pieces of beef to make them more tender has a long history in the Southern and Western United States, it wasn’t until patents on mechanized cubing machines were handed out in the 1930s and 1940s that the cube steak became an inexpensive butcher shop staple.
The machines are usually stainless-steel cases with innards fashioned from rollers covered in dozens of teeth sharp enough to pierce flesh cleanly. There are top-feeding home machines with cranks that do the job, too.

2009/02/28

The Claim: Sugar in the Diet Can Lead to Acne


Any link between sugar and acne has long been dismissed. But now scientists are taking another look.
In recent years, studies have shown that what matters may not be sugar itself but a food’s glycemic index, or the speed and extent to which it raises blood glucose levels. Foods that have a high glycemic index — and as a result raise glucose levels rapidly — cause the body to release a flood of insulin and other hormones, which some scientists suspect can stimulate oil production and inflame the skin.
To test the theory, scientists recruited 50 men and boys ages 15 to 25, all of them with acne, and followed their progress for 12 weeks. Some subjects stuck to a typical diet that included high-glycemic foods like white bread, sweetened cereals and pasta, and the others were given foods higher in protein and lower on the glycemic scale, like fish, whole-grain breads and fruit.
At the end of the study, published in 2007, the subjects on the low-glycemic diet had far greater reductions in skin lesions and other symptoms of acne than the control group. They also showed reductions in their levels of free, circulating androgens, the male hormones known to cause acne, suggesting that hormones played a role.
Other studies have found similar connections between high-glycemic foods and acne, though scientists say more research is needed.

2009/02/27

Rockets hold down LeBron, rout Cavs




HOUSTON (AP)—LeBron James missed shots, complained to the refs and went an entire game without an assist for the first time in his career.
The Houston Rockets, meanwhile, showed they just might be contenders in the Western Conference with a 93-74 win over James and the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday night.
Yao Ming scored 28 points and Ron Artest added 15 while harassing James on defense most of the night, leading the Rockets to their six consecutive win and ninth straight at home.
“It is a big win,” said Yao, who hit 13 of 15 shots, despite Cleveland’s constant double-teams. “We played against one of the best quality teams in this league. That is a really good test for us to see how far we can go.”
James scored 21 points, but went 7-for-21 from the field with three turnovers. He left for good with 4:03 left, the only time in 493 NBA games (counting playoffs) he failed to record an assist.
“I’m not happy with that at all,” James said. “I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have an assist, but as a team, we didn’t move the ball at all. We’ll just move on to the next game.”
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To make matters worse, forward Ben Wallace broke his right leg in the second quarter and will miss 4-6 weeks, the team said. Wallace is Cleveland’s best interior defender, but went out after Yao accidentally kicked him.
“I’ll definitely be back for the playoffs, I’m hoping to come back before then,” Wallace said. “Realistically, I don’t know how much I’d help the team, just coming back for the playoffs. It’d be tough, I’d be out of rhythm. I don’t want to go out there and put my team at a disadvantage. It’s more on me to catch up with them.”
The Cavaliers had season-low point totals in the first (11) and third (10) quarters, and their 34 percent shooting (27-for-80) was also a season worst. Cleveland looked just as bad as it did in a 92-77 loss in Houston last season— James had 32 in that one, but the Cavs shot 39.7 percent.
“We just can’t seem to get into a good flow against the Houston team,” James said. “A lot of credit has to go to them, they are a very good team. Offensively, we couldn’t make a shot and we could never get in any rhythm.”
Von Wafer scored 19 points and Luis Scola added 14 points and nine rebounds for the Rockets. Houston had 25 assists, its sixth straight game with 20 or more, and went 8-for-19 from 3-point range.
But the Rockets are more satisifed with their defense lately—they’ve held their last six opponents to an average of 83.6 points.
“You may get into the second round (of the playoffs), but if you want to make a serious run and be a serious contender,” said Wafer, “you’ve got to be able to continue to play defense. We are trying to come together as a unit.”
Mo Williams also scored 21 for the Cavs, who had a five-game winning streak snapped.
Shadowed by the equally strong Artest from the opening tip, James missed three of his first four shots, part of Cleveland’s 2-for-10 start. The Cavs double-teamed Yao whenever he touched the ball, but Scola scored eight early points to help Houston build a lead.
James was called for a charge late in the opening quarter when he spun into Shane Battier on a drive. The Cavs went 3-for-17 from the field in the quarter and trailed 19-11.
“They wanted us to take jump shots,” said Cleveland coach Mike Brown. “They gave us the jump shot, but we just couldn’t convert it.”

Cleveland Cavaliers' Loren… AP - Feb 26, 11:18 pm EST
James was resting on the bench at the start of the second period and Williams’ 3-pointer from the top of the key ended a six-minute field goal drought for Cleveland.
Kyle Lowry scored on consecutive trips, then assisted on Yao’s layup and Brent Barry’s 3-pointer as Houston pushed the lead into double digits.
James kept missing shots in the second quarter and earned another offensive foul after bumping into Battier again. He sank a 3-pointer from the wing, his second basket in nine shots, before Artest drove for a left-handed dunk for a 37-29 Rockets lead.
The Cavs shot 31 percent (14-for-45) from the field in the first half and trailed 45-40 at the break.
The Rockets had assists on their first five baskets of the second half and Aaron Brooks’ 3-pointer put Houston up 56-46. James tried a no-look, over-his-head pass to Anderson Varejao later in the period, but the ball sailed out of bounds.
“Couldn’t get a rhythm, man,” James said.
The Cavs shot 5-for-17 from the field and coughed up five turnovers in the third quarter to trail 68-50.
James took a rest and returned with 7:21 left in the game, but the Rockets never lost control. Yao blocked James on a dunk and Wafer swished a 3-pointer at the other end for an 85-68 lead.
Notes
Cavs G Delonte West had four points and three turnovers after missing Tuesday’s game against Memphis with soreness in his right wrist. On Wednesday, West visited a doctor in Houston who confirmed that his wrist fracture was healing properly. … Rockets F Carl Landry missed his fourth straight game with a sprained right ankle. … The Cavs are 18-4 against the West this season.

2009/02/23

'Slumdog' celebrations fill Mumbai's crowded slums


MUMBAI, India - Children broke into Bollywood dance numbers and crowds cheered in the narrow lanes of a teeming Mumbai slum on Monday as they gathered to root for the hometown heroes who nabbed the Oscars ' highest honor.
Two of the child actors in " Slumdog Millionaire " were plucked from a desperately poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Mumbai to star in the rags-to-riches tale that stormed the Academy Awards .