If you want to find out about life in Australia, pls watch these series on students' life in Australia from Australia Network (ABC Channel).
Lot of fun.
Enjoy!
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
6/10/09
6/7/09
Speaking_House Swap Holiday
Pls click to the title and listen to the talk
Kate: Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English. I'm Kate Colin and today we’re
talking about home swapping.
Jackie: Hi Kate, yes our topic today is about the growing trend of exchanging your
house or apartment with someone in a different country for a limited period. So
instead of paying for an expensive hotel to go on holiday, you simply swap
your house with someone in a place you want to visit and you can get a lowcost
holiday anywhere in the world.
Kate: What do you think Jackie – would you be willing to swap your house with a
stranger rather stay in a hotel?
Jackie: Answers
Kate: Before we go any further, here's my question for this week. According to a
recent survey which is the most of the most popular destination for UK home
swaps?
a) Australia
b) UK
c) USA
Jackie: Answers
Kate: So how does home swapping work exactly? Well, you just think of a country
you'd like to go to, register with one of the many companies which deal in
home swapping who will list your house on their website, and hopefully you'll
find another family or individual who wants to swap their house for yours.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 2 of 5
Kate: Now we're going to listen to someone who has tried it. She says she's a
tremendous fan of home swapping – which means she likes it. Why is she a fan?
Link 1
Well I'm a tremendous fan of home swapping, for all kinds of reasons not least because it's
free. But also it's the most marvellous opportunity to become somebody else because you
inhabit someone else's life when you swap homes with them.
Jackie: She says she's a fan of home swapping because it's free and it's a great opportunity
to live someone else's life. I suppose she means it is a unique chance to see how
other people live around the world, something you wouldn't experience so much if
you stayed in a hotel.
Kate: Now she goes on to talk about the cost. She mentions home swapping being part
of the mainstream.
Jackie: If something is in the mainstream, it means that some is accepted and known by
most people.
Kate: So let's listen to the next extract – what makes home swapping a cheap holiday?
Link 2
It's become part of the mainstream. Usually they include cars as well, so when you think
about it you're not paying for your accommodation or your vehicle. It really makes it a cheap
holiday. Basically all you've got to pay for is the airfares.
Jackie: She said that many home swaps include a car and this means that you get your
accommodation and vehicle for free. All you pay for is your travel and airfare.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 3 of 5
Kate: Now, let's look at some words for the different types of homes you could end
up swapping with:
Kate: A flat is the equivalent an apartment, or you could end up with a penthouse,
this is a luxurious apartment at the top of a building. A cottage is a small selfcontained
house which is usually in the countryside. A townhouse is a house
in a town or city, usually a comfortable, expensive one in a fashionable area. A
houseboat is a special boat which people use as their home, often kept in one
place on a river or canal and a holiday home or 2nd home is where people
don’t live full time but visit at the weekends and on holidays.
Let's listen to the next extract – which of these types of accommodation does
she mention?
Clip 3
There's a wide range of options in unexpected locations from a houseboat in Kerala to an
apartment in Fairbanks, Alaska and a friend of mine recently spent Christmas in an apartment
on Bondi Beach.
Jackie: She mentioned a house boat in Kerala, India and an apartment in Alaska and a
friend of hers spending Christmas on Bondi Beach in Australia.
Kate: Now we're going to hear from some members of a family from London who
regularly house swap. What does the first speaker like about it?
Clip 4
I quite like living in other people's houses. You're not living in a hotel so you don't have to
live out of a suitcase. You can unpack and live like you would at home but in somebody else's
house.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 4 of 5
Jackie: She said she likes being to unpack and doesn't have to live out of a suitcase. If
you live out of a suitcase you don't unpack your things, you have to keep then
in your bag, so she says she likes this because she can put all her clothes and
things in a cupboard and feel at home. What does her dad think?
Clip5
And I think the other thing I quite like is that because you're living in someone's house you
can kind of pretend you're not a tourist and you're actually nearly a local so you can feel a bit
smug about that.
Jackie: He said that because you're living in someone else's house, you can feel like a
local and not a tourist. That makes him feel smug which means pleased with
himself because he's done something in quite a clever way.
Kate: Yes, I think that's one of the main benefits of home swapping. Often if you
stay in a hotel, you get to see very little of the real culture of the country you're
visiting. What better way of finding out about how people live than living in
someone's house? Before we finish for today, let's have a look at some of the
vocabulary we've come across:
Jackie: We had mainstream which that something that happens often and is known.
Kate: And we had various different types of accommodation:
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 5 of 5
A flat is an apartment
A penthouse is a luxurious apartment or set of rooms at the top of a hotel or
tall building.
A cottage is a small self-contained house which is usually in the countryside
A townhouse is a house in a town or city, usually a comfortable, expensive
one in a fashionable area: it can also mean it is joined on to another house.
A houseboat is a special boat which people use as their home, often kept in
one place on a river or canal and a holiday home or 2nd home is where people
don’t live full time but visit at the weekends and on holidays.
Jackie: And we had that term to live out of a suitcase which means that you have to
keep all your things packed and you can't take them and put them in a
cupboard. And we also had the term smug which means to feel pleased with
yourself.
Kate: And finally the answer to the question I asked you earlier. According to a
recent survey, which country is the most popular this year for home swapping.
Jackie: I think I said Australia.
Kate: I'm afraid you were wrong - the answer is USA with 15% of respondents
preferring to go there. 12% chose to stay in the UK and 11% chose Australia.
That's all we have time for. Thanks for listening everyone. Goodbye!
Kate: Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English. I'm Kate Colin and today we’re
talking about home swapping.
Jackie: Hi Kate, yes our topic today is about the growing trend of exchanging your
house or apartment with someone in a different country for a limited period. So
instead of paying for an expensive hotel to go on holiday, you simply swap
your house with someone in a place you want to visit and you can get a lowcost
holiday anywhere in the world.
Kate: What do you think Jackie – would you be willing to swap your house with a
stranger rather stay in a hotel?
Jackie: Answers
Kate: Before we go any further, here's my question for this week. According to a
recent survey which is the most of the most popular destination for UK home
swaps?
a) Australia
b) UK
c) USA
Jackie: Answers
Kate: So how does home swapping work exactly? Well, you just think of a country
you'd like to go to, register with one of the many companies which deal in
home swapping who will list your house on their website, and hopefully you'll
find another family or individual who wants to swap their house for yours.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 2 of 5
Kate: Now we're going to listen to someone who has tried it. She says she's a
tremendous fan of home swapping – which means she likes it. Why is she a fan?
Link 1
Well I'm a tremendous fan of home swapping, for all kinds of reasons not least because it's
free. But also it's the most marvellous opportunity to become somebody else because you
inhabit someone else's life when you swap homes with them.
Jackie: She says she's a fan of home swapping because it's free and it's a great opportunity
to live someone else's life. I suppose she means it is a unique chance to see how
other people live around the world, something you wouldn't experience so much if
you stayed in a hotel.
Kate: Now she goes on to talk about the cost. She mentions home swapping being part
of the mainstream.
Jackie: If something is in the mainstream, it means that some is accepted and known by
most people.
Kate: So let's listen to the next extract – what makes home swapping a cheap holiday?
Link 2
It's become part of the mainstream. Usually they include cars as well, so when you think
about it you're not paying for your accommodation or your vehicle. It really makes it a cheap
holiday. Basically all you've got to pay for is the airfares.
Jackie: She said that many home swaps include a car and this means that you get your
accommodation and vehicle for free. All you pay for is your travel and airfare.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 3 of 5
Kate: Now, let's look at some words for the different types of homes you could end
up swapping with:
Kate: A flat is the equivalent an apartment, or you could end up with a penthouse,
this is a luxurious apartment at the top of a building. A cottage is a small selfcontained
house which is usually in the countryside. A townhouse is a house
in a town or city, usually a comfortable, expensive one in a fashionable area. A
houseboat is a special boat which people use as their home, often kept in one
place on a river or canal and a holiday home or 2nd home is where people
don’t live full time but visit at the weekends and on holidays.
Let's listen to the next extract – which of these types of accommodation does
she mention?
Clip 3
There's a wide range of options in unexpected locations from a houseboat in Kerala to an
apartment in Fairbanks, Alaska and a friend of mine recently spent Christmas in an apartment
on Bondi Beach.
Jackie: She mentioned a house boat in Kerala, India and an apartment in Alaska and a
friend of hers spending Christmas on Bondi Beach in Australia.
Kate: Now we're going to hear from some members of a family from London who
regularly house swap. What does the first speaker like about it?
Clip 4
I quite like living in other people's houses. You're not living in a hotel so you don't have to
live out of a suitcase. You can unpack and live like you would at home but in somebody else's
house.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 4 of 5
Jackie: She said she likes being to unpack and doesn't have to live out of a suitcase. If
you live out of a suitcase you don't unpack your things, you have to keep then
in your bag, so she says she likes this because she can put all her clothes and
things in a cupboard and feel at home. What does her dad think?
Clip5
And I think the other thing I quite like is that because you're living in someone's house you
can kind of pretend you're not a tourist and you're actually nearly a local so you can feel a bit
smug about that.
Jackie: He said that because you're living in someone else's house, you can feel like a
local and not a tourist. That makes him feel smug which means pleased with
himself because he's done something in quite a clever way.
Kate: Yes, I think that's one of the main benefits of home swapping. Often if you
stay in a hotel, you get to see very little of the real culture of the country you're
visiting. What better way of finding out about how people live than living in
someone's house? Before we finish for today, let's have a look at some of the
vocabulary we've come across:
Jackie: We had mainstream which that something that happens often and is known.
Kate: And we had various different types of accommodation:
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 5 of 5
A flat is an apartment
A penthouse is a luxurious apartment or set of rooms at the top of a hotel or
tall building.
A cottage is a small self-contained house which is usually in the countryside
A townhouse is a house in a town or city, usually a comfortable, expensive
one in a fashionable area: it can also mean it is joined on to another house.
A houseboat is a special boat which people use as their home, often kept in
one place on a river or canal and a holiday home or 2nd home is where people
don’t live full time but visit at the weekends and on holidays.
Jackie: And we had that term to live out of a suitcase which means that you have to
keep all your things packed and you can't take them and put them in a
cupboard. And we also had the term smug which means to feel pleased with
yourself.
Kate: And finally the answer to the question I asked you earlier. According to a
recent survey, which country is the most popular this year for home swapping.
Jackie: I think I said Australia.
Kate: I'm afraid you were wrong - the answer is USA with 15% of respondents
preferring to go there. 12% chose to stay in the UK and 11% chose Australia.
That's all we have time for. Thanks for listening everyone. Goodbye!
6/5/09
How Touch Affects Your Children
The Devastating Effects of Child Abuse and Neglect
Telling your children you love them is not as powerful a reassurance as demonstrating your love for them, and depriving your children of genuine physical affection can have devastating consequences. Years ago many motorists had this sticker affixed to their bumpers: Have you hugged your child today? Many of those stickers have disappeared, along with their message. We become so wrapped up in our own lives that we don't have time to show our children affection anymore. We come home exhausted and we still have to cook for them, bathe them, clean up after them, and shop for them. We use grueling work hours as excuses for not stopping long enough to just hold them and hug them for a few minutes - "Not now - I'm busy." Do we really need to spend more time showing them affection?
In a word: Yes. We can't afford to ignore our children's need for physical affection. Here is why:
While much research has been devoted to the visual, auditory, and olfactory senses, very little research has been conducted on the subject of touch, specifically, its neglect. Volumes have been written on physical and sexual abuse, and many books and articles have been written on the healing properties of touch, but the consequences of its absence can be glimpsed only in sporadic sentences in college psychology texts. More has been written about neglect of touch on monkeys than on human beings, despite the infinitesimally small amount of human research indicating that more needs to be conducted.
Before our eyes see clearly, before we understand what we hear, and long before we identify taste or smell, we feel. Touch is one of the first sensory foundations from which we gain knowledge about life.
We are as affected by touching others as we are by others touching us. If exercised sensitively and wisely, touch in the form of affection and nurturing heals us.
But abusive (physical and/or sexual) touch, if exercised to its fullest expression, may result in our death, either physical or spiritual.
Being deprived of touch can drain us of life, too - physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.
Telling your children you love them is not as powerful a reassurance as demonstrating your love for them, and depriving your children of genuine physical affection can have devastating consequences. Years ago many motorists had this sticker affixed to their bumpers: Have you hugged your child today? Many of those stickers have disappeared, along with their message. We become so wrapped up in our own lives that we don't have time to show our children affection anymore. We come home exhausted and we still have to cook for them, bathe them, clean up after them, and shop for them. We use grueling work hours as excuses for not stopping long enough to just hold them and hug them for a few minutes - "Not now - I'm busy." Do we really need to spend more time showing them affection?
In a word: Yes. We can't afford to ignore our children's need for physical affection. Here is why:
While much research has been devoted to the visual, auditory, and olfactory senses, very little research has been conducted on the subject of touch, specifically, its neglect. Volumes have been written on physical and sexual abuse, and many books and articles have been written on the healing properties of touch, but the consequences of its absence can be glimpsed only in sporadic sentences in college psychology texts. More has been written about neglect of touch on monkeys than on human beings, despite the infinitesimally small amount of human research indicating that more needs to be conducted.
Before our eyes see clearly, before we understand what we hear, and long before we identify taste or smell, we feel. Touch is one of the first sensory foundations from which we gain knowledge about life.
We are as affected by touching others as we are by others touching us. If exercised sensitively and wisely, touch in the form of affection and nurturing heals us.
But abusive (physical and/or sexual) touch, if exercised to its fullest expression, may result in our death, either physical or spiritual.
Being deprived of touch can drain us of life, too - physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.
6/3/09
'Oldest pottery' found in China
By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News
Examples of pottery found in a cave at Yuchanyan in China's Hunan province may be the oldest known to science.
By determining the fraction of a type, or isotope, of carbon in bone fragments and charcoal, the specimens were found to be 17,500 to 18,300 years old.
The authors say that the ages are more precise than previous efforts because a series of more than 40 radiocarbon-dated samples support the estimate.
The work is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Yuchanyan cave was the site where the oldest kernels of rice were found in 2005, and it is viewed as an important link between cave-dwelling hunter-gatherer peoples and the farmers that arose later in the basin of the nearby Yangtze River.
“ Archaeologists before haven't looked at this closely enough to realise what's going on in caves ”
David Cohen Boston University
The previous oldest-known example of pottery was found in Japan, dated to an age between 16,000 and 17,000 years ago, but debate has raged in the archaeological community as to whether pottery was first made in China or Japan.
The most recent dig at Yuchanyan was in 2005 by a team led by Elisabetta Boaretto of the Kimmel Center for Archaeological Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. They believe they have found a more precise way to read the history of human activity written in layers of sediment, or stratigraphy.
'Layer cake'
"The way people move around and mess up caves is very difficult to see archaeologically," David Cohen, an archaeologist at Boston University and a co-author on the research, told BBC News.
"Imagine you have a fire and then people come in again have another fire and another, so you have the ashes of all these fires building up but at the same time people are digging and clearing, pushing things to the side; this messes things up.
"If you have an open-air site, you sometimes get a very clean 'layer cake' stratigraphy. Archaeologists before haven't looked at this closely enough to realise what's going on in caves so they interpret this stratigraphy as a layer cake. But in actuality, it's 'lenses' of stuff that's been mixed up and moved around."
It is comparatively easy to find evidence of human occupation in caves through the dating of charcoal from fires or bones from long-ago dinners, Dr Cohen said. However, because of the unclear layering of sediment it is not easy to correlate well-dated layers with the pottery that may be nearby.
Part of the problem lies in the areas over which previous digs have searched: squares of perhaps five metres on a side.
"It's an issue of association, knowing where everything comes from in space across the cave," Dr Cohen explained. "If you're excavating in a huge unit, you can only say it comes from within this 5m area and this 20cm of sediment, and that's not good enough for understanding human activity."
Instead, the team worked in sub-divisions of just a quarter of a metre square, painstakingly collecting bone and charcoal fragments. The samples were then radiocarbon dated, revealing a clean distribution stretching between 14,000 and 21,000 years ago.
'Fantastic cave'
One fragment of pottery was found in a layer between two radiocarbon-dated fragments that both measured about 18,000 years old, taking the record for oldest pottery.
The team hope that their smaller-scale searching and taking into account the effects of human activity on cave stratigraphy will help with future digs at Yuchanyan, and elsewhere.
"It's a fantastic cave, and we hope that the way these excavations were done would set a precedent for how other caves will be looked at," said Dr Cohen.
Dr Tracey Lu, from an anthropologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who was not an author on the latest study, noted that the dates reported in this paper were slightly older than dates on pottery found in Japan.
However, she said the accuracy of radiocarbon dates in the limestone area has been under debate for many years.
"I agree that pottery was made by foragers in South China," she told the Associated Press news agency.
"But I also think pottery was produced more or less contemporaneously in several places in East Asia... from Russia, Japan to North and South China by foragers living in different environments."
Science and technology reporter, BBC News
Examples of pottery found in a cave at Yuchanyan in China's Hunan province may be the oldest known to science.
By determining the fraction of a type, or isotope, of carbon in bone fragments and charcoal, the specimens were found to be 17,500 to 18,300 years old.
The authors say that the ages are more precise than previous efforts because a series of more than 40 radiocarbon-dated samples support the estimate.
The work is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Yuchanyan cave was the site where the oldest kernels of rice were found in 2005, and it is viewed as an important link between cave-dwelling hunter-gatherer peoples and the farmers that arose later in the basin of the nearby Yangtze River.
“ Archaeologists before haven't looked at this closely enough to realise what's going on in caves ”
David Cohen Boston University
The previous oldest-known example of pottery was found in Japan, dated to an age between 16,000 and 17,000 years ago, but debate has raged in the archaeological community as to whether pottery was first made in China or Japan.
The most recent dig at Yuchanyan was in 2005 by a team led by Elisabetta Boaretto of the Kimmel Center for Archaeological Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. They believe they have found a more precise way to read the history of human activity written in layers of sediment, or stratigraphy.
'Layer cake'
"The way people move around and mess up caves is very difficult to see archaeologically," David Cohen, an archaeologist at Boston University and a co-author on the research, told BBC News.
"Imagine you have a fire and then people come in again have another fire and another, so you have the ashes of all these fires building up but at the same time people are digging and clearing, pushing things to the side; this messes things up.
"If you have an open-air site, you sometimes get a very clean 'layer cake' stratigraphy. Archaeologists before haven't looked at this closely enough to realise what's going on in caves so they interpret this stratigraphy as a layer cake. But in actuality, it's 'lenses' of stuff that's been mixed up and moved around."
It is comparatively easy to find evidence of human occupation in caves through the dating of charcoal from fires or bones from long-ago dinners, Dr Cohen said. However, because of the unclear layering of sediment it is not easy to correlate well-dated layers with the pottery that may be nearby.
Part of the problem lies in the areas over which previous digs have searched: squares of perhaps five metres on a side.
"It's an issue of association, knowing where everything comes from in space across the cave," Dr Cohen explained. "If you're excavating in a huge unit, you can only say it comes from within this 5m area and this 20cm of sediment, and that's not good enough for understanding human activity."
Instead, the team worked in sub-divisions of just a quarter of a metre square, painstakingly collecting bone and charcoal fragments. The samples were then radiocarbon dated, revealing a clean distribution stretching between 14,000 and 21,000 years ago.
'Fantastic cave'
One fragment of pottery was found in a layer between two radiocarbon-dated fragments that both measured about 18,000 years old, taking the record for oldest pottery.
The team hope that their smaller-scale searching and taking into account the effects of human activity on cave stratigraphy will help with future digs at Yuchanyan, and elsewhere.
"It's a fantastic cave, and we hope that the way these excavations were done would set a precedent for how other caves will be looked at," said Dr Cohen.
Dr Tracey Lu, from an anthropologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who was not an author on the latest study, noted that the dates reported in this paper were slightly older than dates on pottery found in Japan.
However, she said the accuracy of radiocarbon dates in the limestone area has been under debate for many years.
"I agree that pottery was made by foragers in South China," she told the Associated Press news agency.
"But I also think pottery was produced more or less contemporaneously in several places in East Asia... from Russia, Japan to North and South China by foragers living in different environments."
6/2/09
speaking_pets for children
Have you guy's ever went to the pet store to buy a pet, and can't decide which pet to buy? When your standing in front of a pet you want, but you think their too much trouble, and they'll cause a big commotion in your house? Well, here are some small pet's and some small notes about them!
Hamsters
Adorable little animals that are very amusing, and fun to play with. Well, it's not hard to pick what colour you want your hamster to be, they come in a variety of colours! Some are very furry, some have marks around there body, and more! They're not much of a trouble, they need water, food, some company once in a while, and a toy to play with. One thing about hamster's is that their nocturnal, sleep in the day and stay awake at night. They can get really grumpy if they're awoken in their sleep during the day, and will sometimes bite you if you start to bother them.
Gerbils
They're a lot like hamster's, but they tend to be more active and they seem to get frightened more easily. They get startled when they get picked up, and other then that, they are basically like hamster's.
Guinea Pigs
Guinea pig's are just like hamster's or gerbil's, but one more advantage they have, is that they're stronger and can take more of a hit then hamster's can. They don't need all the fancy stuff, like tube's, wheel's and other stuff. Just water, food, and some fruit once in a while. Other then that, there one of the best small pet's a child can have.
Rats
Rats make a great pet for people without the fear of them, people who are scared of rats, might not want to get rats as a pet. One of these people are me, personally I'm afraid of these little creatures. Even though I do agree they are cute, but I'm just not fond of them. They do make better pet's in a larger cage, and they might need a cage mate, but don't worry, two rat's are easier to take care of! They're very social, and won't just sit there, they're fun to teach tricks to, and they are not as fragile. They bond with humans better then guinea pigs, and they have fun!
Fish
Fish, in my opinion are one of the EASIEST pet's to take care of, and they are very amusing to watch. All you need to do is basically buy it an aquarium and a couple of friend's and feed it once in a while. I would put a couple of toys inside so it could have fun, and maybe a mini castle, or a rock so it can maybe play hide and seek. Who knows, in a couple of week's they could have breed-ed a couple of fish, and maybe be more social with each other. One thing I don't recommend, is leaving it in a small area, or near another pet, because if someone grabs a hold of the fish, they might tip over the aquarium, and maybe kill the fish, and we don't want that to happen!
Well, next time you go to the pet store, you might have a better idea of what pet to buy! (:
Have fun, and take care.
Hamsters
Adorable little animals that are very amusing, and fun to play with. Well, it's not hard to pick what colour you want your hamster to be, they come in a variety of colours! Some are very furry, some have marks around there body, and more! They're not much of a trouble, they need water, food, some company once in a while, and a toy to play with. One thing about hamster's is that their nocturnal, sleep in the day and stay awake at night. They can get really grumpy if they're awoken in their sleep during the day, and will sometimes bite you if you start to bother them.
Gerbils
They're a lot like hamster's, but they tend to be more active and they seem to get frightened more easily. They get startled when they get picked up, and other then that, they are basically like hamster's.
Guinea Pigs
Guinea pig's are just like hamster's or gerbil's, but one more advantage they have, is that they're stronger and can take more of a hit then hamster's can. They don't need all the fancy stuff, like tube's, wheel's and other stuff. Just water, food, and some fruit once in a while. Other then that, there one of the best small pet's a child can have.
Rats
Rats make a great pet for people without the fear of them, people who are scared of rats, might not want to get rats as a pet. One of these people are me, personally I'm afraid of these little creatures. Even though I do agree they are cute, but I'm just not fond of them. They do make better pet's in a larger cage, and they might need a cage mate, but don't worry, two rat's are easier to take care of! They're very social, and won't just sit there, they're fun to teach tricks to, and they are not as fragile. They bond with humans better then guinea pigs, and they have fun!
Fish
Fish, in my opinion are one of the EASIEST pet's to take care of, and they are very amusing to watch. All you need to do is basically buy it an aquarium and a couple of friend's and feed it once in a while. I would put a couple of toys inside so it could have fun, and maybe a mini castle, or a rock so it can maybe play hide and seek. Who knows, in a couple of week's they could have breed-ed a couple of fish, and maybe be more social with each other. One thing I don't recommend, is leaving it in a small area, or near another pet, because if someone grabs a hold of the fish, they might tip over the aquarium, and maybe kill the fish, and we don't want that to happen!
Well, next time you go to the pet store, you might have a better idea of what pet to buy! (:
Have fun, and take care.
5/31/09
Speaking_film, music band _Mamma Mia
The ever so-beloved West End musical Mamma Mia! has finally been taken from the stage to the silver screen.
The film is based on the songs of legendary Swedish pop band ABBA and is an adaptation of the musical of the same name.
Mamma Mia! uses the music of ABBA to tell the story of Sophie Sheridan, a 21-year-old American bride-to-be, trying to find out the identity of her real father so that he can give her away at the wedding.
Since the premiere of the musical in London in 1999, over 30 million people have seen Mamma Mia! around the world and the theatre production has grossed $2bn in earnings.
Although the title of the musical is taken from ABBA's 1975 chart-topper Mamma Mia, neither the musical's nor the film's plot has anything to do with the story of the group itself.
The band ABBA was the winner of the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest and following that success their songs topped the charts worldwide until the early 1980s.
After a week of exclusive showing in the Leicester Square Odeon, one of London's most famous cinemas, the film was screened in cinemas across the country from 10th July.
Some people say maybe it is the mature A-list cast that makes the film work so well. Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard star as the three potential fathers with the Oscar winner Meryl Streep starring as the mum of the bride-to-be.
A film critic said the film is truly wonderful. It is sharp, hilarious and very beautifully shot.
If you are a fan of ABBA, a fan of the musical, or simply just a fan of Pierce Brosnan, then the film Mamma Mia! is a must.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vocabulary
Listen to the words
Download the words (421 K mp3)
ever so beloved
very popular
the silver screen
the cinema
legendary
very famous
bride-to-be
woman who is going to get married
give her away
the formal act in a wedding ceremony when the bride is presented to the groom, traditionally by her father, is known as 'giving away'
has grossed
has taken an amount of money before tax and other expenses
chart-topper
song which reached the top of the music charts
topped the charts
reached the number one position in the music charts
A-list cast
the actors in the film are from the top group of respected performers
shot
filmed
is a must
is something that should not be missed
The film is based on the songs of legendary Swedish pop band ABBA and is an adaptation of the musical of the same name.
Mamma Mia! uses the music of ABBA to tell the story of Sophie Sheridan, a 21-year-old American bride-to-be, trying to find out the identity of her real father so that he can give her away at the wedding.
Since the premiere of the musical in London in 1999, over 30 million people have seen Mamma Mia! around the world and the theatre production has grossed $2bn in earnings.
Although the title of the musical is taken from ABBA's 1975 chart-topper Mamma Mia, neither the musical's nor the film's plot has anything to do with the story of the group itself.
The band ABBA was the winner of the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest and following that success their songs topped the charts worldwide until the early 1980s.
After a week of exclusive showing in the Leicester Square Odeon, one of London's most famous cinemas, the film was screened in cinemas across the country from 10th July.
Some people say maybe it is the mature A-list cast that makes the film work so well. Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard star as the three potential fathers with the Oscar winner Meryl Streep starring as the mum of the bride-to-be.
A film critic said the film is truly wonderful. It is sharp, hilarious and very beautifully shot.
If you are a fan of ABBA, a fan of the musical, or simply just a fan of Pierce Brosnan, then the film Mamma Mia! is a must.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vocabulary
Listen to the words
Download the words (421 K mp3)
ever so beloved
very popular
the silver screen
the cinema
legendary
very famous
bride-to-be
woman who is going to get married
give her away
the formal act in a wedding ceremony when the bride is presented to the groom, traditionally by her father, is known as 'giving away'
has grossed
has taken an amount of money before tax and other expenses
chart-topper
song which reached the top of the music charts
topped the charts
reached the number one position in the music charts
A-list cast
the actors in the film are from the top group of respected performers
shot
filmed
is a must
is something that should not be missed
Speaking_what to wear
There is an audio file for this text too.
Go to the link (title) and listen. A bit fast but you may have a look at the text while listening.
===============
One of the biggest shocks when you arrive in a new country can be the clothes people are wearing. You may look fashionable at home, but you suddenly find you are behind the times or simply someone to laugh at when you arrive abroad. With this in mind, let's take a look at teenage fashion in the UK for girls.
One of the things that may shock an outsider most is piercings. These days it is not enough to simply wear rings in your ears. You will see many teenagers with rings in their navel, or belly button, nose, lip, or even their eyebrow. Ouch!
Some girls go for a 'glam' look. They wear T-shirts; trousers are usually preferred, blue or black, and the look is finished off with metallic bags and shoes and arms full of bracelets. Another alternative is the 'rocker' look. You start with a T-shirt of your favourite band and tight jeans or a long skirt. On top of this you can wear a denim jacket. Jewellery tends to be large and metallic, and to add colour, wear a scarf.
If neither of these is for you, why not go 'sporty'? T-shirts are usually tie-dyed in hot colours. Wear long shorts, short jeans or a denim skirt. And on your feet? Beach sandals, of course! If you prefer something more feminine, there's the 'girly' look. Skirts are long, to the floor. Wear a top with butterflies or flowers printed on it!
Finally, how about the 'Tom Boy' look? Wear flared jeans and a T-shirt with a logo. Don't forget your waistcoat, of course!
Follow the fashion tips above, and you shouldn't feel out of place. However, it's important to remember to wear clothes and choose a look that you feel comfortable with. Don't just be one of the crowd - be yourself!
Vocabulary
behind the times
out-of-date, unfashionable, not modern
piercings
holes made in the body for wearing jewellery, such as rings or studs
glam
short for 'glamorous', i.e. dressed and/or made up to be extremely good-looking and very fashionable
finished off
completed, given final touches
rocker
someone who really likes rock music (and dresses like a rock music fan)
denim
a thick strong cotton cloth, often blue in colour, used especially for making jeans
scarf
a piece of cloth worn around the neck
tie-dyed
designs on cloth dyed by tightly tying portions of it with waxed thread so the dye only affects the exposed areas
sandals
light open shoes with straps
flared
(trousers or skirts) that widen significantly below the knee (popular in the late 1960s - early 1970s)
waistcoat
a sleeveless garment worn on the upper body over a shirt and usually having buttons down the front
out of place
strange, as if you don't belong
Go to the link (title) and listen. A bit fast but you may have a look at the text while listening.
===============
One of the biggest shocks when you arrive in a new country can be the clothes people are wearing. You may look fashionable at home, but you suddenly find you are behind the times or simply someone to laugh at when you arrive abroad. With this in mind, let's take a look at teenage fashion in the UK for girls.
One of the things that may shock an outsider most is piercings. These days it is not enough to simply wear rings in your ears. You will see many teenagers with rings in their navel, or belly button, nose, lip, or even their eyebrow. Ouch!
Some girls go for a 'glam' look. They wear T-shirts; trousers are usually preferred, blue or black, and the look is finished off with metallic bags and shoes and arms full of bracelets. Another alternative is the 'rocker' look. You start with a T-shirt of your favourite band and tight jeans or a long skirt. On top of this you can wear a denim jacket. Jewellery tends to be large and metallic, and to add colour, wear a scarf.
If neither of these is for you, why not go 'sporty'? T-shirts are usually tie-dyed in hot colours. Wear long shorts, short jeans or a denim skirt. And on your feet? Beach sandals, of course! If you prefer something more feminine, there's the 'girly' look. Skirts are long, to the floor. Wear a top with butterflies or flowers printed on it!
Finally, how about the 'Tom Boy' look? Wear flared jeans and a T-shirt with a logo. Don't forget your waistcoat, of course!
Follow the fashion tips above, and you shouldn't feel out of place. However, it's important to remember to wear clothes and choose a look that you feel comfortable with. Don't just be one of the crowd - be yourself!
Vocabulary
behind the times
out-of-date, unfashionable, not modern
piercings
holes made in the body for wearing jewellery, such as rings or studs
glam
short for 'glamorous', i.e. dressed and/or made up to be extremely good-looking and very fashionable
finished off
completed, given final touches
rocker
someone who really likes rock music (and dresses like a rock music fan)
denim
a thick strong cotton cloth, often blue in colour, used especially for making jeans
scarf
a piece of cloth worn around the neck
tie-dyed
designs on cloth dyed by tightly tying portions of it with waxed thread so the dye only affects the exposed areas
sandals
light open shoes with straps
flared
(trousers or skirts) that widen significantly below the knee (popular in the late 1960s - early 1970s)
waistcoat
a sleeveless garment worn on the upper body over a shirt and usually having buttons down the front
out of place
strange, as if you don't belong
5/28/09
Speaking_ A restaurant in Hanoi_Wild Lotus
The Wild Lotus restaurant is one of the best options for Vietnamese cuisine outside the high-end hotel in Hanoi. This is a room decorated in the style "art deco" in the residential area of town where the main hotels are located. It has 2 distinct plants: a lower offering essentially bar service, with different tables and sofas in the middle of sources and a more distended; prepared for a top restaurant, not very big but spacious enough to enjoy a dinner quiet and without much noise.
We opted for dinner at the top where we were treated very well from the start. The kitchen could be defined as a fusion of Vietnamese cuisine, with many modern dyes that distinguish it from traditional cuisine that is found in other restaurants in town.
For a start we opted for some entrants based Vietnamese rolls that unlike the Chinese have a stronger flavor, partly because of the flavor of its mass (not fried like the Chinese). Additionally, a spinach salad with fruit and shrimp after several dishes made from beef and chicken and especially pork with mushrooms. Finally, a dessert consisting of sticky rice - rice paste - with vanilla ice cream.
Due to the limited depth of the wine list we opted for beer as a companion to our meal.
The cost of the dinner was about $ 25 - $ 35 per person, possibly in the range of higher prices in the city, in line with the quality of the dinner.
Conclusion:
Wild Lotus is a restaurant for a proper European standard but perhaps the most recommended under Vietnamese standards. It is a relaxed, well decorated and with a good service. Vietnamese cuisine is different to other Orientals, in part because it marked its flavor, so it might not satisfy all palates, but to appreciate the Wild Lotus is a good option.
==========
I had been in Wild lotus restaurant in my journey to Hanoi in 2006 and 2007 and it had been nice experiences, the environment was relaxing and comfortable ,the food and staff was nice also. But last May 9 aprox, I had recommended the place to my company group and their comment about the food and service was really regretful, they said that the food was bad and even they serve pork instead of beef, what they didn't ask for. I wish there were an explanation from the restaurant to clearify what really happened there. best regards.
===========
I went to this restaurant with a couple of friends in my recent trip to Hanoi in April 2009. The food, ambiance and service rival WolfGang Puck’s “Cut” steakhouse in Vegas. I guess that sums it up. Try it and you won’t regret…
================
Shiny silver fairy floss light shades project batik snowflake patterns on the ceiling. Striking pink lotus float in clean calm ponds. Austere, confident bronze figures both recline and stand to attention.
"Good evening and welcome to Wild Lotus."
Wild Lotus is a sublime aesthetic and gastronomic trip, art-deco architecture outside, intricately curated gallery inside. Lotus adorn candlesticks, are shown on canvas in abstract decay, embossed in gold on hand-carved doors and delicately painted on ethereal silk curtain. This floral motif is tastefully everywhere at this rather recent addition to high-end dining in Hanoi.
A half sibling to the retreat restaurant, Moon River, this establishment's divine setting is contained on two floors, each distinct in shape and character. The upper storey is a recumbent splendour of cushions and couches, lending itself to aperitifs, coffee after a meal or a simple nightcap. On this floor, the dining transpires in a large recess featuring an ornately carved and curtained bay window. Downstairs offers a warm ambience of white coffee walls and soft chocolate brown chairs, the acoustics allowing intimate conversations to remain private.
This sophisticated blend of contemporary design and orientalia augurs well for the experience to follow. Fortunately, we are not disappointed. Having been unveiled only in March this year, it is inherently obvious that any early glitches have been resolved. As the menu says, the 'culinary journey' at Wild Lotus is themed around the 'old spice routes'. Influences from China, Thailand, India, and Japan, as well as Italy and France, combine to make the cuisine not international, but modern Vietnamese fusion.
Our soups and appetizers are palate pleasers. The creamy sweet corn and leek soup surprises with its crab and coriander dumplings. The five spice salad of pork, prawn, red cabbage and lotus root has an added triple crunch of cucumber, sesame seeds and peanuts and the tangy dressing is enhanced with the addition of shredded starfruit. We experience Japan's influence in the fresh salmon rolls, dipped in a punchy green sauce of ginger, chili and wasabi!
In the interim between courses, a flipped and propelled chopstick is attended to like lightning by our ao dai attired waitress. Before long, she delivers our main courses. The pan fried Nha Trang sea bass is filleted, succulent heaven with its accompanying salad of mango, cherry tomatoes and glass noodles - a real highlight! Sweet pickled shallots are the secret to the grilled beef with herbs and spices, enveloped in tender rolls of meat. Our vegetable dish is luscious, silky purple-skinned eggplant doused in a pork and prawn sauce.
For dessert, our unanimous recommendation is the Vietnamese black sticky rice with Thai custard and vanilla ice cream. It defies superlatives.
The wine list is informed and many marriages can be made with this fine cuisine. Cocktails, beers and other beverages are mixed and presented with precision and beauty. Wild Lotus is sure to become a dining institution in Hanoi and, without wanting to sully our exquisite evening with talk of money, the prices compare remarkably well to other high-end restaurants in the capital.
Wild Lotus Restaurant and Lounge
55A Nguyen Du, Hanoi
We opted for dinner at the top where we were treated very well from the start. The kitchen could be defined as a fusion of Vietnamese cuisine, with many modern dyes that distinguish it from traditional cuisine that is found in other restaurants in town.
For a start we opted for some entrants based Vietnamese rolls that unlike the Chinese have a stronger flavor, partly because of the flavor of its mass (not fried like the Chinese). Additionally, a spinach salad with fruit and shrimp after several dishes made from beef and chicken and especially pork with mushrooms. Finally, a dessert consisting of sticky rice - rice paste - with vanilla ice cream.
Due to the limited depth of the wine list we opted for beer as a companion to our meal.
The cost of the dinner was about $ 25 - $ 35 per person, possibly in the range of higher prices in the city, in line with the quality of the dinner.
Conclusion:
Wild Lotus is a restaurant for a proper European standard but perhaps the most recommended under Vietnamese standards. It is a relaxed, well decorated and with a good service. Vietnamese cuisine is different to other Orientals, in part because it marked its flavor, so it might not satisfy all palates, but to appreciate the Wild Lotus is a good option.
==========
I had been in Wild lotus restaurant in my journey to Hanoi in 2006 and 2007 and it had been nice experiences, the environment was relaxing and comfortable ,the food and staff was nice also. But last May 9 aprox, I had recommended the place to my company group and their comment about the food and service was really regretful, they said that the food was bad and even they serve pork instead of beef, what they didn't ask for. I wish there were an explanation from the restaurant to clearify what really happened there. best regards.
===========
I went to this restaurant with a couple of friends in my recent trip to Hanoi in April 2009. The food, ambiance and service rival WolfGang Puck’s “Cut” steakhouse in Vegas. I guess that sums it up. Try it and you won’t regret…
================
Shiny silver fairy floss light shades project batik snowflake patterns on the ceiling. Striking pink lotus float in clean calm ponds. Austere, confident bronze figures both recline and stand to attention.
"Good evening and welcome to Wild Lotus."
Wild Lotus is a sublime aesthetic and gastronomic trip, art-deco architecture outside, intricately curated gallery inside. Lotus adorn candlesticks, are shown on canvas in abstract decay, embossed in gold on hand-carved doors and delicately painted on ethereal silk curtain. This floral motif is tastefully everywhere at this rather recent addition to high-end dining in Hanoi.
A half sibling to the retreat restaurant, Moon River, this establishment's divine setting is contained on two floors, each distinct in shape and character. The upper storey is a recumbent splendour of cushions and couches, lending itself to aperitifs, coffee after a meal or a simple nightcap. On this floor, the dining transpires in a large recess featuring an ornately carved and curtained bay window. Downstairs offers a warm ambience of white coffee walls and soft chocolate brown chairs, the acoustics allowing intimate conversations to remain private.
This sophisticated blend of contemporary design and orientalia augurs well for the experience to follow. Fortunately, we are not disappointed. Having been unveiled only in March this year, it is inherently obvious that any early glitches have been resolved. As the menu says, the 'culinary journey' at Wild Lotus is themed around the 'old spice routes'. Influences from China, Thailand, India, and Japan, as well as Italy and France, combine to make the cuisine not international, but modern Vietnamese fusion.
Our soups and appetizers are palate pleasers. The creamy sweet corn and leek soup surprises with its crab and coriander dumplings. The five spice salad of pork, prawn, red cabbage and lotus root has an added triple crunch of cucumber, sesame seeds and peanuts and the tangy dressing is enhanced with the addition of shredded starfruit. We experience Japan's influence in the fresh salmon rolls, dipped in a punchy green sauce of ginger, chili and wasabi!
In the interim between courses, a flipped and propelled chopstick is attended to like lightning by our ao dai attired waitress. Before long, she delivers our main courses. The pan fried Nha Trang sea bass is filleted, succulent heaven with its accompanying salad of mango, cherry tomatoes and glass noodles - a real highlight! Sweet pickled shallots are the secret to the grilled beef with herbs and spices, enveloped in tender rolls of meat. Our vegetable dish is luscious, silky purple-skinned eggplant doused in a pork and prawn sauce.
For dessert, our unanimous recommendation is the Vietnamese black sticky rice with Thai custard and vanilla ice cream. It defies superlatives.
The wine list is informed and many marriages can be made with this fine cuisine. Cocktails, beers and other beverages are mixed and presented with precision and beauty. Wild Lotus is sure to become a dining institution in Hanoi and, without wanting to sully our exquisite evening with talk of money, the prices compare remarkably well to other high-end restaurants in the capital.
Wild Lotus Restaurant and Lounge
55A Nguyen Du, Hanoi
5/27/09
Speaking_ a famous person_Oprah Winfrey
For further information on Oprah Winfrey, pls visit the site by clicking to the link.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
"Oprah" redirects here. For her talk show, see The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Oprah Winfrey
Winfrey at her 50th birthday party at Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, in 2004.
Born Orpah Gail Winfrey
January 29, 1954 (1954-01-29) (age 55)
Kosciusko, Mississippi, United States
Residence Chicago, Illinois, United States
Occupation Talk show host, media mogul
Salary $385 million (2008)[1]
Net worth over US$2.7 billion ▲
(Sept. 2008)
Partner Stedman Graham
Website
www.oprah.com
Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954) is an American media personality, Academy Award nominated actress, producer, literary critic and magazine publisher, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history.[2] She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century,[3] the most philanthropic African American of all time,[4] and was once the world's only black billionaire.[5][6][7][8][9] She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.[10][11][12]
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, including being raped at age 9 and becoming pregnant at age 14. Tragedy followed as her son died in infancy.[13] Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19.[14] Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place,[6] she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.
Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication,[15] she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized[15][16][17][18] the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue,[15] which a Yale study claimed broke 20th century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream.[19] By the mid 1990s she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture[18] and promoting controversial self-help fads, she is generally admired for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.[20] In 2006 she became an early supporter of Barack Obama and one analysis estimates she delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race,[21] an achievement for which the governor of Illinois considered offering her a seat in the U.S. senate.[22]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
"Oprah" redirects here. For her talk show, see The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Oprah Winfrey
Winfrey at her 50th birthday party at Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, in 2004.
Born Orpah Gail Winfrey
January 29, 1954 (1954-01-29) (age 55)
Kosciusko, Mississippi, United States
Residence Chicago, Illinois, United States
Occupation Talk show host, media mogul
Salary $385 million (2008)[1]
Net worth over US$2.7 billion ▲
(Sept. 2008)
Partner Stedman Graham
Website
www.oprah.com
Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954) is an American media personality, Academy Award nominated actress, producer, literary critic and magazine publisher, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history.[2] She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century,[3] the most philanthropic African American of all time,[4] and was once the world's only black billionaire.[5][6][7][8][9] She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.[10][11][12]
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, including being raped at age 9 and becoming pregnant at age 14. Tragedy followed as her son died in infancy.[13] Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19.[14] Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place,[6] she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.
Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication,[15] she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized[15][16][17][18] the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue,[15] which a Yale study claimed broke 20th century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream.[19] By the mid 1990s she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture[18] and promoting controversial self-help fads, she is generally admired for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.[20] In 2006 she became an early supporter of Barack Obama and one analysis estimates she delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race,[21] an achievement for which the governor of Illinois considered offering her a seat in the U.S. senate.[22]
5/22/09
Can Money Buy Happiness?
By Arthur C. Brooks From the May/June 2008 Issue
Money doesn’t buy happiness, but success does. Capitalism, moored in values of hard work, honesty, and fairness, is key.
On July 23, 2000, a forty-two-year-old forklift operator in Corbin, Kentucky, named Mack Metcalf was working a 12-hour nightshift. On his last break, he halfheartedly checked the Sunday paper for the winning Kentucky lottery numbers. He didn’t expect to be a winner, of course—but hey, you never know.
Mack Metcalf’s ticket, it turned out, was the winner of the $65 million Powerball jackpot, and it changed his life forever. What did he do first? He quit his job. “I clocked out right then, and I haven’t been back,” he later recounted. In fact, his first impulse was to quit everything, after a life characterized by problem drinking, dysfunctional family life, and poorly paid work. “I’m moving to Australia. I’m going to totally get away. I’m going to buy several houses there, including one on the beach,” he told Kentucky lottery officials.
Metcalf never worked again. But he never moved to Australia. Instead he bought a 43-acre estate with an ostentatious, plantation-style home in southern Kentucky for more than $1 million. There, he spent his days pursuing pastimes like collecting expensive cars and exotic pets, including tarantulas and snakes.
Trouble started for Metcalf as soon as he won the lottery. Seeing him on television, a social worker recognized him as delinquent for child support from a past marriage, resulting in a settlement that cost him half a million dollars. A former girlfriend bilked him out of another half million while he was drunk. He fell deeper and deeper into alcoholism and became paranoid that those around him wanted to kill him. Racked with cirrhosis of the liver and hepatitis, he died in December 2003 at the age of forty-five, only about three years after his lottery dream had finally come true. His tombstone reads, “Loving father and brother, finally at rest.”
Did millions of dollars bring enduring happiness to Mack Metcalf? Obviously not. On the contrary, those who knew him blame the money for his demise. “If he hadn’t won,” Metcalf’s former wife told a New York Times reporter, “he would have worked like regular people and maybe had 20 years left. But when you put that kind of money in the hands of somebody with problems, it just helps them kill themselves.”
So what’s the moral of the story? Is money destined to make us miserable? Of course not. Mack Metcalf’s sad case is surely an aberration. If you hit the lottery, it would be different. You would give philanthropically and do all kinds of fulfilling things. Similarly, if your career suddenly took off in a fantastic way and you earned a great deal of money, you would get much happier. And what is true for the parts must also be true for the whole: When America experiences high rates of economic growth, it gets happier. America is not a nation of Mack Metcalfs, and money is a smart first strategy for attaining a higher gross national happiness.
Right?
You’ve heard the axiom a thousand times: Money doesn’t buy happiness. Your parents told you this, and so did your priest. Still, if you’re like me, you would just as soon see for yourself if money buys happiness. People throughout history have insisted on striving to get ahead in spite of the well-worn axiom. America as a nation has struggled and striven all the way to the top of the world economic pyramid. Are we suffering from some sort of collective delusion, or is it possible that money truly does buy at least a certain amount of happiness?
Americans have on average gotten much richer over the past several decades than they were in previous generations. The inconvenient truth, however, is that there has been no meaningful rise in the average level of happiness.
In 1972, 30 percent of Americans said they were very happy, and the average American enjoyed about $25,000 (in today’s dollars) of our national income. By 2004, the percentage of very happy Americans stayed virtually unchanged at 31 percent, while the share of national income skyrocketed to $38,000 (a 50 percent real increase in average income).
You've heard the axiom a thousand times: Money doesn't buy happiness. Still, if you're like me, you would just as soon see for yourself if money buys happiness.
The story is the same in other developed countries. In Japan, real average income was six times higher in 1991 than it was in 1958. During the post–World War II period, Japan was transformed at unprecedented speed from a poor nation into one of the world’s richest countries. But the average happiness of a Japanese citizen, measured on a scale of 1–4, stayed exactly the same at 2.7.
In some countries, there is even some evidence that economic growth can create unhappiness. This is generally the case for nations experiencing rapid and chaotic development and thus opportunities for great wealth for the first time. Post-Soviet Russia is an example of this phenomenon. In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Empire, a few entrepreneurs made vast fortunes in markets for oil and other primary resources. Yet post-Soviet Russia is a miserable place in which only about one in five citizens say they are very happy about their lives. Some development economists believe that cases of a few lucky entrepreneurs suddenly amassing large fortunes raised unreasonable expectations among ordinary Russians, creating a sense of extreme unfairness and leaving them deeply dissatisfied with their meager lot. And in this way, money created unhappiness.
So individual countries don’t seem to get much happier as they get richer. But are rich countries happier than poor countries?
The answer to this question depends on how poor a “poor country” is. People in poor countries where much of the population lives below subsistence level are much unhappier than people in rich countries, on average. International comparative studies of happiness consistently place the poorest nations of the world—especially the countries of sub-Saharan Africa—at the very bottom.
In 2006, one study ranking countries in terms of happiness found that Zimbabwe and Burundi were the unhappiest places on earth. And this makes sense, of course: It is ridiculous to imagine that illiteracy, high child mortality, and the threat of starvation are any more pleasant or bearable to a Burundian than they would be to an American. But once countries get past the prosperity level that solves large-scale health and nutrition problems, income disparity pales in comparison with other factors in predicting happiness, such as culture and faith.
For example, compare Mexico and France. The cost-of-living difference between the two nations is vast, so economists don’t compare raw income; rather, they compare the “purchasing power” of citizens. In Mexico—a nation in which most people live above the level of subsistence but still are much poorer than residents of the United States or Europe—the average purchasing power was about a third what it was in France in 2004. And yet Mexicans, in aggregate, are happier than the French. In Mexico, 63 percent of adults said they were very happy or completely happy. In France, only 35 percent gave one of these responses.
America as a nation has struggled and striven all the way to the top of the world economic pyramid. Are we suffering from some sort of collective delusion, or is it possible that money does buy at least a certain amount of happiness?
It might be tempting to dismiss the happiness of Mexicans as delusional or a reflection of the fact that most Mexicans have no idea what life with material wealth is like. But this would be a mistake: There is simply no evidence that Mexicans lack an understanding of true happiness compared to the French. A more reasonable conclusion is that Mexican happiness—and French unhappiness—are caused in large measure by forces other than money.
American communities are like countries when it comes to happiness. Like happy Mexico and unhappy France, the happiness of American communities—all of which are above the level of subsistence—depends very little on their comparative prosperity. There are abundant examples of unhappy high-income communities and happy low-income communities. Take eastern Tennessee (which includes the cities of Chattanooga and Knoxville, but is mostly rural), where people are 25 percent likelier than people living in tony San Francisco to say they are very happy, despite earning a third less money on average. Obviously, it is more expensive to live in San Francisco than it is to live in Tennessee, but San Franciscans still enjoy more than 30 percent more disposable income.
Like nations and communities, as long as they don’t start out dangerously impoverished, individuals get little or no extra happiness as they get richer—even massively richer. In a classic 1978 study, two psychologists interviewed 22 major lottery winners and found that the joy of sudden wealth wore off in a few months. Further, lottery winners have a harder time than the rest of us enjoying life’s prosaic pleasures: watching television, shopping, talking with friends, and so forth. It’s as if the overwhelming experience of winning the lottery dulls the enjoyable flavors of ordinary life.
This story opened with the sad tale of Mack Metcalf. In truth, it doesn’t necessarily destroy your life to win the lottery, as it evidently did his, but it won’t make your life better either.
So it’s true: Money doesn’t bring enduring happiness for countries, communities, or individuals, except perhaps when people start out in abject poverty. Why not? The answer has to do with what psychologists call “adaptation.” Humans tend to adapt psychologically to their circumstances—including their monetary circumstances—and do so very quickly.
Perhaps you’ve walked into a chain-smoker’s home and wondered how on earth he could stand to live with such a stench. The answer, of course, is that he is used to it. For the most part, the same is true of economic gains and losses in our lives: They give us pleasure or pain when they happen, but the effect wears off very quickly. Adaptation makes money unsatisfying per se because we get used to it quickly. Almost immediately, an increased income becomes the new “normal.”
For individuals, communities, and nations, economic growth is like being on a treadmill, and getting richer is like speeding up the treadmill: We never get any closer to bliss.
According to the great economist Adam Smith, an early proponent of the benefits of pursuing personal economic interests for the common good, “the mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquility. In prosperity, after a certain time, it falls back to that state; in adversity, after a certain time, it rises up to it.”
Indeed, economists even refer to our tendency to adapt as the “hedonic treadmill.” They have found ingenious ways to illustrate how it works. In 1978, for example, researchers presented a sample of adults with a list of 24 big-ticket consumer items (a car, a house, international travel, a swimming pool, and so on). They were asked how many of these items they currently possessed; they were also asked, “When you think of the good life—the life you’d like to have—which of the things on this list, if any, are part of the good life as far as you are personally concerned?”
Inevitably, people felt that the “good life” required more things than they currently possessed. Among the people between 30 and 44 years old, the average number of items owned was 2.5, while the ideal number was 4.3. The same people were interviewed 16 years later, in 1994, and presented with the same list. Naturally, most people had more items; the ones formerly in their 30s and early 40s (now in the next age category, 45 to 59 years old) had 3.2 items, on average. They were closer to the good life, right? Wrong. Their requirements for the good life had now shifted, to 5.4 items. In other words, after 16 years and lots of work, the “good life” deficit had stayed almost exactly the same. The more stuff you have, the more you want.
Lottery winners have a harder time than the rest of us enjoying life's prosaic pleasures: watching television, shopping, talking with friends, and so forth.
Money may not buy happiness, but there is one important way in which money and happiness are related: At any given moment, richer individuals within a country tend to be happier than poorer folks. In 2004, Americans earning more than $75,000 per year were more than twice as likely to say they were very happy than those earning less than $25,000. One study found that when happiness was measured on a 1–3 scale (where 3 was happiest), Americans in the bottom 10 percent of earners in the mid-1990s had an average happiness score of 1.94; those in the middle of the income distribution had a score of 2.19; and those in the top 10 percent scored 2.36.
This is strange, because we know that money by itself doesn’t bring much happiness. Many economists look at these facts and conclude that though we really don’t care about having money for its own sake, we do care about having more money than others. In other words, my money only makes me happy when I notice that I am richer than you. Or that you are poorer than I, of course. (Like the old saying goes, “It’s not enough to succeed—your friends have to fail, too.”)
Some studies appear to back up this idea. For example, in one experiment from the early 1990s, human subjects were presented with two job options, both at magazines. At Magazine A, they would earn $35,000 while their colleagues earned $38,000. At Magazine B, they would earn $33,000 while their colleagues earned $30,000. Most of the participants chose the higher-paying job at Magazine A—the rational choice. However, two-thirds said that, notwithstanding their choice, they would be happier at Magazine B.
In another study involving faculty, staff, and students at Harvard University, participants were asked to choose between earning $50,000 per year while everyone else earned $25,000, or earning $100,000 per year while others made $200,000. The researchers stipulated that prices of goods and services would be the same in both cases, so a higher salary really meant being able to own a nicer home, buy a nicer car, or do whatever else they wanted with the extra money. But those materialistic perquisites mattered little to most people: 56 percent chose the first option, hypothetically forgoing $50,000 per year simply to maintain a position of relative affluence.
Could it be that what we care most about is not material comforts, but one-upsmanship? Perhaps out of our primeval past comes the urge to demonstrate that we are better than others. A hundred thousand years ago, it would have given us happiness to have more animal skins than the troglodyte in the next cave; this would help ensure mating prospects, which would keep our genetic lines going. Still programmed in this way, we get unexplainable pleasure from having a better office than our coworkers and a bigger house than the guy next door, even if we don’t “need” the space.
This theory may sound good, and it is quite common to hear, but it is not the explanation best supported by the evidence. Rather, what the data tell us is that richer people are happier than poorer people because their relative prosperity makes them feel successful. Think for a moment about your last big pay raise. Why did you feel such joy over it? Most likely, it was because of what your higher pay represented to you—evidence that you had succeeded, that you had created value. That’s why you enjoyed the raise more when you first were offered it than when you started spending it. It is success (not money) that we really crave.
Imagine two people who are the same in income as well as in education, age, sex, race, religion, politics, and family status. One feels very successful and the other does not. The one who feels successful is about twice as likely to be very happy about his or her life than the one who does not feel successful. And if they are the same in perceived success but one earns more than the other, there will be no happiness difference at all between the two.
The upshot: If you and I feel equally successful but you make four times as much as I do, we will be equally happy about our lives. Of course, successful people make more money than unsuccessful people, on average. But it is the success—not the money per se—that is giving them the happiness. I have no doubt that some people do get pleasure from lording their higher incomes over others. But the evidence says this is not the biggest reason that having more than others gives us happiness.
Financial status is the way we demonstrate to others (and ourselves) that we are successful—hence the fancy watches, the expensive cars, and the bespoke suits. We use these things to show other people not just that we are prosperous, but that we are prosperous because we create value.
There is nothing strange about measuring our success with money; we measure things indirectly all the time. I require my students to take exams not because I believe their scores have any inherent value, but because I know these scores correlate extremely well with how much they have studied and how well they understand the material. Your doctor draws your blood to check your cholesterol not because blood cholesterol is interesting in and of itself, but because it measures your risk of having a heart attack or a stroke. In the same way, we measure our professional success with green pieces of paper called “dollars.”
What scholars often portray as an ignoble tendency—wanting to have more than others—is really evidence that we are driven to create value. Wanting to create value is a virtue, not a vice. The fact that it also brings us happiness is a tremendous blessing.
Have you ever wondered why rich entrepreneurs continue to work so hard? Perhaps you’ve said, “If I had a billion dollars, I’d retire.” This is what Mack Metcalf actually did when he won the lottery. But if he had earned that money doing something creative and productive, things would almost certainly have gone differently for him. People who succeed at what they do tend to keep doing it. The drive to succeed, as opposed to just having more money than others, explains why the super-rich—who already have so much more than virtually everybody—continue to work.
Americans have on average gotten much richer over the past several decades than they were in previous generations. But there has been no meaningful rise in the average level of happiness.
If there is a downside to success, it is that it appears to set the bar high and keep it there. For a star quarterback who throws twice as many touchdowns each season as the league average, it is a letdown for him and his fans when he has a year that is only a little above average. The more you succeed, the more you need to succeed to feel happy.
Take the case of billionaire Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle. The world’s 14th-richest man, he would need to spend more than $30 million per week, or $183,000 per hour, just to avoid increasing his wealth. Further, he would have to spend it on items with no investment qualities, meaning that, unless he sets his money on fire, or (better yet) gives it away, he simple cannot not be filthy rich. Yet he continues to slave away, earning billion after billion. Being rich, and having more than the average Joe, simply cannot be driving Larry Ellison. It is the will to succeed and create value at greater and greater heights.
Who enjoys the benefits created from the slaving of Bill Gates (worth $58 billion and counting), Warren Buffett ($62 billion), and all of America’s other success-addicted, ultra-rich entrepreneurs? We all do: As long as fortunes are earned—as opposed to stolen, squeezed from governments, or otherwise extorted from citizens—this is good for all of us.
Oracle has not made Larry Ellison a rich man without any benefit to society. The firm currently has tens of thousands of employees, people with well-paying jobs to support their families. The company has introduced technology that has benefited all parts of the economy, and it has paid billions to its shareholders. And we can’t forget that Oracle has rendered generously unto Caesar, year after year: In 2007 alone, it paid $1.2 billion in corporate taxes, totally apart from the personal taxes paid by Ellison and his employees.
Money is a measure of success, and a handy one at that. But there is a dark side to this fact: People tend to forget that money is only a measure. Some people focus on money for its own sake, forgetting what really brings the happiness.
This is not really a shocking idea, to be sure: We often mistake indirect measures for the actual phenomena we care about. Take, for example, standardized tests in public schools. The purpose of administering them, at least originally, was to see whether schools were providing an adequate education to the majority of their students. When the students at a particular school perform poorly, on average, the school faces sanctions—thus the teachers have incentives to “teach to the test,” focusing on preparing students to take the test instead of teaching the content the test is supposed to measure. There is evidence that this is really taking place. Obviously, it is problematic and ironic if, in order to score higher on the measure of success, we degrade true education.
Just as teaching to the test leads to inferior education, working only for the money can lead to an unhappy life. No doubt you have met people who appear to be trapped in an unsatisfying cycle of materialism and unhappiness. These people confuse money for what it is supposed to measure, and thereby maximize the wrong thing. Among other things, they leave out of the equation all of the kinds of success—in our family lives, in our spiritual lives, in our friendships—that money does not measure. And even their work choices reflect the sad mistake of forgoing what they love doing for what brings in the most monetary compensation. The evidence on happiness is clear that we should avoid the measurement error of materialism.
In some countries, there is even some evidence that economic growth can create unhappiness.
So why do so many people fall prey to this error? One explanation—a timeless hit for critics of American-style capitalism—is that our commercial culture fosters it. Relying as it does on an unending stream of cash, it creates a cleavage for us between true value creation and the symbols of it: cash, and the stuff it can buy.
But before singling out the American freemarket system for creating this confusion, note that capitalism is not the only culprit— far from it. Governments encourage this measurement error even more egregiously. Remember Mack Metcalf: There is no doubt that he played the lottery—the government-monopoly-controlled lottery—in the belief that it would enhance his happiness if he won. Almost everyone believes this: How many times in your life have you been asked what you would do if you won the lottery? Have you ever said, “I would start by being exploited by manipulative friends and family, and then maybe go into an alcoholic spiral—and then I’d probably die an untimely and tragic death”? No, you list things you imagine you would like to do: go back to school, take vacations, buy homes in warm places, and so on.
What is going on here? On the one hand, you possess anecdotal evidence about cases like Metcalf’s. On the other hand, you are being told by those who are ethically and constitutionally bound to represent your interests—politicians and bureaucrats—that easy money will give you happiness. The New Jersey State Lottery’s slogan is “Give Your Dreams a Chance.” My own state of New York drew in gamblers for years with, “All you need is a dollar and a dream.” No doubt your state makes a similar claim.
But easy money will not bring you happiness—earned success will (and in many cases that earned success will also bring you money). It is simply inconceivable that your state lottery commissioner does not understand this fact at some level. Yet for the sheer sake of raising money for its own purposes, your government perpetuates this cognitive error. President Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” How things have changed! Today, government officials eviscerate the very ideal of achievement while exploiting our citizens.
I am not advocating an end to legal gambling here. While I personally have no use for it, I understand that gambling is an enjoyable diversion for some. Furthermore, I believe there is a lot of benefit to protecting our freedom to make our own decisions about our resources, even including the freedom to confuse money and success. But it is astonishing that the government—for no other reason than monopolistically vacuuming money out of its own citizens—should abet this confusion and lower our happiness.
Mexican happiness—and French unhappiness—are caused in large measure by forces other than money.
How could the government make things better for us instead of worse? Here’s an idea: It could tax away our incomes at very high rates so that money and success were no longer so highly correlated. Then, that money (if we still bothered to earn it) could be spent on public goods and services instead of what we would have spent it on, such as big houses and other ostentatious displays of our success. We would be happier if we were forced out of the consumers’ arms race that we have (literally) bought into. And as a bonus, we could enjoy all the good things the government would buy. According to one prominent economist, “We could spend roughly one-third less on consumption—roughly $2 trillion per year—and suffer no significant reduction in satisfaction. Savings of that magnitude could help pay for restoring our infrastructure, for cleaner air and water, and a variety of other things.” It’s so simple!
Unfortunately, this idea is misguided. Although consumerism does not buy happiness, government spending does not either. On the contrary, more government spending makes us less happy in general. Over the past 30 years, Americans have had increasing levels of money taxed away and spent—at least ostensibly—on them. In 1972, the federal government devoted about $4,300 to each American (in 2002 prices). By 2002, the level of spending had risen to $6,900 per person. Yet we have not gotten any happier. In 1972, 30.3 percent of Americans said they were very happy. In 2002, that percentage was still exactly 30.3 percent.
Even worse, when we correct for changing household income levels and the passage of time, higher government spending turns out to be pushing average happiness down, not up. Consider that, while a $1,000 increase in per-capita income is associated with a 1.24 percent drop in the percentage of Americans saying they are not too happy, a $1,000 increase in federal government revenues per person is associated with a 2.91 percent increase in the percentage saying this.
In other words, private prosperity brings us up, but government spending brings us back down. For every dollar in increased GDP that the government taxes away and spends, there is a higher net unhappiness level among the population than if that money had never been earned at all. Why does government spending diminish our happiness so significantly? There are a number of possible explanations. First, in some cases the spending goes to things that make us miserable, such as the Internal Revenue Service. Second, government spending reminds us of how our economic freedoms are abridged, being paid for as they are with taxes. Third, government spending, for some—the nonworking poor, in particular—creates misery, because the people who are supposed to benefit t become dependent on government programs.
Our market system, which often rewards success with dollars, can create the tendency to confuse success itself with money. But giving more money to the government will not fix this; on the contrary, our government tends to exacerbate the problem with its money-making schemes (like the lottery), and it would only make things worse for us if it tried to adjust our values through taxation and redistributive spending. The moral confusion of materialism is one best left to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our faiths to resolve.
Although consumerism does not buy happiness, government spending does not either. On the contrary, more government spending makes us less happy in general.
This is hardly an original observation on my part. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his 1835 classic Democracy in America about the tendency toward “excessive individualism” in an atomistic American society. Tocqueville noted, however, that the remedy lay not in reordering the American system, but in the institutions of civil society: families, churches, charities, and friendships, which are the connective tissue between people that help us to avoid errors in our values. In other words, markets are not enough—we need morality as well, and the institutions that make it possible to express this morality.
Free markets allow us to live the way we want to live—giving most people maximum buying power, and allowing citizens to find jobs that match their skills and passions.
How we use this power and freedom is up to us, and depends on our values: We can make decisions that lead to happiness, or we can make decisions that make us miserable. But to throw out free markets because capitalism does not bring happiness directly would be senseless: It would be like trashing your computer because it didn’t make your coffee.
What about the losers in a capitalistic economy? Doesn’t a competitive market system make it harder for people unable to participate effectively in the market system to pursue happiness like the rest of us? The answer might be yes, but only if we are bereft of our core values of charity and caring for others. The fact that some sick or handicapped or otherwise-challenged people are miserable because they cannot provide for themselves in a free-market system does not mean there is something wrong with our system—it means there is something wrong with our morals. In a moral society, these people should be aided by the rest of us in a way that preserves dignity and avoids dependence.
The fact that money doesn’t buy happiness is no indictment of capitalism. On the contrary, capitalism is the best system to allow people to succeed on their merits in the economy—and we know that it is success that truly does bring happiness. Capitalism, moored in proper values of honesty and fairness, is a key to our gross national happiness, and we should defend it vigorously.
Arthur C. Brooks is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor at Syracuse University. This is adapted from “Gross National Happiness” (Basic Books).
Money doesn’t buy happiness, but success does. Capitalism, moored in values of hard work, honesty, and fairness, is key.
On July 23, 2000, a forty-two-year-old forklift operator in Corbin, Kentucky, named Mack Metcalf was working a 12-hour nightshift. On his last break, he halfheartedly checked the Sunday paper for the winning Kentucky lottery numbers. He didn’t expect to be a winner, of course—but hey, you never know.
Mack Metcalf’s ticket, it turned out, was the winner of the $65 million Powerball jackpot, and it changed his life forever. What did he do first? He quit his job. “I clocked out right then, and I haven’t been back,” he later recounted. In fact, his first impulse was to quit everything, after a life characterized by problem drinking, dysfunctional family life, and poorly paid work. “I’m moving to Australia. I’m going to totally get away. I’m going to buy several houses there, including one on the beach,” he told Kentucky lottery officials.
Metcalf never worked again. But he never moved to Australia. Instead he bought a 43-acre estate with an ostentatious, plantation-style home in southern Kentucky for more than $1 million. There, he spent his days pursuing pastimes like collecting expensive cars and exotic pets, including tarantulas and snakes.
Trouble started for Metcalf as soon as he won the lottery. Seeing him on television, a social worker recognized him as delinquent for child support from a past marriage, resulting in a settlement that cost him half a million dollars. A former girlfriend bilked him out of another half million while he was drunk. He fell deeper and deeper into alcoholism and became paranoid that those around him wanted to kill him. Racked with cirrhosis of the liver and hepatitis, he died in December 2003 at the age of forty-five, only about three years after his lottery dream had finally come true. His tombstone reads, “Loving father and brother, finally at rest.”
Did millions of dollars bring enduring happiness to Mack Metcalf? Obviously not. On the contrary, those who knew him blame the money for his demise. “If he hadn’t won,” Metcalf’s former wife told a New York Times reporter, “he would have worked like regular people and maybe had 20 years left. But when you put that kind of money in the hands of somebody with problems, it just helps them kill themselves.”
So what’s the moral of the story? Is money destined to make us miserable? Of course not. Mack Metcalf’s sad case is surely an aberration. If you hit the lottery, it would be different. You would give philanthropically and do all kinds of fulfilling things. Similarly, if your career suddenly took off in a fantastic way and you earned a great deal of money, you would get much happier. And what is true for the parts must also be true for the whole: When America experiences high rates of economic growth, it gets happier. America is not a nation of Mack Metcalfs, and money is a smart first strategy for attaining a higher gross national happiness.
Right?
You’ve heard the axiom a thousand times: Money doesn’t buy happiness. Your parents told you this, and so did your priest. Still, if you’re like me, you would just as soon see for yourself if money buys happiness. People throughout history have insisted on striving to get ahead in spite of the well-worn axiom. America as a nation has struggled and striven all the way to the top of the world economic pyramid. Are we suffering from some sort of collective delusion, or is it possible that money truly does buy at least a certain amount of happiness?
Americans have on average gotten much richer over the past several decades than they were in previous generations. The inconvenient truth, however, is that there has been no meaningful rise in the average level of happiness.
In 1972, 30 percent of Americans said they were very happy, and the average American enjoyed about $25,000 (in today’s dollars) of our national income. By 2004, the percentage of very happy Americans stayed virtually unchanged at 31 percent, while the share of national income skyrocketed to $38,000 (a 50 percent real increase in average income).
You've heard the axiom a thousand times: Money doesn't buy happiness. Still, if you're like me, you would just as soon see for yourself if money buys happiness.
The story is the same in other developed countries. In Japan, real average income was six times higher in 1991 than it was in 1958. During the post–World War II period, Japan was transformed at unprecedented speed from a poor nation into one of the world’s richest countries. But the average happiness of a Japanese citizen, measured on a scale of 1–4, stayed exactly the same at 2.7.
In some countries, there is even some evidence that economic growth can create unhappiness. This is generally the case for nations experiencing rapid and chaotic development and thus opportunities for great wealth for the first time. Post-Soviet Russia is an example of this phenomenon. In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Empire, a few entrepreneurs made vast fortunes in markets for oil and other primary resources. Yet post-Soviet Russia is a miserable place in which only about one in five citizens say they are very happy about their lives. Some development economists believe that cases of a few lucky entrepreneurs suddenly amassing large fortunes raised unreasonable expectations among ordinary Russians, creating a sense of extreme unfairness and leaving them deeply dissatisfied with their meager lot. And in this way, money created unhappiness.
So individual countries don’t seem to get much happier as they get richer. But are rich countries happier than poor countries?
The answer to this question depends on how poor a “poor country” is. People in poor countries where much of the population lives below subsistence level are much unhappier than people in rich countries, on average. International comparative studies of happiness consistently place the poorest nations of the world—especially the countries of sub-Saharan Africa—at the very bottom.
In 2006, one study ranking countries in terms of happiness found that Zimbabwe and Burundi were the unhappiest places on earth. And this makes sense, of course: It is ridiculous to imagine that illiteracy, high child mortality, and the threat of starvation are any more pleasant or bearable to a Burundian than they would be to an American. But once countries get past the prosperity level that solves large-scale health and nutrition problems, income disparity pales in comparison with other factors in predicting happiness, such as culture and faith.
For example, compare Mexico and France. The cost-of-living difference between the two nations is vast, so economists don’t compare raw income; rather, they compare the “purchasing power” of citizens. In Mexico—a nation in which most people live above the level of subsistence but still are much poorer than residents of the United States or Europe—the average purchasing power was about a third what it was in France in 2004. And yet Mexicans, in aggregate, are happier than the French. In Mexico, 63 percent of adults said they were very happy or completely happy. In France, only 35 percent gave one of these responses.
America as a nation has struggled and striven all the way to the top of the world economic pyramid. Are we suffering from some sort of collective delusion, or is it possible that money does buy at least a certain amount of happiness?
It might be tempting to dismiss the happiness of Mexicans as delusional or a reflection of the fact that most Mexicans have no idea what life with material wealth is like. But this would be a mistake: There is simply no evidence that Mexicans lack an understanding of true happiness compared to the French. A more reasonable conclusion is that Mexican happiness—and French unhappiness—are caused in large measure by forces other than money.
American communities are like countries when it comes to happiness. Like happy Mexico and unhappy France, the happiness of American communities—all of which are above the level of subsistence—depends very little on their comparative prosperity. There are abundant examples of unhappy high-income communities and happy low-income communities. Take eastern Tennessee (which includes the cities of Chattanooga and Knoxville, but is mostly rural), where people are 25 percent likelier than people living in tony San Francisco to say they are very happy, despite earning a third less money on average. Obviously, it is more expensive to live in San Francisco than it is to live in Tennessee, but San Franciscans still enjoy more than 30 percent more disposable income.
Like nations and communities, as long as they don’t start out dangerously impoverished, individuals get little or no extra happiness as they get richer—even massively richer. In a classic 1978 study, two psychologists interviewed 22 major lottery winners and found that the joy of sudden wealth wore off in a few months. Further, lottery winners have a harder time than the rest of us enjoying life’s prosaic pleasures: watching television, shopping, talking with friends, and so forth. It’s as if the overwhelming experience of winning the lottery dulls the enjoyable flavors of ordinary life.
This story opened with the sad tale of Mack Metcalf. In truth, it doesn’t necessarily destroy your life to win the lottery, as it evidently did his, but it won’t make your life better either.
So it’s true: Money doesn’t bring enduring happiness for countries, communities, or individuals, except perhaps when people start out in abject poverty. Why not? The answer has to do with what psychologists call “adaptation.” Humans tend to adapt psychologically to their circumstances—including their monetary circumstances—and do so very quickly.
Perhaps you’ve walked into a chain-smoker’s home and wondered how on earth he could stand to live with such a stench. The answer, of course, is that he is used to it. For the most part, the same is true of economic gains and losses in our lives: They give us pleasure or pain when they happen, but the effect wears off very quickly. Adaptation makes money unsatisfying per se because we get used to it quickly. Almost immediately, an increased income becomes the new “normal.”
For individuals, communities, and nations, economic growth is like being on a treadmill, and getting richer is like speeding up the treadmill: We never get any closer to bliss.
According to the great economist Adam Smith, an early proponent of the benefits of pursuing personal economic interests for the common good, “the mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquility. In prosperity, after a certain time, it falls back to that state; in adversity, after a certain time, it rises up to it.”
Indeed, economists even refer to our tendency to adapt as the “hedonic treadmill.” They have found ingenious ways to illustrate how it works. In 1978, for example, researchers presented a sample of adults with a list of 24 big-ticket consumer items (a car, a house, international travel, a swimming pool, and so on). They were asked how many of these items they currently possessed; they were also asked, “When you think of the good life—the life you’d like to have—which of the things on this list, if any, are part of the good life as far as you are personally concerned?”
Inevitably, people felt that the “good life” required more things than they currently possessed. Among the people between 30 and 44 years old, the average number of items owned was 2.5, while the ideal number was 4.3. The same people were interviewed 16 years later, in 1994, and presented with the same list. Naturally, most people had more items; the ones formerly in their 30s and early 40s (now in the next age category, 45 to 59 years old) had 3.2 items, on average. They were closer to the good life, right? Wrong. Their requirements for the good life had now shifted, to 5.4 items. In other words, after 16 years and lots of work, the “good life” deficit had stayed almost exactly the same. The more stuff you have, the more you want.
Lottery winners have a harder time than the rest of us enjoying life's prosaic pleasures: watching television, shopping, talking with friends, and so forth.
Money may not buy happiness, but there is one important way in which money and happiness are related: At any given moment, richer individuals within a country tend to be happier than poorer folks. In 2004, Americans earning more than $75,000 per year were more than twice as likely to say they were very happy than those earning less than $25,000. One study found that when happiness was measured on a 1–3 scale (where 3 was happiest), Americans in the bottom 10 percent of earners in the mid-1990s had an average happiness score of 1.94; those in the middle of the income distribution had a score of 2.19; and those in the top 10 percent scored 2.36.
This is strange, because we know that money by itself doesn’t bring much happiness. Many economists look at these facts and conclude that though we really don’t care about having money for its own sake, we do care about having more money than others. In other words, my money only makes me happy when I notice that I am richer than you. Or that you are poorer than I, of course. (Like the old saying goes, “It’s not enough to succeed—your friends have to fail, too.”)
Some studies appear to back up this idea. For example, in one experiment from the early 1990s, human subjects were presented with two job options, both at magazines. At Magazine A, they would earn $35,000 while their colleagues earned $38,000. At Magazine B, they would earn $33,000 while their colleagues earned $30,000. Most of the participants chose the higher-paying job at Magazine A—the rational choice. However, two-thirds said that, notwithstanding their choice, they would be happier at Magazine B.
In another study involving faculty, staff, and students at Harvard University, participants were asked to choose between earning $50,000 per year while everyone else earned $25,000, or earning $100,000 per year while others made $200,000. The researchers stipulated that prices of goods and services would be the same in both cases, so a higher salary really meant being able to own a nicer home, buy a nicer car, or do whatever else they wanted with the extra money. But those materialistic perquisites mattered little to most people: 56 percent chose the first option, hypothetically forgoing $50,000 per year simply to maintain a position of relative affluence.
Could it be that what we care most about is not material comforts, but one-upsmanship? Perhaps out of our primeval past comes the urge to demonstrate that we are better than others. A hundred thousand years ago, it would have given us happiness to have more animal skins than the troglodyte in the next cave; this would help ensure mating prospects, which would keep our genetic lines going. Still programmed in this way, we get unexplainable pleasure from having a better office than our coworkers and a bigger house than the guy next door, even if we don’t “need” the space.
This theory may sound good, and it is quite common to hear, but it is not the explanation best supported by the evidence. Rather, what the data tell us is that richer people are happier than poorer people because their relative prosperity makes them feel successful. Think for a moment about your last big pay raise. Why did you feel such joy over it? Most likely, it was because of what your higher pay represented to you—evidence that you had succeeded, that you had created value. That’s why you enjoyed the raise more when you first were offered it than when you started spending it. It is success (not money) that we really crave.
Imagine two people who are the same in income as well as in education, age, sex, race, religion, politics, and family status. One feels very successful and the other does not. The one who feels successful is about twice as likely to be very happy about his or her life than the one who does not feel successful. And if they are the same in perceived success but one earns more than the other, there will be no happiness difference at all between the two.
The upshot: If you and I feel equally successful but you make four times as much as I do, we will be equally happy about our lives. Of course, successful people make more money than unsuccessful people, on average. But it is the success—not the money per se—that is giving them the happiness. I have no doubt that some people do get pleasure from lording their higher incomes over others. But the evidence says this is not the biggest reason that having more than others gives us happiness.
Financial status is the way we demonstrate to others (and ourselves) that we are successful—hence the fancy watches, the expensive cars, and the bespoke suits. We use these things to show other people not just that we are prosperous, but that we are prosperous because we create value.
There is nothing strange about measuring our success with money; we measure things indirectly all the time. I require my students to take exams not because I believe their scores have any inherent value, but because I know these scores correlate extremely well with how much they have studied and how well they understand the material. Your doctor draws your blood to check your cholesterol not because blood cholesterol is interesting in and of itself, but because it measures your risk of having a heart attack or a stroke. In the same way, we measure our professional success with green pieces of paper called “dollars.”
What scholars often portray as an ignoble tendency—wanting to have more than others—is really evidence that we are driven to create value. Wanting to create value is a virtue, not a vice. The fact that it also brings us happiness is a tremendous blessing.
Have you ever wondered why rich entrepreneurs continue to work so hard? Perhaps you’ve said, “If I had a billion dollars, I’d retire.” This is what Mack Metcalf actually did when he won the lottery. But if he had earned that money doing something creative and productive, things would almost certainly have gone differently for him. People who succeed at what they do tend to keep doing it. The drive to succeed, as opposed to just having more money than others, explains why the super-rich—who already have so much more than virtually everybody—continue to work.
Americans have on average gotten much richer over the past several decades than they were in previous generations. But there has been no meaningful rise in the average level of happiness.
If there is a downside to success, it is that it appears to set the bar high and keep it there. For a star quarterback who throws twice as many touchdowns each season as the league average, it is a letdown for him and his fans when he has a year that is only a little above average. The more you succeed, the more you need to succeed to feel happy.
Take the case of billionaire Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle. The world’s 14th-richest man, he would need to spend more than $30 million per week, or $183,000 per hour, just to avoid increasing his wealth. Further, he would have to spend it on items with no investment qualities, meaning that, unless he sets his money on fire, or (better yet) gives it away, he simple cannot not be filthy rich. Yet he continues to slave away, earning billion after billion. Being rich, and having more than the average Joe, simply cannot be driving Larry Ellison. It is the will to succeed and create value at greater and greater heights.
Who enjoys the benefits created from the slaving of Bill Gates (worth $58 billion and counting), Warren Buffett ($62 billion), and all of America’s other success-addicted, ultra-rich entrepreneurs? We all do: As long as fortunes are earned—as opposed to stolen, squeezed from governments, or otherwise extorted from citizens—this is good for all of us.
Oracle has not made Larry Ellison a rich man without any benefit to society. The firm currently has tens of thousands of employees, people with well-paying jobs to support their families. The company has introduced technology that has benefited all parts of the economy, and it has paid billions to its shareholders. And we can’t forget that Oracle has rendered generously unto Caesar, year after year: In 2007 alone, it paid $1.2 billion in corporate taxes, totally apart from the personal taxes paid by Ellison and his employees.
Money is a measure of success, and a handy one at that. But there is a dark side to this fact: People tend to forget that money is only a measure. Some people focus on money for its own sake, forgetting what really brings the happiness.
This is not really a shocking idea, to be sure: We often mistake indirect measures for the actual phenomena we care about. Take, for example, standardized tests in public schools. The purpose of administering them, at least originally, was to see whether schools were providing an adequate education to the majority of their students. When the students at a particular school perform poorly, on average, the school faces sanctions—thus the teachers have incentives to “teach to the test,” focusing on preparing students to take the test instead of teaching the content the test is supposed to measure. There is evidence that this is really taking place. Obviously, it is problematic and ironic if, in order to score higher on the measure of success, we degrade true education.
Just as teaching to the test leads to inferior education, working only for the money can lead to an unhappy life. No doubt you have met people who appear to be trapped in an unsatisfying cycle of materialism and unhappiness. These people confuse money for what it is supposed to measure, and thereby maximize the wrong thing. Among other things, they leave out of the equation all of the kinds of success—in our family lives, in our spiritual lives, in our friendships—that money does not measure. And even their work choices reflect the sad mistake of forgoing what they love doing for what brings in the most monetary compensation. The evidence on happiness is clear that we should avoid the measurement error of materialism.
In some countries, there is even some evidence that economic growth can create unhappiness.
So why do so many people fall prey to this error? One explanation—a timeless hit for critics of American-style capitalism—is that our commercial culture fosters it. Relying as it does on an unending stream of cash, it creates a cleavage for us between true value creation and the symbols of it: cash, and the stuff it can buy.
But before singling out the American freemarket system for creating this confusion, note that capitalism is not the only culprit— far from it. Governments encourage this measurement error even more egregiously. Remember Mack Metcalf: There is no doubt that he played the lottery—the government-monopoly-controlled lottery—in the belief that it would enhance his happiness if he won. Almost everyone believes this: How many times in your life have you been asked what you would do if you won the lottery? Have you ever said, “I would start by being exploited by manipulative friends and family, and then maybe go into an alcoholic spiral—and then I’d probably die an untimely and tragic death”? No, you list things you imagine you would like to do: go back to school, take vacations, buy homes in warm places, and so on.
What is going on here? On the one hand, you possess anecdotal evidence about cases like Metcalf’s. On the other hand, you are being told by those who are ethically and constitutionally bound to represent your interests—politicians and bureaucrats—that easy money will give you happiness. The New Jersey State Lottery’s slogan is “Give Your Dreams a Chance.” My own state of New York drew in gamblers for years with, “All you need is a dollar and a dream.” No doubt your state makes a similar claim.
But easy money will not bring you happiness—earned success will (and in many cases that earned success will also bring you money). It is simply inconceivable that your state lottery commissioner does not understand this fact at some level. Yet for the sheer sake of raising money for its own purposes, your government perpetuates this cognitive error. President Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” How things have changed! Today, government officials eviscerate the very ideal of achievement while exploiting our citizens.
I am not advocating an end to legal gambling here. While I personally have no use for it, I understand that gambling is an enjoyable diversion for some. Furthermore, I believe there is a lot of benefit to protecting our freedom to make our own decisions about our resources, even including the freedom to confuse money and success. But it is astonishing that the government—for no other reason than monopolistically vacuuming money out of its own citizens—should abet this confusion and lower our happiness.
Mexican happiness—and French unhappiness—are caused in large measure by forces other than money.
How could the government make things better for us instead of worse? Here’s an idea: It could tax away our incomes at very high rates so that money and success were no longer so highly correlated. Then, that money (if we still bothered to earn it) could be spent on public goods and services instead of what we would have spent it on, such as big houses and other ostentatious displays of our success. We would be happier if we were forced out of the consumers’ arms race that we have (literally) bought into. And as a bonus, we could enjoy all the good things the government would buy. According to one prominent economist, “We could spend roughly one-third less on consumption—roughly $2 trillion per year—and suffer no significant reduction in satisfaction. Savings of that magnitude could help pay for restoring our infrastructure, for cleaner air and water, and a variety of other things.” It’s so simple!
Unfortunately, this idea is misguided. Although consumerism does not buy happiness, government spending does not either. On the contrary, more government spending makes us less happy in general. Over the past 30 years, Americans have had increasing levels of money taxed away and spent—at least ostensibly—on them. In 1972, the federal government devoted about $4,300 to each American (in 2002 prices). By 2002, the level of spending had risen to $6,900 per person. Yet we have not gotten any happier. In 1972, 30.3 percent of Americans said they were very happy. In 2002, that percentage was still exactly 30.3 percent.
Even worse, when we correct for changing household income levels and the passage of time, higher government spending turns out to be pushing average happiness down, not up. Consider that, while a $1,000 increase in per-capita income is associated with a 1.24 percent drop in the percentage of Americans saying they are not too happy, a $1,000 increase in federal government revenues per person is associated with a 2.91 percent increase in the percentage saying this.
In other words, private prosperity brings us up, but government spending brings us back down. For every dollar in increased GDP that the government taxes away and spends, there is a higher net unhappiness level among the population than if that money had never been earned at all. Why does government spending diminish our happiness so significantly? There are a number of possible explanations. First, in some cases the spending goes to things that make us miserable, such as the Internal Revenue Service. Second, government spending reminds us of how our economic freedoms are abridged, being paid for as they are with taxes. Third, government spending, for some—the nonworking poor, in particular—creates misery, because the people who are supposed to benefit t become dependent on government programs.
Our market system, which often rewards success with dollars, can create the tendency to confuse success itself with money. But giving more money to the government will not fix this; on the contrary, our government tends to exacerbate the problem with its money-making schemes (like the lottery), and it would only make things worse for us if it tried to adjust our values through taxation and redistributive spending. The moral confusion of materialism is one best left to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our faiths to resolve.
Although consumerism does not buy happiness, government spending does not either. On the contrary, more government spending makes us less happy in general.
This is hardly an original observation on my part. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his 1835 classic Democracy in America about the tendency toward “excessive individualism” in an atomistic American society. Tocqueville noted, however, that the remedy lay not in reordering the American system, but in the institutions of civil society: families, churches, charities, and friendships, which are the connective tissue between people that help us to avoid errors in our values. In other words, markets are not enough—we need morality as well, and the institutions that make it possible to express this morality.
Free markets allow us to live the way we want to live—giving most people maximum buying power, and allowing citizens to find jobs that match their skills and passions.
How we use this power and freedom is up to us, and depends on our values: We can make decisions that lead to happiness, or we can make decisions that make us miserable. But to throw out free markets because capitalism does not bring happiness directly would be senseless: It would be like trashing your computer because it didn’t make your coffee.
What about the losers in a capitalistic economy? Doesn’t a competitive market system make it harder for people unable to participate effectively in the market system to pursue happiness like the rest of us? The answer might be yes, but only if we are bereft of our core values of charity and caring for others. The fact that some sick or handicapped or otherwise-challenged people are miserable because they cannot provide for themselves in a free-market system does not mean there is something wrong with our system—it means there is something wrong with our morals. In a moral society, these people should be aided by the rest of us in a way that preserves dignity and avoids dependence.
The fact that money doesn’t buy happiness is no indictment of capitalism. On the contrary, capitalism is the best system to allow people to succeed on their merits in the economy—and we know that it is success that truly does bring happiness. Capitalism, moored in proper values of honesty and fairness, is a key to our gross national happiness, and we should defend it vigorously.
Arthur C. Brooks is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor at Syracuse University. This is adapted from “Gross National Happiness” (Basic Books).
4/21/09
Great Wall of China "even longer"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8008108.stm
Great Wall of China 'even longer'
The structure is a series of walls first linked up more than 2,000 years ago
The Great Wall of China is even greater than previously thought, according to the first detailed survey to establish the length of the ancient barricade.
A two-year government mapping study found that the wall spans 8,850km (5,500 miles) - until now, the length was commonly put at about 5,000km.
Previous estimates of its length were mainly based on historical records.
Infra-red and GPS technologies helped locate some areas concealed over time by sandstorms, state media said.
The project found that there were wall sections of 6,259km, 359km of trenches, and 2,232km of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.
The study was carried out by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping.
Barricade
Experts said the newly-discovered sections of the wall were built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and stretch from Hu Mountain in northern Liaoning province to Jiayu Pass in western Gansu province.
The project will continue for another 18 months in order to map sections of the wall built during the Qin (221-206BC) and Han (206BC-9AD) Dynasties, the report said.
The wall, the world's largest man-made structure, was built to protect the northern border of the Chinese Empire.
Archaeologists had lobbied for the survey to be done to provide scholars with an accurate understanding of the construction.
Known to the Chinese as the "long Wall of 10,000 Li", the Great Wall is in fact a series of walls and earthen works begun in the 5th Century BC and first linked up under Qin Shi Huang in about 220BC.
It was listed as a Unesco world heritage site in 1987.
Great Wall
Barricade
"Long Wall of 10000 li"
A series of wall and earthern works
area concealed over time by sandstorms
Qin 221-206bc
Han (206BC-9AD)
1987: UNESCO world heritage
Now 8850 km (recorded so far as 5000km, based on Historical records)
To protect the northen border from the Chinese Emperor
2 year government mapping study
uinfra-red and GPS technology
Great Wall of China 'even longer'
The structure is a series of walls first linked up more than 2,000 years ago
The Great Wall of China is even greater than previously thought, according to the first detailed survey to establish the length of the ancient barricade.
A two-year government mapping study found that the wall spans 8,850km (5,500 miles) - until now, the length was commonly put at about 5,000km.
Previous estimates of its length were mainly based on historical records.
Infra-red and GPS technologies helped locate some areas concealed over time by sandstorms, state media said.
The project found that there were wall sections of 6,259km, 359km of trenches, and 2,232km of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.
The study was carried out by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping.
Barricade
Experts said the newly-discovered sections of the wall were built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and stretch from Hu Mountain in northern Liaoning province to Jiayu Pass in western Gansu province.
The project will continue for another 18 months in order to map sections of the wall built during the Qin (221-206BC) and Han (206BC-9AD) Dynasties, the report said.
The wall, the world's largest man-made structure, was built to protect the northern border of the Chinese Empire.
Archaeologists had lobbied for the survey to be done to provide scholars with an accurate understanding of the construction.
Known to the Chinese as the "long Wall of 10,000 Li", the Great Wall is in fact a series of walls and earthen works begun in the 5th Century BC and first linked up under Qin Shi Huang in about 220BC.
It was listed as a Unesco world heritage site in 1987.
Great Wall
Barricade
"Long Wall of 10000 li"
A series of wall and earthern works
area concealed over time by sandstorms
Qin 221-206bc
Han (206BC-9AD)
1987: UNESCO world heritage
Now 8850 km (recorded so far as 5000km, based on Historical records)
To protect the northen border from the Chinese Emperor
2 year government mapping study
uinfra-red and GPS technology
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