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1949. William Faulkner : The Sound and the Fury 1951. Par Lagerkvist : The Dwarf 1952. Francois Mauriac : Therese Desqueyroux 1954. Ernest Miller Hemingway : The Old Man and the Sea 1955. Haldor Laxness : Independent People 1957. Albert Camus : The Stranger 1958. Boris Pasternak : Doctor Zhivago, 1961. Ivo Andric : The Bridge on the Drina 1962. Doris Lessing : The Grapes of Wrath 1964. Jean Paul Sartre : Being and Nothingness 1965. Mikhail Sholokhov : And Quiet Flows the Don 1966. Shmuel Yosef Agnon : Only Yesterday 1967. Miguel Angel Asturias : The President 1968. Yasunari Kawabata : Snow Country 1970. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn : The Gulag Archipelago 1972. Heinrich Boll : The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum 1973. Patrick White : The Eye of the Storm 1974. Eyvind Johnson : Romanen om Olof 1974. Harry Martinson : Aniara 1976. Saul Bellow : Herzog 1978. Isaac Bashevis Singer : The Family Moskat 1981. Elias Canetti : Auto da Fe 1982. Gabriel Garcia Marquez : One Hundred Years of Solitude 1983. William Golding : Lord of the Flies 1985. Claude Simon : The Flanders Road 1986. Wole Soyinka : Death and the King's Horseman 1988. Naguib Mahfouz : Palace Walk 1989. Camilo Jose Cela : The Family of Pascual Duarte 1991. Nadine Gordimer : July's People 1993. Toni Morrison : Beloved 1994. Kenzaburo Oe : A Personal Matter 1998. Jose Saramago : Blindness 1999. Gunter Grass : The Tin Drum 2001. Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul : A House for Mr Biswas 2002. Imre Kertesz : Fatelessness 2003. John Maxwell Coetzee : Disgrace 2004. Elfriede Jelinek : The Piano Teacher 2006. Orhan Pamuk : My Name Is Red 2007. Doris Lessing : The Golden Notebook 2008. Jean Marie Gustave : Desert 2009. Herta Muller : The Land of Green Plums 2010. Mario Vargas Llosa : The Feast of the Goat 2012. Mo Yan : Red Sorghum 2013. Alice Munro : The Moons of Jupiter 2014. Patrick Modiano : Missing Person 2017. Kazuo Ishiguro : The Remains of the Day 2018. Olga Tokarczuk : Flights 2021. Abdulrazak Gurnah : Paradise 2022. Annie Ernaux : The Years 2024. Han Kang : The Vegetarian

The Gulag Archipelago is the most disturbing book ive ever read. Its maddening. Bleak hopeless lies and madness. It will make you crazy. It is the warning the West needs to hear. It is wokeness and "political correctness" played out and resulting in the destruction of society, and of man himself. Soviet Russia denied reality, embraced the lie and peddled falsehood in every facet of life, in the sole service of ideology, to a utopian end that was not only ultimately impossible, but the road to which was he|L on Earth- literally paved with the corpses of millions of unique, beautiful, irreplaceable innocent Soviet human beings. The tragic loss of whom, to the human story, cannot be underexpressed. That society could only ever self-destruct cuz it its footings and foundation were a total fabrication- a shallow, incompetent, insincere, inhumane prison devoid of effort, creativity, individuality, purpose, spirit and hope. It is crazy-making sh*t.

The numer 6 is A .. campylobacter jejuni

Thank you 😊

Thank you.

❤

quiz 54 the correct answer is D

Any answers?😂

Why bother saying "written in English" when there are loads of translations in there?

great job

Best 5.55 minutes I will spend in like forever! Love these old covers and thanks for putting this together!!!

Don Quixote, by Cervantes, written in English?

I've only read Vurt, 1987 and 1988's. Now I will read the rest!

Written in English?

1953 is the year Alfred Bester became Alfred Bestest

Quiz 30. Correct answer is B(cartons of milk).

Well you got about 2/3 of the list right.

Good 👍😊😊😊😊

We are constantly required to process a wide range of information to make decisions. Sometimes, these decisions are trivial, such as what marmalade to buy. At other times, the stakes are higher, such as deciding which symptoms to report to the doctor. However, the fact that we are accustomed to processing large amounts of information does not mean that we are better at it (Chabris & Simons, 2009). Our sensory and cognitive systems have systematic ways of failing of which we are often, perhaps blissfully, unaware. Imagine that you are taking a walk in your local city park when a tourist approaches you asking for directions. During the conversation, two men carrying a door pass between the two of you. If the person asking for directions had changed places with one of the people carrying the door, would you notice? Research suggests that you might not. Harvard psychologists Simons and Levi (1998) conducted a field study using this exact set-up and found that the change in identity went unnoticed by 7 (46.6%) of the 15 participants. This phenomenon has been termed 'change blindness' and refers to the difficulty that observers have in noticing changes to visual scenes (e.g. the person swap), when the changes are accompanied by some other visual disturbance (e.g. the passing of the door). Over the past decade, the change blindness phenomenon has been replicated many times. Especially noteworthy is an experiment by Davies and Hine (2007) who studied whether change blindness affects eyewitness identification. Specifically, participants were presented with a video enactment of a burglary. In the video, a man entered a house, walking through the different rooms and putting valuables into a knapsack. However, the identity of the burglar changed after the first half of the film while the initial burglar was out of sight. Out of the 80 participants, 49 (61%) did not notice the change of the burglar's identity, suggesting that change blindness may have serious implications for criminal proceedings. To most of us, it seems bizarre that people could miss such obvious changes while they are paying active attention. However, to catch those changes, attention must be targeted to the changing feature. In the study described above, participants were likely not to have been expecting the change to happen, and so their attention may have been focused on the valuables the burglar was stealing, rather than the burglar. Drawing from change blindness research, scientists have come to the conclusion that we perceive the world in much less detail than previously thought (Johansson, Hall, & Sikstrom, 2008). Rather than monitoring all of the visual details that surround us, we seem to focus our attention only on those features that are currently meaningful or important, ignoring those that are irrelevant to our current needs and goals. Thus at any given time, our representation of the world surrounding us is crude and incomplete, making it possible for changes or manipulations to go undetected (Chabris & Simons, 2010). Given the difficulty people have in noticing changes to visual stimuli, one may wonder what would happen if these changes concerned the decisions people make. To examine choice blindness, Hall and colleagues (2010) invited supermarket customers to sample two different kinds of jams and teas. After participants had tasted or smelled both samples, they indicated which one they preferred. Subsequently, they were purportedly given another sample of their preferred choice. On half of the trials, however, these were samples of the non-chosen jam or tea. As expected, only about one-third of the participants detected this manipulation. Based on these findings, Hall and colleagues proposed that choice blindness is a phenomenon that occurs not only for choices involving visual material but also for choices involving gustatory and olfactory information. Recently, the phenomenon has also been replicated for choices involving auditory stimuli (Sauerland, Sagana & Otgaar, 2012). Specifically, participants had to listen to three pairs of voices and decide for each pair which voice they found more sympathetic or more criminal. The voice was then presented again; however, the outcome was manipulated for the second voice pair, and participants were presented with the non-chosen voice. Replicating the findings by Hall and colleagues, only 29% of the participants detected this change. Merckelbach, Jelicic, and Pieters (2011) investigated choice blindness for intensity ratings of one's own psychological symptoms. Their participants had to rate the frequency with which they experienced 90 common symptoms (e.g. anxiety, lack of concentration, stress, headaches, etc.) on a 5-point scale. Prior to a follow-up interview, the researchers inflated ratings for two symptoms by two points. For example, when participants had rated their feelings of shyness, as 2 (i.e. occasionally), it was changed to 4 (i.e. all the time). This time, more than half (57%) of the 28 participants were blind to the symptom rating escalation and accepted it as their own symptom intensity rating. This demonstrates that blindness is not limited to recent preference selections, but can also occur for intensity and frequency. Together, these studies suggest that choice blindness can occur in a wide variety of situations and can have serious implications for medical and judicial outcomes. Future research is needed to determine how, in those situations, choice blindness can be avoided.

The Discovery of Uranus Someone once put forward an attractive though unlikely theory. Throughout the Earth's annual revolution around the sun, there is one point of space always hidden from our eyes. This point is the opposite part of the Earth's orbit, which is always hidden by the sun. Could there be another planet there, essentially similar to our own, but always invisible? If a space probe today sent back evidence that such a world existed it would cause not much more sensation than Sir William Herschel's discovery of a new planet, Uranus, in 1781. Herschel was an extraordinary man - no other astronomer has ever covered so vast a field of work - and his career deserves study. He was born in Hanover in Germany in 1738, left the German army in 1757, and arrived in England the same year with no money but quite exceptional music ability. He played the violin and oboe and at one time was organist in the Octagon Chapel in the city of Bath. Herschel's was an active mind, and deep inside he was conscious that music was not his destiny, he, therefore, read widely in science and the arts, but not until 1772 did he come across a book on astronomy. He was then 34, middle-aged by the standards of the time, but without hesitation he embarked on his new career, financing it by his professional work as a musician. He spent years mastering the art of telescope construction, and even by present-day standards, his instruments are comparable with the best. Serious observation began in 1774. He set himself the astonishing task of 'reviewing the heavens', in other words, pointing his telescope to every accessible part of the sky and recording what he saw. The first review was made in 1775; the second, and most momentous, in 1780-81. It was during the latter part of this that he discovered Uranus. Afterwards, supported by the royal grant in recognition of his work, he was able to devote himself entirely to astronomy. His final achievements spread from the sun and moon to remote galaxies (of which he discovered hundreds), and papers flooded from his pen until his death in 1822. Among these there was one sent to the Royal Society in 1781, entitled An Account of a Comet. In his own words: On Tuesday the 13th of March, between ten and eleven in the evening, while I was examining the small stars in the neighbourhood of H Geminorum, I perceived one that appeared visibly larger than the rest, being struck with its uncommon magnitude, I compared it to H Geminorum and the small star in the quartile between Auriga and Gemini, and finding it to be much larger than either of them, suspected it to be a comet. Herschel's care was the hallmark of a great observer, he was not prepared to jump any conclusions. Also, to be fair, the discovery of a new planet was the last thought in anybody's mind. But further observation by other astronomers besides Herschel revealed two curious facts. For comet, it showed a remarkably sharp disc; furthermore, it was moving so slowly that it was thought to be a great distance from the sun, and comets are only normally visible in the immediate vicinity of the sun. As its orbit came to be worked out the truth dawned that it was a new planet far beyond Saturn's realm, and that the 'reviewer of the heavens' had stumbled across an unprecedented prize. Herschel wanted to call it Georgium Sidus (Star of George) in honour of his royal patron King George III of Great Britain. The planet was later for a time called Herschel in honour of its discoverer. The name Uranus, which was first proposed by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode, was in use by the late 19th century. Uranus is a giant in construction, but not so much in size; its diameter compares unfavourably with that of Jupiter and Saturn, though on the terrestrial scale it is still colossal. Uranus' atmosphere consists largely of hydrogen and helium, with a trace of methane. Through a telescope the planet appears as a small bluish-green disc with a faint green periphery. In 1977, while recording the occultation of a star behind the planet, the American astronomer James L. Elliot discovered the presence of five rings encircling the equator of Uranus. Four more rings were discovered in January 1986 during the exploratory flight of Voyager 2, In addition to its rings, Uranus has 15 satellites ('moons'), the last 10 discovered by Voyager on the same flight, all revolve about its equator and move with the planet in an east-west direction. The two largest moons, Titania and Oberon, were discovered by Herschel in 1787. The next two, Umbriel and Ariel, were found in 1851 by the British astronomer William Lassell. Miranda, thought before 1986 to be the innermost moon, was discovered in 1948 by the American astronomer Gerard Peter Kuiper.

A Significant Development In Mining Safety A. Coal has been used as a source of fuel for over 5,000 years, but for most of that time it was probably gathered from places where it was exposed on the surface of the ground, It is possible that the Romans undertook some mining, but coal mines across Europe largely date from the 13th century. Thereafter coal production increased steadily and it gradually replaced charcoal and wood as a source of heat and energy. Initially, coal mines were fairly shallow, but they quickly reached the point where artificial lighting was necessary. At first the lights used would have been no different from those used domestically -- candles and simple oil lamps. But as coal mines became deeper, miners encountered a new and terrible problem -- firedamp. This was a natural gas, principally consisting of methane, that exploded on contact with a naked flame. The first known major firedamp explosion, which killed 99 people, took place in Belgium in 1514 and as new technology was used to mine at increasingly deep levels, the problem got worse. B. The simplest solution was to improve the ventilation of the mine. Many mines had only one shaft leading from the surface down to the working area below. Ventilation could be improved to some extent by dividing this into a downcast (bringing in fresh air) and an upcast (returning foul air and firedamp to the surface). But what was really needed was a safe lamp that could not ignite firedamp. The earliest forms of safety lighting sought to produce light without using a naked flame. One early method tried to utilise the fact that skins removed from decaying fish contain the element phosphorus, which emits light in the form of phosphorescence. Unfortunately, this phosphorus is highly toxic, flammable and can self-ignite -hardly desirable properties in a safety light. An alternative was a device invented in about 1750, consisting of a flint which struck against a piece of iron when a handle was turned, creating a shower of sparks which lit up the surrounding area. These were believed to be too cool to ignite firedamp. This device had major drawbacks - extra manpower had to be used to operate it continuously, and it also required regular maintenance and replacement. But worst of all, it was not in fact safe, and numerous accidents were caused when the sparks ignited firedamp. Nonetheless, it was considered to be the least dangerous form of lighting at the time. C. By about 1810 the problem was becoming acute, and in some cases there was no alternative to working in the dark. Some mines were being forced to stop production, with serious economic consequences for the mine owners and local communities. The general response, however, was to keep going and reluctantly accept the inevitable deaths from ignition of firedamp as a regrettable but not especially remarkable, consequence of coal mining. The miners themselves could do little -- they were largely illiterate, and depended on the mine owners for a livelihood. However, the clerical, medical and legal professions were beginning to take notice. After 92 men and boys were killed in 1812 by an explosion at Felling Colliery in northern England, several professional people took action and a society was set up to raise funds for the discovery of new methods of lighting and ventilating mines. The first report of the society stated, 'It is to scientific men only that we must look up for assistance in providing a cheap and effectual remedy. D. As the leading chemist of the day, and an expert on gases, Sir Humphrey Davy was a natural choice from whom to seek help, and he was approached by the society in 1815. The general belief nowadays is that he was the inventor of the first miners' safety lamp, in which the flame was enclosed by a mesh screen containing very small holes. Air could enter the lamp through the holes, but they were too small to allow the flame of the lamp to pass through them and ignite any firedamp present in the mine tunnels. Davy presented a paper describing the lamp in November 1815, and it was trialled in January 1816. However, a few weeks prior to Davy's presentation, an engineer called George Stephenson had independently designed and demonstrated a lamp based on the same scientific principles. After much discussion and argument, he was eventually recognised as deserving equal credit for the discovery, but the time needed for this recognition to be given meant that the miners' safety lamp had already been called the 'Davy lamp', and it is still called that today. E. But in fact, the real inventor of the safety lamp was a man called Dr William Reid Clanny, who in 1813 had been awarded a silver medal by the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce for his own version of a safety lamp. Clanny's first lamp did not fulfil the needs of the ordinary working miner as it was rather heavy and cumbersome. But rather than seeking to glory in his achievement, he recognised its deficiencies and continued to work to improve it, as well as sharing his knowledge with others. George Stephenson acknowledged a debt to Clanny's research, and Humphrey Davy visited him in 1815 shortly before completing the design for his own safety lamp but to this day Dr Clanny remains a forgotten hero.

Forced Rhubarb A. Rhubarb has large fan-shaped leaves and long, green edible stalks, which are commonly cooked with sugar to make pies and other desserts. One type of rhubarb is grown in the dark to produce longer, rosier stalks and this is called 'forced rhubarb'. In the north of England, a cold winter is good news for some, and not just snowmen and woolly hat makers. According to Yorkshire farmer David Westwood, this year's forced rhubarb is the best for years. Westwood, a softly spoken Yorkshireman, should know. He's been growing and selling rhubarb for 62 years, since he started picking on the farm aged 11. His son Jonathan works on the farm too, making him the sixth generation of the Westwoods to grow the pink stems or 'petioles' as they are otherwise known. B. We meet at his farm, a few miles from the city of Wakefield, which with the cities of Bradford and Leeds form the three points of the Rhubarb Triangle, the heart of the British rhubarb industry. 'It doesn't grow as well anywhere else,' insists Westwood. He has a number of theories as to why this is. The loam soil on a clay base is perfect for the roots or 'crowns' which rhubarb grows from. In Victorian times -- the mid-to-late 1800s -- when rhubarb's popularity was at its peak, the local coal mines provided cheap fuel for heating the sheds, a crucial part of the forcing process, which involves depriving the plants of light as they develop. At the same time, the effluence from the industry enriched the soil for farmers. On top of that, according to Westwood, the high levels of pollution in the air would have been ideal for the rhubarb, as 'rhubarb loves soot'. C. Westwood's farm produces both the greenish outdoor rhubarb, the kind that grows well in gardens all over the country, and the startlingly pink forced rhubarb. It's this that is the 'cream of the crop', the upper class of the rhubarb family. Forced rhubarb is the one that's most likely to convert rhubarb-haters who've been traumatised by harshly flavoured school pies made from green overgrown outdoor stems. The slender magenta spears, with a sherbet-tangy flavour and delicate texture, are a far cry from that coarse, bitter stuff. It's also a rare local fruit (although technically a vegetable) at a time when imports dominate, and a welcome splash of colour in the drab winter months. No wonder chefs and food writers have fallen in love with forced rhubarb all over again. It's enjoying a remarkable renaissance, for only 20 years ago it was in such decline that Westwood, one of the last 12 growers left from a peak of 200, was considering abandoning it. D. There are certainly simpler ways to grow food. First the plant roots, or crowns, are grown outside for more than two years. Then, at the start of their third winter, they are left in the ground until it is cold enough to break the crowns' dormancy. This is one of the factors that gives British rhubarb the edge over imports from the Netherlands, which arrive in the country a scene-stealing couple of weeks before the Yorkshire crop. To bring them to market that early, the Dutch crowns are fed with gibberellic acid, to replace the hormones naturally generated by a period of cold weather. Westwood is relaxed on the subject of the imported rhubarb, remarking only: 'It's good-looking all right, but the flavour's nowhere near.' Back in Yorkshire, sometime around the middle of November, the crowns are dug up, transferred to sheds with earthen floors, and watered in. The light is blocked out completely and the heating is turned on. In the warm and dark, the shoots appear so quickly that the buds can be heard gently popping. Within three weeks or so, the first round of picking, or 'pulling' as it's known, can begin. E. In Westwood's 1920s rhubarb sheds, it is pitch black. I slip and slide on the narrow troughs that serve as paths between the beds of rhubarb crowns. It's a relief when a team of 'pullers' arrive, all local men, some of whom have been working for Westwood for 40 years. Each carries a sturdy candle, and their pale, flickering light reveals a sea of yellow leaves stretching 40 metres to the far wall. The men walk the beds plucking the satiny stems expertly, choosing only the ones that have reached the length of an arm. Then, cradling the fuchsia pink bundles in their arms, they move on to the next patch. It's an extraordinary sight in this age of mechanised, computerised agriculture. 'The pulling's done much the same way as it always has been,' Westwood says. 'Electric light spoils the colour.' A labour intensive process, it goes some way to explain the admittedly eye-watering price of the best forced rhubarb - that and the heating, now from oil or propane rather than coal. F. So how was this arcane cold-dark-heat process, in use since Victorian times, discovered? Westwood's story is appealingly earthy. A gardener threw an old crown onto the horse stable muck pile. The manure was hot, and the plant was soon covered. The stable boy must have been puzzled by the startling pink spears that came pushing through the dirt a week or two later, but happily he had the good sense to gather them.

The Panda's Last Chance Chinese authorities have devised an ambitious plan to save the giant panda from the ravages of deforestation. Martin Williams assesses the creature's chances of avoiding extinction. A. The giant panda, the creature that has become a symbol of conservation, is facing extinction. The major reason is loss of habitat, which has continued despite the establishment, since 1963, of 14 panda reserves. Deforestation, mainly earned out by farmers clearing land to make way for fields as they move higher into the mountains, has drastically contracted the mammal's range. The panda has disappeared from much of central and eastern China, and is now restricted to the eastern flank of the Himalayas in Sichuan and Gansu provinces, and the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi province. Fewer than 1400 of the animals are believed to remain in the wild. B. Satellite imagery has shown the seriousness of the situation; almost half of the panda's habitat has been cut or degraded since 1975. Worse, the surviving panda population has also become fragmented; a combination of satellite imagery and ground surveys reveals panda 'islands* in patches of forest separated by cleared land. The population of these islands, ranging from fewer than ten to more than 50 pandas, has become isolated because the animals are bathing to cross open areas. Just putting a road through panda habitat may be enough to split a population in two. C. The minuscule size of the panda populations worries conservationists. The smallest groups have too few animals to be viable, and will inevitably die out. The larger populations may be viable in the short term, but will be susceptible to genetic defects as a result of inbreeding. D. In these circumstances, a more traditional threat to pandas-the cycle of flowering and subsequent withering of the bamboo that is their staple food-can become literally species-threatening. The flowerings prompt pandas to move from one area to another, thus preventing inbreeding in otherwise sedentary populations. In panda islands, however, bamboo flowering could prove catastrophic because the pandas are unable to emigrate. E. The latest conservation management plan for the panda, prepared by China's Ministry of Forestry and the World Wide Fund for Nature, aims primarily to maintain panda habitats and to ensure that populations are linked wherever possible. The plan will change some existing reserve boundaries, establish 14 new reserves and protect or replant corridors of forest between panda islands. Other measures include better control of poaching, which remains a problem despite strict laws, as panda skins fetch high prices; reducing the degradation of habitats outside reserves; and reforestation. F. The plan is ambitious. Implementation will be expensive-Yuan 56.6 million (US$ 12.5 million) will be needed for the development of the panda reserves- and will require participation by individuals ranging from villagers to government officials.

A Most Westerners will have tasted and enjoyed Chinese food in various forms in their own countries, and may even have learned the delicate art of eating with chopsticks. But they may be less prepared for what the writer Colin Thubron memorably describes as the 'passionate relationship' of the Chinese to food. Folk memories of famine are recent (the last were in the 1960s) and there are still areas where people's diet is limited and poor. Refrigeration is more widespread now, but the Chinese almost never eat 'ready meals'; food is freshly cooked for each meal, and fish, meat and poultry are often killed only a short time before they are cooked. Shopping in the markets or shops is done with immense gusto, and everything is prodded, shaken, sniffed and thoroughly checked before being purchased. It is debatable whether, in purely Western terms, the Chinese eat a 'healthy' diet. They eat many vegetables, things are cooked fast so that the goodness is not destroyed, and people eat small quantities fairly frequently-'grazing', rather than eating huge meals at one sitting, which is one reason why they tend to be much slimmer than people in the increasingly obese West. On the other hand they use a large amount of the very salty MSG (monosodium glutamate, or taste powder) in their cooking, as well as sugar; and in some regions of China there is a high incidence of certain types of cancer, due to the overuse of pickling, the only way some vegetables can be preserved through the winter. At any rate, the Western visitor will experience a fantastic range of different foods, some wonderful (dumplings, tofu, sweet and sour soup, Mongolian hotpot, and hundreds more treats), and some less to Western tastes, such as 'hundred-year old eggs' or donkey stew. If the Westerner is overwhelmed by a desire for a more familiar food, these days help is at hand. In the bigger cities, though more rarely in the rural areas, there are plenty of fast food outlets selling hamburgers and pizzas; there are some Italian, Indian, Japanese, Korean and Mexican restaurants, and also newly opened supermarkets (mostly French) that sell the foods of which, in the past, homesick Westerners could only dream-for example, bread, cheese, milk, coffee and real chocolate. B Chinese local dishes are said to have four, eight and ten culinary schools, depending on which authority is consulted. Canton, Shandong, Sichuan and Yangzhou make up four of them: if you count Hunan, Fujian, Anhui and Zhejiang, you have eight culinary schools; add in Beijing and Shanghai, and that makes ten. You should also try the Middle Eastern-type cooking of the Muslim minorities, such as the Hui and Uighur people, whose roadside stalls produce wonderful (and very cheap) lamb kebabs wrapped in naan bread with salad and hot spicy sauce. Here are a few pointers about some of the schools of cookery. C Cantonese cuisine adopts the good points of all other culinary schools, and its selection of ingredients is extensive. River food and seafood are widely used, as well as birds, rats, snakes and insects. There is a saying that 'The Cantonese will eat anything with wings, except a plane, and anything with four legs, except a table.' Cantonese cuisine pays attention to the use of fresh ingredients and has unique cooking methods. Representative dishes are 'three kinds of snake stewed', cat meat, snake soup, casserole mountain turtle and crispy skin suckling pig. Shandong cuisine is dominated by seafood, reflecting its nature as a peninsula surrounded by the sea. Typical dishes include stewed sea cucumber with scallion, stewed snakehead eggs, sea slugs with crab ovum, Dezhou grilled chicken and walnut kernel in cream soup. Sichuan cuisine is renowned for its searingly hot, peppery flavour. The variety of tastes is summed up in the phrase 'a hundred dishes with a hundred flavours'.

International Day: is it good or bad for the city? Expenditure by shop type (£000) Everyone loves International Day in Wellington. International rugby is part of New Zealand's culture and besides, a big international match with the All Blacks playing Australia or South Africa is good for the local economy. Thousands of rugby fans bring money into the city when they come to the match and we all benefit from this boost to the local economy. That is the theory. So why do so many local retailers hate International Day? Is it as good for the economy as we are led to believe? Superficially, it is easy to see how money enters the local economy from this source. The sale of tickets for the international match alone raises nearly $5 million and the sale of television rights a further $2 million. Part of this is used to employ match stewards and ticket collectors at the game. Rugby supporters from overseas need to stay in hotels and they need to eat so they spend money in hotels and restaurants. All rugby fans, both home and away, like a drink and the bars and clubs do an excellent trade. It is estimated that rugby fans may spend $250,000 on drinks and a further $75,000 on hotels and accommodation over an international weekend. Some of this information can be seen on the graph. So where is the problem? The assumption here is that all this extra money, over $7 million, is additional to the money in the local economy. There are two reasons for thinking this may be a wrong assumption. One is that a good deal of this money may not stay local- it is, in fact, spent elsewhere or even in another country. The second is the possibility that this particular form of trade will drive out existing trade and may depress the local economy. Let us look at the first of these possibilities and look specifically at the revenue from the game itself. Money from television rights is something that never sees the local economy at all. The International Rugby Board negotiates the $2 million deal and takes the fee. The New Zealand Rugby Union will get a portion of this, about 4.5%, which it will use to foster the game at a national level. Specialist cameramen, technicians and commentators may well fly in from abroad to cover the game and then fly out again afterwards, taking their fees with them. The money from ticket sales is likewise widely distributed. Only 20% of the total is paid to the Wellington National Rugby Ground to cover the hire of the stadium and the cost of match day staff. The remaining 80% is split evenly between the competing rugby unions. The unions will give approximately 5% of this back to the Wellington Rugby Club, who provide the union with so many of its players. So it would seem that only a quarter of the money from ticket sales would stay in the local economy. This is significantly less than would appear at first. There is an argument too that international rugby may actually drive certain money out of the economy. A look at the graph shows that certain shops and trades, far from carrying out good trade on International Day, suffer a significant slump. Shops which sell unprepared foodstuffs or clothes, for example, see their trade cut by a half or even three quarters when rugby comes to town. It would seem that, rather than face a city full of exuberant rugby fans, many potential customers will go elsewhere to shop. Every match day greengrocers lose A$100,000, clothes and furniture sellers a further $A70,000 each. There are many other retailers in this category. Even the bars and restaurants lose their regular trade over rugby weekends. $250,000 of new drinking income may come into the bars but the usual $50,000 of trade appears to stay at home and the evidence shows that it does not immediately return the following weekend. This study is far from complete but it does provide persuasive evidence that international rugby does not only bring money into Wellington, it also drives it out, perhaps in equal measure. Add to the equation the extra cost of policing and clearing up after 100,000 visitors to the city centre and Wellington may actually be paying for the privilege of hosting internationals. But then, most rugby fans would willingly do that anyway!

FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT A: Traditionally uniforms were- and for some industries still are manufactured to protect the worker. When they were first designed, it is also likely that all uniforms made symbolic sense - those for the military, for example, were originally intended to impress and even terrify the enemy: other uniforms denoted a hierarchy - chefs wore white because they worked with flour, but the main chef wore a black hat to show he supervised. B: The last 30 years, however, have seen an increasing emphasis on their role in projecting the image of an organisation and in uniting the workforce into a homogeneous unit particularly in customer facing" industries, and especially in financial services and retailing. From uniforms and workwear has emerged 'corporate clothing". "The people you employ are your ambassadors," says Peter Griffin, managing director of a major retailer in the UK. "What they say, how they look, and how they behave is terribly important." The result is a new way of looking at corporate workwear. From being a simple means of identifying who is a member of staff, the uniform is emerging as a new channel of marketing communication. C: Truly effective marketing through visual cues such as uniforms is a subtle art, however. Wittingly or unwittingly, how we look sends all sorts of powerful subliminal messages to other people. Dark colours give an aura of authority while lighter pastel shades suggest approachability. Certain dress style creates a sense of conservatism, others a sense of openness to new ideas. Neatness can suggest efficiency but, if it is overdone, it can spill over and indicate an obsession with power. "If the company is selling quality, then it must have quality uniforms. If it is selling style, its uniforms must be stylish. If it wants to appear innovative, everybody can't look exactly the same. Subliminally we see all these things." says Lynn Elvy, a director of image consultants House of Colour. D: But translating corporate philosophies into the right mix of colour, style, degree of branding and uniformity can be a fraught process. And it is not always successful. According to Company Clothing magazine, there are 1000 companies supplying the workwear and corporate clothing market. Of these, 22 account for 85% of total sales - £380 million in 1994. E: A successful uniform needs to balance two key sets of needs. On the one hand, no uniform will work if staff feel uncomfortable or ugly. Giving the wearers a choice has become a key element in the way corporate clothing is introduced and managed. On the other, it is pointless if the look doesn't express the business's marketing strategy. The greatest challenge in this respect is time. When it comes to human perceptions, first impressions count. Customers will size up the way staff look in just a few seconds, and that few seconds will colour their attitudes from then on. Those few seconds can be so important that big companies are prepared to invest years, and millions of pounds, getting them right. F: In addition, some uniform companies also offer rental services. "There will be an increasing specialisation in the marketplace." predicts Mr Blyth, Customer Services Manager of a large UK bank. The past two or three years have seen consolidation. Increasingly, the big suppliers are becoming managing agents', which means they offer a total service to put together the whole complex operation of a company's corporate clothing package - which includes reliable sourcing, managing the inventory, budget control and distribution to either central locations or to each staff member individually. Huge investments have been made in new systems, information technology and amassing quality assurance accreditations. G: Corporate clothing does have potential for further growth. Some banks have yet to introduce a full corporate look: police forces are researching a complete new look for the 21st century. And many employees now welcome a company wardrobe. A recent survey of staff found that 90 per cent welcomed having clothing which reflected the corporate identity.

Snake Oil A: Back in the days of America's Wild West, when cowboys roamed the range and people were getting themselves caught up in gunfights, a new phrase - 'snake oil' - entered the language. It was a dismissive term for the patent medicines, often useless, sold by travelling traders who always claimed miraculous cures for everything from baldness to snakebite. Selling 'snake oil' was almost as risky a business as cattle stealing; you might be run out of town if your particular medicine, as you realised it would, failed to live up to its claims. Consequently, the smarter 'snake oil' sellers left town before their customers had much chance to evaluate the 'cure' they had just bought. B: The remarkable thing about many of the medicines dismissed then as 'snake oil' is not so much that they failed to live up to the outrageous claims made for them - those that weren't harmless coloured water could be positively dangerous. What's remarkable is that so many of the claims made for some of these remedies, or at least their ingredients, most of them plant based, have since been found to have at least some basis in fact. One, Echinacea, eventually turned out to be far more potent than even its original promoter claimed. Echinacea first appeared in 'Meyer's Blood Purifier', promoted as a cure-all by a Dr H.C.F. Meyer- a lay doctor with no medical qualifications. 'Meyer's Blood Purifier' claimed not only to cure snakebite, but also to eliminate a host of other ailments. C: Native to North America, the roots of Echinacea, or purple coneflower, had been used by the Plains Indians for all kinds of ailments long before Meyer came along. They applied poultices of it to wounds and stings, used it for teeth and gum disease and made a tea from it to treat everything from colds and measles to arthritis. They even used it for snakebite. D: Settlers quickly picked up on the plant's usefulness but until Meyer sent samples of his 'blood purifier' to John Lloyd, a pharmacist, it remained a folk remedy. Initially dismissing Meyer's claims as nonsense, Lloyd was eventually converted after a colleague, John King, tested the herb and successfully used it to treat bee stings and nasal congestion. In fact, he went much further in his claims than Meyer ever did and by the 1890s a bottle of tincture1 of Echinacea could be found in almost every American home, incidentally making a fortune for Lloyd's company, Lloyd Brothers Pharmacy. E: As modern antibiotics became available, the use of Echinacea products declined and from the 1940s to the 1970s it was pretty much forgotten in the USA. It was a different story in Europe, where both French and German herbalists and homeopaths continued to make extensive use of it. It had been introduced there by Gerhard Madaus, who travelled from Germany to America in 1937, returning with seed to establish commercial plots of Echinacea. His firm conducted extensive research on echinacin, a concentrate they made from the juice of flowering tops of the plants he had brought back. It was put into ointments, liquids for internal and external use, and into products for injections. F: There is no evidence that Echinacea is effective against snakebite, but Dr Meyer - who genuinely believed in Echinacea - would probably be quite amused if he could come back and see the uses to which modern science has put 'his' herb. He might not be surprised that science has confirmed Echinacea's role as a treatment for wounds, or that it has been found to be helpful in relieving arthritis, both claims Meyer made for the herb. He might though be surprised to learn how Echinacea is proving to be an effective weapon against all sorts of disease, particularly infections. German researchers had used it successfully to treat a range of infections and found it to be effective against bacteria and protozoa2. There are many other intriguing medical possibilities for extracts from the herb, but its apparent ability to help with our more common ailments has seen thousands of people become enthusiastic converts. Dozens of packaged products containing extracts of Echinacea can now be found amongst the many herbal remedies and supplements on the shelves of health stores and pharmacies. Many of those might be the modern equivalents of 'snake oil', but Echinacea at least does seem to have some practical value. G: Echinacea is a dry prairie plant, drought-resistant and pretty tolerant of most soils, although it does best in good soil with plenty of sun. Plants are usually grown from seed but they are sometimes available from nurseries. Echinacea is a distinctive perennial with erect, hairy, spotted stems up to a metre tall. Flower heads look like daisies, with purple rayed florets and a dark brown central cone. The leaves are hairy; the lower leaves are oval to lance-shaped and coarsely and irregularly toothed. H: There are nine species of Echinacea in all but only three are generally grown for medicinal use. All have similar medicinal properties. Most European studies have used liquid concentrates extracted from the tops of plants, whereas extraction in the USA has usually been from the roots. Today most manufacturers blend both, sometimes adding flowers and seeds to improve the quality. For the home grower, the roots of all species seem equally effective. Dig them up in autumn after the tops have died back after the first frost. Wash and dry them carefully and store them in glass containers. You can harvest the tops throughout the summer and even eat small amounts of leaf straight from the plant. Even if you don't make your fortune from this herb, there are few sights more attractive than a field of purple coneflowers in all their glory. And with a few Echinacea plants nearby, you'll never go short of a cure.

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Nice job! A reference. A parade of covers.. you even typed the list in the comments. Thank You !

That is not Herta Muller on the cover of the video, next to her novel

"Promo SM" 🍀

That decade produced many classics. Quite extraordinary.