How to Provide a Better Life for Senior Citizens?

Restrictions on the use of plastic bags have not been so successful in some regions. "White pollution" is still going on. Write a letter to the editor (s) of your local newspaper to give your opinions briefly and make two or three suggestions. You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

The past few years have been busy ones for human-rights organisations. In prosecuting the so-called war on terror, many governments in Western countries where freedoms seemed secure have been tempted to nibble away at them, while doughty campaigners such as Amnesty International(国际特殊组织) also exist for defence. Yet Amnesty no longer makes the splash it used to in the rich world. The organisation is as vocal as it ever was. But some years ago it decided to dilute a traditional focus on political rights by mixing in a new category called social and economic rights. You might suppose that the more of rights you campaign for the better. Why not add pressing social and economic concerns to stuffy old political rights such as free speech and free elections? What use is a vote if you are starving? Are not access to jobs, housing, health care and food basic rights too? No: few rights are truly universal, and letting them multiply weakens them. Food, jobs and housing are certainly necessities, but there"s no use to call them "rights". When a government looks someone up without a fair trial, the victim, perpetrator and remedy are pretty clear. This clarity seldom applies to social and economic "rights". Who should be educated in which subjects for how long at what cost in taxpayers" money is a political question best settled at the ballot box(投票箱). And no economic system known to man guarantees a proper job for everyone all the time. It is hardly an accident that the countries keenest to use the language of social and economic rights tend to be those that show least respect for rights of the traditional sort. And it could not be further from the truth. For people in the poor world, as for people everywhere, the most reliable method yet invented to ensure that governments provide people with social and economic necessities are called politics. That is why the rights that make open polities possible—free speech, due process, protection from arbitrary punishment—are so precious. Insisting on their enforcement is worth more than any number of grandiloquent but unenforceable declarations demanding jobs, education and housing for all. Many do-gooding outfits suffer from having too broad a focus and too narrow a base. Amnesty used to appeal to people of all political persuasions and none, and concentrate on a hard core of well-defined basic liberties. However, by trying in recent years to borrow moral authority from the campaigns and leaders of the past and lend it to the cause of social reform, Amnesty has succeeded only in muffling what was once its central message, at the very moment when governments in the West need to hear it again.

BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B

At around 1. 65 million years ago, another early human, Homo ergaster, started to create tools in a slightly different fashion. This so-called Acheulean tradition was the tool-making technology used for nearly the entire Stone Age, and practiced until 100,000 years ago. Acheulean tools, such as hand axes and cleavers, were larger and more sophisticated than their predecessors". They may have been status symbols as well as tools. Homo ergaster first appeared in Africa around 2 million years ago, and in many ways resembled us. Though they had brow ridges, they had lost the stoop and long arms of their ancestors. They may have been even more slender than us and were probably well-adapted to running long distances. Some experts believe that they were the first to sport largely hairless bodies, and to sweat, though another theory puts our hairlessness down to an aquatic phase. One famous example of a more modern looking early human is the Turkana boy, a teenager when he died, 1. 6 million years ago in Kenya. The shape of this fossil showed that the human pelvis had reached today"s narrow proportions. Combined with the growing size of the human head and brain, this had far-reaching implications; human women now need help for a successful birth; and human babies are born earlier, and need a longer period of childhood care, than those of apes. Meat-eating, however, may have allowed us to become early weaners. H. ergaster may have been the first early human to leave Africa. Bones dated to around 1. 75 million years ago have been found in Dmanisi in Georgia. Shortly afterwards, Homo erectus appeared—the first early human whose fossils have been seen in large numbers outside of Africa. The first specimen discovered, a single cranium, was unearthed in Indonesia in 1891. H. erectus was highly successful, spreading to much of Asia between 1. 8 and 1. 5 million years ago, and surviving as recently as 27,000 years ago. This species, with a brain volume of around 1000 cm 3 would have interacted with modern humans. They may have been the first people to take to the seas and habitually hunt prey such as mammoths and wild horses, although there is some debate about this. They may also have harnessed the use of fire and built the first shelters. In 2004, the remains of a tiny and mysterious human species, that may have lived as recently as 13,000 years ago, was discovered on an Indonesian island. More bones of the "hobbit", or Homo floresiensis, were uncovered in 2005. Some studies suggest it had an advanced brain and was unequivocally a separate species—but others argue that these people were modern humans suffering from a genetic disorder.

You are going to read an article which is followed by a list of examples or headings. Choose the most suitable one from the list A-F for each numbered position(41-45). There may be certain extra which you do not need to use. (10 points)A. Different behaviors of the Internet addictsB. The finding of a research on the Internet addictsC. The Internet addiction may destroy a familyD. The establishment of a new service for web addictsE. Two examples of harm of the Internet addictionF. he Internet addiction may cause many problems It"s the equivalent of inviting sex addicts to a brothel or holding an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting at the pub. Internet addicts tired of their square-eyed, keyboard tapping ways need look no further than the Web for counseling. (41)______. There is now an online counseling service at www.Relate.org.nz for Internet obsessives. Just email the details of your Internet-induced crisis and help comes direct to your inbox. The new breed of cyber-therapists see nothing strange about offering help through the very medium that is swallowing their clients" free time and splitting their marriages. (42)______. Though some may regard Internet addiction as another dubious ailment dreamed up to keep therapists in work, Relationship Services says the problem is real. Therapist Robin Paul says there tend to be two scenarios. Some people meet through chat rooms and fall in love. It"s like having an affair, then they meet and it"s like a whirlwind honeymoon. It"s devastating for the person left behind and quite often it has no real foundation. The second scenario is that a person starts spending more and more time on the Net. They may not meet someone else but they don"t spend any time with their partner and of course the relationship suffers. (43)______. Such stories may appear to be almost urban legends, so ashamed are Internet addicts and their partners. A recent survey of 17,251 Internet users found nearly 6 per cent had some sort of addiction to the medium. They revealed that their online habit contributed to disrupted marriages, childhood delinquency, crime and over-spending. Tap into online addiction sites and you"ll find messages such as: "Hello, my name is Bob and I"m a Webaholic." (44)______. Witness the plight of Ohio woman Kelli Michetti, who literally became a computer hacker because of her husband"s constant online chatting. When she crashed a meat cleaver through her husband"s computer terminal that solved the problem, although naturally it led to difficulties with the police. Or take the classic Internet addiction story of Ingrid Parker, a woman who became such a slave to the Internet—especially chat rooms—that it took over her life. She made do with two hours" sleep a night, had marathon weekend computer sessions of up to 17 hours and fell in love with a married man in the US state of Oregon. (45)______. Dr. Kimberly Young, who set up The Centre for Online Addiction (www.netaddiction.com) in America, studied 396 people whom she considered were psychologically dependent on the Net. They ranged in age from 14 to 70 and spent an average of 38.5 hours a week on the Web. Her study, backed by further research in Britain, found that women were more likely to become addicts. So while the old stereotypical addict was a young man who spent hours playing games, downloading software or reading messages on newsgroups, the new image is of a young woman who fritters away hours e-mailing friends, buying books and CDs online, talking in chat rooms and looking for information for next year"s holiday. "I guess I was a typical example of someone hooked on the Internet," says Parker, who now spends just an hour a day online. "I don"t think anyone who is married or in a sound relationship should really be spending hours talking to someone else and ignoring their nearest and dearest." While Parker provided her own therapy by putting her experiences down on paper, she recommends others take up the online counseling offer, or log off from the Worldwide Web gradually.

花园怎样反映人类的基本诉求 ——2013年英译汉及详解 It is speculated that gardens arise from a basic need in the individuals who made them: the need for creative expression. There is no doubt that gardens evidence an impossible urge to create, express, fashion, and beautify and that self-expression is a basic human urge;【F1】 Yet when one looks at the photographs of the gardens created by the homeless, it strikes one that, for all their diversity of styles, these gardens speak of various other fundamental urges, beyond that of decoration and creative expression. One of these urges had to do with creating a state of peace in the midst of turbulence, a "still point of the turning world," to borrow a phrase from T. S. Eliot.【F2】 A sacred place of peace, however crude it may be, is a distinctly human need, as opposed to shelter, which is a distinctly animal need. This distinction is so much so that where the latter is lacking, as it is for these unlikely gardens, the former becomes all the more urgent. Composure is a state of mind made possible by the structuring of one's relation to one's environment.【F3】 The gardens of the homeless which are in effect homeless gardens introduce form into an urban environment where it either didn' t exist or was not discernible as such. In so doing they give composure to a segment of the inarticulate environment in which they take their stand. Another urge or need that these gardens appear to respond to, or to arise from is so intrinsic that we are barely ever conscious of its abiding claims on us. When we are deprived of green, of plants, of trees,【F4】 most of us give into a demoralization of spirit which we usually blame on some psychological conditions, until one day we find ourselves in garden and feel the expression vanish as if by magic. In most of the homeless gardens of New York City the actual cultivation of plants is unfeasible, yet even so the compositions often seem to represent attempts to call arrangement of materials, an introduction of colors, small pool of water, and a frequent presence of petals or leaves as well as of stuffed animals. On display here are various fantasy elements whose reference, at some basic level, seems to be the natural world.【F5】 It is this implicit or explicit reference to nature that fully justifies the use of word "garden" though in a"liberated" sense, to describe these synthetic constructions. In them we can see biophilia—a yearning for contact with nonhuman life—assuming uncanny representational forms.

BSection III Writing/B

right and left

Much of the excitement among investigators in the field of intelligence derives from their trying to determine exactly what intelligence is. Different investigators have emphasized different aspects of intelligence in their definitions. 【F1】 For example, in a 1921 symposium on the definition of intelligence, the American psychologist Lewis M. Terman emphasized the ability to think abstractly, while another American psychologist, Edward L. Thorndike, emphasized learning and the ability to give good responses to questions. In a similar 1986 symposium, however, psychologists generally agreed on the importance of adaptation to the environment as the key to understanding both what intelligence is and what it does. Such adaptation may occur in a variety of environmental situations.【F2】 For example, a student in school learns the material that is required to pass or do well in a course; a physician treating a patient with an unfamiliar disease adapts by learning about the disease; an artist reworks a painting in order to make it convey a more harmonious impression. 【F3】 For the most part, adapting involves making a change in oneself in order to cope more effectively, but sometimes, effective adaptation involves either changing the environment or finding a new environment altogether. Effective adaptation draws upon a number of cognitive processes, such as perception, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. The main trend in defining intelligence, then, is that it is not itself a cognitive or mental process, but rather a selective combination of these processes purposively directed toward effective adaptation to the environment.【F4】 For example, the physician noted above learning about a new disease adapts by perceiving material on the disease in medical literature, learning what the material contains, remembering crucial aspects of it that are needed to treat the patient, and then reasoning to solve the problem of how to apply the information to the needs of the patient. Intelligence, in sum, has come to be regarded as not a single ability but an effective drawing together of many abilities.【F5】 This has not always been obvious to investigators of the subject, however, and, indeed, much of the history of the field revolves around arguments regarding the nature and abilities that constitute intelligence.

It is impossible to find out exactly how many volunteers are at work today in the United States. Thirty-seven million or so are known to belong to organizations like the Pink Ladies, Travelers" Aid, or Big Brothers; but those who work alone or in small informal groups cannot be counted. The total number of men and women who give their time to help others appears to be between fifty and sixty-eight million. Volunteers start community projects too small to attract the attention of organized agencies, or work at jobs for which no funds are available. A handful of city folk will turn an empty lot into a playground for the children of their neighborhood; others decide to repair and paint a few dilapidated houses in their street. Somewhere else women cook and deliver two hot meals a day to elderly people living alone, and too sick or too tired to prepare their own food. Another group calls lonely old people once a day to chat a little and find out if they are all right. Some college students teach English, mathematics, or drawing to the inmates of a local jail. Young men and women spend part of their weekends collecting empty cans and bottles for the recycling center of their community, and some children pick up the trash left on the beach by the crowd of a summer holiday. Anywhere one looks, the army of volunteers is hard at work—not Only in the United States, but also in many other countries where volunteerism is spreading. Fifteen years ago, the typical volunteer was a married woman between twenty-five and forty-five, who had children in school and time on her hands. She was rather well educated, with a high-school or a college degree, and she didn"t need to earn a salary. She was therefore free to devote her time and talents to those who seemed to need them. Some women volunteered out of boredom, because they needed to find an occupation outside their house. But the great majority were prompted only by the desire to relieve some distress, to be useful. There have always been such women ready to give of themselves unselfishly and quietly. At the beginning of the American Civil War, around 1846, a schoolteacher named Clara Barton undertook to deliver to wounded soldiers all sorts of supplies-food, clothes, tobacco, and even medicine—that they could not get easily. She paid for these out of her own money at first, and later from the funds that she could collect from other generous people. She also ventured on the battlefields, during or after battles, to help the wounded and the dying. After the war, the government asked her to help search for missing soldiers. She helped later in other wars in Europe and attracted a number of women willing to share her work. The group grew and eventually became the American Red Cross, which now counts about 1,140,000 volunteers, with a budget of eighty-two million dollars, all from voluntary contributions. Another pioneer of the same period, Dorothea Dix, fought to improve the living conditions in the hospitals for the mentally iii, which were not well run at the time. Her efforts finally caused state governments to take financial responsibility for these institutions. Many organizations have been launched by a determined group of volunteers, from the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America to the Sierra Club, devoted to the protection of nature, and to the Gray Panthers, who fight discrimination against the elderly and try to keep them active, happy, and politically important by encouraging them to vote.

No blueprint exists for transforming an economy from one with a great deal of government control to one based almost solely on free market principles. Yet the experience of the United Kingdom since 1979 clearly shows one approach that works: privatization, in which under-performing state-owned are sold to private companies. By 1979, the total amount of debt, liabilities, and losses for state-controlled enterprises in the UK topped 3 billion annually. By selling off many of these companies, particularly those in the depressed industrial sector, the government decreased its debt burden and ceased pumping public funds into money losing enterprises. According to government spokesperson Alistair McBride, "Far from past practice of throwing good money after bad, the Queen"s government this year expects to take in 34 billion from the proceeds of the sale". That, say some analysts, may only be the beginning. Privatization has not only been credited with rescuing whole industries but the nation"s economy to boot. Due to increased tax revenues from the newly privatized companies along with a rebound in the overall economy, economic forecasters predict that Britain will be able to repay nearly 12.5% of the net national debt within two years. That is good news indeed for the economy as a whole at a time when many sectors are desperate for any ray of sunshine. British Airways this week announced a 20% jump in overall ticket sales and profits over this quarter a year ago. British Gas announced its first profitable quarter in nine years. At Associated British Ports, a new labor contract was finalized, the first union contract signed at the port without a work stoppage in twelve years. Closer to home for most Britons, the nation"s phone service, British Telecom, no longer puts new subscribers on a waiting list. Prior to privatization, new customers would sometimes have to wait months before phone service could be installed in their home. Now, according to a company press release, British Telecom is promising 24-hour turnaround for all new customers. Part of this improved productivity has to do with new efforts to allow employees to hold a stake in the company"s future. Companies now give their employees stock options that allow employees to share in the company"s success (and profits). The response has been enthusiastic to say the least. At British Aerospace; 89% of those eligible to buy company shares did so. At British Telecom nearly 92% of eligible employees took part. Finally, at Associated British Ports, long synonymous with union disagreements, walkouts, and labor strife, almost 90% of employees now can call themselves owners of the company. "When people have a personal stake in something", said Henry Dundee of Associated British Ports, "they think about it, they care about, they work to make it prosper". At the National Freight Consortium, itself no stranger to labor problems, the new employee-owners actually voted down an employee pay-increase and, pressured union representatives to relax demands for increased wages and expanded benefits. "Privatization was only the start", says one market analyst, "what we may have here is a new industrial revolution".

Donation Write a letter of about 100 words based on the following situation: The students in your university have donated some money and clothes to the earthquake stricken area in Sichuan. As the chairman of the Student Union, write a letter to the Red Cross to donate these donations. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "The Student Union" instead. Do not write the address.

BSection III Writing/B

One of the least appreciated but most remarkable developments of the past 60 years is the extraordinary growth of American agriculture. Farming now accounts for about one tenth of the gross domestic product yet employs less than 1 percent of all workers. It has accomplished this feat through exceptionally high growth in productivity, which haskept prices of food lowand thereby contributed to rising standards of living. Furthermore, the exportable surplus has kept the trade deficit from reaching unsupportable levels. Agriculture not only has one of the highest rates of productivity growth of all industries, but this growth appears to have accelerated during the past two decades. Over the period 1948 to 2004, total farm production went up by 166 percent. The land used for farming dropped by one quarter over the 56-year period, and investment in heavy farm equipment and other capital expenditures decreased by 12 percent. Several developments drove these changes, beginning with the replacement of the remaining horses by tractors immediately after World War II and with the expanding use of fertilizers and pesticides. Later came the adoption of hybrid seeds, genetic engineering of plants and improved livestock breeding. A key element was the U.S. Department of Agriculture"s (USDA) extension service. Operating through land-grant universities and other organizations, it educated farmers on biotechnology, pest management and conservation. For many years, critics have claimed that modern agriculture is not sustainable, one of the major assertions being that it encourages erosion, which will eventually wash away most of the topsoil. Lost topsoil, the argument goes, is virtually irreplaceable because it takes up to 300 years for one inch of soil to form. But a detailed study of two large areas, the Southern Piedmont and the Northern Mississippi Valley Loess Hills, showed that based on 1982 data, soil loss has dropped sharply from the very high rates of the 1930s. The study attributed the decrease in soil erosion to the USDA, which urged farmers after World War II to adopt conservation practices such as strip cropping, whereby alternating rows are planted, and leaving plant residues in the fields year-round to inhibit water runoff. Despite being a robust contributor to the U.S. economy, modern agriculture is not without a dark side. Runoff of fertilizers, antibiotics and hormones degrade the environment and can upset the local ecology. If not grown properly, genetically modified crops could spread their DNA to conventional species.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The threat of ballistic missiles from countries such as Iran and North Korea could materialize with little warning, a Congressional panel of defense experts reported today. That conclusion differs from earlier assessments by the U.S. intelligence community and the Clinton Administration, which have concluded that a new threat to U.S. territory is at least a decade off. The panel—called the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States—was set up by the National Defense Authorization Act of 1997 and first met in January 1998. Its nine policymakers; technologists, and senior military officials had "unprecedented access to the most sensitive and highly classified information," said panel chairperson Donald Rumsfield, a former secretary of defense, at a press conference here. The panel found that liberalized export controls, increased international exchanges of students and scientific personnel, and leaks of classified information have resulted in "massive technology transfer" both from developed nations to rogue nations and between those countries themselves. Moreover, potential aggressors could minimize the technical challenge by settling for missiles with limited accuracy or reliability. The report warns that nations with Scud missile technology, such as Iran, could test a long-range missile within about 5 years from deciding to pursue such a program. North Korea also has the technology for producing biological weapons, the panel noted. Test flights of their missiles that would be able to reach parts of Hawaii and Alaska could take place within 6 months of a decision. Because of the United Nations arms inspections, however, Iraq is lagging behind and would take 10 years from initiating an effort to posing a missile threat to the United States. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called the report "the most important warning about our national security since the end of the Cold War," and urged the establishment of a bipartisan, bicameral committee to work with the Administration to decide: future policy. A White House spokesperson was noncommittal, saying that the report"s recommendations on intelligence analysis would be taken into account, but that the administration stood by its March intelligence assessment. That report concluded that it is unlikely that countries other than Russia, China, or North Korea could deploy a ballistic missile capable of reaching any part of the United States before 2010.

If sustainable competitive advantage depends on workforce skills, American firms have a problem. Human-resource management is not traditionally seen as【C1】______ to the competitive survival of the firm in the United States. Labour is simply another factor of production to be hired or【C2】______at the lowest possible cost— much【C3】______one buys raw materials or equipment. The lack of importance【C4】______o human-resource management can be seen in the corporate hierarchy. In an American firm the chief financial officer is almost always second【C5】______command. The【C6】______of head of human-resource management is usually a specialized job, off at the edge of the corporate hierarchy. The executive who【C7】______it is never consulted on major strategic decisions and has no chance to【C8】______to Chief Executive Officer (CEO).【C9】______, in Japan the head of human-resource management is central—usually the second most important executive, after the CEO, in the firm" s 【C10】______. As a【C11】______, problems【C12】______when new breakthrough technologies arrive. If American workers, for example, take much longer to learn【C13】______to operate new flexible manufacturing stations than workers in Germany (as they do), the effective cost of those stations is【C14】______in Germany than it is in the United States. More time is required before equipment is up and running at capacity, and the need for【C15】______ retraining【C16】______costs and creates bottlenecks that【C17】______the speed with【C18】______new equipment can be employed. The result is a slower pace of technological【C19】______. And in the end the skills of the bottom half of the population【C20】______the wages of the top half. If the bottom half can" t effectively staff the processes that have to be operated, the management and professional jobs that go with these processes will disappear.

A Darwinian understanding of culture begins with the observation that the arts appear in every human society and yield intense delight. When evolutionary psychologists detect those qualities, bells start ringing. Universal appearance of a behavior, for example, walking upright, sometimes leads scientists to infer that it evolved before our ancestors" diaspora from Africa 60,000 years ago. Andintense pleasure is often how our genes encourage some advantageous behavior.【F1】 But where an upright manner of walking and a varied diet had obvious survival advantages for our forefathers, it"s far from clear that the same went for something as energy-consuming and apparently useless as the arts. Denis Dutton, the author of a new book about creativity and evolution, sees evolution generating an art instinct in two ways. First, creative capacities would have helped our ancestors to survive in the hostile conditions of the Pleistocene, the epoch beginning 1.8 million years ago, during which Homo sapiens evolved in Africa【F2】 An ability to invent and absorb stories, for instance, would have helped early humans work out "what if" situations without risking their lives, pass along survival tips and build capacities for understanding other people around the campfire. The best storytellers and best listeners would have had slightly greater odds of survival, giving future generations a higher percentage of good storytellers and listeners, and so on. 【F3】 Second, on those long, dull nights after the day"s hunting and/or gathering was done, a big vocabulary and a creative characteristic would have improved a man"s chances of pursuing a lover —just as an amusing woman would have been more likely to entice the guy to stay. According to this view, which Dutton derives from the psychologist Geoffrey Miller, evolution turns the brain into "a gaudy, overpowered Pleistocene home-entertainment system" for winning and keeping lovers. 【F4】 Over the thousands of generations of our prehistory, then, the pressure from these two processes would have led to what Dutton calls the survival "not just of the physically strongest but of the cleverest, wittiest and wisest." By the dawn of civilization 10,000 years ago, our ancestors" brains would have been hard-wired to collaborate and use tools, as well as to create and enjoy art. Thus our tastes are not blank slates filled in entirely by our societies:【F5】 they are shaped in part by the distant ancestors whom we unknowingly take with us every time we go to the museum, the playhouse and the concert hall. All in all, it"s a lovely vision. I just wish somebody could convince me that it"s true.

Perhaps only a small boy training to be a wizard at the Hogwarts school of magic could cast a spell so powerful as to create the biggest book launch ever. Wherever in the world the clock strikes midnight on June 20th, his followers will flock to get their paws on one of more than 10 million copies of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix". Bookshops will open in the middle of the night and delivery firms are drafting in extra staff and bigger trucks. Related toys, games, DVDs and other merchandise will be everywhere. There will be no escaping Pottermania. Yet Mr. Potter"s world is a curious one, in which things are often not what they appear. While an excitable media (hereby including The Economist, happy to support such a fine example of globalisation) is helping to hype the launch of J.K. Rowling"s fifth novel, about the most adventurous thing that the publishers (Scholastic in America and Britain"s Bloomsbury in English elsewhere) have organised is a reading by Ms. Rowling in London"s Royal Albert Hall, to be broadcast as a live webcast. Hollywood, which owns everything else to do with Harry Potter, says it is doing even less. Incredible as it may seem, the guardians of the brand say that, to protect the Potter franchise, they are trying to maintain a low profile. Well, relatively low. Ms. Rowling signed a contract in 1998 with Warner Brothers, part of AOL Time Warner, giving the studio exclusive film, licensing and merchandising rights in return for what now appears to have been a steal: some $500,000. Warner licenses other firms to produce goods using Harry Potter characters or images, from which Ms. Rowling gets a big enough cut that she is now wealthier than the queen—if you believe Britain"s Sunday Times rich list. The process is self-generating: each book sets the stage for a film, which boosts book sales, which lifts sales of Potter products. Globally, the first four Harry Potter books have sold some 200 million copies in 55 languages; the two movies have grossed over $1.8 billion at the box office. This is a stunning success by any measure, especially as Ms. Rowling has long demanded that Harry Potter should mot be over-commercialised. In line with her wishes, Warner says it is being extraordinarily careful, at least by Hollywood standards, about what it licenses and to whom. It imposed tough conditions on Coca-Cola, insisting that no Harry Potter images should appear on cans, and is now in the, process of making its licensing programme even more restrictive. Coke may soon be considered too mass market to carry the brand at all. The deal with Warner ties much of the merchandising to the films alone. There are no officially sanctioned products relating to "Order of the Phoenix"; nor yet for "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", the film of the third book, which is due out in June 2004. Warner agrees that Ms. Rowling"s creation is a different sort of commercial property, one with long-term potential that could be damaged by a typical Hollywood marketing blitz, says Diane Nelson, the studio"s global brand manager for Harry Potter. It is vital, she adds, that with more to come, readers of the books are not alienated. "The evidence from our market research is that enthusiasm for the property by fans is not waning."

When we fail to demonstrate respect for ourselves we are indirectly encouraging others to disrespect us as well. Respect means showing regard or consideration. If we don"t value ourselves with this esteem and we disregard ourselves, then others will most likely follow suit. Lack of self respect can discredit an individual and others can sense it. This also holds true for how we treat others. If you have no respect or lack of it for yourself, then it can be difficult to implement and understand the importance of respecting others. Respect should not have to be earned. It should be given out of simple kindness and human nature. Unfortunately, compassion and empathy has fallen flat in today"s society. Overall, people don"t seem to care much about one another and even sadder, they don"t seem to care much about themselves. Sometimes we must teach or show people how to treat us by emulating it. This can be done or displayed in the way we hold ourselves. For instance, showing respect for ourselves can be in the form of how you speak and act. When you have self respect, you tend to have a high value of yourself and it shows in your behavior. You present yourself in a way that tells others, "I am worthy and I am a decent person. " Lack of respect is also evident in the way you speak. You may refer to yourself or others negatively and may act or do things that are demeaning to yourself and them. Disrespect directly states, "I don"t care about you or your feelings. " People are going to treat you however you allow them to whether good or bad. When you exhibit self respect, you will not under any circumstances stick around to allow or encourage others to treat you in a disrespectful manner. They will quickly learn that you do not tolerate that type of treatment. You will also be more likely to show respect to other individuals because you realize that they are just as worthy of it as you are. Even the most unpleasant, disrespectful person can learn by example. Being treated with dignity and respect promotes feelings of goodwill and beneficence. As much discontent and disregard as there is in the world today, I still like to believe that most people are generally good, kind and caring. While they may not be the majority, they are the exception and if we each start with ourselves it will be much easier to pay it forward.