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When I was a little child, my grandpa always sat next to me and told some stories about the legendary of Hakka. I was very interested Designer Replica Handbags in these kinds of stories and learned a lot from that. Until then, I started to know I’m a Hakka and also felt proud to be a Hakka.

Hakka, we call it “KeJia” in Chinese, which means “guest family”. When I first heard this word, I felt very confused why we are called guests, are we guests coming from other place? I finally got the answer from my grandpa. He told me sincerely and earnestly that, we, Hakka are the people who emigrated from the north of China in Jin Dynasty. The flooding, grasshopper plaques, droughts, famines and war drove our ancestors move to the south in China. Throughout the whole period, they suffered a lot and finally settled here.

According to this, I felt Hakka is really a great ethnic group. But for their perseverance, hard-working, how could they still exist in the most adverse environment. It is so surprising!

As I gradually grew up, my admiration to this culture increased, my understanding of Hakka was not merely from the little words of my grandpa, but from what I have heard and what I have seen.

When referring to the culture of Hakka, the first thing you will think about is their dialect. Because our ancestor came from different places in the north of China, moreover, when they settled here, their dialects more or less mixed with the dialects of native people, they created so many dialects. I felt intensely about this point. When I was in my middle class, all my classmates are Hakka, who were just from different villages and towns, but the dialects of them were different from each other. Now, you can imagine what a showplace of dialects it was!

Then I want to tell you another treasury of the culture. Let’s begin it with a true story. It sounds interesting. In the sixties of last century, when a foreign reconnaissance satellites flew throw the Fujian province, it took a Gucci bags picture of a building of cylindraceous structure which was once mistaken by a launching base for rockets. Until an old couple walked into it, the riddle was finally undone①. That was the round building of Hakka. From then on, Hakka people can show their own culture to the world. It is Hakka’s time!

The round building is usually 3 to 4 stories tall with a large inner open space (single ring) or double rings. Why is it so big—that’s another cultural reflection . Because of the historic reason, Hakka people don’t want to be apart any more. They always live in big family, and usually with several generations. As for this point, I feel more deeply, especially, when it comes to the end of a year, the Spring Festival. Because at that time, I will go home and enjoy new year with all my relatives. To show my respect and love, I must call them (it’s also a tradition), that’s so hard for me, “Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt, Uncle…” This often lasts for more than 5 minutes. But, on the other hand, I really admire the warm and fragrance feeling with all my relatives!

Above are the cultures that I have heard and seen, it’s only a corner of a whole thing. But just from that I can feel the deep and proud of our culture!

Now, from the mere surprise and then the admiration, I started to be proud to be a Hakka and feel delighted here to introduce our culture to you. The holding of the “World Hakka Fair” in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Prada Scarf province, the construction of the “Hakka Town” in Ganxian, all the Hakka people are making an effort to spread the culture. I should also do something. Because, for us, it is Hakka’s moment!

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We engage in numerous discussions throughout the day, about a variety of topics, from work assignments to the Super Bowl to what we PRADA Handbags are having for dinner that evening. We effortlessly move from conversation to conversation, probably not thinking twice about our brain’s ability to understand everything that is being said to us. How does the brain turn seemingly random sounds and letters into sentences with clear meaning?

In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological science, psychologist Jos J.A. Van Berkum from the Max Planck Institute in The Netherlands describes recent experiments using brain waves to understand how we are able to make sense of sentences.

In these experiments, Van Berkum and his colleagues examined Event Related Potentials (or ERPs) as people read or heard critical sentences as part of a longer text, or placed in some other type of context. ERPs are changes in brain activity that occur when we hear a certain stimulus, such as a tone or a word. Due to their speed, ERPs are useful for detecting the incredibly fast processes involved in understanding language.

Analysis of the ERPs has consistently indicated just how quickly the brain is able to relate unfolding sentences to earlier ones. For example, Van Berkum and colleagues have shown that listeners only need a fraction of a second to determine that a word is out of place, given what the wider story is about. As soon as listeners hear an unexpected word, their brain generates a specific ERP, the N400 effect (so named because it is a negative deflection peaking around 400 milliseconds). And even more interesting, this ERP will usually occur before the word is even finished being spoken.

In addition to the words themselves, the person speaking them is a crucial component in understanding what is being said. Van Berkum also saw an N400 effect occurring very rapidly when the content of a statement being spoken did not match with the voice of the speaker (e.g. “I have a large tattoo on my back” in an upper-class accent or “I like olives” in a young child’s voice). These findings suggest that the brain very quickly Hermes Wallets classifies someone based on what their voice sounds like and also makes use of social stereotypes to interpret the meaning of what is being said. Van Berkum speculates that “the linguistic brain seems much more ‘messy’ and opportunistic than originally believed, taking any partial cue that seems to bear on interpretation into account as soon as it can.”

But how does the language brain act so fast? Recent findings suggest that, as we read or have a conversation, our brains are continuously trying to predict upcoming information. Van Berkum suggests that this anticipation is a combination of a detailed analysis about what has been said before with taking ‘quick-and-dirty’ shortcuts to figure out what, most likely, the next bit of information will be.

One important element in keeping up with a conversation is knowing what or whom speakers are actually referring to. For example, when we hear the statement, “David praised Linda because. . .,” we expect to find out more about Linda, not David. Van Berkum and colleagues showed that when listeners heard “David praised Linda because he. . .,” there was a very strong ERP effect occurring with the word “he,” of the type that is also elicited by grammatical errors. Although the pronoun is grammatically correct in this statement, the ERP occurred because the brain was just not expecting it. This suggests that the brain will sometimes ignore the rules of grammar when trying to comprehend sentences.

These findings reveal that, as we make sense of an unfolding sentence, our brains very rapidly draw upon a wide range of Designer Replica Handbags information, including what was stated previously and who the speaker is, in helping us understand what is being said to us. Sentence understanding is not just about diligently combining stored word meanings. The brain rapidly

Most People Believe Dreams Are Meaningful

Dreams might mean nothing, but many people take them seriously nonetheless, as Sigmund Freud did, new research finds.

People in at least three countries, including the United States, believe dreams contain important hidden truths, said researcher Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

In six different studies, Morewedge and his colleagues surveyed nearly 1,100 people about their dreams. The results are detailed in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“Psychologists’ interpretations of the meaning of dreams vary widely,” Morewedge said. “But our research shows that people believe their dreams provide meaningful insight into themselves and their world.”

In one study that surveyed general beliefs about dreams, Morewedge and co-author Michael Norton, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, surveyed 149 university students in the United States, India and South Korea. The researchers asked the students to rate different theories about dreams.

Across all three cultures, an overwhelming majority of the students endorsed the theory that dreams reveal hidden truths about Gucci bags themselves and the world, a belief also endorsed by a nationally representative sample of Americans, Morewedge said.

In another study, Morewedge and his colleagues wanted to explore how dreams might influence people’s waking behavior. A total of 182 commuters at a Boston train station were asked to imagine that one of four possible scenarios had happened the night before a scheduled airline trip: The national threat level was raised to orange, indicating a high risk of terrorist attack; they consciously thought about their plane crashing; they dreamed about a plane crash; or a real plane crash occurred on the route they planned to take.

A dream of a plane crash was more likely to affect travel plans than either thinking about a crash or a government warning, and the dream of a plane crash produced a similar level of anxiety as did an actual crash, Morewedge found.

Finally, Morewedge wanted to find out whether people perceive all dreams as equally meaningful, or whether their interpretations were influenced by their waking beliefs and desires. So, in another study, 270 men and women from across the United States took a short online survey in which they were asked to remember a dream they had had about a person they knew. People ascribed more importance to pleasant dreams about a person they liked as compared to a person they did not like, while they were more likely to consider an unpleasant dream more meaningful if it was about a person they disliked.

“In other words, people attribute meaning to dreams when it corresponds with their pre-existing beliefs and desires,” Morewedge said. “This was also the case in another experiment which demonstrated that people who believe in God were likely to consider any dream in which God spoke to them to be meaningful; agnostics, however, considered dreams in which God spoke to be more meaningful when God commanded them to take a pleasant vacation than when God commanded them to engage in self-sacrifice.”

More Prada Scarf research is needed to explore fully how people interpret their dreams, and in what cases dreams may actually reveal hidden information, Morewedge said.

“Most people understand that dreams are unlikely to predict the future but that doesn’t prevent them from finding meaning in their dreams, whether their contents are mundane or bizarre,” he said.

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If I asked you were it possible for you to get into the best shape of your life, we could agree that it is. If I asked you were it possible for you PRADA Handbags to become smarter than you’ve ever been, I think we could agree that you could work hard, study, learn, and practice more than you ever had. But strangely, the idea of becoming the “perfect version” of ourselves seems so unobtainable. It seems impossible.

But it isn’t. It just requires you to work harder and more diligently than you ever have before. Is it worth it? Just ask yourself this. Would you like to be the smartest, best looking, fittest, funniest, best dressed, most compassionate, loving person you’ve ever been? Would you like to be your own definition of the perfect person?

If, like me, you answered yes, then you’ve taken the first step to becoming your best self. The journey is long, the obstacles hard. The plan, though, is simple. Define, plan, execute, redefine, plan again, execute again, etc. Let’s go over the plan in a little more detail.

Plan – think about your perfect self. What does he or she look like? How does he speak? How does he think? How does he eat? How does he interact with others? What do people think of him? What is he capable of, that you aren’t? Define your perfect self in adjectives that are measurable and obtainable. Things like “he is lean and strong, with a low body fat percentage and a good amount of visible muscle,” or “she speaks well, avoids idle conversation, and is listened to and respected by all of those that she communicates with.”

Take those descriptions and plan out how long it would take for you to achieve each and every one of them. For instance “if I am at 17% body fat, and I can lose 1 lb per week, it will take me 20 weeks to get to my goal body fat percentage,” or “I speak often without thinking about what I’m saying. This lends to people not caring about my thoughts or respecting my opinions. I need to spend the next 3 months focusing on my idle talk.”

Health Top Tips Nutrition Love Lifestyle Happiness Weight Loss Then implement a “snowball method” towards becoming your perfect self. Start with the shortest timed goals. “I will floss every day” will only take about a week or two to perfect, whereas “I will be able to run a marathon” might take much longer. As soon as you’ve made a description habit, move to the next one (while continuing the first, of course). With each habit you introduce into your newly constructed lifestyle, you will be 1 step closer to your perfect self. You will also gain momentum with each goal, which will motivate you towards the next goal. By the time you reach the goals that could take months or even years to implement, you’ll be so full of new skills and motivation that you’ll tackle them with no problem.

Remember that each of your goals should have purpose. You may found as I have that a couple of months (or years) down the line that a certain goal of yours no longer suits your best interest. Maybe there is no good purpose for being 10% body fat, but instead you find it important to have functional strength and cardiovascular stamina. In this case you would align your plan to fit your new goals. Instead of focusing on body fat percentage, you would plan workouts that focused on increasing strength and stamina. With the victory of each goal implemented into your lifestyle you’ll be one step closer to becoming your vision of your perfect self. Each victory will mark a decision you made and plan that you carried out, work that you did to make yourself better. You’ll feel better about yourself with each victory, and with the learning of each new skill or the discipline of each new focus, you’ll find it that much easier to move to the next goal.

It’s a long journey to Hermes Wallets the top of the mountain, but it’s completely obtainable, and totally worth the effort. Start climbing today, and you’ll be well on your way before you even start feeling the pain. Good luck, and I’ll see you at the top!

5 Things to Know About Personal Finance

Oh money. It makes the world go ’round. It’s one of the biggest reasons for divorce. It either frees us or enslaves us. It is the commodity of all commodities. And yet, as much as many of us make, most of us know so little about how it works. I blame our parents. They should have known. They should have taught us. Well, either way, I’m about to give you a quick crash course in cash money 101, and how personal finances should work. Buckle up and enjoy the ride. Hopefully you’ll be enlightened.

1. How a credit card works

Credit cards are an interesting commodity. They can either work for you or against you, depending on how much you know about them and how smart you are with them. The biggest problem with credit cards, though, is that we gain access to them before we know enough about them. Your parents should have taught you how they work, but sadly, many adults don’t even know exactly how they work. This article should help. Read it. Then read it again.

2. How to create a budget

Budgeting is something that people either love or hate to do. Personally I hate it. But I keep a general budget because it’s important to know where my money is going. A friend of mine knows where every dollar he spends goes. I’d rather divide my money into 2 different accounts, business and pleasure. I give myself an “allowance” to do whatever I want with monthly, and the rest stays in my “business” account for bills and other living expenses. Need a crash course on building a budget? Check this out.

3. The time value of money

The time value of money is a simple principal to understand: basically it states that any amount of money is worth more today than the same amount of money in the future due to it’s earning potential. This means that if you have $100 to invest today, it’s worth more than $100 a year from now, because it could be gaining value through investments for a year. Let’s assume you average 9% on your investments… Your $100 today will be worth $109 in a year, whereas getting $100 a year from now is only worth about $91, due to the value of money lost in the year.

This is very important when you consider the next point…

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4. Start investing early

Take a look at this chart. Basically what it states is that when Saver B starts investing earlier on in life, the time value of his money allows for gaining potential so much greater that even though Saver A invested more than 4 times the amount of Saver B, Saver B has gained more than $400k more than Saver A by retirement.

Moral of the story? If you start investing now, you’ll have much more than if you wait till you make more money, even if you invested more in the years to come.

5. Let your money work for you

We were all taught that it is important to gain a good education and to learn valuable skills to enter the job force and start a good career. But here’s what few of us have learned: more important than having a good job is learning how to make your money Designer Replica Handbags work for you. Consider this: if you can save $500k, and you average 10% on your investment portfolio, you will gain $50k annually without doing anything other than having the money. $2 million will earn you $200k per year (earning 10%). $10 million will earn $1 million per year. The more you invest, the more you’ll make, without lifting a finger (well, other than managing your money, of course).

Sure it’s important to have a good job. But it’s even more important to be investing your money, no matter how much you’re making. If the goal is financial security and freedom, it doesn’t take rocket science; just a little discipline and sacrifice early on. And what you’ll gain is so much more than what you could buy today.

One last note: $1 at age 18 can’t get you more than a coke, or maybe a dollar menu burger. But $1 at age 18 is worth $54 at age 60 (assuming 10% again). Keep that in mind the next time you stop at Starbucks. Your cup of joe is actually taking more than $150 out of your retirement fund.

Spend wisely.

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In feng shui the goal is to create environments that are utterly comfortable, spaces with a predominance of positive energy and few sources of PRADA Handbags negative energy. There are times when environments present insurmountable energy challenges and a choice must be made between two options, neither of which is optimal. It’s then a matter of determining which solution has the least negative effects.

This past weekend I ran into that type of situation in a meeting room in a hotel. “You won’t believe what this room looked like when I got here,” said Mark LeBlanc of Small Business Success, the presenter. “There was a sofa bed and large black chairs in here. It looked like a storage room.” In Mark’s new arrangement the chairs were arranged in a U with Mark’s flip chart positioned at the open end of the U. He was immediately visible upon entering the room.

“It looks nice,” I said, “unfortunately you’re not in the power position.” When he looked at me quizzically I explained, “To be fully empowered, you need to have a solid wall behind you and a full view of the door. In your current position you are facing into the room, not toward the door. And, the energy coming through the door just slams right into you. You would be more empowered if we flipped the U and had you present from the other end of the room.”

“That’s how I initially had it set up, but then I noticed that the large light fixture is at this end of the room. The only light sources at the other end are those two side table lamps. Do you think that would be enough light?” Mark responded. I agreed with Mark that the light was rather dim. So, now we were at a choice point. Was it more important that Mark be well lit? After all, light would stimulate his thinking, inspiration and energy. Or, was it more important that he be speaking from the power position?

“Well, you could speak from this end today and then tomorrow we can rearrange the room for you to speak at the other end. That way you can compare and decide which works best for you,” I suggested.

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Mark agreed to that plan. The next morning we rearranged the room and Mark spoke from the other end of the room for the next day and a half. As I was driving Mark to the airport I asked him whether moving him to the power position in the more dimly lit end of the room had been a good decision. He said, “I definitely felt better at that end of the room, away from all the distractions near the door. And, though the light was dim, it was preferable to the light at the other end. That light was just too bright (it was lit by a high power fluorescent fixture). At the end of the first day (3 hours of presenting), I was exhausted!”

We talked about the fact that in some circumstances you just cannot get a perfect feng shui solution and must make choices. In this case Mark and I decided that putting him in the power position was the priority with lighting being a secondary concern. Though the lighting in the power position was not optimal, as it turned out, it was preferable to being in the path of energy coming from the door, the noise and distractions at the door end of the room, and being drained of energy from the bright light of a fluorescent fixture. Mark and I also noted that he is a strong, compelling speaker with a powerful Hermes Wallets message whose inner light of passion for his message was bright enough to offset the light deficit.

When you find yourself at a feng shui choice point when no solution is ideal, remember to look for the arrangement that has the least negative impact on the people that will be affected by it. When ever possible, place yourself in the most empowered position possible and minimize other sources of negative energy.

8 Reasons Why Children Misbehave

One of the most common expressions parents can be heard saying is, “I don’t understand why he’s/she’s doing that”. There are eight, very common reasons why children misbehave. It is extremely useful for parents to know these because if they can pinpoint the root cause of the misbehavior, they can be more successful at reducing it.

Listed here are the eight most common reasons why children misbehave and a solution to help reduce or eliminate the problem:

1) They want to test whether caregivers will enforce rules.

Children’s main job is to figure out how their complex world works. In order to master the things they need to at each developmental level they will test their parents. They are literally trying to see where the boundaries are, or, if they exist at all. Although testing is frustrating for parents they should know that it is normal and that this is their chance to really make a difference in their child’s life.

How? By setting boundaries and limits and consistently following through on them. This way, their children will adopt positive values and gain self-esteem

2) They experience different sets of expectations between school and home.

Consistency is hugely important in making a child feel safe and secure and able to have a comfortable understanding of the world and how it works. If they are receiving mixed messages from home and school they will feel uneasy inside and express this through more testing than normal and will feel an inner sense of stress.

The best thing a Designer Replica Handbags parent can do is learn a simple method to discipline and then have a conversation with their child’s teacher. During this conversation, the parents should explain their method and ask how the teacher handles situations. The goal is to try and use some of the same language at both the school and at home. With a consistent, clear message, children will rise to the expectation and be happier in the process.

3) They do not understand the rules, or are held to expectations that are beyond their developmental levels.

Sometimes, parent expectations go beyond their child’s abilities. Discipline and guidance strategies should always take into account the child’s developmental level. For example, it would be unreasonable to tell a 2 year old to clean up his room and expect that he will finish the job. At this age, children need a lot of support and guidance to do a job like this.

Reading books about what children can do at each age is helpful with this problem so that parents can know what is developmentally appropriate for them to expect of their child.

4) They want to assert themselves and their independence.

Children begin to show their desire for more independence at around age two. They start to want control over certain areas of their life so that they can feel capable and independent. It doesn’t take long for children to identify the areas they CAN control, much to the chagrin of parents. Situations like eating, sleeping, brushing teeth, and dressing are great examples of times when children recognize their power to get you upset and therefore make them feel in control.

What is the solution? Give them loads of choice in their daily life so that they feel in control of their life in other, more positive ways. As well, it is key to learn a simple, loving method to discipline so that misbehavior are taken care of easily, without any emotion required. Without emotion, there is no reason for the child to want to rebel in order to gain control.

5) They feel ill, bored, hungry or sleepy.

When children’s basic needs aren’t met regularly each day they are always more likely to misbehave, cry, throw a tantrum, etc.

The solution to this is simple: have a routine where the child eats, has individual play time, parent and child play or interaction time and sleeps.

6) They lack accurate information and prior experience.

When children do something such as go to cross a road for the first time, they do not know that they are supposed to look both ways, so we all know that we must explain to them to look left and look right, etc. However, the same technique needs to be applied to discipline situations. Children will repeat a behavior over and over until they have accurate information as to what they should be doing instead and prior experience of the consequence if they continue the behavior.

Using clear, concise language stating what they “need” to be doing rather than what they “shouldn’t” be doing is extremely important. Better to say, “Carry this carefully”, rather than, “Don’t drop this”. In other words, give them something to use as prior knowledge for next time.

7) They have been previously “rewarded” for their misbehavior with adult attention.

No parent would ever think of purposefully rewarding bad behavior, but it subtly happens quite often.

Remember, negative attention is still attention so if they misbehave and their parent either yells or spanks, they have just been rewarded.

If the child whines, cries or throws a tantrum and mom or dad eventually gives in to make them become quiet, they have just been rewarded.

The solution? Say what you expect without emotion and then follow through consistently if they continue the negative behavior. The two keys here are: no emotion and little talking.

They copy the actions of their parents.

The best teacher of how to misbehave or act and speak inappropriately is by watching mom or dad misbehave or act and speak inappropriately. Remember, what children see and experience in the home is what their normal is. So, if they see mom and dad yelling, they will yell. If they get spanked, they will likely use hitting to express their anger or frustration. If they hear, “What?” instead of “Pardon?” that is what they will use. How can we expect any different?

Although not always simple, parents need to look at parenting as a life lesson in personal growth. I always say that children can make open Prada Scarf and willing parents into the best human beings in the world because they have the opportunity to practice being their best selves every single day of the year. Looking at parenting this way makes it easier to catch oneself more often and start demonstrating good behavior by modeling it.

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So that’s it. Lost, arguably the most important genre show of the past decade, ended with a fizzle. People will tell you it was fine until the PRADA Handbags last 15 minutes, but they’re wrong. Spoilers below…

Oh, and hey, West Coast peeps and people who got up early to watch this in England. I mean it. Don’t read this until you’ve watched the episode. Really.

Sure, the last 15 minutes of “The End” were pretty wretched, and that’s when I gave up all hope that this was going to turn into something awesome. But rewind an hour and a half, to the moment when I suddenly realized I didn’t give two craps whether Desmond pulled a rock out of a hole. Or whether Jack put a rock back into that same hole. I just. Didn’t. Care.

Lost, the show, was absolutely genius at making you care about stuff. That was one of the half dozen things that Lost was brilliant at getting us to invest in, along with intriguingly murky characters and starkly surreal storytelling. Probably the greatest weapon in Lost’s arsenal was always its ability to make you care, desperately, feverishly about what happened to these people.

And in the end, I just didn’t care if that rock went in that hole or not. By extension, I had stopped caring whether the island sank. I had stopped caring about the fate of the Man In Black, long before he got kicked out of the episode prematurely. I didn’t care about any of it.

I’m carefully using the first person singular here, because maybe you did care about this stuff. I had cared about it, in some abstract sense, before, but this time around, I just stopped about an hour in. Maybe because it all became more and more abstract, until it just felt like I was watching people play a sport whose rules I wasn’t familiar with. Yes, Lost’s finale was a game of Baseketball.

I’m saying this as someone who actually kind of liked “Across The Sea,” because it made Jacob seem relatable, and who actually had been keeping an open mind about this. I had been aware that some last-minute spoilers about the finale were coming out over Hermes Wallets the weekend, but I hadn’t looked at them because of that desire to keep an open mind. That open mind turned, by degrees, into a sinking feeling.

Like I said, not even talking about the last 15 minutes of the episode yet. That’s a different – pardon me – circle of hell.

All through its run, Lost has had moments of kludgey storytelling, where it felt like people were doing stuff merely because the plot required it. And there have been times when the characters seemed to turn into rats in a maze of the writers’ design. And there have been moments where supposedly huge consequences were swept under a rug because a storyline was over and we were supposed to move on.

And then there have been moments when Lost felt like it was touching something grand and meaningful. When the show’s sweeping collection of characters and locales seemed like a fascinating web, and the show’s mysteries felt really sinister and terrible (in a good way.) There have also been moments when the characters felt both larger than life and like people we might have been friends with.

In retrospect, you can see how the show, over its final year, swung from the latter type of storytelling to the former type. But I felt this sapping of the show’s sense of purpose far more keenly tonight.

Someone took a rock out of a hole. Someone put a rock in a hole.

Instead of talking about all the stuff that left me unmoved, here are the things that actually did move me:

I really loved Jack telling Smokey that John Locke had been right about almost everything, and Smokey was disrespecting him by wearing his face. First of all, it needed to be said. And second of all, there was a spark in the midst of all the lifelessness, and it felt for a second like we were going to get the epic showdown we deserved, now that Jack had come over to Locke’s point of view and Locke was a fraud who espoused Jack’s former philosophy. It was a great moment.

I loved the redemption of Benjamin Linus – even though he did nothing to earn it, and we waited all season in vain for Ben to Do Something. I also loved Ben Designer Replica Handbags telling Hugo that he didn’t have to run things in the fucked-up way that Jacob had. And yay for the hint that Ben turned out to be a great Number Two. (No pun intended.)

And yeah, Hugo getting to be the new Jacob was also great, and much deserved – he was a much better candidate than Guilt Guy.

And I really, actually got choked up when Juliet and Sawyer finally recognized each other and she asked him out for coffee and they embraced and cried and kissed – of all the dozens of reunions and awakenings we witnessed in this episode, the Juliet/Sawyer one was the only one that made me get teary. A lot of the other teary montages just felt like the producers were saying, “Hey remember when this happened? Back when the show was awesome? Remember that? Huh?

Oh, and when Jack goes flying through the air to kick Flocke in the face, it was a nicely composed shot and a decent air-punching moment.

Apart from that, the island storyline felt really blah. Almost everybody was relegated to the status of “extra,” and I didn’t really care if Lapidus and his gang flew off the island or not. I mean, yay, I guess. But since that plane was crammed with characters I’d long since stopped caring about, it was a bit anti-climactic.

Sigh. And then let’s talk about the “flash-sideways” universe. So… almost everybody gets awakened to their memories of the “real” world by encountering their true love. Which means that Jack really was Kate’s true love after all? But Kate wasn’t Jack’s. And Shannon was Sayid’s true love? I mean, really? Shannon? Not Nadia? I mean, okay, whatever.

The two main exceptions, in this episode at least, were Jack and Locke. Jack gets awakened by his dad’s coffin, and it seems as though his “true love” was the whole community of castaways, whose well-being he’d cared for so ineptly throughout the show’s run. (Everybody else gets montages of just their love relationships, but Jack gets a montage of the whole gang, sort of.) And Locke, meanwhile, can’t be reawakened to the “real” world until he has the mythical surgery and regains the ability to walk. Because walking, not Helen or anyone else, was Locke’s true love. Or something. Wha huh? Or maybe it’s supposed to be that the island was Locke’s true love, and somehow regaining the ability to walk makes him think of the island.

And now we come to the revelation of the episode’s final minutes, which I’ve been putting off talking about. The flash-sideways universe wasn’t an alternate universe at all, it was… purgatory? Limbo? Some kind of afterlife way-station. And for some reason, the Losties had to come together in a church before they could move on to the real afterlife.

I can see this spawning a million parodies based around the opening monologue of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.”

So why was it 2004 in purgatory? Why was the island underwater? Why was Sawyer suddenly a cop? With Miles as his partner? (Even though Miles doesn’t get to be there in the end.) And why were the details of Locke’s accident changed so it was Locke’s fault? Not to Gucci bags mention, why did Jack and Juliet have that creepy Stepford kid? (Because we were supposed to think this was an alternate universe that resulted from Jack’s hydrogen bomb, and it was a fake-out.)

Those are questions we really shouldn’t ask, I guess, because they don’t matter. All that matters is that in the end, this particular community of people form something meaningful, even something holy, and they can’t go to Heaven unless they all leave together. Yes, it’s another set of Rules.

And the final moments, after Jack’s dad gave his heavy-handed explanation, and everybody was gathered inside the church from Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” video, and there were handshakes and reunions and a door full of light… I started swearing at my television set. I think I’m still in shock at how lame and idiotic the final five minutes or so felt.

In the end, it’s hard not to see Lost as the longest con of them all. Not because we didn’t get enough answers – it’s really true that after this episode, I don’t need any more answers than what we got. But because all along, Lost seemed to be a story. Until the end, when it wasn’t. In the end, it was just a bunch of stuff that happened.

It’s way too early to tell, but I have a feeling that this will go down in history with the “Patrick Duffy stepping out of the shower” thing on Dallas. It just felt like a cheap, cop-out ending. In a sense, nothing that happened in the “flash-sideways” universe mattered because they were all already dead, and they were going to “move on” eventually one way or another. And nothing on the island mattered, because… well, it just didn’t seem to matter very much.

We’ll have to wait a bit to see how the zeitgeist as a whole decides to think of this episode – maybe it’ll wind up getting a free pass, because the show as a whole was so good. Maybe it’ll wind up getting damned. But let’s hope that people do remember how great Lost was at its best, since Lost was such an influential, successful show, and I hope somebody else eventually tries to duplicate all of its achievements.

As for me, I think I’m going to wind up thinking of Lost as an anthology show, another Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. It served up some wonderfully weird, allusive stories. It gave us some brilliant mind-benders. There were individual episodes and story arcs that stand out as among the best hours of television ever created. You just can’t think of Lost as one unified story Prada Scarf any more, because then you realize it all leads up to this utter flatness. This zone of apathy and new-age “walk into the light” catharsis.

But maybe you loved this ending and I’m on crack. What did you think?

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If Facebook really cared about protecting your data, it would make features opt-in, not opt-out

Everyone knows that privacy isn’t profitable

Parents of Designer Replica Handbags young children can spot an insincere apology from miles away.

“Sorry,” your tot mumbles, after you find the dog half-shaved and your Xbox full of jam.

“Sorry for what?” you’ll say. “Sorry for shaving the dog and putting jam in your Xbox,” he’ll say, looking at the floor. But he’s lying. He’s only sorry that he didn’t get away with it.

Facebook’s much-reported apology in the Washington Post is a bit like that. “Sorry,” says Mark Zuckerberg. “Sorry for what?” the internet asks.

“Sorry for invading your privacy and making things confusing and stuff,” Zuckerberg says. “Can I have an ice cream now?”

In his article, Zuckerberg explains the “principles under which Facebook operates”. Number one? “You have control over how your information is shared”; number two, “We do not share your personal information with people or services you don’t want”. Number three, “We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.”

Principles are good things, but only if you stick to them.

You have control? Facebook doesn’t share with people you don’t want to share with? Then why did EU regulators warn Facebook earlier this month that its most recent privacy changes, which made private information public by default, were “unacceptable”?

Why do we need a stand-alone bit of software to work out what we’re sharing and with whom? As for not giving advertisers access, here’s a story about, er, Facebook accidentally giving advertisers access to people’s private information.

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If Facebook really cared about protecting your data, it would make features opt-in, not opt-out: it would say “here’s your stuff, and we won’t share it unless you want us to” rather than “we’re sharing all your stuff with everyone until and unless you can find the right options to stop us”.

But it won’t, because the fifth principle Zuckerberg describes – “We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone” – means that the only way Facebook’s going to make money is by invading its users’ privacy.

Forget Zuckerberg’s claim that Facebook’s mission is about “giving people the power to share and making the world more open and connected.” Facebook’s mission is to make money.

Facebook isn’t sorry. It says it’s sorry, but it isn’t sorry. Sure, it’ll come up with tweaked privacy settings to defray criticism, just Gucci bags like it did in December 2009. And in August 2009. And in March 2008. And in December 2007.

But make no mistake. Mark Zuckerberg has his eye on your Xbox, and he’s got jam jars in his hand.

Bacteria can make you happier AND smarter!

Mycobacterium vaccae bacteria are already known to decrease anxiety, but it might have even more dramatic properties. Recent studies on mice suggest the bacteria, commonly found in the soils of people’s gardens, also increases intelligence and the ability to learn.

Dorothy Matthews and Susan Jenks, both of The Sage Colleges in Troy, New York, sought to build on previous experiments in which dead strains of the bacteria were injected into mice, spurring the neurons of the mice to greatly increase serotonin production. The more immediate effect of all this extra serotonin, of course, was decreased anxiety levels, leading the earlier researchers to conclude M. vaccae has antidepressant qualities.

But Matthews was interested in a more indirect effect:

“Since serotonin plays a role in learning we wondered if live M. vaccae could improve learning in mice.”

To assess this, Matthews and Jenks had two groups of mice; the experimental group was fed live specimens of the bacteria, while the control group was not. They were then tested in a maze to see how well the two groups could navigate the challenge.

The difference was striking:

“We found that mice that were fed live M. vaccae navigated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors as control mice.”

The mice were retested twice after the bacteria was removed from their diet. When they were tested almost immediately afterward, they weren’t quite as proficient, but still got through the maze much faster than their control counterparts. Tested a final time three weeks later, the mice were still a little faster, but not to a statistically significant extent. This suggests the effect of the bacteria on learning is temporary, although humans with their greater cognitive capacity might be able to derive more lasting benefits from exposure to M. vaccae.

Certainly, Matthews thinks it’s an idea that’s worth following up on:

“This research suggests that M. vaccae may play a role in anxiety and learning in mammals. It is interesting to speculate Prada Scarf that creating learning environments in schools that include time in the outdoors where M. vaccae is present may decrease anxiety and improve the ability to learn new tasks.”

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Give anything 20 years and it’ll PRADA Handbags start to look like the makings of a joke. And so — welcome back to the ’80s, or, as LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge” put it, “borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered ’80s.” You don’t even need to have had first-hand experience with the decade to make fun of it.

Today’s opening of “MacGruber” — which Karina Longworth’s review clusters alongside “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “Cop Out” as movies whose primary subject is a decade’s worth of pop culture rather than actual people — confirms what we already knew: VH1′s “I Love The 80s” was far, far more insidious than we figured.

Compare and contrast — the trailers for “MacGruber” and “Hot Tub Time Machine” are below:

The ’70s didn’t suddenly see a big spate of films mocking the ’50s, nor the ’80s the ’60s and so forth. There is a joke in “Dazed and Confused” — the only one that really guns for the low-hanging fruit — where a character speculates on the rule of how every other decade is awesome, and figures out since the ’70s suck, maybe the ’80s will be totally awesome. But that’s about it.

That an entire decade’s worth of pop culture is, in and of itself, a punchline, is new and unnerving. It’s different from the numerous films taking old TV franchises as a starting point for a movie. The idea isn’t playing with an established brand and resurrecting familiar images; it’s toying with passed-down imagery as a joke whose currency is already established.

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The idea that changes in fashion (accessories, clothing, music, so on) automatically constitute hilarity, then, is a special rule we’ve come up with for the ’80s. Familiarity breeds contemptuous affection for a decade that’s just stupid, which was VH1′s whole premise — mention just a title or name, then laugh away. What’s unclear is whether thirtysomethings now getting to make their own movies will be able to sell that to kids too young to directly remember the ’80s, those for whom the below montage conjures no nostalgia.

What really gives me pause is wondering whether this is a one-off or a harbinger of something more sinister. 20 years hence, will we be deluged with movies portraying the aughts as a time of toxic smart-phone abuse, American Apparel and people writing their Hermes Wallets own Wikipedia entries? It’s easy to reduce a decade to its pop-culture sound-bites and trend topics when you have no memory of being complicit with them. Sneering is easy, compassion is hard.

Marriage gets better when kids leave the nest

Study of women finds an empty nest has its benefits

Marriages get better after the children grow up and move out, according to a UC Berkeley study that analyzed the marital satisfaction of more than 100 women over 18 years.

The study by three professors from UC Berkeley’s department of psychology and Institute of Personality & Social Research questioned the women at the average ages of 43 in 1981, 52 in 1989 and 61 in 1998 and found that marriages grew increasingly better after the kids packed up and left.

“We found that marital satisfaction increased as the women transitioned to an empty nest,” said Sara Gorchoff, one of the authors of the study and a doctoral candidate in the psychology department. “It was not that they spent more time with their partners but that they were better enjoying the time they spent with their partners.”

Though the women in the study were not named, several other Bay Area mothers shared similar views.

Terry Toczynski, a 55-year-old mother of three, said she noticed an improvement in her marriage when her three children went off to school. They were gone for about a year before one of them temporarily moved back recently.

“In the time they weren’t there, we didn’t have to focus 100 percent on raising children, and it was definitely better for us,” the Berkeley woman said. “We were a couple again, two individuals who chose to live together and be with each other. Got good at conversations

“At first, it is very quiet, but there is a lot of good in the lack of noise. We got good at having conversations. Our time is about us.”

The 123 women in the study were born between 1937 and 1939 and were first questioned for a study on creativity while they were seniors at Mills College in Oakland. Since then, they have participated in numerous studies, including one on the effect of the women’s movement.

“We realized what an opportunity we had to study these women over the years,” said Gorchoff, who conducted the study with psychology Professors Oliver John and Ravenna Helson.

Though all the women Designer Replica Handbags attended college, they chose different career paths and had varying income levels and numbers of children. Their martial status varied as well.

Some changed partners, some didn’t. Whatever the case, the study showed that they all reported becoming more satisfied when their children moved away from home.

“The increase was not at all dependent on whether they remarried,” Gorchoff said. “And the women did not report that the general global satisfaction with their lives got better, just their marriages. They were enjoying the time with their partners more.”

Shahla Piff, 59, of San Bruno said she initially felt like her purpose in life was gone when her two sons moved out about six years ago but soon realized her marriage was growing stronger.

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“We had time to pay attention to each other,” said Piff, whose sons are 26 and 28. “The boys were taking a lot of our attention and energy. When they left, we could behave like adults. We could do fun stuff, like travel and go to art shows. “It gives us more time to focus on each other and our interests.”

Marriages improved with age overall, according to the study, but women who experienced the transition to an empty nest were happier with their mates than women with children in the home and women whose children had been gone for a while.

The first survey was done when most of the women still had children at home, the second when some of them still had kids at home, and the third when most kids were gone. All were in middle age during the first survey. Some got married, some raised kids, some were divorced, some remarried and some were in domestic partnerships.

The women rated how satisfied they were in their relationships using a five-point scale.

“The transition to an empty nest may be associated with an increase in the quantity of time and energy invested in one’s marriage, an increase in the quality of time spent with one’s partner and with perceptions of one’s child’s success,” the study said.

Not everyone agrees. Barbara Lockwood, a 58-year-old Brookdale (Santa Cruz County) woman whose sons left home in 1998, said her marriage has remained pretty much the same.

Empty Nest Travel Club

Lockwood started the Empty Nest Travel Club for parents whose kids had moved out, because her husband doesn’t like to travel and she wanted to see the world.

“The kids leaving was a Gucci bags big adjustment and part of the reason I want to travel more, but I wouldn’t say my marriage got more satisfying,” Lockwood said. “We are now focused on ourselves and our discussions are about health problems, not the kids.”

The study, titled “Contextualizing Change in Marital Satisfaction During Middle Age,” was published in the November issue of the journal Psychological Science.

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Many of us obsess about the health of our skin, but how many pay the same attention to the health of our hair? We color, brush, and style it, and Designer Replica Handbags we blast it with heat and chemicals. Some hair takes a significant amount of abuse, and the result of all that mistreatment is a mane that’s dull, lifeless, frizzy, and prone to breakage.

But not all bad hair habits are created equal. Many people would confess to the occasional dalliance with the “hot” button on their hair dryer, but how does that compare with the occasional bleach job? Which causes more damage? We’ve ranked the most common hair no-nos, from the slightly sinful to the dangerously damaging.

Temporary Hair Color Products like Level 1 rinses, washes, stains, and color-depositing shampoos cause virtually no damage to the hair. Since they do not contain chemicals that allow the color molecules to penetrate the hair shaft and interact with the hair’s natural pigments, they merely sit on top of the strands until they wash away, in about six to ten shampoos. Threat Level: Damage-Free!

Hot Showers In addition to being bad for skin, washing with hot water is a poor choice for hair. It rinses away natural protective oils and accelerates the fading process for colored hair. It’s a myth that a final rinse with cool water will close the hair’s cuticle, but using tepid water in general is much gentler on hair. Threat Level: 1 out of 10 (with 10 being the highest threat level)

Brushing When Wet When hair is wet, it’s significantly weaker, and brushing it in this vulnerable condition leads to increased breakage. The individual strands can’t handle the tugging and tension, so they stretch until they snap. To detangle wet hair during or after the shower, gently use a wide-toothed comb, working from the ends upward. Better yet: use your fingers. Threat Level: 2 out of 10

Demi-Permanent Color Non-permanent Level 2 color, a popular at-home option, is generally safe for hair, but it’s not 100 percent gentle. Demi-permanent dyes (like Clairol’s Natural Instincts) contain no ammonia, but they still have a small amount of peroxide to open the hair cuticle and deposit the color molecules. Even though demi-permanent color cannot lighten hair, it still causes a small amount of damage, especially when compounded by other harsh styling practices. Threat Level: 3 out of 10 Perms

The principal chemical used in permanent waves, ammonium thioglycolate, actually loosens the bonds between the molecules of the hair shaft and Gucci bags allows the hair to take whatever shape it’s set in—in the case of perms, on rollers. While any chemical process causes some amount of damage, perms are considered one of the more reliable treatments, as long as the hair is healthy beforehand. Threat Level: 3 out of 10

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Permanent Hair Color

Since permanent hair color involves significant amounts of peroxide and ammonia, it can cause significant amounts of damage, including dryness, breakage, and dullness. The most potentially damaging color transition is in lightening dark hair, which requires two separate processes, the removal of the original color and the depositing of the new color. After this much chemical meddling, hair is in a significantly weaker state than it was when it started. All bottle blonds should take care to condition their hair regularly and treat it gently. Threat Level: 4 out of 10

Blow-Drying/Flat-Ironing

The occasional blast from a hair dryer won’t harm hair too much, but the heat from daily use of a blow dryer or flatiron causes hair to become extremely dry and brittle. Hair in this weakened condition is more susceptible to damage from other stressors, leading it to lose elasticity and break. For daily dryers, stylists recommend allowing hair to partially air-dry before blow-drying, or blow-drying it until it’s only about 80 percent dry and then allowing it to air-dry the rest of the way. Threat Level: 4 out of 10 Tight Hairstyles

Sporting the occasional ponytail is harmless, but the tension of constantly wearing extremely tight hairstyles can trigger a condition called traction alopecia, which can actually cause individual strands of hair to break off. Even if you’re not wearing severe hairstyles every day, repeated use of elastics, combs, or other implements can still cause hair to break. Signs of traction alopecia include scalp pain, thinning hair (especially in the front and back), and breakage near the hairline. African American women, who are more likely to wear extensions, weaves, or braids, are more susceptible to this condition. Luckily, if caught in time, traction alopecia is reversible. Threat Level: 6 out of 10

Chemical Relaxers

These curl-easing products use extremely harsh chemicals, including sodium hydroxide, a product found in drain cleaners. Relaxers work by penetrating the hair shaft and literally rearranging the structure of the molecules. While this technique may loosen curls, it also affects hair’s elasticity and strength. Let only a trained technician apply a relaxer; even if it’s done properly, hair is still left fragile and susceptible to damage. Threat Level: 7 out of 10

Thermal Conditioning

This straightening process uses chemicals similar to those in perms in order to rearrange hair’s molecular structure. But what makes this treatment particularly harsh is that in the second phase of the application, hair with the active chemical on it is brushed and blow-dried so that it sets in a new alignment. That’s a hair-hazard trifecta: chemicals, heat, and tension. Even when Prada Scarf a qualified technician does it for you, this process has the potential to cause serious or catastrophic breakage. Many people find the treatment effective, but even healthy-looking hair is left fragile and extremely porous. Threat Level: 9 out of 10

Many of these hair damagers do their worst only in combination with other bad habits, such as regularly blow-drying dyed hair, or coloring hair that’s already been relaxed or thermally conditioned. The potential for damage also depends on the innate qualities of the hair itself. African Americans and people with curly, fine, color-treated, or coarse hair are especially susceptible to breakage and damage.

Human hair has more tensile strength than strands of nylon, but it’s not invincible, and it doesn’t take much to turn your tresses from beautiful to blah. Avoid these mane-mangling habits and treat your hair kindly and gently to ensure that it’s healthy, strong, and elastic enough to bend—not break.

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Don’t be deceived by the peaceful look of a newborn baby asleep in a crib–that little tyke may actually be hard at work, soaking up information PRADA Handbags about the world. A new study has found that newborns are capable of a rudimentary form of learning while they’re asleep, which may be an important process, considering that infants spend between 16 to 18 hours a day in the land of Nod.

Researchers recruited one- and two-day-old infants for the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. With each sleeping baby, the researchers played a musical tone and followed that by a puff of air to the eyes, a mild annoyance that caused the infant to automatically scrunch up its eyes. As this sequence of events was repeated, the sleeping babies learned to associate the air puff with the tone, and soon began to to tighten their eyelids as soon as they heard the musical note, even if the air puff didn’t follow. Electrodes stuck to their scalps also showed activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in memory.

“It’s surprising how quickly they learned — the study took 30 minutes, but I think they actually learned this in half that time,” said researcher William Fifer, a developmental neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York. “We knew that a baby’s job is to be an information gatherer, a data sponge, but I don’t think we realized this also happens when they’re sound asleep.”

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This research is reminiscent of another experiment done by a different set of researchers last year, which found that some coma patients are capable of the same learned response (associating a tone with a puff of air to the eye). Neuroscientist Tristan Bekinschtein, who conducted the study on coma patients, says the work on infants suggests that there may be more gradations of consciousness than we understand.

Unlike adults, who are unconscious when they sleep, he suggests that sleeping babies may be in a semi-conscious state, allowing them to learn. “We do not know much about sleep in babies but it does not look like sleep in adults,” he says [New Scientist].

How to Check Gmail Account Has Been Hacked?

If you’re worried about email Hermes Wallets security, here is a step by step guide to help you check and determine if your Gmail account has been hacked or compromised in any way.

Step 1: Find the ‘Last Account Activity’ Section Your Inbox

At the bottom of your Gmail inbox there is a ‘Last Account Activity’ section. Click on ‘details’ to launch the full blown monitor.

Step 2: See who has accessed your Gmail account recently

Next, what you’ll see is a table of the most recent activity from your Gmail account. It shows you

How it was accessed (Browser/mobile etc)

Where exactly the IP address is (So you can do some further digging)

When it was accessed

Step 3: Understand the IP addresses – Has your Gmail really been hacked?

If you see IP addresses from different countries, don’t be too quick to panic. If you use any 3rd party services which hook-up to your Gmail account, they will almost certainly show up in your activity log. To do you own investigation, you can use DomainTools to identify the IP address. This will help you differentiate normal activity and your Gmail account being hacked.

Step 4: Understand the alerts – Google’s way of highlighting suspicious activity

Google will also do it’s fair share of monitoring, and will also alert you if it sees suspicious activity both in your inbox, as well as your recent activity log. When this happens, and the IP addresses look suspicious, it is advisable to play it safe, assume your Gmail account has been hacked, and change your passwords immediately.

Step 5: Sign Out All Other Sessions – If you forgot to sign out on a public computer

If you are worried you did not not sign out of a public computer, you can ‘sign out all other sessions’. This won’t fix any hacked Gmail accounts, but it will resolve any careless mistakes. This is also useful if you happen to lose your mobile phone and you want to ensure your email is not read by others.

Step 6: What to do if your Gmail account has really been hacked

The first thing you do is change both your password and security question right away. Then make sure your new choices are very secure. Google themselves have some really good tips . For example in the case of security questions:

Choose a question only you know the answer to – make sure the question isn’t associated with your password.

Pick a question Designer Replica Handbags that can’t be answered through research (for example, avoid your mother’s maiden name, your birth date, your first or last name, your social security number, your phone number, your pet’s name, etc.).

Make sure your answer is memorable, but not easy to guess. Use an answer that is a complete sentence for even more security.

So there you have it. A step-by-step guide on fully understanding Gmail’s account activity log, and how to check if your Gmail account has been hacked

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Reto Schmidli, a Designer Replica Handbags police officer and part-time student in Arlesheim, Switzerland, is the only person who has “double-bageled” Federer.

There may be only one tennis player in the world who wishes he had taken it a bit easier on Roger Federer. Reto Schmidli, 31, a police officer and part-time psychology student in Arlesheim, Switzerland, is the only person who has “double-bageled” Federer, that is, beaten him, 6-0, 6-0.

The fact that the drubbing occurred in Federer’s first tournament match, when he was just 10 years old, is not lost on Schmidli.

“I was just thinking about winning the match,” remembered Schmidli, who is now a recreational player ranked No. 715 in Switzerland. “I wasn’t thinking about being nice to him, but if I had to do it over again, I should have given Roger a game.”

The beating took place at the Grüssenh?lzli tennis center in Pratteln, Switzerland, in August 1991. Federer was scheduled to compete in the 10-and-under tournament, but there weren’t enough entrants, so he was forced to square off against Schmidli, who was nearly 13. Schmidli had a significant size advantage and quickly overpowered Federer without dropping a game.

The match remains memorable for Federer. After notching a 6-0, 6-0 victory over Gastón Gaudio in Shanghai in November 2005, he was asked if he had ever blanked an opponent before. “No, but I lost, 6-0, 6-0, in juniors once,” he told reporters, adding, “I didn’t think I played that badly.” Federer later told Chris Bowers of the BBC: “I actually played pretty good. I lost, 6-0, 6-0. I left the court and I wasn’t even disappointed.”

Give Federer credit for having a sense of humor, but his account of being untroubled by the loss does not square with reports of his hypercompetitive Gucci bags on-court personality in his early years. “He was a really bad loser,” said Madeleine B?rlocher, Federer’s first coach at the Old Boys Tennis Club in Basel. “After he’d lose a match, he’d sit under the umpire’s chair and cry for half an hour sometimes. The other players would already be in the clubhouse eating sandwiches, and he’d still be crying on the court.”

B?rlocher recalled her joy in seeing her beloved protégé cry after he won Wimbledon for the first time. “I laughed because it reminded me of how he used to cry as a child,” she said. “Then he cried when he lost, now he cries when he wins.”

But victories have been hard to come by for Federer since his triumph at the Australian Open in January. For the first time in a decade, Federer has failed to win a tournament between the Australian and French Opens. Early departures at Indian Wells, Miami, Rome and Estoril, along with Sunday’s loss in Madrid against his rival, Rafael Nadal, have raised doubts about his ability to defend his title at Roland Garros this month. And yet, even during his spring “slump,” he has managed to extend two little-known streaks, both of which bolster his claim to being tennis’s greatest player.

In 864 professional matches, spanning 2,117 sets, Federer has been shut out in a set just four times, and three of those occasions came within a two-month span in 1999, when he was 17 years old. He then went nearly a decade without being bageled before losing the 2008 French Open final to Nadal, 1-6, 3-6, 0-6.

Federer has avoided a shutout in 99.9 percent of the sets and in 99.6 percent of the matches he has contested. He has not come close to being double-bageled since the Schmidli loss in 1991, and for a two-year stretch from 2003 to 2005 he not only avoided shutouts, but also avoided 6-1 losses, which are known as breadsticks.

What makes those statistics even more remarkable is that Federer has never retired from a match during his professional career.

By comparison, Andre Agassi was bageled 25 times and retired from 11 matches, and Jimmy Connors was bageled 15 times while retiring on 14 occasions. Even big servers like Pete Sampras and Boris Becker were shut out more frequently.

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Players sometimes tank in a set to conserve energy for the rest of the match, or retire with injuries real or imagined when things look bleak, but Federer does neither. (The only time Federer has been accused of tanking a set came in 1998, when he was fined $100 by a tournament referee in Küblis, Switzerland, for lack of effort.)

“The idea of trying to conserve energy for the next set never arises because he’s never really that tired,” said Chris Bowers, author of “Roger Federer: Spirit of a Champion” and the forthcoming “Roger Federer: The Greatest.” “If he’s leading, 6-0, 5-0, 30-40, he’ll be desperate not to lose that one game. That’s why you find so few bagels with Federer. For him, every point is competition.”

Tennis is known as a gentleman’s game and serving up bagels, or bicycles, as a 6-0, 6-0 result is called in Switzerland, was once viewed as bad sportsmanship. Players occasionally gave an opponent a game during a rout. “I don’t think it happens anymore, ever,” said Cliff Drysdale, a former player who is a commentator for ESPN. “In my era, sometimes we’d throw a guy a bone. We didn’t have Prada Scarf the hangers-on, the psychologists, coaches, trainers and stringers that players have now. We just had each other. That’s why we were more likely to have some compassion on an opponent.”

When Schmidli had the chance to bicycle the boy who became the greatest champion in tennis history, he took it. If the two played again, Federer would certainly return the favor.

If Schmidli pulled Federer over for speeding, there would be no gift for Federer, either.

“As much as I admire Roger, I would have to give him the ticket,” Schmidli said. “In Switzerland there are no free passes.”

A motto Roger Federer has lived by.