There was a couple who used to go to England to shop in the beautiful stores. They both liked antiques and pottery and especially teacups. This was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

One day in this beautiful shop they saw a beautiful teacup. They said, "May we see that? We've never seen one quite so beautiful." As the lady handed it to them, suddenly the teacup spoke.

Apple Inc is hosting a media event next Wednesday, where it is expected to unveil a faster, better-equipped version of its popular iPad tablet to thwart increasing competition from deep-pocketed rivals such as Amazon.com Inc.

The invitation-only event will be held at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) on March 7 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, where the company also introduced the last two generations of iPads.

The rich really are different from the rest of us, scientists have found — they are more apt to commit unethical acts because they are more motivated by greed.

People driving expensive cars were more likely than other motorists to cut off drivers and pedestrians at a four-way-stop intersection in the San Francisco Bay Area, UC Berkeley researchers observed. Those findings led to a series of experiments that revealed that people of higher socioeconomic status were also more likely to cheat to win a prize, take candy from children and say they would pocket extra change handed to them in error rather than give it back.

Drinking ginger tea benefits people with diabetes by alleviating diabetic complications and symptoms. Ginger tea is a household herbal remedy for anything from cold to cancer. Well, research has come up with one more health benefit of ginger tea and this time the diabetics should be happy. Regular consumption of ginger tea has been found to reduce or prolong kidney damage in people suffering from diabetes.

We live in a world mad for talent. From Hollywood and sports to executive search firms and HR departments around the globe, everyone seeks that special mix of natural abilities and attitudes that will make performance pop. A few months ago, Douglas Conant wrote a terrific blog post on how to find talented candidates for a job. When evaluating a potential hire, Conant looks for a strong mix of three qualities — competence, character, and skill as a team player. He gives great advice on how to find such a person. But he's missing a crucial ingredient.

Artificially sweetened drinks are often promoted as healthy alternatives for weight loss and diabetes because they are low in calories and don't contain sugar. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that these diet sodas are harmful to human health. According to Sharon Fowler, MPH, an authority on this subject, "Diet soda is not a health food. In fact, it's not a food at all, it's simply a slurry of chemicals, a number of which may have deleterious effects on the body." Most recently diet sodas have been tied to increased risk of stroke and heart attack, and while many people drink them as an aid to weight reduction, research suggests if you drink diet soda, weight gain may be the result instead.

If you find yourself in love with someone who does not love you,
Be gentle with yourself.
There is nothing wrong with you.
Love just didn't choose to rest in the other person's heart.

If you find someone else in love with you and you don't love him/her,
Feel honored that love came and called at your door,
But gently refuse the gift you cannot return.
Do not take advantage. Do not cause pain.

The full winners of the 2012 Academy Awards have been revealed. Grabbing the coveted Best Picture award was "The Artist", which beat other eight acclaimed nominees in the top category. The critically praised silent drama also became the biggest winner at the awards along with "Hugo", with five golden statuettes each. "Hugo", however, had to lose the top prize to the black-and-white French film.

Who doesn't want flat abs? People desperate to lose weight will willingly starve themselves, take expensive supplements or do the latest fad diet that promises to give them that flawless figure in 30 days. Thankfully, belly fat is metabolically active and easier to lose. However, if proper nutrition is not observed and the resort is made to low calorie diets, weight loss may not happen within the desired time frame. Hunger and calorie deprivation will eventually kick in and dieters confronted with that favorite food they have been avoiding will have the tendency to binge at the first opportunity. The likelihood of gaining more weight than they originally lost is not far-fetched.

On a rainy night in October a police detective sat in his chair at home with a bottle of Jack Daniels by his side. It was his birthday, his children were asleep and he was alone. It had been a particularly hard day at the precinct. He had finally sat down for the first time that night, with intentions of getting drunk and forgetting his troubles.

We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.

It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.

I have in my hand two boxes
Which God gave me to hold
He said, "Put all your sorrows in the black,
And all your joys in the gold."
I heeded his words, and in the two boxes
Both my joys and sorrows I did store
But though the gold became heavier each day
The black was as light as before

This is true story as told to me by my wife...she was the woman in this story! She told me it at least five times, and I have attempted to describe via written prose the extraordinary events of that special day!

It was just another ordinary day as she performed her tasks at a large university as an administrator working with Hall Monitors and residents. It wasn't uncommon for students to pop in to say a welcomed "Hello" or the like.

More and more health reasons for eating dark chocolate keep coming in. Many will be pointed out here, then explained further in the sources indicated by numbers in parenthesis. But first, understand that organic dark chocolate brought into the market place under fair trade agreements is best.

Some of the major cheap chocolate producers use child slaves in Africa to pick cacao. The more dark the chocolate with less sugar, milk, and other ingredients, the closer it is to cacao. A range of at least 70% to 90% cacao in dark chocolate is both tasty and healthy.

The rainbow is a reminder of God's promise to us
He paints beautiful colors across the sky
To help us reflect on our Christian lives and not fuss
To show that He cares for us until we die
Sometimes we see half of one, after the rain
But the other day God surprised me with a full bow

A popular post on this site, Nine Things Successful People Do Differently, provides a fabulous summary of what makes the difference between those who succeed and those who don't. But, in our experience, it misses one really important "thing': Successful people habitually turn obstacles into assets.

People who succeed at work and in life believe and act as if "everything is a gift." Well, maybe not every single thing imaginable. But assuming that everything is a gift is a good way of looking at the problems and surprises you'll encounter in any endeavor, such as, for example, in getting a new venture off the ground, obtaining buy-in with your boss, or launching a new product line in an ultra-competitive market.

I woke up early today, excited over all I get to do before the clock strikes midnight. I have responsibilities to fulfill today. I am important.

My job is to choose what kind of day I am going to have.

Today I can complain because the weather is rainy or I can be thankful that the grass is getting watered for free.

When I was growing up, one of the principles in our house was that we had to tell the truth, no matter how painful it might be. Lying, we were taught, wasn't something you could get away with. Like Pinocchio's nose, it would be apparent to others.

Children of course need clear rules to learn the difference between right and wrong. However as we get older, the truth becomes more nuanced — and there are times when a little white lie or the absence of some key facts might be appropriate. The problem is that all of us have different standards for when, why, and how we shade the truth. These divergent 'shades of gray' then cause miscommunication, breakdowns of trust, and other dysfunctional behaviors. That's why, despite the inclusion of "integrity" in almost every value statement, some form of lying is common in most companies.

Last night, as I sat there
and I started to cry
my wings were all broken
and I just couldn't fly
all the others were flying
around and around
but for me, I couldn't
I remained on the ground

My wings were so bad
all rusted and torn
from anger and hate
to arrogance and scorn
They wouldn't even flap
being so out of repair
but the thing that hurt most
is no one did care

OLD DNA A plant has been generated from the fruit of the narrow-leafed campion. It is the oldest plant by far to be grown from ancient tissue.

Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia and lay permanently frozen until excavated by scientists a few years ago.

This would be the oldest plant by far that has ever been grown from ancient tissue. The present record is held by a date palm grown from a seed some 2,000 years old that was recovered from the ancient fortress of Masada in Israel.

Seeds and certain cells can last a long term under the right conditions, but many claims of extreme longevity have failed on closer examination, and biologists are likely to greet this claim, too, with reserve until it can be independently confirmed. Tales of wheat grown from seeds in the tombs of the pharaohs have long been discredited. Lupines were germinated from seeds in a 10,000-year-old lemming burrow found by a gold miner in the Yukon. But the seeds, later dated by the radiocarbon method, turned out to be modern contaminants.

Seringkali aku berkata,
Ketika semua orang memuji milikku...

Bahwa sesungguhnya ini hanyalah titipan....
Bahwa mobilku hanyalah titipan-Nya
Bahwa rumahku hanyalah titipan-Nya
Bahwa hartaku hanyalah titipan-Nya
Bahwa putraku hanyalah titipan-Nya

Tetapi, mengapa aku tak pernah bertanya...
Mengapa Dia menitipkan padaku ?
Untuk apa Dia menitipkan ini padaku ?

I commented long ago in The Spine about the courtship between fundamentalist Christianity and Israel.

One of the early signs that it was meshing was the meeting between [Israeli Prime Minister Menahem] Begin and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bailey Smith, who had said that God doesn’t hear the prayers of a Jew. That’s a big theological rift already. But Begin tried to finesse the history. When questioned, he said, “Look, about religious truth, we’ll wait and see.  When the Messiah comes, we’ll ask him, ‘Is this your first visit or your second?’ He’ll surely be honest with us.”

Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that? ”

Pole has a master’s degree in statistics and another in economics, and has been obsessed with the intersection of data and human behavior most of his life. His parents were teachers in North Dakota, and while other kids were going to 4-H, Pole was doing algebra and writing computer programs.

Alzheimer's disease presently ranks as the sixth leading cause of death in the US, as the number of new cases is projected to triple by the year 2050 and affect as many as sixteen million people. The result of a new study presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 64th Annual Meeting has found that the level and duration of quality sleep may later affect memory function and the risk of Alzheimer's disease in later life.

In my office at home, there is an old oak desk. It sat for many years in my grandfather's office. After he passed on, it sat in my sister's house for many years until she gave it to me.

I finally decided to refinish the old desk, and make it look more respectable. After carefully stripping away over 80 years of accumulated grime and varnish, the old oak desk revealed its beauty once again, and I marveled at the glow of the newly found wood. The top had been marred by the years of daily use, so I carefully began to sand it smooth.

THE other day it occurred to me that I needed more exercise and should take up skipping. I obtained a smart leather rope with weights in the handles and, waiting until it was almost dark, went out into the street. Making sure that no one was coming, I started bouncing on the pavement. I must have skipped a bit as a child, I guess, because I could remember how to do it. Being a determined if not bloody-minded fellow, I improved after a few days; I could go on longer. But that was that: I didn’t do more skips; my knees couldn’t take it, and I soon ran out of breath. Nor could I do the leaps, twirls, step-overs and girly hops I’d seen on the Internet. I repeated the same little leaden jumps over and over. Soon I had to conclude that I’d reached my level. The only way was down.

One of the losses that modern society feels most keenly is the loss of a sense of community. We tend to imagine that there once existed a degree of neighborliness that has been replaced by ruthless anonymity, by the pursuit of contact with one another primarily for individualistic ends: for financial gain, social advancement or romantic love.

In attempting to understand what has eroded our sense of community, historians have assigned an important role to the privatization of religious belief that occurred in Europe and the U.S. in the 19th century. They have suggested that we began to disregard our neighbors at around the same time that we ceased to honor our gods as a community.

Do you consistently decline getting involved with Facebook, Twitter, or any other other social network scheme? Don't let others make you feel guilty. You may be relieved to know you've made the right decision about refusing more social obligations than are worth handling.

A new study has discovered that social networking or checking social email is more addictive than alcohol and cigarettes. Hard to believe, but that's what was reported. All this "checking out what others are doing no matter how trivial" is a time waster in the long run. But it is cheaper than booze and cigarettes and not as harmful.

Attitude
Bloom where you are planted. You have a choice to get back up after temporary set backs. Attitude is a small thing that makes a big difference!

Direction
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. Write your short term goals down on paper. I have discovered and continue to discover that putting your dreams and goals down on paper lock in or focus your belief that they can be achieved--even if you have to take a course correction in achieving your goals. Success comes in cans, failure comes in can'ts.

Actor/director Kevin Costner told a lesson-laden story about casting the "I Will Always Love You" singer in the 1992 flick The Bodyguard, for which he revealed filming was postponed a year until Houston had wrapped her tour.

The 57-year-old actor reminisced how Houston took off the professional makeup and used her own, but the lights melted it right off during her screen test.

"I asked her why she did it, and she said I just wanted to look my best. I asked her to trust me, and she said she would," Costner said. "A half hour later she went back to do her screen test and the studio fell in love with her… Whitney, you weren't just good enough, you were great."

Man may not live by bread alone, but cancer in animals appears less resilient, judging by a study that found chemotherapy drugs work better when combined with cycles of short, severe fasting.

Even fasting on its own effectively treated a majority of cancers tested in animals, including cancers from human cells.

Every day, we fight the fight.
Every day we play the game.
Every day we expect good things.
Every day we want to do our best.
So what's the secret?
Where's the answer?

Well here it is.
There isn't one.

No matter how long you live, all you can do is improve upon the mistakes and reap the success. That's it.
That's your job. So instead of searching for the magic waters, live for now. Wake up with that smile, that energy,

Something odd and interesting happens to a lot of people who become very successful. Once the initial thrill wears off, they come to perceive their success as "a catastrophe" and even as "a kind of death," as the playwright Tennessee Williams famously put it, after The Glass Menagerie became a smash hit in 1944. Athletes, scientists, generals, entrepreneurs, executives, performers, and politicians have expressed this paradox in different words. Paul Samuelson, an economist who won the Nobel Prize in 1970, later concluded that, "After winners receive the award and adulation, they wither away into vainglorious sterility."

As the wheels continue to come of the wagon known as the old paradigm, humans are increasingly exhibiting accelerated stress behaviors. This isn't good, as research indicates that stress is a leading factor in precipitating illness.

Stress is not ipso facto a bad thing. A certain amount of stress is natural. None of us live stress free lives. However, while a certain amount of stress is normal, chronic negative stress is harmful to our health.

A wild flower grew at the side of the road
Among the weeds so high
It grew along among brambles and thorns
And looked up into the sky.

A man passed down that road one day
Bearing a cross of wood.
And suddenly he staggered and fell
Right where the wild flower stood.

1. It is your attitude at the beginning of a task more than anything else that will determine your success or failure.

We are saddened to tell you that the legend and our beloved pianist virtuoso Bubi Chen has passed away yesterday, February 16, 2012 at the age of 74, just a couple of minutes before 7:00 pm due to pulmonary complications. We were shocked when we received the news from Bubi’s son, Benny Chen just a while after his passing.

My wireless connection to the internet had suddenly stopped working. At first I was frustrated — I had been in the middle of browsing some books on Amazon. But I quickly took it as a blessing. I had an article to write and the Amazon browsing was a distraction. I resisted the temptation to distract myself further by trying to fix it and got to work. I finished the article in record time.

That's a lesson in itself. But it's not the whole story.

Several years ago I went to Jackson Hole, WY on a company sponsored ski trip. Prior to the trip, I had never been on the back of a motorized vehicle with less than 4 wheels.

The guys decided to go snowmobiling...

With the fastest group!

I later discovered that the leader of this particular group had been racing snowmobiles for years, so he had a very high comfort level. As things got going, I was a bit nervous, but as the speed increased I became terrified. I was convinced that I was going to be seriously injured, if I wasn't killed first...but I was also afraid of losing the group, which was seriously outpacing me.

Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard when he lives in the jungle without a razor?

Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are flat?

Why do banks charge a fee on 'insufficient funds' when they know there is not enough?

Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?

Whose idea was it to put an 'S' in the word 'lisp'?

You probably already knew that Whitney Houston's recording of "I Will Love You" is one of the biggest singles of the last 25 years... and the song that defined her legacy, as proven by its use as the lone ballad of homage to Houston at Sunday night's Grammys. Maybe you even know that a not-so-behind-the-scenes songsmith named Dolly Parton wrote and first recorded it, almost 20 years before Whitney spent a then-record 14 weeks at the top of the singles chart in 1992-93 with what turned out to be her signature song.

A teacher in New York decided to honor each of her seniors in high school by telling them the difference they each made. Using a process developed by Helice Bridges of Del Mar, California, she called each student to the front of the class, one at a time.

First she told them how the student made a difference to her and the class. Then she presented each of them with a blue ribbon imprinted with gold letters which read, "Who I Am Makes a Difference."

Acid reflux is the condition where food and stomach acids regurgitate back into the esophagus, causing burning pain in the lower chest accompanied by a host of other symptoms such as bloating, belching, sore throats, snoring, difficulty breathing and ulcers.

The early stages of digestion occur with the release of hydrochloric acid in the stomach to break down foods. Later during the digestive process, bicarbonate is released by the pancreas to help neutralize those acids. In some instances, this process doesn't happen, contributing to painful reflux or GERD symptoms. Eating certain alkaline-forming foods can help reduce over-acidity and

Elizabeth Valenzuela, a managing partner at a law firm in Sherman Oaks, has been an attorney for 26 years but sounds like a fresh law school grad when she talks about her work.

"There is an excitement about what is around the corner," says Valenzuela, 51, and to find out what lurks there, she regularly logs 70- or 80-hour weeks and never complains about it. "I manage the attorneys, the work product that goes out, my own caseload, business operations," she says.

Age-related macular degeneration is a progressive eye condition, leading to the deterioration of the center of the retina, called the macula. It is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly. The result of a study published in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine finds that eating grapes over a lifetime may slow or help prevent age-related macular degeneration as we age.

1. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
2. Memorize your favorite poem.
3. Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.
4. When you say, "I love you", mean it.
5. When you say, "I'm sorry", look the person in the eye.
6. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.

Ginger root is a favorite among herbalists, used in a variety of situations. The spicy root, or rhizome, of the ginger plant can either be eaten raw, powdered, made into tea, juiced, tinctured, or even candied. One of the most common uses for ginger root is for nausea and vomiting. Placebo-controlled, double-blind studies have proven that ginger root effectively reduces nausea and vomiting caused by motion sickness, surgery, and morning sickness during pregnancy. Because organic ginger root is completely safe to use during pregnancy, the herb is especially treasured by pregnant women around the world.

When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

At the New Jersey church where her singing career first took flight, fans and admirers gathered on Sunday to celebrate the life of Whitney Houston and mourn her passing a day after the pop music diva died in a Beverly Hills hotel.

Cards and flowers were tied to the railings of the New Hope Baptist Church, and congregants hugged and cried at the entrance. Among those paying their respects was the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the civil rights activist.

Green tea has long been hailed as a cardio-protective beverage due to its ability to lower levels of oxidized LDL cholesterol, an established heart disease risk factor. It has also been shown to promote brain health because the active compound, EGCG (Epigallocatechin gallate) freely crosses the blood-brain barrier to provide antioxidant support and lower damaging levels of brain inflammation. Researchers from Japan reporting in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition demonstrate that regular green tea consumption lowers the risk of developing functional disabilities that lead to problems with daily chores and activities, such as bathing or dressing. Drinking up to five cups of green tea each day can lower the risk of developing functional disabilities as we age by nearly one half.