可以说，成也萧何，败也萧何。名和利都是双刃剑。适度的运营和管理企业是企业家“和谐”运营的最佳之“道”。

用老子中的思想精华来实践企业管理对那些成名企业应该是更好的企业文化选择。

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I’d thought for a while before deciding to get a dog because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle the grief of outliving it.

Reading news about lives lost in a devastating earthquake or flood halfway across the globe makes me tear, so I was certain losing a pet that grew up under my care would leave me a wreck.

I then reminded myself that I would probably outlive my parents too, and maybe even some of my friends. Does that mean I should also avoid having them around and live a life detached from emotional attachments?

By and by, I’ve come to accept that death is an inevitable final chapter of all living beings–whether or not it comes sooner for some, and later for others.

Thanks to technological advancements, though, the end is coming later and later for most.

In a recent interview with ZDNet Asia, IBMer Kirk E. Jordan proclaimed that high-performance computing can help future generations live up to 150 years. First, I thought “wow”, then I wondered if I would even want to live past 100 years.

When I was old enough to realize mortality wasn’t something I could change, and that I would have only so many years to live out my one life, I began living it with more purpose and urgency.

Because we each have only on average 80 years, or if we’re really fortunate, maybe a 100 years to experience life, the time we have is so much more precious and valuable. So we know to make the most of it and not waste any fretting over the little things.

But, if we had over 150 years, would we still live with purpose and resolution?

It’s great that technological advancements have enabled us to receive better healthcare services, and allowed us to detect and temporarily eradicate cancer cells to give us that few more years in life that we wouldn’t otherwise have had.

When I read a report last year that a couple in the U.S. forked out US$155,000 to clone their Labrador Retriever, which died of cancer in the previous year, I asked myself if I would do the same for my own canine. Absolutely not.

A clone would only be a physical replica of my dog, and not a replacement of the time we spent bonding over nightly walks around my estate or how she would press her face against mine to ask for a cuddle.

Each life is unique, and the experience we have living those few decades unique to each of us. It would be extremely unfortunate if technology is allowed to devalue it by prolonging the natural lifespan of a living being.

And think about the sheer volume of resources we’ll be consuming and how congested it’ll get if everyone on earth lives past 150 years. And wouldn’t life get a little boring after the 125th year?

Mortality isn’t something we can change, but it serves as a good reminder that we should live life to the fullest while we still have it. It’s not how long we have to live that matters, but how we live.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
~ Henry David Thoreau

一个评论是这样写的：

Don’t let technology devalue life
You are quite right.
In fact, looking at urban India, I see many people who are beyond 75 and live a life of sadness and dejection. They are past the age when they are productive or can contribute to society. Most are not able to live independently. Even if they are financially independent, most are physically dependent on others. Barring a few exceptions, they have no purpose left in life.
We need a solution for this – a way to make their lives more fulfilling, to give them hope.
Posted by Sugata Mitra on Friday, February 26 2010 01:36 PM

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By David Mehegan
Globe Staff / November 19, 2007

We know what young people are doing more of: watching television, surfing the Web, listening to their iPods, talking on cellphones, and instant-messaging their friends. But a new report released today by the National Endowment for the Arts makes clear what they’re doing a lot less of: reading.

The report – a 99-page compendium of more than 40 studies by universities, foundations, business groups, and government agencies since 2004 – paints a dire picture of plummeting levels of reading among young people over the past two decades. Among the findings:

Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day.

The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.

Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.

The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day watching TV and 7 minutes reading.

“This is a massive social problem,” NEA chairman Dana Gioia, said by phone from Washington. “We are losing the majority of the new generation. They will not achieve anything close to their potential because of poor reading.”

It is not just the amount of reading. According to the report, reading ability has fallen as well. While scores have improved for 9-year-olds, they dropped sharply for 17-year-olds. Only about a third of high school seniors read at a proficient level, a 13 percent decline since 1992. “And proficiency is not a high standard,” Gioia said. “We’re not asking them to be able to read Proust in the original. We’re talking about reading the daily newspaper.”

Apparently, things are not much better among college students. In 2005, almost 40 percent of college freshmen (and 35 percent of seniors) read nothing at all for pleasure, and 26 percent (28 percent of seniors) read less than one hour per week. Even among college graduates, prose-reading proficiency declined from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003.

The report incorporates national studies that have been carried out since the NEA’s 2004 report, “Reading at Risk,” found that literary reading – fiction, poetry, and plays – had crashed over 20 years among adult Americans. The new report, titled “To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence,” focuses on reading in general, and it reaches down to younger age levels. While not all studies are exactly comparable in some details (such as time spans), overall they trend in the same direction.

“We took information from so many sources, you would expect some results in the opposite direction,” Gioia said. “But I was impressed and depressed at how consistent the information was on the general decline in reading and reading ability.”

Changes in young people’s reading habits have not escaped notice in the publishing and library fields.

“I’m not hearing of a dramatically big drop, but I would say the number of serious readers, the kids who used to come in and get 20 and 30 books – we’re just not seeing that,” said Caroline Ward, a children’s librarian in Stamford, Conn., who is past president of the children’s division of the American Library Association. “We see some, but fewer than we used to.”

The report found that the more books there are in a young person’s home, the higher the average scores in science, civics, and history, all reading-based subjects. The report notes that average annual household spending on books, adjusted for inflation, dropped 14 percent between 1985 and 2005, and that consumer book sales declined 6 percent from 2000 to 2006.

The report does not explain why youth reading has declined, but Gioia said he suspects three main reasons: “First, something is not happening in our educational system. Second, we are surrounded by nonstop media, but for the most part it does not acknowledge reading. When the media made a celebrity of J.K. Rowling, 10 million people bought her book. Oprah Winfrey put ‘Anna Karenina’ on the best-seller list. Third, our lives are completely cluttered with a million gadgets.”

Indeed, the report suggests that multitasking is a factor. It found that more than half of middle and high school students use other media most or some of the time while reading, and that 20 percent of the time they spend reading they are also watching TV, playing video games, sending messages, or otherwise using a computer.

Besides plotting statistical trends, the report cites economic consequences. Seventy-two percent of employers rated high school graduates deficient in writing, and 38 percent cited reading deficiency. One out of five American workers reads at a lower level than necessary to do his or her job. Not surprisingly, proficient readers are more likely to attain management jobs and higher incomes.

Possibly the most striking finding is that, regardless of income, levels of reading for pleasure correlate closely with levels of social life, voting, and political activism, participation in culture and fine arts, volunteerism, charity work, and even regular exercise.

“The poorest Americans who read did twice as much volunteering and charity work as the richest who did not read,” Gioia said. “The habit of regular reading awakens something inside a person that makes him or her take their own life more seriously and at the same time develops the sense that other people’s lives are real.”

That finding confirms previous studies, said Timothy Shanahan, an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and past president of the International Reading Association. “If you’re low in reading ability, not only would you not read the newspaper, but you won’t watch news on TV or listen to it on radio,” Shanahan said. “You’re less likely to take part in activities like sports or church. Being low in literacy is self-isolating, tends to push you out of culture altogether.”

Patricia S. Schroeder, president and chief executive of the Association of American Publishers, said part of the problem could be that adults can make children feel that reading is a duty. A common complaint she hears from children and young adults is that few books relate to their lives or interests. “Reading is not really easy,” she said, “unless they get into something they want to read about.”

David Mehegan can be reached at mehegan@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

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虽说在当前经济危机之下，贪得无厌恐遭报应。可是谈判专家DR.KARRASS说过一句名言：In business, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.
今天我也来帮您添根柴，为广大的“洋白劳”提供个英语讨薪秘籍：

1. Can I ask you to set aside some time so that we could discuss my role and development? I’d appreciate your advice.

讨薪要心平气和，能找到一个老板心情愉快的时候和公司里面一个不容易被人打搅的地方就占据了天时和地利两个要素。重点是先别让老板有所防范！如果不想老板事先得到风声，并且花了三天时间琢磨好了怎么对付你──最好的办法是让自己在约时间的时候听起来云淡风轻。万一狡猾的老板反问“What is it going to be about?” 那就含含糊糊地回答“Oh, it’s nothing. It won’t take long.”

2. I’d appreciate a review of my responsibilities and salary.

希望这不是您推开老板大门后的第一句话，咱们怎么说也得客气客气啊，万一老板憋不住先提了给你加薪，这里子面子都有了可多好。需要说这句话的员工多半是在小企业中工作，企业里还没有形成周期性的绩效和工资考评制度。

3. I’m grateful for the opportunity to work for XXX，especially under your supervision. I hope you’ll agree that in the past three years I’ve become an important member of my team with distinctive accomplishments. For example, in the last six months alone, I’ve…

拜美国某总统发明，也是很多领导开会时候的名言：别问公司为我们做了什么，而是先问问我们为公司做了什么。好吧，想要加工资，先罗列一下你的成绩。这里应该事先做好功课，证据在握，才能心中有数儿。

4. I’ve kept a file to document my performance during the most recent year for your reference if needed.”

这就是提供证据的时候需要用到的了。那些工作业绩和质量可以进行量化分析的朋友会发现这一招特别好用。

5. I’m very confident about my job and the organization. I would like to discuss how to increase my contribution, as well as the reward I shall receive.

如果你在工作中表现平平，想涨工资只是因为刚买了房或换了车，那么千万别说实话。Why is paying for your lifestyle the company’s responsibility? 更多的收入意味着更多的责任，那么想一想，怎么样能说服老板让你的职位变得更重要吧。

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烂是有一些的，但肯定不是烂到极点。例如，支付水电煤，必须输入很长的条形码，十分的不方便，用过两次后放弃，继续用浦发银行来支付。

烂到极点的肯定不是支付宝本身的用户体验，而是马云的这种高调扬家丑的点子，做得太过分了，就是小聪明，这些东西本来就是小聪明，或许只有马云才想得到。

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其实恐怕很多博客都只是“一言堂”，“独角戏”，观众寥寥。

所以，时刻的警戒自己，没有事情，不要用粗鲁的“各位”。

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很多关于广东的负面新闻。

广东，这个最靠近港澳地区的改革开放前沿地区，应该说是冒险者的乐园，也充满了暴力，罪恶。

无论是打工者还是创业者，高收益永远伴随着高风险。

和谐广东，或许更多的是一种口号！

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附上各类比赛时间

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