选择知识点

—Well, if one means trouble, _______ just can’t be helped.

A

Farms are spreading to unused city lots and old properties across the United States.

Eco City Farms is an educational nonprofit organization. It seeks to empower the community by teaching economic development, job training and a healthier way of living. The group has set up farms near automobile repair businesses and fast food stores in urban neighborhoods.

Social activist Margaret Morgan-Hubbard founded Eco City Farms. She says the lack of fresh produce is a major health problem for children and their families who live in nearby Bladensburg, Maryland. “What’s critical is that 70 percent of the people in these towns are either overweight, obese, have diabetes or other kinds of diet-related ailments because they don’t have access to healthy food.”

Eco City Farms offer several programs, including educational activists on agriculture, food, and finding jobs with environmentally-friendly businesses. People can also learn how to cook healthier foods and teach others how to prepare meals. On a recent day, Philip Sidibe demonstrated his cooking skills. He prepared Aloco, a popular food in Cameroon where he grew up. He and other young people not only cook their food, they also grow it in a large garden.

Tameka Barbour-Gaskins lives in Autumn Woods. She says her whole family is eating healthier meals because of the local produce. “I like junk food. I like quick meals. Not easy to just go from eating a certain way all your life to switching over to being healthier... With the garden here, with my son learning, he can help me switch around my style of eating. I want a healthy family.”

Margaret says the urban garden is an agent for change and the young people are its newest supporters. “Our program is about planting seeds. It’s about planting seeds not just in the ground, but in other human beings so that the movement can grow and it’s really exciting because... these young people will be working with us throughout the year to help plan the actual farm and to ultimately own it.”

Teamwork is all about working together to achieve a common goal or purpose. Is teamwork out of date? Why is it so hard to effectively conduct teamwork in those things?

One way we employ teamwork in everyday lives is by becoming a parent. It is a parent's job to teach their children and the basic skills and give them the knowledge they need to be successful in life. For example, the mother teaches her children manners and good health skills, while the father teaches them how to catch a ball or drive a car. However, in today's society, we find more and more parents are experiencing that the teamwork is a one-sided thing. According to a report, there are 13.7 million single parents raising their children in the US and this could be due to the fact that parents don't take responsibility for their children, so they leave one parent to do it alone. This is a sad fact, but it reflects that effective teamwork is losing ground in the parenting aspect of our daily lives.

Another place where teamwork affects us greatly is in our jobs. It doesn't matter if you are a small or large company; if you have at least one employee and yourself, then teamwork will be present. I have noticed that with the current economic recession, people are racing to grab jobs but quality of people's work has gone down greatly. It just appears to me that people do not take pride in their work any more. They want to get to work as fast as they can, just to receive the paycheck, but their quality standards fly right out the window. So I think teamwork is losing its ground in the workforce. There are too many people who want to work independently and forget they are a part of a team.

As you can see, we run into the aspects of teamwork in just about everything we do. Do you believe teamwork is really losing ground in today's society? I think it is.

 Two of the saddest words in the English language are “if only”. I live my life with the goal of never having to say those words, because they convey regret, lost opportunities, mistakes, and disappointment.

      My father is famous in our family for saying, “Take the extra minute to do it right.” I always try to live by the “extra minute” rule. When my children were young and likely to cause accidents, I always thought about what I could do to avoid an “if only” moment, whether it was something minor like moving a cup full of hot coffee away from the edge of a counter, or something that required a little more work such as taping padding (衬垫) onto the sharp corners of a glass coffee table.

      I don’t only avoid those “if only” moments when it comes to safety. It’s equally important to avoid “if only” in our personal relationships. We all know people who lost a loved one and regretted that they had foregone an opportunity to say “I love you” or “I forgive you.” When my father announced he was going to the eye doctor across from my office on Good Friday, I told him that it was a holiday for my company and I wouldn’t be here. But then I thought about the fact that he’s 84 years old and I realized that I shouldn’t give up an opportunity to see him. I called him and told him I had decided to go to work on my day off after all.

      I know there will still be occasions when I have to say “if only” about something, but my life is definitely better because of my policy of doing everything possible to avoid that eventuality (可能). And even though it takes an extra minute to do something right, or it occasionally takes an hour or two in my busy schedule to make a personal connection, I know that I’m doing the right thing. I’m buying myself peace of mind and that’s the best kind of insurance for my emotional well-being.

If a woman has an extra piece of cake, don’t blame it on greed, blame it on her brain.

Scientists have found that women’s brains react to food very differently—and much more strongly—than men’ s. Academics found that decades of dieting pressure on women and advertising have programmed certain parts of the female brain to react strongly when faced with any kind of food. Men, on the other hand, are not usually as obsessive (着迷的) about what they eat.

Dr. Rudolf Uher and his colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry in King’s College London used brain scanning technology, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), to look at the brains of eighteen men and women.

The volunteers were given images of food to look at, as well as food to taste. Their brain reactions were observed by the scientists.

They found that the female brains reacted much more strongly than those of males.

The same reaction did not happen when they were shown non-food images. The team believe this means women think more about food than men tend to.

Dr. Uher said, “This could be related to biological differences between men and women. But the more likely explanation is that women have a more complicated reaction to food because of social pressure.”

Professor Carey Cooper, psychology and health professor at Lancaster University, said, “for centuries women have had a providing role—preparing and cooking food for their families. And it’s part of that role to make sure the food is safe. They will therefore be much more sensitive to food than men are, and I would not be surprised if that was now built into their DNA. If the female brain react to food because it historically has developed neural (神经的) pathways to do this, then food will be the way they express their stress. Food actually, is a comfort for women.”

But other experts have said that more research must be done before the results can be proved.American scientist Angelo del Parigi of the John B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven, Connecticut, said, “Looking at an FMRI alone cannot make sure whether the stronger reaction in women is due to innate (天生的) differences or a learned process.’’