鹅肝酱

鹅肝酱是法国大餐中的顶级美食，口感细腻入口即化，昂贵的价格更让普通人难得一品其美味。但是法国却不是鹅肝生产的第一大国，因为其残忍的生产过程引起了法国国内动物保护组织的强烈反对，因此拥有悠久养鹅历史的匈牙利就成为了鹅肝的生产的第一大国。鹅肝的生产过程到底有多残忍呢?估计看过的人都不会对这个美食那么趋之若鹜了。

这些鹅，它们除了嘴巴受损，喉咙受伤，还必须每天都要忍受胃痛、脚痛，而且被逼不可睡觉，又不准它们随意动弹，就算连看一眼天空或河水的机会都没有。这些鹅每天都被逼不停食，为了得到比正常体积大很多倍的鹅肝，养殖场的工人用高压插管从鹅嘴直接插入鹅的食道，压入远远超过鹅所需要的食物，肝脏因超负荷工作体积异常增大，鹅的食道也因为一天三次反复插管早早溃烂，以至于喝的水都会从溃烂处变成血水流出来。。。

当你跟你的恋人坐在高级餐厅，谈情说爱时，谈论鹅肝的口感美味时，可曾听到一生都在受尽折磨的动物的哭泣。。。

Extreme Workouts: When Exercise Does More Harm than Good

Getting at least some moderate exercise is good for us, and more is even better, doctors and public health experts say. But is there such a thing as too much exercise?

Apparently, yes, according to researchers led by Dr. James O’Keefe, a cardiologist at the Mid America Heart Institute of St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo. Reporting in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, O’Keefe and his colleagues found that physical activity, like any medical treatment, can be harmful if it’s overdone.

“As great as exercise is, it’s like a powerful drug,” he says. “More is better up to a certain dose, but after that there is a point of diminishing returns, and it may actually detract from [heart] health and even your longevity.”

(MORE: Is Exercise Harmful for Some People?)
O’Keefe reviewed studies of people who trained and participated in marathons, triathalons, ultramarathons or long bike races — people who exercised at extreme levels. Overall, people who exercised regularly reaped significant benefits, tending to live seven years longer than those who are physically inactive. But when O’Keefe focused only on the extreme athletes themselves, he found that the healthy effect of all their activity tended not only to wane, but to actually reverse itself and turn toxic.

Studies showed that during and immediately following a marathon, runners showed up to a 50% increase in levels of an enzyme called troponin, which signals damage to the heart (it’s the same enzyme that shoots up in patients having heart attacks). Troponin is released when heart muscle is in distress, and in the case of lengthy extreme exercise sessions, it may start to climb as heart muscle fibers start to tear under the intense burden of pumping continuously at a high level.

“When you’re sitting around, you heart is pumping about five quarts of blood a minute, and if you run up the stairs or hard or push yourself physically, it can go up 35 or 40 quarts a minute,” says O’Keefe. “If you go and run for 26 miles, or do a full-distance triathalon, it completely overtaxes the heart. The heart is pumping 25 quarts a minute for hours and hours, and that starts to cause muscle fibers to tear, which leads to a bump in troponin and other enzymes associated with inflammation, and it causes the death of some muscle cells in the heart.”

(MORE: When Mom Exercises in Pregnancy, Her Baby Benefits)
Over time, that damage can cause scar tissue on the heart, and a thickened and scarred heart is more vulnerable to abnormal heart rhythms, says O’Keefe. Indeed, people who chronically exercise at extreme levels tend to have thicker right atria (which receive deoxygenated blood from the veins) and larger right ventricles (which pump this blood out to the lungs to be oxygenated and circulated). Studies show that endurance athletes have a five times higher risk of atrial fibrillation, or fluctuations in the heartbeat that can trigger more serious heart problems.

In the new data, presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, one of the study co-authors, Dr. Carl Lavie, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and prevention at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans, reported on the optimal “dose” of running for increasing life expectancy. Among 14,000 runners, the optimal amount of exercise appeared to be about 10 to 15 miles per week. “We were thinking that we would see progressively more benefit the more you ran,” says Lavie. “We thought it would level off at some point. But not only did the runners not get more benefit, but the more they did, the faster they ran, the more frequently they ran, the more miles they ran, they actually seemed to lose any benefit to the heart.”

No matter how much they ran, however, they didn’t do worse than non-runners when it came to longevity, Lavie says. But there was a limit to how much exercise contributed to life span. Beyond that point, he says, physical activity started to have a negative, or harmful effect and cut away at any improvement the runners may have accumulated to that point.

(MORE: How Exercise Can Change Your DNA)
The damage doesn’t happen overnight; rather, it builds up over years of training. That’s why O’Keefe, an avid exerciser himself, doesn’t discourage patients who are interested in participating in marathons from trying them. But he counsels hopeful marathoners to consider their race experience a once-in-a-lifetime thing. “If they want to train for a marathon, to cross it off their bucket list, I tell them okay, but it’s not a healthy long term habit to get into,” he says.

Given the results from O’Keefe’s analysis, it makes more sense to exercise at moderate levels. “We have people who are more and more on the extremes. Over the last 35 years, obesity rates have tripled in America, and the number of people completing marathons has gone up 20-fold,” he says. “What we need are more people doing moderate exercise daily, and not running heroic distances. You can get 70% to 80% of the benefit of exercise from doing it 15 to 30 minutes a day.”

And that’s the real lesson from the study. It’s not that exercise is bad for the heart or that it’s better to sit on the couch than go for a run — it’s that the heart and longevity benefits of exercise don’t require extreme efforts. When it comes to exercise, a Goldilocks approach is probably best: too little isn’t good for heart, but neither is too much. Moderate physical activity — anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour a day, several days a week — is just right.

VIDEO: Walking While Working
Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/04/extreme-workouts-when-exercise-does-more-harm-than-good/#ixzz2AIz95ZhF

Top 10 cities with the WORST taxi drivers

 

Somehow I couldn't agree more on the No.1, well done "taxi drivers"

GSC Online – Buy 1 Free 1 Movie Tickets with Visa (ends 31 October 2012)

GSC Buy 1 Free 1 Movie Tickets with Visa (ends 31st October 2012) – Any Class any Day – Great offer for anyone with a Visa Credit or Debit Card; Online Purchases included!

Drawbacks: You can only buy 4 tickets (ie Buy2Free2) per day per card (can get more if you have more than 1 card!); free ticket must be the same movie as the paid ticket; online booking fee of RM1
 
Cinema: GSC
Promotion Period: 17 September – 31st October 2012
Promotion Highlight: Buy 1 Free 1 on any day for any class, and you can do it online!
T&C:
1. Maximum of 4 tickets per card (B2F2)
2. Valid for online purchases only.



Got a Visa Credit or Debit Card from any bank? GSC’s widest offer yet, offering anyone with a Visa card Buy 1 Free 1 on any movie class tickets on any day! This certainly sounds good, but given that you can only do this online, you have to stump up the booking fee of RM1 (which is not discounted, predicatably) for the convenience of booking online.

RM1 booking fee aside, the main gripe we have with this promotion is that its not entirely clear that you get the discount until the very end! We had to go right down to the confirmation page to make sure that we do get the discount. Here is a snapshot of what you expect to see.

Still, we’re picking at straws here for a really bad drawback, and definitely welcome this kind of promotion where the TnCs are not that restrictive!

Apple's iOS6 a Laughing Stock

APPLE, the world's most loved and valuable brand, has been put on notice by customers frustrated with its latest operating system, iOS 6.
Apple maps has become the butt of online jokes after it misplaced towns, cities and buildings as well as displaying roads that defy the laws of gravity and physics.

The app, which replaced Google Maps, is so bad it even inspired a Tumblr blog which documents all the mistakes it has so far made.

The update has caused several address book contacts to be wiped, seemingly at random.

"After updating the iOS6 update on my iPhone 4S, I lost several contacts," wrote on iOS 6 user on the Apple support forum. "Has anyone experienced this same problem?"

Another user, "dianothony", reported that the speakers on her iPhone 4S stopped working after the upgrade.
Other users have reported problems connecting to the internet, uploading photos to social networks and app lock. The further integration of Facebook and the Apple address book is causing user emails to be automatically replaced with their @facebook email address.

One Apple app developer who wished to remain anonymous said if former Apple CEO, Steve Jobs were still alive, "he would never have allowed iOS6 to fail".

"It's the little things I miss about Steve's influence - apps locking up while loading ... incorrect map data, and a few other small graphical user interface issues that cause me to think about getting a Samsung Galaxy 3," the developer said.

President of mobile product manufacturer, Decoder and CEO of mobile start-up, Beaucoo, Christian MacLean told News Ltd that though iO6 was "a little bit unrefined", it wasn't broken. Rather, he said the new operating system represented a significant "transition period" in the smartphone industry.

"What we're starting to see is every man for himself and less collaboration across devices," Mr MacLean said.

At the beginning of the smartphone era, tech companies like Google and Apple worked together, combining their talents in order to release the very first iPhone.

"Now companies are creating competition and Google is nipping at Apple's heels," he said.

The tech expert said the iOS 6 operating system did feel a bit like a "land grab" but that it was inevitable that at some point it would need to temporarily inconvenience users in order to develop a product that was "wholey Apple".

He also acknowledged that Apple didn't understand social media deeply enough to get it right, yet.

Google is reportedly planning to release a maps app that is iOS6 compatible in the near future, though no formal announcement has been made.

There are questions whether Apple would even approve the app as it may be able to argue that it competes with an existing Apple app.

-News Limited Network

Leaving KL for Jakarta an unavoidable sacrifice, says Fernandes

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes says the decision to base himself in Indonesia will allow his designated heir room to grow and also advances AirAsia’s regional interests. – Reuters pic

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 24 – The choice to base himself in Indonesia was a crucial part of AirAsia’s succession planning and not only allows his designated heir room to grow but also advances the airline’s regional interests, said Tan Sri Tony Fernandes today. 

The billionaire music executive-turned-airline-tycoon said that the only way his successor Aireen Omar would be able to grow was by giving her space to come into her own without the risk of having his presence dominating the business.

“And I don’t want to be like some senior politicians who insist on calling the shots long after they’ve handed over the reins,” he said.

“Being out of Malaysia is a necessary part of AirAsia’s succession plan, and it is a sacrifice (AirAsia co-founder) Datuk Kamaruddin and I are willing to make.”

Aireen took over as AirAsia Malaysia CEO in June while Fernandes moved to Jakarta the next month to oversee the group’s regional operations.

Fernandes added that critics of his move to Jakarta were clinging to “outmoded” notions of borders in a globalised economy.

He said that the entry of the Malaysia-Indonesia joint venture airline Malindo into Malaysia was a vindication of his vision that an Asean business model was the way forward.

“Tapping into a combined market of 600 million people is a no-brainer, and I’m proud to say AirAsia was ahead of the pack when it chose to open a regional office in Jakarta to pursue this goal,” said Fernandes.

“This is something right-wing bloggers fail to understand, preferring instead to cling to outmoded notions of borders in a borderless world.”

He also took another aim at critics of his patriotism by noting that he has invested heavily in a private college to help upgrade Malaysia’s education scene.

Under his personal investment holding company Tune Group, Fernandes spearheaded efforts to bring UK’s Epsom College to Malaysia as part of the Kuala Lumpur Education City (KLEC) and spent RM150 million building the campus.

He pointed out that he also sits on a panel tasked with laying out a new education blueprint for future generations of Malaysians to ensure the education of truly global and competitive Malaysians.

“We have put Malaysia on the world map and we are investing in its future,” said Fernandes. “So how can these right-wing bloggers say that I’ve abandoned Malaysia? What have they done for the country?”

AirAsia is one of Malaysia’s biggest success stories and caused waves of concern when it chose Jakarta to be its regional office rather than its home base of Kuala Lumpur.

The reason given then was that it would be closer to the Asean secretariat although some speculated other reasons such as local politics or that the Malaysian market was considered too small compared to Indonesia.

Critics said that the decision to base regional operations in Jakarta showed AirAsia was ungrateful to the country but those who defended the move said that Malaysian companies need to look outward rather than inward in order to grow.

Share 3 Disqus The 3 Most Timeless Investment Principles

Warren Buffett is widely considered one of the greatest investors of all time, but if you were to ask him whom he thinks is the greatest investor, he would probably mention one man: his teacher, Benjamin Graham. Graham was an investor and investing mentor who is generally considered the father of security analysis and value investing.

His ideas and methods on investing are well documented in his books, "Security Analysis" (1934), and "The Intelligent Investor" (1949), which are two of the most famous investing texts. These texts are often considered requisite reading material for any investor, but they aren't easy reads. In this article, we'll condense Graham's main investing principles and give you a head start on understanding his winning philosophy.

Principle #1: Always Invest with a Margin of SafetyMargin of safety is the principle of buying a security at a significant discount to its intrinsic value, which is thought to not only provide high-return opportunities, but also to minimize the downside risk of an investment. In simple terms, Graham's goal was to buy assets worth $1 for 50 cents. He did this very, very well.

To Graham, these business assets may have been valuable because of their stable earning power or simply because of their liquid cash value. It wasn't uncommon, for example, for Graham to invest in stocks where the liquid assets on the balance sheet (net of all debt) were worth more than the total market cap of the company (also known as "net nets" to Graham followers). This means that Graham was effectively buying businesses for nothing. While he had a number of other strategies, this was the typical investment strategy for Graham.

This concept is very important for investors to note, as value investing can provide substantial profits once the market inevitably re-evaluates the stock and ups its price to fair value. It also provides protection on the downside if things don't work out as planned and the business falters. The safety net of buying an underlying business for much less than it is worth was the central theme of Graham's success. When chosen carefully, Graham found that a further decline in these undervalued stocks occurred infrequently.

While many of Graham's students succeeded using their own strategies, they all shared the main idea of the "margin of safety."

Principle #2: Expect Volatility and Profit from ItInvesting in stocks means dealing with volatility. Instead of running for the exits during times of market stress, the smart investor greets downturns as chances to find great investments. Graham illustrated this with the analogy of "Mr. Market," the imaginary business partner of each and every investor. Mr. Market offers investors a daily price quote at which he would either buy an investor out or sell his share of the business. Sometimes, he will be excited about the prospects for the business and quote a high price. Other times, he is depressed about the business's prospects and quotes a low price.

Because the stock market has these same emotions, the lesson here is that you shouldn't let Mr. Market's views dictate your own emotions, or worse, lead you in your investment decisions. Instead, you should form your own estimates of the business's value based on a sound and rational examination of the facts. Furthermore, you should only buy when the price offered makes sense and sell when the price becomes too high. Put another way, the market will fluctuate - sometimes wildly - but rather than fearing volatility, use it to your advantage to get bargains in the market or to sell out when your holdings become way overvalued.

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Here are two strategies that Graham suggested to help mitigate the negative effects of market volatility:

Dollar-Cost Averaging
Dollar-cost averaging is achieved by buying equal dollar amounts of investments at regular intervals. It takes advantage of dips in the price and means that an investor doesn't have to be concerned about buying his or her entire position at the top of the market. Dollar-cost averaging is ideal for passive investors and alleviates them of the responsibility of choosing when and at what price to buy their positions.

SEE: Take Advantage of Dollar-Cost Averaging and Dollar-Cost Averaging Pays

Investing in Stocks and Bonds
Graham recommended distributing one's portfolio evenly between stocks and bonds as a way to preserve capital in market downturns while still achieving growth of capital through bond income. Remember, Graham's philosophy was, first and foremost, to preserve capital, and then to try to make it grow. He suggested having 25-75% of your investments in bonds, and varying this based on market conditions. This strategy had the added advantage of keeping investors from boredom, which leads to the temptation to participate in unprofitable trading (i.e. speculating).

Principle #3: Know What Kind of Investor You Are Graham advised that investors know their investment selves. To illustrate this, he made clear distinctions among various groups operating in the stock market.

Active Vs. PassiveGraham referred to active and passive investors as "enterprising investors" and "defensive investors."

You only have two real choices: The first choice is to make a serious commitment in time and energy to become a good investor who equates the quality and amount of hands-on research with the expected return. If this isn't your cup of tea, then be content to get a passive ( possibly lower) return but with much less time and work. Graham turned the academic notion of "risk = return" on its head. For him, "Work = Return." The more work you put into your investments, the higher your return should be.

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If you have neither the time nor the inclination to do quality research on your investments, then investing in an index is a good alternative. Graham said that the defensive investor could get an average return by simply buying the 30 stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in equal amounts. Both Graham and Buffett said that getting even an average return - for example, equaling the return of the S&P 500 - is more of an accomplishment than it might seem. The fallacy that many people buy into, according to Graham, is that if it's so easy to get an average return with little or no work (through indexing), then just a little more work should yield a slightly higher return. The reality is that most people who try this end up doing much worse than average.

In modern terms, the defensive investor would be an investor in index funds of both stocks and bonds. In essence, they own the entire market, benefiting from the areas that perform the best without trying to predict those areas ahead of time. In doing so, an investor is virtually guaranteed the market's return and avoids doing worse than average by just letting the stock market's overall results dictate long-term returns. According to Graham, beating the market is much easier said than done, and many investors still find they don't beat the market.

Speculator Vs. InvestorNot all people in the stock market are investors. Graham believed that it was critical for people to determine whether they were investors or speculators. The difference is simple: an investor looks at a stock as part of a business and the stockholder as the owner of the business, while the speculator views himself as playing with expensive pieces of paper, with no intrinsic value. For the speculator, value is only determined by what someone will pay for the asset. To paraphrase Graham, there is intelligent speculating as well as intelligent investing - just be sure you understand which you are good at.

The Bottom LineGraham served as the first great teacher of the investment discipline and his basic ideas are timeless and essential for long-term success. He bought into the notion of buying stocks based on the underlying value of a business and turned it into a science at a time when almost all investors viewed stocks as speculative. If you want to improve your investing skills, it doesn't hurt to learn from the best. Graham continues to prove his worth through his disciples, such as Warren Buffett, who have made a habit of beating the market.

Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/07/grahamprinciples.asp#ixzz28UVLHfnn

source: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/07/grahamprinciples.asp#axzz27YfS3F7h