天黑黑

"......the world's most cherished places are those that have changed the least over the centuries......"

 

 

Avery Johnson was dismissed as coach of the Dallas Mavericks the day after a disappointing season ended with a first-round playoff exit in New Orleans. Incredible highs and heartbreaking lows marked the tenure of Johnson, who leaves as the most successful coach in franchise history by many measures. 

Johnson became the eighth coach in team history on March 19, 2005 and posted a record of 194-70 (.735) during the regular season. He led the Mavs to the playoffs four consecutive years, including a trip to the 2006 NBA Finals. His postseason record of 23-24 (.489) included 12 losses in the last 16 games.

 “You’ve got to take the good with the bad,” Johnson said Tuesday night after the 99-94 loss to the Hornets that ended the series. “That is called life. There are a lot of highs and lows in coaching, but the highs outweigh the lows. The rewards outweigh anything. “I’ve been through much worse. There are a lot of people in bad shape and I am not one of them.”

In his first full season as head coach (2005-06), Johnson guided the Mavericks to 60 wins and their first appearance in the NBA Finals. He became the fastest coach to reach 50 wins (62 games), coached the Western Conference All-Star team and was named the NBA’s Coach of the Year.Johnson led Dallas to a franchise-record 67 wins, the NBA’s best record, the following season. The mark was also the sixth best in league history. Following a 10-0 month of February, Johnson garnered Western Conference Coach of the Month honors, an award he won three times in his career. This past season, Johnson became the fastest coach in NBA history to reach 150 wins with a victory over Memphis on November 17, 2007. He accomplished that feat in just 191 games.

Art Garcia | Mavs.com

Those approaching middle age like to think that life begins at 40, but research suggests that just a few years later we are at our most depressed. Scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom who studied happiness and depression levels in 80 countries, have pinpointed 44 as the most unhappy year of life. But they say we shouldn't get too down about it, as many 70-year-olds are as happy and healthy as young adults.

Happiness is a U-shaped curve according to this research. As middle-age approaches the average person will slide down the U to hit rock bottom at the age of 44.They'll be stuck in that trough for quite a few years but by the time they are in their 50s, assuming their physical health is still intact, their happiness levels will go up and risk of depression go down.

Andrew Oswald is professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England. Along with a colleague in the US he analysed data on happiness and depression levels in more than 80 countries, including Australia. He says there was a remarkable uniformity in the findings which applied to men, women, single and married people, with or without children, and to the rich and the poor."We didn't expect to see this over and over again, in many, many dozens of countries and we didn't expect to see it so clearly in mental health measures, depression measures, say, as well as in broader happiness and simple life satisfaction," he said.

Knowing our limits

Professor Oswald says the most plausible explanation for the U-curve is to do with the recognition in middle-age of our limitations."[The cause of the downward trend is] probably start your life expecting too much of yourself being the general manager, being the Australian cricket team, winning a Nobel prize, whatever it is," he said. "And you discover as you go through your 30s and don't achieve that and that's a painful realisation. If you can let that go in middle-age, maybe that's the secret of why our people in this study become happier and mentally healthier."

He says that it is possible that people who are incredibly high achievers will not experience that trough at the age of 44 or thereabouts. "I suppose the problem with high achievers is I suspect their aspirations run even further ahead," he said. "You know, two or three people have actually won the Nobel prize twice. I suppose some Test captains go on for 20 years and so on. "In any case those are too rare, those individuals, so I would just go back to our data. The average person in Australia or Britain or America, most countries, will follow a U-shape in mental health through their own life course."

Better with age

Professor Ian Hickie, from the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney, agrees that life gets better in the late 40s. He says ageing is quite a good thing in mental health terms."Certainly the evidence we've got is if there is a time in your life you're going to be miserable and complain about it, it's mid-life," he said. "When you're young you're hopeful, you're optimistic, despite your difficulties and as you age what you have to look forward to is actually better mental health. "Contrary to most people's ideas, getting older doesn't get with going more miserable and having more troubles, it actually correlates with better coping with life and feeling better about your life. It seems the middle years are the killers. You just got to survive the middle years.

At age 48, Professor Hickie says he thinks he's past the worst point in his life."I feel I am just going out the other end and from here on in life's a breeze," he said.Victor Hugo said 40 was the old age of youth and 50 the youth of old age. And Professor Oswald also stresses that there is a positive message to take from the lesson of the U-curve of happiness.

"Just generally this research is, I hope, useful to somebody going through their 40s, maybe finding it hard," he said. "You are completely normal and if you stick in there then on average life will get better through your remaining decades."

So just think of that U-shape as a smile.

You may be taking drugs every day and not even realize it. A five-month investigation by The Associated Press found low levels of pharmaceutical drugs -- including antibiotics, mood stabilizers and sex hormones -- in the drinking water of at least 41 million Americans.

The AP's investigative team found traces of drugs in 24 of the 62 major metropolitan water systems it checked. Have a glass of water in Philadelphia, for example, and you're drinking tiny amounts of at least 56 pharmaceuticals or their byproducts. Lake Meade, which is about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas, supplies drinking water for Nevada, Arizona and California, and testing found trace levels of birth control, steroids, narcotics and other drugs in that water supply. "It's a wake-up call for America," said Richard Pienciak, the AP's national investigative editor. "The unanswered question at this point is whether 50 years of exposure to small amounts of pharmaceuticals will have long-term adverse effects on the human body. "

How do all those drugs get in the water? People's bodies don't absorb all the medication they take, so some of it is excreted and flushed into the sewers. Sewage treatment plants don't remove the drugs. The treated water then flows into lakes, rivers and reservoirs, and finally to drinking water plants, which typically don't screen for drugs. Scientists are seeing effects on animals. Some male fish, for example, have developed female traits and have reproductive problems. Scientists believe the cause may be exposure to human birth control hormones. "There is no way that having pharmaceutical drugs in the water supply is going to be of any benefit," said David Carpenter, of the Institute for Health and Environment at the State University of New York in Albany.

In addition, with so many drugs in the water supply, people are ingesting them in combinations never intended. Medical experts worry that overexposure to antibiotics can lead to antibiotic resistance and an inability to fight infection. The pharmaceutical industry points out the levels of drugs detected are minuscule. It says the amount of medication in the water supply is the equivalent of a single small pill in an Olympic-size swimming pool.

"No studies have demonstrated any effects on human health," said Marjorie Powell, an attorney representing the pharmaceutical industry. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement that it is concerned about "a growing number of pharmaceuticals in water." Still, the EPA says water in the United States is some of the safest in the world.

There is some new advice to avoid exacerbating the problem. Instead of flushing unneeded medications down the toilet, the new recommendation is to discard drugs by diluting them with water or coffee grounds, putting them in a tight container and throwing them in the garbage. The best way to filter drugs out of tap water is called reverse osmosis, but it's considered too expensive for treatment plants to implement without proof that the pharmaceuticals in the water are a real health threat. Reverse osmosis home kits are available from major plumbing supply outlets. Typical home water filters aren't designed to filter out drugs.

生活是不是就是这样的.一些破事,一些好事,加一些平凡的事.一切的一切都是暂时的, 而我们能做的也就是"不以物喜，不以己悲".