Thursday, July 26, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
Accomplish Your Objectives
Accomplish Your Objectives By leading the Highway
If you want to start playing a bigger game, you'll want to carefully read this short article. I'm going to share with you some simple, yet profound principles to help make some amazing changes.
If there is any area of your life that is in a state of lack, you are simply missing some information. Once you gain enough knowledge on any subject, you become capable of handling that particular area.
If you're having a hard time with increasing your net worth or accumulating wealth, you're missing information on the subject of wealth accumulation.
If you're having a hard time with your business or career, you're missing information about improving your business or career.
If you're having relationship problems, you're missing information about how to find and maintain better relationships.
And, the list can go on and on.
Our company is committed to providing information on a wide variety of topics to help individuals diminish their confusion and gain more control over their lives. Isn't it funny, there really is information that will help you play a bigger game with greater success, and yet, many good hearted people will not take the action necessary to get it?
Confusion and chaos are not part of a normal life. Confusion and chaos are indicators of disorder in life. If a person is experiencing disorder, they simply need to learn how to put the pieces together to gain control.
Life doesn't improve on its own. The only way a person's life improves is by the person stepping up and declaring I've had enough--now I want more. At that point, our products and programs can help you gain the necessary information to live more prosperously.
Is it time to extend your limits and create a better version of yourself?
I've dedicated my life to serving people with my research, discoveries, books, and programs. All I have done was accumulate worthless information until it is in the hands of people using it to improve their lives.
Learn well. Learn quickly. Live Better.
Sex is a stress buster. It relaxes and re-energizes you. Sex frees one from the strain and tension that one might go through in one's professional or personal life, naturally.
During the sexual act, the body produces neuro chemicals called endorphins. One benefits from their release during the point of orgasm. The body produces this 'natural morphine' that alters one's mood, thereby ensuring that it switches to a relaxed mode.
But, there is a flip side. Some use sex as a device to relieve stress as opposed to enjoying the act which is the real purpose. As sexologist Dr. Rajendra Sathe explains, "People use sex or even masturbation as a stress buster. It does work well, and allows you to get over the tensions and relaxes you. But this is not why you should perform sex." He adds, "The real idea behind sexual intercourse should be enjoyment and the pleasure of being with your sweetheart rather than releasing tensions. It is not beneficial in the long run. Many use alcohol as a stress-buster, and end up getting addicted to it. A similar thing can happen with sex."
If you want to start playing a bigger game, you'll want to carefully read this short article. I'm going to share with you some simple, yet profound principles to help make some amazing changes.
If there is any area of your life that is in a state of lack, you are simply missing some information. Once you gain enough knowledge on any subject, you become capable of handling that particular area.
If you're having a hard time with increasing your net worth or accumulating wealth, you're missing information on the subject of wealth accumulation.
If you're having a hard time with your business or career, you're missing information about improving your business or career.
If you're having relationship problems, you're missing information about how to find and maintain better relationships.
And, the list can go on and on.
Our company is committed to providing information on a wide variety of topics to help individuals diminish their confusion and gain more control over their lives. Isn't it funny, there really is information that will help you play a bigger game with greater success, and yet, many good hearted people will not take the action necessary to get it?
Confusion and chaos are not part of a normal life. Confusion and chaos are indicators of disorder in life. If a person is experiencing disorder, they simply need to learn how to put the pieces together to gain control.
Life doesn't improve on its own. The only way a person's life improves is by the person stepping up and declaring I've had enough--now I want more. At that point, our products and programs can help you gain the necessary information to live more prosperously.
Is it time to extend your limits and create a better version of yourself?
I've dedicated my life to serving people with my research, discoveries, books, and programs. All I have done was accumulate worthless information until it is in the hands of people using it to improve their lives.
Learn well. Learn quickly. Live Better.
Sex is a stress buster. It relaxes and re-energizes you. Sex frees one from the strain and tension that one might go through in one's professional or personal life, naturally.
During the sexual act, the body produces neuro chemicals called endorphins. One benefits from their release during the point of orgasm. The body produces this 'natural morphine' that alters one's mood, thereby ensuring that it switches to a relaxed mode.
But, there is a flip side. Some use sex as a device to relieve stress as opposed to enjoying the act which is the real purpose. As sexologist Dr. Rajendra Sathe explains, "People use sex or even masturbation as a stress buster. It does work well, and allows you to get over the tensions and relaxes you. But this is not why you should perform sex." He adds, "The real idea behind sexual intercourse should be enjoyment and the pleasure of being with your sweetheart rather than releasing tensions. It is not beneficial in the long run. Many use alcohol as a stress-buster, and end up getting addicted to it. A similar thing can happen with sex."
Inner Peace
Inner peace is the result of a quiet mind. An inner quietness that allows you to see yourself and the world around you as it is, without any aggression, desires, frustration or stress you can feel content simply just to be. You do not need to be rich, successful, pretty or popular to feel this inner calm all you need is to be able to take control of your mind and stop the constant thoughts that repeat themselves over and over again.
Inner peace is not a fleeting emotion it is a state of mind. However people who find this peace do not simply live every moment with a smile on their face, They still get ill and feel sorrow as they are still human! The only difference is that there is a vast comforting space around such difficult times and an inner knowing that such times will pass. There is also a very light uplifting and joyful feeling towards others and yourself which makes you feel complete. People who achieve this inner quietness generally show a kindness towards all living things and a deep appreciation for the natural world around them.
Finding peace of mind is not something you can buy over the internet or achieve over night. It is a gradual process of self discovery and understanding. It is the most important journey you could ever set out on. It takes great dedication and a genuine thirst to want to be peaceful not only for yourself but for others as well. The good news is that anybody can achieve a peaceful mind if they wish. In fact you already have a peaceful mind it is just covered over in layers of disturbing and repetitive thoughts.
The first step is the most important and that is a genuine feeling to want this peace, this wanting needs to be more than a mere curiosity as the spiritual journey ahead is a long path that demands a great deal of inner strength and determination but it can be achieved by anyone whose thirst for inner contentment is strong enough. It does not matter what religious background you come from our needs as human beings are the same.
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Democracy and Concern for Others in the Society
Many pundits and politicians from both sides of the aisle have raised all the usual and obvious issues and priorities: get our economic house in order; control debt and entitlements; reduce unemployment; stop foreclosures; reverse staggering inequities; invest in infrastructure; simplify the tax code; establish energy security; trim military spending; address climate change; protect social programs; tighten financial regulations; invest in skills and technology; resolve immigration issues; encourage innovators and entrepreneurs; incentivize new businesses; support scientific research and advancement; encourage saving and investment; curb the growth of entitlement programs; provide a basic safety net; and more. If you follow the game, you’ve heard or read it all before.
Why haven’t our leaders accomplish these tasks? That is their responsibility. That is why they are elected, paid, and pensioned. These are not terribly complex issues. It’s truly not rocket science, as the saying goes. Many solutions abound from expert and diverse sources. The problem is not with the difficulty of the issues, the difficulty lies in intransigent partisans. Too many think that only their watch tells the right time. It’s the arrogance and utter failure of rigid ideology. It’s the ignorance of partisan politics and partisan politicians.
Rigid ideology is one of eight structural, systemic, or procedural problems that plague our country, have decimated our decision making process, and thereby our democratic form of government. Our process is defunct. The combined impacts of our modern self-created obstacles have distanced us from that which was envisioned for America. If the source is polluted, the stream cannot be pure. Our source and our stream are polluted. The issues below are long overdue for common-sense solutions if we are again to have a government of, by, and for the people that nurtures shared responsibility and shared prosperity.
1. Get the Founder’s Vision Back
Our forefathers, at the gravest personal risks, established the extraordinary form of government that we have inherited. It is a process that emanated from humankind’s natural instinct to be free and evolve – an irrepressible force. The ideals of democracy are the ideals of humanity. Out of the freedom afforded by that foundation grew a strong and prosperous nation.
Rather than respect the integrity of our democratic process, we have drifted away from it and damaged its potential. We have eroded that which has given us our strength.
We have forgotten – if we were ever aware of – the vision of shared prosperity and how to achieve it. Those lawmakers who don’t understand this live in the wrong country and have no business being involved in making laws.
Our form of government, democracy, is one in which political power resides in all the people. As described by Abraham Lincoln, it’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” not government of some people, by some people, forsome people. It recognizes the value of widespread participation, broad-based input, and shared opportunity. It invites the richness of diversity.
Democracy implies responsibility. Those who benefit from its opportunities must share in the protection of its integrity. Democracy implies concern for others. It is within the mystery of giving that the human spirit is set free to soar to its highest levels. Democracy represents an appreciation for life, a celebration of diversity, an acceptance of oneself, a rekindling of the human spirit, and the road to peace, freedom, and security.
Democracy says, “Do not look only to yourself and like-minded for answers, rather avail yourself of that which others have to offer, for life is diverse.” Democracy says, “Do not be rigid or inflexible, be open and adaptable for life is dynamic and alive.” Democracy says, “Do not compete with each other, cooperate for life presents challenges enough.” Democracy says, “Do not make participation exclusive, make participation inclusive, for life is all-encompassing.” Democracy says, “Do not gravitate toward extremes, seek moderation for life requires balance.” Democracy says, “Do not represent only those who have influence, represent all for life demands equality.” Finally, Democracy says, “Do not tamper with this process for it is your lifeblood.
Seven Words That Can Change The World - Part 1 from Joe Simonetta on Vimeo.
”Babies are smarter than you think
In the past 30 years we've learned that babies and young children know more and learn more than we would ever have thought possible.
Philosophers and psychologists, even the great Swiss child-development theorist Jean Piaget, once thought that babies and young children were irrational, solipsistic, illogical and amoral -- unable to take the perspective of others or understand cause and effect. But new scientific techniques have taught us that even the youngest infants already know a great deal about objects, people and language, and learn even more. In fact, they have implicit learning methods that are as powerful and intelligent as those of the smartest scientists.
They can unconsciously do complicated statistical analyses and their everyday play turns out, remarkably, to be very much like a set of scientific experiments. And I, at least, think that they may actually experience the world more vividly than we do.
Here's just one example of this new research:
One of the hardest problems for all of us is figuring out what other people want, think and feel. It's especially difficult when what they want is different from what we want ourselves. Traditionally, psychologists thought that children couldn't take the perspective of other people until they were 8 or so. But my student Betty Repacholi and I gave 15- and 18-month-olds two bowls of food, one of raw broccoli and one of goldfish crackers.
The children, even in Berkeley, liked the crackers and didn't like the broccoli. With the children watching, Betty tasted a little food from each bowl and made either a disgusted face or a happy face. Then she again gave the babies both bowls of food, put out her hand and said, "Can you give me some?" The 18-month-olds, just barely walking and talking, gave her the crackers if she had acted as if she liked the crackers and the broccoli if she had acted as if she liked the broccoli.
TED.com: Learning from a barefoot movement
These very young children had the profound understanding that someone else -- Betty, in this case -- might have a different perspective on the world, or at least on broccoli, and they helped her get what she wanted. The 15-month-olds, on the other hand, only gave her the crackers. This suggested something even more remarkable: Babies somehow learned this deep fact about human nature between 15 and 18 months. Other studies have shown that this kind of learning is the result of statistical analyses and the everyday experimentation we call play.
This work was inspired by purely scientific, and even philosophical, questions. How can we human beings ever learn as much as we do from the few photons hitting our retinas and the air disturbances that hit our eardrums? How is it that the few genes that separate us from chimpanzees could lead to such big differences in the way we think and live? How can we ever know what someone else thinks or feels?
It turns out, surprisingly enough, that studying babies and young children can hold answers to those big questions. In fact, from an evolutionary point of view it seems that our exceptionally long childhood may play a crucial role in many of the abilities that make us distinctly human.
But this basic science also has implications for what we do. Science has demonstrated just how crucially important the very early years are. And yet more than 20% of American children still grow up in poverty, and preschool teachers are paid less than dogcatchers. We have fewer programs of parental leave or subsidies for childcare than exist in almost every other civilized country.
TED.com: John Hunter on the World Peace Game
The programs we do have to help support and encourage early childhood learning, like Head Start, are facing cuts, even though studies show that in the long run they have the best payoffs of any public investment. The scientific work on the way babies learn demonstrates that neglecting our youngest children is self-destructive. Our moral intuition ought to tell us it's just plain wrong.
On the other hand, when parents, or even policy-makers hear about how much babies learn, they often conclude that what we need to do is teach them more. Parents spend literally millions of dollars on "educational" toys, videos and programs, that they hope will somehow give their children an edge.
Parents and policy-makers pressure teachers to make preschools more and more academic, with more reading drills and less time for play and pretend. But the science suggests this is also wrong. Very young children learn best from their everyday experiences of people and things, and from being able to playfully explore the world in a safe setting with people who love and care for them. Those settings can't be mass manufactured or provided on the cheap, and the learning they lead to can't be simply measured on standardized tests.
The science of early childhood is constantly surprising -- who would guess that 2-year-olds can use statistics to test hypotheses? But actually the policy implications fit what most preschool teachers know intuitively: Children thrive when they are loved, and they learn when they explore. The real mystery is why we can't get the politicians to see it, too.
Why computer voices are mostly female
Why computer voices are mostly female
To most owners of the new iPhone, the voice-activated feature called Siri is more than a virtual "assistant" who can help schedule appointments, find a good nearby pizza or tell you if it's going to rain.
She's also a she.
Siri answers questions in a part-human, part-robot voice that's deep, briskly efficient and distinctly female. (At least in the U.S. and four other countries. In France and the UK, Siri is male.)
People describe the app using female pronouns. Her gender has even prompted some users to flood blogs and online forums with sexually suggestive questions for Siri such as "What are you wearing?" (Siri's baffled response: "Why do people keep asking me this?")
The fuss over Siri's sex also raises a larger question: From voice-mail systems to GPS devices to Siri and beyond, why are so many computerized voices female?
One answer may lie in biology. Scientific studies have shown that people generally find women's voices more pleasing than men's.
"It's much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone likes," said Stanford University Professor Clifford Nass, author of "The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships." "It's a well-established phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices."
HAL, the homicidal artificial intelligence in "2001: A space Odyssey," may have scared manufacturers away from male automated voices.
Research suggests this preference starts as early as the womb, Nass said. He cites a study in which fetuses were found to react to the sound of their mother's voice but not to other female voices. The fetuses showed no distinct reaction to their father's voice, however.
Another answer lies in history. According to some sources, the use of female voices in navigation devices dates back to World War II, when women's voices were employed in airplane cockpits because they stood out among the male pilots. And telephone operators have traditionally been female, making people accustomed to getting assistance from a disembodied woman's voice.
When automakers were first installing automated voice prompts in cars ("your door is ajar") decades ago, their consumer research found that people overwhelmingly preferred female voices to male ones, said Tim Bajarin, a Silicon Valley analyst and president of Creative Strategies Inc.
This may explain why in almost all GPS navigation systems on the market, the default voice is female. One notable exception has been Germany, where BMW was forced to recall a female-voiced navigation system on its 5 Series cars in the late 1990s after being flooded with calls from German men saying they refused to take directions from a woman.
"Cultural stereotypes run deep," said Nass, who details the BMW episode in his book.
Voice casting
Most companies that produce automated voices hold auditions for voice actors and collect recordings of them speaking. Then they invite focus groups to listen to the recordings and rate the voices on how well they convey certain attributes: warmth, friendliness, competence and so on.
"It's casting," Nass said. "It's something Hollywood has known for a long, long time."
Look no further than examples of automated or artificial-intelligence voices in sci-fi movies and TV shows. Voices of authority or menace tend to be male: the homicidal HAL 9000 computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey," the computer program in "WarGames," or Auto, the spaceship's autopilot function in "Wall-E." More subservient talking machines, such as the onboard computer from the "Star Trek" TV series, skew female.
Bajarin, the Silicon Valley analyst, believes that more computerized voices would be masculine if not for the associations with HAL, whose malicious intent in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film was made even creepier by his soothing tone.
"A lot of tech companies stayed away from the male voice because of HAL," he said. "I've heard that theory tossed around multiple times." (One prominent exception: The chipper "You've got mail!" voice from AOL's dial-up days.)
What Apple did is absolutely brilliant. They took Siri and gave it more of a personality.
Norman Winarsky
When it comes to consumer applications of computerized voices, the sex of the voice is usually determined by what service or product is employing it. For example, transit systems such as the San Francisco Area's BART often use higher-pitched voices because they are easier to hear over the clatter of the train cars.
Nuance, a Massachusetts-based company that develops speech technologies for Ford vehicles' SYNC system, Amazon e-readers and other clients, creates both male and female voices. It's then up to the client to choose which voice, and gender, best fits their product, said chief creative officer Gary Clayton.
"As these products become part of our everyday lives, there's a huge opportunity for personalization," added Brant Ward, the company's director of advanced speech design. "I could have an approximation of my wife's voice read me a text message in my car."
Siri: Brilliant or sexist?
Siri, the iPhone 4S's voice, grew from a five-year research project that was funded by military agency DARPA and led by SRI International, a Bay Area research institute. The project spawned a company, also called Siri, that launched an iPhone app in February 2010 and was acquired by Apple two months later.
That original Siri voice-to-text app -- powered in part by Nuance's technology -- also worked by people speaking commands into their phones, although it didn't talk back. And it had no gender. In fact, the app was originally conceived to speak in a gender-neutral voice, said Norman Winarsky, vice president of SRI and a co-founder of Siri.
"What Apple did is absolutely brilliant," said Winarsky, who calls speech "the most natural of all human interfaces."
"They took Siri and gave it more of a personality," he said. "It's the first real artificial intelligence working in millions of people's hands."
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on why the company gave Siri a female voice in the U.S. Nor would she say why Siri speaks like a man in the UK, where iPhone 4S owners have swarmed online forums to request a female voice instead. "Eww!! Hope UK gets female voice soon," wrote one commenter. "I don't think anyone in the US cares about male voice option."
Many GPS devices and computer text-to-speech programs now offer multiple voice options. And someday soon, voice-technology experts say, Siri will probably speak in a variety of voices, too.
Until then, some bloggers have wondered: Are computerized female "assistants" sexist?
Not necessarily, said Rebecca Zorach, director of the Social Media Project at the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.
"I think they have to be understood in a broader context in which they're one small piece," she wrote in an e-mail to CNN. "Voices intended to convey authority (such as voice-over narration in films) tend to be male. So yes, probably these compliant female robot voices reinforce gender stereotypes, not just because they serve the user but because the technology itself is about communication and relationships (areas that women are presumed to be good at).
"I wouldn't automatically claim any sexism in individual companies' choices, though. Most such decisions are probably the result of market research, so they may be reflecting gender stereotypes that already exist in the general public."
Zorach listened to some sound clips of Siri online, then e-mailed back again.
"What's interesting to me is how they seem to intentionally make her speech sound artificial -- they could choose to make her speech more seamless and human-like, but they choose instead to highlight the technology," she said. "That makes you aware of how high-tech your gadget is."
To most owners of the new iPhone, the voice-activated feature called Siri is more than a virtual "assistant" who can help schedule appointments, find a good nearby pizza or tell you if it's going to rain.
She's also a she.
Siri answers questions in a part-human, part-robot voice that's deep, briskly efficient and distinctly female. (At least in the U.S. and four other countries. In France and the UK, Siri is male.)
People describe the app using female pronouns. Her gender has even prompted some users to flood blogs and online forums with sexually suggestive questions for Siri such as "What are you wearing?" (Siri's baffled response: "Why do people keep asking me this?")
The fuss over Siri's sex also raises a larger question: From voice-mail systems to GPS devices to Siri and beyond, why are so many computerized voices female?
One answer may lie in biology. Scientific studies have shown that people generally find women's voices more pleasing than men's.
"It's much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone likes," said Stanford University Professor Clifford Nass, author of "The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships." "It's a well-established phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices."
HAL, the homicidal artificial intelligence in "2001: A space Odyssey," may have scared manufacturers away from male automated voices.
Research suggests this preference starts as early as the womb, Nass said. He cites a study in which fetuses were found to react to the sound of their mother's voice but not to other female voices. The fetuses showed no distinct reaction to their father's voice, however.
Another answer lies in history. According to some sources, the use of female voices in navigation devices dates back to World War II, when women's voices were employed in airplane cockpits because they stood out among the male pilots. And telephone operators have traditionally been female, making people accustomed to getting assistance from a disembodied woman's voice.
When automakers were first installing automated voice prompts in cars ("your door is ajar") decades ago, their consumer research found that people overwhelmingly preferred female voices to male ones, said Tim Bajarin, a Silicon Valley analyst and president of Creative Strategies Inc.
This may explain why in almost all GPS navigation systems on the market, the default voice is female. One notable exception has been Germany, where BMW was forced to recall a female-voiced navigation system on its 5 Series cars in the late 1990s after being flooded with calls from German men saying they refused to take directions from a woman.
"Cultural stereotypes run deep," said Nass, who details the BMW episode in his book.
Voice casting
Most companies that produce automated voices hold auditions for voice actors and collect recordings of them speaking. Then they invite focus groups to listen to the recordings and rate the voices on how well they convey certain attributes: warmth, friendliness, competence and so on.
"It's casting," Nass said. "It's something Hollywood has known for a long, long time."
Look no further than examples of automated or artificial-intelligence voices in sci-fi movies and TV shows. Voices of authority or menace tend to be male: the homicidal HAL 9000 computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey," the computer program in "WarGames," or Auto, the spaceship's autopilot function in "Wall-E." More subservient talking machines, such as the onboard computer from the "Star Trek" TV series, skew female.
Bajarin, the Silicon Valley analyst, believes that more computerized voices would be masculine if not for the associations with HAL, whose malicious intent in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film was made even creepier by his soothing tone.
"A lot of tech companies stayed away from the male voice because of HAL," he said. "I've heard that theory tossed around multiple times." (One prominent exception: The chipper "You've got mail!" voice from AOL's dial-up days.)
What Apple did is absolutely brilliant. They took Siri and gave it more of a personality.
Norman Winarsky
When it comes to consumer applications of computerized voices, the sex of the voice is usually determined by what service or product is employing it. For example, transit systems such as the San Francisco Area's BART often use higher-pitched voices because they are easier to hear over the clatter of the train cars.
Nuance, a Massachusetts-based company that develops speech technologies for Ford vehicles' SYNC system, Amazon e-readers and other clients, creates both male and female voices. It's then up to the client to choose which voice, and gender, best fits their product, said chief creative officer Gary Clayton.
"As these products become part of our everyday lives, there's a huge opportunity for personalization," added Brant Ward, the company's director of advanced speech design. "I could have an approximation of my wife's voice read me a text message in my car."
Siri: Brilliant or sexist?
Siri, the iPhone 4S's voice, grew from a five-year research project that was funded by military agency DARPA and led by SRI International, a Bay Area research institute. The project spawned a company, also called Siri, that launched an iPhone app in February 2010 and was acquired by Apple two months later.
That original Siri voice-to-text app -- powered in part by Nuance's technology -- also worked by people speaking commands into their phones, although it didn't talk back. And it had no gender. In fact, the app was originally conceived to speak in a gender-neutral voice, said Norman Winarsky, vice president of SRI and a co-founder of Siri.
"What Apple did is absolutely brilliant," said Winarsky, who calls speech "the most natural of all human interfaces."
"They took Siri and gave it more of a personality," he said. "It's the first real artificial intelligence working in millions of people's hands."
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on why the company gave Siri a female voice in the U.S. Nor would she say why Siri speaks like a man in the UK, where iPhone 4S owners have swarmed online forums to request a female voice instead. "Eww!! Hope UK gets female voice soon," wrote one commenter. "I don't think anyone in the US cares about male voice option."
Many GPS devices and computer text-to-speech programs now offer multiple voice options. And someday soon, voice-technology experts say, Siri will probably speak in a variety of voices, too.
Until then, some bloggers have wondered: Are computerized female "assistants" sexist?
Not necessarily, said Rebecca Zorach, director of the Social Media Project at the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.
"I think they have to be understood in a broader context in which they're one small piece," she wrote in an e-mail to CNN. "Voices intended to convey authority (such as voice-over narration in films) tend to be male. So yes, probably these compliant female robot voices reinforce gender stereotypes, not just because they serve the user but because the technology itself is about communication and relationships (areas that women are presumed to be good at).
"I wouldn't automatically claim any sexism in individual companies' choices, though. Most such decisions are probably the result of market research, so they may be reflecting gender stereotypes that already exist in the general public."
Zorach listened to some sound clips of Siri online, then e-mailed back again.
"What's interesting to me is how they seem to intentionally make her speech sound artificial -- they could choose to make her speech more seamless and human-like, but they choose instead to highlight the technology," she said. "That makes you aware of how high-tech your gadget is."
5 Things to Enjoy in Life
1. Shake Things Up
"Awe is a response to things you don't have a mental template for," says psychologist Michelle Shiota. "You have a mental template for getting up in the morning, drinking your coffee, and driving to work, but not for listening to a piece of music you haven't heard before or sightseeing in Thailand."
2. Go Outside
Nature is the ultimate source of awe. "Just being outside can conjure up feelings of wonder and give you perspective," says psychologist Dacher Keltner. "Or better yet, plan a hike or a camping trip in a spot that's known for its vast spaces or natural beauty."
3. Crowdsource
Spending time in large groups, whether at rock concerts or political rallies, often stirs feelings of awe. "Ecstatic social experiences have a way of lining everybody up emotionally, and that's very powerful," says Keltner.
4. Turn Your Gaze Upward
Whether you're checking out Mars Rover images at NASA.gov or just looking for constellations in the backyard, "if there's anything that illuminates just how much we still don't know about the universe, it's looking up at the nighttime sky," says Shiota.
5. Find a Daily Dose of Inspiration
Maria Popova, known by her Twitter followers as @Brainpicker, posts a stream of awe-inspiring images on her feed: slow-mo footage of a lightning strike, a sunset seen from space, sculptures carved into a pencil point. "I want people to stop a second and go, 'How amazing is that,'" she says.
Stay Inspired
"Awe is a response to things you don't have a mental template for," says psychologist Michelle Shiota. "You have a mental template for getting up in the morning, drinking your coffee, and driving to work, but not for listening to a piece of music you haven't heard before or sightseeing in Thailand."
2. Go Outside
Nature is the ultimate source of awe. "Just being outside can conjure up feelings of wonder and give you perspective," says psychologist Dacher Keltner. "Or better yet, plan a hike or a camping trip in a spot that's known for its vast spaces or natural beauty."
3. Crowdsource
Spending time in large groups, whether at rock concerts or political rallies, often stirs feelings of awe. "Ecstatic social experiences have a way of lining everybody up emotionally, and that's very powerful," says Keltner.
4. Turn Your Gaze Upward
Whether you're checking out Mars Rover images at NASA.gov or just looking for constellations in the backyard, "if there's anything that illuminates just how much we still don't know about the universe, it's looking up at the nighttime sky," says Shiota.
5. Find a Daily Dose of Inspiration
Maria Popova, known by her Twitter followers as @Brainpicker, posts a stream of awe-inspiring images on her feed: slow-mo footage of a lightning strike, a sunset seen from space, sculptures carved into a pencil point. "I want people to stop a second and go, 'How amazing is that,'" she says.
Stay Inspired
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