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MONA LISA SMILE: The roles you were born to fill

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MONA LISA SMILE: The roles you were born to fill

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Having children is the most destructive thing a person can to do to the environment, according to a new study.

Researchers from Lund University in Sweden found having one fewer child per family can save "an average of 58.6 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions per year".

Eating meat, driving a car and travelling by aeroplane made up the list of the most polluting things people can do to the planet.

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But having children was top, according to the new study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

"A US family who chooses to have one fewer child would provide the same level of emissions reductions as 684 teenagers who choose to adopt comprehensive recycling for the rest of their lives," it said.

Lead author Seth Wynes told The Local: "We found there are four actions that could result in substantial decreases in an individual's carbon footprint: eating a plant-based diet, avoiding air travel, living car free and having smaller families.

"For example, living car-free saves about 2.4 tonnes of C02 equivalent per year, while eating a plant-based diet saves 0.8 tonnes of C02 equivalent a year."

The paper, which studied analysed 39-peer reviewed journals studying the environmental policies of several major economies, found most governments focused on incremental changes which have "much smaller potential to reduce emissions".

Although governments focused on increasing recycling schemes and using energy efficient light bulbs, these methods were between four and eight times less effective than eating a plant-based diet.

Researchers found that avoiding one trans-Atlantic flight per year can save between 0.7 and 2.8 tonnes of C02 equivalent per year (depending on the distance travelled, amount of luggage on board and how many passengers on the flight) whereas recycling will typically only save 0.21 tonnes of C02 equivalent per year.

This means recycling is between three and 13 times less likely to save the planet than avoiding that extra flight at its heaviest.

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Having children is bad for the environment, say researchers

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Having children is the most destructive thing a person can to do to the environment, according to a new study. Researchers from Lund University in Sweden found having one fewer child per family can save "an average of 58.6 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions per year".

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In recent years, the relationship between parents and children has profoundly changed.

For one thing, the decision about whether or not to have children is voluntary. Electing not to have children is no longer stigmatized in the way it was. "Child-free" adults are no longer casually dismissed as shallow and self-absorbed.

As a result, for most adults, the decision to have a child is deliberate and purposeful. Having a child represents a self-conscious decision to become a mother or father and to assume the responsibilities that parenting entails.

Parenting itself has become problematic in a way that differs sharply from the past. In today's society, it is impossible to raise a child unselfconsciously. Bombarded with conflicting advice about the relative merits of breastfeeding versus bottle feeding, crib sleeping and co-sleeping, early versus delayed toilet training, each parent must decide for her- or himself how best to rear a child. Labels abound: attachment parenting, natural parenting, positive parenting, slow parenting.

Lacking the clear and authoritative guidelines set by earlier childrearing experts like Dr. Benjamin Spock, moms and dads must decide whether to be strict or lenient, achievement and performance focused or indulgent, pushy or laid back. Today's parents receive sharply conflicting messages about whether or not to prioritize academics and other accomplishments or, instead, give their children free time, freedom, and free range to explore their environment.

At the same time, parents have grown far more sensitive to the risks that their children face, both physical and psychological. Anxiety has become the hallmark of contemporary parenting. Even before their child is born, prenatal testing leads parents to worry about potential birth defects to an extent absent in the past. This is followed by a preoccupation with children's safety.

Stoking parental fears are sensationalistic media accounts of the risks posed by pedophiles and the prevalence of stranger abduction of children, as well as reports about the potential perils posed by bullying, vaccines, additives, and various environmental hazards.

The result: The geography of childhood has contracted, indoor time has mounted, and adult supervision of children's activities has greatly increased.

Equally important is a profound reversal in parental expectations. Early in time, parents expected their children to love them. Today, in stark contrast, parents seek to ensure that their children love them. To that end, many seek to ensure that their children are happy and never bored.

As mothers and fathers devote more time to work, a sense of guilt also colors parent-child relations. Even though recent research indicates that parents actually spend more face-to-face time with their children than did their 1950s counterparts, mothers and fathers worry that they are not able to provide the kind of safe, secure childhood they themselves enjoyed, involving a great deal of free unstructured play with neighborhood friends. Consequently, many overcompensate.

Underlying the shift in parent-child relationships are a raft of historic shifts. Delayed parenthood, better educated parents, and reduced birthrates all lead parents to increase their fixation upon individual children. In a society in which marital relationships have grown much more fragile, many parents look to their children as a source of permanent attachment and emotional fulfillment. The increase in single parenthood and two-earner households has also altered parent-child relations, since children in these settings must take on greater responsibility for self-care and for helping out than did those in homes with full-time mothers.

Perhaps the biggest force for change in parent-child relationships lies in parents' worries about their ability to transmit their class status to their children. As the economy has grown more competitive and entrepreneurial, many parents seek to give their child a leg up, and as a result invest more time and resources in enrichment activities: reading to their children, conversing with them, and providing toys and activities aimed at enhancing their development.

Today, parenting does not end at 18 or 21. Most parents not only expect to contribute to their children's college education, but to its aftermath: To supporting them during their twenties and helping them, later, in making a down payment on a house.

For all the disdainful talk about hovering, overinvolved, and overprotective helicopter parents, the fact is that parents today are, on average, closer to their adult children than in the past. Parent-child hierarchy has given way, to a remarkable extent, to a relationship that is closer, more intimate, and more egalitarian than ever existed in the past. If it has become harder for some children to cut the umbilical cord and establish an independent identity, and if it has become more difficult for some parents to let go and grant their kids a fully autonomous life, for most, the ongoing bond between child and parent proves to be a crucial source of meaning and personal happiness.

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In recent years, the relationship between parents and children has profoundly changed. For one thing, the decision about whether or not to have children is voluntary. Electing not to have children is no longer stigmatized in the way it was. "Child-free" adults are no longer casually dismissed as shallow and self-absorbed.

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A quick online search of almost any celebrity will reveal a litany of stories and images - from red carpet appearances to what they eat for breakfast. These may have been published and shared by thousands of people - and seen by many more.
The media interest in publishing such stories and images is clear, but digital technology means that celebrities' personal and professional lives are now scrutinised more than ever before. This poses the question: do celebrities have a right to privacy, and if so, how far are we going to protect it?

Privacy and Public Interest - A Balancing Act

The Human Rights Convention guarantees everyone's right to privacy, as well as their right to free expression. Since the Human Rights Act came into force in 2000, people have been able to assert these rights before the UK courts. However, both rights are qualified (or restricted) rights - meaning they can be limited in certain situations. For example, if a story is in the public interest, a judge may rule that the celebrity's right to privacy should be limited for the greater purpose of informing the public.

In the case of celebrity stories or photographs, Articles 8 (privacy) and 10 (expression) often come into conflict. The rights to privacy and free expression are of equal importance legally, so it can be a challenge to strike a balance between them.

Kate Middleton: An Example

In 2012, topless photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge appeared on the front cover of a French magazine. The pictures, showing the Royal couple relaxing at a private villa, had been taken from a distance with a long-lens camera. A Palace statement described the use of the images as "reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales". The magazine nonetheless argued there was a public interest in the relationship of future heirs to the throne.

The French court decided in favour of the Duke and Duchess and awarded compensation, showing that a distinction should be made between what the public are interested in and what is actually in the public interest. While many people may wonder what Royalty get up to on holiday, this is not enough to justify the invasion of privacy that the taking of clandestine photos leads to.

The Dilemma

Image credit: stanhua / Flickr.com

Unlike private citizens, celebrities need to attract media attention in order to promote their work - perhaps their latest film or your favourite Netflix series. This leads people, and often newspapers, to question whether they are in any position to criticise the media attention that surrounds them. JK Rowling has described a common attitude of "you're famous, you're asking for it".

An example is found in the case concerning the actors Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The couple had sold the exclusive right to publish their wedding photos to OK! Magazine. However, Hello! Magazine had secretly obtained photos and published them first.

Because the couple had sold the rights to publish photos, this presented a tension in asserting their right to privacy before the courts. At the UK High Court, Mr Justice Lindsay ruled that the intrusion on their privacy was not justified. However, in a blow to right to privacy campaigners, he stressed that his ruling was based on the grounds of commercial confidentiality, not the right to privacy.

New Problems

The real problem may no longer lie with newspaper editors in print, but with private individuals online.

In a case known as an injunction was granted and upheld to prevent the publication of a story detailing the sexual encounters of an individual married to someone in the entertainment industry. Lord Mance, one of the Supreme Court Justices, confirmed that "there is no public interest (however much it may be of interest to some members of the public) in publishing kiss-and-tell stories" and nor is there any "right to invade privacy by publishing them".

People were quick to point out that had been named online multiple times, raising doubt as to whether an injunction was effective at all. This presents an altogether different problem: what remedy should be available to celebrities when a private citizen invades their privacy?

Human rights are just that - they apply to us all. The question today is not whether celebrities have a right to privacy, but how the balance should be struck between privacy and free expression. Social media has given us an even greater platform to exercise our freedom of expression, but our article 8 right to privacy remains just as important.

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Do Celebrities Have a Right to Privacy? - EachOther

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A quick online search of almost any celebrity will reveal a litany of stories and images - from red carpet appearances to what they eat for breakfast. These may have been published and shared by thousands of people - and seen by many more.

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Galentine's Day. Celebrating female friendship

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Galentine's Day. Celebrating female friendship

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For some, the prospect of celebrating Valentine's Day on 14 February fills them with joy as they prepare to shower their significant other with saccharine declarations of love.

For others, a far more exciting event takes precedence - Galentine's Day, which falls on 13 February every year.

As the name would suggest, Galentine's Day is a celebration of female friendship.

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The term was popularised following the release of a 2010 episode of US sitcom Parks and Recreation.

Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, explains its meaning while throwing an annual Galentine's Day bash for her friends.

"What's Galentine's Day? It's only the best day of the year," Knope says during the 16th episode of the show's second series.

"Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home and we just come and kick it breakfast style. Ladies celebrating ladies."

Galentine's Day has gained traction in recent years, with an increasing number of women, both single and in relationships, using the day to acknowledge the strength of their female friendships.

There are several events taking place to mark the occasion, such as a Revolution and Bumble BFF brunch in Glasgow on 17 February and nationwide screenings of Legally Blonde and Mean Girls at Everyman cinemas.

Some have expressed their opposition to the day, stating that the celebration of bonds between women is something that should be recognised all-year round.

"An unpopular thought but Galentine's Day gets up my nose as much as Valentine's. I don't need a day to celebrate my female friendships," tweeted journalist Poorna Bell.

"To me, that's forged in the midnight Ubers, the tissue pressed into their hand as they cry, the belly laugh as you're walking down a street."

A 2017 survey conducted by YouGov found the majority of Brits have a very unfavourable view of Valentine's Day.

Only four per cent of the participants said that they love the celebration, and 87 per cent stated that they believe the annual event has become too commercial.

Read all about the unromantic origins of Valentine's Day here.

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Why women across the world celebrate Galentine's Day

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For some, the prospect of celebrating Valentine's Day on 14 February fills them with joy as they prepare to shower their significant other with saccharine declarations of love. For others, a far more exciting event takes precedence - Galentine's Day, which falls on 13 February every year.

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What do you REALLY know about Spanish people? If you were to ask a foreigner, his response would probably consist of one accurate statement and many, many misconceptions. That's how it appeared to us in a cliche-ridden New York Times article called "Spain, Land of 10 P.M. Dinner, Asks if It's Time to Reset Clock."

Foreign films and television series only serve to reinforce these cliches. In "Knight and Day," there were bulls running through Sevilla and in "Little Fockers," Dustin Hoffman was traveling to Spain to learn how to dance... the flamenco! (Was there any other option?)

The time has come to shatter these myths about the Spanish. The following stereotypes are totally not true:

No, we don't. This dance is native to the south of Spain, and it's not like everyone in this area even knows how to dance it. Moreover, flamenco is hardly the only dance native to Spain. There are other regional dances: In Madrid, it's the chotis; in Galicia, the muiñeira; the jota in Aragón and the sardana in Catalonia, just to give a few examples.

Actually, bullfighting is quite controversial in Spain. There are anti-bullfighting associations throughout the country, and in regions like Catalonia and the Canaries bullfights are prohibited.

No one's denying that we invented the siesta and that, in fact, we're quite proud of it, but that doesn't mean that we take one every day (we wish!). During the time that, in theory, we should be taking them, the majority of us are at work. Pretty much the only people who can take them regularly are older (retired) people and little children (who aren't yet in school).

Not even close. It's common in Valencia, but every region has its own cuisine and its own specialities. If we had to choose a national dish, it would undoubtedly be the Spanish tortilla (which consists of eggs, potato and onion).

Actually, we prefer wine or beer, whereas sangria tends to be more popular among foreigners. We Spaniards save it for summers only.

News flash: This is not Mexico. We may speak the same language, but that doesn't mean that we eat the same food, nor that we sing rancheras. Contrary to what they thought in "How I Met Your Mother" and "Modern Family," in Spain there are no mariachis.

The Spanish don't all look like Penélope Cruz or Antonio Banderas (though we're flattered you think so). We can also have light hair and blue/green eyes. Some of us don't even get tan in the sun. Elsa Pataky is Spanish, and yet she doesn't have Penélope's basic features. Famed soccer player Gerard Pique (Shakira's boyfriend) also doesn't fit the description.

Sure, Pedro Almodóvar gave a very saintly speech when he won the Oscar for "Talk To Her." And yes, the country is filled with churches from north to south. However, Spain is a secular country with religious freedom, and only 13.2% of the population regularly attends mass.

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Spain has 47 million inhabitants, according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), and of those people, only 4.8 million reside in these cities. That's just 10% of the population. The rest are spread out among other cities throughout the country: Valencia, Zaragoza, Seville and Malaga being the next ones in terms of number of inhabitants.

Okay, this one has a lot of truth to it. In Spain, anything can be turned into a reason for partying. Our calendar is filled with holidays, some of which are as famous as La Tomatina and others you've definitely never heard of. But that doesn't mean that we go to all of them. We wouldn't have time, nor would we be physically capable.

Yes, we have good weather, but not during the whole year, nor even in all of the country's regions. In the south of Spain the heat is practically guaranteed from the beginning of spring well into October. In the north, things are different. In Galicia, Asturias, or Cantabria you can easily find yourself beset by days of rainy weather during the summer, and in Madrid and Castilla-León by snow and frost in the winter.

We're proud of him. We love that he wins Grand Slam tournaments and that he represents us on a global level, but that doesn't mean that he's our only internationally successful athlete. In this group, we would also include the Gasol brothers, Marc Márquez, and Fernando Alonso or even the swimmer Mireia Belmonte.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misspelled the name of Marc Márquez.
This post is a translated and adapted version of El Huffington Post's original.

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12 Stereotypes About The Spanish That Are Totally NOT True

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What do you REALLY know about Spanish people? If you were to ask a foreigner, his response would probably consist of one accurate statement and many, many misconceptions. That's how it appeared to us in a cliche-ridden New York Times article called "Spain, Land of 10 P.M.

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First, we debunked some of the stereotypes about the Spanish that are not true (you know: that we can all dance the flamenco; that we're all fans of bullfighting; that we only eat paella). But now, it's time to own up to the stereotypes that we have to admit ring true.

Unfortunately, languages don't come that easily to us, especially English. One of the reasons for this is that in Spain, films in most theaters are dubbed (as opposed to being in the original languages with subtitles), and that makes it difficult for us to develop a good ear and become familiar with the intonations of the language in question. We should also add that we're terribly afraid of looking ridiculous, which doesn't exactly push us towards trying out our new language skills. According to a study carried out by the OCU, nine out of every 10 Spaniards feels embarrassed when they communicate in English.

...and we'll do it at any time, day or night. But that doesn't mean we're drunks - it's just that alcohol (particularly wine) is a part of our culture. Also, let's be real: We have the best wine in the world.

On the weekends, our lunches can last so long that they become dinner! Nobody leaves without a full stomach. That's just a rule.
4. We're very family-oriented.
Whether it comes to enjoying a feast, going out to a party or even, if it just so happens, attending the Oscars-- family comes first. A shout out to our sister (Penélope Cruz), our mother (Javier Bardem) or any other close family member is a must.

We usually say that there's a bar for every local, and that's not as exaggerated as it seems. A study done by Coca-Cola in 2013 showed that there is one bar for every 132 inhabitants. In other words, there are a total of 350,000 bars for the 47.2 million inhabitants of the country. Pick your poison!

6. We cook well (very well).

In Spain we have a grand, rich and varied cuisine. Gazpacho, pisto, cocido, empanadas, octopus, migas... and, of course, the Spanish potato tortilla. Furthermore, we have 171 Michelin starred restaurants, of which 8 have the highest rating possible (three stars).

We like to give hugs. We kiss upon meeting new people, AND when we say goodbye. Also, we always kiss each other from right to left, exactly the opposite of the French, of course.

Sometimes we could be said to be screaming when talking.

We start the day very late, we eat lunch late, we eat dinner incredibly late, and we go to bed even later. When the rest of Europe has already been asleep for two hours, in Spain we're still watching films or a soccer match (games scheduled on Mondays at 10:00pm are not unusual).

For some reason, we don't know why, we can't help but be tardy all the time. It must be in our genes.

Everyone loves freebies, but we really love them. It doesn't particularly matter whether we even want or need the free item; we'll still wait in line for it cause it's FREE.

Just look at these photos from Madrid during the final game of the Champions League between Real Madrid and Atlético (also from Madrid) in Lisbon. The capital was totally deserted. Sort of how it was when we won the World Cup in South Africa. And a survey done by the IG-Investiga Institute determined that more than half of the country declares themselves avid fans of soccer (or, "the king sport").
This post is a translated and adapted version of El Huffington Post's original.

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12 Stereotypes About The Spanish That Are DEFINITELY True

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First, we debunked some of the stereotypes about the Spanish that are not true (you know: that we can all dance the flamenco; that we're all fans of bullfighting; that we only eat paella). But now, it's time to own up to the stereotypes that we have to admit ring true.

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With dictionary look up. Double click on any word for its definition.
This section is in advanced English and is only intended to be a guide, not to be taken too seriously!

Advent - (Four Sundays Before Christmas)

Advent is not widely celebrated in England, its celebration actually originated in Germany, although in the church calendar Advent is the official start of the run up to Christmas.

Two traditions that have caught on in England are the Advent calendar and the Advent candle. The Advent Calendar originated in the 19th Century from the protestant area of Germany. Protestant Christian families made a chalk line for every day in December until Christmas Eve. Before long, commercial entrepreneurs started replacing the ephemeral chalk lines with printed calendars. The first known Advent Calendar is for the advent of 1851. Nowadays it is usually a thin rectangular card with 24 or 25 doors. The doors are numbered 1-24/25. Door number 1 is opened on the 1st of December, door 2 on the 2nd etc. Behind each door there is a Christmas scene (but the most popular ones have a chocolate behind each door) .

An Advent candle often has 25 marks on it, a bit of the candle is burned down by one mark each day. In some homes, 24 candles are kept, one for each night from December 1 through Christmas eve. One candle is lit for a while on December 1, then a new candle is added each day for the 24 day period. However, it is now more common to have four candles for the four weeks before Christmas. One candle is lit on the first Sunday, two the second week and so on. The candles were often placed on a wreath upon the dining room table. Advent candles are lit in many homes, schools and churches, in England, with a final central candle lit on Christmas Day; these are often on a hanging decoration known as an "Advent Crown." They became exceedingly popular due to a children's TV programme called Blue Peter, who every year made an advent crown from old coathangers, tinsel and candles! Well, they used to use candles, but because of health and safety insanity they now give instructions using baubles - it's not really the same, but you can make an advent crown following the instructions in this pdf file.

In England less emphasis is placed on Christmas Eve than in other countries, much more is made of Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Carol singing, midnight church services and going out to the pub are some of the activities that many families enjoy (sometimes all three activities can be combined into one fun night out!).

Night time on Christmas Eve though is a very exciting time for young children. It is the time when Santa or Father Christmas comes. They hang up their stockings and go to sleep. Santa and his elves make all the toys for Christmas in his home in Greenland. On Christmas Eve he piles all of the toys onto his sleigh and rides across the sky with his 9 reindeer (Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner (or it may be Donder), Blitzen and of course ... Rudolf!). The most famous one is Rudolf the who is always the one at the front, to lead the way with his red nose. In the morning when the children wake up they open their stocking presents. Traditionally on Christmas Eve mince pies and sherry (or milk) are left out for Santa and nowadays carrots are left for his reindeer. Most children are in bed way before midnight waiting for Santa to visit.

There are some interesting facts about Santa.

The origins of the now traditional Christmas Celebration, distinct from earlier pagan winter holidays, date to sixth century England. By the middle ages, it was a well established important holiday, with traditional pageantry, customs, music and feasting all its own. Customs from pre Christian days were incorporated into the Celebrations, and many still remain.

However in 1647, the English parliament passed a law that made Christmas illegal, all festivities were banned by the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell, who considered feasting and revelry on what was supposed to be a holy day to be immoral. The ban was lifted only when Cromwell lost power in 1660.

In Britain, the Holy Days and Fasting Days Act of 1551 (which has not yet been repealed) states that every citizen must attend a Christian church service on Christmas Day, and must not use any kind of vehicle to get to the service There are a large number of Britons who break this law every year. The law may have been intended to encourage humility by forcing even the wealthy to attend the church on foot, or perhaps it was simply to avoid the traffic and parking crush that universal attendance would otherwise have brought about.

Later, during Queen Victoria's reign, Christmas became a time for gift giving, and a special season for children.

Nowadays, according to research by, of all things, Jarlsberg cheese, the average family gets out of bed just before 8am and is ready to start opening presents by 8.19am. Once the wrapping paper has been torn off all the presents, the family sits down to breakfast at 9.02am, but not before they have tucked into a bit of chocolate at 8.39am.

13 per cent of families always attend church on Christmas Day.

Unfortunately all the excitement and stress means that at precisely 9.58 on Christmas morning the first rows begin, and the average parent ends up losing it, and they start to tell off their children for the first time around 11.07am.

The strain of cooking the big Christmas dinner sees the average Brit start to sip their first alcoholic drink at 11.48am.

27 per cent of families sit down to watch the Queen's Speech.

Dinner is finally served at 3.24pm, with 85 per cent of people enjoying the traditional turkey with all the trimmings.

All that food and drink means the first person falls asleep at around 4.58pm, with dad being the leader in losing the "staying awake" battle. Almost half of those who do nod off end up annoying the others with their loud snoring. For those who manage to stay awake, family board games are brought out at 5.46pm.

38 per cent of families think that spending time with the family is the best thing about Christmas Day.

And lights out? 11.39pm.

One Christmas ritual not drawn from an ancient tradition is the British monarch's broadcast on Christmas day. The tradition began in 1932 when King George V read a special speech written by Rudyard Kipling. The broadcast was an enormous success . It began, "I speak now from my home and from my heart, to you all...".

Queen Elizabeth II continues the tradition to this day. Every year she broadcasts her message on Christmas Day, and it is heard by millions of people all over the world. In England most people watch or listen to it whilst digesting their Christmas Dinner!

In England Boxing Day celebrated on December 26th, is traditionally a time to give gifts to tradesmen, servants, and friends.

It originated in medieval times, when every priest was supposed to empty the alms box of his church and distribute gifts to the poor. Wealthy people indulged in huge Christmas feasts, and when they were finished, packed up the remains of feasts in boxes and gave them out to their servants. It didn't become widely celebrated though until Victorian England.

In Ireland there is an Irish custom called "feeding the wren". The custom is based on a legend of St. Stephen. Once he was forced to hide in a bush, but a chattering wren gave him away. In the past Children caged the wren to help it do penance for this misdeed. Nowadays children carry a long pole with a holly bush at the top - which is supposed to hide a captured wren.

In the UK Boxing Day is still a public holiday, some shops and supermarkets open nowadays, but banks and most offices remain closed.

The sixteenth century saw England first officially celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night premiered in the first year of the seventeenth century, in a performance at the court of Elizabeth the First.

Advent is usually solemn and religious in spirit, while Saint Steven's Day marks the beginning of the twelve days of Christmas, a light hearted time given over to merry making and fun. It is a holiday of heart-warming homecoming and family gatherings, with candles glowing in the windows as a sign of welcome.

During the ancient 12-day Christmas celebration, it was considered unlucky to let the log in the fireplace stop burning. This log was called the Yule log and would be used to light the fire in New Year, to ensure that good luck carried on from year to year. The Yule Log custom was handed down from the Druids, but with the advent of gas and electric fires it is rarely observed nowadays.

Another custom in medieval times, was to hide a dried bean in a cake, the cake was then eaten on Twelfth Night (January 6), during the most boisterous party of the year. The finder of the bean became "King of the Bean" and ruled the party for the night.

Another eating myth is that for every mince pie you eat over the 12 days of Christmas you will have a month of good luck the following year!

However, according to A Celebration and History(ISBN 0-679-74038-4), by Leigh Grant, the written lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" first appeared in Mirth without Mischief in the early 1780s in England. Grant states that the tune to which these words are sung apparently dates back much further and came from France. Mirth without Mischief describes "The Twelve Days of Christmas" as a type of memory game played by children at that time. A leader recited the first verse, the next child recited the second verse, and so on until someone missed a verse and had to pay some kind of penalty in the game. There was no religious significance. At anyrate the popular urban myth makes a good story... at least as good as the song itself, so here is a slice of urban myth culture for you: A very famous song about this time of year is "The Twelve Days of Christmas", which has a very interesting history. During the period 1558 to 1829 Catholics in England were prohibited from any practice of their faith by law - private or public. It was a crime to be a Catholic. Some people say that the song was written to help young Catholics learn the tenets of their faith during that period when to be caught with anything in 'writing' indicating adherence to the Catholic faith could not only get you imprisoned, but could also get you hanged, drawn and quartered! The song's gifts are allegedly hidden meanings to the teachings of the faith. "True Love" mentioned refers to God. "Me" refers to every baptized person, here are the other lyrics and their other hidden meanings. However, some people say this is an Urban Myth, but you can make your own mind up.

If you want to know today's cost of this generous gift giving check out PNC Bank's web site.

How would you feel to receive such lovely gifts? Read the replies that Sarah Truelove sent to her beloved.

New Year's Eve - 31st December
See here for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
There are several "traditional" meals you can have at Christmas. Here's a brief look at what the British nosh on Christmas day.

Christmas Dinner

In the past some very strange things were eaten around Christmas. At lavish Christmas feasts in the Middle Ages, swans and peacocks were sometimes served "endored". The flesh was painted with saffron dissolved in melted butter and the birds were served wrapped in their own skin and feathers, which had been removed and set aside prior to roasting.

Around Victorian times another traditional Christmas feast was roasted goose or roasted turkey. In Victorian times, most Londoners would have been familiar with the "goose club", which was a method of saving to buy a goose for Christmas. Goose clubs were popular with working-class Londoners, who paid a few pence a week towards the purchase of a Christmas goose. The week before Christmas, London meat markets were crammed with geese and turkeys, many imported from Germany and France, although some were raised in Norfolk, and taken to market in London. The birds were walked from Norfolk to the markets in London, to protect their feet the turkeys were dressed in boots made of sacking or leather and geese had their feet protected with a covering of tar. The traditional Christmas goose was featured in Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'.

Nowadays, if you sit down with a typical British family on Christmas day, the starter is probably going to be prawns or smoked salmon. The main course is more than likely to be turkey, often free-range and the bigger the better, although goose has been making a bit of a comeback, and for the vegetarian in the family (there's always one) a nut roast, this is normally served with potatoes (roasted, boiled, mashed, or maybe all three), vegetables (including the devil's veg - brussel sprouts) roasted parsnips, and stuffing with gravy and bread sauce. This is usually followed by Christmas pudding; a rich fruit pudding served with brandy sauce or brandy butter.

Christmas puddings or plum puddings are a very rich, dark pudding made with all sorts of dried fruits, nuts, spices, black treacle and lots of sherry or brandy. You can read more about Christmas puddings here.

Christmas cakes are also very rich and dark and contain just about every dried fruit you can think of, nuts (usually blanched almonds) glace cherries, candied peel and once again, sweetened with black treacle. They are covered with a layer of marzipan or almond paste and then thick white "Royal" icing made with icing sugar and egg whites.

It was introduced as a custom by the Victorians. Prior to that period, cake was eaten during Christmas, but without the toppings. The idea of using marzipan is thought to be linked to the Tudor Marchpane an iced and decorated cake of marzipan that acted as the table centrepiece during banquets and festive occasions. They should be made about six weeks before Christmas and are usually decorated with ribbons and images of Santa Claus or robins with holly.

Mince pies were often known as Christmas pies, they were banned in the seventeenth century by that killjoy Cromwell but eventually came back into existence after the Restoration. They are made with mincemeat - which doesn't contain meat at all ( see my recipe). The sweet, rich and fruity pies that we are now accustomed to developed early in the twentieth century when the meat content was removed for good and now the "mincemeat" is a mixture of dried fruit (raisins, sultanas, candied peel, etc.,) apples, spices, sugar and suet, often moistened with brandy or sherry, and baked in small pastry cases.

If the mincemeat is home made everyone in the household should stir it as it is considered to be lucky. The cases should be oval in shape, to represent the manger, with a tiny pastry baby Jesus on top, but as very few people have tins that shape they are nearly always round now.

Images of Christmas

Many Christmas traditions, including the Christmas card, originated in the UK. Yule logs, plum pudding, mince pies, fruitcakes, wassailing, the Christmas goose, mistletoe, holly and carol singing, are all firmly rooted in British soil.

Christmas carols have their roots in medieval England, when minstrels traveled from castle to castle, today they would be called carollers. In addition poor people in England would go wassailing, they would bring their mugs to the door of rich houses hoping for a share of the wassail bowl. The drink in the bowl was called lambswool. It was a brew of hot ale with sugar, eggs, spices and roast apples floating in it.

The book "A Christmas Carol" was written by Charles Dickens. It is the tale of a miser called Ebeneezer Scrooge who is visited by four ghosts (Jacob Marley, The Ghost of Christmas Past, The Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Future). He was made to see the error of his ways and became a reformed character.

Today carollers generally collect money for charity. The 'Round Table' in England often sends a big sleigh with a Christmas tree and people singing and playing carols around the cities and towns of England. In Wales, each village may have several choirs which rehearse well in advance of the holidays and then go carolling collecting money for charity.

The Story of St Nicholas (the original Santa Claus)

The real St. Nicholas lived in Turkey, he was bishop of the Turkish town of Myra in the early 4th century. It was the Dutch who first made him into a Christmas gift-giver, and Dutch settlers brought him to America where his name eventually became the familiar Santa Claus.

However, he is a very popular saint in England where there are almost 400 churches of St. Nicholas, more even than churches of St. George, England's patron saint. Many different stories are told to British children about Saint Nicholas, here is just one:-

Long long ago, in the days when Saint Nicholas was alive, there lived a kindly nobleman. He had a beautiful wife and three pretty young daughters, and all the money his family would ever need. But one day, the mother of the family, who was a sweet gentle woman, became very ill. The nobleman was frantic! He summoned the town's only doctor, a very old, very wise woman, who knew all there was to know about herbs and magic.

The old woman tried all the cures she knew, but she could do nothing to save the poor woman. Finally he called for the priest to come, but by that time his poor wife had passed away. The nobleman was in despair! He missed his wife so much that he lost his head. He wasted all his money away on silly projects and useless inventions. He became so poor that he had to move his family out of their castle and into a little peasant's cottage. Meanwhile his daughters were growing up. Poverty was difficult for them, but they remained cheerful and strong. They soon learned to do their own cooking, cleaning and sewing, and they took care of each other.

All three girls were very pretty. In time each of them fell in love and wanted to get married. But they couldn't because their father was so poor. He had no dowry (a sum of money or some valuable property) to give to the prospective husband's family. He felt he had failed his own children, and he became even more sad and gloomy.

Now, Saint Nicholas happened to live in the same area. The kindly saint had dedicated his whole life to doing good deeds, and was always on the lookout for someone in need. One night the saint came riding through the town on his white horse looking for the house of the nobleman and his three daughters. He rode up to the cottage and peeked in through a chink in the wall. That same night, the daughters had washed out their clothes by hand, and hung them up in front of the fireplace to dry. There were the stockings, three pairs, hanging right on the chimney. Inspiration struck Saint Nicholas. From his pouch he took out three little bags filled with gold coins. One by one he threw the bags down the chimney, so they landed in the stockings of the three daughters. The nobleman, worried about his daughters' futures, had terrible trouble falling asleep a night and was still awake. He heard the clip clop of the white horse as the saint was leaving, and peeked out of the door. He called out to Nicholas, but he had already disappeared into the dark night.

When the daughters woke in the morning, they found their stockings filled with plenty of money for their dowries. When they went to tell their father, they found him sleeping peacefully with a smile on his face. Saint Nicholas had taken care of all his worries. And so, through the goodness of Saint Nicholas the three daughters were able to marry the men they loved, and the nobleman lived on to be a happy grandfather.

St. Nicholas is a very hard-working saint, being the patron saint of children, merchants, apothecaries, pawnbrokers, scholars and mariners. He is reputed to be able to calm storms and rescue sailors. Even pirates have been known to claim his protection. Over the years he has become known as Santa Claus and even his now traditional red costume can be traced to Coca Cola advertising in America!

The tradition of hanging up the stocking is still followed in the British Isles. It is left out on Christmas Eve, along with mince pies, sherry and carrots for Santa and his reindeer, and even today most children are in bed way before midnight waiting for Santa to visit.

The stocking is opened by excited children on Christmas morning. Nowadays the gifts Santa Claus brings can be quite elaborate, in Victorian times it was traditionally fruit, nuts, sweets and coins.

Christmas cards became popular in Victorian England, they were mostly home made and given to loved ones. The first ever Christmas card was the brainchild of Sir Henry Cole, a leading cultural light in Victorian England who was later to become director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The first commercial Christmas card (pictured above) had a hostile reception from some people because it depicted a family, children as well as adults, drinking wine. The card was painted by John Calcott Horsley. It depicts a family feast, under which appear the words, "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You". Side panels illustrated acts of Christmas charity - feeding and clothing the poor etc..

However it was Louis Prang, a 19th-century German immigrant to the United States, who popularised the sending of printed Christmas cards. Prang was a Bavarian-born lithographer who settled in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1850s and established a successful printing business. He invented a way of reproducing color oil paintings, the "chromolithograph technique", and created a card with the message "Merry Christmas" as a way of showing it off. He went on to produce a series of popular Christmas cards. By 1881 he was printing more than five million cards annually.

The first charity Christmas card was produced by UNICEF in 1949. The picture chosen for the card was painted not by a professional artist but by a seven year old girl called Jitka Samkova of Rudolfo, a small town in what was then Czechoslovakia. The town received assistance from UNICEF after the Second World War, inspiring Jitka to paint some children dancing around a maypole. She said her picture represented "joy going round and round".

Nowadays most people buy their cards from Hallmark etc., they are sent before Christmas Day and people use them to decorate their houses. It can be an expensive affair though, some families send and receive well over 100 cards. But what could be nicer than a mantle piece decorated with beautiful cards bearing good wishes from friends and relatives.

Like many of our Christmas customs, gift giving has its historical origin in an ancient pre-Christian tradition. During the ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia, the harvest festival, small candles and clay figures were given. At Calens, the Roman new-year, more elaborate gifts were exchanged. The Romans believed that sweet gifts would ensure a good year, so fruits, honey, and cakes were popular gifts. Evergreen branches, were given as symbols of continuous health and strength. Wealthy Romans gave each other gold coins for good luck. Everyone gave gifts, children gave to their teachers, slaves gave to their masters, and the people gave to their emperor. Even though the three kings and others gave presents to the baby Jesus, gift giving did not become an established part of the Christmas celebration until several centuries after the birth of Christ.

Because the early Christians did not want their religion to be associated with pagan festivals, they shunned gift giving as a pagan practice. It was in the middle ages that gift giving began to be part of the Christmas tradition. The kings of England, like the emperors of Rome, demanded gifts from their subjects. The common people also exchanged gifts, but only among the wealthy were elaborate gifts given. The poor exchanged trinkets and entertained each other with songs and parties and plays.

Nowadays, the knitted pattern jumper is considered to be the worst present you could find under the tree, followed by a dustpan and brush and the dreaded socks.

Christmas Crackers have been a part of the traditional British Christmas since1847, when almost by accident, Tom Smith invented the cracker. They are used to decorate the table at dinner.

In it's simple form a cracker is a small cardboard tube covered in a brightly coloured twist of paper. When the cracker is 'pulled' by two people, each holding one end of the twisted paper, the friction creates a small explosive 'pop' produced by a narrow strip of chemically impregnated paper. Inside the cracker there is usually a tissue paper hat, a balloon, a slip of paper with a very corny joke on it (for example: "What does Santa call his blind reindeer?" "No-eye-deer!" / "Where do fish wash?" "In the river basin!" / "What do you get if you cross a sheep with a kangaroo?" "A wooly jumper!" /" What lies in a pram and wobbles?" "A jelly baby!" ) and a small gift (usually a little cheap plastic thing e.g. a plastic ring or nail clippers).

The family will pull each other's crackers before the meal starts, this often involves crossing arms and pulling two crackers at once. The person who gets the "big end" keeps the plastic trinket. The paper hats are donned, and the jokes read out, accompanied by moans and groans at how awful they are. Then, and only then, can the meal begin.

Christmas trees are an integral part of the Christmas decorations in most British households. Although it was always traditional to bring evergreens into the house the Christmas tree is another tradition borrowed from Germany, where it is said that German Martin Luther was the first person to decorate a tree with candles and bring it indoors to show his children what stars looked like at night in the forest. It didn't become popular in Britain until the nineteenth century, when Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert introduced the custom from Germany.

Nowadays in the UK you will find a variety of trees, from real trees with roots that can be replanted after the festivities, to felled trees that get recycled, to plastic imitations that get unpacked every year. No one seems to be able to agree which is the most environmentally friendly option. The tree will be decorated with lights (candles are a rarity due to the risk of fire), tinsel, baubles, chocolate figures and coins, and the obligatory angel / fairy on the top.

There's a lovely joke about how the fairy ended up on the top of the Christmas tree here.

Mistletoe was considered sacred by the people of ancient Britain. The Druid priests used it in their sacrifices to the gods.It was believed to have magical properties. People who met under a tree bearing mistletoe were forbidden to fight, even if they were enemies, and anyone who entered a home decorated with mistletoe was entitled to shelter and protection. Mistletoe may even have been part of Druidic wedding ceremonies. The Celtic people believed it had miraculous healing powers. In fact the name for mistletoe in the Celtic languages is all heal. mistletoe could cure diseases, render poisons harmless, make humans and animals fertile, protect the house from ghosts and bring good luck.

In eighteenth century England mistletoe was credited, not with healing power, but with a different kind of magic. It was the magic element in the kissing ball, a special decoration used at Christmas parties. The kissing ball had a round frame that was trimmed with evergreens, ribbons and ornaments. Tiny nativity figures were placed inside it. For the finishing touch, a sprig of mistletoe was tied to the bottom of the ball. It was then hung from the ceiling, and party goers would play kissing games underneath it. A kiss under the mistletoe could mean deep romance or lasting friendship and good will.

The mistletoe's kissing tradition, according to one account, comes from the Norse myths. Friga, one of the gods, gave her son, Balda, a charm of mistletoe to protect him from the elements, but because mistletoe grows neither from the water or the earth, nor from fire nor air, it grows on trees, it held the power to harm Balda. One of the other god's arrows made of mistletoe struck Bolda down, and his mother cried tears of white berries. She brought her son back to life, and vowed to kiss anyone who rested beneath the plant. Thus the kissing tradition began.

There is a limit to how much you can kiss under one sprig of mistletoe though. For each kiss a berry must be removed and once all the berries are gone - no more kissing!

Holly, with its dark green spiky leaves and red berries, was also believed to have magical powers and the ability to drive demons away. In Germany holly was considered to be a good luck charm against the hostile forces of nature.

In old England, unmarried women were supposed to tie a sprig of holly to their beds, to guard them against ghosts and devils. the In medieval times, when people were genuinely afraid of ghosts and demons, supernatural creatures were believed to be especially active at Christmas time.

For the Northern Europeans, Christmas came in the middle of winter, when the nights were very long, dark and cold. The voices of Ghosts and demons, witches, goblins and werewolves could be heard screaming out in the winter winds and storms. So the magical powers of mistletoe and holly were taken quite seriously. In Roman times ivy was the ancient symbol of Bakus, the god of wine and revelry. Due to its association with pagan festivals, for a long time, ivy was banned from the inside of Christian homes, and used only to decorate the outside. Not so any more. Its green has become part of the traditional Christmas.

Along with a tree, and bits of tree, holly, ivy and misteltoe, a lot of other materials are used to decorate the house at Christmas. Some people don't even stop inside the house and the most amazing displays of lights and various inflatables decorate their front gardens. Wonder round urban areas of the UK you can spot the houses that have entered into the "competitive" spirit of seeing who can cram the most stuff into the smallest space.

Inside the house you will typically find garlands, fake snow, nativity sets, candles, window decorations, and row upon row of Christmas cards. The table will be set (probably the only time in the year when the whole family sits down together to eat) with the best table cloth, glasses, crockery and cutlery.

Pantomime or "panto" is traditionally performed at Christmas, with family audiences consisting mainly of children and parents. British pantomime is now a popular form of theatre, incorporating song, dance, buffoonery, slapstick, in-jokes, audience participation, and mild sexual innuendo. There are a number of traditional story-lines, and there is also a fairly well-defined set of performance conventions. Many theatres in cities and provincial towns throughout the United Kingdom continue to have an annual pantomime and it is very popular with Amateur Dramatics societies. The Pantomime season lasts from around December to February. You should be able to see pantomime productions in many village halls and similar venues across the country.

There are a few conventions, which can be a bit "surprising" if you're new to panto.

* The leading male juvenile character (the "principal boy") is traditionally played by a young woman, usually in tight-fitting male garments (such as breeches) that make her female charms evident.
* An older woman (the pantomime dame - often the hero's mother) is usually played by a man in drag.
* Risqué double entendre, often wringing innuendo out of perfectly innocent phrases. This is, in theory, over the heads of the children in the audience, but titillating to the adults.
* Audience participation, including calls of "look behind you!" (or "he's behind you!"), and "Oh, yes it is!" or "Oh, no it isn't!" The audience is always encouraged to "Boo" the villain, cheer the hero, and "Awwwww" any poor victims, such as the rejected dame, who usually fancies the prince.
* Sing-a-long, usually a song that combes a well-known tune with re-written lyrics is sung. The audience is encouraged to sing the song; often one half of the audience is challenged to sing "their" chorus louder than the other half.
* The animal, played by an actor in "animal skin" or animal costume. It is often a pantomime horse or cow, played by two actors in a single costume, one as the head and front legs, the other as the body and back legs.
* The good fairy always enters from stage right and the evil villain enters from stage left. In the past the right side of the stage symbolized Heaven and the left side symbolized Hell.
* The members of the cast throw sweets to the children in the audience (although nowadays this is often not done due to health and safety restrictions).
* Sometimes the story villain will squirt members of the audience with water guns or pretend to throw a bucket of "water" at the audience that is actually full of confetti or streamers
* A slapstick comedy routine is often performed, often a decorating or baking scene, with humour based around throwing messy substances and custard pies in the face.

The Nativity Play

A Nativity play is a play, usually performed at Christmas, which recounts the story of the Nativity (birth) of Jesus.

Many primary schools and Sunday schools in the UK put on a Nativity play. Schoolchildren in costume act as the human and angel characters, and often as the animals and props. The infant Jesus is sometimes represented by a doll, but sometimes played by a real baby. Every year parents of young children dread the note from the school to say what role their child will play. Why do the dread it? Because they have to make the costume, and it's a very competitive thing. Parents are judged on the quality of the costume, children are judged on the role they get to play and how many lines they get to speak. If you're interested I got to play the star - not one line.

In the UK, increasing secularism and sensitivity in multicultural areas has led many schools to end the performance of Nativity plays, or significantly alter their content, causing others to complain about excessive political correctness. In 2014, there were reports of drunken spacemen, Elvis Presley, footballers, aliens, punk fairies, and a lobster (that must be a posh school) all making an appearance.

Another controversial topic is taking photographs or filming the play. Some schools have banned this because of fears of inappropriate use of the images. However, some canny schools then sell DVDs of the play.

The Nativity Scene

A nativity scene, or crèche, is a depiction of the birth of Jesus as described in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Sometimes the scene is a static, three dimensional scene, but there are so called "living nativity scenes" in which real humans and animals participate.

A typical nativity scene consists of figures representing the infant Jesus, his mother Mary, and Mary's husband, Joseph. Some nativity scenes include other characters from the Biblical story such as the shepherds, the Magi, and angels. The figures are usually displayed in a stable, cave, or other structure.

Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first nativity scene in 1223 (a "living" one) intending thereby to cultivate the worship of Christ. The scene's popularity inspired communities throughout Christendom to stage similar pantomimes and eventually to create elaborate and ever more elaborate static exhibitions with wax, wooden and even ivory and precious metal figurines garbed in rich fabrics set against intricate landscapes.

The Wishbone

Chickens and turkeys contain a y-shaped bone known as the furcula (be careful how you pronounce that one), more commonly it is referred to as the wishbone. Traditionally this is removed from the carcass of the roasted bird, and dried out. It is then given to two people (usually children), who have to hook their little finger round an end each and pull it apart until it breaks, whilst making a wish. The person who gets the "bigger half" of the wishbone will have his or her wish "come true." Of course, in the great tradition of making wishes, you mustn't tell anyone what you wished for, or it won't come true.

Don't worry if you are a vegetarian. If Santa brings you a 3d printer, you can print one out: 3d printed wishbone
We have a recipe for Christmas Pudding here You can find Lynne's recipe for mincepies and mincemeat here.
Don't worry if it doesn't snow in your country. Here you can build your own on-line snowman!

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Christmas in the UK, British culture, customs and traditions in December - Christmas Celebrations

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Christmas - British Culture British Customs and Traditions in December, Christmas Celebrations in the UK

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Creativity is a trait many consider to be unlearnable-they believe it arises out of innate talent or a similarly abstract aptitude. But what if I told you that there were things you could do to foster your creative side?

As it turns out, creativity is more akin to a learned skill than an innate quality. If we consider creativity to be the ability to extend ideas given a basic premise, this sort of extrapolation should be dependent on observing patterns and thus be trainable.

in Business News Daily breaks this concept down: "At the core is the ability to look at problems from different angles, to connect and combine concepts, and the ability to challenge traditional assumptions. These are skills that require practice to master."

Let's explore some of the ways in which any person can give their creative side a boost.
1. Practice Pattern Recognition
One way to foster creativity is through recognizing patterns in what we observe. For example, if you read a lot of detective novels, you might realize that detective fiction uses a finite number of motifs and be able to predict the outcome of stories with similar premises.

Of course, some people are better than others at picking up patterns quickly, but you can sharpen your pattern-recognition skills in a variety of ways by studying math, nature or art.
2. Pick Up a Musical Instrument
Musical instruments and the coordination of mind and body that is involved in producing music can nurture your creative side. Picking up an instrument like the piano can lead to great benefits as you begin practicing and internalizing the basic finger movements.

The connection between creative power and practicing music is well demonstrated , and many famous figures, including Albert Einstein, Oliver Sacks and Paul Klee, attributed part of their success to their exposure to music.
3. Play Chess
While chess may not seem like the most creative hobby, there is a surprising amount of depth associated with the game and its various positions. The opening, middle game and endgame all have specific, repeatable patterns that blend into each other just enough to allow for creative maneuvers.

Studies have shown that chess players outperformed a control group in the areas of fluency, originality and flexibility.
4. Exercise
Believe it or not, a bout of strenuous exercise can do wonders for getting your creative juices flowing. If we're too sedentary, we become vulnerable to one set of thought patterns and never try to break out of those strictures.

A study published in the NIH indicated that exercise was a surefire way to combat things like mental fog and fatigue, noting that "physical activity is associated with improved affective experience and enhanced cognitive processing."
5. Drawing and Photography
Jeff Koons, an American artist focusing on creating art based on objects associated with popular culture, notes: "If I try to articulate every little detail in a drawing, it would be like missing the forest for the trees, so it's just about getting the outline of the forest."

Getting involved in the fine arts is a great way to improve your creative ability and, as Koons indicates, can assist you in seeing the larger picture. And with the rise of internet classes, drawing and photography classes have become relatively cheap. A combination of platforms such as Udemy, Skillshare and YouTube can get you pretty far.

Photography and drawing are deeply creative activities. The ability to accurately produce or frame representations of what you see can change the way you view the world. Every time artists draw a person's face or their surroundings, they are calling on the sum of their visual experience in order to synthesize certain details into a coherent drawing.
6. Do Nothing at All
The best-selling author Alan Cohen once wrote: "There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither." Sometimes your mind just needs to unplug from processing and skim past volumes of information in the form of internet articles and posts, text messages and other miscellaneous materials.

Processing too much information can make your mind reel and put a stop to your productivity as well as your creativity. Relaxing for a while before continuing a task can yield great dividends for your creative capacity.

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6 Proven Ways To Increase Your Creativity

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Creativity is a trait many consider to be unlearnable-they believe it arises out of innate talent or a similarly abstract aptitude. But what if I told you that there were things you could do to foster your creative side? As it turns out, creativity is more akin to a learned skill than an innate quality.

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What’s Your Definition of Success? | The Success Series

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Now that November is underway, we're all thinking of the next big holiday: Thanksgiving.

Along with turkey and all the trimmings, one of the oldest, most beloved traditions at this time of year is Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Concluding outside the block-long Macy's Herald Square flagship store in New York City, the parade has been held since 1924 and helps kick off the festivities on the last Thursday of November.

As the 2019 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade approaches, FN has everything you need to know about the event.

When does the parade start?

The 2019 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 28, from 9 a.m. to noon ET. Viewers on the West Coast won't need to wake up at the crack of dawn to watch it; the television broadcast on NBC will air at 9 a.m. across time zones.

How can I watch the parade?

Venturing to Manhattan for the big day is not for the faint of heart: Parade goers begin camping out at 6 a.m. to nab prime viewing spots on Central Park West, often braving below-freezing temperatures along with the massive crowds. As in years past, the NYC Police Department is expected to be out in force providing security.

Those hoping to enjoy the action from outside the city - or indoors - can watch on television. NBC, which has exclusive rights to the official program, will broadcast all the action from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. in all time zones. Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and Al Roker of the "Today" show are hosting the broadcast. CBS will be host its own annual parade coverage at the same time, though this is not the official program.

What celebrities are performing?

The parade brings out some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry each year, and 2019 is no exception. Fans viewing on NBC can look forward to performances from TLC, Ciara, Ozuna, Lea Michele, NCT 127 and the Black-Eyed Peas, to name a few.

Are there any new balloons to watch for?

Smokey Bear is returning, following more than two decades out of the parade lineup. Spongebob Squarepants will be joined for the first time by pet snail Gary, while Snoopy has gotten an astronaut suit makeover. Artwork by Yayoi Kusama and a "Green Eggs and Ham" design also adorn new balloons. See Macys.com to find out what other characters are appearing.

What about the floats?

There will be plenty of balloons, celebrity guests and performances, but the floats are arguably the real star of the show. Macy's will have a cornucopia-themed float on the parade route. Entenmann's baked goods company will showcase a bake shop, the Green Giant vegetable brand will have its mascot giant standing more than two stories high and Ronald McDonald will drive down the route in style in a Big Red Shoe that's equal to a whopping men's size 266.
See the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade through the years. Want more?
A Look Back at How the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade Evolved Through the Years

3 Cute and Comfy Outfit Ideas for Every Type of Thanksgiving Dinner

How the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Has Changed Over the Years

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How to Watch Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade 2019 + Everything You Need to Know

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Now that November is underway, we're all thinking of the next big holiday: Thanksgiving. Along with turkey and all the trimmings, one of the oldest, most beloved traditions at this time of year is Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

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How family background influences students' achievement

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How family background influences students' achievement

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This article is part of a new Education Next series commemorating the 50th anniversary of James S. Coleman's groundbreaking report, "Equality of Educational Opportunity." The full series will appear in the Spring 2016 issue of Education Next.

On the weekend before the Fourth of July 1966, the U.S. Office of Education quietly released a 737-page report that summarized one of the most comprehensive studies of American education ever conducted. Encompassing some 3,000 schools, nearly 600,000 students, and thousands of teachers, and produced by a team led by Johns Hopkins University sociologist James S. Coleman, "Equality of Educational Opportunity" was met with a palpable silence. Indeed, the timing of the release relied on one of the oldest tricks in the public relations playbook-announcing unfavorable results on a major holiday, when neither the American public nor the news media are paying much attention.

To the dismay of federal officials, the Coleman Report had concluded that "schools are remarkably similar in the effect they have on the achievement of their pupils when the socio-economic background of the students is taken into account." Or, as one sociologist supposedly put it to the scholar-politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "Have you heard what Coleman is finding? It's all family."

The Coleman Report's conclusions concerning the influences of home and family were at odds with the paradigm of the day. The politically inconvenient conclusion that family background explained more about a child's achievement than did school resources ran contrary to contemporary priorities, which were focused on improving educational inputs such as school expenditure levels, class size, and teacher quality. Indeed, less than a year before the Coleman Report's release, President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into law, dedicating federal funds to disadvantaged students through a Title 1 program that still remains the single largest investment in K-12 education, currently reaching approximately 21 million students at an annual cost of about $14.4 billion.

So what exactly had Coleman uncovered? Differences among schools in their facilities and staffing "are so little related to achievement levels of students that, with few exceptions, their effect fails to appear even in a survey of this magnitude," the authors concluded.
Zeroing In on Family Background
Coleman's advisory panel refused to sign off on the report, citing "methodological concerns" that continue to reverberate. Subsequent research has corroborated the finding that family background is strongly correlated with student performance in school. A correlation between family background and educational and economic success, however, does not tell us whether the relationship between the two is independent of any school impacts. The associations between home life and school performance that Coleman documented may actually be driven by disparities in school or neighborhood quality rather than family influences. Often, families choose their children's schools by selecting their community or neighborhood, and children whose parents select good schools may benefit as a consequence. In the elusive quest to uncover the determinants of students' academic success, therefore, it is important to rely on experimental or quasi-experimental research that identifies effects of family background that operate separately and apart from any school effects.

In this essay I look at four family variables that may influence student achievement: family education, family income, parents' criminal activity, and family structure. I then consider the ways in which schools can offset the effects of these factors.

Parental Education. Better-educated parents are more likely to consider the quality of the local schools when selecting a neighborhood in which to live. Once their children enter a school, educated parents are also more likely to pay attention to the quality of their children's teachers and may attempt to ensure that their children are adequately served. By participating in parent-teacher conferences and volunteering at school, they may encourage staff to attend to their children's individual needs.

In addition, highly educated parents are more likely than their less-educated counterparts to read to their children. Educated parents enhance their children's development and human capital by drawing on their own advanced language skills in communicating with their children. They are more likely to pose questions instead of directives and employ a broader and more complex vocabulary. Estimates suggest that, by age 3, children whose parents receive public assistance hear less than a third of the words encountered by their higher-income peers. As a result, the children of highly educated parents are capable of more complex speech and have more extensive vocabularies before they even start school.

Highly educated parents can also use their social capital to promote their children's development. A cohesive social network of well-educated individuals socializes children to expect that they too will attain high levels of academic success. It can also transmit cultural capital by teaching children the specific behaviors, patterns of speech, and cultural references that are valued by the educational and professional elite.

In most studies, parental education has been identified as the single strongest correlate of children's success in school, the number of years they attend school, and their success later in life. Because parental education influences children's learning both directly and through the choice of a school, we do not know how much of the correlation can be attributed to direct impact and how much to school-related factors. Teasing out the distinct causal impact of parental education is tricky, but given the strong association between parental education and student achievement in every industrialized society, the direct impact is undoubtedly substantial. Furthermore, quasi-experimental strategies have found positive effects of parental education on children's outcomes. For instance, one study of Korean children adopted into American families shows that the adoptive mother's education level is significantly associated with the child's educational attainment.

Family Income. As with parental education, family income may have a direct impact on a child's academic outcomes, or variations in achievement could simply be a function of the school the child attends: parents with greater financial resources can identify communities with higher-quality schools and choose more-expensive neighborhoods-the very places where good schools are likely to be. More-affluent parents can also use their resources to ensure that their children have access to a full range of extracurricular activities at school and in the community.

But it's not hard to imagine direct effects of income on student achievement. Parents who are struggling economically simply don't have the time or the wherewithal to check homework, drive children to summer camp, organize museum trips, or help their kids plan for college. Working multiple jobs or inconvenient shifts makes it hard to dedicate time for family dinners, enforce a consistent bedtime, read to infants and toddlers, or invest in music lessons or sports clubs. Even small differences in access to the activities and experiences that are known to promote brain development can accumulate, resulting in a sizable gap between two groups of children defined by family circumstances.

It is challenging to find rigorous experimental or quasi-experimental evidence to disentangle the direct effects of home life from the effects of the school a family selects. While Coleman claimed that family and peers had an effect on student achievement that was distinct from the influence of schools or neighborhoods, his research design was inadequate to support this conclusion. All he was able to show was that family characteristics had a strong correlation with student achievement.

Separating out the independent effects of family education and family income is also difficult. We do not know if low income and financial instability alone can adversely affect children's behavior, emotional stability, and educational outcomes. Evidence from the negative-income-tax experiments carried out by the federal government between 1968 and 1982 showed only mixed effects of income on children's outcomes, and subsequent work by the University of Chicago's Susan Mayer cast doubt on any causal relationship between parental income and child well-being. However, a recent study by Gordon Dahl and Lance Lochner, exploiting quasi-experimental variation in the Earned Income Tax Credit, provides convincing evidence that increases in family income can lift the achievement levels of students raised in low-income working families, even holding other factors constant.

Parental Incarceration. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 2.3 percent of U.S. children have a parent in federal or state prison. Black children are 7.5 times more likely and Hispanic children 2.5 times more likely than white children to have an incarcerated parent. Incarceration removes a wage earner from the home, lowering household income. One estimate suggests that two-thirds of incarcerated fathers had provided the primary source of family income before their imprisonment. As a result, children with a parent in prison are at greater risk of homelessness, which in turn can have grave consequences: the receipt of social and medical services and assignment to a traditional public school all require a stable home address. The emotional strain of a parent's incarceration can also take its toll on a child's achievement in school.

Quantifying the causal effects of parental incarceration has proven challenging, however. While correlational research finds that the odds of finishing high school are 50 percent lower for children with an incarcerated parent, parents who are in prison may have less education, lower income, more limited access to quality schools, and other attributes that adversely affect their children's success in school. A recent review of 22 studies of the effect of parental incarceration on child well-being concludes that, to date, no research in this area has been able to leverage a natural experiment to produce quasi-experimental estimates. Just how large a causal impact parental incarceration has on children remains an important but largely uncharted topic for future research.

Family Structure. While most American children still live with both of their biological or adoptive parents, family structures have become more diverse in recent years, and living arrangements have grown increasingly complex. In particular, the two-parent family is vanishing among the poor.

Approximately two-fifths of U.S. children experience dissolution in their parents' union by age 15, and two-thirds of this group will see their mother form a new union within six years. Many parents today choose cohabitation over marriage, but the instability of such partnerships is even higher. In the case of nonmarital births, estimates say that 56 percent of fathers will be living away from their child by his or her third birthday. These patterns can have serious implications for a child's well-being and school success (see Figure 1). Single parents have less time for the enriching activities that Robert Putnam, Harvard professor of public policy, has called "Goodnight Moon" time, after the celebrated bedtime storybook by Margaret Wise Brown. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 1- to 2-year-olds who live with two married parents are read to, on average, 8.5 times per week. The corresponding statistic for their peers living with a single parent is 5.7 times. And it's likely that dual-parent families in general have many other attributes that affect their children's educational attainment, mental health, labor market performance, and family formation. More-rigorous quasi-experimental evidence also documents significant negative effects of a father's absence on children's educational attainment and social and emotional development, leading to increases in antisocial behavior. These effects are largest for boys.

Recent research by MIT economist David Autor and colleagues generates quasi-experimental estimates of family background by simultaneously accounting for the impact of neighborhood environment and school quality to investigate why boys fare worse than girls in disadvantaged families. Comparing boys to their sisters in a data set that includes more than 1 million children born in Florida between 1992 and 2002, the authors demonstrate a persistent gender gap in graduation and truancy rates, incidence of behavioral and cognitive disabilities, and standardized test scores.
Policies to Counter Family Disadvantage
Policymakers who are weighing competing approaches to countering the influence of family disadvantage face a tough choice: Should they try to improve schools (to overcome the effects of family background) or directly address the effects of family background?

The question is critical. If family background is decisive regardless of the quality of the school, then the road to equal opportunity will be long and hard. Increasing the level of parental education is a multigenerational challenge, while reducing the rising disparities in family income would require massive changes in public policy, and reversing the growth in the prevalence of single-parent families would also prove challenging. And, while efforts to reduce incarceration rates are afoot, U.S. crime rates remain among the highest in the world. Given these obstacles, if schools themselves can offset differences in family background, the chances of achieving a more egalitarian society greatly improve.

For these reasons, scholars need to continue to tackle the causality question raised by Coleman's pathbreaking study. Although the obstacles to causal inference are steep, education researchers should focus on quasi-experimental approaches relying on sibling comparisons, changes in state laws over time, or policy quirks-such as policy implementation timelines that vary across municipalities-that facilitate research opportunities.

Given what is currently known, a holistic approach that simultaneously attempts to strengthen both home and school influences in disadvantaged communities is worthy of further exploration. A number of contemporary and past initiatives point to the potential of this comprehensive approach.
Promise Neighborhoods
"Promise Neighborhoods," which are funded by a grant program of the U.S. Department of Education, serve distressed communities by delivering a continuum of services through multiple government agencies, nonprofit organizations, churches, and agencies of civil society. These neighborhood initiatives use "wraparound" programs that take a holistic approach to improving the educational achievement of low-income students. The template for the approach is the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), a 97-block neighborhood in New York City that combines charter schooling with a full package of social, medical, and community support services. The programs and resources are available to the families at no cost.

Services available in the HCZ include a Baby College, where expectant parents can learn about child development and gain parenting skills; two charter schools and a college success office, which provides individualized counseling and guidance to graduates on university campuses across the country; free legal services, tax preparation, and financial counseling; employment workshops and job fairs; a 50,000-square-foot facility that offers recreational and nutrition classes; and a food services team that provides breakfast, lunch, and a snack every school day to more than 2,000 students.

Research by Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer demonstrates that the impact of attending an HCZ charter middle school on students' test scores is comparable to the impressive effects seen at high-performing charter schools such as the Knowledge Is Power Program (known as KIPP schools). Students who win admission by lottery and attend an HCZ school also have higher on-time graduation rates than their peers and are less likely to become teen parents or land in prison. Although some community services are available to HCZ residents only, results show that students who live outside the HCZ experience similar benefits simply from attending the Promise Academy. That is, Dobbie and Fryer do not find any additional benefits associated with the resident-only supplementary services that distinguish the Promise Neighborhoods approach. (In many instances, the mean scores for children who live within the zone are higher than those for nonresidents, but these differences are not statistically significant.)

There are two caveats to keep in mind in regard to this finding that support the case for continued experimentation with and evaluation of Promise Neighborhoods. First, many of the wraparound services offered in the HCZ are provided through the school and are thus available to HCZ residents and nonresidents alike. For instance, all Promise Academy students receive free nutritious meals; medical, dental, and mental health services; and food baskets for their parents. The services that nonresidents cannot access are things such as tax preparation and financial advising, parenting classes through the Baby College, and job fairs. It may be that both groups of students are accessing the most beneficial supplementary services.

The second caveat is that the HCZ is a "pipeline" model that aims to transform an entire community by targeting services across many different domains. Therefore, we may have to wait until a cohort of students has progressed through that pipeline before we can get a full picture of how these comprehensive services have benefited them. The first cohort to complete the entire HCZ program is expected to graduate from high school in 2020.

The main drawback of the Promise Neighborhoods model is its high cost. To cover the expenses of running the Promise Academy Charter School and the afterschool and wraparound programs, the HCZ spends about $19,272 per pupil. While this price tag is about $3,100 higher than the median per-pupil cost in New York State, it is still about $14,000 lower than what is spent by a district at the 95th percentile. If future research can demonstrate that the HCZ positively influences longer-term outcomes such as college graduation rates, income, and mortality, the model will hold tremendous potential that may well justify its costs.
Early Childhood Education
Early childhood programs can provide a source of enrichment for needy children, ensuring them a solid start in a world where those with inadequate education are increasingly marginalized. Neuroscientists estimate that about 90 percent of the brain develops between birth and age 5, supporting the case for expanded access to early childhood programs. While the United States spends abundantly on elementary and secondary schoolchildren ($12,401 per student per year in 2013-14 dollars), it devotes dramatically less than other wealthy countries to children in their first few years of life.

Four years before James Coleman released his report, a group of underprivileged, at-risk toddlers at the Perry Preschool in Ypsilanti, Michigan, were randomly selected for a preschool intervention that consisted of daily coaching from highly trained teachers as well as visits to their homes. After just one year, those in the experimental treatment group were registering IQ scores 10 points higher than their peers in the control group. The test-score effects had disappeared by age 10, but follow-up analyses of the Perry Preschool treatment group revealed impressive longer-term outcomes that included a significant increase in their high-school graduation rate and the probability of earning at least $20,000 a year as adults, as well as a 19 percent decrease in their probability of being arrested five or more times. Similar small-scale, "hothouse" preschool experiments in Chicago, upstate New York, and North Carolina have all shown comparable benefits.

Unfortunately, attempts to scale up such programs have proved challenging. Studies of the Head Start program, for instance, have uncovered mixed evidence of its effectiveness. Modest impacts on students' cognitive skills mostly fade out by the end of 1st grade. Such results have led many to question whether quality can be consistently maintained when a program such as Head Start is implemented broadly. Indeed, recent research has revealed considerable differences in Head Start's effectiveness from site to site. Variation in inputs and practices among Head Start centers explains about a third of these differences, a finding that may offer clues as to the contextual factors that influence the program's varying levels of success.

Although the policymaker's challenge is to figure out how to expand access to such programs while preserving quality, evidence suggests that investment in early childhood education has the potential to significantly address disparities that arise from family disadvantage.
Small Schools of Choice
Traditional public schools assign a child to a given school based exclusively on his family's place of residence. As Coleman pointed out, residential assignment promotes stratification between schools by family background, because it creates incentives for families of means to move to the "good" school districts. Under this system, schools cannot serve as the equal-opportunity engines of our society. Instead, residential assignment often replicates within the school system the same family advantages and disadvantages that exist in the community.

The most promising social policy for combating the effects of family background, then, could well be the expansion of programs that allow families to choose schools without regard to their neighborhood of residence. An analysis of more than 100 small schools of choice in New York City between 2002 and 2008 revealed a 9.5 percent increase in the graduation rate of a group of educationally and economically disadvantaged students, at no extra cost to the city. Positive results have also been observed with respect to student test scores for charter schools in New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, and New Orleans.

Small schools of choice might also build the social capital that Coleman considered crucial for student success. First, small schools are well positioned to build a strong sense of community through the development of robust student-teacher, parent-teacher, and student-student relationships. Helping students to cultivate dense networks of social relationships better equips them to handle life's challenges and is particularly vital given the disintegration of many social structures today. While schools may not be able to compensate fully for the disruptive effects of a dysfunctional or unstable family, a robust school culture can transform the "social ecology" of a disadvantaged child.

A small school of choice also engenders a voluntary community that comes together over strong ties and shared values. Typically, schools of choice feature a clearly defined mission and set of core values, which may derive from religious traditions and beliefs. The Notre Dame ACE Academy schools, for instance, strive for the twin goals of preparing students for college and for heaven. By explicitly defining their mission, schools can appeal to families who share their values and are eager to contribute to the growth of the community. A focused mission also helps school administrators attract like-minded teachers and thus promotes staff collegiality. A warm and cohesive teaching staff can be particularly beneficial for children from unstable homes, whose parents may not regularly express emotional closeness or who fail to communicate effectively. Exposure to well-functioning adult role models at school might compensate for such deficits, promoting well-being and positive emotional development.
Implications for Policy
Determining the causal relationships between family background and child well-being has posed a daunting challenge. Family characteristics are often tightly correlated with features of the neighborhood environment, making it difficult to determine the independent influences of each. But getting a solid understanding of causality is critical to the debate over whether to intervene inside or outside of school.

The results of quasi-experimental research, as well as common sense, tell us that children who grow up in stable, well-resourced families have significant advantages over their peers who do not-including access to better schools and other educational services. Policies that place schools at center stage have the potential to disrupt the cycle of economic disadvantage to ensure that children born into poverty aren't excluded from the American dream.

In opening our eyes to the role of family background in the creation of inequality, Coleman wasn't suggesting that we shrug our shoulders and learn to live with it. But in attacking the achievement gap, as his research would imply, we need to mobilize not only our schools but also other institutions. Promise Neighborhoods offer cradle-to-career supports to help children successfully navigate the challenges of growing up. Early childhood programs provide intervention at a critical time, when children's brains take huge leaps in development. Finally, small schools of choice can help to build a strong sense of community, which could particularly benefit inner-city neighborhoods where traditional institutions have been disintegrating.

Schools alone can't level the vast inequalities that students bring to the schoolhouse door, but a combination of school programs, social services, community organizations, and civil society could make a major difference. Ensuring that all kids, regardless of family background, have a decent chance of doing better than their parents is an important societal and policy goal. Innovative approaches such as those outlined here could help us achieve it.
Anna J. Egalite is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at the College of Education, North Carolina State University.

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How Family Background Influences Student Achievement

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This article is part of a new Education Next series commemorating the 50th anniversary of James S. Coleman's groundbreaking report, "Equality of Educational Opportunity." The full series will appear in the Spring 2016 issue of Education Next. On the weekend before the Fourth of July 1966, the U.S.

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A shirt, tie and blazer may not be the ingredients for my favourite outfit, but if I were given the choice, I wouldn't throw away the idea of school uniform. Wearing a uniform is a badge of pride, creates an identity for a school and is an important part of being a school student.

"Uniforms show that you are part of an organisation. Wearing it says we're all in this together," Jason Wing, head teacher at the Neale-Wade academy in Cambridgeshire, says.

"Also, if you wear your uniform with pride, it means you are half way there to being respectful, buying into what the organisation is all about.''

Claire Howlette, an English teacher, agrees: "Uniforms give students a sense of belonging to a particular school and create an identity for the school in the community."

My school is one of many that seem to be reverting to a more formal uniform - this September I will be wearing a shirt and blazer instead of my old jumper and polo shirt. A number of students have complained about the change, but general opinion is that the jumpers and polo shirts were "childish".

A school uniform teaches students to dress smartly and take pride in their appearance. Howlette says: "Uniforms help students to prepare for when they leave school and may have to dress smartly or wear a uniform."

Some people believe that a school uniform can improve learning by reducing distraction, sharpening focus on schoolwork and making the classroom a more serious environment, allowing students to perform better academically.

Perhaps most importantly, a uniform means students don't have to worry about peer pressure when it comes to their clothes. When everyone is dressed the same, worrying about what you look like isn't so important. There is no competition about being dressed in the latest trend, which would put a great deal of financial pressure on students and parents. Potential bullies have one less target for their insults; it's hard to make fun of what someone is wearing when you're dressed exactly the same.

In America, where a majority of schools do not have a uniform, roughly 160,000 children miss school every day due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students. This might not be directly linked to what they're wearing, but having a uniform can be a safety net for many students who might otherwise suffer from bullying. A strict uniform gives the impression that rules are strict too, perhaps helping maintain a sense of order at school.

Although wearing a school uniform is less expensive than buying a whole wardrobe of outfits, uniform can still be pricey. Many schools have a specific supplier, and wearing cheaper alternatives can result in punishment if the black skirt you're wearing isn't exactly the right black skirt. Finding uniform that fits you, especially if you're limited to one shop, can also be a struggle.

Recently the Liberal Democrats held a conference about the cost of school uniforms across England. The education minister David Laws is to issue new guidance to end the practice of using a single uniform supplier, enabling parents to shop around for uniform. If schools decide to change their uniform, for example with a new emblem or colour, changes should be restricted to one or two items, preferably with sew-on logos. Changing from a one-supplier system could help families with the cost of school uniform.

Although it might seem a shame to miss out on those two years of dressing as you like at school, I welcome the smart dress code. Not only does it make getting dressed each morning a lot easier, but it sets sixth formers up as role models for younger students, and that's important.

Macy Vallance, a year-eight student, says: "I like uniforms because everyone is the same and no one can be left out by the way they are dressed. Our new uniform looks smarter, which is good."

My uniform might not be what I would wear in my own time, but it gives me a sense of belonging, takes away the pressure of what to wear and deters the bullies. School uniform isn't fashionable, but that's exactly why I think it should be here to stay.

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You might hate your school uniform, but I think it's there for good reason, says 15-year-old Chloe Spencer

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Success

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Motivation with style. Harvey Specter's best owns in suits. Check out our Top 10 Harvey Specter Quotes That Will Motivate You: http://blog.goalcast.life/2016/04/13/top-10-harvey-specter-quotes-that-will-motivate-you/ Transcript: - Let me give you the ABCs of me. I don't take meetings, I set them; And my respect isn't demanded, it's earned. - That's only two things, what's C?

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Jeff Haden is the ghostwriter behind more than 50 books, some of which could be among your favorites. But you'll never know for sure because, well, he's a "ghost" writer.

But he also produces a ton of great content under his own by-line, notably as contributing editor to Inc., as a frequent writer for Entrepreneur, as a top LinkedIn Influencer, and as author of several business books.

Jeff's latest project is The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win.

One reader said Jeff's writing lives at the intersection of science, emotion, success, and irresistible storytelling. I found that assessment is also true in Jeff's conversation. His approach to the subject of achievement seems to echo one of my favorite Will Durant quotes: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Rodger Dean Duncan: Your suggestion that motivation is not the spark or precondition of success, but is rather the result of success, flies in the face of all the rah-rah achievement pep talks people hear. Give us an illustration of how motivation works this way.

Jeff Haden: I talked with Venus Williams about her career and her various pursuits. She said she had never had a lightning bolt moment of inspiration or motivation. She didn't suddenly think, "My life's purpose is to be the #1 tennis player in the world." She just wanted to be a better tennis player.

Then I thought about all the people who tell me they hope to accomplish something big but are waiting for that lightning bolt to strike. And I realized that only in rare cases do incredibly successful people suddenly find their passion and life's purpose. Most of them develop their passions and interests slowly, over time, simply by trying something, wanting to get better at, and getting daily doses of motivation through enjoying small successes.

In short, motivation isn't something you get. Motivation is something you create, on your own, by following a process that allows you to improve, bit by bit. Or if you want to put it another way, motivation isn't something you have before you set off to achieve a goal. Motivation is something you get from achieving goals, however small.

That thought in itself is incredibly motivating, because it means you already have everything inside you that you need to achieve your goals.

Duncan: Most achievement protocols involve some form of goal-setting. Yet you say the road to success is to "forget about the goal." What does that mean?

Haden: Goals are obviously important, but the real value of a goal is in how it informs the process you will create to achieve it.

Interestingly, most high achievers instinctively create processes that focus on the day-to-day and not the end result. If you focus solely on your goal, you realize just how great the distance is between here, where you're starting, and there, where you hope to someday be. Then that gap is so wide that it's incredibly demotivating. If you want to run a marathon and today you can run only a mile, thinking about someday needing to run 26 miles is hugely daunting. Think about just how far you need to be able to run and you'll quit.

That's why Venus's dad kept Venus and Serena from playing too many junior tournaments. He wanted them to focus on developing their skills, not on winning or losing.

In the early days of Metallica, Kirk Hammett was still taking guitar lessons from Joe Satriani and since he didn't have a car, he rode his bike 25 miles one-way to get there.

Bert Jacobs and his brother John started their Life is Good apparel and accessories company by driving a minivan up and down the coast and selling t-shirts out the back.

The list goes on of people who focused on creating a process that would lead to long-term success, and then working that process and finding motivation in small, day-to-day successes.

That's how they kept going when others would have quit.

Duncan: Decisions, you say, are behavioral change killers. So you advocate establishing routines that eliminate the need for decisions. Why?

Haden: We all have a finite amount of mental energy available for exercising self-control. Some of us have less, some have more. But we all eventually run out of willpower steam. That's why the more choices you need to make during the day, the harder each one is on your brain and the more you start to look for shortcuts. Then you get impulsive. Then you get reckless. Then you make decisions you know you should not make. But it's as if you just can't seem to help yourself.

In fact, we can't help ourselves: We ran out of the mental energy we need to make smart choices. That's why the fewer choices you're forced to make, the smarter the choices you can make when you really do have to make decisions.

Say you want to drink more water and less soda. Easy: Keep three water bottles on your desk at all times. Then you won't need to go to the refrigerator and make a choice.

Or say you struggle to keep from constantly checking your email. Easy: Turn off all your alerts. Or take your mail program off your desktop and keep it on a laptop across the room. The harder it is to check, the less often you'll have to decide not to check.

Choices are the enemy of willpower. So are ease and convenience. Think of decisions that require willpower, and then take willpower out of the equation completely.

Duncan: In working on personal change like weight loss, you suggest keeping a journal. What role does this kind of daily self-assessment play in staying on the path to accomplishment?

Haden: Two basic factors are at play. One, we tend to improve what we measure. (Or in behavioral science terms, the Hawthorne effect.)

Just as importantly, keeping track of what you've done gives you yet another chance to feel good about what you've done. Jerry Seinfeld's goal is to write a joke every day. He puts an X on a calendar each time. That's his marker of success. He loves to see a long string of Xs. It feels good, because it shows he did what he set out to do that day.

And it motivates him to do it again tomorrow.

Duncan: In an age of specialization, many people tend to invest their time and energy in only a single focus. What's the danger of that approach?

Haden: Specialization is eventually the enemy, especially on a professional level. The current professional landscape values generalists over specialists. Change occurs quickly. Skills that are valued today are obsolete tomorrow.

Managers can't be good only at managing a certain function. They need to be good leaders. Employees can't be good only at performing a certain function. They need to embrace an entrepreneurial mind-set and constantly reinvent themselves.

When specific knowledge is more and more a commodity-and it is, because information is more widely available than ever-the people who can synthesize and blend and apply a broad base of skills to a variety of functions and problems are the people who are most valued.

Plus, focusing on just one thing can get really boring.

Duncan: You seem to be a fan of Abraham Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs. How does that model relate to your view of motivation?

Haden: Maslow doesn't necessarily inform how I view motivation, but it definitely impacts how we should choose goals. If you can't pay your bills, financial and career stability should be your goal. If your health is poor, getting fitter should be your goal.

Get the basics in place. Then reach for a less "basic" goal.

You'll start from a better, healthier, stronger foundation-and you'll be more likely to achieve the goal you choose if only because you won't be as stressed or distracted by those basic problems you've ignored.

Duncan: You extol the value of an EPD-Extreme Productivity Day. Exactly what is that, and how does it really affect someone's productivity both short- and long-term?

Haden: Maybe you need to complete a major project. Or tackle a task you've been putting off. Or you just need to crank out a ton of work in a short period of time.

That's the perfect time for an extreme productivity day.

In general terms, an EPD is a day when you focus on just that one thing by putting things in place-and preparing yourself-to do only that one thing. Until it's done.

The cool thing about an EPD is that it resets your internal limits. We all reach a point where we think we can't do more. But as the SEALs say, when you think you can't do more, you've used only about 40% of what you truly have in you.

Stopping isn't caused by actual limits. Stopping is caused by perceived limits. An Extreme Productivity Day automatically ratchets your internal limits to a higher level.

After one or two of them, you'll realize you're capable of a lot more than you thought. Which is a very cool thing.

Duncan: One year you did 100,000 push-ups and 50,000 sit-ups. What lesson did you take from that experience that can be applied in other areas of aspiration?

Haden: One, that I'm kinda stupid.

Two, when you create a routine, stick to that routine, and grind it out day after day after day. You can put together huge numbers. And as I said before, every day you get to feel good about yourself, because you accomplished what you set out to accomplish that day.

Daily success, and the intrinsic reward that comes with it, is incredibly motivating. Daily successes create a virtuous cycle that makes it easier to do what you need to do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, until one day you lift up your head and realize you've accomplished what once seemed impossible. Even to you.

That principle can be applied to anything where numbers are involved. If you want to build a bigger network, make it your process to contact two people every day. If you want to get more leads, make it your process to call five potential customers every day.

What you decide to do is up to you. Just make sure you create a routine that gets you to what, at least at the start, seems like an insurmountable finish line.

Then all you have to do is stick to your routine.

Do that. Keep your head down and just do the work, day after day after day-and your success is assured.

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Your Success Can Be Predictable, Even Inevitable

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Jeff Haden is the ghostwriter behind more than 50 books, some of which could be among your favorites. But you'll never know for sure because, well, he's a "ghost" writer. But he also produces a ton of great content under his own by-line, notably as contributing editor to Inc., as a frequent writer for Entrepreneur, as a top LinkedIn Influencer, and as author of several business books.