Recently for a project, I read Blue Zones by Dan Buettner that discusses how to live longer. Everyone wants to live life to the fullest, and to do that you have to live for a very long time, or so some think. The author traveled to some pretty remote regions of the globe to find centenarians, or people that were 100 years of age or older. The four places discussed were Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy, Nicoya, Costa Rica, and Loma Linda, California. These places have a high concentration of centenarians and Buettner set off to discover the secrets to these people’s longevity and to see how they’ve managed to stay alive so long. Overall, he discovered nine basic things in life that help you live long: 1.) Move a little everyday, get your muscles working 2.) Find your purpose 3.) Find a routine that helps you distress 4.) Stop eating when you’re 80% full 5.) Eat lots of veggies 6.) Drink wine in moderation 7.) Belong and believe in a faith 8.) Keep your family close 9.) Establish a group of close friends who encourage good habits and lifestyles. These nine things were all found to be a part of centenarians lives around the world, recurring habits that they all practice in their own way. More information about Blue Zones can be found at their website http://www.bluezones.com/ which has tips on how to make your life more like on of a centenarian along with quizzes and checklists that you can do for further life improvement. One thing I didn’t really like about the book was the author’s style of writing. To me, the book should’ve been presented as research, but the way the author wrote made it sound like he was trying too hard to write something like a memoir. Other than that, the book was interesting, especially knowing there are a small number of people who have had the privilege to live for so long.
The other day in my English class, we touched on a topic that really intrigued me (and no, it wasn’t food). We were discussing an excerpt by Barbara Ehnreich about television in the 1980s and how it has turned society into couch potatoes. She says that you never see people sitting and watching TV on TV. This makes sense, who would like to watch a show about someone who watches a show? It just wouldn’t be popular or worth watching. Watching TV, Ehnreich says, makes people lazy and it has only gotten worse as the years have gone by. However, my teacher brought up a point that people were saying the same things about paperback books when they became popular. This made me think about what happened in the past, what is happening now, and what will happen in the future. As I said before, in the past paperback books were all the rage because technology hadn’t advanced far enough for us to have the electronics that we do today. People would spend hours reading and getting lost in them, causing others to call them lazy because all they were doing all day was reading, not at all contributing to society. Later on, radio in the 20s and then television in the 50s took the place of novels and became all Americans ever did. Nowadays, it is cell phones, specifically social networking. This all makes me wonder what will happen in the future; what will people be addicted to next? What great new thing can scientists and inventors create that becomes a social phenomena? My only hope is that it will be something that can’t be constructed and controlled by technology. Hopefully we revert back to the basics and realize that this is what we needed all along: face-to-face human contact.
When it comes to being an intense book blogger, or just an avid reader, you have to have sources that you can trust to provide the books you want to read. Most try their local library but sometimes even that doesn’t have what’s on our lists. So what’s a bibliophile to do? Well, we have resources. Other than the library, we can borrow from friends, buy books at Barnes and Noble, and my personal favorite- iBooks. However, I’m the kind of person that only buys books I’ve read before and know I’ll read again. I also have a lot of trouble reading on my phone. I want to check Twitter every five seconds and it just feels better holding an actual book. There actually are a lot of books you can get for free on iBooks, especially if you are a fan of the classics, all of which are usually free. Some people use Kindles or Nooks to get books but from previous posts, you can already tell I’m not a fan of those either. Personally, I think if you’re already paying a large sum of money for a virtual library, some of the books (if not all) should be free. But that’s just me and I’m not really up on my research with tablets used for reading. In order to accomplish a large list of must-reads, readers like me have to have resources. It’s like a life necessity. Air, water, shelter, ways to get books. I want to find more ways to get the books I want. If you know of any websites or places that have the books on my list, let me know! I would love to have that sense of security knowing I have those books available to me. How do you obtain your books to read and finish your lists? Or do people even have lists nowadays? Happy reading.
Salaries for a Test Specialist at IBM in Roseland, NJ vary between $76,544 and $86,807 with an average of $80,500. The top 25% make a salary of at least $79,736. The median salary is $78,915. Attached is a detailed distribution of the salaries.
The average salary for a Test Specialist at IBM in Roseland, NJ increased by an average of 7% year over year between 2014 and 2015.
Salaries for a Application Architect at IBM in Syracuse, NY vary between $77,100 and $80,895 with an average of $78,365. The top 25% make a salary of at least $80,895. The median salary is $77,100. Attached is a detailed distribution of the salaries.
The average salary for a Application Architect at IBM in Syracuse, NY increased by an average of 4% year over year between 2012 and 2015.