Ryan Bayley plays to the crowd at the Athens velodrome3 after seizing Olympic gold in the men's sprint, an achievement that defied4 critics of his junk food habits.

Before these Olympics there had been weeks of speculation5 about the substances that fuelled6 the Australian cycling team. But amid all the claims nd denials, no one thought to test for secret herbs and spices .

Actually, there was no need to. Sprint cycling gold medallist Ryan Bayley is not the type to sneak the fast food that forms a significant part of his unorthodox training diet into his room and scoff it behind closed doors. 8 He is quite proud of eating habits that would shame a sumo' wrestler, let alone a finely-tuned international cycling star.

"Most people do the right thing and eat the right foods," said Bayley, the gold medal resting on his lean stomach. " I just do what I want to do. I eat whatever I want to eat and it seems to be working for me. " Bayley's girlfriend, Katrina Purcell, was asked to name the worst meal she had seen the newly-crowned Olympic champion eat. "Well, he's had steak and chips for dinner, followed by ice-cream," she begins. "It always has to be chocolate and chocolate topping. "

Purcell then grimaced10 slightly as she revealed the full horror of her boy-friend's eating disorder.

But surely he sometimes gets a bit of exercise on the way to the shop. " He drives the car, he loves the car, doesn't ride his bike. "

The fourth gold medal won by Bayley for the Australian Olympic cyclists was particularly popular among the team.

"He really is a great bloke," said 500 metres time trial gold medallist Anna Meares". "I think he deserves everything he gets. He's not your typical kind of bloke, he eats KFC and he drinks Coke, but he doesn't care what anyone thinks as long as he is happy. "

In the most dramatic fashion, Bayley had also proven he is a great cyclist. When he narrowly lost the first of three races in the final to world champion Bos, the 22-year-old from Perth slumped back into the pits like a boxer going back to his corner after a knockdown.12

"You sort of go in there like you go into the ring," said Bayley, "You've got to know exactly what you are doing, otherwise you are going to suffer. "

In those few minutes, Bayley's blood began to boil. " I got off, got very an¬gry, got pissed off". " Bayley said, "When I get pissed off, I get really fast. "

In the second heat, Bayley mowed down Bos just before the line, pulling his front wheel off the line in the unorthodox style he learnt as a BMX14 rider. In the deciding race, he sped past the 21 -year-old Dutchman again, before suf-fering that mixture of shock and exaltation15 that often consumes a gold med-allist in the moment of triumph.

After the race, Bayley spoke affectionately16 of his father, Wayne, who fell in¬to a pit of boiling lime and lost 90 per cent of his sight when Bayley was six years old.

" My dad can't see that wel I, but he's the most positive person I've ever met," he said. " Ever since I was a kid he's always tried to make me happy. He's tried to get me to sports, he's always tried to encourage me with everything I've done and he's never pushed me with anything. "

After his BMX career, Bayley was inspired to try his luck on the track after watching the Australian pursuit team compete at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

"Since then it's been a weird, rocky road," he said. And for once, he meant the rocky road an athlete can travel to Olympic glory - not the ice-cream flavour.

Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, "My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you. 2Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you have been working. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes, and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. 4When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do. " She said to her, "All that you tell me I will do. "

6So she went down to the threshing floor and did just as her mother-in-law had instructed her. ?When Boaz had eaten and drunk, and he was in a contented mood, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she came stealthily and uncovered his feet, and lay down. At midnight the man was startled, and turned over, and there, lying at his feet, was a woman! 9He said, "Who are you?" And she answered, "I am Ruth, your servant; spread your cloak over your servant, for you are next-of-kin." He said, "May you be blessed by the LORD, my daughter; this last instance of your loyalty is better than the first; you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. 11 And now, my daughter, do not be afraid, I will do for you all that you ask, for all the assembly of my people know that you are a worthy woman. 12But now, though it is true that I am a near kinsman, there is another kinsman more closely related than I. Remain this night, and in the morning, if he will act as next-of-kin for you, good; let him do it. If he is not willing to act as next-of-kin for you, then, as the LORD lives, I will act as next-of-kin for you. Lie down until the morning. "

These financial statements include balance sheets, income statements, and a statement of owner' s equity.

Balance Sheet

A balance sheet is a means of reporting the financial position of a business at a specific point in time. The body of the statement contains three major sections: assets, liabilities, and owners' equity, which are the same as the accounting equation. Balance sheets can be prepared in a T - account format or a reporting format.

Income Statement

The Income Statement is a statement reporting profitability or the operating result of a business for an accounting period. The major categories of an income statement for a service company are service revenue, and operating expenses. The difference between revenues and expenses is referred to as operating results which will be reflected in the.owner' s equity in the balance

sheet at the end of that period.

Statement of Owner' s Equity

In sole proprietorships and partnerships, a statement of owners' equity is frequently pre-pared to accompany the Balance sheet and Income Statement. This is simply a summary of the changes in the owners' capital during the accounting period. Note that the ending balance on this statement is just the same as the balance"of the owners' equity on the balance sheet on December 31, 1997. This statement demonstrates the relationship between the income statement and the balance sheet. The net income (or net loss) for a period in the income statement is an addition to (or deduction from) the statement of owners' equity, while the ending owners' equity balance on this statement is an input into the balance sheet at the end of the period.

Notice that all financial statements shown in this passage have one thing in common: there must be a heading that identifies the statement. This heading must identify the business, the statement, and the time involved.

Most of the time we're not aware that we're doing it. We gesture with eyebrows or a hand, meet someone else's eyes and look away, shift positions in a chair. These actions we assume are random and incidental. But researchers have discovered in recent years that there is a system to them almost as consistent and comprehensible as language.

Every culture has its own body language,and children absorb its nuances along with spoken language. A Frenchman talks and moves in French. The way an Englishman crosses his legs is nothing like the way a male American does it. In talking, Americans are apt to end a statement with a droop of the head or hand, a lowering of the eyelids. They wind up a question with a lift of the hand, a tilt of the chin,or a widening of the eyes. With a future-tense verb they often gesture with a forward movement.

There are regional idioms, too: an expert can sometimes pick out a native of Wisconsin just by the way he uses his eyebrows during conversation. Your sex, ethnic background, social class, and personal style all influence your body language. Nevertheless, you move and gesture within the American idiom.

The person who is truly bilingual is also bilingual in body language. New York's famous mayor, Fiorello La Guardia,poli-ticked in English, Italian, and Yiddish. When films of his speeches are run without sound,it's not too difficult to identify from his gesturs the language he was speaking. One of the reasons English-dubbed foreign films often seem flat is that the gestures don't match the language.

Usually the wordless communication acts to qualify the words. What the nonverbal elements express very often, and very efficiently, is the emotional side of the message. When- a person feels liked or disliked, of ten it's a case of "not what he said but the way he said it. " Psychologist Albert Mehrabian has devised this formula: total impact of a mesage = 7 percent verbal + 38 percent vocal + 55 percent facial. The importance of the voice can be seen when you consider that even the words "I hate you"can be made to sound sexy.

More money is being made out of selling car systems than domestic hi-fi, though some of the big names in electronics don' t like to admit it. Yet only a few years ago, ICE meant no more than a cheap, car radio with knob-and-dial-tuning, plus a low-fi cassette player and a mono loud-speaker bolted anywhere convenient inside the car. At over 30 miles an hour the system could barely produce enough sound to make speech intelligible or music enjoyable, because it soon became over-loaded at increased volume settings. Besides, knob-and-dial tuning is dangerous in a car because it takes the driver' s attention off the road. So does fumbling to turn over a tape when the side ends. True, there were continuous-loop systems called 8-track cartridges but their quality was poor.

Today all that has changed. A modern ICE system has enough watts to drown the sound of an engine at motorway speeds. It produces stereo from at least two speakers, which are mounted carefully to aim a spread of sound at the driver' s seat. What' s more, the cassette player— automatically reverses the tape as soon as it reaches the end of a side, so 8-track is obsolete. Tuning is mostly by pre-set buttons though it can still be done by tuning a knob.

For hi-fi stereo listening, today' s ICE radio receives interference-free VHF FM broadcasts. But there’s usually a medium and long-wave AM option too, be- • cause VHF reception is poor in some parts of the country. Or the driver may want a foreign station like Radio Luxemburg, which isn't available on VHF. Then, because British radio stations transmit on different frequencies in different parts of the country, a good car radio also. Has a self-seek gadget which scans each waveband when a button and tunes in every station it comes to. If you don' t want to listen you touch the self-seek button again and the scanning is resumed. And all of this is without taking your eyes off the road.

Another refinement takes care of the way high buildings block VHF signals, causing the radio to fade or suddenly give a hissy sound. You don' t notice the fade or hiss half as much if you' re listening to mono, so a modern radio slides automatically between stereo and mono, depending on signal strength. This can be done so subtly that you don' t notice the change. There' s also a local /distant pushbutton to let you tell the self-seeking circuits to make do with a hissy distant station if it can' t find anything else ( otherwise only the loud and clear signals will be tuned in).

A few modern systems have a refined automatic volume, control that listens to the background noise inside the car with a microphone, and adjusts the volume accordingly. This beats the problem of volume turned up loud enough to be heard comfortably when you' re driving hard, which can become unbearably loud when you slow down or stop at traffic lights.

A hundred years or so ago only one out of every five Americans at work was employed, i. e. , worked for somebody else. Today only one out of five is not employed but working for himself. And when fifty years ago "being employed" meant working as a factory labourer or as a farmhand, the employee of to-day is increasingly a middle-class person with a sub-stantial formal education, holding a professional or management job requiring intellectual and technical skills. Indeed, two things have characterized American society during these last fifty years; middle-:lass and upper-class employees have been the fas-:est growing groups in our working population— •rowing so fast that the industrial worker, that oldest :hild of the Industrial Revolution, has been losing in lumerical importance despite the expansion of industrial production.

Yet you will find little if anything written on what it is to be an employee. You can find a great deal of very dubious advice on how to get a job or how to get a promotion. You can also find a good deal of work in a chosen field, whether it be the mechanist' s trade or bookkeeping. Every one of these trades requires different skills, sets different standards, and requires a different preparation. Yet they all have employeeship in common. And increasingly, especially in the large business or in government, employeeship is more important to success than the special professional knowledge or skill. Certainly more people fail because they do not know the requirements of being an employee than because they do not adequately possess the skills of their trade; the higher you climb the ladder, the more you get into administrative or executive work, the greater the emphasis on ability to work within the organization rather than on technical abilities or professional knowledge.

ATHENS, Greece-Justin Gatlin shov-eled2 the snow off his track in North Carolina3, braving the cold to keep practicing, keep working, keep cha-sing Olympic gold.4

He finally caught it Sunday night, out-running5 the fastest field in Olympic history to become the youngest 100-meter champion in 36 years.

Gatlin ran a personal best 9. 85 seconds, barely6 holding off7 Portugal's Francis Obikwelu, defending gold medalist Maurice Greene", outspo¬ken9 teammate Shawn Crawford and Jamaican's Asafa Powell.

It was the first time in Olympic history that five men broke 10 seconds in a race. Four did it at the 1996 Atlanta" Games.

"I said it was going to be the most exciting race in the world, and it was," said Gatlin, a 22-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y. native", who now lives in Raleigh, N.C. "This is what I train for, that's why I shoveled the snow off North Carolina tracks. That's why I'm here. I'm here to win the gold medal."

In the days preceding13 the race, Gatlin listened quietly while Greene, Craw-ford and Powell proclaimed themselves the front-runners. When Crawford said the only person who could beat14 him was himself, Gatlin responded, "Beat yourself up! "

Sure enough, Crawford got off to a bad start and never was a factor.

With no clear leader as the race drew to a close, Gatlin took control near the very end, shedding a few tears after he crossed the finish line16, then dropping to his knees and clasping his hands in prayer.

Crawford, his training partner, gave him a big hug and screamed, "Do you know what you just did?"

"That race on his part was almost flawless," Crawford said later. "That was the race of his life. I'm just glad I was part of the field that helped push him to that. I know he's going to carry that title, Olympic gold medalist in the 100, with honor and dignity. "

As for Greene, it was another valiant17 effort in a resurrected18 career for the three-time world champion. After breaking his leg in a motorcycle crash two years ago, some thought he would never regain the form that propelled him to Olympic gold in 2000.

Even after failing to become the first man since Carl Lewis" in 1984 and 1988 to win back-to-back20 Olympic 100s, the ever-confident Greene said he's still the greatest sprinter of all time.

The way people work has changed. The increasing use of technology presents new and continual challenges to small and large businesses, employees and managers, teachers and students. Everyone, it seems, is beii affected by the technological revolution. Store clerks, for example, now us

reasingly complex computerized cash registers,1 while university >fessors must learn to adapt their teaching skills in order to lead distance rning courses.2

today's world, training and learning do not stop when we finish school; y must now continue throughout our working lives. In the year 2000, the ing Kong government conducted a survey on the employment concerns, I training needs, of its workforce. For many managers and other >fessionals the biggest challenge, as well as change, in the workplace, was increased use of computers and computerized machinery or equipment, rween 1998 and 2000, the need for experienced employees who could use 5 kind of equipment rose drastically. Many of those in the workplace at 5 time experienced changes in job requirements and had to attend job-ited training or re-training courses.

e changing work environment is also affecting education and how we rn. In Finland, a report on strategies for education and training in the armation age3 discussed the changing roles of both teacher and student, th the increased use of technology and the growth of distance learning, teacher has become more of a tutor4 who guides a student, rather than tures.5 In turn, the student has to take more responsibility for his or her rning in the absence of direct teacher contact. The report also stressed t high school and university students should learn computer skills in ler to cope with the demands of the future workplace.

e Finnish report also highlighted the need for teacher training, and :raining, and suggested that the salaries6 and job descriptions7 of teachers reviewed because of future demands expected in their jobs. Previously, versity professors may have held lectures between the weekday hours of 0 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. in large halls filled with students. Now, they may nd part of their day lecturing large groups of students on campus, and n conduct afternoon or evening classes online, with students in five ferent countries.

There was not a chance in a billion years that an extraterrestrial object as large as Halley's comet would hit the Earth. But that was 15 years ago, when I had little appreciation of geological time. I did not consider then the adage that anything that can happen does happen—given the time. Smaller collisions have happened frequently, as evidenced by many ancient impact craters. Even during the brief period of human history, there was a very real event at Tunguska.

Tunguska was a quiet hamlet in central Siberia. At 7:00 a. m. on June 30, 1908, a fireball appeared above the horizon to the southeast. The bright light streaked across the cloudless sky and exploded somewhere to the northwest. The scale of the explosion was unprecedented in recorded history. When scientists consulted their instruments and calculated the energy that had been released, they were stunned.

The brilliant object had been seen for hundreds of kilometers around, and the explosion was heard as far away as 1 000 kilometers. The shock wave of wind circled the globe twice, and the ejecta from the explosion glowed over Northern Europe .through the next two nights. Vast amounts of fire debris arrived at California two weeks later.

Fortunately, the object had exploded at a height of 8. 5 kilometers above the ground, and the fall region was not densely populated. Hunters who were first to enter the disaster area reported that the whole forest had been flattened and gave accounts of wild forest fires. Systematic investigations did not begin until two decades later. The first team of experts visited the target area in 1927. They endured hardship to penetrate the devastated forest with horse-drawn wagons to investigate the aftereffect of the blast. Their mapping showed that trees within a radius of 30 to 40 kilometers had been uprooted and blown. Within the blast zone, an area of 2 000 square kilometers had been ravaged by fire.

Study of the Tunguska site resumed after the Second World War and is still continuing. Although no meteorites have ever been found, soil samples from Tunguska contain small spherical objects, black glassy objects commonly believed to result from the impact of a meteorite. Scientists found that the chemical composition of the Tunguska objects resembles cosmic dust. Apparently they were not ejecta thrown out of an impact crater, but were derived directly from the explosion above the Earth, and fell down as extraterrestrial fallout.

What was it that exploded on that sunny morning over Siberia? Astronomers have conjured everything from black holes to balls of antimatter, but dramatic as the Tunguska e-vent was, it does not seem to require an exotic explanation'. The more likely interpretation is conventional; the object was a large meteor.

One of the most important social developments that helped to make possible a shift in thinking about the role of public education was the effect of the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s on the schools. In the 1920s, but especially in the Depression conditions of the 1930s, the United States experienced a declining birth rate—every thousand women aged fifteen to forty-four gave birth to about 118 live children in 1920, 89. 2 in 1930, 75. 8 in 1936, and 80 in 1940. With the growing prosperity brought on by the Second World War and the economic boom that followed it, young people married and established households earlier and began to raise larger families than had their predecessors during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102 per thousand in 1946, 106. 2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955. Although economics was probably the most important determinant, it is not the only explanation for the baby boom. The increased value placed on the idea of the family also helps to explain this rise in birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming into the first grade by the mid-19405 and became a flood by 1950. The public school system suddenly found itself overtaxed. While the number of schoolchildren rose because of wartime and postwar conditions, these same conditions made the schools even less prepared to cope with the flood. The wartime economy meant that few new schools were built between 1940 and 1945. Moreover , during the war and in the boom times that followed, large numbers of teachers left their profession for better-paying jobs elsewhere in the economy.

Therefore, in the 1950s and 1960s, the baby boom hit an antiquated and inadequate school system. Consequently, the "custodial rhetoric" of the 1930s and early 1940s no longer made sense; that is, keeping youths aged sixteen and older out of the labor market by keeping them in school could no longer be a high priority for an institution unable to find space and staff to teach younger children aged five to sixteen. With the baby boom, the focus of educators and of laymen interested in education inevitably turned toward the lower grades and back to basic academic skills and discipline. The system no longer had much interest in offering nontraditional, new, and extra services to older youths.