SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

25 years ago, no one could think that our lives would be revolving around the Internet in less that two decades. Now a day, after passing nine years of the 21^st century, no one can imagine living in this world without the Internet. Internet represents the web consisting of billions of websites. There is almost nothing you can’t find on this widespread network!

One of the most magnificent websites that I have ever seen, ScientificAmerican.com, Unlike all the magazine's website, advertising for their magazine and trying to convince you to pay for the subscription, offers you a widespread range of services on its website; As a matter of fact, the magazine is just a tiny part of their service.

The most interesting part of the website, which I want to present, is the Podcasts section. This part comprises four different categories which are 60-second science, science talk, 60-second earth and 60-second psych.

In 60-second parts you can listen to news or different pieces of information just in one minute. Besides gaining useful info about different aspects of science, earth and psychology, it is of use to English learners, who want to get to know and cultivate their American accent. The concepts are mostly broad and not too technical so that everyone, having general knowledge, can grasp them readily.

Science talk consists of interviews with science experts, but this part, being lengthy, doesn't have scripts and might not be as useful for learners as 60-second parts, in which you can have access to the exact transcript of podcast.

At the end, Scientific American is worth visiting and exploring for either technical and general purposes.

True Love

Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of the well-known German composer, was far from being handsome. Along with a rather short stature, he had a grotesque hunchback.

One day he visited a merchant in Hamburg who had a lovely daughter named Frumtje. Moses fell hopelessly in love with her. But Frumtje was repulsed by his misshapen appearance. When it came time for him to leave, Moses gathered his courage and climbed the stairs to her room to take one last opportunity to speak with her. She was a vision of heavenly beauty, but caused him deep sadness by her refusal to look at him. After several attempts at conversation, Moses shyly asked, "Do you believe marriages are made in heaven?" "Yes," she answered, still looking at the floor. "And do you?" "Yes I do," he replied. "You see, in heaven at the birth of each boy, the Lord announces which girl he will marry. When I was born, my future bride was pointed out to me. Then the Lord added, 'But your wife will be humpbacked.' "Right then and there I called out, 'Oh Lord, a humpbacked woman would be a tragedy. Please, Lord, give me the hump and let her be beautiful.'"

Then Frumtje looked up into his eyes and was stirred by some deep memory. She reached out and gave Mendelssohn her hand and later became his devoted wife.

Barry and Joyce Vissell

Report on job satisfaction of bank employees

This report outlines the result of a survey, which has been recently conducted, of bank employees attitude towards their job satisfaction and working condition. We asked a sample of 300 employees, of different ages and both sexes who are all working in the cashier position of different branches of one bank, these three questions:

1. Do you think that your salary is equal to your job responsibility?

2. Do you think you deserve to get a higher position in your organization?

3. Are you looking for another job or you prefer to continue doing your job until you get promoted?

Salary

The vast majority of employees are not satisfied with their salary. And that is why we can see a sheer weariness in employees. Most of them complain that their salary has not increased commensurately with the rate of inflation.

Position

Unfortunately, 72 percent of the employees think that they deserve to get a higher position. It shows that they either are not satisfied with their job or don't have an objective evaluation of their job description, which both mean that they have a forlorn hope to get promoted and if not, they will be completely disappointed with their position.

Recruiting

65 percent of employees, who had expressed their dissatisfaction through the questionnaire, are looking for another job out side of this organization. And the other 35 percent are going to continue their job until they get promoted. This statistic means that the organization will lose some 47 percent of its employees in future and should hire new employees, which is not a good rate of recruiting.

Conclusion

Broadly speaking, the considerable proportion of employees, who work in cashier position, are not satisfied with their job in this bank, which means human resource department has failed in increasing their employees satisfaction. It seems making a revision in their salary system would be one of the best way of increasing their loyalty and satisfaction. In addition, educational programs in order to give them to understand that job promotion needs special skills and experiment and not everyone can get promotion easily, could be considered as another solution for increasing job satisfaction among the employees.