Aerial performer Jennifer Bricker was born without legs, but she never let it stop her.

    Wrapped in a loop of red silk hung from the ceiling Jennifer Bricker climbs and twists to the music. Her head hangs down and her strong arms let go as she balances on her back, high above the ground a move that's all the more daring because she has no legs.

    Jennifer was a few months old when she was adopted by Sharon and Gerald Bricker. She had big brown eyes, a bright smile, and huge amounts of energy. When a doctor advised her adoptive parents to carry her around in a kind of bucket, they refused.

    Jennifer soon learned to walk — and run — on her hands and bottom, and grew up fearlessly climbing trees and bouncing on the trampoline（蹦床） with her three older brothers. “My parents didn't treat me differently so I didn't grasp the concept that I was different. I knew I didn't have legs but that wasn't stopping me from doing the things I wanted to do.”

    At the age of three she was fitted with artificial legs, but she never really took to them — she moved more freely without.

    In 1996 the Olympic Games took place in Atlanta. Jennifer loved to watch the women's gymnastics team, and especially adored the 14-year-old Dominique Moceanu who competed for the US. When Moceanu and the women's team won gold, Jennifer decided she was going to be a gymnast, too. She took up power tumbling, which involves performing floor exercises down a runway. But Jennifer did not want any allowances to be made for her disability.

    At the age of 10 she took part in the Junior Olympics and by age 11 she was tumbling champion for the state of Illinois.

    Jennifer now travels the world as an inspirational speaker and acts as an aerial performer.

    A Canadian woman who lost her diamond ring 13 years ago while cleaning her garden on the family farm is wearing it proudly again after her daughter-in-law pulled it from the ground or a carrot.

    Mary Grams, 84, said she can't believe the lucky carrot actually grew through and around the diamond ring she had long given up hope of finding. She said she never told her husband, Norman, that she lost the ring, but only told her son. Her husband died five years ago.

    “I feel glad and happy, ”Grams said this week . “I grew into the carrot. I feel it amazing”,

    Her daughter-in-law, Calleen Daley, found the ring while getting carrots in for supper with her dog Billy at the farm near Armena, Alberta, where Grams used to live. The farm has been in the family for 105 years. Daley said while she was pulling the carrots and noticed one of them looked strange She almost fed it to her dog bu decided to keep it When she was washing ;the carrots she noticed the ring and spoke to her husband, Grams'son, about what she had found.

    They quickly called Grams. “I told her we found her ring in the garden She couldn't believe it, ”Daley said. “It was so strange that the carrot grew perfectly through that ring. ”

    Grams said she wanted to try the ring on again after so many years with her family looking on, she washed the ring with a little soap to get the dirt off. It moved on her finger as easily as i did when her husband gave it to her.

    “We were laughing, ” she said. “It fits. After so many years it still fits perfectly.”

    Michael and I did not know when the waiter put the plates on our table. At the time we were sitting in a small restaurant, hidden from the busy Third Street, in New York City. Even the smell of fresh serving blintze did not interfered our conversation. In fact, we let the blintze soaked in the sour cream. We just enjoy the conversation too much that we forgot to eat. Our conversation was so delightful though we did not speak about important things. We laughed and spoke about the film which we have just watched.

    While our fun conversation continued, my eyes went across the room and stop on the corner. A couple of old folks sat in there. The woman wearing the flower dress with faded color, the same with the pillow where she laid her pallid handbag. The man's top head shined just like the boiled egg which he ate very slowly. The woman chewed her oatmeal(燕麦片) very slowly too, seemed with very much effort.

    But what made my mind thought about them was the silence around them. Michael and I paid our food and went on. When we passed the corner where the couple sat, my wallet fell. When I stopped to get it, I saw under the table, they were tenderly holding each other's hand. They were eating in silence while holding each other's hand! I was very touched to see the simple yet the very meaningful action reflecting the close relationship of the couple.

    Their silence was the pleasant and relaxing one, it was the expression of the tender love and it did not always need the words to express it. They might spend the hours holding each other's hand like this in the morning.

    When I and Michael went out of the restaurant, I thought, maybe it was nothing bad at all if some day we have something like that. Maybe, it will become the expression of the tender and complete love.

    Parents complain that children outgrow their clothes so fast that it costs a fortune（￡12, 000 on average per year）, going through seven different sizes in the space of their first two years. There could now be a solution：a new high－tech fabric（织物）that expands as the wearer grows.

    Ryan Yasin, who is studying for a master's degree at the London Royal College of Art, came up with the idea after purchasing clothes for his newborn nephew, only to find the baby had outgrown them by the time they arrived. In addition to the expense Yasin was also concerned about the environmental influence. The process of making and distributing just l kilogram, or 2. 2 pounds, of new fabric results in an average of 23 kg, or 50 pounds of greenhouse gases. To make matters worse, the “fast fashion” trend worldwide has caused garment production to double since 2000, with more than half of the clothing ending up in landfills annually!

    To find a solution, Yasin used his previous experience designing satellites to invent a way to fold synthetic（合成的）material such that it stretches in all directions.

    The first design, a pair of tiny pants, not only fit his baby nephew, but also his 2－year-old niece! After spending a lot of time perfecting the process and testing the design, Yasin is now awaiting a patent for his design and seeking investors（投资者）to bring the clothing to market.

    For his new line of Petit Pli, the designer plans to produce outerwear that is both waterproof（防水的）and windproof. The clothing will be machine washable and fold small enough to fit in a jacket or pant pocket. Yasin plans to establish a take－back system so that worn－out Petit Pli clothing can be recycled into new fabric.

    The designer does not expect parents to dress their children only in his expandable clothing, particularly since the current designs use synthetic materials. But he plans to soon produce the wear in “a wider variety of garments” and hopes that Petit Pli will be able to have an “influence on over-consumption. ”We surely hope he succeeds!

    Not many years ago, a wealthy and rather strange old man named Johnson lived alone in a village in the south of England. He had made a lot of money in trading with foreign countries. When he was seventy-five, he gave £ 12,000 to the village school to buy land and equipment for a children's playground.

    As a result of his kindness, many people came to visit him. Among them was a newspaperman. During their talk, Johnson said that he was seventy-five and expected to live to be a hundred. The newspaperman asked him how he managed to be healthy at seventy-five. Johnson had a sense of humor. He liked whisky and drank some each day. "I have an injection (注射) in my neck each evening." He told the newspaperman, thinking of evening glass of whisky.

    The newspaperman did not understand what Johnson meant. In his newspaper he reported that Johnson was seventy-five and has a daily injection in his neck. Within a week Johnson received thousands of letters from all over Britain, asking him for the secret of his daily injection.

    I prefer Lynne Truss's phraseology: I am a grammar "sticker". And, like Truss—author of Eats, shoots & Leaves – I have a "zero tolerance" approach to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid.

    Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have "zero tolerance". She thinks that people who mix up basic grammar "deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked (砍) up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave", while I just think they deserve to be passed over for a job—even if they are otherwise qualified for the position.

    Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a compulsory grammar test. If job hopefuls can't distinguish between "to" and "too", their applications go into the bin.

    Of course, we write for a living. iFixit.com is the world's largest online repair manual (指南), and Dozuki helps companies write their own technical documentation, like paperless work instructions and step-by-step user manuals. So, it makes sense that we've made a strong strike against grammar errors.

    But grammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn't make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the Internet. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between "their" "there" and "they're".

    Good grammar makes good business sense—and not just when it comes to hiring writers. Writing isn't in the official job description of most people in our office. Still, we give our grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff, and our programmers.

    Grammar signifies more than just a person's ability to remember high school English. I've found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing—like stocking shelves or labeling parts. It is the same with programmers. Applicants who don't think writing is important are likely to think lots of other things also aren't important.