A new generation addiction is quickly spreading all over the world. Web holism, a twentieth century disease, affects people from different ages. They surf the net, use e-mail and speak in chat rooms. They spend many hours on the computer, and it becomes a compulsive （强迫的，强制的） habit. They cannot stop, and it affects their lives.

    Ten years ago, no one thought that using computers could become compulsive behavior that could affect the social and physical life of computer users. This obsessional behavior has affected teenagers and college students. They are likely to log on computers and spend long hours at different websites.

    They become hooked on computers and gradually their social and school life is affected by this situation. They spend all free time surfing and don't concentrate on homework, so this addiction influences their grades and success at school. Because they can find everything on the websites, they hang out there. Moreover, this addiction to websites influences their social life.

    They spend more time in front of computers than with their friends. The relation with their friends changes. The virtual life becomes more important than their real life. They have a new language that they speak in the chat rooms and it causes cultural changes in society.

    Because of the change in their behavior, they begin to keep themselves apart from the society and live with their virtual friends. They share their emotions and feelings with friends who they have never met in their life. Although they feel confident on the computer, they are not confident with real live friends they have known all their life. It is a problem for the future. This addictive behavior is beginning to affect all the world.

    I was very disappointed not to be able to go to the concert last Friday. The advertisement in the paper said you could buy tickets at the theatre box any day between 10:00 and 4:00. Since I work from 9:00 to 5:30, the only time I could go to the theatre was during my 45-minute lunch break. Unfortunately, the theatre is on the other side of the town, and the bus service between my office and the theatre is not good. But if you are lucky, you can make the round trip in 45 minutes. Last Monday, I stood at the bus stop for 15 minutes. By the time I saw one come, there was not enough time left to make the trip. So I gave up and went back to the office. The same thing happened on Tuesday, and again next day. On Thursday, my luck changed. I got on a bus right away and arrived at the theatre in 20 minutes. When I got there, however, I found a long line at the box office, and I heard one man say he had been waiting for over an hour. Realizing I would not have enough time to wait in line, I caught the next bus and headed back. By Friday I realized my only hope was to make the trip by taxi. It was expensive, but it would be worth it to hear the concert. The trip by taxi only took 10 minutes, but felt like an hour to me. When I got to the theatre, I was relieved to see that nobody was waiting in line. The reason, however, I quickly discovered, was that they had already sold all the tickets.

    Al was a skilled artist. One night, his older son developed a serious stomachache. Neither Al nor his wife took the condition seriously. But it was actually acute appendicitis (急性阑尾炎), and the boy died suddenly that night.

    Knowing the death could have been prevented if he had realized the seriousness of the situation, Al's emotional health became worse. Worse still, his wife left him a short time later, leaving him alone with his six-year-old younger son. The hurt and pain of the two situations were more than Al could handle, and he turned to alcohol (酒) to avoid the pain. Gradually Al became an alcoholic (酒鬼) and began to lose everything he had. Finally, Al died alone in a San Francisco motel room.

    When I heard of Al's death, I felt sorry for him. “What a complete failure!” I thought. “What a totally wasted life!”

    As time went by, I began to rethink my earlier judgment. I knew Al's son, Ernie, one of the kindest and most caring men I have ever known. I watched Ernie with his children and saw the free flow of love between them. I knew that kindness and caring had long come from somewhere.

    One day I worked up my courage to ask him. “I'm really puzzled by something,” I said. “I know your father was basically the only one to raise you. What did he do so that you became such a special person?”

    Ernie sat quietly and thought for a few moments. Then he said, “From my earliest memories as a child until I left home at 18, Al came into my room every night, gave me a kiss and said, 'I love you, son.'”

    What a fool I had been to judge Al as a failure. He had not left any material possessions (财产) behind. But he had been a kind loving father, and he left behind one of the finest, most giving men I have ever known.

    The other day I heard a few local musicians talking:

    "I hate all the terrible pianos in this town. I hate that rubbish they play on the radio. They can't even understand a bit of music."

    " I'm never playing in that club again. Too many drunks and nobody listens to us."

    But one younger musician said, "There are a few clubs that book my band a few nights a month, and I'm trying to find other places to play. I'm also looking to book a few summer festivals this year."

    I've heard that you are the average of the five people whom you spend the most time with, or to put it another way, you are who your friends are.

    Attitudes are important. Whether they're positive or negative, they're rubbing off on you. If you're around people who complain about lack of work and about other musicians, or blame others, and you play the role of victim, chances are you'll start to as well. So it's time to take a look at the people you call "friends".

    This is an easy exercise: Make a list of the people who you hang out with, and simply stop spending time with the negative people on your list. Set a new standard for yourself and don't become friends with people who fall below that standard.

    Keep successful people around you and your own chances for success will be much better. Ask them how they do it. Ask if they will help you get the work you're looking for, or maybe give you some advice to help you on your career path.

    In a big room on the second floor of the New York City Department of Sanitation's East 99th Street garage, 63-year-old Manhattan native Nelson Molina was listening to a Frank Sinatra CD he found in the trash. "The Way You Look Tonight" was playing through a music player. In fact, the entire space was filled with items strangers threw away. "My family kept everything," said Molina. "Nowadays, people throw it all away." Molina, during his 34 years as a sanitation worker （环卫工人）, gave these items a second life.

    Molina grew up in a housing project with his parents and five other kids in the family and had a habit of picking up unused items at a young age. "My family was poor, so we didn't get much for Christmas," he said. "I'd go out to look for a toy for my sisters, maybe a truck for my brothers." He kept his early morning habit secret from his friends, but not out of embarrassment: "I didn't want the competition."

    On the job, Molina had his sixth sense for finding items. "I could tell, sometimes just by the sound, whether a bag was filled with bottles or a different kind of glass," he said. He kept special finds on the truck, and then put them in out-of-the-way places in the sanitation garage. After almost 10 years, he began showing his discoveries. "It's not a normal practice." said NYC Department of Sanitation assistant chief Keith Mellis. Recently, a team of New York University students has taken on the task of cataloging （分类） the tens of thousands of objects, in hopes that the collection, which has hardly been open to the public, might one day be shown in an official sanitation museum.

At a large forest park in eastern Beijing, 11 birds on the state-level protection list were recently released.

These birds had recovered after the Beijing Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center rescued and took care of them. "We will speed up our efforts to push the establishment of district-level wildlife rescue centers to jointly guard the health of wildlife," said Du Lianhai, director of the center.

The center was set up in 2001 and built a wildlife rescue base in the capital's Shunyi District in 2005. Staff at the base have rescued and rehabilitated over 30,000 wild animals in total.

Wildlife protection has been strengthened in Beijing in recent years. On June 1, the city's newly adopted regulation on wildlife protection took effect, introducing stricter and more concrete measures to protect the environment and wildlife.

For example, the regulation states clearly that Beijing bans hunting throughout the year, compared with the previous regulation which bans hunting during the periods of March to May and September to November each year. The new regulation also gives severer punishment for poachers.

After years of monitoring, data with the Beijing Gardening and Greening Bureau recently showed ecological reconstruction progress. The species and quantity of wild animals in Beijing are continuously increasing, with the number of terrestrial spinal wild animals (陆地脊椎野生动物) growing from 461 species in 1994 to more than 500. The habitat of the endangered bird has expanded from Fangshan District to the whole city, according to the bureau.

"The enforcement of the new regulation marked a new phase in Beijing's wildlife protection work," said Dai Mingchao, deputy director of the Beijing Gardening and Greening Bureau.

"We will step up the publicity of the regulation and raise citizens' awareness of wildlife protection," Dai said. "In our integrated protection of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes and grasslands, we take into full consideration the requirements of food-chain construction, ecological corridor construction, and wildlife and their habitat protection."