A man walked into a small Irish pub and ordered three beers. Bartender was surprised, but he served that man three beers. One hour later the man ordered three beers again. The very next day that man ordered three beers again and drank quietly at a table. This repeated several times and shortly after the people of the town were whispering about the man, who was ordering three beers at once.

    A couple of weeks later, the bartender decided to clear this out and inquired: “I do not want to pry, but could you explain, why do you order three beers all the time?” The man replied: “It seems strange, isn't it? You see, my two brothers live abroad at the moment, one – in France and another – in Italy. We have made an agreement, that every time we go to pub each of us will order extra two beers and it will help keeping up the family bond”.

    Soon all the town have heard about the man's answer and liked it a lot. The man became a local celebrity. Residents of the town were telling this story to newcomers or tourists and even invited them to that pub to look at Three Beer Man.

    However, one day the man came to pub and ordered only two beers, not three as usual. The bartender served him with bad feeling. All that evening the man ordered and drank only two beers. The very next day all the town was talking about this news, some people pray for the soul of one of the brothers, others quietly grieve.

    When the man came to pub the next time and ordered two beers again, the bartender asked him: “I would like to offer condolences to you, due to the death of your dear brother”. The man considered this for a moment and then replied: “Oh, you are probably surprised that I order only two beers now? Well, my two brothers are alive and well. It's just because of my decision. I promised myself to give up drinking.”

    Is your school good for the environment?

    Being green wasn't easy for Kermit the Frog(a famous cartoon character)—but it is for a growing number of schools around the country.A "green" school is an environmentally friendly building that uses less energy by depending on earth's natural resources for heat,light,and power.Green schools have clean air,a lot of natural light,and renewable power sources.

    New studies show that green schools are not only good for the environment,but good for you too!Kids in classrooms with a lot of daylight scored 25 percent higher on reading and math tests than students who studied in rooms with less natural light.Students in schools with more natural light took three to four fewer sick days than students exposed to artificial classroom lighting.The further study found that those students had less dental decay（龋齿）because they were exposed to more of the vitamin D produced by the sun.

The Willow School in N.J. is a school that was built as a green building in 2002.Parts of the building are made wholly from recycled materials.To help trap heat,for example,building workers filled the walls with material from old blue jeans instead of the traditional insulation（绝缘物）made of chemicals.Every classroom has skylights to allow most sunlight,and solar panels（太阳能电池板）line the south end of the building.It uses about 70 percent less energy than a non-green school.This helps the school cut down on high energy costs.

    Kate Burke Walsh,head of the Willow School,says,"Sunlight has an impact—you're happier."The clean,natural surroundings help both students and teachers "handle stress and stay relaxed and focused…it's a very calming atmosphere."

    In 1858, two men wanted to be elected United States Senator from Illinois. One was Stephen Douglas. The other was Abraham Lincoln. Douglas was already the Senator, but his term in office was up. Lincoln had once been a U.S. Representative but was then a lawyer in Illinois.

    The men agreed to have seven public meetings, or debates, in seven different cities in Illinois. That way, voters all over the state would have a chance to hear what each man stood for.

    The first debate was in Ottawa on August 21, 1858. The main thing the men disagreed on was slavery. Douglas believed that as new states joined the union, they should decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to be a slave state or a free state. Lincoln believed that slavery should not spread beyond the states that already had slaves. He said the United States could not survive as half-slave and half-free states.

    The debates drew large crowds in all seven cities. People in the entire country were paying attention. Lincoln lost the Senate race. The debates did, however, make him well known everywhere.

    In 1860, it was time to elect a new President. Lincoln won the Republican party's nomination(提名). Douglas won the Democratic party's nomination. The two men again faced each other to get the people's votes. This time Lincoln won. He became the nation's 16th President.

    The slavery issue was still causing bad feelings between slave and non-slave states. By the time Lincoln took over as President on March 4, 1861, seven states had left the union. A month later, the Civil War began.

    Right now, I am looking at a shelf full of relics, a collection of has-beens, old-timers, antiques, fossils. Right now, I am looking at a shelf full of books. Yes, that's right. If you have some spare cash (the going rate is about $89) and you are looking to enhance your reading experience, then I highly suggest you consider purchasing an e-reader. E-readers are replacing the books of old and I welcome them with open arms (as you should).

    An e-reader is a device that allows you to read e-books. An e-book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images or both, and produced on, published through and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the e-book as "an electronic version of a printed book", but e-books can and do exist without any printed equivalent.

    E-readers put printed books to shame. E-readers are superior to printed books because they save space, are environmentally friendly and provide helpful reading tips and tools that printed books do not.

    The average e-reader can store thousands of digital books, providing a genuine library at your fingertips. What is more, the e-reader itself is very small. It is easy to hold and can fit in a pocketbook or briefcase easily. This makes handling wooden giant such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina a breeze. Perhaps the only drawback to the space-saving aspect of an e-reader is that it requires you to find new things to put on your shelves.

    In addition, e-readers are environmentally friendly. The average novel is about 300 pages long. So, if a novel is printed 1000 times, it will use 300,000 pieces of paper. That's a lot of paper! And for the super bestsellers, these figures increase dramatically. For example, the Harry Potter book series has sold over 450 million copies. That's about 2 million trees! Upon viewing these figures, it is not hard to grasp the severe impact of printed books on the environment. Since e-readers use no trees, they represent a significant amount of preservation in terms of the environment and its resources.

    Finally, e-readers provide helpful reading tips and tools that printed books do not. The typical e-reader allows its user to adjust letter size, letterform and line spacing. It also allows highlighting and electronic bookmarking.

    Furthermore, it grants users the ability to get an overview of a book and then jump to a specific location based on that overview. While these are all nice features, perhaps the most helpful of all is the ability to get dictionary definitions at the touch of a finger. On even the most basic e-reader, users can find instant definitions without having to hunt through a physical dictionary.

    It can be seen that e-readers are superior to printed books. They save space, are environmentally friendly and provide helpful reading tips and tools that printed books do not. So what good are printed books? Well, they certainly make nice decorations.

    Dyeing eggs has long been an Easter tradition, but it's the dyeing of baby chicks that is upsetting in some states.

    The dye, which is often ordinary food coloring, is either injected into eggs being hatched or sprayed onto newly hatched chicks. Although hatchery owners say the practice is harmless, critics argue that spraying the birds with color is stressful and that dyeing the animals transforms them into something attractive that can be thrown away when their colorful feathers disappear.

    “These are living creature and dyeing them sends out a message saying that they are more of a new and unusual object than a living animal,” said Dr. Marc Copper, senior scientific manager for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Dyed chicks — and sometimes rabbits — have been a traditional part of the Easter holiday in some parts of the world, but the practice has gone largely underground in the U.S. because many people view it as cruel.

    Today, about half of U.S. states ban the dyeing of animals, but last month the Florida Legislature passed a bill to remove the state's 45-year-old ban. The drive to end the law wasn't related to Easter chicks; it was done at the request of a dog groomer(美容师) who wanted to enter pet beauty contests.

    Florida governor Rick Scott must agree to remove the ban, which would be lifted July 1, but the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida(ARFF) has asked him not to remove the ban. In addition to allowing animals dyeing, the law would also lift a ban on selling baby animals as pets, and the organization fears that next year the state could see hundreds of dyed baby chicks on the market.

As long as the dye is not poisonous, experts say the birds' health isn't affected, and there are scientific reasons to dye animals. Wildlife researchers often inject eggs with dye to track birds in the wild, and teachers have dyed chicks for educational purposes. However, animal advocates are quick to point out that dyeing baby chicks for Easter isn't educational — it's done simply to earn profits.

    Does your local high school have a student newspaper? Only 1 in 8 of New York's public high schools has student newspapers—and many of those are published just a few times a year. A few more are online, which can leave out poorer schools.

    Rebecca Dwarka, an 18-year-old senior who works for her student paper said, "Facebook is the new way of finding out what happened. Nobody wants to actually sit down and read a whole article about it. This makes a 'whole article' sound a little like a long sentence in lonely places."

    I am not nostalgic(怀旧的) about high school student newspapers and never worked for mine. I put out what was then called a personal magazine with a group of friends because we wanted to write about peace, war and rock 'n' roll without school officials warning us not to make jokes about the local officials.

    School newspapers are in decline(衰落) because students now find out what happened on social networking websites. This is a little discouraging because it proves that for millions of Americans, journalism is becoming a do-it-yourself thing. Every citizen can be a reporter.

    When something happens, we look for social media messages. Facebook posts and Tweets have become the means by which citizens and reporters can prove, deny, pass on stories and express opinions without the press' challenging, researching or slowing the message.

    It requires seeing something carefully and it uses an eye for details to help prove a larger view. And even journalism that conveys an opinion tries to be fair. If school newspapers begin to disappear, I hope there are other ways for students to learn that.