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    A Kickstarter launched Friday will allow interested parties to set up a camera and pet toys in their home for anyone to play with their pets remotely. It's called the ipet Companion, an Internet-connected camera and device that streams video online and allows basic commands from people watching. They can move the camera, look at their pet and press a button to swing a toy around.

    Obviously, demand is strong. The Kickstarter proved so popular that Scott Harris, iPet Companion's founder, said that thousands of people started asking for it.

    The reason why people keep talking about this is the emotional(情感的) connection they have from a thousand miles away. If you want, you can enter a queue to move the camera and play with the pets. Each room has toys that are hooked(钩住) into Internet-connected devices, and you can move them by pressing a button.

    But there's sort of a problem: Pets get bored easily. Young pets will stay more interested than adult pets, but finally even a baby pet will get bored, too. To stop that from happening, you'd better limit the pets' access(接近) to the boys and change the place where they're located in the room.

Harris understands this and said you can plug anything into that adapter(适配器) —toys that you can get on your own. And that's where the iPet Companion really gets interesting. Harris explained that the device is actually sort of a Trojan horse to bring the “Internet of things” to more homes. You don't really have to use it for pets. The adapter could be used for any device with an electrical plug—a sprinkler, say, that you'd be able to activate to water your grass.

    “Our whole goal, our whole purpose is to let anyone control any physical object that they want to while they travel anywhere in the woorld,” Harris said.

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    Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed Lady Day by her loyal friend and musical partner, Lester Young, Holiday had a great influence on jazz and pop singing. Her voiced style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of controlling tempo (节奏). Above all, she was admired for her deeply personal and direct approach to singing.

    She co-wrote a few songs, and several of them have become jazz standards, notably God Bless the Child, Don't Explain, and Lady Sings the Blues. She also became famous for singing jazz standards written by others, including Easy Living and Strange Fruit.

    Her early career is hard to track down with accuracy. But she later gained work singing in local jazz clubs before being spotted by a talent scout (星探), John Hammond in 1933.

    Her voice and recordings were loved for the depth of emotion and intensity she could bring to classic standards. Her range of voice was not the greatest, but her extraordinary low rough voice was soon to become very famous and influential.

    She was an important icon (偶像) of the jazz era and influential in the development of jazz singing. In the late 1930s, she began singing a civil rights song called Strange Fruit, a song which told the tale of a lynching (用私刑处死) of a black man in the Deep South. It was very controversial for that period and it was not played on radios. It was recorded for Commodore Records and she performed it many times over the next 20 years.

    Billie Holiday had a difficult upbringing which influenced her attitude toward life. She experienced many violent relationships. She also became increasingly dependent on various drugs which contributed to her early death in 1959, aged just 44.

    The Bristol International Balloon Festival is a world-class hot air ballooning festival and is recognized as one of the UK's top five outdoor events. Founded in 1978, the Festival has become a symbol for Bristol, the same as Brunel's famous Suspension Bridge.

    Held in the rolling hills of Ashton Court on the edge of Bristol, the Festival is hugely popular and completely free, attracting around half a million people from across the country and beyond. This year, for the first time, visitors will get to see how a hot air balloon is made. To celebrate its 40th anniversary, the world's largest hot air balloon producer, Cameron Balloons, will take on the challenge of constructing a passenger-carrying balloon, on site, in about four days.

    Other events to look forward to at the Bristol International Balloon Festival include daredevil stunts(冒险特技表演) from the Red Arrows, over 250 trade stalls, local and international food stalls, and a funfair(露天游艺集市). Here's what's on in detail:

    Thursday 11th August:

    12 pm Gates Open and Trade Village open

    6 pm Special Shapes Ascent — a number of hot air balloons will take to the sky

    9:30 pm Nightglow and Firework Finale — 30 or more balloons will glow in time to music

    10:30 pm Gates Close

    Friday 12th August:

    6 am Hot Air Balloon Mass Ascent

    9 am Trade and Entertainment Village open

    12 pm Arena(竞技) Entertainment and Tethered Balloons

    6 pm Hot Air Balloon Mass Ascent

    Saturday 13th August:

    6 am Hot Air Balloon Mass Ascent

    9 am Trade and Entertainment Village open

    12 pm Arena Entertainment and Tethered Balloons

    6 pm Hot Air Balloon Mass Ascent

    9:30 pm Nightglow and Firework Finale

    10:30 pm Gates Close

    Sunday 14th August:

    6 am Hot Air Balloon Mass Ascent

    9 am Trade and Entertainment Village open

    12 pm Arena Entertainment and Tethered Balloons

    6 pm Hot Air Balloon Mass Ascent

    People seem to have a natural need for friends and with good reason, friends increase your enjoyment of life and relieve feelings of loneliness. They even can help reduce stress and improve your health. Having good friends is especially helpful when you are going through any kind of hard time such as when you are experiencing anxiety, panic(恐慌) attacks, or depression.

    When you are with good friends, you feel good about yourself, and you are glad to be with them. A friends is someone who—

●you like, respect, and trust, and who likes, expects and trusts you, doesn't always understand you, but accepts and likes you as you are, even as you grow and change, allows you the space to change, grow, make decisions, and even make mistakes.

●listens to you and shares with you both the good times and the bad times.

●respects your need for secrets, so you can tell them anything.

●lets you freely express your feelings and emotions without judging, laughing at or criticizing you.

●accepts the limitations you have put on yourself and helps you to remove them.

    A person once said. "Friendship is a continuing source of bonding(连接),releasing, and creating in yourself and with the other person, there is an emotional bond between the two people."

    A good friend or supporter may or may not be the same age or the same sex as you, and may not have the same educational, cultural, or religious background, or share interests that are similar to yours. Friendships also have different depths(深度). Some are closer to the heart and some more superficial, but they're all useful and good.

    People from Britain and Ireland first came to live in Australia in 1788. They brought different dialects （方言）of English with them. These different kinds of English began to mix and change. The newcomers soon began to speak with their own typical accent（口音） and vocabulary. More and more people came to Australia during the Gold Rush in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some came from Britain and Ireland; others came from non-English speaking countries. Australian English continued to grow and change.

    Australian English has also been influenced by American English. During the Second World War, there were many American soldiers staying in Australia. More importantly, American television shows and music have been popular in Australia since the 1950s.

    Australians use many words that other English speakers do not use. The famous Australian greeting, for example, is G'day! A native forest is called the bush and central Australia is called the outback. Many words were brought to Australia from Britain and Ireland. For example, mate means "friend", and it is still used in Britain. Some of these words have changed in meaning. Some words have come from Australian original languages, many of which are names for animals, plants and places, like dingo and kangaroo.

    Australian spelling comes from British spelling. In words like organise and realise, -ise is the expected and taught spelling method. In words like colour, favourite, -our is the normal, but nouns such as the Labor Party and Victor Harbor are spelled with -or. Program, on the other hand, is more common than programme.

    There are also differences in the definition （定义）of words Australians use in different parts of the country. For example, football means "rugby" in New South Wales and Queensland, but "Australian rules football" in everywhere else in Australia. In New South Wales, a swimming costume is called a cossie or swimmers, while in Queensland it is called togs and bathers in Victoria.

    Genetic engineering, in its broadest definition, means to control a species so that a particular trait is increased in the population. A trait is how an organism (有机体) looks or acts or what it does. Having brown eyes is a trait. Flying in circles is a trait. Climbing trees is a trait.

    The earliest forms of genetic engineering occurred on farms. People selected seeds from plants that had more fruit production or tastier leaves than other plants of their types. Then they chose to save the seeds from the best of that group to sow the next year. So, year by year, the farmers produced better and better crops. This type of activity probably has been going on since mankind first settled in villages and began making a life for themselves in one location, about 12,000 years ago!

    The same sort of thing would have also happened with animals. For example, people chose to eat the animals that didn't have favorable traits and let the animals with the favorable traits reproduce. It was thousands of years before mankind figured out how plants and animals reproduce themselves. With this knowledge, people could pollinate (授粉) plants by hand or keep a pair of animals together in order to deliberately cause an increase in a favorable trait.

    It was only in the last 250 years that scientists began figuring out chromosomes (染色体) and genes and the role they play in the way one generation passes its traits on to the next. And it's only been in the last 30 years that scientists have been able to cut out specific genes from one organism and put them in another. It is this 30-year-old technology that is described by the narrow definition of genetic engineering. Mankind has long been able to have a deliberate impact on the world around him. He now possesses the tools to deliberately impact himself. Some people are afraid of what might be done with that power.