Counting the number of miles traveled done by a product is a strange way of trying to tell the true situation of the environmental damage due to industry. Most food is transported around the world on container ships that are extremely energy efficient. It should be noticed that a ton of butter transported 25 miles in a truck to a farmers' market doesn't necessarily use less fuel on its journey than a similar product transported hundreds of miles by sea. Besides, the idea of “food miles” ignores the amount of fuel used in the production. It is possible to cut down your food miles by buying tomatoes grown in Britain rather than those grown in Ghana. The difference is that the British ones will have been raised in heated greenhouse and the Ghanaian ones in the open sun.

    What is the idea of “food miles” doesprovide, however, is the chance to cut out Third World countries from First World food markets. The number of miles traveled by our food should, as I see it, be regarded as a sign of the success of the global trade system, not a sign of damage to the environment.

    If you could be anybody in the world, who would it be? Your neighbour or a super star? A few people have experienced what it might be like to step into the skin of another person, thanks to an unusual virtual reality（虚拟现实）device. Rikke Wahl, an actress, model and artist, was one of the participants in a body swapping experiment at the Be Another lab, a project developed by a group of artists based in Barcelona. She swapped with her partner, an actor, using a machine called The Machine to Be Another and temporarily became a man. "As I looked down, I saw my whole body as a man, dressed in my partner's pants," she said. "That's the picture I remember best."

    The set-up is relatively simple. Both users wear a virtual reality headset with a camera on the top. The video from each camera is sent to the other person, so what you see is the exact view of your partner. If she moves her arm, you see it. If you move your arm, she sees it.

    To get used to seeing another person's body without actually having control of it, participants start by raising their arms and legs very slowly, so that the other can follow along. Eventually, this kind of slow synchronised（同步的）movement becomes comfortable, and participants really start to feel as though they are living in another person's body.

    Using such technology promises to alter people's behaviour afterwards-potentially for the better. Studies have shown that virtual reality can be effective in fighting racism-the bias（偏见）that humans have against those who don't look or sound like them. Researchers at the University of Barcelona gave people a questionnaire called the Implicit Association Test, which measures the strength of people's associations between, for instance, black people and adjectives such as good, bad, athletic or awkward. Then they asked them to control the body of a dark skinned digital character using virtual reality glasses, before taking the test again. This time, the participants' bias scores were lower. The idea is that once you've "put yourself in another's shoes" you're less likely to think ill of them, because your brain has internalised the feeling of being that person.

    The creators of The Machine to Be Another hope to achieve a similar result. "At the end of body swapping, people feel like holding each other in their arms," says Arthur Pointeau, a programmer with the project. "It's a really nice way to have this kind of experience. I would really, really recommend it to everyone."

                                                                             Bread Garrett's Comedy Club

    Category: Comedy

    Best known for his role on the Emmy award -winning sitcom（情景喜剧）Everybody Loves Raymond, Brad Garrett returns to his Vegas roots with his comedy club at the MGM Grand. It is a good place to check out when you need a break from work.

    Prices from: $56.40 and up

    Age restriction: Must be 21 years of age or older

    Show Length: 115 minutes

    Mac King Comedy Magic Show

    Category: Comedy, Magic

    The Mac King Comedy Magic Show is different every afternoon, with lots of audience participation. He is willing to make fun of himself instead of his guests in order to make everyone feel welcome and entertained. The afternoon is kid-friendly from start to finish. Still, whether you're eight or 80, you won't be able to figure out King's secrets.

    Prices from: $40.90 and up

    Age restriction: No age restriction

    Show Length: 90 minutes

    The Mentalist, Gerry McCambridge

    Category: Comedy, Magic

    Using his skills as a “mentalist”, Gerry McCambridge shocks the crowds as he uses his abilities to predict just what audience members will do next. Anyone who has seen the show has walked away in disbelief, amazed by his unusual power.

    Prices from: $34.99 and up

    Age restriction: Under 13 will not be admitted into the theater

    Show Length: 75 minutes

    Rock of Ages

    Category: Plays & Musicals

    The cheerful Rock of Ages brings audiences back to the times of big hair and even bigger bands with 28 popular rock songs from the 80s including Every Rose Has Its Thom, I Wanna Know What Love Is, Here I Go Again, and more.

    Rock of Ages has been nominated（提名）for five Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical. It also received a Drama League nomination for Distinguished Production for a Musical.

    Prices from: $74.00 and up

    Age restriction: Must be 15 years of age or older

    Show Length: 125 minutes

    You may be familiar with the following famous people, but have you heard of their graduation speeches, in which they either share their unforgotten experiences or give you some great inspiration.

    Michael Dell, University of Texas at Austin

    And now you've accomplished something great and important here, and it's time for you to move on to what's next. And you must not let anything prevent you from taking those first steps. … You must also commit to the adventure. Just have faith in the skills and the knowledge you've been blessed（赐予）with and go.

    J.K. Rowling, Harvard University

    Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between my ambition and the expectation from my parents who were not rich…But what I feared most of myself at your age was not poverty, but failure. The fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you know little about failure, you might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success.

Steve Jobs, Stanford University

    Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith…Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle.

    Bill Gates, Harvard University

    We need as many people as possible to have access to the advanced technology to lead to a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches and deal with the world's inequities（不公平）like hunger, poverty, and so on.

    With smart technology increasingly influencing all aspects of our lives, it is only a matter of time before someone invents “smart” shoes—ones that can be made based on personal needs. Called “ShiftWear”, the sneakers are the brainchild of a team of businessmen, and engineers led by New York-based designer David Coel.

    The adaptable shoes can be customized by using a smart phone app. Shoe owners will have the option of selecting a design from a variety of HD pattern by famous artists or creating one themselves. The company's founders imagine a marketplace where artists can not only share but also sell their designs to others. Despite being electronic, the designs are clearly visible even in the brightest sunlight. What's even cooler is that by switching on a backlight, users can even show off their designs in the dark!

    According to Coel, the sneakers will keep their charge “forever” if only images are displayed. Though they will need periodic recharging, active users have nothing to worry about. That's because the shoes are equipped with special walk-n-charge technology that powers the shoes—with every step. Inactive users also have options of charging the sneakers without using wires.

    The bottom part of the shoes is covered with Kevler fibers, a kind of strong material, reducing normal wear and tear. Even better? They are completely waterproof (not let water through) and can even be thrown into an ordinary laundry machine for a quick wash! The company predicts that the shoes will range the price from $150 to $1000 depending on the size of the E-panels where the designs are displayed.

    This is not the first time that electronics and shoes have combined. Lithuania-based iShuh Technology has come up with a similar concept that connects e-reader panels to a smart phone app via the Bluetooth. Whether these smart shoes become as popular as our smart devices remains to be seen, though they surely are attractive.

Like reading? Interested in Chinese classical novels? Have a look at the following four books which are we known to most Chinese as Four Masterpieces.

The Water Margin

The Water Margin, also known as All Men Are Brothers in Pearl Buck's translation, Shui Hu Zhuan in Chinese, is along chapter novel with the Song Jiang Uprising in the late Northern Song Dynasty as the main background and type of heroic legend. It is an immortal (不朽的) novel and has inspired many storytellers. The author of the novel is generally regarded as Shi Nai'an (1296~1371).

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the first full-length historical romance novel in China. Its author is Luo Guan zhong (about 1330~1400), a famous novelist in the late Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty. Characters such as Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhuge Liang have become household names among the Chinese.

Journey to the West

Journey to the West is the first romantic chapter novel about gods and devils in ancient China. There are 100 copies of Journey to the Westin the existing Ming Publications without the author's signature. Wu Yuxuan, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, first proposed that the author of Journey to the West was Wu Cheng'en (1500~1582) of the Ming Dynasty.

The Dream of the Red Chamber

The Dream of the Red Chamber, also called The Story of the Stone, is said to be the greatest masterpiece of Chinese fiction. It is generally believed to be written by Cao Xueqin (about 1715~1763), a writer of the Qing Dynasty. With hundreds of persons and their stories, the story is very complex but also very interesting for its encyclopedic character(百科全书式的人物).