Reading can be a social activity. Think of the people who belong to book groups. They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them. Now, the website BookCrossing.com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group.

    Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share. BookCrossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book. Then the person leaves it in a public place, hoping that the book will have an adventure, traveling far and wide with each new reader who findsit.

    Bruce Pederson, the managing director of BookCrossing, says, “The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read. BookCrossing combines both.”

    Members leave books on park benches and buses, in train stations and coffee shops. Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they found it.

    People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it. E-mails are then sent to the BookCrossing to keep them updated about where their books have been found. Bruce Peterson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home.

    BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the “real” and not the virtual(虚拟). The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty-five countries.

    In the movie Alice in Wonderland, Alice comes across a Cheshire cat and asks the cat which road she should take. The cat responds, “Well, that depends on where you're trying to get to.” Alice replies, “I don't know.” The cat responds, “Then any road will do.”

    You see, knowing where you're going increases your chances dramatically of getting there, and there is no better way of “GETTING THERE” than setting your goals for the upcoming year. Think of your goals as destinations and the action steps as your GPS guiding and directing you. If you are like many other people, for years you have resisted the need to set goals and even laughed at the thought that setting goals and，even more importantly, committing them to writing have positive effects on your life. However, a closer look might convince you that setting goals is a sensible thing to do.

    In 1979, a class of Harvard MBA students was asked: Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made an action plan to accomplish them? The following will astonish you. Only 3 percent of the class had written goals and a plan in place, 13% just had goals, and an amazing 84% had no specific goals at all.

    Ten years later the numbers of the class were interviewed once again and the following results will no doubt give the reason for our setting goals. The findings were that the 13% who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all. And the 3 percent who had clear, written goals with a plan to achieve them were achieving ten times as much as the entire 97% combined.

    Goal setting will increase your chances of arriving successfully at your destination. Remember, always set SMART goals. Goals should be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound!

    As early as 2005, there were a number of new stories about dog cloning(克隆) and cat cloning. Animal cloning had been old news for nearly a decade by then, with the revolutionary (革命的) cloning of Dolly the sheep in Scotland.

    However, Snuppy was the first pet, a dog, to be cloned. Since the cloning of Snuppy, there has been some very successful cloning of pets and other animals. Lou Hawthorne started BioArts while cloning his beloved mixed-breed dog Missy. Hawthorne was very pleased with the results of the cloning, producing three successful clones that were very alike to the original in character and behavior. In January, 2009, a Florida couple, Ed and Nina Otto, announced that they had paid to have their dog cloned by BioArts.

    All new technology is overpriced. For example, personal computers were not very affordable at first. Only after the producing process was improved was it possible for every family to have a computer. How much room there will be for organizations to reduce the price point on pet cloning without broad demand is of course questionable.

    There are many great dogs and cats that can be found at the local dog pound (野狗收容所) or are given away for "free to good homes" in classified ads (分类广告). However, there is no limit to the value people place on a beloved pet. The Ottos are a good example of that. If people can buy a dog or cat with predictable behavior and characteristics, there is value in that. There is a predictable market here, though it may always be limited in size.

    While pet cloning has not taken off as some hoped, it's clear that it will become a bigger market in the future and it will be increasingly possible for people to try this out. With the inevitable (不可避免的) success that cloned pet owners will have, the practice will become more widely accepted and it seems inevitable that there is a future for cloned dogs and cats.

    For all the pressures and rewards of regionalization (地区化) and globalization, local identities remain the most deeply impressed. Even if the end result of globalization is to make the world smaller, its scope seems to foster the need for more private local connections among many individuals. As Bernard Poignant, mayor of the town of Quimper in Brittany, told the Washington Post, "Man is a fragile animal and he needs his close attachments. The more open the world becomes, the more ties there will be to one's roots and one's land."

    In most communities, local languages such as Poignant's Breton serve a strong symbolic function as a clear mark of "authenticity (原真性)". The sum total of a community's shared historical experience, authenticity reflects a noticeable line from a culturally idealized past to the present, carried by the language and traditions associated with the community's origins. A concern for authenticity leads most secular (世俗的) Israelis to defend Hebrew among themselves while also acquiring English and even Arabic. The same obsession with authenticity drives Hasidic Jews in Israel or the Diaspora to champion Yiddish while also learning Hebrew and English. In each case, authenticity amounts to a central core of cultural beliefs and interpretations that are not only resistant to globalization but also are actually reinforced by the "threat" that globalization seems to present to these historical values. Scholars may argue that cultural identities change over time in response to specific reward systems. But locals often resist such explanation and defend authenticity and local mother tongues against the perceived threat of globalization with near religious eagerness.

    As a result, never before in history have there been as many standardized languages as there are today: roughly 1,200. Many smaller languages, even those with far fewer than one million speakers, have benefited from state-sponsored or voluntary preservation movements. On the most informal level, communities in Alaska and the American northwest have formed Internet discussion groups in an attempt to pass on Native American languages to younger generations. In the Basque, Catalan, and Galician regions of Spain, such movements are fiercely political and frequently involved loyal resistance to the Spanish government over political and linguistic rights. Projects have ranged from a campaign to print Spanish money in the four official languages of the state to the creation of language immersion nursery and primary schools. Zapatistas in Mexico are championing the revival of Mayan languages in an equally political campaign for local autonomy.

    In addition to causing the feeling of the subjective importance of local roots, supporters of local languages defend their continued use on practical grounds. Local tongues foster higher levels of school success, higher degrees of participation in local government, more informed citizenship, and better knowledge of one's own culture, history, and faith. Government and relief agencies can also use local languages to spread information about industrial and agricultural techniques as well as modern health care to diverse audiences. Development workers in West Africa, for example, have found that the best way to teach the vast number of farmers with little or no formal education how to sow and rotate crops for higher yields is in these local tongues. Nevertheless, both regionalization and globalization require that more and more speakers of local languages be multi-literate.

People can't live well without music. It's quite necessary in people's life. Music has a magic energy to help people. It will bring people many surprises.

It can help you free from heart pain. When you feel sad, you can try listening to the music. It will calm you down. You enter the music world. You pay more attention to the music than your sadness.Then the"dark clouds"slowly clear up.

It is also a strong driving force. For example, when you win a match, you certainly have a great mood. At this time, exciting music will arouse(激起) your fighting. It will push you forward and you will continue to work harder.

Music include(囊括了) much knowledge, such as the language and the history. You can learn a lot from it. Different nations make their own special music. Different music expresses different ideas.You can explore different cultures behind the music. As a useful tool(工具), music teaches you to better understand foreign cultures and love them.