Weaving hammocks is an art that takes a sharp eye, a skilled hand and lots of patience. But in Lenwood Haddock's case, being blind works to his advantage. His trained, sensitive hands are acutely aware of every step of the process. Since beginning his craft in 1986, Lenwood has woven about 145, 000 perfect hammocks.

    Lenwood lost his sight in 1973, at age 18, during a hunting accident. “My whole working career has been blind,” he says. He first found a job as a woodworker, but when that organization closed, the North Carolina Division of Services for the Blind connected him with Hatteras Hammocks. On his first day of work. “I did a total of one hammock,” Lenwood recalls, laughing. “And then I came home and lay down to sleep. I lift weights, but I wasn't as tough as I thought until I started weaving.lt takes a lot of energy, and you're standing up all day.”

    In time, however, Lenwood found he had a knack (窍门) for the job. At first he worked on-site at the company, but after a year Lenwood moved his operation to the home workshop where he had worked for 10 years during his woodworking days.

    There, he creates dozens of hammocks each week from ropes in a variety of sizes. One day, he realized the step counter on his phone recorded him walking eight miles without ever leaving his shop.

    The process of weaving a hammock involves making and catching hundreds of loops (环). A single missed stitch (织针) creates a hole that can widen and make the hammock uncomfortable or even dangerous to use. Experienced weavers miss loops sometimes, but to his company's knowledge, Lenwood has never turned in a hammock with even one dropped stitch. Lenwood's skilled fingers are quick to catch and fix any mistakes.

    The company has acquired other brands and changed its name to The Hammock Source. Today, it is the world's largest maker and seller of hammocks, all built by hand.

    However, Lenwood's routine has changed little. He works his fingers back and forth across the rows, looping the rope and pulling it. With every hammock, Lenwood presents himself a perfect product. “I'm not sure how sighted people do it,” he admits.

    It is 2018; e-books are loved by many people. Do you read them?

    An e-book is an electronic book, which can be made from common books and loaded onto an e-reader. The e-reader is a mini-device, just like a cell-phone. It has a touch pad screen and can hold a few hundred e-books. People can read e-books on it just like they do a book. So it is possible for people to read anywhere with an e-reader. This is perfect news for people who love to read books but can't carry many.

    Another great thing is that people can read books on it quickly and there's no need for two hands to hold the book and turn pages. Most e-readers also have a nightlight, so you can read at night and don't wake your partner with a big light on.

    Not all book authors agree to make their books into e-books. The creator of Harry Potter says that her books will never be e-books. However, lots of authors absolutely love the idea and feel it's the next step to keep books alive.

    Nowadays e-books are sold in many websites, from where you can buy and load them onto your e-reader. Those websites look just like ordinary online bookstores and have a list of best sellers and a new book section. There is also a clear price on each e-book to make sure people can buy them like buying common books.

    How are you and your family going to celebrate Earth Day? It's a great day to get outside and ride a bike, but there are other ways you could spend the day. Here are four books. You can learn more about the earth and the animals that make the world a special place to live in.

    The Busy Beaver, by Nicholas Oldland

    Beaver is very, very busy, and he doesn't always think carefully. As a result, he makes a mess of the forest and ends up in hospital. Finally, he realizes how careless he's been and decides to make things right when he returns to the forest.

    Lessons from Mother Earth, by Elaine Mcleod

    Five-year-old Tess is visiting her grandmother and, for the first time, she visits the garden. Along the way, Tess's grandmother tells her the rules of the garden, "You must always take good care of our garden. Never throw rubbish around. There is plenty for everyone to share if we don't destroy the soil." The story is beautifully told as a caring conversation between a child and her grandmother.

    Luz Sees the Light, by Claudia Davila

    When Luz's community(社区) experiences a series of black-outs(停电), she quickly comes to understand the need to save energy and find other ways of doing things. With the help of her friends and neighbors, she creates a community garden and park that everyone can use. The book attracts many young readers.

    The Lorax, by Dr Seuss

    A young boy learns of the role of the Lorax as protector(保护者) of the trees, and how his home became polluted. The book contains memorable forestry conservation (森林保护).

    "IF ALIENS are so likely, why have we never seen any？" That is the Fermi Paradox（悖论） named after Enrico Fermi, a physicist who posed it in 1950.

    Fermi's argument ran as follows. The laws of nature supported the appearance of intelligent life on Earth. Those laws are the same throughout the universe. The universe contains zillions of stars and planets. So, even if life is unlikely to arise on any particular astronomical body, the sheer abundance of creation suggests the night sky should be full of alien civilizations. Fermi wondered why aliens had never visited the earth. Today, the paradox is more usually cast in light of the inability of radio﹣telescope searches to detect the equivalent（相等的） of the radio waves that leak from Earth into the universe, and have done for the past century.

    Thinking up answers to this apparent contradiction has become something of a scientific parlour（客厅）game. Perhaps life is really very unlikely. Perhaps the priests are right: human beings were put on Earth by some creator God for His own unknown purposes, and the rest of the universe is merely background scenery. Perhaps there are plenty of aliens, but they have decided that discretion is a safer bet than gathering together. Or perhaps galactic（银河的） society avoids communicating with Earth specifically. One frightening idea is that technological civilizations destroy themselves before they can make their presence known. They might blow themselves up after inventing nuclear weapons （an invention that, on Earth, Fermi had been part of）, or cook themselves to death by over﹣burning fossil fuels.

    In a paper published last month on arXiv, an online repository（文献库） , a group of three astronomers at Pennsylvania State University have analyzed the history of alien hunting and come to a different conclusion. In effect, they reject one of the paradox's main theory. Astronomers have seen no sign of aliens, argue Jason Wright and his colleagues, because they have not been looking hard enough.

    The extreme hot weather often makes people restless with sweats in summer. Even though people are annoyed by it, experts suggest that summer is the best season to give out your body's poisonous matters and refresh your energy.

    One popular choice is hot-stone massage(按摩). Therapists(理疗师)use smooth and heated stones, usually river rocks, to massage certain parts of the body, or set them on key points of the body. The warmth of the hot stones will promote blood circulation and also help muscles relax, while sweating is also believed to be good for letting out the body's poisonous factors.

    Another popular choice is hot-stone baths. The hot-stone bath will help the body give out poisons and humidity(湿气) that build up during the last winter. Summer is the best season to form a good body. Rather than use water or steam to heat and wash the body, people simply wear a coat or something comfortable, and then lie on heated stone tablets made of hot stones, which are warmed to around 45^oC. The body will gradually warm up and blood circulation will also be improved. More sweat will come out quickly. The sweat is smooth and fresh, not smelly like that released after sports activities. Such baths bring a number of health benefits, such as anti-aging, improved blood circulation and stress relief. The slimming effect of dieting can even be promoted.

    It dates back to ancient times to use hot stones for treatment, but the modern hot-stone massage generally owes to Mary Nelson, a native of Tucson, Arizona, America, whose trademark is "La Stone Therapy".

    The therapy is earning a good fame and popularity with many people, especially those who are often seated in cool rooms with air-conditioners. The hot-stone therapy can help cure many illnesses, back pain included.

Most of the 20th century has been a development on the Industrial Revolution taken to an extreme: people now own more products than ever before; there are enough unclear weapons to destroy the earth several times over; there is hardly any forest left and pollution has got to the point where we buy water. Within a few years I predict you will be able to buy air. (There once was a time when you didn't need to buy food or shelter either.)

Important developments in the last century are the breaking down of the class structures left over from the Industrial Revolution stage, bringing with it the empowerment of the "common man": the working day is set by law to only 8 hours a day; everyone has the vote; the media has less obvious government control; people have landed on the moon, sent spacecrafts to Mars and so on. Families have also shrunk drastically (强烈地); the nuclear family came about, and especially in the last half of the 20th century, one­parent families are becoming more common. This shrinking in the size of the family shows the increased independence of people — once upon a time people had to live in large groups to survive.

As humans have "become the gods", they have realized their individuality and independence and taken their control of the world to an extreme. In many countries the land is almost completely used in the production of food and as living space and they live in small cities which are entirely human constructed, made from materials which are also entirely human constructed (concrete bricks) with hardly any remains of nature. Weeds are poisoned because they are messy; even parks have trees grown in tidy lines; grass is mowed to keep it short and so on. I think the massive drug "problem" troubling people is a result of too much of this influence, humans needing to escape the stark world they have created by entering fantasy worlds.

Over the last 100 years, the 20th century consciousness has spread throughout the world; most of Asia has been thoroughly "Westernized", and most of the Third World is being overrun by Western ways of doing things and living.