Recently actor Adrien Grenier has launched(发动)a campaign to reduce the amount of single-use plastic usage in order to protect and save marine (海洋的)wildlife and the environment. Plastic drinking straws are among many single-use plastic products contributing to the great loss of marine life, but they're a great place to start because they're something that are used by millions of Americans who are unaware that they're so damaging.

    Americans use more than 500 million straws daily, which is enough to fill 127 school buses each day and they can't be recycled. That means plastic straws might end up in oceans, where fish and other marine wildlife mistake the small bits for food and swallow them. After seeing a photo of a beached whale with a belly full of plastic, Grenier felt the inspiration to launch the Lonely Whale Foundation, hoping to inspire and educate others on the challenges faced by marine wildlife.

    Along with stopping the use of straws, Grenier hopes to educate consumer on the dangers of other single-use plastic items such as grocery bags and water bottles. While many Americans use these plastic products in their daily life, there are many alternatives that can help protect the environment such as straws made from stainless steel, glass, and even bamboo instead of plastic.

    In addition to quitting your straw habit, you can further help the environment by taking the I Choose to Reuse commitment, and stop your use of single-use coffee cups, checkout bags and bottled water. Instead, take advantage of any number of alternative reusable products.

    Need another reason to stop drinking from straws? Grenier also says using straws can cause wrinkles!

    One of the most recent social changes taking place in the world is social networking. Social networking has been in existence for at least 150 years, and probably longer than that. In the times before the invention of the computer and the World Wide Web (WWW), social networking was done in person. People who had similar likes and interests would gather together to share experiences, make new friends, and improve their businesses.

    On the Internet, social networking websites made their first appearances during the late 1990s. The first major social networking website in the United States was MySpace. MySpace allowed its users to exchange messages, share pictures, and make new friends in a way that was never thought of in the past. With MySpace, people who did not go out much could reach out to others from their own homes.

    In 2004, Facebook was created. It was first a website created for use by Harvard University's students and teachers, but it soon expanded to include just about everyone. It is now larger than some of the largest companies in the world. It is a website that is changing all the time. Facebook has completely changed the way people stay connected with each other and the rest of the world. The way it works is simple. Users can set up a new account (账户) easily. All a new user needs is an email address to start. Once a person has created an account and his friend also has his own Facebook page, he can invite his friend by sending a request out to him. Once you get started, making new friends will come easily.

    Connecting the best chefs and restaurants in the world with their fans.

    For True Foodies Only puts the world of food in your pocket. It is a global app and social platform where lovers of the art of food and wine come to connect, be inspired and share that love.

    What makes the For True Foodies Only app different?

·It is exclusive (专一的). A “food Facebook” for only the best chefs and restaurants in the world and their fans.

    Users of the app from around the world can find out where to eat when they travel, giving restaurants and chefs free advertising and making sure that your vacation is full of wonderful meals at the restaurants your favorite chefs would eat at.

    New restaurants and chefs can only be chosen by chefs in the app, so together we build a trusted community of the highest quality.

    There is no cost to restaurants to be included or to users –the app is free.

    Buy recipes the way you buy music on the internet –one recipe, a bitebook or a whole cookbook. Restaurants and chefs make more profits by selling digital recipes through the app.

    The story behind the app

    Cordon Bleu Chef Ted and his foodie partner Joanne love eating in great restaurants around the world. But they spent a lot of time researching where to go, in guidebooks, online and from friends, and looking for news about what their favorite chefs were creating. They wished they could easily see where their favorite chefs and foodie loved to eat, and find the latest about the best chefs and restaurants all in one place.

    And so the idea was born. They wanted to build a trusted community of those who love the art of food and wine, with chefs and true foodies at its heart.

    Ted and Joanne spent the next two years using all their experience—Ted as a chef in Michelin star restaurants, and Joanne as an international food marketer—to build a truly amazing app that included only the top restaurants and chefs. Fortunately, their work also included a lot of fine dining, which made it all worthwhile.

Dear Aunt Tara,

    I have a problem with my homework. We have to do it in a group. It has to be finished this Friday, but Gary, the boy in our group, has done nothing helpful. He just keeps rocking the boat.

    Every time we talk about the work with him, he always "Don't worry. I'll do it later" But he seldom does his job. And when he does it be the wrong way. Someone has to do it for him again what's is when Mas Lin asks about our group, Gary always tell her that we others don't work hard enough I'm really mad at Gary about this. We're in the same group. Shouldn't we help each other to do a better job?

Kate

Dear Kate

    It is important or students to learn how to work together in a group. Maybe you should talk to Gary about the problem and tell him you all need his help. If he still doesn't changes, go to talk to your teacher. I believe she can make Gary do his job.

Aunt Tara

    I was now in my twenty-third year of residence in this island and was so naturalized to the place and to the manner of living that I finally enjoyed the certainty that no savagesc(野人) would come to the place to disturb me, and that I could have been content to spend the rest of my time there, even to the last moment, till I had laid me down and died, like the old goat in the cave.

    I had also arrived to some little recreations and amusements, which made the time pass more pleasantly with me a great deal than it did before.

    At first, I had taught my Poll to speak. And he did it so familiarly and talked so clearly and plainly that it was very pleasant to me. And he lived with me no less than six years. How long he might live afterwards, I don't know; though I know people have an idea in Brazil that they live a hundred years. Perhaps poor Poll may be alive there still, calling Poor Robin Crusoe to this day. I wish no other English man the ill luck to come there and hear him. But if he did, he would certainly believe it was the devil.

    My dog was a very pleasant and loving companion to me, for no less than sixteen years of my time, and then died of mere old age.

    As for my cats, they multiplied to that degree that I had to shoot several of them at first to keep them from eating up all I had.

    Besides these, I had two more parrots which talked pretty well and would all call Robin Crusoe, but neither like my first. Nor indeed did I take the pains with any of them that I had done with him. I had also several tame sea-fowls, whose names I don't know, who I caught upon the shore and cut their wings and the little stakes which I had planted before my castle wall being now grown up to a good thick bush; these fowls all lived among these low trees and bred there, which was very agreeable to me; so that as I said above, I began to be very well contented with the life I led, if it might have been secured from the threat of the savages.

    In 1800, only three percent of the world's population lived in cities. Only one city — Beijing — had a population of over a million. Most people lived in rural areas, and never saw a city in their lives. In 1900, just a hundred years later, roughly 150 million people lived in cities, and the world's ten largest cities all had populations exceeding one million. By 2000, the number of city dwellers exceeded three billion; and in 2008, the world's population crossed a tipping point — more than half of the people on Earth lived in cities. By 2050, that could increase to over two-thirds. Clearly, humans have become an urban species.

    In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many people viewed cities negatively — crowded, dirty environments full of disease and crime. They feared that as cities got bigger, living conditions would worsen. In recent decades, however, attitudes have changed. Many experts now think urbanization (城市化) is good news, offering solutions to the problems of Earth's growing population.

    Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, author of The Victory of the Cir, is one such person. Glaeser argues that cities are very productive because "the absence of space between people" reduces the cost of transporting goods, people, and ideas. While the flow of goods has always been important to cities, what is most important today is the flow of ideas. Successful cities enable people to learn from each other easily, and attract and reward smart people with higher wages.

    Another urbanization supporter is environmentalist Stewart Brand. Brand believes cities help the environment because they allow haft of the world's population to live on about four percent of the land. This leaves more space for open country, such as farmland. City dwellers also have less impact per person on the environment than people in the countryside. Their roads, sewers, and power lines need fewer resources to build and operate. City apartments require less energy to heat, cool, and light. Most importantly, people in cities drive less so they produce fewer greenhouse gases per person.

    So it's a mistake to see urbanization as evil; it's a natural part of development  The challenge is how to manage the growth.