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.

    A beautiful and very successful actress (女演员) was the star for a new musical show. Her home was in the countryside, but she did not want to go back there every night, so she bought an expensive house in the centre of the city, got some beautiful furniture and got a man to paint the rooms in new colours.

    It was very difficult to get tickets for her show, because everybody wanted to see it. So she decided to give the painter two of the best seats. She hoped that this would make him work better for her. He took the tickets without saying anything, and she heard no more about them until the end of the month, when she got the painter's bill (帐单). At the bottom of it were these words: “ Four hours watching Miss Hall sing and dance : 3 pounds,” with this note: “ After 5 p.m. I get 15 shillings (先令) an hour instead of 10 shillings.”

    The boy sat on his chair, with his hand above the keyboard. He thought about what to write.

    He recalled that the competition deadline was merely a week away. But he still had not even started on his piece. He looked at the brochure again." WRITING COMPETITION!" the title read. His mom had encouraged him to enter the writing competition, and now he was taking it on as his personal task for the holidays.

    As the boy reflected on his previous writing efforts, he realized how hopeless his task of winning was. Every story he ever wrote was based on other stories. He had little imagination, and unfortunately, imagination was the key to writing.

    Suddenly, he had a brainwave. This time, he came up with an original and imaginative story.

    The words shot towards him like a storm of leaves. Words were coming easily, flowing through him, faster than he could type. He typed faster than he ever had before. He continued to type, amazed at how easy writing this story was. The boy could not stop writing. He looked at the word count and saw the number" 248" staring right back at him. He was not even halfway yet.

    Then he heard the call of his mother saying time for bed. He continued writing the piece, ignoring her. He had to make up for the time he had lost thinking about a topic to write.

    Finally, he finished. The word count now read"498".

    "Perfect," he thought," just under the word limit." He knew this was the story that would win.

    He went onto Google and searched for the competition. He found the page but there was no "Enter" button.

    If a person who lived 200 years ago was treated for a seizure(癫痫)today, they would be surprised by the treatment's freshness. That's because doctors in the 1800s were influenced more by original medical beliefs than science.

    Rather than thinking the brain caused seizures, people in the 1800s still thought they were the result of strange forces. They associated seizures with the work of evil spirits. Others felt that the seizures had a cosmic or lunar cause. They believed that the cycles of the moon and stars could make someone have a seizure.

    During a process to treat a patient who has seizures, doctors would force the patient to pray for the grace of the God. They thought if the patient did this, then the patient would rid themselves of the evil spirits causing the seizures.

    The arrival of modern psychiatry(精神病学) occurred during the 1800s. At that time people who suffered from seizures were placed in psychiatric hospitals. They were treated like they were mad. However, none of the out-of-date treatments worked.

    It wasn't until the late 1850s that the causes of seizures were understood. We know today that these causes are related to the brain. Misfired signals from the brain cause a jerking reflex(反射) in the body. These usually occur when someone is very tired.

    Once the causes of seizures were known, definitive treatments were developed. Today, treatments range from taking pills to having surgery. Treatment is personalized according to the type of seizure the patient has.

    Even today, some people are unsure about seizures. Their most common mistake is thinking that a person having a seizure will swallow their tongue. They often push some implement roughly in the person's mouth. However, this doesn't help. The implement often blocks the airway and prevents the person from breathing. Yet most of the public no longer fear people who have seizures. Instead, they can now help and comfort a person if they have a seizure.

    People who have seen Trisha Seifried Woodall with her cats say that she has a magic touch. Most people don't know anyone who can order a cat to jump on a table, sit for two minutes, and then jump to the floor and walk backward.

    Ms. Seifried Woodall has taught her cats to do all these tricks -- and many more. At her training center. Got Pet-ential, cats learn tricks for TV and magazine ads. Some of her cats have appeared on bags of cat food.

    When Ms. Seifried Woodall gets a cat, she first learns what that cat likes and doesn't like. "Some cats like to stay close to the ground, so I'll teach them how to stand behind me, and walk with me," she says. "Other cats, like high places, so they'll learn how to jump on my bent knee and then safely leap to my shoulder."

    Ms. Seifried Woodall grew up in a family with many pets, and she was first paid to work with animals when she was 18. At a summer job at an amusement park, she learned how to train a few of the animals for performances. She continued to train and learn about animals for 20 years before starting her own animal-training center.

    Ms. Seifried Woodall is proud of the skills her cats have learned, but she is also proud that her center's cats are healthy and social. She believes her cats enjoy learning new tricks.

    In Ms. Seifried Woodall's experience, no breed (品种) of cat is easier to train than others. All of her cats came from shelters. They have become pets in her home.

    Like most animal trainers, Ms. Seifried Woodall uses a reward system. Cats that are successful during training get food or a new toy. A cat that doesn't enjoy eating or playing will probably not be interested in being trained. She never scolds (责骂) them. "Cats need a lot of encouragement when they are performing, she says." I say good job or that s right several times during a single minute."

Father's Day is celebrated today in 75 countries around the world. In my personal world, it's a day I like to think of my father's father.

I learned a lot in my later life from my dad. But I learned something else, as a kid not even yet in school, from my grandfather. I learned to be curious. Little things fathers and grandfathers do can change the life of a child forever. In my case, this change came from necessity：My mom needed someone to look after little Allen, barely 4 years old, during the school day. My grandmother volunteered, and my grandfather came up with a way I could be watched while he worked in his clockmaker's shop.

He seated me on a chair every day while I was there, right in front of his big workbench.  He told me stories. He had a great sense of humor and a funny way of making a "buh﹣buh﹣buh" sound when he sensed my attention was weakening, and he encouraged me to ask questions about anything he was doing.

Naturally, I was usually asking questions about clocks﹣what made the hands move, what the pendulum (钟摆) did, why you had to stop winding just before the weight hit the stop.  Sometimes I just asked about which shiny parts went where.

Most of all, he showed me how clocks worked. He treated me as if I were a sort of small grown﹣up. He never talked down to me, never told me I was "too young to understand".

And so my grandfather granted me two things: A love of clocks, and an everlasting curiosity.

As a journalist, I turned that fascination into explanations of why computers and software do what they do﹣﹣and, perhaps even more importantly, why they fail at that task. I haven't been afraid of opening up the innards and looking for what is wrong with the computer.