Do you often think of life in the future? Will we study at home? Will we have robots? Will we fly to the moon easily? Everyone may have his or her views about that. Life in the future will be very different from life today. Between then and now many changes will take place, but what will the changes be?

    There will be changes in our food. Maybe no one will eat meat. Instead, people will eat more fruit and vegetables. People will stay away from junk food. Maybe people will be healthier.

    Computers will be small and useful. Maybe we will even put the computers into our pockets(口袋). There will be at least two computers in every home. And computer studies will be one of the most important subjects at school.

    Work in the future will be different, too. Dangerous and hard work can be done by robots. People will work fewer hours than they do now. And they will have more free time for sports, watching TV and traveling.

    Do you know of anyone who uses the truth to deceive(欺骗)? When someone tells you something that is true, but leaves out important information that should be included, he can give you a false picture．

    For example, someone might say, “I just won a hundred dollars on the lottery(彩票). It was great. I took that dollar ticket back to the store and turned it in for one hundred dollars!”

    This guy is a winner, right? Maybe, maybe not. We then discover that he bought $ 200 worth of tickets, and only one was a winner. He's really a big loser!

    He didn't say anything that was false, but he left out important information on purpose. That's called a half-truth. Half truths are not technically lies, but they are just as dishonest.

    Some officers often use this trick. Let's say that during Governor Smith's last term, her state lost one million jobs and gained three million jobs. Then she tries another term. One of the persons who don't support her says, “During Governor Smith's term, the state lost one million jobs!” That's true. However, an honest statement would have been, “During Governor Smith's term, the state had a net gain of two million jobs.''

    Advertisers will sometimes use half—truths. It's against the law to make false statements so they try to mislead you with the truth. An advertisement might say, “Nine out of ten doctors advised their patients to take Yucky Pills to cure toothache. ”It fails to mention that they only asked ten doctors and nine of them work for the Yucky Company.

    This kind of thing happens too often. It's a sad fact of life: Lies are lies, and sometimes the truth can lie as well.

    When you look at the sky at night, the Moon looks bigger than the stars. Actually (实际上), the Moon is much smaller than the stars and the Sun. It's much smaller than the Earth. But the Moon is much closer to us than any star. That is why it looks so big. If you hold a coin close to your eyes, it looks big. If you look at it across the Moon, it looks small.

    The Moon moves around the Earth. It makes one trip in about four weeks. The Moon looks flat to us. But it is a round ball, like the Earth.

    People once thought the Moon had fire (火) on it. They thought the fire made it bright. Now we know the Moon is like a mirror. It gets its light from the Sun.

    Our sunlight comes from the Sun, too. What is the Sun? The Sun is a star. The stars we can see have their own light. There are many big stars we cannot see. Their light has burned out. Others are still bright, but they are so far away that we cannot see them. The Sun looks bigger and much brighter than other stars in Galaxy because it is the nearest of all stars. The Sun and the other stars we see are very hot, but the air around us saves us from the heat of the Sun.

    The Sun gives us light and warmth (温暖). It makes plants grow and turns leaves green. It makes life possible on the Earth. It is a life giving star.