【推荐1】Vegetarianism is growing in popularity in a lot of countries. And now, South Africa is one of them. Today, more and more South Africans are experimenting with the vegetarian (素食者) way of life by cutting meat out of their diet.

Some others are exploring veganism. Vegans (纯素者) are similar to vegetarians but they avoid all animal based products, including mike and eggs. Some vegans even do not eat honey. There is no official count of how many vegans there are in South Africa. But the interest has led to the birth of vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Johannesburg, the nation's economic center. And this year, Africa's first big vegan and plant-based festival was held in Cape Town. The Vegan & Plant Powered Show took place at the end of May.

But veganism can be a lonely road for many South Africans. The country is Africa's top consumer of meat from cows, pigs and sheep, based on information from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Many South Africans express shock at the thought of giving up meat, which is central to celebrations and spirituality.

This is an issue for many African vegans, including Anesu Mbizvo. “In African traditional culture, a big part of a family's worth is their livestock (家畜), which decide the wealth of a family. And so when an African kills an animal at a gathering, it's thought that he would give away his wealth.” But she adds, “Offering home grown vegetables would not be considered to be valuable. I think that thought mainly prevents some people of African cultures from being vegans.”

Some South Africans are finding their path somewhere in the middle, Thirty-one-year-old Thandiwe Ngubeni is a communications specialist. She still eats meat but less and less of it as time goes by. “I feel more energetic when I eat a vegan meal. It actually gives me more energy.”

Steve’s Pizza

So many pizza chains compete for the attention of tourists in South Beach, but ask a Miami Beach local where to get the best pizza and they’ll tell you about Steve’s. This is New York style pizza, handmade with care and good ingredients(成分). New branches of Steve’s Pizza are opening elsewhere in Miami, all in non-tourist areas.

Opening hours: 11 a.m.－10a.m.

Cattleman’s Steakhouse

This place is 20 miles east of the city, but local folks would probably drive 200 miles to eat here. The food is good, and the scenery is even better. Come early and wander around the grounds of Indian Cliffs Ranch, where you’ll see everything from rabbits to buffalo (水牛), then catch the sunset either before or after your meal.

Opening hours: 5p.m.－10p.m.

Absolute Baking & Café

The screen door is always swinging open at this town hot spot with giant breakfasts. Try the green chili on eggs – it’s made from scratch, as are the organic(有机的) breads. Lunch includes salads, big sandwiches and local grass-fed beef burgers. Don’t miss a square of soft, fresh carrot cake.

Opening hours: 7a.m.－2p.m.

Walt’s Wharf

Everybody’s favorite for fresh fish (some drive in from LA). Walt’s packs them in on weekends. You can’t make reservations for dinner (though they’re accepted for lunch), but it’s worth the wait for the tree fire–grilled seafood and steaks in the many-windowed ground floor or upstairs in captain’s chairs.

Opening hours: 11a.m.－10:30p.m.

【推荐3】Have you ever wondered what the food you eat every day can tell you about where you come from? Have you ever wondered why people from different parts of the world eat different types of food? Do you ever ask yourself why certain foods or culinary (烹饪的) traditions are so important to your culture? There is more of a connection between food and culture than you may think.

On an individual level, we grow up eating the food of our cultures. It becomes a part of who each of us is. Many of us associate food from our childhood with warm feelings and good memories and it ties us to our families, holding a special and personal value for us.

On a larger scale, food is an important part of culture. Traditional cuisine is passed down from one generation to the next. It also operates as an expression of cultural identity. Immigrants bring the food of their countries with them wherever they go and cooking traditional food is a way of preserving their culture when they move to new places.

In China, harmony is a vital quality in almost every aspect of life. This is reflected in Chinese cuisine, where almost every flavor is used in a balanced way creating delicious dishes with flavors that go well together. The cuisine of the United States also reflects its history. The European colonization of the Americas brought European ingredients and cooking styles to the U.S.

As the world becomes more globalized, it is easier to access cuisines from different cultures. We should embrace our heritage(传统)through our culture's food but we should also become more informed about other cultures by trying their foods. It's important to remember that each dish has a special place in the culture to which it belongs, and is special to those who prepare it.

【推荐3】Folk tales have saddled (使承担) the moon with major responsibilities: moods, increases in crime and even mental disorders are blamed on the moon. But could the “lunar effect” disturb sleep?

Scientists have long understood that human activity is affected by light, including sunlight, moonlight and artificial light. But a recent study suggests our ability to sleep is clearly affected by the lunar cycle, even when considering artificial sources of light.

Using wrist monitors, researchers tracked sleep patterns in 98 individuals living in three local communities in Argentina over the course of two months. One rural community had no electricity access, a second rural community had limited access to electricity, while a third community was located in an urban setting and had full access to electricity.

In each community, the peak(峰值) of participants sleeping less and staying up later occurred three to five days before full moon nights, and the opposite occurred on the nights before the new moon, the authors found.

Unsurprisingly, data showed the “'lunar phase effect” on sleep appeared to be stronger the more limited access to electricity was.

“The result strongly suggests that human sleep is synchronized (同步) with lunar phase,” the researchers wrote in the journal ScienceAdoances.

De la Iglesia added: “We humans tend to believe that we managed to control nature, and the use of artificial light is a great example of that. But it turns out that there are some forces of nature that we cannot get away from.”

Derk-Jan Dijk, a professor of sleep and physiology and the director of a sleep research centre at the University of Surrey, described the study as exciting but noted that the researchers had not deal with internal influences such as body clocks that could affect sleep patterns.

【推荐1】The other day I came across an Instagram post from my friend and colleague Danielle. It was a photo of a review of Danielle s recent photography exhibit. The review was positive, but also critical. That’s why Danielle posted it. She was proud of her work, no matter what her critics thought.

I was shocked by the post- -- it was one of the most honest things I've ever seen on social media! Usually when I scroll (滚读) through Facebook or Instagram, everything I see is perfect. Perfect vacations, perfect babies, perfect birthday cakes…

I' m guilty of it too. I only post photos of happy stuff. If someone saw my Instagram, they’d probably think, “Wow, this girl doesn’t have a care in the world.... and also she must really, really love ice cream.”

Danielle s post didn’t show a perfect world. And yet that didn’t make me think less of her. Quite the opposite, I respected her even more as an artist. That got me thinking. Maybe social media could be more meaningful if we showed off our mistakes or our struggles. And not a world where everything’s perfect, ice cream never melts and the lighting s always just right.

I’m going to try it out. Start with this blog post, which I’ll share on social media. I’ve included a photo here. It’s about a story I worked on for Guideposts magazine. See all those cross- outs and rewrites? That’s just the first of five pages of edit after edit from Guideposts editor- in-chief Edward Grinnan.

I remember the horrible day it happened like it was yesterday. I admit that I wept some tears over it. I considered giving up writing for a career. Eventually, though, I faced the music. I talked to Edward and asked him to explain the edits in detail so I could do better next time. The whole situation was rough. But, looking back now, it was a great learning experience.

【推荐2】Leonardo da Vinci was one of the great creative minds of the Italian Renaissance(文艺复兴), not only hugely influential as an artist and sculptor but also immensely talented as an engineer, scientist and inventor.

Da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452 near the Tuscan town of Vinci. He was apprenticed(便当学徒) to the sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence and in 1478 became an independent master. In about 1483, he moved to Milan to work for the ruling Sforza family as an engineer, sculptor, painter and architect. From 1495 to 1497 he produced a mural of The Last Supper in the refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.

Da Vinci was in Milan until the city was invaded by the French in 1499 and the Sforza family was forced to flee. He may have visited Venice before returning to Florence. During his time in Florence, he painted several portraits, but the only one that survived was the famous Mona Lisa (1503-1506).

In 1506, Da Vinci returned to Milan, remaining there until 1513. This was followed by three years based in Rome. In 1517, at the invitation of the French king Francis I, Leonardo moved to the Chateau of Cloux, near Amboise in France, where he died on 2 May 1519.

The fame of Da Vinci’s surviving paintings has meant that he has been regarded primarily as an artist, but the thousands of surviving pages of his notebooks show the most brilliant of minds. He wrote and drew on subjects including geology, anatomy (which he studied in order to paint the human form more accurately), flight, gravity and optics, often moving from subject to subject on a single page, and writing in left-handed mirror script. He “invented” the bicycle, airplane, helicopter, and parachute some 500 years ahead of their time.

If all this work had been published in a form easy to understand, Da Vinci’s place as a pioneering scientist would have been beyond dispute. Yet his true genius was not as a scientist or an artist, but as a combination of the two – an ‘artist-engineer.’ His painting was scientific, based on a deep understanding of the workings of the human body and the physics of light and shade. His science was expressed through art, and his drawings and diagrams show what he meant and how he understood the way the world works.

【推荐3】Bill McIntosh and Royce Wedding had been best friends for 30 years. Now, living alone 12 miles east of the town, Bill earned his living by hunting foxes and rabbits.

"Coming to the football match this afternoon?" Bill McIntosh asked 54-year-old Royce Wedding as they drank beer at the Eureka Hotel. Royce shook his head, "I promised Mom I'd burn off the weeds in one of our fields." "I' ll give you a hand," Bill said.

Driving slowly from the southern edge of the field，they worked their way upwind（逆风），leaving a line of burning weeds behind them. Suddenly the fire was on them. Bill pushed open his door only to find himself thrown through the air，the gasoline tank exploded（爆炸）and the car jumped three feet off the ground. When it crashed back down Royce found himself unable to move. Bill lay where he fell. "Royce！"he cried，struggling to his feet and heading for the car. Pulling open the door，he seized Royce's arms through the smoke. "I'm stuck，"Royce said. "Get yourself away！"The fire bit at Bill's arms，face and legs，but he said，"I'm not leaving you here. "Bill pulled as hard as he could. Suddenly he fell backward. Royce was free and out of the car.

"What's the matter with that dog?" said Vicky Wedding, Royce's mom. Shocked by noise behind her, she turned to see Bill leaning against the door.

Six months after the fire, when Royce went out of hospital, he walked into the Eureka Hotel and bought Bill a beer.

【推荐2】Nowadays people rarely read for enjoyment, even though reading books used to be one of most people's recreations. It was an escape from the surrounding world, away from technology. However, these days has seen a sharp decline in how much time people spend reading books, news articles, short stories, and many other macro-reading materials.

Social media that have come out, such as Twitter and Facebook, have shortened the amount of time we need to read and process information. Twitter's character limit quickly summarizes information for readers so they do not have to bother opening and reading a longer article. Five minutes on Twitter can catch people up on their news for the rest of the day. Twitter and other social media sites can be regarded as micro-reading, which is a technology that takes bits of articles and summarizes them in a few brief sentences.

But Twitter isn't always able to thoroughly summarize a topic. A headline or summary can be misleading if the reader does not know the context. This can lead to misinterpretations of what an article is actually about.

The other day I was criticized for one of my columns. The criticism was strange, because it was barely connected to the article. When I countered their argument _f saying that this opinion wasn't related to the article, they said they didn't read the story, only the headline.

As a columnist, I spend a good amount of time writing these columns and I hope people can read them with great attention. There are points that I am unable to sum up in a single line. If readers don't bother to read the article and only read the headline, they are not going to get the point of the piece of writing. This is why, as a society, we can't fully rely on social media for all of our information.

【推荐3】Denmark is only about half the size of South Carolina, but it produces more of its electricity from wind than any other country in the world. That's not because it's a particularly breezy country; it has pretty ordinary average wind speeds. The reason the Danes now get 47% of their electricity from wind,with more to come,comes down to a combination of history and policy.

First, the history: Paul la Cour was a scientist and inventor who experimented with and engineered early wind power machines at the start of the 20th century. So it's not surprising that Denmark spent money developing wind power early, beginning at a national level in the 1970s.In the 1980s,due to a strong grassroots movement disagreeing with nuclear power plants, Denmark increased production before many other countries were even considering it.

Denmark has also had significant government support for wind-energy projects, as well as support from the country's technology-focused universities. Even back in 2002, the country was taking climate change warnings seriously, aiming to cut fossil-fuel emissions by 20 percent, which it did via renewable energy investment and implementation.

Some of the world's largest companies in the area --- including Vestas, which builds turbines, and Orsted, which specializes in offshore wind projects --- are Danish,so the country has an impact beyond its borders.

The great impact of Denmark's wind-energy business is important because it's a small country, so while an almost 50% rate of electricity from wind is admirable, it's also small in terms of overall global impact.

While Denmark gets almost half of its electricity needs covered from 5,758 megawatts (MW) of capacity, Spain's 23,000 MTW covers just 18 percent of its electricity supply as it's a much bigger country. China is the leader in wind energy at 221,000 MW,and the U.S. comes second in the world at about 96,000 MW.

Denmark's long support for wind-energy technology and its policies made in support of wind energy have proven this approach can work to decarbonize the economy, even on a bigger scale.At the end of 2019, lawmakers in Denmark set a new goal: increasing the percentage of electricity sourced from renewable power to 100%.