I was living a life in my screen and hardly noticed what was around me. So when my friends invited me to go camping for a long weekend without the cell service, I thought this was exactly what I needed. Here's how keeping away from my phone for 48 hours changed me.

    I realized my bedtime routine was usually centered on one thing: my phone. Right before I went to sleep, I browsed through news websites and checked my emails. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I did the same thing. The problem with this was I felt anxious every night. I felt free without my phone at that weekend camp. I felt asleep listening to the sound of crickets.

    When I had my phone, I was always checking the time and thinking of future plans. My thought was: “Who's going to text me now? What will I do next?” Without my phone, I truly savored what I was doing in the moment, sitting by the river, riding a bike, or singing the old songs. There was no need to rush through any of it. I listened to what my body wanted instead of what my phone was telling me to do.

    You know that moment when you're hanging out with a group of people and no one has anything to say? The typical response: Everyone immediately pulls out their phones. So what did we do without a phone to avoid embarrassing silences? We actually talked to each other. Instead of burying our faces in our screens, we looked one another in the eye, had a moment of pure human connection and then continued talking. And you know what? People actually listened.

    So, now what? Now I'm back to the real world.

Visiting Joshua Tree National Park, California

    Joshua Tree National Park is nearly 800,000 acres (英亩) large and surrounds parts of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts in South-central California. Although deserted at first sight, the park is full of wildlife and provides a variety of entertainment activities from hiking to climbing. Within a three-hour drive, Joshua Tree National Park takes at least a full day to visit.

Things to do

    Hiking opportunities within the park include several choices, from 12 self-guided nature routines to all-day back-country hikes.

    Joshua Tree NP has nine camping grounds, and back-country camping is also allowed.

    Rock climbing is a popular activity in the park, which has 10 mountains greater than 5, 000 feet in height.

When to visit

    Joshua Tree NP is open 365 days a year, although the best time to visit is October through April, when temperature is milder. The peak season is when the wild flowers bloom, and the summer months are the least crowded.

What to bring

    In addition to your camera and telescope, be sure to carry lots of water. Park and guiding maps can be picked up at any of the three visitor centers.

Fees

    Parking fees: You can buy a seven-day vehicle permit (周票) for $ 15, a single entry permit for $ 5, or Joshua Tree National Park annual (每年的) pass for $ 60.

    Camping fees: They vary by camping ground

    The first Europeans to occupy Canada's Prince Edward Island were the French in the 1500s. At that time, its name was Ile Saint-Jean. When the British took over in 1758, they changed the name to its current one in honor of Prince Edward, the first son of Britain's King George Ⅲ.

    Today many communities find their places in Prince Edward Island, but Charlottetown is the only one that can call itself a metropolitan(大都市)area, despite the fact that it is a small one. About 60,000 people live in the city and surrounding area. The city's center area remains relatively unchanged from its 19th century beginnings. Charlottetown's boardwalk runs alongside the water, past docks, boats, shops and restaurants. Historic homes line the streets. During summer months, costumed characters walk around the city and tell of it history.

    Cavendish beach welcomes beach lovers. The gulf streams makes the water warm and wonderful for swimming, and the island's 1,760-kilometer coastline means a beach is never far away.

    Nine of PEI's 63 lighthouses will welcome visitors in the summer. Besides enjoying stunning views from the tops, visitors can browse in the small museums and learn about the island's history.

The most popular time to visit PE I is July to August, when the average temperature reaches 23℃ during the day. From January to February, the average daytime high is only -3.3℃. Each winter, an average 318.2 centimeters of snow fall on the island, covering it with a white blanket.

    Considering the island's many visitors, it's no surprise that tourism is important there. Other key industries on the island are agriculture, fishing and information technology. With so much to offer, the island is naturally a desirable place to live as well.

    Computers have beaten human world champions at chess and, earlier this year, the board game Go(围棋). So far, though, they have struggled at the card table. So we challenged one AI(artificial intelligence) to a game.

Why is poker so difficult? Chess and Go are “information complete” games where all players can see all the relevant information. In poker, other players' cards are hidden, making it an “information incomplete” game. Players have to guess opponents' hands from their actions—-tricky for computers. Solving poker could lead to many breakthroughs, from cyber security to driverless cars.

    Scientists believe it is only a matter of time before AI once again vanquishes humans, so our human-machine match comes up in a game of Texas Hold's Em Limit Poker. The AI was developed by Johannes Heinrich, a researcher studying machine learning at UCL. It combines two techniques: neural(神经的)networks and reinforcement learning(强化学习).

    Neural networks, to some degree, copy the structure of human brains: their processors are highly interconnected and work at the same time to solve problems. They are good at spotting patterns in huge amounts of data. Reinforcement learning is when a machine, given a task, carries it out, learning from mistakes it makes. In this case, it means playing poker against itself billions of times to get better.

    Mr Heinrich told Sky News: “Today we are presenting a new procedure that has learned in a different way, more similar to how humans learn. In particular, it is able to learn abstract patterns, represented by its neural network, which allow it to deal with new and unseen situations.”

    After two hours of quite defensive play, from the computer at least, we called it a draw.

    "The history of the world is but the biography (传记) of great men," argued Thomas Carlyle, the advocate of what has come to be known as the "Great Man Theory of History." This theory suggests that the broader movements and outline of history all go back to the leadership of great individuals who had unique influence on their times. Whether or not Carlyle's theory proves true is debatable, but that certain individuals cast long shadows is not.

    As one who is entrusted with a leadership position, I find it profitable to read of others who have led. Wherever you find me, you'll likely find a good biography nearby. Why is this the case? First, I find good biographies fascinating. I'll occasionally read a novel, but I've never been overly drawn to fiction. I have found myself unable to sleep while in the struggle of the Battle of Britain in William Manchester's The Last Lion. For me, not to read biographies would rob me of pleasure in my life.

    Second, I find good biographies informative. A good biographer tells not only the story of a person, but also of their times. Reading a good biography is like wandering through an intellectual shopping mall. The first store is what drew you there, but you will be pleasantly surprised along the way at what other items grab your attention. You'll find no better account of the British Empire at its peak than the opening chapters of Manchester's Visions of Glory, volume one of his The Last Lion. Strictly speaking, a biography is but a slice of history.

    Third, I find good biographies relaxing. Winston Churchill once noted a man who works with his hands should have a hobby that engages his mind, and a man who works with his mind should have a hobby that engages his hands. Another way to apply Churchill's saying is to combine technical, pen-in-hand vocational reading with leisurely biographical reading. Indeed, few things are more relaxing to me than winding down the evening and entering into another world.

    This is why I love reading good biographies, and why I pity the person who neglects them. Don't be counted among their number.

    Today the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded journalist Svetlana Alexievich approximately $970,000 in recognition of a lifetime of excellence. The 67-year-old author of Voices From Chernobyl and War's Unwomanly Face was praised by the Swedish Academy "for her polyphonic(复调式的) writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."

    Prizes like the Nobel inspire much expectations before the announcement. People give their best guesses as to who will win, look back on past winners, and even place bets as if spectators at a Derby(赛马会).

    Literary prizes reward artistic brilliance. They help writers earn a decent living. But is the public's fascination with prize-winning authors healthy? Our impulse seems to increasingly contribute to a culture of turning authors into celebrities, where readers follow the author instead of the book.

    A story should stand on its own, as a considered, complete book, without biographical information from author. It's an idea perhaps best conveyed in Roland Barthes's 1968 essay The Death of the Author. "The image of literature to be found in contemporary culture is arbitrarily centered on the author, his person, his history, his tastes, his passions."

    Nearly 50 years later, a few still agree. "I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors," New York Times bestselling author Elena Ferrante once wrote. "If books have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won't, "she continued. "True miracles are the ones whose makers will never be known."

    ①But the rules for submission for the Man Booker International Prize, for example, strongly encourage authors to "make themselves available for publicity". And the foundation behind the National Book Award requires finalists to participate in their "website-related publicity".

    ② In 2007, a reporter who showed up uninvited at Doris Lessing's house was the first to inform her that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Today the Twitterati came knocking on Alexievich's digital door hour before the award was even official. To be considered for a prize is to be a public figure.

    ③ Harry Potter series author J. K. Rowling, with over 5.6 million Twitter followers, has actively addressed readers through public appearances and social media, revealing much more than we could have imagined when we closed the final Harry Potter book. We now know the house Harry's children will be sorted into, that Dumbledore is gay," Voldemort" is actually pronounced with a silent "t", and a whole host of the other minor and major details about the backstory of the characters.

    The magical world Rowling created in her books—a relatively tight mystery with well-laid clues that led to a satisfying conclusion, which had to prove their merits to the reader based on an internal logic—is being unraveled by her own hand.

    ④ Of course, public attention also has very important benefits for authors. For three months after receiving the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad sold about triple its print sales from before the prize, Publishers Weekly reports. On Oct. 5, 2010, in the first FT/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Awards, as Nigerian-born Chigozie Obioma accepted the prize for fiction with an easy smile, his excitement was appreciable. Given the cash prize of $40,000 for each winner, it's hard to downplay the importance of such an honor. Such awards bring necessary visibility and funding to writers facing a literary landscape dominated by white men.

    But our culture of celebrity is often too wrapped up in the way we read: How might the meaning of a work change if the author really didn't grow up in a poor neighborhood, or if he or she was abused in childhood? Readers studied the author's life as if it were the key to interpreting his or her novels.

    Behind our fascination is the question that drives all such questions: What did the author intend? By all means, let us praise brilliant work and in doing so trust that the author has already told us enough, and that the story he or she meant to tell ended with the final page.