Australia is the smallest continent in the world. It is a little smaller than China. It is on the Southern Hemisphere of the earth. Australia is big, but its population is small. The population of Australia is nearly as large as that of Shanghai.

    Enough laws have been made to fight against pollution. The cities in Australia have little air or water pollution. The sky is blue and the water is clean. You can clearly see fish in the rivers. Plants grow very well.

    Last month we visited Perth, the biggest city in Western Australia, and went to a wild flower exhibition. There we saw large numbers of wild flowers on show, most of which we had never seen before. We had a wonderful time. Perth is famous for its beautiful wild flowers. Every year in spring Perth has a wild flower exhibition. After visiting Perth, we spent a day in the countryside. We sat down and had a rest near a path at the foot of a hill. It was quiet and we enjoyed ourselves very much. When we heard bells ringing at the top of the hills, we looked up, but what we saw made us pick up all our things and run back to our car as quickly as we could. There were about three hundred sheep coming towards us along the path.

    Australia is famous for its sheep and kangaroos. After a short drive from any town, you will find yourself among the white sheep. Sheep, sheep, everywhere you can see sheep.

"Dad," I say one day …..take a trip. Why don't you fly and meet me?"

    My father had just reired……….. His job filled his day, his thought, his life. While he woke up and took a warm shower, I screamed under a freezing waterfall Peru. While he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.

    My father sees me drfting aimlessly, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down, but now I want him to find an adventure.

    He agrees to travel with me through the national parks. We meet four weeks later in Rapid City.

" What is our first stop?" asks my father.

"What time is it?"

"Still don't have a watch?"

    Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he stares up at the four Presidents carved in granite(), his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of little boy.

"Unbelievable," he says, "How was this done?"

    A film in the information center shows sculptor Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculpture and then left the final touches to his son.

We stare up and I ask myself, Would I ever devote my life to anything?

No directions, …… I always used to hear those words in my father's voice. Now I hear them in my own.

    The next day we're at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.

"Did you ever travel with your dad? I ask.

"Only once," he says. " I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other—but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave.">

    The kast sebtebce—it's probably the same thing I's say about my father. And what I'd want my child to say about me.

In Glacier National Park, my father says, "I've never seen water so blue." I have, in several places of the world, I can keep traveling, I realize—— and maybe a regular job won't be as dull as I feared.

    Weeks after our trip, I call my father.

"The photos from the trip are wonderful," he says." We have got to take another trip like that sometime.

    I tell him I've learn decided to settle down, and I'm wearing a watch.

    Every day, we are inching closer to some kind of artificial intelligence. Advances in big data, machine learning and robotics are going to give us a world where computers are effectively intelligent in terms of how we deal with them. Should you be scared by this? Absolutely, but not in the usual “robot overlords” (机器人帝国) kind of way. Instead, the real fear should be about getting human beings wrong, not getting AI right.

    The key to the technology is the ability of computers to recognize human emotions based on the ‘‘activation” of muscles in the face. A computer can identify the positions of facial muscles and use them to infer the emotional state of its user. Then the machine responds in ways that take that emotional state into account.

    One potential application of it is to provide “emotional robots” for the elderly. Having a machine that could speak in a kind way would comfort a lonely older person. That is a good thing, right? But that won't also relieve us from questioning how we ended up in a society that takes care of the elderly because we don't know what else to do with them? Can't we have more humane solutions than robots?

    “Emotion data” aren't the same thing as the real and vivid emotional experiences we human beings have. Our emotions are more than our faces or voices. How can they be pulled out like a thread, one by one, from the fabric of our being?

    Research programs can come with much philosophical concern, too. From the computers' point of view, what the computing technology captures are emotions, but at its root is a reduction of human experience whose outward expressions can be captured algorithmically (计算上). As the technology is used in the world, it can reframe the world in ways that can be hard to escape from.

    The technology will clearly have useful applications, but once it treats emotions as data, we may find that it is the only aspect of emotion we come to recognize or value. Once billions of dollars floods into this field, we will find ourselves trapped in a technology that is reducing our lives. Even worse, our “emotion data” will be used against us to make money for someone else. And that is what scares me about AI.

    Welcome to Holker Hall & Gardens

    Visitor Information

    How to Get to Holker

    By Car: Follow brown signs on A590 from J36, M6. Approximate travel times: Windermere-20 minutes, Kendal-25 minutes, Lancaster-45 minutes, Manchester-1 hour 30 minutes.

By Rail: The nearest station is Cark-in-Cartmel with trains to Carnforth, Lancaster and Preston for connections to major cities & airports.

    Opening Times

    Sunday-Friday (closed on Saturday)11:00 am-4:00pm, 30th March-2nd November.

    Admission Charges

    Hall & Gardens Gardens

    Adults: £12.00 £8.00

    Groups: £9.00 £5.50

    Special Events

    Producers' Market 13th April

    Join us to taste a variety of fresh local food and drinks. Meet the producers and get some excellent recipe ideas.

    Holker Garden Festival 30th May

    The event celebrates its 22nd anniversary with a great show of the very best of gardening, making it one of the most popular events in gardening.

    National Garden Day 28th August

    Holker once again opens its gardens in aid of the disadvantaged. For just a small donation you can take a tour with our garden guide.

    Winter Market 8th November

    This is an event for all the family. Wander among a variety of shops selling gifts while enjoying a live music show and nice street entertainment.

    A man walked into a small Irish pub and ordered three beers. Bartender was surprised, but he served that man three beers. One hour later the man ordered three beers again. The very next day that man ordered three beers again and drank quietly at a table. This repeated several times and shortly after the people of the town were whispering about the man, who was ordering three beers at once.

    A couple of weeks later, the bartender decided to clear this out and inquired: “I do not want to pry, but could you explain, why do you order three beers all the time?” The man replied: “It seems strange, isn't it? You see, my two brothers live abroad at the moment, one – in France and another – in Italy. We have made an agreement, that every time we go to pub each of us will order extra two beers and it will help keeping up the family bond”.

    Soon all the town have heard about the man's answer and liked it a lot. The man became a local celebrity. Residents of the town were telling this story to newcomers or tourists and even invited them to that pub to look at Three Beer Man.

    However, one day the man came to pub and ordered only two beers, not three as usual. The bartender served him with bad feeling. All that evening the man ordered and drank only two beers. The very next day all the town was talking about this news, some people pray for the soul of one of the brothers, others quietly grieved.

    When the man came to pub the next time and ordered two beers again, the bartender asked him: “I would like to offer condolences to you, due to the death of your dear brother”. The man considered this for a moment and then replied: “Oh, you are probably surprised that I order only two beers now? Well, my two brothers are alive and well. It's just because of my decision. I promised myself to give up drinking.”

    Dearborn Heights, Michigan—2.7 million children under 18 have a parent in prison, and women put in local prisons are the fastest growing population. Shawna Reynolds has seen some of those women up close while working in the corrections system(劳教所) for 17 years, and she was encouraged to try something different.

    After seven years of education and collecting as much money as she could, Shawna created About Face Course Correction—a one-year rehabilitation program(康复项目) that offers a more personal way to help non-violent women prisoners. The program includes classes for women to finish their education, find a job and So on. "You can't expect people who have been in prison to stay in prison," Shawna says. "YOU want them to be helpful people but if you are not going to help them, it's not going to happen."

    The women live free for a year in a house in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Women like 20-year-old Jennifer Douglas, who dropped out of school, took drugs(吸毒), and has spent years in and out of prison. She says, "I was doing things I would never have thought I would do in my whole life. Because of About Face, Jennifer's life is changing. " "Everyone is starting to trust me again and proud of me and what I'm doing," she says. "It's helped me a lot. It has kept me on the right track."

    There are many other women like Jennifer. Every woman's story is different, but each woman is important. And Shawna is determined to break the cycle and help them turn their lives around. She is using her own money and donations to pay for the house and this program. If you would like to donate, please visit their Go Fund Me account here.