Mr. White was born in a small village. His parents worked hard on their farm but they couldn't get enough food for the family. Of course, he couldn't be sent to school and his uncle who worked in a school taught him at home. And he learned a lot before he left there. When he was sixteen, he found work in a factory. As an abled worker, the boss liked him and seven years later the boss married his daughter to him and with his help, Mr White had his own factory after another seven years passed.

    Mrs. White liked her husband very much. So she was always afraid he loved the other women. She often asked him a lot of questions. He wouldn't make her angry and was more careful.

    One evening Mr. White was very busy and he told his secretary to help him. When they finished the work, it was ten in the evening. He had to see her home. That night his wife felt unwell and told him to take her to a hospital. He helped her to get on the car and started. But soon after that he found there was a shoe in the car. He had a look at his wife. The woman seemed to be asleep. He picked it up gently and threw it out of the window.

    Soon they got to the hospital. As he was going to help her to get off, suddenly the woman called out, “Where's my shoe?”

    Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been making changes to my brain. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Involving myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. That's rarely the case any more.

    I think I know what's going on. For over a decade, I've been spending lots of time online. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes by a few Google searches. Even when I'm not working, I'm scanning headlines or just tripping from link to link.

The Net is becoming a universal medium where information flows through my eyes and ears and into mind. The perfect recall of silicon memory (硅制存储器) can be a blessing to thinking. But that comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall Mcluhan pointed out, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is weakening my ability for concentration. Once I was a driver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a flying swallow.

I'm not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to acquaintances, Bruce Friedman, a blogger, also has described how the Internet has changed his mental habits. His thinking has taken on a "staccato (破碎)" quality. "I can't read War and Peace any more" he admitted, "I've lost the ability to do that."

A recently published study suggests that when reading online, we tend to become "more decoders (解码器) of information". We are not only what we read; we are how we read.

    Planning a visit to the UK? Here we help with ways to cut your costs.

    AVOID BIG EVENTS Big sporting events, concerts and exhibitions can increase the cost of accommodation and make it harder to find a room. A standard double room at the Thistle Brighton on the final Friday of the Brighton Comedy Festival (19 Oct.) cost £169.15 at Booking.com. A week later, the same room cost £l18.15.

    If you can be flexible and want to know dates to avoid-or you're looking for a big event to pass your time—check out sites such as Whatsonwhen.com, which allow you to search for events in the UK by city, date and category.

    STAY AWAY FROM THE STATION If traveling to your destination by train, you may want to find a good base close to the station, but you could end up paying more for the sake of convenience at the start of your holiday.

    Don't be too choosy about the part of town you stay in. Booking two months in advance, the cheapest room at Travelodge's Central Euston hotel in London for Saturday 22 September was £95.95. A room just a tube journey away at its Covent Garden hotel was £75.75. And at Farringdon, a double room cost just £62.95.

    GET ON A BIKE London's 'Boris bikes' have attracted the most attention but other cities also have similar programmes that let you rent a bicycle and explore at your own pace, saving you on public transport or car parking costs.

    Among the smaller cities with their own programmes are Newcastle (casual members pay around £1.50 for two hours) and Cardiff (free for up to 30 minutes, or £5 per day).

    The Ice and Snow Festival Highlights

    It will fall upon January 1st, 2019 and last till the early March, 2019. Based on the theme of “Bright Pearl of the Crown of Ice and Snow”, a variety of activities about ice and snow, concerning tourism, culture, fashion and sport, will be open to all tourists.

    People in South Korea who feel they can no longer bear the stress of everyday life now can choose to stay in a prison to relax and think deeply.

    In a society where pressure to do well in school and find highly-paid jobs is intense, a former lawyer came up with an extreme relaxation idea. Kwon Yong-seok created the "Prison Inside Me" —a stress-reduction center with a punishment theme. People come here to cut themselves off from the outside world and pay to be kept in 60-square-foot (5.6-square-meter) cells (囚室).

    Located on the outskirts of Hongcheon, about 58 miles (93 km) northeast of Seoul," Prison Inside Me" came to life after Mr. Kwon voluntarily asked to spend time behind bars for" healing reasons," but his request was turned down." I didn't know how to stop working back then," he said." I felt like I was being swept away against my will, and it seemed I couldn't control my own life." So, Kwon and his wife Roh Ji-hyang decided to take matters into their own hands, and designed and built a prison-like spiritual center. The construction was completed in June last year and cost about 2 billion won ($19 million).

    The facility includes 28 cells, furnished with only a toilet, a sink and a small table, where guests can spend time alone, thinking about life and enjoying private thinking periods. Moreover, guests can also join group thinking periods in the hall, where they are given instructions on how to free themselves from what Mr. Kwon calls the "inner prison" to find inner peace.

    According to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of stressed South Koreans are checking in at the stress-reduction facility to think about their lives and regain control of it. A two-night stay at" Prison Inside Me" costs 150,000 won ($146).

    Mr. Kwon and his wife explained that at the beginning they had a different plan for the" relaxation center," and imagined a longer stay for their guests, but, given that people weren't able to take more time off, they had to reduce the length of stays to just two days.

    Park Woo-sub, a guest at" Prison Inside Me," said the experience helped him a lot." This is my third time in prison. Being kept in a prison makes me hard to breathe, but it also offers time to focus only on me and spend some quiet time with myself."

    Others said the experience would have been more helpful if the conditions had been poorer, like in a real prison.

New research from the University of Portsmouth has shown a marked increase in shipping in the North East Atlantic. Scientists now warn that more monitoring is required to help protect sea life. 

Researchers at the University of Ponsmouth have discovered that rates (率)of shipping in the North East Atlantic area rose by 34 per cent in a five-year period. The research is the first detailed survey of shipping activity in the North East Atlantic. Researchers used data from over 530 million vessel(船)positions recorded by Automatic Identification System(AIS). They looked at the change in shipping between 2013 and 2017 across ten different vessel types. In total the study area covered 1.1 million km², including waters off Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany,Iceland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal. Spain, and the UK. 

Lead author, James Robbins said:"This change is likely to put more pressure on the marine(海 洋的)environment, and may influence the protection of at-risk species. Renewed monitoring effort is needed to make sure that protective measures are enough to save species under threat in a changing environment. "

Some of the greatest shipping increases were found in areas close to the Spanish coast. The Espacio Marino de la Costa da Morte saw a rise of 413 percent in vessel activity. It is an area used to protect seabirds. 

Dr. Sarah Marley, Visiting Researcher at the University of Portsmouth, said:"Shipping is the most widespread human activity in our oceans, carrying a set of threats-from unnoticeable effects like underwater noise pollution to serious results when ships hit whales. "

Professor Alex Ford. from the University's Institute of Marine Sciences, said:"Given the well- documented effects that shipping can have on the marine environment, it is necessary that this situation continues to be monitored-particularly in areas used to protect vulnerable(脆弱的)species which may already be under pressure. "