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 barren 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

    He must have had that nice window seat all the way from London. An Indian, he looked under 40, medium height, slim and wore a suit. I got an aisle seat next to him. I looked at him and tried to smile as I sat down. But there was a blank, distant look that made me stop mid-smile. One of those, I thought.

    Each time I take a flight, I try to chat with a fellow passenger. Most people are responsive when they're alone at 40,000 feet. But the man wearing the suit on my left was a puzzle. One of those non-resident Indians, I thought. What do you lose if you just smiled at a fellow human being? Most of the time, he stared fixedly at the seat in front of him. Why are some people so full of themselves?

    When the stewardess brought lunch, the unfriendly man had his eyes shut. She gave me a should-I-wake-him-up look. I didn't say anything, and he didn't get his lunch. Serves him right. He soon woke up and saw me eat. But he didn't ask for his meal. He could just have pressed a button. That's his problem.

    We still have almost two hours of flying left. I read a magazine. I try to play a video game. I listen to music. He does nothing. At times our eyes meet, but he isn't all there. He's like no other passenger I've ever sat next to. By the time our jet lands in Mumbai, I find his presence almost uncomfortable. As we taxi down the runway, I hear the man speak for the first time—on his mobile phone. He seems to be discussing his connecting flight. About somebody receiving him… Just before the aircraft comes to a halt, he's the first to stand up. “Excuse me,” he says to me. “May I leave? I can't miss my connecting flight.”

    Hmm…! I get up to make way for him when he goes on mechanically, “My wife and child died in a road accident in Delhi.” I'm shocked by his words. Suddenly, everything falls in place.

    Despite his terrible loss and the sufferings he has been enduring, he was calm, controlled throughout. And, maybe, in the midst of his soul-crushing sorrow, he didn't want to burden a stranger with his pain.

    Google's new camera, called Clips, is a small, smart device. It comes with a case that has a clip (夹子), but it's not designed to be worn on your clothing. Most interestingly, it uses artificial intelligence to take photography out of your hands so it can capture moments on its own.

    This roughly 2-inch by 2-inch camera, with a three-hour battery life and Gorilla Glass for toughness, is intended for candid moments, like when a child does something cute that may happen too quickly for you to pull out your smartphone.

    Onboard the Clips device, it uses machine learning algorithms ( 计 算 程 序 ) to help capture scenes. Those algorithms include face recognition. "Once it learns that there's a face you see frequently, it'll try to get nice photos of those faces," said Juston Payne, the device's product manager. And they also want it to recognize facial expressions, which involved "training it to know what happiness looks like". The Google team also trained it to recognize what not to shoot—like when a child's hand is over the lens, or if it is tossed in a dark purse.

    The only way to see the images is by connecting the camera with your phone, as it has no screen for viewing or editing.

    Were people concerned it could seem strange? Yes, Payne admitted. But they said they addressed that by making it obvious what it is. A green light on the front signals that it is on. Besides, unlike a camera meant to monitor your home, it is not connected to the Internet.

    "This product is only possible because of the way that silicon has advanced," Payne said, noting that it was only in the past year or so that they could squeeze the technology down into a device this size. Going forward, we're likely to get more assistance from the artificial intelligence packed into our apps and gadgets.

    When Casey Waletich, the director of safety and operations at the Hillsboro School District in Oregon, decided to start a campaign against bullying (欺凌）in his district, he knew he had to get the students on board.

   "We knew that this had to be a student-led effort. The days of having schools do things without the involvement of the students are over，"Mr. Waletich says.

    So he got a group of students together and asked them how they would like to do things. The resulting campaign," Rethink, Redefine, Where Do You Stand?" was launched in October 2014.

    The Hillsboro campaign is just one example of how schools nationwide are increasingly turning to students to develop-anti-bullying movements designed to not just discourage bulling, but also to encourage students to get involved.

    In 2013, some 20 percent of high school students reported experiencing bullying, according to federal data on Stop Bulling gov. The figure jumps to 28 percent when middle school students are included. Some 70 percent of young people say they have witnessed bullying.

    In response to these issues, anti-bullying campaigns in which students have a central role are being conducted across the country. From West Jordan, Utah(where students participated in a three-year character-building program to stop bullying), to Lisbon, Iowa, and Goodrich, Mich, school officials report that their students are taking ownership.

   "This year I've noticed our students are already thinking about what they need to do to make Sunset Ridge an accepting, safe environment." Said Julie Scherzinger, a guidance councilor at Sunset Ridge Middle School in West Jordan." Students come up to me and ask if anyone needs help"

   "There are many reasons why having students at the center is most

important." Says Ron Avi Astor, a professor in social development at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles." Bullying takes place when adults are absent. The kids see and hear more and can go and inform adults when they aren't there to respond immediately"

   "Teaching kids to step up when someone is being bullied teaches them how to be responsible citizens." Ron Avi Astor added.

    Sagrada Familia (2, 056, 448 visits/year)

    Opening hours: 09: 00-18: 00 (October-March)    09: 00-20: 00 (April-September).

    Admission: $11, or $10 with the Barcelona Card.

    Disabled access: Yes

    The temple has been under construction since 1882 and they've still got another 30 to 80 years to go before it will be finished. The project's vast scale (规模) and its special design have made it one of Barcelona's top tourist attractions for many years.

    La Pedrera (1, 133, 220 visits/year)

    Opening hours: 09: 00-18: 30 (November-February)    09: 00-20: 00 (March-October)

    Admission: $9. 50. Save 20% with the Barcelona Card.

    Disabled access: No.

    This building used to be called Casa Mila, but nowadays it's more commonly known as La Pedrera. It was made of bricks and had colorful tiles (瓷砖).

    Barcelona FC Museum (1, 032, 763 visits/year)

    Opening hours: 6th April-4th October: (Monday to Saturday) 10:00-20:00; the rest of the year: 10: 00 to 18: 30.

    Admission: $8. 50 for entry to museum and an extra $17 for a guided tour.

    Disabled access: Yes.

    It is now generally considered as the best football museum in the world. You can see so many trophies (奖杯), pictures and statues of great football players. I'm not a football fan but I still enjoyed walking round this museum.

    Miró Museum (518, 869 visits/year)

    Opening hours: Check website for details as they vary depending on the time of the year.

    Admission: $8. Save 20% with the Barcelona Card.

    Disabled access: Yes.

    This museum has a wide range of Miró's works dating back as far as 1914. This artwork collection includes not only his paintings but also a good selection of sculptures.

Richard Holmes, a British author and academic, is something of a Romantic, famous for biographies of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In his last book, "The Age of Wonder", he wrote about science and Romanticism and their common commitment to discovery. In his new book, "Falling Upwards", he combines the two again to tell the stories of Europe's early balloonists (气球飞行者).

Mr Holmes's love of balloons was aroused at a village festival and his enthusiasm is one of the book's many pleasures. He refers to the cheerful tone used in many first-hand ballooning stories, and applies it in this second-hand account. He describes men and women wrapped up in fur coats under their hydrogen-filled balloons, enjoying cold chicken and champagne and looking back to earth to see mankind "for what it really is."

Mr Holmes makes much of the strange side of ballooning, but the book is at its best when examining its more serious applications. In the American civil war, for example, both North and South put observers in balloons to spy on enemy movements. And during the Prussian attack on Paris in 1870-71， balloonists managed to fly out of the city to communicate with the French government in exile (流亡) in Tours.

"Falling Upwards" contains much of the historian's writing characteristics, such as footnotes and bibliography (文献书目), but its epilogue (后记) refers modestly to what has gone before as "a series of true balloon stories". It does touch on the more technical aspects of ballooning, and says little about the French Montgolfier brothers who are credited as its inventors. That though seems a small price to pay for such a spirited work. Mr Holmes's tale ends at the start of the 20th century when the business of flight was being handed over to the airship and the airplane.