Traveling with kids is 90 percent reminding yourself to live in the moment and 10 percent making up your mind to never again leave your house.
I have an uncanny ability to forget this as soon as we return home from a trip and I've finished washing piles of dirty clothes in our luggage and cleaning all the messy caused by the kids. Extremely tired and annoyed, I would actually begin to miss the place we just left!
Family travel is like childbirth, I suppose. Painful, loud, messy, sort of awful, actually, but also wonderful. And you remember only the wonderful—until you’re back on a plane and your kids are fighting over who gets the aisle seat. Then you remember the bad stuff.
Last weekend, my kids and I flew to Texas for a trip we would have nothing to complain(抱怨) about—big hotel, wonderful view.
And yet—we found things to complain about. The pool was bigger in that other hotel! Why do you get to shower first? They call this coffee?! Luckily, I’ve learned to put my metaphorical coat of armor (盔甲) on as soon as we land somewhere, and it forces complaints to bounce off me and land in a pile at my feet.
For three days, genuine fun was had and annoying complaints were heard and ignored. Until it was time to catch a plane and fly home.
Unfortunately, our flight was canceled. We spent hours finding a hotel room. We hit the hotel pool before bed and swam well into the night, my kids making up songs and laughing so hard at their silly lyrics (歌词) and their crazy good fortune to be swimming at 10: 30 on a school night.
And that was when it hit me that family travel is all those things I said before but it’s also a lot more. It’s taking your kids to parts of the world that will open their eyes and finding that actually, yours need opening too. It’s remembering that joy and memories are where you make them, not where you find them.
1.The underlined word “uncanny” in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to .
A.unknown. B.uncertain.
C.unexpected. D.unusual.
2.According to the passage, family travel is like childbirth in that .
A.they both cause financial trouble and pain.
B.they are both hard as well as rewarding.
C.childhood memories come flooding back when they travel.
D.both of them need many preparations.
3.By saying “I’ve learned to put my metaphorical coat of armor on” in Paragraph 5, the author means that_ .
A.she tries to deal with the complaints more wisely and properly.
B.she turns those annoying complaints into a means to educate kids.
C.she has improved her language skills when handling the complaints.
D.she has succeeded in escaping kids’ fighting thanks to the armor.
4.From the author’s experience in the passage, we can NOT learn that .
A.family vacation benefits her kids as well as her.
B.joy and memories should be created rather than discovered.
C.the most unforgettable memory for her is about the complaints.
D.she has to spend some time on housework after the family vacation.
Telling a yellow taxi and a binoculars (双筒望远镜)apart is so easy that most people could do it without a second thought. However, it is not so for an artificial intelligence: if you turn the taxi upside down, it sees Binoculars.
This is just one of dozens of examples that show AI is a lot worse at identifying(识别) objects by sight than many people realize. The examples, collected by Anh Nguyen at Auburn University in Alabama, raise concerns about the real-world ability of AI image recognition systems.
Nguyen and his colleagues took images of common objects from the Internet and rotated (旋转) and changed the position of the objects in the pictures. They found this was enough to confuse several AI systems, including Google’s. In one case, a school bus that was correctly identified in the original image was misidentified as a lunch box when upside down in the road. It shows these systems aren’t as intelligent as many people think they are.
Nguyen worries what could happen in real-world situations. For example, it makes sense for a driverless car with AI system to avoid an object it can’t recognize. But if the car stop unexpectedly because it thinks a Coke can is a fire fighting truck, this could be as dangerous as thinking a fire fighting truck is a Coke can. This is one reason why driverless cars will need several sensors (传感器) to provide more information, says Nguyen.
His team has been discovering these problems for the past few years, but nobody knows how to fix them. The biggest problem to progress is that when an AI looks at an image, it can’t extract (提炼) rules that would help it identify a similar one next time – such as the rule that horses have four legs. “To reach a human level of reasoning, we need a way to extract rules from images,” says Nguyen.
1.In paragraph 1, the example of a taxi is used to .
A.raise people’s concerns about the safety of AI system.
B.prove that human beings are much smarter than AI systems.
C.introduce the topic concerning AI’s image recognition ability.
D.show a taxi can have different forms when seen from different views.
2.We can learn from the last paragraph that .
A.AI can’t tell a horse and a car apart because they both have four legs.
B.AI can’t reason like human, which is the biggest challenge.
C.AI doesn’t have the ability to tell things apart that look similar.
D.AI can’t identify images from earlier experiences.
3.What is the best title for this passage?
A.Problems remain to be solved.
B.AI is no cleverer than human beings.
C.AI can’t see things from another view.
D.Driverless cars need to be improved.
If you land in India anytime in late February or March, it’s wise to check the dates of the annual Holi festival and bring a spare set of clothes. That’s because for a few days in spring, people crowd the streets and pelt (投掷) anyone walking by with brightly-colored powder to celebrate the arrival of spring and the end of evil. It’s hard to avoid the fun and the paint, unless you stay inside or look angry enough to discourage the custom.
“Watch out, madam!” said my taxi driver in Amritsar as we drove through a crowd of young people pelting each other with powder. “The colors never come out of your clothes,” he said. “And you might be having purple hair for many days.”
I did a quick check. I was wearing black, a color rarely seen in India. It is usually connected with the lowest social classes, and can be viewed as unlucky. I was happy for my clothes to be painted in colors.
“I have some powder I bought for my children. You can have some gladly, to join in our customs.” he encouraged. Holding what the driver handed me as my weapon of choice, I walked into the Holi smoke. At first people politely avoided foreigners. But then a girl in a sari(一种印度服饰) ran up smiling and put paint on my face. I returned the favor with a handful of pink.
With its brilliant clothes, exotic flowers, trucks covered with lights and brightly painted pictures of gods, India is truly one of the most colorful places on the planet!
1.Which of the following sentences about the Holi festival is correct?
A.It falls on the same day each year and is celebrated for a few days.
B.It is a playful cultural event to throw colors at friends or strangers.
C.It has many purposes, celebrating the end of spring in particular.
D.It is fun for local people but a little unacceptable for foreigners.
2.I was happy for my black clothes to be painted in colors because .
A.the festival influenced my taste in fashion.
B.the taxi driver suggested wearing something colorful.
C.black was the color not liked by people in India.
D.a girl invited me to join in their customs.
3.We can learn from the passage that .
A.the color black provides people with a sense of mystery and tradition.
B.foreigners can’t be too careful in the street in India during the Holi festival.
C.a sari, worn especially by Indian women, is a must for the Holi celebration.
D.anyone can be attacked during Holi festival.
假如你是李华。最近你刚结束在英国为期一个月的交换学习。学习期间，你和房东Mr. Wilson结下了深厚的友谊。请根据下面的写作提纲，给Mr. Wilson发一封电子邮件。
内容包括：1. 表示感谢 2. 回顾他对你的照顾和帮助 3. 邀请他来中国游览
注意：1.词数100左右；可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear Mr. Wilson，
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours
Li hua
假定英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有10处语言错误，每句中最多有两处。每处错误仅涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线(\)划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1.每处错误及其修改均仅限一词;
2.只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。
This morning, when I looked out the window, I excitedly found it was snowing heavy. Attracted by the beautiful sight, so I decided to go out to take some photos. As I walked on the path in front of our building, I saw a boy suddenly slipping on the snow-covered ground. It was at that moment when I realized what I should do. Immediately, I run back home to get a broom(扫帚) and started to sweep the path. I worked so hard that he sweated a lot. An hour later, a thick snow was cleared away. Looked at the clean path, my neighbor all smiled and gave me the thumbs up.
阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（1个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。
One morning, I was waiting at the bus stop, worried about1. (be) late for school. There were many people waiting at the bus stop,2. some of them looked very anxious and3. (disappoint).When the bus finally came, we all hurried on board. I got a place next4. the window, so I had a good view of the sidewalk. A boy on a bike5. (catch) my attention. He was riding beside the bus and waving his arms. I heard a passenger behind me shouting to the driver, but he refused6. (stop) until we reached the next stop. Still ,the boy kept7. (ride).He was carrying something over his shoulder and shouting. Finally, when we came to the next stop, the boy ran up to the door of the bus. I heard an excited conversation. Then the driver stood up and asked,“8. anyone lose a suitcase at the last stop?”A woman on the bus shouted, “Oh dear! It’s9. (I).” She pushed her way to the driver and took the suitcase thankfully. Everyone on the bus began talking about what the boy had done, and the crowd of strangers10. (sudden) became friendly to one another.
