English Recordings

Listen to the description of Sherlock Holmes and take notes.

Here in the name Sherlock Holmes: a peculiar cap, a long tweed coat, a pipe, a magnifying glass... Logic and investigating coming to one's mind.

Holmes is tall, very athletic and he moves fast like a hunter folliwing the prey. His grey eyes and fine nose are features which give his face a determined expression.

The great detective is incredibly eccentric, energetic and passionate, in the days when he practises his profession. He concentrates strongly, makes hypotheses and feels mentally balanced.

Even though he is extremely intelligent, he is also arrogant and he likes to impress Scotland Yard's inspectors, who envy him a little.

Danger is his profession. He trains himself to be a boxer and a runner, even if he is not a violent man.

Holmes is usually solitary and he has only one friend, Dr Watson, whose loyalty has no limit. He is always there to help Holmes solve a case.

Holmes has a messy studio in Baker street, where he conducts scientific experiments to solve mysteries. Since he is one of the first fictional detectives who used science to find criminals, his detection method is well-known to the readers.

Would you like me to charge you in US dollars or Russian rubles?

A witch
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a mole
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pets
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a black cat
a toad
a rat
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The Guardian view on artificial intelligence: human learning
14 Oct 2018

In a modern company like Amazon, almost all human activity is directed by computer programs. They not only monitor workers’ actions but are used to choose who should be employed. Yet it emerged last week that the company had scrapped an attempt to use artificial intelligence to select workers on the basis of their CVs, since the results consistently discriminated against women.

This is a welcome decision that illuminates two important facts about machine learning, the most widely used technique of AI at the moment. The technical or operational point is that these programs, no matter how fast they learn, can only learn from the data presented to them. If this data reflects historic patterns of discrimination, the results will perpetuate those patterns.

That’s what Amazon found: by training its AI with the records of those job applicants who had been hired in the past, who were overwhelmingly men, it taught the program to discriminate against applications from women. Since the program had access to immense amounts of data about the applicants, it was able to infer their sex from factors such as whether they had attended an all-woman college. And since it had neither conscience nor consciousness, the machine behaved as if being female were a sign of inferiority, just as the industry it learned from had done.

This is an instance of a wider problem that has appeared in more sinister contexts, such as decisions over which prisoners should get parole. It is also one that is extremely hard to surmount. When you ask computers to detect patterns in data, which is the short description of machine learning, the patterns they find are usually genuine ones, even if we have not noticed them before.
This kind of mesh of inference is implicit in the way that language works, as Joanna Bryson, one of the authors of a ground-breaking study of the way that machine learning can expose the prejudices embedded in our use of language, points out. We can’t get away from it. It encodes both the wisdom and the folly of all those who have used language before us. Patterns of language describe the way the world is, whether or not it ought to be that way. So when we want to distinguish an “ought” from the “is” of usage, it requires a sustained collective effort.
The technical aspects of the story are not the only salient ones. What matters for the future is the recognition that the responsible actor in the story was Amazon itself, the company, and not the AI it built and used. Discussions of AI too often proceed as if the technology will appear among us like the monolith in the film 2001: something alien and immensely powerful but immediately recognisable and clearly distinguished from the hominids around it. It’s not happening like that at all.
AI is already all around us and is always a hybrid or symbiotic system, made up of the humans who tend the programs and feed them data quite as much as the computers themselves. Companies such as Google or Amazon – and even traditional media and retailers – are now partly constituted by the operations of their computer systems. It is therefore essential that moral and legal responsibility be attached to the human parts of the system.
We hold Facebook or Google responsible for the results of their algorithms. The example of Amazon shows that this principle must be more widely extended. AI is among us already, and the companies, the people, and the governments who use it must be accountable for the consequences.

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Who is my favourite person in the entire world… ?
Mmmh this is a very difficult question. Obviously, I have a favourite singer and a favourite actor but I guess they are not my favourite person as I think a favourite person must be someone special to you, who inspires you as well.
This is why I believe that my grandma is probably my favourite person. She is a 74 year-old, shoulder-length grey haired woman with beautiful blue eyes. She is neither tall nor short: she is of average height. As far as her character is concerned, she is very kind, honest and extremely generous but sometimes she can be absent-minded and clumsy too! She is such a strong woman and so inspirational. She is always here to help everybody: she gives so much of her time and love to everyone. She is really special and I love her so much.

The plantation Brunch and Swamp experience

New Orleans is known for its fantastic, unique cuisine, and for its famous bayous, so why not choose the “Plantation Brunch and Swamp Experience”?
Starting from the French Quarter where we collect you, we will take you out on a full day, eight and a half hour tour. First you will start with a visit of a plantation in the famous place called “Oak Alley”.
After a two hour walk you will be ready for our brunch. Try the local specialties: jambalaya which is spicy rice mixed with meat and seafood and taste our fresh fruit.
In the afternoon we continue with Laura Plantation where you will meet with people from the local Creole community. They will tell you about the life of their ancestors and about slavery. You will visit the plantation and learn about its history.
Finally you will go on an exciting boat tour in the swamps. A unique opportunity to take exceptional photos of the wildlife: alligators, bullfrogs, rabbits, pelicans and if you are lucky the “Rougarou”, the Cajun werewolf!

Hi, I’m Josh, I’m 13 and as you know I’m from Birmingham and I love living here. I always wake up at 7.30 and I usually have breakfast with my family at 8, but it is not as you think: I rarely have full English Breakfast with eggs and beans in the morning; I only do it once a month! When I come home at 5 pm I usually drink a good cup of tea and some biscuits and sometimes study with my sister Margot. Right next to my house there is a cricket feld and I often play with some friends. Sometimes we meet at 7 pm, but more often we meet at 6 pm. Cricket is a very British sport, it’s like a tradition: it’s very old, I think it was invented in the 16th century!
I know, I know... I do a lot of British things, but I’m not a British stereotype: I NEVER talk about the weather! Well, actually that is not really true... Sometimes I do it! Look: the weather is awful today, it’s been raining a lot! Hope tomorrow it will be sunny, you know... I have cricket training and it usually rains when we meet!

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