单选题
    A. Lay out the entrails, read omens and auguries (前兆，预兆，征兆), study the heavens, and shake your hoary (陈腐的，老掉牙的) locks like an ancient prophet. Signs and portents bring us messages, and we should notice them before civilization crumbles.
    B. Off Hope Cove, on the Devon coast, a crew of strong, experienced men has saved a girl's life with minutes to spare, only to find itself 'disciplined' because the only boat available was classified as an 'additional facility awaiting inspection'. Earlier and farther inland, two stronger men stood helplessly in their luminous Police Community Support uniforms, wittering (絮叨; 啰唆) into radios because they lacked the correct certificates to try to rescue a drowning boy.
    C. Elsewhere, a coastguard resigned after saving a 13-year-old dangling from a cliff. He failed to fetch and buckle (用扣环扣住，扣紧) on his own safety harness, and immediately found himself in trouble from bosses droning that they 'don't want dead heroes'.
    D. Meanwhile a thousand small habitual practices—from cake stalls to carpentry classes—find themselves under heavy reproof (责备，责怪，指责) and restraint. And in a hospital ward somewhere a dying, fragile old man repeatedly falls out of bed because nurses reckon that they can't put up the sides of the bed without a 'risk assessment', in case they breach his 'human rights' and 'unlawfully imprison' him.
    E. A frantic family tries to get a telephone line reconnected to a remote Welsh hillside where a man has had a stroke, and meets only call-centre shrugs because they don't have the account number off the bill; a neighbour phones the weekend 'on-call' doctor service about a diseased nonagenarian (90至99岁的人) neighbour, to be told by the doctor that nothing can be done until they give the victim's correct postcode and date of birth.
    F. An amateur dramatic group has to find lock-up storage for two plastic toy swords; and in Huddersfield, citizens have to barricade the road before Binmen will take away rubbish bags that didn't fit correctly into the wheelie bins, although the surplus is entirely due to the said Binmen having been on strike and omitting the last collection.
    G. From distant California, thanks to Times online message boards, comes the echo of a voice from the Ancient World. Jim from E1 Centro responded to the Hope Cove rescue story at the weekend with a quotation from Marcus Tullius Cicero: 'A bureaucrat is the most contemptible of men, though he is needed as vultures (趁火打劫的人，乘人之危的人) are needed, but one hardly admires vultures, which bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, tricky or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?'
    H. Something is wrong. We read too many stories about this craven, inhuman, poltroonish (怯懦的，胆小的) cowering behind rules and routines, and about individuals who get into trouble for momentarily breaching them in the name of humanity or sense. I take issue with Cicero and Jim a little, though—it is too easy to rage at bureaucracy itself and join in thoughtless laughing at 'suits'. Even Cicero accepts that efficient administration is necessary: It gets things done and distributed, and is a bulwark against chaos. So I think we have to choose our targets more carefully, and unpick more precisely the evil threads that make us so uneasy and unhappy and desperate to stick to rules in defiance of common sense and kindness.
    I. I would diagnose it as insecurity, linked to a misunderstanding of the concept of 'training' (which incidentally links straight back to the culture of unintelligent testing in schools), Depressed, anxious people always prefer to stick to rules rather than think for themselves; at the extreme they lapse (陷入，进入) into obsessive-compulsive disorder (强迫症), forever washing their hands and touching wood. Depressed, anxious institutions such as the Maritime (海事的) and Coastguard Authority, National Health Service (and quite a few call-centres) display this pathology (病理学) on a corporate level. You get the 'training', tick the right multiple-choice boxes and refuse to think that there might be another choice, not listed. You feel safer that way, like a troubled child determined not to colour outside the lines.
    J. Yet this is the opposite of real training, as practised for years in real armies, navies, laboratories and institutions. Real training lays down a framework of expertise and safety not to prevent initiative, but to free it. If you really know the rules and understand their purpose, you can judge when to make an exception and break them.
    K. A nurse should be able to think (as some no doubt do): 'Right, the patient is confused and rolling about, and might get hurt. I'll put up the sides of the bed and keep an eye on things, and have a word with the relatives later to explain.'
    L. The boat crew should feel flee to think (as they did): 'The big lifeboat isn't going to be in time. We know our own boat's safe even though it hasn't got the certificate yet, and if we do get into trouble it's worth a try to save a life—go for it!' The dustmen should say: 'OK, so there are bags lying beside the wheelie bins in violation of council regulations, but that'll be because of the strike, isn't it? Chuck (扔掉，丢弃) them in.'
    M. The NHS or telecom call-centre staff should be alert not only to the list of correct procedures on the wall, but to the note of panic in the distant voice.
    N. Employees should be allowed to be people too; and a good bureaucrat should feel safe to judge which value scored highest at the critical moment. We all see examples of this gentle accommodation every day. But we also know that those who break small rules for human values run a real risk, because of that corporate anxiety and depression. It is brought on by soulless micromanagement from the top and a culture that assumes the citizen is a fool. Keeping the balance is not always easy: But human life is a tightrope and always has been. Certainly the reckless rule-breakers should be curbed or sacked; but so should the stupidly rigid bureaucrats.
    O. Can't leave you on that gloomy note. So rejoice: 125 miles out in the dark North Sea, in the excellent Tall Ships Race, 13 crew (mainly teenage) have just been rescued from the flooded cutter Clyde Challenger by the crew of a fellow-competitor (mainly teenage), the Norwegian ketch Loyal. I am sure that they all obeyed the rules: Perish the thought that they wouldn't. But if they had to break a few, good luck to them.

问答题     A good weapon to prevent chaos is efficient administration.

问答题     Instead of thinking for themselves, the depressed, anxious people prefer to stick to rules.

问答题     The purpose of real training is to free, but not to prevent initiative.

问答题     The stupidly rigid bureaucrats should be curbed or sacked.

问答题     Marcus Tullius Cicero compared bureaucrats to vultures.

问答题     The NHS or telecom call-centre staff should help the patient's panic-stricken family rather than just stick to the correct rules.

问答题     The weekend 'on-call' doctor would not give service to the patient unless the correct postcode and date of birth is given.

问答题     The nurses think that they shouldn't put up the sides of the dying old man's bed without a 'risk assessment'.

问答题     A coastguard successfully saved a child, but he resigned because bosses didn't want dead heroes.

问答题     The two men in the uniforms did not rescue the drowning boy as soon as possible because they thought they had no right to rescue him.