单选题Let children learn to judge their own work. A child learning to talk does not learn by being corrected all the time: if corrected too much, he will stop talking. He notices a thousand times a day the difference between the language he uses and the language those around him use. Bit by bit, he makes the necessary changes to make his language like other people"s. In the same way, children learning to do all the other things they learn to do without being taught—to walk, run, climb, whistle, ride a bicycle—compare their own performances with those of more skilled people, and slowly make the needed changes. But in school we never give a child a chance to find out his mistakes for himself, let alone correct them. We do it all for him. We act as if we thought that he would never notice a mistake unless it was pointed out to him, or correct it unless he was made to. Soon he becomes dependent on the teacher. Let him do it himself. Let him work out, with the help of other children if he wants it, what this word says, what the answer is to that problem, whether this is a good way of saying or doing this or not.
If it is a matter of right answers, as it may be hi mathematics or science, give him the answer book. Let him correct his own papers. Why should we teachers waste time on such routine work? Our job should be to help the child when he tells us that he can"t find the way to get the right answer. Let"s end all this nonsense of grades, exams, marks. Let us throw them all out, and let the children learn what all educated persons must some day learn, how to measure their own understanding, how to know what they know or do not know.
Let them get on with this job in the way that seems most sensible to them, with our help as school teachers if they ask for it. The idea that there is a body of knowledge to be learnt at school and used for the rest of one"s life is nonsense in a world as complicated and rapidly changing as ours. Anxious parents and teachers say, "But suppose they fail to learn something essential, something they will need to get on in the world?" Don"t worry! If it is essential, they will go out into the world and learn it.
单选题"They treat us like mules," the guy installing my washer tells me, his eyes narrowing as he wipes his hands. I had just complimented him and his partner on the speed and assurance of their work He explains that it’s rare that customers speak to him this way. I know what he's talking about. My mother was a waitress all her life, in coffee shops and fast-paced chain restaurants. It was hard work, but she liked it, liked "being among the public," as she would say. But that work had its sting, too-the customer who would treat her like a servant or, her biggest complaint, like she was not that bright. There's a lesson here for this political season: the subtle and not-so-subtle insults that blue- collar and service workers endure as part of their working lives. And those insults often have to do with intelligence. We like to think of the United States as a classless society. The belief in economic mobility is central to the American Dream, and we pride ourselves on our spirit of egalitarianism But we also have a troubling streak of aristocratic bias in our national temperament, and one way it manifests itself is in the assumptions we make about people who work with their hands. Working people sense this bias and react to it when they vote. The common political wisdom is that hot-button social issues have driven blue-collar voters rightward. But there are other cultural dynamics at play as well. And Democrats can be as oblivious to these dynamics as Republicans-though the Grand Old Party did appeal to them in St. Paul. Let's go back to those two men installing my washer and dryer. They do a lot of heavy lifting quickly-mine was the first of 15 deliveries-and efficiently, to avoid injury. Between them there is ongoing communication, verbal and nonverbal, to coordinate the lift, negotiate the tight fit, move in rhythm with each other. And all the while, they are weighing options, making decisions and solving problems-as when my new dryer didn’t match up with the gas outlet. Think about what a good waitress has to do in the busy restaurant: remember orders and monitor them, attend to a dynamic, quickly changing environment, prioritize tasks and manage the flow of work, make decisions on the fly. There's the carpenter using a number of mathematical concepts-symmetry, proportion, congruence, the properties of angles-and visualizing these concepts while building a cabinet, a flight of stairs, or a pitched roof. The hairstylist's practice is a mix of technique, knowledge about the biology of hair, aesthetic judgment, and communication skill. The mechanic, electrician, and plumber are troubleshooters and problem solvers. Even the routinized factory floor calls for working smarts. When has any of this made its way into our political speeches? From either party. Even on I,abor Day. Last week, the GOP masterfully invoked some old cultural suspicions: country folk versus city and east-coast versus heartland education, But these are symbolic populist gestures, not the stuff of true engagement. Judgments about intelligence carry great weight in our society, and we have a tendency to make sweeping assessments of people's intelligence based on the kind of work they do. Political tributes to labor over the next two months will render the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps. But few will also celebrate the thought bright behind the eye, or offer an image that links hand and brain It would be fitting in a country with an egalitarian vision of itself to have a truer, richer sense of all that is involved in the wide range of work that surrounds and sustains us. Those politicians who can communicate that sense will tap a deep reserve of neglected feeling. And those who can honor and use work in explaining and personalizing their policies will find a welcome reception.
单选题______salary up by 25%, the doctors and nurses in this hospital were both very happy. [A] As [B] For [C] With [D] Through
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{{B}}Questions 1 to 4 are based on the following
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单选题 Because of satellite links which now enable
broadcast news organizations to originate live programming from any part of the
globe, the entire world is becoming one giant sound stage for television news.
As a result, Marshall McLean's reference to the post-television world as being a
single "global village" is gaining new acceptance and Shakespeare's famous line,
"all the world's a stage," has taken on an interesting new twist in
meaning. But, beyond the philosophical dimensions of global
television communications there are some dramatic, political implications. Even
before today's worldwide satellite links were possible, the growing effect of
broadcast news technology on national and international politics was becoming
increasingly evident. Because television is a close-up medium
and a medium that seems to most readily involve emotions, it is most effective
when it is revealing the plights of people. It was probably the appalling
footage of the Nazi death camps that first demonstrated the power of motion
pictures and television to affect the collective consciousness of a world
audience. In the United States during the 50's and 60's the power of television
to stir the consciousness of large numbers of people was demonstrated in another
way. Night after night graphic news footage of the civil rights struggle was
brought into U.S. homes. Years later, this role was to take on
a new and even more controversial dimension during the Vietnam War. Reading
about war was one thing; but war took on a deeper and more unsavory dimension
when it was exported directly into U.S. living rooms night after night by
television. Public opinion eventually turned against the war and to some measure
against President Johnson who was associated with it. As a result of the public
opinion backlash during these times, the Pentagon was thereafter much more
careful to control what foreign correspondents and TV crews would be allowed to
see and report. It was during this time that President Carter
brought the issue of human rights to the centre of his foreign policy, and, to
some degree, to the centre of international politics. "Human rights are the soul
of our foreign policy," Carter said. "Of all human rights the most basic is to
be free of arbitrary violence, whether that violence comes from government, from
terrorists, from criminals, or from self-appointed messiahs operating under the
cover of politics or religion. " Although political viewpoints
have changed since then, because of the emotional nature of human rights, this
has emerged as the "soul" of television news. The transgression of human rights
has been the focus of many, if not most, major international television news
stories. The reporting of these stories has created outrage in the world,
prompted attempts at censorship by dictators, and in many cases resulted in the
elimination of human rights abuses.
单选题The discovery of the Antarctic not only proved one of the most interesting of all geographical adventures, but created what might be called "the heroic age of Antarctic exploration". By their tremendous heroism, men such as Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen, caused a new continent to emerge from the shadows, and yet that heroic age, little more than a century old, is already passing. Modem science and inventions are revolutionizing the techniques of former explorers, and, although still calling for courage and feats of endurance, future journeys into these icy wastes will probably depend on motor vehicles equipped with caterpillar traction rather than on the dogs that earlier discoverers found so invaluable.
Few realize that this Antarctic continent is almost equal in size to South America, and an enormous field of work awaits geographers and prospectors. The coasts of this continent remain to be accurately charted, and the mapping of the whole of the interior presents a formidable task to the cartographers who undertake the Work. Once their labours are completed, it will be possible to prospect the vast natural resources which scientists believe will furnish one of the largest treasure hoards of metals and minerals the world has yet known, and almost inexhaustible sources of copper, coal, uranium, and many other ores will become available to man. Such discoveries will usher in an era of practical exploitation of the Antarctic wastes.
The polar darkness which hides this continent for the six winter months will be defeated by huge batteries of light, and make possible the establishing of air-fields for the future inter-continental air services by making these areas as light as day, Present flying mutes will be completely changed, for the Antarctic refueling bases will make flights from Australia to South America comparatively easy over the 5,000 miles journey.
The climate is not likely to offer an insuperable problem, for the explorer Admiral Byrd has shown that the climate is possible even for men completely untrained for expeditions into those frozen wastes. Some of his party were men who had never seen snow before, and yet he records that they survived the rigours of the Antarctic climate comfortably, so that, provided that the appropriate installations are made, we may assume that human beings from all countries could live there safely. Byrd even affirms that it is probably the most healthy climate in the world, for the intense cold of thousands of years has sterilized this continent, and rendered it absolutely germfree, with the consequences that ordinary and extraordinary sicknesses and diseases from which man suffers in other zones with different climates are here utterly unknown. There exist no problems of conservation and preservation of food supplies, for the later keep indefinitely without any signs of deterioration; it may even be that later generations will come to regard the Antarctic as the natural storehouse for the whole world.
Plans are already on foot to set up permanent bases on the shores of this continent, and what so few yearn ago was regarded as a "dead continent" now promises to be a most active center of human life and endeavour.
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All living cells on earth require
moisture for their metabolism. Cereal grains when brought in from the field,
although they may appear to be dry, may contain 20 per cent of moisture or more.
If they are stored in a bin thus, there is sufficient moisture in them to
support several varieties of insects. These insects will, therefore, live and
breed and, as they grow and eat the grain, it provides them with biological
energy for their life processes. This energy will, just as in man, become
manifest as heat. Since the bulk of the grain acts as an insulator, the
temperature surrounding the colony of insects will rise so that, not only is
part of the grain spoiled by the direct attack of the insects but more may be
damaged by the heat. Sometimes, the temperature may even rise to the point where
the stored grain catches fire. For safe storage, grain must be dried until its
moisture content is 13 per cent or less. Traditional arts of
food preservation took advantage of this principle in a number of ways. The
plant seeds, wheat, rye, rice, barley millet, maize, are themselves structures
evolved by nature to provide stored food. The starch of their endosperm is used
for the nourishment of the embryo during the time it over-winters (if it is a
plant of the Temperate Zone) and until its new leaves have grown and their
chlorophyll can trap energy from the sunlight to nourish the new-grown plant.
The separation by threshing and winnowing is, therefore, to some degree part of
a technique of food preservation. The direct drying of other
foods has also been used. Fish has been dried in many parts of the world besides
Africa. Slices of dried meat are prepared by numerous races. Biltong, a form of
dried meat, was a customary food for travelers. The drying of meat or fish,
either in the sun or over a fire, quite apart from the degree to which it
exposes the food to infection by bacteria and infestation by insects, tends also
to harm its quality. Proteins are complex molecular structures which are readily
disrupted. This is the reason why dried meat becomes tough and can, with some
scientific justification, by likened to leather. The technical
process of drying foods indirectly by pickling them in the strong salt solutions
commonly called "brine" does less harm to the protein than straightforward
drying, particularly if this is carried out at high temperatures. It is for this
reason that many of the typical drying processes are not taken to completion.
That is to say, the outer parts may be dried leaving a moist inner section.
Under these circumstances, preservation is only partial. The dried food keeps
longer than it would have undried but it cannot be kept indefinitely. For this
reason, traditional processes are to be found in many parts of the world in
which a combination of partial drying and pickling in brine is used. Quite often
the drying involves exposure to smoke. Foods treated in this way are, besides
fish of various sorts, bacon, hams and numerous types of
sausages.
单选题We have all heard of counterfeiting before. Usually it refers to people making money— printing it instead of earning it. But counterfeiting also can involve all sorts of consumer goods and manufactured products. From well-known brand names such as Calvin Klein jeans to auto parts, counterfeiters have found ways to produce goods that look authentic. In some instances, counterfeit products look better than the original!
The demand of brand-name products has helped counterfeiting grow into a very profitable business throughout the world and into a serious problem for legitimate manufacturers and consumers alike. Faulty counterfeit parts have caused more than two dozen plane crashes. Most counterfeit auto parts do not meet federal safety standards.
Counterfeiting hurts manufacturers in many ways. Analysts estimate that, in the United States alone, annual revenue lost runs from $6 billion to $8 billion perhaps even worse, consumers blame the innocent manufacturer when they unknowingly buy a counterfeit product and find it doesn"t perform as expected. Sometimes entire economies can suffer. For instance, when farmers in Kenya and Zaire used counterfeit fertilizers, both countries lost most of their crops.
In 1984 the U.S. government enacted the Trademark Counterfeiting Act and made counterfeiting of products a criminal offense punishable by fines and stiff jail terms.
Unfortunately counterfeiting does not receive top priority from law enforcement officers and prosecutors. Legitimate firms therefore have the burden of finding their own raids and to fight the problem. IBM, with a court order, conducted its own raids and found" keyboards, displays, and boxes with its logo. The fake parts were used to create counterfeits of IBM"s personal computer "XT".
Some companies have developed secret product codes to identify the genuine article. They must change the codes periodically because counterfeiters learn the codes and duplicate them. Perhaps the most effective way for manufacturers to fight counterfeiting is to monitor the distribution network and make sure counterfeit products are not getting into the network. Some companies even hire investigators to track counterfeit products.
By copying other firms" products, counterfeiters avoid research and development costs and most marketing costs. High-tech products such as computers and their software products are especially vulnerable. As long as counterfeiting is profitable, an abundance of products are available to copy, and the laws are difficult to enforce, counterfeiters can be expected to prosper for a long time.
单选题Questions 18 to 20 are based on the following talk.
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Questions 11 to 15 are based on
the following talk.
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{{B}}Questions
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单选题Up-Minneapolis, MN—A father was recently arrested by the police for spanking his child, starting a debate among the American public about spanking. Is spanking, or other types of corporal punishment, an acceptable form of discipline for children? Or is it a form of child abuse?
The case that everyone has talking is the arrest of Dale Clover, a thirty-six-year-old father of three, at a shopping mall in St. Louis, Missouri. He was arrested after an employee at the mall saw him spanking his five-year-old son, Donny, and called the police. The father was arrested for child abuse. Mr. Clover admits that he hit his son but says that it wasn"t child abuse. He says it was discipline.
Across the country, parents disagree on this issue: What is the difference between loving discipline and child abuse? Some parents like Rhonda Moore see a clear difference between spanking and child abuse. Rhonda Moore believes a little bit of pain is necessary to teach a child what is right and wrong. "It"s like burning your hand when you touch a hot stove. Pain is nature"s way of teaching us." Moore believes that spanking is done out of love, but child abuse is done out of anger, when the parent loses control. "When I spank my children, I always talk to them before and afterward, and explain why they are being spanked. I explain what they did wrong, and they remember not to do it again." Moore says that her children respect her as a parent and understand that she is spanking them for their own good.
In contrast, Taylor Robinson, father of four, feels that parents should never hit their children for any reason. Robinson wants his children to learn right and wrong, but not because they are afraid of being hit. "Spanking teaches children to fear their parents, not respect them. When a parent spanks a child, what the child learns is that problems should be solved with violence." Robinson believes that children learn that it is acceptable for parents to hurt their children. "None of these are lessons that I want to teach my children. I want my children to learn to talk about their problems and solve them without violence, but spanking doesn"t teach that."
Parents are split about corporal punishment, and doctors also disagree about the issue. Dr. John Oparah thinks our child abuse laws sometimes go too far; that is, they make it difficult for parents to discipline their children. Oparah says that today many children do not respect their parents. "Children need strong, loving discipline. Sometimes spanking is the best way to get a child"s attention, to make sure the child listens to the parent."
Most doctors, however, say that there are many harmful effects of spanking. Dr. Beverly Lau is opposed to spanking. Lau argues that spanking can lead to more violent behavior in children. She points to research shows that children who are spanked are more violent when they grow up. "A child may stop misbehaving for the moment, but over time, children who are spanked actually misbehave more than children who are not spanked." Lau adds that research shows that, if you want a peaceful family, parents should not spank their children.
The issue of spanking and corporal punishment will continue to be debated among parents and in the courts. In the meantime, if he is convicted of child abuse, Dale Clover could get up to five years in prison.
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单选题Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.
单选题Questions 15-18
单选题 Concrete is probably used more widely than any other
substance except water, yet it remains largely unappreciated. "Some people view
the 20th century as the atomic age, the space age, the computer age—but an
argument can be made that it was the concrete age," says cement specialist
Hendrik van Oss. "It's a miracle material." Indeed, more than a ton of concrete
is produced each year for every man, woman and child on Earth. Yet concrete is
generally ignored outside the engineering world, a victim of its own ubiquity
and the industry's conservative pace of development. Now, thanks to
environmental pressures and entrepreneurial innovation, a new generation of
concretes is emerging. This high-tech assortment of concrete confections
promises to be stronger, lighter, and more environmentally friendly than ever
before. The concretes they will replace are, for the most part,
strong and durable, but with limitations. Concrete is sound under compression
but weak under tension. Steel rebars are used as reinforcement, but make
recycling difficult when concrete breaks down—and break down it inevitably will.
Cracks caused by stress grow larger over time, with water forcing them open and
corroding the rebars within. "When you put enough stress on it, concrete doesn't
work like we want it to. We're asking too much of it now," says Mr. van Oss.
Concrete is also a climate-change villain. It is made by mixing water with an
aggregate, such as sand or gravel, and cement. Cement is usually made by heating
limestone and clay to over 2,500 degrees F. The resulting chemical reaction,
along with fuel burned to heat the kiln, produces between 7 and 10 percent of
global carbon-dioxide emissions. "When we have to repeatedly
regenerate these materials because they're not durable, we release more
emissions," says Victor Li, a civil and environmental engineering professor at
the University of Michigan. Dr. Li has created a concrete suffused by synthetic
fibers that make it stronger, more durable, and able to bend like a metal. Li's
creation does not require reinforcement, a property shared by other concretes
that use chemical additives called plasticizers to reduce the amount of water in
their composition. Using less water makes concrete stronger, but until the
development of plasticizers, it also made concrete sticky, dry, and hard to
handle, says Christian Meyer, a civil engineering professor at Columbia
University. "The engineer would specify a certain strength, a
certain amount of water—and as soon as a supervisor turned his back, in would go
a bucket of water," says Dr. Meyer of the time before plasticizers. Making
stronger concretes, says Li, allows less to be used, reducing waste and giving
architects more freedom. "You can have such futuristic designs if you don't have
to put rebar in there, or structural beams," says van Oss. "You can have things
shooting off into space at odd angles. Many possibilities are opened up." A more
directly "green" concrete has been developed by the Australian company TecEco.
They add magnesium to their cement, forming a porous concrete that actually
scrubs carbon dioxide from the air. "The planet's been through
several episodes of global warming before, and nature put carbon away as coal,
petroleum, and carbonate sediments," says TecEco manager John Harrison. "Now
we're in charge, and we need to do the same. We can literally 'put away' carbon
in our own built environment." Another modification to the built environment is
the carbon fiber-reinforced concrete of Deborah Chung, a materials scientist at
the State University of New York at Buffalo. By running an electrical current
through concrete, Dr. Chung says, tiny deformations caused by minute pressures
can be detected. "You can monitor room occupancy in real-time, controlling
lighting, ventilation, and cooling in relation to how many people are there,"
says Chung. While experts agree that these new concretes will
someday be widely used, the timetable is uncertain. Concrete companies are
responsive to environmental concerns and are always looking to stretch the
utility of their product, but the construction industry is slow to change. "When
you start monkeying around with materials, the governing bodies, the building
departments, are very cautions before they let you use an unproven material,"
Meyer says. In the next few decades, says van Oss, building codes will change,
opening the way for innovative materials. But while new concretes may be
stronger and more durable, they are also more expensive—and whether the tendency
of developers and the public to focus on short-term rather than long-term costs
will also change is another matter.
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Code switching is when people switch,
or change, from one language to another while speaking. They might begin a
conversation in one language and then, later in the conversation, switch to
another. They might also begin a sentence in one language but end it in another.
Or they might insert a word or phrase from another language. When and why people
code switch depends on the speakers and the situation. One
reason people code switch is to show social closeness. Imagine that two women
meet at a party in New York. Gabriela is Brazilian, and Pamela is British. In
their conversation, Pamela asks. Pamela: Where are you
from? Gabriela: Rio. Pamela: Really? Uma cidade
muito bonita [A beautiful city] I was there last year. Gabriela:
Oh, do you speak Portuguese? Pamela: Um pouco [only a
little]… Here, Pamela uses a little Portuguese in order to show
closeness or friendliness to Gabriela. On the other hand, people
also code switch to create social distance. Sometimes this happens in immigrant
homes in the United States where the children can speak English, but the parents
understand only the language of their native country. Children can code switch
to keep their parents from understanding everything they say. Likewise, parents
may code switch when they share a language that their children do not
understand. One final reason that people code switch is lack of
knowledge about a language or lack of attention to one's language. Imagine a
teenage girl living in a Latino community in Los Angeles. Talking with her
friends, she says. "Esperate [Wait a minute] What did you just say?" It is
possible that the teenager was not trying to show social closeness or distance.
Perhaps she didn't know how to express the second idea in Spanish. Most likely,
she may simply have switched to English without paying much attention to which
language she was using. Code switching occurs between people who
share more than one common language; however, it can also occur between people
who share a language and a dialect, or variation, of that language. A person may
use one dialect at home and then switch to another dialect at school or work.
One example is the way teenagers use slang when talking to their friends. For
instance, a teen might say to his friend, "Gotta bounce. Me 'n' the crew're
goin' shoppin' for some mad phat gear." Gotta bounce means "I have to leave".
"The crew" means "my friends" and "mad phat gear" means "nice clothes".
Therefore, the teen is saying, "I'm going shopping with friends". But only
speakers of both English and this teen dialect can understand. Teens use their
dialect because it helps them to show that they fit in with their friends. It
also shows that they are separate from their parents. Regardless
of the situation, there are two important rules for code switching. First, the
speakers have to know both languages or dialects—at least well enough to follow
the changes. More importantly, the switches have to be grammatical. For example,
the sentence "Tengo que do my homework" follows the "subject+verb+object"
grammar rules in both Spanish and English. One day you may be
riding on a train, listening to the people next to you having a conversation. If
you can understand only 50 percent of what they are saying, perhaps they are
code switching—to show each other closeness, or perhaps to stop you from
listening in on their conversation!
单选题Over lunch, a writer outlined a new book idea to his editor. It was to be a niche concern but promised much. The writer left the restaurant with a glow and decided to get an outline over soon. But days and weeks of being too busy turned to months and then, eventually, came the shocking discovery that his editor has been rather elusive of late for a reason: he has been busy crafting a book based on the writer's idea, and it was now in the shops. An apocryphal tale, maybe, but it will send shivers down any writer's spine. What's more, if the writer were to turn to the law in such a dread scenario, the law would be of no use to him at all. Phil Sherrell, a media lawyer with Eversheds, explains: "Intellectual property law protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves." Sherrell agrees that "the distinction is not always satisfactory," but says that there needs to be a limit to the protection conferred on creativity by the law. "To extend the ambit of copyright protection to embrace ideas would be difficult in practice—how would the artist prove that they have conceived the idea if it has not been reduced to a tangible form? It would also open the door to undesirably wide monopolies." But copyright's 300-year pedigree might be a cause for concern rather than veneration. The means by which we communicate has changed out of all recognition from the time when copyright was invented. Today, in the post-modernist world, what constitutes an artistic, literary or musical work is radically different, not least in the field of conceptual art. Here, copyright's time-honoured reluctance to protect ideas is of dubious merit, according to Hubert Best, a media lawyer with Best & Soames. "If you look at Martin Creed's [art installation] Work No. 227, The Lights Going On and Off, where is the work?" asks Best. "Is it in the fact that a light bulb goes on and off, or in the concept? I suspect it's the latter. But old-fashioned copyright law does not cover this kind of thing." Creed's Work No. 227 was an empty room in which the lights periodically switched on and off. It won the Turner Prize in 2001 to a predictable chorus of controversy. This goes with the territory in conceptual art, but other artists have found their work inspires not merely lively debate but accusations of plagiarism. Last year, three weeks after he unveiled his diamond-encrusted, ? 50m skull, Damien Hirst was alleged to have stolen the idea for the work from another artist, John LeKay. In 2006, Robert Dixon, a graphics artist, said that Hirst's print, Valium, was too close for comfort to one of his circular designs in The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry. Hirst had another brush with intellectual property law when Norman Emms complained about a ? 1m bronze torso which, he said was copied from a ? 14. 99 plastic anatomical toy. Emms later received a "goodwill payment" from the artist. As one of the world's wealthiest artists, Hirst is well-placed to fight such battles, but due allowance should be given for art's intertextual essence. Writers borrow plots and embed allusions to their forebears, artists adapt well-known motifs, musicians play each other's songs and sample existing riffs and melodies. But there is a fine line between plagiarism, and creative allusion, and it was considered by the courts in the case of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The Court of Appeal upheld the initial ruling that Brown had not reproduced substantial content from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. The decision was also widely seen as confirming English law's disinclination to protect ideas. Yet if ideas can't be protected, where does that leave the writer aggrieved by the appearance of his idea in another's book? "It sounds harsh," says Sherrell, "but unless a writer has gone some way to creating the work—by way of an outline and perhaps a chapter or two—there is no remedy if the same idea appears under another author's name. However, given that everything is done on computers these days, it would be relatively easy to prove first creation by looking at the hard drive. Other than that, anyone in the creative arena should keep full and dated records to evidence their work. " There is another thing that can be done. "You can impose a confidentiality obligation on those with whom you want to discuss your idea," says Best. "Non disclosure agreements (NDAs) are often used in the corporate world to give a contractual remedy for breach of confidence if an idea is stolen. But the trouble is that a writer, musician or artist who comes into a meeting wielding an NDA isn't likely to make friends. It's a fairly aggressive way to proceed." Best is doubtless correct when he says. "You've just got to get on with it and do it. Once your work exists, in material form, you can sue if anyone steals it./
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