Free trade is supposed to be a win-win situation. You sell me your televisions, I sell you my software, and we both prosper. In practice, free-trade agreements are messier than that.【F1】
Since all industries crave (热望) foreign markets to expand into but fear foreign competitors breaking into their home market, they lobby their governments to tilt the rules in their favor.
Usually,this involves manipulating tariffs and quotas. But, of late, a troubling twist in the game has become more common, as countries use free-trade agreements to rewrite the laws of their trading partners.
Why does the U.S. insist on these rules?【F2】
Quite simply, American drug, software, and media companies are furious about the pirating of their products, and are eager to extend the monopolies that their patents and copyrights confer.
Intellectual-property rules are clearly necessary to spur innovation: if every invention could be stolen, or every new drug immediately copied, few people would invest in innovation. But too much protection can prevent competition and can limit what economists call "increased innovation"—innovations that build, in some way, on others.
It also encourages companies to use patents as tools to keep competitors from entering new markets.【F3】
Finally, it limits consumers" access to valuable new products: without patents, we wouldn"t have many new drugs, but patents also drive prices of new drugs too high for many people in developing countries.
The trick is to find the right balance, insuring that entrepreneurs and inventors get sufficient rewards while also maximizing the well-being of consumers.
History suggests that after a certain point tougher intellectual property rules yield diminishing returns. The U.S., in its negotiations, insists on a one-size-fits-all approach: stronger rules are better.【F4】
But accepting a diverse range of intellectual-property rules makes more sense, especially in light of the different economic challenges that developing and developed countries face.
Lerner"s study found that the benefits of stronger patent laws were reduced in less developed countries. And developing countries, being poorer, obviously have more to gain from shorter patent terms for foreign innovations, since that facilitates the spread of new technology and the diffusion of ideas.
【F5】
The great irony is that the U.S. economy in its early years was built in large part on a loose attitude toward intellectual-property rights and enforcement.
Free-trade agreements that export our own restrictive intellectual property laws may make the world safe for Pfizer, Microsoft, and Disney, but they don"t deserve the name free trade.
BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B
The money is there. So why is it not being spent? That is the big puzzle about the rich world's efforts to improve health in poor countries. In June the leaders of the G8 promised up to $8 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an umbrella group coordinating health aid. The Global Fund closed its latest round of funding applications this week but much of the money committed remains unused. Officials at the fund insist that all is fine: disbursements always lag commitments and money can be released only if it will be spent effectively. But experts such as Joseph Dwyer of Management Sciences for Health say that the pitiful state of poor countries' health services is the main reason for the gap between what is promised and what is spent. Julian Schweitzer of the World Bank says that physical and human shortages in local health services represent "a huge bottleneck to aid". Now the aid efforts may be making things worse. Jordan Kassalow of the Scojo Foundation, an American charity, observes that rich single-issue outfits tend to divert the best medical talent to trendy causes and away from basic medicine against diarrhoea and respiratory infections—the chief killers of children. Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations has a different worry: those anti-corruption efforts have pushed donors into an obsession with often meaningless short-term targets. The result is a never-ending stream of documents and meetings. A sharp focus on process and targets ordained from on high makes it harder to be flexible and innovative or to take advantage of enterprising locals. In poor countries, laments Ms Garrett, "we almost spit on the private sector." But it is the private sector that may offer the most practical chance of progress. Fed up with the costs of an unhealthy workforce, many big local and multinational firms in Africa and Asia are now offering their own innovative health schemes. These started as simple anti-AIDS efforts at mining firms such as Anglo American. Now they have spread. HSBC, a London-based international bank, recently started a scheme to improve its suppliers' and customers' health. In training, too, private-sector and voluntary efforts may work better than official programmes. The International Centre for Equal Healthcare Access has trained thousands of local health-care workers in South-East Asia. Kenya's HealthStore Foundation has helped nurses and community health workers set up dozens of for-profit clinics that reach patients government clinics don't. Such ideas may yet transform the world's most dilapidated health systems into better and more far-reaching ones—if only the current wave of top-down spending does not drown them out.
Think of those fleeting moments when you look out of an aeroplane window and realise that you are flying, higher than a bird. Now think of your laptop, thinner than a brown-paper envelope, or your cellphone in the palm of your hand. Take a moment or two to wonder at those marvels. You are the lucky inheritor of a dream come true. The second half of the 20th century saw a collection of geniuses, warriors, entrepreneurs and visionaries labour to create a fabulous machine that could function as a typewriter and printing press, studio and theatre, paintbrush and gallery, piano and radio, the mail as well as the mail carrier.【C1】______. The networked computer is an amazing device, the first media machine that serves as the mode of production, means of distribution, site of reception, and place of praise and critique. The computer is the 21st century's culture machine. But for all the reasons there are to celebrate the computer, we must also tread with caution. 【C2】______. I call it a secret war for two reasons. First, most people do not realise that there are strong commercial agendas at work to keep them in passive consumption mode. Second, the majority of people who use networked computers to upload are not even aware of the significance of what they are doing. All animals download, but only a few upload. Beavers build dams and birds make nests. Yet for the most part, the animal kingdom moves through the world downloading. Humans are unique in their capacity to not only make tools but then turn around and use them to create superfluous material goods—paintings, sculpture and architecture—and superfluous experiences— music, literature, religion and philosophy.【C3】______. For all the possibilities of our new culture machines, most people are still stuck in download mode. Even after the advent of widespread social media, a pyramid of production remains, with a small number of people uploading material, a slightly larger group commenting on or modifying that content, and a huge percentage remaining content to just consume.【C4】______. Television is a one-way tap flowing into our homes. The hardest task that television asks of anyone is to turn the power off after he has turned it on.【C5】______. What counts as meaningful uploading? My definition revolves around the concept of "stickiness"— creations and experiences to which others adhere. [A]Of course, it is precisely these superfluous things that define human culture and ultimately what it is to be human. Downloading and consuming culture requires great skills, but failing to move beyond downloading is to strip oneself of a defining constituent of humanity. [B]Applications like tumblr.com, which allow users to combine pictures, words and other media in creative ways and then share them, have the potential to add stickiness by amusing, entertaining and enlightening others. [C]Not only did they develop such a device but by the turn of the millennium they had also managed to embed it in a worldwide system accessed by billions of people every day. [D]This is because the networked computer has sparked a secret war between downloading and uploading—between passive consumption and active creation—whose outcome will shape our collective future in ways we can only begin to imagine. [E]The challenge the computer mounts to television thus bears little similarity to one format being replaced by another in the manner of record players being replaced by CD players. [F]One reason for the persistence of this pyramid of production is that for the past half-century, much of the world' s media culture has been defined by a single medium television—and television is defined by downloading. [G]The networked computer offers the first chance in 50 years to reverse the flow, to encourage thoughtful downloading and, even more importantly, meaningful uploading.
Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1.describethedrawingbriefly,2.discussthepossiblemethodsofeffectivelycarryingforwardthecampaigninthewholecountry,and3.giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)
It' s not difficult to understand our desire for athletes to be heroes. On the surface, at least, athletes display a vital and indomitable spirit; they are gloriously alive【B1】______their bodies. And sports do allow us to【B2】______acts that can legitimately be described as【B3】______, thrilling, beautiful, even noble. In a (n)【B4】______complicated and disorderly world, sports are still an arena in which we can regularly witness a certain kind of【B5】______. Yet there' s something of a【B6】______here, for the very qualities a society【B7】______to seek in its heroes— selflessness, 【B8】______consciousness, and the like—are precisely the【B9】______of those which are needed to【B10】______a talented but otherwise unremarkable neighborhood kid into a Michael Jordan. To become a star athlete, you have to have an extremely competitive【B11】______and you have to be totally focused on the development of your own physical skills. These qualities【B12】______well make a great athlete,【B13】______they don't necessarily make a great person. On top of this, our society reinforces these【B14】______by the system it has created to produce athletes a system characterized by【B15】______responsibility and enormous privilege. The athletes themselves suffer the【B16】______of this system. Trained to measure themselves perpetually 【B17】______the achievements of those around them, many young athletes develop a sense of sociologist Walter Schafer has【B18】______ "conditional self-worth". They learn very quickly that they will be accepted by the important figures in their lives—parents, coaches and peers as long as they are【B19】______as "winner". Unfortunately they become【B20】______and behave as if their athletic success will last forever.
In country after country, talk of nonsmokers" right is in the air. While a majority of countries have taken little (1)_____ yet, some nations have introduced legislative steps (2)_____ control smoking. In some developed countries the (3)_____ of cigarette has become more or less stabilized. (4)_____, in many developing nations, cigarette smoking is regarded (5)_____ a sign of economic progress and is even encouraged. As more (6)_____ companies go international, new markets are (7)_____ to gain more smokers in those countries. For (8)_____, great efforts are made by the American tobacco industry to (9)_____ cigarettes in the Middle East and North Africa, (10)_____ U.S. tobacco exports increased by more (11)_____ 4 percent in 1996. Smoking is harmful to the health of people. World governments should (12)_____ serious campaigns against it. Restrictions (13)_____ cigarette advertisements, plus health warnings on packages and (14)_____ on public smoking in certain places such (15)_____ theatres, cinemas and restaurants, are the most popular tools used by nations in (16)_____ of non-smokers or in curbing smoking. But world attention also is (17)_____ on another step that will make the smoker increasingly self-conscious and uncomfortable about his (18)_____. Great efforts should be made to (19)_____ young people especially of the dreadful consequences of (20)_____ the habit. And cigarette price should be boosted.
OnDrunkDrivingWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.
It"s no secret that the job of a political pollster is getting harder and harder every election cycle. People are cutting the landline, and regulations make it incredibly hard for pollsters to reach voters on their cell phones. Mass onslaughts of getoutthe-vote phone calls near Election Day swamp phone lines and make voters recoil from the idea of actually picking up the phone. Finding voters who are willing to talk about their attitudes and beliefs on politics over the phone is an increasingly difficult challenge. It"s hard out there for a pollster these days. Advances in computing allow us to analyze huge quantities of unstructured data(think "my random 140 character musings" instead of "my clear answer to a yes or no question"). Culturally, people are more and more comfortable putting it all out there online, from their tastes in music to their political preferences. Not to mention, samples can be enormous, dwarfing the "small data" samples of a pollster who interviews a thousand registered voters. Technological innovation and a cultural shift toward sharing(and oversharing)make it possible for researchers to assess what people think without having to go to the trouble of actually asking questions. Or do they? This week, the Few Research Center is out with a study throwing cold water on the idea that analyzing data from sources like Twitter can be an accurate substitute fur more traditional research methods. They find that Tweets are inconsistent in how they match up with polling data. Twitter users were more excited than American voters as a whole about the re-election of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Pew finds that Twitter users were less excited about Obama " s inaugural address than their poll respondents. If the challenges facing more traditional "small data" pollsters are actually pretty big. the challenges facing "big data" analysts are huge in this area. It seems obvious that the demographics of the universe of "people Tweeting about the inaugural address" might be different from the universe of "registered voters nationwide. " While traditional pollsters can get a sense of the race, age, and gender of their samples and make corrections accordingly, it"s a lot harder to know all the demographic data behind the Tweets being analyzed. Not to mention, it"s much less clear what counts as a "positive" or "negative" Tweet in any given context, and that this up-or-down-vote approach to sentiment analysis might be too blunt an instrument to be useful. As technology moves forward, so too must the way people gather information about public opinion. But don"t count the "small data" polls out quite yet. While some high-profile misses by political pollsters raised important questions about how accurate election polls really are, quite a few pollsters managed to get it very close to right, even given all the aforementioned challenges pollsters face these days. Both "big data" analysis of online conversations and "small data" surveys and focus groups have a role to play in politics, and smart campaigns will value both as complementary methods of learning about where voters stand.
SoBig. F was the more visible of the two recent waves of infection because it propagated itself by e-mail, meaning that victims noticed what was going on. SoBig. F was so effective that it caused substantial disruption even to those protected by anti-virus software. That was because so many copies of the virus spread (some 500,000 computers were infected) that many machines were overwhelmed by messages from their own anti-virus software. On top of that, one common counter-measure backfired, increasing traffic still further. Anti-virus software often bounces a warning back to the sender of an infected e-mail, saying that the e-mail in question cannot be delivered because it contains a virus. SoBig. F was able to spoof this system by "harvesting" e-mail addresses from the hard disks of infected computers. Some of these addresses were then sent infected e-mails that had been doctored to look as though they had come from other harvested addresses. The latter were thus sent warnings, even though their machines may not have been infected. Kevin Haley of Symantec, a firm that makes anti-virus software, thinks that one reason SoBig. F was so much more effective than other viruses that work this way is because it was better at searching hard-drives for addresses. Brian King, of CERT, an internet-security centre at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, notes that, unlike its precursors, SoBig. F was capable of "multi-threading" z it could send multiple e-mails simultaneously, allowing it to dispatch thousands in minutes. Blaster worked by creating a "buffer overrun in the remote procedure call". In English, that means it attacked a piece of software used by Microsoft"s Windows operating system to allow one computer to control another. It did so by causing that software to use too much memory. Most worms work by exploiting weaknesses in an operating system, but whoever wrote Blaster had a particularly refined sense of humour, since the website under attack was the one from which users could obtain a program to fix the very weakness in Windows that the worm itself was exploiting. One way to deal with a wicked worm like Blaster is to design a fairy godmother worm that goes around repairing vulnerable machines automatically. In the case of Blaster someone seems to have tried exactly that with a program called Welchi. However, according to Mr. Haley, Welchi has caused almost as many problems as Blaster itself, by overwhelming networks with "pings"—signals that checked for the presence of other computers. Though both of these programs fell short of the apparent objectives of their authors, they still caused damage. For instance, they forced the shutdown of a number of computer networks, including the one used by the New York Times newsroom, and the one organising trains operated by CSX, a freight company on America"s east coast. Computer scientists expect that it is only a matter of time before a truly devastating virus is unleashed.
"THE SERVANT"(1963) is one of those films that it is impossible to forget. The servant exploits his master"s weaknesses until he turns the tables: the story ends with the a cringing master ministering to a lordly servant. It is hard to watch it today without thinking of another awkward relationship—the one between business folk and their smartphones. Smart devices are sometimes empowering. They put a world of information at our fingertips. But for most people the servant has become the master. Not long ago only doctors were on call all the time. Now everybody is. Bosses think nothing of invading their employees" free time. Work invades the home far more than domestic chores invade the office. Hyperconnectivity exaggerates the decline of certainty and the general cult of flexibility. Smartphones make it easier for managers to change their minds at the last moment. Employees find it ever harder to distinguish between "on-time" and "off-time"—and indeed between real work and make-work. None of this is good for businesspeople "s marriages or mental health. It may be bad for business, too. When bosses change their minds at the last minute, it is hard to plan for the future. How can we reap the benefits of connectivity without becoming its slaves? One solution is digital dieting. Banning browsing before breakfast can reintroduce a small amount of civilization. Banning texting at weekends or, say, on Thursdays, can really show the iPhone who is boss. The problem with this approach is that it works only if you live on a desert island or at the bottom of a lake. Leslie Perlow of Harvard Business School argues that for most people the only way to break the 24/7 habit is to act collectively rather than individually. One of the world"s most hard-working organisations, the Boston Consulting Group, introduced rules about when people were expected to be offline, and encouraged them to work together to make this possible. Eventually it forced people to work more productively while reducing burnout. Ms Perlow"s advice should be taken seriously. The problem of hyperconnectivity will only get worse, as smartphones become smarter and young digital natives take over the workforce. But ultimately it is up to companies to outsmart the smartphones by insisting that everyone turn them off from time to time.
[A]Physical Changes [B]Low Self-Esteem [C]Emerging Independence and Search for Identity [D]Emotional Turbulence [E]Interest in the Opposite Sex [F]Peer Pressure and Conformity The transition to adulthood is difficult. Rapid physical growth begins in early adolescence—typically between the ages of 9 and 13—and thought processes start to take on adult characteristics. Many youngsters find these changes distressing because they do not fully understand what is happening to them. Fears and anxieties can be put to rest by simply keeping an open line of communication and preparing for change before it occurs. The main issues that arise during adolescence are: 【C1】______ A child" s self worth is particularly fragile during adolescence. Teenagers often struggle with an overwhelming sense that nobody likes them, that they"re not as good as other people, that they are failures, losers, ugly or unintelligent. 【C2】______ Some form of bodily dissatisfaction is common among pre-teens. If dissatisfaction is great, it may cause them to become shy or very easily embarrassed. In other cases, teens may act the opposite—loud and angry—in an effort to compensate for feelings of self-consciousness and inferiority. As alarming as these bodily changes can be, adolescents may find it equally distressing to not experience the changes at the same time as their peers. Late maturation can cause feelings of inferiority and awkwardness. 【C3】______ Young people feel more strongly about everything during adolescence. Fears become more frightening, pleasures become more exciting, irritations become more distressing and frustrations become more intolerable. Every experience appears king-sized during adolescence. Youngsters having a difficult adolescence may become seriously depressed and / or engage in self-destructive behavior. Often, the first clue that a teenager needs professional help is a deep-rooted shift in attitude and behavior. Parents should be alert to the warning signs of personality change indicating that a teenager needs help. They include repeated school absences, slumping grades, use of alcohol or illegal substances, hostile or dangerous behavior and extreme withdrawal and reclusiveness. 【C4】______ There is tremendous pressure on adolescents to conform to the standards of their peers. This pressure toward conformity can be dangerous in that it applies not only to clothing and hairstyles; it may lead them to do things that they know are wrong. 【C5】______ Adolescence marks a period of increasing independence that often leads to conflict between teenagers and parents. This tension is a normal part of growing up—and for parents, a normal part of the letting-go process. Another normal part of adolescence is confusion over values and beliefs. This time of questioning is important as young people examine the values they have been taught and begin to embrace their own beliefs. Though they may adopt the same beliefs as their parents, discovering them on their own enables the young person to develop a sense of integrity. Although adolescence will present challenges for young people and their parents, awareness and communication can help pave the way for a smooth transition into this exciting phase of life.
Recycling also stimulates the local economy by creating jobs and trims the pollution control and energy costs of industries that make recycled products by giving them a more refined raw material.
ModernizationandMoralCultivationWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)supportyourviewwithexamples.
By the 1950"s and 60"s "going for Chinese" had become part of the suburban vernacular. In places like New York City, eating Chinese food became intertwined with the traditions of other ethnic groups, especially that of Jewish immigrants. Many Jewish families faithfully visited their favorite Chinese restaurant every Sunday night. Among the menus in the exhibition are selections from Glatt Wok: Kosher Chinese Restaurant and Takeout in Monsey, N.Y., and Wok Toy in Cedarhurst, N.Y. Until 1965 Cantonese-speaking immigrants, mainly from the county of Toisan, dominated the industry and menus reflected a standard repertory of tasty but bland Americanizations of Cantonese dishes. But loosening immigration restrictions that year brought a flood of people from many different regions of China, starting "authenticity revolution," said Ed Schoenfeld, a restaurateur and Chinese food consultant. Top chefs who were trained in spicy and more unusual regional specialties, like Hunan and Sichunan cooking, came to New York then, Mr. Schoenfeld said. President Richard M. Nixon"s trip to China in 1972 awakened interest in the country and accounts of his meals helped whet diners" appetites for new dishes. An illustration of a scowling Nixon with a pair of chopsticks glares down from the wall at the exhibition. Hunan and Sichuan restaurants in New York influenced the taste of the whole country, Mr. Schoenfeld said. Dishes like General Tso"s chicken and crispy orange beef caught on everywhere. But as with the Cantonese food before it, Mr. Schoenfeld said, the cooking degraded over time, as it became mass produced. Today"s batter-fried, syrup-laden version of Chinese food, he said, bears little resemblance to authentic cuisine. The real explosion of Chinese restaurants that made them ubiquitous came in the 1980"s, said Betty Xie, editor of Chinese Restaurant News. "Now you see there are almost one or two Chinese restaurants in every town in the United States," she said. There are signs that some have tired of Chinese food. A 2004 Zagat survey showed that its popularity has ebbed somewhat in New York City. But the journey of the Chinese restaurant remains the story of the American dream, as experienced by a constant but evolving stream of Chinese immigrants who realized the potential of 12-hour days, borrowed capital and a willingness to cook whatever Americans wanted. Sales margins are tight, and wages are low. Restaurants are passed from one family member to the next, or sold by one Chinese family to another. Often a contingency written into Sales contracts is that the previous owners train the new owners. "The competition in Chinese communities is cutthroat," Mr. Chen, the co-curator, said. "What people realize is you can make much, much better profit in places like Montana."
In a paper just published in Science, Peter Gordon of Columbia University uses his study of the Piraha and their counting system to try to answer a tricky linguistic question. The Piraha, a group of hunter-gatherers who live along the banks of the Maiei River in Brazil, use a system of counting called "one-two-many". In this, the word for "one" translates to "roughly one" (similar to "one or two" in English), the word for "two" means "a slightly larger amount than one" (similar to "a few" in English), and the word for "many" means "a much larger amount". This question was posed by Benjamin Lee Whorl in the 1930s. Whorl studied Hopi, an Amerindian language very different from the Eurasian languages that had hitherto been the subject of academic linguistics. His work led him to suggest that language not only influences thought but, more strongly, that it determines thought. While there is no dispute that language influences what people think about, evidence suggesting it determines thought is inconclusive. For example, in 1972, Eleanor Rosch and Karl Heider investigated the colour-naming abilities of the Dani people of Indonesia. The Dani have words for only two colours.-black and white. But Dr. Rosch and Dr. Heider found that, even so, Dani could distinguish and comprehend other colours. That does not support the deterministic version of the Whorl hypothesis. While recognising that there are such things as colours for which you have no name is certainly a cognitive leap, it may not be a good test of Whorf"s ideas. Colours, after all, are out there everywhere. Numbers, by contrast, are abstract, so may be a better test. Dr. Gordon therefore spent a month with the Piraha and elicited the help of seven of them to see how far their grasp of numbers extended. The tests began simply, with a row of, say, seven evenly spaced batteries. Gradually, they got more complicated. The more complicated tests included tasks such as matching numbers of unevenly spaced objects, replicating the number of objects from memory, and copying a number of straight lines from a drawing. In the tests that involved matching the number and layout of objects they could see, participants were pretty good when faced with two or three items, but found it harder to cope as the number of items rose. Things were worse when the participants had to remember the number of objects in a layout and replicate it "blind", rather than matching a layout they could see. In this case the success rate dropped to zero when the number of items became, in terms of their language, "many". And line drawing produced the worst results of all—though that could have had as much to do with the fact that drawing is not part of Piraha culture as it did with the difficulties of numerical abstraction. Indeed, Dr. Gordon described the task of reproducing straight lines as being accomplished only with "heavy sighs and groans".
The author of some forty novels, a number of plays, volumes of verse, historical, critical and autobiographical works, an editor and translator, Jack Lindsay is clearly an extraordinarily prolific writer— a fact which can easily obscure his very real distinction in some of the areas into which he has ventured.【F1】
His co-editorship of Vision in Sydney in the early 1920s, for example, is still felt to have introduced a significant period in Australian culture, while his study of Kickens written in 1930 is highly regarded.
But of all his work it is probably the novel to which he has made his most significant contribution.
Since 1916 when, to use his own words in Fanfrolico and after, he "reached bedrock," Lindsay has maintained a consistent Marxist viewpoint—【F2】
and it is this viewpoint which if nothing else has guaranteed his novels a minor but certainly not negligible place in modern British literature.
Feeling that "the historical novel is a form that has a limitless future as a fighting weapon and as a cultural instrument", Lindsay first attempted to formulate his Marxist convictions in fiction mainly set in the past; particularly in his trilogy in English novels—1929, Lost Birthright, and Men of Forty-Eight(written in 1919, the Chartist and revolutionary uprisings in Europe).【F3】
Basically these works set out, with most success in the first volume, to vivify the historical traditions behind English Socialism and attempted to demonstrate that it stood, in Lindsay's words, for the "true completion of the national destiny".
【F4】
After the war Lindsay continued to write mainly about the present—trying with varying degrees of success to come to terms with the unradical political realities of post-war England.
【F5】
In the series of novels known collectively as "The British War", and beginning with Betrayed Spring in 1933, it seemed at first as if his solution was simply to resort to more and more obvious authorial manipulation and heavy-handed didacticism.
Fortunately, however, from Revolt of the Sons, this process was reversed, as Lindsay began to show an increasing tendency to ignore party solutions, to fail indeed to give anything but the most elementary political consciousness to his characters, so that in his latest(and what appears to be his last)contemporary novel, Choice of Times, his hero, Colin, ends on a note of desperation: "Everything must be different, I can't live this way any longer. But how can I change it, how? " To his credit as an artist, Lindsay doesn't give him any explicit answer.
Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty. That compulsion has resulted in robotics—the science of conferring various human capabilities on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close. As a result, the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms. Our banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robot-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics, there are already robot systems that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracy—far greater precision than highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone. But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility, they will have to operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves—goals that pose a real challenge. "While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error," says Dave Lavery, manager of a robotics program at NASA, "we can't yet give a robot enough 'common sense' to reliably interact with a dynamic world." Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries. What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain's roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented—and human perception far more complicated—than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of a winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer systems on Earth can't approach that kind of ability, and neu-roscientists still don't know quite how we do it.
There are certain people who behave in a quite peculiar fashion during the work of analysis. When one speaks hopefully to them or expresses satisfaction with the progress of the treatment, they show signs of discontent and their condition invariably becomes worse. One begins by regarding this as defiance and as an attempt to prove their superiority to the physician, but late one comes to take a deeper and juster view. One becomes convinced, not only that such people cannot endure any praise or appreciation, but that they react inversely to the progress of the treatment. Every partial solution that ought to result, and in other people does result, in an improvement or a temporary suspension of symptoms produces in them for the time being an intensification of their illness; they get worse during the treatment instead of getting better. They exhibit what is known as a "negative therapeutic reaction". There is no doubt that there is something in these people that sets itself against their recovery, and its approach is dreaded as though it were a danger. We are accustomed to say that the need for illness has got the upper hand in them over the desire for recovery. If we analyze this resistance in the usual way—then, even after fixation to the various forms of gain from illness, the greater part of it is still left over; and this reveals itself as the most powerful of all obstacles to recovery, more powerful than the familiar ones of narcissistic inaccessibility, a negative attitude towards the physician and clinging to the gain from illness. In the end we come to see that we are dealing with what may be called a "moral" factor, a sense of guilt, which is finding satisfaction in the illness and refuses to give up the punishment of suffering. We shall be right in regarding this disencouraging explanation as final. But as far as the patient is concerned this sense of guilt is dumb; it does not tell him he is guilty, he feels iii. This sense of guilt expresses itself only as a resistance to recovery which it is extremely difficult to overcome. It is also particularly difficult to convince the patient that this motive lies behind his continuing to be iii; he holds fast to the more obvious explanation that treatment by analysis is not the fight remedy for his case.
如何充分利用上大学的时间
——1986年英译汉及详解
It would be interesting to discover how many young people go to university without any clear idea of what they are going to do afterwards.【F1】
If one considers the enormous variety of courses offered, it is not hard to see how difficult it is for a student to select the course most suited to his interests and abilities.
【F2】
If a student goes to university to acquire a broader perspective of life, to enlarge his ideas and to learn to think for himself, he will undoubtedly benefit.
【F3】
Schools often have too restricting an atmosphere, with its time tables and disciplines, to allow him much time for independent assessment of the work he is asked to do.
【F4】
Most students would, I believe, profit by a year of such exploration of different academic studies, especially those "all rounders" with no particular interest.
They should have longer time to decide in what subject they want to take their degrees, so that in later life, they do not look back and say, "I should like to have been an archaeologist. If I hadn"t taken a degree in Modern Languages, I shouldn"t have ended up as an interpreter, but it"s too late now. I couldn"t go back and begin all over again."
【F5】
There is, of course, another side to the question of how to make the best use of one"s time at university.
【F6】
This is the case of the student who excels in a particular branch of learning.
【F7】
He is immediately accepted by the University of his choice, and spends his three or four years becoming a specialist, emerging with a first-class Honour Degree and very little knowledge of what the rest of the world is all about.
【F8】
It therefore becomes more and more important that, if students are not to waste their opportunities, there will have to be much more detailed information about courses and more advice.
Only in this way can we be sure that we are not to have, on the one hand, a band of specialists ignorant of anything outside of their own subject, and on the other hand, an ever increasing number of graduates qualified in subjects for which there is little or no demand in the working world.
