Menorca or Majorca? It is that time of the year again. The brochures are piling up in travel agents while newspapers and magazines bulge with advice about where to go. But the traditional packaged holiday, a British innovation that provided many timid natives with their first experience of warm sand, is not what it was. Indeed, the industry is anxiously awaiting a High Court ruling to find out exactly what it now is. Two things have changed the way Britons research and book their holidays: low-cost airlines and the Internet. Instead of buying a ready-made package consisting of a flight, hotel, car hire and assorted entertainment from a tour operator"s brochure, it is now easy to put together a trip using an online travel agent like Expedia or Travelocity, which last July bought Lastminute. com for £ 577 million ($1 billion), or from the proliferating websites of airlines, hotels and car-rental firms. This has led some to sound the death knell for high-street travel agents and tour operators. There have been upheavals and closures, but the traditional firms are starting to fight back, in part by moving more of their business online. First Choice Holidays, for instance, saw its pre-tax profit rise by 16% to £ 114 million ($195 million) in the year to the end of October. Although the overall number of holidays booked has fallen, the company is concentrating on more valuable long-haul and adventure trips. First Choice now sells more than half its trips directly, either via the Internet, over the telephone or from its own travel shops. It wants that to reach 75% within a few years. Other tour operators are showing similar hustle. MyTravel managed to cut its loss by almost half in 2005. Thomas Cook and Thomson Holidays, now both German owned, are also bullish about the coming holiday season. Highstreet travel agents are having a tougher time, though, not least because many leading tour operations have cut the commissions they pay. Some high-street travel agents are also learning to live with the Internet, helping people book complicated trips that they have researched online, providing advice and tacking on other services. This is seen as a growth area. But if an agent puts together separate flights and hotel accommodation, is that a package, too? The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says it is and the agent should hold an Air Travel Organisers Licence, which provides financial guarantees to repatriate people and provide refunds. The scheme dates from the early 1970s, when some large British travel firms went bust, stranding customers on the Costas. Although such failures are less common these days, the CAA had to help out some 30,000 people last year. The Association of British Travel Agents went to the High Court in November to argue such bookings are not traditional packages and so do not require agents to acquire the costly licences. While the court decides, millions of Britons will happily click away buying online holidays, unaware of the difference.
IllegalCookingOilIsEverywhereWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.
One of the least appreciated but most remarkable developments of the past 60 years is the extraordinary growth of American agriculture. Farming now accounts for about one tenth of the gross domestic product yet employs less than 1 percent of all workers. It has accomplished this feat through exceptionally high growth in productivity, which has kept prices of food low and therebycontributed to rising standards of living. Furthermore, the exportable surplus has kept the trade deficit from reaching unsupportable levels. Agriculture not only has one of the highest rates of productivity growth of all industries, but this growth appears to have accelerated during the past two decades. Over the period 1948 to 2004, total farm production went up by 166 percent. The land used for farming dropped by one quarter over the 56-year period, and investment in heavy farm equipment and other capital expenditures decreased by 12 percent. Several developments drove these changes, beginning with the replacement of the remaining horses by tractors immediately after World War II and with the expanding use of fertilizers and pesticides. Later came the adoption of hybrid seeds, genetic engineering of plants and improved livestock breeding.A key element was the U.S. Department of Agriculture"s (USDA) extension service. Operating through land-grant universities and other organizations, it educated farmers on biotechnology, pest management and conservation. For many years, critics have claimed that modern agriculture is not sustainable, one of the major assertions being that it encourages erosion, which will eventually wash away most of the topsoil Lost topsoil, the argument goes, is virtually irreplaceable because it takes up to 300 years for one inch of soil to form. But a detailed study of two large areas, the Southern Piedmont and the Northern Mississippi Valley Loess Hills, showed that based on 1982 data, soil loss has dropped sharply from the very high rates of the 1930s. The study attributed the decrease in soil erosion to the USDA, which urged farmers after World War Ⅱ to adopt conservation practices such as strip cropping, whereby alternating rows are planted, and leaving plant residues in the fields year-round to inhibit water runoff. Despite being a robust contributor to the U.S. economy, modem agriculture is not without a dark side. Runoff of fertilizers, antibiotics and hormones degrade the environment and can upset the local ecology. If not grown properly, genetically modified crops could spread their DNA to conventional species.
The term "disruptive technology" is popular, but is widely misused. It refers not simply to a clever new technology, hut to one that undermines an existing technology—and which therefore makes life very difficult for the many businesses which depend on the existing way of doing things. Twenty years ago, the personal computer was a classic example. It swept aside an older mainframe-based style of computing, and eventually brought IBM, one of the world"s mightiest firms at the time, to its knees. This week has been a coming-out party of sorts for another disruptive technology, "voice over internet protocol" (VOIP), which promises to be even more disruptive, and of even greater benefit to consumers, than personal computers. VOIP"s leading proponent is Skype, a small firm whose software allows people to make free calls to other Skype users over the internet, and very cheap calls to traditional telephones—all of which spells trouble for incumbent telecoms operators. On September 12th, eBay, the leading online auction house, announced that it was buying Skype for $2.6 billion, plus an additional $1.5 billion if Skype hits certain performance targets in coming years. This seems a vast sum to pay for a company that has only $60m in revenues and has yet to turn a profit. Yet eBay was not the only company interested in buying Skype. Microsoft, Yahoo!, News Corporation and Google were all said to have also considered the idea. Perhaps eBay, rather like some over-excited bidder in one of its own auctions, has paid too much. The company says it plans to use Skype"s technology to make it easier for buyers and sellers to communicate, and to offer new "click to call" advertisements, but many analysts are sceptical that eBay is the best owner of Skype. Whatever the merits of the deal, however, the fuss over Skype in recent weeks has highlighted the significance of VOIP, and the enormous threat it poses to incumbent telecoms operators. For the rise of Skype and other VOIP services means nothing less than the death of the traditional telephone business, established over a century ago. Skype is merely the most visible manifestation of a dramatic shift in the telecoms industry, as voice Galling becomes just another data service delivered via high-speed internet connections. Skype, which has over 54m users, has received the most attention, but other firms routing calls partially or entirely over the internet have also signed up millions of customers.
That' s nothing less than a miracle.
BSection II Reading Comprehension/B
Title: Speed vs. Safety in Riding a Bicycle Outline: Is low speed the only guarantee of safety in riding a bicycle? Why? Is it the same in other things in our life? You should write about 160~200 words neatly.
Individuals can make the world a better place by considering everyone is an individual and accepting the diversities in this world. Consideration of others is a major component in communication. Communicating our wishes to others, without demanding or feeling we are owed something. Humility is another virtue used to enable people to coexist without hostility and bigotry. Consider, everyone in the world has the same basic needs and wants. We all wish to have approval and succeed at the things we do. Be courteous in your dealings with every individual and always be respectful towards them, this will aid in making the world a better place. Random acts of kindness to perfect strangers would certainly enhance how we feel about each other. Speak to others as you pass them on the street. We can turn this trend around and it does start with just one individual. Start with thanking people for any small favor. Don"t hesitate to help someone if you can. The results are remarkable and contagious. Tell a friend and soon those friends will tell other friends to be kinder and gentler. Positive trains of thoughts, really do stop at most stops. Invite people to get on board. Hopefully soon the train will be crowded. Wouldn"t that be a better place to live? A basic principle taught to us by most religions is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I want someone to be kind to me. That is my cue to be kind to them also. We can all have a hand in making this world a better place. Respect our planet. Everyone wants to attend nice clean beaches and walk down a street without trash strewn everywhere. Disciplining our individual characters will enhance how we treat others and how we feel about ourselves. In Australia, a popular greeting is "Good day mate". It"s clever, quaint, and sounds nice too. The first and very last thing we can do is pray for one another. That woman you just passed on the street, you don"t need to know her name. You can just ask God to bless her. Wouldn"t it be wonderful, if strangers you met, gave you their blessings? What a wonderful world this could be. We can start by saying this simple phrase, "May God Bless you". Louis Armstrong sings in his song, "what a wonderful world this could be". He imagined it and sang about it. So can I. These are all conscious efforts. Every individual can make.
Greater efforts should be made to increase agricultural production if food shortage is to be avoided.
Millions of dollars often depend on the choice of which commercial to use in launching a new product. So you show the commercials to a (1)_____ of typical consumers and ask their opinion. The answers you get can sometimes lead you into a big (2)_____. Respondents may lie just to be polite. Now some companies and major advertising (3)_____ have been hiring voice detectives who test your normal voice and then record you on tape (4)_____ commenting on a product. A computer analyzes the degree and direction of change (5)_____ normal. One kind of divergence of pitch means the subject (6)_____ Another kind means he was really enthusiastic. In a testing of two commercials (7)_____ children, they were, vocally, about equally (8)_____ of both, but the computer reported their emotional (9)_____ in the two was totally different. Most major commercials are sent for resting-to theaters (10)_____ with various electronic measuring devices. People regarded as (11)_____ are brought in off the street. Viewers can push buttons to (12)_____ whether they are interested or bored. Newspaper and magazine groups became intensely interested in testing their ads for a product (13)_____ TV ads for the same product. They were interested because the main (14)_____ of evidence shows that people (15)_____ a lot more mental activity when they read (16)_____ when they sit in front of the TV set. TV began to be (17)_____ "a low-involvement" (18)_____. It is contended that low involvement means that there is less (19)_____ that the ad message will be (20)_____.Notes: commercial广告。pitch音调
September 11th. 2001 drew the transatlantic alliance together; but the mood did not last, and over the five years since it has pulled ever further apart. A recent poll for the German Marshall Fund shows that 57% of Europeans regard American leadership in world affairs as "undesirable". The Iraq war is mainly to blame. But there is another and more intractable reason for the growing division; God. Europeans worry that American foreign policy under George Bush is too influenced by religion. The "holy warriors" who hijacked the planes on September 11th reintroduced God into international affairs in the most dramatic of ways. It seems that George Bush is replying in kind, encouraging a clash of religions that could spell global catastrophe. Dominique Moisi, a special adviser at the French Institute for International Relations, argues that "the combination of religion and nationalism in America is frightening. We feel betrayed by God and by nationalism, which is why we are building the European Union as a barrier to religious warfare. " Josef Braml, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, complains that in America "religious attitudes have more of an influence on political choices than in any other western democracy. " The notion that America is too influenced by religion is not confined to the elites. Three in five French people and nearly as many Dutch think that Americans are too religious—and that religion skews what should be secular decisions. Europeans who think that America is "too religious" are more inclined to anti-Americanism than their fellow countrymen. 38% of Britons have an unfavourable view of America, but that number rises to 50% among people who are wary of American religiosity. Is America engaged in a faith-based foreign policy? Religion certainly exerts a growing influence on its actions in the world, but in ways more subtle and complicated than Europeans imagine. It is true that America is undergoing a religious revival. "Hot" religions such as evangelical Protestantism and hardline Catholicism are growing rapidly while "cool" mainline versions of Christianity are declining. It is also true that the Republican Party is being reshaped by this revival. Self-identified evangelicals provided almost 40% of Mr. Bush"s vote in 2004; if you add in other theological conservatives, such as Mormons and traditional Catholics, that number rises closer to 60%. All six top Republican leaders in the Senate have earned 100% ratings from the Christian Coalition. It is also true that Mr. Bush frequently uses religious rhetoric when talking of foreign affairs. On September 12th he was at it again, telling a group of conservative journalists that he sees the war on terror as "a confrontation between good and evil", and remarking, "It seems to me that there"s a Third Awakening" (in other words, an outbreak of Christian evangelical fervour, of the sort that has swept across America at least twice before). And Christian America overall is taking a bigger interest in foreign policy. New voices are being heard, such as Sam Brownback, a conservative senator from Kansas who has led the fight against genocide in Darfur, and Rick Warren, the author of a bestseller called "The Purpose-Driven Life", who is sending 2,000 missionaries to Rwanda. Finally, it is true that religious figures have done some pretty outrageous things. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Ch vez, the president of Venezuela. Lieutenant-General William "Jerry" Boykin, deputy under-secretary of defence for intelligence, toured the country telling Christian groups that radical Muslims hate America "because we"re a Christian nation and the enemy is a guy named Satan". He often wore uniform.
On Living the SOHO Lifestyle A. Title: On Living the SOHO Lifestyle B. Word limit: 160-200 words (not including the given opening sentence) C. Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: "With the advancement of society, SOHO, referring to working at home by utilizing modern facilities, has emerged and is thriving, accompanied by controversies." OUTLINE: 1. The emergence of SOHO and its controversies 2. People's different views on it 3. My opinion
Many people consider the wider use of biofuels a promising way of reducing the amount of surplus carbon dioxide (C02) being pumped into the air by the world"s mechanized transport. The theory is that plants such as sugar cane, maize (corn, to Americans), oilseed rape and wheat take up C02 during their growth, so burning fuels made from them should have no net effect on the amount of that gas in the atmosphere. Theory, though, does not always translate into practice, and just as governments have committed themselves to the greater use of biofuels, questions are being raised about how green this form of energy really is. The latest comes from the International Council for Science (ICSU) based in Paris. The ICSU report concludes that, so far, the production of biofuels has aggravated rather than ameliorated global warming. In particular, it supports some controversial findings published in 2007 by Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany. Dr. Crutzen concluded that most analyses had underestimated the importance to global warming of a gas called nitrous oxide (N20). The amount of this gas released by farming biofuel crops such as maize and rape probably negates by itself any advantage offered by reduced emissions of C02. Although N20 is not common in the Earth"s atmosphere, it is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and it hangs around longer. The result is that, over the course of a century, its ability to warm the planet is almost 300 times that of an equivalent mass of C02. N2O is made by bacteria that live in soil and water and, these days, their raw material is often the nitrogen-rich fertiliser that modern farming requires. Since the 1960s the amount of fertiliser used by farmers has increased sixfold, and not all of that extra nitrogen ends up in their crops. Maize, in particular, is described by experts in the field as a "nitrogen-leaky" plant because it has shallow roots and takes up nitrogen for only a few months of the year. This would make maize (which is one of the main sources of biofuel) a particularly bad contributor to global N20 emissions. But it is not just biofuels that are to blame. The ICSU report suggests N20 emissions in general are probably more important than had been realised. Previous studies, including those by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations-appointed body of experts, may have miscalculated their significance — and according to Adrian Williams of Cranfield University, in Britain, even the IPCC"s approach suggests that the global-warming potential of most of Britain"s annual crops is dominated by N20 emissions.
Aimlessness has hardly been typical of the postwar Japan whose productivity and social harmony are the envy of the United States and Europe. But increasingly the Japanese are seeing a decline of the traditional work-moral values. Ten years ago young people were hardworking and saw their jobs as their primary reason for being, but now Japan has largely fulfilled its economic needs, and young people don't know where they should go next. The coming of age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the male-dominated job market have limited the opportunities of teenagers who are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifices involved in climbing Japan's rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs. In a recent survey, it was found that only 24.5 percent of Japanese students were fully satisfied with school life, compared with 67.2 percent of students in the United States. In addition, far more Japanese workers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs than did their counterparts in the 10 other countries surveyed. While often praised by foreigners for its emphasis on the basics, Japanese education tends to stress test taking and mechanical learning over creativity and self-expression. "Those things that do not show up in the test scores—personality, ability, courage or humanity are completely ignored," says Toshiki Kaifu, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's education committee. "Frustration against this kind of thing leads kids to drop out and run wild." Last year Japan experienced 2125 incidents of school violence, including 929 assaults on teachers. Amid the outcry, many conservative leaders are seeking a return to the prewar emphasis on moral education. Last year Mitsuo Setoyama, who was then education minister, raised eyebrows when he argued that liberal reforms introduced by the American occupation authorities after World War II had weakened the "Japanese morality of respect for parents". But that may have more to do with Japanese life-styles. "In Japan," says educator Yoko Muro, "it's never a question of whether you enjoy your job and your life, but only how much you can endure." With economic growth has come centralization; fully 76 percent of Japan's 119 million citizens live in cities where community and the extended family have been abandoned in favor of isolated, two-generation households. Urban Japanese have long endured lengthy commutes (travels to and from work) and crowded living conditions, but as the old group and family values weaken, the discomfort is beginning to tell. In the past decade, the Japanese divorce rate, while still well below that of the United States, has increased by more than 50 percent, and suicides have increased by nearly one-quarter.
Music comes in many forms; most countries have a style of their own. (1)_____ the mm of the century when jazz was born, America had no prominent (2)_____ of its own. No one knows exactly when jazz was (3)_____, or by whom. But it began to be (4)_____ in the early 1890s. Jazz is America"s contribution to (5)_____ music. In contrast to classical music, which (6)_____ formal European traditions, jazz is spontaneous and free-form. It bubbles with energy, (7)_____ the moods, interests, and emotions of the people: In the 1920s jazz (8)_____ like America. And (9)_____ it does today. The (10)_____ of this music are as interesting as the music (11)_____. American Negroes, or blacks, as they are called today, were the jazz (12)_____.They were brought to the Southern states (13)_____ slaves. They were sold to plantation owners and forced to work long (14)_____ When a Negro died his friends and relatives (15)_____ a procession to carry the body to the cemetery. In New Orleans, a band, often accompanied the (16)_____ On the way to the cemetery the band played slow, solemn music suited to the occasion. (17)_____ on the way home the mood changed. Spirits lifted. Death had removed one of their (18)_____, but the living were glad to be alive. The band played (19)_____ music, improvising on both the harmony and the melody of the tunes (20)_____ at the funeral. This music made everyone want to dance. It was an early form of jazz.
Data has a habit of spreading. It slips past military security and it can also leak from WikiLeaks. It even slipped past the bans of the Guardian and other media organisations involved in this story when a rogue copy of Der Spiegel accidentally went on sale in Basle, Switzerland. Someone bought it, realised what they had, and began scanning the pages, translating them from German to English and posting up-dates on Twitter. It would seem digital data respects no authority, be it the Pentagon, WikiLeaks or a newspaper editor. Individually, we have all already experienced the massive changes resulting from digitisation. Events or information that we once considered momentary and private are now accumulated, permanent, public. Governments hold our personal data in huge databases. It used to cost money to disclose and distribute information. In the digital age it costs money not to. But when data breaches happen to the public, politicians don"t care much. Our privacy is expendable. It is no surprise that the reaction to these leaks is different. What has changed the dynamic of power in a revolutionary way isn" t just the scale of the databases being kept, but that individuals can upload a copy and present it to the world. To some this marks a crisis, to others an opportunity. Technology is breaking down traditional social barriers of status, class, power, wealth and geography—replacing them with an ethos of collaboration and transparency. Leaks are not the problem; they are the symptom. They reveal a disconnect between what people want and need to know and what they actually do know. The greater the secrecy, the more likely a leak. The way to move beyond leaks is to ensure a strong managing system for the public to access important information. We are at a key moment where the visionaries in the leading position of a global digital age are clashing with those who are desperate to control what we know. WikiLeaks is the guerrilla front in a global movement for greater transparency and participation. It used to be that a leader controlled citizens by controlling information. Now it" s harder than ever for the powerful to control what people read, see and hear. Technology gives people the ability to band together and challenge authority. The powerful have long spied on citizens as a means of control, now citizens are turning their collected eyes back upon the powerful. This is a revolution, and all revolutions create fear and uncertainty. Will we move to a New Information Enlightenment or will the strong resistance from those who seek to maintain control no matter the cost lead us to a new totalitarianism ? What happens in the next five years will define the future of democracy for the next century, so it would be well if our leaders responded to the current challenge with an eye on the nature.
Benjamin Franklin just got a face-lift;. And it"s about time. Over the past seven years, the Treasury Department has redesigned the $5, $10, $20 and $50 bills, citing counterfeiting【B1】______. On April 21, the $100 bill【B2】______its fellows when the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing(BEP)unveiled its latest bill. The $100 bill is the highest-denomination note in【B3】______and can weather more than seven years of【B4】______. A humble $1 bill lasts only 21 months. The American Revolution"s continental currency—the first attempt【B5】______national tender—did not have the same kind of【B6】______. So much of the money was produced to【B7】______the war that it quickly【B8】______. In 1863, Congress【B9】______the issuance of paper tender, much of which was easy to counterfeit. It is estimated that one-third of money circulating at the time was【B10】______. But that didn"t stop the government from producing【B11】______of it. By the time the BEP was officially established in 1874, the Treasury Department had been creating【B12】______for more than a decade—with dozens of clerks manually cutting and signing bills before the process was【B13】______. The U.S. started producing coins in 1792. The first piece of money to feature a President"s【B14】______was a coin: the Abraham Lincoln penny, created in 1909. And【B15】______the fact that it costs 1.6¢ to make each l¢ coin, more pennies are produced than any other U.S. denomination.【B16】______bills such as the $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 had no such luck,【B17】______, and the $100,000 note was printed but never released .【B18】______hundreds of billions of dollars in circulation at any given time(more than $330 billion was produced last year alone), updating security features on currency is a(n) 【B19】______process. "In God We【B20】______," sure. In humans, not so much.
They are regarded as chores by both sexes, but fall disproportionately on only one. The latest survey of time use in America suggests women still【C1】______most of the housework, spending on average an hour a day scrubbing, hoovering and shopping,【C2】______with barely 20 minutes for the unfairer sex. Standard【C3】______for this division of labour【C4】______on the pay gap between the sexes. A recent report shows women【C5】______earn about 20% less than men in America Couples can maximise earnings【C6】______the lower-paid(usually female)partner does the【C7】______work at home. But in a new paper Leslie Stratton of Virginia Commonwealth University asks【C8】______different attitudes to housework also play a【C9】______in sharing the dusting. Mr Stratton draws on data from the Time Use Survey in Britain,【C10】______shows how people spent their day and which tasks they enjoyed. Attitudes certainly【C11】______: women disliked laundry less than men. Ironing was generally dreaded; weirdly large numbers of both sexes liked shopping for food. Mr Stratton found some【C12】______for the pay-gap hypothesis. Women with higher wages did a little【C13】______work at home. A woman who earned 10% more than【C14】______ducked out of two minutes' housework per weekday. Her partner heroically【C15】______up this time at the weekend.【C16】______his wages made no difference【C17】______the extent of his efforts around the house. There is【C18】______in the idea that chores go to the lower-paid partner. But cause and effect are【C19】______. Do women do more【C20】______lower pay, or might their careers suffer from a disproportionate burden at home?
It is evident that there is a close connection between the capacity to use language and the capacities covered by the verb" to think". Indeed, me writers have identified thinking with using words: Plato coined the saying, "In thinking the soul is talking to itself"; J. B. Watson reduced thinking to inhibited speech located in the minute movements or tensions of the physiological mechanisms involved in speaking; and although Ryle is careful to point out that there are many senses in which a person is said to think in which words are not in evidence, he has also said that saying something in a specific frame of mind is thinking a thought. Is thinking reducible to, or dependent upon, language habits? It would seem that many thinking situations are hardly distinguishable from the skilful use of language, although there are some others in which language is not involved. Thought cannot be simply identified with running language. It may be the case, of course, that the non-linguistic skills involved in thought can only be acquired and developed if the learner is able to use and understand language. However, this question is one which we cannot hope to answer in this book. Obviously being able to use language makes for a considerable development in all one"s capacities but how precisely this comes about we cannot say. At the common-sense level it appears that there is often a distinction between thought and the words we employ to communicate with other people. We often have to struggle hard to find words to capture what our thinking has already grasped, and when we do find words we sometimes feel that they fail to do their job properly. Again when we report or describe our thinking to other people we do not merely report unspoken words and sentences. Such sentences do not always occur in thinking, and when they do they axe merged with vague imagery and the hint of unconscious or subliminal activities going on just out of range. Thinking, as it happens, is more like struggling, striving, or searching for something than it is like talking or reading. Words do play their part but they are rarely the only feature of thought. This observation is supported by the experiments of the Wurzburg psychologists reported in Chapter Eight who showed that intelligent adaptive responses can occur in problem solving situations without the use of either words or images of any kind; ",Set" and "determining tendencies" operate without the actual use of language in helping us to think purposefully and intelligently. Again the Study of speech disorders due to brain injury or disease suggest that patients can think without having adequate control over their language, some patients, for example, fail to find the names of objects presented to them and are unable to describe simple events which they witness; they even find it difficult to interpret long written notices. But they succeed in playing games of chess or draughts. They can use the concepts needed for chess playing or draughts playing but are unable to use many of the concepts in ordinary language. How they manage to do this we do not know. Yet animals such as Kohler"s chimpanzees can solve problems by working out strategies such as the invention of implements or Climbing aids when such animals have not language beyond a few warning cries. Intelligent or "insightful" behavior is not dependent in the case of monkeys on language skills: presumably human beings have various capacities for thinking situations which are likewise independent of language.
Every immigrant leads a double life. Every immigrant has a double identity and a double vision, being suspended between an old and a new home, an old and a new self.【F1】
The very notion of a new home, of course, is in a sense as impossible as the notion of new parents: parents are who they are; home is what it is.
Yet home, like parentage, must be legitimized through love; otherwise, it is only a fact of geography or biology.【F2】
Most immigrants to America found their love of their old homes betrayed: They did not really abandon their countries; their countries abandoned them, and in America, they found the possibility of a new love, the chance to nurture new selves.
Not uniformly, not without exceptions. Every generation has its Know-Nothing movement.【F3】
Its understandable fear and hatred of alien invasion is as true today as it always was, but in spite of all this, the American attitude remains unique.
Throughout history, exile has been a calamity; America turned it into a triumph and placed its immigrants in the center of a national epic.
The epic is possible because America is an idea as much as it is a country.【F4】
America has nothing to do with loyalty to a dynasty and very little to do with loyalty to a particular place, but everything to do with loyalty to a set of principles.
To immigrants, those principles are especially real because so often they were absent or violated in their native lands. It was no accident in the "60s and 70s, when alienation was in flower, that it often seemed to be "native" Americans who felt alienated, while aliens or the children of aliens upheld the native values.
"Home is where you are happy." Sentimental, perhaps, and certainly not conventionally patriotic, but is appropriate for a country that wrote the pursuit of happiness into its founding document. That pursuit continues for the immigrant in America, and it never stops, but it comes to rest at a certain moment.【F5】
The moment occurs perhaps when the immigrant"s double life and double vision converge toward a single state of mind, when the old life, the old home fade into a certain unreality: places one merely visits, practicing the tourism of memory.
It occurs when the immigrant learns his ultimate lesson: above all countries, America, if loved, returns love.
