Cyberspace, data superhighways, multi media—for those who have seen the future, the linking of computers, television and telephones will change our lives forever. Yet for all the talk of a forthcoming technological Utopia, little attention has been given to the implications of these developments for the poor. As with all new high technology, while the West concerns itself with the "how", the question of "for whom" is put aside once again. Economists are only now realizing the full extent to which the communications revolution has affected the world economy. Information technology allows the extension of trade across geographical and industrial boundaries, and transnational corporations take full advantage of it. Terms of trade, exchange and interest rates and money movements are more important than the production of goods. The electronic economy made possible by information technology allows the haves to increase their control on global markets—with destructive impact on the have-nots. For them the result is instability. Developing countries which rely on the production of a small range of goods for export are made to feel like small parts in the international economic machine. As "futures" are traded on computer screens, developing countries simply have less and less control of their destinies. So what are the options for regaining control? One alternative is for developing countries to buy in the latest computers and telecommunications themselves—so-called "development communications" modernization. Yet this leads to long-term dependency and perhaps permanent constraints on developing countries" economies. Communications technology is generally exported from the U.S., Europe or Japan; the patents, skills and ability to manufacture remain in the hands of a few industrialized countries. It is also expensive, and imported products and services must therefore be bought on credit—credit usually provided by the very countries whose companies stand to gain. Furthermore, when new technology is introduced there is often too low a level of expertise to exploit it for native development. This means that while local elites, foreign communities and subsidiaries of transnational corporations may benefit, those whose lives depend on access to the information are denied it.

(46) The steadily growing number of single-person households in Britain has raised plenty of troubling issues—how to build enough dwellings to accommodate them, what to do about the decline in traditional family cohesion—to keep planners and sociologists busy. But one as yet unstudied side-effect of this social trend appears to be an explosion in the cat population. The Pet Food Manufacturers" Association reckons that the number of dogs has declined from a peak of 7.4 million in 1990 to 6.5 million now. (47) Meanwhile the domestic cat population has risen steadily, overtaking dog numbers in 1993 to stand now at about 8 million, twice as many as there were in 1965. Changing life-styles, more than anything else, are responsible for this. (48) More single-person households and more married women at work means that fewer households are able to give a dog the walks and other attention it needs. Cats, on the other hand, apart from daily feeding, can be left pretty much to their own devices. Which also means that they sometimes wander off in search of a better place to stay if the mood takes them. This causes another problem: feral eats. (49) As cats are harder to round up than dogs, and breed prolifically—a pair can produce ten offspring a year—large colonies of 80 or so cats hiding out in disused buildings are increasingly common. While the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals and the Cat Protection League re-house about 125,000 lost or unwanted cats a year, the League guesses that there may be about 1.2m wild cats in Britain. (50) If they are not a nuisance the animal charities neuter the ones they can catch and then leave them alone. Animal-lovers are pleased. Bird-lovers are not. They blame cats for the sharp decline in the number of small birds in Britain. The League, however, has an. idea for making wild cats socially useful. It tries to persuade farmers and garden centres to take them on as environmentally-friendly rat-catchers. A bunch of neutered, wild cats could well be an efficient way of controlling a potentially plague of rats and mice.

The word Renaissance has of late years received a more extended significance than that which is implied in our English equivalent—the Revival of learning. We use it to denote the whole transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world;【F1】 though it is possible to assign certain limits to the period during which this transition took place, we cannot fix on any dates so positively as to say between this year and that the movement was accomplished. To do so would be like trying to name the days on which spring in any particular season began and ended. The evolution has not been completed. In like manner we cannot refer the whole phenomena of the Renaissance to any one cause or circumstance, or limit them within the field of any one department of human knowledge.【F2】 Students of literature and philosophy see in the Renaissance that discovery of manuscripts, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of thought, to more accurate analysis, and finally to the emancipation of the conscience. Men of science will discourse about the discovery of the solar system by Copernicus and Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius. Men whose attention has been turned to the history of discoveries and inventions will point to the benefits conferred upon the world by the arts of printing and engraving, by the compass and the telescope.【F3】 They will insist that at the moment of the Renaissance all the instruments of mechanical utility started into existence, to aid the dissolution of what was rotten and must perish, to strengthen and perpetuate the new and useful and life-giving. Yet neither any one of these answers, taken separately, nor indeed all of them together, will offer a solution of the problem.【F4】 By the term "renaissance," or new birth, is indicated a natural movement, not to be explained by this or that characteristic, but to be accepted as an effort of humanity in the onward progress in which we still participate. The history of the Renaissance is not the history of arts or of sciences or of literature or even of nations.【F5】 It is the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races.

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

Writeanessaythatconveystheinformationinthefollowingchart/graphaccompaniedbyyourcomments.Youressaymustbewrittenclearlywithin160—200words.

You are going to read an article which is followed by a list of examples or headings. Choose the most suitable one from the list A-F for each numbered position(41-45). There may be certain extra which you do not need to use. (10 points)A. The consequence of losing bonesB. A better lab in space than on earthC. Two different casesD. Multiple effects form weightlessnessE. How to overcome weightlessnessF. Factors that are not so sure During weightlessness, the forces within the body undergo dramatic change. Because the spine is no longer compressed, people grow taller. The lungs, heart and other organs within the chest have no weight, and as a result, the rib cage and chest relax and expand. Similarly, the weights of the liver, kidneys, stomach and bowels disappear. One astronaut said after his flight: "You feel your guts floating up. I found myself tightening my belly, sort of pushing things back." (41)______. Meanwhile muscles and bones come to be used in different ways. Our muscles are designed to support us when stand or sit uptight an4 to move body parts. But in space, muscles used for support on the ground are no longer needed for that purpose; moreover, the muscles used for movement around a capsule differ from those used for walking down a hall. Consequently, some muscles rapidly weaken. This doesn"t present a problem to space travelers as long as they perform only light work. But preventing the loss of muscle tissue required for heavy work during space walks and preserving muscle for safe return to Earth are the subject of many current experiments. Studies have shown that astronauts lose bone mass from the lower spine, hips and upper leg at a rate of about 1 percent per month for the entire duration of their time in space. Some sites, such as the heel, lose calcium faster than others. Studies of animals taken into space suggest that bone formation also declines. (42)______. Needless to say, these data are indeed cause for concern. During space flight, the loss of bone elevates calcium levels in the body, potentially causing kidney stones and calcium crystals to form in other tissues. Back on the ground, the loss of bone calcium stops within one month, but scientists do not yet know whether the bone recovers completely: too few people have flown in space for long periods. Some bone loss may be permanent, in which case ex-astronauts will always be more prone to broken bones. (43)______. These questions mirror those in our understanding of how the body works here on Earth. For example, elderly women are prone to a loss of bone mass. Scientists understand that many different factors can be involved in this loss, but they do not yet know how the factors act and interact; this makes it difficult to develop an appropriate treatment. So it is with bone loss in space, where the right prescription still awaits discovery. (44)______. Many other body systems are affected directly and indirectly. One example is the lung. Scientists have studied the lung in space and learned much they could not have learned in laboratories on earth. On the ground the top and bottom parts of the lung have different patterns of air flow and blood flow. But are these patterns the result only of gravity, or also of the nature of the lung itself? Only recently have studies in space provided clear evidence for the latter. Even in the absence of gravity, different parts of the lung have different levels of air flow and blood flow. (45)______. Not everything that affects the body during space flight is related solely to weightlessness. Also affected, for example, are the immune system and the multiple systems responsible for the amount and quality of sleep (light levels and work schedules disrupt the body"s normal rhythms). Looking out the spacecraft window just before going to sleep (an action difficult to resist, considering the view) can let enough bright light into the eye to trigger just the wrong brain response, leading to poor sleep. As time goes on, the sleep debt accumulates. For long space voyages, travelers must also face being confined in a tight volume, unable to escape, isolated from the normal life of Earth, living with a small, fixed group of companions who often come from different cultures. These challenges can lead to anxiety, depression, crew tension and other social issues, which affect astronauts just as much as weightlessness-perhaps even more. Because these factors operate at the same time the body is adapting to other environmental changes, it may not be clear which physiological changes result from which factors. Much work remains to be done.

The people who run Facebook are furious about a new movie that depicts the existence of Face-book. They're upset because much of the story about The Social Network is just completely made up. But the really interesting thing about this movie is that the story tells a lager truth about Silicon Valley's get-rich-quick culture and the kind of people—like Mark Zuckerberg—who thrive in this environment. The Valley used to be a place run by scientists and engineers. But now the Valley has become a casino, a place where smart kids arrive hoping to make an easy fortune building companies that seem at least not as serious as old-guard companies. The three hottest tech companies today are Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga. Facebook lets you keep in touch with your friends; it will generate about $1.5 billion in revenue this year by bombarding its 500 million members with ads. Twitter is a noisy circus of spats and celebrity watching, and its hapless founders still can't figure out how to make money. The biggest of Facebook app-makers, reportedly will rake in $500 million this year by getting people addicted to cheesy games like Far-mville and Mafia Wars. Meanwhile, among some longtime techies, there' s a sense that something important has been lost. "The old Silicon Valley was about solving really hard problems, making technical bets. But there's no real technical bet being made with Facebook or Zynga," says Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft who now runs an invention lab in Seattle. "Today almost everyone in the Valley will tell you there is too much 'me-tooism', too much looking for a gold rush and not enough people who are looking to solve really hard problems." Sure, there are still entrepreneurs and investors chasing serious technology challenges in the Valley. Myhrvold says he means no disrespect to Facebook and Zynga. "What bother me are the millions of wannabes who will follow along, and the expectation that every company ought to be focused on doing really short-term, easy things to achieve giant paydays. I think that' s unrealistic, and it's not healthy." What he worries are "the unknown engineers and professors who have good ideas will get funded or will they be talked out of it and told they should do something like Zynga? " We' ve already fallen behind in areas like alternative energy, better batteries, and nanotechnolo-gy. Instead of racing to catch up, we're buying seeds and garden gnomes on Facebook. This won't end well.

According to the American College Health Association's most recent annual national survey, 30 percent of college students reported feeling "so depressed that it was difficult to function" at some time over the past year. Nearly three fourths of respondents in a 2011 National Alliance on Mental Illness study of college students diagnosed with mental health conditions said they experienced a mental health crisis while in school. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other federal disability laws prohibit discrimination against students whose psychiatric disabilities "substantially limit a major life activity" and mandates that colleges and universities provide them with "reasonable accommodations" —such as lower course loads and extended deadlines. Despite that very clearly stated law, dozens of current or recent students at colleges and universities across the country—large and small, private and public—told Newsweek they were punished for seeking help: kicked out of campus housing with nowhere else to go, abruptly forced to withdraw from school and even involuntarily committed to psychiatric wards. "Colleges are very accustomed to accommodating learning and physical disabilities, but they don't understand simple ways of accommodating mental health disabilities," says Professor Peter Lake, an expert on higher education law and policy who sees widespread fear and reluctance across the board to "promote diversity that encompasses mental disabilities and mood disorders." Lake often tells skeptics about a man who suffered from clinical depression and constantly talked about suicide: His name was Abraham Lincoln. "We don't want to remove these people," Lake says. "We want to expand the definition of diversity to make sure they're included." Most lifetime cases of mental health conditions begin by the age of 24, and thanks to a variety of factors, including rising antidepressant prescription rates and stigma reduction efforts, college students are more and more likely to ask campus counselors for assistance. The number of students seeking counseling for "severe" psychological problems jumped from 16 percent in 2000 to 39 percent in 2012; the percentage of students who report suicidal thoughts has risen along with it. "Schools should encourage students to seek treatment. But a lot of policies I see involve excessive use of discipline and involuntary leaves of absence, and they discourage students from asking for the help they need," says Karen Bower, a private attorney who specializes in disability discrimination cases in higher education. "Ultimately, that makes the campus less safe." Two large-scale studies found that around 10 percent of college student respondents had thought about suicide in the past year, but only 1.5 percent admitted to having made a suicide attempt. Combined with data from other studies, that suggests that the odds that a student with suicidal ideation—the medical term for suicidal thoughts—will actually commit suicide are 1,000 to 1. "Thus, policies that impose restrictions on students who manifest suicidal ideation will sweep in 999 students who would not commit suicide for every student who will end his or her life," Paul S. Appelbaum writes in Law & Psychiatry: "Depressed? Get Out!""Colleges don't want people who are suicidal around, so what's supposed to happen to them?" says Ira Burnim, legal director of the D. C. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. "We're going to lock them in a bomb shelter?" Kicking students off campus for mental health issues typically does more harm than good by isolating them from their support systems when what they really need is stability and empathy, he says. Moreover, it's often a completely unnecessary overreaction.

There will eventually come a day when The New York Times ceases to publish stories on newsprint. Exactly when that day will be is a matter of debate. "Sometime in the future," the paper's publisher said back in 2010. Nostalgia for ink on paper and the rustle of pages aside, there' s plenty of incentive to ditch print. The infrastructure required to make a physical newspaper—printing presses, delivery trucks—isn't just expensive; it' s excessive at a time when online-only competitors don't have the same set of financial constraints. Readers are migrating away from print anyway. And though print and sales still dwarf their online and mobile counterparts, revenue from print is still declining. Overhead may be high and circulation lower, but rushing to eliminate its print edition would be a mistake, says BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti. Peretti says the Times shouldn't waste time getting out of the print business, but only if they go about doing it the right way. "Figuring out a way to accelerate that transition would make sense for them," he said, "but if you discontinue it, you're going to have your most loyal customers really upset with you." Sometimes that's worth making a change anyway. Peretti gives the example of Netflix discontinuing its DVD-mailing service to focus on streaming. "It was seen as a blunder," he said. The more turned out to be foresighted. And if Peretti were in change at the Times? "I wouldn't pick a year to end print," he said. "I would raise prices and make it into more of a legacy product." The most loyal customers would still get the product they favor, the idea goes, and they'd feel like they were helping sustain the quality of something they believe in. "So if you 're overpaying for print, you could feel like you were helping," Peretti said. "Then increase it at a higher rate each year and essentially try to generate additional revenue." In other words, if you're going to make a print product, make it for the people who are already obsessed with it. Which may be what the Times is doing already. Getting the print edition seven days a week costs nearly $ 500 a year—more than twice as much as a digital-only subscription. "It's a really hard thing to do and it's a tremendous luxury that BuzzFeed doesn't have a legacy business," Peretti remarked. "But we're going to have questions like that where we have things we're doing that don't make sense when the market changes and the world changes. In those situations, it's better to be more aggressive than less aggressive."

The computer is a far more careful and industrious inspector than human beings.

Fate has not been kind to the western grey whale. Its numbers have dwindled to 130 or so, leaving it “critically endangered” in the eyes of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Fishing-nets, speeding ships, pollution and coastal development threaten the few that remain. Most recently, drilling for oil and gas in their main summer feeding grounds, near Sakhalin island off Russia’s Pacific coast, has brought fresh risks for the luckless creatures. Yet the rush to develop Sakhalin’s offshore fields may yet be the saviour of the species. When drilling was first discussed in the 1990s, there were muted complaints. When a consortium called Sakhalin. Energy, led by Royal Dutch Shell, announced plans to build an oil platform and lay pipelines in the only bay where the whales were known to congregate, these protests proliferated. In response, the consortium established an independent panel to advise it on how best to protect the whales and promised to fund its work. It subsequently agreed to change the route of the pipeline at the panel’s suggestion, although it refused to move the platform, as other critics had demanded. It also agreed either to follow the panel’s recommendations in future or to explain publicly why it was rejecting them. The platforms and pipelines are now complete. Sakhalin Energy exported its first cargo of liquefied natural gas last week. The project, says Shell, is an engineering triumph and a commercial success despite all the controversy. But has it been a success for the whales? Sakhalin Energy says their number seems to be growing by 2.5% a year, although Ian Craig, the firm’s boss, admits that the cause might be greater scrutiny rather than population growth. The scientists on the panel still seem worried. They complain that the firm has not always provided the information they need to assess the threat to the whales. It also has not always followed advice, the scientists’ advice about how noisy construction might scare the animals away, for example, or the speed that boats should travel to minimize the risk of hitting the whales. The scientists warn that the loss of just a few fertile females would be enough to tip the population into irrevocable decline. Last summer, there seemed to be far fewer whales around than normal. On the other hand, the panel knows this only because Sakhalin Energy funds lots of research on the whales. As a result, it has discovered that they have a wider range than originally thought, which might explain why so few of them showed up off Sakhalin island last year. Therefore, it is hard to escape the conclusion that, for creatures with a lot as sorry as the western grey whale, a nearby oil project is something of a blessing.

Suppose you are Li Ming. One week ago, you borrowed a book from your teacher Mr. Smith, which is very important to him. But much to your disappointment, you lost the book. Now you want to write a letter of apology to him. Your letter should include the following: 1) a sincere apology, 2) a brief account of the trouble, and 3) any possible replacement. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

A factory that makes uranium fuel for nuclear reactors had a spill so bad it kept the plant closed for seven months last year and became one of only three events in all of 2006 serious enough for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to include in an annual report to Congress. After an investigation, the commission changed the terms of the factory"s license and said the public had 20 days to request a hearing on the changes. But no member of the public ever did. In fact, no member of the public could find out about the changes. The document describing them, including the notice of hearing rights for anyone who felt adversely affected, was stamped "official use only", meaning that it was not publicly accessible. The agency would not even have told Congress which factory was involved were it not for the efforts of Gregory B. Jaczko, one of the five commissioners. Mr. Jaczko identified the company, Nuclear Fuel Services of Erwin, Tenn, in a memorandum that became part of the public record. His memorandum said other public documents would allow an informed person to deduce that the factory belonged to Nuclear Fuel Services. Such secrecy by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now coming under attack by influential members of Congress. These lawmakers argue that the agency is withholding numerous documents about nuclear facilities in the name of national security, but that many withheld documents are not sensitive. The lawmakers say the agency must rebalance its penchant for secrecy with the public"s right to participate in the licensing process and its right to know about potential hazards. The agency, the congressmen said, "has removed hundreds of in nocuous documents relating to the N.F.S. plant from public view". With a resurgence of nuclear plant construction expected after a 30-year hiatus, agency officials say frequently that they are trying to strike a balance between winning public confidence by regulating openly and protecting sensitive information. A commission spokesman, Scott Burnell, said the "official use only" designation was under review. As laid out by the commission"s report to Congress and other sources, the event at the Nuclear Fuel Service factory was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid dribbling under a door and into a hallway. Workers had previously described a yellow liquid in a "glove box", a sealed container with gloves built into the sides to allow a technician to manipulate objects inside, but managers had decided it was ordinary uranium. In fact, it was highly enriched uranium that had been declared surplus from the weapons inventory of the Energy Department and sent to the plant to be diluted to a strength appropriate for a civilian reactor. If the material had gone critical, "it is likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death", the commission said. Generally, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does describe nuclear incidents and changes in licenses. But in 2004, according to the committee"s letter, the Office of Naval Reactors, part of the Energy Department, reached an agreement with the commission that any correspondence with Nuclear Fuel Services would be marked "official use only".

Therehasrecentlybeenadiscussioninanewspaperontheissueofcommunication.Writeanessaytothenewspaperto1.showyourunderstandingofthesymbolicmeaningofthepicturebelow1)thecontentofthepicture2)themeaning/yourunderstanding2.giveaspecificexample/comment,and3.giveyoursuggestionastothebestwaytocommunicate.Youshouldneatlywrite160—200words.

There is no doubt that we' 11 win.

In today"s complex economic world, neither individuals nor nations are self-sufficient. Nations have utilized different economic resources; people have developed different skills. This is the foundation of world trade and economic activity. As a result of this trade and activity, international finance and banking have evolved. For example, the" United States is a major Consumer of coffee, yet it does not have the climate to grow any of its own. Consequently, the United States must import coffee from countries (such as Brazil, Colombia and Guatemala) that grow coffee efficiently. (46) On the other hand, the United States has large industrial plants capable of producing a variety of goods, such as chemicals and airplanes, which can be sold to nations that need them. If nations traded item for item, such as one automobile for 10,000 bags of coffee, foreign trade would be extremely cumbersome and restrictive. So instead of barter, which is the trade of goods without an exchange of money, the United States receives money in payment for what it sells. (47) It pays for Brazilian coffee with dollars, which Brazil can then use to buy wool from Australia, which in mm can buy textiles from Great Britain, which can then buy tobacco from the United States. Foreign trade, the exchange of goods between nations, takes place for many reasons. (48) First, as mentioned above, is that no nation has all of the commodities that it needs. Raw materials are scattered around the world. Large deposits of copper are mined in Peru and Zaire, diamonds are mined in South Africa and petroleum is recovered in the Middle East. Countries that do not have these resources within their own boundaries must buy from countries that export them. Foreign trade also occurs because a country often does not have enough of a particular item to meet its needs. Although the United States is a major producer of sugar, it consumes more than it can produce internally and thus must import sugar. Third, one nation can sell some items at a lower cost than other countries. Japan has been able to export large quantities of radios and television sets because it can produce them more efficiently than other countries. It is cheaper for the United States to buy these from Japan than to produce them domestically. According to economic theory, Japan should produce and export those items from which it derives a comparative advantage. (49) It should also buy and import what it, needs from those countries that have a comparative advantage in the desired items. Finally, foreign trade takes place because of innovation or style. (50) Even though the United States produces more automobiles than any other country, it still imports large numbers of autos from Germany, Japan and Sweden, primarily because there is a market for them in the United States.

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingpicture.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethepicturebriefly,2)interpretitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)

The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is becoming mature. A man reaches the mature (1)_____ of his reasoning powers and mental faculties (2)_____ before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is the only reason of a sort—very mean in its (3)_____. That is why women remain children their whole life long; never seeing (4)_____ but what is quite close to them, (5)_____ fast to the present moment, taking appearance for (6)_____, and preferring (7)_____ to matters of the first importance. For it is (8)_____ his reasoning faculty that man does not live in the present only, (9)_____ the brute, but looks about him and considers the past anti the future; and this is the origin of (10)_____, as well as that of care and anxiety which so many people (11)_____. Both the advantages and the disadvantages, which this (12)_____, are (13)_____ in by the woman to a smaller extent because of her weaker power of reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectually shortsighted, (14)_____, while she has an immediate understanding of what lies quite close to her, her field of (15)_____ is narrow and does not reach to what is (16)_____; so that things which are absent, or past, or to come, have much less effect upon women than upon men. This is the reason why women are inclined to be (17)_____ and sometimes carry their desire to a (18)_____ that borders upon madness. In their hearts, women think it is men"s business to earn money and theirs to spend it—if possible during their husband"s life, (19)_____, at any rate, after his death. The very fact that their husband hands them (20)_____ his earnings for purposes of housekeeping strengthens them in this belief.

The burning of two black churches in Clarendon county, S.C, last year may be a case of extremist terrorism. Clarendon county Sheriff Hoyt Collins said Welch was carrying a membership card for the Christian knights of the KKK when he was arrested. Federal authorities are considering civil-rights charges against them, and FBI agents are investigating the possibility that the Clarendon county arsons are connected to other church fires. The reality is that the federal task force is entering a quagmire. Arson is always a tough crime to investigate, and the evidence in many of these cases is getting old; some may never be solved with some 300,000 churches nationwide, there are approximately 600 cases of arson against church buildings every year. The overall trend is down, although not among black churches in the rural South. Many of these churches are older wooden buildings—tinder-boxes located on country roads miles from police and fire departments. They are extremely vulnerable to arson and, because they burn so quickly, often destroy evidence of the crime as well. The black clergy who descended on Washington a week ago are deeply skeptical of ATF. One reason is that ATF agents who know from experience that about half of all arsons are inside jobs—have questioned and in some cases polygraph black churchmen search of leads. "they strapped a lie detector on me and asked me if I burned the church", says Harold Smith, assistant pastor at the Inner city in Knoxville, Tenn. "When your life is in the ministry.., it hurts to be asked questions like this". Aggressive investigative tactics have already led to trouble at the top. Told that federal prosecutors had subpoenaed some black clergymen in a search for inside suspects, Attorney General Reno reportedly blew her stack and ordered to top-level summit meeting to set limits on the field agents tactics. As administration officials struggled to meet Clinton"s declared goal of bringing racially motivated arsons to a halt, new fires destroyed black churches in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Greenville, Texas. These fires inspired White House aides to scramble Clinton"s travel schedule to allow the stop in Green Leyville, South Carolina—where Clinton, in his familiar role as the nation"s consoler-in-chief, delivered a moving speech at the dedication of a black church that was burned out last year. But even Jackson acknowledged that Clinton must walk a fine line. Too much crusading by this president could prompt even more arsons by the loose cannons of the ultra right. Given the weird admixture of racism and simple loneness that lay behind these crimes, prayerful caution—and even a measure of forgiveness—seemed the wisest stance. "We want the world to know we are not angry with anyone", said Rev. A. Baldwin, summing up the tragedy, in Enid "we are a loving church. But it just broke my heart."

As the bankster phenomenon has so eloquently illustrated, Homo sapiens is exquisitely sensitive to injustice.【F1】 Many people grudgingly tolerated the astronomical incomes of financial traders, and even the cos-mological ones of banks' chief executives, when they thought those salaries were earned by honest labour. Now, so many examples to the contrary have emerged that toleration has vanished. 【F2】 Surprisingly, however, the psychological underpinnings of a sense of injustice—in particular, what triggers willingness to punish an offender, even at a cost to the punisher—have not been well established. But a recent experiment by Nichola Raihani of University College, London, and Katherine McAuliffe of Harvard, just published in Biology Letters, attempts to disentangle the matter. Dr. Raihani and Ms. McAuliffe tested two competing hypotheses. One is that the desire to punish is simple revenge for an offence. The other is that it is related to the offence' s consequences—specifically, whether or not the offender is left better off than the victim. Until recently, the temptation would have been to advertise for undergraduate volunteers for such a project. Instead, Dr. Raihani and Ms. McAuliffe decided to follow a new fashion in psychology and recruit their human guinea pigs through a system called Mechanical Turk. This arrangement, run by Amazon, a large internet firm, pays people registered with it (known as Turkers) small sums of money to do jobs for others.【F3】 That allowed the two researchers not only to gather many more volunteers (560) than would have been possible from the average student body, but also to spread the profile of those volunteers beyond the halls of academe and beyond the age of 21. 【F4】 On the face of things, this result suggests that what really gets people' s goat is not so much having money taken, but having it taken in a way that makes the taker better off than the victim. That will clearly bear further investigation, for example by looking at the case where the first player begins the game better off than the second.【F5】 It is intriguing, though, that even such trivial sums of money can provoke thoughts ofrevenge. In light of this, the fate awaiting those astronomically paid bankers could be a particularly nasty one.