You are going to read a text about the tips on work-life balance, followed by a list of evidences. Choose the best evidence from the list A-G for each numbered subheading(1-5). There are two extra examples which you do not need to use. Lisa McGonagle has a husband, three kids and a public relations business in Boston. Her hectic life speaks volumes about what time management means to her. As she puts it: "I"m running all the time. " The same may apply to you. And that makes time management central to the health and growth of your life, profession and business. Truth should be known: Not everyone has a genuine handle on the effective use of time. So you"re not alone. Here are some suggestions that may help you get time on your side: 【C1】Don"t overbook. This may seem unusual to people who try to crowbar as much as possible into every workday. The problem is: Things rarely go according to a prearranged agenda. That means a lot of time falling through the cracks chasing down appointments, unreturned phone calls and other items that simply aren"t going to happen. 【C2】Prioritize ruthlessly. The secret to booking your time effectively boils down to knowing what" s important and what can wait. But it"s critical to use the sharpest knife possible in trimming the essential from the secondary. 【C3】Learn how to say no. One of the biggest land mines to effective time management is recognizing you don"t have to agree to everything and with everyone. Use your priority criteria to identify requests that simply aren"t worth your time. 【C4】Organize. Bringing your time into line isn"t just a matter of scheduling. The mechanics of how you operate can be every bit as important. That means organizing most every element to allow as smooth a workflow as possible. 【C5】Use technology. Although personal habits and practices can do wonders for time management, don"t overlook technology as yet another weapon to make the most effective use of your workday. [A]"Don"t try to plan on doing too many things," says McGonagle. "Assume that only 50% of the things you plan on doing today will actually get done. If you don"t, you"ll just waste valuable time trying to find out why things didn"t happen. " [B]"Be grateful for what goes right and learn from your mistakes," says Kurth. "Act as if they were scenes in a movie that you get to retake. " [C]For instance, Microsoft Business Contact Manager lets you organize a wide array of customer and product particulars, allowing quick and easy access. "Sticky notes are one of the worst things in the world," says McGonagle. "You should live by your database. That way, nothing is ever forgotten. " [D]"I"ve learned that saying no to one thing opens the door to saying yes to something else," says Kurth. "That can mean anything from cleaning my desk to getting a good night"s sleep. " [E]Part of effective time management is knowing when to shut things down. Turning off a cell phone or other wireless means of communication establishes boundaries. In short, it helps you balance your personal and professional time. [F]"Learn to ask questions that help you determine the level of urgency," says Krista Kurth, co-author of "Running on Plenty at Work". "Negotiate longer lead times whenever you can and don"t give into the "instant-and-immediate answer" syndrome. Treating everything as top priority is draining and depleting. " [G]"Everything in your business should be set up using logical systems so anyone needing anything can find it when they need it," says Peggy Duncan, an Atlanta-based personal productivity authority. "Eliminating clutter and the chaos it causes will give you a gift of 240 to 288 hours every year. "

BSection III Writing/B

OnCustomerServiceWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)giveyourcomments.

Could the bad old days of economic decline be about to return? Since OPEC agreed to supply-cuts in March, the price of crude oil has jumped to almost $26 a barrel, up from less than $10 last December. This near-tripling of oil prices calls up scary memories of the 1973 oil shock, when prices quadrupled, and 1979-80, when they also almost tripled. Both previous shocks resulted in double-digit inflation and global economic decline. So there are the headlines warning of gloom and doom this time? The oil price was given another push up this week when Iraq suspended oil experts. Strengthening economic growth, at the same time as winter grips the northern hemisphere, could push the price higher still in the short item. Yet there are good reasons to expect the economic consequences now to be less severe than in the 1970s. In most countries the cost of crude oil now accounts for a smaller share of the price of petrol than it did in the 1970s. In Europe, tuxes account for up to four-fifths of the retail price, so even quite big changes in the price of crude have a more muted effect on pump prices than in the past. Rich economies are also less dependent on oil than they were, and so less sensitive to swings in the oil price. Energy conservation, a shift to other fuels and a decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries have reduced oil consumption. Software, consultancy and mobile telephones use far less oil than steel or car production. For each dollar of GDP (in constant prices) rich economies now use nearly 50% less oil than in 1973. The OECD estimates in its latest Economic Outlook that, oil prices averaged $22 a barrel for a full year, compared with $13 in 1998, this would increase the oil import bill in rich economies by only 0.25-0.5% of GDP. That is less than one-quarter of the income loss in 1974 or 1980. On the other hand, oil-importing emerging economies—to which heavy industry has shifted—have become more energy-intensive, and se could he more seriously squeezed. One more reason net to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that, unlike the rises in the 1970s, it has not occurred against the background of general commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the world is only just emerging from economic decline. The Economist"s commodity price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices jumped by 70%, and in 1979 by almost 30%.

Maybe unemployment isn"t so bad after all. A new study says that having a demanding, unstable and thankless job may make you even【C1】______than not having a job at all. 【C2】______that a paid position gives workers purpose and a structured role, researchers had【C3】______thought that having any job would make a person happier than being【C4】______. That turns out to be true if you move into a high-quality job—but taking a bad job is【C5】______to mental health. Australian National University researchers looked at how various psychosocial work attributes affect 【C6】______. They found that poor-quality jobs—those with high demands, low control over decision making, low job【C7】______and an effort-reward imbalance—had more adverse effects on mental health than joblessness. Moving from unemployment to a job with high psychosocial quality was associated with【C8】______in mental health, the authors said【C9】______, the mental health of people in the least-satisfying jobs declined the【C10】______over time—and the worse the job, the more it affected workers" welfare. These findings【C11】______the importance of employment to a person"s welfare. Rather than seeking a new job, the study suggests, people who are unemployed or【C12】______in lousy work should seek new【C13】______that offer more security, autonomy and a 【C14】______workload. But that"s a lot【C15】______said than done. 【C16】______employers could be persuaded to be more【C17】______of the mental health of their workers—happier employees are a【C18】______to their employers. "The【C19】______of work conditions," the researchers noted, "may【C20】______a health cost, which over the longer term will be both economically and socially counterproductive."

On Losing Weight A. Title: On Losing Weight 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: "Losing weight has gained much popularity today, especially among girls." OUTLINE: 1. Many young people are keen on losing weight 2. The reasons 3. How to lose weight healthily

It was the biggest scientific grudge match since the space race. The Genome Wars had everything: two groups with appealing leaders ready to fight in a scientific dead heat, pushing the limits of technology and rhetoric as they battled to become the first to read every last one of the 3 billion DNA "letters" in the human body. The scientific importance of the work is unquestionable. The completed DNA sequence is expected to give scientists unprecedented insights into the workings of the human body, revolutionizing medicine and biology. But the race itself, between the government"s Human Genome Project and Rockville, Md., biotechnology company Celera Genomics, was at least partly symbolic, the public/private conflict played out in a genetic lab. Now the race is over. After years of public attacks and several failed attempts at reconciliation, the two sides are taking a step toward a period of calm. HOP head Francis Collins (and Ari Patrinos of the Department of Energy, an important ally on the government side) and Craig Venter, the founder of Celera, agreed to hold a joint press conference in Washington this Monday to declare that the race was over (sort of), that both sides had won (kind of) and that the hostilities were resolved (for the time being). No one is exactly sure how things will be different now. Neither side will be turning off its sequencing machines any time soon—the "finish lines" each has crossed are largely arbitrary points, "first drafts" rather than the definitive version. And while the joint announcement brings the former Genome Warriors closer together than they"ve been in years, insiders say I that future agreements are more likely to take the form of coordination, rather than outright collaboration. The conflict blew up this February when Britain"s Welcome Trust, an HGP participant, released a confidential letter to Celera outlining the HGP"s complaints. Venter called the move "a lowlife thing to do", but by spring, there were the first signs of a thaw. "The attacks and nastiness are bad for science and our investors", Venter told Newsweek in March, "and fighting back is probably not helpful". At a cancer meeting earlier this month, Venter and Collins praised each other"s approaches, and expressed hope that all of the scientists involved in sequencing the human genome would be able to share the credit By late last week, that hope was becoming a reality as details for Monday"s joint announcement were hammered out. Scientists in both camps welcomed an end to the hostilities. "If this ends the horse race, science wins". With their difference behind them, or at least set aside, the scientists should now be able to get down to the interesting stuff, figuring how to make use of all that data.

Relativity theory has had a profound influence on our picture of matter by forcing us to modify our concept of a particle in an essential way.【F1】 In classical physics, the mass of an object had always been associated with an indestructible material substance, with some "stuff" of which all things were thought to be made. Relativity theory showed that mass has nothing to do with any substance, but is a form energy. Energy, however, is a dynamic quantity associated with activity, or with processes.【F2】 The fact that the mass of a particle is equivalent to a certain of energy means that the particle can no longer be seen as a static object, but has to be conceived as a dynamic pattern. This new view of particles was initiated by Dirac when he formulated a relativistic equation describing the behavior of electrons.【F3】 Dirac"s theory was not only extremely successful in accounting for the fine details of atomic structure, but also revealed a fundamental symmetry between matter and anti-matter. It predicted the existence of an anti-matter with the same mass as the electron but with an opposite charge. This positively charged particle, now called the positron, was indeed discovered two years after Dirac had predicted it. The symmetry between matter and anti-matter implies that for every particle there exists an antiparticles with equal mass and opposite charge. Pairs of particles and antiparticles can be created if enough energy is available and can be made to turn into pure energy in the reverse process of destruction.【F4】 These processes of particle creation and destruction had been predicted from Dirac"s theory before they were actually discovered in nature, and since then they have been observed millions of times. The creation of material particles from pure energy is certainly the most spectacular effect of relativity theory, and it can only be understood in terms of the view of particles outlined above.【F5】 Before relativistic particle physics, the constituents of matter had always been considered as being either elementary units which were indestructible and unchangeable, or as composite objects which could be broken up into their constituent parts. The basic question was whether one could divide matter again and again, or whether one would finally arrive at some smallest indivisible units.

It is not just Indian software and "business-process outsourcing" firms that are benefiting from the rise of the internet. Indian modern art is also on an upward spiral, driven by the aspirations of newly rich Indians, especially those living abroad, who use the internet to spot paintings and track prices at hundreds of gallery and auction websites. Prices have risen around 20-fold since 2000, particularly for prized names such as Tyeb Mehta and F. N. Souza. There would have been "no chance" of that happening so fast without the internet, says Arun Vadehra, who runs a gallery in Delhi and is an adviser to Christie"s, an international auction house. He expects worldwide sales of Indian art, worth $200 million last year, to double in 2006. It is still a tiny fraction of the $ 30 billion global art market, but is sizeable for an emerging market. For newly rich—often very rich—non-resident Indians, expensive art is a badge of success in a foreign land. "Who you are, and what you have, are on your walls," says Lavesh Jagasia, an art dealer in Mumbai. Indian art may also beat other forms of investment. A painting by Mr. Mehta that fetched $ 1. 58 million last September would have gone for little more than $ 100,000 just four years ago. And a $ 22 million art-investment fund launched in July by Osian"s, a big Indian auction house, has grown by 4. 1% in its first two months. Scant attention was paid to modern Indian art until the end of the 1990s. Then wealthy Indians, particularly those living abroad, began to take an interest. Dinesh Vazirani, who runs Saffronart, a leading Indian auction site, says 60% of his sales go to buyers overseas. The focus now is on six auctions this month. Two took place in India last week; work by younger artists such as Surendran Nair and Shibu Natesan beat estimates by more than 70%. Sotheby"s and Christie"s have auctions in New York next week, each with a Tyeb Mehta that is expected to fetch more than $1 million. The real question is the fate of other works, including some by Mr. Souza with estimates of up to $ 600,000. If they do well, it will demonstrate that there is strong demand and will pull up prices across the board. This looks like a market with a long way to run.

Immediately after the Civil War, however, the diet began to change. (46) Rail transportation increased the supply and improved the quality of the milk that reached urban centers; cold storage and refrigerator cars made possible the greater consumption of fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, and fresh fish; and commercial canning extended the range of appetizing and healthful foods. Subsequently food statistics indicated an increased consumption of dairy products, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, sugar and syrups, coffee, tea, cocoa, and spices. Decreased consumption was shown for meats, potatoes, and grain products. (47) By and large, the American diet continued to reflect a considerable reliance upon animal products: rather than on grains. which meant that a relatively large acreage was required to feed the American public. Whereas a grain and fish diet, such as in Japan, requires only a quarter of an acre high yield cropland and no pasture per capita, the American diet requires about two and a half acres of cropland and ten acres of pasture per capita-Also it indicated a shift toward the so-called protective foods, toward those high in vitamins and proteins. (48) This change was greatly furthered by governmental food inspection (the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906), by the increasing, use of mechanical refrigerators in the 1920"s and 1910"s and of freezers for frozen food during recent decades. In the years after World War I a food revolution took place that was reminiscent of the one that occurred after the Civil War. The output of the food manufacturing industry quadrupled from 1900 to 1920. (49) In that interval, as we have mentioned earlier, home canning gave way to commercial canning and the labor of housekeeping was lightened. Fortunately most of the major dietary changes that have taken place since the middle of the nineteenth century have resulted in better nutrition for the population. In port, these shifts have taken place because of a preference for new foods rather than old, but in part, they have been made because the new foods were advocated by nutritionists. Apparently American dietary customs were not so deeply ingrained as to prevent change in the interests of better health. (50) Possibly one factor that has contributed to the readiness of Americans to accept new foods or food preparations as the general familiarity most have with a variety of regional dishes coming from many different lands. Within a small area in New York City or San Francisco, one can find restaurants specializing in French, Italian, German, Turkish, Arabian, or Chinese cuisine. And at a Chinese restaurant in the United States the chef and waiter are as likely as not to he Oriental.

House-price falls are gathering momentum and are spreading across the UK, according to a monthly poll of surveyors which on Monday delivered its gloomiest reading for nearly 12 years. Fifty-six percent of surveyors contacted by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reported price falls in the three months to October. Only 3 percent saw prices rise in their area, compared with 58 percent as recently as May. There was further evidence of slowing activity in the property market as the number of sales per surveyor dived to a nine-year low. Unsold stock on agents" books has increased 10 percent since the summer. Ian Perry, Rics" national housing spokesman, said it was now very clear that buyers were unsettled by higher interest rates. The Bank of England raised rates five times to 4.75 percent over the last year to cool the property boom. But he also blamed comments by Mervyn King, the Bank"s governor, and misleading media headlines for "injecting additional uncertainty into the market by continued speculation over more serious price declines". "Mervyn King presumably felt that he had to be more explicit in the summer when people were still buying. His warnings of a drop in property prices then have had the desired effect. "But our concern now is that the pendulum is swinging too far," he said. Last week, the Bank"s monetary policy committee predicted for the first time that "house prices may fall modestly for a period" in its November inflation report. The Nationwide and Halifax mortgage lenders both showed a modest monthly decline in house prices in their latest loan approval data. Although the majority of surveyors expect prices to fall further in the next three months,Mr. Perry stressed there were signs of stabilizing demand from buyers in London. "London tends to be ahead of the rest of the market. And agents are telling us that more people are looking to buy. It is much better than it was," Mr. Perry said. However, falling prices continued to spread from the South of England as surveyors reported the first clear decline in prices in Yorkshire and the Humber, the north and the north- west. Scotland remained the only region with rising prices.

Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age, one of these is too great an absorption in the past. (46) One should not live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about friends who are dead. One"s thoughts must be directed to the future, and to things about which there is something to be done. This is not always easy; one"s own past is gradually increasing weight. It is easy to think to oneself that one"s emotions used to be more vivid than they are, and one"s mind more keen. If this is true it should be forgotten, and it is forgotten it will probably not be true. The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the hope of finding strength in its vitality. When your children are grown up they want to live their own lives, and if you continue to be as interested in them as you were when they were young, you are likely to become a burden to them, unless they are unusually in sensible. (47) I don"t mean that one should be without interest in them, but one"s interest should be contemplative and, if possible, philanthropic, but not too emotional. Animals become indifferent to their young as soon as their young can look after themselves, but human beings, owing to the length of infancy, find this less easy. (48) I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong impersonal interests leading to suitable activities. It is in this sphere that long experience is really fruitful, and that the wisdom bore of experience can be used without becoming a burden. It is no use telling grown-up children not to make mistakes, both because they will not believe you, and because mistakes are an essential part of education. (49) But if you are one of those who are incapable of impersonal interests, you may find that your life will be empty unless you concern yourself with your children and grandchildren. In that case you must realize that while you can still help them in material ways, as by making them an allowance or knitting them jumpers, you must not expect that they will enjoy your company. Some old people are troubled by the fear of death. In the young there is justification for this feeling. (50) Young men who have reason to fear they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows and has done whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is some-what ignoble.

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

It is the staff of dreams and nightmares. Where Tony Blair"s attempts to make Britain love the euro have fallen on deaf ears, its incarnation as notes and coins will succeed. These will be used not just in the euro area but in Britain. As the British become accustomed to the euro as a cash currency, they will warm to it—paving the way for a yes note in a referendum. The idea of euro creep appeals to both sides of the euro argument. According to the pros, as Britons become familiar with the euro, membership will start to look inevitable, so those in favor are bound to win. According to the antis, as Britons become familiar with the euro, membership will start to look inevitable, so those opposed must mobilize for the fight. Dream or nightmare, euro creep envisages the single currency worming its way first into the British economy and then into the affections of voters. British tourists will come back from their European holidays laden with euros, which they will spend not just at airports but in high street shops. So, too, will foreign visitors. As the euro becomes a parallel currency, those who make up the current two-to-one majority will change their minds. From there, it will be a short step to decide to dispense with the pound. Nell Kinnock, a European commissioner and former leader of the Labor Party, predicts that the euro will soon become Britain"s second currency. Hans Eichel, the German finance minister, also says that it will become a parallel currency in countries like Switzerland and Britain. Peter Hain, the European minister who is acting as a cheerleader for membership, says the euro will become "a practical day-to-day reality and that will enable people to make a sensible decision about it". As many as a third of Britain"s biggest retailers, such as Marks and Spencer, have said they will take euros in some of their shops. BP has also announced that it will accept euros at some of its garages. But there is less to this than meet the eyes. British tourists can now withdraw money from cashpoint from European holiday destinations, so they are less likely than in the past to end up with excess foreign money. Even if they do, they generally get rid of it at the end of their holidays, says David Southwell, a spokesman for the British Retail Consortium(BRC).

TheImportanceofDiligenceWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)interpretitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

Suppose you lived at the Rehabilitation Center and were under tender care. You write a letter to extend your thanks to your staff"s consideration. Begin your letter as follows: Dear staff, You should write about 100 words and do not sign your own name, using "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Google already has a window into our souls through our Internet searches and it now has insight into our ailing bodies too. The Internet giant is using its vast database of individual search terms to【B1】______the emergence of flu up to two weeks【B2】______government epidemiologists. Google Flu Trends uses the 【B3】______ of people to seek online help for their health problems. By tracking 【B4】______ for terms such as "cough", "fever" and "aches and pains", it claims to be able to 【B5】______ estimate where flu is【B6】______. Google tested the idea in nine regions of the US and found it could accurately predict flu【B7】______between 7 and 14 days earlier than the federal centres for disease control and prevention. Google hopes the idea could also be used to help【B8】______other diseases. Flu Trends is limited【B9】______the US. Jeremy Ginsberg and Matt Mohebb. Two software engineers【B10】______in the project, said that【B11】______in Google search queries can be very【B12】______. In a blog post on the project they wrote: "It turns【B13】______that traditional flu surveillance systems take 1 to 2 weeks to collect and【B14】______surveillance data but Google search queries can be【B15】______counted very quickly. By making our estimates【B16】______each day, Flu Trends may provide an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza." They explained that【B17】______information health would be kept【B18】______. "Flu Trends can never be used to identify individual users【B19】______we rely on anonymised, aggregated counts of how of ten certain search queries【B20】______each week."

Seven years ago, a group of female scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology produced a piece of research showing that senior women professors in the institute"s school of science had lower salaries and received fewer resources for research than their male counterparts did. Discrimination against female scientists has cropped up elsewhere. One study conducted in Sweden, of all places—showed that female medical-research scientists had to be twice as good as men to win research grants. These pieces of work, though, were relatively small-scale. Now, a much larger study has found that discrimination plays a role in the pay gap between male and female scientists at British universities. Sara Connolly, a researcher at the University of East Anglia"s school of economics, has been analyzing the results of a survey of over 7,000 scientists and she has just presented her findings at this year"s meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Norwich. She found that the average pay gap between male and female academics working in science, engineering and technology is around ￡1,500 ($2,850) a year. That is not, of course, irrefutable proof of discrimination. An alternative hypothesis is that the courses of men"s and women"s lives mean the gap is caused by something else; women taking "career breaks" to have children, for example, and thus rising more slowly through the hierarchy. Unfortunately for that idea, Dr. Connolly found that men are also likely to earn more within any given grade of the hierarchy, Male professors, for example, earn over ￡4,000 a year more than female ones. To prove the point beyond doubt, Dr. Connolly worked out how much of the overall pay differential was explained by differences such as seniority, experience and age, and how much was unexplained, and therefore suggestive of discrimination. Explicable differences amounted to 77% of the overall pay gap between the sexes. That still left a substantial 23% gap in pay, which Dr. Connolly attributes to discrimination. Besides pay, her study also looked at the "glass-ceiling" effect—namely that at all stages of a woman"s career she is less likely than her male colleagues to be promoted. Between postdoctoral and lecturer level, men are more likely to be promoted than women are, by a factor of between 1.04 and 2.45. Such differences are bigger at higher grades, with the hardest move of all being for a woman to settle into a professorial chair: Of course, it might be that, at each grade, men do more work than women, to make themselves more eligible for promotion. But that explanation, too, seems to be wrong. Unlike the previous studies, Dr. Connolly"s compared the experience of scientists in universities with that of those in other sorts of laboratory. It turns out that female academic researchers face more barriers to promotion, and have a wider gap between their pay and that of their male counterparts, than do their sisters in industry or research institutes independent of universities. Private enterprise, in other words, delivers more equality than the supposedly egalitarian world of academia does.

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 tree 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 neuroscientists still don"t know quite how we do it.

Any normal species would be delighted at the prospect of cloning. No more nasty surprises like sickle cell or Down syndrome—just batch after batch of high-grade and, genetically speaking, immortal offspring! But representatives of the human species are responding as if someone had proposed adding Satanism to the grade-school Curriculum. Suddenly, perfectly secular folks are throwing around words like sanctity and retrieving medieval-era arguments against the pride of science. No one has proposed burning him at the stake, but the poor fellow who induced a human embryo to double itself has virtually recanted proclaiming his reverence for human life in a voice, this magazine reported", choking with emotion". There is an element of hypocrisy to much of the anti-cloning furor, or if not hypocrisy, superstition. The fact is we are already well down the path leading to genetic manipulation of the creepiest sort. Life-forms can be patented, which means they can be bought and sold and potentially traded on the commodities markets. Human embryos are life-forms, and there is nothing to stop anyone from marketing them now, on the same shelf with the Cabbage Patch dolls. In fact, any culture that encourages in vitro fertilization has no right to complain about a market in embryos. The assumption behind the in vitro industry is that some people"s genetic material is worth more than others" and deserves to be reproduced at any expense. Millions of low-income babies die every year from preventable ills like dysentery, while heroic efforts go into maintaining yuppie zygotes in test tubes at the unicellular stage. This is the dread "nightmare" of eugenics in familiar, marketplace form which involves breeding the best-paid instead of the best. Cloning technology is an almost inevitable byproduct of in vitro fertilization. Once you decide to go to the trouble of in vitro, with its potentially hazardous megadoses of hormones for the female partner and various indignities for the male, you might as well make a few backup copies of any viable embryo that"s produced. And once you"ve got the backup organ copies, why not keep a few in the freezer, in case Junior ever needs a new kidney or cornea? The critics of cloning say we should know what we"re getting into, with all its Orwellian implications. But if we decide to outlaw cloning, we should understand the implications of that. We would be saying in effect that we prefer to leave genetic destiny to the crap shooting of nature, despite sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs and all the rest, because ultimately we don"t trust the market to regulate life itself. And this may be the hardest thing of all to acknowledge: that it isn"t so much 21st century technology we fear, as what will happen to that technology in the hands of old-fashioned 20th century capitalism.