It was two years ago today that the hunting ban came into force, supposedly ending centuries of tradition. However, the law has been an unmitigated failure—not that either side is shouting about it. It was a nightmare vision that struck fear and loathing into the hearts of millions. When the hunting ban became law, it was said, 16,000 people would lose their jobs, thousands of hounds would be put down, rotting carcasses would litter the countryside, hedgerows would disappear, riders would face on-the-spot fines, law-abiding people from doctors to barristers would be dragged from their horses and carted off to prison, while dog owners would be prosecuted if their mutt caught a rabbit. These were just some of the claims as desperate countryside campaigners battled to save their sport in the lead-up to the hunting ban, which Labour rammed into law using the Parliament Act on November 18, 2004. For many, the fears were real. Others exaggerated as they fought an increasingly aggressive anti-hunting lobby which had rejected acres of independent evidence affirming that hunting is the most humane way of killing foxes. In the battle to "fight prejudice, fight the ban", every emotive argument was deployed. For its part, the anti-hunting brigade extravagantly claimed that the ban would put an end to the rich parading in red jackets. A senior Labour MP, Peter Bradley, admitted in this newspaper that it was, as many suspected, about "class war". He lost his seat shortly afterwards. But people in red coats did not disappear. In fact, none of the forecasts came true. What did happen was something nobody had predicted: the spectacular revival and growth of hunting with hounds. In short, the hunting ban has been a failure. Today, on the second anniversary of the ban's coming into force on February 18, 2005, new figures show that participation in the sport has never been higher. It is so cheerful that two new packs have been formed, something that has not happened for centuries. They include the seductively named Private Pack, set up by the financier Roddy Fleming in Gloucestershire. It operates on an invitation-only basis, a sort of hunting private members club. This can only mean one thing: like it or not, hunting is cool. Young people are taking it up, enticed by the element of rebellion and the mystique of what actually happens as hunts attempt to keep within the law. The hunting ban has been a complete failure because ______.

______ the First World War

Mother was so weak after her operation that the doctors wondered if they would be able to______her through.

The evil manners would be ______ root and branch due to the forceful action taken by the local government.

Visanto Melina, R.D.

In ancient times people who were thought to have the ability to ______ dreams were likely to be highly respected.

A few decades ago

I was ______ in my reading

He's trying to ______ all the support he can obtain for the political party he's formed.

Anyone who trains animals recognizes that human and animal perceptual capacities are different. For most humans, seeing is believing, although we do occasionally brood about whether we can believe our eyes. The other senses are largely ancillary; most of us do not know how we might go about either doubting or believing our noses. But for dogs, scenting is believing. A dog's nose is to ours as the wrinkled surface of our complex brain is to the surface of an egg. A dog who did comparative psychology might easily worry about our consciousness or lack thereof, just as we worry about the consciousness of a squid. We who take sight for granted can draw pictures of scent, but we have no language for doing it the other way about, no way to represent something visually familiar by means of actual scent. Most humans cannot know, with their limited noses, what they can imagine about being deaf, blind, mute, or paralyzed. The sighted can, for example, speak of a blind person as "in the darkness," but there is no corollary expression for what it is that we are in relationship to scent. If we tried to coin words, we might come up with something like "scent-blind." But what would it mean? It couldn't have the sort of meaning that "color-blind" and "tone-deaf" do, because most of us have experienced what "tone" and "color" mean in those expressions, but we don't know what "scent" means in the expression "scent-blind." Scent for many of us can be only a theoretical, technical expression that we use because our grammar requires that we have a noun to go in the sentences we are prompted to utter about animals' tracking. We don't have a sense of scent. What we do have is a sense of smell—for Thanksgiving dinner and skunks and a number of things we call chemicals. So if Fido and I are sitting on the terrace, admiring the view, we inhabit worlds with radically different principles of phenomenology. Say that the wind is to our backs. Our world lies all before us, within a 180 degree angle. The dog's—well, we don't know, do we? He sees roughly the same things that I see but he believes the scents of the garden behind us. He marks the path of the black-and white cat as she moves among the roses in search of the bits of chicken sandwich I let fall as I walked from the house to our picnic spot. I can show em>that/em> Fido is alert to the kitty, but not em>how/em>, for my picture-making modes of thought too easily supply falsifyingly literal representations of the cat and the garden and their modes of being hidden from or revealed to me. The phrase "The other senses are largely ancillary" (Paragraph 1) is used by the author to suggest that ______.

She was artful and could always get round her parents in the end.

There was a ______ of his latest novel in a local newspaper immediately after its publication.

The liberal arts education asks that we confront our unexamined world view with historical understanding, new theories and intercultural ______.

Mobility is one of the characteristics often ______ executives, and they must accustom themselves to moving quite regularly.

There was a noisy ______ at the back of the hall when the speaker began his address.

Astronaut Jim Voss has enjoyed many memorable moments in his career, including three space flights and one space walk. But he recalls with special fondness a decidedly earthbound (为地球引力所束缚的) experience in the summer of 1980,when he participated in the NASA-ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program. Voss, then a science teacher at West Point, was assigned to the Marshall Space Flight Center's propulsion (推进) lab in Alabama to analyze why a hydraulic fuel pump seal on the space shuttle was working so well when previous seals had failed. It was a seemingly tiny problem among the vast complexities of running the space program. Yet it was important to NASA because any crack in the seals could have led to destructive results for the astronauts who relied on them. "I worked a bit with NASA engineers," says Voss, "but I did it mostly by analysis. I used a handheld calculator, not a computer, to do a thermodynamic (热力学) analysis." At the end of the summer, he, like the other NASA-ASEE fellows working at Marshall, summarized his findings in a formal presentation and detailed paper. It was a valuable moment for Voss because the ASEE program gave him added understanding of NASA, deepened his desire to fly in space, and intensified his application for astronaut status. It was not an easy process. Voss was actually passed over when he first applied for the astronaut program in 1978. Over the next nine years he reapplied repeatedly, and was finally accepted in 1987. Since then he has participated in three space missions. The 50 year-old Army officer, who lives in Houston, is now in training for a four-month mission as a crew member on the International Space Station starting in July 2000. Voss says the ASEE program is wonderful for all involved. "It brings in people from the academic world and gives NASA a special property for a particular period of time. It brings some fresh eyes and fresh ideas to NASA, and establishes a link with our colleges and universities," Voss explains. "There is an exchange of information and an exchange of perspectives that is very important." For the academic side, Voss says, the ASEE program also "brings institutions of higher learning more insight into new technology. We give them an opportunity to work on real-world problems and take it back to the classroom." Why was the hydraulic fuel pump seal important for the space shuttle?

Being somewhat short-sighted

On an average of six times a day

Writing in a straightforward as opposed to ______ style, the author produced ______ argument that shed new light on a controversial topic.