不可抗力

死刑

端午节

CPI

Since most, if not all learning occurs through ______, relating one observation to another, it would be strange indeed if the study of other cultures did not also illuminate the study of our town.

For a man who wants the world to slow down, Carl Honore's moment of clarity came in, of all places, an airport. The Canadian journalist was leafing through a newspaper at Rome's Fiumicino airport when he spotted an ad for a collection of condensed, one-minute bedtime stories for kids. At first Honore, a self-described 'speedaholic,' was delighted at the idea of a more efficient bedtime experience for his 2-year-old son. Then he was horrified. 'Have I gone completely insane?' he asked himself, and realized the answer was 'probably.' Out of that epiphany came a best- selling book and a whole new career for Honore as an international spokesman for the concept of leisure.'I'm attacking the whole cultural assumption that faster is better and we must cram every waking hour with things to do,' says Honore, who now lives in London. In a world of bottom-line bosses and results-oriented parents, he dares speak up in favor of the unabridged fairy tale. It's a message people seem to want to hear. Since it appeared in April, In Praise of Slowness has been translated into 12 languages and sold some 60,000 copies, landing on best-seller lists in four countries; a British production company has bought television rights. Honore celebrates, perhaps a bit prematurely, a worldwide disillusionment with 'the cult of speed.' As evidence he cites the Slow Food rebellion against McDonald's that began in Italy and has spread its gospel of civilized dining and local products even to the unlikely precincts of New York and Chicago. In a world in which some parents send their offspring to prep courses for preschool, a growing number of schools around the world—about 800—are following the advice of the early 20th-century German educator Rudolf Steiner to encourage children to play and doodle to their hearts' content, putting off learning to read until as late as 7. Devotees of tantric sex attempt to emulate the rock star Sting, who once boasted of slowing down his lovemaking to the point where it lasted for eight hours. (He later confessed to exaggerating, but the goal is still out there. ) In his own life, Honore has substituted meditation for tennis and for television; he has taken off his wristwatch, which means he's less worried about getting somewhere on time and can drive there without speeding. These tokens of idleness are offset, regrettably, by the demands of being a best-selling author and guru to leisure- starved American executives, single mothers and college students who e-mail him for advice on slowing down and want it now.'Being a spokesman for slow has taken over my whole life,' he says, before dashing off for another interview. Oddly, though, Honore's book has yet to catch on in the country that arguably needs it most, the one that gave the world the assembly line and the one-minute manager. Chained to cell phones and Black Berrys, fueled by junk food and forced to work ever longer hours as their employers cut jobs, frazzled American workers suffer from what the Seattle-based independent television producer John de Graaf called Affluenza in his 2001 book of the same name. It is the collective malaise of a materialistic society that equates the good life with 'the goods life. ' 'Technology is playing a factor in making lives busier around the world,' says de Graaf, who runs a slowness advocacy group called Take Back Your Time.'It's all the more necessary to find ways to protect people's time off because you're on this electronic leash all the time.' By contrast, Europeans and even the famously efficient Japanese are more receptive. Slow Food held its second biennial gastronomic fair in Turin last month, drawing tens of thousands of visitors, including Prince Charles, who took a couple of hours out of a European tour to savor a pint of award-winning pale English ale. The Slow Cities movement has won the backing of municipal officials in more than 100 towns and cities in Europe, Japan and Brazil with a lengthy manifesto urging policies to reduce noise and traffic, preserve the local esthetic and gastronomic customs and establish more pedestrian zones and green spaces. The Society for the Deceleration of Time held its 14th annual meeting in Austria last month to promote what its organizers call 'a more conscious way of living.' Mastering relaxation isn't something to attempt on your own, according to society member Christian Lackner. 'When everyone is telling you to go faster, as an individual you do it,' says Lackner.'You need a movement, a way of building a group of people who want to resist in order to make it easier to say, 'No, I won't. ' ' Perhaps Americans need to be reassured that the slowness movement is not about fleeing to a cottage in rural Vermont. It's an effort to strike the right balance between work and leisure. A few enlightened companies like the accounting firm Ernst Young are urging employees not to check their office e-mail and phone messages on weekends. Just as the election campaign reached a fever pitch in late October, leisure-minded Americans in 10 states were holding seminars on the perils of overwork and giving each other 15-minute massages on the second annual Take Back Your Time Day. The date was picked because the nine weeks that remained until the end of the year equal the amount of time the average American works in excess of his counterparts in Western Europe. For that matter, if you believe the message on their T shirts, the average American works longer than the average medieval peasant. But the premium on long hours and productivity continues to dominate the American workplace. Take Back Your Time has issued a six-point agenda for legislative action that would require employers to provide a minimum of three weeks' annual paid vacation and one week of paid sick leave. But—in contrast to the widespread support these efforts have in European countries—only Sen. Edward Kennedy's office has expressed interest in the proposals. For the foreseeable future Americans are pretty much on their own in the revolt against the cult of speed. Aria Veciana-Suarez vowed to stop eating at her desk earlier this year after a repairman upended her computer keyboard and a shower of crumbs fell out of the plastic rows. The Miami Herald columnist has cut back on the number of speaking engagements she accepts and no longer sifts through readers' mail at her kids' after-school football games.'I don't have to use every minute of my day in a useful way,' says the mother of five.'Productivity has its own price, and it's a price that we don't often recognize.' At least until we find ourselves trying to shave a few minutes from the length of a bedtime story to our children.

The story is about a kindly, generous, cheerful ______ who loves and is loved by everyone.

Passage Two It is not compatible with the egalitarian ideal that there should be sharp differences in the scale of monetary reward for services performed. In New Zealand, care of the underdog has long since been a more important consideration than is the case in very many other countries. Successive governments may claim with some justice to have abolished poverty, but this has not been done without there taking place a narrowing of margins between the rewards for skilled and unskilled labor, with its consequent denialof incentive toacquire skill, to strive for self-improvement. The country's citizens have come to regard social security as their inalienable right, but by taking too readily for granted the State's obligation towards themselves they are apt to lose sight of the converse proposition that they themselves have obligations to the State. The reluctance to reward skilled labor at rates calculated to provide an incentive for acquiring skill has its counterpart in the reluctance to remunerate the nations' best scholars and scientists on a scale sufficient to keep a fair proportion of them at home. The fact is often deplored that so many young men of the highest ability prefer to take up a career overseas, but it is doubtful whether higher salaries would stem their exodus in more than a minor degree. Under any circumstances, regardless of monetary reward, the intellectual litewould be tempted to go abroad in search of a wider field of endeavor than can be found in so small acountry as New Zealand. In a society where great wealth is regarded as antisocial, it is natural that ostentation should be looked at askance. Marks of distinction are liable to be a handicap. For instance, the politician who accepts a title does not usually improve his chances of gaining or retaining office by doing so. Richard Seddon, it will be remembered, consistently and doubtless wisely, refused to accept a knighthood. Wealth carries with it a minimum of prestige; it is a positive disadvantage to the aspirant to a political career. Strongly marked individuality or eccentricity are seldom in evidence among New Zealanders, and even where they do exist, the qualities are tolerated rather than appreciated. The rule of conformity prevails, and if the American writer, Sydney Greenbie, is to be believed, it has already produced a considerable measure of standardization among the inhabitants of the Dominion. 'In face and feature, in mind and taste. ' writes Greenbie, 'the modern New Zealanders are so much alike that it is hard to remember the names of persons you meet casually for lack of distinguishing characteristics to which the eye can cling.' Under conditions such as those described above, it is not surprising that no privileged class should have come into existence through long possession of landed estate or other permanent source of income. Nevertheless, the claim that New Zealanders have developed a classless society can scarcely be substantiated. Snobbery, when discouraged in one quarter, is prone to appear in some new form elsewhere. Recent investigations by A. A. Congalton and R. J. Havighurst show that there is a fairly well defined and universal appreciation of the graduated social status attaching to various social occupations. Results of a survey in which a cross section of the public was asked to answer a series of apposite questions showed, for example, that doctors, lawyers, and big businessmen were graded above heads of Government Departments, clergymen, and university professors; that office workers rated higher than shop assistants, miners than wharf laborers, and so on. Incidentally, the investigation also brought to light the fact that may attempt to inquire into the existence of social distinctions within the community invariably roused resentment. A privileged class being also a leisured class, its rejection is in keeping with a deep-seated belief that work has a virtue in its own right, without regard to its usefulness. In pioneer days, when hands were few and subsistence hard to win, it was indeed a crime to remain idle, and the habit of seeing idleness as a vice has endured. At the beginning of the great slump, when Forbes the Prime Minister, shocked at what he had seen of the 'dole' during a visit to England, declared that so long as he retained office there would be no payment without work, his words appealed to a moral precept deeply inculcated not only in the minds of reactionaries but of many radicals as well.

For 40 years the sight of thousands of youngsters striding across the open moorland has been as much an annual fixture as spring itself. But the 2,400 school pupils who join the grueling Dartmoor Ten Tors Challenge next Saturday may be among the last to take part in the May tradition. The trek faces growing criticism from environmentalists who fear that the presence of so many walkers on one weekend threatens the survival of some of Dartmoor's internationally rare bird species. The Ten Tors Challenge takes place in the middle of the breeding season, when the slightest disturbance can jeopardize birds' chances of reproducing successfully. Experts at the RSPB and the Dartmoor National Park Authority fear that the walkers could frighten birds and even crush eggs. They are now calling for the event to be moved to the autumn, when the breeding season is over and chicks should be well established. Organisers of the event, which is led by about 400 Territorial Army volunteers, say moving it would be impractical for several reasons and would mean pupils could not train properly for the 55-mile trek. Dartmoor is home to 10 rare species of ground-nesting birds, including golden plovers, dunlins and lapwings. In some cases, species are either down to their last two pairs on the moor or are facing a nationwide decline. Emma Parkin, South-west spokeswoman for the PASPB, took part in the challenge as a schoolgirl. She said the society had no objections to the event itself but simply wanted it moved to another time of year. 'It is a wonderful activity for the children who take part but, having thousands of people walking past in one weekend when birds are breeding is hardly ideal,' she said. 'We would prefer it to take place after the breeding and nesting season is over. There is a risk of destruction and disturbance. If the walkers put a foot in the wrong place they can crush the eggs and if there is sufficient disturbance the birds might abandon the nest.' Helen Booker, an RSPB upland conservation officer, said there was no research into the scale of the damage but there was little doubt the walk was detrimental. 'If people are tramping past continually it can harm the chances of successful nesting. There is also the fear of direct trampling of eggs.' A spokesman for the Dartmoor National Park Authority said the breeding season on the moor lasted from early March to mid-July, and the Ten Tors Challenge created the potential for disturbance for March, when participants start training. To move the event to the autumn was difficult because children would be on holiday during the training period. There was a possibility that some schools in the Southwest move to a four-term year in 2004, 'but until then any change was unlikely. The authority last surveyed bird life on Dartmoor two year ago and if the next survey showed any further decline, it would increase pressure to move the Challenge,' he said. Major Mike Pether, secretary of the army committee that organises the Challenge, said the event could be moved if there was the popular will. 'The Ten Tors has been running for 42 years and it has always been at this time of the year. It is almost in tablets of stone but that's not to say we won't consider moving if there is a consensus in favour. However, although the RSPB would like it moved, 75 per cent of the people who take part want it to stay as it is,' he said. Major Pether said the trek could not be moved to earlier in the year because it would conflict with the lambing season, most of the children were on holiday in the summer, and the winter weather was too harsh. Datmoor National Park occupies some 54 sq km of hills topped by granite outcrops known as 'Tors' with the highest Tor-capped hill reaching 621m. The valleys and dips between the hills are often sites of bogs to snare the unwary hiker. The moor has long been used by the British Army as a training and firing range. The origin of the event stretches back to 1959 when three Army officers exercising on the moor thought it would provide a challenge for civilians as well as soldiers. In the first year 203 youngsters took up the challenges. Since then teams, depending on age and ability, face hikes of 35, 45 or 55 miles between 10 nominated Tors over two days. They are expected to carry everything they need to survive.

The painting he bought at the street market the other day was a ______ forgery.

半导体

After a show sales start early in the year, mobile homes have been gaining favor as ______ to increasingly expensive conventional housing.

Catherine's mother was ______ ill last summer, but fortunately, she was making a slow but steady recovery after an operation was done on her lung.

A static technocratic order, by contrast, requires a very different sort of personality: a drone who does what he is told and shuns novelty, someone who avoids facing, or ______ challenges.

Generous public funding of basic science would ______ considerable benefits for the country's health, wealth and security.

Nicholas Chauvin, a French soldier, aired his veneration of Napoleon Bonaparte so ______ and unceasingly that he became the laughingstock of all people in Europe.

The house by the sea had a mysterious air of ______ about it.

The Commonwealth

Passage One Men cannot manufacture blood as efficiently as women can. This makes surgery riskier for men. Men also need more oxygen because they do not breathe as often as women. But men breathe more deeply and this exposes them to another risk. When the air is polluted, they draw more of it into their lungs. A more recent and chilling finding is the effect of automobile and truck exhaust fumes on children's intelligence. These exhaust fumes are the greatest source of lead pollution in cities. Researchers have found thatthe children with the highest concentration of lead in their bodies have the lower scores on intelligence tests and that boys' score lower than girls. It is possible that these low scores are connected to the deeper breathing that is typical of the male. Men's bones are larger than women's and they are arranged somewhat differently. The feminine walk that evokes so many whistles is a matter of bone structure. Men have broader shoulders and a narrower pelvis, which enables them to stride out with no waste motion. A woman's wider pelvis, designed for childbearing, forces her to put more movement into each step she takes with the result that she displays a bit of a jiggle and sway as she walks. If you think a man is brave because he climbs a ladder to clean out the roof gutters, don't forget that it is easier for him than for a woman. The angle at which a woman's thigh is joined to her knees makes climbing awkward for her, no matter whether it is a ladder or stairs or a mountain that she is tackling. A man's skin is thicker than a woman's and not nearly as soft. The thickness prevents the sun's radiation from getting through, which is why men wrinkle less than women do. Women also stay cooler in summer. The fat layer helps insulate them against heat. Men's fat is distributed differently. And they do not have that layer of it underneath their skin. In fact, they have considerably less fat than women and more lean mass. Forty-one percent of a man's body is muscle compared to thirty-five percent for women, which means men have more muscle power. When it comes to strength, almost 90 percent of a man's weight is strength compared to about 50 percent of woman's weight. The higher proportion of muscle to fat makes it easier for men to lose weight. Muscle burns up five more calories a pound that fat does just to maintain itself. So when a man goes on a diet. the pounds roll off much faster. For all men's muscularity they do not have the energy reserves women do. They have more start-up energy, but the fat tucked away in women's nooks and crannies provides a rich energy reserve that men lack. Cardiologists at the University of Alabama who tested healthy women in treadmills discovered that over years the female capacity for exercise far exceeds the male capacity. A woman of sixty who is in good health can exercise up to 90 percent of what she could do when she was twenty. A man of sixty has 60 percent left of his capacity as a twenty-year-old.

Financial institutions will spend huge sums, rolling our nationwide networks in Britain, France, Spain and perhaps in Germany. But the seeds for the most ______ growth will be sown in America, where most banks have been slow to experiment with digital dollars until now.