阅读理解 When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up. Rather than cloaking his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came right out and said he was leaving "to pursue my goal of running a company." Broadcasting his ambition was "very much my decision," McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for the first time with the board of Hartford Financial Services Group, which named him CEO and chairman on September 29. McGee says leaving without a position lined up gave him time to reflect on what kind of company he wanted to run. It also sent a clear message to the outside world about his aspirations. And McGee isn't alone. In recent weeks the No. 2 executives at Avon and American Express quit with the explanation that they were looking for a CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans in response to shareholder pressure, executives who don't get the nod also may wish to move on. A turbulent business environment also has senior managers cautious of letting vague pronouncements cloud their reputations. As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liberum Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders. The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poached. Says Korn/Ferry senior partner Dennis Carey: "I can' t think of a single search I' ve done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first." Those who jumped without a job haven't always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana a decade age, saying she wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commodities exchange. Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in 2005 with ambitions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institution three years later. Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading for top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad one. "The traditional rule was it's safer to stay where you are, but that's been fundamentally inverted," says one headhunter. "The people who' ve been hurt the worst are those who' ve stayed too long."

阅读理解 Since 1989, Dave Thomas, who died at age 69, was one of the most recognizable faces on TV. He appeared in more than 800 commercials for the hamburger chain named for his daughter. "As long as it works," he said in 1991, "I'll continue to do those commercials." Even though he was successful, Thomas remained troubled by his childhood. "He still won't let anyone see his feet, which are out of shape because he never had proper fitting shoes," Wendy said in 1993. Born to a single mother, he was adopted as a baby by Rex and Auleva Thomas of Kalamazoo in Michigan. After Auleva died when he was 5, Thomas spent years on the road as Rex traveled around seeking construction work. "He fed me," Thomas said, "and if I got out of line, he'd beat me." Moving out on his own at 15, Thomas worked, first as a waiter, in many restaurants. But he had something much better in mind. "I thought, if I owned a restaurant," he said, "I could eat for free." A 1956 meeting with Harland Sanders led Thomas to a career as the manager of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant that made him a millionaire in 1968. In 1969, after breaking with Sanders, Thomas started the first Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers, in Columbus, Ohio, which set itself apart by serving made-to-order burgers. With 6,000 restaurants worldwide, the chain now makes $6 billion a year in sales. Although troubled by his own experience with adoption, Thomas, married since 1954 to Lorraine, 66, and with four grown kids besides Wendy, felt it could offer a future for other children. He started the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption in 1992. In 1993, Thomas, who had left school at 15, graduated from Coconut Greek High School in Florida. He even took Lorraine to the graduation dance party. The kids voted him most likely to succeed. "The Dave you saw on TV was the real Dave," says friend Pat Williams. "He wasn't a great actor or a great speaker. He was just Joe Everybody".

阅读理解 If you come to Australia, leave your naughty habits at the door. If you live here, get back in your box. The Australian government announced in the Federal Budget on Tuesday that it will be slogging smokers top dollar for a pack of ciggies. Right now, they cost on average A$25 ($18.91) to A$30 for a packet of 20 or 25 cigarettes, which would already seem like highway robbery to anyone living in any other country on earth. Now, the government will be increasing the cost of cigarettes by 12.5% annually for four years. The increase will smack smokers in September each year. If you work off a packet costing A$25 today, by 2020 it will set you back a hefty A$40. So unless you are living in a life of luxury, it is probably going to break the bank. Must be time to read the "How to stop smoking" book your old neighbor Dave recommended in 2012. If you think you'll just bring the cigarettes in through the duty free back door, think again. The government is reducing the amount of cigarettes you can bring into the county from 50 cigarettes to 25 cigarettes. Not 25 packs, 25 individual cigarettes. That's one packet. This price hike will earn the government A$4.7 billion and it will take the tax excise on cigarettes to almost 69% of the average price of a cigarette currently. This is in line with recommendations from the World Health Organization, which advised governments to increase tax by 70% so that it becomes unaffordable. "These changes will improve the health of Australians by reducing their exposure to tobacco products and will ensure that tobacco products consumed domestically are fully taxed and comply with Australian regulations." the government noted in the budget papers. This increase will see Australia remaining easily the most expensive place in the world for smokers. In 2015, cigarettes in the city of Melbourne cost 142% more than in New York. Cigarettes in Sydney were 130% more, according to a Deutsche Bank report. Australia already has plain packaging laws, which see cigarettes wrapped in generic mould green color and slapped with a photograph of a dying baby. No more sneaky ciggies for you, casual smoker!

阅读理解 Scientists have found that although we are prone to snap overreactions, if we take a moment and think about how we are likely to react, we can reduce or even eliminate the negative effects of our quick, hard-wired responses. Snap decisions can be important defense mechanisms: if we are judging whether someone is dangerous, our brains and bodies are hard-wired to react very quickly, within milliseconds. But we need more time to assess other factors. To accurately tell whether someone is sociable, studies show, we need at least a minute, preferably five. It takes a while to judge complex aspects of personality, like neuroticism or open-mindedness. But snap decisions in reaction to rapid stimuli aren't exclusive to the interpersonal realm. Psychologists at the University of Toronto found that viewing a fast-food logo for just a few milliseconds primes us to read 20 percent faster, even though reading has little to do with eating. We unconsciously associate fast food with speed and impatience and carry those impulses into whatever else we're doing. Subjects exposed to fast-food flashes also tend to think a musical piece lasts too long. Yet we can reverse such influences. If we know we will overreact to consumer products or housing options when we see a happy face (one reason good sales representatives and real estate agents are always smiling), we can take a moment before buying. If we know female job screeners are more likely to reject attractive female applicants, we can help screeners understand their biases—or hire outside screeners. John Gottman, the marriage expert, explains that we quickly "thin slice" information reliably only after we ground such snap reactions in "thick sliced" long-term study. When Dr. Gottman really wants to assess whether a couple will stay together, he invites them to his island retreat for a much longer evaluation: two days, not two seconds. Our ability to mute our hard-wired reactions by pausing is what differentiates us from animals: dogs can think about the future only intermittently or for a few minutes. But historically we have spent about 12 percent of our days contemplating the longer term. Although technology might change the way we react, it hasn't changed our nature. We still have the imaginative capacity to rise above temptation and reverse the high-speed trend.

阅读理解 When American soldiers return home from war with disabilities, they often suffer twice—first from their combat injuries, next from the humiliation of government dependency. Wounded veterans learn they have two basic choices: They can receive almost $3, 000 a month in disability benefits along with medical care and access to other various welfare programs, or they can try to find a job. Especially in this economy, it's no wonder that many find that first option hard to turn down. Mark Duggan, an economics professor at Stanford University, reports that enrollment in U.S. veterans' disability programs rose from 2.3 million in 2001 to 3.9 million in 2014. The percentage of veterans receiving benefits doubled, from 8.9% in 2001 to 18% in 2014. Disability services for veterans now consume $59 billion of the $151 billion department of Veterans Affairs budget. In the 1980s and 1990s, male veterans were more likely to be in the labor force than non-veterans. But since 2000, that has changed dramatically. Now there is a 4% gap between veteran and non-veteran labor participation, with veteran participation lower. Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, founder of The Mission Continues, explains how soldiers who served their country are transformed into welfare receivers who live off their country. "When veterans come home from war they are going through a tremendous change in identity, " he says. "Then the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, and others, encourage them to view themselves as disabled." By the time they come to Greitens' non-profit organization, "We meet a number of veterans who see themselves as charity cases and are not sure anymore what they have to contribute." There are also more practical factors driving the disability boom. One is the expansion of qualification criteria. In 2000, for instance, type 2 diabetes was added as a disability because of evidence linking exposure to Agent Orange with the onset of the disease. Heart disease has also been added to the list. Another possible factor is that younger veterans seem less against welfare than their parents' generation. Veterans who have served since the 1990s are much more likely to sign up for disability than their older counterparts; 1 in 4 younger veterans is on disability, versus just 1 in 7 of those over age 54. We shouldn't go back to the bad-old days when veterans were afraid to admit weakness. But Lt. Col. Daniel Gade is one of many veterans who think our disability system is harmful psychologically, to former soldiers. Gade lost his leg in combat in 2005 and now teaches at West Point. He recently gave a talk to disabled veterans at Ft. Carson, Colo., in which he urged them to rejoin the workforce. "People who stay home because they are getting paid enough to get by on disability are worse off, " he warned. "They are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. They are more likely to live alone." What a waste of human potential, especially since most veterans on disability still have their prime working years ahead of them when they're discharged. We could solve this problem by changing the way we view—and label—veterans with disabilities. As Gade noted in a recent article, "Veterans should be viewed as resources, not as damaged goods." He recommended that "efforts to help veterans should begin by recognizing their abilities rather than focusing only on their disabilities, and should serve the ultimate aim of moving wounded soldiers to real self-sufficiency." On a more practical note, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs could reallocate resources to spend more on job training and less on disability. Current placement programs are sadly inadequate. We are good at sending soldiers off to war. Yet when these young men and women return home, they are essentially told, "We'll give you enough for a reasonably comfortable life, but we won't help you find a job." It is unreasonable that we are condemning thousands of young veterans who served their country to life on the dole rather than enabling them to reenter the workforce with the necessary accommodations.

阅读理解 Teaching children to read well from the start is the most important task of elementary schools. But relying on educators to approach this task correctly can be a great mistake. Many schools continue to employ instructional methods that have been proven ineffective. The staying power of the "look-say" or "whole-word" method of teaching beginning reading is perhaps the most flagrant example of this failure to instruct effectively. The whole-word approach to reading stresses the meaning of words over the meaning of letters, thinking over decoding, developing a sight vocabulary of familiar words over developing the ability to unlock the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. It fits in with the self-directed, "learning how to learn" activities recommended by advocates of "open" classrooms and with the concept that children have to be developmentally ready to begin reading. Before 1963, no major publisher put out anything but these "Run-Spot-Run" readers. However, in 1955, Rudolf Flesch touched off what has been called "the great debate" in beginning reading. In his best-seller Why Johnny Can't Read, Flesch indicted the nation's public schools for miseducating students by using the look-say method. He said—and more scholarly studies by Jeane Chall and Rovert Dykstra later confirmed—that another approach to beginning reading, founded on phonics, is far superior. Systematic phonics first teaches children to associate letters and letter combinations with sounds; it then teaches them how to blend these sounds together to make words. Rather than building up a relatively limited vocabulary of memorized words, it imparts a code by which the pronunciations of the vast majority of the most common words in the English language can be learned. Phonics does not devalue the importance of thinking about the meaning of words and sentences; it simply recognizes that decoding is the logical and necessary first step.

阅读理解 An article in Scientific America has pointed out that empirical research says that, actually, you think you're more beautiful than you are. We have a deep-seated need to feel good about ourselves and we naturally employ a number of self-enhancing strategies to achieve this. Social psychologists have amassed oceans of research into what they call the "above average effect ," or " illusory superiority," and shown that, for example, 70% of us rate ourselves as above average in leadership, 93% in driving and 85% at getting on well with others—all obviously statistical impossibilities. We rose-tint our memories and put ourselves into self-affirming situations. We become defensive when criticized, and apply negative stereotypes to others to boost our own esteem. We stalk around thinking we 're hot stuff. Psychologist and behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley oversaw a key study into self-enhancement and attractiveness. Rather than have people simply rate their beauty compared with others, he asked them to identify an original photograph of themselves from a lineup including versions that had been altered to appear more and less attractive. Visual recognition, reads the study, is "an automatic psychological process, occurring rapidly and intuitively with little or no apparent conscious deliberation." If the subjects quickly chose a falsely flattering image—which most did— they genuinely believed it was really how they looked. Epley found no significant gender difference in responses. Nor was there any evidence that those who self-enhanced the most (that is, the participants who thought the most positively doctored pictures were real) were doing so to make up for profound insecurities. In fact, those who thought that the images higher up the attractiveness scale were real directly corresponded with those who showed other markers for having higher self-esteem. "I don't think the findings that we have are any evidence of personal delusion," says Epley. "It's a reflection simply of people generally thinking well of themselves." If you are depressed, you won't be self-enhancing. Knowing the results of Epley's study, it makes sense that many people hate photographs of themselves viscerally—on one level, they don't even recognize the person in the picture as themselves. Facebook, therefore, is a self-enhancer's paradise, where people can share only the most flattering photos, the cream of their wit, style, beauty, intellect and lifestyles. It' s not that people' s profiles are dishonest, says Catalina Toma of Wisconsin-Madison University, "but they portray an idealized version of themselves."

阅读理解 There are people who are especially attracted to the notion of "climbing the ladder" so as to increase their status, financial position, and sense of self-worth. In part, as a result of the work ethic, these people are internally "driven" to work. Not infrequently, foreign visitors have observed that Americans spend an inordinate amount of time working and, as a consequence, Americans have little time for leisure or personal relationships. In American English a new word "workaholic" has been created to describe an individual who is as addicted to work as an alcoholic is to liquor. There are conflicting points of view about workaholics. Those concerned with problems of mental stress believe workaholics abuse themselves physically and mentally. Others hold that workaholics are valuable members of society because they are extremely productive. The Americans culture values achievement, efficiency, and production—a workaholic supports these values. Despite the presence of workaholics, there is a growing realization in the United States that excessive work demands can be physically and mentally harmful. Many people have been rebelling against the work ethic, claiming that when a job is so important, personal relationships suffer and relaxation becomes secondary. Consequently there has been a shift in values, with more emphasis being given to personal relationships and non-work activities. Increased leisure time in the United States has not changed the idea that work and play are distinct activities. "There is a belief that it is desirable" to work hard and play hard, and undesirable to combine the two. In many offices, stores and factories socializing among employees is discouraged. An employee under pressure at work often cannot afford to respond to social calls and visits. However, the amount of personal contact on the job depends on the nature of the work. People are ambivalent toward work; it is, at the same time, glorified and belittled. In the words of former President Richard Nixon: "The 'work ethic' holds that labor is good in itself; that a man or woman becomes a better person by virtue of the act of working. America's competitive spirit, the 'work ethic' of this people, is alive and well ..." Another viewpoint is expressed in an Anacin commercial: "I like my job and am good at it, but it sure grinds me down sometimes, and the last thing I need to take home is a headache."

阅读理解 In spite of "endless talk of difference", American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people. There is "the democratizing uniformity of dress and discourse, and the casualness and absence of deference" characteristic of popular culture. People are absorbed into "a culture of consumption" launched by the 19th-century department stores that offered "vast arrays of goods in an elegant atmosphere. Instead of intimate shops catering to a knowledgeable elite" these were stores "anyone could enter, regardless of class or background. This turned shopping into a public and democratic act." The mass media, advertising and sports are other forces for homogenization. Immigrants are quickly fitting into this common culture, which may not be altogether elevating but is hardly poisonous. Writing for the National Immigration Forum, Gregory Rodriguez reports that today's immigration is neither at unprecedented levels nor resistant to assimilation. In 1998 immigrants were 9.8 percent of population: in 1900, 13.6 percent. In the 10 years prior to 1990, 3.1 immigrants arrived for every 1, 000 residents: in the 10 years prior to 1890, 9.2 for every 1, 000. Now, consider three indices of assimilation—language, home ownership and intermarriage. The 1990 Census revealed that "a majority of immigrants from each of the fifteen most common countries of origin spoke English 'well' or 'very well' after ten years of residence." The children of immigrants tend to be bilingual and proficient in English. "By the third generation, the original language is lost in the majority of immigrant families." Hence the description of America as a "graveyard" for languages. By 1996 foreign-born immigrants who had arrived before 1970 had a home ownership rate of 75.6 percent, higher than the 69.8 percent rate among native-born Americans. Foreign-born Asians and Hispanics"have higher rates of intermarriage than do U.S.-born whites and blacks." By the third generation, one third of Hispanic Women are married to non-Hispanics, and 41 percent of Asian-American women are married to non-Asians. Rodriguez notes that children in remote villages around the world are fans of superstars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Garth Brooks, yet "some Americans fear that immigrants living within the United States remain somehow immune to the nation' s assimilative power." Are there divisive issues and pockets of seething anger in America? Indeed. It is big enough to have a bit of everything. But particularly when viewed against America's turbulent past, today's social indices hardly suggest a dark and deteriorating social environment.

阅读理解 Old stereotypes die hard. Picture a video-game player and you will likely imagine a teenage boy, by himself, compulsively hammering away at a game involving rayguns and aliens that splatter when blasted. Ten years ago that might have borne some relation to reality. But today a gamer is as likely to be a middle-aged commuter playing "Angry Birds" on her smartphone. In America, the biggest market, the average game-player is 37 years old. Two-fifths are female. Over the past ten years the video-game industry has grown from a small business to a huge, mainstream one. With global sales of $56 billion in 2010, it is more than twice the size of the recorded-music industry. Despite the downturn, it is growing by almost 9% a year. Is this success due to luck or skill? The answer matters, because the rest of the entertainment industry has tended to treat gaming as being a lucky beneficiary of broader technological changes. Video gaming, unlike music, film or television, had the luck to be born digital. In fact, there is plenty for old media to learn. Video games have certainly been swept along by two forces: demography and technology. The first gaming generation—the children of the 1970s and early 1980s—is now over 30. Many still love gaming, and can afford to spend far more on it now. Meanwhile rapid improvements in computing power have allowed game designers to offer experiences that are now often more cinematic than the cinema. But even granted this good fortune, the game-makers have been clever. They have reached out to new customers with new methods. They have branched out into education, corporate training and even warfare, and have embraced digital downloads and mobile devices with enthusiasm. Though big-budget games are still popular, much of the growth now comes from "casual" games that are simple, cheap and playable in short bursts on mobile phones or in web browsers. The industry has excelled in a particular area—pricing. In an era when people are disinclined to pay for content on the web, games publishers were quick to develop "freemium" models, where you rely on non-paying customers to build an audience and then extract cash only from a fanatical few. As gaming comes to be seen as just another medium, its tech-savvy approach could provide a welcome shot in the arm for existing media groups.

阅读理解 Lonely people, it seems, are at greater risk than the gregarious of developing illnesses associated with chronic inflammation, such as heart disease and certain cancers. A paper published last year in the Public Library of Science, Medicine, shows the effect on mortality of loneliness is comparable with that of smoking and drinking after examining the results of 148 previous studies and controlled for factors such as age and pre-existing illness. Steven Cole of the University of California, Los Angeles, thinks he may know why this is so. He told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C., about his work studying the expression of genes in lonely people. Dr. Cole harvested samples of white blood cells from both lonely and gregarious people. He then analysed the activity of their genes, as measured by the production of a substance called messenger RNA. This molecule carries instructions from the genes telling a cell which proteins to make. The level of messenger RNA from most genes was the same in both types of people. There were several dozen genes, however, that were less active in the lonely, and several dozen others that were more active. Moreover, both the less active and the more active gene types came from a small number of functional groups. Broadly speaking, the genes less active in the lonely were those involved in staving off viral infections. Those that were more active were involved in protecting against bacteria. Dr. Cole suspects this could help explain not only why the lonely are iller, but how, in evolutionary terms, this odd state of affairs has come about. The crucial bit of the puzzle is that viruses have to be caught from another infected individual and they are usually species-specific. Bacteria, in contrast, often just lurk in the environment, and may thrive on many hosts. The gregarious are therefore at greater risk than the lonely of catching viruses, and Dr. Cole thus suggests that past evolution has created a mechanism which causes white cells to respond appropriately. Conversely, the lonely are better off ramping up their protection against bacterial infection, which is a bigger relative risk to them. What Dr. Cole seems to have revealed, then, is a mechanism by which social environment reaches inside a person' s body and tweaks its genome so that it responds appropriately. It is not that the lonely and the gregarious are genetically different from each other. Rather, their genes are regulated differently, according to how sociable an individual is. Dr. Cole thinks this regulation is part of a wider mechanism that tunes individuals to the circumstances they find themselves in.

阅读理解 Come on—Everybody's doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what most of us think of when we hear the words peer pressure. It usually leads to no good— drinking, drugs and casual sex. But in her new book Join the Club, Tina Rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in which organizations and officials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their lives and possibly the word. Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, offers a host of examples of the social cure in action: In South Carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called Rage Against the Haze sets out to make cigarettes uncool. In South Africa, an HIV-prevention initiative known as loveLife recruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers. The idea seems promising, and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lameness of many pubic-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to mobilize peer pressure for healthy habits, and they demonstrate a seriously flawed understanding of psychology. "Dare to be different, please don't smoke!" pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers— teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in. Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure. But on the general effectiveness of the social cure, Rosenberg is less persuasive. Join the Club is filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biological factors that make peer pressure so powerful. The most glaring flaw of the social cure as it's presented here is that it doesn't work very well for very long. Rage Against the Haze failed once state funding was cut. Evidence that the loveLife program produces lasting changes is limited and mixed. There' s no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. An emerging body of research shows that positive health habits—as well as negative ones—spread through networks of friends via social communication. This is a subtle form of peer pressure: we unconsciously imitate the behavior we see every day. Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. It's like the teacher who breaks up the troublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. The tactic never really works. And that's the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the real world, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.

阅读理解 The Nobels are the originals, of course. Alfred Nobel, the man who invented deadly explosives, decided to try and do something good with all the money he earned, and gave prizes to people who made progress in literature, science, economics and—perhaps most importantly—peace. Not all awards are as noble as the Nobel. Even though most countries have a system for recognizing, honoring and rewarding people who have done something good in their countries, there are now hundreds of awards and awards ceremonies for all kinds of things. The Oscars are probably the most famous, a time for the (mostly) American film industry to tell itself how good it is, an annual opportunity for big stars to give each other awards and make tearful speeches. As well as that there are also the Golden Globes, apparently for the same thing. But it's not only films—now there are also Grammies, Brits, the Mercury Prize and the MTV and Q awards for music. In Britain, a writer who wins the Booker Prize can expect to see their difficult, literary novel hit the bestseller lists and compete with The Da Vinci Code for popularity. The Turner Prize is an award for a British contemporary artist—each year it causes controversy by apparently giving a lot of money to artists who do things like displaying their beds, putting animals in glass cases or—this year-—building a garden shed. Awards don't only exist for the arts. There are now awards for Sports Personality of the Year, for European Footballer of the Year and World Footballer of the Year. This seems very strange— sometimes awards can be good to give recognition to people who deserve it, or to help people who don't make much money carry on their work without worrying about finances, but professional soccer players these days certainly aren't short of cash. Many small towns and communities all over the world also have their own awards ceremonies, for local writers or artists, or just for people who have graduated from high school or got a university degree. Even the British Council has its own awards for "Innovation in English Language Teaching". Why have all these awards and ceremonies appeared recently? Shakespeare never won a prize, nor did Leonardo da Vinci or Adam Smith or Charles Dickens. It would be possible to say, however, that in the past, scientists and artists could win "patronage" from rich people—a king or a lord would give the artist or scientist money to have them paint their palaces or help them develop new ways of making money. With the change in social systems across the world, this no longer happens. Scientific research is now either funded by the government or by private companies. Perhaps awards ceremonies are just the most recent phase of this process. However, there is more to it than that. When a film wins an Oscar, many more people will go and see it, or buy the DVD. When a writer wins the Nobel Prize, many more people buy their books. When a group wins the MTV awards, the ceremony is seen by hundreds of thousands of people across the world. The result? The group sells a lot more records. Most awards ceremonies are now sponsored by big organizations or companies. This means that it is not only the person who wins the award who benefits but also the sponsors. The MTV awards, for example, are great for publicizing not only music, but also MTV itself. On the surface, it seems to be a "win-win" situation, with everyone being happy, but let me ask you a question—how far do you think that publicity and marketing are winning here, and how much genuine recognition of achievement is taking place?

阅读理解 In a survey conducted by research firm Harris Interactive, 71% of Americans said that spending extra money on travel during the holiday season is worthwhile—so long as it affords them time with family and friends. But just because traveling may be the right thing to do, that doesn't mean it has to be the expensive thing to do. Traveling involves many hidden costs that, once you're aware of them, are easy to spot—and even easier to eliminate. To start, consider transportation fees. For example, if you're driving, fill up the gas tank before traveling on the highway, where it's much costlier, says Clarky Davis, a personal finance expert. And make sure your car is in good condition by checking your heating vents, keeping up with routine maintenance and ensuring your tires are properly inflated, all of which help the car achieve favorable fuel economy. Furthermore, not only does a tow car (救援车) cause inconvenience; it also means extra costs. For those opting to fly, first, be aware of how much it costs to check a bag. Most airlines are charging for every checked bag by weight, but prices vary from carrier to carrier. If you can manage to pack everything into a carry-on, you'll save at least $15. Brooke Ferencsik, a travel expert, suggests considering secondary airports when booking your flight. These airports often are less crowded and frequently offer cheaper tickets. And when it comes to your actual destination, don' t assume that hotels are going to cut back on fees simply because they're desperate to draw customers. "They won't be adding or increasing fees, but they won't be decreasing them either," says Ferencsik. The best defense against extra fees is to read about the hotel' s rates online, before you make a reservation. "Be aware of surcharges for everything from housekeeping to groundskeeping to use of the in-room safe," says Ferenesik. Some hotels even install a sensor within the mini bar, charging guests for simply touching the items, let alone eating or drinking them. "From airlines to hotels to rental cars, they've all got hidden fees you need to be aware of," says Ferencsik. "Do your homework and ask questions."

阅读理解 People often complained about not getting "a good night's sleep" , but sleep patterns differ from person to person. Most adults require six to eight hours of sleep to function well, while others survive on only a few hours. Still, most people today think of sleep as one continuous period of downtime. This is not the way people used to sleep. According to researchers in earlier times, people divided sleep by first sleep a few hours, waking up, then going back to sleep. Before the 18th century, people had no gas or electricity in their homes. Fire, candles, or oil lamps were the common forms of lighting. This lack of artificial lighting in homes contributed to people's sleep patterns. It made sense for people to go to bed early. If you live in this time period, you might be a hard-working farmer, and you would come home, eat and quickly fall into bed exhausted. You would probably go to sleep at 9: 00 or 10: 00 P.M. In this first period of sleep—called first sleep—you would typically sleep until midnight or shortly afterwards. Halfway through the night during a period some call the watch, or watching period. When you came out of first sleep, you would stay in bed and relax quietly. You might talk with a bedfellow, meditate on the day's events or the meaning of a dream, or just let your mind wander. If you enjoyed writing or drawing, you might get out of bed to write a poem or story or draw a picture. Then you would start to feel sleepy, so would return to bed and fall asleep again for your second sleep. This period would continue until early morning when daylight arrived. Again, with no artificial lighting in homes, people naturally woke up early to take advantage of sunlight. Today, human may consider divided sleep a strange habit, but sleep researchers say that it is actually a more natural sleep pattern. Dr. Thomas Wehr of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has studied human sleep. He thinks that modern sleep problems occur because the orderly, natural way of sleep is breaking through the more recent continuous sleep pattern. Wehr and other scientists believe that artificial lighting has altered the way people sleep. In a research study, he asked 15 adults to rest and sleep in darkness for 14 hours (from 6: 00 P.M. to 8: 00 A.M.). At first, the subjects took a few hours to get to sleep, and then slept 11 hours a night. Then overtime, they switched to divided sleep. They fell asleep for about 3 or 5 hours in the evening, stay awake for an hour or two and then slept again for four hours till early morning. Unlike the people in the study, we modern humans generally do not practice divided sleep. However, many of us have the experience of waking up in the middle of the night. We usually consider this a sleeping "problem" , but perhaps we should look at it as natural behavior. Divided sleep may be the way we should all be sleeping. A first sleep followed by a relation period and a second period of sleep could help all of us to beat the stress of our fast-paced lives.

阅读理解 Scientists have found that although we are prone to snap overreactions, if we take a moment and think about how we are likely to react, we can reduce or even eliminate the negative effects of our quick, hard-wired responses. Snap decisions can be important defense mechanisms; if we are judging whether someone is dangerous, our brains and bodies are hard-wired to react very quickly, within milliseconds. But we need more time to assess other factors. To accurately tell whether someone is sociable, studies show, we need at least a minute, preferably five. It takes a while to judge complex aspects of personality, like neuroticism or open-mindedness. But snap decisions in reaction to rapid stimuli aren't exclusive to the interpersonal realm. Psychologists at the University of Toronto found that viewing a fast-food logo for just a few milliseconds primes us to read 20 percent faster, even though reading has little to do with eating. We unconsciously associate fast food with speed and impatience and carry those impulses into whatever else we're doing. Subjects exposed to fast-food flashes also tend to think a musical piece lasts too long. Yet we can reverse such influences. If we know we will overreact to consumer products or housing options when we see a happy face (one reason good sales representatives and real estate agents are always smiling), we can take a moment before buying. If we know female job screeners are more likely to reject attractive female applicants, we can help screeners understand their biases—or hire outside screeners. John Gottman, the marriage expert, explains that we quickly "thin slice" information reliably only after we ground such snap reactions in "thick sliced" long-term study. When Dr. Gottman really wants to assess whether a couple will stay together, he invites them to his island retreat for a much longer evaluation: two days, not two seconds. Our ability to mute our hard-wired reactions by pausing is what differentiates us from animals: dogs can think about the future only intermittently or for a few minutes. But historically we have spent about 12 percent of our days contemplating the longer term. Although technology might change the way we react, it hasn 't changed our nature. We still have the imaginative capacity to rise above temptation and reverse the high-speed trend.

阅读理解 Two friends have an argument that breaks up their friendship forever, even though neither one can remember how the whole thing got started. Such sad events happen over and over in high schools across the country. In fact, according to an official report on youth violence, "In our country today, the greatest threat to the lives of children and adolescents is not disease or starvation or abandonment, but the terrible reality of violence". Given that this is the case, why aren't students taught to manage conflict the way they are taught to solve math problems, drive cars, or stay physically fit? First of all, students need to realize that conflict is unavoidable. A report on violence among middle school and high school students indicates that most violent incidents between students begin with a relatively minor insult. For example, a fight could start over the fact that one student eats a peanut butter sandwich each lunchtime. Laughter over the sandwich can lead to insults, which in turn can lead to violence. The problem isn't in the sandwich, but in the way students deal with the conflict. Once students recognize that conflict is unavoidable, they can practice the golden rule of conflict resolution: stay calm. Once the student feels calmer, he or she should choose words that will calm the other person down as well. Rude words, name-calling, and accusation only add fuel to the emotional fire. On the other hand, soft words spoken at a normal sound level can put out the fire before it explodes out of control. After both sides have calmed down, they can use another key strategy for conflict resolution: listening. Listening allows the two sides to understand each other. One person should describe his or her side, and the other person should listen without interrupting. Afterward, the listener can ask non-threatening questions to clarify the speaker's position. Then the two people should change roles. Finally, students need to consider what they are hearing. This doesn't mean trying to figure out what's wrong with the other person. It means understanding what the real issue is and what both sides are trying to accomplish. For example, a shouting match over a peanut butter sandwich might happen because one person thinks the other person is unwilling to try new things. Students need to ask themselves questions such as these: How did this start? What do I really want? What am I afraid of? As the issue becomes clearer, the conflict often simply becomes smaller. Even if it doesn't, careful thought helps both sides figure out a mutual solution. There will always be conflict in schools, but that doesn't mean there needs to be violence. After students in Atlanta started a conflict resolution program, according to Educators for Social Responsibility, "64% of the teachers reported less physical violence in the classroom; 75% of the teachers reported an increase in student cooperation; and 92% of the students felt better about themselves". Learning to resolve conflicts can help students deal with friends, teachers, parents, bosses, and coworkers. In that way, conflict resolution is a basic life skill that should be taught in schools across the country.

阅读理解 Last year I lived in Chile for half a year as an exchange student with the American Field Service. Compared to most visitors, I didn't travel much. I lived with a Chilean family and had the responsibilities of any Chilean teenager. I went to school every day, in uniform. I had good days and bad days and days that I didn't understand. Chuquicamata, my host community, is a mining camp in the Atacama Desert. There is no disco, no shopping center, no museum or beach. Driveways must be watered daily to keep the dust down. When I arrived here, I was scared. It was so different from the urban middle-class America I was accustomed to. There were lost dogs on the streets, and a constant cloud of brick-colored dust came from the mine. There was no downtown, few smoothly paved streets, and little to do for amusement. The people worked extremely hard. Rain was a rare phenomenon; earthquakes and windstorms were frequent. I had studied Spanish for two and a half years and was always one of the best students in my class. But in my first week in Chile I was barely able to communicate and desperate for one person to whom I could explain my shock. I couldn't speak the thoughts in my head—and there were so many. Most exchange students experience this like me. Culture shock presents itself in everything from increased aggression toward the people to lack of appetite or weight gain and depression. I was required to overcome all difficulties. Being an exchange student is not easy. As time passed, everything changed. I began to forget words in English and to dream in Spanish and love Chilean food. I got used to not depending on expensive things for fun. Fun in Chuquicamata was being with people. And I took math, physics, chemistry, biology, Spanish, art, and philosophy. But the sacrifices were nothing compared to the gain. I learned how to accept as well as to succeed in another culture. I now know the world is my community and have a much deeper understanding of both myself and others.

阅读理解 Two years ago, Rupert Murdoch's daughter, Elisabeth, spoke of the "unsettling dearth of integrity across so many of our institutions". Integrity had collapsed, she argued, because of a collective acceptance that the only "sorting mechanism" in society should be profit and the market. But "it's us, human beings, we the people who create the society we want, not profit" . Driving her point home, she continued: "It's increasingly apparent that the absence of purpose, of a moral language within government, media or business could become one of the most dangerous goals for capitalism and freedom." This same absence of moral purpose was wounding companies such as News International, she thought, making it more likely that it would lose its way as it had with widespread illegal telephone hacking. As the hacking trial concludes—finding guilty one ex-editor of The News of the World, Andy Coulson, for conspiring to hack phones, and finding his predecessor, Rebekah Brooks, innocent of the same charge—the wider issue of dearth of integrity still stands. Journalists are known to have hacked the phones of up to 5, 500 people. This is hacking on an industrial scale, as was acknowledged by Glenn Mulcaire, the man hired by The News of the World in 2001 to be the point person for phone hacking. Others await trial. This long story still unfolds. In many respects, the dearth of moral purpose frames not only the fact of such widespread phone hacking but the terms on which the trial took place. One of the astonishing revelations was how little Rebekah Brooks knew of what went on in her newsroom, how little she thought to ask and the fact that she never inquired how the stories arrived. The core of her successful defence was that she knew nothing. In today's world, it has become normal that well-paid executives should not be accountable for what happens in the organisations that they run. Perhaps we should not be so surprised. For a generation, the collective doctrine has been that the sorting mechanism of society should be profit. The words that have mattered are efficiency, flexibility, shareholder value, business-friendly, wealth generation, sales, impact and, in newspapers, circulation. Words degraded to the margin have been justice, fairness, tolerance, proportionality and accountability. The purpose of editing The News of the World was not to promote reader understanding, to be fair in what was written or to betray any common humanity. It was to ruin lives in the quest for circulation and impact. Ms Brooks may or may not have had suspicions about how her journalists got their stories, but she asked no questions, gave no instruction—nor received traceable, recorded answers.

阅读理解 For centuries in Spain and Latin America, heading home for lunch and a snooze with the family was some thing like a national right, but with global capitalism standardizing work hours, this idyllic habit is fast becoming an endangered pleasure. Ironically, all this is happening just as researchers are beginning to note the health benefits of the afternoon nap. According to a nationwide survey, less than 25 percent of Spaniards still enjoy siestas. And like Spain, much of Latin America has adopted Americanized work schedules, too, with shortened lunch times and more rigid work hours. Last year the Mexican government passed a law limiting lunch breaks to one hour and requiring its employees to work their eight-hour shift between 7 am and 6 p.m. Before the mandate, workers would break up the shift—going home midday for a long break with the family and returning to work until about 9 or 10 p.m. The idea of siesta is changing in Greece, Italy and Portugal, too, as they rush to join their more "industrious" counterparts in the global market. Most Americans I know covet sleep, but the idea of taking a nap mid-afternoon equates with laziness, un employment and general sneakiness. Yet according to a National Sleep Survey poll, 65 percent of adults do not get enough sleep. Numerous scientific studies document the benefits of nap taking, including one 1997 study on the deleterious effects of sleep deprivation in the journal Internal Medicine. The researchers found that fatigue harms not only marital and social relations but worker productivity. According to Mark Rosekind, a former NASA scientist and founder of Solutions in Cupertino, Calif, which educates businesses about the advantages of sanctioning naps, we're biologically programmed to get sleepy between 3 and 5 p.m. and 3 and 5 a.m. Our internal timekeeper—called the circadian clock—operates on a 24-hour rotation and every 12 hours there's a dip. In accordance with these natural sleep rhythms, Rosekind recommends that naps be either for 40 minutes or for two hours. Latin American countries, asserts Rosekind, have had it right all along. They've been in sync with their clocks: we haven't. Since most of the world is sleep-deprived, getting well under the recommended eight hours a night (adults get an average of 6.5 hours nightly), we usually operate on a kind of idle midday. Naps are even more useful now that most of us forfeit sleep because of insane work schedules, longer commute times and stress, In a study published last April, Brazilian medical researchers noted that blood pressure and arterial blood pressure dropped during a siesta.