阅读理解The demoralizing environment, decrepit (老朽的)building and minimal materials make the high school experience for these children an uphill baffle. Merely graduating from such a high school is difficult, much less becoming a high-caliber science or engineering student. Schools with students from a higher socioeconomic level would not tolerate the obstacles I encountered daily. Improvements need to be made efficiently and made soon, or the divisions among people in this country will only become more extreme. Of course, there are things that concerned citizens can do to help. Get involved with a school, especially one in a poor area. Volunteer to give a presentation or just to spend time with the children. My students were excited to talk to an insurance salesperson who came to give a career exploration lecture. They not only were genuinely interested in the opportunities he described but also were amazed that such a man would donate an afternoon to them. Although those measures can help, they are not enough. For teaching to be effective, the entire environment of the inner city needs to be changed. Teaching someone the difference between velocity and acceleration is irrelevant if the person is hungry and scared. Programs that educate parents in child-rearing, organize low-income groups into cooperative units, fight drug trafficking and help to clean up the ghettos physically will improve the life in the community. The small alterations and " new" proposals currently filling the newspapers are certainly not strong enough to transform a decaying and demoralized school structure that has been disintegrating for decades. Inner-city schools need so much more, and the children deserve so much more than our society is willing to give. Like many other people, I entered the teaching profession eager to investigate change and found many institutionalized obstacles in my way. It should not be so difficult to make a difference.

阅读理解Davison knelt down close to the bottom of the basement stairs. He was saved for the moment by the thick fog which covered the street. Could the policemen be sure that he hadn''t turned round and run back into the main street? But they weren''t taking chances. Davison slowly went down the street as they searched all the doorways. There wasn''t a light on in the basement flat behind him. That alone was dangerous. The policemen were coming close but they wouldn''t expect to find him in an occupied flat. There was a notice on the door which said "No milk till Monday", he tore it down. He tried the door and found it was double locked. The footsteps came nearer very slowly. They must be searching thoroughly. He knew there was one chance because people were often careless, so he took out a knife, slipped it under the catch of the window and pushed upward until the window slid up. He climbed through quickly and fell on to a bed. He closed the window and turned on the light at once. He heard steps coming towards the front door. On no account must the place seem empty. He looked for an electric point, and quickly connected the radio and turned it on. Then he opened the door opposite and found himself in the bathroom. Somebody ― it could only be a policeman ― rang the doorbell. Luckily he found what he wanted in the bathroom cupboard straightaway ― a razor, a stick of shaving soap and a towel. He tied the towel over his collar and managed to soap over his neat beard and the ugly scar on his chin fairly thickened before the bell rang again. Davison moved slowly to the front door and opened it. Two policemen stood outside and one of them had a dirty piece of paper in one hand. "We''ve just found this note, "he said. "As it says'' No milk till Monday'', I thought the flat might be empty and the light left on by mistake. "He looked at Davison carefully.

阅读理解The fridge is considered necessary. It has been so since the 1960s when packaged food list appeared with the label: "Store in the refrigerator." In my fridgeless fifties childhood, I was fed well and healthy. The milkman came every day, the grocer, the butcher (肉商), the baker, and the ice-cream man delivered two or three times each week. The Sunday meat would last until Wednesday and surplus(剩余)bread and milk became all kinds of cakes. Nothing was wasted, and we were never troubled by rotten food. Thirty years on food deliveries have ceased, fresh vegetables are almost unobtainable in the country. The invention of the fridge contributed comparatively little to the art of food preservation. Many well-tried techniques already existed ― natural cooling, drying, smoking, salting, sugaring, bottling... What refrigeration did promote was marketing ― marketing hardware and electricity, marketing soft drinks, marketing dead bodies of animals around the world in search of a good price. So most of the world''s fridges are to be found, not in the tropics where they might prove useful, but in the rich countries with mild temperatures where they are climatically almost unnecessary. Every winter, millions of fridges hum away continuously, and at vast expense, busily maintaining an artificially-cooled space inside an artificially-heated house ― while outside, nature provides the desired temperature free of charge. The fridge''s effect upon the environment has been evident, while its contribution to human happiness has been not important. If you don''t believe me, try it yourself, invest in a food cabinet and turn off your fridge next winter. You may not eat the hamburgers, but at least you''ll get rid of that terrible hum.

阅读理解The author advises us to buy

阅读理解He landed in this country when he was 4 years old without a word of English, and there he has recently graduated with honors from Loyola Academy. An immigrant kid whose family rents an apartment in a city two-flat, he attended the North Shore school with full scholarship. All the aunts and uncles were so proud that they made their way from the old country or from various comers of this country to celebrate his graduation. A debate is raging about whether immigrant children first should be taught English, then their other subjects; or whether they should be taught other subjects in their native tongue as they are more gradually introduced to English over two to three years. California voters recently banished the gradual approach ― bilingual education ― in favor of immersion in the English language. The Chicago Public Schools in February put a three-year deadline on moving into all English classes in most cases. But that was never an issue for this graduate, and it never came up for discussion at his party. Relatives and friends laughed and reminisced in their native tongue, inside and outside, on sofas and lawn chairs. Before long, the instruments came out, old world music filled the air and the traditional dancing began. Like many immigrant children, the graduate listens to his parents in the old language and responds to them in English. During a year after arriving here and enrolling in a Chicago Public School he was speaking fluent English with an American accent so strong that his parents would roll their eyes. But fluency had not come easily; it required a year of total immersion in English, including a teacher who never could seem to learn how to pronounce his name correctly. "He''d come home crying," his mother said. Now, you can''t hear a trace of his original language in his voice. The switch, at least for him, has been complete; a matter of personal preference early on, he says, but now to the point where he has trouble remembering how to speak his first language at ail. But he still understands. At the graduation party, his father asked for a beer in the native tongue, and the young man tossed him a can without missing a beat.

阅读理解Although there had been various small cameras developed, it was not until George Eastman introduced the Kodak in 1888 that the mass appeal of photography attracted America and Europe and thereafter spread quickly to the far corners of the earth. Eastman called his new famous camera the Kodak for no particular reason except that he liked the word. It was easy to remember and could be pronounced in any language. An immediate consequence of Eastman'' s invention was a blizzard of amateur photographs that soon became known as snapshots. The word came from hunters'' jargon. When a hunter fired a gun from the hip, without taking careful aim, it was described as a snapshot. Photographers referred to the process of taking pictures as shooting, and they would take pride in a good day''s shoot the way country gentlemen would boast about the number of birds brought down in an afternoon. Photography became not only easy but fun because of the Kodak. Almost overnight photography became one of the world''s most popular hobbies. A new and universal folk art was born; the showing of one''s latest pictures and the creation of family albums became popular social pastimes. Camera clubs and associations numbered their members in the millions. One ardent amateur was the French novelist Emile Zola, who took a lot of photographs of his family, friends, and travels. Interviewed about his favorite hobby in 1900, he observed, "I think you cannot say you have thoroughly seen anything until you have got a photograph of it." "The little black box," as the Kodak was affectionately dubbed, revolutionized the way people communicated. "A picture is worth a thousand words" was the claim and there were literally billions of pictures. In one year alone― 1988, the centenary of the invention of the Kodak ― it is estimated that almost thirty billion were taken in America alone. The impact of the sale of photographic equipment on the economy is equally mind-boggling. Photography has played an essential role in the media revolution. It has greatly enhanced our ability to convey information, so that the concept of the global village has become a commonplace. Photographs have greatly extended our understanding of and compassion for our fellow human beings. Did Mr. Eastman have the faintest idea of the power residing in his "little black box" ?

阅读理解In Britain, strictly speaking, there are three elements in Parliament ― the Crown, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The House of Commons is by far the most powerful and important of the three elements in Parliament and the Prime Ministers is the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons. After a general election in Britain, the Crown appoints tile Prime Minister who must be the leader of the party that has won the majority seats in the House of Commons. It is the Prime Minister who organizes the Cabinet and presides over its meetings. He or she actually decides on who will be the other ministers and so on. The work of each minister is always kept under observation by an unofficial "Shadow Cabinet" organized by the Opposition. The Prime Minister is the head of the government. He or she has the duty to report the government''s work to the King or Queen, has the right to direct all the departments, solves the issues between them and approves the decisions of departments, which do not need to be discussed in the Cabinet. He has the last word in deciding government policy. The Prime Minister not only has the power of appointment but also has the right to reorganize the government, speak for the government in the House of Commons on important decisions and answer the questions of the members of the House of Commons. As he or she is the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons, he or she can control parliament and influence other parties. He or she is the most influential person in Great Britain and in recent years, strong Prime Ministers have shown a tendency to make policy decisions on their own, in the style of American Presidents. The Prime Minister works and lives in his or her famous residence, No. 10 Downing Street. h is named after George Downing, a British diplomat in the 17th century and has a history of over two hundred years as the British Prime Minister''s residence. The inside of "No. 10" has been reconstructed to suit its purposes. In it there are the Cabinet meeting hall, the Prime Minister'' s office and so on. It is here that the Cabinet meets; the Prime Minister receives foreign guests, meets delegations sometimes and does other work. There is an oil painting gallery in which the portraits of all the Prime Ministers, from Robert Walpole to James Callaghan, are placed.

阅读理解How does the author feel about the prospects of the RI's getting out of financial trouble?

阅读理解A finding in recent years shows that men cannot manufacture blood as efficiently as women can. This makes surgery riskier for men. Because they do not breathe as often as women, men also need more oxygen. But men breathe more deeply and this exposes them to another risk. They draw more of the air when it is polluted. 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 makes 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 can climb a ladder to clean out the roof gutters, don''t forget it is easier for him than for a woman. The angle at which a woman''s thigh is joined to her knees makes climbing difficult 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. This prevents the sun''s radiation from getting through, which is why men wrinkle less than women do. Women have a thin layer of fat just under the skin and there is a plus to this greater fat reserve. It acts as an invisible fur coat to keep a woman warmer in the winter. Women also stay cooler in summer. Because 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. 41 percent of a man''s body is muscle compared to thirty-five percent for women, which means that men have more muscle power. When we mention strength, almost 90 percent of a man''s weight is strength compared to about 50 percent of a woman''s weight. The higher proportion of muscle to fat makes it easier for men to lose weight. Muscle bums up five more calories a pound than fat does just to maintain itself. So when a man wants to loss weight, 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 on treadmills discovered that over the 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 only 60 percent left of his capacity as a twenty-year-old.

阅读理解No company likes to be told it is contributing to the moral decline of a nation. "Is this what you like to accomplish with your careers?" an American senator asked Time Warner executives recently. "You have sold your souls, but must you corrupt our nation and threaten our children as well?" At Time Warner, however, such questions are simply the latest manifestation of the soul-searching that has involved the company ever since the company was born in 1990. It''s a self-examination that has, at different times, involved issues of responsibility ,creative freedom and the corporate bottom line. At the core of this debate is chairman Gerald Levin, 56, who took over from the late Steve Ross in the early 1990s. On the financial front, Levin is under pressure to raise the stock price and reduce the company''s mountainous debt, which will increase to ＄17.3 billion after two new cable deals close. He has promised to sell off some of the property and restructure the company, but investors are waiting impatiently. The flap over rap is not making life any easier for him. Levin has consistently defended the company''s rap music on the grounds of expression. In 1992, when Time Warner was under fire for releasing Ice-T''s violent rap song Cop Killer, Levin described rap as a lawful expression of street culture, which deserves an outlet. "The test of any democratic society," he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column, "lies not in how well it can control expression but in whether it gives freedom of thought and expression the widest possible latitude, however disputable or irritating the results may sometimes be. We won''t retreat when we face any threats." Levin would not comment on the debate last week, but there were signs that the chairman was backing off his hard-line stand, at least to some extent. During the discussion of rock singing verses at last month''s stockholders'' meeting, Levin asserted that "music is not the cause of society''s ills'' and even cited his son, a teacher in the Bronx, New York, who uses rap to communicate with students. But he talked as well about the "balanced struggle" between creative freedom and social responsibility, and he proclaimed that the company would launch a drive to develop standards for distribution and labeling of potentially objectionable music. The 15-member Time Warner board is generally supportive of Levin and his corporate strategy. But insiders say some of them have shown their concerns in this matter. "Some of us have known for many, many years that the freedoms under the First Amendment are not totally unlimited," says Luce. "I think it is perhaps the case that some people associated with the company have only recently come to realize this."

阅读理解Changes in regional climate brought about by large-scale deforestation in the eastern lowlands of Central America are affecting weather downwind in the mountains, imperiling ecosystems there. The so-called cloud forests of Monteverde lie along the crest of Costa Rica''s Cordillera de Tilaran mountains. These habitats rely on the almost perpetual fog that forms as moisture-laden Caribbean winds rise up the eastern slopes of the mountains and pass through altitudes at which clouds condense, says Robert O. Lawton, an ecologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The humidity in those breezes is enhanced by moisture expelled from the leaves of lowland forests. By the early 1990s, more than a century of deforestation had left only 18% of the Costa Rican lowland forests east of the peaks untouched. The pastures that replaced forests don''t humidify the winds as well as forests do and are better at warming the atmosphere. As a result, the winds off these pastures must rise further up the Cordillera de Tilaran slopes before clouds condense. Satellite photos of the lowlands in the dry season show that clouds are absent or sparse over deforested areas but are thicker over the forests of neighboring Nicaragua. Computer simulations of day-time cloud formation in the area support these observations, Lawton notes, and they also suggest that the altitude of the cloud base would rise about 200m above today''s height if the lowlands were completely deforested. Lawton and his colleagues report their result in Science magazine. The gradual shifting of bird ranges upslope and a recent population crash among frogs and toads in the Monteverde cloud forest suggest that the veil of clouds may be lifting. Scientists had already blamed the rise of the cloud base for the longer periods of mistfree conditions observed at the downwind edge of the forest. Lawton warns that in the future, the clouds may disappear from the Monteverde slopes for days at a time during the dry season — a development that could lead to collapse of the ecosystems there.

阅读理解In the last ten years, the Internet has opened up incredible amounts of information to ordinary citizens. But using the Internet can be like walking into a library where the books are all lying on the floor in piles. While tools like Google allow some structured search, much of the data from such searches is outdated or of questionable value. Some web enthusiasts have taken up the task of organizing information through a democratic means that only the Internet allows: an encyclopedia of the people, by the people, and completely free to copy and distribute. This people''s encyclopedia'' of the Web ( a free site called Wikipedia) has provided a unique solution by inviting individuals to participate in the process of rationalizing and updating web content. At the heart of this movement are wikis, web sites that allow users to directly edit any web page with one click of the mouse. Wikipedia (the largest example of these collaborative efforts) is a functioning, user-contributed online encyclopedia that has become a popular and highly regarded reference in just three years of existence. The goal of Wikipedia was to create an encyclopedia that could be shared and copied freely while encouraging people to change and improve the content. Each and every article has an " Edit this page" button, allowing anyone, even anonymous passersby, to add or delete any content on the page. It seems like a recipe for disaster and chaos, but it has produced surprisingly credible content that has been evaluated and revised by the thousands of international visitors to the site. The Wikipedia project was started by Jimmy Wales, head of Internet startup bomis. com, after his original project for a volunteer, but strictly controlled, free encyclopedia ran out of money and resources after two years. Editors with PhD degrees were at the helm of the project then, but it produced only a few hundred articles. Not wanting the content to languish, Wales placed the pages on a wiki website in January 2001 and invited any Internet visitors to edit or add to the collection. The site became a runaway success in the first year and gained a loyal following, generating over 20,000 articles and spawning over a dozen language translations. After two years, it had 100, 000 articles. Over 2,000 new articles are added each day across all the various languages. And according to website rankings at alexa. com, it has become more popular than traditional online encyclopedias such as britannica. com and is one of the top 200 most heavily visited websites on the internet.

阅读理解Proper arrangement of classroom space is important to encouraging interaction. Most of us have noticed how important physical setting is to efficiency and comfort when we work. Today''s corporations hire human engineering specialists and spend a great deal of time and money to make sure that the physical environments of buildings are fit to the activities of their inhabitants. Similarly, college classroom space should be designed to encourage the activity of critical thinking. We will move into the twenty-first century, but step into almost any college classroom and you will step back in time at least a hundred years. Desks are normally in straight rows, so students can clearly see the teacher but not all their classmates. The assumption behind such an arrangement is obvious: Everything important comes from the teacher. With a little imagination and effort, unless desks are fixed to the floor, the teacher can correct this situation and create space that encourages interchanges among students. In small or standard-size classes, chairs, desks and tables can be arranged in different ways: circles, U-shapes, or semicircles. The primary goal should be for everyone to be able to see everyone else. Larger classes, particularly those held in lecture halls, unfortunately, allow much less flexibility. Arrangement of the classroom should also make it easy to divide students into small groups for discussion or problem-solving exercises. Small classes with moveable desks and tables present no problem. Even in large lecture halls, it is possible for students to turn around and form groups of four to six. Breaking a class into small groups provides more opportunities for students to interact with each other, think out hard, and see how other students'' thinking processes operate ― all these are the most important elements in developing new modes of critical thinking. In course that regularly use a small group format, students might be asked to stay in the same small groups throughout the course. A colleague of mine allows students to move around during the first two weeks, until they find a group they are comfortable with. He then asks them to stay in the same seat, with the same group, from then on. This not only creates a comfortable setting for interaction but helps him learn students'' names and faces.

阅读理解Between the eighth and eleventh centuries A. D. , the Byzantine Empire staged an almost unparalleled economic and cultural revival, a recovery that is all the more striking because it followed a long period of severe internal decline. By the early eighth century, the empire had lost roughly two-thirds of the territory it had possessed in the year 600, and its remaining area was being raided by Arabs and Bulgarians, who at times threatened to take Constantinople and extinguish the empire altogether. The wealth of the state and its subjects was greatly diminished and artistic and literary production had virtually ceased. By the early eleventh century, however, the empire had regained almost half of its lost possessions, its new frontiers were secure, and its influence extended far beyond its borders. The economy had recovered, the treasury was full, and art and scholarship had advanced. To consider the Byzantine military, cultural, and economic advances as differentiated aspects of a single phenomenon is reasonable. After all, these three forms of progress have gone together in a number of states and civilizations. Rome under Augustus and fifth-century Athens provide the most obvious examples in antiquity. Moreover, an examination of the apparent sequential connections among military, economic, and cultural forms of progress might help explain the dynamics of historical change. The common explanation of these apparent connections in the case of Byzantium would run like this: when the empire had turned back enemy raids on its own territory and had begun to raid and conquer enemy territory, Byzantine resources naturally expanded and more money became available to patronize art and literature. Therefore, Byzantine military achievements led to economic advances, which in turn led to cultural revival. No doubt this hypothetical pattern did apply at times during the course of the recovery. Yet it is not clear that military advances invariably came first. Economic advances second and intellectual advances third. In the 860''s the Byzantine Empire began to recover from Arab incursions so that by 872 the military balance with the Abbasid Caliphate had been permanently altered in the empire''s favor. The beginning of the empire''s economic revival, however, can be placed between 810 and 830. Finally, the Byzantine revival of learning appears to have begun even earlier. A number of notable scholars and writers appeared by 788 and, by the last decade of the eighth century, a cultural revival was in full bloom, a revival that lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Thus the commonly expected order of military revival followed by economic and then by cultural recovery was reversed in Byzantium. In fact, the revival of Byzantine learning may itself have influenced the subsequent economic and military expansion.

阅读理解It is because of his plays that Shakespeare is now considered the greatest English writer in history. The era in which he lived, Elizabethan England, was a time in which broad interests and creativity could flourish. Elizabeth, the queen, was beloved by her subjects and proved to be a powerful and able ruler. Under the reign of Elizabeth, England changed from an island kingdom to an expanding empire. England grew rich through trade. 16th-century Englishmen traveled to the New World and to Africa. Music, dance, poetry, painting, and architecture flourished; but the art form in which Elizabethan England distinguished the rest of Europe was the theater. The theater, which had practically disappeared from Europe, was, at this time, received as a part of the church service. Later, no longer as a part of the service, the "mystery plays" responded to popular taste by adding more and more comic elements. In England, they were sponsored by various trade guilds and presented on stage wagons that went from place to place. When the mystery plays began to lose their appeal, they were replaced by "morality" plays which always taught a moral. In Renaissance England, writers were particularly interested in classical texts such as Latin and Greek plays. Schools and universities began to produce comedies and tragedies by Platus, Terence, and Seneca. Shakespeare was well acquainted with classical humanities and classical tragedies and comedies often served as models in his own drama. A Renaissance man, Shakespeare''s interest went beyond book learning to practical knowledge of military strategy, seafaring, business affairs, and the new geographical discoveries, all evident in his plays. Companies of " strolling plays" which had specialized in morality plays responded to the change by staging new plays. Professional actors, who had been viewed by English society as little better than vagrants or criminals, gradually came under the protection of the nobility. Licensed theater companies were formed; Shakespeare belonged to one of those, where in addition to his writing, he acquired a wide experience in acting and theater management. The theater grew in popularity and public theaters were built, not inside the city limits but just outside, along with other places of entertainment. Theaters in Elizabethan England were patronized by all social classes. The Globe Theater, built in 1599, where many of Shakespeare''s plays were performed, had a platform stage jutting out into a central courtyard. The audience stay around three sides of this platform — the lower-class who each paid a penny in the pit and the wealthier spectators in the galleries above. The orchestra was on stage, as music was usually a significant part of the production. Indeed, the costumes, scenery, singing, playing, and dancing, as well as acting was essential to the total show. There was no lighting, however, plays were performed in the afternoon. Shakespeare knew his audience: his theater is addressed not just to the educated but to all classes of society.

阅读理解Some people ought to defend the workaholic. These people are unjustly accused, abused, and defamed ― often, termed sick or morbid or on the border of pathology. About 30% of American business and commerce is carried on the shoulders of workaholics. The ratio might exist in art and science too. Workaholics are the achievers, the excelers. There is a national conspiracy against excellence and undue admiration of commonness and mediocrity. It is as if we are against those who make uncommon sacrifices because they enjoy doing something. Some famous psychologists say that the workaholic has an inferiority complex which leads to over- compensation. This is certainly not the case. Inferiority, or low esteem, describes laziness more accurately than it describes dedication. We do not seem to realize that very little excellence is achieved by living a well-balanced life. Edison, Ford, Einstein, Freud all had single-minded devotion to work whereby they sacrificed many things, including family and friendship. The accusation is made that workaholics bear guilt by not being good parents or spouses. But guilt can exist in the balanced life also. Think how many "normal" people and middle-ages who have never done anything well ― they are going to settle for less than what they could have become.

阅读理解The study of social science is more than the study of the individual social sciences. Although it is true that to be a good social scientist you must know each of those components, you must also know how they interrelate. By specializing too early, many social scientists can lose sight of the interrelationships that are so essential to understanding modem problems. That''s why it is necessary to have a course covering all the social sciences. In fact, it would not surprise me if one day a news story such as the one above should appear. The preceding passage placed you in the future. To understand how and when social science broke up, you must go into the past. Imagine for a moment that you''re a student in 1062, in the Italian city of Bologna, site of one of the first major universities in the Western world. The university has no buildings. It consists merely of a few professors and students. There is no tuition fee. At the end of a professor''s lecture, if you like it, you pay. And if you don''t like it, the professor finds himself without students and without money. If we go back still earlier, say to Greece in the 6th century B. C. , we can see the philosopher Socrates walking around the streets of Athens, arguing with his companions. He asks them questions, and then other questions, leading these people to reason the way he wants them to reason (this became known as the Socratic method ). Times have changed since then; universities sprang up throughout the world and created colleges within the universities. Oxford, one of the first universities, now has thirty colleges associated with it, and the development and formalization of educational institutions has changed the roles of both students and faculty. As knowledge accumulated, it became more and more difficult for one person to learn, let alone retain, it all. In the 16th century one could still aspire to know all there was to know, and the definition of the Renaissance Man ( people were even more sexist then than they are now) was of one who was expected to know about everything. Unfortunately, at least for someone who wants to know everything, the amount of information continues to grow exponentially while the size of the brain has grown only slightly. The way to deal with the problem is not to try to know everything about everything. Today we must specialize. That is why social science separated from the natural sciences and why it, in turn, has been broken down into various subfields, such as anthropology and sociology.

阅读理解On screens big and small, young heroes like Harry Potter and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer are narked by their ability to transform themselves when faced with danger. Post-9-11 , in a world that seems increasingly out of control, such flexibility is more prized than ever. So perhaps it''s not surprising that the classical master of metamorphosis, Ovid, is having a comeback. The ancient Roman poet created a universe full of magical transformations; his best-known work ''Metamorphoses" depicts constant change as a creative and inevitable life force. Now a new generation of writers, artists and composers is rediscovering his powerful themes. Ovid''s historical impact had been vast. In her new book, Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds, Marina Warner explores on the likes of Chaucer, Dante and Shakespeare. His stories find avid expression in the works of artists like Raphael, Rembrandt, Chagall and Picasso. For ''Metamorphosing", a new exhibit at London''s Science Museum co-curated by Warner. Artist ''aula Rego created a new work called Metamorphosis, inspired by Kafka''s story about a bureaucrat who turns into a cockroach. The show, which runs through January, also includes drawings of nutant insects found near nuclear power plants. The late British poet Ted Hughes sparked this latest Ovid revival with his 1997 Tales from Ovid, a loose and very dark translation of the original. Curious writers and artists began scouring dusty library shelves for Ovid''s 15 volumes of Latin verse, and soon fell under their sway. Jeffrey Eugenides''s Middlesex, in which a young girl is transformed into a man, refers to the myth of Tiresias, who in Ovid''s account underwent the opposite change. Another recent book, Ovid Metamorphosed, testifies to the poet''s cross-cultural appeal: it contains short stories based on his Latin myths by writers from the United States, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada, India and France. September 11 made Ovid seem more relevant than ever. When Mary Zimmerman''s play Metamorphoses opened on Broadway less than a month after the World Trade Center attacks, audiences were deeply moved by its depiction of love, death and human resilience. The play became a hit, earning Zimmerman a Tony Award. Hughes suggested in his introduction to Tales from Ovid that the poet — who finished Metamorphoses in 7 A. D. , as the Roman Empire began to transform — was perfectly placed to comprehend " the psychological gulf that opens at the end of an era". Warner agrees that his tales of change are more likely to resonate during times of uncertainty. Ovid captured the innate pleasure of escaping from the boundaries of life and the laws of nature escapes that can seem more necessary than ever today.

阅读理解When we worry about who might be spying on our private lives, we usually think about the Federal agents. But the private sector outdoes the government every time. It''s Linda Tripp, not the FBI, who is facing charges under Maryland''s laws against secret telephone taping. It''s our banks, not the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) , that pass our private financial data to telemarketing firms. Consumer activists are pressing Congress for better privacy laws without much result so far. The legislators lean toward letting business people track our financial habits virtually at will. As an example of what''s going on, consider U. S. Bancorp, which was recently sued for deceptive practices by the state of Minnesota. According to the lawsuit, the bank supplied a telemarketer called Member-Works with sensitive customer data such as names, phone numbers, bank-accounts and credit-card numbers, Social Security numbers, account balances and credit limits. With these customer lists in hand, Member-Works started dialing for dollars—selling dental plans, videogames, computer software and other products and services. Customers who accepted a "free trial offer" had 50 days to cancel. If the deadline passed, they were charged automatically through their bank or credit-card accounts. U. S. Bancorp collected a share of the revenues. Customers were doubly deceived, the lawsuit claims. They didn''t know that the bank was giving account numbers to Member-Works. And if customers asked, they were led to think the answer was no. The state sued Member-Works separately for deceptive selling. The company defends that it did anything wrong. For its part, U. S. Bancorp settled without admitting any mistakes. But it agreed to stop exposing its customers to nonfinancial products sold by outside firms. A few top banks decided to do the same. Many other banks will still do business with Member-Works and similar firms. And banks will still be mining data from your account in order to sell you financial products, including things of little value, such as credit insurance and credit-card protection plans. You have almost no protection from businesses that use your personal accounts for profit. For example, no federal law shields "transaction and experience" information—mainly the details of your bank and credit-card accounts. Social Security numbers are for sale by private firms. They''ve generally agreed not to sell to the public. But to businesses, the numbers are an open book. Self-regulation doesn''t work. A firm might publish a privacy-protection policy, but who enforces it? Take U. S. Bancorp again. Customers were told, in writing, that "all personal information you supply to us will be considered confidential. " Then it sold your data to Member-Works. The bank even claims that it doesn''t "sell" your data at all. It merely "shares" it and reaps a profit. Now you know.

阅读理解In reading science, a heading (标题)often gives a clue (线索)to a problem that is going to be discussed