单选题 A new catastrophe faces Afghanistan. The American
bombing campaign is conspiring with years of civil conflict and drought to
create an environmental crisis. Humanitarian and political
concerns are dominating the headlines. But they are also masking the
disappearance of the country's once rich habitat and wildlife, which are quietly
being crushed by war. The UN is dispatching a team of investigators to the
region next month to evaluate the damage. "A healthy environment is a
prerequisite for rehabilitation," says Klaus Topfer, head of the UN environment
Programme. Much of south-east Afghanistan was once lush forest
watered by monsoon rains. Forests now cover less than 2 per cent of the country.
"The Worst deforestation occurred during Taliban rule, when its timber mafia
denuded forests to sell to Pakistani markets," says Usman Qazi, an environmental
consultant based in Quetta, Pakistan. And the intense bombing intended to flush
out the last of the Taliban troops is destroying or burning much of what
remains. The refugee crisis is also wrecking the environment,
anti much damage may be irreversible. Forests and vegetation are being cleared
for much-needed farming, but the gains are likely to be short-term. "Eventually
the land will be unfit for even the most basic form of agriculture,' warns
Hammed Naqi of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Pakistan. Refugees—around 4
million as the last county—are also cutting into forests for firewood.
The hail of bombs falling on Afghanistan is making life particularly bard
for the country's wildlife. Birds such as the pelican and endangered Siberian
crane cross eastern Afghanistan as they follow one of the world's great
migratory thoroughfares from Siberia to Pakistan and India. But the number of
the birds flying across the region has dropped by a staggering 85 per cent.
"Cranes are very sensitive and they do not use file route if riley see any
danger," says Ashiq Ahgmad, an environmental scientist for file WWF in Peshawar,
Pakistan, who has tracked the collapse of the birds' migration this
winter. The rugged mountains also usually provide a safe haven
for mountain leopards, gazelles, bears and Marco Polo sheep—the world's largest
species. "The same terrain that allows fighters to strike and disappear back
into the frills has also historically enabled wild life to survive," says Peter
Zahler of the Wildlife Conservation society, based in New York. But he warns
they are now under intense pressure from file bombing and invasions of refugees
and fighters. For instance, some refugees are hunting rare snow
leopards to buy a safe passage across the border, A single fur can fetch $2,000
on the black market, says Zahler. Only 5,000 or so snow leopards are thought to
survive in central Asia, and less than 100 in Afghanistan, their numbers already
decimated by extensive hunting, and smuggling into Pakistan before the
conflict." Timber, falcons and medicinal plants are also being smuggled across
the border. The Taliban once controlled much of this trade, but the recent power
vacuum could exacerbate the problem. Bombing will also leave
its mark beyond file obvious craters. Defence analysts say that while depleted
uranium has been used less in Afghanistan than in file Kosovo conflict,
conventional explosives will litter the country with pollutants. They contain
toxic compounds such as cyclonite, a carcinogen, and rocket propellants contain
perchlorates, which damage thyroid glands.
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单选题
More than three years after moving from
Australia to this remote part of England, we are still learning how things are
done here. Not too long after we arrived and unpacked, we were
invited for "a drink on Sunday morning" by a retired couple nearby. We got there
about noon, to find the living-room crowded—lots of chat and discussions, and on
all a very jolly occasion. Trouble was, there was no food—no
self-respecting Australian would regard a tray of crisps as food. In Sydney,
when you are invited for a drink any time after midday on a Sunday, you know you
will be fed as well as watered and you plan accordingly. Meaning the hard-worked
little woman makes no plans to cook lunch because you are eating out.
By one-fifteen my stomach was sending up "please explain" to me. Even the
crisps had gone. There was nothing we could do except wait, and wonder if the
hostess was going to perform some magic and feed us fashionably late. Then, as
quickly as if word had spread that there was free beer at the local pub, the
room emptied. By one-forty-five there were only a few guests left, so we decided
to go home. Tinned soup for lunch that day because the little woman was not
really interested in real cooking for us. A few weeks ago we
were invited out for "supper" and the hostess suggested 8.15. Ah, we thought
greedily, "this is going to be the real thing". We dressed with
some care—I putting on a dark suit—and arrived on time. My wife looked pretty
good, I thought—a little black dress and so on. But when we walked in I had a
terrible feeling we had got the night wrong because the hostess was dressed in a
daytime kind of way and the husband was in jeans and an open-neck shirt. But no,
we were greeted and shown into the sitting-room. After a drink I
looked around and saw that this was indeed a superior cottage because it had a
(more or less) separate dining-room. But there were no signs of a table-setting.
Not again! I thought. Were we meant to eat before we came? I decided that in
future my wife and I would always carry a chocolate bar. About 9.28 our hostess
went out of the room, saying something about food. Ten minutes later she
returned and asked us to follow. We were led out to the kitchen. There on the
table were country-style plates and a huge bowl of soup, rough bread and all the
makings of a simple meal. And that is what it was. In other words, we had not
read the signals right when we were invited for "supper". If they want you to
come to dinner, they say so, and you know that means dark suits and so on. If
they mean supper, they say it, and you get fed in the kitchen.
If they make such a distinction between "dinner" and "supper", does this
mean we were not worth making an all out effort for? Candles, best silver and
all the rest? It is enough to give a person a complex. When you
think about it, it's pretty depressing. They must use the dining-room sometimes,
because they had all those high-backed chairs and
candle-holders.
单选题In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide acts rather like a one-way mirror—the glass in the roof of a greenhouse which allows the sun"s rays to enter but prevents the heat from escaping.
According to a weather expert"s prediction, the atmosphere will be 3 ℃ warmer in the year 2050 than it is today, if man continues to burn fuels at the present rate. If this warming up took place, the ice caps in the poles would begin to melt, thus raising sea level several meters and severely flooding coastal cities. Also. the increase in atmospheric temperature would lead to great changes in the climate of the northern hemisphere, possibly resulting in an alteration of earth"s chief food-growing zones.
In the past, concern about a man-made warming of the earth has concentrated on the Arctic because the Antarctic is much colder and has a much thicker ice sheet. But the weather experts are now paying more attention to West Antarctic, which may be affected by only a few degrees of warming, in other words, by a warming on the scale that will possibly take place in the next fifty years from the burning of fuels.
Satellite pictures show that large areas of Antarctic ice are already disappearing. The evidence available suggests that a warming has taken place. This fits the theory that carbon dioxide warms the earth.
However, most of the fuel is burnt in the northern hemisphere, where temperatures seem to be falling. Scientists conclude, therefore, that up to now natural influences on the weather have exceeded those caused by man. The question is: Which natural cause has most effect on the weather?
One possibility is the variable behavior of the sun. Astronomers at one research station have studied the hot spots and "cold" spots (that is, the relatively less hot spots) on the sun. As the sun rotates, every 27.5 days, it presents hotter or "colder" faces to the earth, and different aspects to different parts of the earth. This seems to have a considerable effect on the distribution of the earth"s atmospheric pressure, and consequently on wind circulation. The sun is also variable over a long term: its heat output goes up and down in cycles, the latest trend being downward.
Scientists are-now finding mutual relations between models of solar-weather interactions and the actual climate over many thousands of years, including the last Ice Age. The problem is that the models are predicting that the world should be entering a new Ice Age and it is not. One way of solving this theoretical difficulty is to assume a delay of thousands of years while the solar effects overcome the inertia of the earth"s climate. If this is tight, the warming effect of carbon dioxide might thus be serving as a useful counter-balance to the sun"s diminishing heat.
单选题
Questions 16～20
Brian Harper knows from personal experience how curious people
are about priests and nuns. He began training to be a priest 20 years ago,
straight from school, and although he left after two years he has never quite
escaped the legacy. Whenever he tells people about that period in his life they
fire him with questions about what prompted him to consider that route in the
first place. There are the usual questions about coping with
celibacy and the restrictions that this puts on personal relationships. But
there is real curiosity, too, about why an "otherwise normal" person would take
on such a life. "There is a genuine interest in the whole area
of spirituality and the spiritual life," Harper says, "The contrast has never
been greater than it is now between the religious and secular paths. " Many
young people head for a life in the church, he says, after attending Catholic
schools where the emphasis is placed on religious observance, ritual and the
importance of obedience and personal humility. But in today's world it is
becoming increasingly difficult for such young people to ignore what is
happening in the secular world behind the church. Many priests and nuns have
left the safety of the ordered religious life in the past couple of decades. But
they have not done so without a struggle. Harper can identify with the
experience of those who leave. "It is so much easier to join up
than it is to quit," he says, "It's like in personal relationships, they're easy
enough to get into, but extricating yourself from one that's not working or that
you're not happy with can be very difficult indeed. " Steven Mc
Callanan, a parish priest, is frank about his life in church. He sums it up: "If
you are prepared to see life in all its color then go ahead, take orders. But
don't think it will be easy. I face problems every day. "
Harper believes the religious life attracts a true cross-section of
people, from the extrovert to the shy and retiring, although many are drawn by
the church's emphasis on ritual and performance. If one were to generalize,
though, most priests have the kind of artistic temperaments that would "I know
some brilliant men and women in the church, then I know some tried and
disillusioned ones and some who are struggling with their own kind of personal
demons," says Harper. He says it is a shame that the Catholic community has
traditionally put priests on a pedestal, "up there with God", whereas in fact
they are just like everyone else: flawed and vulnerable, make them good actors
or performance poets-and social drinkers. "Being a priest just
happens to be a career, admittedly a specialized one and one that demands a
certain range of qualities. But priests are just as frail and weak as the rest
of us." Harper has made a television programme about priests,
monks and nuns in the Catholic Church. The message he gave to those who took
part in his documentary was: "We are not trying to trip you up or make you
appear strange or foolish. We are just trying to answer what we think are some
generally asked questions about your attitudes, your dilemmas, and the kinds of
lives you lead. "It makes fascinating viewing.
单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following talk.
单选题Directions: In this section you will read several passages.
Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose ONE best
answer, A. B. C. or D. to each question. It is
the latest innovation from Silicon Valley: the employee perk is moving from the
office to the home. Facebook gives new parents $4,000 in spending money.
Stanford School of Medicine is piloting a project to provide doctors with
housecleaning and in-home dinner delivery. Genentech offers take-home dinners
and helps employees find last-minute baby sitters when a child is too sick to go
to school. These kinds of benefits are a departure from the
upscale cafeteria meals, massages and other services intended to keep employees
happy and productive while at work. And the goal is not just to reduce stress
for employees, but for their families, too. If the companies succeed, they will
minimize distractions and sources of tension that can inhibit focus and
creativity. Now that technology has allowed work to bleed into home life, it
seems that companies are trying to address the impact of home life on
work. There is, of course, the possibility that relieving
people of chores at home will simply free them up to work more. But David Lewin,
a compensation expert and management professor at the University of California,
Los Angeles, said he viewed the perks as part of a growing effort by American
business to reward people with time and peace of mind instead of more
traditional financial tools, like stock options and bonuses. "They're trying to
get at people's larger lives and sanity," Mr. Lewin said. "You might call it the
bang for the nonbuck." At Deloitte, the consulting firm,
employees can get a backup care worker if an aging parent or grandparent needs
help. The company subsidizes personal trainers and nutritionists, and offers
round-the-clock counseling service for help with issues like marital strife and
infertility. Deloitte executives, and other experts, said they believe that such
benefits were likely to spread. "The workplace was built on the
assumption that there was somebody at home dealing with the home front," said
Anne Weisberg, a longtime human resources executive who helped write a book
about new kinds of workplace policies. Not only is that no longer the case, she
said, but the work-life pressures seem to be building. "There's a greater
awareness that we're pushing things to the limit and something's got to give,"
she said. Some compensation experts argue these types of perks ultimately do
little to attract employees and might obscure more fundamental problems at
companies that have trouble retaining talent. That is a
challenge Stanford owns up to, given the brain drain suffered by academic
hospitals, where relentless demands include treating patients, writing grants,
doing research and traveling to conferences. So 18 months ago, Stanford hired a
consulting firm called Jump Associates to better understand why so many academic
doctors feel burned out. The company videotaped them from the time they woke up,
through the workday and until they and their families went to sleep.
In one video, a kidney specialist told a story that shocked the
researchers: while she was on maternity leave, she bought a minivan to ferry the
children of friends and neighbors to school and sports practices. That way, the
doctor explained, she would be able to ask for favors when she returned to
work—and that, in theory, would enable her to juggle the dual demands of work
and family. Dr. Valantine, a cardiologist, professor and associate dean at the
Stanford School of Medicine, said the findings had led her to scrap the idea
that people should strive for "work-life balance" and instead think in terms of
"work-life integration". That shifting mind-set—the idea that
life and work must be blended rather than separated—is increasingly common,
according to other doctors, scholars who study work habits and the generally
well-compensated workers of Silicon Valley like Andrew Sinkov, 31, whose
employer is paying to clean his apartment. The value of the perk is greater than
the money saved, he said. His boss, Mr. Libin, also gives
employees $1,000 to spend on vacation, but it has to be "a real vacation". Mr.
Libin added that he did not see these perks just as ways to keep his work
force—and their families—engaged. He said he also tended to be frugal as a chief
executive, preferring these types of peace-of-mind benefits to, say,
business-class travel, which the company does not pay for. "Happy workers make
better products," he said. "The output we care about has everything to do with
your state of mind." At Google, the company has expanded its
benefits beyond free meals, dry cleaning and other services on campus to
offering $500 to new parents. The company has also arranged for fresh fish to be
delivered to the office for employees to take home. "What you've seen is
benefits moving away from free food into thinking more holistically about
individuals and their health," said Jordan Newman, a Google spokesman. "And a
lot of that happens outside of the office."
单选题
Advances in surveillance technology
could seriously damage individual privacy unless drastic measures are taken to
protect personal data, scientists have said. Richard Thomas, the Information
Commissioner, gave warning last year that Britain was "sleepwalking" into a
surveillance society. Yesterday the country's leading engineers developed the
theme, fleshing out a dystopian vision that not even George Orwell could have
predicted. They said that travel passes, supermarket loyalty
cards and mobile phones could be used to track individuals' every move. They
also predicted that CCTV (close-circuit television) footage could become
available for public consumption and that terrorists could hijack the biometric
chips in passports and rig them up as a trigger for explosives.
The report by the Royal Academy of Engineering, Dilemmas of Privacy and
Surveillance—Challenges of Technological Change, argues that the scientists
developing surveillance technology should also think about measures to protect
privacy. "Just as security features have been incorporated into car design,
privacy-protecting features should be incorporated into the design of products
and services that rely on divulging personal information," the report
says. "There is a choice between a Big Brother world where
individual privacy is almost extinct and a world where the data are kept by
individual organizations or services and kept secret and secure." The report
says that shoppers should be allowed to buy goods and services without revealing
their identities to the companies that provide them. It argues that travel
and supermarket loyalty cards and mobile phones are mines of personal
information that should be closely scrutinized to make sure that data is not
abused. Professor Nigel Gilbert, chairman of the report group,
said. "In most cases, supermarket loyalty cards will have your name on. Why?
What is needed in a loyalty card is for the supermarket to know what has been
bought so you can get your discounts." "Does it need to identify
you? No, it just needs authentication that you've bought the goods. It is the
same for Oyster cards on the Tube, some of which you have to register for. These
are all apparently small things but people are being required to give away more
identification information than is required." Ian Forbes, the
report's coauthor, said that because footage from CCTV cameras could be
digitized and potentially stored for ever, that necessitated greater scrutiny of
the controlling networks. Britain has about five million CCTV cameras, one for
every 12 people. The report says: "Give this potential, it
cannot be guaranteed that surveillance images will remain private, or will not
be altered, misused or manipulated." The report also gives warning that
biometric passports and identity cards would give fresh opportunities to
fraudsters and terrorists to read remotely the data chips that they contain. It
says that it could be possible to rig a bomb to go off in the presence of a
certain person or someone of a particular nationality. The
report proposes that the Information Commissioner should be given extended
powers, and that stiffer penalties, including prison sentences, should be
introduced for those who misuse personal data. The Commons Home Affairs Select
Committee is expected to announce an inquiry into the growing use of
surveillance.
单选题It can be concluded that the tone of the passage is ______.
单选题 Directions: In this part of the test, you
will hear several short talks and conversations. After each of these, you will
hear a few questions. Listen carefully because you will hear the talk or
conversation and questions ONLY ONCE. When you hear a question
read the four answer choices and choose the best answer to that question. Then
write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in
your ANSWER BOOKLET.
Questions
11-14
单选题Eight thousand years ago, forests covered more than 23 million square miles, or about 40 percent of Earth"s land surface. Today, almost half of those forests have fallen to the ax, the chain saw, the matchstick, or the bulldozer.
A map unveiled in March by the Washington-based World Resources Institute not only shows the locations of former forests, but also assesses the condition of today"s forests worldwide. Institute researchers developed the map with the help of the World Conservation Monitoring Center, the World Wildlife Fund, and 90 forest experts from a variety of universities, government organizations, and environmental groups.
Only one-fifth of the remaining forests are still "frontier forests", defined as a relatively undisturbed natural forests large enough to support all of their native species. Frontier forests offer a number of benefits: They generate and maintain biodiversity, protect watersheds, prevent flooding and soil erosion, and stabilize climate.
Many large areas that have traditionally been classified as forest land don"t qualify as "frontier" because of human influences such as fire suppression and a patchwork of logging. "There"s surprisingly little intact forest left," says research associate Dirk Bryant, the principal author of the report that accompanies the new map.
In the report, Bryant, Daniel Nielsen, and Laura Tangley divide the world into four groups: 76 countries that have lost all of their frontier forest; 11 nations that are "on the edge"; 28 countries with "not much time"; and only eight—including Canada, Russia, and Brazil—that still have a "great opportunity" to keep most of their original forest. The United States is among the nations said to be mining out of time: In the lower 48 states, says Bryant, "only 1 percent of the forest that was once there as frontier forest qualifies today."
Logging poses the biggest single threat to remaining frontier forests. "Our results suggest that 70 percent of frontier forests under threat are threatened by logging," says Bryant. The practice of cutting timber also creates roads that cause erosion and open the forest to hunting, mining, firewood gathering, and land clearing for farms.
What can protect frontier forests? The researchers recommend combining preservation with sustainable land use practices such as tourism and selective timber extraction. It"s possible to restore frontiers," says Bryant, "but the cost and time required to do so would suggest that the smart approach is to husband the remaining frontier forest before it"s gone.
单选题Questions 11～15
In Barcelona the Catalonians call them
Castells
, but these aren"t stereotypical castles in Spain. These castles are made up of human beings, not stone. The people who perform this agile feat of acrobatics are called castellers, and to see their towers take shape is to observe a marvel of human cooperation.
First the castellers form what looks like a gigantic rugby scrummage. They are the foundation blocks of the castle. Behind them, other people press together, forming outward-radiating ramparts of inward-pushing muscle, flying buttresses for the castle. Then sturdy but lighter castellers scramble over the backs of those at the bottom and stand, barefoot, on their shoulders—then still others, each time adding a higher "story".
These human towers can rise higher than small apartment buildings, nine "stories", 35 feet into the air. Then, just when it seems this tower of humanity can"t defy gravity any longer, a little kid emerges from the crowd and climbs straight up to the top. Arms extended, the child grins while waving to the cheering crowd far below.
Dressed in their traditional costumes, the castellers seem to epitomize an easier time, before Barcelona became a world metropolis and the Mediterranean"s most dynamic city. But when you observe them up close, in their street clothes, at practice, you see there"s nothing easy about what the castellers do—and that they are not merely reenacting an ancient ritual.
None of the castellers can give a logical answer as to why they love doing this. But Victor Luna, 16, touches me on the shoulder and says in English: "We do it because it"s beautiful. We do it because we are Catalan. "
Barcelona"s mother tongue is Catalan, and to understand Barcelona, you must understand two words of Catalan: seny and rauxa. Seny pretty much translates as common sense, or the ability to make money, arrange things, and get things done. Rauxa is reminiscent of our words "raucous" and "ruckus".
What makes the castellers" revealing of the city is that they embody rauxa and seny. The idea of a human castle is rauxa—it defies common sense—but to watch one going up is to see seny in action. Success is based on everyone working together to achieve a shared goal.
The success of Carlos Tusquets" bank, Fibanc, shows seny at work in everyday life. The bank started as a family concern and now employs hundreds. Tusquets said it exemplifies how the economy in Barcelona is different.
Entrepreneurial seny demonstrates why Barcelona and Catalonia—the ancient region of which Barcelona is the capital—are distinct from the rest of Spain yet essential to Spain"s emergence, after centuries of repression, as a prosperous, democratic European country. Catalonia, with Barcelona as its dynamo, has turned into an economic powerhouse. Making up 6 percent of Spain"s territory, with a sixth of its people, it accounts for nearly a quarter of Spain"s production—everything from textiles to computers—even though the rest of Spain has been enjoying its own economic miracle.
Hand in hand with seny goes rauxa, and there"s no better place to see rauxa in action than on the Ramblas, the venerable, tree-shaded boulevard that, in gentle stages, leads you from the centre of Barcelona down to the port. There are two narrow lanes each way for cars and motorbikes, but it"s the wide centre walkway that makes the Ramblas a front-row seat for Barcelona"s longest running theatrical event. Plastic armchairs are set out on the sidewalk. Sit in one of them, and an attendant will come and charge you a small fee. Performance artists throng the Ramblas—stilt walkers, witches caked in charcoal dust, Elvis impersonators. But the real stars are the old women and happily playing children, millionaires on motorbikes, and pimps and women who, upon closer inspection, prove not to be.
Aficionados (Fans) of Barcelona love to compare notes: "Last night there was a man standing on the balcony of his hotel room," Mariana Bertagnolli, an Italian photographer, told me. "The balcony was on the second floor. He was naked, and he was talking into a ceil phone. "
There you have it, Barcelona"s essence. The man is naked (rauxa), but he is talking into a cell phone (seny).
单选题Questions 11-14
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单选题Questions 16-20
Can electricity cause cancer? In a society that literally runs on electric power, the very idea seems preposterous. But for more than a decade, a growing band of scientists and journalists has pointed to studies that seem to link exposure to electromagnetic fields with increased risk of leukemia and other malignancies. The implications are unsettling, to say the least, since everyone comes into contact with such fields, which are generated by everything electrical, from power lines and antennas to personal computers and micro-wave ovens. Because evidence on the subject is inconclusive and often contradictory, it has been hard to decide whether concern about the health effects of electricity is legitimate or the worst kind of paranoia.
Now the alarmists have gained some qualified support from the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the executive summary of a new scientific review, released in draft form late last week, the EPA has put forward what amounts to the most serious government warning to date. The agency tentatively concludes that scientific evidence "suggests a causal link" between extremely low- frequency electromagnetic fields those having very longwave-lengths--and leukemia, lymphoma and brain cancer. While the report falls short of classifying ELF fields as probable carcinogens, it does identify the common 60-hertz magnetic field as "a possible, but not proven, cause of cancer in humans. "
The report is no reason to panic--or even to lose sleep. If there is a cancer risk, it is a small one. The evidence is still so controversial that the draft stirred a great deal of debate within the Bush Administration, and the EPA released it over strong objections from the Pentagon and the White House. But now no one can deny that the issue must be taken seriously and that much more research is needed.
At the heart of the debate is a simple and well-understood physical phenomenon: When an electric current passes through a wire, it generates an electromagnetic field that exerts forces on surrounding objects. For many years, scientists dismissed any suggestion that such forces might be harmful, primarily because they are so extraordinarily weak. The ELF magnetic field generated by a video terminal measures only a few milligauss, or about one-hundredth the strength of the earth"s own magnetic field. The electric fields surrounding a power line can be as high as 10 kilovolts per meter, but the corresponding field induced in human cells will be only about 1 millivolt per meter. This is far less than the electric fields that the cells themselves generate.
How could such minuscule forces pose a health danger? The consensus used to be that they could not, and for decades scientists concentrated on more powerful kinds of radiation, like X-rays, that pack sufficient wallop to knock electrons out of the molecules that make up the human body. Such "ionizing" radiations have been clearly linked to increased cancer risks and there are regulations to control emissions.
But epidemiological studies, which find statistical associations between sets of data, do not prove cause and effect. Though there is a body of laboratory work showing that exposure to ELF fields can have biological effects on animal tissues, a mechanism by which those effects could lead to cancerous growths has never been found.
The Pentagon is far from persuaded. In a blistering 33-page critique of the EPA report, Air Force scientists charge its authors with having "biased the entire document" toward proving a link. "Our reviewers are convinced that there is no suggestion that (electromagnetic fields) present in the environment induce or promote cancer," the Air Force concludes. "It is astonishing that the EPA would lend its imprimatur on this report. " Then Pentagon"s concern is understandable. There is hardly a unit of the modern military that does not depend on the heavy use of some kind of electronic equipment, from huge ground-based radar towers to the defense systems built into every warship and plane.