问答题If you thought that only women on the heavier side felt bad about their bodies after being bombarded with images of stick thin models, well, you"d better think again, for the affliction is common to all members of the fairer sex. And, it doesn"t take a week or a month or even a year for those negative feelings to set in, but only three minutes. In a recent study, researchers measured how some women felt about themselves, from their body weight to their hair, and then exposed them to images of models in magazine ads for one to three minutes. The women were then asked to evaluate themselves again, and in all cases, they reported a drop in their level of satisfaction with their own bodies. The study suggests that the majority of women would benefit from social interventions aimed at curbing the effects of the media. Unlike past interventions that have targeted specific groups of women, such as those with preexisting eating and body-image concerns, this study suggests that such attempts are important for all women.

问答题In general, investment in the United States will be in the form of a subsidiary. It is possible for a non-U. S. corporation to operate a branch office in the United States, but there are significant disadvantages to a branch, particularly with respect to its tax treatment. Branches of non-U. S. corporations are not subject to federal regulation or registration requirements. However, each state will require a "foreign" corporation to "qualify" before "doing business" in that state. A corporation will be considered "foreign" if it is organized under the laws of another country or another state, and so this is not a requirement imposed only on non-U. S. investors. "Doing business" is a technical term that implies a substantial presence in the state. This would include the ownership or leasing of real property, the maintenance of a stock of goods for local sale, employees and the like. Selling products to local customers, either directly or through an independent sales representative or distributor, would not in itself constitute "doing business". The states actually exercise little control over the qualification process other than to ensure that the qualifying entity's name is not confusingly similar to an already registered entity and that all registration fees and taxes are paid (qualification is basically a form of taxation). In most states, qualification for a non-U. S. corporation consists of a relatively easy application, a registration fee, and a notarized or legalized copy of the corporation's articles of incorporation (in English or a certified translation).

问答题For a keynote speaker at a conference on wilderness conservation, Pavan Sukhdev possessed astrange job title: banker. Sukhdev, a high-ranking executive of Deutsche Bank who helped build India's modern financial markets, had a fiscal message to deliver. The loss of forests is costing the global economy between $ 2.5 trillion and $ 4.5 trillion a year, he said. Many trillions more in costs arise from the loss of vegetation to filter water, bees to pollinate crops, microbes to breakdown toxins, and dozens of other "ecosystem services. " For centuries, economies have risen and collapsed based on the market value of the products extracted from nature-timber, coal, metals, game. And yet the value of much of what nature supplies hasn't been reflected in the numbers. A new movement now seeks to put this right by attaching an economic value to the services nature provides. The idea is predicated on the notion that since a paper mill, say, needs water as well as trees, there should be some kind of economic mechanism whereby it pays to help keep the water flowing. The same is true for dozens of other ecosystem services across a wide range of industries. There's scarcely a business in the world that doesn't rely in some way on natural features that help control flooding, disseminate seeds, fend off pests, and hold soil in place. According to a study Sukhdev is conducting for the United Nations, protecting and restoring damaged ecosystems can deliver extraordinarily high rates of return on investment--40, 50, even 80 percent. "People need to start thinking of 'ecological infrastructure'as something they can and should invest in," Sukdhev said at the conference. It sounds radical even to talk about nature in the language of finance, but it's quickly becoming a mainstream practice. One of the few tangible achievements expected from the climate talks in Copenhagen this month is agreement on a program called REDD, or Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation, a complex set of regulations that would help developing countries keep their rainforests standing by turning their carbon-storing capacity into a source of income. Trees, after all, absorb carbon dioxide from the air, which can be seen as a service that offsets tailpipe and smokestack emissions. REDD would establish a market in which wealth ycountries can pay countries with old-growth forests, such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Guyana, for their carbon stocks, thereby creating an economic incentive to preserve the jungle. Carbon storage is only one of many services that could enter the global economy in the next few years. Watershed protection is already generating revenue. The Nature Conservancy, a conservation group, has set up "water funds" in the Southwestern U. S. and parts of South America. Urban water utilities, hydroelectric-power providers, and other users that rely on regular flows of clean water downstream pay into the funds to finance water shedprotection upstream. Elsewhere in the U.S. , federal environmental laws have enabled thriving markets for wetland and endangered-specie shabitat conservation. Under the Clean Water Act, developers who plan to drain or fill in wetlands must create an equal amount of wetlands within the same watershed to conform to a policy of "no net loss." For-profit companies like Wildlands, based in Rocklin, California, preserve, restore, or create wetlands that function as "mitigation banks," in which developers purchase credits to of fsetdestruction they cause. Conservation banks function in a similar way, preserving habitats for listed species. Mitigation banking alone has grown to a $ 3 billion-a-year industry. The next step is to turn ecosystem services into a viable portfolio option for large investors--such as pension funds--and to generate the capital needed to carry out large-scale conservation efforts. Experts are looking into bundling different services together into financial instruments. One former bond trader is building a private exchange that would make it easier for investors to identify ecosystem projects and trade credits. Not everyone thinks using market mechanisms is a good idea. Critics say that REDD, for instance, could protect one rainforest from clear-cutting merely by sending the logging trucks to a different forest. There's also a worry that carbon credits could easily be faked. In Papua New Guinea, government officials and foreign firms are already embroiled in a scandal involving duped locals and bogus projects. The potential upside of markets, though, may be too significant to ignore. "There's this inherent feeling that there's something unethical about a market, that it's permission to pollute, "says Tom Lovejoy, biodiversity chair at the Heinz Center in Washington, D.C. "But at the moment there's nothing else on the table that deals with this at a big-enough scale. " Whole, functioning ecosystems have never been worth as much as their disassembled parts. Turning that equation around may be the best hope for keeping ecosystems intact.1.What are the "ecosystem services"(para. 1)? What is the "ecological infrastructure?" (para. 2)according to Sukhdev?

问答题Questions 1～3 From sacred cow to white elephant is a short jump. Wind power, once seen as the eco-friendly cure-all for Britain"s energy problems, is attracting unprecedented criticism. The latest campaign, which unites veteran Greens and the opposition Tories, opposes a proposed installation of 27 wind turbines next to Romney Marsh in Kent, a noted bird sanctuary and beauty spot. Hundreds more are planned elsewhere—many in beautiful bits of the countryside where some of Britain"s richest people happen to live. A bunch of media-savvy local organizations is now lobbying hard to stop them. The government remains unmoved. It calls wind power "the most proven green source of electricity generation" and cites Denmark as a role model. Renewables (mostly wind) account for 20% of electrical generation capacity there. Renewable energy is needed both to cut CO 2 emissions, promised under the Kyoto treaty, and to reach the government"s own target of generating 10% of British electricity from renewable sources by 2010. The cost of this to the taxpayer is likely to be ￡1 billion a year by 2020. But as well as Tories, toffs and country-lovers, many others think that wind power is seriously flawed. The first big problem is that it is too expensive. Although the British Wind Energy Association puts the cost of electricity from onshore wind farms at 2.5p per kilowatt-hour, only slightly more costly than other power sources, the Royal Academy of Engineering claims that on a more realistic view of construction costs it is much dearer(more expensive): 3.7p when generated onshore and 5.5p offshore. The government has tried to bridge this gap with tradable certificates. The wind-gatherers gain one of these for each megawatt-hour they generate. Power distribution companies then buy them as an alternative to paying the fines levied for failing to buy a set proportion (currently 4.9%) of renewable energy annually. But a recent House of Lords report noted a big snag: the nearer the industry gets to meeting the governments targets, the less the value of the certificates once the target is passed, their worth falls abruptly to zero. So the certificates, which will cost consumers a cool ￡500m this year and will be even more expensive next year, cap the supply of renewable energy instead of encouraging it. In effect, firms will buy only the minimum amount of renewable energy necessary to comply with the law. Then there are the engineering problems. Too light a breeze means no power too strong a gale and the turbines shut down to prevent damage. Even the wind-lovers expect that the farms will manage only 30% of their full capacity on average. Worse, that output can fluctuate rapidly—by up to 20% of the total national wind capacity in the space of a single hour, according to Hugh Sharman, an energy consultant, who has studied Denmark"s wind industry. Furthermore, in a typical year like 2002, he says, there were 54 days when the air was so still that virtually no wind power was generated at all. But whereas Denmark can import power from Norway and Germany to keep the lights on during calm periods, Britain"s power grid is not set up for imports. So conventional coal-, oil- or gas-fired power stations would have to be kept running, ready to take up the load. That sharply raises the real cost of wind energy and means extra CO 2 emissions. Ministers may be right when they argue that wind power is the only renewable energy source that has even a theoretical chance of meeting the government" s targets. Given the costs and technical uncertainties, perhaps it would be better to abandon those targets altogether.

问答题年近古稀的我，应该说是饱经风霜、世事洞明了。但依然时而明白，时而懵懂。孔子曰：“七十而从心所欲，不逾矩。”大概已达到大彻大悟的思想境界了吧。吾辈凡夫，生存在功利社会，终日忙忙碌碌，为柴米油盐所困，酒色财气所惑，既有追求，又有烦恼，若想做到从心所欲，难矣哉! 老年人的从心所欲，不是说可以我行我素，倚老卖老，从心所欲，说白了，就是要有自己的活法，在心灵深处构筑独自的“自由王国”。海阔任鱼跃，天高任鸟飞，悠悠然自得其乐。这种自由，既是无限的，又是有限的，无限的从心所欲寓于有限的生活空间。我想，这大概就是孔夫子所说的“不逾矩”吧。

问答题传统的中国画，不模仿自然，是以表现自然，是以表现心灵舒发性情为主体的意象主义艺术，画中意象与书法中的文字一样，是一种适于书写的极度概括抽象的象征符号，伴随着意象符号的是传统的程式表现技巧。古代的大师们创造着独自心中的意象及其程式，风格迥异，生机勃勃。 后来，多数人惯于对古人程式的模仿，所作之画千人一面。这样的画作一泛滥，雅的不再雅，俗的则更俗。近代中国画仍然在庸俗没落的模式漩涡中进退两难，阿文与当今的有识同行一样，有志标新立异，寻找自我，建立起现代的属于自己的新意象、新格局，且一直背靠着高雅的传统。

问答题A future of temporary networks would seem to run counter to the wave of mergers sweeping the global economy. The headlines of the business press tell the story, "Compaq buys Digital"; "WorldCom buys MC1"; "Citibank merges with Travelers"; "Daimler-Benz acquires Chrysler" Yet when we look beneath the surface of all merger and acquisition activity, we see signs of a counter-phenomenon: the disintegration of the large corporation. Twenty-five years ago, one in five US workers was employed by a Fortune 500 company. Today, the ratio has dropped to less than one in 10. Large companies are far less vertically integrated than they were in the past and rely more and more on outside suppliers to produce components and provide services. While big companies control ever larger flows of cash, they are exerting less and less direct control over actual business activity. They are, you might say, growing hollow. Even within large corporations, decisions are increasingly being pushed to lower levels. Workers are rewarded not for efficiently carrying out orders but for figuring out what needs to be done and doing it. Many large industrial companies have broken themselves up into numerous independent units that transact business with one another almost as if they were separate companies. What underlies this trend? The answers lie in the basic economics of organizations. Business organizations are, in essence, mechanisms for co-ordination. They exist to guide the flow of work, materials, ideas and money, and the form they take is strongly affected by the co-ordination technologies available. When it is cheaper to conduct transactions internally, within the bounds of a corporation, organizations grow larger, but when it is cheaper to conduct them externally, with independent entities in the open market, organizations stay small or shrink. The co-ordination technologies of the industrial era—the train and the telegraph, the car and the telephone, the mainframe computer and the fax machine—made internal transactions not only possible but advantageous. Companies were able to manage large organizations centrally, which provided them with economies of scale in manufacturing, marketing, distribution and other activities. It made economic sense to control many different functions and businesses directly and to hire the legions of administrators and supervisors needed to manage them. Big was good. But with the introduction of powerful personal computers and broad electronic networks— the coordination technologies of the 21st century—the economic equation changes. Because information can be shared instantly and inexpensively among many people in many locations, the value of centralized decision-making and bureaucracy decreases. Individuals can manage themselves, co-ordinating their efforts through electronic links with other independent parties. Small becomes good. In one sense, the new co-ordination technologies enable us to return to the pre-industrial organizational model of small, autonomous businesses. But there is one crucial difference: electronic networks enable these microbusinesses to tap into the global reservoirs of information, expertise and financing that used to be available only to large companies. The small companies enjoy many of the benefits of the big without sacrificing the leanness, flexibility and creativity of the small. In the future, as communications technologies advance and networks become more efficient, the shift to e-lancing promises to accelerate. Should this happen, the dominant business organization of the future may not be a stable, permanent corporation but rather an elastic network that might sometimes exist for no more than a day or two. We will enter the age of the temporary company.

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问答题孔子学院秉承孔子“和为贵”、“和而不同”的理念，推动中外文化的交流与融合，以建设一个持久和平、共同繁荣的和谐世界为宗旨。儒家“吾日三省吾身”等理念早已广为人知。在不久的将来，国际上汉语热潮将持续涌动。不可否认，汉语热的出现是我国综合国力不断增强的表现。改革开放以来，我国的国内生产总值以高于8%的平均增长率持续增长。孔子学院和汉语热的兴起印证了“国富民强，国强语盛”的说法。同时，作为创新知识、传播文化、传承文明的学术机构，大学理应在促进不同文化的交流与理解、维护世界和平与人类共同发展等方面承担起更大的责任。

问答题细娃盼过年，大人盼开春。儿时，对于大人的盼是不能理解的，但过年，对于我来说，可是一年的大盼头了。过年不但好玩，还有好吃的，那气氛是迷人的。年一过，又盼日子快些流，好流来又一个春节。 在盼中，日子真的流得飞快，转眼上了小学，继而初中，然后高中，最后大学；盼的欲望更加强烈，盼的内容也越渐丰富了：盼有好成绩毕业，盼有一份好工作，盼事业有成，盼挣钱替父母分忧，盼有一个好爱人……不知不觉，天天踩着盼的石阶而上，自己竟成了一个大男人，一个挣钱养家糊口 的忙碌人了。

问答题十月的上海，阳光明媚，秋高气爽，来自35个国家和地区的1300余名比赛选手参加了在沪举行的本世纪最后一届世界中学生运动会。 世界各国青少年在沪逗留的时间虽然短暂，但上海的风貌和中国的传统文化仍然给他们留下了深刻的印象。无论是参观矗立于浦江之畔的东方明珠电视塔，还是游览静卧一隅的城隍庙，他们都能感受到传统与现代的美妙结合。博大精深的中国传统文化让这些外国朋友感受到的是神秘和新奇，这种认知来自短暂的接触，但从此之后，他们不会忘记；有这样一个民族，生活在世界的东方。

问答题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} {{I}}In this part of the test, you will hear 5 sentences in English. You will hear the sentences ONLY ONCE. After you have heard each sentence, translate it into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.{{/I}}

问答题Stock exchanges serve important roles in national economies. They encourage investment by providing places for buyers and sellers to trade securities, stocks bonds, and other financial instruments. Companies issue stocks and bonds to obtain capital to expand their business. Corporations issue new securities in the primary market, usually with the help of investment bankers. In the primary market, corporations receive the proceeds of stock sales. Thereafter, they are not involved in the trading of stocks. Owners of stocks trade them on a stock exchange in the secondary market. In the secondary market, investors, not companies, earn the profits or bear the losses resulting from their trades. Stock exchanges encourage investment by providing this secondary market. By allowing investors to sell securities, exchanges increase the safety of investing. Stock exchanges also encourage investment in other ways. They protect investors by upholding rules and regulations that ensure buyers will be treated fairly and receive exactly what they pay for. Exchanges also support state-of-the-art technology and business of brokering, which both help traders to buy and sell securities quickly and efficiently.

问答题 People do not have secret trolleys at the supermarket, so how can it be a violation of their privacy if a grocer sells their purchasing habits to a marketing firm? If they walk around in public view, what harm can cameras recording their movements cause? A company is paying them to do a job, so why should it not read their e-mails when they are at work? How, what and why, indeed. Yet, in all these situations, most people feel a sense of unease. The technology for gathering, storing, manipulating and sharing information has become part of the scenery, but there is little guidance on how to resolve the conflicts created by all the personal data now washing around. A group of computer scientists at Stanford University, led by John Mitchell, has started to address the problem in a novel way. Instead of relying on rigid (and easily programmable) codes of what is and is not acceptable, Dr. Mitchell and his colleagues Adam Barth and Anupam Datta have turned to a philosophical theory called contextual integrity. This theory acknowledges that people do not require complete privacy. They will happily share information with others as long as certain social norms are met. Only when these norms are contravened—for example, when your psychiatrist tells the personnel department all about your consultation—has your privacy been invaded. The team thinks contextual integrity can be used to express the conventions and laws surrounding privacy in the formal vernacular of a computer language. Contextual integrity, which was developed by Helen Nissenbaum of New York University, relies on four classes of variable. These are the context of a flow of information, the capacities in which the individuals sending and receiving the information are acting, the types of information involved, and what she calls the "principle of transmission". It is the fourth of these variables that describes the basis on which information flows. Someone might, for example, receive information under the terms of a commercial exchange, or because he deserves it, or because someone chose to share it with him, or because it came to him as a legal right, or because he promised to keep it secret. These are all examples of transmission principles. Dr. Nissenbaum has been working with Mr. Barth to turn these wordy descriptions of the variables of contextual integrity into formal expressions that can be incorporated into computer programs. The tool Mr. Barth is employing to effect this transition is linear temporal logic, a system of mathematical logic that can express detailed constraints on the past and the future. Linear temporal logic is an established discipline. It is, for example, used to test safety-critical systems, such as aeroplane flight controls. The main difference between computer programs based on linear temporal logic and those using other sorts of programming language is that the former describe how the world ought to be, whereas the latter list specific instructions for the computer to carry out in order to achieve a particular end. The former say something like: "If you need milk, you ought eventually to arrive at the shop." The latter might say: "Check the refrigerator. If there is no milk, get in your car. Start driving. Turn left at the corner. Park. Walk into the shop." Dr. Mitchell and his team have already written logical formulae that they believe express a number of American privacy laws, including those covering health care, financial institutions and children's activities online. The principles of transmission can be expressed in logical terms by using concepts such as "previously" and "eventually" as a type of mathematical operator. (They are thus acting as the equivalents of the "plus", "minus", "multiply" and "divide" signs in that more familiar system of logic known as arithmetic. ) For example, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act states that "a financial institution may not disclose personal information, unless such financial institution provides or has provided to the consumer a notice." This is expressed as. IF send (financial-institution, third-party, personal-information) THEN PREVIOUSLY send (financial-institution, consumer, notification) OR EVENTUALLY send (financial-institution, consumer, notification) According to Dr. Nissenbaum, applying contextual integrity to questions of privacy not only results in better handling of those questions, but also helps to pinpoint why new methods of gathering information provoke indignation. In a world where the ability to handle data is rapidly outpacing agreement about how that ability should be used, this alone is surely reason to study it.

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问答题Questions 4～6 It is too early to say whether the recent declines in global stock markets signal anything out of the ordinary. Though large, they are hardly unprecedented: 8 percent for the Dow, 19 percent for Japan"s Nikkei, 21.7 percent for Brazil"s Bovespa (all changes are measured from recent highs, in April or May, until yesterdays closes). But the fact that they"ve occurred simultaneously suggests herd behavior. Spoiled by years of cheap credit, global investors seem to be reacting to the prospect of higher interest rates by fleeing stock markets almost everywhere. There is danger of a broader financial and economic setback. The riskiest and most mysterious aspect of the present situation is the increasingly global nature of investment capital. Once, capital was largely compartmentalized by nation Americans saved and invested in the United States; Germans saved and invested in Germany. This world is disappearing. It is now routine for pension funds, mutual funds and many wealthy investors to move money in and out of American, European, Asian and Latin American stocks and bonds. The magnitudes are immense. For 2004 the International Monetary Fund reports that. Americans invested $ 856 billion abroad, while foreigners invested $1.44 trillion in the United States. Some flows represented "foreign direct investment": buying factories, real estate or entire companies. But most flows involved corporate stocks and bonds, government bonds or international bank loans. The Japanese invested $ 414 billion abroad, and foreigners invested $ 273 billion in Japan. "Emerging market" countries (China, India, Brazil and many developing nations) received $ 570 billion in foreign investment and made $ 935 billion of investments abroad. About $ 515 billion of the outflow came from governments—dominated by China and other Asian nations—that reinvested their trade surpluses, often in U. S. Treasury bonds. Thirty years ago, these massive global money movements didn"t exist. Most countries had extensive "capital controls" restricting how much (or whether) their citizens could invest abroad and how much (or whether) foreigners could invest in their countries. The United States was a major exception. A turning point was France"s decision in the early 1980s to relax controls, says Rawi Abdelal of the Harvard Business School and author of the forthcoming Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance . The French concluded that controls were so widely evaded by the wealthy that they were impractical, he says. Once France changed, Europe moved to liberalize capital flows. Many other countries gradually joined for fear of losing in the worldwide chase for investment funds. In theory, liberalization benefits everyone. Capital flows to the most productive investments. Savers earn higher returns. Countries with good investment opportunities expand more rapidly. Huge capital inflows have dearly helped China by financing new factories with modern technology. In many ways, the world economy seems healthy. In 2006, the IMF predicts the fourth consecutive year of growth exceeding 4 percent. But there"s a rub: Global finance has created new risks. At least two stand out. First, huge trade imbalances. The United States is running massive deficits, counterbalanced by big surpluses in China, Japan and other Asian countries. These imbalances occur in part because countries with trade surpluses can recycle their export earning—heavily in dollars—rather than buying imports or selling dollars for other currencies, leading to a dollar depreciation. That would lower the American trade deficit by making U. S. imports more expensive and U. S. exports less expensive. Most economists consider today"s massive imbalances unsustainable. Second, worldwide financial crises. Global investors may move in herds, first pouring money into some countries—or investments—and then withdrawing abruptly. That"s what happened in the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Capital flight plunged countries into deep recessions; investors suffered large losses. There are now fears that hedge funds and others may be similarly overexposed in some markets. (Hedge funds are lightly regulated pools of money, mostly from big and wealthy investors. They are estimated to control more than $1 trillion in financial assets.) Some economists, most prominently Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, consider the recent stock market declines a healthy sign. They signal a retreat from blatantly speculative behavior. A prolonged period of cheap credit pushed too much money into risky investments. Some investors put money into emerging-market stocks and bonds; others preferred commodities (gold, copper). Housing was the small investor"s favorite. The result: a series of "bubbles" that are best punctured sooner rather than later.

问答题What is the relationship between real estate market and economic growth in US in the past and in the near future?

问答题Whole generations are growing up addicted to television. Food is left uneaten, homework undone and sleep is lost. Television is a universal pacifier. It is now standard practice for mother to keep the children quiet by putting them in the living room and turning on the set. It doesn"t matter that the children watch rubbishy commercials or spectacles of sadism and violence—as long as they are quiet. There is a limit to the amount of creative talent available in the world. Everyday, television consumes vast quantities of creative work. That is why most of the programs are so bad; it is impossible to keep pace with the demand and maintain high standards as well. When millions watch the same programs, the whole world becomes a village, and society is reduced to the conditions which obtain in preliterate communities. We become utterly dependent on the two most primitive media of communication, pictures and the spoken word.

问答题Now that my son has turned 13, I"m thinking about writing a self-help book for parents of teenagers. It would be a sensitive, insightful book that would explain the complex, emotionally charged relationship between the parent and the adolescent child. The title would be: "I"m a Jerk ; you"re a Jerk. " The underlying philosophy of this book would be that, contrary to what you hear from the "experts", it"s a bad idea for parents and teenagers to attempt to communicate with each other, because there"s always the risk that one of you will actually find out what the other one is thinking. For example, my son thinks it"s a fine idea to stay-up until 3 a.m. on school nights reading what are called "suspense novels," defined as "novels wherein the most positive thing that can happen to a character is that the Evil Ones Hill kill him BEFORE they eat his brain. " My son sees NO connection between the fact that he stays up reading these books and the fact that he doesn"t feel like going to school the next day. "Rob," I tell him, as he is eating his breakfast in extreme slow motion with his eyes completely dosed, so that he sometimes accidentally puts food into his ear, "I want you to go to sleep earlier. " "DAD," he says, using the tone of voice you might use when attempting to explain an abstract intellectual concept to an oyster, "You DON"T UNDERSTAND. I am NOT tired. I am SPOOSH (sound of my son passing out face-down in his Cracklin" Oat Bran)." Of course, psychologists would tell us that failing asleep in cereal is normal for young teenagers, who need to become independent of their parents and make their own life decisions, which is fine, except that if my son made his own life decisions, his ideal daily schedule would be: Midnight to 3 a.m. —Read suspense novels. 3 a.m. to3 p.m. —Sleep. 3:15 p. m. —Order hearty breakfast from Domino"s Pizza and put on loud, hideous music recorded live in hell. 4 p.m. to midnight—Blow stuff up. Unfortunately this schedule would leave little room for, say, school, so we have to supply parental guidance ("If you don"t open this door RIGHT NOW I WILL BREAK IT DOWN and CHARGE IT TO YOUR ALLOWANCE"), the result being that our relationship with our son currently involves a certain amount of conflict, in the same sense that the Pacific Ocean involves a certain amount of water. At least he doesn"t wear giant pants. I keep seeing young teen-age males wearing ENORMOUS pants; pants that two or three teen-agers could occupy simultaneously and still have room in there for a picnic basket; pants that a clown would refuse to wear on the grounds that they were too undignified. The young men wear these pants really low, so that the waist is about knee level and the pants butt drags on the ground. You could not be an effective criminal wearing pants like these, because you"d be unable to flee on foot with any velocity. POLICE OFFICER: We tracked the alleged perpetrator from the crime scene by following the trail of his dragging pants butt. PROSECUTOR: And what was he doing when you caught up with him? POLICE OFFICER: He was hobbling in a suspicious manner. What I want to know is, how do young people buy these pants? Do they try them on to make sure they DON"T fit? Do they take along a 570-pound friend, or a mature polar bear, and buy pants that fit HIM? I asked my son about these pants, and he told me that mainly "bassers" wear them. "Bassers" are people who like a lot of bass in their music. They drive around in cars with four-trillion-watt sound systems playing recordings of what sound like above-ground nuclear tests, but with less of an emphasis on melody. My son also told me that there are also people called "posers" who DRESS like "bassers", but are in fact, secretly, "preppies", he said that some "posers" also pose as "headbangers", who are people who like heavy-metal music, which is performed by skinny men with huge hair who stomp around the stage, striking their instruments and shrieking angrily, apparently because somebody has stolen all their shirts. "Like," my son said, contemptuously, "some posers will act like they like Metallica, but they don"t know ANYTHING about Metallica." If you can imagine. I realize I"ve mainly been giving my side of the parent teen-ager relationship, and I promise to give my son"s side, if he ever comes out of his room. Remember how the news media made a big deal about it when those people came out after spending two years inside Biosphere 2? Well, two years is NOTHING. Veteran parents assure me that teenagers routinely spend that long in the BATHROOM. In fact, veteran parents assure me that I haven"t seen ANYTHING yet. "Wait till he gets his driver"s license," they say. "That"s when Fred and I turned to heroin. " Yes, the next few years are going to be exciting and challenging. But I"m sure that, with love and mast and understanding, my family will get through them OK. At least I will, because I plan to be inside Biosphere 3.

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