题目内容
Perhaps only a small boy training to be a wizard at the Hogwarts School of magic could cast a spell so powerful as to create the biggest book launch ever. Wherever in the world the clock strikes midnight on June 20th, his followers will flock to get their paws on one of more than 10m copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Bookshops will open in the middle of the night and delivery firms are drafting in extra staff and bigger trucks. Related toys, games, DVDs and other merchandise will be everywhere. There will he no escaping Potter mania. Yet Mr. Potter’s world is a curious one, in which things are often not what they appear. While an excitable media (here by including The Economist, happy to support such a fine example of globalization)is helping to hype the launch of J.K. Rowling’s fifth novel, about the most adventurous thing that the publishers (Scholastic in America and Britain’s Bloomsbury)have organized is a reading by Ms.Rowling in London’s Royal Albert Hall to be broadcast as a live web cast. Hollywood, which owns everything else to do with Harry Potter, says it is doing even less. Incredible as it may seem, the guardians of the brand say that, to protect the Potter franchise, they are trying to maintain a low profile, well, relatively low. Ms. Rowling signed a contract in 1998 with Warner Brothers, part of AOL Time Warner, giving the studio exclusive film, licensing and merchandising rights in return for what now appears to have been a steal: some $500,000. Globally, the first four Harry Potter books have sold some 200m copies in 55 languages; the two movies have grossed over $1.8 billion at the box office. This is a stunning success by any measure, especially as Ms. Rowling has long demanded that Harry Potter should not be over-commercialized. In line with her wishes, Warner says it is being extraordinarily careful, at least by Hollywood standards, about what it licenses and to whom. It imposed tough conditions on Coca-Cola, insisting that no Harry Potter images should appear on cans, and is now in the process of making its licensing programme even more restrictive. Coke may soon be considered too mass market to carry the brand at all. The deal with Warner ties much of the merchandising to the films alone. There are no officially sanctioned products relating to Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix; nor yet for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the film of the third book, which is due out in June 2004. "Warner agrees that Ms. Rowling’s creation is a different sort of commercial property, one with long-term potential that could be damaged by a typical Hollywood marketing blitz," says Diane Nelson, the studio’s global brand manager for Harry Potter. "It is vital," she adds, "that with more to come, readers of the books are not alienated. The evidence from our market research is that enthusiasm for the property by fans is not waning.\ It can be concluded from the last paragraph that ______.
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
Since the buildup to the war with Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken it on the chin from the media. The British media ordinarily grill politicians, but in this case they have been particularly feisty, empowered by opinion polls that showed most Brits wanted nothing to do with invading Iraq. ①Until now the American media, which by nature are less aggressive than their British counterparts but probably are taking a lead from polls and politicians that supported the administration’s war stance, have gone relatively easy on President Bust. But this week the media have hit the administration hard with questions about Bush’s State of the Union statement that Iraq was acquiring uranium from Niger, one of the administration’s justifications for war. And with the 2004 campaign heating up and Bush’s approval rating dipping, his administration is being grilled harder than it has been in months. Experts say the questioning will get sharper as summer progresses. ②"That Democrats are just now ’beginning to get traction’ on the justification for the war is an example of how differently politics are played in the U.S.A. than they are in Britain"says Martin Turner, Washington bureau chief of the BBC. The respondents have been highly critical of the war and suspicious of administration claims that weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq. In Britain, whereas prime minister must defend himself every week before Parliament, the media take a "much more muscular approach to grilling politicians", Turner says. Here, the BBC is often regarded as a rather impolite member of the Washington press corps. "We tend to ask questions in a different way than they are asked on the Sunday political programs." In London, Michael Goldfarb, senior correspondent for National Public Radio affiliate WBUR in Boston, says his British counterparts talk about "how astonishing the ride has been for Bush" and how the Bush administration "manages the news like it’s nobody’s business. Here they call Blair Bush’s poodle (狮子狗)". But then again, he says, British media "simply don’t hold to the American notion of objectivity and certainly not impartiality". ABC anchor Peter Jennings, who reported from London in the 1970s and 1980s, says he has "always been struck by how mu ch more aggressive the British press is". They’re simply much more aggressive. In the U.S.A., "there is no doubt that the press is aware of the influence of a powerful president, and the press is aware to some extent that it is in competition for public opinion, so there is always stress between a powerful president and the press." But in the past week, with debate over the war heating up, it led several of Jennings’ World News Tonight broadcasts. "Our reporters sense some deep concern about what is happening.\ It is implied in paragraphs 2 and 3 that Bush might lose public support if ______.
St.Paul didn’t like it. Moses warned his people against it. Hesiod declared it "mischievous" and "hard to get rid of it", but Oscar Wilder said, "Gossip is charming." "History is merely gossip," he wrote in one of his famous plays. "But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality." In times past, under Jewish law, gossipmongers might be fined or flogged(鞭笞). The Puritans put them in stocks or ducking stools, but no punishment seemed to have the desired effect of preventing gossip, which has continued uninterrupted across the back fences of the centuries. Today, however, the much maligned human foible(弱点) is being looked at in a different light. Psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, even evolutionary biologists are concluding that gossip may not be so bad after all. "Gossip is a valuable activity," philosophy professor Aaron Ben-Ze’ev states in a book he has edited, entitled Good Gossip. For one thing, gossip helps us acquire information that we need to know that doesn’t come through ordinary channels, such as: "What was the real reason so-and-so was fired from the office Gossip also is a form of social bonding," Dr. Ben-Ze’ev says. It is "a kind of sharing" that also "satisfies the tribal need--namely, the need to belong to and be accepted by a unique group". What’s more, the professor notes, "Gossip is enjoyable." ①Another gossip groupie, Dr.Ronald de Sousa a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, describes gossip basically as are from of indiscretion and a "saintly virtue", by which he means that the knowledge spread by gossip will usually end up being slightly beneficial. "It seems likely that a world in which all information were universally available would be preferable to a world where immense power resides in the control of secrets," he writes. Still, everybody knows that gossip can have its ill effects, especially on the poor wretch being gossiped about. And people should refrain from certain kinds of gossip that might be harmful, even though the ducking stool is long out of fashion. ②By the way there is also an interesting strain of gossip called medical gossip, which in its best form, according to researchers Jerry M.Suls and Franklin Gookin, can motivate people with symptoms of serious illness, but who are unaware of it to seek medical help. So go ahead and gossip. But remember, if (as often is the case among gossipers) you should suddenly become one of the gossips instead, it is best to employ the foolproof defense recommended by Plato, who may have learned the lesson from Socrates, who as you know was the victim of gossip spread that he was corrupting the youth of Athens: when men speak ill of you, so live that nobody will believe them. Or, as Will Rogers said, "Live so that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.\ The author’s attitude toward "gossip" can be best described as ______.
For one thing, tightness in the job market seems to have given men an additional incentive to take jobs where they can find them. Although female dominated office and service jobs for the most part, rank lower in pay and status, "they’re still there," says June O’Neill, director of program and policy research at the institute. Traditionally mate blue-collar jobs, meanwhile, "aren’t increasing at all". At the same time, she says, "The outlooks of young people are different." Younger men with less rigid views on what constitutes male or female work "may not feel there’s such a stigma to work in a female dominated field." Although views have softened, men who cross the sexual segregation line in the job market may still face discrimination and ridicule. David Anderson, a 36-year-old former high school teacher, says he found secretarial work "a way out of teaching and into the business world". He had applied for work at 23 employment agencies for "management training jobs that didn’t exist", and he discovered that "the best skill ! had was being able to type 70 words a minute". He took a job as a secretary to the marketing director of a New York publishing company. But he says he could feel a lot of people wondering what he was doing there and if something was wrong with him. Mr. Anderson’s boss was a woman. When she asked him to fetch coffee, he says, "The other secretaries’ eyebrows went up." Sales executives who came in to see his boss, he says, "couldn’t quite believe that I could and would type, take dictation, and answer the phones." Males sometimes find themselves mistaken for higher status professionals. Anthony Shee, a flight attendant with U.S. Air Inc., has been mistaken for a pilot. Mr. Anderson, the secretary, says he found himself being "treated in executive tones whenever I wore a suit". In fact, the men in traditional female jobs often move up the ladder fast. Mr. Anderson actually worked only seven months as a secretary. Then he got a higher level, better paying job as a placement counselor at an employment agency. "I got a lot of encouragement to advance," he says, "including job tips from male executives who couldn’t quite see me staying a secretary." Experts say, for example that while men make up only a small fraction of elementary school teachers, a disproportionate number of elementary principals are men. Barbara Bergmann, an economist at the University of Maryland who has studied sex segregation at work, believes that’s partly because of "sexism in the occupational structure" and partly because men have been raised to assert themselves and to assume responsibility. Men may also feel more compelled than women to advance, she suspects. David Anderson says that ______.
The mental health movement in the United States began with a period of considerable enlightenment．①Dorothea Dix was shocked to find the mentally ill in jails and almshouses(养老院)and crusaded for the establishment of asylums in whish people could receive humane care in hospital like environments and treatment which might help restore them to sanity．By the mid 1800s，20 states had established asylums， but during the late 1800s and early 1900s，in the face of economic depression， legislatures were unable to appropriate sufficient funds for decent care．Asylums became overcrowded and prison like. Additionally, patients were more resistant to treatment than the pioneers in the mental health field had anticipated, and security and restraint were needed to protect patients and others. Mental institutions became frightening and depressing places in which the rights of patients were all but forgotten. These conditions continued until after World War Ⅱ. ②At that time, new treatments were discovered for some major mental illnesses theretofore considered untreatable(penicillin for syphilis of the brain and insulin treatment for schizophrenia) and depressions), and a succession of books, motion pictures, and newspaper exposes called attention to the plight of the mentally ill. Improvements were made and Dr. David Vail’s Humane Practices Program is a beacon for today. But changes were slow in coming until the early 1960s. ③At that time, the Civil Rights movement led lawyers to investigate America’s prisons, which were disproportionately populated by blacks, and they in turn followed prisoners into the only institutions that were worse than the prisons--the hospital for the criminally insane . The prisons were filled with angry young men that, encouraged by legal support, were quick to demand their rights. ④The hospital for the criminally insane, by contrast, were populated with people who were considered "crazy" and who were often kept obediently in their place through the use of severe bodily restraints and large doses of major tranquilizers, The young cadre (骨 干) of public interest lawyers liked their role in the mental hospitals. The lawyers found a population that was both passive and easy to champion. These were, after all, people who, unlike criminals, had done nothing wrong. And in many states, they were being kept in horrendous institutions, an injustice, which once exposed, was bound to shock the public and, particularly, the judicial conscience. Patients’ rights groups successfully encouraged reform by lobbying in state legislatures. Judicial interventions have had some definite positive effects, but there is growing awareness that courts cannot provide the standards and the review mechanisms that assure good patient care. ⑤The details of providing day-to-day care simply cannot be mandated by a court, so it is time to take from the courts the responsibility for delivery of mental health care and assurance of patient right and return it to the state mental health administrators to whom the mandate was originally given. Though it is a difficult task, administrators must undertake to write roles and standards and to provide the training and surveillance (监督) to assure that treatment is given and patient rights are respected. People who are the patients in asylums can best be described as ______.
微信支付 
支付宝支付