Opinion polls are now beginning to show that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment more widely. But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm Should we not rather encourage many ways for self-respecting people to work Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centers of production and work The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people’s work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom. Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people’s homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people’s work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they live. Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial times, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and families to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm today, and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes. It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded--a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives. All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the idealist goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs. Which of the following contributes to the spread of employment
A. Relief from housework on the part of women.
B. The development of farms.
C. The enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries.
D. The appearance of office work.
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Do you really have to ask Open your eyes. The problem isn’t that the next mass murderer may be sitting right next to you, sleeping in your house, eating at your table, giving you every signal of desperation a person can give. The problem is you don’t want to see it. How else could a child become a psychologically twisted and emotionally alienated mass murderer, unnoticed by everyone Nobody gets that far gone without anyone noticing. We all recognize behavior that raises our concern. We all know when someone is exceeding just weird. We see it happening and yet we ignore it, because if we don’t, we’ll have to take responsibility for doing something about it. We go to movies filled with violent portrayals of ourselves more as animals than as humans. We know it is the wrong message, but we ignore it, because if we don’t, we’ll have to take responsibility for doing something about it. We watch television shows that portray us as vapid, meaningless cretins (白痴) incapable of intelligence or kindness. We know it is the wrong message, but we ignore it, because if we don’t, we’ll have to take responsibility for doing something about it. We clap our hands and stamp our feet to the beat of songs whose lyrics would, if we saw them written on a piece of paper, scare the hell out of us. We know it is the wrong message, but we ignore it, because if we don’t, we’ll have to take responsibility for doing something about it. We trust movie stars whom we have confused with their movie roles when they tell us that owning handguns is patriotic. We know handguns serve only one purpose--to rid human beings of their lives, but we ignore it, because if we don’t, we’ll have to take responsibility for doing something about it. We read books that tell us discipline equals love. So we demonstrate our "love" by suffocating (使窒息) our kids with a million rules and regulations. Instead of respecting them as individuals, we control them. Instead of getting to know them, we criticize everything they say and do. Instead of loving them unconditionally, we judge them. Children who are loved and respected are not emotionally alienated. Children who are loved and respected do not murder people. As parents, teachers, and human beings, we are responsible for the messages we send, the violence we condone(宽恕), and the children we raise. What does the expression "vapid" (Line 1, Par
A. 3) meanA. Amusing.B. Dull.C. Interesting.D. Multiplicat
A sign that Hispanics will dominate California’s future is that a university study has found the ethnic accounted for nearly half of all births in the state by the end of the last decade. Hispanic mothers had 247,796 of the 521,265 children born in California in 1998, or 47.5 percent, according to the University of California at Los Angeles study released in December 2001. Non-Hispanic Whites had 33.9 percent, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders with 10.7 percent. Blacks represented 6.8 percent of births and American Indians had 0.5 percent of all births. California’s future economic health depends upon those Hispanics, who soon will be the majority of young adults and hence the working force, says David Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA. The study, based on state health department statistics, confirms the ethnic shift that made 2001 the year California officially lost its White majority. The U.S. Census showed that Hispanics made up nearly a third while non-Hispanic Whites slipped to less than half of the state’s total population of 33.9 million. California’s experience is part of a "sea change" in the United States, where 23 states already have Hispanics as their largest ethnic minority. Dr. Harry Pachon says, "Hispanics are becoming more prominent in everything from movies to politics, and that is good for the state. If there was no penetration of social and political institutions, then you would have an isolated minority and that’s a recipe for social unrest. On the other hand, by the third generation, one of every two Hispanics have married outside of their ethnic group. There’s a Latinization of America but there’s also an Americanization of Latinos. By third generation, a lot of them are losing their Spanish; they prefer American NFL to soccer." Overall, nearly 65 percent of all Hispanic mothers were immigrants, ranking them second to Asian and Pacific Islanders at more than 84 percent. The babies tend to grow up healthy as well. Studies have shown that at virtually all stages of life, Hispanics, at least in California, Arizona and Texas, tended to suffer fewer major health problems, such as heart attacks, cancer and strokes, than other ethnic groups, Hayes-Bautista noted. Only about 15 percent of Hispanic mothers were 19 years old or younger. By comparison, nearly 17 percent of Blacks and 19 percent of American Indians were teenagers. Non-Hispanic Whites had a figure of nearly 7 percent. How many percent of babies were born by Hispanic mothers in California in 1998
A. 50%.
B. 47.5%.
C. 33.9%.
D. 10.7%.
It is all very well to blame traffic congestion, the cost of petrol and the hectic pace of modem life, but manners on the roads are becoming deplorable. Everybody knows that the nicest men become monsters behind the wheel. It is all very well again to have a tiger in the tank, but to have one in the driver’s seat is another kettle of fish altogether. You might tolerate the odd road hog, but nowadays the well-mannered motorist is the exception to the rule. Perhaps the situation calls for a "Be Kind to Other Drivers" campaign, otherwise it may get completely out of hand. Road courtesy is not only good manners, but good sense too. It takes the most levelheaded and good-tempered of drivers to resist the temptation to retaliate when subjected to uncivilized behavior. On the other hand, a little courtesy goes a long way towards relieving the tensions and frustrations of motoring. A friendly nod or a wave of acknowledgement in response to an act of courtesy helps to create an atmosphere of goodwill and tolerance so necessary in modern traffic conditions. But such acknowledgements of courtesy are all too rare today. Many drivers nowadays don’t even seem able to recognize courtesy when they see it. Contrary to general opinion, young drivers (especially sports-car owners, who take pride in their driving) have better manners than their seniors. But this attitude is short- lived in the world of modem driving where many drivers neither expect nor give any quarter. This may be a commendable trait on the battlefield but is out of place on the roads. Lorry drivers say they have almost abandoned the practice of signaling cars to overtake when the road is clear, because many of the cars took too long to pass. Their drivers couldn’t be bothered to select a lower gear. Others, after overtaking, slowed down again and hogged the road. Again, a motoring magazine has recently drawn attention to the increasing number of drivers who never wait for gaps. "They manufacture them by force, using their direction indicators as a threat rather than a warning." Slanting matches and even punch-ups are quite common. It can’t be long before we hear of pistols and knives being used: we can then call our dual carriageways, and solve a spelling problem in the process. Driving is essentially a state of mind. However technically skilled a driver may be, he can’t be an advanced motorist if he is always arrogant and aggressive. Road courtesy is good sense because______.
A. it minimizes friction
B. most drivers never make acknowledgements
C. it cuts down the number of drivers
D. most drivers will hit others while being offended
Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance were determined by technologists, artisans, designers, inventors, and engineers--using nonscientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in the mind by a visual, nonverbal process. ①In the development of Western technology, it has he en nonverbal thinking, by and large, that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details; and rockets exist not because of geometry or thermodynamics (热力学), but because they were first a picture in the minds of those who built them. The creative shaping process of a technologist’s mind can be seen in nearly every artifact that exists. For example, in designing a diesel engine, a technologist might impress individual ways of nonverbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitive sense of rightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber Where should the valves be placed Should it have a long or short piston Such questions have a range of answers that are supplied by experience, by physical requirements, by limitations of available space, and not least by a sense of form. Some decisions, such as wall thickness and pin diameter, may depend on scientific calculations, but the nonscientific component of design remains primary. Design courses, then, should be an essential element in engineering curricula. Nonverbal thinking, a central mechanism in engineering design, involves perceptions, the stock in trade of the artist, not the scientist. ②Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail. "hard thinking", nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development of cognitive processes and infeiror to verbal or mathematical thought, ③But it is paradoxical that when the staff of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric(等比例 的)views of industrial processes for its historical record of American engineering, the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students, but rather students attending architectural schools. ④If courses in design, which in a strong]y analytial engineering curriculum provide the backgound required" for practical problem solving, are not provided, we can expect to encounter silly but costly enors gccurring in advanced engineering systems. For example, early models of high-speed railroad cars loaded with high-tech controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because the fan sucked snow into the electrical system. ⑤Absurd random failures that plague automatic control systems are not merely trivital aberrations(失常); they are a reflection of the chaos that results when design is assumed to be primarily a prgblem in mathematics: It can be inferred that the author thinks engineering curricula are ______.
A. strengthened when they include courses in design
B. strong because nonverbal thinking is still emphasized by most of the courses
C. strong despite the errors made in the development of automatic control systems
D. strong despite the absence of nonscientific modes of thinking