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TEXT F On May 12, 1946, Louis Alexander Slotin was carrying out an experiment in the laboratories at Los Alamos with seven other men. Slotin was good with his hands; he liked using his head; he was bright and a little daring-- in short, he was like any other man who is happy in his work. At Los Alamos, Slotin, then aged thirty-five, was concerned with the assembly of pieces of plutonium, each of which alone is too small to be dangerous and which will only sustain a chain reaction when they are put together. Atomic bombs are, in fact, detonated in this way, by suddenly bringing together several harmless pieces of plutonium so that they form a larger, explosive mass. Slotin himself had tested the assembly of the first experimental bomb which had been exploded in New Mexico in July, 1945. Now, nearly a year later, Slotin was again doing an experiment of this kind. He was nudging several pieces of plutonium toward one another, by tiny movements, in order to ensure that their total mass .would be large enough to make a chain reaction; and he was doing it, as experts are tempted to do such things, with a screwdriver. The screwdriver slipped, the pieces of plutonium came a fraction too close together and suddenly the instruments everyone was watching registered a great upsurge of neutrons, which is the sign that a chain reaction had begun. The assembly was filling the room with radioactivity. Slotin moved at once; he pulled the pieces of plutonium apart with his bare hands. This was virtually an act of suicide for it exposed him to the largest dose of radioactivity. Then he calmly asked his seven co-workers to mark their precise positions at the time of the accident in order that the degree of exposure to the radioactivity each one received could be fixed. Having clone this and alerted the medical service, Slotin apologized to his companions, and predicted what turned out to be exactly true: that he thought that he would die and that they would recover. Slotin had saved the lives of the seven men working with him by cutting to a minimum the time during which the assembly of plutonium was giving out neutrons and radioactive rays. He himself died of radiation sickness nine days later. The setting for his act, the people involved, and the disaster are scientific, but this is not the reason why I tell Slotin’s story. I tell it to show that morality shall we call it heroism in this case has the same anatomy the world over. There are two things that make up morality. One is the sense that other people matter: the sense of common loyalty, of charity and tenderness, the sense of human love. The other is a clear judgment of what is at stake: a cold knowledge, without a trace of deception, of precisely what will happen to oneself and to others if one plays either the hero or the coward. This is the highest morality: to combine human love with an unflinching, scientific judgment. I tell the story of Louis Slotin for another reason also. He was an atomic physicist who made a different choice from mine. He was still working on bombs when he died, a year after World War II ended. The essence of morality is not that we should all act alike but that each of us should deeply search his own conscience--and should then act steadfastly as it tells him to do. What is the main point of the passage
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America is a country that now sits atop the cherished myth that work provides rewards, that working people can support their families. It’s a myth that has become so divorced from reality that it might as well begin with the words "Once upon a time". Today 1.6 million New Yorkers suffer from "food insecurity", which is a fancy way of saying they don’t have enough to eat. Some are the people who come in at night and clean the skyscrapers that glitter along the river. Some pour coffee and take care of the aged parents of the people who live in those buildings. The American Dream for the well-to-do grows from the bowed backs of the working poor, who too often have to choose between groceries and rent. In a new book called "The Betrayal of Work", Beth Shulman says that even in the booming 1990s one out of every four American workers made less than $8. 70 an hour, an income equal to the government’s poverty level for a family of four. Many, if not most, of these workers had no health care, sick pay or retirement provisions. We ease our consciences, Shulman writes, by describing these people as "low skilled", as though they’re not important or intelligent enough to deserve more. But Iow-skilled workers today are better educated than ever before, and they constitute the linchpin (SYNC) of American industry. When politicians crow (得意洋洋地说) that happy days are here again because jobs are on the rise, it’s these jobs they’re really talking about. Five of the 10 occupations expected to grow big in the next decade are in the lowest-paying job groups. And before we sit back and decide that’s just the way it; is, it’s instructive to consider the rest of the world. While the bottom 10 percent of American workers earn just 37 percent of our average wage, their counterparts in other industrialized countries earn upwards of 60 percent. And those are countries that provide health care and child care, which eases the economic pinch considerably. Almost 40 years ago, when Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, a family with a car and a house in the suburbs felt prosperous. Today that same family may well feel poor, overwhelmed by credit card debt, a second mortgage and the cost of the stuff that has become the backbone of American life. When the middle Class feels poor, the poor have little chance for change, or even recognition. We learn from the passage that the difference in pay between the lowest paid and the average worker in America is ______ than. that in other industrialized countries.
TEXT D Given Shakespeare’s popularity as an actor and a playwright and his conspicuous financial success, it was not surprising that jealous rivals began to snipe at his work. In later centuries, a common charge was that Shakespeare did not invent many of his plots but took his basic stories from well-known English history and old legends instead. It is quite true that these sources have been used by many English dramatists. But what Shakespeare did to the common facts is wholly remarkable: he invented new characters, transformed old ones, created a gallery of kings, maidens, courtiers, warriors and clowns of startling psychological depth. He rearranged familiar tales with an extraordinary gift for drama, comedy and fantasy. And over all this Work, so rich with soaring language and glistening poetry, he cast an unprecedented mood of grandeur and glory. Never had the theatre been showered with such lyricism and passion, such insight and profundity. But how could a man of so little education produce such masterful works Did Shakespeare, in fact, write the plays Through the centuries, some have suggested Francis Bacon was the "real" Shakespeare. But the mystery-author theorists conveniently ignore an indisputable fact: numerous contemporaries stated that William Shakespeare of Stratford and London was the author of all but a few plays in the present canon. Ben Jonson knew him well, as did theatre owners, and the actors who signed the validating foreword to the definitive First Folio (1623) edition of his work. That Shakespeare was not "educated" means only that he had not endured the dry curriculum of Oxford or Cambridge in those days. Shakespeare was, in fact, a wide reader with an inquisitive mind and a confidence in his own perceptions. John Deyden observed: "He was naturally learned" And Shakespeare certainly "read" tile nature of human behavionr-male and female, monarchs and jesters, peasants and buffoons. It was his imaginative range, his jewelled language, his skill as a storyteller-rather than his erudition-that made him the wonder of the world. In one revolutionary step, the dramatist from Avon broke away from the stereotyped morality plays that dominated the English stage. He preached no sermons; he offered no pious warnings; he treated good, evil, virtue and sin as would a psychologist, not a priest. His cool objectivity in rendering human passions has incurred the wrath of many a righteous soul, and even the great Samuel Johnson chastised Shakespeare for writing "without any moral purpose". It was precisely this aspect of Shakespeare, this relentless analytic stance, embroidered with poetry of luminous beauty , that ushered in what can, without exaggeration, be called the modern theatre. Shakespeare destroyed the reigning, stultifying over-simplifications of Elizabethan drama. He dared to show heroes with flaws and doubts and unheroic impulses; heroines whose chastity was at war with their carnality; petty and fearful kings; queens who were monsters, and princes who were charlatans; villains overwhelmed by guilt or even tempted by virtue-in short, a parade of characters caught, as men and women truly are, in the conflict of emotions and the paradoxes of human dilemmas. What is common among the characters in Shakespeare’s drama
Passage Two Supporters of the biotech industry have accused an American scientist of misconduct after she testified to the New Zealand government that a genetically modified(GM) bacterium could cause serious damage if released. The New Zealand Life Sciences Network, an association of pro-GM scientists and organizations, says the view expressed by Elaine Ingham, a soil biologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, was exaggerated and irresponsible. It has asked her university to discipline her. But Ingham stands by her comments and says the complaints are an attempt to silence her. "They’re trying to cause trouble with my university and get me fired," Ingham told New Scientist. The controversy began on 1 February, when Ingham testified before New Zealand’s Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, which will determine how to regulate GM organisms. Ingham claimed that a GM version of a common soil bacterium could spread and destroy plants if released into the wild. Other researchers had previously modified the bacterium to produce alcohol from organic waste. But Ingham says that when she put it in soil with wheat plants, all of the plants died within a week.. "We would lose terrestrial(陆生的)plants... this is an organism that is potentially deadly to the continued survival of human beings," she told the commission. She added that the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) canceled its approval for field tests using the organism once she had told them about her research in 1999. But last week the New Zealand Life Sciences Network accused Ingham of "presenting inaccurate, careless and exaggerated information" and "generating speculative doomsday scenarios (世界末日的局面)that are not scientifically supportable". They say that her study doesn’t even show that the bacteria would survive in the wild, much less kill massive numbers of plants. What’s more, the network says that contrary to Ingham’s claims, the EPA. was never asked to consider the organism for field trials. The EPA has not commented on the dispute. But an e-mail to the network from Janet Anderson, director of the EPA’s bio pesticides (生物杀虫剂)division, says "there is no record of a review and/or clearance to field test". Ingham says EPA officials had told her that the organism was approved for field tests, but says she has few details. It’s also not clear whether the organism, first engineered by a German institute for biotechnology, is still in use. Whether Ingham is right or wrong, her supporters say opponents are trying unfairly to silence her. "I think her concerns should be taken seriously. She shouldn’t be harassed in this way," says Ann Clarke, a plant biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada who also testified before the commission. "It’s an attempt to silence the opposition." According to Ann Clarke, the New Zealand Life Sciences Network ______.
TEXT C "Winners" Winners have different potentials. Achievement is not the most important thing, authenticity is. The authentic person experiences the reality of himself by knowing himself, being himself, and becoming a credible, responsive person. He actualizes his own unprecedented uniqueness and appreciates the uniqueness of others. A winner is not afraid to do his own thinking and to use his own knowledge. He can separate facts from opinion and doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. He listens to others, evaluates what they say, but comes to his own conclusions. While he can admire and respect other people, he is not totally defined, demolished, bound, or awed by them. A winner can be spontaneous. He does not have to respond in predetermined, rigid ways. He can change his plans when the situation calls for it. A winner has a zest for life. He enjoys work, play, food, other people, sex, and the world of nature. Without guilt, he enjoys his own accomplishments. Without envy he enjoys the accomplishments of others. Although a winner can freely enjoy himself, he can also postpone enjoyment. He can discipline himself in the present to enhance his enjoyment in the future. He is not afraid to go after what he wants but does so in appropriate ways. He does not get his security by controlling others. He does not set himself up to lose. A winner cares about the world and its peoples. He is not isolated from the general problems of society. He is concerned, compassionate, and committed to improving the quality of life. Even in the face of national and international adversity, he does not see himself as totally powerless. He does what he can to make the world a better place. "Losers" Although people are born to win, they are also born helpless and totally dependent on their environment. Winners successfully make the transition from total helplessness to independence and then to interdependence. Losers do not. Somewhere along the line they begin to avoid becoming self-responsible. As we have noted, few people are total winners or losers. Most of them are winners in some areas of their lives and losers in others. Their winning or losing is influenced by what happens to them in childhood. A lack of response to dependency needs, poor nutrition, brutality, unhappy relationships, disease, continuing disappointments, inadequate physical care, and traumatic events are among the many experiences that contribute to making people losers. Such experiences interrupt, deter, or prevent the normal progress toward autonomy and self-actualization. To cope with negative experiences a child learns to manipulate himself and others. These manipulative techniques are hard to give up later in life and often become set patterns. A winner works to shed them. A loser hangs on to them. A loser represses his capacity to express spontaneously and appropriately his full range of possible behaviour. He may be unaware of other options for his life if the path he chooses goes nowhere. He is afraid to try new things. He maintains his own status quo. He is a repeater. He repeats not only his own mistakes but often those of his family and culture also. A loser has difficulty giving and receiving affection. He does not enter into intimate, honest, direct relationships with others. Instead, he tries to manipulate them into living up to his expectations and channels his energies into living up to their expectations. When a person wants to discover and change his "losing streak", when he wants to become more like the winner he was born to be, he can use gestalt-type experiments and transactional analysis to make change happen. These are two new, exciting, psychological approaches to human problems. The first was given new life by Dr. Frederick Peris; the second was developed by Dr. Eric Berne. Gestalt therapy is not new. However, its current popularity has grown very rapidly since it Was given new impetus and direction by Dr. Frederick Peris. Gestalt is a German word for which there is no exact English equivalent; it means, roughly, the forming of an organised, meaningful whole. Peris perceives many personalities as lacking wholeness, as being fragmented. He claims people are often aware of only parts of themselves rather than of the whole self. For example, a woman may not know or want to admit that sometimes she acts like her mother; a man may not know or admit that sometimes he wants to cry like a baby. The aim of gestalt therapy is to help one to become whole-to help the person become aware of, admit to, reclaim, and integrate his fragmented parts. Integration helps a person make the transition from dependency to self-sufficiency; from authoritarian outer support to authentic inner support. Changing one’s "losing streak" means______.
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