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I’m in Paris, and a strangely quiet Paris it is. Nothing is going nowhere. If they’re not on strike here, they’re stuck in a traffic jam. It took me two hours to go two miles yesterday evening. And this morning many of the taxis, too, have joined in, leaving me with no alternative but to start walking. And it’ s bitterly cold! The strikes are serious protests about serious issues, but I’m struck, as so often on these occasions, by something much more mundane. People are once again talking to people; strangers are going out of their way to befriend strangers, allies for a week or two in their shared frustration. Parisian motorists, even, normally the most competitive of individualists, have been seen leaving notes in their parked cars saying where they are going and when they expect to leave in case anymore wants a lift. Remove the technology of modem life, it seems, and we often start to be nice to one another again. Technology can isolate us, for all its benefits. It started, I guess, with the chimney. Before there were chimneys, we all had to huddle together in one room Just to keep warm, master and maid, cowman and son of the house. Then some unknown genius came up with the idea of the chimney, and the social stratification of society increased dramatically as all withdrew into their own quarters. Central heating, which is, more truthfully, decentralized heating, made it worse, and now we have our walkmans, our microwaves, or, if we’ re really trendy, the Internet and e-mail. You can get by, these days, without actually speaking to anyone at all. Just the odd grunt to show that you’ re alive ! I liked the survey which asked teenagers how they laid a table for a meal. Did they put the knife on the fight and the fork on the left, or did they put them both together And 40 percent said one and 20 percent the other, but 40 percent didn’t know! They had never sat down at a table together but had always, as they say, been grazers, helping themselves from the fridge and carrying the food off to their own comer to munch on their own. If progress means that we don’ t need to talk to each other anymore, then I’m getting worried. You can’ t begin to love and befriend your neighbors if you never talk to them, and vice versa, they can’t love you. It becomes a recipe for a world of solitaries. But most of us weren’t destined to be hermits. People need people to be truly people, as the Parisians, in spite of all their frustrations, are discovering again this week. "Try walking instead" was my motto for this morning, but perhaps the motto for us all this festive month might be "Turn it off, whatever it is, and try talking instead!\ Which of the following statements is true
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To get a chocolate out of a box demands a considerable amount of unpacking: the box has to be taken out of its paper bag; the plastic wrapper has to be torn off, the lid opened and the packing paper inside removed; the chocolate itself then has to be unwrapped from its own piece of paper. Similarly a pot of face cream comes surrounded by layers of paper, wedged inside a cardboard box, and the whole thing wrapped tightly in plastic. It is not only luxuries which are wrapped in this way. With so many goods now produced centrally and sold in supermarkets it is becoming increasingly difficult to buy anything from nails to potatoes that is not already done up in plastic or paper. The wrapper itself is of no interest to the shopper, who usually throws it away immediately. Useless wrapping accounts for much of the 31 pounds in weight of rubbish put out by the average London household each week. So why is it done Some of it, like the wrapping on meat, is necessary, but most of the rest is simply competitive selling. This is stupid. Packaging is using up scarce energy and raw materials and ruining all the time. One big firm reports that its glass, cans and paper have all gone up by 30 percent in the last couple of months, while plastic has increased by 50 percent and all these prices are still rising. This seems as yet to have had surprisingly little effect on the packaging practice of manufacturers. Little research is being carried out on the costs in energy and materials of other possible types of packaging. Just how practical is it, for instance, for local authorities to save waste paper and re-manufacture it as egg-boxes Would it be cheaper to plant another forest to produce new paper One mason for the unorganized behavior of everyone concerned is probably the varied nature of the packaging industry. So many people, with so many different interests of their own, are affected that it is extremely hard to reach any agreement on what should be done. Also, packagers say that preserving forests and preventing waste is not their concern. What does the word "wedged" in the first paragraph mean
Robert Spring, a 19th century forger, was so good at his profession that he was able to make his living for 15 years by selling false signatures of famous Americans. Spring was born in England in 1813 and arrived in Philadelphia in 1858 to open a bookstore. At first he prospered by selling his small but genuine collection of early U.S. autographs. Discovering his ability at copying handwriting, he began imitating signatures of George Washington and Ben Franklin and writing them on the title pages of old books. To lessen the chance of detection, he sent his forgeries to England and Canada for sale and circulation. Forgers have a hard lime selling their products. A forger can’t approach a respectable buyer but must deal with people who don’ t have much knowledge in the field. Forgers have many ways to make their work look re- al. For example, they buy old books to use the aged paper of the title page, and they can treat paper and ink with chemicals. In Spring’s time, right after the Civil War, Britain was still fond of the Southern states, so Spring invented a respectable maiden lady known as Miss Fanny Jackson, the only daughter of General "Stonewall" Jackson. For several years Miss Fanny’s financial problems forced her to sell a great number of letters and manuscripts belonging to her famous father. Spring had to work very hard to satisfy the demand. All this activity did not prevent Spring from dying in poverty, leaving sharp-eyed experts the difficult task of separating his forgeries from the originals. According to the passage, forgeries are usually sold to______.
To get a chocolate out of a box demands a considerable amount of unpacking: the box has to be taken out of its paper bag; the plastic wrapper has to be torn off, the lid opened and the packing paper inside removed; the chocolate itself then has to be unwrapped from its own piece of paper. Similarly a pot of face cream comes surrounded by layers of paper, wedged inside a cardboard box, and the whole thing wrapped tightly in plastic. It is not only luxuries which are wrapped in this way. With so many goods now produced centrally and sold in supermarkets it is becoming increasingly difficult to buy anything from nails to potatoes that is not already done up in plastic or paper. The wrapper itself is of no interest to the shopper, who usually throws it away immediately. Useless wrapping accounts for much of the 31 pounds in weight of rubbish put out by the average London household each week. So why is it done Some of it, like the wrapping on meat, is necessary, but most of the rest is simply competitive selling. This is stupid. Packaging is using up scarce energy and raw materials and ruining all the time. One big firm reports that its glass, cans and paper have all gone up by 30 percent in the last couple of months, while plastic has increased by 50 percent and all these prices are still rising. This seems as yet to have had surprisingly little effect on the packaging practice of manufacturers. Little research is being carried out on the costs in energy and materials of other possible types of packaging. Just how practical is it, for instance, for local authorities to save waste paper and re-manufacture it as egg-boxes Would it be cheaper to plant another forest to produce new paper One mason for the unorganized behavior of everyone concerned is probably the varied nature of the packaging industry. So many people, with so many different interests of their own, are affected that it is extremely hard to reach any agreement on what should be done. Also, packagers say that preserving forests and preventing waste is not their concern. What’s the best title for the passage
Robert Spring, a 19th century forger, was so good at his profession that he was able to make his living for 15 years by selling false signatures of famous Americans. Spring was born in England in 1813 and arrived in Philadelphia in 1858 to open a bookstore. At first he prospered by selling his small but genuine collection of early U.S. autographs. Discovering his ability at copying handwriting, he began imitating signatures of George Washington and Ben Franklin and writing them on the title pages of old books. To lessen the chance of detection, he sent his forgeries to England and Canada for sale and circulation. Forgers have a hard lime selling their products. A forger can’t approach a respectable buyer but must deal with people who don’ t have much knowledge in the field. Forgers have many ways to make their work look re- al. For example, they buy old books to use the aged paper of the title page, and they can treat paper and ink with chemicals. In Spring’s time, right after the Civil War, Britain was still fond of the Southern states, so Spring invented a respectable maiden lady known as Miss Fanny Jackson, the only daughter of General "Stonewall" Jackson. For several years Miss Fanny’s financial problems forced her to sell a great number of letters and manuscripts belonging to her famous father. Spring had to work very hard to satisfy the demand. All this activity did not prevent Spring from dying in poverty, leaving sharp-eyed experts the difficult task of separating his forgeries from the originals. After the Civil War, there was a great demand in Britain for______.
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