We are entering a period in which rapid population growth, the presence of deadly weapons, and dwindling resources will bring international tensions to dangerous levels for an extended period. Indeed, 1 seems no reason for these levels of danger to subside unless population equilibrium is 2 and some rough measure of fairness reached in the distribution of wealth among nations. 3 of adequate magnitude imply a willingness to redistribute income internationally on a more generous 4 than the advanced nations have evidenced within their own domains. The required increases in 5 in the backward regions would necessitate gigantic applications of energy merely to extract the 6 resources.It is uncertain whether the requisite energy-producing technology exists, and more serious, 7 that its application would bring us to the threshold of an irreversible change in climate 8 a consequence of the enormous addition of manmade heat to the atmosphere. It is this 9 problem that poses the most demanding and difficult of the challenges. The existing 10 of industrial growth, with no allowance for increased industrialization to repair global poverty, hold 11 the risk of entering the danger zone of climatic change in as 12 as three or four generations. If the trajectory is in fact pursued, industrial growth will 13 have to come to an immediate halt, for another generation or two along that 14 would literally consume human, perhaps all life. The terrifying outcome can be postponed only to the extent that the wastage of heat can be reduced, 15 that technologies that do not add to the atmospheric heat burden—for example, the use of solar energy—can be utilized. (1996)
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There has been a lot of hand-wringing over the death of Elizabeth Steinberg. Without blaming anyone in particular, neighbors, friends, social workers, the police and newspaper editors have struggled to define the community"s responsibility to Elizabeth and to other battered children. As the collective soul-searching continues, there is a pervading sense that the system failed her.The fact is, in New York State the system couldn"t have saved her. It is almost impossible to protect a child from violent parents, especially if they are white, middle-class, well-educated and represented by counsel.Why does the state permit violence against children There are a number of reasons. First, parental privilege is a rationalization. In the past, the law was giving its approval to the biblical injunction againstsparing the rod.Second, while everyone agrees that the state must act to remove children from their homes when there is danger of serious physical or emotional harm, many child advocates believe that state intervention in the absence of serious injury is more harmful than helpful.Third, courts and legislatures tread carefully when their actions intrude or threaten to intrude on a relationship protected by the Constitution. In 1923, the Supreme Court recognized the "liberty of parent and guardian to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control." More recently, in 1977, it upheld the teacher"s privilege to use corporal punishment against schoolchildren. Read together, these decisions give the constitutional imprimatur to parental use of physical force.Under the best conditions, small children depend utterly on their parents for survival. Under the worst, their dependency dooms them. While it is questionable whether anyone or anything could have saved Elizabeth Steinberg, it is plain that the law provided no protection.To the contrary, by justifying the use of physical force against children as an acceptable method of education and control, the law lent a measure of plausibility and legitimacy to her parents" conduct.More than 80 years ago, in the teeth of parental resistance and Supreme Court doctrine, the New York State Legislature acted to eliminate child labor law. Now, the state must act to eliminate child abuse by banning corporal punishment. To break the cycle of violence, nothing less will answer. If there is a lesson to be drawn from the death of Elizabeth Steinberg, it is this: spare the rod and spare the child. The New York State law seems to provide least protection of a child from violent parents of ______.
A. a family on welfare
B. a poor uneducated family
C. an educated black family
D. a middle-class white family
She was artful and could always ______ her parents in the end.
A. shout down
B. get round
C. comply with
D. pass over
A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in identically the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as sacred texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual circumstances of the time and the individual child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or arousing his sadistic impulse. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often guilty of cruelty than those who had not. Aggressive, destructive, sadistic impulses every child has and, on the whole, their symbolic verbal discharge seem to be rather a safety valve than an incitement to overt action. As to fears, there are, I think, well-authenticated cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc., do not exist; and that, instead of indulging his fantasies in fairy tales, the child should be taught how to adapt to reality by studying history and mechanics. I find such people, I must confess, so unsympathetic and peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of madmen attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a broomstick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their enchanted girl-friend.No fairy story ever claimed to be a description of the external world and no sane child has ever believed that it was. According to the author, the best way to retell a story to a child is to ______.
A. tell it in a creative way
B. take from it what the child likes
C. add to it whatever at hand
D. read it out of the story book
When you call the police, the police dispatcher has to locate the car nearest you that is free to respond. This means the dispatcher has to keep track of the status and location of every police car—not an easy task for a large department.Another problem, which arises when cars are assigned to regular patrols, is that the patrols may be too regular. If criminals find out that police cars will pass a particular location at regular intervals, they simply plan their crimes for times when no patrol is expected. Therefore, patrol cars should pass by any particular location at random times; the fact that a car just passed should be no guarantee that another one is not just around the corner. Yet simply ordering the officers to patrol at random would lead to chaos.A computer dispatching system can solve both these problems. The computer has no trouble keeping track of the status and location of each car. With this information, it can determine instantly which car should respond to an incoming call. And with the aid of a pseudorandom number generator, the computer can assign routine patrols so that criminals can"t predict just when a police car will pass through a particular area.(Before computers, police sometimes used roulette wheels and similar devices to make random assignments.)Computers also can relieve police officers from constantly having to report their status. The police car would contain a special automatic radio transmitter and receiver. The officer would set a dial on this unit indicating the current status of the car—patrolling, directing traffic, chasing a speeder, answering a call, out to lunch, and so on. When necessary, the computer at headquarters could poll the car for its status. The voice radio channels would not be clogged with cars constantly reporting what they were doing. A computer in the car automatically could determine the location of the car, perhaps using the LORAN method. The location of the car also would be sent automatically to the headquarters computer. If the patrols are too regular, ______.
A. the dispatchers will be bored with it
B. the officers may become careless
C. the criminals may take advantage of it
D. the streets will be in a state of chaos