Everybody loathes it, but everybody does it A recent poll showed that 20% of Americans hate the practice. It seems so arbitrary, after all. Why does a barman get a tip, but not a doctor who saves lives In America alone, tipping is now a $ 16 billion-a-year industry. Consumers acting rationally ought not to pay more than they have to for a given service. Tips should not exist. So why do they The conventional wisdom is that tips both reward the efforts of good service and reduce uncomfortable feelings of inequality. The better the service, the bigger the tip. Such explanations no doubt explain the purported origin of tipping--in the 16th century, boxes in English taverns carried the phrase "To Insure Promptitude" (later just "TIP") . But according to new research from Cornell University, tipping no longer serves any useful function. The paper analyses data from 2, 327 groups dining at 20 different restaurants. The correlation between larger tips and better service was very weak: only a tiny part of the variability in the size of the tip had anything to do with the quality of service. Customers who rated a meal as "excellent" still tipped anywhere between 8% and 17% of the meal price. Tipping is better explained by culture than by economics. In America, the custom has become institutionalized: it is regarded as part of the accepted cost of a service. In a New York restaurant, failing to tip at least 15% could well mean abuse from the waiter. Hairdressers can expect to get 15-20%, the man who delivers your groceries$2. In Europe, tipping is less common; in many restaurants, discretionary tipping is being replaced by a standard service charge. In many Asian countries, tipping has never really caught on at all. How to account for these national differences Look no further than psychology. According to Michael Lynn, the Cornell paper’s co-author, countries in which people are more extrovert, sociable or neurotic tend to tip more. Tipping relieves anxiety about being served by strangers. And, says Mr. Lynn, "In America, where people are outgoing and expressive, tipping is about social approval, ff you tip badly, people think less of you. Tipping well is a chance to show off." Icelanders, by contrast, do not usually tip-a measure of their introversion, no doubt. While such explanations may be crude, the hard truth seems to be that tipping does not work. It does not benefit the customer. Nor, in the case of restaurants, does it actually stimulate the waiter, or help the restaurant manager to monitor and assess his staff. Service people should "just be paid a decent wage" which may actually make economic sense. What can we know about the origin of "tip"
A. It originated from the English inn service.
B. The original purpose of tip was to ensure that waiter could get more money.
C. The waiter threatened the customers with bad service if no tips were given.
D. It originated in a small English villag
Science develops through objective analysis, instead of through personal belief. Knowledge gained in science accumulates as time goes by, building on work performed earlier. Some of this knowledge-such as our understanding of numbers-stretches back’ to the time of ancient civilizations, when scientific thought first began. Other scientific knowledge such as our understanding of genes that cause cancer or of quarks (the smallest known building block of matter) -dates back less than 50 years. However, in all fields of science, old or new, researchers use the same systematic approach, known as the scientific method, to add to what is known.41__________. For example, in 1676, the English physicist Robert Hooke discovered that elastic objects, such as metal springs, stretch in proportion to the force that acts on them. Despite all the advances that have been made in physics since 1676, this simple law Still holds true.42__________. Sometimes scientific predictions go much further by describing objects or events that are not yet known. An outstanding instance occurred in 1869, when the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev drew up a periodic table of the elements arranged to illustrate patterns of recurring chemical and physical properties.43__________. At the time, most geologists discounted Wegener’s ideas, because the Earth’s crust seemed to be fixed. But following the discovery of plate tectonics in the 1960s, in which scientists found that the Earth’s crust is actually made of moving plates, continental drift became an important part of geology.Through advances like these, scientific knowledge is constantly added to and refined. As a result, science gives us an ever more detailed insight into the way the world around us works.44__________. However, with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, this rapidly changed. Today, science has a profound effect on the way we live, largely through technology--the use. of scientific knowledge for practical45__________. The refrigerator, for example, owes its existence to a discovery that liquids take in energy when they evaporate, a phenomenon known as latent heat.A. Scientists utilize existing knowledge in new scientific investigations to predict how things will behave. For example, a scientist who knows the exact dimensions of a lens can predict how the lens will focus a beam of light. In the same way, by knowing the exact makeup and properties of two chemicals, a researcher can predict what will happen when they combine.B. For a large part of recorded history, science had little bearing on people’s everyday lives. Scientific knowledge was gathered for it sown sake, and it had few practical applications.C. During scientific investigations, scientists put together and compare new discoveries and existing knowledge. In most cases, new discoveries extend what is currently accepted, providing further evidence that existing ideas are correct.D. Tile principle of latent heat was first exploited in a practical way in 1876, and the refrigerator has played a major role in maintaining public health ever since. Tile first automobile, dating from the 1880s, made use of many advances in physics and engineering, including reliable ways of generating high-voltage sparks, while the first computers emerged in the 1940s from simultaneous advances in electronics and mathematics.E. Some forms of technology have become so well established that it is easy to forget the great scientific achievements that they represent.F. In science, important advances can also be made when current ideas are shown to be wrong. A classic case of this occurred early in the 20th century, when the German geologist Alfred Wegener suggested that the continents were at one time connected, a theory known as continental drift.G. Other fields of science also play an important role in the things we use or consume every day. Research in food technology has created new ways of preserving and flavoring what we eat. 41
The number of speakers of English in Shakespeare’s time is estimated to have been about five million. Today it is estimated that some 2600 million people speak it as a native language, mainly in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. In addition to the standard varieties of English found in these areas, there are a great many regional and social varieties of the language, as well as various levels of usage that are employed both in its spoken and written forms.It is virtually impossible to estimate the number of people in the world who have acquired an adequate working knowledge of English in addition to their own languages. The purposes for which English is learned and the situations in which such learning takes place are so varied that it is difficult to define and still more difficult to assess what constitutes an adequate working knowledge for each situation.The main reason for the widespread demand for English is its present - day importance as a world language. Besides serving the infinite needs of its native speakers, English is a language in which some of the most important works in science, technology, and other fields are being produced and not always by native speakers. It is widely used for such purposes as meteorological and airport communications, international conferences, and the dissemination of information over the radio and television networks of many nations. It is a language of wider communication for a number of developing countries, especially former British colonies. Many of these countries have multi - lingual populations and, need a language for internal communication in such matters as government, commerce industry, law and education as well as for international communication and for access to the scientific and technological developments in the West. What constitutes an adequate working knowledge of English()
A. The ability to read a newspaper.
B. It is difficult to assess because it differs for each situation.
C. Being multi - lingual.
D. Being a native speaker.
Like street comer prophets proclaiming that tile end is near, scientists who study the earth’s atmosphere have been issuing predictions of impending doom for the past few years without offering any concrete proof. So far even the experts have had to admit that no solid evidence has emerged that this is anything but a natural phenomenon. And the uncertainty has given skeptics-especially Gingrichian politicians--plenty of ammunition to argue against taking the difficult, expensive steps required to stave off a largely hypothetical calamity. Until now, A draft report currently circulating on the Internet asserts that the global temperature rise can now be blamed, at least in part, on human activity. Statements like this have been made before by individual researchers-who have been criticized for going too far beyond the scientific consensus. But this report comes from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a respected UN sponsored body made up of more than 1,300 leading climate experts from 40 nations. This shift in scientific consensus is based not so much on new data as on improvements in the complex computer models that climatologists use to test their theories. Unlike chemists or molecular biologists, climate experts have no way to do lab experiments on their specialty. So they simulate them on supercomputers and look at what happens when human generated gases-carbon dioxide from industry and auto exhaust, methane from agriculture, chlorofluoro carbons from leaky refrigerators and spray cans-are pumped into the models virtual atmospheres. Until recently, the computer models weren’t working very well. When the scientists tried to simulate what they believe has been happening over the past century or so, the results didn’t mesh with reality; the models said the world should now he warmer than it actually is. The reason is that the computer models had been overlooking an important factor affecting global temperatures: sulfur dioxides that are produced along with CO2 when fossil fuels are burned in cars and power plants. Aerosols actually cool the planet by blocking sunlight and mask the effects of global warmning. Once the scientists factored in aerosols, their models began looking more like the real world. The improved performance of the simulations was demonstrated in 1991, when they successfully predicted temperature changes in the aftermath of the massive Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines. A number of studies since have added to the scientists confidence that they finally know what they are talking about-and can predict what may happen if greenhouse gases continue to be pumped into the atmosphere unchecked. Gingrichian politicians reluctant to address the problem because______.
A. they think it is anything but a natural phenomenon
B. the efforts may turn to be too difficult and expensive
C. they think the predicted disaster is only hypothetical
D. some scientists have gone too far beyond the scientific consensus