题目内容
My kids tell me that I am "so 20th century", which troubles me. A person likes to feel that he is "with it", as we used to say in the 20th century. So I have been thinking how I might change myself into a true 21st-century man. Clearly, in my advanced state of age I would be foolish to attempt some wild leap into the contemporary fashion. And anyway, my distinctive taste attracts much favourable comment. But if my clothing is too characteristic to change, perhaps I should do something about my lifestyle. So last week I took myself to the NEC for the Smart Home Show which is "the exhibition dedicated to all the latest trends in smart home technology". It was a shock. How could I have lived for half a century without a fingerprint-operated front door ("Never lock yourself out of your home again!") Or vacuum cleaners that suck dust straight into a dustbin, via a system of pipes in your house walls (MI you have to do is rebuild your entire home.) Or automatic garden sprinklers which are so smart that they turn themselves off when it starts to rain Of course, you could just look out of the window, observe that it’s raining and turn them off yourself, but that would be so 20th century. Besides, those were just the simpler things. For the true smart-home owner, a plasma (等离子) TV fireplace is a must. At first glance it’s just an electric fire with a mantelpiece, but press your remote and a giant TV screen rises from the mantelpiece. "Thieves won’t even know it’s there," a spokesman claimed. Just as well. At ￡5,280, it would be a pity to have it broken. But the real revolution has happened in the bathroom. Never again need you feel cut off from world events as you go about your washing. Forget the mirrors that turn into TV screens. They’re old hat. The buzz in bathrooms now is all about heated towel-racks that turn into TVs. Enough! I was convinced: I want a smart home. There’s only one problem: The cost. You are looking at ￡18,000 to ￡25,000 for an average home. Hmm. I won’t be entering the 21st century just yet, then. To be "21st century", the author decided to______.
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
Rubbish dumps throughout the industrial world are nearly full, heralding a crisis for city authorities as they look at alternative ways of dealing with the global garbage crisis. That problem is peculiar to fast-moving, wealthy societies, which increasingly demand more packaged goods. In New York State alone, residents have doubled their demand for packaged goods in the past thirty years. And the situation is not expected to ease, not least because of social trends. As more women transfer their production and management skills to commercial enterprises, demand for convenience products in the home continues to grow, says a report published by the Washington-based World Watch Institute. The only solution for a nation which now spends more on wrapping food than it pays farmers to produce it, is recycling on a grand scale for commercial as well as conservation reasons. The Institute wants multi-layered dustbins to be distributed to households, and people to be obliged to separate their waste into four categories: organic, glass and metals; paper; plastics and miscellaneous. It also believes it can only be a matter of time before such bins have to be made compulsory. Cynthia Pollock, the author of the report, entitled "Mining Urban Wastes: The Potential for Recycling", points out that "consumers and policy makers are just beginning to realize that there is not real ’away’ for throwaway". Pollock believes that recycling is the only alternative. "Although household wastes are usually thrown out with little regard for their remaining value, a list of the world’s discards would reveal a wealth of materials." And it is not just food; "Simply recovering the print run of the Sunday edition of the New York Times would leave 75,000 trees standing and reduce the energy used per ton of paper by up to three-quarters." The main reason for the garbage crisis is______.
"I smoke for my health," I proclaimed in a newspaper article published in 1979. Since I am a doctor, this advice attracted amused attention. I reasoned that smoking made me cough and thus prevented pneumonia; smoking made my heart go faster and eliminated the need for special exercise; smoking restrained my appetite and kept me trim. And then, at 51, I had a heart attack. I knew the risk factors for early heart disease, high blood-cholesterol levels and smoking. The first four were in my favor, but 1; chose to smoke. Strange how the evidence that linked smoking to heart disease appeared unclear to me, and how the same data now appear overwhelmingly convincing. Why stop now Smokers who stop after their first heart attack have an 80-percent chance of living ten more years—if they don’t, a 60-per cent chance. As a smoker, I always resented the fact that we smokers received only scorn from nonsmokers. How could nonsmokers know that smoking was bad for the health if there were no smokers to prove it Being a member of the experimental group, rather than the control group, deserves a certain measure of social appreciation. I’ve done my time. I’m now ready to be a control. No longer smoke for my health. My health can’t stand the help. Will I miss the late-night trips to find a store that’s still open and selling cigarettes Will I miss searching through ashtrays (烟灰缸) to find the longest butt that is still smokable Only time will tell. Not smoking may give me the time to find out. Was it easy to stop Sure. Here is all you have to do. First, experience a severe crushing pain under your breastbone as you finish a cigarette. Next, have yourself admitted to a coronary-care(心脏康复) unit and be stripped of your clothing and belongings. Finally, remain in the unit at ad-solute bed rest for four days while smoking is forbidden. This broke my had-it. See if it works for you. The word "help" at the end of the fourth paragraph refers to ______.
The first device men had for measuring time was the sundial, which was invented around 700 B.C. The early sundial was a hollow half bowl with a bead (有孔小珠) fixed in the center. As the sun traveled across the sky, the shadow of the bead traveled in and is across the face of the bowl. The bowl was divided into 12 equal parts called hours. The length of these hours varied with the seasons, as days were longer or shorter. In the summer an hour might have been half again as long as our hours now, in the winter only half as long. For 1,600 years this way of measuring hours by dividing the daylight into 12 parts didn’t change. A minute is the sixtieth part of an hour and a second is the sixtieth part of a minute. Both of these measurements are for convenience in dividing time into useful sections. The ancient Babylonians reckoned time more accurately than the people who came after than for several thousand years. They used a water clock, the water running through a hole of a very carefully calculated size from one jar into another. The time it took for the water to drip completely through was the length of the day of the equinox. Day and night are equal at that time, each lasting 12 hours. Our modem industry depends on clocks and timing. Assembly lines run on exact time schedules. In the manufacture of almost every article around you there are certain processes that must be timed precisely. China must be baked for an exact length of time, glass hardened, paint dried electrically, canned food processed. If you look around your room, you will probably see dozens of other things that had to be timed when they were made, some of them to a millionth of a second. Parts of radio tubes and light bulbs must be timed as exactly as this. Our whole world runs on a time schedule. Trains and planes, schools and business, radios, traffic lights, and the cake for dessert all depend on the clock. Flyers make a clock out of the sky, so they can call directions. They imagine it to be a huge clock face with their plane at the center of the dial. The nose of the plane points to 12 o’clock. Then if one man yells "see gull at 2 o’clock", everybody knows exactly where to look. The first time-measuring invented around 700 B. C was shaped like a______.
"I smoke for my health," I proclaimed in a newspaper article published in 1979. Since I am a doctor, this advice attracted amused attention. I reasoned that smoking made me cough and thus prevented pneumonia; smoking made my heart go faster and eliminated the need for special exercise; smoking restrained my appetite and kept me trim. And then, at 51, I had a heart attack. I knew the risk factors for early heart disease, high blood-cholesterol levels and smoking. The first four were in my favor, but 1; chose to smoke. Strange how the evidence that linked smoking to heart disease appeared unclear to me, and how the same data now appear overwhelmingly convincing. Why stop now Smokers who stop after their first heart attack have an 80-percent chance of living ten more years—if they don’t, a 60-per cent chance. As a smoker, I always resented the fact that we smokers received only scorn from nonsmokers. How could nonsmokers know that smoking was bad for the health if there were no smokers to prove it Being a member of the experimental group, rather than the control group, deserves a certain measure of social appreciation. I’ve done my time. I’m now ready to be a control. No longer smoke for my health. My health can’t stand the help. Will I miss the late-night trips to find a store that’s still open and selling cigarettes Will I miss searching through ashtrays (烟灰缸) to find the longest butt that is still smokable Only time will tell. Not smoking may give me the time to find out. Was it easy to stop Sure. Here is all you have to do. First, experience a severe crushing pain under your breastbone as you finish a cigarette. Next, have yourself admitted to a coronary-care(心脏康复) unit and be stripped of your clothing and belongings. Finally, remain in the unit at ad-solute bed rest for four days while smoking is forbidden. This broke my had-it. See if it works for you. Which of the following has the similar meaning to the sentence "The first four were in my favor"
微信支付 
支付宝支付