题目内容

Ruth Handler invented something in 1959 which became so quintessentially American as to be included in the official " America’s Time Capsule" buried at the celebration of the Bicentennial in 1976: the Barbie doll. In the early 1950s, Handler saw that her young daughter, Barbara, and her girlfriends enjoyed playing with adult female dolls as much or more than with baby dolls. Handler sensed that it was just as important for girls to imagine what they themselves might grow up to become as it was for them to focus on what caring for children might be like. Inspired by her daughter’s fascination with adult paper dolls, Ruth Handier suggested making a three-dimensional doll through which little girls could act out their dreams. In 1959, Mattel introduced the Barbie doll (named after the Handlers’ daughter), a pint-sized model of the "girl next door. " Soon enough Barbie sprouted a coterie of friends and family. Ken (named for the Handlers’ son) , Barbie’s boyfriend, appeared in 1961. Meanwhile, the longtime Southern California resident defied prevailing trends in the toy industry of the late 1950s when she proposed an alternative to the flat-chest baby dolls then marketed to girls. "I believed it was important to a little girl’s self-esteem," Handler has said, "to play with a doll that has breasts. " Barbie, a teenage doll with a tiny waist, slender hips and impressive bust, became not only a best-selling toy with more than 1 billion sold in 150 countries, but a cultural icon analyzed by scholars, attacked by feminists and showcased in the Smithsonian Institution. "My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be," Handler wrote in her 1994 autobiography. "Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices. " Ruth Handier undeniably invented an American icon that functions as both a steady cynosure for girls’ dreams and an ever-changing reflection of American society. By 1966, Handler was 50 and Mattel ruled the highly competitive toy world: It controlled 12% of the $2-billion toy market in the United States. By 1970, however, her world began to unravel. Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. New corporate managers began to diversify Mattel away from toys, and their machinations ultimately resulted in the Handlers’ ouster from the company they had founded. Although best known for her pivotal role as Barbie’s inventor, Handler devoted her later years to a second, trailblazing career: manufacturing and marketing artificial breasts for women who had undergone mastectomies. Herself a breast cancer survivor, she personally sold and fitted the prosthesis and crisscrossed the country as a spokeswoman for early detection of the disease in the 1970s, when it was still a taboo subject. The Nearly Me prosthetic breast was made of liquid silicone enclosed in polyurethane and had a rigid foam backing. Her goal was to make an artificial breast so real that "a woman could wear a regular brassiere (=bra) and blouse, stick her chest out and be proud." she said of" the prosthetics business. "It sure rebuilt my self-esteem, and I think I rebuilt the self-esteem of others." By 1980, sales of the Nearly Me artificial breast had surpassed $1 million. In 1991, Handler sold the company to a division of Kimberly-Clark. She died on April 27th, 2002. The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the Stop Cancer Organization. Why is Barbie doll so attractive to girls

A. It is a three-dimensional doll.
B. It looks like the female adult with breasts and a good shape.
C. It’s a teenage doll
D. It looks like the girl next door.

查看答案
更多问题

The never-ceasing pace of scientific accomplishment often surpasses the progress of moral thought, leaving people struggling to make sense, initially at least, of whether heart transplants are ethical or test-tube babies desirable. Over the past three decades scientists have begun to investigate a branch of medicine that offers astonishing promise—the ability to repair the human body and even grow new organs—but which destroys early-stage embryos to do so. In "The Stem Cell Hope" Alice Park, a science writer at Time magazine, chronicles the scientific, political, ethical and personal struggles of those involved in the work. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent (多能性的): they have the ability to change into any one of the 200- odd types of cell that compose the human body; but they can do so only at a very early stage. Once the bundle has reached more than about 150 cells, they start to specialize. Research into repairing severed spinal cords or growing new hearts has thus needed a supply of stem cells that come from entities that, given a more favorable environment, could instead grow into a baby. Immediately after the announcement of the birth of Dolly the sheep—the clone of an adult ewe whose mammary (乳腺的) cells Ian Wilmut had tricked into behaving like a developing embryo—American scientists were hauled before the nation’s politicians who were uneasy at the implication that people might also be cloned. Concern at the speed of scientific progress had previously stalled publicly funded research into controversial topics, for example, into in vitro fertilization. But it did not stop the work from taking place: instead the IVF industry blossomed in the private sector, funded by couples desperate for a baby and investors who had spotted a profitable new market. That is also what happened with human stem cells. After a prolonged struggle over whether to ban research outright—which pitted Nancy Reagan, whose husband suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, against a father who asked George Bush’s advisers, "Which one of my children would you kill"—Mr. Bush blocked the use of government money to fund research on any new human embryonic stem-cell cultures. But research did not halt completely: Geron, a biopharmaceutical (生物制的) company based in Menlo Park, California, had started "to mop up this orphaned innovation", as Ms Park puts it, by recruiting researchers whose work brought them into conflict with the funding restrictions. Meanwhile, in South Korea a scientist claimed not only to have cloned human embryos but also to have created patient-specific cultures that could, in theory, be used to patch up brain damage or grow a kidney. Alas, he was wrong. But a Japanese scientist did manage to persuade adult skin cells to act like stem cells. If it proves possible to scale up his techniques, that would remove the source of the controversy over stem-cell research. Three months after he took office, Barack Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding for research on new stem-cell cultures, saying that he thought sound science and moral values were consistent with one another. But progress has been slow: the first human trials in America, involving two people with spinal-cord injuries who have been injected with stem cells developed by Geron, are only just under way. The sick children who first inspired scientists to conduct research into stem cells in order to develop treatments that might help them are now young adults. As Ms Park notes, the fight over stem-cell research is not over, and those who might benefit from stem-cell medicine remain in need. As a result of the birth of Dolly and an adult ewe, ______.

American scientists were strongly criticized for human cloning
B. government-funded researches were banned from controversial topics
C. American universities started to conduct similar research overseas
D. the IVF industry is starting to disappear in the US

The word "day" has two meanings. When we talk about the number of days in a year, we are using "day" to mean 24 hours. But when we talk about day and night, we are using "day" to mean the time between sunrise (日出 and sunset (日落).Since the earth looks like a ball, the sun can shine on only half of it at a time. Always one half of the earth is having day and the other half night. A place is moved from day into night and from night into day over and over by the spinning (旋转) of the earth. At the equator (赤道) day and night are sometimes the same length (长度). They are each twelve hours long. The sun rises at 6 o’clock in the morning and sets at 6 o’clock in the evening. For six months the North Pole is tilted (倾斜) toward the sun. In those months the Northern Hemisphere (半球)gets more hours of sunlight than the Southern Hemisphere. Days are longer than nights. South of the equator nights are longer than days. For the other six months the North Pole is tilted away from the sun. Then the Southern Hemisphere gets more sunlight. Days are longer than nights. North of the equator nights are longer than days. Winter is the season of long nights. Summer is the season of long days. ______ day is as long as night at the equator.

The word "open" is really used a lot. You’ve probably heard" open up" in many ways over the years. Probably most people would like to be more open than they are right now. We know it feels good to share with others. If feels good to talk to somebody about things we’re concerned about. It’s good to be able to trust somebody. What do we really mean by becoming open Well, trying to talk about yourself in such a way that something of the inner person, that is you, is communicated to others might be one way of being open or at least thinking about being open. That inner person is a complex person who has a variety of thoughts and also feelings. So, wanting to share with other people these inner feelings and these inner thoughts is one way of becoming open. Being open is a kind of invitation to others. What you share about yourself should encourage others to come in, so to speak and make contact with you. To involve themselves with you. Being open is difficult. It makes us feel vulnerable, psychologically naked and usually anxious. But it also is important in terms of really letting others get to understand how we think, how we feel and what we believe. We often hide our inner thoughts and feelings because we’re concerned how well excepted they’ll be by other people. But we also shut out other people from knowing and accepting us by not being open. We’re denying ourselves that chance to speak out, to declare our inner thoughts and feelings. It’s up to you to decide just how you’re going to talk about yourself and what you’re going to say. Telling somebody that school or work is awful. However, it might be more meaningful to share why you’re saying that about school or work. That’s at a little deeper level. There are probably more risks attached to sharing that. Probably most important is an immediate here and now honesty that goes along with being open. For instance, telling someone that you’re bored is risky, but it takes courage to say, "I’m bored, why don’t we do such and such", or "Let’s change topics. "For me, declaring your boredom or resentments also means I’m responsible for suggesting alternatives to change my mood. You have the power to change things by being open and sharing things. Keep in mind also that being completely open with everyone in every situation may be very inappropriate. You may want to be more open with your spouse or close friends, but not with your boss or people you don’t know as well. You may choose not to be open with people you don’t fully trust, because to be open is to share vulnerable information about yourself. And if you don’t fully trust how someone else will use that information about you, you may choose not to share it. Also, some people may be very uncomfortable with too much openness and you may not want to be as open with them. A caution about being open is that sometimes we can be too open. In the name of being open we say everything we feel or think to others. But fail to be sensitive to others feelings about our openness. We may make them feel very uncomfortable or say something that hurts them. Being open also carries a responsibility with it and that is to be aware of others’ reactions to us and to respect their reactions. Which of the following is NOT the reason why the author says "being open is difficult"

A. Because it makes us feel easy to be attacked.
Because people don’t want others to know many details about themselves.
C. Because people are afraid of being against when they tell others their real opinions.
D. Because people cannot make sure whether others can be open to them in return.

My grandmother cut a recipe sometime in the 1940s or 1950s for "Mrs. Orr’s Chocolate Cake" from the Monitor. When my dad tasted this cake, he was so enchanted with it that he requested this cake every year, both for Father’s Day and for his birthday in September. Dad was a creature of habit. He didn’t always greet new experiments in cooking with glee. When I graduated from college and got my first apartment, I began to learn to cook, with guidance and suggestions from my morn and the help of a few good cookbooks. I also began to experiment. Often when I invited Morn and Dad over for dinner, I tried a new recipe. Dad would look at his plate suspiciously and ask, "Am I the ’guinea pig’ for this meal" Dad especially didn’t encourage experimentation where his birthday cake was concerned. It had to be Mrs. Orr’s cake, made in a metal 9-by-13-inch pan, rather than in layers, and it had to have white butter cream icing, not the traditional chocolate icing that many people enjoy on chocolate cake. Once we asked if he would like chocolate icing for a change. Silly question. So we enjoyed Mrs. Orr’s cake with white icing twice a year. Nothing fancy, nothing pretentious—just like Dad. No nuts, coconut, sprinkles, or other decorations. No pretty cake plate or beautiful presentation. Just plain cake with icing in a plain metal pan. Somehow, it seemed to fit Dad, a plain, no-nonsense kind of man with Midwestern down-home friendliness. Dad was very generous in sharing his special cake with family and friends. When my sister and I were no longer living at home, we’d still get together for Father’s Day and Dad’s birthday. He always cut generous pieces for us to take home. When a neighbor came over for morning coffee, Dad always offered him a piece of cake, commenting with awe that either his wife or daughters had made him this cake, and how much they must love him for going to "all that work"—a comment not so meaningful as it would have been if we’d made him a layer cake and decorated it. Of course, we asked repeatedly if he’d rather have a different cake, maybe decorated. Again, silly question. For some reason that no one understands, this cake always rises higher in the middle than a normal cake, sometimes looking rather lopsided. It doesn’t seem to matter which kind of pan we use, or which type of chocolate. That means the comers and sides of the cake get more icing than the center. Personally, I always like a corner piece. So did Dad. Years ago, my cousin told me she makes Mrs. Orr’s cake as a layer cake and uses chocolate icing. I tried it when I was having company (not Dad), using raspberry jam between two layers and a chocolate butter cream icing on the top and sides. The sides looked too messy for company, so I pressed chopped nuts into them, piped the chocolate icing around the bottom and top, and everyone thought I bought it at a bakery. It was amazingly rich and wonderful, hence the name I gave it, Majestic Chocolate Cake. The funny thing, though, is that I missed the white icing! Dad isn’t with us anymore, but whenever I see this recipe in my file, I’m filled with sweet memories of the man who loved his special cake, appreciated those who’d baked it, and shared it so freely. What can we infer from the last sentence in Paragraph 2

A. Dad ate too much food as a pig.
B. Dad praised me for the new recipe.
C. Dad refused the meal prepared according to a new recipe.
Dad thought the food was too much for him.

答案查题题库