题目内容
Humour, which ought to give rise to only the most light-hearted and gay feelings, can often stir up vehemence and animosity. Evidently it is dearer to us than we realize. Men will take almost any kind of criticism except the observation that they have no sense of humour. A man will admit to being a coward or a liar or a thief or a poor mechanic or a bad swimmer, but tell him he has a dreadful sense of humour and you might as well have slandered his mother. Even if he is civilized enough to pretend to make light of your statement, he will still secretly believe that he has not only a good sense of humour but are superior to most. He has, in other words, a completely blind spot on the subject. This is all the more surprising when you consider that not one man in ten million can give you any kind of intelligent answer as to what humour is or why he laughs.One day when I was about twelve years old, it occurred to me to wonder about the phenomenon of laughter. At first I thought it is easy enough to see what I laugh at and why I am amused, but why at such times do I open my mouth and exhale in jerking gasps and wrinkle up my eyes and throw back my head and halloo like an animal Why do not I instead rap four times on the top of my head or whistle or whirl aboutThat was over twenty years ago and I am still wondering, except that I now no longer even take my first assumption for granted, I no longer clearly understand why I laugh at what amuses me nor why things are amusing. I have illustrious company in my confusion, of course. Many of the great minds of history have brought their power of concentration to bear on the mystery of humour, and, to date, their conclusions are so contradictory and ephemeral that they cannot possibly be classified as scientific.Many definitions of the comic are incomplete and many are simply rewording of things we already know. Aristotle, for example, defined the ridiculous as that which is incongruous but represents neither danger nor pain. But that seems to me to be a most inadequate sort of observation, for of at this minute I insert here the word rutabagas, I have introduced something in congruous, something not funny. Of course, it must be admitted that Aristotle did not claim that every painless in congruity is ridiculous but as soon as we have gone as far as this admission, we begin to see that we have come to grips with a ghost when we think have it pinned, it suddenly appears behind us, mocking us.An all-embracing definition of humour has been attempted by many philosophers, but no definition, no formula had ever been devised that is entirely satisfactory. Aristotle’s definition has come to be known loosely as the "disappointment" theory, or the "frustrated expectation", but he also, discussed another theory borrowed in part from Plato which states that the pleasure we derive in laughing is an enjoyment of the misfortune of others, due to a momentary feeling of superiority or gratified vanity in appreciation of the fact that we ourselves are not in the observed predicament. The purpose of two questions in the second paragraph is to ().
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
College sports in the United States are a huge deal. Almost all major American universities have football, baseball, basketball and hockey programs, and (21) millions of dollars each year to sports. Most of them earn millions (22) as well, in television revenues, sponsorships. They also benefit (23) from the added publicity they get via their teams. Big-name universities (24) each other in the most popular sports. Football games at Michigan regularly (25) crowds of over 90,000. Basketball’s national collegiate championship game is a TV (26) on a par with (与…相同或相似)any other sporting event in the United States, (27) perhaps the Super Bowl itself. At any given time during fall or winter one can (28) one’s TV set and see the top athletic programs--from schools like Michigan, UCLA, Duke and Stanford -- (29) in front of packed houses and national TV audiences.The athletes themselves are (30) and provided with scholarships. College coaches identify (31) teenagers and then go into high schools to (32) the country’s best players to attend their universities. There are strict rules about (33) coaches can recruit--no recruiting calls after 9 p. m., only one official visit to a campus--but they are often bent and sometimes (34) Top college football programs (35) scholarships to 20 or 30 players each year, and those student-athletes, when they arrive (36) campus, receive free housing, tuition, meals, books, etc.In return, the players (37) the program in their sport. Football players at top colleges (38) two hours a day, four days a week from January to April. In summer, it’s back to strength and agility training four days a week until mid-August, when camp (39) and preparation for the opening of the September-to-December season begins (40) . During the season, practices last two or three hours a day from Tuesday to Friday. Saturday is game day. Mondays are an officially mandated day of rest. 27().
Opinion polls are now beginning to show an unwilling general agreement that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of ~sharing the available employment more widely.But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighbourhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centres of production and workThe industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people’s work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought about may have to be reversed. This seems a discouraging thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people’s homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people travelled longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people’s work lost all connection with their home lives and places in which they lived.Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. It became customary for the husband to go out paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife.All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some efforts and resources away from the impractical goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs. According to the passage, which of the following is true().
You are required to write a composition about the trend of aged people to live alone. Your composition should contain the following points. (1)Present situation. (2)Possible reasons for such situation. (3)Your own opinion. You should write 160--:200 words on ANSWER SHEET 2.
British cancer researchers have found that childhood leukaemia is caused by an infection and clusters of cases around industrial sites are the result of population mixing that increases exposure. The research published in the British Journal of Cancer backs up a 1988 theory that some as yet unidentified infection caused leukaemia--not the environmental factors widely blamed for the disease."Childhood leukaemia appears to be an unusual result of a common infection," said Sir Richard Doll, an internationally-known cancer expert who first linked tobacco with lung cancer in 1950. "A virus is the most likely explanation. You would get an increased risk of it if you suddenly put a lot of people from large towns in a rural area, where you might have people who had not been exposed to the infection. " Doll was commenting on the new findings by researchers at Newcastle University, which focused on a cluster of leukaemia cases around the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria in northern England. Scientists have been frying to establish why there was more leukaemia in children around the Sellafield area, but have failed to establish a link with radiation or pollution. The Newcastle University research by Heather Dickinson and Louise Parker showed the cluster of cases could have been predicted because of the amount of population mixing going on in the area, as large numbers of construction workers and nuclear staff moved into a rural setting. "Our study shows that population mixing can account for the (Sellafield) leukaemia cluster and that all children, whether their parents are incomers or locals, are at a higher risk if they are born in an area of high population mixing," Dickinson said in a statement issued by the Cancer Research Campaign, which published the British Journal of Cancer.Their paper adds crucial weight to the 1988 theory put forward by Leo Kinlen, a cancer epidemiologist at Oxford University, who said that exposure to a common unidentified infection through population mixing resulted in the disease. This passage is mainly about （）.
微信支付 
支付宝支付