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When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed the hungry. Now, in much of the world, the rich are thin, the poor are fat, and right-thinking people are worrying about obesity. Evolution is mostly to blame. It has designed mankind to cope with deprivation, not plenty. People are perfectly tuned to store energy in good years to see them through lean ones. But when bad times never come, they are stuck with that energy, stored around their expanding bellies. Thanks to rising agricultural productivity, lean years are rarer all over the globe. Modern-day Malthusians, who used to draw graphs proving that the world was shortly going to run out of food, have gone rather quiet lately. According to the UN the number of people short of food fell from 920m in 1980 to 799 m 20 years later, even though the world’s population increased by 1.6 billion over the period. This is mostly a cause for celebration. Mankind has won what was for most of his time on this planet, his biggest battle: to ensure that he and his offspring had enough to eat. But every silver lining has a cloud, and the consequence of prosperity is a new plague that brings with it a host of interesting policy dilemmas. As a scourge of the modern world, obesity has an image problem. It is easier to associate with Father Christmas than with the four horses of the apocalypse. But it has a good claim to lumber along beside them for it is the world’s biggest public-health issue today the main cause of heart disease, which kills more people these days than AIDS, malaria, war; the principal risk factor in diabetes; heavily implicated in cancer and other diseases. Since the World Health Organisation labelled obesity an "epidemic" in 2000, reports on its fearful consequences have come thick and fast. Will public-health warnings, combined with media pressure, persuade people to get thinner, just as they finally put them off tobacco Possibly. In the rich world, sales of healthier foods are booming and new figures suggest that over the past year Americans got very slightly thinner for the first time in recorded history. But even if Americans are losing a few ounces, it will be many years before the country solves the health problems caused by half a century’s dining to excess. And, everywhere else in the world, people are still piling on the pounds. That’s why there is now a consensus among doctors that governments should do something to stop them. There’s nothing radical about the idea that governments should intervene in the food business. They’ve been at it since 1202.when King John of England first banned the adulteration of bread. Governments and people seem to agree that ensuring the safety and stability of the food supply is part of the state’s job. But obesity is a more complicated issue than food safety. It is not about ensuring that people don’t get poisoned; it is about changing their behaviour. Should governments be trying to do anything about it at all There is a bad reason for doing something. The bad reason is that governments should help citizens look after themselves. People, the argument goes, are misled by their genes, which are constantly trying to pack away a few more calories just in case of a famine around the corner. Governments should help guide them towards better eating habits. But that argument is weaker in the case of food than it is for tobacconicotine is addictive, chocolate is not-and no better than it is in any other area where people have a choice of being sensible or silly. People are constantly torn by the battle between their better and worse selves. It’s up to them, not governments, to decide who should win. The word "scourge" in Paragraph 4 probably means
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大学校长分文科出身和理科出身两类。文科出身的人轻易做不到这位子。做到了也不以为荣，准是干政治碰避下野，仕而不优则学，借诗书之译，弦诵之声来休养身心。 理科出身的人呢，就全然不同了。中国是世界上最提倡科学的同家，没有旁的国家肯这样给科学家大官做的。外国科学进步，中国科学家进爵。在外国，研究人情的学问始终跟研究物理的学问分歧；而在中国，只要你知道水电、土木、机械、动植物等等，你就可以行政治人。
It was the benefit night of Fenogcnov, thc tragic actor. They were acting "Prince Serebryany". The tragedian himself was playing Vyazemsky: Limonadov, the stage manager, was playing Morozov; Madame Bcobahtov. Elena. The performance was a grand success. The tragedian accomplished wonders indeed. When he was carrying off Elena, he held her in one hand above his head as he dashed across the stage. He shouted, hissed, banged with his feet, tore his coat across his chest. When he refused to fight Morozov, he trembled all over as nobody ever trembles in reality, and gasped loudly. The theatre shook with applause. There were endless calls. Fenogenov was presented with a silver cigarette-case and a bouquet tied with long ribbons. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs and urged their men to applaud, many shed tears... But the one who was the most enthusiastic and most excited was Masha, daughter of Sidoretsky the police captain. She was sitting in the first row of the stalls beside her papa; she was ecstatic and could not take her eyes off the stage even between the acts. Her delicate little hands and feet were quivering, her eyes were full of tears, her cheeks turned pater and paler. And no wonder - she was at the theatre for the first time in her life. "How well they act! How splendidly!"she said to her papa the potice captain, every time the curtain fell. "How good Fcnogcnov is! "And if her papa had been capable of reading faces he would have read on his daughter’s pale little countenance a rapture that was ahnost anguish. She was overcome by the acting, by the play, by the surroundings. When the regimental band began playing between the acts, she chased her cycs, exhausted. "Papa!" she said to the police captain during the last interval, "go behind the scenes and ask them all to dinner tomorrow!" The police captain went behind the scenes.praised them for all their fine acting, and complimented Madame Bcobahtov."Your lovely face demands a canvas, and I only wish I could wield the brush ! "And with a scrapc, he thereupon invited the company to dinner. "All except the fair sex, " he whispered. "I don’t want the actresses, for I have a daughter. " Next day the actors dined at the police captain’s. Only three turned up, the manager Limonadov, the tragedian Fcnogcnov, and the comic man Vodolazov; the others sent excuses. The dinner was a dull affair Limonadov kept telling the police captain how much he respected him, and how highly he thought of all persons in authority; Vodolazov mimicked drunken merchants and Armenians; and Fenogenov, a tall .stout little Russian with black cyes and frowning brow, declaimed "At the portals of the great, " and "To be or not to be."Limonadov, with tears in his cycs.described his interview with the former Governor. General Kanyutchin. The police captain listened, was bored, and smiled affably. He was well satisfied, although Limonadov smelt strongly of burnt feathers, and Fenogcnov was wearing a hired dress coat and boots trodden down at heel. Thcy plcascd his daughtcr and made her lively, and that was enough for him. And Masha never took her eyes off the actors. She had never before scen such clever, exceptional people! In the evening the police captain and Masha were at the theatre again. A week later the actors dined at the police captain’s again.and after that came almost every day either to dinner or supper. Masha became more and more devoted to the theatre, and went there every evening. She fell in love with the tragedian. One fine morning, when the police captain had gone to meet the bishop, Masha ran away with Limonadov’s company and married her hero on thc way. After celebrating the wedding, the actors composed a long and touching letter and sent it to the police captain. It was the work of their combined efforts. The answer to this letter was most discomforting. The police captain disowned his daughter for marrying, as he said, "a stupid, idle little Russian with no fixed home or occupation." The word "disowned" in the last paragraph probably means
In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions. Now listen to the interview. What is the meaning of "taking in the good" by the interviewee
Jump to 2010 and Beveridge would be astonished at what became of his welfare state. Millions of Britons are entangled in means-tested tax credits, housing benefits and entitlements for the jobless that can make it unprofitable to work. The past decade saw massive job creation. But almost 1.4m people spent nine of the past ten years on out-of-work benefits, as lain Duncan Smith, the Conservative work and pensions secretary, noted. Mr. Duncan Smith —- a man of unusually public religious faith by British standards—declared it a "sin" that millions of jobs had been taken by foreigners under the previous Labour government, because Britons were not "capable or able" to do so. He unveiled plans to roll some existing welfare payments into a single, simplified "Universal Credit". By fiddling with the rates at which benefits are withdrawn from those who find work, Mr. Duncan Smith hopes it will always pay to take a job. If the complexity of the modern welfare system would be alien to its founders, the political context of today’s reforms would be familiar. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, unveiled a cap on the benefits that any one family can receive, tied to the median net income of a working household. The British sense of "fair play would not tolerate people opting for welfare as a "lifestyle choice’", Mr. Osborne said. Mr. Duncan Smith has vowed tougher sanctions for benefit claimants who refuse work, up to and including the loss of some benefits for three years. Even school breakfasts are back as a cause of contention. The Labour-led administration in Wales — a devolved region which, like Scotland, offers its inhabitants publicly funded goodies not provided in England — vowed on November i7th to preserve tree breakfasts in primary schools from cuts. Welsh Tories grumble that breakfast is the responsibility of parents. Lots of developed countries fret about the cost of welfare, but — at least in western Europe — Britain is a special case. According to a recent Eurobarometer survey, the British are more likely that anyone in western Europe to think poverty is caused by laziness, and more likely than anyone else in the 27- strong European Union to blame it on immigration: the French prefer to blame the "pursuit of profit", and the Germans bad policies. The same survey shows the British to be less convinced than any other nation in the European Union that poverty can be tackled with increased social benefits= they prefer to offer the poor work, training and regeneration schemes. When it comes to rugged individualism, the British can be found — as usual — paddling in the middle of the Atlantic, somewhere between Europe and America. The latest Pew Global Attitudes survey of Europe asked whether success in life is determined by "forces outside our control". In France.Germany, Italy and Spain, most respondents fatalistically answered "yes". In Britain, 55% said "no", though that was trumped by the response from America, where 68% said "no". Yet when it comes to the issue of a British work ethic, the picture is murkier. When asked whether they are satisfied with their jobs, the British arc on the EU average. A different question is posed every few years by the International Social Survey Programme: whether a job is just a way of earning money, and whether respondents would enjoy working even if they did not need the income. Among the 13 countries polled, the British (especially British men) consistently express the lowest commitment to work for its own sake. It would be easy to come away with a rather chilly image of Britain: hostile to the work — shy, yet jaundiced about work. That would help to explain the rather punitive tones in which the coalition government has unveiled its welfare reforms. But where does that leave David Cameron’s voluntarism "Big Society" After all, that rests on what Jesse Norman, a Tory MP and Cameroon theorist, has called the "bold conjecture" that Britons are a people fizzing with latent, untapped energy, ready to roll back the state and bid to run public services better. The answer, perhaps, is that the British arc complicated. They are individualists who build strong communities and pull together in a crunch. They have a national allergy to earnestness Most British people may agree that ones success partly results from one’s
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