The World in a Glass: Six Drinks That Changed History Tom Standage urges drinkers to savor the history of their favorite beverages along with the taste. The author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses (Walker & Company, June 2005), Standage lauds the libations that have helped shape our world from the Stone Age to the present day. "The important drinks are still drinks that we enjoy today," said Standage, a technology editor at the London-based magazine the Economist. "They are relics(纪念物) of different historical periods still found in our kitchens." Take the six-pack, whose contents first fizzed at the dawn of civilization.Beer The ancient Sumerians, who built advanced city-states in the area of present-day Iraq, began fermenting(发酵) beer from barley at least 6,000 years ago. "When people started agriculture the first crops they produced were barley or wheat. You consume those crops as bread and as beer," Standage noted. "It’s the drink associated with the dawn of civilization. It’s as simple as that." Beer was popular with the masses from the beginning. "Beer would have been something that a common person could have had in the house and made whenever they wanted," said Linda Bisson, a microbiologist at the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis. "The guys who built the pyramids were paid in beer and bread," Standage added. "It was the defining drink Egypt and Mesopotamia. Everybody drank it. Today it’s the drink of the working man, and it was then as well."Wine Wine may be as old or older than beet--though no one can be certain. Paleolithic humans probably sampled the first "wine" as the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes. But producing and storing wine proved difficult for early cultures. "To make wine you have to have fresh grapes," said Bisson, the UC Davis microbiologist. "For beer you can just store grain and add water to process it at any time." Making wine also demanded pottery that could preserve the precious liquid. "Wine may be easier to make [than beer], but it’s harder to store," Bisson added. "For most ancient cultures it would have been hard to catch [fermenting grape juice] as wine on its way to [becoming] vinegar." Such caveats and the expense of producing wine helped the beverage quickly gain more cachet (威望) than beer. Wine was originally associated with social elites and religious activities. Wine snobbery may be nearly as old as wine itself. Greeks and Romans produced many grades of wine for various social classes. The quest for quality became an economic engine and later drove cultural expansion. "Once you had regions [like Greece and Rome] that could distinguish themselves as making good stuff, it gave them an economic boost," Bisson said. "Beer just wasn’t as special."Spirits Hard liquor, particularly brandy and rum, placated (安抚) sailors during the long sea voyages of the Age of Exploration, when European powers plied the seas during the 15th, 16th, and early 17th centuries. Rum played a crucial part of the triangular trade between Britain, Africa, and the North American colonies that once dominated the Atlantic economy, Standage also suggests that rum may have been more responsible than tea for the independence movement in Britain’s American colonies. "Distilling molasses for rum was very important to the New England economy," he explained. "When the British tried to tax molasses it struck at the heart of the economy. The idea of ’no taxation without representation’ originated with molasses and sugar. Only at the end did it refer to tea." Great Britain’s longtime superiority at sea may also owe a debt to its navy’s drink of rum-based choice, grog(掺水烈酒), which was made a compulsory beverage for sailors hr the late 18th century. "They would make grog with rum, water, and lemon or lime juice," Standage said. "This improved the taste but also reduced illness and scurvy. Fleet physicians thought that this had doubled the efficiancy of the fleet."Coffee The story of modern coffee starts in the Arabian Peninsula, where roasted beans were first brewed around A,D, 1000. Sometime around the 15th century, coffee spread throughout the Arab world, "In the Arab world, coffee rose as an alternative to alcohol, and coffeehouses as alternatives to taverns (酒馆)--both of which are banned by Islam," Standage said. When coffee arrived in Europe it was similarly hailed as an "anti-alcohol" that was quite welcome during the Age of Reason in the 18th century. "Just at the point when the Enlightenment is getting going, here’s a drink that sharpens the mind," Standage said, ’The coffeehouse is the perfect venue (聚会地点) to get together and exchange ideas and information. The French Revolution started in a coffeehouse." Coffee also fuelled commerce and had strong links to the rituals of business that remain to the present day. Lloyds of London and the London Stock Exchange were both originally coffeehouses.Tea Tea became a daily drink in China around the third century A.D. Standage says tea played a leading role in the expansion of imperial and industrial might in Great Britain many centuries later. During the 19th century, the East India Company enjoyed a monopoly on tea exports from China. "Englishmen around the world could drink tea, whether they were a colonial administrator in India or a London businessman," Standage said. "The sun never set on the British Empire---which meant that it was always teatime somewhere." As the Industrial Revolution of 18th and 19th centuries gained steam, tea provided some of the fuel. Factory workers stayed alert during long, monotonous shifts thanks to welcome tea breaks. The beverage also had unintended health benefits for rapidly growing urban areas. "When you start packing people together in cities it’s helpful to have a water-purification technology like tea," which was brewed with boiling water, Standage explained.Coca-Cola In 1886 pharmacist John Stith Pemberton sold about nine Coca-Colas a day. Today his soft drink is one of the world’s most valuable brands--sold in more countries than the United Nations has members. "It may be the second most widely understood phrase in the world after ’OK’ ," Standage said. The drink bas become a symbol of the United States--love it or hate it. Standage notes that East Germans quickly reached for Cokes when the Berlin Wall fell, while Thai Muslims poured it out into the streets to show disdain for the U.S. in the days leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. "Coca-Cola encapsulates what happened in the 20th century: the rise of consumer capitalism and the emergence of America as a superpower," Standage said. "It’s globalization in a bottle." While Coke may not always produce a smile, a survey by the Economist magazine (Standage’s employer), suggests that the soft drink’s presence is a great indicator of happy citizens. When countries were polled for happiness, as defined by a United Nations index, high scores correlated with sales of Coca-Cola. "It’s not because [Coke] makes people happy, but because [its] sales happen in the dynamic free-market economics that tend to produce happy people," Standage said. Today beer is the drink of the working man, which was not the case before.
You’re busy filling out the application form for a position you really need. Let’s assume you once actually completed a couple of years of college work or even that you completed your degree. Isn’t it tempting to lie just a little, to claim on the form that your diploma represents a Harvard degree Or that you finished an extra couple of years back at State University More and more people are mining to utter deception like this to land their job or to move ahead in their careers, for personnel officers, like most Americans, value degrees from famous schools. A job applicant may have a good education anyway, but he or she assumes that chances of being hired are better with a diploma from a well-known university. Registrars at most well-known colleges say they deal with deceitful claims like these at the rate of about one per week. Personnel officers do check up on degrees listed on application forms, then. If it turns out that an applicant is lying, most colleges are reluctant to accuse the applicant directly. One Ivy League school calls them "impostors (骗子)", another refers to them as "special cases". One well-known West Coast school, in perhaps the most delicate phrase of all, says that these claims are made by "no such people". To avoid outright (彻底的) lies, some job-seekers claim that they "attended" or "were associated with" a college or university. After carefully checking, a personnel officer may discover that "attending" means being dismissed after one semester. It may be that "being associated with" a college means that the job-seeker visited his younger brother for a football weekend. One school that keeps records of false claims says that the practice dates back at least to the turn of the century--that’s when they began keeping records, anyhow. If you don’t want to lie or even stretch the truth, there are companies that will sell you a phony diploma. One company, with offices in New York and on the West Coast, will put your name oh a diploma from any number of nonexistent colleges. The price begins at around twenty dollars for a diploma from "Smoot State University". The prices increase rapidly for a degree from the "University of Purdue". As there is no Smoot State and the real school in Indiana is properly called Purdue University, the prices seem rather high for one sheet of paper. This passage implies that ______.
A. buying a false degree is not moral
B. personnel officers only consider applicants from famous schools
C. most people lie on applications because they were dismissed from school
D. society should be greatly responsible for lying on applications
Today, most countries in the world have canals. Many countries have built canals near the coast, and parallel (67) the coast. Even in the twentieth century, goods can be moved more cheaply by boat than by any other (68) of transport. These (69) make it possible for boats to travel (70) ports along the coast without being (71) to the dangers of the open. Some canals, such as the Suez and the Panama, save ships weeks of time by making their (72) a thousand miles shorter. Other canals permit boats to reach cities that are not (73) on the coast; still other canals (74) lands where there is too much water, help to (75) fields where there is not enough water, and (76) water power for factories and mills. The size of a canal. (77) on the kind of boats going through it. The canal must be wide enough to permit two of the largest boats using it to (78) each other easily. It must be deep enough to leave about two feet of water (79) the keel of the largest boat using the canal. When the planet Mars was first (80) through a telescope, people saw that the round disk of the planet was crises-crossed by a (81) of strange bluegreen lines. These were called "canals" (82) they looked the same as canals on earth (83) are viewed from an airplane. However, scientists are now (84) that the Martian phenomena are really not canals. The photographs (85) from space-ships have helped us to (86) the truth about the Martian "canals".
A. [A] way [C] method
B. [B] means [D] approach