题目内容
A cute little female about six inches high, with wings and a pretty dress is the usual description people give if you ask them what a fairy looks like. This image of the fairy as a tiny, lovable, angel-like creature dressed in white, goes back to about the seventeenth century. But before that time, fairies were very different. They were cruel and dangerous creatures which lived in the remote hills and forests of Britain.
Farmers and hunters considered them to be as real and dangerous as the wolves and bears that lived in the wilder parts of the countryside. They were feared so much that people rarely spoke out loud of "fairies", preferring to use more respectful names such as "the little people" or "the hidden people".
There were many different names for the hidden people: fairies, elves, pixies, leprechauns, brownies, and goblins, to name but a few. There were also a number of explanations of their origin. Some said they were spirits of wood and water. In Cornwall they were thought to be the restless ghosts of unbaptised babies. Still others believed them to be a separate creation, as real as humans and animals.
They had the appearance of dark-skinned and dark-haired humans, although of course they were much smaller than ordinary people. Most accounts describe them as being the size of children, about four feet or so. Their clothing seems almost always to have been green or brown, although they occasionally went naked. Many early stories indicate that they were nocturnal. They had their homes in lonely and out of the way places.
Generally the fairies hated humans and could be very cruel to them. A good example of this cruelty is the legend of the "changeling". The fairies would steal human babies, especially those with fair hair and blue eyes, and replace them with one of their own or just a piece of wood.
Babies were not the only thing that the fairies would steal. Tools, plates, saucepans, practically anything small that they could easily carry. Food was also taken, as well as clothing. Fruit trees were raided in the night and cows milked dry.
The first thing we notice about these people is that their needs were not at all supernatural. They wanted food and were ready to steal in order to get it. Surely these were not ghosts or natural spirits.
One explanation is that stories of fairies are folk memories of the pre-Celtic inhabitants of Britain. Folk memories are oral traditions handed down over the years by word of mouth, These traditions can be very ancient.
The invasion of the Celts was an awful event for this island. It would not be surprising if some form. of memory of such an important event should survive to this day. These legends survive most strongly in the Celtic parts of the British Isles: Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall.
But could stories based on these events really be handed down by word of mouth over 2,000 years？
We will never know the truth about the fairies. However, this theory does seem more probably than most.
A fairy before the 17th century had all of the following features EXCEPT that ______.
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SECTION B PASSAGES
Directions: In this section, you will hear several passages. Listen to the passages carefully and then answer the questions that follow.
听力原文： Bertrand Russell wrote a short and sweet essay called "Three Passions I Have Lived For." Here are Russell's three: The longing for love; the search for knowledge; and what he called "the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. "Of these three, the first two require no external reminders. One seeks love because love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness; one seeks knowledge to understand the human heart. It is the third passion, the unbearable sympathy for the suffering of others that seems to call for frequent updating. So the world accommodates, with glimpses of that unbearable sympathy in Africa, where among the spasms of slaughter and disease, volunteers labour to keep that tortured continent alive; or in Iraq, where, between the pictures of invasions and explosions, a soldier occasionally is spotted lifting a child to safety. Or within our own borders, where those without homes or food are attended by those who refuse to let them go under. That constitutes the "unbearable" part, passion undercut by the powerlessness. Of course, reason and gentleness are politics by other means as well, but they require a different sort of passion. Russell's ideas of passion were straightforward and in the right place, which made his life worth living.
What is Bertrand Russell's third passion？
M: I think it's a little bit extreme. I think it's a very important institution, and has played a very important role.
W: Doing what？
M: Doing what nobody else is willing to do at such a moment when countries are in difficulties, which is to give them the financial resources to get out of a difficult joint, or maybe give that country the support, the financial support that the market is not willing to do.
W: You've been criticized for getting governments to stop spending money on their poor people, on their education, health care, and stuff like that.
M: Well, I think that's an unfair accusation. The fund finds a country that has so much public deficit and public debt that doesn't get credit in the market. So it's not that this program against poverty or that program to construct a road is unfunded, it's that the whole budget is unfunded. And when we decide that, of course, wages of public servants, construction of infrastructure, money dedicated to social problems, all of them suffer, but not because of the fund decision, but because of the situation. I accept that at some moments specific decisions that we have made maybe could have been better, sure.
What institution is the man work for？
听力原文： General Motors, the leading U.S. automaker on Tuesday reported a 4.2 per cent decline in total vehicle sales to 433,723 in April compared with the same month in 199Car sales fell 4.5 per cent and truck sales 3.9 per cent, the company said in a statement. Despite the April performance' GM vice-president for North American sales Roy Robert said: "We're going into the summer season with excellent momentum."
What is the percentage of total decline in vehicle sales in April this year？
In no small measure, the epidemic of paranormal beliefs--beliefs beyond the range of scientific explanation--is due to the rapid emergence of the mass media on a global scale. These media have virtually replaced the schools, colleges and universities as the chief conveyors of information. The days of the lone scientist conducting research in the lab or of the isolated scholar writing a paper or book for a limited audience have been bypassed. Today new ideas are popularized--whether half or fully baked--and they are broadcast far and wide even if they have not been sufficiently tested. Apparently the chief interests of most media corporations are entertainment rather than information, profit rather than truth, selling products rather than contributing to the sum of human knowledge. Accordingly, paranormal ideas are pandered to a gullible public and the line between fiction and reality is blurred. The public is often confronted with sensational accounts of hidden realms, and pseudoscience is mistaken for genuine existence. Even reputable publishers prefer to publish books touting paranormal claims rather than dispassionate scientific critiques. Why is it that of the thousands of proastrology, pro-psychic, or pro-UFO books published, very few are sceptical7 "They don't sell," is the response of the hallelujah choir within the publishing industry--a sad commentary on our times.
The skeptics thus have a vital role to play: to educate the public about the nature of science and to attempt to persuade media producers and directors that they have some responsibility to develop an appreciation for scientific rationality. One of the roles of CSICOP is to challenge the views of pseudoscience pouring forth daily from the media. It is clear that we cannot operate within the cloistered confines of the academy, but need to enter into the public arena. In monitoring the media, we surely have not sought to center producers or publishers; we only wish for some balance on their part in presenting paranormal claims, and for some role for scepticism about theses claims. Largely because of the media, large sectors of public opinion simply assume that psychic powers are real, that it is possible to modify material objects merely by the mind, that psychics can help detectives solve mysteries, and that we can abandon the clinical tests of medical science and heal patients by miraculous means. The number of paranormal, occult, and sci-fi television programs is increasing. Our objection is that "docudramas" are not labelled as fictionalized accounts but touted as fact. In regard to the many talk shows that constantly deal with paranormal topics, the skeptical viewpoint is rarely heard; and when it is permitted to be expressed, it is usually sandbagged by the host or other guests.
It can be inferred from the text that most people who have no doubts about paranormal phenomena are probably ______.
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