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When the British artist Paul Day unveiled his nine metre-high bronze statue of two lovers locked in an embrace at London’s brand new St Pancreas International Station last year it was lambasted as "kitsch", "overblown" and "truly horrific". Now, a brief glimpse of a new frieze to wrap around a plinth for The Meeting Place statue has been revealed, depicting "dream-like" scenes inspired by the railways.Passengers arriving from the continent will be greeted with a series of images including a Tube train driven by a skeleton as a bearded drunk sways precariously close to the passing train Another shows the attempted suicide of a jilted lover under a train reflected in the sunglasses of a fellow passenger. Another section reveals a woman in short skirt with her legs wrapped round her lover while they wait for the next train.Other less controversial parts of the terracotta draft frieze depicts soldiers leaving on troop trains for the First World War and the evacuation of London’s underground network after the terror attacks of 7 July 2005.Until the unveiling of The Meeting Place last year, Day, who lives in France, was best known for the Battle of Britain memorial on Embankment. His new frieze looks set to be a return to the sort of crammed bronze montages that has made him so well known Day said he wanted the new plinth to act as the ying to the larger statue’s yang."For me this sculpture has always been about how our dreams collide with the real world," he said. "The couple kissing represent an ideal, a perfect dream reality that ultimately we cannot obtain. The same is true of the railways. They were a dream come true, an incredible feat of engineering but they also brought with them mechanized warfare, Blitzkrieg and death. "Day is still working on the final bronze frieze which will be wrapped around the bottom of the plinth in June next year but he says he wants the 50 million passengers that pass through St Pancras every year to be able to get up close and personal with the final product. "The statue is like a signpost to be seen and understood from far away," he said. "Its size is measured in terms of the station itself. The frieze, on the other hand, is intended to capture the gaze of passers-by and lead them on a short journey of reflections about travel and change that echoes their presence in St Pancras, adding a very different experience to The Meeting Place sculpture. "Brushing aside some of the criticism leveled at his work that has compared it to cartoons or comic strips, Day said he believed his work would stand the test of time. "All the crap that was hurled at the sculpture was just that, crap," he said "The reaction from the critics was so strangely hostile but I believe time will tell whether people, not the art press, will value the piece."When people criticise my reliefs for looking like comic strips they have got the wrong end of the stick. Throughout the ages, man has been telling stories through a series of pictures, whether it’s stained glass windows, sculptures or photojournalism. My friezes are part of that tradition "Stephen Jordan, from London and Continental Railways, which commissioned the piece, said: " The Meeting Place seeks to challenge and has been well received by visitors who love to photograph it. In addition, it performs an important role within the station, being visible from pretty much anywhere on the upper level of St Pancras International and doing exactly what was planned, making the perfect meeting place for friends. \ Which of the following is NOT true about The Meeting Place sculpture （）
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"They treat us like mules," the guy installing my washer tells me, his eyes narrowing as he wipes his hands. I had just complimented him and his partner on the speed and assurance of their work He explains that it’s rare that customers speak to him this way. I know what he’s talking about. My mother was a waitress all her life, in coffee shops and fast-paced chain restaurants. It was hard work, but she liked it, liked "being among the public," as she would say. But that work had its sting, too-the customer who would treat her like a servant or, her biggest complaint, like she was not that bright.There’s a lesson here for this political season: the subtle and not-so-subtle insults that blue- collar and service workers endure as part of their working lives. And those insults often have to do with intelligence.We like to think of the United States as a classless society. The belief in economic mobility is central to the American Dream, and we pride ourselves on our spirit of egalitarianism But we also have a troubling streak of aristocratic bias in our national temperament, and one way it manifests itself is in the assumptions we make about people who work with their hands. Working people sense this bias and react to it when they vote. The common political wisdom is that hot-button social issues have driven blue-collar voters rightward. But there are other cultural dynamics at play as well. And Democrats can be as oblivious to these dynamics as Republicans-though the Grand Old Party did appeal to them in St. Paul.Let’s go back to those two men installing my washer and dryer. They do a lot of heavy lifting quickly-mine was the first of 15 deliveries-and efficiently, to avoid injury. Between them there is ongoing communication, verbal and nonverbal, to coordinate the lift, negotiate the tight fit, move in rhythm with each other. And all the while, they are weighing options, making decisions and solving problems-as when my new dryer didn’t match up with the gas outlet.Think about what a good waitress has to do in the busy restaurant: remember orders and monitor them, attend to a dynamic, quickly changing environment, prioritize tasks and manage the flow of work, make decisions on the fly. There’s the carpenter using a number of mathematical concepts-symmetry, proportion, congruence, the properties of angles-and visualizing these concepts while building a cabinet, a flight of stairs, or a pitched roof.The hairstylist’s practice is a mix of technique, knowledge about the biology of hair, aesthetic judgment, and communication skill. The mechanic, electrician, and plumber are troubleshooters and problem solvers. Even the routinized factory floor calls for working smarts. When has any of this made its way into our political speeches From either party. Even on I,abor Day.Last week, the GOP masterfully invoked some old cultural suspicions: country folk versus city and east-coast versus heartland education, But these are symbolic populist gestures, not the stuff of true engagement. Judgments about intelligence carry great weight in our society, and we have a tendency to make sweeping assessments of people’s intelligence based on the kind of work they do.Political tributes to labor over the next two months will render the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps. But few will also celebrate the thought bright behind the eye, or offer an image that links hand and brain It would be fitting in a country with an egalitarian vision of itself to have a truer, richer sense of all that is involved in the wide range of work that surrounds and sustains us.Those politicians who can communicate that sense will tap a deep reserve of neglected feeling. And those who can honor and use work in explaining and personalizing their policies will find a welcome reception. To illustrate the intelligence of the working class, the author cites the examples of all of the following EXCEPT（）
From cyborg housemaids and water-powered cars to dog translators, and rocket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in the quest to turn science fiction into reality. Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier.For chemists, physicists, material scientists, astronauts and dreamers across the globe, the space elevator represents the most tantalizing of concepts: cables stronger and lighter than any fibre yet woven, tethered to the ground and disappearing beyond the atmosphere to a satellite docking station in geosynchronous orbit above Earth.Up and down the 22,000 mile-long (36,000km) cables-or flat ribbons-will run the elevator carriages, themselves requiring huge breakthroughs in engineering to which the biggest Japanese companies and universities have turned their collective attention.In the carriages, the scientists behind the idea told The Times , could be any number of cargoes. A space elevator could carry people, huge solar-powered generators or even casks of radioactive waste. The point is that breaking free of Earth-s gravity will no longer require so much energy- perhaps 100 times less than launching the space shuttle. "Just like traveling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator into space," Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association, saidThe vision has inspired scientists around the world and government organizations, including Nasa. Several competing space elevator projects are gathering pace as various groups vie to build practical carriages, tethers and the hundreds of other parts required to carry out the plan. There are prizes offered by space elevator-related scientific organizations for breakthroughs and competitions for the best and fastest design of carriage.First envisioned by the celebrated master of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, in his 1979 work The Fountains o f Paradise, the concept has all the best qualities of great science fiction: it is bold, it is a leap of imagination and it would change life as we know it. Unlike the warp drives in Star Trek, or H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, the idea of the space elevator does not mess with the laws of science; it just presents a series of very, very complex engineering problems.Japan is increasingly confident that its sprawling academic and industrial base can solve those issues, and has even put the astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (￡5 billion) on building the elevator. Japan is renowned as a global leader in the precision engineering and high-quality material production without which the idea could never be possible.The biggest obstacle lies in the cables. To extend the elevator to a stationary satellite from the Earth’s surface world require twice that length of cable to reach a counterweight, ensuring that the cable maintains its tension. The cable must be exceptionally light, staggeringly strong and able to withstand all projectiles thrown at it inside and outside the atmosphere. The answer, according to the groups working on designs, will lie in carbon nanotubes-microscopic particles that can be formed into fibres and whose mass production is now a focus of Japan’s big textile companies.According to Yoshio Aoki, a professor of precision machinery engineering at Nihon University and a director of the Japan Space Elevator Association, the cable would need to be about four times stronger than what is currently the strongest carbon nanotube fibre, or about 180 times stronger than steel. Pioneering work on carbon nanotubes in Cambridge has produced a strength improvement of about 100 times over the past five years.Equally, there is the issue of powering the carriages as they climb into space. "We are thinking of using the technology employed in our bullet trains," Professor Aoki said. "Carbon nanotubes are good conductors of electricity, so we are thinking of having a second cable to provide power all along the route. " Japan is hosting an international conference in November to draw up a timetable for the machine. Cyborg housemaids, water-powered cars, dog translators and rocket boots are（）
Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk. 16（）
Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation. 4（）
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