|
|
楼主 |
发表于 2004-2-18 00:00:00
|
显示全部楼层
20 The Historical Significance of American Revolution
The ways of history are so intricate and the motivations of
human actions so complex that it is always hazardous to attempt
to represent events covering a number of years, a multiplicity of
persons, and distant localities as the expression of one
intellectual or social movement; yet the historical process which
culminated in the ascent of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency
can be regarded as the outstanding example not only of the birth
of a new way of life but of nationalism as a new way of life. The
American Revolution represents the link between the
seventeenth century, in which modern England became
conscious of itself, and the awakening of modern Europe at the
end of the eighteenth century. It may seem strange that the
march of history should have had to cross the Atlantic Ocean, but
only in the North American colonies could a struggle for civic
liberty lead also to the foundation of a new nation. Here, in the
popular rising against a “tyrannical” government, the fruits were
more than the securing of a freer constitution. They included the
growth of a nation born in liberty by the will of the people, not
from the roots of common descent, a geographic entity, or the
ambitions of king or dynasty. With the American nation, for the
first time, a nation was born, not in the dim past of history but
before the eyes of the whole world.
21 The Origin of Sports
When did sport begin? If sport is, in essence, play, the claim
might be made that sport is much older than humankind, for , as
we all have observed, the beasts play. Dogs and cats wrestle and
play ball games. Fishes and birds dance. The apes have simple,
pleasurable games. Frolicking infants, school children playing
tag, and adult arm wrestlers are demonstrating strong,
transgenerational and transspecies bonds with the universe of
animals - past, present, and future. Young animals, particularly,
tumble, chase, run wrestle, mock, imitate, and laugh (or so it
seems) to the point of delighted exhaustion. Their play, and ours,
appears to serve no other purpose than to give pleasure to the
players, and apparently, to remove us temporarily from the
anguish of life in earnest.
Some philosophers have claimed that our playfulness is the most
noble part of our basic nature. In their generous conceptions,
play harmlessly and experimentally permits us to put our creative
forces, fantasy, and imagination into action. Play is release from
the tedious battles against scarcity and decline which are the
incessant, and inevitable, tragedies of life. This is a grand
conception that excites and provokes. The holders of this view
claim that the origins of our highest accomplishments ---- liturgy,
literature, and law ---- can be traced to a play impulse which,
paradoxically, we see most purely enjoyed by young beasts and
children. Our sports, in this rather happy, nonfatalistic view of
human nature, are more splendid creations of the nondatable,
transspecies play impulse.
22. Collectibles
Collectibles have been a part of almost every culture since
ancient times. Whereas some objects have been collected for
their usefulness, others have been selected for their aesthetic
beauty alone. In the United States, the kinds of collectibles
currently popular range from traditional objects such as stamps,
coins, rare books, and art to more recent items of interest like
dolls, bottles, baseball cards, and comic books.
Interest in collectibles has increased enormously during the past
decade, in part because some collectibles have demonstrated
their value as investments. Especially during cycles of high
inflation, investors try to purchase tangibles that will at least
retain their current market values. In general, the most
traditional collectibles will be sought because they have
preserved their value over the years, there is an organized
auction market for them, and they are most easily sold in the
event that cash is needed. Some examples of the most stable
collectibles are old masters, Chinese ceramics, stamps, coins,
rare books, antique jewelry, silver, porcelain, art by well-known
artists, autographs, and period furniture. Other items of more
recent interest include old photograph records, old magazines,
post cards, baseball cards, art glass, dolls, classic cars, old
bottles, and comic books. These relatively new kinds of
collectibles may actually appreciate faster as short-term
investments, but may not hold their value as long-term
investments. Once a collectible has had its initial play, it
appreciates at a fairly steady rate, supported by an increasing
number of enthusiastic collectors competing for the limited
supply of collectibles that become increasingly more difficult to
locate.
23 Ford
Although Henry Ford’s name is closely associated with the
concept of mass production, he should receive equal credit for
introducing labor practices as early as 1913 that would be
considered advanced even by today’s standards. Safety
measures were improved, and the work day was reduced to eight
hours, compared with the ten-or twelve-hour day common at the
time. In order to accommodate the shorter work day, the entire
factory was converted from two to three shifts.
In addition, sick leaves as well as improved medical care for
those injured on the job were instituted. The Ford Motor Company
was one of the first factories to develop a technical school to
train specialized skilled laborers and an English language school
for immigrants. Some efforts were even made to hire the
handicapped and provide jobs for former convicts.
The most widely acclaimed innovation was the five-dollar-a-day
minimum wage that was offered in order to recruit and retain the
best mechanics and to discourage the growth of labor unions.
Ford explained the new wage policy in terms of efficiency and
profit sharing. He also mentioned the fact that his employees
would be able to purchase the automobiles that they produced -
in effect creating a market for the product. In order to qualify for
the minimum wage, an employee had to establish a decent home
and demonstrate good personal habits, including sobriety,
thriftiness, industriousness, and dependability. Although some
criticism was directed at Ford for involving himself too much in
the personal lives of his employees, there can be no doubt that,
at a time when immigrants were being taken advantage of in
frightful ways, Henry Ford was helping many people to establish
themselves in America.
24 Piano
The ancestry of the piano can be traced to the early keyboard
instruments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries --- the spinet,
the dulcimer, and the virginal. In the seventeenth century the
organ, the clavichord, and the harpsichord became the chief
instruments of the keyboard group, a supremacy they maintained
until the piano supplanted them at the end of the eighteenth
century. The clavichord’s tone was metallic and never powerful;
nevertheless, because of the variety of tone possible to it, many
composers found the clavichord a sympathetic instrument for
intimate chamber music. The harpsichord with its bright,
vigorous tone was the favorite instrument for supporting the bass
of the small orchestra of the period and for concert use, but the
character of the tone could not be varied save by mechanical or
structural devices.
The piano was perfected in the early eighteenth century by a
harpsichord maker in Italy (though musicologists point out
several previous instances of the instrument). This instrument
was called a piano e forte (sort and loud), to indicate its dynamic
versatility; its strings were struck by a recoiling hammer with a
felt-padded head. The wires were much heavier in the earlier
instruments. A series of mechanical improvements continuing
well into the nineteenth century, including the introduction of
pedals to sustain tone or to soften it, the perfection of a metal
frame, and steel wire of the finest quality, finally produced an
instrument capable of myriad tonal effects from the most
delicate harmonies to an almost orchestral fullness of sound,
from a liquid, singing tone to a sharp, percussive brilliance.
25. Movie Music
Accustomed though we are to speaking of the films made before
1927 as“silent”, the film has never been, in the full sense of the
word, silent. From the very beginning, music was regarded as an
indispensable accompaniment; when the Lumiere films were
shown at the first public film exhibition in the United States in
February 1896, they were accompanied by piano improvisations
on popular tunes. At first, the music played bore no special
relationship to the films; an accompaniment of any kind was
sufficient. Within a very short time, however, the incongruity of
playing lively music to a solemn film became apparent, and film
pianists began to take some care in matching their pieces to the
mood of the film.
As movie theaters grew in number and importance, a violinist,
and perhaps a cellist, would be added to the pianist in certain
cases, and in the larger movie theaters small orchestras were
formed. For a number of years the selection of music for each
film program rested entirely in the hands of the conductor or
leader of the orchestra, and very often the principal qualification
for holding such a position was not skill or taste so much as the
ownership of a large personal library of musical pieces. Since the
conductor seldom saw the films until the night before they were
to be shown (if indeed, the conductor was lucky enough to see
them then), the musical arrangement was normally improvised in
the greatest hurry.
To help meet this difficulty, film distributing companies started
the practice of publishing suggestions for musical
accompaniments. In 1909, for example, the Edison Company
began issuing with their films such indications of mood as
“pleasant”, “sad”, “lively”. The suggestions became more explicit,
and so emerged the musical cue sheet containing indications of
mood, the titles of suitable pieces of music, and precise
directions to show where one piece led into the next.
Certain films had music especially composed for them. The most
famous of these early special scores was that composed and
arranged for D.W Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation, which was
released in 1915.
26. International Business and Cross-cultural Communication
The increase in international business and in foreign investment
has created a need for executives with knowledge of foreign
languages and skills in cross-cultural communication. Americans,
however, have not been well trained in either area and,
consequently, have not enjoyed the same level of success in
negotiation in an international arena as have their foreign
counterparts.
Negotiating is the process of communicating back and forth for
the purpose of reaching an agreement. It involves persuasion and
compromise, but in order to participate in either one, the
negotiators must understand the ways in which people are
persuaded and how compromise is reached within the culture of
the negotiation.
In many international business negotiations abroad, Americans
are perceived as wealthy and impersonal. It often appears to the
foreign negotiator that the American represents a large multimillion-
dollar corporation that can afford to pay the price without
bargaining further. The American negotiator’s role becomes that
of an impersonal purveyor of information and cash.
In studies of American negotiators abroad, several traits have
been identified that may serve to confirm this stereotypical
perception, while undermining the negotiator’s position. Two
traits in particular that cause cross-cultural misunderstanding
are directness and impatience on the part of the American
negotiator. Furthermore, American negotiators often insist on
realizing short-term goals. Foreign negotiators, on the other hand,
may value the relationship established between negotiators and
may be willing to invest time in it for long- term benefits. In order
to solidify the relationship, they may opt for indirect interactions
without regard for the time involved in getting to know the other
negotiator.
27. Scientific Theories
In science, a theory is a reasonable explanation of observed
events that are related. A theory often involves an imaginary
model that helps scientists picture the way an observed event
could be produced. A good example of this is found in the kinetic
molecular theory, in which gases are pictured as being made up
of many small particles that are in constant motion.
A useful theory, in addition to explaining past observations, helps
to predict events that have not as yet been observed. After a
theory has been publicized, scientists design experiments to test
the theory. If observations confirm the scientist’s predictions, the
theory is supported. If observations do not confirm the
predictions, the scientists must search further. There may be a
fault in the experiment, or the theory may have to be revised or
rejected.
Science involves imagination and creative thinking as well as
collecting information and performing experiments. Facts by
themselves are not science. As the mathematician Jules Henri
Poincare said, “Science is built with facts just as a house is built
with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called science
any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house.”
Most scientists start an investigation by finding out what other
scientists have learned about a particular problem. After known
facts have been gathered, the scientist comes to the part of the
investigation that requires considerable imagination. Possible
solutions to the problem are formulated. These possible solutions
are called hypotheses.
In a way, any hypothesis is a leap into the unknown. It extends
the scientist’s thinking beyond the known facts. The scientist
plans experiments, performs calculations, and makes
observations to test hypotheses. Without hypothesis, further
investigation lacks purpose and direction. When hypotheses are
confirmed, they are incorporated into theories.
28 Changing Roles of Public Education
One of the most important social developments that helped to
make possible a shift in thinking about the role of public
education was the effect of the baby boom of the 1950’s and
1960’s on the schools. In the 1920’s, but especially in the
Depression conditions of the 1930’s, the United States
experienced a declining birth rate --- every thousand women aged
fifteen to forty-four gave birth to about 118 live children in 1920,
89.2 in 1930, 75.8 in 1936, and 80 in 1940. With the growing
prosperity brought on by the Second World War and the economic
boom that followed it young people married and established
households earlier and began to raise larger families than had
their predecessors during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102
per thousand in 1946,106.2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955. Although
economics was probably the most important determinant, it is
not the only explanation for the baby boom. The increased value
placed on the idea of the family also helps to explain this rise in
birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming into the first
grade by the mid 1940’s and became a flood by 1950. The public
school system suddenly found itself overtaxed. While the number
of schoolchildren rose because of wartime and postwar
conditions, these same conditions made the schools even less
prepared to cope with the
food. The wartime economy meant that few new schools were
built between 1940 and 1945. Moreover, during the war and in
the boom times that followed, large numbers of teachers left
their profession for better- paying jobs elsewhere in the economy.
Therefore in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the baby boom hit an
antiquated and inadequate school system. Consequently, the
“ custodial rhetoric” of the 1930’s and early 1940’s no longer
made sense that is, keeping youths aged sixteen and older out of
the labor market by keeping them in school could no longer be a
high priority for an institution unable to find space and staff to
teach younger children aged five to sixteen. With the baby boom,
the focus of educators and of laymen interested in education
inevitably turned toward the lower grades and back to basic
academic skills and discipline. The system no longer had much
interest in offering nontraditional, new, and extra services to
older youths.
29 Telecommuting
Telecommuting-- substituting the computer for the trip to the job
---- has been hailed as a solution to all kinds of problems related
to office work.
For workers it promises freedom from the office, less time
wasted in traffic, and help with child-care conflicts. For
management, telecommuting helps keep high performers on
board, minimizes tardiness and absenteeism by eliminating
commutes, allows periods of solitude for high-concentration
tasks, and provides scheduling flexibility. In some areas, such as
Southern California and Seattle, Washington, local governments
are encouraging companies to start telecommuting programs in
order to reduce rush-hour congestion and improve air quality.
But these benefits do not come easily. Making a telecommuting
program work requires careful planning and an understanding of
the differences between telecommuting realities and popular
images.
Many workers are seduced by rosy illusions of life as a
telecommuter. A computer programmer from New York City
moves to the tranquil Adirondack Mountains and stays in contact
with her office via computer. A manager comes in to his office
three days a week and works at home the other two. An
accountant stays home to care for her sick child; she hooks up
her telephone modern connections and does office work between
calls to the doctor.
These are powerful images, but they are a limited reflection of
reality. Telecommuting workers soon learn that it is almost
impossible to concentrate on work and care for a young child at
the same time. Before a certain age, young children cannot
recognize, much less respect, the necessary boundaries between
work and family. Additional child support is necessary if the
parent is to get any work done.
Management too must separate the myth from the reality.
Although the media has paid a great deal of attention to
telecommuting in most cases it is the employee’s situation, not
the availability of technology that precipitates a telecommuting
arrangement.
That is partly why, despite the widespread press coverage, the
number of companies with work-at-home programs or policy
guidelines remains small.
30 The origin of Refrigerators
By the mid-nineteenth century, the term “icebox” had entered the
American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect the
diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice trade grew
with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and
hospitals, and by some forward-looking city dealers in fresh meat,
fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1861-1865), as ice was
used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use.
Even before 1880, half of the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia,
and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston and Chicago,
went to families for their own use. This had become possible
because a new household convenience, the icebox, a precursor
of the modern refrigerator, had been invented.
Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now
suppose. In the early nineteenth century, the knowledge of the
physics of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration,
was rudimentary. The commonsense notion that the best icebox
was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course
mistaken, for it was the melting of the ice that performed the
cooling. Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included
wrapping up the ice in blankets, which kept the ice from doing its
job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors
achieve the delicate balance of insulation and circulation needed
for an efficient icebox.
But as early as 1803, and ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas
Moore, had been on the right track. He owned a farm about
twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the village
of Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox
of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found that
customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of
his competitors to pay a premium price for his butter, still fresh
and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage of his icebox,
Moore explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel
to market at night in order to keep their produce cool.
31 British Columbia
British Columbia is the third largest Canadian provinces, both in
area and population. It is nearly 1.5 times as large as Texas, and
extends 800 miles (1,280km) north from the United States border.
It includes Canada’s entire west coast and the islands just off the
coast.
Most of British Columbia is mountainous, with long rugged ranges
running north and south. Even the coastal islands are the
remains of a mountain range that existed thousands of years ago.
During the last Ice Age, this range was scoured by glaciers until
most of it was beneath the sea. Its peaks now show as islands
scattered along the coast.
The southwestern coastal region has a humid mild marine
climate. Sea winds that blow inland from the west are warmed by
a current of warm water that flows through the Pacific Ocean. As
a result, winter temperatures average above freezing and
summers are mild. These warm western winds also carry
moisture from the ocean.
Inland from the coast, the winds from the Pacific meet the
mountain barriers of the coastal ranges and the Rocky Mountains.
As they rise to cross the mountains, the winds are cooled, and
their moisture begins to fall as rain. On some of the western
slopes almost 200 inches (500cm) of rain fall each year.
More than half of British Columbia is heavily forested. On
mountain slopes that receive plentiful rainfall, huge Douglas firs
rise in towering columns. These forest giants often grow to be as
much as 300 feet (90m) tall, with diameters up to 10 feet (3m).
More lumber is produced from these trees than from any other
kind of tree in North America. Hemlock, red cedar, and balsam fir
are among the other trees found in British Columbia.
32 Botany
Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the
history of human knowledge. For many thousands of years it was
the one field of awareness about which humans had anything
more than the vaguest of insights. It is impossible to know today
just what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but form
what we can observe of pre- industrial societies that still exist a
detailed learning of plants and their properties must be
extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food
pyramid for all living things even for other plants. They have
always been enormously important to the welfare of people not
only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes,
medicines, shelter, and a great many other purposes. Tribes
living today in the jungles of the Amazon recognize literally
hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them,
botany, as such, has no name and is probably not even
recognized as a special branch of “knowledge” at all.
Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become the farther
away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less
distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes
unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge,
and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an
orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East
about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be
harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next
season the first great step in a new association of plants and
humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them
flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on,
humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled
production of a few plants, rather than getting a little here and a
little there from many varieties that grew wild- and the
accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of
experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to
fade away.
33 Plankton
Scattered through the seas of the world are billions of tons of
small plants and animals called plankton. Most of these plants
and animals are too small for the human eye to see. They drift
about lazily with the currents, providing a basic food for many
larger animals.
Plankton has been described as the equivalent of the grasses
that grow on the dry land continents, and the comparison is an
appropriate one. In potential food value, however, plankton far
outweighs that of the land grasses. One scientist has estimated
that while grasses of the world produce about 49 billion tons of
valuable carbohydrates each year, the sea’s plankton generates
more than twice as much.
Despite its enormous food potential, little effect was made until
recently to farm plankton as we farm grasses on land. Now
marine scientists have at last begun to study this possibility,
especially as the sea’s resources loom even more important as a
means of feeding an expanding world population.
No one yet has seriously suggested that “plankton-burgers” may
soon become popular around the world. As a possible farmed
supplementary food source, however, plankton is gaining
considerable interest among marine scientists.
One type of plankton that seems to have great harvest
possibilities is a tiny shrimp-like creature called krill. Growing to
two or three inches long, krill provides the major food for the
great blue whale, the largest animal to ever inhabit the Earth.
Realizing that this whale may grow to 100 feet and weigh 150
tons at maturity, it is not surprising that each one
34 Raising Oysters
In the oysters were raised in much the same way as dirt farmers
raised tomatoes- by transplanting them. First, farmers selected
the oyster bed, cleared the bottom of old shells and other debris,
then scattered clean shells about. Next, they ”planted” fertilized
oyster eggs, which within two or three weeks hatched into larvae.
The larvae drifted until they attached themselves to the clean
shells on the bottom. There they remained and in time grew into
baby oysters called seed or spat. The spat grew larger by
drawing in seawater from which they derived microscopic
particles of food. Before long, farmers gathered the baby oysters,
transplanted them once more into another body of water to
fatten them up.
Until recently the supply of wild oysters and those crudely
farmed were more than enough to satisfy people’s needs. But
today the delectable seafood is no longer available in abundance.
The problem has become so serious that some oyster beds have
vanished entirely.
Fortunately, as far back as the early 1900’s marine biologists
realized that if new measures were not taken, oysters would
become extinct or at best a luxury food. So they set up wellequipped
hatcheries and went to work. But they did not have the
proper equipment or the skill to handle the eggs. They did not
know when, what, and how to feed the larvae. And they knew
little about the predators that attack and eat baby oysters by the
millions. They failed, but they doggedly kept at it. Finally, in the
1940’s a significant breakthrough was made.
The marine biologists discovered that by raising the temperature
of the water, they could induce oysters to spawn not only in the
summer but also in the fall, winter, and spring. Later they
developed a technique for feeding the larvae and rearing them to
spat. Going still further, they succeeded in breeding new strains
that were resistant to diseases, grew faster and larger, and
flourished in water of different salinities and temperatures. In
addition, the cultivated oysters tasted better!
35 Oil Refining
An important new industry, oil refining, grew after the Civil war.
Crude oil, or petroleum - a dark, thick ooze from the earth - had
been known for hundreds of years, but little use had ever been
made of it. In the 1850’s Samuel M. Kier, a manufacturer in
western Pennsylvania, began collecting the oil from local
seepages and refining it into kerosene. Refining, like smelting, is
a process of removing impurities from a raw material.
Kerosene was used to light lamps. It was a cheap substitute for
whale oil, which was becoming harder to get. Soon there was a
large demand for kerosene. People began to search for new
supplies of petroleum.
The first oil well was drilled by E.L. Drake, a retired railroad
conductor. In 1859 he began drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
The whole venture seemed so impractical and foolish that
onlookers called it “Drake’s Folly”. But when he had drilled down
about 70 feet (21 meters), Drake struck oil. His well began to
yield 20 barrels of crude oil a day.
News of Drake’s success brought oil prospectors to the scene.
By the early 1860’s these wildcatters were drilling for “black
gold” all over western Pennsylvania. The boom rivaled the
California gold rush of 1848 in its excitement and Wild West
atmosphere. And it brought far more wealth to the prospectors
than any gold rush.
Crude oil could be refined into many products. For some years
kerosene continued to be the principal one. It was sold in
grocery stores and door-to-door. In the 1880’s refiners learned
how to make other petroleum products such as waxes and
lubricating oils. Petroleum was not then used to make gasoline or
heating oil.
36 Plate Tectonics and Sea-floor Spreading
The theory of plate tectonics describes the motions of the
lithosphere, the comparatively rigid outer layer of the Earth that
includes all the crust and part of the underlying mantle. The
lithosphere is divided into a few dozen plates of various sizes and
shapes, in general the plates are in motion with respect to one
another. A mid-ocean ridge is a boundary between plates where
new lithospheric material is injected from below. As the plates
diverge from a mid-ocean ridge they slide on a more
37 Icebergs
Icebergs are among nature’s most spectacular creations, and yet
most people have never seen one. A vague air of mystery
envelops them. They come into being ----- somewhere ------in
faraway, frigid waters, amid thunderous noise and splashing
turbulence, which in most cases no one hears or sees. They exist
only a short time and then slowly waste away just as unnoticed.
Objects of sheerest beauty they have been called. Appearing in
an endless variety of shapes, they may be dazzlingly white, or
they may be glassy blue, green or purple, tinted faintly of in
darker hues. They are |
|
发表于 2004-2-18 00:00:00