试题

应得客是一款用AI带你背重点的大学生期末刷题App。听考点、刷题库、在线默写,把考试重点背进脑子。考前突击不挂科,就用应得客。

即刻下载"应得客"APP
Following the explosion of creativity in Florence during the 14h century known as the Renaissance, the modern world saw a departure from what it had once known. It turned from God and the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and instead favoured a more humanistic approach to being. Renaissance ideas had spread throughout Europe well into the 17h century, with the arts and sciences flourishing extraordinarily among those with a more logical disposition. (46) With the Church’s teachings and ways of thinking eclipsed by the Renaissance, the gap between the Medieval and modern periods had been bridged, leading to new and unexplored intellectual territories.During the Renaissance, the great minds of Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei demonstrated the power of scientific study and discovery. (47) Before each of their revelations many thinkers at the time had sustained more ancient ways of thinking, including the geocentric view that the Earth was a the centre of our universe. Copernicus theorized in 1543 that all of the planets  that we knew of revolved not around the Earth, but the Sun, a system that was later upheld by Galileo at his own expense. Offering up such a theory during a time of high tension between scientific and religious minds was branded as heresy and any such heretics that continued to spread these lies were to be punished by imprisonment or even death.(48) Despite attempts by the Church to suppress this new generation of logicians and rationalists, more explanations for how the universe functioned were being made at a rate that the people could no longer ignore. It was with these great revelations that a new kind of philosophy founded in reason was born.The Church’s long-standing dogma was losing the great battle for truth to rationalists and scientists. This very fact embodied the new ways of thinking that swept through Europe during most of 17h century. (49) As many took on the duty of trying to integrate reasoning and scientific philosophies into the world, the Renaissance was over and it was time for a new era-the Age of Reason.The 17h and I8h centuries were times of radical change and curiosity. Scientific method, reductionism and the questioning of Church ideals was to be encouraged, as were ideas of liberty, tolerance and progress. (50) Such actions to seek knowledge and to understand what information we already knew were captured by the Latin phrase “sapereaude” or “dare to know”, after Immanuel Kant used it in his essay “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”. It was the purpose and responsibility of great minds to go forth and seek out the truth, which they believed to be founded in knowledge.
The growth of the use of English as the world’s primary language for international communication has obviously been continuing for several decades. (46) But even as the number of English speakers expands further there are signs that the global predominance of the language may fade within the foreseeable future.Complex international, economic, technological and cultural changes could start to diminish the leading position of English as the language of the world market, and UK interests which enjoy advantage from the breadth of English usage would consequently face new pressures. Those realistic possibilities are highlighted in the study presented by David Graddol. (47) His analysis should therefore end any self-contentedness among those who may believe that the global position of English is so stable that the young generations of the United Kingdom do not need additional language capabilities.David Graddol concludes that monoglot English graduates face a bleak economic future as qualified multilingual youngsters from other countries are proving to have a competitive advantage over their British counterparts in global companies and organizations. Alongside that, (48) many countries are introducing English into the primary-school curriculum but British schoolchildren and students do not appear to be gaining greater encouragement to achieve fluency in other languages.If left to themselves, such trends will diminish the relative strength of the English language in international education markets as the demand for educational resources in languages, such as Spanish, Arabic or Mandarin grows and international business process outsourcing in other languages such as Japanese, French and German, spreads.(49) The changes identified by David Graddol all present clear and major challenges to the UK’s providers of English language teaching to people of other countries and to broader education business sectors. The English language teaching sector directly earns nearly £1.3 billion for the UK in invisible exports and our other education related exports earn up to £10 billion a year more. As the international education  market  expands,  the  recent  slowdown  in  the  numbers of international students studying in the main English-speaking countries is likely to continue, especially if there are no effective strategic policies to prevent such slippage.The anticipation of possible shifts in demand provided by this study is significant: (50) It gives a basis for all organizations which seek to promote the learning and use of English, a basis for planning to meet the possibilities of what could be a very different operating environment. That is a necessary and practical approach. In this as in much else, those who wish to influence the future must prepare for it.
It was only after I started to write a weekly column about the medical journals, and began to read scientific papers from beginning to end, that I realized just how bad much of the medical literature frequently was. I came to recognize various signs of a bad paper: the kind of paper that purports to show that people who eat more than one kilo of broccoli a week were 1.17 times more likely than those who eat less to suffer late in life from pernicious anaemia. (46) There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals which, when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press, generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms.Why is so much bad science published? A recent paper, titled ‘The Natural Selection of Bad Science’, published on the Royal Society’s open science website, attempts to answer this intriguing and important question. It says that the problem is not merely that people do bad science, but that our current system of career advancement positively encourages it. What is important is not truth, but publication, which has become almost an end in itself. There has been a kind of inflationary process at work: (47) nowadays anyone applying for a research post has to have published twice the number of papers that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago. Never mind the quality, then, count the number.(48) Attempts have been made to curb this tendency, for example, by trying to incorporate some measure of quality as well as quantity into the assessment of an applicant’s papers. This is the famed citation index, that is to say the number of times a paper has been quoted elsewhere in the scientific literature, the assumption being that an important paper will be cited more often than one of small account. (49) This would be reasonable enough if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications, or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favors.Boiling down an individual’s output to simple metrics, such as number of publications or journal impacts, entails considerable savings in time, energy and ambiguity. Unfortunately, the long-term costs of using simple quantitative metrics to assess researcher merit are likely to be quite great. (50) If we are serious about ensuring that our science is both meaningful and reproducible, we must ensure that our institutions encourage that kind of science.
Within the span of a hundred years, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a tide of emigration—one of the great folk wanderings of history—swept from Europe to America. (46) This movement, driven by powerful and diverse motivations, built a nation out of a wilderness and, by its nature, shaped the character and destiny of an uncharted continent.(47) The United States is the product of two principal forces—the immigration of European peoples with their varied ideas, customs, and national characteristics and the impact of a new country which modified these traits. Of necessity, colonial America was a projection of Europe. Across the Atlantic came successive groups of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Scots, Irishmen,Dutchmen, Swedes, and many others who attempted to transplant their habits and traditions to the new world. (48) But the force of geographic conditions peculiar to America, the interplay of the varied national groups upon one another, and the sheer difficult of maintaining old-world ways in a raw, new continent caused significant changes. These changes were gradual and at first scarcely visible. But the result was a new social pattern which, although it resembled European society in many ways, had a character that was distinctly American.(49) The first shiploads of immigrants bound for the territory which is now the United States crossed the Atlantic more than a hundred years after the 15th-and-16th-century explorations of North America. In the meantime, thriving Spanish colonies had been established in Mexico, the West Indies, and South America. These travelers to North America came in small, unmercifully overcrowded craft. During their six- to twelve-week voyage, they survived on barely enough food allotted to them. Many of the ships were lost in storms, many passengers died of disease, and infants rarely survived the journey. Sometimes storms blew the vessels far off their course, and    often calm brought unbearably long delay.To the anxious travelers the sight of the American shore brought almost inexpressible relief. Said one recorder of  events, “The air at  twelve leagues’ distance smelt as  sweet as  a new-blown garden.” The colonists’ first glimpse of the new land was a sight of dense woods. (50) The virgin forest with its richness and variety of trees was a real treasure-house which extended from Maine all the way down to Georgia. Here was abundant fuel and lumber. Here was the raw material of houses and furniture, ships and potash, dyes and naval stores.
In a social situation, eye contact with another person can show that you are paying attention in a friendly way. But it can also be antagonistic such as when a political candidate turns toward their competitor during a debate and makes eye contact that signals hostility. Here’s what hard science reveals about eye contact: We know that a typical infant will instinctively gaze into its mother’s eyes, and she will look back. This mutual gaze is a major part of the attachment between mother and child. In adulthood, looking someone else in a pleasant way can be a complimentary sign of paying attention. It can catch someone’s attention in a crowded room, “Eye contact and smile” can signal availability and confidence, a common-sense notion supported in studies by psychologist Monica Moore. 42. _______Neuroscientist Bonnie Auyeung found that the hormone oxytocin increased the amount of eye contact from men toward the interviewer during a brief interview when the direction of their gaze was recorded. This was also found in high-functioning men with some autistic spectrum symptoms, who may tend to avoid eye contact. Specific brain regions that respond during direct gaze are being explored by other researches, using advanced methods of brain scanning.43. _______With the use of eye-tracking technology, Julia Minson of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government concluded that eye contact can signal very different kinds of messages, depending on the situation. While eye contact may be a sign of connection or trust in friendly situations, it’s more likely to be associated with dominance or intimidation in adversarial situations. “Whether you’re a politician or a parent, it might be helpful to keep in mind that trying to maintain eye contact may backfire if you’re trying to convince someone who has a different set of beliefs than you,” said Minson.44. _______When we look at a face or a picture, our eyes pause on one spot at a time, often on the eyes or mouth. These pauses typically occur at about three per second, and the eyes then jump to another spot, until several important points in the image are registered like a series of snapshots. How the whole image is then assembled and perceived is still a mystery although it is the subject of current research.45. _______In people who score high in a test of neuroticism, a personality dimension associated with self-consciousness and anxiety, eye contact triggered more activity associated with avoidance, according to the Finnish researcher Jari Hietanen and colleagues. “Our findings indicate that people do not only feel different when they are the centre of attention but that their brain reactions also differ.” A more direct finding is that people who scored high for negative emotions like anxiety looked at others for shorter periods of time and reported more comfortable feelings when others did not look directly at them.
Shakespeare’s lifetime was coincident with a period of extraordinary activity and achievement in the drama. (46) By the date of his birth Europe was witnessing the passing of the religious drama, and the creation of new forms under the incentive of classical tragedy and comedy. These new forms were at first mainly written by scholars and performed by amateurs, but in England, as everywhere else in western Europe, the growth of a class of professional actors was threatening to make the drama popular, whether it should be new or old, classical or medieval, literary or farcical. Court, school, organizations of amateurs, and the traveling actors were all rivals in supplying a widespread desire for dramatic entertainment; and (47) no boy who went to a grammar school could be ignorant that the drama was a form of literature which gave glory to Greece and Rome and might yet bring honor to England.When Shakespeare was twelve years old the first public playhouse was built in London. For a time literature showed no interest in this public stage. Plays aiming at literary distinction were written for schools or court, or for the choir boys of St. Paul’s and the royal chapel, who, however, gave plays in public as well as at court. (48) But the professional companies prospered in their permanent theaters, and university men with literary ambitions were quick to turn to these theaters as offering a means of livelihood. By the time that Shakespeare was twenty-five, Lyly, Peele, and Greene had made comedies that were at once popular and literary; Kyd had written a tragedy that crowded the pit; and Marlowe had brought poetry and genius to triumph on the common stage--where they had played no part since the death of Euripides. (49) A native literary drama had been created, its alliance with the public playhouses established, and at least some of its great traditions had been begun.The development of the Elizabethan drama for the next twenty-five years is of exceptional interest to students of literary history, for in this brief period we may trace the beginning, growth, blossoming, and decay of many kinds of plays, and of many great careers. We are amazed today at the mere number of plays produced, as well as by the number of dramatists writing at the same time for this London of two hundred thousand inhabitants. (50) To realize how great was the dramatic activity, we must remember further that hosts of plays have been lost, and that probably there is no author of note whose entire work has survived.
[A] The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent text by choosing from the list A-G and filling them into the numbered boxes. Paragraphs B and D have been correctly placed. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)[B] The first published sketch, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” brought tears to Dickens’s eyes when he discovered it in the pages of The Monthly Magazine. From then on his sketches, which appeared under the pen name “Boz” in The Evening Chronicle, earned him a modest reputation.[C] The runaway success of The Pickwick Papers, as it is generally known today, secured Dickens’s fame. There were Pickwick coats and Pickwick cigars, and the plump, spectacled hero, Samuel Pickwick, became a national figure.Soon after Sketches by Boz appeared, a publishing firm approached Dickens to write a story in monthly installments, as a backdrop for a series of woodcuts by the then-famous artist Robert Seymour, who had originated the idea for the story. With characteristic confidence, Dickens successfully insisted that Seymour’s pictures illustrate his own story instead. After the first installment, Dickens wrote to the artist and asked him to correct a drawing Dickens felt was not faithful enough to his prose. Seymour made the change, went into his backyard, and expressed his displeasure by committing suicide. Dickens and his publishers simply pressed on with a new artist. The comic novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, appeared serially in 1836 and 1837 and was first published in book form in 1837.[D]Charles Dickens is probably the best-known and, to many people, the greatest English novelist of the 19th century. A moralist, satirist, and social reformer, Dickens crafted complex plots and striking characters that capture the panorama of English society.[E]Soon after his father’s release from prison, Dickens got a better job as errand boy in law offices. He taught himself shorthand to get an even better job later as a court stenographer and as a reporter in Parliament. At the same time, Dickens, who had a reporter’s eye for transcribing the life around him, especially anything comic or odd, submitted short sketches to obscure magazines.[F]Dickens was born in Portsmouth, on England’s southern coast. His father was a clerk in the British Navy pay office—a respectable position, but with little social status. His paternal grandparents, a steward and a housekeeper, possessed even less status, having been servants, and Dickens later concealed their background. Dicken’s mother supposedly came from a more respectable family. Yet two years before Dicken’s birth, his mother’s father was caught stealing and fled to Europe, never to return. The family’s increasing poverty forced Dickens out of school at age 12 to work in Warren’s Blacking Warehouse, a shoe-polish factory, where the other working boys mocked him as “the young gentleman.” His father was then imprisoned for debt. The humiliations of his father’s imprisonment and his labor in the blacking factory formed Dickens’s greatest wound and became his deepest secret. He could not confide them even to his wife, although they provide the unacknowledged foundation of his fiction.[G]After Pickwick, Dickens plunged into a bleaker world. In Oliver Twist, he traces an orphan’s progress from the workhouse to the criminal slums of London. Nicholas Nickleby, his next novel, combines the darkness of Oliver Twist with the sunlight of Pickwick. The popularity of these novels consolidated Dickens’ as a nationally and internationally celebrated man of letters.D → 41. _____→ 42. _____→ 43. _____→ 44. _____→B → 45. _____
Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life. It might be poetic, philosophical, sensual, or mathematical, but in any case it must, in my view, have something to do with the soul of the human being. Hence it is metaphysical; but the means of expression is purely and exclusively physical: sound. I believe it is precisely this permanent coexistence of metaphysical message through physical means that is the strength of music. (46) It is also the reason why when we try to describe music with words, all we can do is articulate our reactions to it, and not grasp music itself.Beethoven’s importance in music has been principally defined by the revolutionary nature of his compositions. He freed music from hitherto prevailing conventions of harmony and structure. Sometimes I feel in his late works a will to break all signs of continuity. The music is abrupt and seemingly disconnected, as in the last piano sonata. In musical expression, he did not feel restrained by the weight of convention. (47) By all accounts he was a freethinking person, and a courageous one, and I find courage an essential quality for the understanding, let alone the performance, of his works.This courageous attitude in fact becomes a requirement for the performers of Beethoven’s music. His compositions demand the performer to show courage, for example in the use of dynamics. (48) Beethoven’s habit of increasing the volume with an extreme intensity and then abruptly following it with a sudden soft passage was only rarely used by composers before him.Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behavior and the larger questions of right    and wrong affecting the entire society. (49) Especially significant was his view of freedom, which, for him, was associated with the rights and responsibilities of the individual: he advocated freedom of thought and of personal expression.Beethoven’s music tends to move from chaos to order as if order were an imperative of human existence. For him, order does not result from  forgetting or ignoring the disorders that plague our  existence; order is a necessary development, an  improvement that may  lead to the Greek ideal of spiritual elevation. It is not by chance that the Funeral March is not the last movement of the Eroica Symphony, but the second, so that suffering does not have the last word. (50) One could interpret much of the work of Beethoven by saying that suffering is inevitable, but the courage to fight it renders life worth living.
[A] These tools can help you win every argument--not in the unhelpful sense of beating your opponents but in the better sense of learning about the issues that divide people, learning why they disagree with us and learning to talk and work together with them. If we readjust our view of arguments--from a verbal fight or tennis game to a reasoned exchange through which we all gain mutual respect and understanding--then we change the very nature of what it means to “win” an argument.[B] Of course, many discussions are not so successful. Still, we need to be careful not to accuse opponents of bad arguments too quickly. We need to learn how to evaluate them properly. A large part of evaluation is calling out bad arguments, but we also need to admit good arguments by opponents and to apply the same critical standards to ourselves. Humility requires you to recognize weaknesses in your own arguments and sometimes also to accept reasons on the opposite side.[C] None of these will be easy, but you can start even if others refuse to. Next time you state your position, formulate an argument for what you claim and honestly ask yourself whether your argument is any good. Next time you talk with someone who takes a stand, ask them to give you a reason for their view. Spell out their argument fully and charitably. Assess its strength impartially. Raise objections and listen carefully to their replies.[D] Carnegie would be right if arguments were fights, which is how we often think of them. Like physical fights, verbal fights can leave both sides bloodied. Even when you win, you end up no better off. Your prospects would be almost as dismal if arguments were even just competitions--like, say, tennis games. Paris of opponents hit the ball back and forth until one winner emerges from all who entered. Everybody else loses. This kind of thinking is why so many people try to avoid arguments, especially about politics and religion.[E] In his 1936 work How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote: “There is only one way to get the best of an argument--and that is to avoid it.” This aversion to arguments is common, but it depends on a mistaken view of arguments that causes profound problems for our personal and social lives--and in many ways misses the point of arguing in the first place.[F] These views of arguments also undermine reason. If you see a conversation as a fight or competition, you can win by cheating as long as you don’t get caught. You will be happy  to convince people with bad arguments. You can call their views stupid, or joke about how ignorant they are. None of these tricks will help you understand them, their positions or the issues that divide you, but they can help you win--in one way.[G] There is a better way to win arguments. Imagine that you favor increasing the minimum wage in our state, and I do not. If you yell, “Yes,” and I yell. “No,” neither of us learns anything. We neither understand nor respect each other, and we have no basis for compromise or cooperation. In contrast, suppose you give a reasonable argument: that full-time workers should not have to live in poverty. Then I counter with another reasonable argument: that a higher minimum wage will force businesses to employ fewer people for less time. Now we can understand each other’s positions and recognize our shared values, since we both care about needy workers.
Mental health is our birthright. (46) We don’t have to learn how to be mentally healthy; it is built into us in the same way that our bodies know how to heal a cut or mend a broken bone. Mental health can’t be learned, only reawakened. It is like the immune system of the body, which under stress or through lack of nutrition or exercise can be weakened, but which never leaves us. When we don’t understand the value of mental health and we don’t know how to gain access to it, mental health will remain hidden from us. (47) Our mental health doesn’t really go anywhere; like the sun behind a cloud, it can be temporarily hidden from view, but it is fully capable of being restored in an instant.Mental health is the seed that contains self-esteem—confidence in ourselves and an ability to trust in our common sense. It allows us to have perspective on our lives—the ability to not take ourselves too seriously, to laugh at ourselves, to see the bigger picture, and to see that things will work out. It’s a  form of  innate or  unlearned optimism. (48) Mental health allows us to view others with sympathy if they are having troubles, with kindness if they are in pain, and with unconditional love no matter who they are. Mental health is the source of creativity for solving problems, resolving conflict, making our surroundings more beautiful, managing our home life, or coming up with a creative business idea or invention to make our lives easier. It gives us patience for ourselves and toward others as well as patience while driving, catching a fish, working on our car, or raising a child. It allows us to see the beauty that surrounds us each moment in nature, in culture, in the flow of our daily lives.(49) Although mental health is the cure-all for living our lives, it is perfectly ordinary as you will see that it has been there to direct you through all your difficult decisions. It has been available even in the most mundane of life situations to show you right from wrong, good from bad, friend from foe. Mental health has commonly been called conscience, instinct, wisdom, common sense, or the inner voice. We think of it simply as a healthy and helpful flow of intelligent thought. (50) As you will come to see, knowing that mental health is always available and knowing to trust it allow us to slow down to the moment and live life happily.
How does your reading proceed? Clearly you try to comprehend, in the sense of identifying meanings for individual words and working out relationships between them, drawing on your implicit knowledge of English grammar. (41) _______ You begin to infer a context for the text, for instance, by making decisions about what kind of speech event is involved: Who is making the utterance, to whom, when and where.The ways of reading indicated here are without doubt kinds of comprehension. But they show comprehension to consist not just of passive assimilation but of active engagement in inference and problem-solving. You infer information you feel the writer has invited you to grasp by presenting you with specific evidence and clues. (42) _______Conceived in this way, comprehension will not follow exactly the same track for each reader. What is in question is not the retrieval of an absolute, fixed or “true” meaning that can be read off and checked for accuracy, or some timeless relation of the text to the world. (43) _______Such background material inevitably reflects who we are. (44) _______ This doesn’t, however, make interpretation merely relative or even pointless. Precisely because readers from different historical periods, places and social experiences produce different but overlapping readings of the same words on the page--including for texts that engage with fundamental human concerns--debates about texts can play an important role in social discussion of beliefs and values.How we read a given text also depends to some extent on our particular interest in reading it. (45) _______ Such dimensions of reading suggest--as others introduced later in the book will also do--that we bring an implicit (often unacknowledged) agenda to any act of reading. It doesn’t then necessarily follow that one kind of reading is fuller, more advanced or more worthwhile than another. Ideally, difficult kinds of reading inform each other, and act as useful reference points for and counterbalances to one another. Together, they make up the reading component of your overall literacy, or relationship to your surrounding textual environment.[A] Are we studying that text and trying to respond in a way that fulfils the requirement of a given course? Reading it simply for pleasure? Skimming it for information? Ways of reading on a train or in bed are likely to differ considerably from reading in a seminar room.[B] Factors such as the place and period in which we are reading, our gender, ethnicity, age and social class will encourage us towards certain interpretations but at the same time obscure or even close off others.[C] If you are unfamiliar with words or idioms, you guess at their meaning, using clues presented in the context. On the assumption that they will become relevant later, you make a mental note of discourse entities as well as possible links between them. [D] In effect, you try to reconstruct the likely meanings or effects that any given sentence, image or reference might have had: These might be the ones the author intended.[E] You make further inferences, for instance, about how the text may be significant to you, or about its validity--inferences that form the basis of a personal response for which the author will inevitably be far less responsible.[F] In plays, novels and narrative poems, characters speak as constructs created by the author, not necessarily as mouthpieces for the author’s own thoughts.[G] Rather, we ascribe meanings to texts on the basis of interaction between what we might call textual and contextual material: between kinds of organization or patterning we perceive in a text’s formal structures (so especially its language structures) and various kinds of background, social knowledge, belief and attitude that we bring to the text.
One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community have no economic value. Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community and, if its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance. When one of these non economic categories is threatened and, if we happen to love it, we invent excuses to give it economic importance. At the beginning of the century songbirds were supposed to be disappearing.(46)Scientists jumped to the rescue with some distinctly shaky evidence to the effect that insects would eat us up if birds failed to control them. The evidence had to be economic in order to be valid. It is painful to read these roundabout accounts today. We have no land ethic yet, (47) but we have at least drawn nearer the point of admitting that birds should continue as a matter of intrinsic right, regardless of the presence or absence of economic advantage to us. A parallel situation exists in respect of predatory mammals and fish-eating birds. (48) Time was when biologists somewhat overworked the evidence that these creatures preserve the health of game by killing the physically weak, or that they prey only on “worthless” species. Here again, the evidence had to be economic in order to be valid. It is only in recent years that we hear the more honest argument that predators are members of the community, and that no special interest has the right to exterminate the m f or the sake of a benefit, real or fancied, to itself. Some species of tree have been“read out of the party” by economics-minded foresters because they grow too slowly, or have too low a sale value to pay as timber crops.(49) In Europe, where forestry is ecologically more advanced, the noncommercial tree species are recognized as members of native forest community, to be preserved as such, within reason. Moreover, some have been found to have a valuable function in building up soil fertility. The interdependence of the forest and its constituent tree species, ground flora, and fauna is taken for granted. To sum up: a system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. (50) It tends to ignore , and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value,but that are essential to its healthy functioning. It assumes, falsely, that the economic parts of the biotic clock will function without the uneconomic parts.
[A] In December of 1869, Congress appointed a commission to select a site and prepare plans and cost estimates for a new State Department Building. The commission was also to consider possible arrangements for the War and Navy Departments. To the horror of some who expected a Greek Revival twin of the Treasury Building to be erected on the other side of  the White House, the elaborate French Second Empire style design by Alfred Mullett was selected, and construction of a building to house all three departments began in June of 1871.[B] Completed in 1875, the State Department’s south wing was the first to be occupied, with its elegant four-story library (completed in 1876), Diplomatic Reception Room, and Secretary’s office decorated with carved wood, Oriental rugs, and stenciled wall patterns. The Navy Department moved into the east wing in 1879, where elaborate wall and ceiling stenciling and marquetry floors decorated the office of the Secretary.[C] The State, War, and Navy Building, as it was originally known, housed the three Executive Branch Departments most intimately associated with formulating and conducting the nation’s foreign policy in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century--the period when the United States emerged as an international power. The building has housed some of the nation’s most significant diplomats and politicians and has been the scene of many historic events.[D] Many of the most celebrated national figures have participated in historical events that have taken place within the EEOB’s granite walls. Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush all had offices in this building before becoming President. It has housed 16 Secretaries of the Navy, 21 Secretaries of War, and 24 Secretaries of State. Winston Churchill once walked its corridors and Japanese emissaries met here with Secretary of State Cordell Hull after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.[E] The Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) commands a unique position in both the national history and the architectural heritage of the United States. Designed by Supervising Architect of the Treasury, Alfred B. Mullett, it was built from 1871 to 1888 to house the growing staffs of the State, War, and Navy Departments, and is considered one of the best examples of French Second Empire architecture in the country.[F] Construction took 17 years as the building slowly rose wing by wing. When the EEOB was finished, it was the largest office building in Washington, with nearly 2 miles of black and white tiled corridors. Almost all of the interior detail is of cast iron or plaster; the use of wood was minimized to insure fire safety. Eight monumental curving staircases of granite with over 4,000 individually cast bronze balusters are capped by four skylight domes and two stained glass rotundas.[G] The history of the EEOB began long before its foundations were laid. The first executive offices were constructed between 1799 and 1820. A series of fires (including those set by the British in 1814) and overcrowded conditions led to the construction of the existing Treasury Building. In 1866, the construction of the North Wing of the Treasury Building necessitated the demolition of the State Department building.41. →C→42. →43. →F→44. →45.
With its theme that “Mind is the master weaver”, creating our inner character and outer circumstances, the book As a Man Thinking by James Allen is an in-depth exploration of the central idea of self-help writing.(46) Allen’s contribution was to take an assumption we all share--that because we are not robots we therefore control our thoughts--and reveal its erroneous nature. Because most of us believe that mind is separate from matter, we think that thoughts can be hidden and made powerless; this allows us to think one way and act another. However, Allen believed that the unconscious mind generates as much action as the conscious mind, and (47) while we may be able to sustain the illusion of control through the conscious mind alone, in reality we are continually faced with a question: “Why cannot I make myself do this or achieve that?”Since desire and will are damaged by the presence of thoughts that do not accord with desire, Allen concluded: “We do not attract what we want, but what we are.” Achievement happens because you as a person embody the external achievement; you don’t “get” success but become it. There is no gap between mind and matter.Part of the fame of Allen’s book is its contention that Circumstances do not make a person, they reveal him. (48) This seems a justification for neglect of those in need, and a rationalization of exploitation, of the superiority of those at the top and the inferiority of those at the bottom.This, however would be a knee--jerk reaction to a subtle argument. Each set of circumstances, however bad, offers a unique opportunity for growth. If circumstances always determined the life and prospects of people, then humanity would never have progressed. In fact, (49) circumstances seem to be designed to bring out the best in us, and if we feel that we have been wronged then we are unlikely to begin a conscious effort to escape from our situation. Nevertheless, as any biographer knows, a person’s early life and its conditions are often the greatest gift to an individual.The sobering aspect of Allen’s book is that we have no one else to blame for our present condition except ourselves. (50) The upside is the possibilities contained in knowing that everything is up to us; where before we were experts in the array of limitations, now we become authorities of what is possible.
[A] Some archaeological sites have always been easily observable—for example, the Parthenon in Athens, Greece; the pyramids of Giza in Egypt; and the megaliths of Stonehenge in southern England. But these sites are exceptions to the norm. Most archaeological sites have been located by means of careful searching, while many others have been discovered by accident. Olduvai Gorge, an early hominid site in Tanzania, was found by a butterfly hunter who literally fell into its deep valley in 1911. Thousands of Aztec artifacts came to light during the digging of the Mexico City subway in the 1970s.[B] In another case, American archaeologists René Million and George Cowgill spent years systematically mapping the entire city of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico near what is now Mexico City. At its peak around AD 600, this city was one of the largest human settlements in the world. The researchers mapped not only the city’s vast and ornate ceremonial areas, but also hundreds of simpler apartment complexes where common people lived.[C] How do archaeologists know where to find what they are looking for when there is nothing visible on the surface of the ground? Typically, they survey and sample (make test excavations on) large areas of terrain to determine where excavation will yield useful information. Surveys and test samples have also become important for understanding the larger landscapes that contain archaeological sites.[D] Surveys can cover a single large settlement or entire landscapes. In one case, many researchers working around the ancient Maya city of Copán, Honduras, have located hundreds of small rural villages and individual dwellings by using aerial photographs and by making surveys on foot. The resulting settlement maps show how the distribution and density of the rural population around the city changed dramatically between AD 500 and 850, when Copán collapsed.[E] To find their sites, archaeologists today rely heavily on systematic survey methods and a variety of high-technology tools and techniques. Airborne technologies, such as different types of radar and photographic equipment carried by airplanes or spacecraft, allow archaeologists to learn about what lies beneath the ground without digging. Aerial surveys locate general areas of interest or larger buried features, such as ancient buildings or fields.[F] Most archaeological sites, however, are discovered by archaeologists who have set out to look for them. Such searches can take years. British archaeologist Howard Carter knew that the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun existed from information found in other sites. Carter sifted through rubble in the Valley of the Kings for seven years before he located the tomb in 1922. In the late 1800s British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans combed antique dealers’ stores in Athens, Greece. He was searching for tiny engraved seals attributed to the ancient Mycenaean culture that dominated Greece from the 1400s to 1200s BC. Evans’s interpretations of these engravings eventually led him to find the Minoan palace at Knossos (Knosós), on the island of Crete, in 1900.[G] Ground surveys allow archaeologists to pinpoint the places where digs will be successful. Most ground surveys involve a lot of walking, looking for surface clues such as small fragments of pottery. They often include a certain amount of digging to test for buried materials at selected points across a landscape. Archaeologists also may locate buried remains by using such technologies as ground radar, magnetic-field recording, and metal detectors. Archaeologists commonly use computers to map sites and the landscapes around sites. Two- and three-dimensional maps are helpful tools in planning excavations, illustrating how sites look, and presenting the results of archaeological research.41. →A→42. →E→43. →44. →45.