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Maria Chapman, abolitionist and close associate of William Lloyed Garrison, wrote many brochures condemning slavery. slogans short poems sentiments short pamphlets
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Its evident that her handling of them has bruised the peaches. promulgated infatuated damaged infuriated
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Messalina’s name has become a byword for notorious behavior. an epithet an abstraction an indication an oration
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The caliber of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing was reassessed by literary critics in the 1950’s. idealism creativity quality imagery
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People fishing on a lake must wait calmly so as not to scare the fish away. considerately hungrily alertly quietly
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Laser beams can be used to bore metals and other hard materials. trim melt drill slice
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The cost of elections in the United States is borne by both the government and the private sector. known fought exposed assumed
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Acknowledged as the main cause of hay fever the pollen of ragweed is very bothersome. intriguing annoying potent significant
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They got in quite a brawl. snit fight bally littering
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Do you follow what I am saying? change investigate write understand
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She eventually married the most persistent one of her admirers. in a way in due course in the end in any case
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Five minutes left, the outcome of the match was still in doubt. result judgment decision event
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The reporter was accused of unprofessional conduct. movement words principle behavior
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He made a considerable sum of money in real estate. large positive powerful realistic
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A crowd gathered to see what had happened. collected fixed divided assist
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Computer Mouse
The basic computer mouse is an amazingly clever invention with a relatively simple design that allows us to point at things on the computer and it is very productive. Think of all the things you can do with a mouse like selecting text for copying and pasting, drawing, and even scrolling on the page with the newer mice with the wheel. Most of us use the computer mouse daily without stopping to think how it works until it gets dirty and we have to learn how to clean it. We learn to point at things before we learn to speak, so the mouse is a very natural pointing device. Other computer pointing devices include light pens, graphics tablets and touch screens, but the mouse is still our workhorse.
The computer mouse was invented in 1964 by Douglas Englehart of Stanford University. As computer screens became more popular and arrow keys were used to move around a body of text, it became clear that a pointing device that allowed easier motion through the text and even selection of text would be very useful. The introduction of the mouse, with the Apple Lisa computer in 1983, really started the computer public on the road to relying on the mouse for routine computer tasks.
How does the mouse work? We have to start at the bottom, so think upside down for now. It all starts with the mouse ball. As the mouse ball in the bottom of the mouse rolls over the mouse pad.it presses against and turns two shafts. The shafts are connected to wheels with several small holes in them. The wheels have a pair of small electronic light-emitting devices called light-emitting diodes(LED)mounted on either side. One LED sends a light beam to the LED on the other side. As the wheels spin and a hole rotates by, the light beam gets through to the LED on the other side. But a moment later the light beam is blocked until the next hole is in place. The LED detects a changing pattern of light, converts the pattern into an electronic signal, and sends the signal to the computer through wires in a cable that goes out of the mouse body. This cable is the tail that helps give the mouse its name. The computer interprets the signal to tell it where to position the cursor on the computer screen.
So far we have only discussed the basic computer mouse that most of you probably have or have used. One problem with this design is that the mouse gets dirty as the ball rolls over the surface and picks up dirt. Eventually you have to clean your mouse. The newer optical mice avoid this problem by having no moving parts.
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A. the timely(及时的)discovery
B. convenience
C. sex equality
D. its connection with humans
E. the huge power
F. its uncertainty
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Hurricanes(龙卷风)
Did you know that before 1950, hurricanes had no names? They were simply given numbers. The first names were simply Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc. but in 1953, females names were given because of the unpredictability(不可预知)factor of the storms. In 1979, realizing the sexist(性别歧视的)nature of such names, the lists were expanded to include both men and women.
Hurricanes and typhoons(台风)are the same things. If they form in the Atlantic, we call these strong storms hurricanes, from the West Indian word hurricane, meaning“big wind. “And if they are Pacific storms, they are called typhoons from the Chinese taifun, meaning “ great wind. “ To be classified as a hurricane, the storm must have maximum winds of at least 75 mph. These storms are big, many hundreds of miles in diameter.
Hurricanes get their power from water vapor as it gives out its stored-up energy. All water vapor gives out heat as it condenses(凝结)from a gaseous state to a liquid state over fixed points on the equator(赤道). To make a hurricane, you must have extremely wet, warm air, the kind of air that can only be found in tropical region.
Scientists have determined that the heat given out in the process of water condensation can be as high as 95 billion kilowatts per hour. In just one day alone, the storm can produce more energy than many industrialized nations need in an entire year! The problem is that we don’t know how to make sure such great energy work for us.
Predicting the path of a hurricane is one of the most difficult tasks for forecasters. It moves at a typical speed of 15 mph. But not always. Some storms may race at twice this speed, then suddenly stop and remain in the same location for several days. It can be maddening(发疯的)if you live in a coastal area that may be hit.
The biggest advance in early detection is continuous watch from weather satellites. With these, we can see the storms form and track them fully, from birth to death. While they can still kill people and destroy property, hurricanes will never surprise any nation again.
A. A short history of naming hurricanes
B. Harnessing the hurricane energy
C. Difficulty in forecasting the course of a hurricane
D. Huge energy stored in a hurricane
E. Forecasting a hurricane through satellite watching
F. Different names for the same things
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Seeing the World Centuries Ago
If you enjoy looking through travel books by such familiar authors as Arthur Former or Eugene Fodor.it will not surprise you to lean that travel writing has a long and venerable history. Almost from the earliest annals of recorded time individuals have found ready audiences for their accounts of journeys to strange and exotic locales.
One of the earliest travel writers, a Greek geographer and historian named Strabb, lived around the time of Christ. Though Strabo is known to have traveled from east of the Black Sea west to Italy and as far south as Ethiopia, he also used details gleaned from other writers to extend and enliven his accounts. His multivolumed work Geography provides the only surviving account of the cities, peoples, customs, and geographical peculiarities of the whole known world of his time.
Two other classic travel writers, the Italian Marco Polo and the Moroccan Ibn Battutah, lived in roughly the same time period. Marco Polo traveled to China with his father and uncle in about A. D. 1275 and remained there 16 or 17 years, visiting several other countries during his travels. When Marco returned to Italy he dictated his memoirs, including stories he had heard from others, to a scribe, with the resulting book II million being an instant success. Though difficult to attest to the accuracy of all he says, Marco’s book impelled Europeans to begin their great voyages of exploration.
Ibn Battutah’s interest in travel began on his required Muslim journey to Mecca in 1325, and during his lifetime he journeyed through all the countries where Islam held sway. His travel book the Rihlah is a personalized account of desert journeys, court intrigues, and even the effect of the Back Death in the various lands he visited. In almost 30 years of traveling it is estimated that Ibn Battutah covered more than 75, 000 miles.
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The Cherokee Nation
Long before the white man came to America, the land belonged to the American Indian nations. The nation of the Cherokees lived in what is now the southeastern part of the United States.
After the white man came, the Cherokees copied many of their ways. One Cherokee named Sequoyah saw how important reading and writing was to the white man. He decided to invent a way to write down the spoken Cherokee language. He began by making word pictures. For each word he drew a picture. But that proved impossible—there were just too many words. Then he took the 85 sounds that made up the language. Using his own imagination and an English spelling book, Sequoyah invented a sign for each sound. His alphabet proved amazingly easy to learn. Before long, many Cherokees knew how to read and write in their own language. By 1828, they were even printing their own newspaper.
In 1830, the U. S. Congress passed a law. It allowed the government to remove Indians from their lands. The Cherokees refused to go. They had lived on their lands for centuries. It belonged to them. Why should they go to a strange land far beyond the Mississippi River?
The army was sent to drive the Cherokees out. Soldiers surrounded their villages and marched them at gunpoint into the western territory. The sick, the old and the small children went in carts, along with their belongings. The rest of the people marched on foot or rode on horseback. It was November, yet many of them still wore their summer clothes. Cold and hungry, the Cherokees were quickly exhausted by the hardships of the journey. Many dropped dead and were buried by the roadside. When the last group arrived in their new home in March 1839, more than 4, 000 had died. It was indeed a march of death.
