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The main characters of Horatio Alger’s books always rise from poverty to riches maturity wisdom status wealth
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The song “Yankee Doodle“ was originally sung by British troops to ridicule the American colonists. given inspiration to make fun of entertain discourage
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The Sun Dance is considered by many to be the most spectacular ritual of the North American Plains Indians. ceremony ancestor scene costume
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Rival traditions of acting have coexisted in Western theater since antiquity. Myriad Rudimentary Stylistic Conflicting
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Scientists routinely deal with concepts such as uncertainty, probability, and hypothesis. reluctantly carefully commonly occasionally
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The first watermill was horizontal and resembled a rudimentary turbine. a flat a rusty an unconventional an unsophisticated
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Eyespots, the most rudimentary eyes, are found in protozoan flagellates, flatworms, and segmented worms. hostile-looking perceptive primitive strangely formed
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Extending from Quebec to Alabama, the Appalachian Mountain region is extensive and very scenic. vast rustic fertile picturesque
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In times of economic difficulty, corporate budgets for research and development are often slashed before any others. shifted cut examined presented
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Hoof-and-mouth disease was eliminated in the United States by slaughtering affected herds of cattle. isolating testing vaccinating killing
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The gar is a fish with a long, slender body and scales as hard as flint. flat straight slim fragile
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The earliest kind of desk was a box that had a sloping lid, under which there was storage space for writing materials. a sturdy a polished an inclined an adaptable
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Their sole fault was a failure to recognize all the factors involved. maximum usual initial only
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Generally, a material with a sour taste, such as vinegar or lemon juice, contains an acid. a tart an oily a fruity a bland
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A writer’s attempts to reproduce folk speech can be an asset to the historian of pronunciation. wisdom language traditions beliefs
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Riches and Romance From France’s Wine Harvest
September is harvest time. And with bunches of grapes swinging (摇滚) in the wind, the vineyards of southern France are getting ready to celebrate it.
The yearly wine festival is held in honour of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. It’s a fun time with parties, music, dancing, big meals and, of course, lots of wine.
French wine-making began more than 2,500 years ago. The world’s oldest type of vine grows in France and always produces a good quality wine. Today France produces one fifth of the world’s wine, and some of the most famous varieties.
The top wine-producing areas are Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Loire Valley. Champagne, a drink used in celebrations, is named after the place where sparkling (有气泡的)wine was first produced in 1700.
Wine is made from the juice of freshly picked grapes. It is the sugars that turn into alcohol.
Traditionally, people used to take off their shoes and crush the grapes with their bare feet to bring out the juice. Nowadays, this practice is usually carried out by machines.
Each wine producing region has its own character, based on its type of grapes and soil.
The taste of wine changes with time. Until 1850, all French champagne was sweet. Now, both wine and champagne taste slightly bitter.
The drink has always been linked with riches, romance and nobleness. Yet the French think of it in more ordinary terms.
They believe it makes daily living easier, less hurried and with fewer problems.
“All its links are with times when people are at their best, with relaxation, happiness, long slow meals and the free flow of ideas.“ wrote wine expert Hugh Johnson.
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Integrating All Communications
1．Have you ever felt frustrated when you have to contact your friends, but cannot reach them even you’ve tried to call to their mobile phones, pager and telephone? You may have to try again and again to reach them through other means such as the Internet or ICQ chat lines until you find where they are.
2．But never fear, the future will bring this running around to an end, an executive with Lucent Technologies says.
3．“If you contact your friend through a traditional telephone, but you find no one there, the network will automatically search for other communication means until your friend is available and connects you, maybe through his mobile phone or instant message account,“ Robert Cohen, Lucent’s global product marketing director, said.
4．The integration of different communication networks will make this possible, he said. The integrated telecommunication network is expected to be the next big thing in the next couple of years.
5．Future networks will be developed to be multi-service networks that can support all kinds of communication methods and provide multiple communication services to users. Users would be able to communicate with one another across the different devices with a variety of multimedia contents such as voice, data and video.
6．“It’s the next generation network,“ Cohen said. “It’s to combine fixed-line telephone, wireless communication, cable as well as the Internet under the same network, and allow communication to be done across different communication technologies.“
7．Adoption of the integrated technologies will help lay the foundation for the “single number“ concept. Instead of having several contact numbers used for several kinds of devices, people will be assigned one number, and this number will be used to allow their friends to contact them through E-mail, mobile phone, pager, instant message or other kinds of devices. “With just one number your friends will be able to contact you through all communication methods as the number will associate with each individual’s communication device connected to the network, “Cohen said.
8．To usher the industry in the future, Lucent has introduced what is called SoftSwitch technology to be the brain for the “next generation“ network. SoftSwitch allows telecom operators to integrate different kinds of communication networks, even old circuit-based networks or the new “packet“ networks.
9．The technology also allows operators to create enhanced communication services on their existing network infrastructure, helping them to take a shorter time for new service delivery
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Eat Healthy
“Clean your plate!“ and “Be a member of the clean-plate club!“ Just about every kid in the US has heard this from a parent or grandparent. Often, it’s accompanied by an appeal: “Just think about those starving orphans in Africa!“ Sure, we should be grateful for every bite of food. Unfortunately, many people in the US take too many bites. Instead of staying “clean the plate“, perhaps we should save some food for tomorrow.
According to news reports, US restaurants are partly to blame for the growing bellies. A waiter puts a plate of food in front of each customer, with two to four times the amount recommended by the government, according to a USA Today story. Americans traditionally associate quantity with value and most restaurants try to give them that. They prefer to have customers complain about too much food rather than too little.
Barbara Rolls, a nutrition professor at Pennsylvania State University, told USA Today that restaurant portion sizes began to grow in the 1970s, the same time that the American waistline began to expand.
Health experts have tried to get many restaurants to serve smaller portions. Now, apparently, some customers are calling for this, too. The restaurant industry trade magazine QSR “reported last month that 57 percent of more than 4,000 people surveyed believe restaurants serve portions that are too large; 23 percent had no opinion; 20 percent disagreed. But a closer look at the survey indicates that many Americans who can’t afford fine dining still prefer large-portions. 70 percent of those earning at least $150,000 per year prefer smaller portions; but only 45 percent of those earning less than $ 25,000 want smaller.
It’s not that working class Americans don’t want to eat healthy. It’s just that, after long hours at low-paying jobs, getting less on their plate hardly seems like a good deal. They live from paycheck to paycheck, happy to save a little money for next year’s Christmas presents.
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Generation Gap
A few years ago, it was fashionable to speak of a generation gap, a division between young people and their elders. Parents complained that children did not show them proper respect and obedience, while children complained that their parents did not understand them at all. What had gone wrong? Why had the generation gap suddenly appeared? Actually, the generation gap has been around for a long time. Many critics argue that it is built into the fabric of our society.
One important cause of the generation gap is the opportunity that young people have to choose their own life styles. In more traditional societies, when children grow up, they are expected to live in the same area as their parents, to marry people that their parents know and approve of, and often to continue the family occupation. In our society, young people often travel great distances for their education, most out of the family home at an early age, marry or live or choose occupations different from those of their parents.
In our upwardly mobile society, parents often expect their Children to do better than they did: to find better jobs, to make more money, and to do all the things that they were unable to do. Often, however, the ambitions that parents have for their children are another cause of the division between them. Often they discover that they have very little in common with each other.
Finally, the speed at which changes take place in our society is another cause of the gap between the generations. In a traditional culture, elderly people are valued for their wisdom, but in our society the knowledge of a lifetime may become obsolete overnight.
The young and the old seem to live in two very different worlds, separated by different skills and abilities.
No doubt, the generation gap will continue to be a feature of American life for some time to come. Its causes are rooted in the freedoms and opportunities of our society, and in the rapid pace at which society changes.
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The Deer’s Death
He ran close, and again stood still, stopped by a new fear. Around him the grass was whispering and alive. He looked wildly about, then down. The ground was black with ants, great energetic ants that took no notice of him, but hurried towards the fighting shape. And as he drew in his breath and pity and terror seized him, the beast fell and the screaming stopped. Now he could hear nothing but a bird singing, and the sound of the rustling (沙沙声) whispering ants.
He peered over at the blackness that twitched with the jerking(抽搐) nerves. It grew quieter. There were small twitches from the mass that still looked vaguely like the shape of a small animal.
It came into his mind that he could shoot it and end its pain; and he raised the gun. Then he lowered it again. The deer could no longer feel; its fighting was a mechanical protest of the nerves. But it was not that which made him put down the gun. It was a swelling feeling of rage and misery and protest that expressed itself in the thought: if I had not come it would have died like this, so why should I interfere? All over the bush things like this happen; they happen all the time; this is how life goes on, by living things dying painfully. I cannot stop it. He was glad that the deer was unconscious and had gone past suffering so that he did not have to make a decision to kill it. At his feet, now, were ants tricking back with pink fragments in their mouths and there was a fresh acid smell in his nose. He sternly controlled the uselessly convulsing(痉挛的) muscles of his empty stomach, and reminded himself: the ants must eat, too.
The shape had grown small. Now it looked like nothing to be recognized. He saw the blackness thin, and bits of white showed through, shining in the sun—yes, there was the sun just up. Then the boy looked at those insects. A few were standing and gazing up at him with small glittering eyes. “Go away!“ he said to the ants coldly. “I am not for you—not just yet, at any rate.“
He bent over the bones and touched the sockets(孔) in the skull: that was where the eyes were, he thought suspiciously, remembering the liquid eyes of a deer.
That morning, perhaps an hour ago, this small creature had been stepping proud and free through the bush even as he himself had done. Proudly stepping the earth, it had smelt the cold morning air. Walking like kings, it had moved freely through this bush, where each blade of grass grew for it alone, and where the river ran pure sparkling water for it to drink.
And then—what had happened? Such a sure swift footed thing could surely not be trapped by a swarm of ants?
