Text 4
So far as I know, Miss Hannah Arendt was the first person to define the essential difference between work and labor. To be happy, a man must feel, firstly, free and, secondly, important. He cannot be really happy if he is compelled by society to do what he does not enjoy doing, or if what he enjoys doing is ignored by society as of no value or importance. In a society where slavery in the strict sense has been abolished, the sign that what a man does is of social value is that he is paid money to do it, but a laborer today can rightly be called a wage slave. A man is a laborer if the job society offers him is of no interest to himself but he is compelled to take it by the necessity of earning a living and supporting his family.
The antithesis to labor is play. When we play a game, we enjoy what we are doing, otherwise we should not play it, but it is a purely private activity; society could not care less whether we play it or not.
Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what from the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his own point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener: or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer. Which a means can be seen from his attitude toward leisure. To a worker, leisure means simply the hours he needs to relax and rest in order to work efficiently. He is therefore more likely to take too little leisure than too much; workers die of coronaries and forget their wives’ birthdays. To the laborer, on the other hand, leisure means freedom from compulsion, so that it is natural for him to imagine that the fewer hours he has to spend laboring, and the more hours he is free to play, the better.
What percentage of the population in a modem technological society are, like myself, in the fortunate position of being workers At a guess I would say sixteen percent, and I do not think that figure is likely to get bigger in the future.
Technology and the division of labor have done two things: by eliminating in many fields the need for special strength or skill, they have made a very large number of paid occupations which formerly were enjoyable work into boring labor, and by increasing productivity they have reduced the number of necessary laboring hours. It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful. Indeed, the problem of dealing with boredom may be even more difficult for such a future mass society than it was for aristocracies. The latter, for example, ritualized their time; there was a season to shoot grouse, a season to spend in town, etc. The masses are more likely to replace an unchanging ritual by fashion which it will be in the economic interest of certain people to change as often as possible. Again, the masses cannot go in for hunting, for very soon there would be no animals left to hunt. For other aristocratic amusements like gambling, dueling, and warfare, it may be only too, easy to find equivalents in dangerous driving, drag-taking, and senseless acts of violence. Workers seldom commit acts of violence, because they can put their aggression into their work, be it physical like the work of a smith, or mental like the work of a scientist or an artist. The role of aggression in mental work is aptly expressed by the phrase" getting one’s teeth into a problem".

What does the sentence "society could not care less whether we play it or not "mean()

A:Society cares as much as possible whether we play it or not B:Society cares as little as possible whether we play it or not C:Society is very careful about whether we play it or not D:Society isn't careful enough about whether we play it or not

Despite decades of scientific research, no one yet knows how much damage human activity is doing to the environment. Humans are thought to be responsible for a whole host of environmental problems, ranging from global warning to ozone depletion. What is not in doubt, however, is the devastating effect humans are having on the animal and plant life of the planet.
Currently, an estimated 50,000 species become extinct every year. If this carries on, the impact on all living creatures is likely to be profound, says Dr. Nick Middleton, a geographer at Oxford University. " All species depend in some way on each other to survive. And the danger is that, if you remove one species from this very complex web of interrelationships, you have very little idea about the knock-on effects of other extinctions. "
Complicating matters is the fact that there are no obvious solutions to the problem. Unlike global warning and ozone depletion—which, if the political will was there, could be reduced by cutting gas emissions—preserving biodiversity remains an intractable problem.
The latest idea is " sustainable management " , which is seen as a practical and economical way of protecting species from extinction. This means humans should be able to use any species of animal or plant for their benefit, provided enough individuals of that species are left alive to ensure its continued existence.
For instance, instead of depending on largely ineffective laws against poaching, it gives local people a good economic reason to preserve plants and animals. In Zimbabwe, there is a sustainable management project elephants. Foreign tourists pay large sums of money to kill these animals for sport. This money is then given to the inhabitants of the area where the hunting takes place. In theory, locals will be encouraged to protect elephants, instead of poaching them—or allowing others to poach them—because of the economic benefit involved.
This sounds like a sensible strategy, but it remains to be seen whether it will work. With corruption endemic in many developing countries, some observers are skeptical that the money will actually reach the people it is intended for.Others wonder how effective the locals will be at stopping poachers.
There are also questions about whether sustainable management is practical when it comes to protecting areas of great-bio-diversity such as the world’s tropical forests. In theory, the principle should be the same as with elephants—allow logging companies to cut down a certain number of trees, but not so many as to completely destroy the forest.
Sustainable management of forests requires controls on the number of trees which are cut down, as well as investment in replacing them. But because almost all tropical forests are located in countries which desperately need revenue from logging, there are few regulations to do this. Moreover, unrestricted logging is so much more profitable that wood prices from managed forests would cost up to five times more—an increase that consumers, no matter how " green " , are unlikely to pay.
For these reasons, sustainable management of tropical forests is unlikely to become widespread in the near future. This is disheartening news. It’s estimated these forests contain anything from 50 to 90 percent of all animal and plant species on Earth. In one study of a five-square-kilometer area of rain forest in Peru, for instance, scientists counted 1,300 species of butterfly and 600 species of bird. In the entire continental United States, only 400 species of butterfly and 700 species of bird have been recorded.
Scientist Professor Norman Myers sees this situation as a gigantic " experiment we’re conducting with our planet " . " We don’t know what the outcome will be. If we make a mess of it, we can’t move to another planet…It’s a case of one planet, one experiment. /
What factors might NOT affect the practicality of sustainable management

A:Whether there is corruption in the government. B:Whether there are corresponding regulations. C:Whether produced goods have attractive prices. D:Whether people are aware of the danger that the earth will be destroyed.

Text 4 So far as I know, Miss Hannah Arendt was the first person to define the essential difference between work and labor. To be happy, a man must feel, firstly, free and, secondly, important. He cannot be really happy if he is compelled by society to do what he does not enjoy doing, or if what he enjoys doing is ignored by society as of no value or importance. In a society where slavery in the strict sense has been abolished, the sign that what a man does is of social value is that he is paid money to do it, but a laborer today can rightly be called a wage slave. A man is a laborer if the job society offers him is of no interest to himself but he is compelled to take it by the necessity of earning a living and supporting his family. The antithesis to labor is play. When we play a game, we enjoy what we are doing, otherwise we should not play it, but it is a purely private activity; society could not care less whether we play it or not. Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what from the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his own point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener: or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer. Which a means can be seen from his attitude toward leisure. To a worker, leisure means simply the hours he needs to relax and rest in order to work efficiently. He is therefore more likely to take too little leisure than too much; workers die of coronaries and forget their wives’ birthdays. To the laborer, on the other hand, leisure means freedom from compulsion, so that it is natural for him to imagine that the fewer hours he has to spend laboring, and the more hours he is free to play, the better. What percentage of the population in a modem technological society are, like myself, in the fortunate position of being workers At a guess I would say sixteen percent, and I do not think that figure is likely to get bigger in the future. Technology and the division of labor have done two things: by eliminating in many fields the need for special strength or skill, they have made a very large number of paid occupations which formerly were enjoyable work into boring labor, and by increasing productivity they have reduced the number of necessary laboring hours. It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful. Indeed, the problem of dealing with boredom may be even more difficult for such a future mass society than it was for aristocracies. The latter, for example, ritualized their time; there was a season to shoot grouse, a season to spend in town, etc. The masses are more likely to replace an unchanging ritual by fashion which it will be in the economic interest of certain people to change as often as possible. Again, the masses cannot go in for hunting, for very soon there would be no animals left to hunt. For other aristocratic amusements like gambling, dueling, and warfare, it may be only too, easy to find equivalents in dangerous driving, drag-taking, and senseless acts of violence. Workers seldom commit acts of violence, because they can put their aggression into their work, be it physical like the work of a smith, or mental like the work of a scientist or an artist. The role of aggression in mental work is aptly expressed by the phrase" getting one’s teeth into a problem".

What does the sentence "society could not care less whether we play it or not "mean ()

A:Society cares as much as possible whether we play it or not B:Society cares as little as possible whether we play it or not C:Society is very careful about whether we play it or not D:Society isn't careful enough about whether we play it or not

Despite decades of scientific research, no one yet knows how much damage human activity is doing to the environment. Humans are thought to be responsible for a whole host of environmental problems, ranging from global warning to ozone depletion. What is not in doubt, however, is the devastating effect humans are having on the animal and plant life of the planet.
Currently, an estimated 50,000 species become extinct every year. If this carries on, the impact on all living creatures is likely to be profound, says Dr. Nick Middleton, a geographer at Oxford University. " All species depend in some way on each other to survive. And the danger is that, if you remove one species from this very complex web of interrelationships, you have very little idea about the knock-on effects of other extinctions. "
Complicating matters is the fact that there are no obvious solutions to the problem. Unlike global warning and ozone depletion—which, if the political will was there, could be reduced by cutting gas emissions—preserving biodiversity remains an intractable problem.
The latest idea is " sustainable management " , which is seen as a practical and economical way of protecting species from extinction. This means humans should be able to use any species of animal or plant for their benefit, provided enough individuals of that species are left alive to ensure its continued existence.
For instance, instead of depending on largely ineffective laws against poaching, it gives local people a good economic reason to preserve plants and animals. In Zimbabwe, there is a sustainable management project elephants. Foreign tourists pay large sums of money to kill these animals for sport. This money is then given to the inhabitants of the area where the hunting takes place. In theory, locals will be encouraged to protect elephants, instead of poaching them—or allowing others to poach them—because of the economic benefit involved.
This sounds like a sensible strategy, but it remains to be seen whether it will work. With corruption endemic in many developing countries, some observers are skeptical that the money will actually reach the people it is intended for.Others wonder how effective the locals will be at stopping poachers.
There are also questions about whether sustainable management is practical when it comes to protecting areas of great-bio-diversity such as the world’s tropical forests. In theory, the principle should be the same as with elephants—allow logging companies to cut down a certain number of trees, but not so many as to completely destroy the forest.
Sustainable management of forests requires controls on the number of trees which are cut down, as well as investment in replacing them. But because almost all tropical forests are located in countries which desperately need revenue from logging, there are few regulations to do this. Moreover, unrestricted logging is so much more profitable that wood prices from managed forests would cost up to five times more—an increase that consumers, no matter how " green " , are unlikely to pay.
For these reasons, sustainable management of tropical forests is unlikely to become widespread in the near future. This is disheartening news. It’s estimated these forests contain anything from 50 to 90 percent of all animal and plant species on Earth. In one study of a five-square-kilometer area of rain forest in Peru, for instance, scientists counted 1,300 species of butterfly and 600 species of bird. In the entire continental United States, only 400 species of butterfly and 700 species of bird have been recorded.
Scientist Professor Norman Myers sees this situation as a gigantic " experiment we’re conducting with our planet " . " We don’t know what the outcome will be. If we make a mess of it, we can’t move to another planet…It’s a case of one planet, one experiment.

What factors might NOT affect the practicality of sustainable management()

A:Whether there is corruption in the government B:Whether there are corresponding regulations C:Whether produced goods have attractive prices D:Whether people are aware of the danger that the earth will be destroyed

They (couldn’t) decide (whether) they should (leave) the theater or (to stay there).( )

A:couldn’t B:whether C:leave D:to stay there

You can not judge whether you have exercised too much or not by ______.

A:your breathing B:your heart beating C:your exercising time D:whether you are exhausted

{{B}}第三篇{{/B}}

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? {{B}}A Phone that Knows You’re Busy{{/B}}
? ?It’s a modem conundrum: you’re too busy to be disturbed by incessant phone calls so you mm your cell phone off. But if you don’t remember to turn it back on when you’re less busy, you could miss some important calls. If only the phone knew when it was wise to interrupt you, you wouldn’t have to turn it off at all. Instead, it could let calls through during spells of relative inactivity.
? ?A bunch of behavior sensors and a clever piece of software could do just that, by analyzing your behavior to determine if it’s a good time to interrupt you. If built into a phone, the system may decide you’re too busy and ask the caller to leave a message or ring back later. In a desktop computer, the system could stop instant messages or spain annoying you when you’re busy.
? ?James Fogarty and Scott Hudson at Camegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania based their system on tiny microphones, cameras and touch sensors that reveal body language and activity. First they had to study different behaviors to find out which ones strongly predict whether your mind is interrupted. The potential "busyness" signals they focused on included whether the office doors were left open or closed, the time of day, if other people were with the person in question, how close they were to each other, and whether or not the computer was in use.
? ?The sensors monitored these and many other factors while four subjects were at work. At random intervals, the subjects rated how in term ptible they were on a scale ranging from "highly interruptible" to "highly not—term ptible". Their ratings were then correlated with the various behaviors. "It is a shotgun approach: we used all the indicators we could think of and then let statistics ferret out which were important," says Hudson.
? ?The model showed that using the keyboard, and talking on a landline or to someone else in the office correlated most strongly with how interruptible the subjects judged themselves to be.
? ?Interestingly, the computer was actually better than people at predicting when someone was too busy to be interrupted. The computer got it right 82 per cent of the time, humans 77 percent.
? ?Fogarty speculates that this might be because people doing the interrupting are inevitably biased towards delivering their message, whereas computers don’t care.
? ?The first application for Hudson and Fogarty’s system is likely to be in an instant messaging system, followed by office phones and cell phones. "There is no technological roadblock to it being deployed in a couple of years," says Hudson.
Which of the following is NOT included in paragraph 3 as a potential "busyness" signal?

A:Whether the office door is open or not. B:Whether there are people with the person in question or not. C:Whether the person is using the computer or not. D:Whether the person is bothered by a question or not.

 8 New York Students Have Swine Flu   The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 51 of swine flu in eight students at a New York preparatory school, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Sunday. The students have had only 52 symptoms and none have been hospitalized, he said. Some of the students have already recovered.   More than 100 students were absent from 53 due to flu-like symptoms last week. New York health officials tested samples for eight students Saturday and determined the students were probably 54 from swine flu, and the CDC confirmed the 55 on Sunday, Bloomberg said.   The announcement brings the 56 of confirmed swine flu cases in the United States to 20. Bloomberg and New York Health Commissioner Tom Frieden said there is no 57 of a citywide outbreak of the flu, and no sign of a potential 58 of swine flu at other schools.   Some students at the school 59 spring break1 in Mexico, Bloomberg said, but authorities have not determined 60 any of the students with a confirmed case of swine flu was in Mexico. Someone who traveled to Mexico may not have had any flu symptoms but 61 on the flu to someone else, he noted.   Frieden called 62 students who are home sick to stay home for 48 hours after their symptoms subside.   If symptoms are normal for a regular kind of flu, there is 63 need to go to a hospital, said Bloomberg. If symptoms become severe, as with any 64 , people should go to the hospital, he said.   St. Francis, which has 2,700 students, announced it will remain closed for two days. 65 whether the students’ illnesses have been minor because they’re young and healthy or because it is a minor strain of the virus, Frieden responded, "We don’t know."

A:why B:how C:when D:whether

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