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阅读教程3Unit4TheNatureofScientificReasoning练习答案Unit 4 The Nature of Scientific Reasoning1．Evidence for ArgumentsRead the following evidence and write down the arguments they are supporting: Argument: ________________________ 1)It is absolutely impossible for Copernicus to go out and record the fact that theearth moves around the sun.2)It is impossible for Kepler to work out his laws by taking enough readings andthen squaring and cubing everything in sight.3)The Royal Society will not take the notebooks with recordings of one’s lifelongobservation.Answer: Science is not a large collection of facts.2．Context and Other Clues1)Meaning: clear or deep perception of a situationContext and clue: To be able to see things clearly requires a power of mind, suchas imagination or creation.Word: insight2)Meaning: record by writingContext and clue: Like those writers, scientists do not just record what they see.Word: fix3)Meaning: the earlier stage ofContext and clue: A historian does not know how a scientist starts his discovery.In this sense, the word is usually used in its plural form.Word: beginnings4)Meaning: the outside qualitiesContext and clue: Things appear differently. Only by thinking hard, using metaphors or analogies, can a scientist find the likeness. Appearance refers to natural phenomenon.Word: appearance5)Meaning: rise as if with a jumpContext and clue: He suddenly had a wild imagination.Word: leap6)Meaning: search forContext and clue: Kepler tried to work out his laws by using metaphors.Word: feel for7)Meaning: powerfully, with strong persuasivenessContext and clue: This point has been explained clearly in a fable by Karl Popper.Word: forcefully8)Meaning: narratingContext and clue: The schoolbooks do not tell the whole story.Word: account9)Meaning: occur to one’s mindContext and clue: At the sight of the fall of an apple, Newton realized that the same force of gravity might go on reaching out beyond the earth.Word: strike10)Meaning: matchContext and clue: Newton had already found the likeness, for the two things went together.Word: agree3. Vocabulary studyFill in the blanks with appropriate words.1) A better understanding of these phenomena may completely alter our ________of the nature of the universe.2)However, even solid foods will pass down the tube with the aid of _______.3)To understand galaxy formation we would like to think of ______.4)The _______ of free immigration was magnificent, the reality inevitably less so.Answer: conception, gravity, gravitation, concept4. True or FalseRead the following statements and decide whether they are true or false. Write down T for True and F for False.1)The readers of Balzac and Zola think that the two writers are more honest thanother writers. _____2)Science should be based on experiments, so it is not imaginative. ____3)The purpose of this passage is to reveal to the readers the essentialcharacteristics of scientific thinking. _____4)The English bishops would not like to open Joanna Southcott’s box. ____5)It can be inferred from the passage that a scientist is more imaginative thanpeople of other professions.Answer: FFTTF。
Unit 7 TV and Its InfluenceSection Two In-readingREADING ONEWhen Television Ate My Best FriendI was eight years old when I lost my best friend. My very first very best friend. Lucy hardly ever whined, even when we kids played cowboys and she had to be Dale Evans. Nor did she cry, even when we played dodge ball and some big kid threw the ball so hard you could read Spalding backward on her legs. Lucy was world class.Much of our time together was spent in my backyard on the perfect swing set: high, wide, built solid, and grounded for life. But one June day long ago, something went wrong. I was swinging as high as I could, and still higher. The next time the swing started to come back down, I didn’t . I just kept going up. And up.Then I began to fall.―Know what? Know what?‖ Lucy was yelling at me.No, I didn’t know what. All I knew was that my left arm hurt.―Know what? For a minute there, you flew. You seemed to catch the wind and … soar! Right up until you must have do ne something wrong, because you fell.‖Wearing a cast on my broken arm gave me time to work out the scientifics with Lucy. Our Theory was that if you swing just high enough and straight enough, and you jump out of the swing at just the right moment and in just the right position —you just might fly.July was spent waiting for my arm to heal. We ran our hands across the wooden seat, feeling for the odd splinter that could ruin your perfect takeoff. We pulled on the chains, testing for weak links.Finally came the day in August when my cast was off, and Lucy and I were ready. Today we would fly.Early that morning, we began taking turns — one pushing, one pumping. All day we pushed and pumped, higher and higher, ever so close. It was almost dark wh en Lucy’s mother hollered for her to come home right this minute and see what her daddy had brought them.This was strictly against the rules. Nobody had to go home in August until it was altogether dark. Besides, Lucy’s daddy wasn’t a man to be struc k with irresistible impulses like stopping at the horse store and thinking, Golly, my little girl loves ponies! I better get her one!So we kept on swinging, and Lucy pretended not to hear her mother – until she dropped Lucee to Lucille Louise. Halfway through the fourth Lucille Louise, Lucy slowly raised her head as though straining to hear some woman calling from the next county.―Were you calling me, Mother? Okay, okay, I’m coming. Yes, ma’am. Right now.‖Lucy and I walked together to the end of my driveway. Once in her front yard, she slowed to something between a meander and a lollygag, choosing a path that took her straight through the sprinklers. Twice.When at last Lucy sashayed to her front door, she turned back to me and, with a grin, gave me the thumbs-up sign used by pilots everywhere. Awright. So we’d fly tomorrow instead. We’d waited all summer. We could wait one more day. On her way in the house, she slammed the screen door.BANG!In my memory, I’ve listened to that screen door shut behind my best friend a thousand times. It was the last time I played with her.I knocked on the door every day, but her mother always answered saying Lucy was busy andcouldn’t come out to play. I tried calling, but her mother always answered saying Luc y was busy and couldn’t come to the phone. Lucy was busy? Too busy to play? Too busy to fly? She had to be dead. Nothing else made sense. What, short of death, could separate such best friends? We were going to fly. Her thumb had said so. I cried and cried.I might never have known the truth of the matter, if some weeks later I hadn’t overheard my mother say to my father how maybe I would calm down about Lucy if we got a television too.A what? What on earth was a television? The word was new to me, but I was clever enough to figure out that Lucy’s daddy had brought home a television that night. At last I knew what had happened to Lucy. The television ate her.It must have been a terrible thing to see. Now my parents were thinking of getting one. I was scared. They didn’t understand what television could do.―Television eats people,‖ I announced to my parents.―Oh, Linda Jane,‖ they said, laughing. ―Television doesn’t eat people. You’ll love television just like Lucy. She’s inside her house watching it right this minute.‖Indeed, Lucy was totally bewitched by the flickering black and white shapes. Every afternoon following school, she’d sit in her living room and watch whatever there was to watch. Saturday mornings, she’d look at cartoons.Autumn came. Around Thanksgiving, I played an ear of corn in the school pageant. Long division ruined most of December. After a while, I forgot about flying. But I did not forget about Lucy.Christmas arrived, and Santa Claus brought us a television .―See?‖ my paren ts said. ―Television doesn’t eat people.‖ Maybe not. But television changes people. It changed my family forever.We stopped eating dinner at the dining-room table after my mother found out about TV trays. Dinner was served in time for one program and finished in time for another. During the meal we used to talk to one another. Now television talked to us. If you absolutely had to say something you waited until the commercial, which is, I suspect, where I learned to speak in thirty-second bursts.Before television, I would lie in bed at night, listening to my parents in their room saying things I couldn’t comprehend. Their voices alone rocked me to sleep. Now Daddy went to bed right after the weather, and Mama stayed up to see Jack Paar. I went to sleep listening to voices in my memory.Daddy stopped buying Perry Mason books. Perry was on television now, and that was so much easier for him. But it had been Daddy and Perry who’d taught me how fine it can be to read something you like.Mama and Daddy stopped going to movies. Most movies would one day show up on TV, he said.After a while, Daddy and I didn’t play baseball any more. We didn’t go to ball games either, but we watched more baseball than ever. That’s how Daddy perfected The Art of Dozing to Baseb all. He would sit in his big chair, turn on the game, and fall asleep within minutes. At least he appeared to be asleep. His eyes were shut, and he snored. But if you shook him, he’d open his eyes and tell you what the score was, who was up, and what the pitcher ought to throw next.It seemed everybody liked to watch television more than I did. I had no interest in sitting still when I could be climbing trees or riding a bike or practicing my takeoffs just in case one day Lucy woke up and remembered we had a Theory. Maybe the TV hadn’t actually eaten her, but once her parents pointed her in the direction of that box, she never looked back.Lucy had no other interests when she could go home and turn on ―My Friend Flicka.‖ Maybe it was because that was as close as she would get to having her own pony. Maybe if her parents had allowed her a real world to stretch out in, she wouldn’t have been satisfied with a nineteen-inch world.All I know is I never had another first best friend. I never learned to fly ei ther. What’s more, I was right all along: television really does eat people .READING TWOHow Parents Can Lessen the Effects of Television Violence"Mommy, I'm bored.‖"Don't bother me now, Junior; I have a headache. Why don't you go watch TV?"Conversations like this often take place between parent and child because no parent, no matter how conscientious, can spend every minute with his or her child. And let’s face it, television is a way to keep a bored child quiet and occupied. And yes, television can be a good form of entertainment and even a valuable teaming tool.Almost everyone agrees that television can have a great influence on how children view the world and how they act within it. As a result, almost everyone agrees that it is important for parents to supervise what television their children watch. Usually, this means that parents are advised to restrict the amount of violence viewed.Anne Somers, for example, cites the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, which published a report, To Establish Justice, to Insure Domestic Tranquility, in 1969.A portion of the report discloses that many of the experiments done with children show that aggressive behavior is learned by viewing violence on television. The report states that while television is a serious influence on our society’s level of violence, it is not necessarily the main cause. However, it goes on to say that the influence of television on children is stronger now, when the authority of the "traditional institution" of religion, education, and family is questionable. The concern expressed in the report is that since so much of television broadcasting expresses antisocial, aggressive behavior, and since television is such a strong influence on children, children will be learning to behave aggressively.Certainly the literature expressing the dangers of television violence for children is abundant; one can find it published in everything from TV Guide to the most scholarly journals. Yet does it all mean that parents must be sure their children never view violence on the small screen? 1 think not, for there is evidence that not all children who view televised violence become overly aggressive. The child's interpretation of what is viewed is a crucial factor in how he or she will behave afterward. Sociology professor Hope Lunin Klapper believes:The child itself plays an active role in the socialization process. The consequences of television for a child are thus in part a consequence of the child .... It is the child’s perception which defines the stimulus.... The consequences of television involve....two major steps: first, the child’s perception or translation of the content, and second, his or her response or lack of response to that perception.Thus, whether televised violence will adversely affect a child will depend on that child. The conclusion to be drawn from Klapper is that some children will not become violent just because they have viewed violence on television. Klapper says that whether a child behaves aggressively will be, in part, a result of his or her perception of the viewed violence, and this says a lot aboutwhat the parental role should be. Parents could counteract any negative effects that television violence could have on a child's behavior by taking advantage of the opportunity presented to teach the child some of the values that they feel are important. As a child watches a violent program, the parents could explain that the behaviors displayed do not coincide with their values. In this way, a child could be taught that even though such behaviors exist, they are not desirable. After all, violence does exist in the world. If parents constantly shield their children from this fact, then the children will be unable to cope with this reality of life. On the other hand, exposure to violence, through television and parental explanation about what is viewed, can be a healthy education in the reality of violence and how to avoid it.Professor Charles Atkin explains another reason children should not be completely restricted from viewing violence. He suggests that children will choose to watch television shows that correspond to their own tendencies toward aggression. Thus by observing the types of programs their children prefer, parents can gain a better understanding of their personalities. A child who continually elects to watch violence may have aggressive tendencies. Parents need to know whether their children are too aggressive so they can intervene, and one way they can discover this is to observe their children's viewing preferences. If the child is consistently choosing violent shows, the parents can, as Atkin explains, "effectively mediate their children's predispositions" and make their child understand that although violence does exist in reality, there are other aspects of life as well.Thus, parents can help their children's personalities develop in a positive manner by observing how they respond to television violence and by influencing accordingly how they interpret what they see. Parents can use televised violence to assess their children's tendency toward violence, and they can use it to voice their disapproval to show violence is wrong. Of course, this means parents must watch violent shows with their children, even when they have a headache.READING THREEWhy You Watch What You Watch When You WatchIt is about time that you all stop lying to each other and face up to your problems: you love television and you view too much.I used to be the guy in charge of the ratings at NBC, and my waking hours were filled with people either complaining about the inaccurate the ratings were or, without my asking them, volunteering that they never watch TV, because the programs stink, particularly this season.Let’s look at the facts, because only by examining the nature of the disease can we cure it, or at least make peace with it.The truth is that you buy extra sets, color sets, and even pay a monthly charge for cable television to view. Yet when you view an evening's worth of TV you are full of complaints about what you have viewed. But the next night yon’re right back there, hoping against hope for satisfying content, never really learning from experience, another night is shot. Instead of tuning the set off and doing something else, you persist in exercising the medium.The fact is that you view TV regardless of its content. Because of the nature of the limited spectrum(only a few channels in each city) and the economic need of the networks to attract an audience large enough to attain advertising dollars which will cover the cost of the production of the TV program, pay the station carrying the program, and also make a profit, you are viewingprogram which by necessity must appeal to the rich and poor, smart and stupid, tall and short, wild and tame, together. Therefore, you are in the vast majority of cases viewing something that is not to your taste. From the time you bought a set to now, you have viewed thousands of programs which were not to your taste. The result is the hiding of, and lying about, all that viewing. Because of the hiding and lying, you are guilty. The guilt is expressed in the feeling that ―I should have been reading instead of viewing.‖It is of course much more difficult to read than to view. Reading requires a process called decoding, which causes a slowdown in the information taken in by the user. TV viewing is very simple to do—kids do it better than adults because they are unencumbered by guilt—and the amount of information derived from an hour’s viewing is infinitely more than is derived from an hour’s reading.But print has been around for a long time and it has attracted people who have learned to express themselves in this medium , so the printed content, on the whole, is superior to the TV content . Still ,most of us prefer television. Despite the lack of quality content, the visual medium is so compelling that it attracts the vast majority of adults each day to a progression of shows that most of these people would ignore in printed form .The process of viewing works like this:A family has just finished dinner and one member says, ― Let’s see what’s on TV tonight.‖The set gets turned on or the TV Guide gets pulled out. If it’s TV Guide, then the list of programs(most of which are repeats) is so unappealing that each member of the family says to himself that he remembers when TV Guide made an awful error in its program listings back in 1967 and maybe it has happened again.The set is turned on whether a good program is listed or not at that time. Chances are over 100 to 1 that there is nothing on that meets this or any family’s taste for that moment. But the medium meets their taste.The view(s) then slowly turns the channel selector, grumbling at each image he sees on the screen. Perhaps he’ll go around the dial two or three times before settling on one channel whose program is least objectionable.― Well, let’s watch this, ‖ someone in the family says. ―There’s nothing better on.‖ So they watch. No one thinks of jogging a couple of laps around the block or getting out the old Parcheesi board. They watch whatever is least objectionable.The programmers for the networks have argued that this is a ―most satisfying ‖ choice— not LOP(least objectionable program) . But if it were, then why would everybody be complaining and lying about TV viewing? I don’t deny that in some rare time periods, ―least objectionable‖is actually most satisfying, but the bulk of the time people are viewing they don’t particularly consider good, and that is why the medium is so powerful and rich.READING FOURTV AddictionThe word ―addiction‖ is often used loosely and wryly in conversation. People will refer to themselves as ―mystery book addicts‖ or ―cookie addicts.‖ E.B. White writes of his annual surge of interest in gardening: ―We are hook ed and are making an attempt to kick the habit.‖ Yet nobody really believes that reading mysteries or ordering seeds by catalogue is serious enough to becompared with addictions to heroin or alcohol. The word ―addiction‖ is here used jokingly to denote a tendency to overindulge in some pleasurable activity.People often refer to being ―hooked on TV.‖ Does this, too, fall into the lighthearted category of cookie eating and other pleasures that people pursue with unusual intensity, or is there a kind television viewing that falls into the more serious category of destructive addiction?When we think about addiction to drugs or alcohol, we frequently focus on negative aspects, ignoring the pleasures that accompany drinking or drug-taking. And yet the essence of any serious addiction is a pursuit of pleasure, a search for a ―high‖ that normal life does not supply. It is only the inability to function without the addictive substance that is dismaying, the dependence of the organism upon a certain experience and an increasing inability to function normally without it. Thus a person will take two or three drinks at the end of the day not merely for the pleasure drinking provides, but also because he ―doesn’t feel normal‖ without them.An addict does not merely pursue a pleasurable experience and need to experience it in order to function normally. He needs to repeat it again and again. Something about that particular experience makes life without it less than complete. Other potential pleasurable experiences are no longer possible, for under the spell of the addictive experience, his life is peculiarly distorted. The addict craves an experience and yet he is never really satisfied. The organism may be temporarily sated, but soon it begins to crave again.Finally a serious addiction is distinguished from a harmless pursuit of pleasure by its distinctly destructive elements. A heroin addicts, for instance, leads a damaged life: his increasing need for heroin in increasing does prevents him from working, from maintaining relationships, from developing in human ways. Similarly an alcoholic’s is narrowed and dehumanized by his dependence on alcohol.Let us consider television viewing in the lights of the conditions that define serious addictions.Not unlike drugs or alcohol, the television experiences allow the participant to blot out the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state. The worries and anxieties of reality are as effectively deferred by becoming absorbed in a television program as by going on a ―trip‖ induced by drugs or alcohol. And just as alcoholics are only inchoately aware of there addiction, feeling that they can control their drinking more than they really do. (― I can cut it out anytime I want—I just like to have three or fou r drinks before dinner‖), people similarly overestimate their control over television watching. Even as they put off other activities to spend hour after hour watching television, they feel they could easily resume living in a different, less passive style. But somehow or other while the television set is present in there homes, the click doesn’t sound. With television pleasure s available, those other experiences seem less attractive, more difficult somehow.A heavy viewer (a college English instructor) ob serves: ―I find television almost irresistible. When the set is on, I cannot ignore it. I can’t turn it off. I feel sapped, will-less, enervated. As I reach out to turn off the set, the strength goes out of my arms. So I sit there for hours and hours.‖The self-confessed television addict often feels he ―ought‖ to do other things—but the fact that he doesn’t read and doesn’t plant his garden or sew or crochet or play games or have conversations means that those activities are no longer as desirable as television viewing. In a way a heavy viewer’s life is as imbalanced by his television ―habit‖ as a drug addict’s or an alcoholic’s. He is living in a holding pattern, as it were, passing up the activities that lead to growth ordevelopment or a sense of accomplishment. This is one reason people talk about their television viewing so ruefully, so apologetically. They are aware that it is an unproductive experience, that almost any other endeavor is more worthwhile by any human measure.Finally it is the adverse effect of television viewing on the lives of so many people that defines it as a serous addiction. The television habit distorts the sense of time. It renders other experiences vague and curiously unreal while taking on a greater reality for itself. It weakens relationships by reducing and sometimes eliminating normal opportunities for talking, for communicating.And yet television does not satisfy, else why would the viewer continue to watch hour after hour, day after day? ―The measure of heath,‖ writes Lawrence Kubie, ―is flexibility… and especially the freedom to cease when sated.‖ But the television viewer can never be sated with his television experiences--- they do not provide the true nourishment that satiation requires--- and thus he finds that he cannot stop watching.。
蒋静仪阅读教程（泛读3）Unit7TVandItsInfluence2Unit 7 TV and Its InfluenceSection Two In-readingREADING ONEWhen Television Ate My Best FriendI was eight years old when I lost my best friend. My very first very best friend. Lucy hardly ever whined, even when we kids played cowboys and she had to be Dale Evans. Nor did she cry, even when we played dodge ball and some big kid threw the ball so hard you could read Spalding backward on her legs. Lucy was world class.Much of our time together was spent in my backyard on the perfect swing set: high, wide, built solid, and grounded for life. But one June day long ago, something went wrong. I was swinging as high as I could, and still higher. The next time the swing started to come back down, I didn’t . I just kept going up. And up.Then I began to fall.―Know what? Know what?‖ Lucy was yelling at me.No, I didn’t know what. All I knew was that my left arm hurt.―Know what? For a minute there, you flew. You seemed to catch the wind and … soar! Right up until you must have do ne something wrong, because you fell.‖Wearing a cast on my broken arm gave me time to work out the scientifics with Lucy. Our Theory was that if you swing just high enough and straight enough, and you jump out of the swing at just the right moment and in just the right position —you just might fly.July was spent waiting for my arm to heal. We ran our handsacross the wooden seat, feeling for the odd splinter that could ruin your perfect takeoff. We pulled on the chains, testing for weak links.Finally came the day in August when my cast was off, and Lucy and I were ready. Today we would fly.Early that morning, we began taking turns — one pushing, one pumping. All day we pushed and pumped, higher and higher, ever so close. It was almost dark wh en Lucy’s mother hollered for her to come home right this minute and see what her daddy had brought them.This was strictly against the rules. Nobody had to go home in August until it was altog ether dark. Besides, Lucy’s daddy wasn’t a man to be struc k with irresistible impulses like stopping at the horse store and thinking, Golly, my little girl loves ponies! I better get her one!So we kept on swinging, and Lucy pretended not to hear her mother –until she dropped Lucee to Lucille Louise. Halfway through the fourth Lucille Louise, Lucy slowly raised her head as though straining to hear some woman calling from the next county.―Were you calling me, Mother? Okay, okay, I’m coming. Yes, ma’am. Right now.‖Lucy and I walked together to the end of my driveway. Once in her front yard, she slowed to something between a meander and a lollygag, choosing a path that took her straight through the sprinklers. Twice.When at last Lucy sashayed to her front door, she turned back to me and, with a grin, gave me the thumbs-up sign used by pilots everywhere. Awright. So we’d fly tomorrow instead. We’d waited all summer. We could wait one more day. On herway in the house, she slammed the screen door.BANG!In my memory, I’ve listened to that screen door shut behind my best friend a thousand times. It was the last time I played with her.I knocked on the door every day, but her mother always answered saying Lucy was busy andcouldn’t come out to play. I tried calling, but her mother always answered saying Luc y was busy and couldn’t come to the phone. Lucy was busy? Too busy to play? Too busy to fly? She had to be dead. Nothing else made sense. What, short of death, could separate such best friends? We were going to fly. Her thumb had said so. I cried and cried.I might never have known the truth of the matter, if some weeks later I hadn’t overheard my mother say to my father how maybe I would calm down about Lucy if we got a television too.A what? What on earth was a television? The word was new to me, but I was clever enough to figure out that Lucy’s daddy had brought home a television that night. At last I knew what had happened to Lucy. The television ate her.It must have been a terrible thing to see. Now my parents were thinking of getting one. I was scared. They didn’t understand what television could do.―Television eats people,‖ I announced to my parents.―Oh, Linda Jane,‖ they said, laughing. ―Television doesn’t eat p eople. You’ll love television just like Lucy. She’s inside her house watching it right this minute.‖Indeed, Lucy was totally bewitched by the flickering black and white shapes. Every afternoon following school, she’d sit in her living room and watch whatever there was to watch. Saturdaymornings, she’d look at cartoons.Autumn came. Around Thanksgiving, I played an ear of corn in the school pageant. Long division ruined most of December. After a while, I forgot about flying. But I did not forget about Lucy.Christmas arrived, and Santa Claus brought us a television .―See?‖ my paren ts said. ―Television doesn’t eat people.‖ Maybe not. But television changes people. It changed my family forever.We stopped eating dinner at the dining-room table after my mother found out about TV trays. Dinner was served in time for one program and finished in time for another. During the meal we used to talk to one another. Now television talked to us. If you absolutely had to say something you waited until the commercial, which is, I suspect, where I learned to speak in thirty-second bursts.Before television, I would lie in bed at night, listening to my parents in their room saying things I couldn’t comprehend. Their voices alone rocked me to sleep. Now Daddy went to bed right after the weather, and Mama stayed up to see Jack Paar. I went to sleep listening to voices in my memory.Daddy stopped buying Perry Mason books. Perry was on television now, and that was so much easier for him. But it had been Daddy and Perry who’d taug ht me how fine it can be to read something you like.Mama and Daddy stopped going to movies. Most movies would one day show up on TV, he said.After a while, Daddy and I didn’t play baseball any more. We didn’t go to ball games either, but we watched more baseball than ever. That’s how Daddy perfected The Art of Dozing to Baseb all. He would sit in his big chair, turn on thegame, and fall asleep within minutes. At least he appeared to be asleep. His eyes were shut, and he snored. But if you shook him, he’d open his eyes and tell you what the score was, who was up, and what the pitcher ought to throw next.It seemed everybody liked to watch television more than I did. I had no interest in sitting still when I could be climbing trees or riding a bike or practicing my takeoffs just in case one day Lucy woke up and remembered we had a Theory. Maybe the TV hadn’t actually eaten her, but once her parents pointed her in the direction of that box, she never looked back.Lucy had no other interests when she could go home and turn on ―My Friend Flicka.‖ Maybe it was because that was as close as she would get to having her own pony. Maybe if her parents had allowed her a real world to stretch out in, she wouldn’t have been satisfied with a nineteen-inch world.All I know is I never had another first best friend. I never learned to fly ei ther. What’s more, I was right all along: television really does eat people .READING TWOHow Parents Can Lessen the Effects of Television Violence"Mommy, I'm bored.‖"Don't bother me now, Junior; I have a headache. Why don't you go watch TV?"Conversations like this often take place between parent and child because no parent, no matter how conscientious, can spend every minute with his or her child. And let’s face it, television is a way to keep a bored child quiet and occupied. And yes, television can be a good form of entertainment and even a valuable teaming tool.Almost everyone agrees that television can have a greatinfluence on how children view the world and how they act within it. As a result, almost everyone agrees that it is important for parents to supervise what television their children watch. Usually, this means that parents are advised to restrict the amount of violence viewed.Anne Somers, for example, cites the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, which published a report, To Establish Justice, to Insure Domestic Tranquility, in 1969.A portion of the report discloses that many of the experiments done with children show that aggressive behavior is learned by viewing violence on television. The report states that while television is a serious influence on our society’s level of violence, it is not necessarily the main cause. However, it goes on to say that the influence of television on children is stronger now, when the authority of the "traditional institution" of religion, education, and family is questionable. The concern expressed in the report is that since so much of television broadcasting expresses antisocial, aggressive behavior, and since television is such a strong influence on children, children will be learning to behave aggressively.Certainly the literature expressing the dangers of television violence for children is abundant; one can find it published in everything from TV Guide to the most scholarly journals. Yet does it all mean that parents must be sure their children never view violence on the small screen? 1 think not, for there is evidence that not all children who view televised violence become overly aggressive. The child's interpretation of what is viewed is a crucial factor in how he or she will behave afterward. Sociology professor Hope Lunin Klapper believes:The child itself plays an active role in the socialization process.The consequences of television for a child are thus in part a consequence of the child .... It is the child’s perception which defines the stimulus.... The consequences of television involve....two major steps: first, the child’s perception or translation of the content, and second, his or her response or lack of response to that perception.Thus, whether televised violence will adversely affect a child will depend on that child. The conclusion to be drawn from Klapper is that some children will not become violent just because they have viewed violence on television. Klapper says that whether a child behaves aggressively will be, in part, a result of his or her perception of the viewed violence, and this says a lot aboutwhat the parental role should be. Parents could counteract any negative effects that television violence could have on a child's behavior by taking advantage of the opportunity presented to teach the child some of the values that they feel are important. As a child watches a violent program, the parents could explain that the behaviors displayed do not coincide with their values. In this way, a child could be taught that even though such behaviors exist, they are not desirable. After all, violence does exist in the world. If parents constantly shield their children from this fact, then the children will be unable to cope with this reality of life. On the other hand, exposure to violence, through television and parental explanation about what is viewed, can be a healthy education in the reality of violence and how to avoid it.Professor Charles Atkin explains another reason children should not be completely restricted from viewing violence. He suggests that children will choose to watch television shows that correspond to their own tendencies toward aggression. Thus byobserving the types of programs their children prefer, parents can gain a better understanding of their personalities. A child who continually elects to watch violence may have aggressive tendencies. Parents need to know whether their children are too aggressive so they can intervene, and one way they can discover this is to observe their children's viewing preferences. If the child is consistently choosing violent shows, the parents can, as Atkin explains, "effectively mediate their children's predispositions" and make their child understand that although violence does exist in reality, there are other aspects of life as well.Thus, parents can help their children's personalities develop in a positive manner by observing how they respond to television violence and by influencing accordingly how they interpret what they see. Parents can use televised violence to assess their children's tendency toward violence, and they can use it to voice their disapproval to show violence is wrong. Of course, this means parents must watch violent shows with their children, even when they have a headache.READING THREEWhy You Watch What You Watch When You WatchIt is about time that you all stop lying to each other and face up to your problems: you love television and you view too much.I used to be the guy in charge of the ratings at NBC, and my waking hours were filled with people either complaining about the inaccurate the ratings were or, without my asking them, volunteering that they never watch TV, because the programs stink, particularly this season.Let’s look at the facts, because only by examining the nature of the disease can we cure it, or at least make peace with it.The truth is that you buy extra sets, color sets, and even pay a monthly charge for cable television to view. Yet when you view an evening's worth of TV you are full of complaints about what you have viewed. But the next night yon’re right back there, hoping against hope for satisfying content, never really learning from experience, another night is shot. Instead of tuning the set off and doing something else, you persist in exercising the medium.The fact is that you view TV regardless of its content. Because of the nature of the limited spectrum(only a few channels in each city) and the economic need of the networks to attract an audience large enough to attain advertising dollars which will cover the cost of the production of the TV program, pay the station carrying the program, and also make a profit, you are viewingprogram which by necessity must appeal to the rich and poor, smart and stupid, tall and short, wild and tame, together. Therefore, you are in the vast majority of cases viewing something that is not to your taste. From the time you bought a set to now, you have viewed thousands of programs which were not to your taste. The result is the hiding of, and lying about, all that viewing. Because of the hiding and lying, you are guilty. The guilt is expressed in the feeling that ―I should have been reading instead of viewing.‖It is of course much more difficult to read than to view. Reading requires a process called decoding, which causes a slowdown in the information taken in by the user. TV viewing is very simple to do—kids do it better than adults because they are unencumbered by guilt—and the amount of information derived from an hour’s viewing is infinitely more than is derived froman hour’s reading.But print has been around for a long time and it has attracted people who have learned to express themselves in this medium , so the printed content, on the whole, is superior to the TV content . Still ,most of us prefer television. Despite the lack of quality content, the visual medium is so compelling that it attracts the vast majority of adults each day to a progression of shows that most of these people would ignore in printed form .The process of viewing works like this:A family has just finished dinner and one member says, ― Let’s see what’s on TV tonight.‖The set gets turned on or the TV Guide gets pulled out. If it’s TV Guide, then the list of programs(most of which are repeats) is so unappealing that each member of the family says to himself that he remembers when TV Guide made an awful error in its program listings back in 1967 and maybe it has happened again.The set is turned on whether a good program is listed or not at that time. Chances are over 100 to 1 that there is nothing on that meets this or any family’s taste for that moment. But the medium meets their taste.The view(s) then slowly turns the channel selector, grumbling at each image he sees on the screen. Perhaps he’ll go around the dial two or three times before settling on one channel whose program is least objectionable.― Well, let’s watch this, ‖ someone in the family says. ―There’s nothing better on.‖ So they watch. No one thinks of jogging a couple of laps around the block or getting out the old Parcheesi board. They watch whatever is least objectionable.The programmers for the networks have argued that this is a ―most satisfying ‖ choice—not LOP(least objectionableprogram) . But if it were, then why would everybody be complaining and lying about TV viewing? I don’t deny that in some rare time periods, ―least objectionable‖is actually most satisfying, but the bulk of the time people are viewing they don’t particularly consider good, and tha t is why the medium is so powerful and rich.READING FOURTV AddictionThe word ―addiction‖ is often used loosely and wryly in conversation. People will refer to themselves as ―mystery book addicts‖ or ―cookie addicts.‖ E.B. White writes of his annual surge of interest in gardening: ―We are hook ed and are making an attempt to kick the habit.‖ Yet nobody really believes that reading mysteries or ordering seeds by catalogue is serious enough to becompared with addictions to heroin or alcohol. The word ―addiction‖ is here used jokingly to denote a tendency to overindulge in some pleasurable activity.People often refer to being ―hooked on TV.‖ Does this, too, fall into the lighthearted category of cookie eating and other pleasures that people pursue with unusual intensity, or is there a kind television viewing that falls into the more serious category of destructive addiction?When we think about addiction to drugs or alcohol, we frequently focus on negative aspects, ignoring the pleasures that accompany drinking or drug-taking. And yet the essence of any serious addiction is a pursuit of pleasure, a search for a ―high‖ that normal life does not supply. It is only the inability to function without the addictive substance that is dismaying, the dependence of the organism upon a certain experience and anincreasing inability to function normally without it. Thus a person will take two or three drinks at the end of the day not merely for the pleasure drinking provides, but also because he ―doesn’t feel normal‖ without them.An addict does not merely pursue a pleasurable experience and need to experience it in order to function normally. He needs to repeat it again and again. Something about that particular experience makes life without it less than complete. Other potential pleasurable experiences are no longer possible, for under the spell of the addictive experience, his life is peculiarly distorted. The addict craves an experience and yet he is never really satisfied. The organism may be temporarily sated, but soon it begins to crave again.Finally a serious addiction is distinguished from a harmless pursuit of pleasure by its distinctly destructive elements. A heroin addicts, for instance, leads a damaged life: his increasing need for heroin in increasing does prevents him from working, from maintaining relationships, from developing in human ways. Similarly an alcoholic’s is narrowed and dehumanized by his dependence on alcohol.Let us consider television viewing in the lights of the conditions that define serious addictions.Not unlike drugs or alcohol, the television experiences allow the participant to blot out the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state. The worries and anxieties of reality are as effectively deferred by becoming absorbed in a television program as by going on a ―trip‖ induced by drugs or alcohol. And just as alcoholics are only inchoately aware of there addiction, feeling that they can control their drinking more than they really do. (― I can cut it out anytime I wa nt—I just like to havethree or fou r drinks before dinner‖), people similarly overestimate their control over television watching. Even as they put off other activities to spend hour after hour watching television, they feel they could easily resume living in a different, less passive style. But somehow or other while the television set is present in there homes, the click doesn’t sound. With television pleasure s available, those other experiences seem less attractive, more difficult somehow.A heavy view er (a college English instructor) ob serves: ―I find television almost irresistible. When the set is on, I cannot ignore it. I can’t turn it off. I feel sapped, will-less, enervated. As I reach out to turn off the set, the strength goes out of my arms. So I sit there for hours and hours.‖The self-confessed television addict often feels he ―ought‖ to do other things—but the fact that he doesn’t read and doesn’t plant his garden or sew or crochet or play games or have conversations means that those activities are no longer as desirable as television viewing. In a way a heavy viewer’s life is as imbalanced by his television ―habit‖ as a drug addict’s or an alcoholic’s. He is living in a holding pattern, as it were, passing up the activities that lead to growth or development or a sense of accomplishment. This is one reason people talk about their television viewing so ruefully, so apologetically. They are aware that it is an unproductive experience, that almost any other endeavor is more worthwhile by any human measure.Finally it is the adverse effect of television viewing on the lives of so many people that defines it as a serous addiction. The television habit distorts the sense of time. It renders other experiences vague and curiously unreal while taking on a greater reality for itself. It weakens relationships by reducing andsometimes eliminating normal opportunities for talking, for communicating.And yet television does not satisfy, else why would the viewer continue to watch hour after hour, day after day? ―The measure of heath,‖ writes Lawrence Kubie, ―is flexibility… and especially the freedom to cease when sated.‖ But the television viewer can never be sated with his television experiences--- they do not provide the true nourishment that satiation requires--- and thus he finds that he cannot stop watching.。
Unit 4Preview2.Do the following exercises.1.Paraphrase the following sentences.1.He had opened his eyes when the sun rose,scratched (because he had an itch on the skin), relieved himself like a dog at the roadside…Notice the euphemism “done his business.”The author could not have used the normal expression”used the toilet”because there was no toilet.2.Live simply and freely.Pay no attention to conventions, which are unnatural and useless. Avoid or get rid of all those unnecessary things that make our life complicated and wasteful…3.They own and control him. He is their slave. In order to get some goods that have no true value and will be useless very soon, he has sold the only true, lasting good, his own independence.4.He knew very well what he lived for:it was to change people’s values, to make them know the true meaning of life…5.He was the most popular/important/successful person at this particular moment or his century…2.Translate the words in bold type.1.我们那调皮的猫把我们的新沙发套都抓破了。
寻找可以依靠的坚实臂膀在美国，越来越多的老人独居。
他们生病时处境通常显得很悲惨。
简·格罗斯在下面的文章中指出这些老年人的问题。
每次人们在医生办公室给格雷斯·麦凯比递来一份紧急情况联系人表格时，空格处总令她心中发怵。
对任何有配偶、伴侣或子女的人来说，这是个很简单的问题。
但是，75岁的麦凯比女士一直独居。
谁能和她一起渡过难关?情况最糟糕的时候，谁会关心她?这些曾是假设的问题。
但是现在，麦凯比女士视力越来越差，几乎完全看不见。
她一直有很多朋友，但从没请过谁为她负起责任，比如，接急诊室半夜来的电话，或因为她自己不能写支票而帮助付账单。
她在所有的朋友中，选定了一个心地善良、遇事不慌、有解决问题能力的人。
所以，她多次在空白处写止“夏洛特·弗兰克”，然后打电话说，“夏洛特，又把您写在单子上了，”于是，紧张时刻得到缓解。
麦凯比女士被一个鲁莽的司机撞倒在人行横道上，得了脑震荡，这时，年龄70岁，自己也独居的弗兰克女士在起居室长沙发上守了一夜。
麦凯比女士再也看不清标)隹字体时，弗兰克女士给她弄了一台电脑，把字体设置到最大，这样，她就能读报纸，从商品单定购货物。
“你会发现，有些好朋友成了至交，”麦凯比女士说，“夏洛克既实际又形象地告诉我要，抓住不放，我这样做了。
”无法统计出不同年龄生病或有残疾的独居者的数字，医院安排出院的人和家庭健康照料机构说，他们服务的明显无人照顾的独居者越来越多。
人口调查报告中，单人家庭，包括从未结婚者、离婚者和丧偶者，其数目明显增加。
2003年，近27％的美国家庭由独居者组成，高于1970年的18％，这些家庭注重的是不具有亲属的法律地位或社会地位的友谊。
人口统计学家警告说，生育高峰期出生的人老年化，疾病和残疾成为老年不可避免的必然结果，这将使独居者家庭队伍壮大。
美国医院协会资深副会长詹姆斯·本特利说，独居者属于最棘手的情况。
他说，任何病人或残疾人，在医院里和出院后都“需要有人负责照料他们”，但独居者在特别脆弱的时候，却是自己照料自己。
