英语精读课文加翻译

大学英语精读一课文加翻译（转自baidu知道）Some Strategies for Learning EnglishLearning English is by no means easy. It takes great diligence and prolonged effort.学习英语绝非易事.它需要刻苦和长期努力.Nevertheless, while you cannot export to gain a good command of English without sustained hard work, there are various helpful learning strategies you employ to make the task easier. Here are some of them.虽然不经过持续的刻苦努力便不能期望精通英语,然而还是有各种有用的学习策略可以用来使这一任务变得容易一些.一下便是其中的几种.1. Do not treat all new words in exactly the same way. Have you ever complained about your memory because you find it simply impossible to memorize all the new words you are learning? But, in fact, it is not your memory that is at fault. If you cram your head with too many new words at a time, some of them are bound to be crowded out. What you need to do is to deal with new words in different ways according it how frequently they occur in everyday use. While active words demand constant practice and useful words must be committed to memory, words that do not often occur in everyday situations require just a nodding acquaintance. You will find concentrating on active and useful words the most effective route to enlarging your vocabulary. 不要以完全相同的方式对待所有的生词.你可曾因为简直无法记住所学的所有生词而抱怨自己的记忆力太差?其实,责任并不在你的记忆力.如果你一下子把太多的生词塞进头脑,必定有一些生词会被挤出来.你需要做的是根据生词日常使用的频率以不同的方式对待它们.积极词汇需要经常练习,有用的词汇必须牢记,而在日常情况下不常出现的次只需要见到时认识即可.你会发现把注意力集中于积极有用的词上是扩大词汇量最有效的途径.2. Watch out for idiomatic ways of saying things. Have you ever wondered why we say, “I am interested in English”, but “I am good at French”? And have you ever asked yourself why native English speakers say, “learn the news or secret”, but “learn of someone’s success or arrival”? These are all examples of idiomatic usage. In learning English, you must pay attention not only to the meaning of a word, but also to the way native speakers use it in their daily lives.密切注意地道的表达方式.你可曾纳闷过,为什么我们说“我对英语感兴趣”是“I’m interested in English”, 而说“我精于法语”则是“I’m good at French”? 你可曾问过自己,为什么以英语为母语的人说“获悉消息或秘密”是“learn the news or secret”, 而“获悉某人的成功或到来”是“learn of someone’s successor arrival”?这些都是惯用法的例子.再学习英语时,你不仅必须注意词义,还必须注意以英语为母语的人在日常生活中如何使用它.3. Listen to English every day. Listening to English on a regular basis will not only improve your ear, but will also help you build your speaking skills. In addition to language tapes especially prepared for your course, you can also listen to English radio broadcasts, watch English TV, and see English movies. The first time you listen to a taped conversation or passage in English, you may not be able to catch a great deal. Try to get its general meaning first and listen to it over and over again. You will find that with each repetition you will get something more.每天听英语.经常听英语不仅不提高你的听力,而且有助你培养说的技能.除了专为课程准备的语言磁带外,你还可以听英语广播,看英语电视和英语电影.第一次听录好音的英语对话或语段,你也许不能听懂很多.先试着听懂大意,然后再反复地听.你会发现每次重复都会听懂很多更多的东西.4. Seize opportunities to speak. It is true that there are few situations at school where you have to communicate in English, but you can seek out opportunities to practice speaking the language. Talking with your classmates, for example, can be an easy and enjoyable way to get some practice. Also try to find native speaker on your campus and feel free to talk with them. Perhaps the easiest way to practice speaking is to rehearse aloud, since this can be done at any time, in any place, and without a partner. For instance, you can look at pictures or objects around you and try to describe them in detail. You can also rehearse everyday situations. After you have made a purchase in a shop or finished a meal in a restaurant and paid the check, pretend that all this happened in an English-speaking country and try to act it out in English.抓住机会说.的确,在学校里必须用英语交流的场合并不多,但你还是可以找到练习的英语的机会.例如,跟你的同班同学进行交谈可能就是得到一些练习的一种轻松愉快的方式.还可以找校园里以英语为母语的人跟他们随意交谈.或许练习讲英语最容易的方式是高声朗读,因为这在任何时间,任何地方,不需要搭档就可以做到.例如,你可以看着图片或身边的物件,试着对它们详加描述.你还可以复述日常情景.在商店里购物或在餐馆里吃完饭付过账后,假装这一切都发生在一个讲英语的国家,试着用英语把它表演出来.5. Read widely. It is important to read widely because is our learning environment; reading is the main and most reliable source of language input. When you choose reading materials, look for things that you find interesting, that you can understand without relying too much on a dictionary. A page a day is a good way to start. As you go on, you will find that you can do more pages a day and handle materials at a higher lever of difficulty.广泛阅读.广泛阅读很重要,因为在我们的学习环境中,阅读是最重要,最可靠的语言输入来源.在选择阅读材料时,要找你认为有趣的,不需要过多依赖词典就能看懂的东西.开始时每天读一页是个好办法.接下去,你就会发现你每天可以读更多页,而且能对付难度更高的材料.6. Write regularly. Writing is a good way to practice what you already know. Apart from compositions assigned by your teacher, you may find your own reasons for writing. A pen pal provides good motivation; you will learn a lot by trying to communicate with someone who shares your interests, but comes from a different culture. Other ways to write regularly include keeping a diary, writing a short story and summarizing the daily news.经常写,写作是练习你已经学会的东西的好方法.除了老师布置的作文,你还可以找到自己要写的理由.有个笔友可以提供很好的动力;与某个跟你趣味相投但来自不同文化的人进行交流,你会学到很多东西.经常写作的其他方式还有记日记,写小故事或概述每天的新闻.Language learning is a process of accumulation. It pays to absorb as much as you can from reading and listening and then try to put what you have learned into practice through speaking and writing.语言学习是一个积累的过程.从读和听中吸收尽量多的东西,然后再试着把学到的东西通过说和写 .。

2014101018课文翻译（Unit1——10）第一单元Translation of Text A半日1我走在父亲的一侧，牢牢地抓着他的右手。

我身上穿的，戴的全是新的：黑鞋子，绿校服，红帽子。

然儿我一点儿也高兴不起来，因为今天我将第一次被扔到学校里去。

2母亲站在窗前望着我们缓缓前行，我也不时的回头看她，希望她会救我。

我们沿着街道走着，街道两旁是花园和田野，田野里栽满了梨树和椰枣树。

3“我为什么要去上学？”我问父亲，“是我做错了什么了吗？”4“我不是在惩罚你，”父亲笑着说道，“上学不是一种惩罚。

学校是把孩子培养成才的地方。

难道你不想象你哥哥们那样，成为一个有用的人吗？”5我不相信他的话。

我才不相信把我从家里拽出来，扔进那个大大的，高墙围绕的建筑里对我有什么真正的好处呢。

6到了学校门口，我们看到了宽阔的庭院，站满了孩子。

“自己进去吧，”我父亲说，“加入他们。

笑一笑，给其他的孩子做个好榜样。

”7我紧抓着父亲的手，犹豫不决。

但是父亲却把我轻轻地推开了。

“拿出点男子气概来，”他说，“从今天起你就要真正开始自己的生活了。

放学时我会在这等你的。

”8我走了几步，便看见了一些孩子的面孔。

他们中我一个也不认识。

他们也没有一个认识我的。

我感觉自己像是一个迷了路的陌生人。

然而这时有些男孩开始好奇的打量我，其中一个走过来问到，“谁带你来的？”9“我爸爸”我小声说道。

10“我爸爸死了，”他简短地说。

11我不知道该说些什么。

这时学校的门已经关上了，有些孩子哭了起来。

接着，铃响了，一位女士走了过来，后面跟着一群男人。

那些人把我们排成几行。

使我们形成一个错综复杂的队行，站在那四周高楼耸立的院子里。

每层楼都有长长的阳台，阳台上带有木制顶棚，从阳台上可以俯视到我们。

12“这是你们的新家，”那位女士说道，“这儿有你们的父母。

一切能带给你们快乐，对你们有益的事物，这儿都有。

因此擦干你们的眼泪，快快乐乐地面对生活。

”13这样看来我之前的顾虑都是毫无根据的了。

Unit1 The Dinner Party关于男人是否比女人更勇敢的一场激烈争论以一种颇为出人意料的方式解决了The dinner party晚宴1. I first heard this tale in India, where is told as if true—though any naturalist would know it couldn’t be. Later someone told me that the story appeared in a magazine shortly before the First World War. That magazine story, and the person who wrote it, I have never been able to track down.我最初听到这个故事是在印度，那儿的人们今天讲起它来仍好像确有其事似的——尽管任何一位博物学家都知道这不可能是真的。

后来有人告诉我，在第一次世界大战之前不久，一家杂志曾刊登过这个故事。

但登在杂志上的那篇故事以及写那篇故事的人，我却一直未能找到。

2.The country is India.A colonial official and his wife are giving a large dinner party. They are seated with their guests—officers and their wives, and a visiting American naturalist—in their spacious dining room, which has a bare marble floor, open rafters and wide glass doors opening onto a veranda.故事发生在印度。

某殖民地官员和他的夫人正举行盛大的晚宴。

1．Gases such as carbon monoxide, emitted by factories and automobiles, have seriously polluted the atmosphere.工厂和汽车发出的一氧化碳一类的气体严重污染了大气2．The industrial engineer’s letter indicates that he doubts the feasibility of the plan.那为工业管理工程师来的信表明，他对改项计划是否可行有怀疑3．Many parents in the United States set aside a fund for their children’s education before they are born.美国许多父母在孩子出生之前就为他们的教育留出一笔专款4．I have made sure that her conclusion is based on facts.我已了解清楚，她的结论是以事实为根据的5．The medical team, composed of three doctors and two nurses, set off for the mountain(ous) area a few days ago.几天前，由三位医生和两名护士组成的医疗队出发到山区去了6．The village is named after the high mountain that stands in front of it.这个村庄是以树立在它前面的那座高山命名的7．He was ill for about a week, which has really set him back in his studies.他病了一个月左右，这使他在学习上耽误了很多8．The war that broke out between the North and the South in 1861 is known in history as the American Civil War.南方和北方之间于一八六一年爆发的那场战争在历史上称为“美国内战”1．Their argument ended when she slammed the door and left without a word.她砰地关上门，一声不吭地走了，他们间那场争执就此结束2．The guest at the dinner party were slightly surprised at the commanding tone of the American.出席晚宴的客人对那个美国人威严的语气感到有点以外3．Johnny has outgrown the fear of staying at home alone.约翰尼已长大成熟，不再害怕独自呆在家里了4．While all the other passengers made for the exit, he alone remained in his seat as if unwilling to leave the plane.当全部乘客都向出口处走去时，他却独自留在座位上，好象不愿意离开这架飞机似的5．The letter is to be handed to Dr. Wilson himself.这封信必须交给威尔逊博士本人6．While she felt like joining in the argument, Nancy was too shy to open her mouth.南希虽然很想参加辩论，但腼腆得不敢开口7．What do you think is the likeliest time to find him at home?你觉得什么时候最有可能在家里找到他8．The hunter’s face (was) lit up with excitement as soon as he saw a fox emerge from among the bushes and run in thedirection of/ make for the trap he had laid.猎人一看见有只狐狸从树丛中出现并向他设下的陷阱方向跑去，脸上顿时闪出了兴奋的表情It was suggested at the meeting that a committee of 11 be appointed to make a new constitution.会上有人建议任命一个十一人委员会来制定新章程2．By making on-the-spot observation, the young scientist obtained first-hand information they needed in their research work.这些青年科学家通过现场观察，获得了研究工作所需的第一手资料3．It is very likely that he will be rejected by the army because of his bad eyesight.他很可能会因视力不好而被拒收入伍4．The committee members have conflicting opinions as to the best location of the new airport.委员会成员在新机场最佳选址这一问题上持有不同意见5. Henry’s works of art are superior in many respects to those of his brother’s.亨利创作的艺术品在许多方面比他兄弟的要好6. The steady rise in the quality of our products owes much to the improvement of our equipment我们产品质量的稳步提高在很大程度上是由于设备有所改进7. Jim would have preferred to act on his own judgment, but he didn’t because as a soldier he had to obey the order.吉姆本想按照自己的判断行事，但他没有这样做，因为作为军人他得服从命令8. Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a city without bikes or one without cars. I should not hesitate amoment to prefer the latter.如果让我来决定我们是要一个没有自行车的城市呢，还是要一个没有汽车的城市，我会毫不犹豫地选择后者1. She got a post as a cashier at a local bank. But she was soon fired because she proved to be incompetent.她在当地一家银行找到一份出纳员的工作，但不久因不称职而被解雇了。

第一单元1 The idea of being a writer had e to me off and on since my childhood in Belleville, but it wasn't until my third year in high school that the possibility took hold. Until then I've been bored by everything associated with English courses. I found English grammar dull and difficult. I hated the assignments to turn out long, lifeless paragraphs that were agony for teachers to read and for me to write.从孩提时代，我还住在贝尔维尔时，我的脑子里就断断续续地转着当作家的念头，但直等到我高中三年级，这一想法才有了实现的可能。

在这之前，我对所有跟英文课沾边的事都感到腻味。

我觉得英文语法枯燥难懂。

我痛恨那些长而乏味的段落写作，教师读着受累，我写着痛苦。

2 When our class was assigned to Mr. Fleagle for third-year English I anticipated another cheerless year in that most tedious of subjects. Mr. Fleagle had a reputation among students for dullness and inability to inspire. He was said to be very formal, rigid and hopelessly out of date.To me he looked to be si*ty or seventy and e*cessively prim.He wore primly severe eyeglasses,his wavy hair was primly cut and primly bed. He wore prim suits with neckties set primly against the collar buttons of his white shirts. He had a primly pointed jaw, a primly straight nose, and a prim manner of speaking that was so correct, so gentlemanly, that he seemed a ic antique.弗利格尔先生接我们的高三英文课时，我就准备着在这门最最单调乏味的课上再熬上沉闷的一年。

5篇英语精读文章+翻译1.Can We Know the Universe? - Reflections on a Grain of SaltCarl SaganScience is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things - from sub-nuclear particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and thence to the cosmos as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world.Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a grain of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage-at the very least, the courage to question the conventional wisdom.But to what extent can we really know the universe around us? Sometimes this question is posed by people who hope the answer will be in the negative, who are fearful of a universe in which everything might one day be known. And sometimes we hear pronouncements from scientists who confidently state that everything worth knowing will soon be known - or even is already known.Let us approach a much more modest question: not whetherwe can know the universe or the Milky Way Galaxy or a star or a world. Can we know ultimately and in detail, a grain of salt? Consider one microgram of table salt, a speck just barely large enough for someone with keen eyesight to make out without a microscope. In that grain of salt there are about 1016 sodium and chlorine atoms. This is a 1 followed by 16 zeros, 10 million billion atoms. If we wish to know a grain of salt, we must know at least the three-dimensional positions of each of these atoms. (In fact, there is much more to be known - for example, the nature of the forces between the atoms - but we are making only a modest calculation.) Now, is this number more or less than the number of things which the brain can know?How much can the brain know? There are perhaps 1011 neurons in the brain, the circuit elements and switches that are responsible in their electrical and chemical activity for the functioning of our minds. A typical brain neuron has perhaps a thousand little wires, called dendrites, which connect it with its fellows. If, as seems likely, every bit of information in the brain corresponds to one of these connections, the total number of things knowable by the brain is no more than 1014, one hundred trillion. But this number is only one percent of the number of atoms in our speck of salt.So in this sense the universe is intractable, astonishingly immune to any human attempt at full knowledge. We cannot on this level understand a grain of salt, much less the universe.But let us look more deeply at our microgram of salt. Salt happens to be a crystal in which, except for defects in the structure of the crystal lattice, the position of every sodium and chlorine atom is predetermined. If we could shrink ourselves into this crystalline world, we could see rank upon rank of atoms inan ordered array, a regularly alternating structure - sodium, chlorine, sodium, chlorine, specifying the sheet of atoms we are standing on and all the sheets above us and below us. An absolutely pure crystal of salt could have the position of every atom specified by something like 10 bits of information. This would not strain the information-carrying capacity of the brain.If the universe had natural laws that governed its behavior to the same degree of regularity that determines a crystal of salt, then, of course, the universe would be knowable.Even if there were many such laws, each of considerable complexity, human beings might have the capacity to understand them all.Even if such knowledge exceeded the information-carrying capacity of the brain, we might store the additional information outside our bodies - in books, for example, or in computer memories - and still, in some sense, know the universe.Human beings are, understandably, highly motivated to find regularities, natural laws. The search for rules, the only possible way to understand such a vast and complex universe, is called science. The universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out.It is an astonishing fact that there are laws of nature, rules that summarize conveniently - not just qualitatively but quantitatively - how the world works. We might imagine a universe in which there are no such laws, in which the 1080 elementary particles that make up a universe like our own behave with utter and uncompromising abandon. To understand such a universe we would need a brain at least as massive as theuniverse. It seems unlikely that such a universe could have life and intelligence, because beings and brains require some degree of internal stability and order. But even if in a much more random universe there were such beings with an intelligence much greater than our own, there could not be much knowledge, passion or joy.Fortunately for us, we live in a universe that has at least important parts that are knowable. Our common-sense experience and our evolutionary history have prepared us to understand something of the workaday world.When we go into other realms, however, common sense and ordinary intuition turn out to be highly unreliable guides.For myself, I like a universe that includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence.2.Extraterrestrial LifeA. Bowdoin Van RiperWhether life exists anywhere in the universe besides Earth is an open question, one that Western scholars have debated for over 200 years without coming significantly closer to a solution.Proving that extraterrestrial life does not exist is, by definition, impossible.Our galaxy is too large for us to investigate every corner of it where life might have arisen since we last looked, and it is only one galaxy among many.Proving that extraterrestrial life does exist is easy in principle but difficult inpractice.The discovery of an alien organism would provide proof, but searching for one would require interstellar travel-something well beyond humans' technological reach.NONINTELLIGENT LIFE IN OUR GALAXYMost of the planets and moons in our solar system appear inhospitable to life as we know it. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune lack solid surfaces and receive only limited sunlight. Mercury is baked and irradiated by the sun, while Pluto is perpetually dark and frozen. Venus's dense atmosphere creates crushing pressures, intense heat, and corrosive rain at its surface. Few of the solar system's moons, and none of its asteroids, are large enough to hold even a thin atmosphere. The most likely places to search for life in our solar system appear to be Mars and the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Robot spacecraft have photographed Mars, Europa, and Titan from space. Robot landers have explored small portions of the Martian surface. Finding intelligent life on any of the three worlds now seems unlikely. Finding simpler forms of life, if they exist at all, is likely to require systematic observation at close range.The probability that life exists somewhere else in our galaxy is high, simply because the number of stars in our galaxy is so high. Even if only a tiny fraction of stars have planets, even if only a tiny fraction of those planets are suitable for life, even if life only develops on a fraction of those planets, and even if intelligence only evolves on a fraction of the planets with life, there are still likely to be thousands of life-bearing planets in our galaxy. Finding such life will, however, mean finding the planets. Even ifinterstellar travel was routine, the job would be daunting. It would mean finding one world among thousands, with noevidence of its special status visible at interstellar distances.INTELLIGENT LIFE IN OUR GALAXYIntelligent life, if it exists elsewhere, is likely to be much rarer than nonintelligent life. It may, however, prove easier actually to find. Our own species beams a steady stream of radio and television signals into space and attaches information-laden metal plates to spacecraft headed out of the solar system. The signals are an accidental by-product of broadcasting; the plates are a conscious attempt at communication. Both announce our existence, our level of technological sophistication, and a tiny bit about our culture.It is also possible that a sufficiently intelligent and technologically adept species might find us before we develop the ability to go looking for it. Believers in the extraterrestrial origin of UFOs argue that such encounters have already happened, either in the past or in the present. Most mainstream scientists are skeptical of such beliefs, explaining purported encounters with aliens in more prosaic terms.EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE IN POPULAR CULTUREPopular culture depicts thousands of human encounters with extraterrestrial life. Entire subgenres of science fiction are devoted to such encounters: "first contact" stories, "alien invasion" stories, "aliens among us" stories, and so on. A detailed discussion of popular culture's treatment of aliens could easily fill a book. Nearly all stories about extraterrestrial life, however, follow three well-established conventions.First, most stories featuring imagined extraterrestrial life tend to focus on one or, at most, two species from any given world. Gatherings of intelligent aliens from many worlds are common, but fully imagined alien ecosystems are not. The reasonfor this is both obvious and understandable. Ecosystems are extraordinarily complex. Describing one on Earth, the building blocks of which are familiar, is a significant challenge; creating a plausible alien ecosystem from scratch, using very different building blocks, is an even greater challenge.Second, the physical form of extraterrestrial species reflects human attitudes toward species on Earth. The sweet-natured title character of Stephen Spielberg's film E.T. has a head that is large in proportion to its body and eyes that are large in proportion to its head. It has, in other words, the basic morphology of a human infant. Alien species that invade or attack the earth often resemble creatures that Western culture deems unpleasant. Powerful and benevolent aliens, on the other hand, recall angels in their lack of permanent physical bodies. Their evolution "beyond the need for physical form" is also suggestive of ideas about the afterlife.Third, the personalities and thought patterns of intelligent aliens closely resemble those of humans. Alien invaders of Earth want what human invaders want: territory, resources, slaves, or mates. Alien benefactors of Earth act out of altruism or paternalism or to secure allies in a hostile universe. Humans and aliens routinely discover that despite their physical differences, they share many of the same hopes and fears.We know nothing of how extraterrestrial life - if it exists - appears, behaves, or (if intelligent) thinks. Stories about it thus allow for limitless imagination. We tend, nevertheless, to imagine aliens whose appearance reflects our attitudes toward species here on Earth and whose thought and behavior patterns mirror our own. The reason for this is less a failure of imagination than an acknowledgement of dramatic necessity.Stories about human encounters with alien species are, ultimately, stories about us rather than the aliens. The innocent, stranded aliens of films like Escape from the Planet of the Apes and Starman are litmus tests for human society. Good-hearted individuals shelter and aid them, but those in power persecute them; the stories simultaneously reveal the best and worst of human behavior. Stories like these require aliens that are more human than any real alien species is likely to be-aliens that are human enough for human characters to interact with and for human audiences to care about.3.We Are All ScientistsThomas H. HuxleyThe method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.It is simply the mode at which all phenomena are reasoned about.There is no more difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, than there is between the operations and methods of a baker weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely graduated weights.It is not that the action of the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working; but the beam of one is set on an infinitely finer axis than the other, and of course turns by the addition of a much smaller weight.You have all heard it repeated, that men of science work by means of induction and deduction: and that by the help of these operations, they wring from Nature certain other things, which are called natural laws and causes, and that out of these, theybuild up hypotheses and theories. And it is imagined by many that the operations of the common mind can by nomeans be compared with these processes, and that they have to be acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft. To hear all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science must be constituted differently from that of his fellow men; but if you will not be frightened by the terms, you will discover that you are quite wrong. Probably there is not one here who has not in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a complex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, though differing of course in degree, as that which a scientific man goes through in tracing the causes of natural phenomena.A very trivial circumstance will serve to exemplify this. Suppose you go into a fruiter's shop, wanting an apple--you take up one, and, on biting it, you find it is sour; you look at it, and see that it is hard and green. You take up another one, and that too is hard, green, and sour. The shop man offers you a third; but, before biting it, you find it is hard and green, and you immediately say that you will not have it, as it must be sour.Nothing can be simpler than that, but if you take the trouble to analyze and trace out into its logical elements what has been done by the mind, you will be greatly surprised. You found that, in the two experiences, hardness and greenness in apples went together with sourness. When you are offered another apple which is hard and green, you say: "All hard and green apples are sour; this apple is hard and green, therefore it is sour." You see, you have, in the first place, established a law by induction, and upon that you have founded a deduction, and reasoned out the special conclusion of the particular case. Now, suppose, someday, you are questioned by a friend: "But how do you know that allhard and green apples are sour?" You at once reply, "Oh, because I have tried them over and over again, and have always found them to be so." Well, if we were talking science instead of common sense, we should call that an experimental verification. The more extensive verifications are, the more frequently experiments have been made, and results of the same kind arrived at, and the more varied the conditions under which the same results are attained, the more certain is the ultimate conclusion. And in science, as in common life, our confidence in a law is in exact proportion to the absence of variation in the result of our experimental verifications. We believe gravitation in such an extensive, thorough, and unhesitating manner because the universal experience of mankind verifies it, and we can verify it ourselves at any time; and that is the strongest possible foundation on which any natural law can rest.Let us now take another example.Suppose that on coming down to the parlor of your house, you find that a teapot and some spoons which had been left in the room are gone--the window is open, and you observe the mark of a dirty hand on the window frame, and you notice the impress of a hobnailed shoe on the gravel outside. All these phenomena have struck your attention instantly, and before two seconds have passed you say, "Oh, somebody has broken open the window, entered the room, and run off with the spoons and the teapot!" You mean to say exactly what you know; but in reality you are giving a hypothesis. You do not know it at all; it is nothing but a hypothesis rapidly framed in your own mind. By a train of reasoning involving many inductions and deductions, you have probably arrived at the general law that the windows do not open by themselves. Something has opened the window.A second general law you have arrived at is that teapots and spoons do not go out of a window spontaneously. They have been removed. In the third place, you look at the marks on the windowsill and the shoe-marks outside, and you conclude that they are made by a man. You assume from all these premises that the man who made the marks outside and on the window sill, opened the window, got into the room, and stole your teapot and spoons.Now, in this supposition case, I have taken phenomena of a very common kind, in order that you might see what are the different steps in an ordinary process of reasoning. I say that you are led to your conclusion by exactly the same train of reasoning as that which a man of science pursues when he is endeavoring to discover the origin and laws of the most occult phenomena. The only difference is that the nature of the inquiry being more abstruse, every step has to be most carefully watched, so that there may not be a single crack or flaw in his hypothesis. A flaw or crack in many of the hypotheses of daily life may be of little or no moment; but, in a scientific inquiry, a fallacy, great or small, is always of importance, and is sure to be in the long run constantly productive of mischievous, if not fatal results./doc/043924829.html,puter AddictsDina IngberIt is 3 A.M. Everything on the university campus seems ghostlike in the quiet, misty darkness--everything except the computer center. Here, twenty students sit transfixed at their consoles, tapping away on the terminal keys. For the rest of the world, it might be the middle of the night, but here time does not exist. As in the gambling casinos of Las Vegas, there are no windows or clocks. This is a world unto itself. Like gamblers, theseyoung computer "hackers" are pursuing a kind of compulsion, a drive so consuming it overshadows nearly every other part of their lives and forms the focal point of their existence. They are compulsive computer programmers.What do they do at the computer at all hours of the day or night? They design and play complex games; they delve into the computer's memory bank for obscure tidbits of information; like ham radio operators, they communicate with hackers in other areas who are plugged into the same system. They even do their everyday chores by computer, typing termpapers and getting neat printouts. By breaking the code, they can cut into other programs, discovering secrets in computerized systems or making mischievous (and often costly) changes to other people's programs.Computer-science teachers are now more aware of the implications of this hacker phenomenon and are on the lookout for potential hackers and cases of computer addiction that are already severe. They know that the case of the hackers is not just the story of one person's relationship with a machine. It is the story of a society's relationship to the so-called thinking machines, which are becoming almost ubiquitous.Many feel we are now on the verge of a computer revolution that will change our lives as drastically as the invention of the printing press and the Industrial Revolution changed society in the past. By the most conservative estimates, one out of three American homes will have computers or terminals within the next five to ten years. Electronic toys and games, which came on the market in 1976, already comprise a more than half-billion-dollar business. And though 300,000 Americans now work full time programming computers, at least another 1.2 million will beneeded by 1990. Many of them are likely to come from today's young hackers.There is a strong camaraderie and sense of belonging among hackers. They have their own subculture, with the usual in jokes and even a whole vocabulary based on computer terminology (there is even a hacker's dictionary). But to outsiders, they are a strange breed. In high schools, the hackers are called nerds or the brain trust. They spend most of their free time in the computer room and don't socialize much. And many have trouble with interpersonal relationships.Joel Bion, a sophomore at Stanford, explains how he got hooked: "I've been working with computers since I was eight. I grew up in Minnesota and I didn't have many friends. I wasn't into sports and couldn't participate in gym class because I had asthma. Then I found a computer terminal at school. I bought some books and taught myself. Pretty soon I was spending a few hours on it every day. Then I was there during vacations. Sure, I lost some friends, but when I first started I was so fascinated. Here was a field I could really feel superior in. I had a giant program, and I kept adding and adding to it. And I could use the computer to talk to people all over the state, I thought that was a great social interaction. But, of course, it wasn't, because I never came into face-to-face contact."Interesting and malleable are the two key words if you want to understand the hacker's addiction and the increasing allure of the computer for all segments of our society.The computer can be almost as interesting as a human being. Like people, it is interactive. When you ask it a question, it gives you an answer. And because it stores great quantities of information, it can often answermore questions, more accurately, than human friends. This interaction has led some to attribute human characteristics to the machine.Hackers are not the only ones interacting with the computer on a personal level. The amazing powers of the machine have enticed even the most sophisticated scientists into wondering just how human it can become. The newly developing science of artificial intelligence aims at programming the computer to think, reason and react in much the same way that people do. Computers can diagnose a patient's ailments and recommend treatments. They can mimic the dialogue of a psychotherapist or the reasoning of a lawyer.If computers can replace our most admired humans, the professionals, then why shouldn't the hackers feel close to them and invest emotional energy in them? After all, the computer seems to have unlimited potential. Already, with today's technology, tens of thousands of words can be stored on a tiny silicon chip measuring less than a centimeter square and millimeter thick. And any item of information on the chip can be called up and displayed on a TV screen in a fraction of a second. So the computer user has access to worlds of information within reach, literally, of his fingertips. And the computer can rearrange that information and interrelate facts or draw conclusions at the programmer's command. It is extremely malleable.Computer-science teachers say they can usually pick out the prospective hackers in their courses because these students make their homework assignments more complex than they need to be. Rather than using the simplest and most direct method, they take joy in adding extra steps just to prove their ingenuity.But perhaps those hackers know something that we don't about the shape of things to come. "That hacker who had to be literally dragged off his chair at MIT is now a multimillionaire of the computer industry," says MIT professor Michael Dertouzos. "And two former hackers became the founders of the highly successful Apple home-computer company."When seen in this light, the hacker phenomenon may not be so strange after all. If, as many psychiatrists say, play is really the basis for all human activity, then the hacker games are really the preparation for future developments.Computers are not just becoming more and more a part of our world. To a great degree they are our world. It is therefore not unlikely that our relationship with them will become as subjective as that of the hackers. So perhaps hackers are, after all, harbingers of the world to come.5.Why Superstitions?Peter LorieEvery age pays attention to the ancient superstitions according to a certain subtle fashion, very often knowing nothing about the original sources from which they derived. It wasn't so long ago that bibles were fanned in front of sick men's faces and communion wine was prescribed for whooping cough while women bathed their sore eyes with baptismal water. Although modem Westerners would not admit to crossing themselves when faced with potential evil such as a passing magpie, they do cross fingers to prevent bad luck. Some superstitions merely transform from the original, and the original is frequently a relic of still more ancient cultures and long-vanished ways of life. Above all, superstitions remain as outward expressions of the tensions and anxieties that hold sway over humanity as itstruggles down the corridor of life from birth to death, full of change and uncertainty.We can see the superstition, therefore, as a kind of reassurance against fluctuation as though we are part of an impenetrable mystery with incomprehensible rules.And yet - strangely perhaps in this age of reason - it very often turns out that we are more interested in the mysteries of superstitions than in previous centuries when they were taken for granted, and that in fact there is much more to many superstitions than is at first obvious. Mistletoe, for example, was the most holy of plants to the Druids, why so? To hang a sprig of this strange plant in a house at Christmas is to attract young men to kiss young women beneath it, each time plucking one of the berries from the sprig. Why should this be so? Who started it? Why did the hanging of mistletoe keep away the devil? The young woman to whom the man had given the plucked berry would retire to her room, lock the door and swallow the berry. She would then inscribe the initials of the man onto a mistletoe leaf and "stitch it into her corset close to her heart, binding him to her so long as it remain there."Superstitious nonsense! But how do we maintain the best love affairs, the best and most happy relationships? By mutual concern, by bringing the partner close to an open heart, by honesty and warmth, by acknowledging their presence in our lives. How better to represent this than with a mistletoe leaf inscribed and secreted in the most intimate place?All superstition has grown from something; there is no smoke without fire. Who was the first one to decide that opening an umbrella in a house is bad luck? Who was the first to walk under a ladder and suffer the consequences? Who smashed a。

大学英语精读第四册课文翻译Unit 1两个大学男孩 不清楚赚钱需要付出艰苦的劳动 被一份许诺轻松赚大钱的广告吸引了。

男孩们很快就明白 如果事情看起来好得不像真的 那多半确实不是真的。

轻轻松松赚大钱约翰•G•哈贝尔“你们该看看这个 ”我向我们的两个读大学的儿子建议道。

“你们若想避免因为老是向人讨钱而有失尊严的话 这兴许是一种办法。

”我将挂在我们门把手上的、装在一个塑料袋里的几本杂志拿给他们。

塑料袋上印着一条信息说 需要招聘人投递这样的袋子 这活儿既轻松又赚钱。

“轻轻松松赚大钱!” “我不在乎失不失尊严 ”大儿子回答说。

“我可以忍受 ”他的弟弟附和道。

“看到你们俩伸手讨钱讨惯了一点也不感到尴尬的样子 真使我痛心 ”我说。

孩子们说他们可以考虑考虑投递杂志的事。

我听了很高兴 便离城出差去了。

午夜时分 我已远离家门 在一家旅馆的房间里舒舒服服住了下来。

电话铃响了 是妻子打来的。

她想知道我这一天过得可好。

“好极了!”我兴高采烈地说。

“你过得怎么样?”我问道。

“棒极了!”她大声挖苦道。

“真棒!而且这还仅仅是个开始。

又一辆卡车刚在门前停下。

”“又一辆卡车?”“今晚第三辆了。

第一辆运来了四千份蒙哥马利-沃德百货公司的广告 第二辆运来四千份西尔斯-罗伯克百货公司的广告。

我不知道这一辆装的啥 但我肯定又是四千份什么的。

既然这事是你促成的 我想你或许想了解事情的进展。

”我之所以受到指责 事情原来是这样 由于发生了一起报业工人罢工 通常夹在星期日报纸里的广告插页 必须派人直接投送出去。

公司答应给我们的孩子六百美金 任务是将这些广告插页在星期天早晨之前投递到四千户人家去。

“不费吹灰之力!”我们上大学的大儿子嚷道。

“六百块!”他的弟弟应声道 “我们两个钟点就能干完!”“西尔斯和沃德的广告通常都是报纸那么大的四页 ”妻子告诉我说 “现在我们门廊上堆着三万二千页广告。

就在我们说话的当儿 两个大个子正各抱着一大捆广告走过来。

这么多广告 我们可怎么办?”“你让孩子们快干 ”我指示说。