《毕金献阅读理解》电子书节选之四

　　Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals and soldiers, whereas the people who

　　really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. We do not know who first set a broken leg, or launched a seaworthy boat, or calculated the length of the year, or manured a field; but we know all about the killers and destroyers. People think a great deal of them, so much so that on all the highest pillars in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a general or a soldier. And I think most people believe that the greatest countries are those that have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them as conquerors. It is just possible they are, but they are not the most civilized.

　　Animals fight; so do savages; hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Even being good at getting other people to fight for you and telling them how to do it most efficiently this, after all, is what conquerors and generals have done is not being civilized. People fight to settle quarrels. Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their disputes other than by seeing which side can kill off greater number of the other side, and then saying that that side which has killed most has won. And it not only has won, but, because it has won, has been in the right. For that is what going to war means; it means saying that might is right.

　　This is what the story of mankind has on the whole been like. Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars in history, in which millions of people were killed or mutilated . And while today it is true that people do not fight and kill each other in the streets while, that is to say, we have got to the stage of keeping the rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life nations and countries have not learnt to do this yet, and still behave like savages.

　　11. In the opening sentence, the author indicates that

　　[A] most history books were comprised by conquerors, generals and soldiers.

　　[B] hardly anyone who gave impetus to civilization is mentioned in history books.

　　[C] history writings are more about conquerors than actual creators of civilization.

　　[D] conquerors, generals and soldiers should be least mentioned in history books.

　　12. In the author s opinion, the countries that conquered a large number of other countries are

　　[A] certainly both the most powerful and most civilized. [B] neither the greatest nor the most civilized in any way.

　　[C] possibly either the most civilized or the mightiest in a way.

　　[D] likely the mightiest in some sense but not the most civilized.

　　13. The meaning of the last sentence in Paragraph 2 is that

　　[A] fighters believe that the winner is right and the loser wrong.

　　[B] only those who are mighty have the right to go to war.

　　[C] those who are right should fight against those who are wrong.

　　[D] only powerful nations might win the right to rule weak ones.

　　14. Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars in history. The author says this in order to show that our own age is

　　[A] different from those of the past.

　　[B] not much better than the past ones.

　　[C] more civilized than the past times.

　　[D] staying as civilized as those of the past.

　　15. The author s attitude to war may be best expressed as

　　[A] a great disappointment.[B] a cold reproach.

　　[C] a stern condemnation.[D] a sharp criticism.

　　Text 4

　　Through human history, weather has altered the march of events and caused some mighty cataclysms. Since Columbus did not know where he was going or where he had arrived when he got there, the winds truly deserve nearly as much credit as he for the discovery of America. Ugly west winds helped turn the 1588 Spanish Armada away from England in a limping panic. Napoleon was done in twice by weather: once by the snow and cold that forced his fearful retreats from Moscow, later by the rain that bedevilled him at Waterloo and caused Victor Hugo to write: A few drops of water... and unseasonable cloud crossing the sky, sufficed for the overthrow of a world. In 1944 the Allied invasion of Normandy was made possible by a narrow interval of reasonably good weather between the bad. It was so narrow, in fact, that Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower later expressed gratitude to the gods of war .

　　Every year brings fresh reminders of the weather s power over human life and events in the form of horrifying tornadoes, hurricanes and floods. These leave behind forgettable statistics and unforgettable images of devastated towns and battered humanity that can only humble people in the face of such wrath. Farmers often suffer the most, from the drought to the hailstorms or quick freezes that even today can wipe out whole crops in minutes. Icy assaults serve as reminders of the inescapable vulnerability of life and social well?being to the whims of the weather. And history is packed with reminders of far worse. The weather, for example, provoked a major social dislocation in the United States in the 1930 s when it turned much of the South west into the Dust Bowl.

　　No wonder, then, that man s great dream has been some day to control the weather. The first step toward control, of course, is knowledge, and scientists have been hard at work for years trying to keep track of the weather. The United States and other nations have created an international apparatus that maintains some 100,000 stations to check the weather round the clock in every sector of the globe and, with satellites, in a good deal of the more than 16 billion cubic kilometers of the atmosphere. With computers on tap and electronic eyes in the sky, modern man has thus come far in dealing with the weather. Yet man s predicament today is not too far removed from that of his remote ancestors. For all the advances of scientific forecasting, in spite of the thousands of daily bulletins and advisories that get flashed about, the weather is still ultimately often changing and unpredictable. Man s dream of controlling it is still just that a dream.

　　16. The writer is of the opinion that Columbus

　　[A] owed much to the west winds for his discovery.

　　[B] took credit for the discovery from someone else.

　　[C] was unaware that he had discovered the New World.

　　[D] could hardly deserve to be the discoverer of America.

　　17. The quote from Victor Hugo indicates that Napoleon

　　[A] underrated the effect of the weather change.

　　[B] was the greatest victim of the untimely rain.

　　[C] failed to foresee the unexpected weather.

　　[D] encountered a crushing blow at Waterloo.

　　18. What helped the allies to carry out a successful invasion of Normandy?

　　[A] It was a brief spell of fairly good weather.

　　[B] It was a short period of terrible weather.

　　[C] It was calm weather followed by a storm.

　　[D] It was the excellent weather condition.

　　19. According to the author, it is UNTRUE about weather control that

　　[A] computers and satellites are powerful instruments in dealing with weather.

　　[B] we are far from being able to control the weather despite modern devices.

　　[C] we can bring the weather under control owing to technological advances.

　　[D] modern electronic devices have enabled us to predict the weather accurately.

　　20. We can conclude from the text that

　　[A] man is very much at the mercy of weather.

　　[B] man is doomed to be destroyed by weather.

　　[C] weather is sure to be tamed by human beings.

　　[D] it s only a matter of time to conquer weather.

　　Part B

　　Directions:

　　In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 21 25, choose the most suitable one from the list A G to fit into each of the number blanks. There are two extra choices, which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

　　Ecologists have generally defined the environment as the external conditions and influences affecting the life and development of organisms. From this basic concept a definition of the human environment can be derived by replacing organisms by man in the above definition. Further clarification of the nature of human conditions and influences is needed.

　　. The lithosphere includes the Earth s solid crust down to an average depth of 60km into the interior of the globe. The hydrosphere is made up by the oceans, lakes, rivers, icecaps and other water bodies. The atmosphere comprises the gaseous envelope of the planet.

　　Living organisms and non-living parts depend upon each other and interact in complex ways, which are studied by ecologists with the fundamental ecosystem approach.

　　Moving from the global view of spaceship Earth to a regional, national, or local level, one is led to the consideration of fellow human beings as an additional social component of the environment. . In particular, they have created an artificial, man-made environment which affects all other environmental components. The environmental problem exists within these inter-relationships and inter?dependencies.

　　The difficulties involved are described by Bartelmus, who offers a tentative list of general human objectives, condensed from a variety of publicly proclaimed social objectives. The list of objectives includes affection, recreation and entertainment, education, human freedoms , shelter, esthetic and cultural values, political equity , health, physiological needs and future quality of life. Subjective value judgments are involved in such a list, and any further breakdown would be even more arbitrary as human preferences vary significantly among individuals and through time and space.

　　[A]The shift in the way ecologists study the planet, from the spaceship Earth paradigm to one that emphasizes the role of social interactions in the environment, allows for a great deal of subjectivity.

　　[B]Development is generally accepted to be a process that attempts to improve the living conditions of people. Most also agree that the improvement of living conditions relates to non-material wants as well as to physical requirements. Development goals that call for the increase of human welfare or the improvement of the quality of life reflect this agreement.

　　[C]Taking a global look at the whole of mankind, regional variations of habitat may be put aside for a description of the major physical characteristics of our planet.

　　[D] Quantifiable definitions of these concepts are needed for measuring progress toward development goals. A typical starting point has been to break down the overall objective of human welfare into sub-objectives or targets.

　　[E] The human environment is in the process of becoming so diverse that sub-categories are so far from their starting point that the subsequent subjectivity makes it impossible to have clear objectives.

　　[F] The biosphere is the part of the physical world where life can exist, and includes the living organisms themselves. It extends into all other spheres and is usually broken down into biotic and abiotic components.

　　[G] Social groups such as nations, tribes and families interact in numerous ways, both aggressive and cooperative, and cause distinctive impacts, both productive and destructive, on the biophysical environment.

　　参考答案

　　Part A

　　Text 3: 11. B 12. D 13. A 14. D 15. C

　　Text 4: 16. C 17. B 18. A 19. C 20. A

　　Part B

　　21. C 22. F 23. G 24. B 25. D