综英课文

Lesson5 Angels on a Pin Alexander Calandra

Some time ago, I received a call from Jim, a colleague of mine, who teaches physics. He asked me if I would do him a favor and be the referee on the grading of an examination question. I said sure, but I did not quite understand why he should need my help. He told me that he was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, but the student protested that it wasn't fair. He insisted that he deserved a perfect score if the system were not set up against the student. Finally, they agreed to take the matter to an impartial instructor. And I was selected.
I went to my colleague's office and read the examination question. It said: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the building, tie a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street, and then bring it up and measure the length of the rope. The length of the rope will be the height of the building."
I laughed and pointed out to my colleague that we must admit the student really had a pretty strong case for full credit since he had indeed answered the question completely and correctly. On the other hand, I could also see the dilemma because if full credit were given to him it could mean a high grade for the student in his physics course. A high grade is supposed to prove competence in the course, but the answer he gave did not show his knowledge on the subject. "So, what would you do if you were me?" Jim asked. I suggested that the student have another try at answering the question. I was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I was surprised that the student did, too.

Steve: Wait a minute... wait a minute! Let's not be a mob!
(The people seem to pause for a moment. Then, much more quietly and slowly, they start to walk across the street. GOODMAN stands there alone, facing the people.)
Goodman: I just don't understand it. I tried to start it, and it wouldn't start. You saw me. (And now, just as suddenly as the engine started, it stops. There's a frightened murmuring of the people.)
Don: Maybe you can tell us. Nothing's working on this street. Nothing. No lights, no power, no radio. Nothing except one car—yours!
(The people pick this up, and their murmuring becomes a loud chant filling the air with demands for action.)
Goodman: Wait a minute now. You keep your distance—all of you. So I've got a car that starts by itself—well, that's weird—I admit it. But does that make me a criminal or something? I don't know why the car works—it just does!
(This stops the crowd, and GOODMAN, still backing away, goes up the steps and then stops to face the mob.)
Goodman: What's it all about, Steve?
Steve (quietly): Seems that the general impression holds that maybe the people in one family aren't what we think they are. Monsters from outer space or something. Different from us. You know anybody that might fit that description around here on Maple Street?
Goodman: What is this, a practical joke or something?
(Suddenly the engine of the car starts all by itself again, runs for a moment, and stops. The people once again react.)
Goodman: Now that's supposed to make me a criminal, huh? The car engine goes on and off? (He looks around at the faces of the people.) I just don't understand it... any more than any of you do! (He wets his lips, looking from face to face.) Look, you all know me. We've lived here five years. Right in this house. We're no different from any of you!

Lesson 7 Mandela’s garden

While I have always enjoyed gardening, it was not until I was behind bars that I was able to tend my own garden. My first experience in the garden was at Fort Hare where, as part of the university's manual labor requirement, I worked in one of my professors' gardens and enjoyed the contact with the soil as an alternative to my intellectual labors. Once I was in Johannesburg studying and then working, I had neither the time nor the space to start a garden.
I began to order books on gardening. I studied different gardening techniques and types of fertilizers. I did not have many of the materials that the books discussed, but I learned through trial and error. For a time, I attempted to grow peanuts, and used different soils and fertilizers, but finally I gave up. It was one of my few failures.
A garden was one of the few things in prison that one could control. To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it and then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the owner of the small patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom.

Lesson8 my personal manager

So on that perfect October morning, I stopped Carlos and said, point blank, "It doesn't seem to bother you—being short, I mean."
He looked up at me. "Of course I mind being short. I get a stiff neck every day from looking up at people like you."
"I might have known I couldn't get a sensible answer from you." I started up the steps.
"Hey, don't go away. Please."
I stopped.
Carlos was through kidding. "Sure, it bothers me, being knee-high to a flea. But there isn't anything I can do about it. When I realized I was going to have to spend my life in this undersized skin, I just decided to make the best of it and concentrate on being myself."
"You seem to get along great," I admitted. "But what about me? No boy wants to date a girl taller than he is."
"The trouble with you is you're afraid to be yourself. You're smart. And you could be pretty. In fact, you might be more than pretty."
I felt myself turning red.
"I am getting a great idea," said carlos, and right then he suggested being my manager.
I wasn't sure. "W-e-ll—"
"Look," He almost fell off the steps in his eagerness, "Prize fighters have managers. And movie stars. Besides, what have you got to lose?"
I shrugged. "OK."

Lesson9 against all odds

When Stephen Hawking returned to St. Albans for the Christmas vacation at the end of 1962, the whole of southern England was covered in a thick blanket of snow. In his own mind, he must have known that something was wrong. The strange clumsiness he had been experiencing had occurred more frequently. At the party he threw on New Year's Eve, he had difficulties pouring a glass of wine, and most of the liquid ended up on the tablecloth.
　　After a series of examinations, he was told that he had a rare and incurable disease called ALS. The disease affects the patient's nerves in the spinal cord and the parts of the brain which control motor functions. The body gradually wastes away, but the mind remains unaffected. Hawking just happened to be studying theoretical physics, one of the very few jobs for which the mind is the only real tool needed. This, however, gave little comfort to the twenty-one-year-old who, like everyone else, had seen a normal life ahead of him rather than a death sentence. The doctors had given him two years.
　　Hawking was deeply shocked by the news and experienced a time of deep depression. He shut himself away and listened to a great deal of loud music. He kept thinking, 'How could something like this happen to me? Why should I be cut off like this?' There seemed very little point in continuing with his research because he might not live long enough to finish his PhD. For a while he quite naturally believed that there was nothing to live for. If he was going to die within a few years, then why bother to do anything now? He would live out his time span and then die. That was his fate.

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