英语写作范文30篇
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21 The Origin of Sports
When did sport begin? If
sport is, in essence, play, the claim might be
made that sport
is much older than
humankind, for , as we all have observed, the
beasts play. Dogs
and cats wrestle and
play ball games. Fishes and birds dance. The apes
have simple,
pleasurable games.
Frolicking infants, school children playing tag,
and adult arm
wrestlers are
demonstrating strong, transgenerational and
transspecies bonds with the
universe of
animals
-
past, present, and
future. Young animals, particularly, tumble,
chase, run wrestle, mock, imitate, and
laugh (or so it seems) to the point of delighted
exhaustion. Their play, and ours,
appears to serve no other purpose than to give
pleasure to the players, and
apparently, to remove us temporarily from the
anguish of
life in earnest.
Some philosophers have
claimed that our playfulness is the most noble
part of our
basic nature. In their
generous conceptions, play harmlessly and
experimentally
permits us to put our
creative forces, fantasy, and imagination into
action. Play is
release from the
tedious battles against scarcity and decline which
are the incessant,
and inevitable,
tragedies of life. This is a grand conception that
excites and provokes.
The holders of
this view claim that the origins of our highest
accomplishments
----
liturgy, literature, and law
----
can be traced to a play
impulse which, paradoxically,
we see
most purely enjoyed by young beasts and children.
Our sports, in this rather
happy,
nonfatalistic view of human nature, are more
splendid creations of the
nondatable,
transspecies play impulse.
22. Collectibles
Collectibles have been a
part of almost every culture since ancient times.
Whereas
some objects have been
collected for their usefulness, others have been
selected for
their aesthetic beauty
alone. In the United States, the kinds of
collectibles currently
popular range
from traditional objects such as stamps, coins,
rare books, and art to
more recent
items of interest like dolls, bottles, baseball
cards, and comic books.
Interest in collectibles has increased
enormously during the past decade, in part
because some collectibles have
demonstrated their value as investments.
Especially
during cycles of high
inflation, investors try to purchase tangibles
that will at least
retain their current
market values. In general, the most traditional
collectibles will be
sought because
they have preserved their value over the years,
there is an organized
auction market
for them, and they are most easily sold in the
event that cash is needed.
1
Some examples of the most
stable collectibles are old masters, Chinese
ceramics,
stamps, coins, rare books,
antique jewelry, silver, porcelain, art by
well
-
known artists,
autographs, and period furniture. Other
items of more recent interest include old
photograph records, old magazines, post
cards, baseball cards, art glass, dolls, classic
cars, old bottles, and comic books.
These relatively new kinds of collectibles may
actually appreciate faster as
short
-
term investments, but
may not hold their value as
long
-
term
investments. Once a collectible has had its
initial play, it appreciates at a
fairly steady rate, supported by an
increasing number of enthusiastic collectors
competing for the limited supply of
collectibles that become increasingly more
difficult to locate.
23 Ford
Although Henry Ford’s name
is closely associated with the concept of mass
production, he should receive equal
credit for introducing labor practices as early as
1913 that would be considered advanced
even by today’s standards. Safety measures
were improved, and the work day was
reduced to eight hours, compared with the
ten
-
or
twelve
-
hour day common at
the time. In order to accommodate the shorter
work day, the entire factory was
converted from two to three shifts.
In addition, sick leaves as
well as improved medical care for those injured on
the job
were instituted. The Ford Motor
Company was one of the first factories to develop
a
technical school to train specialized
skilled laborers and an English language school
for immigrants. Some efforts were even
made to hire the handicapped and provide
jobs for former convicts.
The most widely acclaimed
innovation was the five
-
doll
ar
-
a
-
d
ay minimum wage that
was offered in
order to recruit and retain the best mechanics and
to discourage the
growth of labor
unions. Ford explained the new wage policy in
terms of efficiency
and profit sharing.
He also mentioned the fact that his employees
would be able to
purchase the
automobiles that they produced
-
in effect creating a
market for the
product. In order to
qualify for the minimum wage, an employee had to
establish a
decent home and demonstrate
good personal habits, including sobriety,
thriftiness,
industriousness, and
dependability. Although some criticism was
directed at Ford for
involving himself
too much in the personal lives of his employees,
there can be no
doubt that, at a time
when immigrants were being taken advantage of in
frightful ways,
Henry Ford was helping
many people to establish themselves in America.
2
24 Piano
The ancestry of the piano can be traced
to the early keyboard instruments of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
---
the spinet, the
dulcimer, and the virginal. In the
seventeenth century the organ, the
clavichord, and the harpsichord became the chief
instruments of the keyboard group, a
supremacy they maintained until the piano
supplanted them at the end of the
eighteenth century. The clavichord’s tone was
metallic and never powerful;
nevertheless, because of the variety of tone
possible to it,
many composers found
the clavichord a sympathetic instrument for
intimate chamber
music. The harpsichord
with its bright, vigorous tone was the favorite
instrument for
supporting the bass of
the small orchestra of the period and for concert
use, but the
character of the tone
could not be varied save by mechanical or
structural devices.
The piano was perfected in the early
eighteenth century by a harpsichord maker in
Italy (though musicologists point out
several previous instances of the instrument).
This instrument was called a piano e
forte (sort and loud), to indicate its dynamic
versatility; its strings were struck by
a recoiling hammer with a
felt
-
padded head. The
wires were much heavier in the earlier
instruments. A series of mechanical
improvements continuing well into the
nineteenth century, including the introduction
of pedals to sustain tone or to soften
it, the perfection of a metal frame, and steel
wire
of the finest quality, finally
produced an instrument capable of myriad tonal
effects
from the most delicate
harmonies to an almost orchestral fullness of
sound, from a
liquid, singing tone to a
sharp, percussive brilliance.
25. Movie Music
Accustomed though we are to
speaking of the films made before 1927 as“silent”,
the
film has never been, in the full
sense of the word, silent. From the very
beginning,
music was regarded as an
indispensable accompaniment; when the Lumiere
films
were shown at the first public
film exhibition in the United States in February
1896,
they were accompanied by piano
improvisations on popular tunes. At first, the
music
played bore no special
relationship to the films; an accompaniment of any
kind was
sufficient. Within a very
short time, however, the incongruity of playing
lively music
to a solemn film became
apparent, and film pianists began to take some
care in
matching their pieces to the
mood of the film.
As movie theaters grew in number and
importance, a violinist, and perhaps a cellist,
would be added to the pianist in
certain cases, and in the larger movie theaters
small
3
orchestras were formed. For a number of
years the selection of music for each film
program rested entirely in the hands of
the conductor or leader of the orchestra, and
very often the principal qualification
for holding such a position was not skill or taste
so much as the ownership of a large
personal library of musical pieces. Since the
conductor seldom saw the films until
the night before they were to be shown (if
indeed, the conductor was lucky enough
to see them then), the musical arrangement
was normally improvised in the greatest
hurry.
To help
meet this difficulty, film distributing companies
started the practice of
publishing
suggestions for musical accompaniments. In 1909,
for example, the Edison
Company began
issuing with their films such indications of mood
as “pleasant”, “sad”,
“lively”. The
suggestions became more explicit, and so emerged
the musical cue sheet
containing
indications of mood, the titles of suitable pieces
of music, and precise
directions to
show where one piece led into the next.
Certain films
had music especially composed for them. The most
famous of these
early special scores
was that composed and arranged for D.W Griffith’s
film Birth of a
Nation, which was
released in 1915.
26. International Business and
Cross
-
cultural Communication
The increase in
international business and in foreign investment
has created a need for
executives with
knowledge of foreign languages and skills in
cross
-
cultural
communication. Americans, however, have
not been well trained in either area and,
consequently, have not enjoyed the same
level of success in negotiation in an
international arena as have their
foreign counterparts.
Negotiating is the process of
communicating back and forth for the purpose of
reaching an agreement. It involves
persuasion and compromise, but in order to
participate in either one, the
negotiators must understand the ways in which
people are
persuaded and how compromise
is reached within the culture of the negotiation.
In many
international business negotiations abroad,
Americans are perceived as
wealthy and
impersonal. It often appears to the foreign
negotiator that the American
represents
a large multi
-
million
-
dollar corporation that can afford
to pay the price
without bargaining
further. The American negotiator’s role becomes
that of an
impersonal purveyor of
information and cash.
4
In studies of
American negotiators abroad, several traits have
been identified that may
serve to
confirm this stereotypical perception, while
undermining the negotiator’s
position.
Two traits in particular that cause
cross
-
cultural
misunderstanding are
directness and
impatience on the part of the American negotiator.
Furthermore,
American negotiators often
insist on realizing
short
-
term goals. Foreign
negotiators,
on the other hand, may
value the relationship established between
negotiators and
may be willing to
invest time in it for long
-
term benefits. In order to solidify the
relationship, they may opt for indirect
interactions without regard for the time
involved in getting to know the other
negotiator.
27.
Scientific Theories
In science, a theory is a reasonable
explanation of observed events that are related. A
theory often involves an imaginary
model that helps scientists picture the way an
observed event could be produced. A
good example of this is found in the kinetic
molecular theory, in which gases are
pictured as being made up of many small
particles that are in constant motion.
A useful
theory, in addition to explaining past
observations, helps to predict events
that have not as yet been observed.
After a theory has been publicized, scientists
design experiments to test the theory.
If observations confirm the scientist’s
predictions, the theory is supported.
If observations do not confirm the predictions,
the scientists must search further.
There may be a fault in the experiment, or the
theory may have to be revised or
rejected.
Science involves imagination and
creative thinking as well as collecting
information
and performing experiments.
Facts by themselves are not science. As the
mathematician Jules Henri Poincare
said, “Science is built with facts just as a house
is
built with bricks, but a collection
of facts cannot be called science any more than a
pile of bricks can be called a house.”
Most scientists start an investigation
by finding out what other scientists have learned
about a particular problem. After known
facts have been gathered, the scientist comes
to the part of the investigation that
requires considerable imagination. Possible
solutions to the problem are
formulated. These possible solutions are called
hypotheses.
5
In a way, any
hypothesis is a leap into the unknown. It extends
the scientist’s thinking
beyond the
known facts. The scientist plans experiments,
performs calculations, and
makes
observations to test hypotheses. Without
hypothesis, further investigation lacks
purpose and direction. When hypotheses
are confirmed, they are incorporated into
theories.
28 Changing Roles of Public Education
One of the most
important social developments that helped to make
possible a shift in
thinking about the
role of public education was the effect of the
baby boom of the
1950’s and 1960’s on
the schools. In the 1920’s, but especially in the
Depression
conditions of the 1930’s,
the United States experienced a declining birth
rate
---
every
thousand women aged fifteen to
forty
-
four gave birth to
about 118 live children in
1920, 89.2
in 1930, 75.8 in 1936, and 80 in 1940. With the
growing prosperity
brought on by the
Second World War and the economic boom that
followed it young
people married and
established households earlier and began to raise
larger families
than had their
predecessors during the Depression. Birth rates
rose to 102 per
thousand in 1946,106.2
in 1950, and 118 in 1955. Although economics was
probably
the most important
determinant, it is not the only explanation for
the baby boom. The
increased value
placed on the idea of the family also helps to
explain this rise in birth
rates. The
baby boomers began streaming into the first grade
by the mid 1940’s and
became a flood by
1950. The public school system suddenly found
itself overtaxed.
While the number of
schoolchildren rose because of wartime and postwar
conditions,
these same conditions made
the schools even less prepared to cope with the
food. The wartime economy
meant that few new schools were built between 1940
and
1945. Moreover, during the war and
in the boom times that followed, large numbers
of teachers left their profession for
better
-
paying jobs
elsewhere in the economy.
Therefore in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the
baby boom hit an antiquated and inadequate
school system. Consequently, the “
custodial rhetoric” of the 1930’s and early 1940’s
no longer made sense that is, keeping
youths aged sixteen and older out of the labor
market by keeping them in school could
no longer be a high priority for an institution
unable to find space and staff to teach
younger children aged five to sixteen. With the
baby boom, the focus of educators and
of laymen interested in education inevitably
turned toward the lower grades and back
to basic academic skills and discipline. The
system no longer had much interest in
offering nontraditional, new, and extra services
to older youths.
6
29
Telecommuting
Telecommuting
--
substituting the computer for the trip to the job
----
has been hailed
as a solution to all kinds of problems
related to office work.
For workers it promises freedom from
the office, less time wasted in traffic, and help
with child
-
care
conflicts. For management, telecommuting helps
keep high
performers on board,
minimizes tardiness and absenteeism by eliminating
commutes,
allows periods of solitude
for high
-
concentration
tasks, and provides scheduling
flexibility. In some areas, such as
Southern California and Seattle, Washington, local
governments are encouraging companies
to start telecommuting programs in order to
reduce rush
-
hour
congestion and improve air quality.
But these benefits do not
come easily. Making a telecommuting program work
requires careful planning and an
understanding of the differences between
telecommuting realities and popular
images.
Many
workers are seduced by rosy illusions of life as a
telecommuter. A computer
programmer
from New York City moves to the tranquil
Adirondack Mountains and
stays in
contact with her office via computer. A manager
comes in to his office three
days a
week and works at home the other two. An
accountant stays home to care for
her
sick child; she hooks up her telephone modern
connections and does office work
between calls to the doctor.
These are
powerful images, but they are a limited reflection
of reality. Telecommuting
workers soon
learn that it is almost impossible to concentrate
on work and care for a
young child at
the same time. Before a certain age, young
children cannot recognize,
much less
respect, the necessary boundaries between work and
family. Additional
child support is
necessary if the parent is to get any work done.
Management too
must separate the myth from the reality. Although
the media has paid
a great deal of
attention to telecommuting in most cases it is the
employee’s situation,
not the
availability of technology that precipitates a
telecommuting arrangement.
That is partly why, despite the
widespread press coverage, the number of companies
with work
-
at
-
home programs or policy
guidelines remains small.
30 The origin of Refrigerators
7
By the
mid
-
nineteenth century, the
term “icebox” had entered the American language,
but ice was still only beginning to
affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United
States. The ice trade grew with the
growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns,
and hospitals, and by some
forward
-
looking city dealers
in fresh meat, fresh fish, and
butter.
After the Civil War
(1861
-
1865), as ice was used
to refrigerate freight cars, it
also
came into household use. Even before 1880, half of
the ice sold in New York,
Philadelphia,
and Baltimore, and one
-
third
of that sold in Boston and Chicago, went
to families for their own use. This had
become possible because a new household
convenience, the icebox, a precursor of
the modern refrigerator, had been invented.
Making an
efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now
suppose. In the early
nineteenth
century, the knowledge of the physics of heat,
which was essential to a
science of
refrigeration, was rudimentary. The commonsense
notion that the best
icebox was one
that prevented the ice from melting was of course
mistaken, for it was
the melting of the
ice that performed the cooling. Nevertheless,
early efforts to
economize ice included
wrapping up the ice in blankets, which kept the
ice from
doing its job. Not until near
the end of the nineteenth century did inventors
achieve
the delicate balance of
insulation and circulation needed for an efficient
icebox.
But as
early as 1803, and ingenious Maryland farmer,
Thomas Moore, had been on
the right
track. He owned a farm about twenty miles outside
the city of Washington,
for which the
village of Georgetown was the market center. When
he used an icebox
of his own design to
transport his butter to market, he found that
customers would
pass up the rapidly
melting stuff in the tubs of his competitors to
pay a premium price
for his butter,
still fresh and hard in neat,
one
-
pound bricks. One
advantage of his
icebox, Moore
explained, was that farmers would no longer have
to travel to market at
night in order
to keep their produce cool.
31 British Columbia
British
Columbia is the third largest Canadian provinces,
both in area and population.
It is
nearly 1.5 times as large as Texas, and extends
800 miles (1,280km) north from
the
United States border. It includes Canada’s entire
west coast and the islands just off
the
coast.
Most of
British Columbia is mountainous, with long rugged
ranges running north and
south. Even
the coastal islands are the remains of a mountain
range that existed
8
thousands of years ago. During the last
Ice Age, this range was scoured by glaciers
until most of it was beneath the sea.
Its peaks now show as islands scattered along the
coast.
The southwestern coastal region has a
humid mild marine climate. Sea winds that
blow inland from the west are warmed by
a current of warm water that flows through
the Pacific Ocean. As a result, winter
temperatures average above freezing and
summers are mild. These warm western
winds also carry moisture from the ocean.
Inland from the
coast, the winds from the Pacific meet the
mountain barriers of the
coastal ranges
and the Rocky Mountains. As they rise to cross the
mountains, the
winds are cooled, and
their moisture begins to fall as rain. On some of
the western
slopes almost 200 inches
(500cm) of rain fall each year.
More than half of British
Columbia is heavily forested. On mountain slopes
that
receive plentiful rainfall, huge
Douglas firs rise in towering columns. These
forest
giants often grow to be as much
as 300 feet (90m) tall, with diameters up to 10
feet
(3m). More lumber is produced from
these trees than from any other kind of tree in
North America. Hemlock, red cedar, and
balsam fir are among the other trees found in
British Columbia.
32 Botany
Botany, the study of
plants, occupies a peculiar position in the
history of human
knowledge. For many
thousands of years it was the one field of
awareness about
which humans had
anything more than the vaguest of insights. It is
impossible to
know today just what our
Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but form
what we
can observe of
pre
-
industrial societies
that still exist a detailed learning of plants and
their properties must be extremely
ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of
the
food pyramid for all living things
even for other plants. They have always been
enormously important to the welfare of
people not only for food, but also for clothing,
weapons, tools, dyes, medicines,
shelter, and a great many other purposes. Tribes
living today in the jungles of the
Amazon recognize literally hundreds of plants and
know many properties of each. To them,
botany, as such, has no name and is probably
not even recognized as a special branch
of “knowledge” at all.
Unfortunately, the more industrialized
we become the farther away we move from
direct contact with plants, and the
less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet
9
everyone comes
unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical
knowledge, and
few people will fail to
recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our
Neolithic
ancestors, living in the
Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered
that certain
grasses could be harvested
and their seeds planted for richer yields the next
season the
first great step in a new
association of plants and humans was taken. Grains
were
discovered and from them flowed
the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From
then on, humans would increasingly take
their living from the controlled production
of a few plants, rather than getting a
little here and a little there from many varieties
that grew wild
-
and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands
of years of
experience and intimacy
with plants in the wild would begin to fade away.
33 Plankton
Scattered
through the seas of the world are billions of tons
of small plants and animals
called
plankton. Most of these plants and animals are too
small for the human eye to
see. They
drift about lazily with the currents, providing a
basic food for many larger
animals.
Plankton has
been described as the equivalent of the grasses
that grow on the dry land
continents,
and the comparison is an appropriate one. In
potential food value, however,
plankton
far outweighs that of the land grasses. One
scientist has estimated that while
grasses of the world produce about 49
billion tons of valuable carbohydrates each year,
the sea’s plankton generates more than
twice as much.
Despite its enormous food potential,
little effect was made until recently to farm
plankton as we farm grasses on land.
Now marine scientists have at last begun to
study this possibility, especially as
the sea’s resources loom even more important as a
means of feeding an expanding world
population.
No
one yet has seriously suggested that
“plankton
-
burgers” may soon
become popular
around the world. As a
possible farmed supplementary food source,
however,
plankton is gaining
considerable interest among marine scientists.
One type of
plankton that seems to have great harvest
possibilities is a tiny
shrimp
-
like
creature called krill. Growing to two or three
inches long, krill provides
the major
food for the great blue whale, the largest animal
to ever inhabit the Earth.
Realizing
that this whale may grow to 100 feet and weigh 150
tons at maturity, it is
not surprising
that each one
10
34 Raising
Oysters
In the
oysters were raised in much the same way as dirt
farmers raised tomatoes
-
by
transplanting them. First, farmers
selected the oyster bed, cleared the bottom of old
shells and other debris, then scattered
clean shells about. Next, they ”planted”
fertilized oyster eggs, which within
two or three weeks hatched into larvae. The larvae
drifted until they attached themselves
to the clean shells on the bottom. There they
remained and in time grew into baby
oysters called seed or spat. The spat grew larger
by drawing in seawater from which they
derived microscopic particles of food. Before
long, farmers gathered the baby
oysters, transplanted them once more into another
body of water to fatten them up.
Until recently
the supply of wild oysters and those crudely
farmed were more than
enough to satisfy
people’s needs. But today the delectable seafood
is no longer
available in abundance.
The problem has become so serious that some oyster
beds
have vanished entirely.
Fortunately, as
far back as the early 1900’s marine biologists
realized that if new
measures were not
taken, oysters would become extinct or at best a
luxury food. So
they set up
well
-
equipped hatcheries and
went to work. But they did not have the
proper equipment or the skill to handle
the eggs. They did not know when, what, and
how to feed the larvae. And they knew
little about the predators that attack and eat
baby oysters by the millions. They
failed, but they doggedly kept at it. Finally, in
the
1940’s a significant breakthrough
was made.
The
marine biologists discovered that by raising the
temperature of the water, they
could
induce oysters to spawn not only in the summer but
also in the fall, winter, and
spring.
Later they developed a technique for feeding the
larvae and rearing them to
spat. Going
still further, they succeeded in breeding new
strains that were resistant to
diseases, grew faster and larger, and
flourished in water of different salinities and
temperatures. In addition, the
cultivated oysters tasted better!
35 Oil Refining
An important new industry,
oil refining, grew after the Civil war. Crude oil,
or
petroleum
-
a
dark, thick ooze from the earth
-
had been known for
hundreds of years,
but little use had
ever been made of it. In the 1850’s Samuel M.
Kier, a manufacturer
11