题目内容
1 Medical consumerism — like all sorts of consumerism, only more menacingly — is designed to be unsatisfying. The prolongation of life and the search for perfect health (beauty, youth, happiness) are inherently self-defeating. The law of diminishing returns necessarily applies. You can make higher percentages of people survive into their eighties and nineties. But, as any geriatric ward shows that is not the same as to confer enduring mobility, awareness and autonomy. Extending life grows medically feasible, but it is often a life deprived of everything, and one exposed to degrading neglect as resources grow over- stretched and politics turn mean.
2 What an ignominious destiny for medicine if its future turned into one of bestowing meagre increments of unenjoyed life! It would mirror the fate of athletics, in which disproportionate energies and resources — not least medical ones, like illegal steroids — are now invested to shave records by milliseconds. And, it goes without saying, the logical extension of longevism — the "abolition" of death — would not be a solution but only an exacerbation. To air these predicaments is not anti-medical spleen — a churlish reprisal against medicine for its victories — but simply to face the growing reality of medical power not exactly without responsibility but with dissolving goals.
3 Hence medicine's finest hour becomes the dawn of its dilemmas. For centuries, medicine was impotent and hence unproblematic. From the Greeks to the Great War, its job was simple, to struggle with lethal diseases and gross disabilities, to ensure live births, and to manage pain. It performed these uncontroversial tasks by and large with meagre success. Today, with mission accomplished, medicine's triumphs are dissolving in disorientation. Medicine has led to vastly inflated expectations, which the public has eagerly swallowed. Yet as these expectations grow unlimited, they become unfulfillable. The task facing medicine in the twenty-first century will be to redefine its limits even as it extends its capacities.
In the author's opinion, the prolongation of life is equal to
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The UN today has the same basic purpose and structure as it did when it was founded in 1945. Its primary purpose—and greatest benefit to its members—is to maintain world peace. That, in turn, helps encourage business and international trade. In addition to that primary mission, the UN serves its member countries in a variety of other ways. The UN provides a forum for countries to promote their views and settle conflicts without violence, It allows countries to cooperate to solve world problems, such as poverty, disease, and environmental degradation. It serves as a symbol of international order and global identity. It promotes and coordinates economic and social progress in developing countries, with the idea that such problems create sources of conflict that can lead to war. The UN helps coordinate the work of hundreds of agencies and programs, both within its own organization and outside it. It also collects and publishes international data.
The UN is the result of a long history of efforts to promote international cooperation. In the late 18th century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed a federation or "league" of the world's nations. Kant believed that such a federation would allow countries to unite and punish any nation that committed an act of aggression. This type of union by nations to protect each other against an aggressor is sometimes referred to as collective security. Kant also felt that the federation would protect the rights of small nations that often become pawn (被人利用者) in power straggles between larger countries. The UN's charter established six distinct bodies that serve different functions: (1) the General Assembly, (2) the Security Council, (3) the Secretariat (秘书处), (4) the Economic and Social Council, (5) the International Court of Justice, and (6) the Trusteeship (信托投资理事会) Council.
The UN started in 1945 with 51 founding members—including the 50 countries that had attended the San Francisco conference, and Poland, which was not at the conference but signed the charter later. New members are admitted to the UN on the recommendation of the Security Council by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly. Membership is open to any country that supports the UN's mission and is willing to follow the rules and responsibilities specified in the charter. In its early years, Western countries dominated the ON and the General Assembly regularly sided with the United States. The Soviet Union provided a balance to Western influence by using its veto (否决) power in the Security Council.
What is the main purpose of the UN？
1 WHY SHOULD anyone buy the latest volume in the ever-expanding Dictionary of National Biography？ I do not mean that it is bad, as the reviewers will agree. But it will cost you 65 pounds. And have you got the rest of volumes？ You need the basic 22 plus the largely decennial supplements to bring the total to 31. Of course, it will be answered, public and academic libraries will want the new volume. After all, it adds 1,068 lives of people who escaped the net of the original compilers. Yet in 10 years' time a revised version of the whole caboodle, called the New Dictionary of National Biography, will be published. Its editor, professor Colin Matthew, tells me that he will have room for about 50,000 lives, some 13, 000 more than in the current DNB. This rather puts the 1,068 in Missing Persons in the shade.
2 When Dr Nicholls wrote to The Spectator in 1989 asking for names of people whom readers had looked up in the DNB and had been disappointed not to find, she says that she received some 100, 000 suggestions. (Well, she had written to "other quality newspapers" too. ) As soon as her committee had whittled the numbers down, the professional problems of an editor began. Contributors didn't file copy on time; some who did sent too much. 50, 000 words instead of 500 is a record, according to Dr Nicholls.
3 There remains the dinner-party game of who's in, who's out. That is a game that the reviewers have played and will continue to play. Criminals were my initial worry. After all, the original edition of the DNB boasted. Malefactors whose crimes excite a permanent interest have received hardly less attention than benefactors. Mr. John Gross clearly had similar anxieties, for he complains that, while the murderer Christie is in, Crippen is out. One might say in reply that the injustice of the hanging of Evans instead of Christie (entry in Missing Persons) notes. But then Crippen was reputed as the first murderer to be caught by telegraphy (he had tried to escape by ship to America).
4 It is surprising to find Max Miller excluded when really not very memorable names get in. There has been a conscious effort to put in artists and architects from the Middle Ages. About their lives not much is always known.
5 Of Hugo of Bury St Edmunds, a 12th-century illuminator whose dates of birth and death are not recorded, his biographer comments: "Whether or not Hugo was a wall- painter, the records of his activities as carver and manuscript. painter attest to his versatility." Then there had to be more women, too (12 per cent, against the original DBN's 3), such as Roy Strong's subject, the Tudor painter Levina Teerlinc, of whom he remarks. "Her most characteristic feature is a head attached to a too small, spindly body. Her technique remained awkward, thin and often cursory." Doesn't seem to qualify her as a memorable artist. Yet it may be better than the record of the original DNB, which included lives of people who never existed (such as Merlin) and even managed to give thanks to J. W. Clerke as a contributor, though, as a later edition admits in a shamefaced footnote, "except for the entry in the List of contributors there is no trace of J. W. Clerke."
The writer suggests that there is no sense in buying the latest volume
听力原文：M: Do you mind if I take notes？
W: Not at all.
M: Thank you. I see that you have been an assistant manager for four years, which means that you were made an assistant manager at a relatively young age. I'm interested in whether you have problems of authority, and how you would deal with them. Can you tell me how you would deal with a member of the staff who refused to carry out an order or request that you thought was perfectly reasonable？
W: I would make sure that the interview took place in private. I think that's important. I would ascertain whether there was antagonism towards myself, or whether the root of the cause was domestic, or indeed in the work situation, and I would take it from there.
M: You'd talk it through？
W: 0h, yes.
M: Right, thank you. Er… as you know, there have been a number of applications for this post.
Why do you think we should give it to you？
W: I recognize that I have a comparative lack of experience in senior management. Er... since I got my MBA, I've done a lot of work. I've done, ...er...negotiation studies, and psychology studies. I think that I have a basis, ...er...for a fresh and dynamic approach.
M: Most interesting. Thank you for coming, and we'll let you know it about a week.
W: Lovely, thank you. Nice to meet you. Goodbye.
What is the man interested in at the beginning of the conversation？
听力原文：W: Why are the children so noisy？
M: They want something for a snack.
W: Don't give them anything. They're going to have dinner soon.
What is the man going to give the children？
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