题目内容
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文：L— Liu Feifei, host of Dialogue on CCTV—9
R—Alistair Richards, Chief Operating Officer of Guinness World Records
L: Welcome to our show. Let's begin with the story of Guinness World Records. How did this Records come into being？
R: The Guinness World Records book came into being about fifty years ago. In 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, the managing director of the then Guinness Brewery was out doing some shooting of birds in his great country estate in Ireland. He went into an argument with one of his friends as to what was the fastest game bird in Europe. And later he decided that there should be some book of statistics which would stop this type of argument. He approached two statisticians and writers, the McWhirter twins, Norris and Ross McWhirter, and their office in central London, and asked them to develop the first Guinness World Records book, which they duly did.
L: That's funny. I mean, is that kind of related to the British personality that they like to talk about fine points and argue to a certain point where they need to verify the information with some statistical background？
R: I don't know if it's British but you're probably right. I think it's true to some degree of the male mind. For example, I think lots of boys and men love statistics and love competition and love comparisons. I mean it's grown out a bit more since then. The book is sold in a hundred countries around the world. We do about three million books a year. So it seems to have connected with something that all types of people can relate to.
L: Back in the 1950s, how long did it take for the first Records book to be put together？
R: I think he put it together pretty quickly, between probably eight months and two years.
L: How was he able to amass all this statistical information？
R: At the time he used it from the existing material. So what he did was put together the most comprehensive in terms of the most categories covered. He put together the ultimate facts--the highest, the lowest, the shortest, the fastest in as many different categories as he could. And he would have used the books that were published. They did the research, just the two of them, Norris McWhirter and Ross McWhirter.
L: How many different categories are there in your book today？
R: There are about fourteen or fifteen categories.
L: Are there sub-categories within the main categories？
R: There are. I mean you could talk about the human body. And we may talk about the most pierced women, for example, which in fact is 1,903. I met the Brazilian lady about three weeks ago. She now runs a Brazilian restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland. So there are those types of records and there are records about weight, records about strength and endurance. So each category is quite broad in terms of the number of different records that could fall underneath it.
L: You seem to suggest that those people are after fame or publicity. But tangibly--does this lead to wealth？
R: In some instances. What somebody could be good at doing to get a Guinness World Record is good enough for them to, perhaps, travel around the world doing it in exhibitions. Guinness World Records also makes TV programs in about ten countries and we sell TV programs in 76 countries around the world. So some- times people who get in the book can also get on the TV show. What happens is that if another TV program sees an individual who has got a Guinness World Record on our TV show, they might want to put him on their TV show. And it can sort of build from there. So they can become famous. It's not the primary purpose for which we put the book together. But
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2 They may have resisted Socrates' lesson. We do not. Several thousand years later, we are more wary of the enchantments of beauty. We not only split off-with the greatest facility-the "inside" (character, intellect) from the "outside" (looks); but we are actually surprised when someone who is beautiful is also intelligent, talented, good.
3 It was principally the influence of Christianity that deprived beauty of the central place it had in classical ideals of human excellence. By limiting excellence (virtus in Latin) to moral virtue only, Christianity set beauty adrift-as an alienated, arbitrary, superficial enchantment. And beauty has continued to lose prestige. For close to two centuries it has become a convention to attribute beauty to only one of the two sexes: the sex which, however fair, is always Second. Associating beauty with women has put beauty even further on the defensive, morally.
4 A beautiful woman, we say in English, but a handsome man. "Handsome" is the masculine equivalent of-and refusal of-a compliment which has accumulated certain demeaning overtones, by being reserved for women only. That one can call a man "beautiful" in French and in Italian suggests that Catholic countries-unlike those countriesshaped by the Protestant version of Christianity-still retain some vestiges of the pagan admiration for beauty. But the difference, if one exists, is of degree only. In every modern country that is Christian or post-Christian, women are the beautiful sex-to the detriment of the notion of beauty as well as of women.
The author means _________ by "whole persons" in Para. 1.
According to the passage, back in the 1950s, how long did it take for the first Records book to be put together？
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. At the end of each news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions.
听力原文： The U. S. ETS is looking at possible changes to GRE General Test. Changes under consideration for the verbal part include more reading passages and a broader selection. For the quantitative part, ETS plans to increase the depth and breadth of the reasoning skills needed. ETS wants to implement these changes by October 2006.
According to ETS, several things will be changed in the GRE General Test except ______.
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