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What is the purpose of para. 2？
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PART C
Directions: You will hear three dialogues or monologues. Before listening to each one, you will have 5 seconds to read each of the questions which accompany it. While listening, answer each question by choosing A, B, C or D. After listening, you will have 10 seconds to check your answer to each question. You will hear each piece ONLY ONCE.
听力原文： Poe was born in Boston in 1809. He attended the University of Virginia, where he was a distinguished student and developed his lifelong taste for liquor. Afterward, he enlisted in the U. S. Army and rose to the rank of sergeant major. He was expelled from West Point after a year, loosing his hopes of becoming a career officer.
Poe started publishing his poetry and stories in the early 1830s and pursued a career in journalism to ensure some sort of financial security. In 1843, he published several works, including The Tell-Tale Heart and The Gold Bug which won a $100 prize in a contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. The story made Poe famous with the fiction reading public. His poem "The Raven" which appeared in the New York Evening Mirror in January 1845, was a critical and commercial success. Along with "To Helen" and "Annabel Lee", "The Raven' is considered one of Poe's finest poems. The Fall of the House of Usher and The Murders in the Rue Morgue are arguably two of his best short stories. But both Poe and his wile Virginia's poor health kept the pair in financial and emotional distress. Poe died in 1849.
When did Poe start publishing his poetry and stories and pursue a career in journalism？
Why didn't Miss Smith continue her study after she finished school？
听力原文： Japanese people, who never miss a chance to be photographed, were lining up to get their picture on a postage stamp. Vanity stamps that feature personal photographs went on sale for the first time in Japan as part of an international postage stamp exhibition. The customer's photo is taken with a digital camera and then printed on stamp sheets, a process that takes about five minutes. Sold in a sheet of 10 stamps for $8.80, little more than the cost of lunch in Tokyo, each stamp features a different scene from traditional Tokyo -- along with the photo. The stamps can be used normally to mail a letter, and postal officials hope they will help promote interest in letter writing in the Internet age. "Certainly E-mail is a useful method of communication, but letters are fun in a different way," said an official in the Posts Ministry. "We want to show young people that letters can be fun too." While similar stamp sheets debuted in Australia in 1999 and are now sold in some 12 nations and territories l Japan's fondness for commemorative photos is likely to make them especially popular here. Indeed, officials had prepared 1,000 sheets but they were sold out in less than 30 minutes. Although the stamps are currently only available as a special service during the exhibition, postal officials said they might start selling them on a regular basis in the future.
What does each vanity stamp cost？
I inherited my one litmus test from my father, Jim Alter, who flew 33 harrowing missions over Nazi Germany during World War 11. My father is not just a veteran who by all odds should not have survived. He is a true patriot. His litmus test is the proposal to amend the Constitution to ban flag burning, which will come up for a vote next week in the U. S. Senate. For dad—and me—any member of Congress who supports amending the Bill of Rights for the first time in the history of this country for a nonproblem like flag burning is showing serious disrespect for our Constitution and for the values for which brave Americans gave their lives. Such disrespect is a much more serious threat than the random idiots who once every decade or so try (often unsuccessfully) to burn a flag.
Our understandable outrage at flag burning shouldn't turn our brains to mush. "I feel the same sense of outrage, but I would not amend that great shield of democracy (the Constitution) to hammer a few miscreants," Colin Powell said when the issue last came up (his position has not changed). "The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away." Powell argues that a constitutional ban on flag burning is a sign of weakness and fear.
John Glenn, another of the thousands of combat veterans against the amendment (they have banded together in a group called Veterans Defending the Bill of Rights), notes that "those 10 amendments we call the Bill of Rights have never been changed or altered by one iota, not by one word, not a single time in all of American history. There was not a single change during any of our foreign wars, and not during recessions or depressions or panics. Not a single change when we were going through times of great emotion and anger like the Vietnam era, when flag after flag was burned or desecrated. There is only one way to weaken our nation. The way to weaken our nation would be to erode the freedom that we all share."
Actually, even during the Vietnam War, flag burning was rare. By one count, there have been only 45 such incidents in 200 years, and fewer than half a dozen since it was outlawed in 1989. Should the Constitution be amended, however, the incidence of flag burning is expected to surge as a form. of civil disobedience. What began as a phony issue designed to prove patriotism (usually on the part of those who never served, the primary sponsors) could become a real concern.
The flag-burning amendment, which already passed the House, is apparently just short of the 67 needed in the Senate. With one or two absences, the amendment would be approved. It would then go to the states for ratification, where its chances for approval appear good.
Senators afraid of being seen as soft on flag burners should just adopt the Hillary Clinton dodge: support for a statute, but not an amendment. Another law is a dopey idea (an earlier one was struck down by the Supreme Court), but it's politically safe and better than perverting the Constitution.
To make matters worse, the amendment is vaguely worded, which led to fatuous debate in the Senate over whether a woman wearing a skimpy bathing suit patterned with stars and stripes was guilty of desecration. Bloggers wondered the same thing about President Bush's new habit of autographing flags when he shakes hands on rope lines. Unconstitutional？ With a war on and a hundred other pressing problems, it's nice to see our elected representatives focused on what really counts.
The usual litmus tests-abortion, gun control, Iraq-shouldn't be. Reasonable and sincere people can disagree, w
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