The malls were filled with people seeking gifts for their loved ones. Some of the malls remained open around the clock, partly to satisfy our needs to buy gifts.
Behind the materialistic aspect of shopping for gifts lies the idea of caring, being attentive to the desires of special people in our lives. However, to use a well-worn play on words: it is our presence, not our presents, that truly counts. Many of us, unfortunately, can be so inattentive, even in the presence of our loved ones, that we might as well not be there at all.
Attention is one of the greatest gifts we can give each other. Companies around the globe spend billions every year on advertising to catch our attention for just a short moment at a time. Whole industries — media, entertainment, education — rely on the precious gift of our attention for their continued existence. A baby lacking attention for a long time is likely to be psychologically unhealthy.
In earlier times, both diet and attention could be left unregulated (没人管的) without major cause for concern. There were natural checks and balances: limited availability of food meant few got fat, for example. Similarly, in bygone times we might have spent a few hours communicating with the village storyteller; today, watching an entire TV series, while speaking to nobody, is common. In traditional societies, with smaller population, everyone would get a fair deal of attention. On many issues we might go to see Grandma or Grandpa; now we have Google and Wikipedia.
“She just wants attention.” people tend to think little of those doing things simply for attention. But the truth is that human beings need attention, and giving attention to each other is, to a large extent, what human civilization is based upon. This perhaps explains the runaway success of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. While we use such sites for “micro Hogging”, “idea voicing” and “status updates” — the reality is that we are often doing no more or less than fulfilling our basic human drive for attention exchange.
I friend you, you friend me, I retweet you, you retweet me. The charming ease with which we can now get and give attention is why many people appear overly attached to their smartphones. It is also a vicious (恶性的) circle. As ever more people are busy exchanging attention online, there is increasingly less attention to be paid in the real world, which forces more people to seek their attention exchange online, or else risk attention-starvation.
The very nature of attention exchange is being rapidly transformed, and there is a danger that some of us will develop unhealthy practices. Just as eating red meat every day is a bad idea, so it is with too much attention exchange. The biological consequences of our technological advancement in food production are highly visible; heart disease, diabetes and obesity. The consequences of our transformed attention exchanges will be psychological and social, and so may take longer to identify, but they will be equally damaging.
Face-to-face attention is becoming rarer, and therefore more valuable. In a sense it is priceless. And it is a gift that can be given all-year-round.
1.In the first two paragraphs the author __________.
A. offers advice to attention givers
B. analyses the present problems
C. states the necessity of presents
D. puts forward his point of view
2.What can we infer from Paragraphs 6-7?
A. More people will risk attention-starvation in future.
B. The nature of attention exchange is rarely changed.
C. Technological advancement contributes to all diseases.
D. Transformed attention exchanges do harm to society.
3.The writer’s purpose for writing the passage is to __________.
A. advocate more focus on real life attention
B. analyze the necessity of attention giving
C. give practical tips on attention exchange
D. recommend some social networking sites
My heart sank when the man at the immigration counter gestured to the back room. I was born and raised in America, and this was Miami, where I live, but they weren’t quite ready to let me in yet.
“Please wait in here, Ms Abujaber,” the immigration officer said. My husband, with his very American last name, accompanied me. He was getting used to this. The same thing had happened recently in Canada when I’d flown to Montreal to speak at a book event. That time they held me for 45 minutes. Today we were returning from a literary festival in Jamaica, and I was startled that I was being sent “in back” once again.
The officer behind the counter called me up and said, “Miss, your name looks like the name of someone who’s on our wanted list. We’re going to have to check you out with Washington.”
“How long will it take?”
“Hard to say ... a few minutes,” he said. “We’ll call you when we’re ready for you.” After an hour, Washington still hadn’t decided anything about me. “Isn’t this computerized?”
I asked at the counter. “Can’t you just look me up?”
Just a few more minutes, they assured me.
After an hour and a half, I pulled my cell phone out to call the friends I was supposed to meet that evening. An officer rushed over. “No phones!” he said. “For all we know you could be calling a terrorist cell and giving them information.”
“I’m just a university professor,” I said. My voice came out in a squeak.
“Of course you are. And we take people like you out of here in leg irons every day.”
I put my phone away.
My husband and I were getting hungry and tired. Whole families had been brought into the waiting room, and the place was packed with excitable children, exhausted parents, even a flight attendant.
I wanted to scream, to jump on a chair and shout: “I’m an American citizen; a novelist; I probably teach English literature to your children.” Or would that all be counted against me?
After two hours in detention, I was approached by one of the officers. “You’re free to go,” he said. No explanation or apologies. For a moment, neither of us moved, we were still in shock.
Then we leaped to our feet.
“Oh, one more thing.” He handed me a tattered photocopy with an address on it. “If you weren’t happy with your treatment, you can write to this agency.”
“Will they respond?” I asked.
“I don’t know --- I don’t know of anyone who’s ever written to them before.” Then he added, “By the way, this will probably keep happening each time you travel internationally.”
“What can I do to keep it from happening again?”
He smiled the empty smile we’d seen all day. “Absolutely nothing.”
After telling several friends about our ordeal, probably the most frequent advice I’ve heard in response is to change my name. Twenty years ago, my own graduate school writing professor advised me to write under a pen name so that publishers wouldn’t stick me in what he called “the ethnic ghetto” --- a separate, secondary shelf in the bookstore. But a name is an integral part of anyone’s personal and professional identity -just like the town you’re born in and the place where you’re raised.
Like my father, I’ll keep the name, but my airport experience has given me a whole new perspective on what diversity and tolerance are supposed to mean. I had no idea that being an American would ever be this hard.
1.The author was held at the airport because __________.
A. she and her husband returned from Jamaica.
B. her name was similar to a terrorist’s.
C. she had been held in Montreal.
D. she had spoken at a book event.
2.We learn from the passage that the author would __________ to prevent similar experience from happening again.
A. write to the agency B. change her name
C. avoid traveling abroad D. do nothing
3.Her experiences indicate that there still exists __________ in the US.
A. hatred B. discrimination
C. tolerance D. diversity
4.The author sounds __________ in the last paragraph.
A. impatient B. bitter C. worried D. ironic
On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily, and he realized the fact that the time had come for him to provide against the coming winter.
The winter ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them there were no dreams of Mediterranean voyages or blue Southern skies. Three months on the Island was what his soul desired. Three months of assured board and bed and good company, safe from north winds seemed to Soapy the most desirable thing.
Just as the more fortunate New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach each winter, Soapy had made his arrangements for his annual journey to the Island. And now the time had come.
There were many institutions of charity in New York where he might receive lodging and food, but to Soapy’s proud spirit the gifts of charity were undesirable. You must pay in humiliation of spirit for everything received at the hands of mercy. So it was better to be a guest of the law.
Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accomplishing his desire. He left his bench and went up Broadway. He stopped at the door of a glittering cafe. He was shaven and his coat was decent. If he could reach a table in the restaurant, the portion of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter’s mind. A roasted duck, with a bottle of wine, a cigar and a cup of coffee would be enough. Such a dinner would make him happy, for the journey to his winter refuge.
But as Soapy entered the restaurant door, the head waiter’s eye fell upon his shabby trousers and old shoes. Strong hands pushed him in silence and haste out into the street.
Some other way of entering the desirable refuge must be found.
At a corner of Sixth Avenue Soapy took a stone and sent it through the glass of a glittering shop window. People came running around the corner, a policeman at the head of them. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of the policeman.
“Where is the man that has done that?” asked the policeman.
“Don’t you think that I have had something to do with it?” said Soapy, friendly.
The policeman paid no attention to Soapy. Men who break windows don’t remain to speak with policemen. They run away. He saw a man running and rushed after him, stick in hand. Soapy, disgusted, walked along, twice unsuccessful.
On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant for people with large appetites and modest purses. Soapy entered this place without difficulty. He sat at a table and ate beefsteak and pie. And then he told the waiter he had no money.
“Go and call a cop,” said Soapy. “And don’t keep a gentleman waiting.”
“No cop for you,” said the waiter. “Hey!”
Then Soapy found himself lying upon his left ear on the pavement. He arose with difficulty, and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed a rosy dream. The Island seemed far away.
After another unsuccessful attempt to be arrested for harassing a young woman, Soapy went further toward the district of theatres.
When he saw a policeman standing in front of a glittering theatre, he thought of “disorderly conduct”. On the sidewalk Soapy began to sing drunken songs at the top of his voice. He danced, cried, and otherwise disturbed the peace.
The policeman turned his back to Soapy, and said to a citizen, “It is one of the Yale boys celebrating their football victory. Noisy, but no harm.”
Sadly, Soapy stopped his useless singing and dancing. The Island seemed unattainable. He buttoned his thin coat against the north wind.
In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man who had set his silk umbrella by the door. Soapy entered the store, took the umbrella, and went out with it slowly. The man with the cigar followed hastily.
“My umbrella,” he said.
“Oh, is it?” said Soapy. “Well, why don’t you call a policeman? I took your umbrella! Why don’t you call a cop? There stands one on the corner.”
The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise. The policeman looked at them curiously.
“Of course,” said the umbrella man, “well, you know how these mistakes occur…if it’s your umbrella I hope you’ll excuse me – I picked it up this morning in a restaurant – if it’s yours, I hope you’ll…”
“Of course it’s mine,” said Soapy.
The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to help a well-dressed woman across the street.
Soapy threw the umbrella angrily. He was angry with the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. They seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong.
At last Soapy stopped before an old church on a quiet corner. Through one window a soft light glowed, where, the organist played a Sunday anthem. For there came to Soapy’s ears sweet music that caught and held him at the iron fence.
The moon was shining; cars and pedestrians were few; birds twittered sleepily under the roof. And the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends.
The influence of the music and the old church produced a sudden and wonderful change in Soapy’s soul. He thought of his degraded days, dead hopes and wrecked faculties.
And also in a moment a strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of this pit; he would make a man of himself again. Those sweet notes had set up a revolution in him. Tomorrow he would be somebody in the world. He would…
Soapy felt a hand on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nothing.”
“Then come along,” said the policeman.
“Three months on the Island,” said the Judge the next morning.
1.Which of the following is the reason for Soapy’s not turning to charity?
A. His pride gets in the way.
B. What the institutions of charity offer isn’t what Soapy needs.
C. He wants to be a citizen who obeys the law.
D. The institutions of charity are not located on the island.
2.From the passage, we can see what the two restaurants have in common is that __________.
A. they are both fancy upper class restaurants
B. neither of them served Soapy
C. they both drove Soapy out of the restaurant after he finished his meal
D. neither of them called cops
3.Hearing the Sunday anthem at the church, Soapy was reminded of __________.
A. his good old days and wanted to play the anthem again
B. his unaccomplished ambition and was determined to get to the Island
C. his disgraceful past and determined to transform himself
D. his rosy dream and wished to realize it
4.By ending the story this way, the author means to __________.
A. show that one always gets what he/she wants with enough efforts
B. make a contrast and criticize the sick society
C. surprise readers by proving justice was done after all
D. put a tragic end to Soapy’s life and show his sympathy for Soapy
A classic joke goes like this: A nurse rushes into an exam room and says, “Doctor, doctor, there’s an invisible man in the waiting room.” The doctor says, “Tell him I can’t see him.”
Pretty simple, right?
Here’s how I tell it: “A nurse—her name is Joyce—feels a presence in the waiting room. She looks around but sees nothing. She jumps up from her desk, carefully replaces her chair, and runs down the lavender-hued hallway to the doctor’s office. She knocks on the door. No response. He’s not there. Where can he be? She continues down the hall, admiring a lithograph of an 18th-century Mississippi paddleboat along the way.” By this time, my audience has left, but I soldier on. “She bursts into the exam room and says, ‘Doctor, doctor!’ The doctor, I should mention, is a urologist with a degree from Ohio State, which is where my nephew …”
You get the idea. I’m an embellisher. I can’t leave a simple gag alone.
I’m not the only joke-challenged member of the family. My sister’s worse than I am. Her problem: She can’t remember them. “‘A nurse rushes into an exam room and says…’Uh, let me start all over again. ‘A nurse rushes into a waiting…’No, it’s not the waiting room. She just came from the waiting room. Let me start all over again. ‘A doctor rushes into…’ No, wait…”
My uncle’s different. He’s guilty of taking a perfectly fine joke and selling it as the second coming of Oscar Wilde, “Okay, this is a good one. Ready? No, really, ready? Okay, fasten your seat belts. Ready?‘A nurse…’Got it? A nurse? Okay, ready?‘A nurse rushes into an exam room and says, “Doctor, doctor, there’s an invisible man in the waiting room.”’ Now, this is where it gets funny. Ready?”
No one is ever ready, so they leave before he gets to the punch line.
My father’s on Wall Street, so he hears all the jokes before they hit the Web. And he lets you know he knows them all by telling you all of them. He also knows that most people don’t like jokes. So he slips them in under the radar: “I was chatting with Ben Bernanke the other day. You know Ben, don’t you? The Fed chief? Anyway, we were reviewing the Fed’s policy on long-term interest rates, and he told me it had evolved into its current iteration only after a nurse rushed into an exam room and said, ‘Doctor, doctor, there’s…’ Hey, where are you going?”
My brother Mark understands that the secret to good joke telling is to know your audience. When he entertained my grandmother’s bridge club one evening, he made it a point to adapt the joke to them: “A beautiful blonde nurse rushes into a consulting room…”
No one in my family has ever finished this joke.
But as bad as it is not to be able to tell a joke, there’s something worse: not being able to listen to one. Take my cousin Mitch for example.
“Why couldn’t the doctor see him?” he asked.
“Because he’s invisible,” I said.
“Now, I didn’t get that. I thought the doctor couldn’t see him because he was with a patient.”
“Well, yeah, okay, but the fact that the guy was invisible…”
“Could the nurse see him?”
“No. She’s the one who said he was invisible…”
“How’d she know he was there?”
“Because he…”
“When you say he was invisible, does that mean his clothes were invisible too?” Here’s where I tried to walk away.
“Because if his clothes weren’t invisible,” Mitch said, stepping between me and the exit, “then the doctor could see him, right?”
“Yeah, but …”
“At least his clothes.”
“I guess…”
“Unless he was naked.”
“Okay, he was naked!”
“Why would he go to his doctor naked?”
Next time you see my family and someone is telling a joke, do yourself a favor: Make yourself invisible.
1.Which of the following is true according to this article?
A. No one in the writer’s family is good at telling jokes.
B. Mark is the best at telling jokes in his family.
C. Mitch is very sensitive to all kinds of jokes.
D. A typically classic joke should cover all the details.
2.What is inappropriate about Mark’s adaptation of the joke?
A. He knows the audience very well.
B. He shouldn’t have entertained a bridge club.
C. He shouldn’t have begun the story with a beautiful blond nurse.
D. He shouldn’t have told old people jokes.
3.Mitch stepped between me and the exit because __________.
A. he wanted to go out with me
B. he wanted to block my way out
C. he was trying to repay the situation in the consulting room
D. he wanted to show that the doctor could see the patient
4.Which is the best title of the passage?
A. Learn to Amuse Others
B. Where to Find a Doctor
C. How to Ruin a Classic Joke
D. A Story about a Funny Family
阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
I recently traveled to San Francisco for some meetings and found myself with a half day to . My : The 49ers’ first game of the season, against the Green Bay Packers. The America’s Cup sailing races. Or I could get .
After a terribly long line at the car rental center, I was . So I disappeared into the fog and clouds shrouding the Pacific Coast Highway and headed south with absolutely no in mind. I drove through tunnels out of the mountains and stopped at a few state beaches; at one, I watched a wedding out on the cliffs among the crashing . Back in the car, I drove toward San Gregorio, a town that you can easily . I know because I drove right through it and up on a narrow pine tree–bordered asphalt(柏油) road that felt like it would go on .
A few people just moved around outside the San Gregorio General Store, talking about the motorcycles they've owned over the years. Inside, I found a bar with regular customers, two people playing guitar together, and, of course, a full-on store. I a song, took a seat quickly, and watched the guitarists play and dance. Then I congratulated them, a couple of wrinkled dollars in their bucket, and walked back out into the world.
It was pouring outside. We all waited, some patiently, others , because nature messed up their hurried day. I got lost in the sound and sight of the heavens away the dirt and dust of the world. “Mom, let’s run through the .” said a girl. “When you were talking to Daddy about his cancer, you said, if God can get us through this, he can get us through anything!” “Honey, you are right.” Mom said. Then off they ran. And yes, I did. I ran.
The day could have been so : being into a stadium or bar half-watching sports. this was much more rewarding. Hours prior, I was on a flight with the masses, going through the motions. Then I was out on my own, having an unexpected and unrepeatable experience.
I learned something on September 8: Don’t be to get lost—on purpose or otherwise—and have zero expectations. It will be good for you. I promise.
1.A. wasteB. killC. devoteD. spend
2.A. seriesB. privilegesC. optionsD. priorities
3.A. startedB. injuredC. lostD. stuck
4.A. freeB. occupiedC. suspiciousD. absorbed
5.A. freedomB. frightC. conscienceD. destination
6.A. carvedB. releasedC. standingD. running
7.A. wavesB. crowdsC. vehiclesD. hills
8.A. identifyB. missC. surviveD. recognize
9.A. pickedB. broughtC. endedD. took
10.A. steadilyB. smoothlyC. firmlyD. forever
11.A. recordedB. releasedC. orderedD. composed
12.A. brokeB. carriedC. withdrewD. threw
13.A. delightedB. annoyedC. calmedD. inspired
14.A. turningB. washingC. givingD. melting
15.A. dangerB. dustC. rainD. store
16.A. somewhatB. especiallyC. somehowD. absolutely
17.A. impressiveB. independentC. adventurousD. different
18.A. pushedB. persuadedC. talkedD. tricked
19.A. ButB. ThereforeC. BesidesD. Also
20.A. keenB. afraidC. curiousD. thoughtful
--- The manager of the factory wants to improve production a great deal, but he doesn’t spend much on technology.
---I am afraid he won’t realize his dream. You know ________.
A. you can’t eat your cake and have it
B. empty vessels make the greatest sound
C. enough is as good as a feast
D. two heads are better than one
