填空题The cinema has learned a great deal from the theater about presentation. Gone are the days when crowds were packed on wooden benches in tumble-down buildings to gape the antics of silent, jerking figures on the screen, where some poor pianist made frantic efforts to translate the dramas into music. These days it is quite easier to find a cinema that surpasses a theater in luxury. Even in small villages, cinemas are spacious, well-lit and well-ventilated places where one can sit for comfort. The projectionist has been trained to give the audience time to prepare themselves for the film they are to see. Talk drops to a whisper and then fades out together. As soon as the cinema is in darkness, spotlights are focused on the curtains which are drawn slowly apart, often to the accompany Of music, to reveal the title of the film.
Everything has carefully contrived so that the spectator will never actually see the naked screen which will remind him all too sharply that what he is about to see is nothing merely shadows flickering on a white board. However much the cinema tries to simulate the conditions in a theater, it never fully succeeds. Nothing can equal to the awe and sense of hushed expectation which is felt by a theater audience as the curtain is slowly risen.
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2.单项选择题The romantic archetype of the poor, isolated writer living abroad was perhaps best immortalized by Ernest Hemingway in "A Moveable Feast," his memoir of life in Paris as a young writer in the 1920s. Yet little remains of the kind of life he described, while electronic communications, cheap travel and modern economics have virtually wiped out much of the expatriate writer ethos.
Paradoxically, those same developments have made life more practical for the many writers who still seek distant shores to escape the conventions and restrictions of their home countries. Nevertheless, it’s not quite what it used to be, as a few expatriate writers attest.
Just this week, Norman Spinrad, an American science fiction writer who has lived in Paris for 15 years, suddenly had to repatriate to New York after his landlord decided to sell his Latin Quarter apartment. ’Tm being squeezed out of France," said Spinrad. "Because I’m a writer I don’t have a regular job. So in order to get an apartment they demand a year’s deposit to be tied up 20 grand or so and I am not rich enough to be able to lose 20 grand and then be able to continue to pay the rent. "Even if you’ve got the money, they’d rather rent it to somebody with a salary," added Spinrad, 63. "The paradox is that the French encourage creative artists on every other level, and I’ve been treated very well." Spinrad first came to France to write a novel set in Paris, but ended up staying because he liked the lifestyle. He said he intends to return if he can.
Jerome Charyn, another American writer from New York who lives in Paris, says he loves the "softness" of European culture. "I feel there’s a kind of brutality in America," he said. "It’s part of its virtues because as a creator you probably need that brutality. But as someone who’s just sort of bouncing around day-to-day, you don’t need it." Like many of today’s nomadic writers, Charyn maintains a home in his native country to fuel his fiction. "I feel like Jekyll and Hyde, I’m constantly split," he says. He teaches film at the American University of Paris and said that having a regular job helps the writer abroad in more ways than fighting bureaucracy. "It sort of puts you into the system, makes it easier for you to exist within the culture," he said. "You’re no longer that isolated because you’re seeing students, you’re seeing other faculty members, you have a very different kind of context."
Writers abroad say they do not feel cut off from what is happening in the United States. "I feel I know more about what’s going on in the States being here than being there," Spinrad said, "because the news there is just pitiful and pressured by the government, if not controlled." Cable television in France, he said, gives him both American news programs and international stations. Indeed, Herbert Lottman, a publishing business expert, long-time Paris resident and the author of books about Man Ray and Albert Camus, said that technology has made it almost impossible for writers to isolate themselves. "The world has changed and the medium has changed so there is no longer an expatriate hidden in a hole in a garret in Paris," he said. "Everything he thinks and says is e-mailed immediately to everybody he knows in the United States."
If Paris is inadvertently discouraging impoverished writers, Ireland encourages them by exempting writers from income taxes. Anne McCaffrey, a fantasy and science fiction writer, has lived in Ireland for more than 30 years, although she said she moved there partly to get away from an increasingly violent America when her children were young. She said that Ireland was also conducive to writers because "the Irish leave you to get on with your own business".
Charyn says "I feel like Jekyll and Hyde, I’m constantly split," (in paragraph 4) because ______,A．he cannot bear the brutality in the United States
B．he has to experience two different cultures: the "softness" of European culture and the "brutality" in America
C．he has to work regularly in France in order to survive
D．he finds that he is no longer isolated
5.单项选择题Dr Corell heads a team of some 300 scientists who have spent the past four years investigating the matter in a process known as the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA). The group, drawn from the eight countries with territories inside the Arctic Circle, has just issued a report called "Impacts of a Warming Arctic", a lengthy summary of the principal scientific findings.
Scientists have long suspected that several factors lead to greater temperature swings at the poles than elsewhere on the planet. One is albedo (反照率)-the posh scientific name for how much sunlight is reflected by a planet’s surface, and how much is reflected. Most of the polar regions are covered in snow and ice, which are much more reflective than soil or ocean. If that snow melts, the exposure of dark earth (which absorbs heat) acts as a feedback loop that accelerates warming. A second factor that makes the poles special is that the atmosphere is thinner there than at the equator, and so less energy is required to warm it up. A third factor is that less solar energy is lost in evaporation at the frigid poles than in the steamy tropics.
Arctic warming may influence the global climate in several ways. One is that huge amounts of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, are stored in the permafrost of the tundra. Although a thaw would allow forests to invade the tundra, which would tend to ameliorate any global warming that is going on (since trees capture carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most talked about in the context of climate change), a melting of the permafrost might also lead to a lot of trapped methane being released into the atmosphere, more than offsetting the cooling effects of the new forests.
Another worry is that Arctic warming will influence ocean circulation in ways that are not fully understood. One link in the chain is the salinity of sea water, which is decreasing in the north Atlantic thanks to an increase in glacial meltwaters. Because fresh water and salt water have different densities, this "freshening" of the ocean could change circulation patterns. The most celebrated risk is to the mid-Atlantic Conveyor Belt, a current which brings warm water from the tropics to north-western Europe, and which is responsible for that region’s unusually mild winters. Some of the ACIA’s experts are fretting over evidence of reduced density and salinity in waters near the Arctic that could adversely affect this current.
The biggest popular worry, though, is that melting Arctic ice could lead to a dramatic rise in sea level. Here, a few caveats are needed. For a start, much of the ice in the Arctic is floating in the sea already. Archimedes’s principle shows that the melting of this ice will make no immediate difference to the sea’s level, although it would change its albedo. Second, if land ice, such as that covering Greenland, does melt in large quantities, the process will take centuries. And third, although the experts are indeed worried that global warming might cause the oceans to rise, the main way they believe this will happen is by thermal expansion of the water itself.
Nevertheless, there is some cause for nervousness. As the ACIA researchers document, there are signs that the massive Greenland ice sheet might be melting more rapidly than was thought a few years ago. Cracks in the sheet appear to be allowing melt water to trickle to its base, explains Michael Oppenheimer, a climatologist at Princeton University who was not one of the report’s authors. That water may act as a lubricant, speeding up the sheet’s movement into the sea. If the entire sheet melted, the sea might rise by 6-7 metres. While acknowledging that disintegration this century is still an unlikely outcome, Dr Oppenheimer argues that the evidence of the past few years suggests it is more likely to happen over the next few centuries if the world does not reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. He worries that an accelerating Arctic warming trend may yet push the ice melt beyond an "irreversible on/off switch".
Not everybody wants to hear a story like that. But what people truly believe is happening can be seen in their actions better than in their words. One of the report’s most confident predictions is that the break-up of Arctic ice will open the region to long-distance shipping and, ironically, to drilling for oil and gas. It is surely no coincidence, then, that the Danish government, which controls Greenland, has just declared its intention to claim the mineral rights under the North Pole. It, at least, clearly believes that the Arctic ocean may soon be ice-free.
Which of the following factors may lead to greater temperature changes at the poles than elsewhere on the planetA．The albedo of the poles will be larger if snow melts.
B．the albedo of snow is larger than that of the exposed dark earth if snow melts.
C．More energy is needed to warm up the Arctic since the atmosphere there is thinner.
D．Less solar energy is lost in volatilization at the poles than at the equator.
8.单项选择题The romantic archetype of the poor, isolated writer living abroad was perhaps best immortalized by Ernest Hemingway in "A Moveable Feast," his memoir of life in Paris as a young writer in the 1920s. Yet little remains of the kind of life he described, while electronic communications, cheap travel and modern economics have virtually wiped out much of the expatriate writer ethos.
Paradoxically, those same developments have made life more practical for the many writers who still seek distant shores to escape the conventions and restrictions of their home countries. Nevertheless, it’s not quite what it used to be, as a few expatriate writers attest.
Just this week, Norman Spinrad, an American science fiction writer who has lived in Paris for 15 years, suddenly had to repatriate to New York after his landlord decided to sell his Latin Quarter apartment. ’Tm being squeezed out of France," said Spinrad. "Because I’m a writer I don’t have a regular job. So in order to get an apartment they demand a year’s deposit to be tied up 20 grand or so and I am not rich enough to be able to lose 20 grand and then be able to continue to pay the rent. "Even if you’ve got the money, they’d rather rent it to somebody with a salary," added Spinrad, 63. "The paradox is that the French encourage creative artists on every other level, and I’ve been treated very well." Spinrad first came to France to write a novel set in Paris, but ended up staying because he liked the lifestyle. He said he intends to return if he can.
Jerome Charyn, another American writer from New York who lives in Paris, says he loves the "softness" of European culture. "I feel there’s a kind of brutality in America," he said. "It’s part of its virtues because as a creator you probably need that brutality. But as someone who’s just sort of bouncing around day-to-day, you don’t need it." Like many of today’s nomadic writers, Charyn maintains a home in his native country to fuel his fiction. "I feel like Jekyll and Hyde, I’m constantly split," he says. He teaches film at the American University of Paris and said that having a regular job helps the writer abroad in more ways than fighting bureaucracy. "It sort of puts you into the system, makes it easier for you to exist within the culture," he said. "You’re no longer that isolated because you’re seeing students, you’re seeing other faculty members, you have a very different kind of context."
Writers abroad say they do not feel cut off from what is happening in the United States. "I feel I know more about what’s going on in the States being here than being there," Spinrad said, "because the news there is just pitiful and pressured by the government, if not controlled." Cable television in France, he said, gives him both American news programs and international stations. Indeed, Herbert Lottman, a publishing business expert, long-time Paris resident and the author of books about Man Ray and Albert Camus, said that technology has made it almost impossible for writers to isolate themselves. "The world has changed and the medium has changed so there is no longer an expatriate hidden in a hole in a garret in Paris," he said. "Everything he thinks and says is e-mailed immediately to everybody he knows in the United States."
If Paris is inadvertently discouraging impoverished writers, Ireland encourages them by exempting writers from income taxes. Anne McCaffrey, a fantasy and science fiction writer, has lived in Ireland for more than 30 years, although she said she moved there partly to get away from an increasingly violent America when her children were young. She said that Ireland was also conducive to writers because "the Irish leave you to get on with your own business".
Norman Spinrad ended up repatriating to New York because ______.A．he couldn’t afford the high rent in Paris
B．he wasn’t sure if he could afford the rent if he has to put 20,000 dollars in a bank
C．he had been treated very well in France
D．he liked the lifestyle in Paris