The first outline of The Ascent of Man was written in July 1969 and the last foot of film was shot in December 1972. An undertaking as large as this, though wonderfully exhilarating, is not entered lightly. It demands an unflagging intellectual and physical vigour, a total immersion, which I had to be sure that I could sustain with pleasure; for instance, I had to put off researches that I had already begun; and I ought to explain what moved me to do so. There has been a deep change in the temper of science in the last 20 years: the focus of attention has shifted from the physical to the life sciences. As a result, science is drawn more and more to the study of individuality. But the interested spectator is hardly aware yet how far-reaching the effect is in changing the image of man that science moulds. As a mathematician trained in physics, I too would have been unaware, had not a series of lucky chances taken me into the life sciences in middle age. I owe a debt for the good fortune that carried me into two seminal fields of science in one lifetime; and though I do not know to whom the debt is due, I conceived The Ascent of Man in gratitude to repay it. The invitation to me from the British Broadcasting Corporation was to present the development of science in a series of television programmes to match those of Lord Clark on Civilisation. Television is an admirable medium for exposition in several ways: powerful and immediate to the eye, able to take the spectator bodily into the places and processes that are described, and conversational enough to make him conscious that what he witnesses are not events but the actions of people. The last of these merits is to my mind the most cogent, and it weighed most with me in agreeing to cast a personal biography of ideas in the form of television essays. The point is that knowledge in general and science in particular does not consist of abstract but of man-made ideas, all the way from its beginnings to its modern and idiosyncratic models. Therefore the underlying concepts that unlock nature must be shown to arise early and in the simplest cultures of man from his basic and specific faculties. And the development of science which joins them in more and more complex conjunctions must be seen to be equally human: discoveries are made by men, not merely by minds, so that they are alive and charged with individuality. If television is not used to make these thoughts concrete, it is wasted.
Topic 1 (选题一) It’s not that we are afraid of seeing him stumble, of scribbling a mustache over his career. Sure, the nice part of us wants Mike to know we appreciate him, that he still reigns, at least in our memory. The truth, though, is that we don’t want him to come back because even for Michael Jordan, this would be an act of hubris so monumental as to make his trademark confidence twist into conceit. We don’t want him back on the court because no one likes a show-off. The stumbling? That will be fun. But we are nice people, we Americans, with 225 years of optimism at our backs. Days ago when M.J. said he had made a decision about returning to the NBA in September, we got excited. He had said the day before, “I look forward to playing, and hopefully I can get to that point where I can make that decision. It’s O.K., to have some doubt, and it’s O.K. to have some nervousness.” A Time/CNN poll last week has Americans, 2 to 1, saying they would like him on the court ASAP. And only 21 percent thought that if he came back and just completely bombed, it would damage his legend. In fact only 28 percent think athletes should retire at their peak. Sources close to him tell Time that when Jordan first talked about a comeback with the Washington Wizards, the team Jordan co-owns and would play for, some of his trusted advisers privately tried to discourage him. “But they say if they try to stop him, it will only firm up his resolve,” says an NBA source. The problem with Jordan’s return is not only that he can’t possibly live up to the storybook ending he gave up in 1998 — earning his sixth ring with a last-second championship-winning shot. The problem is that the motives for coming back — needing the attention, needing to play even when his 38-year-old body does not — violate the very myth of Jordan, the myth of absolute control. Babe Ruth, the 20th century’s first star, was a gust of fat bravado and drunken talent, while Jordan ended the century by proving the elegance of resolve; Babe’s pointing to the bleachers replaced by the charm of a backpedaling shoulder shrug. Jordan symbolized success by not sullying his brand with his politics, his opinion or superstar personality. To be a Jordan fan was to be a fan of classiness and confidence. To come back when he knows that playing for Wizards won’t get him anywhere near the second round of the play-offs, when he knows that he won’t be the league scoring leader, that’s a loss of control. Jordan does not care what we think. Friends say that he takes articles that tell him not to come back and tacks them all on his refrigerator as inspiration. So why bother writing something telling him not to come back? He is still Michael Jordan.
Even after I was too grown-up to play that game and too grown-up to tell my mother that I loved her, I still believed I was the best daughter. Didn’t I run all the way up to the terrace to check on the drying mango pickles whenever she asked? As I entered my teens, it seemed that I was becoming an even better, more loving daughter. Didn’t I drop whatever I was doing each afternoon to go to the corner grocery to pick up any spices my mother had run out of? My mother, on the other hand, seemed more and more unloving to me. Some days she positively resembled a witch as she threatened to pack me off to my second uncle’s home in provincial Barddhaman — a fate worse than death to a cool Calcutta girl like me — if my grades didn’t improve. Other days she would sit me down and tell me about “Girls Who Brought Shame to Their Families”. There were apparently, a million ways in which one could do this, and my mother was determined that I should be cautioned against every one of them. On principle, she disapproved of everything I wanted to do, from going to study in America to perming my hair, and her favorite phrase was “over my dead body.” It was clear that I loved her far more than she loved me — that is, if she loved me at all. After I finished graduate school in America and got married, my relationship with my mother improved a great deal. Though occasionally dubious about my choice of a writing career, overall she thought I’d shaped up nicely. I thought the same about her. We established a rhythm: She’d write from India and give me all the gossip and send care packages with my favorite kind of mango pickle; I’d call her from the United States and tell her all the things I’d been up to and send care packages with instant vanilla pudding, for which she’d developed a great fondness. We loved each other equally — or so I believed until my first son, Anand, was born. My son’s birth shook up my neat, organized, in-control adult existence in ways I hadn’t imagined. I went through six weeks of being shrouded in an exhausted fog of postpartum depression. As my husband and I walked our wailing baby up and down through the night, and I seriously contemplated going AWOL, I wondered if I was cut out to be a mother at all. And mother love — what was that all about? Then one morning, as I was changing yet another diaper, Anand grinned up at me with his toothless gums. Hmm, I thought. This little brown scrawny thing is kind of cute after all. Things progressed rapidly from there. Before I knew it, I’d moved the extra bed into the baby’s room and was spending many nights on it, bonding with my son.
奥林匹克运动的生命力和非凡魅力在于在奥林匹克运动中居核心地位的奥 林匹克精神。体育的目的在于追求人类身心全面发展，并在此基础上促进社会的 发展和进步。现代奥林匹克运动的创始人顾拜旦（Pieere de Coubertin）认为体育 是全人类的一项伟大事业。他将奥林匹克运动的目标设定为促进不同国家、不同 文化之间的相互理解，从而促进和维护世界和平，推进人类文明。这一理想使奥 林匹克运动得以经百年而不衰。作为全世界奥林匹克大家庭成员的一个盛大聚 会，奥林匹克运动已经成为促进世界和平、进步与发展的一只重要社会力量。
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The vitality and special appeal of the Olympic Games lie in the Olympic spirit， which is the soul of the Games. The goal of sports is to pursue comprehensive physical and mental development and，on the basis of this，to accelerate social progress. Pierre de Coubertin，founder of the modern Olympiad，considered sports a great undertaking of humanity. The goal of the Olympic Movement defined by him is to promote understanding among different countries and cultures，maintain world peace and advance human civilization. This ideal has enabled the Olympic Games to thrive for more than a century. The Olympic Games have been a grand gathering of members of the Olympic family throughout the world，and the Olympic Movement has become a major social force to promote world peace，progress and development.
In recent years，China’s economy has maintained rapid development，injecting vigor into global economic growth. Facts have confirmed the prediction made by China before its WTO accession: China’s development cannot be sustained without the world，and world development needs China. In the coming 20 years，China is bound to make historic contributions to global economic development and to the common progress of mankind，while building a well-off society in an all-round way. To achieve this，China will continue to expand foreign trade，energetically implement its west development strategy，further improve its investment environment，and provide overseas investors with greater business opportunities. Meanwhile，it will guide and support competitive enterprises to invest overseas and carry out diverse forms of economic and technological cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual benefit. China will further intensify bilateral，multilateral and regional economic cooperation，so as to achieve common development in all countries and regions in the world.
The cell phone is becoming one of the major technologies of the 21st century. Within a few years, it will become a multi-functional communicator capable of transmitting and receiving not only sound, but also video, still images, data and text. A new era of personal communication is on the way. Thanks in part to the growth of wireless networks, the telephone is converging with the personal computer and the television. Soon light-weight phones outfitted with high-resolution screens will be connected to satellites. People can talk, send and receive e-mail, or take part in video conferences anytime, anywhere. These phones might also absorb many of the key functions of computers. Mobile devices are expected to be ideal for some of the new services that are available via the Internet, such as trading stocks, shopping and booking theater and airline tickets. The telecommunication revolution is developing around the globe. It will soon be possible to receive almost all forms of electronic communication through a single device. A three-in-one phone is most likely. It can serve as a cordless at home, a cell phone on the road and an intercom at work. Some experts even suggest that cell videophones could overtake television as the major source of visual information.