Nowadays more and more people are trapped in too busy work to relax themselves. We have no time to tell a bed-time story to our children, or enjoy a nice dinner with our family, or take a break to think about how we live the precious life, or even meet friends. All we notice is that the distinctions that used to guide and steady us ------ between Sunday and Monday, public and private, here and there ------ are gone. We have more ways to communicate, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating.
Maybe that’s why more and more people I know, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi. Some friends of mine try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cell phones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends on neural processes that are “inherently slow. ” The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for.
In my own case, I turn to eccentric and often extreme measures to try to keep my sanity and ensure that I have time to do nothing at all. I’ve not yet used a cell phone and I’ve never Tweeted or entered Face book. I try not to go online till my day’s writing is finished, and I moved from Manhattan to rural Japan.
None of this is a matter of principle or asceticism (苦行主义): it’s just pure selfishness. Nothing makes me feel better-----calmer, clearer and happier----than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” That is the highest of the highest we have been longing for----The Joy of Quiet.
【小题1】The writer sometimes doesn’t do anything because ________.

Amazed zoo visitors watch as an orangutan(猩猩) named Bonnie swings along cables way above their heads. She’s not making a great ape escape; she’s taking a “highway” to higher learning.

Bonnie is traveling on the Orangutan Transit System, called the O-Line, at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. The O-Line stretches from the Great Ape House, where Bonnie lives, to an exhibit called Think Tank. There she and other orangutans participate in a study trying to answer the questions: Do animals think?  If so,  how?

    Think Tank scientists look for clues that an animal is thinking. A baby orangutan following its mother is probably not thinking. But an orangutan using a stick to reach honey in a beehive probably is thinking. It’s figuring out how to obtain a sweet treat.

    To learn more about what the orangutans are thinking, Think Tank scientists are teaching orangutans a language of symbols. The apes don’t actually speak. They point to the symbols to show their thoughts.

    Each symbol stands for a word. Different categories of the symbols have their own shapes. Food symbols, for example, are rectangles(矩形); object symbols are circles; and verbs are diamonds.

    Computers help the orangutans learn the symbolic language. After the apes are shown an apple, for example, their task is to touch the apple symbol on a computer screen. They can do so. All six orangutans have learned a few symbols, but only Azy and Indah have learned eight symbols and can use the computer.

    Azy and Indah choose to live at Think Tank. The others commute(往返) from the Great Ape House on the O-Line. All attend Think Tank sessions, though none are made to do so. “They’re eager to learn”, one of the scientists says. “They never turn me down!”

What is the main idea of the passage?

Scientists are doing research on whether animals can think and how they think.

Biologists have found that orangutans are more intelligent than other animals.

Orangutans at the National Zoo can be taught to communicate with humans easily.

Animals are being taught by scientists to speak to one another at the National Zoo.

     The Orangutan Transit System refers to _____.

a way that can teach animals to learn things and communicate quickly

a place for various animals in the National Zoo to participate in the study

a walkway for the orangutans to travel to different sections of the zoo

a line for the orangutans to travel between the Great Ape House and the Think Tank

     According to the passage, scientists use a system of symbols to help _____.

find out which orangutan can learn the symbolic language fast

attract all the orangutans to live together at Think Tank

communicate with the orangutans and understand them better

understand whether animals can learn a language and express themselves by using it

     It can be inferred from the passage that _____.

a baby orangutan has his own intention though following his mother

many animals in the wild can learn symbolic languages to express their thoughts

the cleverer the animals are, the more knowledge they would like to learn

orangutans can form mental images in their minds when they see objects

Almost all cultures celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of another in some way. Different cultures celebrate the beginning of a new year in different ways, and at different times on the calendar.
In Western countries, people usually celebrate New Year at midnight on January 1st. People may go to parties, dress in formal clothes -- like tuxedos (小礼服) and evening gowns, and drink champagne at midnight. During the first minutes of the New Year, people cheer and wish each other happiness for the year ahead. But some cultures prefer to celebrate the New Year by waking up early to watch the sun rise. They welcome the New Year with the first light of the sunrise.
It is also a common Western custom to make a New Year’s promise, called a resolution. New Year’s resolutions usually include promises to try something new or change a bad habit in the new year.
Many cultures also do special things to get rid of bad luck at the beginning of a new year. For example, in Ecuador, families make a big doll from old clothes. The doll is filled with old newspapers and firecrackers. At midnight, these dolls are burned to show the bad things from the past year are gone and the new year can start afresh (again). Other common traditions to keep away bad luck in a new year include throwing things into rivers or the ocean, or saying special things on the first day of the new year.
Other New Year traditions are followed to bring good luck is to eat grapes on New Year’s Day. The more grapes a person eats, the more good luck the person will have in the year. In France, people eat pancakes for good luck at New Year. In the United States, some people eat black-eyed peas (豇豆) for good luck -- but to get good luck for a whole year you have to eat 365 of them!
【小题1】Which culture celebrates New Year in the morning?

A．Bringing good luck.	B．Keeping away bad luck.
C．Planning for the next year.	D．Remembering the past.

“Experience may possibly be the best teacher, but it is not a particularly good teacher.” You might think that Winston Churchill or perhaps Mark Twain spoke those words, but they actually come from James March, a professor at Stanford University and a pioneer in the field of organizational decision making. For years March (possibly be wisest philosopher of management) has studied how humans think and act, and he continues to do so in his new book The Ambiguities of Experience.
He begins by reminding us of just how firmly we have been sticking to the idea of experiential learning: “Experience is respected；experience is sought；experience is explained.” The problem is that learning from experience involves serious complications (复杂化), ones that are part of the nature of experience itself and which March discusses in the body of this book.
In one interesting part of the book, for example, he turns a doubtful eye toward the use of stories as the most effective way of experiential learning. In our efforts to make stories interesting, he argues, we lose part of the complicated truth of things. He says “The more accurately reality is presented, the less understandable the story, and the more understandable the story, the less realistic it is.”
Besides being a broadly knowledgeable researcher, March is also a poet, and his gift shines through in the depth of views he offers and the simple language he uses. Though the book is short, it is demanding: Don’t pick it up looking for quick, easy lessons. Rather, be ready to think deeply about learning from experience in work and life.
【小题1】According to the text, James March is ________.