2012考研英语一真题详解
小荷作文网初中-学校食堂工作总结
Text 1
Come on –Everybody’s doing it.
That whispered message, half invitation and
half forcing, is what most of us think of when
we hear the words peer pressure. It
usually
leads to no good-drinking, drugs and casual sex.
But in her new book Join the
Club, Tina
Rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be
a positive force through
what she calls the
social cure, in which organizations and officials
use the power of
group dynamics to help
individuals improve their lives and possibly the
word.
Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer
Prize, offers a host of example of the social
cure in action: In South Carolina, a state-
sponsored antismoking program called Rage
Against the Haze sets out to make cigarettes
uncool. In South Africa, an
HIV-prevention
initiative known as LoveLife recruits young people
to promote safe
sex among their peers.
The
idea seems promising，and Rosenberg is a perceptive
observer. Her critique
of the lameness of many
pubic-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to
mobilize peer
pressure for healthy habits, and
they demonstrate a seriously flawed understanding
of
psychology.” Dare to be different, please
don’t smoke!” pleads one billboard
campaign
aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers-
teenagers, who desire nothing
more than
fitting in. Rosenberg argues convincingly that
public-health advocates
ought to take a page
from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer
pressure.
But on the general effectiveness of
the social cure, Rosenberg is less persuasive.
Join the Club is filled with too much
irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of
the social and biological factors that make
peer pressure so powerful. The most
glaring
flaw of the social cure as it’s presented here is
that it doesn’t work very well
for very long.
Rage Against the Haze failed once state funding
was cut. Evidence that
the LoveLife program
produces lasting changes is limited and mixed.
There’s no doubt that our peer groups exert
enormous influence on our behavior.
An
emerging body of research shows that positive
health habits-as well as negative
ones-spread
through networks of friends via social
communication. This is a subtle
form of peer
pressure: we unconsciously imitate the behavior we
see every day.
Far less certain, however, is
how successfully experts and bureaucrats can
select our
peer groups and steer their
activities in virtuous directions. It’s like the
teacher who
breaks up the troublemakers in the
back row by pairing them with better-behaved
classmates. The tactic never really works. And
that’s the problem with a social cure
engineered from the outside: in the real
world, as in school, we insist on choosing our
own friends.
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Text 2
A deal is a deal-except, apparently ,when
Entergy is involved. The company, a
major
energy supplier in New England, provoked justified
outrage in Vermont last
week when it announced
it was reneging on a longstanding commitment to
abide by
the strict nuclear regulations.
Instead, the company has done precisely what
it had long promised it would not
challenge
the constitutionality of Vermont’s rules in the
federal court, as part of a
desperate effort
to keep its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant
running. It’s a
stunning move.
The
conflict has been surfacing since 2002, when the
corporation bought
Vermont’s only nuclear
power plant, an aging reactor in Vernon. As a
condition of
receiving state approval for the
sale, the company agreed to seek permission from
state regulators to operate past 2012. In
2006, the state went a step further, requiring
that any extension of the plant’s license be
subject to Vermont legislature’s approval.
Then, too, the company went along.
Either
Entergy never really intended to live by those
commitments, or it simply
didn’t foresee what
would happen next. A string of accidents,
including the partial
collapse of a cooling
tower in 207 and the discovery of an underground
pipe system
leakage, raised serious questions
about both Vermont Yankee’s safety and Entergy’s
management– especially after the company made
misleading statements about the
pipe. Enraged
by Entergy’s behavior, the Vermont Senate voted 26
to 4 last year
against allowing an extension.
Now the company is suddenly claiming that the
2002 agreement is invalid
because of the 2006
legislation, and that only the federal government
has regulatory
power over nuclear issues. The
legal issues in the case are obscure: whereas the
Supreme Court has ruled that states do have
some regulatory authority over nuclear
power,
legal scholars say that Vermont case will offer a
precedent-setting test of how
far those powers
extend. Certainly, there are valid concerns about
the patchwork
regulations that could result if
every state sets its own rules. But had Entergy
kept its
word, that debate would be beside the
point.
The company seems to have concluded
that its reputation in Vermont is already
so
damaged that it has noting left to lose by going
to war with the state. But there
should be
consequences. Permission to run a nuclear plant is
a poblic trust. Entergy
runs 11 other reactors
in the United States, including Pilgrim Nuclear
station in
Plymouth. Pledging to run Pilgrim
safely, the company has applied for federal
permission to keep it open for another 20
years. But as the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) reviews the company’s
application, it should keep it mind what
promises from Entergy are worth.
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Text 3
In the idealized
version of how science is done, facts about the
world are waiting
to be observed and collected
by objective researchers who use the scientific
method to
carry out their work. But in the
everyday practice of science, discovery frequently
follows an ambiguous and complicated route. We
aim to be objective, but we cannot
escape the
context of our unique life experience. Prior
knowledge and interest
influence what we
experience, what we think our experiences mean,
and the
subsequent actions we take.
Opportunities for misinterpretation, error, and
self-deception abound.
Consequently,
discovery claims should be thought of as
protoscience. Similar to
newly staked mining
claims, they are full of potential. But it takes
collective scrutiny
and acceptance to
transform a discovery claim into a mature
discovery. This is the
credibility process,
through which the individual researcher’s me,
here, now becomes
the community’s anyone,
anywhere, anytime. Objective knowledge is the
goal, not the
starting point.
Once a
discovery claim becomes public, the discoverer
receives intellectual
credit. But, unlike with
mining claims, the community takes control of what
happens
next. Within the complex social
structure of the scientific community, researchers
make discoveries; editors and reviewers act as
gatekeepers by controlling the
publication
process; other scientists use the new finding to
suit their own purposes;
and finally, the
public (including other scientists) receives the
new discovery and
possibly accompanying
technology. As a discovery claim works it through
the
community, the interaction and
confrontation between shared and competing beliefs
about the science and the technology involved
transforms an individual’s discovery
claim
into the community’s credible discovery.
Two
paradoxes exist throughout this credibility
process. First, scientific work
tends to focus
on some aspect of prevailing Knowledge that is
viewed as incomplete
or incorrect. Little
reward accompanies duplication and confirmation of
what is
already known and believed. The goal
is new-search, not re-search. Not surprisingly,
newly published discovery claims and credible
discoveries that appear to be important
and
convincing will always be open to challenge and
potential modification or
refutation by future
researchers. Second, novelty itself frequently
provokes disbelief.
Nobel Laureate and
physiologist Albert Azent-Gyorgyi once described
discovery as
“seeing what everybody has seen
and thinking what nobody has thought.” But
thinking what nobody else has thought and
telling others what they have missed may
not
change their views. Sometimes years are required
for truly novel discovery claims
to be
accepted and appreciated.
In the end,
credibility “happens” to a discovery claim – a
process that
corresponds to what philosopher
Annette Baier has described as the commons of the
mind. “We reason together, challenge, revise,
and complete each other’s reasoning and
each
other’s conceptions of reason.”
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Text 4
If the trade unionist Jimmy
Hoffa were alive today, he would probably
represent
civil servant. When Hoffa’s
Teamsters were in their prime in 1960, only one in
ten
American government workers belonged to a
union; now 36% do. In 2009 the number
of
unionists in America’s public sector passed that
of their fellow members in the
private sector.
In Britain, more than half of public-sector
workers but only about 15%
of private-sector
ones are unionized.
There are three reasons
for the public-sector unions’ thriving. First,
they can shut
things down without suffering
much in the way of consequences. Second, they are
mostly bright and well-educated. A quarter of
America’s public-sector workers have a
university degree. Third, they now dominate
left-of-centre politics. Some of their ties
go
back a long way. Britain’s Labor Party, as its
name implies, has long been
associated with
trade unionism. Its current leader, Ed Miliband,
owes his position to
votes from public-sector
unions.
At the state level their influence
can be even more fearsome. Mark Baldassare of
the Public Policy Institute of California
points out that much of the state’s budget is
patrolled by unions. The teachers’ unions keep
an eye on schools, the CCPOA on
prisons and a
variety of labor groups on health care.
In
many rich countries average wages in the state
sector are higher than in the
private one. But
the real gains come in benefits and work
practices. Politicians have
repeatedly
“backloaded” public-sector pay deals, keeping the
pay increases modest
but adding to holidays
and especially pensions that are already generous.
Reform has been vigorously opposed, perhaps
most egregiously in education,
where charter
schools, academies and merit pay all faced drawn-
out battles. Even
though there is plenty of
evidence that the quality of the teachers is the
most
important variable, teachers’ unions have
fought against getting rid of bad ones and
promoting good ones.
As the cost to
everyone else has become clearer, politicians have
begun to clamp
down. In Wisconsin the unions
have rallied thousands of supporters against Scott
Walker, the hardline Republican governor. But
many within the public sector suffer
under the
current system, too.
John Donahue at
Harvard’s Kennedy School points out that the norms
of culture
in Western civil services suit
those who want to stay put but is bad for high
achievers.
The only American public-sector
workers who earn well above $$250,000 a year are
university sports coaches and the president of
the United States. Bankers’ fat pay
packets
have attracted much criticism, but a public-sector
system that does not reward
high achievers may
be a much bigger problem for America.
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