第二周补充阅读材料

Weekly Reading Materials (2)A Puma at LargePumas are large, cat-like animals which are found in America. When reports came into London Zoo that a wild puma had been spotted forty-five miles south of London, they were not taken seriously. However, as the evidence began to accumulate, experts from the Zoo felt obliged to investigate, for the descriptions given by people who claimed to have seen the puma were extraordinarily similar.The hunt for the puma began in a small village where a woman picking blackberries saw 'a large cat' only five yards away from her. It immediately ran away when she saw it, and experts confirmed that a puma will not attack a human being unless it is cornered. The search proved difficult, for the puma was often observed at one place in the morning and at another place twenty miles away in the evening. Wherever it went, it left behind it a trail of dead deer and small animals like rabbits. Paw prints were seen in a number of places and puma fur was found clinging to bushes. Several people complained of "cat-like noises' at night and a businessman on a fishing trip saw the puma up a tree. The experts were now fully convinced that the animal was a puma, but where had it come from? As no pumas had been reported missing from any zoo in the country, this one must have been in the possession of a private collector and somehow managed to escape. The hunt went on for several weeks, but the puma was not caught. It is disturbing to think that a dangerous wild animal is still at large in the quiet countryside.Do the Advantages of T elevision Outweigh the Disadvantages?Television is now playing a very important part in our life. But television, like other things, has both advantages and disadvantages. Do the former outweigh the latter?In the first place, television is not only a convenient source of entertainment, but also a comparatively cheap one. For a family of four, for example, it is more convenient as well as cheaper to sit comfortably at home, with almost unlimited entertainment available, than to go out in search of amusement elsewhere. They do not have to pay for expensive seats at the theatre, the cinema, or the opera, only to discover, perhaps, that the show is disappointing.All they have to do is press a button, and they can see plays, films, operas, and shows of every kind, not to mention political discussions and the latest exciting. football match. Some people, however, maintain that this is precisely where the danger lies. The television viewer takes no initiative. He makes no choice and exercises no judgment. He is completely passive and has everything presented to him without any effort on his part.Television, it is often said, keeps one informed about current events, allows one to follow the latest developments in science and politics, and offers an endless series of programmes which are hoth instructive and entertaining. The most distant countries and the strangest customs are brought right into one's stitting-room. It could be argued that the radio performs this service just as well; but on television everything is much more living, much more real. Y et here again there is a danger. We get so used to looking at it, so dependent on its flickering pictures, that it begins to dominate our lives.There are many other arguments for and against television. The poor quality of its programmes i.s often criticized. But it is undoubtedly a great comfort to many lonely elderly people. And does it corrupt or instruct our children? I think we must realize that television in itself is neither good nor bad. It is the uses to which it is put that determine its value to society.Pets Are Good for Y ouThe basic meaning of "pet" is an animal we keep for emotional rather than economic reasons. A pet animal is kept as a companion, and we all need companions to keep us feeling happy. But pets offer us more than mere companionship; they invite us to love and be loved. Many owners feel their pets understand them, for animals are quick to sense anger and sorrow. Often a cat or dog can comfort us at times when human words don't help. We feel loved, too, by the way pets depend on us for a home, for food and drink. Dogs especially, look up to their owners, which makes them feel important and needed.A pet can be something different to each member of the family, another baby to the mother, a sister or brother to an only child, a grandchild to the elderly, but for all of us pets provide pleasure and companionship. It has even been suggested that tiny pets should be sent as companions to astronauts on space ships, to help reduce the stress and loneliness of space flights.In this Plastic Age, when most of us live in large cities, pets are particularly important for children. A pet in the family keeps people in touch with the more natural, animal world. Seeing an animal give birth brings understanding of the naturalness of childbirth, and seeing a pet die helps a child to cope with sorrow. Learning to care for a pet helps a child to grow up into a loving adult who feels responsible towards those dependent on him. Rightly we teach children to be good to their pets. They should learn, too, that pets are good for us human beings.Run, Patti, Run!At a young and tender age, Patti Wilson was told by her doctor that she was an epileptic. Her father, Jim Wilson, is a morning jogger. One day she smiled through her braces and said, "Daddy what I'd really love to do is run with you every day, but I'mafraid I'll have a seizure."Her father told her, "If you do, I know how to handle it, so let's start running!"That's just what they did every day. It was a wonderful experience for them to share and there were no seizures at all while she was running. After a few weeks, she told her father, "Daddy, what I'd really love to do is break the world's long-distance running record for women."Her father checked the Guiness Book of World Records and found that the farthest any woman had run was 80 miles. As a freshman in high school, Patti announced, "I'm going to run from Orange County up to San Francisco." (A distance of 400 miles.) "As a sophomore," she went on, "I'm going to run to Portland, Oregon." (Over 1500 miles.) "As a junior I'll run to St. Louis." (About 2000 miles) "As a senior I'll run to the White House." (More than 3000 miles away.)In view of her handicap, Patti was as ambitious as she was enthusiastic, but she said she looked at the handicap of being an epileptic as simply "an inconvenience." She focused not on what she had lost, but on what she had left.That year, she completed her run to San Francisco wearing a T-shirt that read, "I Love Epileptics." Her dad ran every mile at her side, and her mom, a nurse, followed in a motor home behind them in case anything went wrong.In her sophomore year, Patti's classmates got behind her. They built a giant poster that read, "Run, Patti, Run!" (This has since become her motto and the title of a book she has written.) On her second marathon, en route to Portland, she fractured a bone in her foot. A doctor told her she had to stop her run. He said, "I've got to put a cast on your ankle so that you don't sustain permanent damage.""Doc, you don't understand," she said. "This isn't just a whim of mine, it's a magnificent obsession! I'm not just doing it for me, I'm doing it to break the chains on the brains that limit so many others. Isn't there a way I can keep running?" He gave her one option. He could wrap it in adhesive instead of putting it in a cast. He warned her that it would be incredibly painful, and he told her, "It will blister." She told the doctor to wrap it up.She finished the run to Portland, completing her last mile with the governor of Oregon. Y ou may have seen the headlines: "Super Runner, Patti Wilson Ends Marathon For Epilepsy On Her 17th Birthday."After four months of almost continuous running from West Coast to the East Coast, Patti arrived in Washington and shook the hand of the President of United States. She told him, "I wanted people to know that epileptics are normal human beings with normal lives."I told this story at one of my seminars not long ago, and afterward a big teary-eyed man came up to me, stuck out his big meaty hand and said, "Mark, my name is Jim Wilson. Y ou were talking about my daughter, Patti." Because of her noble efforts, he told me, enough money had been raised to open up 19 multi-million-dollar epileptic centers around the country.If Patti Wilson can do so much with so little, what can you do to outperform yourself in a state of total wellness?。