当代研究生英语(上) 听力原文 B

The Umbrella Man (Part One)

I'm going to tell you about a funny thing that happened to my mother and me yesterday evening. Yesterday afternoon, my mother took me to London to see the dentist. After that, we went to a café. When we came out of the café, it was raining. "We must get a taxi," my mother said. Lots of them came by, but they all had passengers inside them.

Just then a man came up to us. He was a small man and he was probably seventy or more. He said to my mother politely, "Excuse me." He was under an umbrella which he held high over his head.

"Yes?" my mother said, very cool and distant.

"I wonder if I could ask a small favour of you," he said. I saw my mother looking at him suspiciously. She is a suspicious person, my mother. The little man was saying, "I need some help."

My mother was staring down at him along the full length of her nose. I wanted to say to her, "Oh mummy, he's a very old man, and he's polite, and he's in some sort of trouble, so be nice to him." But I didn't say anything.

"I've never forgotten it before," he said.

"You've never forgotten what?" my mother asked.

"My wallet," he said. "I must've left it in my other jacket."

"Are you asking me to give you money?" my mother said.

"No, I'm offering you this umbrella to protect you and to keep, if you would give me a pound for my taxi fare just to get me home."

"Why don't you walk home?" my mother asked.

"Oh, I don't think I could manage it. I've gone too far already."

The idea of getting an umbrella to shelter was very attractive.

"It's a lovely silk umbrella," the little man said. "Why don't you take it, madam? It cost me over twenty pounds, but that isn't important because I want to get home." "I don't think it's quite right that I should take an umbrella from you worth twenty pounds. I think I'd better just give you the taxi fare."

"No, no, no!" he cried. "I would never accept money from you like that! Take the umbrella, dear lady, and keep the rain off your shoulders."

She took out a pound and gave it to the little man. He took it and gave her the umbrella. He said, "Thank you, madam, thank you." Then he was gone.

A UFO in My Yard (Part One)

It was one a.m. one cold fall night in 1968. I was 21 then, and was coming home from a date. I had just dropped off my girlfriend and was heading back to Franksville, a rural town in Wisconsin. As I turned left to go east on Seven Mile Road, I saw extremely bright lights streaming out from the distance.

My heart skipped a beat. What was producing these strange lights visible from a half mile away? I thought it was a house on fire. The lights seemed to emanate from the area where my house was located. My parents and two brothers were probably in bed by now. As I accelerated and turned onto the town street, frantic thoughts ran through my mind. Was the house burning down? Was my family trapped inside?

As I raced toward my house, I noticed that the yards of my house and my neighbors' were illuminated as if it were day. Then I saw the source of the strange light. It wasn't a house fire, as I had feared. It was a possibility I would have never anticipated, one that was perhaps even more fearsome than the house fire I had imagined.

Hovering motionless only 50 feet above the rooftops was a strange object. Round and silvery, it was approximately 300-400 feet in diameter. In the wake of the hovering enigma, there was an eerie silence. I stuck my head out the driver's side window to get a closer look at what I guessed was some kind of aircraft.

It looked made of aluminum, except for two cones that protruded from the top and bottom of the craft's center. Both cones seemed to be made of a glass-like material. The top cone was white, while the bottom cone glowed yellow. White lights circled the yellow cone on the underside of the craft. Each light was about 3-4 feet in diameter.

It didn't look like any conventional aircraft I had ever seen. It looked like a flying saucer from a movie. Was this what an alien spaceship truly looked like?

I pondered what to do. If I pulled into the driveway I would be putting myself directly beneath the craft. I considered turning the car around and speeding away.

U3

A Letter from Sunderland

As I exited from the Sunderland train station, fear began to set in. I had just

finished a six-hour plane journey followed by more than four hours on a train, and now I was supposed to find my way to my residence hall with a heavy suitcase. I was alone in a strange country and getting a little scared.

At the moment, a cab miraculously appeared before my eyes. The driver swiftly put my luggage in the trunk and asked where I was going. I somehow managed to mumble the address I had been given and we were quickly on our way. I think he asked me where I was from, but his accent was thick and hard to understand. I could have told him that my name was "The United States."

Soon my uneasiness subsided and I realized where I was, England. Before now, it had seemed a distant dream. Back in the US, the University of Maine had offered me a scholarship and I had made the decision to spend a semester in the United Kingdom last year and the University of Sunderland was my school of choice.

Not only did they have a journalism program, but they would accept my scholarship, making it affordable for me to go. Although I was psyched to leave, I hadn't prepared myself mentally for it when I actually got here.

England is a great place. So far everyone has been really friendly and helpful, and there are so many things to do and see here. Although some things are similar to the US, there are some interesting cultural differences.

Little things that the locals take for granted seem so strange and foreign to me. It was a few days before I got used to looking right before crossing the street or saying football instead of soccer. Prompts for me to "get in the queue" were met with a blank stare before I realized I was being told to get in line.

As fate would have it, I was put into a residence hall. There were also some students in the hall from Canada, Norway and Denmark. We bonded quickly and soon held a party together.

The first week here was a whirlwind of trying to complete necessary administrative details like registering with the university, getting a library card and finding the nearest pub. Good news, there's one right around the corner!

Classes start on Monday, and I'm ready for them to begin. My only apprehension is that the professors or lecturers will have such thick accents that I won't be able to understand them. The accents here have very thick Scottish influences to them, so some of the locals are a bit hard to understand.

One of the things I am most excited about while being here is traveling to other parts of the United Kingdom and Europe. The student center offers many day trips

for international students. Unlike the US, it's fairly easy to travel in England. The rail system can take you pretty much anywhere you want to go. I can already tell that being here is going to be the experience of a lifetime. Although the decision to go so far away wasn't an easy one, I'm glad to be here and can't wait for the semester ahead.

U4

Laughter: the Best Medicine

The following is an interview by a TV hostess with Dr. Lee Berk of the Loma Linda School of Public Health in California.

W: We've all heard the saying "Laughter is the best medicine." How important is it to our health, Dr. Berk?

M: This saying has been scientifically proven! According to our research, laughter strengthens the immune system and lowers the levels of stress hormones ...

W: Can you be more specific?

M: Well, after a bout of laughter, blood pressure drops to a lower, healthier level than when the laughter began. Dr. William Fry of Stanford University found that "twenty seconds of guffawing gives the heart the same workout as three minutes of hard rowing."

W: What else?

M: Another year-long study of heart attack victims done at the Oakhurst Health Research Institute in California found that of those patients who spent half an hour a day watching comedy videos, 10 percent had a second heart attack, whereas 30 percent of those who did not watch had a second attack.

W: Wow! Laughter is really a good medicine to patients. Can you give us another example?

M: Sure! Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, learned this during a battle with a debilitating illness. He discovered that his condition improved when he enjoyed himself and watched funny movies. Laughing, he wrote, is like inner jogging. It helps us heal by activating the immune system. Many sick people have taken his advice and incorporated humor into their recovery regimen by watching comedies or reading collections of jokes.

W: You said Norman learned this? Do we have to learn to laugh?

M: Not necessarily. Since laughing is something people can do sitting down,

costs no money, and requires no special exercise equipment or skill, it's the perfect workout for anyone who doesn't have the time or desire to participate in a regular fitness program.

W: Oh, I see. Do you have such a program to offer to the general public?

M: Yes, we do. It's called the Smile Time-Out.

W: How does it work?

M: It's easy. You take a deep breath, smile, exhale, and say "Aaah" while visualizing all your muscles and cells smiling. Then add to that a memory of a time you felt really good and laughed and laughed.

W: What about the situation in which you aren't in a mood to laugh?

M: OK, remember, even when you fake a smile or laugh, you get the same physiological benefits as when it's the real thing, because your mind is smart, but your body is stupid and can't tell the difference!

W: Great! Ha, ha, ha ... ! I've learned it! And thank you for joining us to talk about laughing.

M: My pleasure.

U5

Difficult Neighbours

Most of us have had a conflict, great or small, with a neighbour. Many local organizations that track quarrels between neighbours say such conflicts - about property lines, eyesores, loud stereos, parties, undisciplined children - are on the rise.

It is estimated that neighbourhood disputes make up 50 to 60 percent of cases referred to mediation. And the number is growing. A retired judge, Duncan, says sometimes such disputes wind up in court. Some cases are serious, but others border on the ludicrous. He recalls, two neighbours didn't see eye to eye on anything. One was a blue-collar worker, the other a university employee. The university man's tree dropped apples in the other's yard. When they rotted, the blue-collar man threw them back. The university man left the gate to their common driveway open, upsetting his neighbour, who liked it closed. Finally, the blue-collar man bought a plastic model, dressed it in a military uniform and installed it in a window facing his neighbour's house - with right arm raised and middle finger extended. The other man charged him with civil harassment.

After hearing both sides, Judge Duncan says, "I told them that this was offensive

behavior and just asked them to work it out on their own. They were both very sheepish, and quickly agreed. They knew the whole thing was silly, but had just gotten beyond their control."

Misunderstanding can also cause a dispute. Duncan tells another story. Two women hadn't spoken to each other in nine years, even though they had once been friends. Meanwhile, they had kept the police busy answering complaints that the other's TV was too loud, her car was blocking the driveway or her kids were unruly. Finally the police insisted they submit their dispute to mediation.

"How did all this start?" asked the mediator. One woman told the mediator about the day she had come to the other's door to borrow something. Her neighbour opened the door, said "I can't talk to you," then "slammed the door in my face."

"I remember that day," replied the "door-slammer." "I was on the phone with my sister, who had just learned she had breast cancer. I meant, 'I'll talk to you later.' But when I tried, you wouldn't talk to me." If they had talked it over that day, the feud would never have happened. So speak up right away. When a dispute looms, carefully plan what to say and attack the problem, not the person. If your neighbour likes his stereo loud, calmly tell him or her how the problem harms you - "I have to be at work at 5 a.m. Could you turn it down after 10 p.m.?"

U6

Finders Keepers (Part One)

Walking along, minding your own business, you see a wallet on the ground. You pick it up. Some photos inside, a card or two with ID. Hmm, and a nice wad of money, too. So what do you do? The right thing, or ... ?

Reader's Digest set out to discover just what people would do. In big cities and towns across the globe, in the UK, Europe, the US, Asia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America, editors of the magazine dropped temptation in the path of unsuspecting people. We "lost" more than 1,100 wallets to see just how many would be returned. Each contained around ￡30 in local currency, but also a name and phone number so that the finders would have no trouble returning the wallet - presuming they wanted to. We left them in shopping centres, train and underground stations, supermarkets, car parks and on pavements. Then we watched to see what would happen.

The results were ... fascinating!

All told, 44 percent of the wallets were picked up, never to be seen again. From one country to another, though, the results varied widely. The gold stars for honesty have to go to Norway and Denmark, where every single wallet was returned. Scandinavian countries, on the whole, put the rest of the world to shame. So did New Zealand and a couple of places in Asia - South Korea and Japan. But watch your possessions in Argentina and Italy. As for Mexico, it's tough luck if you lose your wallet there. In most Mexican cities, barely any were returned.

How did the UK fare? Not bad: out of 80 wallets, 52 were returned - 65 percent. Medium-sized towns were slightly more honest than cities, and, interestingly, women outperformed men. That put us solidly on the list of pretty honest countries, alongside the US, Canada, Australia and India. Of course, cities and towns within the same country often varied widely as well.

So what does all this tell us about human character? Plenty - at least when it comes to those who wore halos. In each place, we talked to people to find out why they had returned our wallets. Throughout the world, across diverse cultures, it boiled down to a few common themes: family education, religious faith and empathy.

U7

Did We Land on the Moon?

Last week my phone rang. It was my mother and she was very upset.

"Tony!" she exclaimed, "I just came from the coffee shop and there's a guy down there who says NASA never landed on the Moon. Everyone was talking about it ... I just didn't know what to say!"

That last bit was hard to swallow, I thought. Mom's never at a loss for words. But even more incredible was the controversy that swirled through the small town and places like it across the country. After a long absence, the "Moon Hoax" was back.

All the debates about the Moon landing began on Thursday, February 15, 2001 when the Fox Television network aired a program called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? It was re-aired on March 19. The program was hosted by X-Files actor Mitch Pileggi. The program was an hour long, and featured interviews with a series of people who believe that NASA faked the Apollo Moon landings in the 1960s and 1970s. The biggest voice in this is Bill Kaysing, who claims to have

all sorts of hoax evidence, including pictures taken by the astronauts, engineering details, discussions of physics and even some testimony by astronauts themselves. The program's conclusion was that the whole thing was faked in the Nevada desert. According to them, NASA technology in the 1960s did not have the technical capability of going to the Moon. Instead, anxious to win the space race any way it could, NASA acted out the Apollo program in movie studios. Neil Armstrong's historic first steps on another world, the Moon vehicle and the American flag - it was all a fake!

Fortunately the Soviets didn't think it was a hoax. Otherwise, they could have filmed their own fake Moon landings and really embarrassed the free world.

According to the show, NASA was a blundering movie producer thirty years ago. The hoax believers pointed out a lot of discrepancies in Apollo imagery. For example, pictures of astronauts transmitted from the Moon don't include stars in the dark lunar sky - an obvious production error! What happened? Did NASA film-makers forget to turn on the constellations?

Here's another one. Pictures of Apollo astronauts erecting a US flag on the Moon show the flag bending and waving. How can that be? After all, there's no breeze on the Moon ...

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." These immortal words were spoken when American astronaut Neil Armstrong first set foot on the Moon in 1969. Or did he?