【Native Speaker每日综合训练—28系列】【28-14】文史哲

jay871750293

Hi~ buddies~
Sunday's exercise is coming~

In Speaker Part, I took an intriguing report about "Love Test" from BBC 6 minute english.
And in Speed Part, there are two articles from distinct subjects. First one discusses about some facets of mordern health system in a different but interesting way(FYI, in the Speed Part, there is only the last part of the whole passage. ). The other one, belonging to the business sphere, is about the trillionaires in the world.
Finally, in the Obstacle Part, like the last time, contains two comments of two recent movies: one is "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" and the other one is "The Armstrong Lie”.
And here are links of those two movies.

"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1951264/
"The Armstrong Lie”: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1638364/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Part 1 Speaker

[Rephrase1]
'Love test' predicts good marriage

[Reprot： 56'']

Mp3:
Transcprit:
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2013/11/131129_witn_love_test.shtml

jay871750293

lylyyu 发表于 2013-12-2 17:55
刚开始，感觉也就看个似懂非懂，最后的越障更是眼睛在动，脑子不动。很多单词不认识的感觉，tofel词汇已 ...

lylyyu是刚开始小分队练习吗？
如果是刚开始练习的话，这种情况是常有的，像我练习的头一个星期几乎就是在扫视单词，根本无法理解...
应该不会是阅读障碍的问题，不要太担心哈~

理解会收到一些其他因素的影响，比如背景知识理解的程度。以越障为例，讲了2个电影，一个是饥饿游戏，一个是阿姆斯特朗。如果没有看过饥饿游戏（或者看过但忘记了主要人物与剧情），如果不是很了解自行车赛，不知道阿姆斯特朗关于违禁药物使用的谎言，那么都会在很大程度上影响到自己的理解（特别是同时需要保证速度时...）

所以，lylyyu，首先需要解决的是心态，不要着急，要循序渐进，适应一个星期左右的小分队练习之后应该会稍微好一些；在摆正心态之后，需要找好一个速度与理解的平衡，如果是刚开始感觉理解不太好的话，建议花更多的精力在理解上，先读懂，然后在一个较好的理解程度上逐步提升速度。

至于背单词，我个人觉得是一个很深奥的学问，个人认为真正掌握一个单词的宗旨在于对这个单词的“听说读写”四个方面的完全掌握，以阅读为例，看到这个单词能不能瞬间反应出它可能的意思？在句子里看到这个单词能否瞬间确定它合理的意思？我认为如果能够回答以上两个问题，这个单词在阅读上就是真正掌握了。所以，背单词并不是以过了多少遍单词书来衡量的，关键是自己在运用时的把握程度。

个人见解，希望能够对lylyyu君有帮助，加油！！！
欢迎讨论、交流、拍砖~

jay871750293

Part 2 Speed

Article 1(Check the title later)
Excerpt of "Would Lincoln Have Survived If He Was Shot Today?"

Philip Mackowiak
Nov 29 2013, 9:00 AM ET

[TIME2]

Sometimes a life is saved only to leave the patient to linger in dying, never again to speak, see, hear, or awaken into a conscious being.

On January 4, 2006, Ariel Sharon, then Prime Minister of Israel, suffered a different though no less devastating brain injury—a massive stroke. The Israeli heath care system, arguably one of the best in the world, reacted quickly and decisively with a series of sophisticated interventions, hoping for the kind of miraculous recovery sometimes seen in such patients. In spite of a host of aggressive measures, including several surgeries related to his comatose state, Sharon never regained his cognitive abilities. He was placed in a long-term care facility on November 6, 2007. Six years later, he is alive but in a persistent vegetative state.

Abraham Lincoln suffered his massive brain injury almost a century and a half earlier. The health care system in which his physicians operated was far less sophisticated than that of modern-day Israel or the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. It had neither the knowledge nor the tools to save Lincoln’s life, much less preserve his cognitive abilities, in the aftermath of Booth’s attack. If Dr. Scalea’s team had had access to Lincoln at the time of the assassination, perhaps he might have survived, albeit with right-sided hemiplegia and homonymous hemianopsia, along with persistent dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dysphasia. If so, he might yet have retained enough cognitive and communicative function to have restrained the forces of prejudice and vindictiveness that marred Johnson’s period of reconstruction. Lincoln’s genius, after all, was that “In the cave of winds in which he saw history in the making, he was more a listener than a talker.”

However, in medicine as in politics, nothing is certain. Although under the care of a trauma team like Dr. Scalea’s Lincoln might have made a recovery as miraculous as that of Giffords, he might also have fared no better, or even worse, than under the care of Doctors Leale and Taft. As in the case of Ariel Sharon, modern technology produces tragic failures along with spectacular successes. Sometimes a life is saved only to leave the patient “to linger in dying … never again [to] speak, see, hear, or awaken into a conscious being.” It is because of such uncertainty that knowing when not to treat can be more difficult and more important than knowing how to treat.
[Words: 400]
Source: The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/would-lincoln-have-survived-if-he-was-shot-today/281680/

Article 2(Check the title later)
Who Wants to Be a Trillionaire?

By Elliot Hannon

[TIME3]
The global pool of wealth is bigger than ever. Credit Suisse’s 2013 Global Wealth Report puts it at $241 trillion, or 68 percent bigger than a decade ago. That’s not to say that it is being spread more evenly—10 percent of the world’s population possesses 86 percent of the money. Wealth is being created and stockpiled so fast, the report projects, that in just two generations’ time, there could be 1 billion millionaires in the world. That means roughly 1 in 5 adults could soon call themselves a millionaire.


Even billionaires aren’t the exotic species they once were. According to Forbes, there are 1,426 of them today, with more than 200 of them having reached 10-figure status in the last year alone. When Forbes started its billionaire list 25 years ago, there were only 140. It’s hard to imagine the likes of Evan Spiegel, 23-year-old co-founder of Snapchat, turning down multibillion-dollar offers from Google and Facebook even a couple of years ago. Hitting the 10-figure mark: not as cool as it used to be.

It wasn’t always so easy. When John D. Rockefeller rose from a clerk earning 50 cents a day at a produce company to become the world’s first billionaire a century ago, the fortune he amassed would have made Bill Gates swoon. In 1918, Rockefeller’s taxable income was a staggering $33 million, or slightly more than $550 million in today’s dollars. That dwarfs Warren Buffett’s 2010 tax bill, where he paid just under $7 million on $40 million in taxable income. At the time, Rockefeller’s fortune alone amounted to 1.53 percent of the U.S. economy, the equivalent of some $350 billion today.
[Words: 286]

[TIME4]
But even then, Rockefeller wasn’t halfway to the next monetary milestone: a trillion dollars. No one since has even come close. Here’s a clue to just how alien a concept of personal wealth this is: So far, neither Merriam-Webster dictionary nor Oxford have acknowledged the word trillionaire. How does one become something that doesn’t exist yet?

Rockefeller’s rise to extreme wealth came from a familiar source: oil. In 1870, he founded the Standard Oil Company; by the end of that decade, Standard Oil was refining 90 percent of the oil in the U.S. The timing of Rockefeller’s ascendency was perfect: The post-war U.S. was expanding westward and petroleum became the global currency of industrialization. Rockefeller’s road to 10 figures wasn’t paved with good business sense alone; he also benefited from monopolistic practices. When the Supreme Court ordered the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911, the company spun off oil predecessors into the titans of the modern industry: Conoco, Amoco, Chevron, Exxon, and Mobil.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the Rothschild family had built the infrastructure of modern banking. The patriarch, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, set the family on a path pioneering modern finance, acting as a central bank to the continent, striking deals that helped finance the infrastructure of European industrialization, and making them the wealthiest family the world had ever seen.

Could the rise of Rockefeller and the Rothschilds be replicated to create a trillionaire? First, you have to actually want to make that much money. Rockefeller was driven by what he thought was a higher calling to make more and more, but also to give it away. "I believe the power to make money is a gift of God," Rockefeller said. "It is my duty to make money and even more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow men."

With his unimaginable wealth, Rockefeller pioneered a contradictory pursuit: the art of giving it away. By the end of his life, he had given away more than $500 million of his fortune, giving rise to modern philanthropy. He invested heavily in education; from his wealth, the University of Chicago was born. He poured funds into medical research to cure diseases and medical schools to train doctors.
[Words: 371]

[TIME5]
Rockefeller strove for “efficiency in giving” just as in his business pursuits, in order “to solve the problem of giving money away without making paupers of those who receive it." It’s an instinct that two of today’s wealthiest—Bill Gates and Warren Buffett—share. The pair’s donations to Gates’ foundation made it a $40 billion juggernaut. And they don’t just want to give their own cash away; they want their fellow billionaires to pledge to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. That makes Gates, Buffett, and the many who wish to emulate them all longshots for trillionaire status.

Following in Rockefeller’s footsteps in the extraction business isn’t a sure bet, either. There surely are still billions to be had in oil, but trillions? In an already competitive industry, production has gotten more complicated and expensive. Rockefeller built Standard Oil in the early days of the commercial oil business and relentlessly absorbed competitors to create a monopoly. So tight was his grip on the market that it spurred the antitrust movement, which hinders his successors from achieving the same sort of dominance. As Rockefeller’s oil prepotency waned, global production flourished; in a frantically developing industrialized world, oil reserves took on strategic importance. That meant the countries resting atop oil reserves weren’t going to let it go. Governments have become accustomed to demanding a larger share of the profits for themselves.

Could a new wonder mineral arise to anoint a new Rockefeller? It’s certainly possible. With the explosion of mobile technology from cellphones to laptops to hybrid cars, the insatiable need for batteries has made rare Earth metals a hot commodity. But they, too, are found within national boundaries. In fact, 97 percent of the world’s rare Earth metals are found in China, giving the country a virtual Rockefeller-like monopoly that it won’t let slip away.
[Words: 306]

[TIME6]
A century ago, the world’s wealthiest rode a wave of industrialization in the U.S. that ushered in a Gilded Age. The explosion of communication technology and transportation transformed the American economy into a truly national marketplace. It was a period that created the American middle class, as well as setting the stage for American industrialists to accumulate vast fortunes. Today, a similar process is occurring on a global scale. Global communication and transportation lines have now stretched beyond borders and fuelled the growth of a global middle class. Programmers in India are now part of the labor pool for American companies, which in turn makes them new consumers. That’s not to say that the distribution of wealth has gotten more equal, but more wealth than ever in more parts of the world could set the stage for a trillionaire to emerge.

The two industries are best positioned to take a billionaire to the next level are technology and retail, for the same reason: Both use a global labor pool to make affordable products, inexpensive enough that workers can soon become the consumers of the products they are making. Of course, the tech industry is building on Internet infrastructure to create billionaires faster than ever. In October 2010, photo-sharing social network Instagram came into being; less than two years and a mere 13 employees later, Facebook snapped up the company for a cool billion. A look at the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest shows that the rise of technology and telecommunications has made a big impact: Mexico’s Carlos Slim, who vies with Gates for the top spot on global-richest lists, made the bulk of his fortune in telecom.

Lurking just below these technology magnates are Amancio Ortega, the founder of Zara; the Walton family and their ubiquitous Walmart chain; the Mars family of candy fame; Stefan Persson, chairman of H&M; and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. The rise of these individuals and families is perhaps more surprising than that of Gates, Slim, and their peers—and may be revealing about the clearest sustainable path to 10 figures. These magnates are best positioned, in different ways, to find and use available labor no matter where it is. That will help them sell their products at prices that a wealthier world will be able to afford most quickly. For that to happen, they’ll need emerging markets to continue emerging, creating not only employees but customers, too. If that happens, in two generations—about 60 years—Credit Suisse predicts there could be as many as 11 trillionaires walking among us.  
[Words: 426]
Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/billion_to_one/2013/11/the_world_s_first_trillionaire_is_it_possible.html

jay871750293

Part 3 Obstacle

Article3 (Check the title later)
WINNERS AND LOSERS

BY DAVID DENBY
DECEMBER 2, 2013

[Paraphase7]
The basic premise of “The Hunger Games,” the first volume in Suzanne Collins’s trilogy of young-adult novels, never made much sense to me. How could a totalitarian government keep its people down while forcing some of their children to fight to the death in a yearly competition? What could be a greater goad to revolution than the anguish of seeing children die? There were other mysteries and not a few hypocrisies: the filmmakers who adapted the book shrugged off the gladiatorial issues implicit in the spectacle. They wanted to create indignation over the horror—children forced to hunt one another with arrows, swords, lances—while staging the violence in the most anodyne manner possible to achieve a PG-13 rating. The teens I know accepted the combat as a given, while their elders, bewildered, and looking for a little meaning, interpreted the story as a representation of how kids felt about the competitive traumas of high school; or as a metaphor for capitalism, with its terrifying job market and winner-take-all ethos; or, more simply, as a satiric exaggeration of talent-show ruthlessness. The premise of “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” an adaptation of Collins’s second volume, doesn’t make a lot of sense, either. Having survived the competition through daring and ingenuity, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and her admirer, Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), receive riches and acclaim from the vicious overlords in the Capitol. Yet rebellion is breaking out in the twelve districts of the country, called Panem, and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and his new head gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), cook up a fresh scheme: they will choose among the survivors of all the competitions, some of them now middle-aged or elderly, and throw them into a new struggle, which will somehow quell the rebellion. Distraction is supposed to work miracles. Along with this gang of heavies, Katniss and Peeta are pushed back into the woods to fight again.

Gary Ross’s direction of the first movie, with its wandering, jiggling camera and its fragmented, messy staging, was pretty much an embarrassment. Francis Lawrence (“I Am Legend”), working with a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy and Michael deBruyn, has taken over, and parts of “Catching Fire”—at least the first forty-five minutes or so—are impressive. The scenes in Katniss’s home turf, District 12, have the feel of life under totalitarian control. The mood is Eastern-bloc depression, a gray world drained of vitality. The images are large-scale and weighted: menacing military vehicles charge through the demoralized cities; faceless storm troopers in white plastic helmets clobber people with truncheons. For Katniss, the pleasure of victory never arrives. At the very beginning of the movie, we see her in silhouette, crouching at the edge of a pond, a huntress poised to uncoil. She hates being a celebrity, and she certainly has no desire to lead a revolution. Jennifer Lawrence’s gray-green eyes and her formidable concentration dominate the camera. She resembles a story-book Indian princess, and she projects the kind of strength that Katharine Hepburn had when she was young. Two guys vie for Katniss’s love—not just the doleful, fair-haired Peeta but the faithful, darkly handsome Gale (Liam Hemsworth). But happiness is not her fate. She’s tormented, and wary.

The film moves back to the Capitol for more of the extravagant decadence and purple-pink luxury that was so puzzling in the first movie. Why is everyone dressed in wigs, glitter, and eye shadow, as if outfitted for a drag ball that never ends? The crowds are nothing more than seething, bright-colored décor. Stanley Tucci returns as Caesar Flickerman, and again brilliantly parodies beauty-pageant and talent-show hosts. Unctuous and hostile at the same time, Tucci flashes enormous choppers that glisten in the light. Donald Sutherland, with his satanic eyebrows and rounded, insinuating voice, is an entertainingly threatening presence. And Woody Harrelson, as the hard-drinking realist Haymitch, who guides Katniss through every terror, is the core of intelligence in the movie; he is used more centrally here than in the first film, and his glare and his acid voice cut through the meaningless fashion show. Yet, despite the good acting, the middle section of the film, set at the Capitol, is attenuated and rhythmless—the filmmakers seem to be touching all the bases so that the trilogy’s readers won’t miss anything. In the woods, Francis Lawrence recovers his skills, at least for a while: some of the starts and frights—a bunch of snarling devil baboons, some enveloping poisonous smoke—work in a B-movie-ish way. But there are complications in the plot that the filmmakers can’t sort out. Characters we barely know go chasing through the brush, brandishing weapons. Who are Katniss and Peeta’s friends? Who are their enemies? Some of the confusion is intentional, some of it the result of ineptitude, and the grand climax, whose elements include a long piece of wire, a lightning bolt, and an electronic force field, is an incoherent, rapid blur that will send the audience scurrying back to the book to find out what’s supposed to be going on. Cinema can provide explosions of light and terrors bursting through the foliage, but when it comes to basic exposition of complicated physical events, literature—even a calculating young-adult novel—may have the movies beat.

In some ways, Lance Armstrong is a familiar American type. A handsome man, he has strong, regular features, a ready smile, a finely honed, slender body; he also has an unblinking military gaze that would melt a steel girder. As he admits, in Alex Gibney’s documentary “The Armstrong Lie,” his life has been damaged by the need to win every encounter, be it personal or professional. Armstrong lied until it was impossible for him to lie anymore, and Gibney’s movie unexpectedly hinges on that moment. Seven-time winner of the Tour de France, world-famous exemplar of physical courage (he survived testicular cancer in his twenties), Armstrong, having beaten back countless accusations that he was doping, retired in 2005. But in 2009 he attempted a comeback. The point was to prove that he was “clean,” and to validate his earlier titles by winning another. Gibney, usually a skeptical liberal filmmaker (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Taxi to the Dark Side”), was determined to make a positive movie about an American hero. During the 2009 Tour de France, he joined Armstrong’s entourage with a camera crew. Armstrong, as it turned out, didn’t win; he finished third. And in 2010 fresh accusations were made against him. Cornered, he finally confessed to Oprah Winfrey, last January, that he had been doping since the nineteen-nineties. Gibney then reshuffled his footage and put himself, as a self-confessed patsy, in the movie. “The Armstrong Lie” goes on forever, perhaps because Gibney can’t believe that, like everyone else, he’s been had. Again and again, he looks for elements of moral clarity (never mind remorse) in Armstrong, and the cyclist looks back at Gibney (and at us) as if he were a fool. His attitude is: Don’t you get it?

What we don’t get is how often winners will do whatever it takes to win. Gibney interviews Armstrong’s former teammates, who say that, in the nineties, many cyclists were doping, and that they had no choice but to do the same if they were to maintain a competitive edge. An event like the Tour de France is mostly “suffering”—a three-week slog through the Alps and other difficult terrain. Doping increases the amount of oxygen in the blood, delaying the moment when the muscles become exhausted and quit. Armstrong, like many others, took testosterone and the drug EPO. He also refreshed his own blood now and then, transporting the elixir to various tournaments and transfusing it back into his depleted system. (Gibney speculates that he withdrew blood after cycling in the Rockies.) One of the greatest athletes in the world became a kind of ghoul, feeding on his own body.

For Armstrong, success creates its own benediction, absolution, and redemption; after all, as he reminds Gibney, his victories and his personal story brought extraordinary levels of attention and money to the cycling world—competitors, cycling associations, bike manufacturers, media coverage. Many people benefitted from his victories. From our point of view, however, it’s hard to overstate his cynicism. The bitterest parts of Gibney’s movie are the interviews with the former teammates who were caught doping, and whom Armstrong, when he was still officially clean, viciously turned on. These men took the fall. In competition, they literally covered for him—providing protection from wind resistance by riding around him until he could burst from the pack at the last minute to win. For most of his professional life, Armstrong lived in a safety zone created by others. Gibney doesn’t get much out of him; his admissions are as brief, bald, and dismissive as his lies. What’s most alive in him is his contempt for “dickheads”—anyone who has ever held him responsible for anything. The most determined person in the movie, apart from Armstrong, is Betsy Andreu, whose husband, the cyclist Frankie Andreu, was an Armstrong teammate and a victim. She told the truth about Armstrong under subpoena, and refused to be rattled when she was attacked by him and his supporters. In front of Gibney’s camera, she’s both defiant and regretful. Armstrong’s fierce desire to predominate created fear and loyalty. In Betsy Andreu, he seems to have met his match.
[Words: 1560]
Source: New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2013/12/02/131202crci_cinema_denby

疏离无罪

占~~久违的沙发，感谢JAY

Speaker:A test that can find out whether a couple have unconscious negative feeling to each other,a feeling may affect their marriage.

02:33
Sometimes the life is saved only to leave the patient to linger in dying.Then the article raised two cases:Ariel Sharon and Abraham Lincoln to show its idea.Knowing when not to treat may be more difficult and important than knowing how to treat.

01:42
The global wealth is growing rapidly in the past decades.More people become millionaires and it seem that it is easier to reach that level today.But this is not alway easy.Rockefeller gain much more money in the past.But todday rich people must pay more tax.

02:02
But no one had gain a trillion dollars.Then introduce Rockefeller and Rothschild family who may be the most wealthy family in USA and Europe.They also can not get to that goal.Rockefeller gave out most of his money in his later life.

01:50
The policy of giving out makes two wealthiest share in the world.It is impossible to become a trillionares in oil industry for several reasons.But in mobile technology in china there is a chance.

02:15
The communist technology and transporation line creat fortune fot the American,and now they are creating fortune for the world.More and more people benefit form them.Technology and retail may be the next two industries that can creat billionares.They both have inexpensive costs and can sell goods to people who creat them.Several example companies are raised in these two industry.

08:52
Main idea:We should not do whaever it takes to win
The preimise of hunger game is odds.But the game is just like many competitions in our life such as competitions in high school,in job market and so on.Introduce the movie,the performace of the actors and the characters.
Then the article grow into the armstrong lie.He used drugs in the race to win.What we don’t get is how often winners will do whatever it takes to win. Many winner want to win more games so they choose drugs,even they cost a lot for this action.And at the same time many people benefits from their success.

两电影都没看过，后一个好歹还看过新闻，这越障好艰难。。

thenewme

竟然第二个诶~
晚安~
----------

SPEED

2 2'38

3+4 3'54

5+6 4'53

magnate 巨头

OBSTACLE

8'41

introduction of  "the hunger games"(3 volume, characters)

MI : meaningless

吐吐yeah

好久不见的首页啊啊啊~占个位~谢谢JAY~

掌管 6        00:08:47.56        00:17:27.98
掌管 5        00:01:52.15        00:08:40.41
掌管 4        00:01:36.27        00:06:48.26
掌管 3        00:01:33.06        00:05:11.99
掌管 2        00:01:31.52        00:03:38.92
掌管 1        00:02:07.39        00:02:07.39

obstacle
main idea:comments on two recent movies:"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" and "The Armstrong Lie”
structure:
1.The Hunger Games 2
attitude:negative(the basic premise does not make sense)
introduces the movie
2.The Armstrong Lie
introduces the story of Lance Armstrong about winning,who is a familiar American type.

小鱼上树

首页你还在么，哦，你还在哦

28-14

Speaker

Newly-weds sometimes refuse to admit that they have negativefeelings about the other half. They can lie to themselves but they can’t foolthe unconscious feelings deep inside.

2 400 2min14

3 286 1min12

4 371 1min51

5 306 1min34

6 426 1min51

10 percent of the world’s population possesses 86 percent ofthe money. Rockefeller’s rise to extreme wealth came from a familiar sourceil. First, you have to actually want to make that much money. the art ofgiving it away. The two industries are best positioned to take a billionaire tothe next level are technology and retail.

sherlock1992

末班车〜，谢谢jay~

---

28-14
Speaker: Unconcious feelings of new-weddings can indicate future emotional conditions of couples.

Speed:
T2-2'37''
T3-1'46''
T4-2'12''
T5-2'02''
T6-2'27''

Obstacle-9'48''

kimwang53

早起的虫子有鸟吃~~谢谢JAY

speaker
a test that can find people's unconscious negetive feeling about their partner.

speed
2.13
1.25
1.54
1.42
2.02

叶晴豆

2:57
1:58
2:14
2:16
2:44
Obstacle
Lance Armstrong---winning another earlier but lost in 2009 Tour de France---teammates doping---victim
victories and  personal story brought extraordinary levels of attention and money to the cycling world---created fear and loyalty
阅读水平严重受限，实在是写不粗来逻辑链