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[阅读小分队] 【Native Speaker每日综合训练—44系列】【44-08】文史哲

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发表于 2014-11-9 07:38:08 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
内容:枣糕兔 编辑:枣糕兔

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Part I: Speaker

Buying Theater Tickets

Susie: I can’t believe I’m going to get to see my favorite actor in a play. I want front row seats!
David: I’m looking at the venue’s seating plan right now and all front row seats are taken for the entire run. I’m guessing that season ticket holders got those.
Susie: Damn! All right. Let’s try to get seats as close to the stage as possible, preferably in the orchestra.
David: The only orchestra tickets still available have partially obstructed views.
Susie: Okay, we’ll take those.
David: But we won’t be able to see the entire stage. These tickets in the loge or mezzanine, or even the balcony will give us a better view of the play.
Susie: I don’t need to see every part of the play. I just want to get as close to him as possible.
David: Wait one second. I see two seats in the second row still available for the matinee performance. Oh no, those are seats for wheelchair access.
Susie: That’s great! We’ll take those.
David: But neither of us needs wheelchair access.
Susie: I’ll break a leg if I have to to get that close to him.
David: Do the words “obsessed fan” mean anything to you?
Susie: You can call it obsession, but I call it devotion!

Source: ESLpod
http://www.eslpod.com/website/show_podcast.php?issue_id=15879173#


[Rephrase 1, 19’22]

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 楼主| 发表于 2014-11-9 07:38:09 | 显示全部楼层
Part II: Speed


Would Loretta Lynch echo Holder on civil rights?
Jeffrey Toobin   |   November 7, 2014


[Time 2]
(CNN) -- New junior federal prosecutors literally started in the basement of the U.S. courthouse in downtown Brooklyn. I moved into my subterranean office in January 1990. A few weeks later, Loretta Lynch moved into her new digs down the hall. We were assistant U.S. attorneys in the Eastern District of New York, which covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island.

The work of this U.S. attorney's office is unglamorous, especially for new hires. Our jurisdiction included John F. International Kennedy Airport in Queens, so our introductory cases often involved low-level drug smuggling, especially the "swallowers" who ingested condoms full of cocaine or heroin. Lynch thrived in that chaotic environment.

And now, two-plus decades later, it looks like she will be the next attorney general of the United States.

She has been U.S. attorney twice in the courthouse where she came up -- first under President Bill Clinton and currently under President Barack Obama. She is not a well-known figure, even in New York. She is a workhorse, not a show horse, and she has flourished doing the hard, ordinary work of federal prosecution -- narcotics cases, organized crime (always big in Brooklyn), public corruption (ditto) and civil rights violations.

Lynch has showed her strengths more as an administrator than as a courtroom performer. She always had good relations with the U.S. attorney's "clients" -- the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement agencies. Still, against heavy pressure from the New York police, she led a full investigation and prosecution of the horrible assault of Abner Louima by NYPD officers in 1997.

She is a tough and successful New Yorker, but she has also never forgotten her North Carolina roots. There is a Southern graciousness about her (and her accent), and it will certainly be on display in any confirmation hearings.

Two major questions loom over her prospective tenure as attorney general. First, will she continue the emphasis on voting rights that Eric Holder displayed? The answer is almost certainly yes. Like Holder, she comes from the generation after the civil rights movement, but it is part of her DNA, and that will come through in her priorities.

The more interesting question involves drugs. Holder moved carefully but steadily to reduce federal prosecutions of low-level narcotics offenses, especially marijuana. In addition, he started plans to lower the sentences of federal inmates who were convicted under those laws. Will Lynch continue these efforts?

She has no public track record on these policy issues, though she has aggressively prosecuted narcotics offenders in Brooklyn. This area offers a possible route for cooperation with some Republicans, like Sen. Rand Paul, who were sympathetic to Holder on this issue.

In any event, one verdict is clear: Lynch has come a long way from that basement we shared.
[464 words]

Source: CNN Opinion
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/07/opinion/toobin-loretta-lynch/index.html?hpt=op_t1


Lil Buck Elevates Jookin’ to an Art
——Dancer Lil Buck combined a style of Memphis street dancing with the rigor of classical ballet, astonishing everyone from Madonna to Damian Woetzel with his graceful moves
JASON GAY   |   Nov. 5, 2014


[Time 3]
It was morning, breakfast time, in the Bowery Hotel in downtown New York City, and in the plush, low-lit lobby, a hushed crowd in expensive-looking T-shirts and denim huddled over laptops and lingered over cappuccinos. In the middle of the room, the dancer Lil Buck was talking about music and anticipation—how he’s learned in his 26 years to not just feel a rhythm but to predict what’s coming next, staying one step ahead, as if he, not the musician, were in control of the song. “I try to feel like, ‘How would I want the beat to go?’ ” Lil Buck said. He began to elaborate further, but then stopped. “I can give you a visual.”

Lil Buck reached for his smartphone and, with a magician’s flair, began flicking a thumb through his playlist, keeping the screen pointed directly at me, away from his eyes. After scrolling for a few seconds, he dialed up a random song—it turned out to be “Forbidden Love” by the composer Abel Korzeniowski, off the soundtrack to the 2013 film Romeo and Juliet. As a piano melody began, Lil Buck lifted himself out of his chair in his baseball cap and T-shirt and black pants and started to move, curling his neck and unraveling his long arms. “I jump inside of the music,” he said, lifting his toes off the floor. “I mess with the tempo. You know how with an equalizer, you can see the music go up and down? That’s what I do.” He bent his knees and glided in small squares on the carpet, appearing to levitate. “Being a vessel for sound. You see it in my body.”

Behind him, a handful of hotel guests looked over at the man suddenly dancing in the lobby. This was jaded New York City, where everybody thinks they have already seen everything, but it was hard not to be entranced. This elegant ripple of movement and footwork, exuberant and seemingly gravity resistant—this is why people around the planet have clamored to watch Lil Buck, why in just a few years he has progressed from street performances and open auditions to ovations in New York and China and collaborations with the likes of Yo-Yo Ma and Madonna at the Super Bowl. “Lil Buck is one of a kind,” said Benjamin Millepied, the director of dance at the Paris Opera Ballet. He could dance like this anywhere. He could do this in a concert hall, on the Great Wall of China or in a TV commercial (that was Lil Buck dancing as the lead hamster in that endlessly played KIA ad)—or here, in a boutique hotel, over morning coffee. He was a step ahead of the music, as if occupying a new kind of body.

“I still haven’t seen anybody do a lot of the things that I do,” Lil Buck said. “I’m my own entity. I’m my own alien.”
[489 words]

[Time 4]
Lil Buck rose to fame, as so many people do these days, with an Internet moment. If you go to YouTube, you can find it: a 2011 performance with Yo-Yo Ma at an arts benefit in Los Angeles. It is a breezy outdoor setting, and as the cellist begins to play Camille Saint-Saëns ’s “The Swan,” Lil Buck flutters his arms and glides around the concrete on his sneakers. As he arcs his back, angles his neck and fully inhabits the song, it becomes obvious that the audience has never seen anything quite like him before. A few times, you can hear someone gasp.

This was not the first time Lil Buck had performed “The Swan”—he’d developed the piece in 2007, back in his home city of Memphis, Tennessee, with one of his early dance mentors, Katie Smythe. But among the audience members this time was the film director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Her), who captured the performance on his phone and uploaded it. To date “The Swan” has more than 2.7 million views—not a massive number compared to, say, a Katy Perry video, but still extraordinary for what is essentially a home video of a dance collaboration.

The video made Lil Buck an Internet sensation, but his success had hardly arrived overnight. Born Charles Riley in Chicago in 1988, Lil Buck—a childhood nickname that stuck—was raised in Memphis, where in his early adolescence he became fascinated by jookin’, a locally grown dance movement rooted in hip-hop and earlier forms of street dancing, such as the Gangsta Walk. Memphis jookin’ emphasized fluidity and footwork, sometimes on tiptoes; at its best, it offered the illusion of floating in slow motion. Lil Buck became obsessed. He practiced religiously, wearing out sneakers and competing in “battles” against young Memphis talent. “He started doing a lot of stuff with his ankles, balancing on his toe as long as he could,” said Craten “Jai” Armmer Jr., a musician and filmmaker who was chronicling the jookin’ scene at the time and is now Lil Buck’s manager. “Buck has always been an extreme style dancer.”

“I didn’t really have that natural feel when I first got into it,” Lil Buck recalled. “I just jumped into it, trying crazy things.”

In his teens, Lil Buck began dancing at Memphis’s New Ballet Ensemble and School, where his jookin’ was interjected with a dose of the discipline and rigor of ballet. From the start, his talent appeared undeniable, and the school took him under its wing, providing him with a scholarship and a job. “His charisma as a performer, it’s magic,” said Smythe, New Ballet’s CEO and artistic director. She believes the ballet instruction Lil Buck received helped with his turns, his balance and what Smythe called his verticality, giving his jookin’ a new height and posture. “He started to adopt elements from each form into his improvisation, trying things out and playing with them,” Smythe said. “All of a sudden, his jookin’ was different from everyone else’s.”
[504 words]

[Time 5]
At 19, Lil Buck set out for Los Angeles, where he encountered Damian Woetzel, an acclaimed director and former principal dancer for the New York City Ballet. Woetzel’s wife, the former NYCB prima ballerina Heather Watts, had been an early admirer of Lil Buck’s talent—“Buck makes you want to cry,” she told me—and Woetzel was similarly taken. Lil Buck had already experienced some professional breakthroughs—he’d choreographed a rollicking music video, “Tightrope,” for the singer Janelle Monáe—but the well-connected Woetzel introduced him to a new wave of admirers, including Yo-Yo Ma. “When I met him, [his success] was very much built on astonishment at his dancing ability,” Woetzel said. “But there was a whole other side, his ability to fuse worlds.”

That fusing ability may be Lil Buck’s signature gift, his apparent ease at moving between artistic settings and collaborators, picking up pieces and techniques and translating them into something original. Lil Buck has often been described as a 21st-century dancer, and like a viral phenomenon, there is something modern and platform-agnostic about his style; it works before an art-world audience or among school kids or on TV. In the past few years, Lil Buck has tried a little bit of everything. He’s been an artist in residence at the Vail International Dance Festival and the Aspen Institute; he traveled to Beijing with Yo-Yo Ma (and Meryl Streep) for a U.S.–China cultural summit; he served as a judge on the show So You Think You Can Dance; he made his debut with the New York City Ballet in a piece choreographed in collaboration with the French artist JR. A year ago, he performed with Cirque du Soleil in a Michael Jackson–inspired show; before that, Lil Buck went out on the road with Madonna. You can find video of him in Madonna’s Cleopatra-themed 2012 Super Bowl halftime show, performing a nimble backflip before an audience of hundreds of millions. (“Pressure,” Lil Buck said, smiling.) Not long ago, he said, Madonna had sent him a pair of Riccardo Tisci–designed Nikes as a birthday gift. “He adapts to the environment he’s in,” said the filmmaker Ole Schell, who made a short film about Lil Buck’s trip to China.

This fluidity has elevated Lil Buck to a rare position: the dancer as emerging pop star. Over the past generation and a half, mainstream culture has relegated dancers mostly to backup ornamentation; the familiar scene is the artist singing with a cluster of choreographed bodies, their faces often obscured, names seldom promoted. Lil Buck, conversely, has been the solo star of his own Gap commercial; he has chatted about jookin’ with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report. “I think he’s going to make dance more important,” said Watts. “He is making dance more important. Young people know who Lil Buck is.”
[472 words]

[The Rest]
Lil Buck is polite about this type of praise but doesn’t take his growing celebrity for granted. He is not so far removed from humbler days of L.A. auditions and realizes there are many extraordinary talents who would crave such opportunities. “I strongly believe dance has its own power,” he said. “It’s not for background. I believe you can be just as entertained watching dancers without other artists in front of them.” (Madonna, he said, has been a real advocate: “She started off as a dancer and really understands dancers. She gets to know you as an individual artist.”) Already Lil Buck has been described as the Baryshnikov of jookin’, and he speaks reverentially of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. But at a certain point the comparisons stop, and he occupies his own individual orbit. “I want to be Lil Buck,” he said. “I want to be known for Lil Buck.”

“He’s very much his own guy,” said Woetzel. “He’s sui generis. It’s not been done.”

As his profile has grown, Lil Buck’s schedule has become even more hectic—though he’s based in Las Vegas, more and more of his life unfolds on airplanes and in hotels. “It still feels nonstop,” he said. He admitted there are moments when he wakes up and isn’t certain where he is. “It’s happened a few times.” Maintaining relationships is difficult. “I am very single right now,” Lil Buck said. He leaned over the table and spoke directly into my tape recorder, as if to emphasize the point. “Single ladies, you know what I am saying? You want to come to a show?” He laughed. “I’m single, but it’s working for me. It’s hard to have a relationship when you’re traveling so much.”

Artistically, these are important years. Watts believes most dancers enter their physical prime in their late 20s and early 30s; Lil Buck is still developing, pushing the boundaries of his body, which has grown leaner partly as the result of a vegan diet. (In September, Lil Buck was taking a rare rest after spraining an ankle.) Earlier in the summer, before a residency in Aspen, he had traveled to Paris to make a short film with the artist JR. “He likes to say yes,” said Woetzel. “But you can’t do everything.” Smythe hopes he will return to Memphis for additional ballet work; she sounded a bit like Yoda hoping Luke Skywalker would return for more Jedi training.

Lil Buck feels he is just getting started, but he has visions for his post-performing future, including building his own company and serving as its artistic director. “I know my body won’t be able to do all this crazy stuff forever,” he said. He knows there will soon be other great dancers chasing after him. They already are, especially back in Memphis, where Lil Buck’s brilliant and improbable journey started. “I love it,” Lil Buck said. “I want the younger guys to come up to me and say, ‘Man, I’ll battle you one day. I’m going to get you.’ I’m like, ‘I hope so! That means you’ve got to go harder than I went. And I’m still going hard. So good luck with that!’ ”
[532 words]

Source: The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/articles/lil-buck-elevates-jookin-to-an-art-1415236752


Steven Moffat Explains Why Doctor Who Companions Are Young, Attractive Girls, and It Sure Makes Sense
James Plafke   |   May 9th 2012

Background info: Doctor Who is a giant TV series in the UK. The TV play was named after the main character in this story, who is a different species from human, called TimeLord, and always has a beautiful companion traveling through time and space with him. The current showrunner is Steven Moffat, also known as the main creator of Sherlock, a mini TV series on BBC.


[Time 6]
Not too long ago, we got word that Doctor Who will, par for the course, get a new companion in the upcoming season to replace Amy Pond and Rory Williams: Jenna-Louise Coleman. As you might notice, she’s quite pretty, which might also lead you think about the past companions, all of which (from the 2005 reboot series) are attractive, most of which are empirically gorgeous. With the whole hullabaloo that seems widespread on the Internet regarding the Doctor someday being played by a female, one might also run into people speculating or complaining about how most of his companions are, by and large, young, attractive females. Showrunner Steven Moffat has a pretty simple answer regarding that, and it sure makes sense.

No, Catherine Tate isn’t unattractive, but she’s not part of the group to which Moffat is referring, which contains four out of five young, super gorgeous females. Speaking in an interview in Doctor Who Magazine, Moffat addressed why, canonically speaking, young, attractive females always seem to end up as the companion:

“…you are always going to have the same sort of person, just because it’s the same man choosing them, and it’s the same person being chosen.

I think the function of a companion is pretty simple. I don’t think that’s very difficult. It’s just a question of who credibly is going to agree to go in the TARDIS? Who’s going to do it? Is it going to be a mother of 15 children? No. Is it going to be someone in their 60s? No. Is there going to be a particular age range? I mean … who’s going to have a crush on the Doctor? You know, come on! It’s more than a format. It’s evolved from good, dramatic reasons.”

That sure makes sense, doesn’t it? As far as we’re aware, the Doctor is heterosexual; he had a wife and children back before he traveled the universe in his blue box, and with the recent series, he’s fallen in love with a female, and has only been attracted to females (in other standalone love affairs). He travels the universe alone, and the whole thing about his character is that he’s the loneliest being in the universe. So, logically, what would the loneliest being in the universe (who really hates being lonely) do? Look for companionship. And whatever that being’s sexual identity might be (whether it straight, gay, or pansexual, as we’ve experienced with Captain Jack) is probably what that being would lean toward when trying to stave off loneliness. “Okay, but why are the young, attractive females always straight and love the Doctor?” you might ask. Another simple answer: People are more likely to be drawn to people they’re drawn to, so a straight female with a propensity for crushing on mysterious, ridiculously charming, heroic men will probably go ahead and follow that kind of crush.

Basically, it’s all logic and probability.
(via Blastr)
[488 words]

Source: The Mary Sue
http://www.themarysue.com/steve-moffat-doctor-who-companions-attractive-girls/

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 楼主| 发表于 2014-11-9 07:38:10 | 显示全部楼层
Part III: Obstacle


Oakland police use Mace during Oakland's "Stop the Draft Week" October 16, 1967, the largest anti-Vietnam war protest in the San Francisco bay area to that date, in downtown Oakland.
(© William James Warren/Science Faction/Corbis)

The Forgotten History of Mace, Designed by a 29-Year-Old and Reinvented as a Police Weapon
——When riots shook America, mace became a tool of crowd control instead of private protection
Daniel A. Gross   |   November 4, 2014


[Paraphrase 7]
In May 1968, in front of photographers and television cameras, Sheriff Joseph Woods wiped a tear from his eye. As an unyielding ex-Marine who hadn't hesitated using force against protestors in Chicago and its suburbs, Woods wasn't really the crying type. He was tearing up because he had just been shot by mace—which, he argued, "is a very humane weapon." The television cameras were broadcasting his attempt to try and prove his point.

Mace was only four years old at this point, and hadn't even reached the consumer market yet—but in its short lifespan, it had already been transformed from a tool of private protection to a front-line weapon of riot control. Strangely enough, it began as the household invention of a young Pittsburgh couple who kept an alligator in the basement. Over time, from Los Angeles to D.C. to Ferguson, it became a ubiquitous and potent symbol of both justice and injustice.

Half a century ago, Alan and Doris Litman lived in Pittsburgh. Doris was a science teacher and Alan, 29 years old, was an inventor, which presumably meant he was waiting for a big break from one of his many pending patents. Journalist Garry Wills portrayed Litman as an enthusiastic and idiosyncratic graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, where among other things he'd done experiments on animal intelligence. This explained why, to the bewilderment of visitors, he and Doris kept an alligator in the basement. It was named Ernst.

Litman's early creations sound like they came off a shelf at Sears. In 1961, he submitted a patent application for an "Infrared nursing bottle heater," a device that warmed milk for infants, and in 1963 he sketched a "waterless egg cooker" and a "bacon cooker." All three inventions seem to have slipped into the netherworld of products that never saw profits. One year later, however, his focus underwent an unexpected shift. He submitted a 1964 application for an "Assailant Incapacitator" and another for an "Aerosol Safety Device," the two of which combined into a little bottle for spraying harsh chemicals. Litman had gone from designing home goods to designing devices for "pocket-sized personal protection." Eventually he'd even patent an "Anti-personnel grenade."

This raises an obvious question. How in the world did Alan Litman go from a builder of bacon cookers to the designer of anti-personnel grenades?

It all started when one of Doris Litman's colleagues, a young female teacher, was mugged on the streets of Pittsburgh. According to several newspaper accounts, when she brought the story home to Alan, the pair started discussing the tools a woman might use in self-defense. Pocket-sized pepper sprays existed, but they often unintentionally afflicted the sprayer, or took so long to sink in that they simply failed to deter attackers.

So the Litmans started running experiments in their home. They toyed with aerosol spray cans, figuring out how to better direct liquids. They mixed chemicals like kerosene, Freon, and sulfuric acid to dissolve and propel harsh irritants. After trying a dizzying array of chemicals that seared the eyes and face, they settled on chloroacetophenone, a chemical the U.S. military had highlighted as a potent tear gas during World War II. At first they called it TGASI, for "Tear Gas Aerosol Spray Instrument," but soon they came up with the catchier name of "Chemical Mace." According to newspaper reports, the name implied that chemicals could produce the same incapacitating effect as a medieval mace—a chilling design of spiked club—but without causing the same brutal injuries. Alan sent off patent applications for a spray can, nozzle, and their chemical mixture.

"Chemical Mace" joined a growing list of technologies designed to disarm without killing. Just a handful of chemicals are considered incapacitating but non-lethal, but they're harnessed in weapons from grenades to sprays to artillery shells. Pepper sprays all harness a single chemical, capsaicin, which is the active ingredient of chili peppers and immediately produces an intense burning sensation all across the face. The remaining chemicals, including the active ingredient in Chemical Mace, fall into the category of tear gases. These take effect more slowly than pepper sprays and cause particular pain in the mucous membranes of the eyes and mouth. All these chemicals—pepper spray and the handful of "non-lethal" tear gases—produce the same basic effect: they attach to sensory receptors on our nerve endings and produce the sensation of burning pain.

Mace wasn't innovative because of its active ingredient, which had already been synthesized in laboratories and discussed for its military applications. It was innovative because it repackaged a chemical weapon as a civilian product. Because it wasn't considered deadly, it didn't violate federal laws; because of its spray bottle design, it could fit in your pocket. And in this form, mace was almost immediately a success. The prototype spray bottle became the foundation of Alan Litman's new business, the General Ordnance Equipment Corporation.

Just two years later, with patent applications still pending, Litman accepted a $100,000 offer for the company from Smith & Wesson—the famed manufacturer of guns and ammunition. His new employer, which made him director of nonlethal weaponry research, bridged the two key markets for weapons that don't kill: private consumers and law enforcement. Mace was in the midst of a transformation.

Patenting "Chemical Mace" proved far more difficult than Litman anticipated. Because the chemical had already been identified by scientists, he never managed to patent a chemical mixture for his devices. His early sprayer design wasn't granted a patent either, and only after years of tweaking, in 1969, did he arrive at a patentable sprayer design that we'd still recognize today.

Which brings us back to Sheriff Joseph Woods of Cook County, Illinois—one of many powerful members of law enforcement eying new technologies to revolutionize the battle for civil order.

As Woods well knew, the late 1960s were a violent time for American cities. Protests against race inequality and the Vietnam War were flaring up across the country, and police forces were militarizing in response. In the wake of the Watts riots, Los Angeles police were considering the purchase of a 20-ton bulletproof vehicle, capable of carrying a machine gun and crushing a barricade of cars. Detroit police had supplemented standard-issue pistols with 500 rifles, 300 shotguns, and 1200 tear gas grenades. Sheriff Woods' approach was to defy an order from his state's Circuit Court and build a riot control squad from civilian volunteers. His Chicago-area police officers were equipped with the latest in law enforcement technology, namely the mace spray that immediately sparked controversy.

By 1967, mace was being tested on unruly crowds across the nation. Norman Mailer mentioned mace in reporting from antiwar rallies in Washington. As a November story in the Pittsburgh Reading Eagle suggested the concept of a spray weapon was still something of a surprise: "Police from Scituate, R.I. To Chula Vista, Calif., have added a new weapon to their arsenals—an aerosol can of gas." But even though mace was experimental, it was quickly becoming a weapon of the front lines.
[1174 words]

[The Rest]
The Reading Eagle continued: "It was used recently on a gang that turned a Pittsburgh school hallway into an alley of violence, on antiwar demonstrators who battled Police at an Oakland, Calif., induction center, on a prisoner who went beserk in his New Orleans cell, and on a frightened opossum who took over a W. Va., police car."

"It failed to control one of the disturbances—the opossum," the article concluded lightheartedly, as if the use of mace on prisoners and students wasn't worth comment.

It was, of course, and criticism proved fierce. Several 1968 medical studies flagged potential long-term health risks like eye damage, allergic reactions, and asthma attacks. These fears still seem reasonable: the CDC states that exposure to chloroacetophenone can constrict airways and cause fluid build-up in the lungs, both of which can exacerbate existing respiratory conditions. Severe exposure in the eyes can cause corneal opacity and, if sprayed particles are traveling quickly enough, even blindness. Other critiques objected on principle: Since chemical weapons are outlawed in international warfare, should law enforcement deploy a harsh chemical spray against America's own citizens? Since police brutality is already a concern with conventional weapons—and since protest is a part of healthy democracy—does it make sense to arm officers with another class of weapon?

In Chicago, Sheriff Woods responded with his televised stunt. He asked to be shot with mace from around 15 inches away, with nurses standing by to monitor his vital signs. Though police officers often aim for the eyes, the stream hit him in the neck. He reported that the spray was cool but quickly vaporized and prompted a sharp burning in the chest and eyes. "It took an effort to keep my eyes open," Woods told a United Press International reporter. But he said the effects were temporary and minor.

The story made national news alongside slightly more rigorous arguments in favor of police uses of mace. In the mid-1960s, over 100 police were shot in riots across the country, and officers justifiably clamored for better methods of self-defense. The strongest and most persistent claim was that mace allowed police officers to incapacitate a suspect without needing to risk firing a gun. In other words, you can see mace as a part of the militarization of police, but you can also argue that it helped halt the domestic arms race. It gave police a reliable alternative to harsher weapons.

In such a turbulent moment, the original inspiration for Litman's modest spray slipped quietly into the background. A product that had started as a tool to empower individuals, like the teacher mugged in Pittsburgh, was now being accused of disempowering American citizens of their right to protest. According to Garry Wills, Litman gradually stopped discussing the product as controversy grew. Even 50 years after the invention of mace, these criticisms remain relevant. If they've largely faded off the map, that's only because by the 1970s, thousands of police departments had made mace mainstream.

Mace earned its twin identity in American culture, as a tool for both private protection and law enforcement, only in the past few decades. Amazingly, mace wasn't widely sold for private use until 1981—by which time members of law enforcement were arguing against it. Private use of mace, they worried, might put police officers at risk.

In a society that embraces firearms while fighting gun violence, safety and self-defense can become puzzlingly relative concepts. One man's definition of self-defense is another man's definition of brutality. And with this in mind, perhaps it's no wonder the uses of mace were disputed from the very beginning. Sometimes the very same technology that makes us safe can put us at risk.
[616 words]

Source: Smithsonian
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/forgotten-history-mace-designed-29-year-old-and-reinvented-police-weapon-180953239/

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发表于 2014-11-9 08:30:19 | 显示全部楼层
Thanks for sharing!
05:04->politic background of Loterry
       her opinion about drugs and voting right.
02:58->Dance style of Lil: dance everywhere with music
02:27->It became firstly famous in Internet.
       the teenager story of Lil
02:46->Lil's specially ability to make the original music, which make him popular even between young people.
03:36->2 reasons for the companion of doctor is always young and beautf women: lonely+ drawn to the people they are drawn to.
07:14->it's firstly designed for self-protection
           how it becomes an anti-personal grenade?
发表于 2014-11-9 08:51:24 | 显示全部楼层
Speaker
Two people book theater tickets online.
front row seats

2- 464 - 2'09
This part tells a story about a women, Loretta Lynch, who assistant U.S. attorneys in New York: her working experiences, her personalities and two questions.

3 - 489 - 2'29
This part describles a ballet dancer, Lil Buck, whose dance performance shocks everybody.

4 - 504 - 1'39
This part involves two major points: how Lil became famous and how did he be so obssessed with ballet.

5 - 472 - 1'55
This part continues the becoming famous story and talks about how people judge Lil.

6 - 488 - 1'46
Not attracted by Doctor Who, so no conclusion.

Obstacle - 1174 - 6'17
This passage shows us the development of Chemical Mace, from a self-defence tool to a weapon.
Chemical Mace 梅斯催泪毒气
发表于 2014-11-9 13:56:07 | 显示全部楼层
阅读速度好慢啊,怎么破?

            time        words          speed(words/min)
time2   4'34        464   102
time3           3'35        489        136
time4   3'50        504        131
time5   3'40        472        129
time6           4'04        488        120


Obstacle:
The story of mace invention. It was invented for personal protection, but then it was used for riot control. Sometimes the very same technology that makes us safe can also put us at risk.
发表于 2014-11-9 15:33:17 | 显示全部楼层
大神们求解这句话的背后含义。。!!!谢谢!!!

People are more likely to be drawn to people they’re drawn to, so a straight female with a propensity for crushing on mysterious, ridiculously charming, heroic men will probably go ahead and follow that kind of crush.
发表于 2014-11-9 17:00:45 | 显示全部楼层
time2 2'46
time3 2'28
time4 2'42
time5 2'53
time6 2'52

obstacle 7'25

14/11/09
发表于 2014-11-9 17:03:53 | 显示全部楼层
Time 2: 2:56

The passage reviews the background and experiences of attorney general to be and predicts her position on two particular issues: human rights and narcotics issues.

Time 3: 2:46

These paragraphs of the passage describe what and how Lil Buck explained his dance and feel of music to the author in the lobby of a hotel in New York.

Time 4: 2:32

These paragraphs of the passage tells how Lil Buck became famous by an internet sensation and how he learnt dancing, from learning Memphis street dancing to learning ballet in a school.

Time 5: 2:21

These paragraphs of the passages tells what happened when Lil Buck’s went to LA, the achievements he accomplished so far, how important he is, and what changes he will bring to dance.

Time 6: 3:18

The passage gives the reason for that Doctor Who always have young and beautiful companions, that is something supposed to be so.

Obstacle: 7:37

The passage talks about the person who invented the maze, why and how the maze was invented and how it became popular in riot control.
发表于 2014-11-9 18:31:55 | 显示全部楼层
谢谢小伙伴哟~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
time2: Loretta Lynch will probably be the tenure attorney general but there are still several questions remain. The passage
       introduced her career experience. The first question is whether she will continue the emphasis on voting rights that
       Eric Holder displayed and the other question envolves drugs.
time3: The author met the dancer Lil Buck. Lil Buck is a dancer who can stay one step ahead and is in control of the song
       instead of the musician. Then Lil Buck gave an improvisation and many people in the hotel watched it. Then the author
       gave high commentation on Lil Buck.
time4: Lil Buck rose to fame with an Internet moment when he performed "The Swan". The views of his performance was extraordinary
       for a home video of a dance collaboration. Lil Buck became fascinated in jookin' in his early adolescence and his talent
       appeared undeniable.
time5: Woetzel and his wife were both amazed about Lil Buck's talent and Woetzel introduced him to another side of dance.
       There is something modern and platform-agnostic about his dancing style and in the past few years, he has tried a little
       bit of everything. Ths fluidity has elevated Lil Buck to a rare position as both a dancer and a emerging pop star.
the rest: Lil Buck is polite about this type of praise but doesn't take his growing celebrity for granted. His schedule became
          more hectic and he wants to find a girlfriend. Lil Buck is still developing, pushing the boundries of his body. He has
          visions for his post-performing future including building his own company and serving as its artistic director.
time6: Jenna-Louise Coleman will be the new companion for Doctor Who in the upcoming season. The author were trying to explain
       why Doctor Who's companions were always young, attractive women. Perhaps it's evolved from good, dramatic reasons and
       this kind of women are more likely to be attracted to Doctor Who.

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