四级阅读美文
Barbie’s fate
‵Barbie, beware. The ‵iconic plastic doll｜is ‵often mutilated｜at the ‵hands of young girls, according to research published｜by British academics.
“The ‵girls we survey｜see Barbie torture｜as a ‵legitimate play activity, and see the ‵torture as a｜ ‵‘cool’ activity,” said Agnes Nairn, one of the University｜of Bath researchers. The ‵types of mutilation are ‵varied｜and ‵creative, and ‵range from removing the hair｜to decapitation, burning, breaking｜and ‵even microwaving.
Researchers from the university’s ‵marketing｜and ‵psychology departments｜questioned ‵100 children｜about their attitudes｜to a ‵range of products｜as part of a study｜on ‵branding. They found｜ ‵Barbie provoked the ‵strongest reaction, with youngsters reporting｜“‵rejection, ‵hatred and ‵violence”, Nairn said. “The ‵meaning of ‘Barbie’｜went ‵beyond an expressed antipathy; ‵actual physical violence｜and torture towards the doll｜was ‵repeatedly reported.” she said.
While boys ‵often expressed nostalgia｜and affection toward GI Joe, ‵renouncing Barbie｜appeared to be a ‵rite of passage｜for ‵many girls,① Nairn said.
“The ‵most readily expressed reason｜for ‵rejecting Barbie｜was that she was ‵babyish, and girls saw her｜as representing their younger childhood｜ ‵out of which they felt｜they had now grown,” she said.
Nairn said｜many girls saw Barbie｜as an ‵inanimate object｜ ‵rather than a treasured toy.
“Whilst for an ‵adult｜the delight the child felt in ‵breaking, ‵mutilating｜and ‵torturing their dolls｜is ‵deeply disturbing, from the child's point of view｜they were ‵simply being imaginative｜in disposing of an ‵excessive commodity｜in the ‵same way｜as one might crush cans｜for recycling,” she said.
Manufacturer Mattel, which sells 94 ‵million Barbies｜a year worldwide, said the doll remained｜the “‵No. 1 fashion doll brand”.
Mattel U.K. said｜that despite the findings｜of “this ‵very small group of children, we know｜that there are ‵millions of girls in the U.K.｜and ‵across the world｜that love and enjoy playing with ‵Barbie｜and will ‵continue to do so｜in the future.” [330 words]
芭比娃娃的命运
芭比娃娃，小心点。根据英国研究人员公布的调查结果，这只塑料娃娃经常受到年轻女孩的虐待。
英国巴斯大学研究人员艾格尼丝·奈恩说：“我们调查的那些女孩都认为虐待芭比娃娃没有什么不对，而且还觉得自己这样做挺酷的。”虐待芭比的方式多种多样，而且很有创意，有的把芭比娃娃的头发给剃了，有的把她的头给卸了，有的烧它、把它的身体折断，甚至有人把它放进微波炉里。
巴斯大学营销系和心理学系的研究人员对100个儿童进行了调查，调查主要是针对他们对一系列产品的态度，这也是品牌研究的一个部分。调查结果表明，孩子们对芭比娃娃的反应最为强烈，据奈恩介绍，“排斥、厌恶和暴力”是被用的最多的评价字眼。她说，“芭比所遭受的已经不仅仅是孩子们的反感了，暴力和‘酷刑’对于这个娃娃来说已是家常便饭。”
“当男孩们对于‘美国大兵’念念不忘时，和芭比娃娃说再见则是很多女孩告别童年时代的标志。”
奈恩说，“女孩们不喜欢芭比最直接的一个原因就是，觉得芭比太孩子气，就像自己童年时的样子，而她们觉得自己已经不再是小女孩了，芭比娃娃已经不适合自己。”
奈恩说很多女孩都觉得芭比娃娃死气沉沉的，没有一点生气，根本不把她当成宝贝。
她说，“在大人们看来，孩子以虐待、蹂躏玩具娃娃为乐实在是太不正常了，但是站在孩子们的角度想想，他们觉得自己只是在处理一个多余的东西，这就和把铁罐压扁以便回收的.道理是一样的。”
芭比娃娃的生产商麦特尔公司介绍，芭比娃娃仍然是时尚娃娃的第一品牌。她每年的全球销售量达到9400万。
麦特尔公司说，尽管这个调查发现有一小部分孩子不喜欢芭比娃娃，但是我们知道在英国乃至全世界，有几百万的女孩都很喜欢芭比，她们把她当作自己的朋友，而且会一直对芭比娃娃‘宠爱有加’。
英语标准美文100篇 002Competition
It is a plain fact that we are in a world where competition is going on in all areas and at all levels.This is exciting.Yet, on the other hand, competition breeze a pragmatic attitude.People choose to learn things that are useful,and do things that are profitable.Todays' college education is also affected by this general sense of utilitarianism. Many college students choose business nor computing programming as their majors convinced that this professions are where the big money is. It is not unusual to see the college students taking a part time jobs as a warming up for the real battle.I often see my friends taking GRE tests, working on English or computer certificates and taking the driving licence to get a licence. Well, I have nothing against being practical. As the competition in the job market gets more and more intense, students do have reasons to be practical. However, we should never forget that college education is much more than skill training. Just imagine, if your utilitarianism is prevails on campus, living no space for the cultivation of students' minds,or nurturing of their soul. We will see university is training out well trained spiritless working machines.If utilitarianism prevails society, we will see people bond by mind-forged medicals lost in the money-making ventures;we will see humality lossing their grace and dignity, and that would be disastrous.I'd like to think society as a courage and people persumed for profit or fame as a horese that pulls the courage.Yet without the driver picking direction the courage would go straight and may even end out in a precarious situation .A certificate may give you some advantage, but broad horizons, positive attitudes and personal integrities ,these are assets you cannot acquire through any quick fixed way.In today's world, whether highest level of competition is not of skills or expertise , but vision and strategy. Your intellectual quality largely determinds how far you can go in your career.
英语标准美文100篇 008
Chinese Undergraduates in the US
Each year, elite American universities and liberal arts colleges, such as Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Amherst and Wellesley, offer a number of scholarships to Chinese high school graduates to study in their undergraduate programs. Four years ago, I received such a scholarship from Yale.
What are these Chinese undergrads like? Most come from middle-class families in the big urban centers of China. The geographical distribution is highly skewed, with Shanghai and Beijing heavily over-represented. Outside the main pool, a number of Yale students come from Changsha and Ningbo,swhereseach year American Yale graduates are sent to teach English.
The overwhelming majority of Chinese undergraduates in the US major in science, engineering or economics. Many were academic superstars in their high schools - gold medallists in international academic Olympiads or prize winners in national academic contests. Once on US campuses, many of them decide to make research a lifelong commitment.
Life outside the classroom constitutes an important part of college life. At American universities the average student spends less than thirteen hours a week in class. Many Chinese students use their spare time to pick up some extra pocket money. At Yale, one of the most common campus jobs is washing dishes in the dining halls. Virtually all Chinese undergraduates at Yale work part-time in the dining halls at some point in their college years. As they grow in age and sophistication, they upgrade to better-paying and less stressful positions. The more popular and interesting jobs include working as a computer assistant, math homework grader, investment office assistant and lab or research assistant. The latter three often lead to stimulating summer jobs.
Student activities are another prominent feature of American college life. Each week there are countless student-organized events of all sorts - athletic, artistic, cultural, political or social (i.e. just for fun). New student organizations are constantly being created, and Chinese undergrads contribute to this ferment. Sport looms much larger on US campuses than in China. At Yale, intramural sports from soccer to water polo take place all year long; hence athletic talent is a real social asset. One of the Chinese students at Yale several years ago was a versatile sportsman. His athletic talents and enthusiastic participation in sporting events, combined with his other fine qualities, made him a popular figure in his residential college.
英语标准美文100篇 017I Want to Know
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!
It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, without moving to hide it
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.
I want to know if you can see beauty , if you can source your life from god’s presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”
英语标准美文100篇 027Beauty
there were a sensitivity and a beauty to her that have nothing to do with looks. She was one to be listened to, whose words were so easy to take to heart.
I have thought about her often over the years and how she struggled in a society that places an incredible premium on looks, class, wealth and all the other fineries of life. She suffered from a disfigurement that cannot be made to look attractive. I know that her condition hurt her deeply.
Would her life have been different had she been pretty? Chances are it would have. And yet there were a sensitivity and a beauty to her that had nothing to do with looks. She was one to be listened to, whose words were so easy to take to heart. Her words came from a wounded but loving heart, very much like all hearts, but she had more of a need to be aware of it, to live with it and learn from it. She possessed a fine-tuned sense of beauty. Her only fear in life was the loss of a friend.
It is said that the true nature of being is veiled. The labor of words, the expression of art, the seemingly ceaseless buzz that is human thought all have in common the need to get at what really is so. The hope to draw close to and possess the truth of being can be a feverish one. In some cases it can even be fatal, if pleasure is one's truth and its attainment more important than life itself. In other lives, though, the search for what is truthful gives life.
The truth of her life was a desire to see beyond the surface for a glimpse of what it is that matters. She found beauty and grace and they befriended her, and showed her what is real.
英语标准美文100篇 080Work and Pleasure
To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real. It is no use starting late in life to say: “I will take an interest in this or that.” Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. A man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet hardly get any benefit or relief. It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do. Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. It is no use offering the manual labourer, tired out with a hard week’s sweat and effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball on Saturday afternoon. It is no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, who has been working or worrying about serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at the weekend.
It may also be said that rational, industrious useful human beings are divided into two classes: first, those whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and secondly, those whose work and pleasure are one. Of these the former are the majority. They have their compensations. The long hours in the office or the factory bring with them as their reward, not only the means of sustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and most modest forms. But Fortune’s favoured children belong to the second class. Their life is a natural harmony. For them the working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays when they come are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation. Yet to both classes the need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a diversion of effort, is essential. Indeed, it may well be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds.
工作和娱乐
要想获得真正的快乐与安宁，一个人应该有至少两三种爱好，而且必须是真正的爱好。到晚年才说“我对什么什么有兴趣”是没用的，这只会徒然增添精神负担。一个人可以在自己工作之外的领域获得渊博的知识，不过他可能几乎得不到什么好处或是消遣。做你喜欢的事是没用的，你必须喜欢你所做的事。总的来说，人可以分为三种：劳累而死的、忧虑而死的、和烦恼而死的。对于那些体力劳动者来说，经历了一周精疲力竭的体力劳作，周六下午让他们去踢足球或者打棒球是没有意义的。而对那些政治家、专业人士或者商人来说，他们已经为严肃的事情操劳或烦恼六天了，周末再让他们为琐事劳神也是没有意义的。
也可以说，那些理性的、勤勉的、有价值的人们可分为两类，一类，他们的工作就是工作，娱乐就是娱乐；而另一类，他们的工作即娱乐。大多数人属于前者，他们得到了相应的补偿。长时间在办公室或工厂里的工作，回报给他们的不仅是维持了生计，还有一种强烈的对娱乐的需求，哪怕是最简单的、最朴实的娱乐。不过，命运的宠儿则属于后者。他们的生活很自然和谐。对他们来说，工作时间永远不嫌长。每天都是假日，而当正常的假日来临时，他们总是埋怨自己所全身心投入的休假被强行中断了。不过，有些事情对两类人是同样至关重要的，那就是转换一下视角、改变一下氛围、将精力转移到别的事情上。确实，对那些工作即是娱乐的人来说，最需要隔一段时间就用某种方式把工作从脑子里面赶出去。