In one of the old buildings near our school,one could see an old man sitting by a large window on the first floor,His name was James.During the three years at school,I had hardly ever found him missing from his usual position.

He was a high-ranking government official and lived happily with his wife .Once there was a bus accident,in which a number of passengers were seriously injured and taken to the hospital for treatment.James was responsible for the rescue operation.It was a big hospital,but James was shocked to notice how ill-equipped it was.There was no enough life-saving drugs and life-supporting equipment.The injured and their companions had to struggle there .James attempted to help .However,though he emptied his pockets,many of them died that day.

That was a turning point in his life.He made a decision to devote his life to helping others,particularly the poor and needy patients and their companions.He began to spend much of his income on these people.Since this required much time and energy,he found it difficult to fulfill his official duties and therefore chose to retire,which,in turn,reduced his income considerably.

His wife was deeply worried.Most of the time,James was out and paid least attention to home affairs.Meanwhile,as he was spending a lot helping others,she had struggle even to meet the household expenses.Though she was not against his helping the poor,she urged him not to ignore his own home and life,but it had no effect on him.She decided to leave him ,never to return.Though he continued his work, this was a great blow and did serious harm to his health and enthusiasm and he was soon forced to stay indoors.That was when he took his position by the window,spending his time looking outside.

    A few weeks after my graduation,I returned to school,only to find the building gone.I heard that they were torn down.Everyone left except James.He refused to go and the next morning,he was found at his usual place by the window,dead.

    NEW YORK—Australian mining enterpriser Clive Palmer on Tuesday unveiled(公布) blueprints (蓝本) for Titanic Ⅱ, a modern copy of the doomed ocean liner, although he didn't call the ship unsinkable any more.

    The ship will largely recreate the design and decoration of the fabled original, with some modifications to keep it in line with current safety rules and shipbuilding practices, and the addition of some modern comforts such as air conditioning, Palmer said at a press conference in New York.

    The three passenger classes, however, will be prevented from mingling(混杂), as in 1912, Palmer said. “I'm not too superstitious(迷信的). ”Palmer said when asked whether recreating a ship best-known for sinking was tempting fate.

    White Star Line, the operator of the original ship, had said the Titanic was designed to be unsinkable. About 1, 500 people died on Titanic's maiden voyage in 1912 from Southampton to New York after the ship collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

    Palmer, who created the company Blue Star Line last year, refused to make a similar boast.

    “Anything will sink if you put a hole in it,”Palmer said. “I think it would be very cavalier(漫不经心的) to say it.”

    Unlike the original, TitanicⅡ will have more than enough space in its lifeboats for every person on board and will have additional escape staircases. Markku Kanerva, sales director at Deltamarin, the Finnish company designing the ship, said it would be “the safest cruise ship in the world”.

    Palmer refused to answer questions about the project's cost. Although the Titanic was the world's largest ship in her time, she would be smaller than many of today's modern cruise ships.

    “It's not about the money, ”Palmer said. “I've got enough money for it. I think that's all that matters.”

    Forbes estimated Palmer's net worth to be $795 million in 2012. He describes himself as a billionaire.

    TitanicⅡ will be built by Chinese state-owned CSC Jinling Shipyard, which has already built four ore carriers for Palmer's mining business, he said. The contract to build TitanicⅡ has not yet been signed, Palmer said.

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项 （A 、B 、C  和 D ）中，选出最佳选项。

    Christmastime in the city brings forests of trees already cut and waiting to be sold. But some people like to drive to tree farms. Others wait for their trees to come to them. They order one from the pages of a catalog or on the Internet. Some say the easiest thing of all is to buy a man­made tree with Christmas lights already on it. No falling needles to have to clean up.

    The National Christmas Tree Association says 33,000,000 real trees were sold last year, compared to 9,000,000 man­made ones. Man­made trees generally cost more, but they can be reused. Most natural trees are cut up and recycled, but some people buy trees that can be planted.

    Most Christmas trees are now grown on farms instead of in forests. Twenty-one thousand tree farmers in the United States grow Christmas trees on more than 180,000 hectares. Oregon was the leading producer last year.

    Twenty-two percent of people who bought real trees last year chose them at a farm. Two percent of those people cut the trees themselves. The next most popular places were big stores like Walmart and Home Depot. Groups like the Boy Scouts also sell Christmas trees. But some people pay nothing for theirs. They steal it.

    Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has many pretty evergreens. Some years ago, a university worker found a way to keep them there. A month before Christmas, workers treated them with “pink ugly mix”. It contains water and red food colour. The bright colour starts to disappear after about a month. It can take longer, however. Cornell decided not to use the mix this year, but the idea has spread.

    Until late in the 20th century, most Americans spent time with people of generations. Now mid-aged Americans may not keep in touch with old people until they are old themselves. That's because we group people by age. We put our three-year-olds together in day-care center, our 13-year-olds in school and sports activities, and our 80-year-olds in senior-citizen homes. Why?

    We live away from the old for many reasons: Different generations have different lifestyles. Besides, young people sometimes avoid the old to get rid of fears for aging and dying. It is much harder to watch someone we love disappear before our eyes. Sometimes it's so hard that we stay away from the people who need us most.

    Fortunately, some of us have found our way to the old. And we have discovered that they often save the young. A reporter moved her family onto a block filled with old people. At first her children were disappointed. But the reporter baked banana bread for the neighbors and had her children deliver it and visit. Soon the children had many new friends, with whom they shared food, stories and projects. “My children have never been less lonely,” the reporter said.

    The young, in turn, save the old. Once I was in a rest home when a visitor showed up with a baby. She was immediately surrounded. People who hadn't gotten out of bed in a week suddenly were ringing for a wheelchair. Even those who had seemed asleep wake up to watch the child. Babies have an astonishing power to comfort and cure.

    Grandparents are a special case. They give grandchildren a feeling of security and continuity. As my husband put it, “my grandparents gave me a deep sense that things would turn out right in the end.”

    Grandchildren speak of attention they don't get from worried parents. “My parents were always telling me to hurry up, and my grandparents told me to slow down,” one friend said. A teacher told me she can tell which pupils have relationships with grandparents: they are quieter, calmer, more trusting.

Hollywood's theory that machines with evil(邪恶) minds will drive armies of killer robots is just silly. The real problem relates to the possibility that artificial intelligence(AI) may become extremely good at achieving something other than what we really want. In 1960 a well-known mathematician Norbert Wiener, who founded the field of cybernetics（控制论）, put it this way: “If we use, to achieve our purposes, a mechanical agency with whose operation we cannot effectively interfere(干预), we had better be quite sure that the purpose put into the machine is the purpose which we really desire.”

A machine with a specific purpose has another quality, one that we usually associate with living things: a wish to preserve its own existence. For the machine, this quality is not in-born, nor is it something introduced by humans; it is a logical consequence of the simple fact that the machine cannot achieve its original purpose if it is dead. So if we send out a robot with the single instruction of fetching coffee, it will have a strong desire to secure success by disabling its own off switch or even killing anyone who might interfere with its task. If we are not careful, then, we could face a kind of global chess match against very determined, super intelligent machines whose objectives conflict with our own, with the real world as the chessboard.

The possibility of entering into and losing such a match should concentrate the minds of computer scientists. Some researchers argue that we can seal the machines inside a kind of firewall, using them to answer difficult questions but never allowing them to affect the real world. Unfortunately, that plan seems unlikely to work: we have yet to invent a firewall that is secure against ordinary humans, let alone super intelligent machines.

Solving the safety problem well enough to move forward in AI seems to be possible but not easy. There are probably decades in which to plan for the arrival of super intelligent machines. But the problem should not be dismissed out of hand, as it has been by some AI researchers. Some argue that humans and machines can coexist as long as they work in teams—yet that is not possible unless machines share the goals of humans. Others say we can just “switch them off” as if super intelligent machines are too stupid to think of that possibility. Still others think that super intelligent AI will never happen. On September 11, 1933, famous physicist Ernest Rutherford stated, with confidence, “Anyone who expects a source of power in the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.” However, on September 12, 1933, physicist Leo Szilard invented the neutron-induced(中子诱导) nuclear chain reaction.

    Pangolins (穿山甲) are strange-looking creatures, covered with hard scales (鳞). They can roll up into a ball to protect themselves from enemies and have tongues that are longer than their bodies.

    Pangolins have recently become the focus of Chinese people. A screenshot (截屏) of a micro blog post showing some people eating pangolins at a feast spread. A few days later, people were angered again by pictures showing people eating protected animals, including pangolins.

    Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg. Many more pangolins have been hunted or killed. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), more than 1 million of them have been killed or sold in the last 10 years. It also said that they are the most illegally traded mammals in the world. In September 2016, the IUCN added the pangolin to the world's "endangered animals list". They are now more endangered than pandas.

    A growing trade of their scales and meat is the main reason for their decline in numbers. Many people in Asia and Africa consider pangolin meat is delicious. Some people even think pangolin scales have medical qualities. However, their scales are made of keratin (角蛋白), the same material human fingernails are made of.

    Luckily, the situation is getting better. World Pangolin Day is on the third Saturday of February each year. It's a day to help people know more about pangolins. The government now stops anyone from buying and eating pangolins in China. Breaking this law is regarded as a crime. The trade of pangolins across the world is also not allowed, according to the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.