Italy is one country where beauty is prized more than any other virtue(美德). That is, except in the small town of Piobbico, the self-declared World Capital of Ugly People. The road sign at the edge of the town even warns visitors that they are entering the ugly zone. People who consider themselves ugly have been gathering in Piobbico since the 1960s. That's when Ugly Club president Telesforo Lacobelli established a dating agency for women who believed they were too ugly to attract husbands. Lacobelli believes that he is ugly himself because he has a short nose in a country where long or large noses have always been considered beautiful.

    People from around the world travel to Piobbico to tell their sad stories of ugliness. During the annual Festival of the Ugly, which occurs on the first Sunday of every September, hundreds of people gather in Piobbico's town square to elect the president of the Ugly Club. Lacobelli wins the election every year. The Ugly Club has over 20, 000 members. They carry ID cards that grade their ugliness from bearable to extreme. A prize is awarded to Ugly Club members who qualify as extremely ugly.

    The Ugly Club president insists that ugliness is a virtue. Since beautiful people get a lot of attention for their beauty alone, they have to work hard to prove their other virtues. Ugly people, on the other hand, are genuine and do not have to prove anything to anybody, according to Lacobelli.

    Lacobelli is a spokesperson for ugly people everywhere. He believes that the uglier one is, the better life can be. Though the club enjoys making fun of beauty, especially beauty contests, Lacobelli has a serious side as well. He believes that too many people suffer from financial and emotional pressures because they don't meet society's standards of beauty. The fact that beautiful people are more successful in the workforce is a problem that Lacobelli has attempted to bring forward to the Italian public and government.

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。

    The ancient city of Xi'an in China holds many treasures. And last month, archaeologists working there made an important discovery—a buried palace built in the third century B.C. to honor China's first emperor.

    The entire palace measures roughly 2,260 feet long by 820 feet wide. It includes 10 courtyard houses and one main building. Archaeologists found bricks and pieces of pottery at the site of the palace, as well as the remains of walls and roads.

    The palace is part of the massive burial complex of Emperor Qin Shihuangdi. He conquered seven warring kingdoms and united ancient China in 211 B.C.

    Qin Shihuangdi wanted his legacy, or accomplishments, to be remembered forever. So he hired more than 700,000 workers to build his funeral complex in Xi'an. It represents a miniature version of his vast kingdom.

    The complex also includes the world-famous terra-cotta army, a collection of more than 8,000 life-size clay statues. These sculptures represent soldiers, acrobats, and horses from the Qin Dynasty (221 B.C.-206 B.C.). Scientists have not yet found all these terra-cotta warriors, even though they discovered more of the statues last summer.

    Farmers discovered the complex by accident in 1974. Since then, scientists studying the site have learned a great deal about life in ancient China. But much of the emperor's tomb has yet to be dug up, or unearthed. Many of the artifacts (objects from the past) are so old that scientists cannot preserve them.

    "Archaeologists fully acknowledge that nobody in the world has the technology (to safely dig up Xi'an's treasures) yet," explains Kristin Romey, an expert on Chinese archaeology.

    But as technology improves, archaeologists will keep digging to uncover the rest of the wonders that still lie buried in Xi'an.

    "It's one of the most important archaeological discoveries that's waiting to be made," says Romey, "and we know where it is."

    It happened to me recently. I was telling someone how much I had enjoyed reading Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father and how it had changed my views of our President. A friend I was talking to agree with me that it was, in his words ,“a brilliantly written book” However, he then went on to talk about Mr. Obama in a way which suggested he had no idea of his background at all. I sensed that I was talking to a book liar.

    And it seems that my friend is not the only one. Approximately two thirds of people have lied about reading a book which they haven't. In the World Book Day's “Report on Guilty Secrets”, Dreams From My Father is at number 9. The report lists ten books, and various authors, which people have lied about reading, and as I'm not one to lie too often (I'd hate to be caught out), I will admit here and now that I haven't read the entire top ten. But I'm pleased to say that, unlike 42 percent of people, I have read the book at number one, Gorge Orwell's 1984. I think it's really brilliant.

    The World Book Day report also has some other interesting information in it. It says that many people lie about having read Jane Austin Austen, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky (I haven't read him, but haven't lied about it either) and Herman Melville.

    Asked why they lied, the most common reason was to “impress” someone they are speaking to. This could be tricky if the conversation became more in-depth!

    But when asked which authors they actually enjoy, people named J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, Sophie Kinsella (ah, the big sellers, in other words). Forty-two percent of people asked admitted they turned to the back of the book to read the end before finishing this story (I will come clean: I do this and am astonished that 58 percent said they had never done so.).

    When I spent the summer with my grandmother, she always set me down to the general store with a list. Behind the counter was a lady like no one I'd ever seen.

    “Excuse me,” I said. She looked up and said, “I'm Miss Bee.”

    “I need to get these.” I said, holding up my list. “So? Go get them. ” Miss Bee pointed to a sign. “There's no one here except you and me and I'm not your servant, so get yourself a basket from that pile.”

    I visited Miss Bee twice a week that summer. Sometimes she shortcharged me. Other times she overcharged. Going to the store was like going into battle. All summer long she found ways to trick me. No sooner had I learned how to pronounce “bicarbonate of soda” and memorized its location on the shelves than she made me hunt for it all over again. But by summer's end the shopping trip that had once taken me an hour was done in 15 minutes.

    “All right, little girl,” she said. “What did you learn this summer?” “That you're a meanie!” I replied. Miss Bee just laughed and said, “I know what you think of me. Well, I don't care! My job is to teach every child I meet life lessons. When you get older you'll be glad!” Glad I met Miss Bee? Ha! The idea was absurd…

    Until one day my daughter came to me with homework troubles. “It's too hard,” she said. “Could you finish my math problems for me?”

    “If I do it for you, how will you ever learn to do it yourself?” I said. Suddenly, I was back at that general store where I had learned the hard way to add up my bill by myself. Had I ever been overcharged since?

    A layover or flight delay can be extremely fun in these international airports.

    Munich Airport, Germany

    Aviation lovers passing through Munich can take a behind the-scenes tour to learn how the airport operates. Visitors can also tour three historic aircraft and a retired rescue helicopter, climb up to a 28-metre high observation platform for an up-close view of take-offs and landings, and watch films on aviation in the airport's 60-seat cinema. Travelers can also kill layover time at an 18-hole mini-golf course, or even stop in for a teeth cleaning at the airport dental office.

    Changi Airport, Singapore

    After a long flight to Singapore, travelers can relax in a Balinese-style swimming pool, work out at the airport gym, or enjoy a drink and live musical performances at the airport's Music Bar. The airport also boasts a tranquil butterfly garden, and a "fragrant garden" which is home to 15 species of plants and trees. Free movies at one of two airport cinemas also keep passengers entertained.

    Schiphol Amsterdam Airport, the Netherlands

    Schiphol is Europe's fifth-largest airport. Here passengers can view the works of Dutch masters free of charge, and try their luck at airports casino (赌场). You can even have your wedding ceremony at Schiphol—couples can choose from four different wedding packages, including a 1930-style ceremony held on a Dakota military aircraft.

    San Francisco International Airport, California

    The airport's 24-hour Air Train not only moves passengers between terminal, but also provides a fun view of the runways. There are three aquariums to explore, along with interactive play areas, an aviation museum, and a library. If that's, not enough to keep the little ones busy, travelers can rent portable DVD players and movies for use in the airport.

Albert Einstein's 1915 masterpiece "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" is the first and still the best introduction to the subject, and I recommend it as such to students. But it probably wouldn't be publishable in a scientific journal today.

Why not? After all, it would pass with flying colours the tests of correctness and significance. And while popular belief holds that the paper was incomprehensible to its first readers, in fact many papers in theoretical physics are much more difficult.

As the physicist Richard Feynman wrote, "There was a time when the newspapers said that only 12 men understood the theory of relativity. I do believe there might have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than 12."

No, the problem is its style. It starts with a leisurely philosophical discussion of space and time and then continues with an exposition of known mathematics. Those two sections, which would be considered extraneous today, take up half the paper. Worse, there are zero citations of previous scientists' work, nor are there any graphics. Those features might make a paper not even get past the first editors.

A similar process of professionalization has transformed other parts of the scientific landscape. Requests for research time at major observatories or national laboratories are more rigidly structured. And anything involving work with human subjects, or putting instruments in space, involves piles of paperwork.

We see it also in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the Nobel Prize of high school science competitions. In the early decades of its 78-year history, the winning projects were usually the sort of clever but naive, amateurish efforts one might expect of talented beginners working on their own. Today, polished work coming out of internships(实习) at established laboratories is the norm.

These professionalizing tendencies are a natural consequence of the explosive growth of modern science. Standardization and system make it easier to manage the rapid flow of papers, applications and people. But there are serious downsides. A lot of unproductive effort goes into jumping through bureaucratic hoops(繁文缛节), and outsiders face entry barriers at every turn.

Of course, Einstein would have found his way to meeting modern standards and publishing his results. Its scientific core wouldn't have changed, but the paper might not be the same taste to read.