Painting

    The art of creating pictures using colors, shapes and lines is called painting. Museums and galleries show the paintings of professional (专业的) artists. But painting is also a popular form of entertainment and creative expression.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#}Experienced painters usually use a brush to apply oil paints to a canvas cloth surface. Young painters usually use watercolors on pieces of paper. Very young children may use finger paints to create paintings.

    Painters can use their art to express devotion to a religion, to tell a story, to express feelings and ideas, or simply to present a pleasing picture. Religious paintings often show a god or a scene from a sacred text (圣典). Other common subjects have been famous legends and events in history, as well as scenes from daily life. Artists also paint portraits (画像), or pictures of people{#blank#}2{#/blank#}All of these types of paintings show the human figure in some way.

    Some kinds of paintings do not focus on people. In landscape (风景) painting the focus is on scenes from nature. Artists also paint still objects such as fruits and vegetables{#blank#}3{#/blank#}Some artists communicate their ideas through pictures that do not represent any object.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}Paintings dating back 15,000 years have been found on the walls of caves in France and Spain{#blank#}5{#/blank#} Samples of painted pottery (陶器) from at least 5,000 years ago have been found in China and Iran. The ancient Egyptians decorated their temples with beautiful paintings. People in ancient Greece painted decorative objects such as vases in addition to the walls of temples.

A. These works are called still-life paintings.

B. These works can communicate a special feeling.

C. Humans have been making paintings for thousands of years.

D. People of all ages create pictures using a variety of materials.

E. Cave paintings generally show animals that early humans hunted.

F. The design of a painting is the plan of its lines, shapes and colors.

G. Sometimes artists make portraits of themselves, which are called self-portraits.

                                                 The Bystander (旁观者) Effect

    When an emergency situation occurs, observers are more likely to take action if there are few or no other witnesses.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    The bystander effect is also called the Genovese effect, which is named after Catherine “Kitty” Genovese, a young woman who was cruelly murdered on March 13, 1964. Early in the morning, 28-year-old Genovese was returning home from work. As she approached her apartment entrance, she was attacked and stabbed (刺) by a man later identified as Winston Moseley. Despite Genovese's repeated cries for help.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}The attack first began at 3:20, but it was not until 3:50 that someone first contacted police．

    Many psychologists were set thinking by the incident, as well as most Americans. As the conclusion, the bystander effect came out and later proved by a series of studies and experiments.

    There are two major factors that contribute to the bystander effect.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}Because there are other observers, individuals do not feel as much pressure to take action, since the responsibility to take action is thought to be shared among all of those present. The second reason is the need to behave in correct and socially acceptable ways. When other observers fail to react, individuals often take this as a signal that a response is not needed or not appropriate.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} In the case of Kitty Genovese, many of the 38 witnesses reported that they believed that they were witnessing a "lovers' quarrel", and {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. They hesitate and assess the risk of getting hurt

B. This phenomenon is referred to as the bystander effect.

C. Other researchers have found that onlookers are less likely to take action if the situation is unclear.

D. First, the presence of other people creates a division of responsibility.

E. they did not realize that the young woman was actually being murdered.

F. none of the people in the nearby apartment building who heard her cries called police for help.

G. the attacker didn't stop stabbing her.

Dear James,

    It is a beautiful day here and I am sitting under the big tree at the end of the garden. I have just returned from a long bike ride to an old castle. It seems amazing that at my age I am still fit enough to cycle 20 kilometres in an afternoon. It's my birthday in two weeks' time and I'll be 82 years old! I think my long and active life must be due to the healthy life I live.

    This brings me to the real reason for my letter, my dear grandson. Your mother tells me that you started smoking some time ago and now your are finding it difficult to give it up. Believe me, I know how easy it is to begin smoking and how tough it is to stop. You see, during adolescence I also smoked and became addicted to cigarettes.

    By the way, did you know that this is because you become addicted in three different ways? First, you can become physically addicted to nicotine（尼古丁）, which is one of the hundreds of chemical in cigarettes. This means that after a while your body becomes accustomed to having nicotine in it. So when the drug leaves your body, you get withdrawal symptoms. Secondly, you become addicted through habit. As you know, if you do the same thing over and over again, you begin to do it automatically. Lastly, you can become mentally addicted. I believed I was happier and more relaxed after having a cigarette, so I began to think that I could only feel good when I smoked. Quitting smoking was really difficult because I was addicted in all three ways. But I did finally manage.

    When I was young, I didn't know much about the harmful effects of smoking. I didn't know, for example, that it could do terrible damage to your heart and lungs or that it was more difficult for smoking couples to become pregnant. Neither did I know that my cigarette smoke could affect the health of non-smokers. However, what I did know was that my girlfriend thought I smelt terrible. She told me that she wouldn't go out with me again unless I stopped! I also noticed that I became breathless quickly, and that I wasn't enjoying sport as much. When I was taken off the school football team because I was unfit, I knew it was time to quit smoking.

    I am sending you some advice I found on the internet. It might help you to stop and strengthen your resolve. I do hope so because I want you to live as long and healthy a life as I have.

Love from

Grandpa

    Parents often say that they don't mind what their children do in life just as long as they are happy. Happiness and pleasure are almost universally seen as among the most precious human goods.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}Philosopher Jeremy Bentham believed that all sources of pleasure are of equal quality, but John Stuart Mill disagreed. Mill argued for a difference between higher and lower pleasure.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}Lower pleasure, in contrast, requires mere (仅仅的；纯粹的) senses.

    The entire debate assumes a clear divide between the physical and the mental.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}What will it mean for our ideas about pleasure?

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}Food is usually considered to be the lower pleasure. All animals eat, using the senses of smell and taste. It doesn't require any complex cognition (认知) to conclude that something is delicious. However, these people failed to appreciate something that the French food writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin captured. That is, "Animals feed; man eats; only the man of intellect(才智) knows how to eat."

    Eating shows that the difference between higher pleasure and lower pleasure is not what you enjoy but how you enjoy it.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}Preparing it using the powers of reflection and attention turns it into a higher pleasure.

A. The dining table is a good place to start.

B. Wolfing down your food is a lower kind of pleasure.

C. What's the real difference between high and low pleasure?

D. What happens if the physical and the mental cannot be separated?

E. All philosophers believed that cookery could never be a form of art.

F. Higher pleasure depends on human abilities such as self-awareness or language use.

G. However, disagreements will be caused about whether some forms of pleasure are better than others.