2024年6月17日发(作者：)

2002年 Text 1

If you intend using humor in your talk to make people smile, you must know

how to identify shared experiences and problems. Your humor must be relevant to

the audience and should help to show them that you are one of them or that you

understand their situation and are in sympathy with their point of view. Depending

on whom you are addressing, the problems will be different. If you are talking to a

group of managers, you may refer to the disorganized methods of their secretaries;

alternatively if you are addressing secretaries, you may want to comment on their

disorganized bosses.

如果你想在谈话中用幽默来使人发笑，你就必须知道如何发现与听众享有的共同经历

和共同问题。你的幽默一定要与听众有关，能够向他们显示你是他们的一员，或者你了解

他们的情况且赞同他们的观点。根据与你谈话对象的不同，问题也应有所不同。如果你在

和一群经理谈话，你就可以评论他们秘书的工作方法杂乱无章；相反，如果你在和一群秘

书谈话，你就可以评论她们老板的工作方法如何杂乱。

Here is an example, which I heard at a nurses’ convention, of a story, which

works well because the audience all shared the same view of doctors. A man

arrives in heaven and is being shown around by St. Peter. He sees wonderful

accommodations, beautiful gardens, sunny weather, and so on. Everyone is very

peaceful, polite and friendly until, waiting in a line for lunch, the new arrival is

suddenly pushed aside by a man in a white coat, who rushes to the head of the line,

grabs his food and stomps over to a table by himself. “Who is that?” the new

arrival asked St. Peter. “Oh, that’s God,” came the reply, “but sometimes he

thinks he’s a doctor.”

下面举一个例子，是我在一个护士大会上听到的故事。这个故事效果很好，因为所有

的听众对医生都有同样的看法。一个人到了天堂，由圣彼得带领他四处参观。他看到了豪

华的住宅、美丽的花园、晴朗的天气等等。大家在排队用午餐的时候，都很安静、礼貌和

友善，直到这位新来天堂的人突然被一位穿白大褂的人推到一旁。只见这人挤到了队伍的

前面，抓起他的食物，噔噔地旁若无人地走到一张餐桌旁吃起来。“这是谁啊？”新来的

人问圣彼得。“哦，那是上帝，”他回答说，“但有时他也觉得自己是一名医生。”

If you are part of the group, which you are addressing, you will be in a position

to know the experiences and problems which are common to all of you and it’ll

be appropriate for you to make a passing remark about the inedible canteen food

or the chairman’s notorious bad taste in ties. With other audiences you mustn’t

attempt to cut in with humor as they will resent an outsider making disparaging

remarks about their canteen or their chairman. You will be on safer ground if you

stick to scapegoats like the Post Office or the telephone system.

如果你与听众们来自同一个群体，你就能够了解你们所共有的经历和问题，你就可以

顺带评论一下餐厅里令人难以下咽的伙食或者老总在选择领带方面众所周知的低级趣味。

而对于其他听众，你就不能试图贸然地讲这种幽默，因为他们也许不喜欢外人对他们的餐

厅或老总作如此微词。如果你只拿邮局或电话局这样的替罪羊去调侃的话，那你就会更稳

妥些。

注：上下文中的说的是找稳妥的话题进行调侃以达到幽默的效果。stick to sth的意

思是 not abandon or change sth; keep to sth 不放弃或不改变某事物; 坚持或维持

某事物。故此处意译为“只拿”。

If you feel awkward being humorous, you must practice so that it becomes

more natural. Include a few casual and apparently off-the-cuff remarks which you

can deliver in a relaxed and unforced manner. Often it’s the delivery which causes

the audience to smile, so speak slowly and remember that a raised eyebrow or an

unbelieving look may help to show that you are making a light-hearted remark.

如果你在使用幽默时感到很别扭，你应该进行练习以变得更加自然。你可以用轻松的、

不做作的方式说一些很随便的、看上去是即兴的话。使听众发笑的往往是你的说话方式，

因此要说慢一些，并且记住扬扬眉毛或者做出一种不相信的表情，这些都会向人们显示你

正在说笑话。

Look for the humor. It often comes from the unexpected. A twist on a familiar

quote “If at first you don’t succeed, give up” or a play on words or on a

situation. Search for exaggeration and understatements. Look at your talk and pick

out a few words or sentences which you can turn about and inject with humor.

平时要留意幽默，它常常是在出其不意的时候出现。它可以是对一句常言的歪曲，比

如“你要是一开始不成功，就放弃”，或者是戏谑语言和情景。留意夸大其词和轻描淡写

的话。考虑一下你的谈话，选出一些词汇和句子来，将它们颠倒秩序反复揣摩，并注入一

些幽默。

2002年 Text 2

Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning

tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty.

That compulsion has resulted in robotics -- the science of conferring various

human capabilities on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the

mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close.

自从人类有了创造力开始，人们就发明了各种日益精巧的工具来处理那些危险、枯

燥、繁重或者是十分令人讨厌的工作。这种冲动导致了机器人学科的产生——一门将人类

的能力赋予机器的科学。即使科学家们目前尚未研制出科幻小说中的机械人版本，但他们

也已经接近这个目标了。

注：have yet to是固定短语，意思是“否定，还没有，尚未”

As a result, the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos

whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed

much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms. Our

banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical

politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless

robot-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and

micro-mechanics, there are already robot systems that can perform some kinds of

brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracy -- far greater precision than

highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone.

因此，现代世界日益充斥着各种智能装置，虽然我们几乎都注意不到它们，但它们的

普遍存在已使人们摆脱了很多劳动。工厂里轰鸣着机器手臂生产线的节奏；自动柜员机处

理银行业务，并且用机器语言有礼貌地感谢你的惠顾；地铁由不知疲倦的机器人来驾驶。

由于电子器件和微观机械的结构不断小型化，现在已有一些机器人系统能够进行精确到亚

毫米的脑部和骨髓手术，其精确性远远超过技术娴熟的医生仅仅用双手所能达到的水平。

But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility, they will have to

operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions

for themselves -- goals that pose a real challenge. “While we know how to tell a

robot to handle a specific error,” says Dave Lavery, manager of a robotics

program at NASA, “we can’t yet give a robot enough ‘common sense’ to

reliably interact with a dynamic world.”

但是如果机器人要进入帮助人们节省劳力的下一个阶段，它们的运行就应该在更大程

度上无需受人监控，并且至少能够独立地做一些决定。这些目标给我们提出了真正的挑战。

“虽然我们知道如何让机器人去处理一个特定的错误，”美国宇航局（NASA）的机器人

项目经理Dave Lavery里说，“我们仍然不能赋予机器人以足够的‘常识’，使它们能够

与不断变化的动态世界进行可靠的交流。”

Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed

results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared

that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the

human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that

forecast by decades if not centuries.

实际上对真正的人工智能的探索已经产生了诸多不同的效果。虽然在20世纪60年代

和70年代人们有过一段乐观的时期——那时候人们认为晶体管电路和微处理器的发展似

乎将使他们在2010年能够模仿人类大脑的活动——但是最近研究人员已经把这个预测延

后数十年，甚至数百年。

What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain’s

roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented -- and human

perception far more complicated -- than previously imagined. They have built

robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter

in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly

changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant,

instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of a winding forest road or the

single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer systems on

Earth can’t approach that kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don’t know

quite how we do it.

在试图模拟人类思维模型的过程中，研究人员发现，人类大脑中的近1000亿个神经

细胞远比以前想像的更聪明，人类的认知能力也比以前想像的更复杂。他们制造的机器人

在严格控制的工厂环境里，能够在仪表盘上识别毫米以下的误差。但是人的大脑能够扫描

一个快速变化的场景，迅速排除98％的不相干部分，立即聚焦于森林中蜿蜒道路旁的一只

猴子、或者人群中的一张可疑的脸。地球上最先进的计算机系统也达不到这种能力，而且

神经学科学家至今仍然不知道我们是怎样做到这一点的。

2002年 Text 3

Could the bad old days of economic decline be about to return? Since OPEC

agreed to supply-cuts in March, the price of crude oil has jumped to almost $26 a

barrel, up from less than $10 last December. This near tripling of oil prices calls up

scary memories of the 1973 oil shock, when prices quadrupled, and 1979-80, when

they also almost tripled. Both previous shocks resulted in double-digit inflation

and global economic decline. So where are the headlines warning of gloom and

doom this time?

过去经济衰落的日子会不会重来？自从石油输出国组织在3月决定减少原油供应，原

油的价格便从去年12月的不到10美元一桶上升到约26美元一桶。这次近3倍的涨价令

人想起了1973年和1979～1980年两次可怕的石油恐慌，当时的油价分别涨了4倍和近

3倍。前两次的油价暴涨都导致了两位数的通货膨胀和全球性的经济衰退。那么这次警告

人们厄运来临的头版新闻都到哪里去了呢？

The oil price was given another push up this week when Iraq suspended oil

exports. Strengthening economic growth, at the same time as winter grips the

northern hemisphere, could push the price higher still in the short term.

本周伊拉克暂停石油出口，这使油价又一次上扬。强劲的经济增长势头，随着北半球

冬季的到来，有可能在短期内使石油价格涨得更高。

Yet there are good reasons to expect the economic consequences now to be

less severe than in the 1970s. In most countries the cost of crude oil now accounts

for a smaller share of the price of petrol than it did in the 1970s. In Europe, taxes

account for up to four-fifths of the retail price, so even quite big changes in the

price of crude have a more muted effect on pump prices than in the past.

然而，我们有充分的理由预期这次油价暴涨给经济带来的影响不会像20世纪70年代

那么严重。与70年代相比，现在多数国家的原油价格占汽油价格的份额要小很多。在欧

洲，税金在汽油零售价的比例高达4/5，因此，即使原油价格发生很大的波动，汽油价格

所受的影响也不会像过去那么显著。

Rich economies are also less dependent on oil than they were, and so less

sensitive to swings in the oil price. Energy conservation, a shift to other fuels and a

decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries have reduced oil

consumption. Software, consultancy and mobile telephones use far less oil than

steel or car production. For each dollar of GDP (in constant prices) rich economies

now use nearly 50% less oil than in 1973. The OECD estimates in its latest

Economic Outlook that, if oil prices averaged $22 a barrel for a full year, compared

with $13 in 1998, this would increase the oil import bill in rich economies by only

0.25-0.5% of GDP. That is less than one-quarter of the income loss in 1974 or 1980.

On the other hand, oil-importing emerging economies -- to which heavy industry

has shifted -- have become more energy-intensive, and so could be more seriously

squeezed.

发达国家对石油的依赖性也不如从前，因此对油价的波动也就不会那么敏感。能源储

备、燃料替代以及能源密集型重工业的重要性的降低，都减少了石油消耗量。软件、咨询

及移动通讯消耗的石油，比钢铁、汽车行业少得多。发达国家国民生产总值中每一个美元

所消耗的石油量比1973年少了近一半。国际经合组织在最近一期的《经济展望》中估计，

如果油价持续一年维持在22美元左右，与1998年的13美元一桶相比，这也只会使发达

国家的石油进口在支出上增加GDP的0.25％～0.5％。这还不到1974年或1980年收入

减少部分的1/4。另一方面，进口石油的新兴国家由于转向了重工业，消耗能量更大，因

此可能会受到石油危机的强烈影响。

One more reason not to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that, unlike the

rises in the 1970s, it has not occurred against the background of general

commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the

world is only just emerging from economic decline. The Economist’s commodity

price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices

jumped by 70%, and in 1979 by almost 30%.

另外一个不应因油价上升而失眠的原因是，与20世纪70年代不同，这次油价上升不

是发生在普遍的物价暴涨及全球需求过旺背景之下。世界上很多地区刚刚走出经济衰落。

《经济学家》的商品价格指数与一年前相比总的来说也没有什么变化。1973年的商品价格

跃升了70％，而1979年也上升了近30％。

2002年 Text 4

The Supreme Court’s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important

implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering.

最高法庭关于医生协助病人结束生命问题的裁决，对于如何用药物减轻病危者的痛苦

这个问题来说，具有重要的意义。

Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted

suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of “double effect,” a

centuries-old moral principle holding that an action having two effects -- a good

one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen -- is permissible if the actor

intends only the good effect.

尽管最高法院裁决早就认为，宪法至今仍没有赋予医生帮助病人自杀的权利，然而最

高法庭实际上却认可了医疗界的“双效”原则，这个存在了好几个世纪的道德原则认为，

如果某种行为具有双重效果（好的效果是行为之目的 而坏的效果是可预见的），那么，只

要行为实施只是想达到好的效果，这个行为就是可以允许的。

Doctors have used that principle in recent years to justify using high doses of

morphine to control terminally ill patients’ pain, even though increasing dosages

will eventually kill the patient.

近年来，医生们一直在利用这项原则，为自己替病危患者注射大剂量的吗啡镇痛的做

法提供正当的理由，尽管他们知道，不断增加的剂量最终会杀死病人。

Nancy Dubler, director of Montefiore Medical Center, contends that the

principle will shield doctors who “until now have very, very strongly insisted that

they could not give patients sufficient medication to control their pain if that

might hasten death.”

Montefiore 医疗中心主任Nancy Dubler认为，这项原则将保护这样的一些医生，

这些医生在此之前一直强烈地认为，如果给病人充分的药品来止痛会加速他们的死亡的话，

那就不能这样做。

George Annas, chair of the health law department at Boston University,

maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical

purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to

hasten death. “It’s like surgery,” he says. “We don’t call those deaths

homicides because the doctors didn’t intend to kill their patients, although they

risked their death. If you’re a physician, you can risk your patient’s suicide as

long as you don’t intend their suicide.”

波士顿大学健康法律系主任George Annas坚持认为，只要医生是出于合理的医疗目

的开药，那么即使服用此药会加速病人的死亡，医生的行为也没有违法。“这就像做手术，”

他说，“我们不能称那些死亡为杀人是因为医生并没有想杀死病人，尽管他们敢冒病人死

亡的危险。假定你是一名医生，只要你并没有想让病人自杀，你就可以去冒你的病人自杀

的风险去开药方。”

On another level, many in the medical community acknowledge that the

assisted-suicide debate has been fueled in part by the despair of patients for

whom modern medicine has prolonged the physical agony of dying.

另一方面，许多医疗界人士承认，致使医助自杀这场争论升温的部分原因是由于病人

们的绝望情绪，对这些病人来说，现代医学延长了临终前肉体的痛苦。

Just three weeks before the Court’s ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the

National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching

Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the undertreatment of pain

and the aggressive use of “ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may

prolong and even dishonor the period of dying” as the twin problems of

end-of-life care.

就在最高法庭对医助自杀进行裁决的前三周，全国科学学会公布了一份长达两卷的报

告——临近死亡：完善临终护理。报告指出了医院临终关怀护理中存在的两个问题：对病

痛处理不力和大胆使用“无效而强制性的医疗程序，这些程序可能会延长死亡期，甚至会

让死亡期难堪”。

The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to

test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a Medicare

billing code for hospital-based care, and to develop new standards for assessing

and treating pain at the end of life.

“医疗行业采取步骤，让年轻医生去晚期病人休养所培训，对各种大胆的镇痛疗法方

面的知识进行评估，为医院护理制定一份符合美国医疗保障方案的付款条例，以及为评估

和治疗临终痛苦制定新的标准。

Annas says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning

medical initiatives translate into better care. “Large numbers of physicians seem

unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably

suffering,” to the extent that it constitutes “systematic patient abuse.” He says

medical licensing boards “must make it clear that painful deaths are

presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license

suspension.”

Annas说，律师可以在要求把医疗界的这些善意的行为变成更好的护理行动方面发挥

关键作用。“不少医生对病人所遭受的毫无必要的，可预见的痛苦无动于衷”，乃至于已

构成“蓄意虐待病人”。他说，行医资格理事会“必须明确表明——病人痛苦地死亡，可

以推定，是由于医生处理不力造成的，应该因此吊销其从医资格”。

56. From the first three paragraphs, we learn that ________.

[A] doctors used to increase drug dosages to control their patients’ pain

[B] it is still illegal for doctors to help the dying end their lives

[C] the Supreme Court strongly opposes physician-assisted suicide（B）

[D] patients have no constitutional right to commit suicide

从前三段，我们了解到________.

[A] 医生过去常常通过增加剂量来减轻病人的痛苦

[B] 医生帮助那些垂死的病人结束生病现在仍然是非法的

[C] 最高法院强烈反对医生协助病人自杀

[D] 病人没有宪法赋予的自杀权力

57. Which of the following statements is true according to the text?

[A] Doctors will be held guilty if they risk their patients’ death.

[B] Modern medicine has assisted terminally ill patients in painless recovery.

[C] The Court ruled that high-dosage pain-relieving medication can be

prescribed.（C）

[D] A doctor’s medication is no longer justified by his intentions.

下面的哪一项符合文意？

[A] 医生如果那病人的生命来冒险将被认为有罪。

[B] 现代医学帮助晚期病人得到无痛康复。

[C] 最高法院裁定可以开大剂量镇痛药。

[D] 医生开的药不再由其动机决定。

58. According to the NAS’s report, one of the problems in end-of-life care is

________.

[A] prolonged medical procedures [B] inadequate treatment of pain

[C] systematic drug abuse（B） [D] insufficient hospital care

根据国家科学院的报告，临终关怀的问题之一在于________。

[A] 延长了治疗程序 [B] 对痛苦的处理不充分

[C] 系统性的药物滥用 [D] 医院的照料不够

59. Which of the following best defines the word “aggressive” (Line 3,

Paragraph 7)?

[A] Bold [B] Harmful

[C] Careless [D] Desperate

下面哪个词语最适合定义“aggressive”（第七段第三行）这个词？

[A] 大胆的 [B] 有害的

[C] 粗心的 [D] 绝望的

60. George Annas would probably agree that doctors should be punished if

they ________.

[A] manage their patients incompetently

[B] give patients more medicine than needed

[C] reduce drug dosages for their patients（D）

[D] prolong the needless suffering of the patients

乔治•安纳斯可能认为医生应该受到处罚，如果他们________。

[A] 没能力管理病人

[C] 为病人较少用药量

为病人提供不必要的药物

延长病人不必要的痛苦

[B]

[D]