2019수능특강 영어독해연습 4강 TEXT

수능특강 영어독해연습 4강.hwp

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Is peak oil a certainty? History is littered with energy predictions that have failed to come true. Some have been overly optimistic─nuclear powered cars, electricity too cheap to meter, oil at $20 per barrel in 2011. Others have been overly pessimistic─a worldwide peak of oil in the 1970s, for example. High oil prices motivate more drilling and exploration. They make resources that weren't previously economical to pump worthwhile. And they encourage research into new technologies that can lower costs and increase the amount of oil coming out of a field. It's generally a mistake to bet against human ingenuity. It's utterly possible that new technological breakthroughs will make it possible to find new oil fields faster than we do today, or to pump oil from places that we can't today. Twenty years from now, we might be filled with a glut of oil. Dismissing that possibility would be foolish.

 

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Social welfare is a set of activities that has, in part, been directed to offsetting the unequal distributions. Social welfare workers—the people who develop social welfare ideas and carry out social welfare activities—have looked for ways to increase the income, honor, power, and freedom of members of society who receive lesser amounts of these social benefits. Most of these attempts involve some redistribution of benefits, that is, taking some of the freedom, power, honor, and income from those who have more and finding acceptable ways of giving it to those who have less. Social welfare activities in Western society thus create conflicts among various groups in society. These for the most part fall under the major heading of the conflict between freedom and equality. Individuals who want to more nearly equalize the distribution of social benefits come into conflict with those who want the freedom to keep the amounts of social benefits they already have gained.

 

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People who lack reputation individually may be able to derive it from an institution to which they belong. Their institutional affiliation signals that they can be trusted. In dynastic societies, family affiliation may suffice; reputation is given in the family name rather than in any particular member of the family. Schools and universities can also accredit their alumni—an important factor when there is competition between private educational institutions. This explains why references are often sought from institutions rather than from individuals. But where do institutions get their reputations from in the first place? Institutional reputation is often derived from the personal reputation of the founder. Institutions do not exist in timeless limbo—they have to be created, and personal initiative is required to do this. Some of the largest and strongest institutions are founded by committees or councils, which combine the reputations of the individuals involved.

 

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In 1381, English serfs rose up in revolt. Fifty thousand of them marched on London, destroyed the Savoy Palace of the king’s uncle, stormed the Tower of London, and killed the lord treasurer and the lord chancellor. While the revolt was put down soon after, it marked a sea change in the relationship between lords and commoners. Commoners would no longer be serfs, bound to the land. They would have the rights to negotiate their wages, to buy or rent land, and to settle where they chose. By the end of the century, serfs had become tenant farmers, leasing or buying their land with currency rather than labor, and selling the food they grew at market for a profit. Where serfs saw little incentive to growing more food, as most of it went to the lord, this new breed of tenant farmer could earn money in direct proportion to the amount and quality of food they brought to market. For the first time, working hard and innovating served the interests of most European farmers directly. And as a result, agricultural output soared, as did the output of other farm goods like wool.

 

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Humor depends upon the perception of an appropriate incongruity; that is, the perception of an appropriate relationship between categories that would ordinarily be regarded as incongruous. .”A brief example should suffice to illustrate the notion: “A man goes to see a psychiatrist. The doctor asks him, ‘What seems to be the problem?’ The patient says, ‘Doc, no one believes anything I say.’ The doctor replies, ‘You’re kidding!’” To understand this joke, one must apprehend both the appropriateness and the incongruity of the doctor’s response. The phrase “you’re kidding” is an expression of surprise and appropriately registers the doctor’s skepticism that the situation could be as severe as the patient describes. In some sense, it may even be regarded as a reflexive expression of reassurance. At the same time, “you’re kidding” registers the physician’s disbelief in the patient’s report and seems to affirm the very proposition that the physician seems to be denying—that no one believes anything the patient says. In other words, the doctor’s denial is incongruous in that it confirms the very problem about which the patient complains. Even the physician to whom the patient turns for help seems to doubt his veracity from the first moment of their encounter.

 

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Global free-market capitalism has an impact upon the worker-consumer’s share of gross product. In Western capitalist democracies, labour unions have served as ‘brokers’ on behalf of their membership, negotiating with employers for wages and benefits in an effort to gain a fair share of the GDP. Union corruption aside, the union is the workers’ only dedicated voice. Present trends, however, indicate that the social-political power of labour unions is on the decline. Their membership, economic-political influence, and bargaining power are being eroded by several factors: the decline of the manufacturing sector caused by importation of lower-priced goods from developing economies; the inflow of cheap migrant labour; outsourcing of work to countries with lower wages; displacement of unionized blue-collar workers by robots; and the shift of jobs from the unionized public sector to the non-unionized private sector. Moreover, global competition is forcing workers to accept the lowest global standard in wages and benefits.

 

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No matter what emotion you’re feeling right now, you can count on one thing—it will change. Every emotion has a natural life span. Even the hottest flash of anger and the deepest sting of shame will pass away in their own time. No emotion lasts forever. Emotions are often compared to waves. Like a wave, every emotion appears, rises to a peak, and then falls. This might seem obvious. But it’s one of the first things that we forget when we’re feeling upset. Just as some waves rise to enormous heights, some emotions rise to great peaks of intensity. At those peak moments, we might feel that we’re drowning. The emotion feels like a destructive force of nature—a hurricane, cyclone, or flood that’s raging inside us. We worry that we won’t survive, that it’s too much to bear. We forget that this moment is just the peak of the wave. In fact, an emotion often feels most unpleasant right before it begins to recede. Remembering that emotions are impermanent helps us ride out the waves.

 

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Important advances in self-concept are made during early childhood as children develop an awareness of their own characteristics. Three-year-old children first describe themselves in global terms, based on external qualities (“I’m fast”) rather than psychological qualities (“I’m kind”). This global tendency leads young children to think that if they are good at drawing, they also are good at puzzles, running, or singing; that is, self-definitions are generalized to other contexts. By four years of age, children’s judgments are more specific and differentiated. They acknowledge that they are good at one skill, but not so good at others. Or they may acknowledge that they are good at doing something in one situation but not in other situations. For instance, older preschoolers may believe that they are good at puzzles but not at drawing or that they are good at playing basketball with other preschoolers but not with older children.

 

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In The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud gives his insights on what he thinks about religion. He argued that all humans have desires or instincts that need to be repressed by society if society is to function. For instance, social order is maintained only on the condition that people repress their aggressive instincts and tendencies. However, for Freud, this repression takes an intolerably heavy toll on human psychology. Humans would not be able to handle this repression of their instincts were it not for some sort of psychological compensation to relieve the pressure. Freud believed that religion provides “illusions” that offer the sort of compensation or relief required. He argued that a religion like Christianity provides this psychological compensation through the creation of the illusion that adherents will go to heaven: human suffering in the present life can be indirectly relieved by the promise and hope that adherents will go somewhere perfect when they die. Why do religions exist? For Freud, the answer is simple: because something is necessary to alleviate the friction created by social repression.

 

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We’ve emphasized that hereditary factors are critical in determining which children can look forward to being outstanding, and perhaps even elite, athletes. However, the effects of genetics are never absolute because genes do not operate in isolation. We cannot undervalue the influence of the environments in which we live—natural, social, and athletic. During childhood and adolescence, regular exercise is among the many environmental factors essential to achieving full potential for growth. Moderate physical stress from the muscle activities found in most sports is generally a positive force on bone growth. But training programs for young athletes have virtually no growth-promoting effect on their height. Dramatic effects of constant participation in sport do, however, occur in muscle and fat tissue. Following the start of adolescence in males, the increase in muscle mass is directly related to the intensity and duration of training programs. And, of course, the loss of fatty tissue is a desirable effect of sport participation.

 

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Don’t try to be a jack-of-all-trades, I-can-do-anything job applicant, also known as a “slash” person. When you say you’re a computer programmer/chef/Pilates instructor, people at college mixers might be amused, but no hiring manager will be. Companies won’t know what to make of you. Slash identities work best if they are in related fields, such as social entrepreneur/consumer activist, or coder/app developer. If you’re unsure if you want a job in marketing or sales, develop slightly different pitches and resumes so each has a clear focus. Remember the T-shape concept—emphasize depth in one key area and breadth in a group of related areas. As a rule, the more focused the brand, the better. Swiss army knife-type brands generally end up in the rubbish bin. Likewise, “I can do anything” or, “You can train me” is not compelling. You must stand for something. Organizations with job openings are looking to fill a slot in one area, and they need someone who can jump in right away.

 

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In everyday language, central tendency attempts to identify the “average” or “typical” individual. This average value can then be used to provide a simple description of an entire population or a sample. In addition to describing an entire distribution, measures of central tendency are also useful for making comparisons between groups of individuals or between sets of data. For example, weather data indicate that for Seattle, Washington, the average yearly temperature is 53° Fahrenheit and the average annual precipitation is 34 inches. By comparison, the average temperature in Phoenix, Arizona, is 71° and the average precipitation is 7.4 inches. The point of these examples is to demonstrate the great advantage of being able to describe a large set of data with a single, representative number. Central tendency characterizes what is typical for a large population and in doing so makes large amounts of data more digestible. Statisticians sometimes use the expression “number crunching” to illustrate this aspect of data description. That is, we take a distribution consisting of many scores and “crunch” them down to a single value that describes them all.