2020수능특강 영어독해연습 12강 본문

 

12강

1

Clutter beats us up psychologically and physically. It clouds our minds, making it difficult to access what truly matters in our lives. According to Ab Jackson, a fellow organizer, “Are you a person that buys things that you don’t need, with money that you don’t have, to impress people that you don’t even like?” Sound familiar? How reassuring would it be to get organized in a way that not only helps you cope with the basic demands of life but also gives you more energy and joy? How about a way that actually resonates with what is easy for your unique brain? We only have so much life force, so much chi, pran, or energy. Why spend it performing tasks that don’t match your prewired tendencies? How can we learn to do this with less stress and more grace; even, dare I say, a sense of satisfaction and pleasure? Here is where your own organizing skills can greatly assist you in feeling intact, leading a life that is proactive rather than reactive, purposeful, and ultimately satisfying.

 

2

TV shows were more popular in the seventies than they are now not because they were better, but because we had fewer alternatives to compete for our screen attention. What we thought was the rising tide of common culture actually turned out to be less about the triumph of Hollywood talent and more to do with the sheepherding effect of broadcast distribution. The great thing about broadcast is that it can bring one show to millions of people with unmatchable efficiency. But it can’t do the opposite—bring a million shows to one person each. Yet that is exactly what the Internet does so well. The economics of the broadcast era required hit shows—big buckets—to catch huge audiences. The economics of the broadband era are reversed. Serving the same stream to millions of people at the same time is hugely expensive and wasteful for a distribution network optimized for point‑to‑point communications.

 

3

In one study Barbara Weston and I attempted to determine whether or not 2‑ and 3‑year‑old babies would show evidence of familiarity to the perfume the mother wore during regular feedings. She would wear her own perfume and the same one each time. The perfumes included ‘L’Air du Temps’, ‘Jontu’ and ‘Maximi’. After a few such exposures, we tested the babies in the laboratory. The perfume was presented to the infant on a cotton swab and the babies’ sucking, respiration, general activity and heart rate were recorded on a polygraph. There were two control groups: a test with an odourless cotton swab, and a test with another perfume, ‘Cachet’, which was not worn by any of the mothers in the experimental group. The results for 15 infants, 8 girls and 7 boys, showed 80 per cent response on trials with the perfume versus virtually zero with the odourless control. However, the infants responded about equally to mothers’ perfume and the control perfume, ‘Cachet’. In the above study, infants were responsive to perfume, but they did not recognize the ones that were familiar.

 

4

In addition to efforts to develop natural and more sustainable adhesive materials for commercial use, recent years have seen the emergence of a wide variety of “green adhesives.” Efforts to produce and market these have been associated not only with the use of more sustainable raw materials but also with minimizing the environmental impacts of adhesives, particularly with regard to reducing harmful compounds and solvents contained in the adhesives. A number of governments have introduced regulations on the chemical emissions produced when using adhesives. These regulations have attempted to place limits on the amount of volatile organic compounds contained in adhesive products, as these compounds are thought to release hazardous air pollutants posing both health and environmental risks. Other products are designed to save energy and reduce waste. Low‑temperature hot melt glues, for example, require less energy to melt and apply, and new cardboard and foil‑based packaging has also been developed to reduce the landfill waste from plastic tube applicators.

 

5-7

Joe has one specific memory of when he was 17 years old. He had been working summers and vacations for nearly five years at his father’s appliance store. Joe was out on a service call one afternoon to fix a customer’s washing machine. Some members of the high school yearbook staff came into the store to get a picture of him for a story they were doing on how the senior class spent summer vacation. His dad directed them to the customer’s home (it’s a small‑town thing). So, much to Joe’s surprise, two of the prettiest girls in the senior class showed up to take his picture. At the time Joe was so self‑conscious. At 17, the presence of pretty girls made him incredibly nervous. Also, he looked dirty and completely unprepared for this unannounced visit. Making it all the worse was the utilitarian way the two classmates handled the task. They briefly announced the purpose of their visit, snapped two photos, and left with no more than three sentences of interaction. The manner in which they showed up, executed their chore, and exited all in the span of five minutes with not even a pleasantry was bruising to a teenage boy’s ego. After completing the service call, Joe returned to the store. It was clear, even to his emotionally restricted father, that he was bummed. “What happened to you?” His father asked him. Reluctantly, Joe shared his encounter with the two girls. After listening to his story, he said, “Cheer up, it gets worse.” And with that, Dad returned to the task at hand. Joe remember thinking, “Really! ‘Cheer up, it gets worse?’ That has got to be the worst motivational speech I have ever heard in my life.” Years later, he reminded his dad, now softened with age, of that conversation. He offered more nuance this time. First, he said, the phrase is true. Life is hard, but no matter how difficult today is, there will be a worse one ahead. “Cheer up, it gets worse,” is not negative, he said. It is a reminder not to wallow in your troubles today because there will be a day in the future you will want to trade for today. Truly, an amazing piece of advice.

 

8

Imagine I tell you that Maddy is bad. Perhaps you infer from my intonation, or the context in which we are talking, that I mean morally bad. Additionally, you will probably infer that I am disapproving of Maddy, or saying that I think you should disapprove of her, or similar, given typical linguistic conventions and assuming I am sincere. However, you might not get a more detailed sense of the particular sorts of way in which Maddy is bad, her typical character traits, and the like, since people can be bad in many ways. In contrast, if I say that Maddy is wicked, then you get more of a sense of her typical actions and attitudes to others. The word ‘wicked’ is more specific than ‘bad’. I have still not exactly pinpointed Maddy’s character since wickedness takes many forms. But there is more detail nevertheless, perhaps a stronger connotation of the sort of person Maddy is. In addition, and again assuming typical linguistic conventions, you should also get a sense that I am disapproving of Maddy, or saying that you should disapprove of her, or similar, assuming that we are still discussing her moral character.

 

9

When electromagnetic wavelengths start to get too long to bend retinal (a biological chemical in the retina of the eye), we call them infrared because they are just below the visible color red. When the wavelengths are a little too short to be seen we call them ultraviolet because they are just beyond the visible color violet. Visible light is squeezed in between the invisible infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths. If we consider visible light to be the dividing line within the universe of invisible electromagnetic waves, what can we say about wavelengths on either side of the visible? Those wavelengths shorter than visible light carry more energy. The shorter wavelength radiations (think x‑rays) carry enough energy that they go beyond simply bending molecules; they can actually break them. And it is the breaking of biological molecules that results in radiation’s adverse biological effects. In contrast, those radiations with longer wavelengths carry much less energy than light (think radio waves), not even enough to bend retinal or other biological molecules. If these low energy radiations have biological effects, their mechanism is more obscure and beyond what we currently understand about biology.

 

10

Pain has always been philosophically and politically problematic. Whereas physical injuries and diseases can be observed by others, pain has an apparently private quality, which potentially cuts the sufferer off from others. By its nature, it can be difficult to adequately communicate, a quality that led the cultural theorist Elaine Scarry to describe intense pain as “world‑destroying.” The sufferer feels alone with their pain, and depends on the capacity of others to empathize and to believe them. As Scarry puts it, “To have pain is to have certainty; to hear about pain is to have doubt.” This generates its own political strains, as some sufferers are inevitably viewed as more credible than others, while some are assumed to exaggerate their pains. The politics of pain involves differing views of who deserves compassion and how much, a matter that generates its own distinctive political positions. For example, American conservatives have historically taken the harsher view that those in pain are less deserving of sympathy or pain relief. Pain is expressed subjectively, which makes it a political issue to decide how compassionate we should be towards the sufferers.

 

11

In the classic model of the Sumerian economy, the temple functioned as an administrative authority governing commodity production, collection, and redistribution. The discovery of administrative tablets from the temple complexes at Uruk suggests that token use and consequently writing evolved as a tool of centralized economic governance. Given the lack of archaeological evidence from Uruk‑period domestic sites, it is not clear whether individuals also used the system for personal agreements. For that matter, it is not clear how widespread literacy was at its beginnings. The use of identifiable symbols and pictograms on the early tablets is consistent with administrators needing a lexicon that was mutually intelligible by literate and nonliterate parties. As cuneiform script became more abstract, literacy must have become increasingly important to ensure one understood what he or she had agreed to.

 

12-14

Although Joyce had little patience with elderly people, she applied for the activity director position in a nursing facility. When the ringing of the telephone woke her, it was 8:05 am. The woman on the other end sounded cheerful. “I have your application for activity director,” she said. “We are about to open a new unit. How soon can you be here for an interview?” Trying her best to sound awake, Joyce said, “One hour. I can come in one hour.” From that day on, Joyce’s life changed. Each waking moment, her thoughts are on the residents of the nursing facility. The residents fill her thoughts and her heart. Her first love was Miss Lilly, a lonely woman with only one living relative. Miss Lilly was not a pretty sight. She was a broad‑shouldered woman with large hands and feet, in a near prone position. She spent her days in a blue chair. Her hair, sparse and iron‑gray, had twin cowlicks that caused it to stick out in all directions. Worse yet, Miss Lilly never spoke. Joyce had seen her one relative, a niece, several times. Each visit was the same. Standing a few feet in front of the blue chair, her niece would say, “Your check came, your bill is paid.” Never a personal word, a hug, or any sign of affection. Months passed, and Miss Lilly seemed to shrink lower and lower down in her chair. Joyce discovered she was not eating well and gave up her lunch hour to feed Miss Lilly. Seeing how much Miss Lilly enjoyed Jell‑O and pudding, Joyce brought her extra. Joyce talked to her constantly—about the weather, current events, anything that she could think of. One day, to her amazement, Miss Lilly spoke. “Bend down,” Miss Lilly said. Quickly, Joyce knelt at her side. “Put your arms around me and pretend you love me,” Miss Lilly whispered. “Me love Miss Lilly?” Joyce had never thought about it. Joyce gathered Miss Lilly into her arms and felt her heart bursting with love. There have been many Miss Lillys in Joyce’s life since then and she knows there will be others. They are the ones who need more than kindness and care; they need a little piece of her heart. She loves each day of work, sharing with the residents with her life, her joys, and her sorrows. They share with her their past, their fear of the future, their families, and most of all, their love. Because of Miss Lilly, Joyce never feels the same about the older generation, about nursing facilities, or even about life.