2021英语时文选读

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1、英语时文选读Passage One. The Age of Obama (被时间追杀的奥巴马)1.Time roughs up presidents.Photos of Barack Obama onElection Night 2021 look like they were taken much longer a go. Now his face has deeper creases and crow?s feet, while his hair has turned white. “You look at the picture when they?re inaugurated and

2、four years later, they?re visibly older,” said Connie Mariano, White House physician from 1992 to 2021. “It?s like t hey went in a time machine and fast-forwarded eight years in the span of four years.”Why presidents age quickly2.Presidents face unabated, unfathomable stress. “You see it over a term

3、,” said Ronan Factora, aphysician specializing in geriatric medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. “It?s a good study of chronic stress on a person?s overall health.”3.Changes in skin or hair are gradual, he said. “If you do have a stressful event, nothing is going tohappen right away.” Nothing visible a

4、nyway. Inside the body, the pituitary gland jolts the adrenal gland, just above the kidneys. Hormones start coursing. Adrenaline cranks up heart rates and blood pressure. Cortisol, another hormone from the same gland, causes inflammation and preps the body for converting sugars into energy.4.“It?s n

5、ot intended that people would be chronically exposed to these levels,” said Sherita Golden, aphysician at the Johns Hopkins Medical Bloomberg School of Public Health. Cortisol strains the circulatory system, battering artery walls. The hormone also thins the skin, makes muscles waste and bones lose

6、mass. The immune system weakens, and viruses that cause colds and cold sores take hold. Sleep turns fitful.5.“Your cognition slows, you may feel more depressed, your ability to concentrate goes down,”Factora said. “And it just builds on itself a real cascade.”The only known cure6.There is one known

7、treatment: exercise. “It is the best benefit a physician can recommend,”Factora said. “There is no drug that can present as many benefits as exercise can.”7.Obama is a fiend for exercise. In hour-long workouts, he has been known to hit treadmills hard,weight train with arms and legs, build quickness

8、 through “plyos” or plyometrics exercises that involve explosive movements. He also throws footballs, shoots basketballsand thwacks at golf balls.8.His predecessors exercised, too, some of them fiercely. George W. Bush ran till his aging kneesmade cycling a better option. Presidents Carter and Bill

9、Clinton jogged, while Ronald Reagan rode horses and split logs with such vigor, he once cut his thigh. President Gerald Ford performed a daily exercise regimen while still in his robe and PJs.9.Good exercise leads to better thinking, brain-mapping has shown. “Exercise actually brings moreblood flow,

10、” explained Linda Fried, an epidemiologist and geriatrician at Columbia University.“Parts of the brain are activated and they?re associated with complex thinking andproblem-solving.” Workouts also force a president to truly, finally, deeply rest. Only then can the relaxed brain start to make creativ

11、e associations.Infirmity and vice10.The job has compounded certain human frailties. Most famous perhaps is the lethal case ofpneumonia that 68-year-old William Henry Harrison caught at his inauguration. Woodrow Wilson?s stroke certainly limited his leadership of the country, and Franklin D. Roosevel

12、t worked around the problems related to his polio more ably than might have been expected.11.But daily habits also affect presidential well-being in lesser-known ways. Dwight D. Eisenhowerwas so dedicated to his form of exercise that he played 800 rounds of 18 holes over eight years as president, ac

13、cording to Evan Thomas, the author of“Ike?s Bluff: President Eisenhower?s Secret Battle to Save the World.” Then, in 1955, Eisenhower had a heart attack, and two years later, a stroke. Intestinal surgery came in between, all as he was staving off nuclear war and realigning Southeast Asia.12.“Toward

14、the end,” Thomas said, “he was taking an extra sleeping pill at night” the powerful,old-school kind, with barbiturates. And that was on top of a nightly scotch, never more than five ounces, except when it was, Thomas said. “A couple of times he says to his doctor, Let?s get drunk.? ”13.To the best o

15、f the public?s knowledge, recent presidents have not exacerbated their stress throughbad behaviors such as drinking. Obama, however, confirmed that he had to kick a cigarette habit of unknown intensity at some midpoint in his first term.14.The side effects of smoking might show up as those lines in

16、his face, the doctors said. While sunexposure can also make a face look withered, Obama?s darker skin has melanin to alleviate UV ray damage. That same coloring, however, can make his white hair look more pronounced.A special lot15.Obama had a fitness test on Jan. 12, and the White House said the re

17、sults would be released byFebruary. His previous physical was in October 2021; it showed that he had added one pound since his February 2021 physical (his 2021 weight: 181, very good for a man who was then 50 and 6-foot-1).16.Like all presidents since 1992, Obama has been under constant medical watc

18、h: a military physicianis on hand wherever a president goes. Burton Lee,whom the first President Bush brought to the White House to monitor his health, agreed with Mariano that presidents are a special lot. They push their bodies and minds, and thus they develop a greater capacity to fight off infec

19、tion. They shake enough hands to fell a lesser creature, he said.17.But the mental intrusions the sense that someone needs something from the president everymoment of every day are as insidious as the germs. “It?s just a phenomenally demanding job,” he said. “You never get one minute off.”18.Despite

20、 the extraordinary stress levels, many recent presidents have lived well beyond normal lifeexpectancy. Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford died at 93; Jimmy Carter and the George H.W. Bushare 88. Doctors are coming to understand that stress may have an upside. “Human beings need some degree of stress to k

21、eep their systems tuned,” Fried said. “Some people enjoy the stimulation of it and the excitemen t and couldn?t live without it.”19.Plus, human minds literally seek reasons to live. “Many people, as they get older, deeply care aboutfuture generations and the world?s survival,” Fried said. “If they h

22、ave a chance to make a difference, that keeps people healthy.” (1039 words)-By Ned Martel, May-Ying Lam, Grace Koerber and Kat Downs, The Washington Post, Jan. 17, 2021Passage Two. The Magician Steve Jobs(魔术师乔布斯)1.NOBODY else in the computer industry, or any other industry forthat matter, could put

23、on a show like Steve Jobs. His productlaunches, at which he would stand alone on a black stage andconjure up a “magical” or “incredible” new electronic gadget infront of an awed crowd, were the performances of a mastershowman. All computers do is fetch and shuffle numbers, he onceexplained, but do i

24、t fast enough and “the results appear to bemagic”. He spent his life packaging that magic into elegantly designed, easy to use products.2.He had been among the first, back in the 1970s, to see the potential that lay in the idea of sellingcomputers to ordinary people. In those days of green-on-black

25、displays, when floppy discs were still floppy, the notion that computers might soon become ubiquitous seemed fanciful. But Mr Jobs was one of a handful of pioneers who saw what was coming. Crucially, he also had an unusual knack for looking at computers from the outside, as a user, not just from the

26、 inside, as an engineersomething he attributed to the experiences of his wayward youth.3.Mr Jobs caught the computing bug while growing up in Silicon Valley. As a teenager in the late1960s he cold-called his idol, Bill Hewlett, and talked his way into a summer job at Hewlett-Packard. But it was only

27、 after dropping out of college, travelling to India, becoming a Buddhist and experimenting with psychedelic drugs that Mr Jobs returned to California to co-found Apple, in his parents? garage, on April Fools? Day 1976. “A lot of people in our industry haven?t had very diverse experiences,” he once s

28、aid. “So they don?t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions.” Bill Gates, he suggested, would be “a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger”.4.Dropping out of his college course and attending calligraphy classes instead had

29、, for example, givenMr Jobs an apparently useless love of typography. But support for a variety of fonts was to prove a key feature of the Macintosh, the pioneering mouse-driven, graphical computer that Apple launched in 1984. W ith its windows, icons and menus, it was sold as “the computer for the

30、rest of us”. Having made a fortune from Apple?s initial success, Mr Jobs expected to sell “zillions” of his new machines. But the Mac was not the mass-market success Mr Jobs had hoped for, and he was ousted from Apple by its board.5.Yet this apparently disastrous turn of events turned out to be a bl

31、essing: “the best thing that couldhave ever happened to me”, Mr Jobs later called it. He co-founded a new firm, Pixar, which specialised in computer graphics, and NeXT, another computer-maker. His remarkable second act began in 1996 when Apple, having lost its way, acquired NeXT, and Mr Jobs returne

32、d to put its technology at the heart of a new range of Apple products. And the rest is history: Apple launched the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, and (briefly) became the world?s most valuable listed company. “I?m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn?t been fired from App

33、le,” Mr Jobs said in 2021. When his failing health f orced him to step down as Apple?s boss in August, he was hailed as the greatest chief executive in history. Oh, and Pixar, his side project, produced a string of hugely successful animated movies.6.In retrospect, Mr Jobs was a man ahead of his tim

34、e during his first stint at Apple. Computing?searly years were dominated by technical types. But his emphasis on design and ease of use gave him the edge later on. Elegance, simplicity and an understanding of other fields came to matter in a world in which computers are fashion items, carried by eve

35、ryone, that can do almost anything.“Technology alone is not enough,” said Mr Jobs at the end of his speech introducing the iPad 2, in March 2021. “It?s technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.” It was an unusual statement for t

36、he head of a technology firm, but it was vintage Steve Jobs.7.His interdisciplinary approach was backed up by an obsessive attention to detail. A carpentermaking a fine chest of drawers will not use plywood on the back, even though nobody will see it, he said, and he applied the same approach to his

37、 products. “For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” He insisted that t he first Macintosh should have no internal cooling fan, so that it would be silentputting user needs above engineering convenience. He called an Apple engineer one weeke

38、nd with an urgent request: the colour of one letter of an on-screen logo on the iPhone was not quite the right shade of yellow. He often wrote or rewrote the text of Apple?s advertisements himself.8.His on-stage persona as a Zen-like mystic notwithstanding, Mr Jobs was an autocratic managerwith a fi

39、erce temper. But his egomania was largely justified. He eschewed market researchers and focus groups, preferring to trust his own instincts when evaluating potential new products. “A lot of times, people don?t know what they want until you show it to them,” he said. His judgment proved uncannily acc

40、urate: by the end of his career the hits far outweighed the misses. Mr Jobs was said by an engineer in the early years of Apple to emit a “reality distortion field”, such were his powers of persuasion. But in the end he changed reality, channelling the magic of computing into products that reshaped

41、music, telecoms and media. The man who said in his youth that he wanted to “put a ding in the universe” did just that. （982 words）T.S. Economist, Oct 8, 2021Passage Three. What Gets in the Way of Immigration Reform（是什么阻止了移民改革的进程）1.Theres been lots of talk about legislation, but reformcould face sign

42、ificant roadblocks in Congress.2.The Gang of Eight is drafting principles. The White House says immigration reform could be in theState of the Union. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is planning Judiciary hearings. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO have joined hands to push for action. Theres no sh

43、ortage of political will to get immigration reform done in this Congress, but attempts at an overhaul of the system have failed before, and lawmakers still have several major hurdles to overcome this time.3.Here are a few:4. A PATH TO CITIZENSHIP VERSUS LEGAL STATUS:This is the single most divisive

44、issue that lawmakers will have to overcome. Democrats, in general, will demand that any legislation include a path to citizenship (this is also a priority for the AFL-CIO).Many Republicans, on the other hand, remain staunchly opposed to anything resembling amnesty.Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid t

45、old a Nevada news outlet that a bipartisan group of senators “have agreed tentatively on a path to citizenship, which is the big stumbling block.” But it remains to be seen whether that agreement would be acceptable to the entire Congress.http:/ VERSUS PIECEMEAL REFORM:Proponents say a comprehensive

46、 package is the only way to fix the system. It?s also a top priority of the president and the aim of the Gang of EightSens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Robert Menendez, D-N.J., John McCain, R-Ariz., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and newly elected

47、Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. But a comprehensive bill also gives everyone something to hate. Some lawmakers, such as Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, say it will be easier to tackle different reforms in smaller bills because different coalitions will support each piece.6.INCLUSION OF A GUEST-WORKER PROGRAM:

48、Disagreement over granting foreign workers temporary visas to work in the United States has historically separated business and labor groups, but the two are trying to find common ground this time. Jeff Hauser, spokesman for the AFL-CIOwhich has opposed such programs in the pastsaid his group is tal

49、king to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about ways to create a depoliticized body to manage the future flow of workers.7.THE HASTERT RULE:While a number of high-profile Republicans such as McCain have worked on immigration reform for years, it?s still likely that legislation will have more Democratic t

50、han Republican support. But House Speaker John Boehner has generally run the House in the style of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, always ensuring that a majority of the majority party supports legislation before bringing it to the floor. The rule was violated to get the fiscal-cliff legislatio

51、n passed. Redistricting after the 2021 election put more and more lawmakers into safe districts, meaning they have less incentive to compromise. So it may not be possible for Boehner to get a majority of the majority to back immigration reform.8. A CROWDED AGENDA:The temporary nature of the deal pro

52、duced to avert the fiscal cliff means that within the first few months of the year, Congress will have to negotiate a deal to raise the debt ceiling, deal with the sequester, and fund the government. President Obama is also pushing gun control as a top priority.With limited time before legislators s

53、tart focusing on their 2021 midterm races, there might not be enough oxygen for immigration reform to happen this year as well.9.PLAIN OLD POLITICS:There?s a reason that immigration reform has failed so many times: It?s a tough political nut to crack, and can bring out ugliness and name-calling on b

54、oth sides of the aisle. At a Politico Pro event Tuesday, Labrador suggested that Obama wanted a political victory instead of a policy victorywhich may be easier if nothing gets done and Republicans get the blame. That?s not the way Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a longtime immigration-reform advocate,

55、sees it. “I have had Republicans say they dont want Obama to do a bill because they want flexibility, but if he doesnt doa bill, hes criticized,” she said at the event. She says she?s just waiting for Boehner to get the ballrolling. “Its not that tough, its just the decision to do it,” she said. (71

56、6 words)Rebecca Kaplan, National Journal, Jan. 16, 2021Lesson Four. Dubai?s renaissance：Edifice complex（迪拜的复兴：大厦情节）1.The Gulf emirate is as flashy as ever, but it still has structural problems to solve2.DUBAI doesn?t do discreet. The emirate welcomed in the new year wi th a hugefireworks display tha

57、t engulfed the Burj Khalifa, the world?s tallest building, in time to a live performance by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. In a video that runs in the Burj Khalifa?s visitors? centre, an executive at Emaar, the developer behind the skyscraper, explains why it had to go that high: “You have to do

58、 something impossible, otherwise you?ll be like any other company, or person. We have to grow higher and highergrow like Dubai.”3.The emirate?s latest wheeze is to create a city wit hin the city, a development bigger than anythingthat has gone before. Mohammed bin Rashid (MBR) City will feature more

59、 than 100 hotels, the Middle East?s largest entertainment centre, a park bigger than London?s Hyde Park and the world?s biggest shopping mall, appropriately named “Mall of the World”.4.Plans for the supersized project, named after Dubai?s ruler, were unveiled in November and aremeant to signal that

60、Dubai is back in business only three years after a near-death experience. In late 2021 Dubai World, a big government-controlled investment firm, announced it could no longer repay its debts, threatening to bring down the entire economy. The emirate was bailed out by Abu Dhabi, an oil-rich fellow-mem

61、ber of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the UA E?s central bank.5.Dubai has come a long way since then. The IMF estimates that GDP was up by 4.1% in the first halfof 2021 compared with the same period of 2021. Trade, transport and tourism are buoyant. Imports of food and vehicles rose by 20% in t

62、he first half of 2021; in the year to August the number of passengers at Dubai International Airport was up by nearly 14%; and occupancy rates of Dubai?s hotels reach 80%, among the world?s highest. The property market is showing signs of renewed exuberance. In September Emaar put a 63-storey tower

63、with 542 flats on the market and sold them all on the first day.6.But Dubai is more than a story of skyscrapers built on sand with borrowed cash. Because theemirate?s oil reserves were limited, its rulers decided decad es ago to diversify. Emirates Airline is the best-known result of this strategy:

64、it started in 1985 and now ranks among the world?s leading carriers. The Jebel Ali Free Zone is one of the world?s biggest transit ports and the Dubai International Financial Centre the Middle East?s financial hub.7.This role as a regional huband a policy of being open to almost any kind of business

65、explains whyDubai has been, at least economically, the main beneficiary of the Arab spring. Instability in the restof the region has diverted capital, commerce and people to theemirate. When neighbouring Saudi Arabia upped its social spendingto pre-empt protests, for instance, much of the cash ended up inDubai?s shopping malls. More important, the emirate has clearlyestablishe d itself as the region?s safe haven. “Dubai has created anenvironment where compan