英语高级视听说 Unit 1Pirates of the Internet

It s no secret that online piracy has decimated the music industry as millions of people stopped buying CDs and started stealing their favorite songs by downloading them from the internet. Now the hign-tech thieves are coming after Hollywood. Illegal downloading of full-length feature films is a relatively new phenomenon, but it s becoming easier and easier to do. The people running America s movie studios know that if they don t do something----and fast---they could be in the same boat as the record companies. Correspodent: ?”Chernin: “Well, I think, you know, ultimately, our absolute features.”Peter Chernin runs 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in Hollywood. He knows the pirates of the Internet are gaining on him. Correspont: “Do you know ?”Chernin: .”Correspondent: “And it s only going to grow.”Chernin: “It s only going to grow. Somebody can put a perfect digital copy up on the internet. A perfect digital copy, all right. And with the click of mouse, send out a million copies all over the world, in an instant.”

And it s all free. If that takes hold, kiss Hollywood goodbye. Chernin recently organized a “summit”between studio moguls and some high school and college kids---the people most likely to be downloading.

Chernin: “And we said, Let s come up with a challenge. Let s give them five movies, and see if they can find them online. And we all sat around and picked five movies, four of which hadn t been released yet. And then we came back half an hour later. They had found all five movies that we gave them. ”Correspondent: “Even the ones that hadn t even been released yet?”Chernin: “Even the ones that hadn t even been released yet.”Correspondent: “Did these kids have any sense that they were stealing?”Chernin: “You know it s…it s a weird dichotomy. I think they know it s stealing, and I don t think they think it s wrong. I think they have an attitude of, It s here. ”The Internet copy of last year s hit Signs, starring Mel Gibson, was stolen even before director M. Night Shyamalan could organize the premiere. Correspondent: “The movie was about to be released. When did the first bootleg copy appear?”

6

Shyamalan: “Two weeks before it or three weeks before it. Before the Internet age, when somebody bootlegged a movie, the only outlet they had was to see it to those vendors on Times

Square, where they had the boxes set up outside and they say, Hey, we have Signs---it s not even out yet. And you walk by and you know it s illegal. But now, because it s the digital age, you can see, like, a clean copy. It s no longer the kind of thesleazy guy in Times Square with the box. It s just, oh, it s on this beautiful site, and I have to go, Click. ”Correspondent: “How did those movies get on the Internet? How did that happen?”Chernin: “Through an absolute act of theft. the or circulated among companies that do special effects, or subtitles. Chernin: “The other way that pre-released movies end up (stolen) is that people go to …there are lots of screenings that happen in this industry…on…”

Correspondent: “And record it.”This is one of those recorded-off-the-screen copies of Disney s Pirates of the Caribbean. Not great quality, but not awful either. And while it used to take forever to download a movie, anyone with a high-speed Internet connection can now have a full-length film in an hour or two.

Saaf: “Well, this is just one of many websites where basically people, hackers if you will, announce their piracy releases.”Randy Saaf runs a company called Media Defender that helps movie studios combat online piracy. Correspondent: “Look at this, all these new movies that I haven t even seen yet, all here.”Saaf: “Yep.”Correspondent: “Secondhand Lions that just came out. Sometimes I feel like I m the only person in this country who has never downloaded anything. But maybe there is a few others of us out there. So I m going to ask you to show us Kazaa, that s the biggest downloading site, right?”Saaf: “Right. This is the Kazaa media desktop. Kazaa is the largest peer-to-peer network.”It s called peer-to-peer because computer users are sharing files with each other, with no middleman. All Kazaa does is provide the software to make that sharing possible. When we went online with Randy Saaf, nearly four million other Kazaa users were there with us, sharing every kind of digital file. Saaf: “Audio, documents, images, software, and video. If you wanted a movie, you would click on the video section, and then you would type in a search phrase. And basically what this is doing now, it is asking the people on the peer-to-peer network, Who has Finding Memo ?”Within seconds, 191 computers sent an answer: “We have it.”This is Finding Memo, crisp picture and sound, downloaded free from Kazaa a month before its release for video rental or sale. If you don t want to watch it on a little computer

screen, you don t have to. On the newest computers, you can just “burn”it onto a DVD and watch it on your big-screen TV. And that s a dagger pointed right at the heart of Hollywood. Chernin: “Where movies make the bulk of their money is on DVD and home videos. 50 percent of the revenues for any movie come out of home video…”Correspondent: “15 percent?”Chernin: “50 percent so that if piracy occurs and it wipes out your home video profits or ultimately your television profits, you are out of business. No movies will get made.”Even if movies did get made, Night Shyamalan says that wouldn t be any good, because profits would be negligible, so budgets would shrink dramatically. Shyamalan: “And slowly it will degrade what s possible in that art form.”Rosso: “Always. You can t shut it down.”Wayne Rosso is Hollywood s enemy. They call him a pirate, but officially he s the president of Grokster, another peer-to-peer network that works just like Kazaa. Correspondent: “Ok, I have e.”Rosso: “Right.”Correspondent: “Ok, did I pay to do that?”Rosso: “No, it s free.”Correspondent: “So who pays you? How do you make money?”“And how many people use Grokster?”Rosso: “Ten million.”Correspondent: “Ten million people have used it.”Rosso: “A month.”Correspondent

9Correspondent: “what else?”Rosso: “I will assume. See, we have no way of knowing what people are downloading.”Correspondent: “That sRosso: “We have no idea what the content is, and whatever it is…”Correspondent: “Well, you may not know the specifics, but you know that s what your site…”Rosso: “And we can t stop it. Correspondent: “But you are there for that purpose, that is why you exist, of course it is.”Rosso: “No, no, no, no, no, no.”Correspondent: “Come on, this is the fig leaf part.”Rosso: “No, no, no, no, no.”Shyamalan:“He is totally conformable with putting on his site a stolen piece of material. Am I wrong in that? If my movie was his site?”Correspondent: “Because I have nothing to do with it.”Shyamalan:“Yeah, right.”Correspondent: “Because I just provided the software.”Shyamalan:“Yeah, right. So, immediately, how can you ever have a conversation with him? Because he s taken a stolen material and he is totally fine with passing it around in his house. All these, all these are illegal activities. So, I m not, it s just my house, I m not doing anything wrong.”But it is Rosso who has the law on his side. A federal judge has ruled that Grokster and other file-swapping networks are Rosso: “So we are completely legal, and unfortunately this is something the entertainment industry refuses to accept. They seem to think the judge s decision was nothingThe studios are

appealing that court ruling. And they like the carpenters and painters who work on film sets. At the same time, Hollywood is trying to Chernin: “You will very seldom go to an early screening of a movie right now where, probably you don t notice until you pay attention, someone s not in the front of that auditorium with infrared binoculars looking for somebody with a camcorder.”

Saaf: “What we re just trying to do is make the actual pirated content difficult to find. And the way we do that is by, you know, serving up fake files.”It s called “spoofing.”but aren t. Correspondent: “So if I had clicked on any number of those Finding Nemo offerings, I could have clicked on one of yours, or somebody like you. And what would I have found after my hour and a half of downloading?”Saaf: “it might just be a blank screen or something. You know, typically speaking, what we push out is just not the real content.”Correspondent: “What you are trying to do is make this so impossible, so infuriating that people will just throw up their hands and say it s just easier for me to go rent this thing, buy the DVD or whatever, it s just easier.”Saaf: “Right.”Correspondent: “That s your goal.”Saaf：：“Right.”

Correspondent: “Does that work? Is that a good idea?”Rosso: “No. It doesn t work. I mean I don t blame them but it doesn t work because what happens is that the community cleanses itself of the spoofs.”He means that downloaders quickly spread the word online about how to tell the fake movie files from the real thing. Correspondent: “It s like an arms race(军备竞赛）, isn t it?”Chernin: “That s exactly what it s like. It s like an arms race. There will be, you know, they re gonna get a step ahead. We re gonna try and get that step back.”Rosso: “But I ll tell you one thing: I ll bet on the hackers.”Correspondent: “That they will break whatever…”Rosso: “The studios come up with.”Correspondent: “The companies throw at them.”

and that isn t going away. Chernin: “The generally accepted estimate is that Correspondent: “60 million.”

Chernin: “At 60 million Americans, that s a mainstream product. That s not a bunch of college kids or, you know, a bunch of computer geeks. That s America.”So, instead of trying to stop it entirelybest way is to negotiate some kinds of licensing deal with him. Rosso: “If the movie industry acts now and starts exploring alternatives and solutions with guys like me, hopefully they won t have a problem.”Correspondent: “What if they try to buy you?”Rosso: “I d sell it in al heartbeat.”Correspondent: “You would sell, Grokster would sell to a movie studio?”Rosso:

“Sure, call me.”The idea of making deals with appeal to Hollywood. Instead, Fox and other studios have just launched their own uld love the idea that you don t have to go to the video store. You can do this. And that s what we re working the most effective business model in the world can t compete with free.”Not that Peter Chernin is interested, but he won t have the chance to buy Grokster, at least not from Wayne Rosso. A few days ago, Rosso announced that he is leaving Grokster to take over as president of another file-swapping software company, this one based in Spain. Grokster will continue under new management.

Key to the exercises Task I Global Listening

1. C

2. C.

3. D .

4. D

5. A

6. B.

7. B

8. C

Task II

Episode 1 1. T 2. F 3. T 4. F 5. T Listen for Details

Episode 2 1 2 3

Episode 3 (1) technology always wins (2) software (4) radio(3) advertising supported (5) Ten million people

(6) music (8) not liable for (10) control (12) facilitating (14) comfortable (7) video games (9) typo (11) fig leaf (13) steal

Episode 4

1. Following the music industry and begin to sue individuals who download movies.

2. Airing ads about people whose jobs are at risk because of piracy.

3. Keeping copies of movies from leaking in the first place.

4. Hiring people to hack the hackers/serve up thousands of fake copies of new movies.

Episode 5

1. Downloading off the Internet.

2. 60 million

3. Embrace it and get paid too.

4. A bunch of crooks.

5. 3-5 dolloars.

6. Stopping piracy.

英语高级视听说-下册-unit-2

Not Your Average Teen Lots of teenage girls dream of becoming rich and famous. But it's not a fantasy for Michelle Wie. Just before her 16th birthday last fall, she became the highest-paid woman golfer in history simply by turning professional and lending her name to commercial endorsements that will pay her between $10 million and $12 million a year, most of which will go into a trust fund until she becomes an adult. Wie has been a celebrity since she was 13, when people began predicting she would become the Tiger Woods of women' sgolf. But, as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, that has never been enough for Wie. She wants to become the first woman ever to successfully compete with men in a professional sport. She has tried a couple of times on the PGA Tour without embarrassing herself. As you will see, she has changed a lot since we first talked to her way back in 2004, when she was 14. At the time, Wie told Kroft her ultimate goal was to play in the Masters. "I think it'd be pretty neat walking down the Masters fairways," she said. It was a neat dream for a 14-year-old kid. Nothing has happened in the last two years to change Wie's mind or shake her confidence. She is stronger now, more mature and glamorous. She has already demonstrated that she can play herself into the middle of the pack against the best men on the PGA Tour and has come within a shot of winning her first two starts on the LPGA Tour this year as a part-time professional. The day before 60 Minutes interviewed her at the Fields Open in Honolulu, she shot a final round of 66, coming from six strokes off the lead to just miss a playoff. "You won your first check yesterday," Kroft says. "Uh-huh," Wie says. "It was, it was really cool. I mean, I was like looking at how much I won. I was like 'Oh my God.' " Wie says she won around $72,000. Asked whether she gets to keep that money, Wie said she didn't know. "I'm trying to negotiate with my dad how much I can spend of that, and stuff like that. We're still working it out. But, you know, I'm definitely gonna go shopping today," she says, laughing. Half of her life is spent in the adult world, competing with men and women twice her age for paychecks they may need to make expenses and dealing with the media, sponsors and marketing executives. The rest of the time she is a junior at Punahou High School in Honolulu, where she is an A student and claims to lead the life of a typical 16-year-old.

上外版英语高级视听说(上册)听力原文

Unit 1 Pirates of the Internet It’s no secret that online piracy has decimated the music industry as millions of people stopped buying CDs and started stealing their favorite songs by downloading them from the internet. Now the hign-tech thieves are coming after Hollywood. Illegal downloading of full-length feature films is a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s becoming easier and easier to do. The people running America’s movie studios know that if they don’t do something----and fast---they could be in the same boat as the record companies. Correspodent: “What’s really at stake for the movie industry with all this privacy?” Chernin: “Well, I think, you know, ultimately, our absolute features.” Peter Chernin runs 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in Hollywood. He knows the pirates of the Internet are gaining on him. Correspont: “Do you know how many movies are being downloaded today, in one day, in the United States?” Chernin: “I think it’s probably in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” Correspondent: “And it’s only going to grow.” Chernin: “It’s only going to grow. √Somebody can put a perfect digital copy up on the internet. A perfect digital copy, all right. And with the click of mouse, send out a million copies all over the world, in an instant.”

高级英语视听说教程第二册听力文本

Book 2 Chapter 1 The Population Today we’re going to talk about population in the United States. According to the most recent government census, the population is 281,421,906 people. Now this represents an increase of almost 33 million people since the 1990 census. A population of over 281 million makes the United States the third most populous country in the whole world. As you probably know, the People’s Republic of China is the most populous country in the world. But do you know which is the second most populous? Well, if you thought India, you were right. The fourth, fifth, and sixth most populous countries are Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan. Now let’s get back to the United States. Let’s look at the total U. S. population figure of 281 million in three different ways. The first way is by race and origin; the second is by geographical distribution, or by where people live; and the third way is by the age and sex of the population. First of all, let’s take a look at the population by race and origin. The latest U. S. census reports that percent of the population is white, whereas percent is black. Three percent are of Asian origin, and 1 percent is Native American. percent of the population is a mixture of two or more races, and percent report themselves as “of some other race”. Let’s make sure your figures are right: OK, white, percent; black, percent; Asian, 3 percent; Native American, 1 percent; a mixture of two or more races, percent; and of some other race, percent. Hispanics, whose origins lie in Spanish-speaking countries, comprise whites, blacks, and Native Americans, so they are already included in the above figures. It is important to note that Hispanics make up percent of the present U.S. population, however. Finally, the census tells us that 31 million people in the United States were born in another country. Of the 31 million foreign born, the largest part, percent are from Mexico. The next largest group, from the Philippines, number percent. Another way of looking at the population is by geographical distribution. Do you have any idea which states are the five most populous in the United States? Well, I’ll help you out there. The five most populous states, with population figures, are California, with almost 34 million; New York, with 21 million; Texas, with 19 million; and Florida, with 16 million; and Illinois with million people. Did you get all those figures down? Well, if not, I’ll give you a chance later to check your figures. Well, then, let’s move on. All told, over half, or some 58 percent of the population, lives in

《英语高级视听说》

《英语高级视听说》 教学大纲 课程编码：3011104 课程性质：专业教育必修课 教学时数：96学时 学分数：6学分 开课学期：第五、六、七学期 授课单位：英语系视听说教研室 授课对象：英语专业本科学生 一、课程概述 1.性质与地位 英语高级视听说课程是为英语专业本科学生在专业学习提高阶段开设的专业教育必修课程。该课程以外语教学理论为指导，广泛应用多媒体教学，融课堂教学与自主学习为一体，以真实语境下的常速语料为基本教学材料，紧扣时代脉搏，是全面提升学生听说能力、使学生的目标语听力理解能力与口语产出能力满足高层次语言应用要求的重要课程。 2.基本理念 英语高级视听说课程以素质教育、创新教育思想为理论指导，以双主模式及Anderson的“听前－听时－听后”理论为理论支撑，着力发展学生的目标语高级实时应用能力。 课程在实施过程中，一方面坚持以人为本，关注学生的情感，另一方面注重营造自主学习的气氛，创造自主学习的条件和环境，培养学生的可持续自我发展能力。 本课程摒弃接受式、填鸭式的学习方式和教学方式，坚持以学生为中心，以方法为主导，强调启发式、引导式教学，同时利用该课程材料均以多媒体形式呈现于课堂、内容时效性强等独特优势，激发学生的学习兴趣与积极性，培养和增强学生探索知识的能力和欲望。 利用校园网、互联网等信息渠道，开展多媒体课堂教学与课后自主学习，着力提高教学效率与教学质量，同时努力提升听与说在认知学习中的地位，贯彻“听为学”、“说为学”的理念，使学生认识到视听是与阅读同等重要的语言输入途径，也是同样有效的认知途径。 3.设计思路

本课程教学以解放军外国语学院生长干部学历教育本科人才培养方案（英语）为依据，参照《高等学校英语专业英语教学大纲》（以下简称《大纲》）的要求实施。教学安排在3个学期内完成，第八学期举行3次有关英语区域变体的讲座，第五、六、七学期每学期32学时，第八学期6学时，总时数为102学时。 教学实施分为课堂教学与自主学习，教学内容分为音频和视频两部分：音频教材方面主要包括《英语专业三年级听力教程》、《英语中级听力》、《英语专业四年级听力教程》，以及带前方记者报道的最新VOA、BBC、NPR新闻等；视频教材包括《高级英语视听说教程》、《英语高级视听说》、片长10分钟左右的多主题短片，BBC/CNN 视频新闻以及部分精选的记录片、影视剧片段等。授课教师在教材既定的总体框架下，可根据学生的实际水平和国际国内形势的发展情况，灵活组合、添加部分最新音、视频材料用于课堂教学，以保证教学内容时时更新，反映最新形势。 英语区域变体讲座内容涉及澳大利亚英语、新西兰英语、南亚英语、东南亚英语的特点，重点解决学生在听辨这些英语变体时所遇到的苦难。 二、课程目标 1.总体目标 系统讲授听力理解过程中各环节所需的语言知识和理解判断要素；利用新闻、对话、讲座、电影等语料训练学生对声像信息的辨读能力；通过“视”、“听”、“说”的结合，综合多种训练手段，提高学生的听力理解和口头表达能力，加深其对英语国家政治、军事、经济、社会、文化等方面的认识和了解，全面提升真实语境下的实时语言运用能力，并使之具备较强的自主学习能力。 2.分类目标 （1） 通过本课程的学习，学生应具备独立解决辨音难点的能力，掌握运用字典等工具书逆向查词、独立解决疑难问题的能力。 （2） 通过本课程的学习，学生应掌握政治、军事、经济、科技、文化等方面的听力理解词汇及口语产出词汇，并最终达到《大纲》八级水平。 （3） 通过本课程的学习，学生应充分理解“听为学”、“说为学”的理念，并积极通过这两种渠道进行目标语认知。 （4） 通过本课程的学习，学生应充分理解自主学习的重要性，充分利用教师提供的自主学习资源或自主开发新资源，养成良好的自主学习习惯，开展有效的 自主学习。 （5） 通过视频材料的广泛使用，使学生有效掌握大量非语言性对象国知识。 （6） 通过讲座，使学生了解英语区域变体的语音、语法特点，并能够准确把握视、音频材料的大意及细节内容。 三、内容标准 1.授课内容 第五、六学期，教学内容主要为《英语专业三年级听力教程》、《英语中级听力》、《英语高级视听说》（上）中的材料，辅以带有前方记者报道的VOA、BBC、NPR新

英语高级视听说 下册 unit 2

Not Y our A verage Teen Lots of teenage girls dream of becoming rich and famous. But it's not a fantasy for Michelle Wie. Just before her 16th birthday last fall, she became the highest-paid woman golfer in history simply by turning professional and lending her name to commercial endorsements that will pay her between $10 million and $12 million a year, most of which will go into a trust fund until she becomes an adult. Wie has been a celebrity since she was 13, when people began predicting she would become the Tiger Woods of women’s golf. But, as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, that has never been enough for Wie. She wants to become the first woman ever to successfully compete with men in a professional sport. She has tried a couple of times on the PGA Tour without embarrassing herself. As you will see, she has changed a lot since we first talked to her way back in 2004, when she was 14. At the time, Wie told Kroft her ultimate goal was to play in the Masters. "I think it'd be pretty neat walking down the Masters fairways," she said. It was a neat dream for a 14-year-old kid. Nothing has happened in the last two years to change Wie's mind or shake her confidence. She is stronger now, more mature and glamorous. She has already demonstrated that she c an play herself into the middle of the pack against the best men on the PGA Tour and has come within a shot of winning her first two starts on the LPGA Tour this year as a part-time professional. The day before 60 Minutes interviewed her at the Fields Open in Honolulu, she shot a final round of 66, coming from six strokes off the lead to just miss a playoff. "Y ou won your first check yesterday," Kroft says. "Uh-huh," Wie says. "It was, it was really cool. I mean, I was like looking at how much I won. I was like 'Oh my God.' " Wie says she won around $72,000. Asked whether she gets to keep that money, Wie said she didn't know. "I'm trying to negotiate with my dad how much I can spend of that, and stuff like that. We're still working it out. But, you know, I'm definitely gonna go shopping today," she says, laughing. Half of her life is spent in the adult world, competing with men and women twice her age for paychecks they may need to make expenses and dealing with the media, sponsors and marketing executives. The rest of the time she is a junior at Punahou High School in Honolulu, where she is

英语高级视听说unit-4

Unit 4 Brain Man Almost 25 years ago, 60 Minutes introduced viewers to George Finn, whose talent was immortalized in the movie "Rain Man." George has a condition known as savant syndrome, a mysterious disorder of the brain where someone has a spectacular skill, even genius, in a mind that is otherwise extremely limited. Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called "Brain Man" in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain. ________________________________________ Back in 1983, George Finn, blessed or obsessed with calendar calculation, could give you the day if you gave him the date. "What day of the week was August 13th, 1911?" Safer quizzed Finn. "A Sunday," Finn replied. "What day of the week was May 20th, 1921?" Safer asked. "Friday," Finn answered. George Finn is a savant. In more politically incorrect times he would have been called an "idiot savant" - a mentally handicapped or autistic person whose brain somehow possesses an island of brilliance. Asked if he knew how he does it, Finn told Safer, "I don't know, but it's just that, that's fantastic I can do that." If this all seems familiar, there?s a reason: five years after the 60 Minutes broadcast, Dustin Hoffman immortalized savants like George in the movie "Rain Man." Which brings us to that other savant we mentioned: Daniel Tammet. He is an Englishman, who is a 27-year-old math and memory wizard. "I was born November 8th, 1931," Safer remarks. "Uh-huh. That's a prime number. 1931. And you were born on a Sunday. And this year, your birthday will be on a Wednesday. And you'll be 75," Tammet tells Safer. It is estimated there are only 50 true savants living in the world today, and yet none are like Daniel. He is articulate, self-sufficient, blessed with all of the spectacular ability of a savant, but with very little of the disability. Take his math skill, for example.

(完整版)高级英语视听说2参考答案(1)

Chapter 1 The Population I 2 populous 3 race 4 origin 5 geographical distPrelistening B 1 census ribution 6 made up of 7 comprises 8 relatively progressively 9 Metropolitan densely 10 decreased death rate 11 birth rate increasing 12 life expectancy D 1 a 18.5 mill b 80% c 1/2 d 13.4 mill e 2: 10 f 4% g 1990 h 40% i 3/4 j 33.1% 2 a 3 b 1 c 2 d 5 e 4 II First Listening ST1 population by race and origin ST2 geographical distribution ST3 age and sex III Postlistening A 1. People’s Republic of China, India 2. 281 mill

3. Hispanics(12.5%) 4. Texas 5. the South and the West 6. 20% 7. by more than 5 million 8. about 6 years 9. 2.2 years 10. a decreasing birth rate and an increasing life expectancy Chapter 2: Immigration: Past and Present PRELISTENING B. Vocabulary and Key Concepts immigrated natural disasters/ droughts/ famines persecution settlers/ colonists stages widespread unemployment scarcity expanding/ citizens failure decrease

英语高级视听说unit 8

1 Unit8 Chasing The Flu If this year of tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes has taught us anything, it's that worst case scenarios do sometimes happen. Now with winter upon us, the latest thing to worry about is the avian flu -- a particularly deadly bird virus that is ravaging the poultry industry in Asia, and has, on rare occasions, infected humans, killing half of its victims. Fewer than 100 people have died worldwide, yet the World Health Organization calls it the most serious health threat facing the planet, greater than AIDS or tuberculosis. Because humans have no immunity to the virus, and there are no proven drugs or vaccines to stop it, it has the potential to cause an influenza pandemic similar to the one that killed 50 million people in 1918. It may no t happen, but billions of dollars are being spent to sequence its genes, track its movement, and sl ow its progress in what many people believe could be a race against time. 60 Minutes set out for Europe and Asia chasing the flu. Correspondent Steve Kroft reports. It's called the H5N1 virus, a primitive piece of genetic material so small it can barely be seen unde r the most powerful microscopes. Like all flu viruses, it is constantly evolving and every day scient ists record the latest changes as it moves silently around the globe in the bellies of birds. The virus has infected the waterfowl now migrating the flyways over Southeast Asia. This is the fr ont line in the battle against avian flu, where the most cases have been identified and the most p eople have died. Ducks and geese have passed it along to domestic poultry, and humans have gotten it from sick bi rds. So far, the virus can't pass easily from human to human, but a single deadly mutation could c hange that and trigger the deaths of tens of millions of people. "Time is the essence," says Dr. Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization's chief of Pandemic Influenza in Geneva. She calls it a warning signal from nature. "For the first time in history we are seeing a pandemic unfolding in front of our eyes," says Dr. Ch an. No one has more experience with H5N1 than Dr. Chan. She was director of health in Hong Ko ng when the first outbreak occurred there in 1997. This is a virus that affects mostly birds and has killed fewer than 100 people. Why does Dr. Chan s ee it as such a serious health threat? "We are seeing very worrying signs, the geographical spread of this virus, and it has extended bey ond the usual sort of poultry sector. It is infecting cats. It's causing death in tigers, and so on and s o forth. Now we are getting all these signals, and we are tracking the changes of the virus," she ex plains. "If you look at the disease it causes in human being, [it] is very severe, with a very high fat ality rate. More than about half of the people infected die. We have not seen anything quite like i t," says Dr. Chan. "And also, this virus causes unprecedented spread in the animal sector. And we have never seen this in the entire history of mankind." The best minds in health, science and veterinary medicine have been mobilized to try and stop th e bird flu before it can become highly contagious in humans. Nearly 200 million chickens exposed to the virus have already been destroyed, yet, in the last few months the H5N1 virus has spread from Asia into Europe. Every morning at the World Health Organization's Strategic Health Operations Center, scientists a nd public health officials gather to go over the latest information and monitor every suspected hu

高级英语视听说教程3文本246单元

Let me begin the lecture today by asking, "What exactly is culture?"This question has been approached by anthropologists in many different ways. Murdock, for example, in Outline of World Cultures,produced what many have called the ultimate laundry list of thingscultural by naming 900-odd categories of human behavior. I won'tattempt to go into these at this time. Another less lengthy list is thefamous "grocery list" of Edward B. Tyler. He wrote, "Cultureis that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals,custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." But another definition of culture that many find useful is, "the totality of learned, socially transmitted behavior." Obviously this definition leaves out much if we feel obligated to include all the ways of life that have been evolved by people in every society. A particular culture, then, would mean the total shared way of life of a given group. This would include their ways of thinking, acting, and feeling as reflected in their religion, iaw, language, art, and customs, as well as concrete things such as houses, clothing, and tools. Cultural anthropology is the study of cultures-living and dead. In its totality, it includes linguistics, the study of speech forms, archaeology (the study of dead cultures), and ethnology, which is the study of living cul- tures or those that can be observed directly. Why study cultural anthropology? One reason noted by Ruth Benedict, another well-known anthropologist, is that the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the present is such a fascinating one of cultural growth. Interestingly, every society has gone through three stages or steps of cultural growth. These are savagery, barbarism, and finally, civilization. The last is, of course, to varying degrees. We are often reminded of another compelling reason to learn about different cultures-to learn and use a foreign language effectively. Most of us realize that just knowing the language of another culture is not enough for meaningful communication. You can ask anyone who has tried to use their high school Spanish inside a Spanish-speaking country. Ned Seelye, in his 1993 book Teaching Culture, lists six skills to nurture and support intercultural communication: Number 1: Cultivate curiosity about another culture and empathy toward its members.Number 2: Recognize that different roles and other social variables such as age, sex, social class, religion, ethnicity, and place of residence affect the way people speak and behave.Number 3: Realize that effective communication requires discovering the culturally conditioned images of people when they think, act, and react to the world around them.Number 4: Recognize that situational variables and conventions shape people's behavior in important ways.Number 5: Understand that people generally act the way they do because they are exercising the options their society allows for satisfying basic physical and psychological needs.And, finally, number 6: Develop the ability to evaluate the truth of a generalization about the target culture and to locate and organize information about the target culture from books, mass media, people, and personal observations. Culture and society must coexist. Without living together people cannot create a culture or way of life. If a group or society is small, isolated, and stable, it might also share a single culture. For example, think of the Tasaday, allegedly a Stone Age people in the Philippine rain forest, who were discovered by anthropologists back in 1971. Aside note is that due to their supposed isolation, they had no weapons or known words in their language for "enemy" or "war." In your read- ing after the lecture, you'll learn more about the Tasaday and the conroversy surrounding them up to the present time. It is important to remember, however, that large societies, such as those in Canada, the United