TEXT B
WHY SHOULD anyone buy the latest volume in the ever-expanding Dictionary of National Biography? I do not mean that it is bad, as the reviewers will agree. But it will cost you 65 pounds. And have you got the rest of volumes? You need the basic 22 plus the largely decennial supplements to bring the total to 31. Of course, it will be answered, public and academic libraries will want the new volume. After all, it adds 1,068 lives of people who escaped the net of the original compilers. Yet in 10 years time a revised version of the whole caboodle, called the New Dictionary of National Biography, will be published. Its editor, Professor Colin Matthew, tells me that he will have room for about 50,000 lives, some 13,000 more than in the current DNB. This rather puts the 1,068 in Missing Persons in the shade. When Dr Nicholls wrote to the Spectator in 1989 asking for names of people whom readers had looked up in the DNB and had been disappointed not to find, she says that she received some 100,000 suggestions. (Well, she had written to "other quality newspapers" too. ) As soon as her committee had whittled the numbers down, the professional problems of an editor began. Contributors didnt file copy on time; some who did sent too many: 50,000 words instead of 500 is a record, according Dr Nicholls. There remains the dinner-party game of whos out. That is a game that the reviewers have played and will continue to play. Criminals were my initial worry. After all, the original edition of the DNB boasted: Malefactors whose crimes excite a permanent interest have received hardly less attention than benefactors. Mr. John Gross clearly had similar anxieties, for he complains that, while the murderer Christie is in, Crippen is out. One might say in reply that the injustice of the hanging of Evans instead of Christie was a force in the repeal of capital punishment in Britain, as Ludovie Kennedy (the author of Christie entry in Missing Persons) notes. But then Crippen was reputed as the first murderer to be caught by telegraphy (he had tried to escaped by ship to America). It is surprising to find Max Miller excluded when really not very memorable names get in. There has been a conscious effort to put in artists and architects from the Middle Ages. About their lives not much is always known. Of Hugo of Bury St. Edmunds, a 12th-century illuminator whose dates of birth and death are not recorded, his biographer comments:" Whether or not Hugo was a wall-painter, the records f his activities as carver and manuscript painter attest to his versatility". Then there had to be more women, too (12 per cent, against the original DBNs 3), such as Roy Strongs subject, the Tudor painter Levina Teerlinc, of whom he remarks:" her most characteristic feature is a head attached to a too small, spindly body. Her technique remained awkward, thin and often cursory". Doesnt seem to qualify her as a memorable artist. Yet it may be better than the record of the original DNB, which included lives of people who never existed (such as Merlin) and even managed to give thanks to J. W. Clerke as a contributor, though , as a later edition admits in a shamefaced footnote, "except for the entry in the List of Contributors there is no trace of J. W. Clerke".
14. The writer suggests that there is no sense in buying the latest volume ______
A) because it is not worth the price.
B) because it has fewer entries than before.
C) unless one has all the volumes in his collection.
D) unless an expanded DNB will come out shortly.
15. On the issue of who should be included in the DNB, the writer seems to suggest that ______
A) the editors had clear rules to follow.
B) there were too many criminals in the entries.
C) the editors clearly favoured benefactors.
D) the editors were irrational in their choices.
16. Crippen was absent from the DNB ______
A) because he escaped to the U.S.
B) because death sentence had been abolished.
C) for reasons not clarified.
D) because of the editors' mistake.
17. The author quoted a few entries in the last paragraph to ______
A) illustrate some features of the DNB.
B) give emphasis to his argument.
C) impress the reader with its content.
D) highlight the people in the Middle Ages.
18. Throughout the passage, the writer's tone towards the DNB was ______
A) complimentary.
B) supportive.
C) sarcastic.
D) bitter.
TEXT C
Medical consumerism —— like all sorts of consumerism, only more menacingly —— is designed to be unsatisfying. The prolongation of life and the search for perfect health (beauty, youth, happiness) are inherently self-defeating. The law of diminishing returns necessarily applies. You can make higher percentages of people survive into their eighties and nineties. But as any geriatric ward shows, that is not the same as to confer enduring mobility, awareness and autonomy. Extending life grows medically feasible, but it is often a life deprived of everything, and one exposed to degrading neglect as resources grow over-stretched and politics turn mean. What an ignominious destiny for medicine if its future turned into one of bestowing meagre increments of unenjoyed life! It would mirror the fate of athletics, in which disproportionate energies and resources —— not least medical ones, like illegal steroids —— are now invested to shave records by milliseconds And, it goes without saying, the logical extension of longevism —— the "abolition" of death —— would not be a solution but only an exacerbation. To air these predicaments is not anti-medical spleen —— a churlish reprisal against medicine for its victories —— but simply to face the growing reality of medical power not exactly without responsibility but with dissolving goals. Hence medicines finest hour becomes the dawn of its dilemmas. For centuries, medicine was impotent and hence unproblematic. From the Greeks to the Great War, its job was simple: to struggle with lethal diseases and gross disabilities, to ensure live births, and to manage pain. It performed these uncontroversial tasks by and large with meagre success. Today, with mission accomplished, medicines triumphs are dissolving in disorientation. Medicine has led to vastly inflated expectations, which the public has eagerly swallowed. Yet as these expectations grow un-limited, they become unfulfillable. The task facing medicine in the twenty-first century will be to redefine its limits even as it extend its capacities.
19. In the author's opinion, the prolongation of life is equal to ______
A) mobility.
B) deprivation.
C) autonomy.
D) awareness.
20. In the second paragraph a comparison is drawn between ______
A) medicine and life.
B) resources and energies.
C) predicaments and solutions.
D) athletics and longevism.
WHY SHOULD anyone buy the latest volume in the ever-expanding Dictionary of National Biography? I do not mean that it is bad, as the reviewers will agree. But it will cost you 65 pounds. And have you got the rest of volumes? You need the basic 22 plus the largely decennial supplements to bring the total to 31. Of course, it will be answered, public and academic libraries will want the new volume. After all, it adds 1,068 lives of people who escaped the net of the original compilers. Yet in 10 years time a revised version of the whole caboodle, called the New Dictionary of National Biography, will be published. Its editor, Professor Colin Matthew, tells me that he will have room for about 50,000 lives, some 13,000 more than in the current DNB. This rather puts the 1,068 in Missing Persons in the shade. When Dr Nicholls wrote to the Spectator in 1989 asking for names of people whom readers had looked up in the DNB and had been disappointed not to find, she says that she received some 100,000 suggestions. (Well, she had written to "other quality newspapers" too. ) As soon as her committee had whittled the numbers down, the professional problems of an editor began. Contributors didnt file copy on time; some who did sent too many: 50,000 words instead of 500 is a record, according Dr Nicholls. There remains the dinner-party game of whos out. That is a game that the reviewers have played and will continue to play. Criminals were my initial worry. After all, the original edition of the DNB boasted: Malefactors whose crimes excite a permanent interest have received hardly less attention than benefactors. Mr. John Gross clearly had similar anxieties, for he complains that, while the murderer Christie is in, Crippen is out. One might say in reply that the injustice of the hanging of Evans instead of Christie was a force in the repeal of capital punishment in Britain, as Ludovie Kennedy (the author of Christie entry in Missing Persons) notes. But then Crippen was reputed as the first murderer to be caught by telegraphy (he had tried to escaped by ship to America). It is surprising to find Max Miller excluded when really not very memorable names get in. There has been a conscious effort to put in artists and architects from the Middle Ages. About their lives not much is always known. Of Hugo of Bury St. Edmunds, a 12th-century illuminator whose dates of birth and death are not recorded, his biographer comments:" Whether or not Hugo was a wall-painter, the records f his activities as carver and manuscript painter attest to his versatility". Then there had to be more women, too (12 per cent, against the original DBNs 3), such as Roy Strongs subject, the Tudor painter Levina Teerlinc, of whom he remarks:" her most characteristic feature is a head attached to a too small, spindly body. Her technique remained awkward, thin and often cursory". Doesnt seem to qualify her as a memorable artist. Yet it may be better than the record of the original DNB, which included lives of people who never existed (such as Merlin) and even managed to give thanks to J. W. Clerke as a contributor, though , as a later edition admits in a shamefaced footnote, "except for the entry in the List of Contributors there is no trace of J. W. Clerke".
14. The writer suggests that there is no sense in buying the latest volume ______
A) because it is not worth the price.
B) because it has fewer entries than before.
C) unless one has all the volumes in his collection.
D) unless an expanded DNB will come out shortly.
15. On the issue of who should be included in the DNB, the writer seems to suggest that ______
A) the editors had clear rules to follow.
B) there were too many criminals in the entries.
C) the editors clearly favoured benefactors.
D) the editors were irrational in their choices.
16. Crippen was absent from the DNB ______
A) because he escaped to the U.S.
B) because death sentence had been abolished.
C) for reasons not clarified.
D) because of the editors' mistake.
17. The author quoted a few entries in the last paragraph to ______
A) illustrate some features of the DNB.
B) give emphasis to his argument.
C) impress the reader with its content.
D) highlight the people in the Middle Ages.
18. Throughout the passage, the writer's tone towards the DNB was ______
A) complimentary.
B) supportive.
C) sarcastic.
D) bitter.
TEXT C
Medical consumerism —— like all sorts of consumerism, only more menacingly —— is designed to be unsatisfying. The prolongation of life and the search for perfect health (beauty, youth, happiness) are inherently self-defeating. The law of diminishing returns necessarily applies. You can make higher percentages of people survive into their eighties and nineties. But as any geriatric ward shows, that is not the same as to confer enduring mobility, awareness and autonomy. Extending life grows medically feasible, but it is often a life deprived of everything, and one exposed to degrading neglect as resources grow over-stretched and politics turn mean. What an ignominious destiny for medicine if its future turned into one of bestowing meagre increments of unenjoyed life! It would mirror the fate of athletics, in which disproportionate energies and resources —— not least medical ones, like illegal steroids —— are now invested to shave records by milliseconds And, it goes without saying, the logical extension of longevism —— the "abolition" of death —— would not be a solution but only an exacerbation. To air these predicaments is not anti-medical spleen —— a churlish reprisal against medicine for its victories —— but simply to face the growing reality of medical power not exactly without responsibility but with dissolving goals. Hence medicines finest hour becomes the dawn of its dilemmas. For centuries, medicine was impotent and hence unproblematic. From the Greeks to the Great War, its job was simple: to struggle with lethal diseases and gross disabilities, to ensure live births, and to manage pain. It performed these uncontroversial tasks by and large with meagre success. Today, with mission accomplished, medicines triumphs are dissolving in disorientation. Medicine has led to vastly inflated expectations, which the public has eagerly swallowed. Yet as these expectations grow un-limited, they become unfulfillable. The task facing medicine in the twenty-first century will be to redefine its limits even as it extend its capacities.
19. In the author's opinion, the prolongation of life is equal to ______
A) mobility.
B) deprivation.
C) autonomy.
D) awareness.
20. In the second paragraph a comparison is drawn between ______
A) medicine and life.
B) resources and energies.
C) predicaments and solutions.
D) athletics and longevism.