英语真题阅读

2012

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Come on –Everybody‘s doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what most of us think of when we hear the words peer pressure. It usually leads to no good-drinking, drugs and casual sex. But in her new book Join the Club, Tina Rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in which organizations and officials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their lives and possibly the word. Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, offers a host of example of the social cure in action: In South Carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called Rage Against the Haze sets out to make cigarettes uncool. In South Africa, an HIV-prevention initiative known as LoveLife recruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers. The idea seems promising，and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lameness of many pubic-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to mobilize peer pressure for healthy habits, and they demonstrate a seriously flawed understanding of psychology.‖Dare to be different, please don‘t smoke!‖pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers-teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in. Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure. But on the general effectiveness of the social cure, Rosenberg is less persuasive. Join the Club is filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biological factors that make peer pressure so powerful. The most glaring flaw of the social cure as it‘s presented here is that it doesn‘t work very well for very long. Rage Against the Haze failed once state funding was cut. Evidence that the LoveLife program produces lasting changes is limited and mixed. There‘s no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. An emerging body of research shows that positive health habits-as well as negative ones-spread through networks of friends via social communication. This is a subtle form of peer pressure: we unconsciously imitate the behavior we see every day. Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. It‘s like the teacher who breaks up the troublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. The tactic never really works. And that ‘s the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the real world, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.

Text 2 A deal is a deal-except, apparently ,when Entergy is involved. The company, a major energy supplier in New England, provoked justified outrage in Vermont last week when it announced it was reneging on a longstanding commitment to abide by the strict nuclear regulations. Instead, the company has done precisely what it had long promised it would not challenge the constitutionality of Vermont‘s rules in the federal court, as part of a desperate effort to keep its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant running. It‘s a stunning move. The conflict has been surfacing since 2002, when the corporation bought Vermont‘s only nuclear power plant, an aging reactor in V ernon. As a condition of receiving state approval for the sale, the company agreed to seek permission from state regulators to operate past 2012. In 2006, the state went a step further, requiring that any extension of the plant‘s license be subject to Vermont legislature‘s approval. Then, too, the company went along. Either Entergy never really intended to live by

those commitments, or it simply didn‘t foresee what would happen next. A string of accidents, including the partial collapse of a cooling tower in 207 and the discovery of an underground pipe system leakage, raised serious questions about both Vermont Yankee‘s safety and Entergy‘s management–especially after the company made misleading statements about the pipe. Enraged by Entergy‘s behavior, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 last year against allowing an extension. Now the company is suddenly claiming that the 2002 agreement is invalid because of the 2006 legislation, and that only the federal government has regulatory power over nuclear issues. The legal issues in the case are obscure: whereas the Supreme Court has ruled that states do have some regulatory authority over nuclear power, legal scholars say that Vermont case will offer a precedent-setting test of how far those powers extend. Certainly, there are valid concerns about the patchwork regulations that could result if every state sets its own rules. But had Entergy kept its word, that debate would be beside the point. The company seems to have concluded that its reputation in Vermont is already so damaged that it has noting left to lose by going to war with the state. But there should be consequences. Permission to run a nuclear plant is a poblic trust. Entergy runs 11 other reactors in the United States, including Pilgrim Nuclear station in Plymouth. Pledging to run Pilgrim safely, the company has applied for federal permission to keep it open for another 20 years. But as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviews the company‘s application, it should keep it mind what promises from Entergy are worth.

Text 3 In the idealized version of how science is done, facts about the world are waiting to be observed and collected by objective researchers who use the scientific method to carry out their work. But in the everyday practice of science, discovery frequently follows an ambiguous and complicated route. We aim to be objective, but we cannot escape the context of our unique life experience. Prior knowledge and interest influence what we experience, what we think our experiences mean, and the subsequent actions we take. Opportunities for misinterpretation, error, and self-deception abound. Consequently, discovery claims should be thought of as protoscience. Similar to newly staked mining claims, they are full of potential. But it takes collective scrutiny and acceptance to transform a discovery claim into a mature discovery. This is the credibility process, through which the individual researcher‘s me, here, now becomes the community‘s anyone, anywhere, anytime. Objective knowledge is the goal, not the starting point. Once a discovery claim becomes public, the discoverer receives intellectual credit. But, unlike with mining claims, the community takes control of what happens next. Within the complex social structure of the scientific community, researchers make discoveries; editors and reviewers act as gatekeepers by controlling the publication process; other scientists use the new finding to suit their own purposes; and finally, the public (including other scientists) receives the new discovery and possibly accompanying technology. As a discovery claim works it through the community, the interaction and confrontation between shared and competing beliefs about the science and the technology involved transforms an individual‘s discovery claim into the community‘s credible discovery. Two paradoxes exist throughout this credibility process. First, scientific work tends to focus on some aspect of prevailing Knowledge that is viewed as incomplete or incorrect. Little reward accompanies duplication and confirmation of what is already known and believed. The goal is new-search, not re-search. Not surprisingly, newly published discovery claims and credible discoveries that appear to be important and convincing will always be open to challenge and

potential modification or refutation by future researchers. Second, novelty itself frequently provokes disbelief. Nobel Laureate and physiologist Albert Azent-Gyorgyi once described discovery as ―seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.‖But thinking what nobody else has thought and telling others what they have missed may not change their views. Sometimes years are required for truly novel discovery claims to be accepted and appreciated. In the end, credibility ―happens‖to a discovery claim –a process that corresponds to what philosopher Annette Baier has described as the commons of the mind. ―We reason together, challenge, revise, and complete each other‘s reasoning and each other‘s conceptions of reason.‖

Text 4 If the trade unionist Jimmy Hoffa were alive today, he would probably represent civil servant. When Hoffa‘s Teamsters were in their prime in 1960, only one in ten American government workers belonged to a union; now 36% do. In 2009 the number of unionists in America‘s public sector passed that of their fellow members in the private sector. In Britain, more than half of public-sector workers but only about 15% of private-sector ones are unionized. There are three reasons for the public-sector unions‘thriving. First, they can shut things down without suffering much in the way of consequences. Second, they are mostly bright and well-educated. A quarter of America‘s public-sector workers have a university degree. Third, they now dominate left-of-centre politics. Some of their ties go back a long way. Britain‘s Labor Party, as its name implies, has long been associated with trade unionism. Its current leader, Ed Miliband, owes his position to votes from public-sector unions. At the state level their influence can be even more fearsome. Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute of California points out that much of the state‘s budget is patrolled by unions. The teachers‘unions keep an eye on schools, the CCPOA on prisons and a variety of labor groups on health care. In many rich countries average wages in the state sector are higher than in the private one. But the real gains come in benefits and work practices. Politicians have repeatedly ―backloaded‖public-sector pay deals, keeping the pay increases modest but adding to holidays and especially pensions that are already generous. Reform has been vigorously opposed, perhaps most egregiously in education, where charter schools, academies and merit pay all faced drawn-out battles. Even though there is plenty of evidence that the quality of the teachers is the most important variable, teachers‘unions have fought against getting rid of bad ones and promoting good ones. As the cost to everyone else has become clearer, politicians have begun to clamp down. In Wisconsin the unions have rallied thousands of supporters against Scott Walker, the hardline Republican governor. But many within the public sector suffer under the current system, too. John Donahue at Harvard‘s Kennedy School points out that the norms of culture in Western civil services suit those who want to stay put but is bad for high achievers. The only American public-sector workers who earn well above $250,000 a year are university sports coaches and the president of the United States. Bankers‘fat pay packets have attracted much criticism, but a public-sector system that does not reward high achievers may be a much bigger problem for America.

2011

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The decision of the New York Philharmonic to hire Alan Gilbert as its next music director has been the talk of the classical-music world ever since the sudden announcement of his appointment in 2009. For the most part, the response has been fa vorable, to say the least. “Hooray! At last!” wrote Anthony Tommasini, a sober-sided classical-music critic.

One of the reasons why the appointment came as such a surprise, however, is that Gilbert is comparatively little known. Even Tommasini, who had adv ocated Gilbert’s appointment in the Times, calls him “an unpretentious musician with no air of the formidable conductor about him.” As a description of the next music director of an orchestra that has hitherto been led by musicians like Gustav Mahler and Pierre Boulez, that seems likely to have struck at least some Times readers as faint praise.

For my part, I have no idea whether Gilbert is a great conductor or even a good one. To be sure, he performs an impressive variety of interesting compositions, but it is not necessary for me to visit Avery Fisher Hall, or anywhere else, to hear interesting orchestral music. All I have to do is to go to my CD shelf, or boot up my computer and download still more recorded music from iTunes.

Devoted concertgoers who reply that recordings are no substitute for live performance are missing the point. For the time, attention, and money of the art-loving public, classical instrumentalists must compete not only with opera houses, dance troupes, theater companies, and museums, but also with the recorded performances of the great classical musicians of the 20th century. There recordings are cheap, available everywhere, and very often much higher in artistic quality than today’s live performances; moreover, they can be “consumed”at a time and place of the listener’s choosing. The widespread availability of such recordings has thus brought about a crisis in the institution of the traditional classical concert.

One possible response is for classical performers to program attractive new music that is not yet available on record. Gilbert’s own interest in new music has been widely noted: Alex Ross, a classical-music critic, has described him as a man who is capable of turning the Philharmonic into “a markedly different, more vibrant o rganization.” But what will be the nature of that difference? Merely expanding the orchestra’s repertoire will not be enough. If Gilbert and the Philharmonic are to succeed, they must first change the relationship between America’s oldest orchestra and the new audience it hops to attract.

2009年纽约交响乐团突然宣布聘用艾伦?吉尔伯特为下一位乐曲指挥，从那时起一直到现在，这次任命都成为古典音乐界的话题。退一步说，从总体上看，反应还是不错的。如冷静的古典音乐评论家安东尼?托姆西尼就这样写：从长时间来看，这次委命是英明的。

然而，这次任命还是令人意外。原因之一在于吉乐伯特名声相对较小。就连那时主张雇用吉尔伯特的托姆西尼，也称吉尔伯特其貌不扬，缺乏一位令人敬仰的指挥大师的气质。作为对这个很牛的管弦乐队（牛的表现：到目前为止一直被牛人领导着）下一任指挥家的描述，这种描述跟虚浮的赞扬一样，确实会令至少一部分泰晤士报的读者觉得愕然不解（让他们觉得不可思议）。

就我的观点而言，我不知道吉尔伯特是不是一位伟大的指挥家，甚至连他是不是算好的指挥家也不敢确定。可以确信的是，虽然他演出了很多令人印象深刻的有趣的乐曲。然而，我不需要访问Avery Fisher Hall（可能是纽约交响乐团所在地，即吉尔伯特表演之所），或者其他地方才能听到有趣的管弦乐。（作者意思是，不需要听吉尔伯特，到处可以听到有趣的管弦乐。）我所做的，只需要到我的CD棚里去，随便打开我的电脑，从ITUNES上就可下载比那（当指吉尔伯特表演的）多得多的类似的音乐。

对于唱片，那些专门参加音乐会的人会说，现场表演是不可替代的。他们显然忽视了一个要点。为了替音乐爱好者节省时间、精力、金钱考虑，古典乐曲表演表不仅要在各种表演场所进行竞争，还要在记录这些行为的媒介上竞争。记在唱片上的表演比现场表演更便宜，更易得，甚至质量更好。而且它们的消费时间地点可以任由听者选择。因此，这种唱片的广泛应用，给传统音乐会带来了生存危机。

一个可能的应对方式（解决办法）是古典音乐表演者发明有吸引力的从唱片上听不到的曲子。吉尔伯特在新音乐方面投入了自己的兴趣，这已广被人知：如古典音乐评论家罗斯就把吉尔伯特描述成一个可以扭转交响乐方向的人，认为他把交响乐带进了一个明显不同的更有活力的天地。但是，这种“不同”的实质是什么呢？仅仅扩展交响乐的节目是不够的。吉尔伯特和交响乐要想取得成功，必须首先改变美国旧的管弦乐和它们想吸引的新的听众之间的关系。

Text 2

When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up. Rather than cloaking his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came right out and said he was leaving “to pursue my goal of running a company.” Broadcasting his ambition was “very much my decision,” McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for the first time with the board of Hartford Financial Services Group, which named him CEO and chairman on September 29.

McGee says leaving without a position lined up gave him time to reflect on what kind of company he wanted to run. It also sent a clear message to the outside world about his aspirations. And McGee isn’t alone. In recent weeks the No.2 executives at Avon and American Express quit with the explanation that they were looking for a CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans in response to shareholder pressure, executives who don’t get the nod also may wish to move on. A turbulent business environment also has senior managers cautious of letting vague pronouncements cloud their reputations.

As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more

willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liberum Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders.

The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poached. Says Korn/Ferry senior partner Dennis Carey:”I can’t think of a single search I’ve done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first.”

Those who jumped without a job haven’t always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana a decade age, saying she wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commodities exchange. Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in 2005 with ambitions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institution three years later.

Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading for top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad one. “The traditional rule was it’s safer to stay where you are, but that’s been fundamentally inverted,” says one headhunter. “The people who’ve been hurt the worst are those who’ve stayed too long.”

当列姆?麦克杰八月份从美国银行任上离职时，他的解释确实令人意外。与通常会用的模糊理由不同的是，他直率地说，他离开是为了找一家公司当管理者，而那是他一向就有的追求。他说，作出这一选择纯属个人原因。两周之内，他与哈佛财务服务集团的董事会实现了首次会谈，这一集团在9月29日聘他担任CEO。

麦克杰说，他离开时并没有确定的目标，这使他得以思考自己究竟想管理什么样的公司。这同时也可以让他向外界展示自己的魄力。无独有偶（并不只有他才有这种雄心）。最近几周，雅芳公司和美国联邦快递公司的第二执行官都离开自己的公司，他们的解释都是想当CEO。由于股东施压，董事会需要审查继承人方案，还没有被准许离开的这几位执行官肯定希望事情早点出来结果。商业环境复杂异常，这使得高级经理人员不愿用模糊的声明来损害自己的名声。

随着经济开始出现复苏的迹象，这些希望离任者可能在还没有找到下家时就跳槽。根据“登记册”研究机构的报告，在第三季度，CEO营业额从一年前开始下降了23%，把那些紧跟在这些领导人身后的董事会也弄得神经兮兮。由于经济复苏，那些有抱负的领导人将大有机会。

放弃高级职位去寻找更好的职位，这种决定是非同寻常的，过去可不常见。多年来，执行官和猎头们都坚持认为，最好的CEO候选人需要去挖别人的墙角才能得到（而不是那些主动离开原岗位的人）。某某猎头说，当董事会还没有委托我先去找一个还在任上的CEO时，我不能去考虑那些我在网上一搜就有的人。

那些没有工作去向就跳槽的人不会总是很快找到理想岗位。十年前爱伦?马拉姆从T公司领导人的位子上退下，也是为了当一个CEO。一年前她才成为一家小型电子交易所的领导人。罗伯特在2005年为了当CEO而离开，他最终在一家重要的财务机构找到这种工作是在三年之后。

许多招聘人表示，对于那些最好的演员来说，旧的耻辱正在淡忘。财务危机

使得在两个工作机会之间进行选择或者离开更坏的工作这样的行为变得可以接受。“传统规则是，最好呆在你原来的地方，但现在这种规则被从根本上颠覆了。”一个猎头说，“在一个地方呆得越久，就越容易受损。”

Text 3

The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional ―paid‖ media – such as television commercials and print advertisements – still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Consumers passionate about a product may create ―owned‖ media by sending e-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its Web site. The way consumers now approach the broad range of factors beyond conventional paid media.

Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers promoting their own products. For earned media , such marketers act as the initiator for users‘ responses. But in some cases, one marketer‘s owned media become another marketer‘s paid media – for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend ,which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies‘ marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned.

The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses that originally created them.

If that happens, passionate consumers would try to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. In such a case, the company‘s response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.

在过去，销售成功的基本法则是：种瓜得瓜，一分耕耘一分收获。现在不同了。传统的付出方式（媒介，指企业付钱给电视台做广告或者报社做报刊广告）

——电视购物和印刷广告——虽然仍占主要地位，但是现在的企业可以开发出更多的替代这些媒介的形式。对产品有热情的用户可能通过给在自己网站上注册的顾客发关于产品和商品的电邮的提醒，来建立自己的媒介。这样用户现在接近了广阔的媒介因素，这些因素超越了传统的付费媒介。

付费并占有的媒介，是被想促销自己产品的商人控制的。而对于白捡的媒介（免费的媒介报道）而言，这种商人的角色仅是作为响应用户需求的第一环（直接面对用户的不是他们）。但是在一些案例中，一个商人拥有的媒介成为另一个商人的付费媒介（但有时候，促销产品的商人也直接面对用户，即把别人占有的媒介暂时变成自己占有的媒介）。例如，当一个电子商务零售商在自己的网站上出售广告空间时，就是如此。我们把这种出售的媒介定义为拥有的媒介。这种（出售空间式的）拥有的媒介是如此强大普遍，以致于其他团体把他们的希望（满意；内容；电子商务发动机）寄托在这种环境中。这种（寄托）趋势虽然依然在婴儿期，但我们相信这种从零售商和旅行提供商（如航空公司、旅馆）有效起步的趋势会越来越强劲。例如强生建立了一个婴儿中心，这是一种杰出的媒介资产，可用于推销提升配套产品，包括那些有竞争力的产品。除了带来利润，除了由于其他商人的到场可以使这个地方显得客观可信，以及给各个公司有机会了解有关其他公司需求的有价值的信息，还能有利于拓展所有公司都关心的用户交易。

这类戏剧性的技术革新给商人带来数量越来越多（种类也越来越多）的通信机会的同时，也同样会提高风险。因为热情的用户会更快、更形象、更有破坏力地表达自己的反对，这种被绑架的媒介，与上述的免费利用的媒介背道而驰（不是商人所希望出现的）。此时，媒介就像人质一样，成为敌人可用的财产或者发起的一次行动（敌人有用户、其他竞争对手、对某商标或产品向来没有好话的社会活动家）。例如，社会网络中的成员正在意识到他们可以绑架媒介，来对建立媒介的那些商人施加压力。

如果这种事情发生了，热情的用户就会努力劝说其他人抵制产品，使得目标公司声名处于危险之中。此时，公司的反应往往不会足够快，也不会足够理性，学习曲线将会变得很陡（学习曲线是表示单位产品生产时间与所生产的产品总数量之间的关系的一条曲线。一般情况下，产品总量越大，单个产品生产时间越短。也可以表示工人一定时间所犯错误数量与练习时间的关系，一般练习时间越长，单位时间内错误越少。这里的曲线陡时大约表示相同产量规模下，现在比原来单个产品所消耗的资源更多，或者说相同练习程度下，一定时间错误更多。总之，是比原来更糟糕了）。例如丰田汽车，今年早些时候通过相对来说较快和精心策划的行动从车辆召回危机中把损尽量降下来，丰田的行动包括努力请用户进土威特这样的地方，挖掘社会新闻的利用等等。

Text 4

It‘s no surprise that Jennifer Senior‘s insightful, provocative magazine cover story, ―I love My Children, I Hate My Life,‖ is arousing much chatter – nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that ―the very

things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight.‖

The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive – and newly single – mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual ―Jennifer Aniston is pregnant‖ news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.

In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing ? It doesn‘t seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of p arents to the regrets of the children. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn‘t have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.

Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britne y tell it, raising a kid on their ―own‖ (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake.

It‘s hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous: most adults understand that a ba by is not a haircut. But it‘s interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood aren‘t in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way t hat a small part of us hoped getting ― the Rachel‖ might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston.

毫无疑问，作为有煸动性的杂志封面故事，詹尼弗西尼尔的深刻见解——“我爱我的孩子们，我讨厌我目前的生活状况”——可以唤起人们的谈兴。可是，人们不会想到，养孩子可不是一件完全令人愉悦、生活充实的事情。西尼尔并没有简单地说，孩子使得父母既快乐又痛苦。她建议，我们需要重新定义幸福：幸福不应该像过去那样被定义为由一个个瞬间的快乐组合而成的东西；我们应该把幸福视为一种过去的状态。尽管抚养孩子的日子漫长难熬，令人筋疲力尽，但是西尼尔认为，正是那些心绪沉重的时刻，日后却给我们带来由衷的欣喜。

杂志封面上一位有魅力的母亲抱着一个可爱的婴儿，这种圣母与圣子的图画这周在报摊上可不止西尼尔这一起。例如杂志上讲到最近刚收养孩子的母亲——有时是刚变成单身母亲的人——桑德拉布鲁克，以及那种很常见的“詹尼弗阿尼斯顿怀孕了”的新闻。实际上，每周都有至少一位名流母亲、或者准母亲在杂志上笑迎读者。

在一个坚持不懈地倡导生育的社会中，承认自己后悔生育孩子就相当于承认自己赞同谋杀宠物猫，这难道不值得反思吗？把父母亲的后悔与孩子的后悔相提并论（可能指把作为孩子家长的那种辛苦产生的悔恨理解为根源出在孩子身上，

从而产生关于生下孩子的后悔），这显然并不合理。（因此）不情愿养孩子的父母很少会反思自己是否应该养育孩子。但是那不幸福的无孩子的人却为类似“孩子是世上唯一最可珍惜的东西”这样的信息所烦恼。显然，他们的不幸必须通过生儿育女才能得以消除。

当然，在美国周刊与人这样的杂志上所提供的“社会名流父母亲”现象是不切实际的。特别是当“父母亲”是布鲁克这样的单身母亲时更是如此。多项研究表明，有孩子的父母很少比没有孩子的夫妇更快乐，而单亲家庭中的家长烦愁尤甚。这并不奇怪，因为一个人养一个孩子实在太麻烦了。然而，你看看桑德拉和布列尼说的话：自己“一个人”养孩子，其实非常简单。（她们当然觉得简单了，因为她们是在周围人全天候的帮助下养着孩子的。）

当然，要说很多人傻头傻脑地生育孩子，只是因为里斯和安格丽娜这种名流使这种行为看上去显得诱人，这也是不可能的——多数成年人其实理解：养孩子可不是像做个发型那么简单。但是这确实是一件很有趣的值得反思的事情：我们每周看的“轻松快乐做父母”的杂志封面，并不是通过潜意识的方式里让我们对（没有孩子的）现实经历不满，而是这些图片在潜意识中让我们有那种想成为雷切尔的心理，但实际上却使得我们看上去有点像詹尼弗亚尼斯顿。（大约指雷切尔养孩子显得潇洒，而詹尼弗生养孩子显得狼狈。）

2010

Text 1

Of all the changes that have taken place in English-language newspapers during the past quarter-century, perhaps the most far-reaching has been the inexorable decline in the scope and seriousness of their arts coverage.

It is difficult to the point of impossibility for the average reader under the age of forty to imagine a time when high-quality arts criticism could be found in most big-city newspapers. Yet a considerable number of the most significant collections of criticism published in the 20th century consisted in large part of newspaper reviews. To read such books today is to marvel at the fact that their learned contents were once deemed suitable for publication in general-circulation dailies.

We are even farther removed from the unfocused newspaper reviews published in England between the turn of the 20th century and the eve of World War II, at a time when newsprint was dirt-cheap and stylish arts criticism was considered an ornament to the publications in which it appeared. In those far-off days, it was taken for granted that the critics of major papers would write in detail and at length about the events they covered. Theirs was a serious business, and even those reviewers who wore their learning lightly, like George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman, could be trusted to know what they were about. These men believed in journalism as a calling, and were proud to be pub lished in the daily press. ―So few authors have brains enough or literary gift enough to keep their own end up in journalism,‖ Newman wrote, ―that I am tempted to define ?journalism‘ as ?a term of contempt applied by writers who are not read to writers who are.‘‖

Unfortunately, these critics are virtually forgotten. Neville Cardus, who wrote for

the Manchester Guardian from 1917 until shortly before his death in 1975, is now known solely as a writer of essays on the game of cricket. During his lifetime, though, he was also one of England‘s foremost classical-music critics, a stylist so widely admired that his Autobiography (1947) became a best-seller. He was knighted in 1967, the first music critic to be so honored. Yet only one of his books is now in print, and his vast body of writings on music is unknown save to specialists.

Is there any chance that Cardus‘s criticism will enjoy a revival? The prospect seems remote. Journalistic tastes had changed long before his death, and postmodern readers have little use for the richly upholstered Vicwardian prose in which he specialized. Moreover, the amateur tradition in music criticism has been in headlong retreat.

Text 2

Over the past decade, thousands of patents have been granted for what are called business methods. https://www.sodocs.net/doc/8918876242.html, received one for its "one-click" online payment system. Merrill Lynch got legal protection for an asset allocation strategy. One inventor patented a technique for lifting a box.

Now the nation's top patent court appears completely ready to scale back on business-method patents, which have been controversial ever since they were first authorized 10 years ago. In a move that has intellectual-property lawyers abuzz the U.S. court of Appeals for the federal circuit said it would use a particular case to conduct a broad review of business-method patents. In re Bilski, as the case is known , is "a very big deal", says Dennis D. Crouch of the University of Missouri School of law. It "has the potential to eliminate an entire class of patents."

Curbs on business-method claims would be a dramatic about-face, because it was the federal circuit itself that introduced such patents with is 1998 decision in the so-called state Street Bank case, approving a patent on a way of pooling mutual-fund assets. That ruling produced an explosion in business-method patent filings, initially by emerging internet companies trying to stake out exclusive rights to specific types of online transactions. Later, move established companies raced to add such patents to their files, if only as a defensive move against rivals that might beat them to the punch. In 2005, IBM noted in a court filing that it had been issued more than 300 business-method patents despite the fact that it questioned the legal basis for granting them. Similarly, some Wall Street investment films armed themselves with patents for financial products, even as they took positions in court cases opposing the practice.

The Bilski case involves a claimed patent on a method for hedging risk in the energy market. The Federal circuit issued an unusual order stating that the case would be heard by all 12 of the court's judges, rather than a typical panel of three, and that one issue it wants to evaluate is whether it should "reconsider" its state street Bank ruling.

The Federal Circuit's action comes in the wake of a series of recent decisions by

the supreme Court that has narrowed the scope of protections for patent holders. Last April, for example the justices signaled that too many patents were being upheld for "inventions" that are obvious. The judges on the Federal circuit are "reacting to the anti-patent trend at the Supreme Court", says Harold C. Wegner, a patent attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

Text 3

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that social epidemics are driven in large part by the acting of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well-connected. The idea is intuitively compelling, but it doesn't explain how ideas actually spread.

The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible sounding but largely untested theory called the "two step flow of communication": Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those selected people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of certain looks, brands, or neighborhoods. In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting, or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends

In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don't seem to be required of all.

The researchers' argument stems from a simple observing about social influence, with the exception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey—whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence—even the most influential members of a population simply don't interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these non-celebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected, must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example from the initial influential prove resistant, for example the cascade of change won't propagate very far or affect many people.

Building on the basic truth about interpersonal influence, the researchers studied the dynamics of populations manipulating a number of variables relating of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people's ability to influence others and their tendency to be influenced. Our work shows that the principal requirement for what we call "global cascades"– the widespread propagation of influence through networks – is the presence not of a few influentials but, rather, of

a critical mass of easily influenced people, each of whom adopts, say, a look or a brand after being exposed to a single adopting neighbor. Regardless of how influential an individual is locally, he or she can exert global influence only if this critical mass is available to propagate a chain reaction.

Text 4

Bankers have been blaming themselves for their troubles in public. Behind the scenes, they have been taking aim at someone else: the accounting standard-setters. Their rules, moan the banks, have forced them to report enormous losses, and it's just not fair. These rules say they must value some assets at the price a third party would pay, not the price managers and regulators would like them to fetch.

Unfortunately, banks' lobbying now seems to be working. The details may be unknowable, but the independence of standard-setters, essential to the proper functioning of capital markets, is being compromised. And, unless banks carry toxic assets at prices that attract buyers, reviving the banking system will be difficult.

After a bruising encounter with Congress, America's Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rushed through rule changes. These gave banks more freedom to use models to value illiquid assets and more flexibility in recognizing losses on long-term assets in their income statement. Bob Herz, the FASB's chairman, cried out against those who "question our motives." Yet bank shares rose and the changes enhance what one lobby group politely calls "the use of judgment by management."

European ministers instantly demanded that the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) do likewise. The IASB says it does not want to act without overall planning, but the pressure to fold when it completes it reconstruction of rules later this year is strong. Charlie McCreevy, a European commissioner, warned the IASB that it did "not live in a political vacuum" but "in the real word" and that Europe could yet develop different rules.

It was banks that were on the wrong planet, with accounts that vastly overvalued assets. Today they argue that market prices overstate losses, because they largely reflect the temporary illiquidity of markets, not the likely extent of bad debts. The truth will not be known for years. But bank's shares trade below their book value, suggesting that investors are skeptical. And dead markets partly reflect the paralysis of banks which will not sell assets for fear of booking losses, yet are reluctant to buy all those supposed bargains.

To get the system working again, losses must be recognized and dealt with. America's new plan to buy up toxic assets will not work unless banks mark assets to levels which buyers find attractive. Successful markets require independent and even combative standard-setters. The FASB and IASB have been exactly that, cleaning up rules on stock options and pensions, for example, against hostility from special interests. But by giving in to critics now they are inviting pressure to make more

concessions.

2009

Text1

Habits are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. ―Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,‖ William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st cent ury, even the word ―habit‖ carries a negative connotation.

So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

But don‘t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they‘re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

―The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,‖ says Dawna Markova, author of ―The Open Mind‖ and an executive change co nsultant for Professional Thinking Partners. ―But we are taught instead to ?decide,‘ just as our president calls himself ?the Decider.‘‖ She adds, however, that ―to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.‖

All of us work through problems in ways of which we‘re unaware, she says. Researchers in the late 1960 covered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At puberty, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.

The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. ―This breaks the major rule in the American belief system — that anyone can do anything,‖ explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book ―This Year I Will...‖ and Ms. Markova‘s business partner. ―That‘s a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters commonness. Knowing what you‘re good at and doing even more of it creates excellence.‖ This is where developing new habits comes in.

Text 2

It is a wise father that knows his own child, but today a man can boost his paternal (fatherly) wisdom – or at least confirm that he‘s the kid‘s dad. All he needs to

do is shell our $30 for paternity testing kit (PTK) at his local drugstore – and another $120 to get the results.

More than 60,000 people have purchased the PTKs since they first become available without prescriptions last years, according to Doug Fog, chief operating officer of Identigene, which makes the over-the-counter kits. More than two dozen companies sell DNA tests Directly to the public , ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to more than $2500.

Among the most popular : paternity and kinship testing , which adopted children can use to find their biological relatives and latest rage a many passionate genealogists-and supports businesses that offer to search for a family‘s geographic roots .

Most tests require collecting cells by webbing saliva in the mouth and sending it to the company for testing. All tests require a potential candidate with whom to compare DNA.

But some observers are skeptical, ―There is a kind of false precision being hawked by people claiming they are doing ancestry testing,‖ says Trey Duster, a New York University sociologist. He notes that each individual has many ancestors-numbering in the hundreds just a few centuries back. Yet most ancestry testing only considers a single lineage, either the Y chromosome inherited through men in a father‘s line or mitochondrial DNA, which a passed down only from mothers. This DNA can reveal genetic information about only one or two ancestors, even though, for example, just three generations back people also have six other great-grandparents or, four generations back, 14 other great-great-grandparents.

Critics also argue that commercial genetic testing is only as good as the reference collections to which a sample is compared. Databases used by some companies don‘t rely on data collected systematically but rather lump together information from different research projects. This means that a DNA database may differ depending on the company that processes the results. In addition, the computer programs a company uses to estimate relationships may be patented and not subject to peer review or outside evaluation.

Text 3

The relationship between formal education and economic growth in poor countries is widely misunderstood by economists and politicians alike progress in both area is undoubtedly necessary for the social, political and intellectual development of these and all other societies; however, the conventional view that education should be one of the very highest priorities for promoting rapid economic development in poor countries is wrong. We are fortunate that is it, because new educational systems there and putting enough people through them to improve economic performance would require two or three generations. The findings of a research institution have consistently shown that workers in all countries can be

trained on the job to achieve radical higher productivity and, as a result, radically higher standards of living.

Ironically, the first evidence for this idea appeared in the United States. Not long ago, with the country entering a recessing and Japan at its pre-bubble peak. The U.S. workforce was derided as poorly educated and one of primary cause of the poor U.S. economic performance. Japan was, and remains, the global leader in automotive-assembly productivity. Yet the research revealed that the U.S. factories of Honda Nissan, and Toyota achieved about 95 percent of the productivity of their Japanese countere pants a result of the training that U.S. workers received on the job.

More recently, while examing housing construction, the researchers discovered that illiterate, non-English- speaking Mexican workers in Houston, Texas, consistently met best-practice labor productivity standards despite the complexity of the building industry‘s work.

What is the real relationship between education and economic development? We have to suspect that continuing economic growth promotes the development of education even when governments don‘t force it. After all, that‘s how education got started. When our ancestors were hunters and gatherers 10,000 years ago, they didn‘t have time to wonder much about anything besides finding food. Only when humanity began to get its food in a more productive way was there time for other things.

As education improved, humanity‘s productivity potential, they could in turn afford more education. This increasingly high level of education is probably a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the complex political systems required by advanced economic performance. Thus poor countries might not be able to escape their poverty traps without political changes that may be possible only with broader formal education. A lack of formal education, however, doesn‘t constrain the ability of the developing world‘s workforce to substantially improve productivity for the forested future. On the contrary, constraints on improving productivity explain why education isn‘t developing more quickly there than it is.

Text 4

The most thoroughly studied in the history of the new world are the ministers and political leaders of seventeenth-century New England. According to the standard history of American philosophy, nowhere else in colonial America was ―So much important attached to intellectual pursuits ‖According to many books and articles, New England‘s leaders established the basic themes and preoccupations of an unfolding, dominant Puritan tradition in American intellectual life.

To take this approach to the New Englanders normally mean to start with the Puritan s‘theological innovations and their distinctive ideas about the church-important subjects that we may not neglect. But in keeping with our examination of southern intellectual life, we may consider the original Puritans as carriers of European culture adjusting to New world circumstances. The New England

colonies were the scenes of important episodes in the pursuit of widely understood ideals of civility and virtuosity.

The early settlers of Massachusetts Bay included men of impressive education and influence in England. `Besides the ninety or so learned ministers who came to Massachusetts church in the decade after 1629,There were political leaders like John Winthrop, an educated gentleman, lawyer, and official of the Crown before he journeyed to Boston. There men wrote and published extensively, reaching both New World and Old World audiences, and giving New England an atmosphere of intellectual earnestness.

We should not forget , however, that most New Englanders were less well educated. While few crafts men or farmers, let alone dependents and servants, left literary compositions to be analyzed, The in thinking often had a traditional superstitions quality. A tailor named John Dane, who emigrated in the late 1630s, left an account of his reasons for leaving England that is filled with signs. sexual confusion, economic frustrations , and religious hope-all name together in a decisive moment when he opened the Bible, told his father the first line he saw would settle his fate, and read the magical words: ―come out from among them, touch no unclean thing , and I will be your God and you shall be my people.‖ One wonders what Dane thought of the careful sermons explaining the Bible that he heard in puritan churched.

Mean while , many settles had slighter religious commitments than Dane‘s, as one clergyman learned in confronting folk along the coast who mocked that they had not come to the New world for religion . ―Our main end was to catch fish. ‖

2008

Text 1

While still catching-up to men in some spheres of modern life, women appear to be way ahead in at least one undesirable category. ―Women are particularly susceptible to developing depression and anxiety disorders in response to stress compared to men,‖according to Dr. Yehuda, chief psychiatrist at New York‘s Veteran‘s Administration Hospital.

Studies of both animals and humans have shown that sex hormones somehow affect the stress response, causing females under stress to produce more of the trigger chemicals than do males under the same conditions. In several of the studies, when stressed-out female rats had their ovaries (the female reproductive organs) removed, their chemical responses became equal to those of the males.

Adding to a woman‘s increased dose of stress chemicals, are her increased ―opportunities‖ for stress. ―It‘s not necessarily that women don‘t cope as well. It‘s just that they have so much more to cope with,‖says Dr. Yehuda. ―Their capacity for tolerating stress may even be greater than men‘s,‖ she observes, ―it‘s just that they‘re dealing with so many more things that they become worn out from it more visibly and sooner.‖

Dr. Yehuda notes another difference between the sexes. ―I think that the kinds of things that women are exposed to tend to be in more of a chronic or repeated nature. Men go to war and are exposed to combat stress. Men are exposed to more acts of random physical violence. The kinds of interpersonal violence that women are exposed to tend to be in domestic situations, by, unfortunately, parents or other family members, and they tend not to be one-shot deals. The wear-and-tear that comes from these longer relationships can be quite devastating.‖

Adeline Alvarez married at 18 and gave birth to a son, but was determined to finish college. ―I struggled a lot to get the college degree. I was living in so much frustration that that was my escape, to go to school, and get ahead and do better.‖Later, her marriage ended and she became a single mother. ―It‘s the hardest thing to take care of a teenager, have a job, pay the rent, pay the car payment, and pay the debt.

I lived from paycheck to paycheck.‖

Not everyone experiences the kinds of severe chronic stresses Alvarez describes. But most women today are coping with a lot of obligations, with few breaks, and feeling the strain. Alvarez‘s experience demonstrates the importance of finding ways to diffuse stress before it threatens your health and your ability to function.

Text 2

It used to be so straightforward. A team of researchers working together in the laboratory would submit the results of their research to a journal. A journal editor would then remove the authors‘ names and affiliations from the paper and send it to their peers for review. Depending on the comments received, the editor would accept the paper for publication or decline it. Copyright rested with the journal publisher, and researchers seeking knowledge of the results would have to subscribe to the journal.

No longer. The Internet –and pressure from funding agencies, who are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from government-funded research by restricting access to it – is making access to scientific results a reality. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has just issued a report describing the far-reaching consequences of this. The report, by John Houghton of Victoria University in Australia and Graham Vickery of the OECD, makes heavy reading for publishers who have, so far, made handsome profits. But it goes further than that. It signals a change in what has, until now, been a key element of scientific endeavor.

The value of knowledge and the return on the public investment in research depends, in part, upon wide distribution and ready access. It is big business. In America, the core scientific publishing market is estimated at between $7 billion and $11 billion. The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers says that there are more than 2,000 publishers worldwide specializing in these subjects. They publish more than 1.2 million articles each year in some 16,000 journals.

This is now changing. According to the OECD report, some 75% of scholarly journals are now online. Entirely new business models are emerging; three main ones were identified by the report‘s authors. There is the so-called big deal, where institutional subscribers pay for access to a collection of online journal titles through site-licensing agreements. There is open-access publishing, typically supported by asking the author (or his employer) to pay for the paper to be published. Finally, there are open-access archives, where organizations such as universities or international laboratories support institutional repositories. Other models exist that are hybrids of these three, such as delayed open-access, where journals allow only subscribers to read a paper for the first six months, before making it freely available to everyone who wishes to see it. All this could change the traditional form of the peer-review process, at least for the publication of papers.

Text 3

In the early 1960s Wilt Chamberlain was one of only three players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) listed at over seven feet. If he had played last season, however, he would have been one of 42. The bodies playing major professional sports have changed dramatically over the years, and managers have been more than willing to adjust team uniforms to fit the growing numbers of bigger, longer frames.

The trend in sports, though, may be obscuring an unrecognized reality: Americans have generally stopped growing. Though typically about two inches taller now than 140 years ago, today‘s people – especially those born to families who have lived in the U.S. for many generations –apparently reached their limit in the early 1960s. And they aren‘t likely to get any taller. ―In the general population today, at this genetic, environmental level, we‘ve pretty much gone as far as we can go,‖says anthropologist William Cameron Chumlea of Wright State University. In the case of NBA players, their increase in height appears to result from the increasingly common practice of recruiting players from all over the world.

Growth, which rarely continues beyond the age of 20, demands calories and nutrients – notably, protein – to feed expanding tissues. At the start of the 20th century, under-nutrition and childhood infections got in the way. But as diet and health improved, children and adolescents have, on average, increased in height by about an inch and a half every 20 years, a pattern known as the secular trend in height. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, average height – 5′9″ for men, 5′4″ for women – hasn‘t really changed since 1960.

Genetically speaking, there are advantages to avoiding substantial height. During childbirth, larger babies have more difficulty passing through the birth canal. Moreover, even though humans have been upright for millions of years, our feet and back continue to struggle with bipedal posture and cannot easily withstand repeated strain imposed by oversize limbs. ―There are some real constraints that are set by the genetic architecture of the individual organism,‖ says anthropologist William Leonard

of Northwestern University.

Genetic maximums can change, but don‘t expect this to happen soon. Claire C. Gordon, senior anthropologist at the Army Research Center in Natick, Mass., ensures that 90 percent of the uniforms and workstations fit recruits without alteration. She says that, unlike those for basketball, the length of military uniforms has not changed for some time. And if you need to predict human height in the near future to design a piece of equipment, Gordon says that by and large, ―you could use today‘s data and feel fairly confident.‖

Text 4

In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a dentist to transplant nine teeth into his jaw – having extracted them from the mouths of his slaves.

That‘s a far different image from the cherry-tree-chopping George most people remember from their history books. But recently, many historians have begun to focus on the roles slavery played in the lives of the founding generation. They have been spurred in part by DNA evidence made available in 1998, which almost certainly proved Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one child with his slave Sally Hemings. And only over the past 30 years have scholars examined history from the bottom up. Works of several historians reveal the moral compromises made by the nation‘s early leaders and the fragile nature of the country‘s infancy. More significantly, they argue that many of the Founding Fathers knew slavery was wrong – and yet most did little to fight it.

More than anything, the historians say, the founders were hampered by the culture of their time. While Washington and Jefferson privately expressed distaste for slavery, they also understood that it was part of the political and economic bedrock of the country they helped to create.

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Still, Jefferson freed Hemings‘s children –though not Hemings herself or his approximately 150 other slaves. Washington, who had begun to believe that all men were created equal after observing the bravery of the black soldiers during the

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