网址:http://m.1010jiajiao.com/timu3_id_2600495[举报]
There are still many things that Peter Cooke would like to try his hand at — paper-making and feather-work are on his list. For the moment, though, he will stick to the skill that he has been delighted to make perfect over the past ten years: making delicate and unusual objects out of shells.
As he leads me round his apartment showing me his work, he points to a pair of shell-covered ornaments(装饰品) above a fireplace. “I shan’t be at all bothered if people don’t buy them because I have got so used to them, and to me they’re lovely. I never meant to sell my work commercially. Some friends came to see me about five years ago and said, ‘You must have an exhibition — people ought to see these. We’ll talk to a man who owns an art gallery’”. The result was an exhibition in London, at which 70 per cent of the objects were sold. His second exhibition opened at the gallery yesterday. Considering the enormous prices the pieces command —around £2,000 for the ornaments — an empty space above the fireplace would seem a small sacrifice for Cooke to make.
There are 86 pieces in the exhibition, with prices starting at£225 for a shell-flower in a crystal vase. Cooke insists that he has nothing to do with the prices and is cheerily open about their level: he claims there is nobody else in the world who produces work like his, and, as the gallery-owner told him, “Well, you’re going to stop one day and everybody will want your pieces because there won’t be any more.”
“I do wish, though,” says Cooke, “that I’d taken this up a lot earlier, because then I would have been able to produce really wonderful things — at least the potential would have been there. Although the ideas are still there and I’m doing the best I can now, I’m more limited physically than I was when I started.” Still, the work that he has managed to produce is a long way from the common shell constructions that can be found in seaside shops. “I have a miniature(微型的) mind,” he says, and this has resulted in boxes covered in thousands of tiny shells, little shaded pictures made from shells and baskets of astonishingly realistic flowers.?
Cooke’s quest(追求) for beautiful, and especially tiny, shells has taken him further than his Norfolk shore: to France, Thailand, Mexico, South Africa and the Philippines, to name but a few of the beaches where he has lain on his stomach and looked for beauties to bring home. He is insistent that he only collects dead shells and defends himself against people who write him letters accusing him of stripping the world’s beaches. “When I am collecting shells, I hear people’s great fat feet crunching(嘎吱嘎吱地踩) them up far faster than I can collect them; and the ones that are left, the sea breaks up. I would not dream of collecting shells with living creatures in them or diving for them, but once their occupants have left, why should I not collect them?” If one bases this argument on the amount of luggage that can be carried home by one man, the beauty of whose work is often greater than its natural parts, it becomes very convincing indeed.
What does the reader learn about Peter Cooke in the first paragraph?
A. He has produced hand-made objects in different materials.?
B. He hopes to work with other materials in the future.?
C. He has written about his love of making shell objects.?
D. He was praised for his shell objects many years ago.
When mentioning the cost of his shell objects, Cooke ____.
A. cleverly changes the subject.
B. defends the prices charged for his work.
C. says he has no idea why the level is so high.
D. notes that his work will not always be so popular.
The “small sacrifice” in Paragraph 2 refers to _________.?
A. the loss of Cooke’s ornaments? B. the display of Cooke’s ornaments?
C. the cost of keeping Cooke’s ornaments D. the space required to store Cooke’s ornaments
What does Cooke regret about his work?
A. He is not as famous as he should have been.?B. He makes less money than he should make.
C. He is less imaginative than he used to be.? D. He is not as skillful as he used to be. ?
What does the reader learn about Cooke's shell-collecting activities?
A. Not everyone approves of what he does.
B. Other methods might make his work easier.
C. Other tourists get in the way of his collecting.
D. Not all shells are the right size and shape for his work
查看习题详情和答案>>Started in 1636, Harvard University is the oldest of all the many colleges and universities in the United States. Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Dartmouth were opened soon after Harvard.
In the early years, these schools were much alike(*similar).Only young men went to college. All the students studied the same subjects, and everyone learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Little was known about science then, and one kind of school could teach everything that was known about the world. When the students graduated(*毕业),most of them became ministers or teachers.
In 1782, Harvard started a medical school for young men who wanted to become doctors. Later, lawyers could receive their training in Harvard’s law school. In 1825, besides Latin and Greek, Harvard began teaching modern languages, such as French and German. Soon it began teaching American history.
As knowledge increased, Harvard and other colleges began to teach many new subjects. Students were allowed to choose the subjects that interested them.
Today, there are many different kinds of colleges and universities. Most of them are made up of smaller schools that deal with special fields of learning. There’s so much to learn that one kind of school can’t offer it all.
The oldest university in the US is _________.
A.Yale B.Harvard C.Princeton D.Columbia
From the second paragraph, we can see that in the early years,______.
A.those colleges and universities were the same
B.people, young or old, might study in the colleges
C.students studied only some languages and science
D.when the students finished their school, they became lawyers or teachers
Modern languages the Harvard taught in 1825 were ________.
A.Latin and Greek B.Latin, Green, French and German
C.American history and German D.French and German
As knowledge increased, colleges began to teach_______.
A.everything that was known B.law and something about medicine
C.many new subjects D.the subjects that interested students
On the whole, the passage is about___________.
A.how to start a university B.the world-famous colleges in America
C.how colleges have changed D.what kind of lesson each college teaches
查看习题详情和答案>>_______, his idea was accepted by all the people at the meeting.
A. Strange as might it sound B. As it might sound strange
C. As strange it might sound D. Strange as it might sound
查看习题详情和答案>>Money spent on advertising is money spent as well as any I know of. It serves directly to assist a rapid distribution of goods at reasonable prices, thereby establishing a firm home market and so making it possible to provide for export at competitive prices. By drawing attention to new ideas it helps enormously to raise standards of living. By helping to increase demand it ensures an increased need for labor, and is therefore an effective way to fight unemployment. It lowers the costs of many services: without advertisements your daily newspaper would cost four times as much, the price of your television license would need to be doubled, and travel by bus or tube would cost 20 per cent more.
And perhaps most important of all, advertising provides a guarantee of reasonable value in the products and services you buy. Apart from the fact that twenty-seven Acts of Parliament govern the terms of advertising, no regular advertiser dare promote a product that fails to live up to the promise of his advertisements. He might fool some people for a little while through misleading advertising. He will not do so for long, for mercifully the public has the good sense not to buy the inferior article more than once. If you see an article consistently advertised, it is the surest proof I know that the article does what is claimed for it, and that it represents good value.
By the first sentence of the passage, the author means that______.
A. he is fairly familiar with the cost of advertising
B. everybody knows well that advertising is money consuming
C. advertising costs money like everything else
D. it is worthwhile to spend money on advertising
In the passage, which of the following is not included in the advantage of advertising?
A. Securing greater fame. B. Providing more jobs.
C. Improving living standards. D. Reducing newspaper cost.
According to the author, _____.
A. the consumers are often fooled by misleading advertising.
B. no advertiser dare promote a product that can't live up to the promise of his advertisement.
C. if an article is consistently advertised, it probably has good value.
D. with advertisements, you have to pay more for the goods or services you need.
From the passage, we can draw a conclusion that____.
A. the most importance of advertisements is to lower the cost of many services
B. the twenty-seven Acts of Parliament made misleading advertisements unable to exist
C. advertising assists a rapid distribution of goods, thereby do good to the import at good prices
D. advertising does a lot for the material benefit of the community
查看习题详情和答案>>填空(共10小题:每小题1分,满分10分)
阅读下面短文,根据所读内容在文后第76至第85小题的空格里填上适当的单词或短语,并将答案转写到答题卡上。
注意:每空不超过3个单词。
The best thing you can say about the roofs of most city buildings is that you don’t have to look at them much. That’s very good, since and urban landscape viewed from above can be and unlovely thing-block after block of tarred(铺有沥青的)black rooftops, sticky in summer, windswept in winter, ugly year-round. Or at least that’s the way it used to be.
But urban roofs are going green. Environmental designers have begun to realize that the tops of buildings don’t have to be wastelands. Indeed, they can be gardens, planted with grasses, flowers and bushes.
A planted roof usually comes in one of two varieties: extensive or intensive. The extensive type is wide and shallow, with a soil depth of less than 8 inches, able to support smaller plants, The intensive type may be smaller, but it’s relatively deeper and home to larger plants.
Whatever the design, green roofs are not so simple as ordinary gardens. They have multiple layers beneath the soil, including a drainage layer, waterproofing, structural support, and so on .
But this system can do a great deal of good. A recent paper in the journal BioScience tells that green roofs can control temperature, contain water and clean the air. And most impressively, they can cut heat loss from a building by 50%, lower air-conditioning costs by 25%, and reduce the urban-heated-island effect by 2℃.
Of course, apart from the square feet greened and heat reduced, green roofs are even more valued since people can gain some psychological comfort simply by having a quiet place to go. As so often happens, what’s good for the planet can also be good for the spirit.
查看习题详情和答案>>