这些读者既“温故”，读文史，了解过去；又“知新”，爱科学、展望未来。他们愿意从各种各样的书籍中探索找寻生活的乐趣、人生的乐趣、思维的乐趣和智慧的乐趣。他们看市井风俗、社会百态，看多彩人生和丰富感情。他们生活在现在，同时也生活在过去和未来，他们最大限度地体会读书带来的追求智慧的乐趣。正如王小波说的：“智慧本身就是好的。有一天我们都会死去，追求智慧的道路还会有人在走着。死掉以后的事我看不到，但在我活着的时候，想到这件事，心里就高兴。”

A sense of smell is something we are born with. Or is it?Until recently scientists believed that the commonsense view was wrong: research had suggested that we learn to distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant smells by experience. From early experiments that involved asking children between three and five years old what they thought of certain smells, researchers concluded that children must learn their appreciation of pleasant and unpleasant smells as they get older, rather than being born with it. One of the most surprising results of these tests was that the children said they liked the smell of faeces nearly as often as they said they liked banana.Psychologist Hilary Schmidt understandably found this research hard to accept. She looked at the way the tests were conducted, and applied lessons from other work on child psychology to design her own experiments. She noted that children younger than five will often answer ‘Yes’ to leading questions even if the answers are contradictory. She therefore decided to set her experiment up as a game. She asked the children if they would give a particular smelly thing to Oscar the Grouch, a popular television character who lives in a dustbin and likes ‘smelly’ things, or to Big Bird, another television character who likes ‘nice’ things. She found that the children distinguished between pleasant and unpleasant smells in much the same way as an adult. With the help of younger and younger subjects, she hopes to shed light on the importance of the inherited component of the sense.Children younger than seven or eight are notoriously bad at recognizing what an object is from its shape alone. Schmidt points to an experiment she has carried out with children under five who were given a large styrofoam ball and a small, but heavy, lead ball to compare. After they had a chance to feel the two, she took the balls away, and showed them another pair of Styrofoam and lead ball. When she asked them which of the two would be the heavier, they invariably pointed to the Styrofoam ball just because it was bigger. Despite their earlier experience, they had not grasped the idea of what an object is made of—its substance—as well as size and shape. But in other experiments when she introduced odors, she found that children under five understood that smell was an important characteristic of substance, and children could use a scent to recognize substance irrespective of the shape or size in which it was presented to them.Schmidt has also found that girls are more sensitive to smell than boys. The sex difference is well known in adults, but not in children. Explaining the difference in adults has centered on the suggestion that as girls get older, they tend to take part in activities such as cooking, which train them to distinguish between smells. Another suggestion was that after puberty, female hormones bring about some change in the olfactory equipment. But Schmidt’s observations that the sex difference exists in children does not fit in with either explanation.31. According to the text, it is well-known that our sense of smell is ______.32. Which would Hilary Schmidt most probably agree to?33. Schmidt’s styrofoam and lead ball experiment shows that younger children ______.34. The word “subjects” (Para. 3) most probably means ______.35. From the last sentence of the text, we can infer that Schmidt may ______.

This week we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, one of Britain’s most extraordinary scientists. His theory of evolution, one of the greatest discoveries of all time, gives us a way of understanding the connectedness of all life and the uniqueness of human life within it. Together with other branches of scientific exploration, evolution begins to unfold and illuminate the interplay of forces that make our universe such an extraordinary dynamic reality. In this sense, science is itself a journey of learning and exploration. This I find exciting and humbling.Towards the end of his life Darwin wrote: “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist.” The science opens me not only to puzzles and to questions about the world I live in; it leads me to marvel at its complexity. Here, I find science is a good friend to my faith. It also calls me to a journey of learning and understanding. One of the things that mars our culture is the fracture between faith and science. It impoverishes our inquiry into the realities that make up our life and world. This is a false opposition.If we see the two as fundamentally opposed—science endangering and undermining faith, or faith obstructing knowledge—then distortions are produced on both sides. For example, some Christians argue for “Young Earth Creationism” or Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolutionary theory. Creationism is the belief that the biblical stories of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis are literally true.Is genuine Christianity obliged to adopt any of these positions? No, it is not. Belief in creation is not equivalent to any one of them. It is a mistake to treat the theology of creation in the Book of Genesis as a scientific textbook. It does unfold a profound and valid truth about the world in which we live, its order and purpose. The Book of Genesis speaks about the relationship between God and creation and especially about the place of humanity in that relationship. That wonderful narrative of creation offers us a first vision of an “ecology of holiness” in which every material and living thing has a place and its creativity is consecrated in goodness by God. The account of creation in Genesis is pointing us beyond the question “how?” to the question “why?” Ultimately, science as well as faith must come to that most fundamental of all questions: the question of meaning and purpose.31. According to the author, Darwin’s theory of evolution shows that ______.32. Which of the following would Darwin most probably agree to?33. The author finds science “humbling” because it ______.34. The author believes that The Book of Genesis is true in that it ______.35. In the author’s opinion, the relationship between science and faith is ______.

The child was so ______ that even when she knocked the television of its stand so that it was irreparably damaged, her parents thought her to be charming.

We rarely perceive more than a minute ______ of the sights and sounds that fall upon our sense organs; the great majority pass us by.

A _____ lifestyle is one that is going nowhere fast: no new employment, no new love interest, no volunteer work, and no new life-changing commitments.