M: Good morning. Can I help you? W: Hello, my name’s Miss Bristow and I’m intending to go to a conference in Melbourne for 2 weeks. M: I see. Do you want the excursion fare or the full return fare? W: Now, can I get a stopover on an excursion fare? M: Yes, you’re allowed only one stopover on the excursion fare. W: Oh, I see, only one. M: Yes. But of course, if you pay the full return fare then you can have unlimited stopovers. W: Oh that’s much better. Yes. You see, the thing is that I’ve got two weeks’ holiday after the conference and I’ve never been out that way before at all to Australia or the Far East, and I wanted to go, you know, shopping or seeing Hong Kong or Shanghai or somewhere around there. M: Yes. Um... W: Where exactly can I go? M: Well, lots of places. There’s Singapore or um, Thailand, you’ve really got quite a lot of choices you know. W: Well, it sounds marvelous. Um, how much would that cost? How much is the full fare? M: The full fare? Well, that’s really quite a lot. It’s 1,204 pounds. W: A thousand two hundred and four. Well, it’s once a lifetime, you know, I’ve never been. M: Um... W: The thing is, actually that, um, I’m absolutely terrified of flying. I’ve never done it before. M: Oh dear. W: And err, I’m hoping that I can persuade my two friends, who are also going to the conference, to stop over with me on the way back. M: That would be a good idea. W: Um, yes. By the way, one of them is in Cairo at the moment. Would it be possible for me to stop over there on my way to Melbourne? M: Yes, of course. There are plenty of flights to Cairo and plenty more onwards from Cairo to Melbourne. And then you can stay there for as long as you like. W: Oh that’s great! Now, the thing is, I think I’d better go and persuade Mr. Gates that he’d like to stop with me in Cairo... M: I see. W: ...go and discuss it with him and then come back to you in a day or two, if that’s all right. M: Yes, certainly. W: Oh, thank you very much. OK, goodbye. M: Thank you. Goodbye. 27. What does the woman come to the travel agency to do? 28. What kind of ticket will the woman probably buy? 29. How much does the ticket cost? 30. What will the woman’s trip probably be? To buy a plane ticket. To talk to a friend. To ask for some information. To arrange her conference.

In the 18th century French economists protested the excessive regulation of business by the government. Their motto was “laisser fair“. “Laisser fair“ means “let the people do as they choose“. In the economic sense, this meant that while the government should be responsible for things like maintaining peace and protecting property rights, it should not interfere with private business. It shouldn’t create regulation that might hinder business growth, nor should it be responsible for providing subsidies to help. In other words, governments should take a hands-off approach to business. For a while in the United States, laisser fair was a popular doctrine. But things quickly changed. After the Civil War, politicians rarely opposed the governments’ generous support of business owners. They were only too glad to support government land grants and loans to railroad owners for example. Their regulations kept tariffs high and that helped protect American industrialists against foreign competition. Ironically in the late 19th century, a lot of people believed that the laisser fair policy was responsible for the country’s industrial growth. It was generally assumed that because business owners did not have a lot of external restrictions placed on them by the government, they could pursue their own interests, and this was what made them so successful. But in fact, many of these individuals would not have been able to meet their objectives if not for government support. 23. What is the talk mainly about? 24. Who first used the motto “laisser fair“? 25. What is the principal idea of the “laisser fair“ policy? 26. When was “laisser fair“ truly accepted in the United States? Competition in business. Government grants. A type of economic policy. International transportation practices.

Like many teenage girls, Lee Ann Thill was obsessed with her appearance. A diabetic, she already was suffering from bulimia—forcing herself to throw up to lose weight. But it wasn’t enough, and she’d recently put on 20 pounds. Then one day at a camp for diabetic teens, she heard counselors chew out two girls for practicing “diabulimia“—skipping their insulin so they could lose weight, one of the consequences of uncontrolled diabetes. “Don’t you realize you could die if you skip your insulin?“ The counselor scolded. “That you could fall into a coma or damage your kidneys or your eyes?“ But that’s not what registered with Thill, who has Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes. Instead she focused on this: Skipping insulin equals weight loss. For the next 17 years, diabulimia was her compulsion. “I took just enough insulin to function,“ said Thill, now 34, of Magnolia, N. J. Today she worries about the long-term damage that may have come from her weight obsession. At 25, a blood vessel hemorrhage in her eye required surgery. At 28, doctors told her she had damaged kidneys. “I’m fearful for the future,“ Thill said. “I feel very strongly that had I taken care of myself, I could have lived as long as anyone without diabetes. I don’t think that’s going to happen now. “ Diabulimia usually is practiced by teenage girls and young women, and it may be growing more common as the secret is exchanged on Internet bulletin boards for diabetics and those with eating disorders. One expert who has studied the phenomenon estimates that 450,000 Type 1 diabetic women in the United States—one-third of the total—have skipped or shortchanged their insulin to lose weight and are risking a coma and an early death. “People who do this behavior wind up with severe diabetic complications much earlier,“ said Ann Goebel-Fabbri, a clinical psychologist at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. “The American Diabetes Association has long known about insulin omission as a tactic to lose weight. But ’diabulimia’ is a term that has cropped up only in recent years and is not a recognized medical condition,“ said Barbara Anderson, a pediatrics professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Type 1 diabetes is a disorder in which the body’s own immune system attacks insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. People with the disease produce little or no insulin, so they take shots of the hormone daily. Red flags for diabulimia include a change in eating habits—typically someone who eats more but still loses weight—low energy and high blood-sugar levels. Frequent urination is another signal. When sugars are high, the kidneys work overtime to filter the excess glucose from the blood. This purging of sugar from the body through the kidneys is similar to someone with bulimia, who binges and then purges, or vomits.

The challenge of making a serious film about the Zodiac, a serial killer who terrorised northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is that he was never caught. By focusing on the men who tried to catch the murderer and the effect the investigation had on their lives, David Fincher weaves a potent spell. James Vanderbilt’s intelligent, factual script is based on a book by Robert Graysmith, who became intrigued by the letters the Zodiac wrote to the San Francisco newspaper where he worked as a political cartoonist. Played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Graysmith is that familiar figure, the earnest amateur sleuth solving crimes that baffle the authorities. Dave Toschi(Mark Ruffalo), a San Francisco homicide detective, and Paul Avery(Robert Downey junior), a star reporter, are also hunting the Zodiac. The three men stay on the case for two decades, during which the embittered Avery sinks into substance abuse, Toschi is transferred from the homicide department under a cloud, and Graysmith’s marriage comes to grief. Obsessed investigators are common in films about serial killers, a genre in which Mr. Fincher scored a notable success in 1995 with “Seven“. But what was a melodramatic device in that film becomes gripping drama in “Zodiac“, which has also seen a refining of his visual style. “Seven“ was flashy: “Zodiac“ is sober and ravishingly elegant. Instead of dwelling on gruesome images, Mr. Fincher sets our nerves on edge with three brutal crimes, then mesmerises us with a mystery—just as the Zodiac did. After an initial killing spree, he continued to hold the Bay Area in thrall with threatening letters accompanied by blocks of cipher code, which newspapers printed like the morning crossword. During one sequence the words of the taunting messages even seem to float in the air around the frustrated investigators. Mr. Fincher aims to tell a fascinating story, not to exorcise a collective obsession. Jack the Ripper, who was never caught, became an industry, whereas the solution “Zodiac“ proposes is convincing enough to forestall a stream of books and films in which the Zodiac turns out to be Spiro Agnew, say, or Janis Joplin. That should at least put a dent in the undying notoriety this particular psychopath killed to achieve.

In 1896 a Georgian couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their two-year-old was told that since the child had made no real economic contribution to the family, there was no liability for damages. In contrast, less than a century later, in 1979, the parents of a three-year-old sued in New York for accidental-death damages and won an award of $750,000. The transformation in social values implicit in juxtaposing these two incidents is the subject of Viviana Zelizer’s excellent book, Pricing the Priceless Child. During the nineteenth century, she argues, the concept of the “useful“ child who contributed to the family economy gave way gradually to the present-day notion of the “useless“ child who, though producing no income for, and indeed extremely costly to, its parents, is yet considered emotionally “priceless“. Well established among segments of the middle and upper classes by the mid-1800’s, this new view of childhood spread throughout society in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as reformers introduced child-labor regulations and compulsory education laws predicated in part on the assumption that a child’s emotional value made child labor taboo. For Zelizer the origins of this transformation were many and complex. The gradual erosion of children’s productive value in a maturing industrial economy, the decline in birth and death rates, especially in child mortality, and the development of the companionate family(a family in which members were united by explicit bonds of love rather than duty)were all factors critical in changing the assessment of children’s worth. Yet “expulsion of children from the ’cash nexus’. ...although clearly shaped by profound changes in the economic, occupational, and family structures,“ Zelizer maintains, was also part of a cultural process of “sacralization“ of children’s lives. “Protecting children from the crass business world became enormously important for late-nineteenth-century middle-class Americans,“ she suggests: this sacralization was a way of resisting what they perceived as the relentless corruption of human values by the marketplace. In stressing the cultural determinants of a child’s worth, Zelizer takes issue with practitioners of the new sociological economics, who have analyzed such traditionally sociological topics as crime, marriage, education and health solely in terms of their economic determinants. Allowing only a small role for cultural forces in the form of individual “preferences“, these sociologists tend to view all human behavior as directed primarily by the principle of maximizing economic gain. Zelizer is highly critical of this approach, and emphasizes instead the opposite phenomenon: the power of social values to transform price. As children became more valuable in emotional terms, she argues, their “exchange“ or “surrender“ value on the market, that is, the conversion of their intangible worth into cash terms, became much greater.

6. Flight No. GW-235 was supposed to arrive at 9 am, but we waited till noon. 7. At first, the Greens didn’t plan to participate in the closing ceremony, but they changed their minds at the last minute. 8. College graduates should by all means hunt for a job. But they should first think over what they really want to get. 9. Sometimes, only a slip of one’s pen will cost a huge loss, especially for some important projects. 10. The completion of the new stadium was not on the dot and was not available for public use until last September. The plane arrived at 9 am. The planed arrived at 12 pm. The plane delayed for 3 hours. The plane delayed for 9 hours.

(1)The main light source of the future will almost surely not be a bulb. It might be a table, a wall, or even a fork. (2)Moscow is the world’s most expensive city for the second year in a row, thanks to an appreciating ruble and rising housing costs. (3)A record number of Japanese people worked themselves to death last year despite a government campaign to ease the country’s notorious office hours. (4)Multinational enterprises are those firms that produce and market their products in two or more countries. Now those sort of companies dominate in the more capital intensive industries. (5)Men who are accused of never listening by women now have an excuse—women’s voices are more difficult for men to listen to than other men’s.

(1)You might want to think twice before making another personal call during work hours. Companies can now buy a service that automatically analyses phone calls made by office staff, figures out which are for business and which are personal, and delivers a monthly list of repeat offenders directly to top management. The system focuses only on those who run up huge bills or spend hours of work time on personal calls, and no one listens in to the calls themselves. (2)El Nino was named last century by Peruvian fishermen, who noticed that a warm current in the eastern Pacific appeared every few years around Christmas. They called the event El Nino, meaning “the Christ child“ in Spanish. In recent years, scientists have determined that the anomalous warming of the Pacific waters results from broad changes in the ocean’s circulation and in air-pressure patterns. These changes in turn alter the course of the jet stream, resulting in extraordinarily heavy rainfall on the western coast of South America.

Glass fibers have a long history. The Egyptians made coarse fibers by 1600 BC, and fibers survive as decorations on Egyptian pottery dating back to 1375 BC. During the Renaissance(fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD, glassmakers from Venice used glass Line fibers to decorate the surfaces of plain glass vessels. However, glassmakers guarded their secrets so carefully that no one wrote about glass fiber production until the early seventeenth century. The eighteenth century brought the invention of “spun glass“ fibers. Rene-Antoine de Reaumur, a French scientist, tried to make artificial feathers from glass. He made fibers by rotating a wheel through a pool of molten glass, pulling threads of glass where the hot thick liquid stuck to the wheel. His fibers were short and fragile, but he predicted that spun glass fibers as thin as spider silk would be flexible and could be woven into fabric. By the start of the nineteenth century, glassmakers learned how to make longer, stronger fibers by pulling them from molten glass with a hot glass tube. Inventors wound the cooling end of the thread around a yarn reel, then turned the reel rapidly to pull more fiber from the molten glass. Wandering tradespeople began to spin glass fibers at fairs, making decorations and ornaments as novelties for collectors, but this material was of little practical use: the fibers were brittle, ragged, and no longer than ten feet, the circumference of the largest reels. By the mid-1870’s, however, the best glass fibers were finer than silk and could be woven into fabrics or assembled into imitation ostrich feathers to decorate hats. Cloth of white spun glass resembled silver: fibers drawn from yellow-orange glass looked golden. Glass fibers were little more than a novelty until the 1930s, when their thermal and electrical insulating properties were appreciated and methods for producing continuous filaments were developed. In the modern manufacturing process, liquid glass is fed directly from a glass-melting furnace into a bushing, a receptacle pierced with hundreds of fine nozzles, from which the liquid issues in fine streams. As they solidify, the streams of glass are gathered into a single strand and wound onto a reel.

过去七年中，中国的房地产业经历了前所未有的泡沫现象和过热问题。以上海为例，七年前，上海市房屋均价仅为每平方米4000元左右，然而七年后的今天则已飙升至8600元。这个价格对于那些月薪不足四千但却渴望在上海拥有一套属于自己的体面、舒适的栖身之所的工薪阶层来说是无法承受的负担。鉴于此，上海市政府近日出台并实施了一系列的措施来抑制房地产的投机行为，包括提高利率及增加房产税等。目前，已经取得了初步的成效。

1. The spaghetti I ate last night at the Italian restaurant across the street was out of this world. 2. As Jeffery is really interested in the painting, why don’t we send him to an art school? 3. I had only one hot dog yesterday. Guess what? Jane ate triple that amount. 4. If Tony can’t accomplish the task, nobody can. 5. Tom and Amy went to the Grand Theater on Saturday, but they went away only half way through. The spaghetti was from the outer space. The spaghetti was terrible. The spaghetti was delicious.. The spaghetti was self-cooked.

M: What happened to you today? W: I went to the Music Festival in downtown. I listened to a really nice concert. M: Really? Then whose music were they played? W: Beethoven’s. It was so beautiful that I was humming the music myself all the way home from the subway. What time is it, anyway? It must be getting late. M: 7 o’clock. Did you forget? We were supposed to meet the other members of the Drama Society this afternoon. W: Oh, I’m sorry. It completely slipped my mind. M: Monica was going to show us a new play she composed. I wanted to see it. W: Why didn’t you go? M: Well, I was waiting for you, like we planned. And before I knew it, it was too late. But forget it, the concert would probably be more interesting. W: My favorite piece is the Symphony No. 9, which is the last complete symphony composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. M: I’ve listened to that before. I have a couple of his CD’s. W: You do? I’d like to borrow them some time if you don’t mind. M: If I can find them, sure. My CD collections stuff away somewhere. W: I hope I can get the CD. M: Well, we still have some time before the mall closes. Why don’t we check to see if the music shop’s got it. W: All right. 11. What is the conversation mainly about? 12. Why does the woman apologize to the man? 13. What does the woman want to borrow from the man? 14. Where will the speaker probably go next? A concert the woman attended. The man’s collection of CD’s. A new drama show. An instrument the woman is learning to play.

OK, so in our last class we were discussing big bands swing music. You remember this was a kind of dance music with a steady rhythm. But today we deal with music played by smaller jazz bands. It’s called bebop. Now bebop makes use of all sorts of new types of rhythms, some of them very irregular. We’ll talk more about that later. But first I want to talk about some of the social elements that I believe contributed to the development of bebop music. To do this, we have to look at when bebop arose and started becoming so popular, which was from the late 1930s through the 1940s, from the time of the great depression right into the Second World War. Now one factor that certainly helped create the environment for bebop music was the decline of the US economy. During the great depression, the economy suffered tremendously. And fewer people had money to spend on entertainment. Then during the Second World War the government imposed a new tax on public entertainment, what you might call performance tax. The government collected money on performances that included any types of acting, dancing or singing, but not instrumental music. So to avoid this new tax, some jazz bands stop using singers altogether. They started relying on the creativity of the instrumentalist to attract audiences. This was what bebop bands did. Now remember a lot of bands have singers. So the instrumentalists simply played in the background and had occasional solos while the singer sang the melody to the songs, but not bebop bands. So the instrumentalists had much more freedom to be creative. So they experimented, playing the music faster and using new irregular sorts of rhythms. 15. What is the talk mainly about? 16. How did the bebop bands avoid the performance tax? 17. Why does the professor mention the decline of the US economy during the great depression? 18. What does the professor describe as a significant characteristic of bebop music? The types of instruments used in bebop music. The social setting in which bebop music developed. How two styles of jazz music influenced each other. The influence of bebop music on the United States economy during the 1940s.

W: Good morning, Dr. Morgan. Welcome to “The Future World“. M: Thank you. W: Well, what are your predictions about the world? What is it going to be like in the year 2020? M: Hum, if present trends continue, I’m afraid the world in 2020 will be more crowded and more polluted than the world we live in now. W: Yes, however, food production is constantly increasing. Don’t you think we will be able to cope with the increase in world population? M: I don’t think so. Even though production is constantly increasing, the people of the world will be poorer than they are today. For hundreds of millions of the desperately poor, the supply of food and other necessities of life will not be any better. And for many they will be worse, unless the nations of the world do something to change the current trends. W: What about energy? Will there be enough oil to satisfy our needs in the year 2020? M: World oil production will reach the maximum and the price of oil will begin to increase. The available supplies will not be sufficient for our needs. So at least part of these needs will have to be met by alternative sources of energy. W: Yes, water is becoming a problem, too. M: Yes, unfortunately. Water shortage will become more severe in the future, and due to the increase of births there will be enough water only for half of the population. W: Which of the present trends do you think will continue over the next decade? M: Well, significant loss of the world’s forests will continue over the next 10 years as the demand for wood for fuel and manufacturers increases. Also atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other chemicals is expected to increase at rates that could alter the world’s climate due to the “green-house effect“. W: The “green-house effect“? Could you explain what it is? M: Sure. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air is progressively increasing and it traps more of the heat of the sun in the lower atmosphere. This has a warming effect which could change the climate and even melt the polar ice caps, which would cause disastrous flooding. 19. According to the conversation, what is Dr. Morgan? 20. According to what Dr. Morgan says, what will happen to the world in 2020? 21. What are human beings now faced with? 22. What is “green-house effect“? He’s an expert on life in the future. He’s an anthropologist. He’s the host of a TV program. He’s an expert on “green-house effect“.

M: Good morning. Can I help you? W: Hello, my name’s Miss Bristow and I’m intending to go to a conference in Melbourne for 2 weeks. M: I see. Do you want the excursion fare or the full return fare? W: Now, can I get a stopover on an excursion fare? M: Yes, you’re allowed only one stopover on the excursion fare. W: Oh, I see, only one. M: Yes. But of course, if you pay the full return fare then you can have unlimited stopovers. W: Oh that’s much better. Yes. You see, the thing is that I’ve got two weeks’ holiday after the conference and I’ve never been out that way before at all to Australia or the Far East, and I wanted to go, you know, shopping or seeing Hong Kong or Shanghai or somewhere around there. M: Yes. Um... W: Where exactly can I go? M: Well, lots of places. There’s Singapore or um, Thailand, you’ve really got quite a lot of choices you know. W: Well, it sounds marvelous. Um, how much would that cost? How much is the full fare? M: The full fare? Well, that’s really quite a lot. It’s 1,204 pounds. W: A thousand two hundred and four. Well, it’s once a lifetime, you know, I’ve never been. M: Um... W: The thing is, actually that, um, I’m absolutely terrified of flying. I’ve never done it before. M: Oh dear. W: And err, I’m hoping that I can persuade my two friends, who are also going to the conference, to stop over with me on the way back. M: That would be a good idea. W: Um, yes. By the way, one of them is in Cairo at the moment. Would it be possible for me to stop over there on my way to Melbourne? M: Yes, of course. There are plenty of flights to Cairo and plenty more onwards from Cairo to Melbourne. And then you can stay there for as long as you like. W: Oh that’s great! Now, the thing is, I think I’d better go and persuade Mr. Gates that he’d like to stop with me in Cairo... M: I see. W: ...go and discuss it with him and then come back to you in a day or two, if that’s all right. M: Yes, certainly. W: Oh, thank you very much. OK, goodbye. M: Thank you. Goodbye. 27. What does the woman come to the travel agency to do? 28. What kind of ticket will the woman probably buy? 29. How much does the ticket cost? 30. What will the woman’s trip probably be? To buy a plane ticket. To talk to a friend. To ask for some information. To arrange her conference.

Archaeologist Andrej Gaspari is haunted by pieces of the past. His hometown river, the Ljubljanica, has yielded thousands of them—Celtic coins, Roman luxuries, medieval swords—all from a shallow 12-mile(19 kilometers)stretch. Those who lived near and traveled along the stream that winds through Slovenia’s capital of Ljubljana considered it sacred, Gaspari believes. That would explain why generations of Celts, Romans, and earlier inhabitants offered treasures—far too many to be accidental—to the river during rites of passage, in mourning, or as thanksgiving for battles won. But Gaspari may never be able to explain for certain why the Ljubljanica holds one of Europe’s richest stores of river treasures, many of them remarkably preserved by the soft sediments and gentle waters. Too many pieces of the puzzle have already disappeared. During the past two decades, sport divers have made the river their playground, removing most of some 10,000 to 13,000 objects found so far. Even though removing artifacts from the Ljubljanica has long been illegal, professional archaeologists have been forced to compete with private collectors. Some divers sold their loot to museums: others to the highest bidder. Some kept their treasures private. Many artifacts have left the country, untraceable. Gaspari’s greatest torment comes from the knowledge that few maverick collectors know—or care— where exactly their prizes were found. For an archaeologist, an object’s meaning comes as much from its context—location, association with other objects—as from the prize itself. Without context, there is no story. Mladen Muck is one of Gaspari’s tormentors. Now in his 40s, the Bosnian-born architect began diving in the river in 1985 and has brought up about a thousand pieces. In his kitchen in Ljubljana, a plastic box contains prehistoric tools. Upstairs, dusty cases hold other rare artifacts, including deer antler axes. Muck says he has no intention of selling what he has found. Like many collectors, he babies his goods and claims they are better off with him than with the authorities. “More people see these artifacts in my house than if I gave them to a museum,“ he says with a dismissive wave. “There they would sit in a basement. “ Gaspari disagrees. “A team at the National Museum of Slovenia is preparing an exhibit of the river’s treasures that will tour Europe in 2008,“ he says. Still, he hopes that someday Muck will hand over his items. “My heart is strong,“ quips the 33-year-old archaeologist. If Muck is obstinate, “I will outlive him. “

The light turns green and the person in front of you doesn’t step on the gas. Someone edges in on you too abruptly at the Midtown Tunnel. You’re behind a minivan driving below the speed limit on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Do you yell, gesture, curse or honk? Of course you do. After all, this is New York, and this spring we went from third place to second in instances of aggressive driving and road rage. A new national poll of 2,500 drivers brings word that only Miami is more badly behaved than we are. When the news broke in May, The New York Sun suggested that theatrical behavior behind the wheel was a source of pride to many New York motorists. One cabbie wondered how Miami could have beaten us. Nancy Julius, a clinical psychologist, admitted there were days when she was proud of outmaneuvering other drivers. “I’m actually offended that we’re only No. 2,“ she told me last week. “I think we should be No. 1. We’re entitled to our anger. “ I know what she means. Why let anyone get away with anything? I mean, if the Colonies hadn’t been angry with King George, would we have Independence Day traffic to infuriate us? No. It’s summer, and I say let the raging begin. What else can you do but rage when confronted with a street fair? It’s the season for parade rage, too. Last weekend, downtown residents, gay and straight, fumed about the Gay Pride parade that tied up traffic and trashed streets. Power rage surged last week during a New York blackout. So did air rage when Northwest flights were canceled due to employee walkouts. In Los Angeles there’s heir rage, too, as neighbors of Paris Hilton vent about gawkers and paparazzi overrunning a narrow street. Of course you have to exercise caution if you choose to spout off. In May, Newsday reported that a road rage incident on the Long Island Expressway ended with one driver being pepper-sprayed. The other spent the night in jail. “A total disaster,“ he said. Well, yes, but maybe a little amusing too? I’m not suggesting it’s fun watching people endangering themselves or others. But come on, who doesn’t enjoy a good fight every now and again? Last Tuesday, after Gov. Eliot Spitzer publicly chided the State Legislature, the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, announced to the press that Mr. Spitzer should “stop wandering around this state, having a tantrum like a big overgrown rich kid. “ Equally amusing was an MTV report last week about a music industry luncheon that ended in a rumble involving the rappers Ludacris and T. I. and their posses. And wouldn’t any Manhattan(or Hamptons)intersection be dull without the free-ranging displays of aggression? Driver turns a little soon? Bang on his trunk with your hand. And if a bicyclist barrels past while you’re on foot, give him a piece of your mind! Then, after taking it to the street, take it inside. The other morning there was a long line at my overpriced coffee place. After watching one woman cut, I was outraged to see another—chic in white—try it, too. “Just so you know, the line’s in the back of the store,“ I said. It ended with her cursing and me telling her to shut up. But instead of feeling distressed, I felt invigorated. “Fighting can make long lines less boring,“ said Robert Sinclair, an AAA spokesman. “Besides, you can’t let people step on you.“

Authorities agree that the dog was the first of man’s domesticated animals. How and when this domestication took place, however, remains unknown. A 50,000-year-old cave painting in Europe seems to show a doglike animal hunting with men. But most experts believe the dog was domesticated only within the last 15,000 years. Moreover, fossil remains that would substantiate the presence of dogs with humans have not yet been unearthed for periods earlier than about 10,000 BC. One theory holds that humans took wolf pups back to their camp or cave, reared them, allowed the tame wolves to hunt with them, and later accepted pups of the tame wolves into the family circle. Another theory suggests that dogs were attracted to food scraps dumped as waste near human living sites. As they ate them up and kept the site clean, the dogs offered a service to the humans. In turn, the humans would accept the presence of the dogs and would not drive them away.