天津阅读 Rd104・2007 阅读理解

The city of Rome has passed a new law to prevent cruelty to animals. All goldfish bowls are no longer allowed and dog owners must walk their dogs.

This comes after a national law was passed to give prison sentences to people who desert cats or dogs.

“The civilization of a city can be measured by this,” said Monica Carina, the councilor（议员）behind the new law.

“It’s good to do whatever we can for our animals who in exchange for a little love fill our existence with their attention,” she told a Rome newspaper.

The newspaper reported that round bowls don’t give enough oxygen for fish and may make them go blind.

“Rome has tried to protect fish more than anywhere else in the world. It stands out for recognizing that fish are interesting animals who deserve（值得）over respect and compassion every bit as much as dogs and cats and other animals,” said Karin Robertson, a director of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Last year a law was passed in Italy that gives people who desert pets big fines（罚款）and prison sentences. Since then local governments have added their own animal protection rules.

The northern city of Turin passed a law in April to give pet owners fines of up to $598 if they do not walk their dogs three times a day.

The new law in Rome also says that owners mustn’t leave their dogs in hot cars or cut their dogs’ tails to make them look lovelier. The law also gives legal recognition to the “cat ladies” who feed homeless cats. The cats live all over the city from ancient ruins to modern office car parks.

Charles Blackman: Alice in Wonderland**

An Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Australia**

June—12 August 2007

Venue（地点）The Ian Potter Centre

Admission Free entry

Charles Blackman is famous for his beautiful paintings of dreams. In 1956, he heard for the first time Lewis Carroll’s extraordinary tale of Alice in Wonderland—the story of a Victorian girl who falls down a rabbit hole, meets a lot of funny characters and experiences all kinds of things. At that time, Blackman’s wife was suffering from progressive blindness. The story of Alice moving through the strange situations, often disheartened by various events, was similar to his wife’s experiences. It also reflected so much of his own life. All this contributed to the completion of the Alice in Wonderland paintings.

Illustrator Workshop**

Go straight to the experts for an introductory course in book illustration. The course includes an introduction to the process of illustration and its techniques, workshop exercise and group projects.

Dates Sunday 17 June & Sunday 5 Aug, 10am—1pm

Venue Gas Works Arts Park

Wonderful World**

Celebrate the exhibition and Children’s Book Week with special activities just for the day, including a special visit from Alice and the White Rabbit.

Date Sunday 24 June, 11am—4pm

Venue Exhibition Space, Level 3

Topsy-Turvy**

Visit the exhibition or discover wonderful curiosities in artworks in the NGV Collection and make a magic world in a box. Alice and the White Rabbit will be with you. Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland will be screened.

Dates Sunday 8, 15, 22, 29 July, and Tuesday 24—Friday 27 July, 12noon—3pm

Venue Theatre, NGV Australia

Drawing Workshop**

Distortions of scale（比例失真）can make artworks strange but interesting. Find out how Charles Blackman distorted scale in his paintings to create a curious world, then experiment with scale in your own drawings. More information upon booking.

Date Friday 27 July, 10:30am—3pm

Venue Foyer, Level 3

I recently turned fifty, which is young for a tree, midlife for an elephant, and ancient for a sportsman. Fifty is a nice number for the states in the US or for a national speed limit but it is not a number that I was prepared to have hung on me. Fifty is supposed to be my father’s age, but now I am stuck with this number and everything it means.

A few days ago, a friend tried to cheer me up by saying, “Fifty is what forty used to be.” He had made an inspirational point. Am I over the hill? People keep telling me that the hill has been moved, and I keep telling them that the high-jump bar has dropped from the six feet I once easily cleared to the four feet that is impossible for me now.

“You are not getting older, you are getting better,” says Dr. Joyce Brothers. This, however, is the kind of doctor who inspires a second opinion.

And so, as I approach the day when I cannot even jump over the tennis net, I am moved to share some thoughts on aging with you. I am moved to show how aging feels to me physically and mentally. Getting older, of course, is obviously a better change than the one that brings you eulogies（悼词）. In fact, a poet named Robert Browning considered it the best change of all:

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be.

Whether or not Browning was right, most of my first fifty years have been golden ones, so I will settle for what is ahead being as good as what has gone by. I find myself moving toward what is ahead with a curious blend（混合）of both fighting and accepting my aging, hoping that the philosopher（哲学家）was right when he said, “Old is always fifteen years from now.”

In meditation（冥想）, people sit quietly and focus their attention on their breath. As they breathe in and out, they attend to their feelings. As thoughts go through their minds, they let them go. Breathe. Let go. Breathe. Let go.

According to a recent study at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, three months of training in this kind of meditation causes a marked change in how the brain allocates（分配）attention. It appears that the ability to let go thoughts that come into mind frees the brain to attend to more rapidly changing things and events in the outside world. Expert meditators are better than other people at catching such fast-changing stimuli（刺激）, like facial expressions.

The study provides evidence for changes in the workings of the brain with mental training. People can learn and improve abilities of all sorts with practice, everything from driving to playing the piano. The study has shown that meditation is good for the brain. It appears to reduce pressure and promote a sense of well-being.

In an experiment, 17 volunteers with no meditation experience in the experimental group spent three months meditating 10 to 12 hours a day. A control group also with no meditation experience meditated for 20 minutes a day over the same period. Both groups were then given the tests with two numbers in a group of letters. As both groups looked for the numbers, their brain activity was recorded.

Everyone could catch the first number. But the brain recordings showed that the less experienced meditators tended to grasp the first number and hang onto it, so they missed the second number. Those with more experience gave less attention to the first number, as if letting it go, which led to an increased ability to grasp the second number. This shows that attention can change with practice.

Just ask Daniel Levinson, who meditated for three months as part of the study. “I am a much better listener,” he said. “I do not get lost in my own personal reaction to what people are saying.”

When we think of leadership, we often think of strength and power. But what are these really, and how do they operate?

Leadership today is not about forcing others to do things. If this is even possible, it is short-term, and tends to backfire. If you order someone to do something against their will, they may do it because they feel they must, but the anger they feel will do more harm in the long term. They will also experience fear.

Fear causes the thinking brain to shut down, making the person unable to function at his or her best. If they associate you with this emotion of fear, they will become less functional around you, and you will have succeeded in not only shooting yourself in the foot, but possibly making a good employee or partner unable to perform effectively. Fear has no place in leadership.

The way we influence people in a lasting way is by our own character, and our understanding and use of emotion. We can order someone to do something, which may be part of the work day; or we can employ them at the emotional level, so they become fully devoted to the projects and provide some of their own motivation（积极性）. Today’s workplace is all about relationships.

Anyone works harder in a positive environment in which they are recognized and valued as a human being as well as a worker. Everyone produces just a bit more for someone they like. Leaders understand the way things work. They know the pay check is not the single most motivating factor（因素）in the work life of most people.

The true strength of leadership is an inner strength that comes from the confidence of emotional intelligence—knowing your own emotions, and how to handle them, and those of others. Developing your emotional intelligence is the single best thing you can do if you want to develop your relationships with people around you, which is the key to the leadership skills.