大学英语精读第三版第四册课本教学材料及课本教材翻译

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might as well make a little money from them. We wanted to avoid the indignity of having to ask you for……\

一个大学男孩，不清楚赚钱需要付出艰苦的劳动，被一份许诺轻松赚大钱的广告吸引了。男孩们很快就明白，如果事情看起来好得不像真的，那多半确实不是真的。

轻轻松松赚大钱

“你们该看看这个，”我向我们的两个读大学的儿子建议道。“你们若想避免因为老是向人讨钱而有失尊严的话，这兴许是一种办法。”我将挂在我们门把手上的、装在一个塑料袋里的几本杂志拿给他们。塑料袋上印着一条信息说，需要招聘人投递这样的袋子，这活儿既轻松又赚钱。（“轻轻松松赚大钱!”）

“我不在乎失不失尊严，”大儿子回答说。 “我可以忍受，”他的弟弟附和道。

“看到你们俩伸手讨钱讨惯了一点也不感到尴尬的样子，真使我痛心，”我说。

孩子们说他们可以考虑考虑投递杂志的事。我听了很高兴，便离城出差去了。午夜时分，我已远离家门，在一家旅馆的房间里舒舒服服住了下来。电话铃响了，是妻子打来的。她想知道我这一天过得可好。

“好极了!”我兴高采烈地说。“你过得怎么样?”我问道。

“棒极了!”她大声挖苦道。“真棒!而且这还仅仅是个开始。又一辆卡车刚在门前停下。” “又一辆卡车?”

“今晚第三辆了。第一辆运来了四千份蒙哥马利-沃德百货公司的广告；第二辆运来四千份西尔斯-罗伯克百货公司的广告。我不知道这一辆装的啥，但我肯定又是四千份什么的。既然这事是你促成的，我想你或许想了解事情的进展。”

我之所以受到指责，事情原来是这样：由于发生了一起报业工人罢工，通常夹在星期日报纸里的广告插页，必须派人直接投送出去。公司答应给我们的孩子六百美金，任务是将这些广告插页在星期天早晨之前投递到四千户人家去。

“不费吹灰之力!”我们上大学的大儿子嚷道。

“六百块!”他的弟弟应声道，“我们两个钟点就能干完!”

“西尔斯和沃德的广告通常都是报纸那么大的四页，”妻子告诉我说，“现在我们门廊上堆着三万二千页广告。就在我们说话的当儿，两个大个子正各抱着一大捆广告走过来。这么多广告，我们可怎么办?”

“你让孩子们快干，”我指示说。“他们都是大学生了。他们自己的事得由他们自己去做。” 第二天中午，我回到旅馆，看到一份紧急留言，要我马上给妻子回电话。她的声音高得很不自然，而且有些颤抖。家里又运到了好几卡车的广告插页。“有百货公司的，廉价商店的，杂货店的，食品店的，汽车行的，等等。有些像整本杂志那么厚。我们这里有数十万页，说不定是几百万页的广告!我们家整个房子从东墙到西墙，从南墙到北墙统统堆满了广告，一堆又一堆，比你大儿子还要高。现在只剩下一点点空间，刚够一个人走进去，从十一种插页中各取一份，卷在一起，套上橡皮筋，再塞进一只塑料袋内。我们的塑料袋足够供应全美所有的外卖餐厅!”她越讲声音越响，几乎震耳欲聋。“这么多的广告必须在星期日早晨七点以前统统送出去。”

“嗯，你最好让孩子们尽快地捆扎装袋，等会儿我再跟你谈。我有个午餐约会。” 我餐后回来，妻子又打来一只紧急电话。

“你午餐吃得不错吧?”她用悦耳的声音问道。我吃的牛排好极了，但这次我学乖了，还是不说为妙。 “糟透了，”我报告说。“一种什么酸溜溜的鱼，我想大概是鳗鲡吧。”

“不错嘛。你的大学生儿子已经雇了他们的弟弟妹妹和两三个邻居的小孩帮忙，工钱一人五块，建起了流水作业线。用外交术语来说，事情‘有进展’。”

“这确实令人鼓舞。”

“不，并非如此，”她纠正说。“相反，非常叫人泄气。他们干了好几个小时了。装好的塑料袋，一直

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堆到天花板，但一切努力收效很小。这些广告宣传品简直就像是不停地自行生产出来一样!”

“还有一件事，”她接着说，“你那上大学的儿子必须明白，威胁雇员，说要揍他们，是不可能使他们卖力的。”

我跟大儿子一通上话，便咆哮道，“你如果再威胁那些孩子，我就对你不客气了!白痴!你应该给奖金，对装袋最多的工人每小时奖励一块。”

“可那要减少我们的利润啦，”他提醒道。

“那些孩子不帮你按时将所有的广告投送出去，你就什么利润也得不到。如果他们不干，你们俩就得亲手搬走所有的广告。而在把它们搬掉之前，你们吃不成，也睡不成。”

电话里出现了短暂的沉默，他在思考。接着，他说，“爸爸，你刚才使我深受启迪，令我恍然大悟。” “那就干吧!” “是，阁下!”

到第二天傍晚，我妻子就有许多事报告了。奖金计划行之有效，可后来有人对能否兑现表示怀疑，提出把钱拿出来给大家看看。接着工人队伍里的一位活动家声称，老板每人拿几百块钱，工人们决没有理由满足于每人五块外加一点点竞争性的奖金。劳工组织人宣布，所有工人的工资都应该达到每小时五块钱!在老板答应之前，他们不再干活儿，一分钟也不干。

罢工持续了不到两小时。通过调解，双方达成协议，每小时两块。渐渐地，大堆的广告开始减少。 结果，全部工作比最后限期星期日早晨七点提前三个小时完成。等我回到家里，孩子们已经结了账。劳务支出150元，汽油费????40元，还有40元买礼品——几盒糖果，送给乐于助人的邻居，他们主动开出自家的车帮助投递，还有一打玫瑰送给他们的母亲。除去以上开支，他们每人得到185元——大约相当于他们所干的91小时的最低工资的三分之二。虽然如此，可正如一个儿子所说，那还是“足够”他们花一阵子，使他们“避免那种有失尊严的事。”

几个星期过去了，一切都很好。后来，一个星期六的上午，我们两个小儿子的奇怪举动引起了我的注意。他们不停地将一个又一个的纸箱从房屋四处的角落里搬出，经过前门，送到人行道边。我以为他们的妈妈在指挥他们清除破烂，好让垃圾车运走呢。正在这时，我听到他们在议论经济问题。

“哟，我们会赚许多钱呢!” “我们要发财啦!”

经查问发现，他们正在把我们的全部图书“出售或出租”。 “不成!不成!”我叫道。“不能把我们的书卖了!” 哎唷，爸，我们以为你用不着它们了呢!”

“书永远不会'用'不着的，”我尽力解释道。

“你肯定用不着了。你都看过了，再也不用了。没有错。既然不用，还不如卖点钱。我们想避免那种有失尊严的事，不再伸手向你要……”

Unit 2 Text

Is there anything we can learn from deer? During the \crisis\of 1973-1974 the writer of this essay was living in northern Minnesota and was able to observe how deer survive when winter arrives. The lessons he learns about he way deer conserve energy turn out applicable to our everyday life.

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DEER AND THE ENERGY CYCLE

Some persons say that love makes the world go round. Others of a less romantic and more practical turn of mind say that it isn't love; it's money. But the truth is that it is energy that makes the world go round. Energy is the currency of the ecological system and life becomes possible only when food is converted into energy, which in turn is used to seek more food to grow, to reproduce and to survive. On this cycle all life depends.

It is fairly well known that wild animals survive from year to year by eating as much as they can during times of plenty, the summer and fall, storing the excess, usually in the form of fat, and then using these reserves of fat to survive during the hard times in winter when food is scarce. But it is probably less well known that even with their stored fat, wild animals spend less energy to live in winter than in summer.

A good case in point is the whiter-tailed deer. Like most wildlife, deer reproduce, grow, and store fat in the summer and fall when there is plenty of nutritious food available. A physically mature female deer in good condition who has conceived 怀孕in November and given birth to two fawns during the end of May or first part of June, must search for food for the necessary energy not only to meet her body's needs but also to produce milk for her fawns. The best milk production occurs at the same time that new plant growth is available. This is good timing, because milk production is an energy consuming process — it requires a lot of food. The cost can not be met unless the region has ample food resources.

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As the summer progresses and the fawns grow, they become less dependent on their mother's milk and more dependent on growing plants as food sources. The adult males spend the summer growing antlers and getting fat. Both males and females continue to eat high quality food in the fall in order to deposit body fat for the winter. In the case of does and fawns, a great deal of energy is expended either in milk production or in growing, and fat is not accumulated as quickly as it is in full grown males. Fat reserves are like bank accounts to be drawn on in the winter when food supplies are limited and sometimes difficult to reach because of deep snow. As fall turns into winter, other changes take place. Fawns lose their spotted coat. Hair on all the deer becomes darker and thicker. The change in the hair coats is usually complete by September and maximum hair depths are reached by November or December when the weather becomes cold.

But in addition, nature provides a further safeguard to help deer survive the winter—an internal physiological response which lowers their metabolism, or rate of bodily functioning, and hence slows down their expenditure of energy. The deer become somewhat slow and drowsy. The heart rate drops. Animals that hibernate practice energy conservation to a greater extreme than deer do. Although deer don't hibernate, they do the same thing with their seasonal rhythms in metabolism. Deer spend more energy and store fat in the summer and fall when food is abundant, and spend less energy and use stored fat in the winter when food is less available.

When the \

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a cabin on the edge of an area where deer spend the winter in northern Minnesota, observing the deer as their behavior changed from more activity in summer and fall to less as winter progressed, followed by an increase again in the spring as the snow melted. It was interesting and rather amusing to listen to the advice given on the radio: \warm, and turn the thermostat on your furnace down.\deer reduce their activity, grow a winter coat of hair, and reduce their metabolism as they have for thousands of years. It is biologically reasonable for deer to reduce their cost of living to increase their chance of surviving in winter.

Not every winter is critical for deer of course. If the winter has light snow, survival and productivity next spring will be high. But if deep snows come and the weather remains cold for several weeks, then the deer must spend more energy to move about, food will be harder to find, and they must then depend more on their fat reserves to pull them through. If such conditions go on for too long some will die, and only the largest and strongest are likely to survive. That is a fundamental rule of life for wild, free wandering animal such as deer.

Yes, life—and death, too -- is a cycle that goes round and round, and when animals die their bodies become food for other life forms to use by converting them into energy.

And the cycle continues.

有什么是我们能从鹿身上学到的吗?在1973-1974年的“能源危机”期间，本文作者正住在明尼苏达北部，能够观察当冬天来临时，鹿如何生存。他从鹿储存能量的方法上得到的经验也能够运用到我们的日常生活中。

鹿和能量循环