THE PROBLEM OF THE SHRIKES
When I called up my mother in the countryside on the telephone she was very upset. "There are some snakes in our courtyard," she told me. "Snakes come near the house now and then, and they seem to have made their home here, not far from the walnut tree. Can you get rid of them please?" I felt very proud. Here was a chance for .me to distinguish myself by inventing something merciful that would catch snakes but not harm them. I knew my parents would not like me to hurt these living creatures!
The first thing I did was to see if there were any products that might help me, but there only seemed to be powders designed to kill snakes. A new approach was clearly needed. I set about researching the habits of snakes to find the easiest way to trap them. Luckily these reptiles are small and that made the solution easier.
Prepared with some research findings, I decided on three possible approaches: firstly, removing their habitat; secondly, attracting them into a trap using male or female perfume or food; and thirdly cooling them so that they would become sleepy and could be easily caught. I decided to use the last one. I bought an ice-cream maker which was made of stainless steel. Between the outside and the inside walls of the bowl there is some jelly, which freezes when cooled. I put the bowl into the fridge and waited for 24 hours. At the same time I prepared some ice-cubes.
The next morning I got up early before the sun was hot. I placed the frozen bowl over the snakes' habitat and the ice-cubes on top of the bowl to keep it cool. Finally I covered the whole thing with a large bucket. Then I waited. After two hours I removed the bucket and the bowl. The snakes were less active but they were still too fast for me. They abruptly disappeared into a convenient hole in the wall. So I had to adjust my plan.
For the second attempt I froze the bowl and the ice-cubes again but placed them over the snakes' habitat in the evening, as the temperature was starting to cool. Then as before, I covered the bowl with the bucket and left everything overnight. Early the next morning I returned to see the result. This time with great caution I bent down to examine the snakes and I found them very sleepy. But once picked up, they tried to bite me. As they were poisonous snakes, I clearly needed to improve my design again.
My third attempt repeated the second procedure. The next morning I carried in my hand a small net used for catching fish. This was in the expectation that the snakes would bite again. But monitored carefully, the snakes proved to be no trouble and all went according to plan. I collected the passive snakes and the next day we merrily released them all back into the wild.
Pressed by my friends and relations, I decided to seize the opportunity to get recognition for
my successful idea by sending my invention to the patent office. Only after you have had that
recognition can you say that you are truly an inventor. The criteria are so strict that it is difficult to get new ideas accepted unless they are truly novel. In addition, no invention will get a patent if it is:
◎a discovery
◎a scientific idea or mathematical model
◎literature or art
◎a game or a business
◎a computer programme
◎a new animal or plant variety
Nor will you receive a patent until a search has been made to find out that your product really
is different from everyone else's. There are a large number of patent examiners, too, whose only job is to examine whether your claim is valid or not. If it passes all the tests, your application for a patent will be published 18 months from the date you apply. So I have filled in the form and filed my patent application with the Patent Office. Now it's a matter of waiting and hoping. You'll know if I succeed by the size of my bank balance! Wish me luck!
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Scotland, but when he was young his family moved to Boston, USA. His mother was almost entirely deaf, so Alexander became interested in helping deaf people communicate and in deaf education. This interest led him to invent the microphone. He found that by pressing his lips against his mother's forehead, he could make his mother understand what he was saying.
He believed that one should always be curious and his most famous saying was:
"Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the result of thought."
It was this exploring around problems and his dynamic spirit that led to his most famous invention - the telephone in 1876. Bell never set out to invent the telephone and what he was trying to design was a multiple telegraph. This original telegraph sent a message over distances using Morse code (a series of dots tapped out along a wire in a particular order). But only one message could go at a time. Bell wanted to improve it so that it could send several messages at the same time. He designed a machine that would separate different sound waves and allow different conversations to be held at the same time. But he found the problem difficult to solve. One day as he was experimenting with one end of a straw joined to a deaf man's ear drum and the other to a piece of smoked glass, Bell noticed that when he spoke into the ear, the straw drew sound waves on the glass. Suddenly he had a flash of inspiration. If sound waves could be reproduced in a moving electrical current, they could be sent along a wire. In searching to improve the telegraph,
Bell had invented the first telephone!
Bell was fully aware of the importance of his invention and wrote to his father:
"The day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas – and friends will talk to each other without leaving home."
The patent was given in 1876, but it was not until five days later that Bell sent his first telephone message to his assistant Watson. The words have now become famous:
"Mr Watson - come here - I want to see you."
Alexander Graham Bell was not a man to rest and he interested himself in many other areas of invention. He experimented with helicopter designs and flying machines. While searching for a kite strong enough to carry a man into the air, Bell experimented putting triangles together and discovered the tetrahedron shape. Being very stable, it has proved invaluable in the design of bridges.
Bell was an inventor all his life. He made his first invention at eleven and his last at seventy- five. Although he is most often associated with the invention of the telephone, he was indeed a continuing searcher after practical solutions to improve the quality of everybody's life.
选修8 Unit 4 Pygmalion-Reading
PYGMALION
MAIN CHARACTERS:
Eliza Doolittle (E): a poor flower girl who is ambitious to improve herself
Professor Higgins (H): an expert in phonetics, convinced that the quality of a person's English decides his/her position in society
Colonel Pickering (CP): an officer in the army and later a friend of Higgins' who sets him a task
Act One FATEFUL MEETINGS
11 :15 pm in London, England in 1914 outside a theatre. It is pouring with rain and cab whistles are blowing in all directions. A man is hiding from the rain listening to people's language and watching their reactions. While watching, he makes notes. Nearby a flower girl wearing dark garments and a woollen scarf is also sheltering from the rain. A gentleman (G) passes and hesitates for a moment.
E: Come over’ere, cap’in, and buy me flowers off a poor girl.
G: I'm sorry but I haven't any change.
E: I can giv’ou change, cap’in.
G: (surprised) For a pound? I'm afraid I've got nothing less.
E: (hopefully) Oah! Oh, do buy a flower off me, Captain. Take this for three pence. (holds up some dead flowers)
G: (uncomfortably) Now don't be troublesome, there's a good girl. (looks in his wallet and sounds more friendly) But, wait, here's some small change. Will that be of any use to you? It's raining heavily now, isn't it? (leaves)
E: (disappointed at the outcome, but thinking it is better than nothing) Thank you, sir. (sees a man taking notes and feels worried) Hey! I ain’t done nothing wrong by speaking to that gentleman. I've a right to sell flowers, I have. I ain’t no thief. I'm an honest girl I am! (begins to cry)
H: (kindly) There! There! Who's hurting you, you silly girl? What do you take me for? (gives her a handkerchief)
E: I thought maybe you was a policeman in disguise.
H: Do I look like a policeman?
E: (still worried) Then why did 'ou take down my words for? How do I know whether 'ou took me down right? 'ou just show me what 'ou've wrote about me!
H: Here you are. (hands over the paper covered in writing)
E: What's that? That ain't proper writing. I can't read that. (pushes it back at him)
H: I can. (reads imitating Eliza) "Come over' ere, cap'in, and buy me flowers off a poor girl." (in his own voice) There you are and you were born
in Lisson Grove if I'm not mistaken.
E: (looking confused) What if I was? What's it to you?
CP: (has been watching the girl and now speaks to Higgins) That's quite brilliant! How did you do that, may I ask?
H: Simply phonetics studied and classified from people's own speech. That's my profession and also my hobby. You can place a man by just a few remarks. I can place any spoken conversation within six miles, and even within two streets in London sometimes.
CP: Let me congratulate you! But is there an income to be made in that?
H: Yes, indeed. Quite a good one. This is the age of the newly rich. People begin their working life in a poor neighbourhood of London with 80 pounds a year and end in a rich one with 100 thousand. But they betray themselves every time they open their mouths. Now once taught by me, she'd become an upper class lady ...
CP: Is that so? Extraordinary!
H: (rudely) Look at this girl with her terrible English: the English that will condemn her to the gutter to the end of her days. But, sir, (proudly) once educated to speak properly, that girl could pass herself off in three months as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. Perhaps I could even find her a place as a lady's maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English.
E: What's that you say? A shop assistant? Now that's sommat I want, that is!
H: (ignores her) Can you believe that?
CP: Of course! I study many Indian dialects myself and ...
H: Do you indeed? Do you know Colonel Pickering?
CP: Indeed I do, for that is me. Who are you?
H: I'm Henry Higgins and I was going to India to meet you.
CP: And I came to England to make your acquaintance!
E: What about me? How'll you help me?
H: Oh, take that. (carelessly throws a handful of money into her basket) We must have a celebration, my dear man. (leave together)
E: (looking at the collected money in amazement) Well, I never. A whole pound! A fortune! That'll help me, indeed it will. Tomorrow I'll find you, Henry Higgins. Just you wait and see! All that talk of (imitates him) "authentic English" ... (in her own voice) I'll see whether you can get that for me ... (goes out)
Act Two, Scene 1 MAKING THE BET
It is 11am in Henry Higgins' house the next day. Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering are sitting deep in conversation.
H: Do you want to hear any more sounds?
CP: No, thank you. I rather fancied myself because I can pronounce twenty-four distinct vowel sounds; but your one hundred and thirty beat me. I can't distinguish most of them.
H: (laughing) Well, that comes with practice.
There is a knock and Mrs Pearce (MP), the housekeeper, comes in with cookies, a teapot, some cream and two cups.
MP: (hesitating) A young girl is asking to see you.
H: A young girl! What does she want?
MP: Well, she's quite a common kind of girl with dirty nails.I thought perhaps you wanted her to talk into your machines.
H: Why? Has she got an interesting accent? We'll see.Show her in, Mrs Pearce.
MP: (only half resigned to it) Very well, sir. (goes downstairs)
H: This is a bit of luck. I'll show you how I make records on wax disks ...
MP: (returning) This is the young girl, sir. (Eliza comes into the room shyly following Mrs Pearce. She is dirty and wearing a shabby dress. She curtsies to the two men.)
H: (disappointed) Why! I've got this girl in my records. She's the one we saw the other day. She's no use at all. Take her away.
CP: (gently to Eliza) What do you-want, young lady?
E: (upset) I wanna be a lady in a flower shop 'stead o' selling flowers in the street. But they won't take me 'less I speak better. So here I am, ready to pay him. I'm not asking for any favours - and he treats me like dirt.
H: How much?
E: (happier) Now yer talking. A lady friend of mine gets French lessons for two shillings an hour from a real Frenchman. You wouldn't have the face to ask me for the same for teaching me as yer would for French. So I won't give yer more than a shilling.
H: (ignoring Eliza and speaking to Pickering) If you think of how much money this girl has - why, it's the best offer I've had! (to Eliza) But if I teach you, I'll be worse than a father.
CP: I say, Higgins. Do you remember what you said last night? I'll say you're the greatest teacher alive if you can pass her off as a lady. I'll be the referee for this little bet and pay for the lessons too ...
E: (gratefully) Oh, yer real good, yer are. Thank you, Colonel.
H: Oh, she is so deliciously low. (compromises) OK, I'll teach you. (to Mrs Pearce) But she'll need to be cleaned first. Take her away, Mrs Pearce. Wash her and burn her horrible clothes. We'll buy her new ones. What's your name, girl?
E: I'm Eliza Doolittle and I'm clean. My clothes went to the laundry when I washed last week.
MP: Well, Mr Higgins has a bathtub of his own and he has a bath every morning. If these two gentlemen teach you, you'll have to do the same. They won't like the smell of you otherwise.
E: (sobbing) I can't. I dursn't. It ain't natural and it'd kill me. I've never had a bath in my life; not over my whole body, neither below my waist nor taking my vest off. I'd never have come if I'd known about this disgusting thing you want me to do ...
H: Once more, take her away, Mrs Pearce, immediately. (Outside Eliza is still weeping with Mrs Pearce) You see the problem, Pickering. It'll be how to teach her grammar, not just pronunciation. She's in need of both.
CP: And there's another problem, Higgins. What are we going to do once the experiment is over?
H: (heartily) Throw her back.
CP: But you cannot overlook that! She'll be changed and she has feelings too. We must be practical, mustn't we?
H: Well, we'll deal with that later. First, we must plan the best way to teach her.
CP: How about beginning with the alphabet. That's usually considered very effective ... (fades out as they go offstage together)