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今天的托福課討論的題目很有趣：死亡山谷裡會自動滾動的石頭！這實在是太好玩了 :D

Narrator Narrator Narrator Narrator

Listen to part of a lecture in a geology class.

Professor Pr ofessor Professor Professor

Now we’ve got a few minutes before we leave for today. So I’ll just touch on an

interesting subject that I think makes an important point. We’ve been covering

rocks and different types of rocks for the last several weeks. But next week we

are going to do something a bit different. And to get started I thought I’d

mention something that shows how uh…as a geologist (one who studies the history and development of the Earth's crust), you need to know

about more than just rocks and the structure of solid matter, moving rocks, you

may have heard about them.

It’s quite a mystery. Death valley is this desert plane, a dry lake bed in

California surrounded by mountains and on the desert floor these huge rocks,

some of them hundreds of pounds. And they move. They leave long trails

behind them, tracks you might say as they move from one point to another. But

nobody has been able to figure out how they are moving because no one has

ever seen it happen.

Now there are a lot of theories, but all we know for sure is that people aren’t’

moving the rocks. There are no footprints, no tyre tracks and no heavy

machinery like a bulldozer…uh, nothing was ever brought in to move these

heavy rocks.

So what’s going on? Theory NO.1 ---Wind? Some researchers think powerful

uh…windstorms might move the rocks. Most of the rocks move in the same

direction as the dominant wind pattern from southwest to northeast. But some,

and this is interesting, move straight west while some zigzag (a line characterized by sharp turns first to one side then to the other) or even move in

large circles.

Um…How can that be? How about wind combined with rain? The ground of

this desert is made of clay. It’s a desert, so it’s dry. But when there is the

occasional rain, the clay ground becomes extremely slippery. It’s hard for

anyone to stand on, walk on. Some scientists theorized that perhaps when the

ground is slippery the high winds can then move the rocks. There’s a problem

with this theory. One team of scientists flooded an area of the desert with water,

then try to establish how much wind force would be necessary to move the

rocks. And guess this, you need winds of at least five hundred miles an hour to

move just the smallest rocks. And winds that strong have never been recorded.

Ever! Not on this planet.

So I think it’s safe to say that that issues has been settled. Here is another

possibility – ice. It’s possible that rain on the desert floor could turn to thin

sheets of ice when temperatures drop at night. So if rocks…uh becoming

better than ice, uh… OK, could a piece of ice with rocks in it be pushed around

by the wind? But there’s a problem with this theory, too. Rocks trapped in ice

together would have moved together when the ice moved. But that doesn’t

always happen. The rocks seem to take separate routes.

There are a few other theories. Maybe the ground vibrates, or maybe the

ground itself is shifting, tilting. Maybe the rocks are moved by a magnetic force.

But sadly all these ideas have been eliminated as possibilities. There’s just no

evidence. I bet you are saying to yourself well, why don’t scientists just set up

video cameras to record what actually happens? Thing is this is a protective

wilderness area. So by law that type of research isn’t allowed. Besides, in

powerful windstorms, sensitive camera equipment would be destroyed. So

why can’t researchers just live there for a while until they observe the rocks’

moving? Same reason.

So where are we now? Well, right now we still don’t have any answers. So all

this leads back to my main point – you need to know about more than just

rocks as geologists. The researchers studying moving rocks, well, they

combine their knowledge of rocks with knowledge of wind(hydromechanic), ice and such…um

not successfully, not yet. But you know, they would wouldn’t even have been able to get started without uh… earth science understanding – knowledge about wind,

storms, you know, meteorology (climate). You need to understand physics (chemistry). So for

several weeks like I said we’ll be addressing geology from a wider prospective.

I guess that’s a ll for today. See you next time.

Succeed , success , successful

Narrator Narrator Narrator Narrator

Listen to part of a lecture in a United States government class.

Professor Pr ofessor Professor Professor

OK, last time we were talking about government support for the arts. Who can

sum up some of the main points? Frank?

Frank Fr ank Frank Frank

Well, I guess there wasn’t really any, you know, official government support for

the arts until the twentieth century. But the first attempt the United States

government made to, you know, to support the arts was the Federal Art

Project.

Professor Pr ofessor Professor Professor

Right, so what can you say about the project?

Frank Fr ank Frank Frank

Um…it was started during the Depression, um…in the 1930s to employ

out-of- work artists.

Professor Pr ofessor Professor Professor

So was it successful? Janet? What do you say?

Janet Ja net Janet Janet

Yeah, sure, it was successful. I mean, for one thing, the project established a

lot of…uh like community art centers and galleries and places like rural areas

where people hadn’t really had access to the arts.

Professor Pr ofessor Professor Professor

Right.

Frank Fr ank Frank Frank

Yeah. But didn’t the government end up wasting a lot of money for art that

wasn’t even very good?

Professor Pr ofessor Professor Professor

Uh…some people might say that. But wasn’t the primary objective of the

Federal Art Project to provide jobs?

Frank Fr ank Frank Frank

That’s true. I mean…it did provide jobs for thousands of unemployed artists.

Professor Pr ofessor Professor Professor

Right. But then when the United States became involved in the Second World

War, unemployment was down and it seems that these programs weren’t

really necessary any longer.

So, moving on, we don't actually see any govern…well any real government

involvement in the arts again until the early 1960s, when President Kennedy

and other politicians started to push for major funding to support and promote

the arts. It was felt by a number of politicians that …well that the government

had a responsibility to support the arts as sort of… oh, what can we say?...the

the soul…or spirit of the country. The idea was that there be a federal

subsidy…um…uh…financial assistance to artists and artistic or cultural

institutions. And for just those reasons, in 1965, the National Endowment for

the Arts was created.

So it was through the NEA NE A NEA NEA , the National Endowment for the Arts, um…that the

arts would develop, would be promoted throughout the nation. And then

individual states throughout the country started to establish their own state arts

councils to help support the arts. There was kind of uh…cultural explosion.

And by the mid 1970s, by 1974 I think, all fifty states had their own arts

agencies, their own state arts councils that work with the federal government

with corporations, artists, performers, you name it.

Frank Fr ank Frank Frank

Did you just say corporations? How are they involved?

Professor Pr ofessor Professor Professor

Well, you see, corporations aren’t always altruistic. They might not support the

arts unless…well, unless the government made it attractive for them to do so,

by offering corporations tax incentives to support the arts, that is, by letting

corporations pay less in taxes if they were patrons of the arts. Um, the

Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C. , you may uh…maybe you’ve been there,

financial support from corporations. And the Kennedy and Lincoln centres

aren’t the only examples. Many of your cultural establishments in the United

States will have a plaque somewhere acknowledging the support – the money

they received from whatever corporation. Oh, yes, Janet?

Janet Ja net Janet Janet

But aren’t there a lot of people who don’t think it’s the government’s role to

support the arts?

Professor Pr ofessor Professor Professor

Well, as a matter of fact, a lot of politicians who did not believe in government

support for the arts, they wanted to do away with the agency entirely, for that

very reason, to get rid of governmental support. But they only succeeded in

taking away about half the annual budget. And as far as the public goes,

well…there are about as many individuals who disagree with the government

support as there are those who agree. In fact, with artists in particular, you

have lots of artists who support and who have benefited from this agency,

although it seems that just as many artists suppose a government agency

being involved in the arts, for many different reasons, reasons like they don’t

want the government to control what they create. In other words, the

arguments both for and against government funding of the arts are as many

and, and as varied as the individual styles of the artists who hold them.