5th box -Flashcards

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1. lesson32

lnhe Frozen Future Doctors are always devising* new cures for diseases that kill people. But suppose you are dying from an incurable illness now. If only you could postpone death until a cure was found! Now some people are trying to do just that. One young man consented to having his body frozen and placed in a massive capsule in order to preserve it until doctors find a cure for his disease. Some peopie have denounced this unique experiment with a torrent of angry words. They resent human attempts to molest the natural order of life and death. There is also a gloomy fear that the world is already overcrowded and that people have to die to make room for those who are about to be born. If the experiment works, unforeseen problems undoubtedly* will arise.
The Famous Monster of the lake There seems to be more and more evidence that the enormous* monster in Loch Ness, a solitary lake in Scotland, is more than a vision. Each year there are numerous* glimpses of the monster by visitors and neighborhood people; also recent films, not easy to ignore,* are making even scientists hesitate. The story of frequent visits by a monster once seemed absurd to them, but now they are not so sure. Yet the conflict is far from over. Those who believe the monster exists are still in the minority, and they are constantly competing* for more information to prove that the Loch Ness monster is not a fiction. Even now they are trying to get more and clearer moving pictures of what has become the famous inhabitant* of the lake. Perhaps the question of whether the monster exists or not will be answered in this coming decade.
How Our Language Grows Many popular expressions in our language have interesting backgrounds. When we refer to a person's weak spot as his Achilles heel) we are recalling the story of the mighty Greek hero of the Trojan War, Achilles, a warrior of unusual strength and valor. The mother of Achilles, in whose veins flowed the blood of the gods, was warned at his birth that her son would die in battle. In great distress, she sought to save her son. In order to diminish his chances of being hurt and to give him maximum protection in combat, she dipped the infant in the river Styx. The magic waters touched every part of the child's body except the heel that she held in her hand. Thus it happened many years later that as Achilles started to flee from an attack, a poisoned arrow struck him in the heel, the only spot where he was vulnerable. Today, the meaning of Achilles heel is not confined to a weak spot in the body but it also signifies a weakness in the character of an individual, or in the defenses of a nation, or in the structure of a system. American politics, rather than mythology, provides the explanation for the word bunk. This word came into the language in 1820 when Felix Walker, the representative from Buncombe County, North Carolina, formed the habit of making long, unnecessary speeches in Congress. When his colleagues asked him why he was tormenting them so, he apologized by saying it was his patriotic duty to put those speeches in the record out of loyalty to his supporters at home. The word "Buncombe" was shortened to "bunk" and came to mean any thought that has little or no worth.
A Helping Hand Youth workers Bill Nash and Jim Boyle are house hunters, not so much for a house as for a concerned family willing to house and feed troubled youngsters temporarily. They try to give prompt attention to those who cannot or will not live at home. For some, leaving home may have been the result of a hasty decision, based on a scorching remark and the subsequent tempest within the family. The cooling-off period away from the family is a time to soothe feelings. With sympathetic outsiders, youngsters have a chance to redeem them-selves. The hope, of course, is that they will learn to relate to adults again and quickly resume a normal life of harmony with their own families. Some people refrain from offering their homes, expressing vague fears of the harmful effects on their own children. But this has not been the case, even when the problem of the "visitor" was the illegal use of narcotics. One parent remarked, "With us it worked the other way. The horror of drugs became real to my own son. We got a lot more than we gave."

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