17년 2회차

Leadership and strength are inextricably bound together. We look to strong people as leaders because they can protect us from threats to our group.

Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.

The idea that justice ① in allocating access to a university has something to do with ② the goods that ③ universities properly pursue ④ explain why selling admission is unjust.

Strange as ① it may seem, ② the Sahara was once an expanse of grassland ③ supported the kind of animal life ④ associated with the African plains.

A : Do you think we can get a loan?
B : Well, it depends. Do you own any other property? Any stocks or bonds?
A : No.
B : I see. Then you don’t have any __________. Perhaps you could get a guarantor — someone to sign for the loan for you.

In 1782, J. Hector St. John De Crèvecoeur, a French immigrant who had settled in New York before returning to Europe during the Revolutionary War, published a series of essays about life in the British colonies in North America, Letters from an American Farmer. The book was an immediate success in England, France, and the United States. In one of its most famous passages, Crèvecoeur describes the process by which people from different backgrounds and countries were transformed by their experiences in the colonies and asks, “What then is the American?” In America, Crèvecoeur suggests, “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.” Crèvecoeur was among the first to develop the popular idea of America as that would come to be called “melting pot.”

Again and again we light on words used once in a good, but now in an unfavorable sense. Until the late Eighteenth century this word was used to mean serviceable, friendly, very courteous and obliging. But a(n) __________ person nowadays means a busy uninvited meddler in matters which do not belong to him/her.

A faint odor of ammonia or vinegar makes one-week-old infants grimace and __________ their heads.

The first coffeehouse in western Europe ① opened not in ② a center of trade or commerce but in the university city of Oxford, ③ in which a Lebanese man ④ naming Jacob set up shop in 1650.

A : Why don’t you let me treat you to lunch today, Mr. Kim?
B : __________.

For centuries, people gazing at the sky after sunset could see thousands of vibrant, sparkling stars. But these days, you’ll be lucky if you can view the Big Dipper. The culprit: electric beams pouring from homes and street lamps, whose brightness obscures the night sky. In the U.S., so-called light pollution has gotten so bad that by one estimate, 8 out of 10 children born today will never encounter a sky __________ enough for them to see the Milky Way. There is hope, however, in the form of astrotourism, a small but growing industry centered on stargazing in the worlds’ darkest places. These remote sites, many of them in national parks, offer views for little more than the cost of a campsite. And the people who run them often work to reduce light pollution in surrounding communities. __________ astrotourism may not be as luxurious as some vacations, travelers don’t seem to mind.

㉠ Millions of people suffering from watery and stinging eyes, pounding headaches, sinus issues, and itchy throats, sought refuge from the debilitating air by scouring stores for air filters and face masks.
㉡ The outrage among Chinese residents and the global media scrutiny impelled the government to address the country’s air pollution problem.
㉢ Schools and businesses were closed, and the Beijing city government warned people to stay inside their homes, keep their air purifiers running, reduce indoor activities, and remain as inactive as possible.
㉣ In 2013, a state of emergency in Beijing resulting from the dangerously high levels of pollution led to chaos in the transportation system, forcing airlines to cancel flights due to low visibility.

Both novels and romances are works of imaginative fiction with multiple characters, but that’s where the similarities end. Novels are realistic; romances aren’t. In the 19th century, a romance was a prose narrative that told a fictional story dealt with its subjects and characters in a symbolic, imaginative, and nonrealistic way. __________, a romance deals with plots and people that are exotic, remote in time or place from the reader, and obviously imaginary.

Definitions are especially __________ to children. There’s an oft-cited 1987 study in which fifth graders were given dictionary definitions and asked to write their own sentences using the words defined. The results were discouraging. One child given the word erode wrote “Our family erodes a lot,” because the definition given was “eat out, eat away.”

Modern banking has its origins in ancient England. In those days people wanting to safeguard their gold had two choices — hide it under the mattress or turn it over to someone else for safekeeping. The logical people to turn to for storage were the local goldsmiths, since they had the strongest vaults. The goldsmiths accepted the gold for storage, giving the owner a receipt stating that the gold could be redeemed at a later date. When a payment was due, the owner went to the goldsmith, redeemed part of the gold and gave it to the payee. After all that, the payee was very likely to turn around and give the gold back to the goldsmith for safekeeping. Gradually, instead of taking the time and effort to physically exchange the gold, business people __________.

In some cultures, such as in Korea and Egypt, politeness norms require that when someone is offered something to eat or drink, it must be refused the first time around. However, such a refusal is often viewed as a rejection of someone’s hospitality and thoughtlessness in other cultures, particularly when no __________ is made for the refusal. Americans and Canadians, for instance, expect refusals to be accompanied by a reasonable __________.

Instead, these employees spoke first of the sincerity of the relationships at work, that their work culture felt like an extension of home, and that their colleagues were supportive.

Why Orkney of all places? How did this scatter of islands off the northern tip of Scotland come to be such a technological, cultural, and spiritual powerhouse? For starters, you have to stop thinking of Orkney as remote. For most of history, Orkney was an important maritime hub, a place that was on the way to everywhere. It was also blessed with some of the richest farming soils in Britain and a surprisingly mild climate, thanks to the effects of the Gulf Stream.

Initially, papyrus and parchment were kept as scrolls that could be unrolled either vertically or horizontally, depending on the direction of the script. The horizontal form was more common, and because scrolls could be quite long, a scribe would typically refrain from writing a single line across the entire length, but instead would mark off columns of a reasonable width. That way the reader could unroll one side and roll up the other while reading. Nevertheless, the constant need to re-roll the scroll was a major disadvantage to this format, and it was impossible to jump to various places in the scroll the way we skip to a particular page of a book. Moreover, the reader struggled to make notes while reading since both hands (or weights) were required to keep the scroll open.