My grandmother Adele loved culture and was generous with its gifts. When I was a child, she took me to museums, restaurants, dances. She showered me with gifts from her travels around the world. But I can only remember her giving me one book--a book that, to this day, I have not read. She presented me with her own favorite childhood book: Hans Brinker. My grandmother was happy to share this book with me. She even decorated the title page with her proud writing. I tried to read it. I adored reading, and would dive into a new pile of books from the library all at once. But something about Hans Brinker just wouldn't let me in. The story was set in Holland, a long time ago. It felt dull and unfamiliar--even though I was a fan of classics of other times and places. I simply read the first pages over and over. I could not progress. Standing on a bookshelf in our living room, the book was like something I avoided. It scolded me for not being interested, for not trying hard enough, for disappointing my grandmother. The book started to fit in, almost forgotten, until Adele asked. Had I read it? Did I like it? Always determined, she wanted to know the answer. I would make some kind of excuse, feel bad, and open it again, hoping for a new reaction. _ . Years passed and finally Adele and I both accepted that I would never read Hans Brinker. Eventually I cleared the book from the shelf. The Hans Brinker experience led me to set a rule that I've lived by ever since: Do not ask about a book given as a gift. Don't ask, despite your desire to discuss it to grow closer. The desire for such connection is what gives book-giving with special meaning--and increases the owner's possibility to be a letdown. Guilt is basically the same as for all gifts, though. If the giver doesn't have the pleasure of seeing or hearing about the gift being enjoyed, and asks whether it is, then the owner--unless she can truthfully say "yes"--either has to admit to not liking the present, or else lie on the spot. Neither is pleasant. So, don't ask. . The author learns from the Hans Brinker's experience that never _ . A) give others books as gifts B) lie to people who give you gifts C) get close to others through gifts D) talk about the books given as gifts
D
Where do the turtles go? Every summer, thousands of endangered green sea turtles climb onto beaches around the world. Each mother sea turtle produces 100 or more eggs in a hole, and covers the hole with sand before she swims away. Two months later, the eggs hatch , and the baby turtles climb out of the sand and swim into the ocean. They don't reappear until they have grown as large as dinner plates. Until now, no one knows where the baby turtles go or what they do. "if we don't know where these little turtles are, we can't protect them," says Kim Reich, who helps solve part of the mystery. Her teacher, Karen Bjorndal, has studied green sea turtles for more than 30 years. Every year, Bjorndal goes to the Bahamas Islands. Many young sea turtles come here to live and eat at the end of their childhood. These turtles are the only sea turtles that live as plant eaters. In fact, their name may be a result of what they eat. The turtles don't look green but they do have green fat. Scientists learned that the turtles eat green sea plants, which may turn their fat green. Between 2002 and 2004, Bjorndal caught 44 green sea turtles in the Bahamas. After testing them, she found something to support the 20-year-old idea: baby green sea turtles eat meat before they turn to a diet of plants. In fact, they eat animals that live in the open ocean. Scientists still need to find where exactly green sea turtles grow. We now know that baby green sea turtles are out in the open ocean, but the open ocean is a big place. " _ is really a problem," says Bjorndal. The discovery may help us do a better job of protecting this sea animal. What does Karen Bjorndal's research prove about green sea turtles? A) the young live in the Bahamas Islands. B) The young eat meat before turning to a diet of plants C) They live in the open ocean for a lifelong time D) They are the only sea turtles that live as plant eaters.
B
Now comes word from the University of California, Berkeley, a new study has confirmed that the richer you are the less compassionate you are In a study just published in the journal Emotion, psychologist Jennifer Stellar sought to determine the empathic capacities of a group of 300 college students, who had been hand-selected for maximum economic diversity. As a rule, college students have just one income level: poor. Stellar thus chose her subjects based on the income of the people who respond to the requests and write the checks: the parents. In the first of three experiments, she had 148 of her subjects fill out reports how often they experience emotions such as joy, love, compassion and horror. She also had them agree or disagree with statements like "I often notice people who need help." When the numbers on these lists were processed, Stellar found no meaningful personality differences among the students that could be attributable to income except one: across the board, the lower the subjects' family income, the higher their score on compassion. The second study involved 64 subjects who watched two videos -- an emotionally neutral instructional video on construction techniques, and a far more charged one that involved real families coping with a cancer-stricken child. Again, the subjects filled out emotional lists and again they scored similarly. But the lower-income volunteers continued to come out higher on the compassion-and-empathy scale. During this study, Stellar also used heartbeat monitors to determine their physical reactions to the two videos. There was, not surprisingly, no difference in heart rate when the instructional video was playing, but when the cancer stories began, the heartbeats of the lower-income volunteers slowed noticeably -- a counterintuitive sign of caring. An immediate threat to ourselves or another causes heart rate to jump, the better to snap into action to respond to the danger. An emotional crisis can have the opposite physical effect on observers -- helping them settle... What can be the best title of the text? A) Without money? That's not a big deal B) Hate money? Then try to be low-income C) Got money? Then you might lack sympathy D) Too much money? Come to experience hardships
C