Passage 5

The main problem in discussingAmerican popular culture is also one of its main characteristics: it won’t stayAmerican. No matter what it is, whether it is films, food and fashion, music,casual sports or slang, it’s soon at home elsewhere in the world. There areseveral theories why American popular culture has had this appeal.

One theory is that is hasbeen “advertised” and marketed through American films, popular music, and morerecently, television. 41) __________ .They are, after all, in competition withthose produced by other countries.

Another theory, probably amore common one, is that American popular culture is internationally associatedwith something called “ the spirit of America .” 42)_________ .

The final theory is lesscomplex: American popular culture is popular because a lot of people in theworld like it.

Regardless of why its spreads,American popular culture is usually quite rapidly adopted and then adapted inmany other countries. 43)__________ . Black leather jackets worn by many heroesin American movies could be found, a generation later, on all those young menwho wanted to make this manly-look their own.

Two areas where this continuingprocess is most clearly seen are clothing and music. Some people can stillremember a time. When T-shirts, jogging clothes, tennis shoes, denim jackets,and blue jeans were not common daily wear everywhere .Only twenty years ago, itwas possible to spot an American in Paris by his or her clothes. No longer so:those bright colors, checkered jackets and trousers, hats and socks which wereonce made fun in cartoons are back again in Paris as the latest fashion. 44)__________ .

The situation with Americanpopular music is more complex because in the beginning, when it was stillclearly American, it was often strongly resisted. Jazz was once thought to be agreat danger to youth and their morals, and was actually outlawed in severalcountries. Today, while still showing its rather American roots, it has becomeso well established. Rock “n” roll and all its variations, country &western music, all have more or less similar histories. They were first resisted,often on America as well, as being “low-class,” and then as “a danger to ournation’s youth.” 45)__________ . And then the music became accepted and wasextended and was extended and developed, and exported back to the U.S.

A) As a result, its American origins and roots are often quicklyforgotten. “happy birthday to you,” for instance, is such an everyday song thatits source, its American copyright, so to speak, is not remembered.

B) But this theory fails to explain why American films, music, and television,programs are so popular in themselves.

C) American in origin, informal clothing has become the world’s firsttruly universal style.

D) The BBC, for example, banned rock and roll until 1962.

E) American food has become popular around the world too.

F) This spirit is variously described as being young and free,optimistic and confident, informal and disrespectful.

G) It is hardly surprising that the public concern contributes a lot tothe spread of their culture.

Passage 6

Albert Einstein, whose theories on space time and matter helped unravel the secrets of the atom and of the universe, was chosen as “Person of the Century by Time magazine on Sunday.

A man whose very name is synonymous with scientific genius, Einstein has come to represent more than any other person the flowering of 20th century scientific thought that set the stage for the age of technology.

“The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic, but technological-technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science,” wrote theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in a time essay explaining Einstein’s significance. 41) __________ .

Time chose as runner-up President Franklin Roosevelt to represent the triumph of freedom and democracy over fascism, and Mahatma Gandhi as an icon for a century when civil and human rights became crucial factors in global politics.

“What we saw was Franklin Roosevelt embodying the great theme of freedom’s fight against totalitarianism , Gandhi personifying the great theme of individual struggling for their rights, and Einstein being both a great genius and a great symbol of a scientific revolution that brought with it amazing technological advances that helped expand the growth of freedom,” said Time Magazine Editor Walter Isaacson.

Einstein was born in Ulm , Germany in 1879. 42) __________ .He could not stomach organized learning and loathed taking exams.

In 1905, however, he was to publish a theory which stands as one of the most intricate examples of human imagination in history. 43) __________ . Everything else----mass, weight, space, even time itself ----is a variable. And he offered the world his now –famous equation: energy equals mass times the speed of light squared ---E=mc2

44) __________ .

45) __________ . Einstein did not work on the project. Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey in 1955.

A) “Indirectly, relativity paved the way for a new relativism in morality, art and politics,” Isaacson wrote in an essay explaining Time’s choices.” There was less faith in absolutes, not of time and space but also of truth and morality.” Einstein’s famous equation was also the seed that led to the development of atomic energy and weapons. In 1939, six years after he fled European fascism and settled at Princeton University, Einstein, an avowed pacifist, signed a letter to President Roosevelt urging the United States to develop an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany did.

B) How he thought of the relativity theory influenced the general public’s view about Albert Einstein.

C) “Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein.”

D) Roosevelt heeded the advice and formed the “Manhattan Project” that secretly developed the first atomic weapon.

E) In his early years, Einstein did not show the promise of what he was to become. He was slow to learn to learn to speak and did not do well in elementary school.

F) In his “Special Theory of Relativity,” Einstein described how the only constant in the universe is the speed of light..

G) It is said that Einstein’s success lies in the fact that few people can understand his theories.