In the 1950s, British historian Northeaster Parkinson came up with a concept which was later known as Parkinson’s Law of Triviality. It states that the amount of time spent discussing an issue in an organization is oppositely associated with its actual importance.
Parkinson’s Law of Triviality is also known as “bike-shedding (车棚)”, after the story Parkinson uses to illustrate it. He asks readers to imagine a financial committee meeting to discuss a three-point agenda. The points are as follows: A proposal for a f10 million nuclear power plant; A proposal for a f350 bike shed; A proposal for a f21 annual coffee budget.
What happens? The committee ends up running through the nuclear power plant proposal in little time. It’s too advanced for anyone to really dig into the details. The discussion soon moves to the bike shed. Here, everyone’s an expert. In the end, the committee runs out of time and decides to meet again to complete their analysis.
Bike-shedding happens because the smaller a matter is, the more people will have an opinion on it, even when there is no real value to add. When something is outside of our circle of competence, like a nuclear power plant, we don’t even try to express an opinion. But when something is understandable everyone wants to show that they know about the topic at hand.
How can we avoid bike-shedding? The main thing you can do is to have a clear purpose. Priya Parker, the author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, says that any successful gathering needs to have a focused purpose. “Specificity,” she says, “is a key element.”
When it comes to choosing your list of invitees, Parker writes, “if the purpose of your meeting is to make a decision, you may want to consider having fewer cooks in the kitchen.” Getting the result you want—a thoughtful, educated discussion about that power plant—depends on having the right people in the room.
1. What is Parkinson’s purpose of presenting the imaginary meeting?| A．To state a fact. | B．To clarify a concept. | C．To make a prediction. | D．To introduce a new point. |
| A．The more you know, the less you speak. |
| B．What is simple for you may be tough for others. |
| C．What requires more work may get less attention. |
| D．The more you put in, the better your result will be. |
| A．Planning before the meeting. | B．Getting the right people to the table. |
| C．Spending less time on the minor issues. | D．Taking different opinions into account. |
| A．Purpose: The Key to an Effective Meeting |
| B．Talent: A Crucial Element in Organizations |
| C．The Bike Shed Effect: Avoiding Small Matters |
| D．Nuclear Power Plant: The Less-known Proposal |
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【推荐1】T. S. Eliot wrote of “Distracted from distraction by distraction /Filled with fancies and empty of meaning.” T. S. Eliot never had a smartphone.
Neither did I for a long time. No Facebook account; not even email. But according to my date of manufacture, I’m supposed to be a digital native. Perhaps it’s because by the age of 20 I was living in the Welsh countryside with no signal and no Wi-Fi.
When I finally fell into the digital world, I fell hard. Unlike my friends for whom social media and mobile technology had grown and flowered around them, for me it was a sudden immersion. I got Facebook, Twitter and Gmail accounts at the same time that I got an iPhone 4. I would check my phone; five minutes later I would check my phone again. I was addicted and it started to affect my relationships with friends and family
One night, without a word, I abandoned my iPhone and bought a Nokia 3310 and became the talk of the town. Soon I became aware that not only had I stolen secret time back from the hurried days, but somehow a secret space as well. I could stretch out, free to think again, to be wholly creative and to learn meaningfully.
But, wherever I went I got bloody lost. Wandering blindly around London, only to miss appointments, became a frequent pastime (消遣). What did we do before Google Maps? I was useless. The change was worth it, though. I’ll sound like an overstatement but I think it changed my life. My choices are broader and healthier because I’m not being screamed at all day.
I bought a new Samsung phone last week. I had been scared of the rate of progress, crying: “Stop the train! Stop the madness.” But I want to be part of building the future, and to do that, you’ve got to swim in contemporary waters. Rejecting the modern world doesn’t help anyone. It slows you down and I need to be efficient. Time will tell whether I’ve mastered the wisdom to reject constantly checking my phone.
1. What can be learned about the author when she lived in the Welsh countryside?| A．She read a lot of T. S. Eliot. | B．She had no friends to talk with. |
| C．She had no access to the Internet. | D．She was afraid of the digital world. |
| A．She thought she needed a spare phone. | B．She found her iPhone stopped working. |
| C．She wanted to attract people’s attention. | D．She hoped to break her smartphone addiction. |
| A．She led a simple and healthy life. | B．She found her life was in a mess. |
| C．She spent more time with her friends. | D．She became an example for other people. |
| A．To seek wisdom. | B．To stop her madness. |
| C．To keep pace with the times. | D．To get back to the real world. |
One day earlier this year, my husband said that the crab apple tree was dead.
“Why do you think it is dead?” I asked.
“Look at it. There’s not a leaf on it.”
“There’s not a leaf on anything. It’s March,” I said.
“It looked sick last fall and with this bitter winter we had, I’m convinced it’s dead.”
The truth is he’s never liked the crabapple. Sure, it has beautiful blooms in the spring, but then it gets a disease, the leaves curl, and it drops those little apples that sit on the driveway.
Each passing week he pronounced the tree dead. Eventually I began to believe him. Though he agreed it would be a regrettable loss, there was a twinkle in his eye. He armed himself a couple of weeks ago and began trimming. A branch here, a branch there, a small limb, then a large limb. I watched and then decided to check the wood on some of the branches closer to the trunk. I broke one off and saw green.
The crabapple was not dead. It just hadn’t had time to leaf out. The tree was now falling to one side, but it was not dead. I would have told him so, but he had moved on to a maple. Once the man starts, he can’t stop. One trim leads to another.
“Please, stop!” I called.
He smiled and nodded, but he couldn’t hear because he had started the hedge (树篱) trimmers and was getting ready to fix a line of hedges.
Zip (飕飕声), zip, zip.
“What do you think?” he shouted.
“It’s supposed to be a privacy hedge; now all that will be private are our ankles.”
He started the trimmers again.
“Stop!” I called, “Come back!”
“Why?” he shouted.
“You’re in the neighbor’s yard.”
1. By saying “if only I had taken my own advice.” the author means that ___________.
| A．she didn’t follow her own advice about pruning shears |
| B．she feels regretful about her marriage after many years |
| C．she should have kept a closer watch on her husband |
| D．she shouldn’t have given that marital advice to her daughters |
| A．has a great talent for gardening |
| B．nearly ruined their neighbor’s garden |
| C．mistook their crab apple tree for a maple tree |
| D．had never used pruning shears before |
| A．Why the author’s husband insisted on trimming their crab apple tree. |
| B．Why husbands shouldn’t be left to trim trees alone. |
| C．How the author has survived her “thirty-some” years of marriage. |
| D．How the author’s husband killed their crab apple tree. |
| A．Anxious. | B．Critical. |
| C．Serious. | D．Humorous. |
【推荐3】On August 3, 2020, a New Jersey schoolteacher named Julia Mooney put on a grey button-down dress and wore it to work. She wore it the next day and the next. In fact, she continued to wear that same dress for 100 days in a row. Mooney wanted to get people — her middle school students, in particular — thinking about fashion in a new way and how we live in what she describes as a “culture of excess”, closets overflowing with clothes far more than we need.
At first, Mooney said nothing to her students about her experiment. There was no formal class discussion until several weeks later, at which point the students were responsive. Mooney said that her students could really understand the idea that we need to judge each other based on what we do and not what we wear. “As they try to define themselves the students are often identifying with brands or superficial (表面上的) things. Many seemed excited to have a reason to talk about how silly all of that really is.” she said.
A quest for greater simplicity is partly what inspired Mooney in the first place. On her website, she wrote that “spending a long time thinking and worrying about what to wear in the morning will be a thing of the past”. It also solved the problem of limited closet space in an old house.
If there was a tear (破洞) Mooney patched it with her sewing machine. She was careful with it so she wore an apron (围裙) to keep it clean — just like people did in years gone by.She washed the dress on weekends.
“The challenge I’m presenting is this: Let’s think before we buy it, wear it, throw it away and buy again. Are we just perpetuating (使持续) a culture that defines us based on what we’re wearing rather than what we’re doing? What if we spent our energy trying to be good, interesting humans instead of trying to look good and interesting?” she said.
Mooney herself is back to wearing pants to work, but the effect of the experiment lingers. She said, “I’m expressing my interest in the health of our planet and the people who occupy it, while channeling less of my energy into my wardrobe and more into loving my children, being patient with my students and embracing my day-to-day existence.”
1. Why did Julia Mooney wear the same dress continuously?| A．She liked that dress most. |
| B．She tried to save time and money. |
| C．She had to follow a fast fashion trend. |
| D．She wanted to arouse people’s reflection. |
| A．Opposed. | B．Indifferent. |
| C．Uncertain. | D．Optimistic. |
| A．The aim Mooney wanted to achieve. |
| B．The influence Mooney was trying to exert. |
| C．Efforts Mooney made to keep the plan going well. |
| D．Difficulties Mooney encountered in carrying out the plan. |
| A．It is our responsibility to protect the earth’s environment. |
| B．Mooney is putting more energy into worthwhile things. |
| C．Mooney doesn’t care what she wears every day. |
| D．People should be grateful for their daily lives. |
【推荐1】It is easy for us to know the difference between our friends and our enemies. But can other animals do the same? Elephants can! They can use their sense of vision and smell to tell the difference between people who pose a threat and those who do not. In Kenya, researchers find that elephants react differently to clothing worn by men of the Maasai and Kamba ethnic groups. Young Maasai men spear(刺)animals and thus pose a threat to elephants; Kamba men arc mainly farmers and are not a danger to elephants.
In an experiment conducted by animal scientists, elephants were first presented with clean clothing or clothing that had been worn for five days by either a Maasai or a Kamba man. When the elephants noticed the smell of clothing worn by a Maasai man, they moved away from the smell faster and took longer to relax than when they noticed the smells of either clothing worn by Kamba men or clothing that had not been worn at all.
Clothing color also plays a role. In the same study, when the elephants saw red clothing not worn before, they reacted angrily, as red is typically worn by Maasai men. Rather than running away as they did with the smell, the elephants acted aggressively toward the red clothing.
The researchers believe that the elephants’ emotional reactions are due to their different senses of the smells and the sights. Smelling a potential danger means that a threat is nearby and the best thing to do is run away and hide. Seeing a potential threat without its smell means that risk is low. Therefore, instead of showing fear and running away, the elephants express their anger and become aggressive.
1. What character does the author want to express about elephant?| A．Friendly. | B．Clever. | C．Dangerous. | D．Naughty. |
| A．The color of Kamba men’s clothes. |
| B．The smell of Kamba men’s clothes. |
| C．The red clothes not worn before. |
| D．The smell of Maasai men’s clothes. |
| A．Elephants learn from their experience. |
| B．Elephants have sharper sense of smell than sight. |
| C．Elephants are more intelligent than other animals. |
| D．Elephants tend to attack rather than escape when in minor danger. |
| A．Nature | B．Business Weekly | C．Fashion | D．News Week |
【推荐2】Tea drinking was common in China for nearly one thousand years before anyone in Europe had ever heard about tea. People in Britain were much slower in finding out what tea was like, mainly because tea was very expensive. It could not be bought in shops and even those people who could afford to have it sent from Holland did so only because it was a fashionable curiosity. Some of them were not sure how to use it. They thought it was a vegetable and tried cooking the leaves. Then they served them mixed with butter and salt. They soon discovered their mistake but many people used to spread the used tea leaves on bread and give them to their children as sandwiches.
Tea remained rare and very expensive in England until the ships of the East India Company began to bring it direct from China early in the seventeenth century. During the next few years so much tea came into the country that the price fell and many people could afford to buy it.
At the same time people on the Continent were becoming more and more fond of tea. Until then tea had been drunk without milk in it, but one day a famous French lady named Madame de Sevigne decided to see what tea tasted like when milk was added. She found it so pleasant that she would never again drink it without milk. Because she was such a great lady her friends thought they must copy everything she did, so they also drank their tea with milk in it. Slowly this habit spread until it reached England and today only very few Britons drink tea without milk.
At first, tea was usually drunk after dinner in the evening. No one ever thought of drinking tea in the afternoon until a duchess found that a cup of tea and a piece of cake at three or four o'clock stopped her getting “a sinking feeling” as she called it. She invited her friends to have this new meal with her, and so tea-time was born.
1. Which of the following is true of the introduction of tea into Britain?| A．The Britons got expensive tea from India. |
| B．Tea reached Britain from Holland. |
| C．The Britons were the first people in Europe who drank tea. |
| D．It was not until the 17th century that the Britons had tea. |
| A．How tea-time was born in Holland. |
| B．The history of tea drinking in Britain. |
| C．How tea became a popular drink in France. |
| D．How the Britons got the habit of drinking afternoon tea. |
| A．In the eighteenth century. | B．In the sixteenth century. |
| C．In the seventeenth century. | D．In the late seventeenth century. |
| A．It tasted like milk. |
| B．It was good for health. |
| C．It became a popular drink. |
| D．They tried to copy the way Madame de Sevigne drank tea. |
【推荐3】Is that person really glad to see me? Or is he just being polite? Some people struggle to tell an artificial smile from a truly happy-one. And computers have found this task even more difficult. Recently, researchers have trained a program to detect when a smile is genuine(真诚的).
Visual computing researchers at the University of Bradford in the U. K. started with a software for analyzing a changing facial expression. This program can examine a video clip of a human head and identify(确认) specific details around the eyes, cheeks and mouth. Then the program tracks the details relative to each other as the face smiles.
Next，the scientists had their program evaluate(评估)two sets of video clips. In one subjects performed posed smiles. In the other, they watched a film that inspired genuine displays of emotion. The program calculated the differences among the subjects’ faces during the two clips. And it turns out that one's mouth, cheeks and eyes move differently when pretending to smile.
In particular, the muscles around the eyes shift 10 percent more for a real smile than they do for a fake one. These results are in the journal Advanced Engineering Informatics. "A genuine smile is indeed in the eyes. The computer aids analysis of the exact weight distribution of human smiles across the face.” Hassan Ugail and Ahmad Al-dahoud say.
The researchers suggest their work could improve a computer's ability to analyze facial expressions and thus to interact more smoothly with humans. But their real accomplishment is in proving Tyra Banks right: "You have to smile with your eyes."
1. What's the purpose of the program?| A．To tell different smiles. | B．To detect human heads. |
| C．To examine human faces. | D．To record facial expressions. |
| A．They performed posed smiles. | B．They analyzed different video clips. |
| C．They improved a computer's ability. | D．They evaluated a very special software. |
| A．Smiling with eyes is the most important. |
| B．Eyes reflect whether a smile is real or not. |
| C．Mouth，cheeks and eyes always move the same. |
| D．Muscles move more frequently when people do a faking smile, |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Health. |
| C．Inventions. | D．Science. |
