[听力] 【一起来听写】nova的日志汇总1 [复制链接]

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发表于 2011-10-5 10:58:11 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

9.22
Communication: cultural differences
Good morning class, I’m sure you have all heard this expression ” when in Rome, do as the Romans do”. But what exactly does it mean? Throughout my life, I have enjoyed travelling to many countries where I experienced lots of different cultures and people. One thing that I always remembered was that I was the guest and not there to change or break any rules. Globalization brings many benefits, but learning to and adapt to accept different culture can be challenging. We don’t always say eye to eye with someone from a different culture. Misunderstandings are common and can be an obstacle to an otherwise good relationship. At other times, we aren’t even the wire of any differences.
In order to try and get on with everyone no matter their culture backgrounds, I want to discuss several ways of overcoming several cultural misunderstandings, by talking about several differences in cultures. First of all, communication is the key to any culture. What makes communicating challenging is the people communicate in different ways both within and across cultures. How we use languages differs from culture to culture. For example, if we were to say ‘maybe ’ in Canada, it might actually mean no, but if we were in England, it might mean maybe, I’ll consider it. Other interesting and often misunderstood forms of communication are non-verbal forms communicating, such as facial expressions, gestures, personal space, sense of time and even seating arrangement.
This leads me to another cultural misunderstanding, conflict. Believe it or not, some cultures see conflict something positive, while others see it as something to stay away from. In some western cultures, although conflict is not usually desirable, people are often encouraged to deal directly with the conflicts from the outset by meeting face to face, as a way to work through whatever problems exist. On the other hand, in many eastern countries, arguing is seen as embarrassing or demeaning
and is best to work out quietly by writing your complains down on a paper.
Another difference may be as subtle how we work toward finishing something. Some factors might be access to resources, what we expect to get when the project is finished, different ideas of time, and varied ideas about working in a team versus working independently to finish the task. For some Asian and Hispanic cultures developing relationships from the outset of the project is more important than the end result of completing the task. Unlike Asian and Hispanic cultures, European-Americans tend to focus on the task at hand instead of the relationship. They prefer to let relationships develop as they work on the task. All the groups are still committed to the project and want to finish it, but they just have a different way of going about it. Additionally, depending on the culture the roles individuals play in decision-making differ a great deal. In some culture, delegating a task is common. In America, it is very common for the upper managers to assign responsibility for a particular matter to a subordinate. In many Southern European and Latin American countries, it is more common for the decision-makers to hold the responsibility for themselves. Another difference can be seen with group decisions. In America, it only takes a majority, which may only be 51%to make a decision. In places like Japan, 100% of the support is desired before a decision is made. Keep in mind that individual’s expectations about their own role in influencing a decision may be affected by their own culture as well.
Privacy is another big difference between cultures. In some cultures, it is better to keep your emotions private, rather than being frank about your feelings. This is especially important to remember when you are talking with someone or when you are working with people.
The last point I want to make concerns the way people find things out or epistemologies
. Epistemologies of doing or a way of knowing the world through experience and interaction is not new, but keeping the cultural differences in mind is fairly new. For example, one culture might tend to consider information learned by counting and measuring more valid than knowledge acquired by affective ways of knowing. Meanwhile, another culture could be emphasized practical experience and place more value on thinking process.
These are just some examples of cultural differences. I hope by understanding and accepting cultures, we can resolve any cultural misunderstanding. Perhaps the best way to get to know or understand a culture is to get involved and hand out with people from different cultures, and to listen with an open mind. Don’t forget, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Hispanic 西班牙的
epistemologies 认识论

9.23
Meteorology: storms
Now, I have a list of names and I want you to tell me some information about the names. Here we go: Alex, Bonnie, Charley, Danielle, Earl, Frances.
I know, I know. The list is in alphabetical order.
The names you are reading are in order of boy, girl, boy girl, boy girl. Excellent, now what if I told you were to going to talk about some weather systems. Now, what’s the connection?
Oh, I know. Those are names of some famous meteorologists.
No, you’ve completely missed the boat. they are names given to Atlantic storms called hurricanes in the year 2004. Beginning in 1953, the tropical prediction center produced two lists of names for hurricanes. One list is for Atlantic storm names, and the other is for eastern pacific storms. There are in alphabetical order and they do alternate male and female names. Now we are going to concentrate on hurricanes and tornados. Can anyone tell me a bit information on how hurricanes and tornados start. Well, first of all, storm is called by different names in different parts of the world. For example, the name hurricane is given to storm that develop over the Atlantic or the eastern pacific oceans. In the western north pacific including Philippines, these systems are called typhoons, and in the India and south pacific ocean, they are called cyclones. Tornados, on the other hand, occurs mostly in American and happen when warm and cool airstreams collide.
That’s almost perfect. Actually, there are more tornados in Britain. On average, Britain has 93 tornados annually in an area 38times smaller than America. In a nutshell, you’re twice as likely to see a tornado In Britain as in America. Tornados are formed when air within a low pressure front rises, creating a strong upward stream of air like a vacuum cleaner. This stream of air sucks up warm air from the ground, which causes
it to spin faster and faster. What happens next is perhaps the most dangerous part, this strong air-currency can create a vortex or spiraling funnel of wind that can reach a speed 300 miles per hour. It’s when the vortex touches the ground that it creates the most destruction because it can suck up cows and cars like tiny pieces of paper and even explode the houses. Luckily, the vortex is usually not more than 250meters in size.
Ma’am, how does the tornado explode a house？
Well, the air pressure inside the vortex is extremely low and the air pressure inside the building is normal. So when the tornado passes over the house, the air inside the building gets bigger and create an explosion. The wind speeds of tornado can vary from 72 to nearly 300miles per hour. Fortunately, it’s only once in a blue moon that tornados have winds greater than 200 miles per hour.
So that’s why tornados are so destructive, it’s much clearer now.
Now moving on to hurricanes. Like our fellow classmate mentioned, hurricanes develop over the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Oceans. A hurricane is strong rotating storm with an intense center of low pressure. This center is always called the eye of the storm. They cause high winds huge waves and heavy flooding. I’m sure many of you remember seeing hurricane Gilbert on the news back in1998. Gilbert produced 160 miles per hour winds and left 318 dead in the J. now in order for a tropical storm to be called hurricane it must produce wind speeds above 73 miles per hour. Unfortunately, about 50 tropical storms become hurricane each year. A hurricane is one of the most powerful of all weather systems, and is powered by heat energy released by the condensation of water vapor.
Professor, why don’t more hurricanes develop?
Well, the condition have to be precise a hurricane to form. The sea surface temperate must be above 26.5 degrees.
Meteorology 气象学
vortex 涡流
in a nutshell 简单来说
To be precise 确切的讲
funnel 漏斗，烟囱

missed the boat 错失良机

9.24
Ok, we’ve been talking about theories that deal with the effects of human activity on the climate. But today I’d like to talk a little about other theories that can explain the variations in climate. And one of the best known is called the Melangeges hypothesis.
Um, now What the M hypothesis is about? And it says that the variations in earth’s movements, specifically in its orbit around the sun, these variations lead to differences in the amount of energy that reaches Eearth. And these differences in the amount of energy that’s reaching earth from the sun, and it’s what causes variations in earth’s climate. Ok, a lot of people think of earth’s orbit around the sun as being perfectly circular, as smooth and as regular as see the way the hands move on a well-made watch. But it just doesn’t work that way.
You’re probably aware that the earth’s orbit around the sun is not shaped like a perfect circle. It’s more than oval, it’s elliptical. But the shape of this orbit isn’t consistent; it varies over time over a period about 100 000 years. Sometimes it’s a little more circular, and sometimes it’s more elliptical, and when earth’s orbit is more elliptical, earth is actually closer to the sun during part of a year, which makes earth and in particular, the Northern Hemisphere warmer. And why is that important? Well, because most of the planet’s glaciers are in the north-hemisphere, if it gets too warm then glaciers will stop forming. And we already talked about how that affects earth’s overall temperature.
The second movement involved the hypothesis has to do with axial tilt and the tilt of earth’s axis, that imaginary pole that runs through the center of the earth. And depending on the angle it’s tilts at the seasons can be more or less severe. It makes winters cooler and summers warmer, or
what some might say is doing now, it makes summers less hot and more importantly, the winter less cold, which, just like what I mentioned before can also stop, um prevent glaciers from forming or cause them to melt. There is a third movement hypothesis covers called precession. Precession basically is the change in direction of earth’s axis of rotation. It would take me 1 million years to explain just even the basics of this movement as precession is quite complex. And all these details are way beyond our scope. What’ important for you to understand is that these three theories of the movements, well they are cyclical and they work together to form and to produce complex but regular variations of earth climate and lead to the growth or decline glaciers. Now when Milankovitch first proposed this theory in the 1920s, many of the colleges was skeptical.
M didn’t have any proof. Actually there wouldn’t be any evidence to support his hypothesis until the 1970s, when oceanographers were able to drill deep into the seafloor and collect samples, samples which were then analyzed by the geologists. And from these samples they were able to put together a history of ocean temperatures going back hundreds of thousands of years. And this showed that earth’s climate had changed pretty much the way M hypothesis suggested it would. So this evidence was pretty strong support for M hypothesis and by the 1980s, most people accepted this theory.
However, in the late 1980s, some scientists were exploring Devil’s hole which is basically an extensive water-cave, far from the ocean in Nevada,
in the western US. Over millions of years, ground water left deposits of a mineral called calcite on the rock within Devil’s Hole. And by studying these calcite deposits, we could determine the climate conditions, the temperatures over the last half million years. Well, Devil’s Hole findings contradicted the one obtained during the 1970s, So, basically the questions was: the age of one or both of the samples wrong? Or were scientists misunderstanding the significant of the evidence?
Well, in the 1990s,a new study was done on the two samples the ocean floor samples were found to be correct, as were the samples from Devil’s hole. And now it’s generally believed that the samples from devil holes correspond to variations in local climate in the western US, rather than global climate changes.