Контрольные тексты Text 33

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Human beings

Human beings are, surely, the most interesting creatures on the face of the earth, yet, strangely enough, their study has been almost the very last of the sciences to come into being. Anthropology, the science of man, is just about the youngest of the sciences, and it is, without any doubt, the most important — the most important because it deals with humanity itself, with the great questions of life and of death. What is man? What is he born as? What is he born for? Where did he come from? Whither has he been going? How did he come to present so many different types, both physically and culturally? These, and many more, are some of the questions which anthropology asks and attempts to answer. There can be scarcely any questions more important than these, unless it be the question: In what direction should man go?

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whither ['wɪðə] — куда (устарелая форма)

How did he come — Как получилось, что он

Text 34

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Where do jokes come from?

Some years ago, I read a story by Isaac Asimov, one of my favorite science fiction authors, about the world of fifty or one hundred years hence, when computers have become so complex and powerful that ordinary scientists are not allowed to use them.

To use a computer efficiently requires a rigid competitive training from childhood. People who have taken the appropriate courses and have passed the qualifying tests are called Computer Masters and granted the privilege of playing with these giant toys indefinitely, and in any way they please. Nobody is allowed to interfere with their activities, no matter how strange the experiment they want to conduct.

The story continues: a certain Computer Master is observed by his distinguished colleagues and worshiping students, spending his days and nights reading jokes into the machine. This behavior is considered rather eccentric even for Computer Masters, but nothing is done to hinder him.

After three weeks of intensive effort, he ceases his endeavors, exclaiming, "I have discovered it!" Naturally, his colleagues are curious about what he has discovered. "Well," he says, "the question that kept nagging at me was the classic one, where do jokes come from?" To utilize all the contemporary resources at his disposal to answer the question, he had read thousands of jokes from many sources into the computer. All its enormous powers were then used to analyze the stories in accordance with various theories and disciplines, ranging from philology to psychology.

Finally, the computer printed out the result of this intensive analysis. Jokes, it concluded, are constantly being fed into our world by a civilization from outer space, which then observes their distribution, variants, and effects. Thus the Earth is being used as a giant laboratory, and all human beings are guinea pigs in this massive psychological experiment. Anyone who has ever tried to make up even a passable joke, much less a good joke, will accept this as a reasonable explanation.

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hence — отсюда, с этих пор (three years hence — через три года, три года спустя). В научной литературе чаше всего это слово выступает в значении следовательно

to grant — даровать, жаловать, допускать (to take for granted — считать не требующим доказательства, само собой разумеющимся; to take nothing for granted — ничего не принимать на веру)

to interfere — вмешиваться (Don't interfere in his affairs — He вмешивайся в его дела. Не is always interfering — Он всегда во все вмешивается); сталкиваться, противоречить друг другу (Pleasure must not be allowed to interfere with business — Развлечение не должно мешать делу)

guinea pigs ['ɡɪnɪpɪɡs] — морские свинки; зд. подопытные кролики

much less — зд. тем более (§ 107)