LESSON 5

Exercises to be done before the text

I. Read and translate the following words with the negative prefixes dis-, in-, un-, mis-:

a)to disassemble, to disconnect, disadvantage, to disapprove, to discover;

b)indefinitely, infrequently, inaccuracy, impossible, improbability, inadequate, indisputable;

c)to unload, unnecessary, unequal, unobtainable, unnatural;

d)misfortune, to misuse, to misinterpret, to misjudge.

II.Add the prefixes to the words and translate them into Russian:

a)super- : conductivity, structure, heat, natural, sonic, hard, man:

b)pre- : arranged, determined, revolutionary;

c)poly- : atomic, phase, crystal;

d)semi- : automatic, conductor, final;

e)multi- : national, engined, millionaire.

III. Translate the following sentences paying attention to the Gerund:

1. This is the only way of solving global and domestic problems. 2. In enjoying their rights citizens must not break other people's rights. 3. Learning a foreign language enriches your native language. 4. Reading books is my hobby. 5. By solving this problem we detected some interesting phenomena. 6. He proposed his own way of making this experiment. 7. Drawing nations closer together through an exchange of culture is an effective way of achieving understanding today. 8. Learning rules without examples is useless. 9. Ring me up before going to the institute. 10. On coming to the conference I met the scientist I wanted to see very much. 11. His changing the plans was not known to us. 12. On completing their work they found interesting results. 13. While driving be careful.

92

14. I don't like being disturbed. 15. On getting married they went to Greece for their honeymoon. 16. I hate waiting. 17. Listening to him is boring.

Text

THE WORLD IN HALF A CENTURY FROM NOW

Andrey Sakharov

I conjecture that territories of two types, a "Work Territory" (WT) and a "Protected Territory"(PT), will emerge gradually from the overpopulated industrial world ill-suited for human habitation and pernicious to the environment. The "Protected Territory" will be larger of the two and intended for maintaining natural balance on earth, for recreation, and restoring man's equanimity. In the smaller and much more densely populated "Work Territory" people will spend most of their time, engage in high agriculture; the environment has been fully geared to practical needs; concentrated in this territory is the entire industry with its huge automatic and semiautomatic plants; almost all its inhabitants live in "megalopolises" dominated by skyscrapers, in air-conditioned apartments complete with automated kitchens, holographic landscape-walls, etc. The skyscrapers will be concentrated in the centre, the rest of the megalopolises constituting suburbs sprawling for tens of kilometers. These suburbs, as I see them in my mind's eye, will be much like what one finds in the more prosperous countries today: family cottages with front lawns and vegetable and fruit gardens, child care centres, sports grounds, swimming pools, everyday service shops, modern city comforts, quiet and convenient public transport, pure air, free and varied cultural life.

Despite a rather high average population density, life in WTs can be as healthy, natural and happy - given a clever approach to social and interstate problems - as that enjoyed by the middle class in modern industrialized countries, i.e. much healthier than the overwhelming majority of our contemporaries can make it. I hope, nevertheless, that the man of the future will be able to spend part of his time, even though a smaller part, in the still more "natural" conditions of the

93

PTs. Those living in PTs will also have a social mission to fulfill - they do not only relax, but also do manual and brain work, read books and meditate. They live in tents or in homes they have patterned after their ancestors' abodes. They listen to the murmur of a mountain creek, or simply delight in peace and quiet, feast their eyes on wild scenic beauty, the woods, the sky and clouds. Their chief preoccupation will be conserving nature - and their own selves.

Just a few statistics. The WT will be 30 million square kilometers large, with an average population density of 300 persons per square kilometer. The PT will be 80 million square kilometers large, with an average population density of 25 persons per square kilometer. The earth's total population will be 11 billion, and people can spend about 20 per cent of their time in the PT.

"Flying towns" - artificial earth satellites discharging important production functions - will be a natural extension of the WT. Concentrated on them will be solar power plants and, possibly, a substantial proportion of radiation-cooled nuclear and thermonuclear plants, which will help prevent the overheating of the earth; besides, the satellites will carry vacuum metallurgy plants, greenhouse farms, space research laboratories and intermediate stations for long-distance flights. Under the WT and PT alike, there will be a ramified network of underground towns. The surfaces of the oceans, the Antarctic, and later, possibly, of the Moon and other planets will be gradually drawn into the orbit of agriculture.

The industry, power engineering and everyday life are also to undergo dramatic changes. To begin with, the need to protect the environment calls for a universal changeover to closed production cycles causing no environment pollution at all. The enormous technical and economic problems involved in such a changeover can be solved only on an international scale.

Another distinguishing feature of the industry will be much more extensive use of cybernetic equipment. I conjecture that the parallel development of semiconductor, magnetic, vacuum-tube, photoelectronic, laser, cryotronic, gas dynamic and other types of cybernetic equipment will lead to an enormous rise in its

94

economic and technological potentialities.

However, further progress in the field of telecommunications and information service will play a special role.

The establishment of an integral worldwide telephone and video-telephone communication system is to mark one of the next stages of this progress. In the long run the world information service (WIS) will come into service.

The WIS will put anyone within minutes to the contents of any book or article ever published, and issue any information requested.

The WIS is to play a truly historic role in that it will remove all the remaining barriers in the way of information exchange between countries and individuals.

On power supply. I am convinced that huge coal-burning non-polluting power stations will lose none of their importance as sources of power supply within the next fifty years. At the same time, atomic power plants and thermonuclear power plants will become common.

On transport. In the PT, the family car will be ousted, I think, by a batterypowered "walking cart" on articulated limbs which does not trample down the grass and requires no asphalted roads. The bulk of goods and passenger traffic will be taken care of by helium atomic-powered airships and, chiefly, by highspeed atomic-powered overhead and subway trains. In a number of cases, particularly in municipal transport, loading and unloading will be done "in motion" using special mobile "auxiliaries" such as moving sidewalks (like the one described by Herbert Wells in his "When the Sleeper Wakes"),discharge wagons on parallel tracks, and the like.

To my mind, the current achievements of physics and chemistry will make it possible not only to create man-made materials superior to natural ones in all their substantial properties but to reproduce artificially many unique properties of whole ecosystems. I visualize the production of artificial diamonds from graphite by means of special underground nuclear blasts. Diamonds are known to play a very

95

important role in modem technology, and their cheaper production may further add to it.

Space research is to play a still greater role in the science of the future than it does now. I envisage a more vigorous effort to make contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations.

Exercises to be done after the text.

I. Answer the following questions:

1. Do you like Sakharov's hypotheses of the future? 2.Will they come true in your opinion? 3.Would you like to live in such a society?

II. Translate into Russian the following sentences. Mind Gerund:

1. 0n being told the news he sent a telegram. 2. He waited for them without thinking of time. 3. Не began learning Chinese. 4. We always enjoy travelling. 5. I never thought of being offered this job. 6. Swimming is my favourite sport. 7. Testing will begin in a few minutes. 8. The experiment resulted in finding new substances. 9. Without constant studying it is impossible to translate original texts. 10.By doing so he helped me greatly. 11. Climbing mountains is very popular in Scotland. 12. Travelling was much slower and harder then. 13. He started repairing the car the day before yesterday. 14. Looking for some new information is very exciting. 15. They started hitching early in the morning. 16. After meeting the man they have been looking for a long time they were very happy. 17. On arranging a time and a place to meet they left. 18. We couldn’t stop laughing. 19. Stop tapping your fingers.

III. Point out sentences where:

a) the word "reading" is translated as "чтение":

1.What are you reading?

2.Reading this article he consulted a dictionary.

3.When I came home he had been reading for an hour.

96

4. Reading aloud improves one's pronunciation.

b)the word "acting" should be translated as "действуя": 1. The force acting upon the body should be determined. 2. In what direction is this force acting?

3. Acting upon the body the force changes its original size.

4. This force has been acting upon the body for some time already.

c)the word "lifted" can be translated as "поднятый":

1.Having lifted this body he estimated its weight.

2.The body has been lifted to the necessary height.

3.The body lifted to this height may be used for this experiment. d) the word "determined" is translated as " определенное":

1.Have you determined this distance?

2.The conditions determined, we could continue our experiment.

3.Having determined the value the students could calculate the equation.

4.This value is always determined this way.

5.The ratio determined in this experiment is very important.

IV. Answer the following questions:

1. Are you good at translating from English into Russian? 2. Are you good at telling anecdotes? 3. Are you good at playing cards? 4. Are you interested in learning English? 5. Are you interested in playing computer games? 6. Are you interested in collecting smth? 7. Are you interested in getting good marks? 8. Are you good at saving money? 9. Are you good at fixing a car? 10. Are you good at washing up? 11. Are you bored with having a holiday? 12. Are you bored with watching TV? 13. Are you bored with listening to music? 14. Are you bored with reading about philosophy? 15. Are you bored with English? 16. Are you tired of doing English exercises? 17. Are you tired of living? 18. Are you tired of doing nothing? 19. Are you tired of answering stupid questions? 20. Are you tired of answering your mother’s questions? 21. Are you tired of driving a car?

97

V. Translate the following sentences paying attention to the underlined words:

1. The more you work, the better you know English. 2. The better we know the laws governing the society the more we understand the process going on in it. 3. The stronger the material is, the more load it can carry. 4. The more we work for peace and cooperation, the stronger the unity of all progressive people. 5. I've not been to Moscow for a long time and I see that it has greatly changed since that time. 6. Since an atom is electrically neutral, it must have an equal number of positive and negative charges. 7. Since it was proved, we followed this method. 8. His dream is to work as an engineer somewhere in Siberia. 9. He can't answer this question, as he doesn't know the subject well. 10. This instrument is as precise as possible. 11. As far as we know he came back home. 12. It is necessary for him to take part in the meeting. 13. He made much for the development of this law. 14. They worked at this problem for a long time. 15. This discovery is very important, for it has opened vast prospects.

VI. Enjoy yourself:

1. Two men have talked for some time in the train.

"Are you going to professor Brown's lecture this evening?", says one of

them.

"Yes", answers the other.

"Don't go. They say he is a very bad speaker". "I must go", says the other. "I am Brown".

2. "Your husband is too fond of strong coffee", said the doctor. "You must not let him have it. He gets too excited".

"But, doctor, you should see how excited he gets when I give him weak coffee".

3. She is a secretary. It was her first job. Her shorthand wasn't bad, and her

98

typing was quite good. But the boss noticed that she never answered the telephone. It rang and rang, and she never touched it.

"Why don't you answer it?" he asked at last. "Because it's always for you", she said.

4."There are far too many spelling mistakes in this letter that you have typed. There's no excuse for that. You must use a dictionary when you are in doubt". "But the trouble is that I am never in doubt".

5.Rebecca: "Mum, did baby brother come from Heaven?"

Mum:" That's right, dear."

Rebecca: " I don't blame them for throwing him out!"

6. "Aunt Mary has a new baby," Mrs. Wilson said to her little daughter.

"What's wrong with the old one?" the little girl asked.

99