102年初等考試,初等考,初等考試題庫,初等考試科目-國考應援團

Why is the world producing so much garbage? Garbage is an

unavoidable result of consumption. And to __1__ the high standard of

living that has been reached in many industrialized countries, we

must continue to consume, as the consumption keeps the wheel of

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industry turning. We use the rapidly disappearing natural resources of

the earth to feed the machines of industry, which __2__ produce

endless quantities of consumer goods. What we haven’t been able to

do, however, is to find a successful way to __3__ all the by-products

of industry and the products themselves when they are used up, worn

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out, or outdated.

One of the biggest causes of the garbage problem is the world’s

exploding population. More and more people mean more and more

waste. Before the industrial revolution, when the world population

was very small, the problem of garbage did not exist. Whatever waste

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was produced then could be absorbed by the earth without __4__

nature’s balance, but nature can no longer cope with the amount of

garbage that is currently being produced.

For generations, historians and boat lovers have been trying to

learn more about the brave ship that brought the Pilgrims to America.

The task is a difficult one because Mayflower was such a common

name for ships back in early seventeenth-century England that there

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were at least twenty of them when the Pilgrims left for the New World.

An exact duplicate of the Mayflower has been built in England

and given to the people of the US as a symbol of good will and

common ancestry linking Britons and Americans. The Pilgrims’

Mayflower apparently was built originally as a fishing vessel. It seems

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to have been 90 feet long by 22 feet wide, displacing 180 tons of

water. The duplicate measures 90 feet by 26 feet, displaces 183

tons, and has a crew of 21, as did the original vessel. The new

Mayflower has no motor but travels faster than the old boat.

What happened to the historic boat? So far as can be told, the

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Mayflower went back to less colorful jobs and, not too many years

later, was scrapped. What happened to the beams, masts, and

planking is questionable. In the English city of Abingdon, there is a

Congregational church that contains two heavy wooden pillars. Some

say these pillars are masts from the Mayflower. A barn in the English

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town of Jordans seemed to be built with old ship timbers. Marine

experts said these timbers were impregnated with salt and, if put

together, would form a vessel 90 feet by 22 beet. The man who

owned the farm when the peculiar barn was built was a relative of the

man who appraised the Mayflower when it was scrapped.

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So the original Mayflower may still be doing service ashore while

her duplicate sails the seas again.