Text 3
As a historian who's always searching for the text or the image that makes us re-evaluate the past, I've become preoccupied with looking for photographs that show our Victorian ancestors smiling (what better way to shatter the image of 19th-century prudery?). I've found quite a few, and— since I started posting them on Twitter — they have been causing quite a stir. People have been surprised to see evidence that Victorians had fun and could, and did, laugh. They are noting that the Victorians suddenly seem to become more human as the hundred-or-so years that separate us fade away through our common experience of laughter.
Of course, I need to concede that my collection of 'Smiling Victorians' makes up only a tiny percentage of the vast catalogue of photographic portraiture created between 1840 and 1900, the majority of which show sitters posing miserably and stiffly in front of painted backdrops, or staring absently into the middle distance. How do we explain this trend?
During the 1840s and 1850s, in the early days of photography, exposure times were notoriously long: the daguerreotype photographic method (producing an image on a silvered copper plate) could take several minutes to complete, resulting in blurred images as sitters shifted position or adjusted their limbs. The thought of holding a fixed grin as the camera performed its magical duties was too much to contemplate, and so a non-committal blank stare became the norm.
But exposure times were much quicker by the 1880s, and the introduction of the Box Brownie and other portable cameras meant that, though slow by today’s digital standards, the exposure was almost instantaneous. Spontaneous smiles were relatively easy to capture by the 1890s, so we must look elsewhere for an explanation of why Victorians still hesitated to smile.
One explanation might be the loss of dignity displayed through a cheesy grin. “Nature gave us lips to conceal our teeth,” ran one popular Victorian saying, alluding to the fact that before the birth of proper dentistry, mouths were often in a shocking state of hygiene. A flashing set of healthy and clean, regular ‘pearly whites’ was a rare sight in Victorian society, the preserve of the super-rich (and even then, dental hygiene was not guaranteed).
A toothy grin (especially when there were gaps or blackened teeth) lacked class: drunks, tramps, and music hall performers might gurn and grin with a smile as wide as Lewis Carroll's gum- exposing Cheshire Cat, but it was not a becoming look for properly bred persons. Even Mark Twain, a man who enjoyed a hearty laugh, said that when it came to photographic portraits there could be “nothing more damning than a silly, foolish smile fixed forever”.
31.According to Paragraph 1, the author's posts on Twitter
A.changed people’s impression of the Victorians.
B.highlighted social media’s role in Victorian studies.
C.re-evaluated the Victorians’ notion of public image.
D.illustrated the development of Victorian photography.
32.What does author say about the Victorian portraits he has collected?
A.They are in popular use among historians.
B.They are rare among photographs of that age.
C.They mirror 19th-century social conventions.
D.They show effects of different exposure times.
33.What might have kept the Victorians from smiling for pictures in the 1890s?
A.Their inherent social sensitiveness.
B.Their tension before the camera.
C.Their distrust of new inventions.
D.Their unhealthy dental condition.
34.Mark Twain is quoted to show that the disapproval of smiles in pictures was
A.a deep-root belief.
B.a misguided attitude.
C.a controversial view.
D.a thought-provoking idea.
35.Which of the following questions does the text answer?
A.Why did most Victorians look stern in photographs?
B.Why did the Victorians start to view photographs?
C.What made photography develop slowly in the Victorian period?
D.How did smiling in photographs become a post-Victorian norm?
Text 4
From the early days of broadband, advocates for consumers and web-based companies worried that the cable and phone companies selling broadband connections had the power and incentive to favor affiliated websites over their rivals. That’s why there has been such a strong demand for rules that would prevent broadband providers from picking winners and losers online, preserving the freedom and innovation that have been the lifeblood of the internet.
Yet that demand has been almost impossible to fill — in part because of pushback from broadband providers, anti-regulatory conservatives and the courts. A federal appeals court weighed in again Tuesday, but instead of providing a badly needed resolution, it only prolonged the fight. At issue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the latest take of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on net neutrality, adopted on a party-line vote in 2017. The Republican-penned order not only eliminated the strict net neutrality rules the FCC had adopted when it had a Democratic majority in 2015, but rejected the commission’s authority to require broadband providers to do much of anything. The order also declared that state and local governments couldn’t regulate broadband providers either.
The commission argued that other agencies would protect against anti-competitive behavior, such as a broadband-providing conglomerate like AT&T favoring its own video-streaming service at the expense of Netflix and Apple TV. Yet the FCC also ended the investigations of broadband providers that imposed data caps on their rivals’ streaming services but not their own.
On Tuesday, the appeals court unanimously upheld the 2017 order deregulating broadband providers, citing a Supreme Court ruling from 2005 that upheld a similarly deregulatory move. But Judge Patricia Millett rightly argued in a concurring opinion that “the result is unhinged from the realities of modern broadband service,” and said Congress or the Supreme Court could intervene to “avoid trapping Internet regulation in technological anachronism.”
In the meantime, the court threw out the FCC’s attempt to block all state rules on net neutrality, while preserving the commission’s power to preempt individual state laws that undermine its order. That means more battles like the one now going on between the Justice Department and California, which enacted a tough net neutrality law in the wake of the FCC's abdication.
The endless legal battles and back-and-forth at the FCC cry out for Congress to act. It needs to give the commission explicit authority once and for all to bar broadband providers from meddling in the traffic on their network and to create clear rules protecting openness and innovation online.
36.There has long been concern that broadband provides would
A.bring web-based firms under control.
B.slow down the traffic on their network.
C.show partiality in treating clients.
D.intensify competition with their rivals.
37.Faced with the demand for net neutrality rules, the Fcc
A.Sticks to an out-of-date order.
B.Takes an anti-regulatory stance.
C.Has issued a special resolution.
D.Has allowed the states to intervene.
38.What can be learned about AT&T from Paragraph 3?
A.It protects against unfair competition.
B.It engages in anti-competitive practices.
C.It is under the FCC’s investigation.
D.It is in pursuit of quality service.
39.Judge Patricia Millett argues that the appeals court’s decision
A.focuses on trivialities.
B.conveys an ambiguous message.
C.is at odds with its earlier rulings.
D.is out of touch with reality.
40.What does the author argue in the last paragraph?
A.Congress needs to take action to ensure net neutrality.
B.The FCC should be put under strict supervision.
C.Rules need to be set to diversify online services.
D.Broadband providers’ rights should be protected.
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