【正文】 worth on any subject, high or low. But if everyone is a critic, is that still criticism? Or are we heading toward the end of criticism7 If all opinions are equally valid, there is no need for experts. Democracy works in life, but art is undemocratic. The result of this ultimately meaningless barrage is that more and more we are living in a profoundlyor shallowlyuncritical age. A critic, as T. S. Eliot famously observed, must by very intelligent. Now, can anybody assume that the invasion of cyberspace by opinion upon opinion is proof of great intelligence and constitutes informed criticism rather than uniformed artistic chaos2 Of course, like any selfrespecting critic, 1 have always encouraged my readers to think for themselves. They were to consider my positive or negative assessments, which i always tried to explain, a challenge to think along with me: here is my reasoning, follow it, then agree or disagree as you see fit. In an uncritical age, every pseudonymous chatroom chatterbox provides a snappy, selfconfident judgment, without the process of arriving at it being clear to anyone, including the chatterer. Blogs, too, tend to be invitations to leap before a second look. Do the impassioned ramblings fed into a hungry blogosphere represent responses from anyone other than longheads? tlow has it e to this? We have all been bitten by television soun。put away39。s been through several episodes of global warming before, and nature put carbon away as coal, petroleum, and carbonate sediments, says TecEco manager John Harrison. Now we39。s creation does not require reinforcement, a property shared by other concretes that use chemical additives called plasticizers to reduce the amount of water in their position. Using less water makes concrete stronger, but until the development of plasticizers, it also made concrete sticky, dry, and hard to handle, says Christian Meyer, a civil engineering professor at Columbia University. The engineer would specify a certain strength, a certain amount of waterand as soon as a supervisor turned his back, in would go a bucket of water, says Dr. Meyer of the time before plasticizers. Making stronger concretes, says Li, allows less to be used, reducing waste and giving architects more freedom. You can have such futuristic designs if you don39。re asking too much of it now, says Mr. Van Oss. Concrete is also a climatechange villain. It is made by mixing water with an aggregate, such as sand or gravel, and cement. Cement is usually made by heating limestone and clay to over 2,500 degrees F. The resulting chemical reaction, along with fuel burned to heat the kiln, produces between 7 and 10% of global carbondioxide emissions. When we have to repeatedly regenerate these materials because they39。s conservative pace of development. Now, thanks to environmental pressures and entrepreneurial innovation, a new generation of concretes is emerging. This hightech assortment of concrete confections promises to be stronger, lighter, and more environmentally friendly than ever before. The concretes they will replace are, for the most part, strong and durable, but with limitations. Concrete is sound under pression but weak under tension. Steel rebars are used as reinforcement, but make recycling difficult when concrete breaks down—and break down it inevitably will. Cracks caused by stress grow larger over time, with water forcing them open and corroding the rebars within.When you put enough stress on it, concrete doesn39。 archives to America. Questions 1115 Concrete is probably used more widely than any other substance except water, yet it remains largely unappreciated. Some people view the 20th century as the atomic age, the space age, the puter agebut an argument can be made that it was the concrete age, says cement specialist Hendrik van Oss. lt39。 manuscripts is on the rise. (B) The British literary people are peting with their American rivals. (C) American institutions are buying British writers39。 money (D) mainly lives in New York as he is most wele to American readers 9. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage? (A) The campaigning group consists of 15 famous literary people. (B) Foreign institutions regularly charge for access to the papers by British writers. (C) American universities have more funding to purchase the manuscripts from British writers. (D) People have different opinions towards using taxpayers39。t cost the Treasury an arm and a legwe39。 money to keep British writers39。 archives 39。re talking pennies, really. The campaigners say American universities are targeting young British writers and offering between ~50,000 and ~300,000 for their of notebooks, manuscripts and letters. Joan Winterkorn, a broker who negotiated the sale the papers of Laurence Olivier and the writers Kenh Tynan and Peter Nichols to the British Library, said the cream of British archive material will continue to be up for grabs unless the tax laws are changed. American universities are increasingly creating a working relationship with younger and younger writers, so this is not something that is going to go away, she said. “ 英語(yǔ)客棧 ” 網(wǎng)址： 友情提供：英語(yǔ)客棧 第 6 頁(yè) 共 14 頁(yè) It is understood that an academic from one American institution was flown to London this month with a specific brief to hobble ishiguro at the Booker prize dinner in London. lshiguro, 50, who was nominated for his novel Never Let Me Go and who won the Booker in 1989 tbr The Remains of the Day, has not yet made a decision, according to his spokeswoman. She said he had been approached by a number of US universities. Arnold Wesker, best known for his plays Roots and Chips with Everything, sold three tons of letters, manuscripts and papers to an American university in