1、ReadingBy mango Passage One For hundreds of millions of years, turtles (海龟 ) have struggled out of the sea to lay their eggs on sandy beaches, long before there were nature documentaries to celebrate them, or GPS satellites and marine biologists to track them, or volunteers to hand-carry the hatchli
2、ngs (幼龟 ) down to the waters edge lest they become disoriented by headlights and crawl towards a motel parking lot instead. A formidable wall of bureaucracy has been erected to protect their prime nesting on the Atlantic coastlines. With all that attention paid to them, youd think these creatures wo
3、uld at least have the gratitude not to go extinct. But Nature is indifferent to human notions of fairness, and a report by the Fish and Wildlife Service showed a worrisome drop in the populations of several species of North Atlantic turtles, notably loggerheads, which can grow to as much as 400 poun
4、ds. The South Florida nesting population, the largest, has declined by 50% in the last decade, according to Elizabeth Griffin, a marine biologist with the environmental group Oceana. The figures prompted Oceana to petition the government to upgrade the level of protection for the North Atlantic logg
5、erheads from “threatened” to “endangered”meaning they are in danger of disappearing without additional help. Which raises the obvious question: what else do these turtles want from us, anyway? It turns out, according to Griffin, that while we have done a good job of protecting the turtles for the we
6、eks they spend on land (as egg-laying females, as eggs and as hatchlings), we have neglected the years spend in the ocean. “The threat is from commercial fishing,” says Griffin. Trawlers (which drag large nets through the water and along the ocean floor) and longline fishers (which can deploy thousa
7、nds of hooks on lines that can stretch for miles) take a heavy toll on turtles. Of course, like every other environmental issue today, this is playing out against the background of global warming and human interference with natural ecosystems. The narrow strips of beach on which the turtles lay thei
8、r eggs are being squeezed on one side by development and on the other by the threat of rising sea levels as the oceans warm. Ultimately we must get a handle on those issues as well, or a creature that outlived the dinosaurs (恐龙 ) will meet its end at the hands of humans, leaving our descendants to w
9、onder how creature so ugly could have won so much affection. Passage Two There are few more sobering online activities than entering data into college-tuition calculators and gasping as the Web spits back a six-figure sum. But economists say families about to go into debt to fund four years of party
10、ing, as well as studying, can console themselves with the knowledge that college is an investment that, unlike many bank stocks, should yield huge dividends. A 2008 study by two Harvard economists notes that the “labor-market premium to skill”or the amount college graduates earned thats greater than
11、 what high-school graduate earneddecreased for much of the 20th century, but has come back with a vengeance (报复性地 ) since the 1980s. In 2005, The typical full-time year-round U.S. worker with a four-year college degree earned $50,900, 62% more than the $31,500 earned by a worker with only a high-sch
12、ool diploma. Theres no question that going to college is a smart economic choice. But a look at the strange variations in tuition reveals that the choice about which college to attend doesnt come down merely to dollars and cents. Does going to Columbia University (tuition, room and board $49,260 in
13、2007-08) yield a 40% greater return than attending the University of Colorado at Boulder as an out-of-state student ($35,542)? Probably not. Does being an out-of-state student at the University of Colorado at Boulder yield twice the amount of income as being an in-state student ($17,380) there? Not
14、likely. No, in this consumerist age, most buyers arent evaluating college as an investment, but rather as a consumer productlike a car or clothes or a house. And with such purchases, price is only one of many crucial factors to consider. As with automobiles, consumers in todays college marketplace h
15、ave vast choices, and people search for the one that gives them the most comfort and satisfaction in line with their budgets. This accounts for the willingness of people to pay more for different types of experiences (such as attending a private liberal-arts college or going to an out-of-state publi
16、c school that has a great marine-biology program). And just as two auto purchasers might spend an equal amount of money on very different cars, college students (or, more accurately, their parents) often show a willingness to pay essentially the same price for vastly different products. So which is it? Is college an investment product like a stock or a consumer product like a car? In keeping with the automotive worlds hottest consumer trend, maybe its best to characterize it as a hybrid (混合动力汽车 ); an expensive consumer product that, over time, will pay rich dividends.
