Passage Two

Placing a human being behind the wheel of an automobile often has the same curious effect as cutting certain fibers in the brain. The result in either case is more primitive behavior. Hostile feelings are apt to be expressed in an aggressive way.
The same man who will step aside for a stranger at a doorway will, when behind the wheel, risk an accident trying to beat another motorist through an intersection. The importance of emotional factors in automobile accidents is gaining recognition. Doctors and other scientists have concluded that the highway death toll resembles a disease epidemic and should be investigated as such.

Dr Ross McFarland, Associate Professor of Industrial Hygiene at the Harvard University School of Public Health, said that accidents “now constitute a greater threat to the safety of large segments of the population than diseases do.”
Accidents are the leading cause of death between the ages of 1 and 35. About one third of all accidental deaths and one seventh of all accidental injuries are caused by motor vehicles.

Based on the present rate of vehicle registration, unless the accident rate is cut in half, one of every 10 persons in the country will be killed or injured in a traffic accident in the next 15 years.

Research to find the underlying causes of accidents and to develop ways to detect drivers who are apt to cause them is being conducted at universities and medical centers. Here are some of their findings so far.

A man drives as he lives. If he is often in trouble with collection agencies, the courts, and police, chances are he will have repeated automobile accidents. Accident repeaters usually are egocentric, exhibitionistic, resentful of authority, impulsive, and lacking in social responsibility. As a group, they can be classified as borderline psychopathic personalities, according to Dr. Mr Farland.

The suspicion, however, that accident repeaters could be detected in advance by screening out persons with more hostile impulses is false. A study at the University of Colorado showed that there were just as many overly hostile persons among those who had no accidents as among those with repeated accidents.

Psychologists currently are studying Denver high school pupils to test the validity of this concept. They are making psychological evaluations of the pupils to see whether subsequent driving records will bear out their thesis.

51. The author believes that, behind the wheel of an automobile, some people act ______.
[A] as though they were uncivilized
[B] as though their brain fibers needed cutting
[C] as though they wanted to repress (抑制) hostile feeling
[D] as though they should change their attitudes from hostility to amicability

52. Dr. MaFarland emphasizes the great menace of accidents by comparing it to ______.
[A] hostile attitudes
[B] psychopathic behavior
[C] an epidemic
[D] antisocial behavior

53. Which of the following statement is true, according to the article?
[A] The accident rate will be reduced in the next few years.
[B] Motor vehicle registration will cause an increase in accidents in the future.
[C] Unless the accident is decreased, ten per cent of the American population.
will be killed or injured in motor accidents in the next 15 years.
[D] There is no hope that the accident rate will decrease during the next 15 years.

54. According to the article, studies at leading universities have shown that
accident repeaters ______.
[A] are in trouble with collection agencies
[B] cannot be discovered on the basis of generally hostile attitudes.  [C] drive entirely differently from the way they usually live.
[D] can be detected in advance

55. According to Dr. McFarland, accident repeaters are ______.
[A] criminally insane
[B] neurotic
[C] shy
[D] borderline psychopathic cases

Passage Three

Twenty years ago I knew a man called Jiggins, who had the Health Habit. He used to take a hot bath every morning. He said it opened his pores. After it he took a cold shower. He said it closed the pores. He got so skilled that he could open and shut his pores when he wanted to. Jiggins used to stand and breathe at an open window for half an hour before dressing. He said it expanded his lungs.

After he had got his vest on, Jiggins used to do exercises. He did them forwards, backwards, and bottom-side up. He spent all his time at this kind of thing. In his spare time at the office, he used to lie on his stomach on the floor and see if he could lift himself up with his knuckles. If he could, then he tried some other way until he found one that he couldn't do. Then he would spend the rest of his lunch hour on his stomach, perfectly happy.

In the evenings in his room he used to lift iron bars and cannon balls, heavy dumbbells, and haul himself up to the ceiling with his teeth. You could hear the noise half a mile away. He liked it.

He spent half the night swinging himself around his room. he said it made his brain clear. When he got his brain perfectly clear, he went to bed and slept. As soon as he woke, he began clearing it again.

Jiggins is dead. He was, of course, a pioneer, but the fact that he dumb-belled himself to death at an early age does not prevent a whole generation of young men from following in his path.
They are ridden by the Health Mania.
They make themselves a nuisance.

They get up at impossible hours. They go out in silly little track suits and run the Marathon before breakfast. They chase around barefoot to get the dew on their feet. They hunt for unpolluted air. They bother about fibre and unsaturated (未饱和的) fats. They won't eat some things because they have too much of these, and they won't eat others because they haven't any. They prefer bran and ginseng and peanuts to cheesecake and buttered crumpets. They won't drink water out of a tap. They won't eat sardines out of a can. They won't drink milk out of a glass. They are afraid of alcohol in any shape . Yes, sir, afraid.

“Cowards”.

And after all their fuss they eventually catch some simple old-fashioned illness and die like anybody else.

Now people of this sort have no chance of reaching any great age. They are on the wrong track.

Listen. Do you want to live to be really old, to enjoy a grand, green, exuberant, boastful old age and to make yourself a nuisance to your whole neighborhood with your reminiscences?

Then cut out all this nonsense. Cut it out. Get up in the morning at a sensible hour. The time to get up is when you have to, not before. If your office opens at eleven, get up at ten-thirty. Take your chance on unpollutted air. There isn't any such thing, anyway. If your work begins at seven in the morning, get up at ten minutes to, but don't be liar enough to say you like it, it isn't exhilarating, and you know it.
Also, stop all the cold bath business. You never did it when you were a child. Don't be a fool now. If you must take a bath (you don't really need to), take it warm, the pleasure of getting out of bed and creeping into a hot bath beats a cold plunge to death. In any case, stop talking about your bath and your shower, as if you were the only person who ever washed.

So much for that point.

Now take the question of food.

Eat what you want. Eat lots of it. Yes, eat too much of it. Eat everything that you like until you can't eat anymore. The only test is , can you pay for it? If you can't pay for it, don't eat it. And listen, don't worry whether your food contains bran, or wheatgerm, or iron.
And don't think that you can mix all these things up with your food . In any decent house-hold all that sort of stuff is washed out in the kitchen sink before the food is put on the table.

Now, just one final word about fresh air and exercise. Don't bother with either of them. Get your room full of good air, then shut the windows and keep it. It will keep for years. Anyway, don't keep using your lungs all the time. Let them rest. As for exercise, if you have to take it, take it and put up with it. But as long as you can pay other people to play baseball for you and run races and do gymnastics when you sit in the shade and smoke and watch them—great heavens, what more do you want?