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Asimov had both an extraordinary imagination that gave him the ability to explore future worlds and an amazing mind with which he searched for explanations of everything, in the present and the past.
Asimov's life began in Russia, where he was born on 2 January, 1920. It ended in New York on 6 April, 1992, when he died as a result of an HIV infection that he had got from a blood transfusion nine years earlier.
When Asimov was three, he moved with his parents and his one-year-old sister to New York City. There his parents bought a candy store which they ran for the next 40 or so years. At the age of nine, when his mother was pregnant with her third child, Asimov started working part-time in the store. He helped out through his school and university years until 1942, a year after he had gained a master's degree in chemistry. In 1942 he joined the staff of the Philadelphia Navy Yard as a junior chemist and worked there for three years. In 1948 he got his PhD in chemistry. The next year he became a biochemistry teacher at Boston University School of Medicine. In 1958 he gave up teaching to become a full-time writer.
It was when Asimov was eleven years old that his talent for writing became obvious. He had told a friend two chapters of a story he had written. The friend thought he was retelling a story from a book. This really surprised Asimov and from that moment, he started to take himself seriously as a writer. Asimov began having stories published in science fiction magazines in 1939. In 1950 he published his first novel and in 1953 his first science book.
Throughout his life, Asimov received many awards, both for his science fiction books and his science books. Among his most famous works of science fiction, one for which he won an award was the Foundation trilogy (1951-1953), three novels about the death and rebirth of a great empire in a galaxy of the future. It was loosely based on the fall of the Roman Empire but was about the future. These books are famous because Asimov invented a theoretical framework which was designed to show how ideas and thinking may develop in the future. He is also well known for his collection of short stories, I, Robot (1950), in which he developed a set of three \beings or allow them to be injured. Some of his ideas about robots later influenced other writers and even scientists researching into artificial intelligence.
Asimov was married twice. He married his first wife in 1942 and had a son and a daughter. Their marriage lasted 31 years. Soon after his divorce in 1973, Asimov married again but he had no children with his second wife.
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选修7 Unit 3 Under the sea - Reading OLD TOM THE KILLER WHALE
I was 16 when I began work in June 1902 at the whaling station. I had heard of the killers that every year helped whalers catch huge whales. I thought, at the time, that this was just a story but then I witnessed it with my own eyes many times.
On the afternoon I arrived at the station, as I was I sorting out my' accommodation, I heard a loud noise coming from the bay. We ran down to the shore in time to see an enormous animal opposite us throwing itself out of the water and then crashing down again. It was black and white and fish-shaped. But I knew it wasn't a fish.
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Another whaler yelled out, \announced there was about to be a whale hunt.
\already heard that George didn't like being kept waiting, so even though I didn't have the right clothes on, I raced after him.
Without pausing we jumped into the boat with the other whalers and headed out into the bay. I looked down into the water and could see Old Tom swimming by the boat, showing us the way. A few minutes later, there was no Tom, so George started beating the water with his oar and there was Tom, circling back to the boat, leading us to the hunt again.
Using a telescope we could see that something was happening. As we drew closer, I could see a whale being attacked by a pack of about six other killers. \
\it's teamwork - the killers over there are throwing themselves on top of the whale's blow-hole to stop it breathing. And those others are stopping it diving or fleeing out to sea,\that moment, the most extraordinary thing happened. The killers started racing between our boat and the whale just like a pack of excited dogs.
Then the harpoon was ready and the man in the bow of the boat aimed it at the whale. He let it go and the harpoon hit the spot. Being badly wounded, the whale soon died. Within a moment or two, its body was dragged swiftly by the killers down into the depths of the sea. The men started turning the boat around to go home. \
\no,\Jack replied. \return tomorrow to bring in the body. It
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won't float up to the surface for around 24 hours.\
the others are having a good feed on its lips and tongue,\ Although Old Tom and the other killers were fierce hunters, they, never harmed or attacked people. In fact, they protected them. There was one day when we were out in the bay during a hunt and James was washed off the boat.
\ The sea was rough that day and it was difficult to handle the boat. The waves were carrying James further and further away from us. From James's face, I could see he was terrified of being abandoned by us. Then suddenly I saw a shark.
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It took over half an hour to get the boat back to James, and when we approached him, I saw James being firmly held up in the water by Old Tom. I couldn't believe my eyes.
There were shouts of \done, Old Tom\and 'Thank God\as we pulled James back into the boat. And then Old Tom was off and back to the hunt where the other killers were still attacking the whale.
A NEW DIMENSION OF LIFE 19th January
I'm sitting in the warm night air with a cold drink in my hand and reflecting on the day – a day of pure magic! I went snorkelling on the reef offshore this morning and it was the most fantastic thing I have ever done. Seeing such extraordinary beauty, I think every cell in my body woke up. It was like discovering a whole new dimension of life.
The first thing I became aware of was all the vivid colours surrounding me - purples, reds, oranges, yellows, blues and greens. The corals were fantastic - they were shaped like fans, plates, brains, lace, mushrooms, the branches of trees and the horns of deer. And all kinds of small, neat and elegant fish were swimming in and around the corals.
The fish didn't seem to mind me swimming among them. I especially loved the little orange and white fish that hid in the waving long thin seaweed. And I also loved the small fish that clean the bodies of larger fish - I even saw them get inside their mouths and clean their teeth! It seemed there was a surprise waiting for
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me around every corner as I explored small caves, shelves and narrow passages with my underwater flashlight: the yellow and green parrotfish was hanging upside down, and sucking tiny plants off the coral with its hard bird-like mouth; a yellow-spotted red sea-slug was sliding by a blue sea-star; a large wise-looking turtle was passing so close to me that I could have touched it.
There were other creatures that I didn't want to get too close to - an eel with its strong sharp teeth, with only its head showing from a hole, watching for a tasty fish (or my tasty toe!); and the giant clam halt buried in some coral waiting for something to swim in between its thick green lips. Then there were two grey reef sharks, each about one and a half metres long, which suddenly appeared from behind some coral. I told myself they weren't dangerous but that didn't stop me from feeling scared to death for a moment!
The water was quite shallow but where the reef ended, there was a steep drop to the sandy ocean floor. It marked a boundary and I thought I was very brave when I swam over the edge of the reef and hung there looking down into the depths of the ocean. My heart was beating wildly - I felt very exposed in such deep clear water.
What a wonderful, limitless world it was down there! And what a tiny spot I was in this enormous world!
选修7 Unit 4 Sharing- Reading A LETTER HOME Dear Rosemary,
Thanks for your letter, which took a fortnight to arrive. It was wonderful to hear from you. I know you're dying to hear all about my life here, so I've included some photos which will help you picture the places I talk about.
You asked about my high school. Well, it's a bush school – the classrooms are made of bamboo and the roofs of grass. It takes me only a few minutes to walk to school down a muddy track. When I reach the school grounds there are lots of \long way, sometimes up to two hours, to get to school.
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There's no electricity or water and even no textbooks either! l'm still trying to adapt to these conditions. However, one thing is for sure, I've become more imaginative in my teaching. Science is my most challenging subject as my students have no concept of
doing experiments. In fact there is no equipment, and if I need water I have to carry it from my house in a bucket! The other day I was showing the boys the weekly chemistry experiment when, before I knew it, the mixture was bubbling over everywhere! The boys who had never come across anything like this before started jumping out of the windows. Sometimes I wonder how relevant chemistry is to these students, most of whom will be going back to their villages after Year 8 anyway. To be honest, I doubt whether I'm making any difference to these boys' lives at all.
You asked whether I'm getting to know any local people. Well, that's actually quite difficult as I don't speak much of the local English dialect yet. But last weekend another teacher, Jenny, and 1 did visit a village which is the home of one of the boys, Tombe. It was my first visit to a remote village. We walked for two and a half hours to get there - first up a mountain to a ridge from where we had fantastic views and then down a steep path to the valley below. When we arrived at the village, Tombe's mother, Kiak, who had been pulling weeds in her garden, started crying \of Tombe's.
Tombe's father, Mukap, led us to his house, a low bamboo hut with grass sticking out of the roof - this shows it is a man's house. The huts were round, not rectangular like the school buildings.
There were no windows and the doorway was just big enough to get through. The hut was dark inside so it took time for our eyes to adjust. Fresh grass had been laid on the floor and there was a newly made platform for Jenny and me to sleep on. Usually Kiak would sleep in her own hut, but that night she was going to share the platform with us. Mukap and Tombe were to sleep on small beds in another part of the hut. There was a fireplace in the centre of the hut near the doorway. The only possessions I could see were one broom, a few tin plates and cups and a couple of jars.
Outside Mukap was building a fire. Once the fire was going, he laid stones on it. When hot, he placed them in an empty oil drum with kau kau (sweet potato), corn
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