We live a life surrounded by robots. Nearly every robot has been made in some way1 up to a certain level or temperature. The machine will wait for “feedback” about the water2or temperature before it begins the washing cycle. In this way, a washing machine has been patterned after humans. We depend on 3from our five senses to find out what is happening around us and then make decisions about our actions.
Of course, some machines perform functions like humans, but much 4 than we do, such as calculators. A pocket calculator works faster than a human, never makes mistakes, and doesn’t get 5or bored.
Other robots are very similar to humans in their ability6 new things. In factories, robots can learn to do many different tasks, as they are shown by a human operator. For example, in a car factory, a person will guide a robot's “arm” and “ 7” through the steps of the new job. The robot's electronic “brain” will 8the information away, memorizing the steps so the next time it9can repeat the movements without a human operator. When the robot must be moved to a new job, its memory is 10so it is ready to learn the next job. Of course, at any time if there is anything 11in the process, different from the original task, the robot cannot 12 with it. It will signal for an engineer to come for repairs.
Some robots are considered very intelligent because they have more human abilities than others, such as “seeing” 13 cameras for eyes or “feeling” with metal fingers that can14shapes and even temperatures. However, no machine has 15been able to copy the complexity of the simplest, most common person.
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你准备参加一个题为“是否应该让机器人干家务”的讨论会，讨论会上你将做一个书面发言。请认真阅读下面短文，然后完成以下任务：
1.概括短文内容要点，该部分的字数大约60—80；
2.就“是否应该让机器人干家务”这一主题谈谈你的看法，至少包含以下的内容要点，该部分的字数大约60—80；
1）.机器人是社会科技进步的表现。
2）.让机器人干家务可以减轻家人的负担。高智能机器人还可以照顾家人。
3）.但使用、维修的成本高；机器人的行动缓慢，不能与人类真正沟通。
4）.机器人的价格昂贵，一般人家负担不起。真正普及还需一段较长的时间。
As science developed rapidly in the direction of technology, it supplies an a better and ore cofortable life. en will be working shorter and shorter hours, while housewives will also be able to have ore free tie. Can you iagine doing housework without a housewife? Scientists believe this will be turned into realities in not very long tie, and perhaps during your lifetie house-robots will take the place of housewives.
When I discussed this kind of achine with housewives, soe 90 percent of the replied iediately, “How soon can I buy one?” The other 10 percent said, “I would be terrified to see it oving about y house.” But when I explained to the that it could be turned off or stopped, they quickly realized that it is a useful object.
In y own hoe we have found that the washing-up achine is regarded as a good hand in the roo. There's no greater pleasure than to go to bed in the evening and know that the washing-up is being done downstairs after we are asleep.
Soe failies would like to have their robot slaves doing all the downstairs housework after they were in bed at night, while others would have it done in the ornings. But this would be entirely a atter of choice.
Mark Twain has been called the inventor of the American novel.And he surely deserves additional praise：the man who popularized the clever literary attack on racism.
I say clever because antislavery fiction had been the important part of the literature in the years before the Civil War.H.B.Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is only the most famous example.These early stories dealt directly with slavery.With minor exceptions，Twain planted his attacks on slavery and prejudice into tales that were on the surface about something else entirely.He drew his readers into the argument by drawing them into the story.
Again and again，in the postwar years，Twain seemed forced to deal with the challenge of race.Consider the most controversial，at least today，of Twain's novels，Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.Only a few books have been kicked off the shelves as often as Huckleberry Finn，Twain's most widely read tale.Once upon a time，people hated the book because it struck them as rude.Twain himself wrote that those who banned the book considered the novel “trash and suitable only for the slums(贫民窟)．”More recently the book has been attacked because of the character Jim，the escaped slave，and many occurences of the word nigger.(The term Nigger Jim，for which the novel is often severely criticized，never appears in it.)
But the attacks were and are silly—and miss the point.The novel is strongly antislavery.Jim's search through the slave states for the family from whom he has been forcibly parted is heroic.As J．Chadwick has pointed out，the character of Jim was a first in American fiction—a recognition that the slave had two personalities，“the voice of survival within a white slave culture and the voice of the individual：Jim，the father and the man.”
There is much more.Twain's mystery novel Pudd'nhead Wilson stood as a challenge to the racial beliefs of even many of the liberals of his day.Written at a time when the accepted wisdom held Negroes to be inferior(低等的)to whites，especially in intelligence，Twain's tale centered in part around two babies switched at birth.A slave gave birth to her master's baby and，for fear that the child should be sold South，switched him for the master's baby by his wife.The slave's lightskinned child was taken to be white and grew up with both the attitudes and the education of the slaveholding class.The master's wife's baby was taken for black and grew up with the attitudes and intonations of the slave.
The point was difficult to miss：nurture(养育)，not nature，was the key to social status.The features of the black man that provided the stuff of prejudice—manner of speech，for example—were，to Twain，indicative of nothing other than the conditioning that slavery forced on its victims.
Twain's racial tone was not perfect.One is left uneasy，for example，by the lengthy passage in his autobiography(自传)about how much he loved what were called“nigger shows”in his youth—mostly with white men performing in blackface—and his delight in getting his mother to laugh at them.Yet there is no reason to think Twain saw the shows as representing reality.His frequent attacks on slavery and prejudice suggest his keen awareness that they did not.
Was Twain a racist？Asking the question in the 21st century is as wise as asking the same of Lincoln.If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the“wisdom”of the considered moral judgments of the present，we will find nothing but error.Lincoln，who believed the black man the inferior of the white，fought and won a war to free him.And Twain，raised in a slave state，briefly a soldier，and inventor of Jim，may have done more to anger the nation over racial injustice and awaken its collective conscience than any other novelist in the past century.
—I believe not， because he has important party to attend.
Kinsey French has taught children with Down syndrome(唐氏综合征) for the past three years. The teacher of 1education at the Christian Academy's Providence School, developed a(n) 2with her students in her first year. That was 3when it came to her wedding day, she invited the class to 4her wedding party as flower girls and ring bearers. "They were like a 5to me," Kinsey told WLKY about the students, 6from seven to eleven years old. "So I knew I couldn't have this important day7them, my lovely 'kids'."
Kinsey's now-husband, Josh, was 8too — in fact, knowing how much it would mean to her, he 9proposed (求婚) to her in front of the class. The wedding went10on the Internet after photographer Lang Thomas Leichhart 11on his Facebook photos of Kinsey in her wedding dress, 12by her students."The scene of their being together was so moving that I was brought to 13many times during the day," he told CNN. "You can tell how14she is to these kids."
And while the children loved 15their wedding responsibilities and posing for photos, they said that their 16of the night was the dancing. For Kinsey, it was making 17that would last a lifetime. "It was so exciting," she told WLKY. "It was18for Josh and me just to have them as a19of the day, and have them come and 20with us."
"Life is speeding up. Everyone is getting unwell." Picture this:You're rushing (finish) your homework on the computer. Your mobile phone rings. Suddenly the computer goes blank and you lose all your work. Now you have to stay up to get it (do). How can you feel calm and happy?
(invention) have speeded up our lives so much that they often leave us feeling stressed and tired. Why do you think people who live far away from (noise) cities often seem to be happier? Perhaps because they lead simple life.
One family in the UK went "back in time" to seelife was like without all the inventions we have today. The grandparents, with their daughter, and grandsons Benjamin, 10, and Thomas,7, (spend) nine weeks in a house dating back to 1940. They had no microwave, computer or mobile phones.
The grandmother, Molly, said, "It was hard (physical), but not mentally." She believed life was less materialistic."The more things you have, the more difficult life becomes," she said. The boys said they had less to fight over, their computer, for example. Benjamin also noticed that (he)grandmother had changed from being a trendy, beer-drinking granny to oneliked cooking things.
