Discoveries in science and technology are thought by “untaught minds” to come in blinding flashes or as the result of dramatic accidents. Sir Alexander Fleming did not, as legend would have it, look at the mold (霉) on a piece of cheese and get the idea for penicillin there and then. He experimented with antibacterial substances for nine years before he made his discovery. Inventions and innovations almost always come out of laborious trial and error. Innovation is like soccer; even the best players miss the goal and have their shots blocked much more frequently than score.
The point is that the palyers who score most are the ones who take the most shots at the goal–and so it goes with innovation in any field of activity. The prime difference between innovators and others is one of approach. Everybody gets ideas, but innovators work consciously on theirs, and they follow them through until they prove practicable or otherwise. What ordinary people see as fanciful abstractions, professional innovators see as solid possibilities.
“Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there’s no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done,” wrote Rudolph Flesch, a language authority. This accounts for our reaction to seemingly simple innovations like plastic garbage bags and suitcases on wheels that make life more convenient:” How come nobody thought of that before?”
The creative approach begins with the proposition that nothing is as it appears. Innovators will not accept that there is only one way to do anything. Faced with getting from A to B, the average person will automatically set out on the best-known and apparently simplest route. The innovator will search for alternate courses, which may prove easier in the long run and are bound to be more interesting and challenging even if they lead to dead ends.
Highly creative individuals really do march to a different drummer.
Directions:
(A) Title: ON MAKING FRIENDS.
(B) Time limit: 40 minutes
(C) Word limit: 120—150 words (not including the given opening sentence)
(D) Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: “As a human being, one can hardly do without a friend.”
(E) Your composition must be written clearly on the ANSWER SHEET.
OUTLINE:
(1) The need for friends
(2) True friendship
(3) My principle in making friends
On Making Friends
One hundred and thirteen million Americans have at least one bank-issued credit card. They give their owners automatic credit in stores, restaurants, and hotels, at home, across the country, and even abroad, and they make many banking services available as well. More and more of these credit cards can be read automatically, making it possible to withdraw or deposit money in scattered locations, whether or not the local branch bank is open. For many of us the“cashless society” is not on the horizon-it’s already here.
While computers offer these conveniences to consumers, they have many advantages for sellers too. Electronic cash registers can do much more than simply ring up sales. They can keep a wide range of records, including who sold what, when, and to whom. This information allows businessmen to keep track of their list of goods by showing which items are being sold and how fast they are moving. Decisions to reorder or return goods to suppliers can then be made. At the same time these computers record which hours are busiest and which employees are the most efficient, allowing personnel and staffing assignments to be made accordingly. And they also identify preferred customers for promotional campaigns. Computers are relied on by manufacturers for similar reasons. Computer-analyzed marketing reports can help to decide which products to emphasize now, which to develop for the future, and which to drop. Computers keep track of goods in stock, of raw materials on hand, and even of the production process itself.
Numerous other commercial enterprises, from theaters to magazine publishers, from gas and electric utilities to milk processors, bring better and more efficient services to consumers through the use of computers.
Emerging from the 1980 census is the picture of a nation developing more and more regional competition, as population growth in the Northeast and Midwest reaches a near standstill.
This development—and its strong implications for US politics and economy in years ahead—has enthroned the South as America’s most densely populated region for the first time in the history of the nation’s head counting.
Altogether, the US population rose in the 1970s by 23. 2 million people— “numerically the third-largest growth ever recorded in a single decade. Even so, that gain adds up to-only11.4 percent, lowest in American annual records except for the Depression years.
Americans have been migrating south and west in larger numbers since World War Ⅱ,and the pattern still prevails.
Three sun-belt states- Florida, Texas and California—together had nearly 10 million more people in 1980 than a decade earlier. Among large cities, San Diego moved from 14th to 8th and San Antonio from 15th to 10th—with Cleveland and Washington. DC, dropping out of the top 10.
Not all that shift can be attributed to the movement out of the snow belt, census officials say. Nonstop waves of immigrants’ played a role, too—and so did bigger crops of babies as yesterday’s “baby boom” generation reached its child-bearing years.
Moreover, demographers see the continuing shift south and west as joined by a related but newer phenomenon: More and more, Americans apparently are looking not just for places with more jobs but with fewer people, too. Some instances—
• Regionally, the Rocky Mountain states reported the most rapid growth rat—37.1 percent since 1970 in a vast area with only 5 percent’ of the US population.
• Among states, Nevada and Arizona grew fastest of a11: 63.5 and 53.1 percent respectively.Except for Florida and Texas, the top 10 in rate of growth is composed of Western states with 7.5 million people—about 9 per square mile.
The flight from overcrowdedness affects the migration from snow belt to more-bearable climates.
Nowhere do 1980 census statistics dramatize more the American search for spacious living than in the Far West. There, California added 3.7 million to its population in the 1970s, more than any other state.
In that decade, however, large numbers also migrated from California, mostly, to other parts of the West. Often they chose-and still are choosing—somewhat colder climates such as Oregon, Idaho and Alaska in order to escape smog, crime and other plagues of urbanization in the Golden State.
As a result, California’s growth rate dropped during the 1970s, to 18. 5 percent—little more than two thirds the 1960’s growth figure and considerably below that of other Western states.