听力原文：M: It's so cold now, but this morning it was so hot and sunny. I wish there was a way! could always be wearing the most suitable clothes for the temperature.
W: I recently read that in ten years we'll be wearing clothes that change with the weather. So when it's cold, our clothes will warm up, and when it's hot, our clothes will cool off.
M: Oh, very funny! So we'll be wearing huge clothes with built-in air conditioners and heaters.
W: I'm being serious! Researchers have discovered a method of treating fibers with plastic crystals capable of storing and releasing heat as the temperature fluctuates. These treated fibers absorb more heat than untreated fibers. Researchers are still working with this, but soon this process will be widespread.
M: That's fascinating. I didn't know that fibers had the capability of storing heat. How does that work？
W: These fibers work with the heat by rearranging their structures. The treated fibers move back and forth between two solid shapes.
M: I don't understand. What kind of shapes do they change into？
W: When the weather gets warmer, the crystals take on cube shapes and absorb heat. When the weather gets cooler, the crystals become cooler and come back to their original structure.
M: That's truly unbelievable. You said that it'd be a decade before this type of clothes will be available, What a shame! I don't think I can wait that long.
(23)
A．He is indifferent.
B．He is doubtful.
C．He is disgusted.
D．He is alarmed.
I'm in Paris, and a strangely quiet Paris it is. Nothing is going nowhere. If they're not on strike here, they're stuck in a traffic jam. It took me two hours to go two miles yesterday evening. And this morning many of the taxis, too, have joined in, leaving me with no alternative but to start walking. And it' s bitterly cold!
The strikes are serious protests about serious issues, but I'm struck, as so often on these occasions, by something much more mundane. People are once again talking to people; strangers are going out of their way to befriend strangers, allies for a week or two in their shared frustration. Parisian motorists, even, normally the most competitive of individualists, have been seen leaving notes in their parked cars saying where they are going and when they expect to leave in case anymore wants a lift.
Remove the technology of modem life, it seems, and we often start to be nice to one another again. Technology can isolate us, for all its benefits. It started, I guess, with the chimney. Before there were chimneys, we all had to huddle together in one room Just to keep warm, master and maid, cowman and son of the house. Then some unknown genius came up with the idea of the chimney, and the social stratification of society increased dramatically as all withdrew into their own quarters. Central heating, which is, more truthfully, decentralized heating, made it worse, and now we have our walkmans, our microwaves, or, if we' re really trendy, the Internet and e-mail. You can get by, these days, without actually speaking to anyone at all. Just the odd grunt to show that you' re alive !
I liked the survey which asked teenagers how they laid a table for a meal. Did they put the knife on the fight and the fork on the left, or did they put them both together？ And 40 percent said one and 20 percent the other, but 40 percent didn't know! They had never sat down at a table together but had always, as they say, been grazers, helping themselves from the fridge and carrying the food off to their own comer to munch on their own.
If progress means that we don' t need to talk to each other anymore, then I'm getting worried. You can' t begin to love and befriend your neighbors if you never talk to them, and vice versa, they can't love you. It becomes a recipe for a world of solitaries. But most of us weren't destined to be hermits. People need people to be truly people, as the Parisians, in spite of all their frustrations, are discovering again this week. "Try walking instead" was my motto for this morning, but perhaps the motto for us all this festive month might be "Turn it off, whatever it is, and try talking instead!"
According to the author, the advent of modem technology may NOT______.
A．isolate us from the test of the society.
B．enable us to enjoy a much more convenient life.
C．leave people alone so that they may become truly people.
D．help people become grazers who are used to helping themselves from the fridge and carrying the food off to their own comer to munch on their own.
