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  3. Thumbs Up The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is riding high in the bestselling film charts and is also being repeated as a

Thumbs Up The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is riding high in the bestselling film charts and is also being repeated as a

admin2013-07-11  28
问题                              Thumbs Up
    The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is riding high in the bestselling film charts and is also being repeated as a series on the radio. But what about the hitchhiker’s guide to Earth? When did you last give a lift to a hitchhiker or see one? Or when, even, did you last set out on the open road, stick out your thumb and wonder how far you would get that night?
    When I was in my teens and 20s, hitchhiking was a main form of long-distance transport. The kindness or curiosity of strangers took me all over Europe, North America, Asia and southern Africa. Some of the lift-givers became friends, many provided hospitality en route. Not only did you find out much more about a country than when travelling by train or plane, but there was that element of excitement about where you would finish up that night. I’m sure I’ve blotted out the long, depressing waits in the rain, but I can still recall a couple of dozen particularly spectacular rides and drivers. Hitchhiking featured in great books and great songs. So what has happened to it?
While hitchhiking was clearly still alive and well in some parts of the world, the general feeling was that throughout much of the west it was doomed. Americans had various explanations as to why it was largely a thing of the past. But most blamed a fearful nation. Fed on a diet of crime news, people assumed that anyone on the open road without the money for even a bus ticket must present a danger. Is the same now true in Britain? Certainly no one who reads and believes the Daily Mail would be likely to open their car door to a stranger lest something dreadful befall them. But are the rest of us so wary both to hitch and to give a lift?
    In Poland in the’60s, the authorities introduced the Hitchhiker’s Booklet. Every hitchhiker who had it could write down how many kilometres they covered. The booklet contained coupons for drivers, so each time a driver picked up somebody, he or she received a coupon. At the end of the season, drivers who had picked up the most hikers were rewarded with various prizes. Everybody was hitchhiking then.
    Such an initiative would seem to fulfill many of the government’s current aims: it would increase respect by breaking down barriers between strangers, it would help fight global warming by cutting down on fuel consumption as hitchhikers would be using existing fuels and not flying, and it would improve educational standards by delivering instant lessons in geography, orienteering, history, politics and sociology. What is New Labour waiting for?
    A century before Douglas Adams wrote his Hitchhiker’s Guide, another adventure story writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, gave us, in El Dorado, what should be the hitchhiker’s motto: "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." What better time than a bank holiday weekend to put that into practice, either by putting it to the test or by helping someone who is trying to travel hopefully with their thumb outstretched.
What does the author think of hitchhiking?
选项 A、It is doomed to disappear.
B、It is popular in very few places in the world.
C、Because of a fear of lawsuits it has become uncommon.
D、Its practice in Poland is worth of imitation for Britain.
答案D
解析 本题考查作者观点。第三段首句提到，当搭便车仍在世界一些地方存在并流行时，在整个西方的很多地区它行将消亡。因此[A]不正确，作者只是认为它在西方国家有消亡的趋势。[B]错在very few，西方国家不是世界上的大多数。第三段中间分析了搭便车成为过去时的原因，即，英国和美国一样都是人心惶惶的国家，人们被大量地灌输犯罪新闻。这是人们对社会安全的不信任，并不是“担心惹官司"，排除[C]。第四段介绍了60年代波兰政府采用的“搭便车小册”计划。第五段接着指出，这样的新方案可以完成许多政府的现行目标，该段末句作者问到：新工党还等什么呢?可见，作者对波兰的做法持肯定态度，并呼吁英国政府予以借鉴，[D]是作者的观点。
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