The gift of being able to describe a face accurately is a rare one, as every experienced police
officer knows to his cost. As the Lancet put it recently, "When we try to describe faces precisely,
words fail us, and we resort to identikit (拼脸型图) procedures."
Yet, according to one authority on the subject, we can each probably recognize more than
1,000 faces, the majority of which differ in fine details. This, when one comes to think of it, is a
tremendous feat, though, curiously enough, relatively little attention has been devoted to the
fundamental problems of how and why we acquire this gift for recognizing and remembering faces.
Is it an inborn property of our brains, or an acquired one? As so often happens, the experts tend
to differ.
Thus, some argue that it is inborn, and that there are "special characteristics about the brain"s
ability to distinguish faces". In support of this, they note how much better we are at recognizing a
face after a single encounter than we are, for example, in recognizing an individual horse. On the
other hand, there are those, and they are probably in the majority, who claim that the gift is an
acquired one.
The arguments in favor of this latter view, it must be confessed, are impressive. It is a habit that
is acquired soon after birth. Watch, for instance, how a quite young baby recognizes his mother by
sight. Granted that his other senses help - the sound, his sense of smell, the distinctive way she
handles him. But of all these, sight is predominant. Formed at the very beginning of life, the ability
to recognize faces quickly becomes an established habit, and one that is, essential for daily living,
if not necessarily for survival. How essential and valuable it is we probably do not appreciate until
we encounter people who have been deprived of the faculty.
This unfortunate inability to recognize familiar faces is known to all, but such people can often
recognize individuals by their voices, their walking manners or their spectacles. With typical human
ingenuity, many of these unfortunate people overcome their handicap by recognizing other
characteristic features.
There are many destructive (破坏性的) forces when it comes to nature, which have
destroyed whole cities and killed many people. They"re really terrible, but they occur somewhat
often, and this is why you see so many charities these days which focus their efforts on helping
people who have been affected by natural disasters.
While the world is a very beautiful place to live in, there will always be parts of the world
where natural disasters happen more often than in other places, where properties and lives are
destroyed. Only the people who live in the country where tsunamis and earthquakes as well as
other disasters occur experience these, and we can only imagine the suffering that they go through.
For some people out there, the world is cruel, but they have no choice but to stay where they
are. A lot of the time people simply cannot afford to move away, as they might not be able to get a
job when they leave.
In 2004, there was a tsunami in the Indian Ocean. A tsunami is a large wave that towers hundreds
of feet into the air, and covers whole areas when it comes crashing down on to dry land. This particular
tsunami was caused by an earthquake that happened in the middle of the sea, shooting the water away
from the ground and towards dry land. This tsunami actually reached thirty meters in height, and was one
of the worst tidal waves the world has ever seen. Over 200,000 people were hurt in the disaster.
In 2005, we also saw a hurricane happened in the United States. This hurricane was known as
hurricane Katrina, and is perhaps the worst in the history of the world. It happened in 2005 and
destroyed millions of properties in the area. It also took the lives of nearly 2,000 American people.
It was known that for ten days, the wind swept through the area, meaning the most powerful country
in the world became helpless in their attempts to save the people who were affected by the hurricane.
Finally, in 2008 we saw yet another natural disaster. This time it was a cyclone (旋风), which is
similar to a hurricane but happens in a circular motion (圆周运动). This cyclone Nargis had been
one of the strongest to have ever occurred, reaching a death toll of nearly 150,000 people.
All of these were terrible disasters that were unavoidable.
Title: Forces of Nature
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