RC 1 - NOV 07

British Chef Heston Blumenthal's imaginative 'Hot and Iced Tea', is a
syrupy concoction that's prepared by putting a divider down the
middle of a glass, then filling one side with a hot tea and the other
with an iced version. Because of the viscous consistency of the
liquid,
when the divider is removed, the two halves keep separate long enough
for a lucky diner to sample a perfectly, and simultaneously, hot
and iced tea. When you sip Blumenthal's tea it makes no sense to argue
about whether it's really cold or really hot. You could, of course,
take care to sip only from the cold side, or only from the hot. But
the cup of tea is really both.
I think much of the world, the sciences, certainly the social and
behavioural sciences, look more like that cup of tea than we often let
on.
We typically assume, for example, that happiness and sadness are polar
opposites and, thus, mutually exclusive. But recent research on
emotion suggests that positive and negative effects should not be
thought of as existing on opposite sides of a continuum, and that, in
fact, feelings of happiness and sadness can co-occur. When
participants are surveyed immediately after watching certain films, or
graduating from college, they are found to feel both profoundly happy
and sad. Our emotional experience, it turns out, is a lot like a
viscous cup of tea: It can run hot and cold at the same time.
The same can be true of good and evil. Minor contextual nuance can
make all the difference. Consider John Rabe, the bald and
bespectacled German engineer, known as 'the living Buddha of Nanking'.
Rabe was the legendary head of the International Safety Zone
and was credited with having saved hundreds of thousands of Chinese
lives during a savage Japanese occupation. On the other side of
the cup, Rabe was simultaneously the leader of the Nazi party in the
same city. In 1938 he assured audiences that he supported the
German political system '100 percent'.
In its essence, this sort of anti-Manichaean perspective posits that
only one alternative does not always obtain. If you believe people are
always only good, or always only evil, if you think the cup is only
ever hot, or only ever cold, well then you're just wrong – you haven't
felt
the cup, and you have a terribly naïve understanding of nature. But as
long as your views are not that extreme, as long as you recognize
the possibility of both cold and hot, then in many cases you needn't
choose – it turns out they're both there.
As we all know, history is filled with very smart people who did
really stupid things, and with good people who acted horribly. Are we
altruistic or selfish? Smart or stupid? Good or evil? Like that hot
and iced tea, there is always a little of both – it just depends on
which side
you drink from.


51 Which of the following is closest to the examples mentioned in the passage?

1) Human nature is determined by both genes and environment.
2) A number of scientists are very superstitious in personal life.
3) A certain ruthless dictator is known to be a sensitive poet.
4) A professional thief often helps rescue stray animals


52

Choose a suitable title for the passage.


1) Opposites Attract
2) Neither Here nor There
3) Running Hot and Cold
4) Both – not Either

53

Why does the author introduce the 'Hot and Iced Tea' in the context of
the whole passage?

1) He uses it to show that opposites can be found in all areas of life.
2) He uses it to show that the idea of opposites existing
simultaneously is present even in the culinary arts.
3) He uses it to show that even the most mundane of items, such as
tea, can be unexpectedly complex.
4) He uses it as a metaphor to introduce his belief that opposites can
exist simultaneously.