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温州一位胡女士成为第一个因过马路时使用智能手机而被罚款10元人民币的人。她被判违反了年初提出的禁止“影响其他车辆或行人的活动”的市政条例。
测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
teeming [ˈtiːmɪŋ] adj.丰富的
triumphant [traɪˈʌmfənt] adj.胜利的
physiognomy [ˌfɪziˈɒnəmi] n.面相
serene [səˈriːn] adj.安详
阅读马上开始，建议您计算一下阅读整篇文章所用的时间，对照下方的参考值就可以评估出您的英文阅读水平。
Jonathan Derbyshire
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In the 1930s, the German cultural critic Walter Benjamin wrote his now celebrated study of “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire”. One of the central figures in Benjamin’s analysis of the French capital in the 1850s as it was portrayed in the prose poems of Charles Baudelaire was the flâneur, the “solitary and thoughtful stroller”.
The street, Benjamin wrote, “becomes a dwelling for the flâneur”, who is depicted as a kind of late-Romantic hero, not alienated by the teeming urban spectacle, but absorbed in it. “In the flâneur,” said Benjamin, “the joy of watching is triumphant”.
Around the time that Baudelaire was composing his poetic physiognomy of Paris, which was also a hymn to the “eternal beauty and astonishing harmony of life in the capital cities”, Marx and Engels were writing critically of another kind of pedestrian, the “narrow-minded city animal” shut up in his “private interest”, a bit like today’s smartphone-toting citizen.
If a latter-day “painter of modern life” were to set about turning the contemporary cityscape into poetry, which would be his or her protagonist? I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be some 21st-century descendant of the flâneur.
A better model, I think, is the figure known in 19th-century French literature as the badaud, the “gaper” or “gawker”, who is so intoxicated by his surroundings that he “forgets himself”, as Benjamin put it — with one crucial difference: today’s gapers and gawkers are mesmerised not by those subtle changes in the urban fabric that occur as you pass from one neighbourhood to the next, but by their smartphones.
Portmanteau words for this type have already been coined. There’s the “phubber”, the person who snubs physical contact in favour of his or her phone. And there’s the “smombie”, the smartphone zombie so fascinated by their device that they are oblivious to the world around them.
The smombie has become one of the principal obstacles to serene passage around the modern city. So much so that “smombism” can surely now be added to the sorry catalogue of urban blight.
For the past three years, I have been cycling to the Financial Times’s offices by the river Thames from my home in south London. I have yet to come close to a collision with a car, a bus or a truck in that time. But I have lost count of the occasions on which I’ve narrowly avoided mowing down a pedestrian who has stepped off the pavement into the street distracted by a device in their hands.
Shouting a warning at them or ringing your bell is pointless, as they are almost invariably wearing headphones. Only a fleeting glimpse of my luminous jacket as I swerve out of the way alerts them to the fact that they have just had a brush with disaster.
Nor is it just when crossing the street that the smombies put themselves (not to mention other pedestrians) in danger. Last summer, a water feature at the More London development on the south bank of the Thames had to be closed after a series of smombie-related accidents. And in 2016, a 20-ft sculpture of a pair of clasped hands erected outside Salisbury Cathedral had to be moved. People were “walking through [it] texting”, said the artist Sophie Ryder. Some had “bumped their heads”.
So what can be done to combat this scourge? Britain’s Highway Code contains 35 “rules for pedestrians”. These include helpful advice such as not grabbing hold of passing vehicles and the correct etiquette to observe at equestrian crossings. However, they make no mention of the menace of being in control of a smartphone while walking along the road. Urgent action is evidently required.
Lawmakers in the UK could do worse than look to China, where a crackdown on smombism has begun in the city of Wenzhou. In January, a woman identified only as Ms Hu became the first person to be fined Rmb10 (a little over £1) for using her smartphone while crossing the road. She was found guilty of violating municipal regulations brought in at the beginning of the year that ban “activities affecting other vehicles or pedestrians”.
Other Chinese cities have also moved to tackle the problem. In Xian, the authorities have introduced a special lane on the pavement on one major road. Painted red, green and blue, with pictures of mobile phones instead of more conventional road markings, the lane is reserved for those who insist on texting while walking.
Liberal westerners may feel uncomfortable about the element of public shaming involved in such measures, but the Chinese are not alone in believing that pedestrians need to be compelled to change their behaviour, not merely nudged.
In 2017, the city of Honolulu in Hawaii introduced a “distracted walking law”. Using a smartphone or tablet while crossing the street can land you with a fine of $15. Penalties for repeat offenders range from $75 to $99.
Proposals for similar measures in Toronto were rejected in the same year, however. A police officer told the Canadian state broadcaster: “We shouldn’t need a law for common sense.”
请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：
A.A person who cries, with mouth wide open.
B.A person who laughs, with mouth wide open.
C.A person who stares, typically in amazement or wonder.
D.A person who runs, usually in joy.
答案 (1)
A.The person who subs phone in favour of his or her physical contacts.
B.The person who subs phone in favour of his or her own interests.
C.The person who snubs physical contact in favour of his or her phone.
D.The person who snubs other people who use phones,
答案 (2)
A.Smartphone zombie
B.Smartphone baby
C.Smart zombie
D.Smart baby
答案 (3)
(1) 答案：C A person who stares, typically in amazement or wonder.解释：A better model, I think, is the figure known in 19th-century French literature as the badaud, the “gaper” or “gawker”, who is so intoxicated by his surroundings that he “forgets himself”.
(2) 答案：C The person who snubs physical contact in favour of his or her phone.解释：There’s the “phubber”, the person who snubs physical contact in favour of his or her phone.
(3) 答案：A Smartphone zombie解释：And there’s the “smombie”, the smartphone zombie so fascinated by their device that they are oblivious to the world around them.