Our brains work in complex and strange ways. There are some people who can calculate the day of the week for any given date in 40,000 years, but who cannot add two plus two. Others can perform complex classical piano pieces after hearing them once, but they cannot read or write.

    Dr. J. Langdon Down first described this condition in 1887. He called these people idiot savants. An idiot savant is a person who has significant mental injury, such as in autism (自闭症) or retardation. At the same time, the person also exhibits some extraordinary skills, which are unusual for most people. The skills of the savant may vary from being exceptionally gifted in music or in mathematics, or having a photographic memory. One of the first descriptions of a human who could calculate quickly was written in 1789 by Dr. Benjamin Rush, an American doctor. His patient, Thomas Fuller, was brought to Virginia as a slave in 1724. It took Thomas only 90 seconds to work out that a man who has lived 70 years, 17 days, and 12 hours has lived 2,210,500,800 seconds. Despite this ability, he died in 1790 without ever learning to read or write.

    Another idiot savant slave became famous as a pianist in the 1860s. Blind Tom had a vocabulary of only 100 words, but he played 5,000 musical pieces beautifully.

    In the excellent movie Rain Man, made in 1988 and available on video cassette, Dustin Hoffman plays an idiot savant who amazes his brother played by Tom Cruise, with his ability to perform complex calculations very rapidly.

    Today we more clearly recognize that the idiot savant is special because of brain impairment. Yet not all brain injury leads to savant skills. Some studies have shown that people who have purposeful interruption of the left side of the brain can develop idiot savant skills. However few people wish to participate in such experiments. There are many excellent reasons for not undergoing unnecessary experimentation on one’s brain. The term idiot savant is outdated and inappropriate. Virtually all savants have a high degree of intelligence and are thus not idiots.

全球气候变化会引起地理环境的变化。据此完成下列小题。

阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，从每小题所给的A、B、C三个选项中选出最佳选项。

    One day Eric was traveling on horseback. At noon, he tied his horse to a 1. Afew minutes later, Paul came along and tied his horse to the same tree.

   “My horse is wild,” said Eric. “Please tie your horse to another tree, 2 my horse will kill yours.”

   “No way!” Paul said, “I shall tie my horse as I like!”He tied up his horse and had his 3 nearby. After a moment they heard a terrible noise. The two horses were 4. They ran up to them, but it was too 5. Paul's horse was killed. “See what your horse has done! You'll have to 6 it,”shouted Paul. And he brought Eric before Mr. Know.

    Mr. Know asked Eric some questions. But Eric said 7. At last Mr. Know said, “This man cannot speak.”

  “He can!” Paul said 8. “He talked to me when I met him.”

  “Are you 9?”asked Mr. Know. “What did he say?”

  “He told me not to tie my horse to the same tree because his horse was wild and would kill my horse.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Know. “So he 10 you. Then can you expect to get money from him?” Paul had to leave silently.

-         film do you like better, Lost in Thailand or Life of Pi?

- Lost in Thailand.