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Questions 1-3:This book may not change your life. But if you have a tendency to be messy and have already broken your new year resolutions to be neater in future, it will certainly make you feel better about your natural inclinations. Untidiness, hoarding, procrastination and improvisation are not bad habits, the authors argue, but often more sensible than meticulous planning, storage and purging of possessions.That is because the tidiness lobby counts the benefits of neatness, but not its costs. A rough storage system (important papers close to the keyboard, the rest distributed in loosely related piles on every flat surface) takes very little time to manage. Filing every bit of paper in a precise category, with colour-coded index tabs and a neat system of cross-referencing, will certainly take longer. And by the end, it may not save any time. Your reviewer's office is easily the most untidy in The Economist (not entirely his own work, it should be said, thanks to the heroic efforts of his even untidier office-mate). But when it comes to managing information, there seems to be no discernible difference in the end result.The authors of this book trawl the furthest reaches of psychology, management studies, biology and physics to show why a bit of disorder is good for you. Chiefly, it creates much more room for coincidence and serendipity. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin because he was notoriously untidy, and didn't clean a Petri dish, thus allowing fungal spores to get to work on bacteria. He remarked wryly on visiting a colleague's spotless lab: “no danger of mould here”.It can also help make sense of things. Hearing depends on random movement of molecules: when they coincide with sounds from outside, they are strong enough to stimulate the inner ear. A bit of background noise on the phone enables our ears to filter out echoes. A slightly mushyphotograph can be easier to understand. Music and art depend on mess.Procrastination makes sense too. America's Marine Corps, the authors repeat (several times), never makes detailed plans in advance. Leaving important things to the last minute reduces the risk of wasting time on things that may ultimately prove not important at all.The authors are witheringly contemptuous of the bogus equation of tidiness and morality—for example in corporate “clean desk” policies. Disorder and creativity are so closely linked that any employer who penalizes the first sacrifices the second, they argue. America's professional organizers, a thriving and lucrative cult of tidiness coaches, are merchants of guilt, not productivity boosters.It's all fine, up to a point. But the book has two weaknesses. One is that it overstates the case. The case for tidiness in some environments—surgery, a dinner table or income tax returns—is really overwhelming. The other is that the book is a bit repetitive and disorganized.Even readers who love mess in their own lives don't necessarily like it in others.1. Paraphrase the sentence “the tidiness lobby counts the benefits of neatness, but not its costs”. (Para. 2)2. Why did the authors of the book cite the example of Alexander Fleming in the third paragraph?3. What is the “equation of tidiness and morality”? (Para. 6) Why are the authors of the book “contemptuous of” it?Questions 4-6:"We changed South Korean politics and the media market, but I'm too shy to say that,” says Oh Yeon Ho before he can catch his own irony. But Mr. Oh, the founder and boss of Ohmy News, a sort of online newspaper, has earned the right to boast, because Ohmy is the world'smost successful example to date of “citizen journalism” in action. Ohmy's website currently gets an average of 700,000 visitors and 2m page views a day,which puts it in the same league as a large newspaper. But Ohmy has no reporters on its staff at all. Instead, it relies on amateurs—“citizens”, as Mr. Oh prefers to call them—to contribute the articles, which are then edited by Mr Oh, a former magazine journalist, and a few colleagues. Mr.Oh likes to think of Ohmy as a “playground” for South Korean hobbyists, where “adults” set certain rules and thus give the site credibility. The articles tend to be good, because “in South Korea we have good people power,” says Mr. Oh. “They are highly educated and eager to change society.” Ohmy also has built-in feedback and rating systems so that the best articles rise to the top.One of Ohmy's biggest innovations is economic. The site has a “tipjar” system that invites readers to reward good work with small donations. All they have to do is click a little tip-jar button to have theirmobile-phone or credit-card account debited. One particularly good article produced the equivalent of $30,000 in just five days. Ohmy's own economics also appear to be working well. Even though Mr. Oh originally intended the company to be not-for-profit—“my aim was not to earn money but to create a new kind of journalism,” he says—he turned it into a for-profit firm in 2003. He will not divulge how much profit he makes, but the advertising and syndication revenues (from other internet sites that run Ohmy's articles) seem to keep him going nicely.Ohmy's success has already had wide ramifications in South Korea's media industry. Although it has not killed off any South Korean newspapers or broadcasters, it has forced all of them to adjust by becoming more like Ohmy. Several newspaper sites, for instance, now have feedback and conversation panes at the bottom of online articles and are trying to interact more with readers. Mr. Oh, who left his careerin the mainstream media because he was sick of what he saw as their conservative bias, also reckons that Ohmy has helped to improve the balance. If the media scales used to be tilted 80% in favor of conservatives, he thinks, Ohmy has reduced that to 60%; he wants to make it 50%.Does South Korea, a country of early adopters in many ways, foreshadow the future everywhere? “The reality is that you can't point to many successes; Ohmy News is the only one,” says Dan Gillmor, a journalist who quit his job at the San Jose Mercury News, a newspaper widely read in Silicon Valley, in order to found Grassroots Media, an experiment in American citizen journalism. After a year or so of looking in vain for a good business model, Mr Gillmor has put the idea on ice.But others are much more optimistic. Last year Al Gore, a former American vice-president, and Joel Hyatt, his friend and business partner, set up Current TV, a cable-television channel that encourages its viewers to contribute their own video stories. And they do. “Viewer-created content”—or “VC2”,as Current TV calls it—now accounts for 30% of the channel's airtime, and rising. Mr Hyatt, the chief executive, thinks it will eventually be half or more. To help people get started, Current TV has extensive online tutorials on storytelling techniques, camera equipment and so forth. And to organize the content that comes in, its website allows users to vote on the quality of each video clip. It is, in many ways, a pure meritocracy.When Current TV was launched, the traditional cable channels “didn't get it” and sneered, Mr Hyatt recalls with glee. “What people didn't understand is that there are tens of thousands of people out there who can create something great for a few minutes.” For instance, a story by an American traveler who found himself in the Gaza Strip during Israel's pull-out was probably the best piece of video reporting on the subjectthat ran on television at the time. During Hurricane Katrina, some residents of New Orleans made excellent contributions by taking cameras onto their home-made boats and making videos of their own neighborhoods.For society as a whole, all this new talent—from bloggers, who are “journal-ists” in the classic sense, to citizen journalists—should amount to something overwhelmingly positive. “The more journalism the better;I don't care who does it,” says Dan Gillmor. That is not, however, how professional journalists, ostensibly speaking on behalf of the public, usually choose to see it. Their mood is gloomy.4. What is Ohmy? How did it “change South Korean media market”?5. How does the Current TV differentiate itself from traditional TV channels? Give some examples.6. Explain the last sentence of the article “their mood is gloomy”. Questions 7-10:“You don't have to wait for government to move... the really fantastic thing about Fairtrade is that you can go shopping!” So said a representative of the Fairtrade movement in a British newspaper this year. Similarly Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University, argues that “when you choose organics, you are voting for a planet with fewer pesticides, richer soil and cleaner water supplies.”The idea that shopping is the new politics is certainly seductive. Never mind the ballot box: vote with your supermarket trolley instead. Elections occur relatively rarely, but you probably go shopping several times a month, providing yourself with lots of opportunities to express your opinions. If you are worried about the environment, you might buy organic food; if you want to help poor farmers, you can do your bit by buying Fairtrade products; or you can express a dislike of evil multinational companies and rampant globalization by buying only localproduce. And the best bit is that shopping, unlike voting, is fun; so you can do good and enjoy yourself at the same time.Sadly, it's not that easy. There are good reasons to doubt the claims made about three of the most popular varieties of “ethical” food: organic food, Fairtrade food and local food. People who want to make the world a better place cannot do so by shifting their shopping habits: transforming the planet requires duller disciplines, like politics.Organic food, which is grown without man-made pesticides and fertilizers, is generally assumed to be more environmentally friendly than conventional intensive farming, which is heavily reliant on chemical inputs. But it all depends what you mean by “environmentally friendly”. Farming is inherently bad for the environment: since humans took it up around 11,000 years ago, the result has been deforestation on a massive scale. But following the “green revolution” of the 1960s greater use of chemical fertilizer has tripled grain yields with very little increase in the area of land under cultivation. Organic methods, which rely on crop rotation, manure and compost in place of fertilizer, are far less intensive. So producing the world's current agricultural output organically would require several times as much land as is currently cultivated. There wouldn't be much room left for the rainforest.Fairtrade food is designed to raise poor farmers' incomes. It is sold at a higher price than ordinary food, with a subsidy passed back to the farmer. But prices of agricultural commodities are low because of overproduction. By propping up the price, the Fairtrade system encourages farmers to produce more of these commodities rather than diversifying into other crops and so depresses prices—thus achieving, for most farmers, exactly the opposite of what the initiative is intended to do. And since only a small fraction of the mark-up on Fairtrade foods actually goes to the farmer—most goes to the retailer—the system gives richconsumers an inflated impression of their largesse and makes alleviating poverty seem too easy.Surely the case for local food, produced as close as possible to the consumer in order to minimize “food miles” and, by extension, carbon emissions, is clear? Surprisingly, it is not. A study of Britain's food system found that nearly half of food-vehicle miles (i.e., miles traveled by vehicles carrying food) were driven by cars going to and from the shops. Most people live closer to a supermarket than a farmer's market, so more local food could mean more food-vehicle miles. Moving food around in big, carefully packed lorries, as supermarkets do, may in fact be the most efficient way to transport the stuff.What's more, once the energy used in production as well as transport is taken into account, local food may turn out to be even less green. Producing lamb in New Zealand and shipping it to Britain uses less energy than producing British lamb, because farming in New Zealand is less energy-intensive. And the local-food movement's aims, of course, contradict those of the Fairtrade movement, by discouraging rich country consumers from buying poor-country produce. But since the local-food movement looks suspiciously like old-fashioned protectionism masquerading as concern for the environment, helping poor countries is presumably not the point.The best thing about the spread of the ethical-food movement is that it offers grounds for hope. It sends a signal that there is an enormous appetite for change and widespread frustration that governments are not doing enough to preserve the environment, reform world trade or encourage development. Which suggests that, if politicians put these options on the political menu, people might support them. The idea of changing the world by voting with your trolley may be beguiling. But if consumers really want to make a difference, it is at the ballot box thatthey need to vote.7. Paraphrase the sentence “Never mind the ballot box: vote with your supermarket trolley instead”. ( Para. 2)8. What is “organic food”? Why does the author believe that it may lead to the problem that “there wouldn’t be much room left for the rainforest”?9. How is “Fairtrade food” designed to help poor farmers? According to the author, can this goal be achieved?10. How is the “local food” generally believed to help protect the environment? Why does the author say that “local food may turn out to be even less green”? (Para. 7)。