2013届高考英语考前50天秘笈 考前14天.docVIP

英语：2013届高考生 考前50天秘笈 阅读理解（2） (限时20分钟) (A) Planking: a brief history The rules are simple: you must lie face down, palms(手掌)flat against your sides, with your feet together and pointing at the ground. Points are awarded for an original location and for the number of onlookers and participants involved. 1 Without a photo, you’re just a person lying down. This is planking, described variously as a global participatory art project, a “meaningless internet craze”. It began 14 years ago with a pair of bored kids. Gary Clarkson, then 15, and his friend Christian Langdon, 12, would perform the plank in public places, amusing one another and puzzling onlookers. 2 The game was a pointless way for the boys to pass the time. As Clarkson puts it, “It was just a really stupid, random thing to do. ” For its first 10 years planking spread very slowly, from Clarkson and Langdon to their friends at school and, after a while, on to other kids from the neighborhood. 3 Soon, they had a few thousand followers. Photographs of plankers came in from all over the world: American plankers on top of their televisions, British plankers in trees, and Europeans on country roads and steep riverbanks. Then things got really interesting. A few days later, a mass gathering of plankers attracted more than 100 people. The planking in the photos posted to Facebook became riskier and stranger. One brave airport worker performed the plank in the engine fan of a jet plane. 4 Some people have linked the practice to the 1995 video for the Radiohead song, “Just”. In the video, a man lies down on a busy London road and a crowd of strangers gather to try to understand and help him. He refuses to move, or to tell them why he’s lying there. He tells them—but not us, the viewers—and all we see is that now the entire crowd is lying down on the pavement as well. 5 “People generally think you’re mad, ”as creator Gary Clarkson puts it. “That’s sort of the point. ” A. You must, of course,