单选题
The English-speaking world does not look kindly on straw.
Grasping at straws, straw-man arguments, the last straws and the straws that
break so many camels' backs all demonstrate that. There is also a tale that
straw is the worst material from which to build a house, particularly if you are
a pig with a hungry wolf around. So the cards were stacked against Warren Brush
when local officials learned that he had several buildings made of straw bales
(大捆) on his land. They have tried to fine him. A lot. But the
case is still unresolved. The problem is that California's building codes make
no provision for the use of straw. And Mr. Brush has many defenders—among them
several university scientists and David Eisenberg, chairman of the United States
Green Building Council's code committee. They would like to see the prejudice
against straw houses eliminated, for straw is, in many ways, an ideal building
material. It is, for one thing, a great insulator. That keeps
down the heating bills in houses made from it. It is also a waste product that
would otherwise be burned, and is therefore cheap. And—very much to the point in
a place like California—it is earthquake-resistant. Last year a test conducted
at the University of Nevada showed that straw-bale constructions could withstand
twice the amount of ground motion recorded in the Northridge earthquake that hit
Los Angeles in 1994. California, of course, is already
thoroughly earthquake-proofed. But straw buildings might do well in quake-prone
places that are less wealthy. After a strong earthquake struck Pakistan in 2005,
Darcey Donovan, a structural engineer from Truckee, California, set up a
not-for-profit straw-bale-construction operation that has since built 17 houses
there. There are, as it were, other straws in the wind: a post
office in suburban Albuquerque, a Quaker school in Maryland, an office complex
in suburban Los Angeles and an urban-renewal project in Binghamton, New York,
have all been built from straw. Even California is having a rethink, and may
change its rules to accommodate straw-bale construction. As Mr. Eisenberg
observes, "the lesson of the Three Little Pigs isn't to avoid straw. It's that
you don't let a pig build your house."
单选题
By "the cards were stacked against Warren Brush," the author means that
Brush ______.
A. received punishment
B. made a breakthrough
C. might be highly praised
D. would be in trouble
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】第一段说英语世界对稻草很不友好。很多的习语都可以证明此论点，如“最后的稻草”。还有《三只小猪》这个故事说稻草是盖房的最差材料，尤其当你旁边有一匹饿狼的时候。所以，当地方官员了解到Warren Brush有几个用稻草建的房子时，情况对Warren Brush很不利。stack the cards against sb.的意思就是“对某人造成障碍，对某人不利”。