单选题 Sometimes it's just hard to choose. You're in a restaurant and the waiter has his pen at the ready. As you hesitate, he gradually begins to take a close interest in the ceiling, his fingernails, then in your dining partner. Each dish on the menu becomes a blur as you roll your eyes up and down in a growing panic. Finally, you desperately opt for something that turns out to be what you hate.
It seems that we need devices to protect us from our hopelessness at deciding between 57 barely differentiated varieties of stuff-be they TV channels, gourmet coffee, downloadable ring tones, or perhaps, ultimately even interchangeable lovers. This thought is opposed to our government's philosophy, which suggests that greater choice over railways, electricity suppliers and education will make us happy. In my experience, they do anything but.
Perhaps the happiest people are those who do not have much choice and aren't confronted by the misery of endless choice. True, that misery may not be obvious to people who don't have a variety of luxuries. If you live in Madagascar, say, where average life expectancy is below 40 and they don't have digital TV or Starbucks, you might not be impressed by the anxiety and perpetual stress our decision-making paralysis causes.
Choice wasn't supposed to make people miserable. It was supposed to be the hallmark of self-determination that we so cherish in modem society. But it obviously isn't: ever more choice increases the feeling of missed opportunities, and this leads to self-blame when choices fail to meet expectations. What is to be done? A new book by an American social scientist, Barry Schwartz, called The Paradox of Choice, suggests that reducing choices can limit anxiety.
Schwartz offers a self-help guide to good decision-making that helps us to limit our choices to a manageable number, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices we make.
But once you realize that your Schwartzian filters are depriving you of something you might have found enjoyable, you will experience the same anxiety as before, worrying that you made the wrong decision in drawing up your choice-limiting filters. Arguably, we will always be doomed to buyers' remorse and the misery it entails. The problem of choice is perhaps more difficult than Schwartz allows.

单选题 The waiter mentioned in the first paragraph would agree that given a variety of choice______.

单选题 It is implied that it is the government's intention to______.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】[解析] 推理题。首先根据题干中的government's intention定位至文章第二段例数第二句，This thought is opposed…make us happy. 这句话中的This thought指的就是该段首句所说的“看起来我们似乎需要一些手段来保护自己，使自己免受从57种鲜有差别的物品中做选择时那种绝望感的困扰”。而政府的哲学则正好和这种想法相反，政府认为，在铁路、电力供应和教育方面提供更多的选择可以让我们快乐。选项A和D均属不相关信息，应排除；选项C太荒谬，凭常识就可以排除；正确答案是B选项，公共服务体系就是将原文中的铁路、电力供应和教育抽象化了。

单选题 We can infer that the author's attitude towards choice is that______.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】[解析] 推理题。题干要求从作者的态度出发，那么首先就应该搞清楚作者的态度。作者的态度在各段均有体现：第一段的主题句是“有的时候要做出选择就是如此困难”；第二段开头说“看起来我们似乎需要一些手段来保护自己，使自己免受从57种鲜有差别的物品中做选择时那种绝望感的困扰”，可见在作者看来做选择并不是能给人带来快乐的事；作者的态度在该段末句又得到了证实“就我的经验来看，这些东西根本没法让人快乐。”选项B与该句意思相同，是正确答案。原文they do anything but中but后面省略的部分就是make us happy。