单选题A. How's everything going? B: ______.

单选题My calculation was wrong because I Uoverlooked/U one tiny point.

单选题Henry Ford gave much credit to his wife for his car-making business because ______.

单选题Women often are swayed to buy a product for reasons far different than those that drive men. A. fluctuated B. shielded C. praised D. fulfilled

单选题They were given nothing ______ dry bread and water for their evening meal. A. other than B. more than C. less than D. rather than

单选题Beowulf, a typical example of______, is regarded today as the national epic of the Anglo-Saxons.

单选题The passage is mainly about ______. A. the advantages and disadvantages of economic growth B. the present debate on economic growth C. the importance of the debate on economic growth D. the contradiction between economists and the business community

单选题The development of the event is influenced by many factors, ______ are beyond our control.

单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} It is a fair bet that more than half of the PCs bought this Christmas in America for less than $1 000 will have AMD rather than Intel inside. Not content with this seasonal miracle, Advanced Micro Devices is bidding to loosen Intel's grip on the more profitable high end of the market too. It could well succeed. For most of its existence, AMD has lived in the shadow of the deal that it did with Intel in 1982. To power its PCs, IBM had decided to buy Intel's new x-86 chips, but wanted a second supplier to keep Intel under control. Under the terms of the agreement, Intel got the contract, but had to share its intellectual property with the smaller AMD. Intel broke the arrangement, AMD started a lawsuit, and thus began nearly a decade of bitter legal battles between the two companies. The conflict misrepresented AMD's business, absorbed management energy and weakened investor confidence. By selling cheap Intel clones(克隆产品), AMD staggered (蹒跚，摇晃) on, sometimes quite successfully, especially if Intel was late to market with a new product. But despite the support of computer makers complaining under Intel's dominance, trying to get a lift on the back of an ill-tempered 8001b gorilla(大猩猩) was proving a risky form of existence. Eventually, under a settlement in 1995, AMD gave up any rights to Intel microcode. It was confident that its home-grown k5 would give Intel's Pentium a run for its money, while a new $1.8 billion plant in Texas would meet demand and match Intel's manufacturing skills. It did not. Design faults put the k5 more than two years behind the Pentium, and the Austin plant lay largely idle.

单选题If such unhappy persons don't change their bad behaviour, what should people do according to the author?______

单选题The marvelous telephone and television network that has now enmeshed the whole world, making all men neighbors, cannot be extended into space. It will never be possible to converse with anyone on another planet. Even with today"s radio equipment, the messages will take minutes—sometimes hours—on their journey, because radio and light waves travel at the same limited speed of 186, 000 miles a second. Twenty years from now you will be able to listen to a friend on Mars, but the words you hear will have left his mouth at least three minutes earlier, and your reply will take a corresponding time to reach him. In such circumstances, an exchange of verbal messages is possible—but not a conversation. To a culture which has come to take instantaneous communication for granted, as part of the very structure of civilized life, this "time barrier" may have a profound psychological impact. It will be a perpetual reminder of universal laws and limitations against which not all our technology can ever prevail. For it seems as certain as anything can be that no signal--still less any material object—can ever travel faster than light. The velocity of light is the ultimate speed limit, being part of the very, structure of space and time. Within the narrow confines of the solar system, it will not handicap us too severely. At the worst, these will amount to twenty hours—the time it takes a radio signal to span the orbit of Pluto, the outer-most planet. It is when we move out beyond the confines of the solar system that we come face to face with an altogether new order of cosmic reality. Even today, many otherwise educated men—like those savages who can count to three but lump together all numbers beyond four—cannot grasp the profound distinction between solar and stellar space. The first is the space enclosing our neighboring worlds, the planets; the second is that which embraces those distant suns, the stars, and it is literally millions of times greater. There is no such abrupt change of scale in the terrestrial affairs. Many conservative scientists, appalled by these cosmic gulfs, have denied that they can ever be crossed. Some people never learn ; those who sixty years ago scoffed at the possibility of flight, and ten years ago laughed at the idea of travel to the planets, are now quite sure that the stars will always be beyond our reach. And again they are wrong, for they have failed to grasp the great lesson of our age— that if something is possible in theory, and no fundamental scientific laws oppose its realization, then sooner or later it will be achieved. One day we shall discover a really efficient means of propelling our space vehicles. Every technical device is always developed to its limit and the ultimate speed for spaceships is the velocity of light. They will never reach that goal, but they will get very near it. And then the nearest star will be less than five years voyaging from the earth.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} “Two centuries ago, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left St. Lois to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase,” George W. Bush said, announcing his desire for a program to send men and women to Mars. “They made that journey in the spirit of discovery... America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons.” Yet there are vital differences between Lewis and Clark’s expedition and a Mars mission. First, Lewis and Clark were headed to a place amenable to life; hundreds of thousands of people were already living there. Second, Lewis and Clark were certain to discover places and things of immediate value to the new nation. Third, the Lewis and Clark venture cost next to nothing by today’s standards. In 1989 NASA estimated that a people-to-Mars program would cost $ 400 billion, which inflates to $ 600 billion today. But the fact that a destination is tantalizing does not mean the journey makes sense, even considering the human calling to explore. And Mars as a destination for people makes absolutely no sense with current technology. Present systems for getting from Earth’s surface to low-Earth orbit are so fantastically expensive that merely launching the 1,000 tons or so of spacecraft and equipment a Mars mission would require could be accomplished only by cutting health-care benefits, education spending or other important programs or by raising taxes. Absent some remarkable discovery, astronauts, geologists and biologists once on Mars could do little more than analyze rocks and feel awestruck beholding the sky of another world. It is interesting to note that when President Bush unveiled his proposal, he listed these recent major achievements of space exploration: pictures of the rings of Saturn and the outer planets, evidence of water on Mars and the moon of Jupiter, discovery of more than 100 planets outside our solar system and study of the soil of Mars. All these accomplishments came from automated probes or automated space telescopes. Bush’s proposal, which calls for “reprogramming” some of NASA’s present budget into the Mars effort, might actually lead to a reduction in such unmanned science, the one aspect of space exploration that’s working really well. Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars to hurl tons toward Mars using current technology, why not take a decade or two decades, or however much time is required researching new launch systems and advanced propulsion? If new launch systems could put weight into orbit affordably, and if advanced propulsion could speed up that long, slow transit to Mars, then the dreams of stepping onto the Red Planet might become reality. Mars will still be there when the technology is ready. The drive to explore is part of what makes us human, and exploration of the past has led to unexpected glories. Dreams must be tempered by realism, however. For the moment, going to Mars is hopelessly unrealistic.

单选题If books had never been discovered, man would have found some other way of recording his communication. But then, for our consideration, we should include as books everything that is a written record. This would include tablets, papyrus and anything else-including computer diskettes. In the case of music, it would be impossible to think that man can live without it. Looking at primitive cultures, it appears that music is actually a part of the human psyche. When two things are knocked together, music is produced. So for the sake of our discussion, it is intended to restrict the meaning of music to the popularly accepted concept. Music is the pleasing combination of sounds that we like to listen to. Though it is difficult to, we can pretend that these things never existed. In this case we would not miss them today. To compare with recent inventions, let us look at radio and television Though we cannot think of life without them today, this is so only from comparatively recent times. There are many of us living today who had seen a time when there was no television. They will tell us that life was not that much different. The same is probably true of radio. But books are a different thing because they, or something akin to them, began thousands of years ago. In the case of music, it goes back even further--perhaps to millions of years, we may be able to imagine a world which never saw books, because books are a human invention. However, in the case of music this does not seem possible. Pleasing sounds are all around us, like the singing of the birds and the whistling of the wind. Music just seems to be inborn in us and in the world around us. If books did not exist, the world will be a poorer place indeed. Great philosophies like Plato's would become unknown and all the pleasures and lessons we could get from them will be lost forever. Then there is literature like the works of the great masters like Shakespeare, Dickens and Jane Austen. What a so sombre, miserable world it will be without the pleasures of reading. Since there are so many other things which depend on reading-like plays, songs and movies--we can expect them to disappear also. It would be a dark and unsatisfying world where knowledge is not propagated, where there are no books to derive pleasure from. In the case of music: Without it the world will be bleak and cold indeed. It would be a terrible world with no cheery tunes, no songs to sing and no great music to lose ourselves in. A world which does not listen to the music of the great masters like Chopin and Beethoven would be a very sorry world. There will not be so many smiles on faces anymore. When we lose music, an expression of a deep part of ourselves--from the soul--is lost. With music, connected activities like dancing will be lost too. A world without music and dancing will bring us back to the Stone Age. Unlike radio, television, telephones and computers, reading and music are not mere conveniences that we can live without. Reading is crucial for self-expression and for passing on records and knowledge to future generations. Music is part of our very soul. A world without these will not be the world as we know it. In fact, many of us would not want to live in such a world.

单选题Throughout all ages man has always carved colossal figures out of stone. This can be seen in the ancient ruins of Egypt, Persia and Babylon. In modern times America has also taken up the same challenge and has carved huge sculptures into her mountains. On the East Coast of America not far from Atlanta, Georgia stands Stone Mountain, the largest mass of exposed granite in the world. Carved into the side of this mountain are three tremendous equestrian figures. They are sculptures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall Jackson." It is a memorial to the Confederacy. The colossal figure of Lee alone measures 138 feet from the top of his head to the tip of his horse"s hoof. To see these stone sculptures on the side of a mountain is most impressive and inspiring. It was commissioned in 1916 and was begun by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mt. Rushmore, but was not completed until 1969 by Walter K. Hancock. In South Dakota, a western state, is located another achievement of man"s ability to shape nature into his own image and the achievement is considered to be one of the great man-made wonders of the modern world. It is located in the Black Hills in the southwestern part of the state. It is called the "Shrine of Democracy" at Mount Rushmure about twenty-five miles from Rapid City. It is visible for 97 kilometers. this monument was conceived by master sculptor, Gutzon Borglum and was begun in 1927. He was born in Idaho and his first commission was a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Capitol in Washington, D. C. This masterpiece in stone consists of the faces of four U. S. presidents which are 60 feet high each. The monument took 14 years to complete and ranks as one of the great sculptures of the world equal to the colossal figures of gods and kings found in Egyptian temples and tombs. Some have argued that a fifth face should be carved next to the existing four, but this would be impossible because the stone on the rest of the mountain is not of good quality for carving. A trip to America would not he complete without viewing one of these monuments. Their size, scope and grandeur stand as a testimony to both art and technology and the grandeur of America.

单选题We usually want people to keep quiet in the cinema so that we can______the film.

单选题A good scientist ______ into all aspects era problem in order to find solutions.