单选题Wives tend to believe that their husbands are infinitely resourceful and versatile.

单选题The two words borrow and lend are antonyms but the two sentences "Jan lent some money to Jack" and "Jack borrowed some money from Jan" are synonymous.

单选题Without question there are plenty of bargains to be had at sales time—particularly at the top-quality shops whose reputation depends on having only the best and newest goods in stock each season. They tend, for obvious reasons, to be the fashion or seasonal goods which in due course become the biggest bargains. It is true that some goods are specially brought in for the sales but these too can provide exceptional value. A manufacturer may have the end of a range left on his hands and be glad to sell the lot off cheaply to shops; or he may have a surplus of a certain material which he is glad to make up and get rid of cheaply; or he may be prepared to produce a special line at low cost merely to keep his employees busy during a slack period. He is likely to have a good many "seconds" available and if their defects are trifling these may be particularly good bargains. Nevertheless, sales do offer a special opportunity for sharp practices and shoppers need to be extra critical. For example the "second" should be clearly marked as such and not sold as if they were perfect. (The term "substandard", incidentally, usually indicates a more serious defect than "seconds".) More serious is the habit of marking the price down from an alleged previous price which is in fact fictitious. Misdescription of this and all other kinds is much practiced by the men who run one day sales of carpets in church halls and the like. As the sellers leave the district the day after the sale there is little possibility of redress . In advertising sales, shops may say "only 100 left" when in fact they have plenty more; conversely they may say "10 000 at half-price" when only a few are available at such a drastic reduction. If ever the warning "let the buyer beware" were necessary it is during sales.

单选题H is improper for a person in such a high ______ in the company to behave so badly in public.

单选题About 35% of all high school graduates in America continue their education in an institution of higher learning. The word college is used to refer to either a college or a university. These institutions offer four-year programs that lead to a Bachelor of Arts (B. A. ) or Bachelor Science (B. S. ) degree. Some students attend a junior college (providing only a two-year program) for one to two years before entering a four-year college as a sophomore (二年级生) or junior (三年级生). It is generally easier to be accepted at a state university than at a private one. Most private schools require strict entrance examinations and a high grade point average (GPA), as well as specific college prep classes in high school. Private schools cost considerably more than state colleges and famous private schools are very expensive. Poorer students can sometimes attend, however, by earning scholarships. Some college graduates go on to earn advanced masters or doctoral degrees in grad (graduate) school. Occupations in certain fields such as law or medicine require such advanced studies. Since college costs are very high, most students work at part-time jobs. Some have full-time jobs and go to school part-time. Often some will take five or more years to complete a four-year program because of money / job demands on their time. While the college and work demands take up the great part of a student"s time, most still enjoy social activities. Sports, dances, clubs, movies, and plays are all very popular. However, gathering together for long, philosophical talks at a favorite meeting place on or near the university is probably the most popular activity.

单选题Friends play an important part in our lives, and although we may take the friendship for granted, we often don"t clearly understand how we make friends. While we get on well with a number of people, we are usually friends with only a very few. For example, the average among students is about 6 per person. In all the cases of friendly relationships, two people like one another and enjoy being together, but beyond that, the degree of intimacy between them and the reasons for their shared interest vary enormously. As we get to know people we take into account things like age, race, economic condition, social position , and intelligence. Although these factors are not of prime importance, it is more difficult to get on with people when there is a marked difference in age and background. Some friendly relationships can be kept on argument and discussion, but it is usual for close friends to have similar ideas and beliefs, to have attitudes and interests in common— they often talk about "being on the same wavelength". It generally takes time to reach this point. And the more intimately involved people become, the more they rely on one another. People want to do friends favors and hate to break a promise. Equally, friends have to learn to put up with annoying habits and to tolerate differences of opinion. In contrast with marriage, there are no friendship ceremonies to strengthen the association between two people. But the supporting and understanding of each other that results from shared experiences and emotions does seem to create a powerful bond, which can overcome differences in background, and break down barriers of age, class or race.

单选题In this park, sparrows often fly down from trees to eat from visitors' hands. They are used to ______in this way. A. be fed B. feed C. having fed D. being fed

单选题The rich have traditionally passed their wealth on to their children. But an increasing number of billionaires are choosing not to. The reason? They want their children to live on themselves—and not to turn into spoiled successors. Nicola Horlick or "supermom", a famous British billionaire, owing to the fact that she has high-flying jobs and five kids—has spent her career making a report ￡250m. She now seems determined to throw off large parts of it. She already gives away about 25% of her income each year; she has just revealed, in a report on the state of charity in the city, that she will not be leaving most of the remainder to her children. "I think it is wrong to give too much inherited wealth to children," Horlick told the report"s authors. "I will not be leaving all my wealth to my children because that would just ruin their lives." She is by no means the first to go public with this convition. Bill Gates has put an estimated $30bn into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This was supplemented, in 2009, by another $24bn or so from his friend Warren Buffett. Buffett has always been colorful, quotably clear on where he stands. His daughter often tells a story of finding herself without change for a car parking ticket—her father lent her $20, then promptly made her write him a check. "To suggest that the children of the wealthy should be just as wealthy," he has said, "is like saying the members of America"s 2004 Olympic team should be made up only of the children of the 1980 Olympic team." Antia Roddick, the late founder of the Body Shop, told her kids that they would not inherit one penny. The money that she made from the company would go into the Body Shop Foundation, which isn"t one of those awful tax shelters, like some in America. It just functions to take the money and give it away.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} If good intentions and good ideas were all it took to save the deteriorating atmosphere, the planet's fragile layer of air would be as good as fixed. The two great dangers threatening the blanket of gases that nurtures and protects life on earth--global warming and the thinning ozone layer--have been identified. Better yet, scientists and policymakers have come up with effective though expensive countermeasures. But that doesn't mean these problems are anywhere close to being solved. The stratospheric ozone layer, for example, is still getting thinner, despite the 1987 international agreement known as the Montreal Protocol, which calls for a phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting chemicals by the year 2006. CFCs--first fingered as dangerous in the 1970s by Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, two of this year's Nobel--prizewinning chemists--have been widely used for refrigeration and other purposes. If uncontrolled, the CFC assault on the ozone layer could increase the amount of hazardous solar ultraviolet light that reaches the earth's surface, which would, among other things, damage crops and cause cancer in humans. Thanks to a sense of urgency triggered by the 1085 detection of what has turned out to be an annual "hole" in the especially vulnerable ozone over Antarctica, the Montreal accords have spurred industry to replace CFCs with safer substances. Yet the CFCs already in the air are still doing their dirty work. The Antarctic ozone hole is more severe this year than ever before, and ozone levels over temperate regions are dipping as well. If the CFC phaseout proceeds on schedule, the atmosphere should start repairing itself by the year 2000, say scientists. Nonetheless, observes British Antarctic Survey meteorologist Jonathan Shanklin: "It will be the middle of the next century before things are back to where they were in the 1970s." Developing countries were given more time to comply with the Montreal Protocol and were promised that they would receive $ 250 million from richer nations to pay for the CFC phaseout. At the moment, though, only 60% 'of those funds has been forthcoming. Says Nelson Sabogal of the U.'N. Environment Program: "If developed countries don't come up with the money, the ozone layer will not recuperate. This is a crucial time." It is also a critical time for warding off potentially catastrophic climate change. Waste gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and the same CFCs that wreck the ozone layer all tend to trap sunlight and warm the earth. The predicted results: an eventual melting of polar ice caps, rises in sea levels and shifts in climate patterns.

单选题Astheycan’taffordtoletthesituationgetworse,theywilltakesomenecessary_______.

单选题The longest bull run in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby"s in London on September 15th 2008. All but two pieces sold, fetching more than ￡70m, a record for a sale by a single artist. It was a last victory. As the auctioneer called out bids, in New York one of the oldest banks on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy. The world art market had already been losing momentum for a while after rising bewilderingly since 2003. At its peak in 2007 it was worth some $65 billion, reckons Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics, a research firm—double the figure five years earlier. Since then it may have come down to $50 billion. But the market generates interest far beyond its size because it brings together great wealth, enormous egos, greed, passion and controversy in a way matched by few other industries. In the weeks and months that followed Mr. Hirst"s sale, spending of any sort became deeply unfashionable . In the art world that meant collectors stayed away from galleries and salerooms. Sales of contemporary art fell by two-thirds, and in the most overheated sector, they were down by nearly 90% in the year to November 2008. Within weeks the world"s two biggest auction houses, Sotheby"s and Christie"s, had to pay out nearly $200m in guarantees to clients who had placed works for sale with them. The current downturn in the art market is the worst since the Japanese stopped buying Impressionists at the end of 1989. This time experts reckon that prices are about 40% down on their peak on average, though some have been far more fluctuant. But Edward Dolman, Christie"s chief executive, says: "I"m pretty confident we"re at the bottom." What makes this slump different from the last, he says, is that there are still buyers in the market. Almost everyone who was interviewed for this special report said that the biggest problem at the moment is not a lack of demand but a lack of good work to sell. The three Ds—death, debt and divorce—still deliver works of art to the market. But anyone who does not have to sell is keeping away, waiting for confidence to return.

单选题Next to Sir Andrew in the club-room sits Captain Sentry, a gentleman of great courage, good understanding, but invincible modesty. He is one of those that deserve very well, but are very awkward at putting their talents within the observation of such as should take notice of them. He was some years a captain, and behaved himself with great gallantry in several engagements and at several sieges; but having a small estate of his own, and being next heir to Sir Roger, he has quitted a way of life in which no man can rise suitably to his merit, who is not something of a courtier as well as a soldier. I have heard him often lament that in a profession where merit is placed in so conspicuous a view, impudence should get the better of modesty. When he had talked to this purpose; I never heard him make a sour expression, but frankly confess that he left the world because he was not fit for it. A strict honesty, and an even regular behavior, are in themselves obstacles to him that must press through crowds, who endeavour at the same end with himself, the favor of a commander. He will, however, in his way of talk excuse generals for not disposing according to men's desert, or inquiring into it; for, says he, that the great man who has a mind to help me, has as many, to break through to come at me, as I have to come at him: therefore he will conclude that the man who would make a figure, especially in a military way, must get over all false modesty, and assist his patron against the importunity of other pretenders, by a proper assurance in his own vindication. He says it is a civil cowardice to be backward in asserting what you ought to expect, as it is a military fear to be slow in attacking when it is your duty, With this candour does the gentleman speak of himself and others. The same frankness runs through all his conversation. The military part of his life has furnished him with many adventures, in the relation of which he is very agreeable to the company; for he is never overbearing, though accustomed to command men in the utmost degree below him; nor ever too obsequious, from a habit of obeying men highly above him.

单选题Asia's real boat-rocker is a growing China, not Japan, a senior American economist observed. There is so much noise surrounding and emanating from the 'world's miracle economy that it is becoming cacophonous. In Washington, DC, the latest idea is that China is becoming too successful, perhaps even dangerously so: while Capitol Hill resounds with complaints of trade surpluses and currency manipulation, the Pentagon and sundry think-tanks echo to a new drumbeat of analysts worrying about China's 12.6% annum rise in military spending and about whether it might soon have the ability to take pre-emptive military action to force Taiwan to rejoin it. So it may be no coincidence that for three consecutive weekends the streets of big Chinese cities have been filled with the sounds of demonstrators marching and rocks being thrown, all seeking to send a different message: that Japan is the problem in Asia, not China, because of its wanton failure to face up to its history; and that by cosying up to Japan in security matters, America is allying with Asia's pariah. Deafness is not the only risk from all this noise. The pressure towards protectionism in Washington is strong, and could put in further danger not only trade with China but also the wider climate for trade liberalization in the D0ha round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) . So far words have been the main weapons used between China and Japan, but there is a chance that nationalism in either or both countries could lead the governments to strike confrontational poses over their territorial disputes in the seas that divide them, even involving their navies. And the more that nationalist positions become entrenched in both countries but especially China, the more that street protests could become stirred up, perhaps towards more violence. A revaluation of the yuan, as demanded in Congress, would not re-balance trade between America and China, though it might help a little, in due course. A "sincere" apology by Japan for its wartime atrocities might also help a little, but it would not suddenly turn Asia's natural great-power rivals into bosom 'buddies. All these issues are complex ones and, as is often the case in trade and in. historical disputes, finding solutions is likely to be far from simple.

单选题 Come on-Everybody's doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what most of us think of when we hear the words peer pressure. It usually leads to no good-drinking, drugs and casual sex. But in her new book Join the Club, Tina Rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in which organizations and officials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their lives and possibly the word. Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, offers a host of example of the social cure in action: In South Carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called Rage Against the Haze sets out to make cigarettes uncool. In South Africa, an HIV-prevention initiative known as LoveLife recruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers. The idea seems promising, and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lameness of many pubic-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to mobilize peer pressure for healthy habits, and they demonstrate a seriously flawed understanding of psychology. " Dare to be different, please don't smoke!" pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers-teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in. Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure. But on the general effectiveness of the social cure, Rosenberg is less persuasive. Join the Club is filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biological factors that make peer pressure so powerful. The most glaring flaw of the social cure as it's presented here is that it doesn't work very well for very long. Rage Against the Haze failed once state funding was cut. Evidence that the LoveLife program produces lasting changes is limited and mixed. There's no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. An emerging body of research shows that positive health habits-as well as negative ones-spread through networks of friends via social communication. This is a subtle form of peer pressure : we unconsciously imitate the behavior we see every day. Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. It's like the teacher who breaks up the troublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. The tactic never really works. And that's the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the real world, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.

单选题It seems clear that literature has become more and more a female activity. In bookstores, at conferences or public readings by writers, and even in university departments dedicated to the humanities, the women clearly outnumber the men. The explanation traditionally given is that middle-class women read more because they work fewer hours than men, and so many of them feel that they can justify more easily than men the time that they devote to fantasy and illusion. I am somewhat allergic(反感的) to explanations that divide men and women into frozen categories and attribute to each sex its characteristic virtues and shortcomings; but there is no doubt that there are fewer and fewer readers of literature, and that among the saving remnant (剩余) of readers women predominate. This is the case almost everywhere. In Spain, for example, a recent survey organized by the General Society of Spanish Writers revealed that half of that country"s population has never read a book. The survey also revealed that in the minority that does read, the number of women who admitted to reading surpasses the number of men by 6.2 percent, a difference that appears to be increasing. I am happy for these women, but I feel sorry for these men, and for the millions of human beings who could read but have decided not to read. They earn my pity not only because they are unaware of the pleasure that they are missing, but also because I am convinced that a society without literature, or a society in which literature has been relegated—like some hidden vice—to the margins of social and personal life, is a society condemned to become spiritually barbaric, and even to jeopardize (破坏) its freedom. I wish to offer a few arguments against the idea of literature as a luxury pastime, and in favor of viewing it as one of the most primary and necessary undertakings of the mind, an irreplaceable activity for the formation of citizens in a modern and democratic society, a society of free individuals.

单选题Microsoft founder Bill Gates has ______ about being a parent, stating that 13 is an appropriate age for a child's first cell phone. A. opened up B. taken up C. put up D. held up

单选题Customer: ______.Walter: I'm sorry. Didn't you order fried shrimp?Customer: I ordered fried chicken.Waiter: Oh, all I heard was fried shrimp. Let me have kitchen redo this for you.

单选题The court considers a monetary ______ to be an appropriate way of punishing him.