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文学
单选题There was a loud crash as the door broke, and in ______ the police.
单选题As the cat lay asleep, dreaming her whiskers______.
单选题Which of the following may be the probable title for the passage?
单选题______ that your son is well again, you no longer have anything to Worry about.
单选题The football game comes to you ______ from New York. A) lively B) alive C) live D) living
单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following four texts. Answer
the questions below each text by choosing A, B,C or D. Mark your answers on
ANSWER SHEET 1. {{B}}Text 1{{/B}}
Imagine being asked to spend twelve or
so years of your life in a society which consisted only of members of your own
sex. How would you react? Unless there was something definitely wrong with you,
you wouldn't be too happy about it, to say the least. It is all the more
surprising, therefore, that so many parents in the world choose to impose such
abnormal conditions on their children--conditions which they themselves wouldn't
put up with for one minute! Any discussion of this topic is
bound to question the aims of education. Stuffing children's heads full of
knowledge is far from being foremost among them. One of the chief aims of
education is to equip future citizens with all they require to take their place
in adult society. Now adult society is made up of men and women, so how can a
segregated school possibly offer the right sort of preparation for it? Anyone
entering adult society after years of segregation can only be in for a
shock. A co-educational school offers children nothing less than
a true version of society in miniature. Boys and girls are given the opportunity
to get to know each other, to learn to live together from their earliest years.
They are put in a position where they can compare themselves with each other in
terms of academic ability, athletic achievement and many of the extra-curricular
activities which are part of school life. What a practical advantage it is (to
give just a small example) to be able to put on a school play in which the male
parts will be taken by boys and the female parts by girls! What nonsense, boys
and girls are made to feel that they are a race apart. Rivalry between the sexes
is fostered. In a co-educational school, everything falls into its proper
place. But perhaps the greatest contribution of co-education is
the healthy attitude to life it encourages. Boys don't grow up believing that
women are mysterious creatures—airy goddesses, more like book-illustrations to a
fairy-tale, than human beings. Girls don't grow up imagining that men axe
romantic heroes. Years of living together at school dispel illusions of this
kind. There axe no goddesses with freckles, pigtails, piercing voices and inky
fingers. There are no romantic heroes with knobby knees, dirty fingernails and
unkempt hair. The awkward stage of adolescence brings into sharp focus some of
the physical and emotional problems involved in growing up. These can better be
overcome in a coeducational environment. Segregated schools sometimes provide
the right conditions for sexual deviation. This is hardly possible under a
co-educational system. When the time comes for the pupils to leave school, they
are fully prepared to enter society as well-adjusted adults. They have already
had years of experience in coping with many of the problems that face men and
women.
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单选题 I have been very lucky to have won the Nobel Prize twice.
It is, of course, very exciting to have such an import {{U}}{{U}} 1
{{/U}} {{/U}}of my work, but the real pleasure was in the work
itself. Scientific research is like an exploration of a voyage
of discovery, you are {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}trying out new
things that have not been done before. Many of them will lead {{U}}
{{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}and you have to try something different, but
sometimes an experiment does {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}and
tells you something new and that it is really exciting. {{U}} {{U}}
5 {{/U}} {{/U}}small the new finding may be, it is great to think "I am
the only person who knows" and then you will have the fun of thinking what this
finding will {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}and of deciding what
will be the {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}experiment.
One of the best things about scientific research is that you are always
doing something different and it is never {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}}
{{/U}}. There are good times when things go well and bad times when they {{U}}
{{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}. Some people get discouraged at the difficult
times, but when I have a failure my policy has always been not to worry but to
start planning the next experiment, {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}}
{{/U}}is always fun.
单选题I can't understand how he can fell that his colleagues are always ready to denounce him.
单选题There used to be coffee shop next to your house, ______?A. wasn't thereB. didn't thereC. wasn't itD. didn't it
单选题we moved to the country so that the kids would have a garden ______ to play. A. with which B. in which C. for which D. about which
单选题The United Nations declared last Friday that Somalia's famine is over. But the official declaration means little to the millions of Somalis who are still hungry and waiting for their crops to grow. Ken Menkhaus, professor of political science at Davidson College, said it was profoundly disappointing to be discussing another Somali famine, after he worked in the country during the 1991—1992 one. Each famine, he said, has distinct characteristics, and this one unfolded in slow motion over the past couple of years. That's at least partly because the Somali diaspora sent money home that delayed the worst effects. Menkhaus was among four experts on Somalia and famine who spoke at the Radcliffe Gym Monday evening, who gathered for the event, "Sound the Horn: Famine in the Horn of Africa. " Paul Farmer, Kolokotrones University Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, drew on his experience treating malnourished people in Haiti, where he has worked for decades, and said the human and social context of hunger need as much attention as the patients do. A malnourished child is typically an indication of poverty at home, and aid to families should be part of treating the child, he said. Similarly, broader agricultural interventions and fair trade policies are needed to boost local agricultural economies. Though famine is often thought of as a natural disaster, Monday's speakers said that is a false impression. Though Somalia suffered through a severe drought, with today's instant communications, transport systems can move massive amounts of food. Given today's global food markets, famine is too often a failure of local government and international response. "In today's 21st-century world, just about everything about famine is manmade. We're no longer in a world of man against nature," said Robert Paarlberg, adjunct professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Ethiopia, which was also affected by the recent drought, fared much better this time because of reforms implemented after the 2001 one. Likewise, Paarlberg said, northern and central Somalia regions that fall outside of the influence of the A1-Shabaab militia, also fared better. There were several man-made features of this famine, which affected more than 10 million people and killed between 50,000 and 100,000, half of them children under age 5. The largest man-made feature was the role of the A1-Shabaab militia that rules the region and that kept food aid from reaching those in need. But the international community isn't blameless. As early as November 2010, an international famine early warning system was predicting the failure of rains in the region, but the international community didn't respond fully until an official famine was declared in July 2011. On top of that, U. S. anti-terrorism laws cut off food aid because A1-Shabaab, listed as a terrorist group, was taking some of it. Though the United Nations has declared the famine over, that was based on statistical measures, such as the number of people dying each day and the number of children who are malnourished. Though the official famine may be over, both U.N. officials and Monday's speakers said the crisis continues for the people of Somalia. Almost a third of the population remains dependent on humanitarian assistance, crops growing from recent rains will take months to reach maturity, and herds of cows, goats, and other animals were greatly reduced during the crisis. Michael Delaney, director of humanitarian response for Oxfam America, warned that the world will have another chance to get its response right, because the warning signs are pointing to an impending famine in Africa's Sahel, the arid, continent-spanning transition zone just below the Sahara Desert.
单选题The park was______with people doing all sorts of recreational activities.
单选题The British Post Office praises the codes as______
单选题When I come across a good article in reading newspapers, I often want to cut and keep it. But just as I am about to do so I find the【C1】______on the opposite side is as much interesting. It may be a discussion of the way to【C2】______in good health, or a report about【C3】______tp behave and conduct oneself in society. If I cut the front article, the opposite one is likely to【C4】______damage, leaving out half of it or keeping the text【C5】______the title. Therefore, I should prepare【C6】______I start to cut. Or it will be halfway done when I find out the【C7】______result. 【C8】______two things are to be done at the same time. You can only take up one of them, the other has to wait or be【C9】______But you know the future is unpredictable—the changed situation may not allow you to do what is left【C10】______Thus you are caught in a【C11】______position and feel sad. How should the nice chances and brilliant ideas gather around all at once? What are you going to do when you【C12】______two things at the same time? It may happen that your life【C13】______greatly on your preference of one choice to the other. In fact that is what【C14】______is like. We are often【C15】______with the two opposite sides of a thing which are both desirable【C16】______a new'spaper cutting. It often oceurs that our attention is drawn to one thing only【C17】______we get into another. The【C18】______may be more important than the latter and give rise to a divided mind. A famous philosopher【C19】______said "When one door shuts, another opens in life. " So a casual choice may not be a【C20】______one.
单选题According to the text, which of the following would most probably be one major difference in behavior between Manager X, who uses intuition to reach decisions, and Manager Y, who uses only formal decision analysis?
单选题The teacher ______ that the students be there before noon. A. wanted B. intended C. demanded D. told
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单选题The meeting ______.
单选题Planet Earth was stricken by floods, drought and fire in 1997, a year which ended with the world's major polluters quarreling about ways to prevent further environmental disasters. The climate was dominated in the latter part of the year by E1 Nino, an swelling of warmer water off the South American coast which affects global weather patterns. "I think for sure the most dramatic thing has been the E1 Nino phenomenon that has been experienced throughout the tropics," said Jeffrey Sayer, director-general of the International Center for Forestry Research. E1 Nino is being blamed for widespread floods and drought in the tropics, and has affected other areas as well. A major demonstration of the phenomenon was drought-intensified bush fires in Indonesia that spread a smog across large areas of Southeast Asia before badly-delayed rains started to fall in late November. Apart from E1 Nino, eastern and central Europe suffered the worst floods in living memory in early July, with over 100 people killed and many thousands of families displaced through the region. In the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto, a UN gathering of 159 countries on global warming finally agreed on cutting greenhouse gas emissions through the next decade after 11 days of confused and uncontrolled negotiations. The conference accepted scientific evidence that heating of the Earth's surface by gases trapped in the atmosphere causes more and fiercer storms, expanding deserts, melting polar ice and raising sea levels which threaten to flood lowlying islands. US Vice President A1 Gore called the Kyoto agreement "a vital turning point," but added that more still needed to be done.
单选题I don"t mean ______ anything, but these apples looked so good that I couldn"t resist ______ one.
单选题What is not mentioned in the passage?
单选题{{B}}D{{/B}}
Warman's, the makers of office
materials, had advertised for a travelling salesman. Mr. Barlow applied for the
job, and soon afterwards was invited to the company's head office to meet Mr.
Snell, the sales manager. Mr. Snell asked Mr. Barlow what experience he had had
as a salesman. "I worked as a salesman for a brush company until
six months ago. I sold brushes, dusters, tins of polish, things like that. I
went from door to door selling direct to housewives." Mr. Snell
then asked him why he had left that job. "Well, to be honest, it
was very hard work," Mr. Barlow replied. "It meant walking sometimes six or
eight miles a day. But the real reason for leaving was that I didn't think very
highly of the goods that I was selling. They were not of the best quality, and
that made it difficult for me to be sincere when I had to tell housewives what
wonderful brushes they were. I knew perfectly well they wouldn't last beyond a
month. What's more, the pay was rather poor. I realized after a while that I
wouldn't be able to support a family on the money I was earning."
"I see," said Mr. Snell. "So what did you do next?" "For
the last six months I have been a salesman in a department store," said Mr.
Barlow. "And do you think you could sell Warman's office
materials with clear conscience?" Mr. Snell asked. "Do you think you could be
sincere, as you put it, about selling the papers, inks, copying- machines and so
on that we produce here?" Mr. Barlow said that he thought he
could; that Warman's office materials enjoyed a very high reputation, and that
in his department at Caldwell's he sold almost nothing else. He said he had
always wanted to work for a big company with a good name; to travel all over the
country, selling goods to other companies, rather than to housewives on
doorstep; and—he added with a smile—to enjoy the money and the working
conditions offered with the job for which he had applied. "Mr.
Barlow," said Mr. Snell, "do you have a clean driving license?"
"Yes, I do," Mr. Barlow replied. "Then as long as your
medical examination proves to be satisfactory, I'm quite prepared to offer you
the job." Mr. Snell got up and shook Mr. Barlow by the hand. "Congratulations,"
he said, "and welcome to Warman's."
单选题Will you go shopping with us this afternoon? ______. But Ive got quite a lot of homework to do. A) Of course. B) Id like to. C) Thats all right. D) No, I wont.
单选题Richard Holbrooke, who died at the age of 69 after suffering a ruptured aorta, was not the most universally beloved, but was certainly one of the ablest, the most admired and the most effective of American diplomats. He is one of the few of that profession in the past 40 years who can be compared with the giants of the "founding generation" of American hegemony, such as Dean Acheson and George Kennan.
Holbrooke was tough as well as exceptionally bright. He was a loyal, liberal Democrat, but also a patriot who was prepared to be ruthless in what he saw as his nation"s interest. To his friends, he was kind and charming, but he could be abrasive: no doubt that characteristic helped prevent him becoming Secretary of State on two occasions, under Bill Clinton and again when Barack Obama became president.
He held almost every other important job in the international service of the US. He was ambassador to the United Nations, where he dealt with the vexed problem of America"s debts to the organization, and to Germany. He was the only person in history to be assistant Secretary of State—the key level in routine diplomacy—in two regions of the world, Europe and Asia. He distinguished himself as an investment banker, a magazine editor, a charity executive and an author, but he will be remembered most of all for his success in negotiating an end to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina at an Ohio airbase, and for his part in the American intervention in Kosovo. At the time of his death, he was Obama"s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Holbrooke joined the Foreign Service, and in 1963 was sent as a civilian official to Vietnam, where he was one of a talented cohort of young men who were to become leaders in American diplomacy. Once back in Washington in 1966, Holbrooke worked for two years in the White House under Johnson, and then at the State Department, where he was a junior member of the delegation to the fruitless initial peace talks with North Vietnam in Paris.
By 1972, Holbrooke was ready for a change. He became the first editor of the magazine
Foreign Policy
, created as a less stuffy competitor to the august Foreign
Affairs
. He also worked for
Newsweek
magazine. In 1976, he went to work for Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, who was beginning his campaign for president and badly needed some foreign policy expertise. When Carter became president, in 1977, Holbrooke became his assistant Secretary of State for Asian affairs.
单选题There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides of the pond, and wider still at the east end. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore. The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I looked out the window, and look! Where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the transparent pond already calm and full of hope as in a summer evening reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom, though none was visible overhead. The pitch pines and shrub oaks about my house, which had so long drooped suddenly resumed their several characters, looked brighter, greener, and more erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. I know that it would not rain any more. You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, aye, at your very woodpile, whether its winter is past or not. As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like weary travelers getting in late from southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings; when, driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, large and tumultuous. But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up with great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader at intervals. A plump of ducks rose at the same time and took the route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins. For a week I heard the circling groping clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and herald of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of Nature. As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.
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单选题In 1993. New York State ordered stores to charge a deposit on beverage(饮料)containers. Within a year. Consumers had returned millions of aluminum cans and glass and plastic bottles. Plenty of companies were eager to accept the aluminum and glass as raw materials for new products. But because few could figure out what to do with the plastic, much of it wound up buried in landfills(垃圾填埋场). The problem was not limited to New York. Unfortunately, there were too few uses for second-hand plastic. Today, one out of five plastic soda bottles is recycled(回收利用)in the United States. The reason for the change is that now there are dozens of companies across the country buying discarded plastic soda bottles and turning them into fence posts, paint brushes, etc. Shrinking landfill space, and rising costs for burying and burning rubbish are forcing local governments to look more closely at recycling. In many areas, the East Coast especially, recycling is already the least expensive waste-management option. For every ton of waste recycled, a city avoids paying for its disposal, which, in parts of New York, amounts to saving of more than $100 per ton. Recycling also stimulates the local economy by creating jobs and trims the pollution control and energy costs of industries that make recycled products by giving them a more refined raw material.
单选题Choose the best from the following sentences marked A to E to complete the article below. Write your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.
A Bad Time for Britain to Say "Auf Wiedersehen"
History records that the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher scoffed at British diplomats" self-interested realism. Waving a map delineating past German expansionism, she embarked on a doomed effort to thwart unification. Francois Mitterrand was enlisted but the French president soon changed sides in the face of Helmut Kohl"s resolve. Britain found itself marginalised in Washington, where George H. W. Bush backed Mr. Kohl, and unwelcome in Bonn.
11. ______ This is not to say they are good. The relationship between Angela Merkel and David Cameron has turned from lukewarm to distinctly cool. Asked when the two leaders will next meet, one German official remarks: "What"s the point?"
The eurozone crisis has bred a more assertive Germany—witness its willingness this week to scupper the proposed takeover of BAE Systems by EADS. 12. ______.
The rot set in last December when Mr. Cameron tried to veto deeper economic and political eurozone integration. His pitch for special privileges and protections for the City of London was viewed in Berlin as an attempt to unpick the essential fabric of the single market—the EU"s cherished "acquis".
13. ______ What"s the point of Ms Merkel striking deals in Downing Street if they are cast aside when he feels a need to play to the eurosceptic gallery?
Germany recently signed up to a British initiative to freeze the EU budget. Now it finds Mr. Cameron waving a unilateral veto. British ministers are also questioning some of the union"s fundamental pillars, including free movement of people.
14. ______ British disengagement from "core" Europe is inevitable. The government has already said it will not join a new banking union. Mr. Cameron is now suggesting a two-tier EU budget so that Westminster can pay less.
Were Britain planning to leave the union—and on its present trajectory it is heading in that direction, such complacency might just make sense. But Mr. Cameron insists that EU membership remains vital to the nation"s prosperity. Any serious business leader would agree.
Britain, albeit mostly by choice, is sliding fast into Europe"s second division. Whether a new relationship can be made to work will depend on how many friends it has.
15. ______ The breakdown of the EADS-BAE deal was another reminder, if one were needed, that Britain cannot escape the consequences of decisions taken on the continent. Mr. Cameron has Chosen the wrong moment to bid auf Wiedersehen to a natural ally.
Questions
A. But the real argument with Britain is about Europe.
B. Relations between Britain and Germany are not as bad now as they were then.
C. The answer at the moment is precious few.
D. Mr. Cameron"s indulgence of hardline Tory eurosceptics has cast him as an unreliable partner.
E. What does it matter if the Germans are cross?
单选题Only applicants with the proper ______will be considered for the job.
单选题Every Saturday evening it is our custom to meet and review the______ week's contents.
单选题The word "reliable" in line 3 is closest in meaning to which of the following?
单选题For dinner that evening we had some ______ turtle meat.
单选题Battles are like marriages. They have certain fundamental experience they share in common; they differ infinitely, but still they are all alike. A battle seems to me a conflict of wills to the death in the same way that a marriage of love is the identification of two human beings to the end of the creation of life—as death is the reverse of life, and love of hate. Battles are commitments to cause death as marriages are commitments to create life. Whether, for any individual, either union results in death or in the creation of new life, each risks it—and in the risk commits himself. As the servants of death, battles will always remain horrible. Those who are fascinated by them are being fascinated by death. There is no battle aim worthy of the name except that of ending all battles. Any other conception is, literally, suicidal. The fascist worship of battle is a suicidal drive; it is love of death instead of life. In the same idiom, to triumph in battle over the forces which are fighting for death is-again literally-to triumph over death. It is a surgeon's triumph as he cuts a body and bloodies his hands in removing a cancer in order to triumph over the death that is in the body. In these thoughts I have found my own peace, and I return to an army that fights death and cynicism in the name of life and hope. It is a good army. Believe in it.
单选题I listened to Dr. Wilson's lecture about the protection of wild animals, but I was unable to grasp its key ______.A. wordsB. notesC. dotsD. points
单选题It was ______ we had hoped.
A. more a success than
B. a success more than
C. as much of a succes as
D. a success as much as
单选题This style of writing, incidentally, is suggestive of what is called the "newsreel technique" of John Dos Passos. A. reminiscent B. collective C. forgettable D. advisable
单选题Many people talked of the 288,000 new jobs the Labor Department reported for June, along with the drop in the unemployment rate to 6.1 percent, as good news. And they were right. For now it appears the economy is creating jobs at a decent pace. We still have a long way to go to get back to full employment, but at least we are now finally moving forward at a faster pace.
However, there is another important part of the jobs picture that was largely overlooked. There was a big jump in the number of people who report voluntarily working part-time. This figure is now 830,000 (4. 4 percent) above its year ago level.
Before explaining the connection to the Obamacare, it is worth making an important distinction. Many people who work part-time jobs actually want full-time jobs. They take part-time work because this is all they can get. An increase in involuntary part-time work is evidence of weakness in the labor market and it means that many people will be having a very hard time making ends meet.
There was an increase in involuntary part-time in June, but the general direction has been down. Involuntary part-time employment is still far higher than before the recession, but it is down by 640,000 (7.9percent) from several years ago.
We know the difference between voluntary and involuntary part-time employment because people tell us. The survey used by the Labor Department asks people if they worked less than 35 hours in the reference week. If the answer is "yes", they are classified as worked less than 35 hours in that week because they wanted to work less than full time or because they had no choice. They are only classified as voluntary part-time workers if they tell the survey taker they chose to work less than 35 hours a week.
The issue of voluntary part-time relates to Obamacare because One of the main purposes was to allow people to get insurance outside of employment. For many people, especially those with serious health conditions or family members with serious health conditions, before Obamacare the only way to get insurance was through a job that provided health insurance.
However, Obamacare has allowed more than 12 million people to either get insurance through Medicaid or the exchanges. These are people who may previously have felt the need to get a full-time job that provided insurance in order to cover themselves and their families. With Obamacare there is no longer a link between employment and insurance.
单选题In the author's view, if an American business makes an immoral decision as a group, the man aging individuals ______.
单选题The main part of the title of the novel was taken from Bunyan" s The Pilgrim" s Progress, in which the pilgrims arrive at a place where all such merchandise are sold, as houses, lands, trades, honors , titles, countries, and delights of all sorts. . . The subtide of the novel reinforces the point, for it indicates that the novel is concerned principally not with individual heroes but with the society as a whole, though it is also possible to interpret the phrase as meaning that there are only heroines or one heroine but no heroes. And indeed the novel evolves chiefly around two women, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp.Which novel does the following passage discuss?
单选题Being good-looking is useful in so many ways. In addition to whatever personal pleasure it gives you, being attractive also helps you earn more money, f'amd a higher-earning spouse and get better deals on mortgages. Each of these facts has been demonstrated over the past 20 years by many economists and other researchers, The effects are not small: one study showed that an American worker who was among the bottom one-seventh in looks, as assessed by randomly chosen observers, earned 10 to 15 percent less per year than a similar worker whose looks were assessed in the top one-third — a lifetime difference, in a typical case, of about $ 230, 000. Most of us, regardless of our professed attitudes, prefer as customers to buy from better-looking salespeople, as jurors to listen to better-looking attorneys, as voters to be led by better-looking politicians, as students to learn from better-looking professors. This is not a matter of evil employers' refusing to hire the ugly: in our roles as workers, customers and potential lovers we are all responsible for these effects. How could we remedy this injustice? A radical solution may be needed: why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals? We actually already do offer such protections in a few places, including in some jurisdictions in California, and in the District of Columbia, where discriminatory treatment based on looks in hiring, promotions, housing and other areas is prohibited. The mechanics of legislating this kind of protection are not as difficult as you might think. Ugliness could be protected generally in the United States by small extensions of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Ugly people could be allowed to seek help from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other agencies in overcoming the effects of discrimination. You might argue that people can't be classified by their looks — that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In one study, more than half of a group of people were assessed identically by each of two observers using a five-point scale ; and very few assessments differed by more than one point. There are possible other objections. "Ugliness" is not a personal trait that many people choose to embrace; those whom we classify as protected might not be willing to admit that they are ugly. But with the chance of obtaining extra pay and promotions amounting to $ 230, 000 in lost lifetime earnings, there's a large enough incentive to do so. Bringing antidiscrimination lawsuits is also costly, and few potential plaintiffs could afford to do so. But many attorneys would be willing to organize classes of plaintiffs to overcome these costs, just as they now do in racial-discrimination and other lawsuits. Economic arguments for protecting the ugly are as strong as those for protecting some groups currently covered by legislation. So why not go ahead and expand protection to the looks-challenged? There's one legitimate concern. With increasingly tight limits on government resources, expanding rights to yet another protected group would reduce protection for groups that have commanded our legislative and other attention for over 50 years. You might reasonably disagree and argue for protecting all deserving groups. Either way, you shouldn't be surprised to see the United States heading toward this new legal frontier.
单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}}
Ethiopians appear to have evolved a
unique way of coping with thin mountain air. But how they do it remains a
mystery. One way for the body to get enough oxygen to its
tissues when breathing oxygen-poor air is for it to make more red blood cells.
This increases the amount of hemoglobin(血红蛋白), the protein that carries oxygen.
Although less haemoglobin in the arteries is saturated with oxygen at high
altitudes, having more of it makes up for the shortfall. People
native to the high Andes are known to have more red blood cells than lowlanders,
and athletes who train at altitude can increase their concentration of
cells. But while many Tibetans also live at high altitudes, they
do not have significantly elevated levels of haemoglobin. Instead they seem to
boost the amount of nitric oxide, which dilates(使膨胀) blood vessels and increases
blood flow. Now Cynthia Beall, an anthropologist from Case
Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, has found a third kind of
adaptation. When she tested the blood of 236 people in the Ambaras region in the
Semien Mountains of Ethiopia, she found that 95 percent of the haemoglobin in
their arteries is saturated with oxygen, almost as much as that of people living
at low altitudes and roughly 5 per cent above that of residents in the Andes or
Tibet. "That shouldn't be, "says Beall. They must have a
massively efficient way to get oxygen from the lungs to the blood, she says. But
just what remains mysterious. They do not have higher concentrations of
haemoglobin than anyone else, nor do they have a different kind of
haemoglobin. Beall adds that this ability might be found in all
people living in that part of the world, and not just those in the study. It
might be why so many world-class endurance athletes are Ethiopian. "The next
study needs to look at that,"she says.
单选题A: Excuse me. What subway station am I in? I got lost.
B: ______
单选题Where is the second centre of Hollywood film making in Europe. after London*. Paris. or perhaps Berlin? Try Prague. Last year, Hollywood spent over $200m on shooting movies, commercials and pop videos in the Czech capital. This year. all the big studios will be in town. MGM has "Hart's War" starring Bruce Willis; Disney is shooting "Black Sheep" with Anthony Hopkins; and Fox has just finished filming "From Hell", a Jack the Ripper saga starring Johnny Depp. Praguers take Tinseltown in their stride. Old ladies looked only slightly confused last month when the cobbled streets of Mala Strana, Prague's old quarter, were cleared of real snow and sprayed with a more cinematically pleasing chemical alternative for Universal's "Bourne Identity", a $50m thriller starring Matt Damon. The film's producer, Pat Crowley, reckons a day filming in Prague costs him $100.000, against $250,000 in Paris. Czech crews, he says, are professional, English-speaking and numerous. They are also a bargain—40% cheaper than similar crews in London or Los Angeles, points out Matthew Stillman. the British boss of Stillking, a Prague-based production firm. Mr. Stillman founded Stillking in 1993 after arriving in Prague with $500 and a typewriter. Today, Hollywood producers come to the company for crews, catering, lights and much more. It claims to have about half of the local film-production business and this year hopes for revenues of over $50m. The biggest draw to Prague, however, is Barrandov—one of the largest film studios in Europe, with 11 sound-stages, onsite photo labs and top-notch technicians. It was founded during Czechoslovakia's pre-war first republic by Milos Havel, an uncle of the present Czech president, Vaclav Havel. The Nazis expanded it as a production centre for propaganda flicks—the sound-stages are courtesy of Joseph Goebbels. Then came the Communists with their own propaganda and, admittedly, a few impressive homegrown directors such as Milos Forman, who began Hollywood's march to Prague by filming "Amadeus" there. But it is partly thanks to Barrandov that Prague remains some way behind London as a film centre. The studio has suffered from doubtful management and is already stretched to capacity ("You can't even get an office there," moans one producer). Its present owner, a local steel company, is keen to sell but talks with a Canadian institution have been thorny, not least because the Czech government holds a golden share. Should the Canadian deal fall through, Stillking says it would consider a bid of its own.
单选题According to some loud chorus, the oil price in the new era will be as low as
单选题To whom does the mother speak Korean? A. Her oldest daughter only. B. Her two daughters only. C. All of her children. D. Only to her son.
单选题If x dollars are invested at 12 percent for one year and y dollars are invested at 8 percent for one year, the annual income from the 8 percent investment will exceed the annual income from the 12 percent investment by $64. If $5,000 is the total amount invested between x and y, how much is invested at 12 percent? A. $1,680 B. $1,997 C. $3,003 D. $3,320 E. $3,500
单选题But A
assuming that
the contrast I have developed is valid, and that the fostering of skills and creativity B
are both worthwhile goals
, the important question becomes this: Can we gather, from the Chinese and American extremes, C
a superior way
to approach education, perhaps D
to strike a better balance
between the poles of creativity and basic skills?
单选题"A verbal slap on the hands" in the last sentence may be interpreted as ______.
单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}}
Real policemen, both Britain and the
United States, hardly recognize any resemblance between their lives and what
they see on TV - if they ever get home in time. There are similarities, of
course, but the cops don't think much of them. The first
difference is that a policeman's real life revolves round the law. Most of
his training is in criminal law. He has to know exactly what actions are crimes
and what evidence can be used to prove them in court. He has to know nearly as
much law as a professional lawyer, and what is more, he has to apply it on his
feet, in the dark and rain, running down an alley after someone he wants to talk
to. Little of his time is spent in chatting to scantily clad
ladies or in dramatic confrontations with desperate criminals. He will spend
most of his working life typing millions of words on thousands of forms about
hundreds of sad, unimportant people who are guilty-or not-of stupid, petty
crimes. Most television crime drama is about finding the
criminal; as soon as he's arrested, the story is over. In real life, finding
criminals is seldom much of a problem: Except in very serious cases like
murders and terrorist attacks-where failure to produce results reflects on the
standing of the police-little effort is spent on searching. The police have an
elaborate machinery which eventually shows up most wanted men.
Having made an arrest, a detective really starts to work. He has to prove
his case in court and to do that he often has to gather a lot of different
evidence. Much of this has to be given by people who don't want to get involved
in a court case. So as well as being overworked, a detective has to be out
at all hours of the day and night interviewing his witnesses and persuading
them, usually against their own best interests, to help him. A
third big difference between the drama detective and the real one is the
unpleasant moral twilight in which the real one lives. Detectives are subject to
two opposing pressures: first as members of a police force they always have to
behave with absolute legality, secondly, as expensive public
servants they have to get results They can hardly ever do both. Most of the time
some of them have to break the rules in small ways. If the
detective has to deceive the world, the world often deceives him. Hardly anyone
he meets tells him the truth. And this separation the detective feels between
himself and the rest of the world is deepened by the simple mindedness-as he
sees it-of citizens, social workers, doctors, law makers, and judges, who,
instead of stamping out crime punish the criminals less severely in the hope
that this will make them reform. The result, detectives feel, is that nine
tenths of their work is recatching people who should have stayed behind bars.
This makes them rather cynical.
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单选题Historians tend to tell the same joke when they are describing history education in America. It's the one (51) the teacher standing in the schoolroom door (52) goodbye to students for the summer and calling after them. "By the way, we won World War Ⅱ. " The problem with the joke, of course, is that it's not funny. The recent surveys on (53) illiteracy are beginning to numb: nearly one third of American 17-year-olds cannot even (54) which countries the United States fought against in that war. One third have no idea when the Declaration of Independence was (55) . One third thought Columbus reached the New World after 1750. Two thirds cannot correctly (56) the Civil War between 1850 and 1900. Even when they get the answers right, some are just guessing. Unlike math or science, ignorance of history cannot be (57) connected to loss of international competitiveness. But it does affect our future (58) a democratic nation and as individuals. The good news is that there is growing agreement on what is wrong with the (59) of history and what needs to be done to fix it. The steps are tentative (尝试性的) (60) yet to be felt in most classrooms.
单选题Mrs. Peters stopped playing the piano ______.
单选题By the mid-nineteenth century, the term "ice-box" had entered the American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States: The ice trade grew with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and hospitals, and by some forward-looking city dealers in fresh meat, fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1861-1865), as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880, half the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston and Chicago, went to families for their own use. This had become possible because a new household convenience, the icebox, a precursor of the modern refrigerator, had been invented.
Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now suppose: In the early nineteenth century, the knowledge of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration, was rudimentary. The commonsense notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course mistaken, for it was the melting of ice that performed the cooling. Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the ice in blankets, which kept the ice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors achieve the delicate balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox.
But as early as 1803, an ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the right track. He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the village of Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found that customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of his competitors to pay a premium price for his butter, still fresh and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage of his icebox, Moore explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel to market at night in order to keep their produce cool.
单选题Man: It's raining cats and dogs outside. Did you remember to bring the umbrella? Women: Oops, ______.
单选题She could have cried, but she had no time to dwell ______her disappointment, for suddenly a harsh voice hailed her from below.
单选题The President of the United States is head of the______Branch.
单选题The mini-skirt is______.A. in fashionsB. in a fashionC. in fashionD. in the fashion
单选题It is during his spare time______Johnson has been studying a course in history.
单选题In this factory, suggestions often have to wait fur months before they are fully ______ .
单选题Tall-growing crops should be planted where they will not shade or ______ with the growth of small crops.
单选题In the end he realized his dream, but______the cost of his life.
单选题Did you enjoy the trip? Im afraid not. And ______. A) my classmates cant either. B) my classmates dont too. C) neither do my classmates. D) neither did my classmates.
单选题A: I'm so glad that you've come to our wedding. B:
Congratulations, and ______
A. all my good wishes!
B. all wishes!
C. happy forever!
D. all my best wishes!
单选题Every chemical change either results from energy being sued to produce the change, or causes energy to be ______ in some form.
单选题Although he is talkative, he is______to tell us anything about his family.
单选题It"s been called the Gig Economy, Freelance Nation, the Rise of the Creative Class, and the e-economy, with the "e" standing for electronic, entrepreneurial. Everywhere we look, we can see the U.S. workforce undergoing a massive change. No longer do we work at the same company for 25 years, waiting for the gold watch, expecting the benefits and security that come with full-time employment. We"re no longer simply lawyers, or photographers, or writers. Instead, we"re part-time lawyers-cum-amateur photographers who write on the side.
Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients, learning to be marketing and accounting experts, and creating offices in bedrooms/coffee shops. Independent workers abound. We call them freelancers, contractors, sole proprietors, consultants, temps, and the self-employed.
This transition is nothing less than a revolution. We haven"t seen a shift in the workforce so significant in almost 100 years since we transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Now, employees are leaving the traditional workplace and opting to piece together a professional life on their own. As of 2005, one-third of our workforce participated in this "freelance economy". Statistics show that number has only increased over the past six years. While the economy has unwillingly pushed some people into independent work, many have chosen it because of greater flexibility that lets them skip the dreary office environment and focus on more personally fulfilling projects.
These trends will have an enormous impact on our economy and our society:
We don"t actually know the true composition of the new workforce. After 2005, the government stopped counting independent workers in a meaningful and accurate way. Studies have shown that the independent workforce has grown and changed significantly since then.
Jobs no longer provide the protections and security that workers used to expect. The basics such as health insurance, protection from unpaid wages, a retirement plan, and unemployment insurance are out of reach for one-third of working Americans. Independent workers are forced to seek them elsewhere, and if they can"t find or afford them, then they go without. Therefore, it"s time to build a new support system that allows for the flexible and mobile way that people are working.
This new, changing workforce needs to build economic security in profoundly new ways. For the new workforce, the New Deal is irrelevant. When it was passed in the 1930s, the New Deal provided workers with important protections and benefits but those securities were built for a traditional employer-employee relationship. The New Deal has not evolved to include independent workers.
单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} There are 5 passages in this part. Each passage is
followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are
4 choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice and mark
the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet with a single line through the
center.{{B}}Passage 1{{/B}}
Population tends to grow at an
exponential(指数的)rate. This means that they progressively double. As an example
of this type of growth rate, take one penny and double every day for one month.
After the first week, you would have only 64 cents, but after the fourth week
you would have over a million dollars. This helps explain why
the population has come on "all of a sudden". It took from the beginning of
human life to the year 1830 for the population of the earth to reach one
billion. That repents(缓慢进行)a time span of at least two million years. Then it
took from 1830 to 1930 for world population to reach 2 billion. The next billion
was added by 1960, only thirty years, and in 1975 world population reached 4
billion, which is another billion people in only fifteen years.
World population is increasing at a rate of 9000 per hour, 220000 per day,
and 80 million per year. This is not only due to higher birth rate, but to lower
death rate as well. The number of births has not declined at the same rate as
the number of deaths. Some countries, such as Columbia,
Thailand, Morocco, Costa Rica, and the Philippines, are doubling their
population about every twenty-one years, with a growth rate of 3.3% a year or
more. The United States is doubling its population about very eighty-seven
years, with a rate of 0.8% per year. {{U}}Every time a population doubles, the
country involved needs twice as much of everything, including hospitals,
schools, resources, food and medicines to care for its people. {{/U}}It is easy to
see that this is very difficult to achieve for the more rapidly growing
countries.
单选题Would you please______these books to your classmates?
单选题He signed his name ______ two witnesses.
单选题The______ in my son's clothes are beginning to come apart. A. seams B. beams C. rims D. segments
单选题It is______impossible to find a good educational program in this channel on TV.
单选题Business organizations, political organizations, social organizations, all find ______ important to advertise in order to influence public opinion. A. it B. that C. as D. which
单选题In 1880, Sir Joshua Waddilove, a Victorian philanthropist, founded Provident Financial to provide affordable loans to working-class families in and around Bradford, in northern England. This month his company, now one of Britain's leading providers of "home credit" -small, short-term, unsecured loans—began the nationwide rollout of Vanquis, a credit card aimed at people that mainstream lenders shun. The card offers up to they impose extra charges, such as application fees; and they cap their potential losses by lending only small amounts ( $ 500 is a typical credit limit). All this is easier to describe than to do, especially when the economy slows. After the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000, several sub-prime credit-card providers failed. Now there are only around 100, of which nine issue credit cards. Survivors such as Metris and Providian, two of the bigger sub-prime card companies, have become choosier about their customers' credit histories. As the economy recovered, so did lenders' fortunes. Fitch, a rating agency, says that the proportion of sub-prime credit-card borrowers who are more than 60 days in arrears (a good predictor of eventual default)is the lowest since November 2001. But with American interest rates rising again, some worry about another squeeze. As Fitch's Michael Dean points out, sub-prime borrowers tend to have not just higher-rate credit cards, but dearer auto loans and variable-rate mortgages as well That makes a risky business even riskier.
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单选题(It) was (so) a long journey (that) we felt very tired (when) we arrived.
单选题[此试题无题干]
单选题The two claws of the mature American lobster are decidedly different from each other. The crusher claw is short and stout; the cutter claw is long and slender. Such bilateral asymmetry, in which the fight side of the body is, in all other respects, a mirror image of the left side, is not unlike handedness in humans. But where the majority of humans are righthanded, in lobsters the crasher claw appears with equal probability on either the right side or left side of the body. Bilateral asymmetry of the claws comes about gradually. In the juvenile fourth and fifth stages of development, the paired claws are symmetrical and cutter like. Asymmetry begins to appear in the juvenile sixth stage of development, and the paired claws further diverge toward welldefined cutter and crusher claws during succeeding stages. An intriguing aspect of this development was discovered by Victor Emmer. He found that if one of the paired claws is removed during the fourth or fifth stage, the intact claw invariably becomes a crusher, while the regenerated claw becomes a cutter. Removal of a claw during a later juvenile stage or during adulthood, when asymmetry is present, does not alter the asymmetry; the intact and regenerate claws retain their original structures. These observations indicate that the conditions that trigger differentiation must operate in a random manner when the paired claws are intact, but in a nonrandom manner when one of the claws is lost. One possible explanation is that differential use of the claws determines their asymmetry. Perhaps the claw that is used more becomes the crusher. This would explain why, when one of the claws is missing during the fourth or fifth stage, the intact claw always becomes a crusher. With two intact claws, initial use of one claw might prompt the animal to use it more than the other throughout the juvenile fourth and fifth stages, causing it to become a crusher. To test this hypothesis, researchers raised lobsters in the juvenile fourth and fifth stages of development in a laboratory environment in which the lobsters could manipulate oyster chips. (Not coincidentally, at this stage of development lobsters typically change from a habitat where they drift passively, to the ocean floor where they have the opportunity to be more active by borrowing in the substrate. ) Under these conditions, the lobsters developed asymmetric claws, half with crusher claws on the left, and half with crusher claws on the right. In contrast, when juvenile lobsters were reared in a smooth tank without the oyster chips, the majority developed two cutter claws. This unusual configuration of symmetrical cutter claws did not change when the lobsters were subsequently placed in a manipulable environment or when they lost and regenerated one or both claws.
单选题Recently TV Station has taken great pains to make a program that reviews the important ______ of 2006. A) affairs B) events C) matters D) things
单选题The text seems to imply that other forms of life in the cosmos ______.
单选题Passage Three Americans are well known for the strange diets they always seem to be following. It seems that Americans like to diet almost as much as they like to eat. New types of diet plans are always coming out. Usually, though, they don't stay popular for long. There are many diets on the market. It is often difficult to know which ones really work. It's also hard to believe how fast a dieter is supposed to shed pounds. A lot has been written about dieting. And some interesting facts about diets and foods have been discovered. For example, did you know that the more celery you eat, the more weight you will lose.9 Celery has "negative" calories. The body burns up more calories digesting a piece of celery than there are in the celery stick itself. Dieters shun potatoes because they think they are fattening. But they aren't. A potato has about the same number of calories as an apple. To gain a single pound, you would have to eat eleven pounds of potatoes! Some dieters even worry about getting fat from licking postage stamps. But they have nothing to worry about. The glue on an average stamp has only about one-tenth of a calorie. Maybe a diet of postage stamps would be popular?
单选题 Crossing Wesleyan University's campus usually
requires walking over colorful messageschalked on the ground. They can be as
innocent as meeting announcements, but in a growingnumber of cases the
language is meant to shock. It's not uncommon, for instance, to see
lewdreferences to professors'sexual preferences scrawled across a path or the
mention of the word"Nig" that African-American students say make them feel
uncomfortable. In response, officials and students at
schools are now debating ways to lead theircommunities away from forms of
expression that offend or harass (侵扰). In the process, they' reputting up
against the difficulties of regulating speech at institutions that pride
themselves onfostering open debate. Mr. Bennet of Wesleyan says
he had gotten used to seeing occasional talkings filled withfour-letter words.
Campus tradition made any horizontal surface not attached to a building
apotential billboard. But when talkings began taking on a more threatening and
lewd tone, Bennetdecided to act. "This is not acceptable in a workplace
and not aeeeptahle in an institution of higherlearning." Bennet says. For
now, Bennet is seeking input about what kind of message-postingpolicy the
school should adopt. The student assembly recently passed a resolution saying
the"right to speech comes with implicit responsibilities to respect community
standards" Other public universities have confronted problems
this year while considering various ways ofregulating where students can express
themselves. At Harvard Law School, the recent controversywas more linked to the
academic setting. Minority students there are seeking to curb what theyconsider
harassing speech in the wake of a series of incidents last spring.
At a meeting held by the "Committee on Healthy Diversity" last week, the
school's BlackLaw Students Association endorsed a policy targeting
discriminatory harassment. It would trigger areview by school officials if there
were charges of "severe or pervasive conduct" by students orfaculty. The policy
would cover harassment based on, but not limited to, factors such as
race,religion, creed, sexual orientation, national origin, and ethnieity
(种族划分). Boston attorney Harvey Silverglate, says other
schools have adopted similar harassmentpolicies that are actually speech codes,
punishing students for raising certain ideas. "Restrictingstudents from saying
anything that would be perceived as very unpleasant by another studentcontinues
uninterrupted, " says Silverglate, who attended the Harvard Law town
meeting lastweek.
单选题
If a farmer wishes to succeed, he must
try to keep a wide gap between his consumption and his production. He must store
a large quantity of grain{{U}} (31) {{/U}}consuming all his grain
immediately. He can continue to support himself and his family{{U}} (32)
{{/U}}he produces a surplus. He must use this surplus in three ways: as seed
for sowing, as an insurance{{U}} (33) {{/U}}the unpredictable effects of
bad weather and as a commodity which he must sell in order to{{U}} (34)
{{/U}}old agricultural implements and obtain chemical fertilizers to{{U}}
(35) {{/U}}the soil. He may also need money to construct irrigation{{U}}
(36) {{/U}}and improve his farm in other ways. If no surplus is
available, a farmer cannot be{{U}} (37) {{/U}}. He must either sell some
of his property or{{U}} (38) {{/U}}extra fids in the form of loans.
Naturally he will try to borrow money at a low{{U}} (39) {{/U}}of
interest, but loans of this kind are not{{U}} (40)
{{/U}}obtainable.
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单选题With all his experience abroad he was a major {{U}}asset{{/U}} to the company.
单选题Three fourths of the homework ______ today. A. has finished B. has been finished C. have finished D. have been finished
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单选题The president was expected to ______ some suggestions after reading all those reports.
单选题Where are most likely to be affected by caner-inducing agents according to the passage? ( )
单选题They are Uconfronting/U tremendous and more complicated problems.
单选题In War Made Easy Norman Solomon demolishes the myth of all independent American press zealously guarding sacred values of free expression. Although strictly focusing on the shameless history of media cheerleading for the principal post World War' Ⅱ American wars, invasions, and interventions, he calls into question the entire concept of the press as some kind of institutional counterforce to government and corporate power. Many of the examples compiled in this impeccably documented historical review will be familiar to readers who follow the news on the Internet. But such examples achieve flesh impact because of the way Solomon has organized and analyzed them. Each chapter is devoted to a single warhawk argument ( " America Is a Fair and Noble Superpower, " " Opposing the War Means Siding with the Enemy, " "Our Soldiers Are Heroes, Theirs Are Inhuman " ), illustrated with historical examples from conflicts in the Dominican Republic, E1 Salvador, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo, both Iraq wars, and others in which the media were almost universally enthusiastic accomplices. The book should really be subtitled " War reporting doesn't just suck, it kills. " It makes you feel like demanding a special war crimes tribunal for corporate media executives and owners who joined the roll-up to " shock and awe " as non-uniformed psywar ops. To be sure, this would raise the issue of whether or not following orders might suffice for the defense of obedient slaves such as Mary McGrory and Richard Cohen, who performed above and beyond the call of duty. " He persuaded me, " McGrory gushed the morning after Colin Powell addressed a plenary session of the United Nations on February 5,2003, declaring that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. " The cumulative effect was stunning." In the same Washington Post edition, Cohen wrote. The evidence he presented to the United Nations—some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail—had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool could conclude otherwise. Solomon demonstrates how this kind of peppy prewar warm-up degenerates into drooling and heavy breathing once the killing begins. As if observing a heavy metal computer game, the pornographers of death concentrate on the exquisite craftsmanship and visual design of the murder machines, and the magnificence of the fiery explosions they produce.
单选题W: Carol told us on the phone not to worry about her. Her left leg doesn't hurt as much as it did yesterday.M: She'd better have it examined by a doctor anyway. And I will call her about it this evening.Q: What does the man think Carol should do? A. See a doctor. B. Stay in bed for a few days. C. Get treatment in a better hospital. D. Make a phone call to the doctor.
单选题Do you ever automatically say "God bless you" when someone sneezes? Did you ever cross your fingers when making a wish? Most people who do these things never think about why they do them. They just do them. But there is a reason. Both acts are meant to insure good luck. They are little superstitions that have come down to us from an earlier time, when everybody believed in good and evil spirits. And even in our modern world, when men are traveling to the moon, we are still practicing some of these ancient habits in our daily lives. In ancient times, men believed that the soul lived in the head. Every time someone sneezed, he was risking the danger of dislodging that soul and blowing it out the nose into the outside world. So, as insurance against a lost soul, people would say "God bless you" to be sure that God would catch the soul and return it to its rightful owner. Some people today toss a bit of salt over their left shoulder if they happen to spill any at the dinner table. This practice once had a serious purpose. In an earlier time, men believed that evil spirits always stood on their left side and good sprits on the right. So any time they spilled some of the precious stuff, they would throw a bit of it over their left shoulder to keep away the evil spirits. Since the evil spirits stood on the left, and the good spirits on the right, the right side was considered the lucky side of the body. Putting your best foot forward meant starting out on the lucky side, with your right foot first. That was a guarantee of good luck at whatever you were about to do. We still speak of "putting your best foot forward," although we don't always start walking with the right foot.
单选题The detective, ______ to read a newspaper, glanced at the man ______ next to a woman.A. pretending, seatB. pretending, seatedC. pretended, seatingD. pretended, seated
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单选题I'd like to work abroad to______my horizons.
单选题Man: Marilyn seems happy with her grades. Woman: Happy? She could hardly contain herself. Question: What does the man say about Marilyn?
单选题I finally finished ______ this quiz. Now I'm going to watch TV.
单选题He was a young man of barely eighteen years, evidently county ______ , and now, as it seemed, on his first visit to town.
单选题Thomas Hardy is a prolific writer whose works include the following except______.
单选题With the awfully limited vocabulary to only a thousand words or fewer, the reader resembles a color blind artist who is only aware of a few colors and consequently his ability to create on canvas is
lamentably
restricted.
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单选题His understanding made a deep ______ on the young girl.
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Passage 9 One of
the most interesting of all studies is the study of words and word origins. Each
language is {{U}}(1) {{/U}} of several earlier languages, and the words
of a language can sometimes be traced {{U}}(2) {{/U}} through two or
three different languages to their {{U}}(3) {{/U}} Again, a word from
one language may pass into other languages and {{U}}(4) {{/U}} a new
meaning. The word "etiquette", which is {{U}}(5) {{/U}} French origin
and originally meant a label, {{U}}(6) {{/U}} a sign, passed into
Spanish and kept its original meaning. So in Spanish the word "etiquette" today
is used to {{U}}(7) {{/U}} the small tags which a store {{U}}(8)
{{/U}} to a suit, a dress or a bottle. The word "etiquette" in French,
{{U}}(9) {{/U}}, gradually developed a different meaning. It
{{U}}(10) {{/U}} became the custom to write directions on small cards or
"etiquette" as to how visitors should dress themselves and {{U}}(11)
{{/U}} during an important ceremony at the royal court. {{U}}(12)
{{/U}}, the word "etiquette" began to indicate a system of correct manners
for people to follow. {{U}}(13) {{/U}} this meaning, the word passed
into English. Consider the word "breakfast". "To fast" is to
go for some period of time without {{U}}(14) {{/U}} . Thus, in the
morning, after many hours {{U}}(15) {{/U}} the night without food, one
{{U}}(16) {{/U}} one's fast. Consider the everyday
English {{U}}(17) {{/U}} "Good-bye". Many years ago, people would say to
each other {{U}}(18) {{/U}} parting: "God be with you." As this was
{{U}}(19) {{/U}} over and over millions of times, it gradually became
{{U}}(20) {{/U}} to "good-bye".
单选题Tom's parents died when he was a child, so he was ______ by his relatives.
单选题After Los Angeles, Atlanta may be America's most car-dependent city. Atlantans sentimentally give their cars names, compare speeding tickets and jealously guard any side street where it is possible to park. The city's roads are so well worn that the first act of the new mayor, Shirley Franklin, was to start repairing potholes. In 1998, 13 metro counties lost federal highway funds because their air-pollution levels violated the Clean Air Act. The American Highway Users Alliance ranked three Atlanta interchanges among the 18 worst bottlenecks in the country. Other cities in the same fix have reorganized their highways, imposed commuter and car taxes, or expanded their public-transport systems. Atlanta does not like any of these things. Public transport is a vexed subject, too. Atlanta's metropolitan region is divided into numerous county and smaller city governments, which find it hard to work together. Railways now serve the city center and the airport, but not much else; bus stops are often near invisible poles, offering no indication of which bus might stop there, or when. Georgia's Democratic governor, Roy Barnes, who hopes for reelection in November, has other plans. To win back the federal highway money lost under the Clean Air Act, he created the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA), a 15-member board with the power to make the county governments, the city and the ten-county Atlanta Regional Commission cooperate on transport plans, whether they like it or not. Now GRTA has issued its own preliminary plan, allocating $ 4.5 billion over the next three years for a variety of schemes. The plan earmarks money to widen roads; to have an electric shuttle bus shuttle tourists among the elegant villas of Buckhead; and to create a commuter rail link between Atlanta and Macon, two hours to the south. Counties will be encouraged, with generous ten-to-one matching funds, to start express bus services. Public goodwill, however, may not stretch as far as the next plan, which is to build the Northern Arc highway for 65 miles across three counties north of the city limits. GRTA has allotted $270m for this. Supporters say it would ease the congestion on local roads; opponents think it would worsen over-development and traffic. The counties affected, and even GRTA's own board, are divided. The governor is in favor, however; and since he can appoint and fire GRTA'S members, that is probably the end of the story. Mr Barnes has a tendency to do as he wants, regardless. His arrogance on traffic matters could also lose him votes. But Mr Barnes think that Atlanta's slowing economy could do him more harm than the anti-sprawl movement.
单选题—I wonder why Mary is so unfriendly to us. —She is ______ than unfriendly. I'm afraid. A. shyer B. much shyer C. shy more D. more shy
单选题The vast majority of people in any culture ______ to the established standard of that culture.
单选题Eggs are my favorite food. I like them (21) , hard-boiled, scrambled, or poached. I eat eggs for (22) , lunch, and dinner. I eat eggs here, there, and everywhere! Eggs taste great. You can eat them by (23) or as part of any meal. Eggs are (24) used as an ingredient in many prepared foods. Can you think of any foods that contain (25) ? Eggs are really a perfect food. They are (26) in most of the nutrients we need to maintain good (27) . When a baby chicken develops (28) an egg, the egg (29) and yolk are the only foods they need. Many people believe that eggs are (30) . They point out that eggs contain a very high amount of cholesterol (胆固醇). Too (31) of one kind of cholesterol in our blood can cause heart disease. There is no evidence that eggs (32) the harmful cholesterol in our blood. When we eat foods that are (33) in cholesterol, our bodies make (34) of it to balance, or adjust. If you want to enjoy a tasty and healthy food, eat plenty of (35) .
单选题Go Tell It on the Mountain is mainly about the experience of a boy named_____.
单选题
The geology of the Earth's surface is
dominated by the particular properties of water. Present on Earth in solid,
liquid, and gaseous states, water is exceptionally reactive. It dissolves,
transports, and precipitates many chemical compounds and is constantly modifying
the face of the Earth. Evaporated from the oceans, water vapor
forms clouds, some of which are transported by wind over the continents.
Condensation from the clouds provides the essential agent of continental
erosion: rain. Precipitated onto the ground, the water trickles down to form
brooks, streams, and rivers, constituting what is called the hydrographic
network. This immense polarized network channels the water toward a single
receptacle: an ocean. Gravity dominates this entire step in the cycle because
water tends to minimize its potential energy by running from high altitudes
toward the reference point that is sea level. The rate at which
a molecule of water passes through the cycle is not random but is a measure of
the relative size of the various reservoirs. If we define residence time as the
average time for a water molecule to pass through one of the three
reservoirs--atmosphere, continent, and ocean--we see that the times are very
different. A water molecule stays, on an average, eleven days in the atmosphere,
one hundred years on a continent and forty thousand years in the ocean. This
last figure shows the importance of the ocean as the principal reservoir of the
hydrosphere but also the rapidity of water transport on the
continents. A vast chemical separation process takes places
during the flow of water over the continents. Soluble ions such as calcium,
sodium, potassium, and some magnesium are dissolved and transported. Insoluble
ions such as aluminum, iron, and silicon stay where they are and form the thin,
fertile skin of soil on which vegetation can grow. Sometimes soils are destroyed
and transported mechanically during flooding. The erosion of the continents thus
results from two closely linked and interdependent processes, chemical erosion
and mechanical erosion. Their respective interactions and efficiency depend on
different factors.
单选题 That summer an army of crickets started a war with my
father. They picked a fight the minute they invaded our cellar. Dad didn't care
for bugs much more than Mamma, and he could tolerate a few spiders and assorted
creepy crawlers living in the basement Every farm house had them. A part of
rustic living and something you needed to put up with ff you wanted the simple
life. He told Mamma: now that were living out here, you can't
be jerking your head and swallowing your gum over what's plain natural, Ellen.
But she was a city girl through and through and had no ears when it came to
defending vermin. She said a cricket was just a noisy cockroach, just a dumb
horny bug that wouldn't shut up. She said in the city there were blocks of
buildings overrun with cockroaches with no way for people to get rid of them. No
sir, no way could she sleep with all that chirping going on; then to prove her
point she wouldn't go to bed. She drank coffee and smoked my father's
cigarettes and she paced between the couch and the TV. Next morning she
threatened to pack up and leave, so Dad drove to the hardware store and hurried
back. He squirted poison from a jug with a spray nozzle. He sprayed the basement
and all around the foundation of the house. When he was finished he told us that
was the end of it. But what he should have said was: this is
the beginning, the beginning of our war, the beginning of our destruction. I
often think back to that summer and try to imagine him delivering a speech with
words like that, because for the next fourteen days Mamma kept find dead
crickets in the clean laundry. She'd shake out a towel or a sheet and a dead
black cricket would roll across the linoleum. Sometimes the cat would corner
one, and swat it around like he was playing hockey, then carry it away in his
mouth. Dad said swallowing a few dead crickets wouldn't hurt as long as the cat
didn't eat too many. Each time Mamma complained he told her it was only natural
that we'd be fending a couple of dead ones for a while. Soon
live crickets started showing up in the kitchen and bathroom. Mamma freaked
because she thought they were the dead crickets come back to haunt, but Dad said
these was definitely a new batch, probably coming up on the pipes. He fetched
his jug of poison and sprayed beneath the sink and behind the toilet and all
along the baseboard until the whole house smelled of poison, and then he sprayed
the cellar again, and then he went outside and sprayed all around the foundation
leaving a foot-wide moat of poison. For a couple of weeks we
went back to find dead crickets in the laundry. Dad told us to keep a sharp look
out. He suggested that we'd all be better off to hide as many as we could from
Mamma. I fed a few dozen to the cat who I didn't like because he scratched
and bit for no reason. I hoped the poison might kill him too so we could get a
puppy. A couple of weeks later, when both live and dead crickets kept turning
up, he emptied the cellar of junk. Then he burned a lot of bundled newspapers
and magazines which he said the crickets had turned into nests.
He stood over that fire with a rake in one hand and a garden hose in the other.
He wouldn't leave it even when Mamma sent me out to fetch him for supper. He
wouldn't leave the fire, and she wouldn't put supper on the table. Both my
brothers were crying. Finally she went out and got him herself. And while we
ate, the wind lifted some embers onto the wood pile. The only gasoline was in
the lawn mowers fuel tank but that was enough to create an explosion big enough
to reach the house. Once the roof caught, there wasn't much anyone could
do.
单选题In 1879, Richard Henry Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian School, a remarkable 40-year chapter in this country's failed social policy regarding Native Americans. Pratt's faith could be simply described as: "Kill the Indian, Save the Man!" to eradicate any manifestations of their native culture. When four decades of forcible education ended in 1918, it wasn't clear what Pratt's experiment had killed and what it had saved. But there was one indisputably notable legacy-- the Carlisle football team. In the early 20th century, the Carlisle Indians ascended to the pinnacle(顶点) of the collegiate game. In those years, it began to engage all the Ivy football powers on the gridiron(运动场). And from 1911 to 1913, including the season in which the legendary Jim Thorpe returned from the Olympics to score 25 touchdowns, Carlisle had a 38-3 record, including a 27-6 rout of West Point. Washington Post sportswriter Sally Jenkins has produced a fascinating new book, "The Real All Americans": The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation (Doubleday. $24.95), that examines the Carlisle legend in wonderful detail. At the turn of the century, football was exploding on the college scene, particularly at the Ivy elites, where the sons of the gentry could prepare for the rigors of leadership on the gridiron. They preferred their football brutal. Conversely, the Carlisle team was undermanned and seriously undersized. But Carlisle was blessed with gifted athletes and a wizard of a coach, Pop Warner. Because Carlisle couldn't match the brute force of its rivals, Warner created an entirely new brand of football, relying on speed, deception and guile. In that 1903 Harvard game, Carlisle used the hidden ball trick to score on the second-half kickoff. While the return man pretended to cradle the ball, another player had it tucked into a pocket sewn inside the back of his jersey and ran unmolested 103 yards for a touchdown. Carlisle developed new blocking techniques that compensated for its size disadvantage: the spiral throw that put the long pass, with its premium(优势) on speed, into the offense and a repertoire of fakes; reverses and misdirection that remain a central part of the game. It took brains to concoct the schemes and intelligence to execute them. These innovations did not go unrecognized. After Carlisle trounced Army in 1912, The New York Times hailed the conquerors from Carlisle for playing "the most perfect brand of football ever seen in America." Still, today this country celebrates football like no other sport. Jenkins does a marvelous job of making an intimate connection between our beloved, modern game and the unlikely team that, a century ago, helped make it what it is today.
单选题Text One
Phrases:
A. check out 56 five books
B. houses our humanities and map 57
C. introduce you to our 58 facilities
Welcome to the university library. This tour will 59 . First of all, the library’s collection of books, reference materials, and other resources are found on levels one to four of this building. Level one 60 . On level two, you will find our circulation desk, current periodicals and journals, and our copy facilities. Our science and engineering sections can be found on level three. Finally, group study rooms and the multimedia center are located on level four. Undergradu, ate students can 61 for two weeks. Graduate students can check out fifteen books for two months. Books can be renewed up to two times.
单选题In the light of American ______, man is living in a cold, indifferent, and essentially Godless world, and is no longer free in any sense of the word.
单选题A. partnerB. farmerC. warmD. harm
单选题Fingerprints from an unchangeable ____ despite changes in the individual’s appearance or age.
单选题My father often works very hard. And he has
1
to see a film. Here I"ll tell you
2
about him.
One afternoon, when he finished his work and was about to go home, he found a film ticket under the
3
on his desk. He thought he
4
to have not much work to do that day and
5
was quite wonderful to pass the
6
at the cinema. So he came back home and quickly finished his supper. Then he said
7
to us and left.
But to our
8
, he came back about half an hour later. I asked him what was the matter. He smiled and told us about
9
funny thing that had happened at the cinema.
When my father was sitting an his seat, a
10
came to my father"s and said that the seat was
11
. My father was surprised. He took out the ticket
12
looked at it carefully. It was Row 17.
13
. And then he looked at the seat. It was the same. So he asked her
14
her ticket. She took out the ticket at once and the seat shown in it was Row 17, Seat 3.
Why? What"s the matter with all this? While they were wondering suddenly the woman said, "The colors of the tickets are different." So they looked at the ticket more carefully. After a while, my father said, "Oh,
15
, I made a mistake. My ticket is for the film a month ago. Take this seat, please." With these words, he left the cinema.
单选题______ deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world experience.(西安交大2008研)
单选题Man: We've got three women researchers in our group: Mary, Betty and Helen. Do you know them? Woman: Sure. Mary is active and sociable. Betty is the most talkative woman I've ever met. But guess what? Helen's just the opposite. Question: What do we learn from the woman's remark about Helen?
单选题For semi-professional artists, performing before the public is a good chance ____. A．to improve themselves in their career B．to help train amateur performers C．to make friends with superstars D．to get involved in profitable business
单选题Variables such as individual and corporate behavior______nearly impossible for economists to forecast economic trends with precision.
单选题Illiteracy may be considered more as an abstract concept than a condition. When a famous English writer used the (1) over two hundred years ago, he was actually (2) to people who could (3) read Greek or Latin. (4) ,it seems unlikely that university examiners had this sort of (5) in mind when they reported on "creeping illiteracy" in a report on their students' final examination in 1988. (6) the years, university lecturers have been (7) of an increasing tendency towards grammatical sloppiness, poor spelling and general imprecision (8) their students' ways of writing; and sloppy writing is all (9) often a reflection of sloppy thinking. Their (10) was that they had (11) to do teaching their own subject (12) teaching their undergraduates to write. Some lecturers believe that they have a (n) (13) to stress the importance of maintaining standards of clear thinking (14) the written word in a world dominated by (15) communications and images. They (16) on the connection between clear thinking and a form of writing that is not only clear, but also sensitive to (17) of meaning. The same lecturers argue that undergraduates appear to be the victims of a "softening process" that begins (18) the teaching of English in schools, but this point of view has, not (19) , caused a great deal of (20) .
单选题Cultural responses to modernization often manifest themselves in the mass media. For example, Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, created a fictional world in which he cautioned readers that modern science and technology posed a threat to individual dignity. Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times, set in a futuristic manufacturing plant, also told the story of the dehumanizing impact of modernization and machinery. Writers and artists, in their criticisms of the modern world, often point to technology's ability to alienate people from one another, capitalism's tendency to foster greed, and government's inclination to create bureaucracies that oppress rather than help people. Among the major values of the modern period, four typically manifest themselves in the cultural environment: celebrating the individual, believing in rational order, working efficiently, and rejecting tradition. These values of the modern period were originally embodied in the printing press and later in newspapers and magazines. The print media encouraged the vision of individual writers, publishers, and readers who circulated new ideas. Whereas the premodern period was guided by strong beliefs in a natural or divine order, becoming modern meant elevating individual self-expression to a central position. Along with democratic breakthroughs, however, individualism and the Industrial Revolution triggered modern forms of hierarchy, in which certain individuals and groups achieved higher standing in the social order. For example, those who managed commercial enterprises gained more control over the economic ladder, while an intellectual class of modern experts, who mastered specialized realms of knowledge, gained increasing power over the nation's social, political, and cultural agendas. To be modern also meant to value the capacity of organized, scientific minds to solve problems efficiently. Progressive thinkers maintained that the printing press, the telegraph, and the railroad in combination with a scientific attitude would foster a new type of informed society. At the core of this society, the printed mass media, particularly newspapers, would educate the citizenry, helping to build and maintain an organized social framework. Journalists strove for the premodern ideal through a more fact-based and efficient approach to reporting. They discarded decorative writing and championed a lean look. Modern front-page news de-emphasized description, commentary, and historical context. The lead sentences that reported a presidential press conference began to look similar, whether they were on the front page in Tupelo, Mississippi, or Wahpeton, North Dakota. Just as modern architecture made many American skylines look alike, the front pages of newspapers began to resemble one another. Finally, to be modern meant to throw off the rigid rules of the past, to break with tradition. Modern journalism became captivated by timely and immediate events. As a result, the more standardized forms of front-page journalism, on the one hand, championed facts and current events while efficiently meeting deadlines. But on the other hand, modern newspapers often failed to take a historical perspective or to analyze sufficiently the ideas underlying these events.
单选题It isn't good ______ you to stay outside in the sun all day.
单选题Why would any woman in her fight mind choose to walk on the balls of her feet with her heels propped up by spikes? The historical answer is that high heels reflect aristocratic tastes-specifically, the tastes of the seventeenth-century French court, which first popularized them in Europe. Not only did heels keep the wearer's feet relatively mud free, they also created a physical elevation to match the social elevation of the stylish, exaggerated the strutting gait of the noble classes, and they suggested, by their very precariousness, that their owners could afford not to worry about falling on their faces. Indeed, as Bernard Rudofsky points out, seventeenth-century wearers of high heels, men and women, frequently had to be transported in sedan chairs because they could not manage cobblestones on foot. Some "heels" in that era were actually full-soled platforms, and to walk on these things at all, one needed the constant elbow support of two Servants. The helplessness associated with the raised-heel style encouraged the notion that heeled persons were above having to care for themselves. In view of this, it is not surprising that even today it is women, almost exclusively, who wear heels. High heels are the cobbler's contribution to what I have called the pedestal ploy. They link physical incapacity with the notion of woman as a "higher being"--too high to get along on her own. Women have taken to high heels, of course, because they feel, correctly, that they increase their attractiveness to men. Part of that increased attractiveness has to do with male fantasies of female fragility. As fashion-iconoclast Elizabeth Hawes puts it, "The idea is that he, in his heavy shoes, should feel stronger and more capable than she on her fragile stilts. Never mind the realities." Another part of it may be biological. In his discussion of rump display among mammals, Dale Guthrie notes that the "lines of the buttocks, thigh, calf and ankle have a native sexual stimulation, but this can be increased with high-heeled shoes; the curves are exaggerated when the heel is lifted." Heels also exaggerate the lateral motion of buttocks the. ultimate function of high heels, therefore, may be to fuel the male belief that women are both impotent and seductive.
单选题
单选题
单选题{{B}}Questions 11-15 are based on the following passage:{{/B}}
I doubt that any historically valid
treatment of that presidential administration can emerge for at least another
decade, if then. I confess that when I came out of the White House I signed up
to do an "insider volume", but sober, professional second thoughts have led me
to put that project on ice until at least 1980. The problem is that I
simultaneously know too much, and not enough. I know what I thought was
happening. But I cannot fully document what happened. And I have seen enough
highly classified documents to know that most of what the observers thought was
happening was at best half right, at worst dead wrong. This has steered me in a
different direction as far as writing is concerned. I am now preparing what is
frankly and unashamedly an ex parte memoir, "My Experiences in Washington." It
is based on what I believed to be true, on the picture as I conceptualized it,
of the presidential administration under which I
worked.
单选题
单选题The whole passage carries a tone of ___________.
单选题
单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following four
texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your
answers on Answer Sheet 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}}
St. Paul didn't like it. Moses
warned his people against it. Hesiod declared it "mischievious” and
"hard to get rid of it", but Oscar Wilder said, "Gossip is charming."
"History is merely gossip," he wrote in one of his famous plays. "But
scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. ' In times past,
under Jewish law, gossipmongers might be fined or flogged. The Puritans put them
in stocks or ducking stools, but no punishment seemed to have the desired effect
of preventing gossip, which has continued uninterrupted across the back fences
of the centuries. Today, however, the much-maligned human foible
is being looked at in a different light. Psychologists, sociologists,
philosophers, even evolutionary biologists are concluding that
gossip may not be so bad after all. Gossip is "an intrinsically
valuable activity", philosophy professor Aaron Ben-Ze'ev states in a book he has
edited, entitled Good Gossip. For one thing, gossip helps us
acquire information that we need to know that doesn't come through ordinary
channels, such as: "What was the real reason so and-so was fired from the
office?" Gossip also is a form of social bonding, Dr. Ben-Ze'ev says. It is "a
kind of sharing" that also "satisfies the tribal need-- namely, the need to
belong to and be accepted by a unique group". What's more, the professor notes,
"Gossip is enjoyable." Another gossip groupie, Dr. Ronald De
Sousa, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, describes gossip
basically as a form of indiscretion and a "saintly virtue", by which he means
that the knowledge spread by gossip will usually end up being slightly
beneficial. "It seems likely that a world in which all information were
universally available would be preferable to a world where immense power resides
in the control of secrets," he writes. Still, everybody knows
that gossip can have its ill effects, especially on the poor wretch being
gossiped about. And people should refrain from certain kinds of gossip
that might be harmful, even though the ducking stool is long out of
fashion. By the way, there is also an interesting strain of
gossip called medical gossip, which in its best form, according to researchers
Jerry M. Suls and Franklin Goodkin, can motivate people with symptoms of serious
illness, but who are unaware of it, to seek medical help. So go
ahead and gossip. But remember, if (as often is the case among gossipers)
you should suddenly become one of the gossipees instead, it is best to employ
the foolproof defense recommended by Plato, who may have learned the lesson from
Socrates, who as you know was the victim of gossip spread that he was corrupting
the youth of Athens: When men speak ill of thee, so live thiat nobody will
believe them. Or, as Will Rogers said, "Live so that you wouldn't .be
ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town
gossip."
单选题The temperatures are somewhat lower than the average temperature in May this year. A. rather B, very C. a little D. less
单选题______ news and current affairs, I hardly watch any television. A. Aside from B. Regardless of C. In the face of D. So far as
单选题{{B}}Passage 3{{/B}}
The air is polluted. The earth is
poisoned. Water is unsafe to drink and garbage is burying the civilization that
produced it. Our environment is being polluted faster than
nature man's efforts can prevent it. Time is bringing us more people, and more
people will bring us more industry. More people and more industry will bring us
more motor-cars, larger cities, and the growing use of man made materials. This
is happening not only in the advanced societies but among the developing nations
as they become industrialized. Now many scientists are worrying
about the possibility of world pollution. Some experts declare that the balance
of nature is being so upset that the very survival of human beings is in
danger. {{U}}What can solve this problem? The fact is that
pollution is caused by man—by his greed and his modern way of life. {{/U}}We make
"increasing industrialization" our chief aim. For its sake we are willing to
sacrifice everything: clean air, pure water, good food, our health and the
future of our children. There is constant flow of people from the countryside
into cities, eager for the benefits of modern society. But as our technological
achievements have grown in the last twenty years, so has pollution become a
serious problem. Isn't it time that we stopped to ask where we
are going and why? It reminds us of the story about the airline pilot who told
his passengers over the loudspeaker: "I've some good news and some bad news. The
good news is that we're making rapid progress at 530 miles per hour. The bad
news is that we*re lost and don't know where we are going." The sad fact is that
this becomes a true story when applied to our modern
society.
单选题He got excited at the news, ______ I was calm.A. whenB. whileC. becauseD. after
单选题Mergers may be effective to revive or rejuvenate failing business by
the {{U}}infusion{{/U}} of new management and personnel.
A. inspection
B. introduction
C. evaluation
D. concentration
单选题
单选题
单选题We should make a clear______between ' competent' and ' proficient' for the purposes of our discussion.
单选题
Lobbying groups often try to disguise a
financial self-interest by clumsily dressing up their arguments in the guise of
concern for the public. You see this tendency in the pharmaceutical
industry{{U}} (21) {{/U}}in energy and lumber companies who like to tout
their{{U}} (22) {{/U}}of the environment. But{{U}} (23) {{/U}},
two new books argue, are these tactics more{{U}} (24) {{/U}}a cause for
concern than in agribusiness. Marion Nestle's "Food Safety:
Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bio-terrorism' looks at the way the American meat
and biotechnology industries have{{U}} (25) {{/U}}successfully on
Capitol Hill{{U}} (26) {{/U}}stricter federal regulation, which the
author argues has undermined the safety of the food supply.(27)
, Maxime Schwartz's "How the Cows Turned Mad"{{U}} (28) {{/U}}the
origins of mad-cow disease over more than two centuries, and reveals the fallout
from the British government's blind{{U}} (29) {{/U}}that the disease
could not be{{U}} (30) {{/U}}to humans. In 1999, Ms
Nestle writes in her earlier book, Rosemary Mueklow, the executive director of
the National Meat Association, lobbied against President Clinton's{{U}} (31)
{{/U}}to establish a more thorough testing regime for E. coli 0157: H7, a
potentially{{U}} (32) {{/U}}pathogen. Ms Muck low’s
organization—which represents meatpackers and processors who{{U}} (33)
{{/U}}to discard or reprocess meat found to be infected under the new
testing regime—argued on Capitol Hill that{{U}} (34) {{/U}}microbial
testing in meat could actually lead to a greater public health risk{{U}}
(35) {{/U}}confident consumers might relax their own safe-handling
procedures at home.
单选题Why did the man fasten the end of the rope before he climbed up the ladder?
单选题
单选题I don't doubt______ she will learn a lot during her stay in China.
单选题Which of the following is true about the difference between great art and simple entertainment according the author?
单选题Output is now six times ______ it was before 1990.
单选题Now a paper in Science argues that organic chemicals in the rock come mostly from ______ on earth than bacteria on Mars.
单选题The police tried {{U}}in vain{{/U}} to break up the protest crowds in front of the government building.
单选题By referring______his notes, the speaker was able to give the exact details required.
单选题______ that you kindly take immediate action on the matter. A) It requested B) It is requested C) That requested D) That is requested
单选题For the moment, mind-reading is still science fiction. But that may not be true for much longer. Several lines of inquiry are converging on the idea that the neurological activity of the brain can be decoded directly, and people"s thoughts revealed without being spoken.
Just imagine the potential benefits. Such a development would allow both the fit and the disabled to operate machines merely by choosing what they want those machines to do. It would permit the profoundly handicapped to communicate more easily than is now possible even with the text-based speech engines used by the likes of Stephen Hawking. It might unlock the mental prisons of people apparently in comas, who nevertheless show some signs of neural activity. For the able-bodied, it could allow workers to dictate documents silently to computers simply by thinking about what they want to say. The most profound implication, however, is that it would abolish the ability to lie.
Who could object to that? You will not bear false witness. Tell the truth, and shame the Devil. Transparency, which speaks for honesty in management, is put forward as the answer to most of today"s evils. But honestly speaking, the truth of the matter is that this would lead to disaster, for lying is at the heart of civilization. People are not the only creatures who lie. Species from squids to chimpanzees have been caught doing it from time to time. But only human beings have turned lying into an art. Call it diplomacy, public relations or simple good manners: lying is one of the things that make the world go round.
The occasional untruth makes domestic life possible, is essential in the office and forms a crucial part of parenting. Politics might be more entertaining without lies—"The prime minister has my full support" would be translated as, "If that half-wit persists in this insane course we"ll all be out on our ears"—but a party system would be hard to sustain without the semblance of loyalty that dishonesty permits.
The truly scary prospect, however, is the effect mind-reading would have on relations between the state and the individual. In a world in which the authorities could peep at people"s thoughts, speaking truth to power would no longer be brave: it would be unavoidable. Information technology already means that physical privacy has become a scarce commodity. Websites track your interests and purchases. Mobile phones give away your location. Video cameras record what you are up to. Lose mental privacy as well, and there really will be nowhere.
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单选题We don't need heating system, ______.