单选题 Achieving Contentment A. Socrates said contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty. Being a minimalist isn't easy. Living this counter-cultural lifestyle requires quite a determined personality. You have to smile and ignore friends and family who keep saying 'but you could be earning so much more if you took that corporate job.' Or 'why are you driving a 5-year-old car when you can afford a brand new one.' 'Why are you camping in a game reserve, and not staying in a 5-star hotel and casino.' B. It isn't easy to keep the constant pressure to shop and own at bay, but what makes it easy is contentment. When you look happy and your life is one that others envy for its solid relationships, rewarding creative work and annoying glow of health, people's helpful advice on lifestyle tends to sound thin. C. It's worth learning to be content! Not only does contentment provide the opportunity for minimalism, it also reduces your stress level, improves your outlook, relaxes your body, and makes your life enjoyable. There is an unmistakable freedom that follows contentment: a freedom to be who you are, enjoy who you are, and live the life you were destined to live. D. In our consumeristic-culture discontent is promoted and encouraged. If you aren't discontent with your car, why would you buy another one at twice the price? 'They' need to foster discontent with your body, your life, your husband or your job to soften you up for the hard sell. E. If only you bought this product, smoked this drug, drank this poison, used this service you would be happy. Selling starts by first breeding discontent. That is why celebrity shows are all over TV—they are an important foundation for the adverts between shows—no matter how beautiful you are, no matter how rich, there is always that celebrity to show you that you are being positively frugal (节俭的) by only buying a Mercedes and not a Porche. F. On the one hand, your life is enhanced by your dreams and aspirations. On the other hand, these drives can pull you farther and farther from your enjoyment of your life right now. By learning the lessons of gratitude and abundance, you can bring yourself closer to fulfilling the challenge of living in the present. There is no one-size-fits-all, but here are five keys that have helped us further develop contentment in our lives. 1. Be grateful G. Gratitude and contentment are inseparable. Focus on the good things in your life—the things you have—not the things you lack. Are you questioning what you have to be grateful for? Nothing come to mind? After all you are poorer than X, and uglier than Y, not as important as the boss, and suffer more responsibility than your staff. There you go comparing up again. When 90% of the world probably has less than you do, most people still focus on the few 0.2% of lucky souls who are models, superstars, CEOs and plain lucky. H. Come on now, get some perspective. Start making a list of all the good things in your life—even if it's just sunny weather, a nice nose or a great cup of coffee. Don't worry about finishing—the simple discipline of appreciating what you do have will set off a new habit. Try to add one or two items to the list every day. 2. You can't keep shopping your way to happiness I. Advertising has ingrained (使根深蒂固) the belief that the proper way to diffuse discontent is to buy whatever we don't yet have. Almost no energy is spent determining the true root of the discontent. We quickly focus on the nearest product (preferably chocolate based), and avoid thinking about what really makes us feel out of control, frustrated or angry. J. You have to break that habit. Understand that material possessions will never fully satisfy the desires of your heart (that's why discontent always returns). The next time you recognize discontentment surfacing in your life, refuse to give into that bad habit. Instead, commit to better understand yourself. Are you buying a new cell phone, or do you really want to buy 'coolness and popularity, and the envy of friends?' K. A little trick—if you compulsively shop when your world is out of control, buy something really tiny such as the smallest chocolate bar in the shop, a pair of plastic earrings, a cup of coffee. The action of purchasing makes people happy because for a few seconds at least, you have the sole attention of the shop assistant (aren't you an important person!) and you demonstrate through the display of cash or credit cards that you are in control of your life. For most people a 50p pack of gum gives the same pleasure as a $500 pair of shoes. Better in fact, you don't have that dull dread of the let-down when you get them home and can't work out where you will fit them in your cupboard. 3. Take charge of your attitude L. A person who lacks contentment in their life will often engage in 'when and then thinking'—'when I get..., then I will be happy.' Remember, your happiness is not reliant on the acquisition of any possession. The temporary joy of happiness is not contentment—happiness is often externally driven by things that happen to you. That is what you remember and you keep looking for that high in external events and things. Contentment is how you respond to life and situations. Contentment is a decision. 4. Stop comparing yourself to others M. This is a hard one—it's such a daily, hourly habit. I'm smarter than him, and dumber than her. I'm fatter than them, and so much better than him. Comparing your life with someone else's will always lead to discontentment. There will always be people who 'appear' to be better off than you and seemingly living the perfect life. But be advised, we always compare the worst of what we know about ourselves to the best assumptions that we make about others. You are unique. And it's always better that way. Live up to your own expectations of what you can be, and stop living up to the media and friends' expectations. 5. Get off your butt and help N. When you begin helping others, sharing your talents, time and money, you will find yourself learning to be content. You will feel better about yourself. If you don't like people much, volunteer to walk dogs. If you're allergic to cats, help an elderly person with her garden or go shopping with her and carry groceries. Pick up litter, plant a flowing shrub in a wasteland, get someone a cup of coffee without being asked. And while you're at it, stop shirking. Ladies, mow the lawn or change a plug now and then. Men, pick up that laundry before you're asked. O. Be content with what you have, never with what you are. Never stop learning, growing, or discovering. Take pride in your personhood and the progress that you have made, but never become so content that you cannot find room for improvement. Contentment is not the same as complacency (自满).

单选题Which of the following is the best title for the text?

单选题A: Has everyone submitted their proposals to me? B: ______.

单选题What is the characteristic of the Martian surface according to observations over the past 20 years?

单选题When I was about 12 I had an enemy, a girl who liked to point out my shortcomings. Week by week her list grew: I was skinny, I wasn't a good student, I was boyish, I talked too loud, and so on. I put up with her as long as I could. At last, with great anger, I ran to my father in tears. He listened to my outburst quietly. Then he asked, "Are the things she says true or not?" True? I wanted to know how to strike back. What did truth have to do with it? "Mary, didn't you ever wonder what you are really like? Well, you now have that girl's opinion. Go and make a list of everything she said and mark the points that are true. Pay no attention to the other things she said." I did as he directed and discovered to my surprise that about half the things were true. Some of them I couldn't change (like being skinny), but a good number I could and suddenly wanted to change. For the first time in my life I got a fairly clear picture of myself. I brought the list back to Daddy. He refused to take it. "That's just for you," he said. "You know better than anybody else the truth about yourself, once you hear it. But you've got to learn to listen, not to close your ears in anger or hurt. When something said about you is true you'll know it. You'll find that it will echo inside you." Daddy's advice has returned to me at many important moments.

单选题The individual TV viewer invariably senses that he or she is ______ an anonymous, statistically insignificant part of a huge and diverse audience.

单选题--Do you think it will snow tomorrow? -- ______.

单选题There was very ______ water for them to drink during their journey across the desert.

单选题Most lecturers find it expedient to use notes when addressing to graduate students.

单选题 The Amazon Mystery: What America's Strangest Tech Company Is Really Up To A. If there's a sentence that sums up Amazon, the weirdest major technology company in America, it's one that came from its own CEO, Jeff Bezos, speaking at the Aspen Institute's 2009 Annual Awards Dinner in New York City: 'Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood.' In other words: if you don't yet get what I'm trying to build, keep waiting. B. Four years later, Amazon's annual revenue and stock price have both nearly tripled, but for many onlookers, the long wait for understanding continues. Bezos's company has grown from its humble Seattle beginnings to become not only the largest bookstore in the history of the world, but also the world's largest online retailer, the largest Web-hosting company in the world, the most serious competitor to Netflix in streaming video, the fourth-most-popular tablet (平板电脑) maker, and a sprawling international network of fulfillment centers for merchants around the world. It is now rumored to be close to launching its own smartphone and television set-top box. The every-bookstore has become the store for everything, with the global ambition to become the store for everywhere. C. Seriously: What is Amazon? A retail company? A media company? A logistics (物流) machine? The mystery of its strategy is deepened by two factors. First is the company's communications department, which famously excels at not communicating. (Three requests to speak with Amazon officials for this article were delayed and, inevitably, declined.) This moves discussions of the company's intentions into the realm of mind reading, often attempted by the research departments of investment banks, where even optimistic analysts aren't really sure what Bezos is up to. 'It's very difficult to define what Amazon is,' says R. J. Hottovy, an analyst with Morningstar, who nonetheless champions the company's future. D. Second, investors have developed a seemingly unconditional love for Amazon, despite the company's reticence (沉默寡言) and, more to the point, its financial performance. Some 19 years after its founding, Amazon still barely turns a profit—when it makes money at all. The company is pinched between its low margins as a discount retailer and its high capital spending as a global logistics company. Last year, it lost $39 million. By comparison, in its latest annual report, Apple announced a profit of almost $42 billion—nearly 22 times what Amazon has earned in its entire life span. And yet Amazon's market capitalization, the value investors place on the company, is more than a quarter of Apple's, placing Amazon among the largest tech companies in the United States. E. 'I think Amazon's efforts, even the seemingly eccentric ones, are centered on securing the customer relationship,' says Benedict Evans, a consultant with Enders Analysis. The Kindle Fire tablet and the widely rumored phone aren't boring experiments, he told me, but rather purchasing devices that put Amazon on the coffee table so consumers can never escape the tantalizing glow of a shopping screen. F. In a way, this strategy isn't new at all. It's ripped from the mildewed playbooks of the first national retail stores in American history. Amazon appears to be building nothing less than a global Sears, Roebuck of the 21st century—a large-scale operation that aims to dominate the future of shopping and shipping. The question is, can it succeed? G. In the late 19th century, soon after a network of rail lines and telegraph wires had stitched together a rural country, mail-order companies like Sears built the first national retail corporations. Today the Sears catalog seems about as innovative as the prehistoric handsaw, but in the 1890s, the 500-page 'Consumer's Bible' popularized a truly radical shopping concept: the mail would bring stores to consumers. H. But in the early 1900s, as families streamed off farms and into cities, chains like J. C. Penney and Woolworth sprang up to greet them. Sears followed. The company's focus on the emerging middle-class market paid off so well that by mid-century, Sears's revenue approached 1 percent of the entire U.S. economy. But its dominance had deflated by the late 1980s, after more competitors arose and as the blue-collar consumer base it had leaned on collapsed. I. Now that Internet cables have replaced telegraph wires, American consumers are reverting to their turn-of-the-century shopping habits. Families have rediscovered the Consumer's Bible while sitting on their couches, and this time, it's in a Web browser. E-commerce has nearly doubled in the past four years, and Amazon now takes in revenue of more than $60 billion annually. The Internet means to the 21st century what the postal service meant to the late 1800s: it welcomes retailers like Amazon into every living room. J. 'Sears took advantage of the U.S. postal system and railways in the early 20th century just as transportation costs were falling,' says Richard White, a historian at Stanford, 'and Amazon has done the same with the Web.' Its national logistics machine mimics Sears's pneumatic-tube-powered (气动管驱动的) Chicago warehouse, but is more powerful, and much faster. K. Like the mail-order giants did a century ago, Amazon is moving to the city. In the past few years, the company has added warehouses in the most-populous metros to cut shipping times to urban customers. People subscribing to Amazon Prime or AmazonFresh (which, in exchange for an annual payment, provides fast delivery of most goods or groceries you'd like to order) commit themselves financially, with Prime members spending twice as much as other buyers. If those subscriptions grow numerous enough, Amazon's search bar could become the preferred retail-shopping engine. L. At least, that's the vision. Defenders say Amazon is trading the present for the future, spending all its revenue on a global scatter plot of warehouses that will make the company unbeatable. Eventually, the theory goes, investors expect Amazon to complete its construction project and, having swayed enough customers and destroyed enough rivals, to 'flip the switch,' raising prices and profits greatly. In the meantime, they're happy to keep buying stock, offering an unqualified thumbs-up for heavy spending. M. But this theory assumes a practically infinite life span for Amazon. The modem history of retail innovation suggests that even the giants can be overtaken suddenly. Sears was still America's largest retailer in 1982, but just nine years later, its annual revenues were barely half those of Walmart. N. Amazon is not as insulated from its rivals as some think it is. Walmart, eBay, and a bounty of upstarts (新贵) are all in the race to dominate online retail. Amazon's furious spending on new buildings and equipment isn't an elective measure; it's a survival plan. The truth is Amazon has won investors' trust with a reputation for spending everybody to death, and it can spend everybody to death because it has won investors' trust. For now. O. 'Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers,' Slate's Matthew Yglesias joked earlier this year. Of course, Amazon is not a charity, and its investors are not philanthropists (慈善家). Today, they are funding an effort to fulfill the dreams of the turn-of-the-century retail kings: to build the perfect personalized shopping experience for the modem urban household. For once, families are reaping the dividends of Wall Street's generosity. The longer investors wait for Amazon to fulfill their orders, the less we have to wait for Amazon to fulfill ours.

单选题Last year, the crime rate in Chicago has sharply ______. A. declined B. lessened C. descended D. slipped

单选题According to the passage, what is the advantage of a budget?

单选题"What are you going to study next year?" "I don't know, but it's time ______ something." A. I decide B. I decided C. I'll decide D. I'd decide

单选题The professor gave ______ instructions for carrying out the research project.

单选题根据读音，选择合适的答案（ ）

单选题The landscape can change abruptly after a rainstorm in the desert in Xinjiang.

单选题The forest fire caused by the volcano is difficult to be______.

单选题Most children carry their phone in their back pocket,and when someone reaches for it,in mymind theyre reaching for a gun,said Della Fave,a spokesman发言人for New Jersey police.Della Fare shared a ph

单选题Speaker A: Well, I'm really glad I talked to Doug about the problem I was having with my girlfriend. He gave me some excellent advice.Speaker B: Great. That's what I like about Doug.______, and he's always prepared to stop what he's doing and help you out when you need it.