单选题The spring floods had washed away the bridge, we were forced to take a ______ route.

单选题 A Nation that's Losing Its Toolbox A. The scene inside the Home Depot on Weyman Avenue here would give the old-time Ameri-can craftsman pause. In Aisle 34 is precut plastic flooring, the glue already in place. In Aisle 26 are prefabricated windows. Stacked near the checkout counters, and as colorful as a Fisher-Price toy, is a not-so-serious-looking power tool: a battery-operated saw-and-drill combination. And if you don't want to do it yourself, head to Aisle 23 or Aisle 35, where a help desk will arrange for an in- staller. B. It's all very handy stuff, I guess, a convenient way to be a do-it-yourselfer without being all that good with tools. But at a time when the American factory seems to be a shrinking presence, and when good manufacturing jobs have vanished, perhaps never to return, there is something deeply troubling about this dilution of American craftsmanship. C. This isn't a lament (伤感)—or not merely a lament—for bygone times. It's a social and cultural issue, as well as an economic one. The Home Depot approach to craftsmanship—simplify it, dumb it down, hire a contractor—is one signal that mastering tools and working with one's hands is receding in America as a hobby, as a valued skill, as a cultural influence that shaped thinking and behavior in vast sections of the country. D. That should be a matter of concern in a presidential election year. Yet neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney promotes himself as tool-savvy (使用工具很在行的) presidential timber, in the mold of a Jimmy Carter, a skilled carpenter and cabinet maker. E. The Obama administration does worry publicly about manufacturing, a first cousin of craftsmanship. When the Ford Motor Company, for example, recently announced that it was bringing some production home, the White House cheered. 'When you see things like Ford moving new production from Mexico to Detroit, instead of the other way around, you know things are changing,' says Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council. F. Ask the administration or the Republicans or most academics why America needs more manufacturing, and they respond that manufacturing gives birth to innovation, brings down the trade deficit, strengthens the dollar, generates jobs, arms the military and brings about a recovery from re-cession. But rarely, if ever, do they publicly take the argument a step further, asserting that a growing manufacturing sector encourages craftsmanship and that craftsmanship is, if not a birthright, then a vital ingredient of the American serf-image as a can-do, inventive, we-can-make-anything people. G. Traditional vocational training in public high schools is gradually declining, stranding thou-sands of young people who seek training for a craft without going to college. Colleges, for their part, have since 1985 graduated fewer chemical, mechanical, industrial and metallurgical (冶金的)engineers, partly in response to the reduced role of manufacturing, a big employer of them. H. The decline started in the 1950s, when manufacturing generated a sturdy 28% of the national income, or gross domestic product, and employed one-third of the workforce. Today, factory output generates just 12% of G. D. P. and employs barely 9% of the nation's workers. I. Mass layoffs and plant closings have drawn plenty of headlines and public debate over the years, and they still occasionally do. But the damage to skill and craftsmanship—what's needed to build a complex airliner or a tractor, or for a worker to move up from assembler to machinist to supervisor—went largely unnoticed. J. 'In an earlier generation, we lost our connection to the land, and now we are losing our connection to the machinery we depend on,' says Michael Hout, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley. 'People who work with their hands,' he went on, 'are doing things today that we call service jobs, in restaurants and laundries, or in medical technology and the like.' K. That's one explanation for the decline in traditional craftsmanship. Lack of interest is another. The big money is in fields like finance. Starting in the 1980s, skill in finance grew in importance, and, as depicted in the news media and the movies, became a more appealing source of in-come. By last year, Wall Street traders, bankers and those who deal in real estate generated 21% of the national income, double their share in the 1950s. And Warren Buffett, the good-natured financier, became a homespun folk hero, without the tools and overalls (工作服). L. 'Young people grow up without developing the skills to fix things around the house,' says Richard Curtin, director of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers. 'They know about computers, of course, but they don't know how to build them.' M. Manufacturing's shrinking presence undoubtedly helps explain the decline in craftsmanship, if only because many of the nation's assembly line workers were skilled in craft work, if not on the job then in their spare time. In a late 1990s study of blue-collar employees at a General Motors plant (now closed) in Linden, N. J. , the sociologist Ruth Milkman of City University of New York found that many line workers, in their off-hours, did home renovation and other skilled work. 'I have often thought,' Ms. Milkman says, 'that these extracurricular jobs were an effort on the part of the workers to regain their dignity after suffering the degradation of repetitive assembly line work in the factory.' N. Craft work has higher status in nations like Germany, which invests in apprenticeship (学徒) programs for high school students. 'Corporations in Germany realized that there was an interest to be served economically and patriotically in building up a skilled labor force at home; we never had that ethos (风气),' says Richard Sennett, a New York University sociologist who has written about the connection of craft and culture. O. The damage to American craftsmanship seems to parallel the steep slide in manufacturing employment. Though the decline started in the 1970s, it became much steeper beginning in 2000. Since then, some 5.3 million jobs, or one-third of the workforce in manufacturing, have been lost. A stated goal of the Obama administration is to restore a big chunk of this employment, along with the multitude of skills that many of the jobs required. P. As for craftsmanship itself, the issue is how to preserve it as a valued skill in the general population. Ms. Milkman, the sociologist, argues that American craftsmanship isn't disappearing as quickly as some would argue—that it has instead shifted to immigrants. 'Pride in craft, it is alive in the immigrant world,' she says. Sol Axelrod, 37, the manager of the Home Depot here, fittingly learned to fix his own car as a teenager, even changing the brakes. Now he finds immigrant crafts-men gathered in abundance outside his store in the early morning, waiting for it to open so they can buy supplies for the day's work as contractors. Skilled day laborers, also mostly immigrants, wait quietly in hopes of being hired by the contractors. Q. Mr. Axelrod also says the recession and persistently high unemployment have forced many people to try to save money by doing more themselves, and Home Depot in response offers classes in fixing water taps and other simple repairs. The teachers are store employees, many of them older and semi-retired from a skilled trade, or laid off. 'Our customers may not be building cabinets or out-door decks; we try to do that for them,' Mr. Axelrod says, 'but some are trying to build up skills so they can do more for themselves in these hard times.'

单选题All the ______ of the city went to the meeting last Saturday.

单选题Even if they are on sale, these refrigerators are equal in price to, if not more expensive than, ______ at the other store.

单选题No sooner had we finished the conversation ______ we heard a knock on the door. A. when B. then C. than D. until

单选题—Look! There______" "Oh, there______"

单选题He has failed me so many times that I no longer place any ______ on what he promises. A. faith B. belief C. credit D. reliance

单选题In fact, there is perhaps only one human being (in) a thousand who (are) passionately interested in (his) job for the job's (sake).

单选题______ how the immature brain prevents seizure-induced cell injury or death could lead to new methods to reduce or prevent seizure damage in adults.

单选题What you said was just the problem ______ discussion.

单选题Because of the outbreak of SARS, the airport______ .

单选题 Let's get out the dictionary and settle this dispute once and for all.

单选题根据下面资料，回答21-35题。In the past， I always thought that being a teacher was an easy job. But I changed my（21）when I became a part-time teacher. About four years ago， Richard asked me（22）I could help teach

单选题此题为音频题

单选题______ widespread belief, cockroaches (蟑螂) would not take over the world if there were no one around to step on them. A. In view of B. Thanks to C. In case of D. Contrary to

单选题Speaker A: Look what Bruce gave me for my birthday--this beautiful scarf. Speaker B: ______. He must have spent quite a bit of money on it. I didn't know you and Bruce were such close friends.

单选题 Can societies be rich and green? A. 'If our economies are to flourish, if global poverty is to be eliminated and if the well-being of the world's people enhanced—not just in this generation but in succeeding generations—we must make sure we take care of the natural environment and resources on which our economic activity depends.' That statement comes not, as you might imagine, from a stereotypical tree-hugging, save-the-world greenie (环保主义者), but from Gordon Brown, a politician with a reputation for rigour, thoroughness and above all, caution. B. A surprising thing for the man who runs one of the world's most powerful economies to say? Perhaps; though in the run-up to the five-year review of the Millennium (千年的) Goals, he is far from alone. The roots of his speech, given in March at the roundtable meeting of environment and energy ministers from the G20 group of nations, stretch back to 1972, and the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. C. 'The protection and improvement of the human environment is a major issue which affects the well-being of peoples and economic development throughout the world,' read the final declaration from this gathering, the first of a sequence which would lead to the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 and the World Development Summit in Johannesburg three years ago. D. Hunt through the reports prepared by UN agencies and development groups—many for conferences such as this year's Millennium Goals review—and you will find that the linkage between environmental protection and economic progress is a common thread. E. Managing ecosystems sustainably is more profitable than exploiting them, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. But finding hard evidence to support the thesis is not so easy. Thoughts turn first to some sort of global statistic, some indicator which would rate the wealth of nations in both economic and environmental terms and show a relationship between the two. F. If such an indicator exists, it is well hidden. And on reflection, this is not surprising; the single word 'environment' has so many dimensions, and there are so many other factors affecting wealth—such as the oil deposits—that teasing out a simple economy-environment relationship would be almost impossible. G. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a vast four-year global study which reported its initial conclusions earlier this year, found reasons to believe that managing ecosystems sustainably—working with nature rather than against it—might be less profitable in the short term, but certainly brings long-term rewards. H. And the World Resources Institute (WRI) in its World Resources 2005 report, issued at the end of August, produced several such examples from Africa and Asia; it also demonstrated that environmental degradation affects the poor more than the rich, as poorer people derive a much higher proportion of their income directly from the natural resources around them. I. But there are also many examples of growing wealth by trashing the environment, in rich and poor parts of the world alike, whether through unregulated mineral extraction, drastic water use for agriculture, slash-and-burn farming, or fossil-fuel-guzzling (大量消耗) transport. Of course, such growth may not persist in the long term—which is what Mr. Brown and the Stockholm declaration were both attempting to point out. Perhaps the best example of boom growth and bust decline is the Grand Banks fishery. For almost five centuries a very large supply of cod (鳕鱼) provided abundant raw material for an industry which at its peak employed about 40,000 people, sustaining entire communities in Newfoundland. Then, abruptly, the cod population collapsed. There were no longer enough fish in the sea for the stock to maintain itself, let alone an industry. More than a decade later, there was no sign of the ecosystem re-building itself. It had, apparently, been fished out of existence; and the once mighty Newfoundland fleet now gropes about frantically for crab on the sea floor. J. There is a view that modern humans are inevitably sowing the seed of a global Grand Banks-style disaster. The idea is that we are taking more out of what you might call the planet's environmental bank balance than it can sustain; we are living beyond our ecological means. One recent study attempted to calculate the extent of this 'ecological overshoot of the human economy', and found that we are using 1.2 Earth's-worth of environmental goods and services—the implication being that at some point the debt will be called in, and all those services—the things which the planet does for us for flee—will grind to a halt. K. Whether this is right, and if so where and when the ecological axe will fall, is hard to determine with any precision—which is why governments and financial institutions are only beginning to bring such risks into their economic calculations. It is also the reason why development agencies are not united in their view of environmental issues; while some, like the WRI, maintain that environmental progress needs to go hand-in-band with economic development, others argue that the priority is to build a thriving economy, and then use the wealth created to tackle environmental degradation. L. This view assumes that rich societies will invest in environmental care. But is this right? Do things get better or worse as we get richer? Here the Stockholm declaration is ambiguous. 'In the developing countries,' it says, 'most of the environmental problems are caused by under-development.' So it is saying that economic development should make for a cleaner world? Not necessarily; 'In the industrialised countries, environmental problems are generally related to industrialisation and technological development,' it continues. In other words, poor and rich both over-exploit the natural world, but for different reasons. It's simply not true that economic growth will surely make our world cleaner. M. Clearly, richer societies are able to provide environmental improvements which lie well beyond the reach of poorer communities. Citizens of wealthy nations demand national parks, clean rivers, clean air and poison-flee food. They also, however, use far more natural resources—fuel, water (all those baths and golf courses) and building materials. N. A case can be made that rich nations export environmental problems, the most graphic example being climate change. As a country's wealth grows, so do its greenhouse gas emissions. The figures available will not be completely accurate. Measuring emissions is not a precise science, particularly when it comes to issues surrounding land use; not all nations have released up-to-date data, and in any case, emissions from some sectors such as aviation are not included in national statistics. But the data is exact enough for a clear trend to be easily discernible. As countries become richer, they produce more greenhouse gases; and the impact of those gases will fall primarily in poor parts of the world. O. Wealth is not, of course, the only factor involved. The average Norwegian is better off than the average US citizen, but contributes about half as much to climate change. But could Norway keep its standard of living and yet cut its emissions to Moroccan or even Ethiopian levels? That question, repeated across a dozen environmental issues and across our diverse planet, is what will ultimately determine whether the human race is living beyond its ecological means as it pursues economic revival.

单选题The family is too poor to ______ the three children ______ school.