单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} The crucial years of the Depression, as they are brought into historical focus, increasingly emerge as the decisive decade for American art, if not for American culture in general For it was during this decade that many of the conflicts which had blocked the progress of American art in the past came to a head and sometimes boiled over. Janus-faced, the thirties look backward, sometimes as far as the Renaissance; and at the same time forward, as far as the present and beyond. It was the moment when artists, like Thomas Hart Benton, who wished to turn back the clock to regain the virtues of simpler times came into direct conflict with others, like Stuart Davis and Frank Lloyd Wright, who were ready to come to terms with the Machine Age and to deal with its consequences. America in the thirties was changing rapidly. In many areas the past was giving way to the present, although not without a struggle. A predominantly rural and small town society was being replaced by the giant complexes of the big cities; power was becoming increasingly centralized in the federal government and in large corporations. As a result, traditional American types such as the independent farmer and the small businessman were being replaced by the executive and the bureaucrat. Many Americans, deeply attached to the old way of life, felt disinhereited. At the same time, as immigration decreased and the population became more homogeneous, the need arose in art and literature to commemorate the ethnic and regional differences that were fast disappearing. Thus, paradoxically, the conviction that art, at least, should serve some purpose or carry some message of moral uplift grew stronger as the Puritan ethos lost its contemporary reality. Often this elevating message was a sermon in favor of just those traditional American virtues which were now threatened with obsolescence in a changed social and political context. In this new context, the appeal of the paintings by the Regionalists and the American Scene painters often lay in their ability to recreate an atmosphere that glorified the traditional American values-self-reliance tempered with good-neighborliness, independence modified by a sense of community, hard work rewarded by a sense of order and purpose. Given the actual temper of the times, these themes were strangely anachronistic, just as the rhetoric supporting political isolationism was equally inappropriate in an international situation soon to involve America in a second world war Such themes gained popularity because they filled a genuine need for a comfortable collective fantasy of a God-fearing, white-picket-fence America, which in retrospect took on the nostalgic appeal of a lost Golden Age. In this light, an autonomous art-for-art's sake was viewed as a foreign invader liable to subvert the native American desire for a purposeful art. Abstract art was assigned the role of the villainous alieen; realism was to personify the genuine American means of expression. The argument drew favor in many camps: .among the artists, because most were realists; among the politically oriented intellectuals, because abstract art was apolitical; and among museum officials, because they were surfeited with mediocre imitations of European modernism and were convinced that American art must develop its own distinct identity. To help along this road to self-definition, the museums were prepared to set up an artificial double standard, one for American art, and another for European art. In 1934, Ralph Flint wrote in Art News, "We have today in our midst a greater array of what may be called second-, third, and fourth-string artists than any other country. Our big annuals are marvelous outpourings of intelligence and skill; they have all the diversity and animation of a fine-ring circus."

单选题Toward the novel literary idea, the author's attitude seems to be that of

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} There are several different methods that can be used to create a forecast. The method a forecaster chooses depends upon the experience of the forecaster, the amount of information available to the forecaster, the level of difficulty that the forecast situation presents, and the degree of accuracy or confidence needed in the forecast. The first of these methods is the persistence method; the simplest way of producing a forecast. The persistence method assumes that the conditions at the time of the forecast will not Change. For example, if it is sunny and 87 degrees today, the persistence method predicts that it will be sunny and 87 degrees tomorrow. If two inches of rain fell today, the persistence method would predict two inches of rain for tomorrow. However, if weather conditions change significantly from day to day, the persistence method usually breaks down and is not the best forecasting method to use. The trends method involves determining the speed and direction of movement for fronts, high and. low pressure centers, and areas of clouds and precipitation. Using this information, the forecaster can predict where he or she expects those features to be at some future time. For example, if a storm system is 1,000 miles west of your location and moving to the east at 250 miles per day, using the trends method you would predict it to arrive in your area in 4 days. The trends method works well when systems continue to move at the same speed in the same direction for a long period of time. If they slow down, speed up, change intensity, or change direction, the trends forecast will probably not work as well. The climatology method is another simple way of producing a forecast. This method involves averaging weather statistics accumulated over many years to make the forecast. For example, if you were using the climatology method to predict the weather for New York City on July 4th, you would go through all the weather data that has been recorded for every July 4th and take an average. The climatology method only works well when the weather pattern is similar to that expected for the chosen time of year. If the pattern is quite unusual for the given time of year, the climatology method will often fail. The analog method is a slightly more complicated method of producing a forecast. It involves examining today's forecast scenario and remembering a day in the past when the weather scenario looked very similar (an analog). The forecaster would predict that the weather in this forecast will behave the same as it did in the past. The analog method is difficult to use because it is virtually impossible to find a perfect analog. Various weather features rarely align themselves in the same locations they were in the previous time. Even small differences between the current time and the analog can lead to very different results.

单选题Ever hear of the lemming? Lemmings are arctic rat-like animals with very odd habits: periodically, for unknown reasons, they mass together in large herd and commit suicide by rushing into deep water and drowning themselves. They all run in together, blindly, and not one of them ever seems to stop and ask, "Why am I doing this? Is this really what I 'want to do?" and thus save it serf from destruction. Obviously, lemmings are driven to perform their strange suicide rites by common instinct. People choose to "follow the herd" for more complex reasons, yet we are still too often the unwilling victims of the bandwagon appeal. Essentially, the bandwagon urges us to an action or an opinion because it is popular—be- cause "everyone else is doing it." This call to "get on the bandwagon" appeals to the strong de- sire in most of us to be one of the crowd, not to be left out or alone. Advertising makes extensive use of the bandwagon appeal, bat so do politicians. Senator Yakalot uses the bandwagon appeal when he says "more and more citizens are rallying to my cause every day," and asks his audience to "join them—and me—in our fight for America." One of the ways we can see the bandwagon appeal at work is in the overwhelming success of various fashions and trends, which capture the interests of thousands of people for a short time, then disappear suddenly and completely. For a year or two in the 1950S every child in North America wanted a coonskin cap so that they could be like Davy Crockett; no one wanted to be left out. After that there was the hula-hoop craze that helped to dislocate thousands of Americans. The problem here is obvious: just because everyone's doing it doesn't mean that we should too. Group approval does not approve that something is true or is worth doing: Large numbers of people have supported actions we now condemn. Just a generation ago, Hitler and Mussolini rose to absolute and destructive rule in two of the most cultured countries of Europe. When they came into power they won by massive popular support from millions of people who didn't want to be "left out" at a. great historical moment. As we have seen, propaganda can appeal to us by arousing our emotions or distracting our attention from the real issues at hand. But there's third way that propaganda can be put to work against us—by use of faulty logic. This approach is really subtler than the other two because it gives the appearance of reasonable, fair argument. It is only when we look more closely that the holes in logic fiber show up.

单选题Nobody, it seems, wants to be left out of Argentina's current boom in television reality shows. After the success of local versions of "Big Brother" and "Survivor", a camera is now to be (1) in the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, to film everything (well, almost) (2) President Fernando de la Rua gets (3) to. The results will be edited and (4) several times a day, (5) the state channel, Canal 7: thus dispell, it is (6) , the notion that the president spends his time twiddling his thumbs to his economy minister, Domingo Cavallo, runs the country. This is a dangerous strategy. Mr. de la Rua's predecessor, Carlos Menem, was famous for his love of show business, even closing his 1995 presidential campaign (7) an appearance on the hit show "Videomatch". In deliberate (8) , before his election victory two years (9) . Mr. de la Rua (10) in television commercials that he was a very boring man. Audiences agree: his appearances last year on several leading talk (11) made their ratings fall. Worse, when he decided to make his own appearance on "Videomatch" last December, a member of the audience blamed him and left him (12) embarrassed. With a congressional election (13) in October, opinion (14) suggest that over three-quarters of Argentines (15) dissatisfied with Mr. de la Rua. That, says his circle, is at least partly due to his (16) portrayal by Freddy Villarreal, an impressionist on "Videomatch", and by leading newspaper cartoonists, such as Nik in La Naeion. Mr. de la Rua's team is apparently pressing the (17) to be nicer. But it is unclear whether blanket (18) will help the president win (19) viewers, or whether they will vote that Fernando should (20) the house in 2003

单选题The Royal Museum contains a ______ of the king's famous declaration.

单选题The first three days of July 1863 saw the bloodiest hours of the Civil War, in a battle that spilled across the fields and hills surrounding Gettysburg, Pa. The fighting climaxed in the bright, hot afternoon of the third day, when more than 11,000 Confederate soldiers mounted a disastrous assault on the heart of the Union line. That assault marked the farthest the South would penetrate into Union territory. In a much larger sense, it marked the turning point of the war. No surprise, then, that the Battle of Gettysburg would become the subject of songs, poems, funeral monuments and, ultimately, some of the biggest paintings ever displayed on this continent. Paul Philippoteaux, famed for his massive 360-degree cyclorama paintings, painted four versions of the battle in the 1880s. Cycloramas were hugely popular in the United States in the last decades of the 19th century, before movies displaced them in the public's affection. Conceived on a mammoth scale, a cyclorama painting was longer than a football field and almost 50 feet tall. Little thought was given to preserving these enormous works of art. They were commercial ventures, and when they stopped earning they were tossed. Most were ultimately lost—victims of water damage or fire. One of Philippoteaux's Gettysburg renderings was cut up and hung in panels in a Newark, N.J., department store before finding its way back to Gettysburg, where it has been displayed off and on since 1913. Along the way, the painting lost most of its sky and a few feet off the bottom. Sections were cut and moved to patch holes in other sections. And some of the restorative efforts proved almost as crippling to the original as outright neglect. Since 2003, a team of conservators has labored in a $12 million effort to restore Philippoteaux's masterwork. They have cleaned it front and back, patched it, added canvas for a new sky and returned the painting to its original shape—a key part of a cyclorama's optical illusion was its hyperbolic shape, it bellies out at its central point, thrusting the image toward the viewer. When restoration is completed later this year, the painting will be the centerpiece of the new Gettysburg battlefield visitors' center, which opens to the public on April 14. Much work remains to be done. But even partially restored, the painting seethes with life—and death.

单选题The words "water" and "teacher" have a common phoneme and a common morpheme as well. (北二外2006研)

单选题Everything ______ if Albert hadn't called the fire brigade. A. would be destroyed B. would have been destroyed C. will be destroyed D. will have been destroyed

单选题By the end of the year all but two people ______ A. have left B. will leave C. will be leaving D. will have left

单选题Lexical changes CANNOT be identified in ______. A. lexical change proper B. phonological Change C. mopho-syntactical change D. syntactical change

单选题Jean didn't have time to go to the concert last night because she was busy ______ for her examination.

单选题Which of the following is false? A．Broadcast. com was taken over by Yahoo in spring 1999. B．E-tailers will compete with TV broadcasters. C．Internet sites will become more TV-acceptable. D．Future TV sets will become simpler technologically.

单选题The ulterior motives of women are impossible to guess.

单选题He spent hundreds of hours in the ______of skill with a rifle.

单选题______, our next step is to determine how to carry it out. A. The plan having been made B. Making the plan C. The plan being made D. Having made the plan

单选题An ebook (also referred to as an electronic book, eBook, or e-book) is a digital version (版本) of a print book that you download and read. But if you want to read an ebook, you must have an Ebook Reader, which is a kind of free software used by your computer. Make sure you have installed the appropriate Reader before you download your ebook from the Internet. The software allows you to turn the words on the screen into the size you like. It also helps you turn pages and change your viewing options (计算机屏幕上的阅读选择). Ebooks are a fun alternative to regular books. You can download them to any computers and create your own library of hundreds of titles. If you load them onto your portable computer, you can take them with you when you travel. Some ebooks are even interactive! Best of all, when you order an ebook, there is no waiting and no shipping charges. The amount of time it takes to download your ebook depends on the speed of your connection and the size of your ebook.

单选题The phrase "token economies" (Line 1, Par

单选题I was extremely exasperated when I saw that my room was littered with wood shavings.