单选题John Battelle is Silicon Valley's Bob Woodward. One of the founders of Wired magazine, he has hung around Google for so long that he has come to be as close as any outsider can to actually being an insider. Certainly, Google' s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, believe that it is safer to talk to Mr. Battelle than not to do so. The result is a highly readable account of Google's astonishing rise-the steepest in corporate history-from its origins in Stanford University to its controversial stockmarket debut and its current struggle to become a grown-up company while staying true to its youthfully brash motto, "Don't be evil." Mr. Battelle makes the reader warm to Google's ruling triumvirate-their cleverness and their good intentions-and fear for their future as they take on the world. Google is one of the most interesting companies around at the moment. It has a decent shot at displacing Microsoft as the next great near-monopoly of the information age. Its ambition-to organise all the world's information, not just the information on the world wide web-is epic, and its commercial power is frightening, Beyond this, Google is interesting for the same reason that secretive dictatorships and Hollywood celebrities are interesting-for being opaque, colourful and, simply, itself. The book disappoints only when Mr. Battelle begins trying to explain the wider relevance of internet search and its possible future development. There is a lot to say on this subject, but Mr. Battelle is hurried and overly chatty, producing laundry lists of geeky concepts without really having thought any of them through properly. This is not a fatal flaw. Read only the middle chapters, and you have a great book.

单选题Henric Ibsen, author of the play "A Doll"s House", in which a pretty, helpless housewife abandons her husband and children to seek a more serious life, would surely have approved. From January 1st, 2008, all public companies in Norway are obliged to ensure that at least 40% of their board directors are women. Most firms have obeyed the law, which was passed in 2003. But about 75 out of the 480 companies it affects are still too male for the government"s liking. They will shortly receive a letter informing them that they have until the end of February to act, or face the legal consequences—which could include being dissolved. Before the law was proposed, about 7% of board members in Norway were female, according to the Centre for Corporate Diversity. The number has since jumped to 36%. That is far higher than the average of 9% for big companies across Europe or America"s 15% for the Fortune 500. Norway"s stock exchange and its main business lobby oppose the law, as do many businessmen. "I am against quotas for women or men as a matter of principle," says Sverre Munck, head of international operations at a media firm. "Board members of public companies should be chosen solely on the basis of merit and experience," he says. Several firms have even given up their status in order to escape the new law. Companies have had to recruit about 1,000 women in four years. Many complain that it has been difficult to find experienced candidates. Because of this, some of the best women have collected as many as 25-35 directorships each, and are known in Norwegian business circles as the "golden skirts". One reason for the scarcity is that there are fairly few women in management in Norwegian companies. They occupy around 15% of senior positions. It has been particularly hard for firms in the oil, technology and financial industries to find women with enough experience. Some people worry that their relative lack of experience may keep women quiet on boards, and that in turn could mean that boards might become less able to hold managers to account. Recent history in Norway, however, suggests that the right women can make strong directors. "Women feel more compelled than men to do their homework," says Ms Reksten Skaugen, who was voted Norway"s chairman of the year for 2007, "and we can afford to ask the hard question, because women are not always expected to know the answers."

单选题It's the first turning ______ the left after the traffic lights.

单选题We all know that, ______, the situation will get worse. A. not if dealt carefully with B. if not carefully dealt with C. if dealt not carefully with D. not if carefully dealt with

单选题I"m in a position to think about my future and plan it a little more rather than just waiting for what happens.

单选题Must I wait till you come back? No, you______

单选题If you do not ______ by the regulations, you will get into trouble.

单选题The agency's ruling {{U}}crippled{{/U}} their plans.

单选题If I ______ get back to London in time, I'll definitely come. A. can B. could C. would be able to D. will be able to

单选题Engineering students are supposed to be examples of practicality and rationality, but when it comes to my college education I am an idealist and a fool. In high school, I wanted to be an electrical engineer and, of course, any sensible student with my aims would have chosen a college with a large engineering department, famous reputation and lots of good labs and research equipment. But that"s not what I did. I chose to study engineering at a small liberal arts (文科) university that doesn"t even offer a major in electrical engineering. Obviously, this was not a practical choice; I came here for more noble reasons. I wanted a broad education that would provide me with flexibility and a value system to guide me in my career. I wanted to open my eyes and expand my vision by interacting with people who weren"t studying science or engineering. My parents, teachers and other adults praised me for such a sensible choice. They told me I was wise and mature beyond my 18 years, and I believed them. I headed off to college sure I was going to have an advantage over those students who went to big engineering "factories" where they didn"t care if you had values or were flexible. I was going to be a complete engineer: technical genius and sensitive humanist (人文学者) all in one. Now I"m not so sure. Somewhere along the way my noble ideals crashed into reality, as all noble ideals eventually do. After three years of struggling to balance math, physics and engineering courses with liberal arts courses, I have learned there are reasons why few engineering students try to reconcile (协调) engineering with liberal arts courses in college. The reality that has blocked my path to become the typical successful student is that engineering and the liberal arts simply don"t mix as easily as I assumed in high school. Individually they shape a person in very different ways; together they threaten to confuse. The struggle to reconcile the two fields of study is difficult.

单选题______, she failed again in the test and felt very depressed.

单选题Ask an American schoolchild what he or she is learning in school these days and you might even get a reply, provided you ask it in Spanish, but don't bother, here's the answer: Americans nowadays are not learning any of the things that we learned in our day, like reading and writing. Apparently these are considered fusty old subjects, invented by white males to oppress women and minorities. What are they learning? In a Vermont college town I found the answer sitting in a toy store book rack, next to typical kids' books like "Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy is 'Disfunctional'". It's a teacher's guide called "Happy To Be Me", subtitled "Building Self-Esteem". Self-esteem, as it turns out, is a big subject in American classrooms. Many American schools see building it as important as teaching reading and writing. They call it "whole language" teaching, borrowing terminology from the granola people to compete in the education marketplace. No one ever spent a moment building my self-esteem when I was in school. In fact, from the day I first stepped inside a classroom my self-esteem was one big demolition site. All that mattered was "the subject", be it geography, history, or mathematics. I was praised when I remembered that "near", "fit", "friendly", "pleasing", "like" and their opposites took the dative case in Latin. I was reviled when I forgot what a cosine was good for. Generally, I lived my school years beneath a torrent of castigation so consistent I eventually ceased to hear it as people who live near the sea eventually stop hearing the waves. Schools have changed. Reviling is out, for one thing. More important, subjects have changed. Whereas I learned English, modern kids learn something called "language skills". Whereas I learned writing, modern kids learn something called "communication". Communication, the book tells us, is seven per cent words, twenty three per cent facial expression, twenty per cent tone of voice, and fifty per cent body language. So this column, with its carefully chosen words, would earn at most a grade of seven per cent. That is, if the school even gave out something as oppressive and demanding as grades. The result is that, in place of English classes, American children are getting a course in "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Consider the new attitude toward journal writing. I remember one high school English class when we were required to keep a journal. The idea was to emulate those great writers who confided in diaries, searching their soul and honing their critical thinking on paper. "Happy To Be Me" states that journals are a great way for students to get in touch with their feelings. Tell students they can write one sentence or a whole page. Reassure them that no one, not even you, will read what they write. After the unit, hopefully all students will be feeling good about themselves and will want to share some of their entries with the class. There was a time when no self-respecting book for English teachers would use "great" or "hopefully" that way. Moreover, back then the purpose of English courses (an antique term for "Unit") was not to help students "feel good about themselves", which is good because all that reviling didn't make me feel particularly good about anything.

单选题Woman: My results are a bit flattering because I've had quite a lot of luck. Man: Nonsense, you're head and shoulders above the others in your group. Question: What does the man think is the reason for the woman's success?

单选题That everyone"s too busy these days is a cliche. But one specific complaint is made especially mournfully: There"s never any time to read. What makes the problem thornier is that the usual time-management techniques don"t seem sufficient. The web"s full of articles offering tips on making time to read: "Give up TV" or "Carry a book with you at all times." But in my experience, using such methods to free up the odd 30 minutes doesn"t work. Sit down to read and the flywheel of work-related thoughts keeps spinning—or else you"re so exhausted that a challenging book"s the last thing you need. The modern mind, Tim Parks, a novelist and critic, writes, "is overwhelmingly inclined toward communication... It is not simply that one is interrupted; it is that one is actually inclined to interruption." Deep reading requires not just time, but a special kind of time which can"t be obtained merely by becoming more efficient. In fact, "becoming more efficient" is part of the problem. Thinking of time as a resource to be maximised means you approach it instrumentally, judging any given moment as well spent only in so far as it advances progress toward some goal. Immersive reading, by contrast, depends on being willing to risk inefficiency, goallessness, even time-wasting. Try to slot it in as a to-do list item and you"ll manage only goal-focused reading—useful, sometimes, but not the most fulfilling kind. "The future comes at us like empty bottles along an unstoppable and nearly infinite conveyor belt," writes Gary Eberle in his book Sacred Time, and "we feel a pressure to fill these different-sized bottles (days, hours, minutes) as they pass, for if they get by without being filled, we will have wasted them." No mind-set could be worse for losing yourself in a book. So what does work? Perhaps surprisingly, scheduling regular times for reading. You"d think this might fuel the efficiency mind-set, but in fact, Eberle notes, such ritualistic behaviour helps us "step outside time"s flow" into "soul time." You could limit distractions by reading only physical books, or on single-purpose e-readers. " Carry a book with you at all times" can actually work, too—providing you dip in often enough, so that reading becomes the default state from which you temporarily surface to take care of business, before dropping back down. On a really good day, it no longer feels as if you"re "making time to read," but just reading, and making time for everything else.

单选题Frank Friedel, in creating a biography of the United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt, has had to Uwrestle with/U something like 40 tons of paper.

单选题A: You seem to be having some problems. B: ______ I"ll manage.

单选题If ______, I would have gone with him.A. had he told meB. he had told meC. he has told meD. he would tell me

单选题After Richard found his father, ______.