单选题The longest bull run in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby"s in London on September 15th 2008. All but two pieces sold, fetching more than ￡70m, a record for a sale by a single artist. It was a last victory. As the auctioneer called out bids, in New York one of the oldest banks on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy. The world art market had already been losing momentum for a while after rising bewilderingly since 2003. At its peak in 2007 it was worth some $65 billion, reckons Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics, a research firm—double the figure five years earlier. Since then it may have come down to $50 billion. But the market generates interest far beyond its size because it brings together great wealth, enormous egos, greed, passion and controversy in a way matched by few other industries. In the weeks and months that followed Mr. Hirst"s sale, spending of any sort became deeply unfashionable . In the art world that meant collectors stayed away from galleries and salerooms. Sales of contemporary art fell by two-thirds, and in the most overheated sector, they were down by nearly 90% in the year to November 2008. Within weeks the world"s two biggest auction houses, Sotheby"s and Christie"s, had to pay out nearly $200m in guarantees to clients who had placed works for sale with them. The current downturn in the art market is the worst since the Japanese stopped buying Impressionists at the end of 1989. This time experts reckon that prices are about 40% down on their peak on average, though some have been far more fluctuant. But Edward Dolman, Christie"s chief executive, says: "I"m pretty confident we"re at the bottom." What makes this slump different from the last, he says, is that there are still buyers in the market. Almost everyone who was interviewed for this special report said that the biggest problem at the moment is not a lack of demand but a lack of good work to sell. The three Ds—death, debt and divorce—still deliver works of art to the market. But anyone who does not have to sell is keeping away, waiting for confidence to return.

单选题 Come on-Everybody's doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what most of us think of when we hear the words peer pressure. It usually leads to no good-drinking, drugs and casual sex. But in her new book Join the Club, Tina Rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in which organizations and officials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their lives and possibly the word. Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, offers a host of example of the social cure in action: In South Carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called Rage Against the Haze sets out to make cigarettes uncool. In South Africa, an HIV-prevention initiative known as LoveLife recruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers. The idea seems promising, and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lameness of many pubic-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to mobilize peer pressure for healthy habits, and they demonstrate a seriously flawed understanding of psychology. " Dare to be different, please don't smoke!" pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers-teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in. Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure. But on the general effectiveness of the social cure, Rosenberg is less persuasive. Join the Club is filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biological factors that make peer pressure so powerful. The most glaring flaw of the social cure as it's presented here is that it doesn't work very well for very long. Rage Against the Haze failed once state funding was cut. Evidence that the LoveLife program produces lasting changes is limited and mixed. There's no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. An emerging body of research shows that positive health habits-as well as negative ones-spread through networks of friends via social communication. This is a subtle form of peer pressure : we unconsciously imitate the behavior we see every day. Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. It's like the teacher who breaks up the troublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. The tactic never really works. And that's the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the real world, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.

单选题The court considers a monetary ______ to be an appropriate way of punishing him.

单选题The rich have traditionally passed their wealth on to their children. But an increasing number of billionaires are choosing not to. The reason? They want their children to live on themselves—and not to turn into spoiled successors. Nicola Horlick or "supermom", a famous British billionaire, owing to the fact that she has high-flying jobs and five kids—has spent her career making a report ￡250m. She now seems determined to throw off large parts of it. She already gives away about 25% of her income each year; she has just revealed, in a report on the state of charity in the city, that she will not be leaving most of the remainder to her children. "I think it is wrong to give too much inherited wealth to children," Horlick told the report"s authors. "I will not be leaving all my wealth to my children because that would just ruin their lives." She is by no means the first to go public with this convition. Bill Gates has put an estimated $30bn into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This was supplemented, in 2009, by another $24bn or so from his friend Warren Buffett. Buffett has always been colorful, quotably clear on where he stands. His daughter often tells a story of finding herself without change for a car parking ticket—her father lent her $20, then promptly made her write him a check. "To suggest that the children of the wealthy should be just as wealthy," he has said, "is like saying the members of America"s 2004 Olympic team should be made up only of the children of the 1980 Olympic team." Antia Roddick, the late founder of the Body Shop, told her kids that they would not inherit one penny. The money that she made from the company would go into the Body Shop Foundation, which isn"t one of those awful tax shelters, like some in America. It just functions to take the money and give it away.

单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} The Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, announced here today that a delegation of Pakistani officials would fly to the Taliban's headquarters in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar Monday to renew demands that the militia surrender Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden. U. S. officials have named bin Laden, who has been given shelter by the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan, as the prime suspect in Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Washington and New York. "We are aware of the gravity of the situation and know that in the lives of, nations, such situations do arise that require making important decisions," Musharraf said at a meeting with Pakistani newspaper editors. The Taliban's leader, Mohammad Omar, has refused to give up bin Laden, claiming he is not responsible for the U. S. attacks. "The Pakistan government is leaning on the Taliban government to hand over Osama to save this entire region from catastrophe," said Najam Sethi, editor of the weekly newspaper Friday Times, who participated in the meeting with Musharraf. "I am not sure whether there is much chance of that happening, but the pressure is on from the Pakistan government." Pakistan has been a key supporter of the Taliban, which controls more than 90 percent of Afghanistan and has enforced a strict interpretation of Islamic law in the country. Omar, the Taliban leader, today convened an emergency meeting of clerics (圣职人员) in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "As regards the possible attack by America on the sacred soil of Afghanistan, veteran honorable clerics should come to Kabul for a sharia decision," Omar said in a statement broadcast on the Taliban's Radio Shariat today. Sharia is Islamic law. Omar, who reportedly left Ms Kandahar headquarters several days ago in anticipation of a U. S. attack, asked Afghans to pray and read the Koran to meet what he called a "test", according to the statement. He indicated he would not attend the meeting of clerics, though he reportedly met with a small group of senior clerics today. The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported today it had received a statement from Bin Laden, dispathed by an aide from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan, in which he denied involvement in last week's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "I am residing in Afghanistan," the statement said. "I have taken an oath of allegiance to Omar, which does not allow me to do such things from Afghanistan. We have been blamed in the past, but we were not involved."

单选题All the questions ______ around what she had been doing on the night of the robbery. A. dissolved B. revolved C. evolved D. devolved

单选题Astheycan’taffordtoletthesituationgetworse,theywilltakesomenecessary_______.

单选题Microsoft founder Bill Gates has ______ about being a parent, stating that 13 is an appropriate age for a child's first cell phone. A. opened up B. taken up C. put up D. held up

单选题The protein found by Peter Shiromani ______.

单选题If he told his wife about their plan, she was bound to agree.

单选题—I went to the museum you introduced to me yesterday.—Oh, did you? ______. A. So I did B. So did I C. Either I did D. Either did I

单选题We had no computer back-up and had to rely on old paper files to ______ the records we lost.

单选题They both watched as the crime scene technicians took samples of various fibers and bagged them,dusted for fingerprints,took pictures and tried to _____what could have happened.

单选题______ has warmed the waters off Alask

单选题It seems clear that literature has become more and more a female activity. In bookstores, at conferences or public readings by writers, and even in university departments dedicated to the humanities, the women clearly outnumber the men. The explanation traditionally given is that middle-class women read more because they work fewer hours than men, and so many of them feel that they can justify more easily than men the time that they devote to fantasy and illusion. I am somewhat allergic(反感的) to explanations that divide men and women into frozen categories and attribute to each sex its characteristic virtues and shortcomings; but there is no doubt that there are fewer and fewer readers of literature, and that among the saving remnant (剩余) of readers women predominate. This is the case almost everywhere. In Spain, for example, a recent survey organized by the General Society of Spanish Writers revealed that half of that country"s population has never read a book. The survey also revealed that in the minority that does read, the number of women who admitted to reading surpasses the number of men by 6.2 percent, a difference that appears to be increasing. I am happy for these women, but I feel sorry for these men, and for the millions of human beings who could read but have decided not to read. They earn my pity not only because they are unaware of the pleasure that they are missing, but also because I am convinced that a society without literature, or a society in which literature has been relegated—like some hidden vice—to the margins of social and personal life, is a society condemned to become spiritually barbaric, and even to jeopardize (破坏) its freedom. I wish to offer a few arguments against the idea of literature as a luxury pastime, and in favor of viewing it as one of the most primary and necessary undertakings of the mind, an irreplaceable activity for the formation of citizens in a modern and democratic society, a society of free individuals.

单选题The phrase "coincided with" in the first sentence of Para. 2 is closest in meaning to ______.

单选题Customer: ______.Walter: I'm sorry. Didn't you order fried shrimp?Customer: I ordered fried chicken.Waiter: Oh, all I heard was fried shrimp. Let me have kitchen redo this for you.

单选题It is raining so ______ that we can ______ go out without an umbrella. A. hard; hard B. hard; hardly C. hardly; hard D. hardly; hardly

单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}} Large, multinational corporations may be the companies whose ups and downs seize headlines. But to a far greater extent than most Americans realize, the economy's vitality depends on the fortunes of tiny shops and restaurants, neighborhood services and factories. Small businesses, defined as those with fewer than 100 workers, now employ nearly 60 percent of the work force and are expected to generate half of all new jobs between now and the year 2000. Some 1.2 million small firm have opened their doors over the past six years of economic growth, and 1989 will see an additional 200, 000 entrepreneurs striking off on their own. Too many of these pioneers, however, will blaze ahead unprepared. Idealists will overestimate the clamor for their products or fall to factor in the competition. Nearly everyone will underestimate, often fatally, the capital that success requires, Mid-career executives, forced by a takeover or a restructuring to quit the corporation and find another way to support themselves, may savor the idea of being their own boss but may forget that entrepreneurs must also, at least for a while, be bookkeeper and receptionist, too. According to Small Business Administration data, 24 of every, 100 businesses starting out today are likely to have disappeared in two years, and 27 more will have shut their doors four years from now. By 1995, more than 60 of those I00 start-ups will have folded. A new study of 3,000 small businesses, sponsored by American Express and the National Federation of Independent Business, suggests slightly better odds: Three years after start-up, 77 percent of the companies surveyed were still alive, Most credited their success in large part to having picked a business they already were comfortable in. Eighty percent had worked with the same product or service in their lest jobs. Thinking through an enterprise before the launch is obviously critical. But many entrepreneurs forget that a firms health in its pulse. In their zeal to expand, small-business owners often ignore early warning signs of a stagnant market or of decaying profitability. They hopefully pour more and more money into tile enterprise, preferring not to acknowledge eroding profit margins that mean the market for their ingenious service or product has evaporated, or that they must cut the payroll or vacate their lavish offices. Only when the financial well runs dry do they see the seriousness of the illness, and by then the patient is usually too far-gone to save. Frequent checks of your firm's vital signs will also guide you to a sensible rate of growth. To snatch opportunity, you must spot the signals that it is time to conquer new markets, add products or perhaps franchise your hot idea.