单选题A new catastrophe faces Afghanistan. The American bombing campaign is conspiring with years of civil conflict and drought to create an environmental crisis. Humanitarian and political concerns are dominating the headlines. But they are also masking the disappearance of the country's once rich habitat and wildlife, which are quietly being crushed by war. The UN is dispatching a team of investigators to the region next month to evaluate the damage. "A healthy environment is a prerequisite for rehabilitation," says Klaus Topfer, head of the UN environment Programme. Much of south-east Afghanistan was once lush forest watered by monsoon rains. Forests now cover less than 2 per cent of the country. "The Worst deforestation occurred during Taliban rule, when its timber mafia denuded forests to sell to Pakistani markets," says Usman Qazi, an environmental consultant based in Quetta, Pakistan. And the intense bombing intended to flush out the last of the Taliban troops is destroying or burning much of what remains. The refugee crisis is also wrecking the environment, anti much damage may be irreversible. Forests and vegetation are being cleared for much-needed farming, but the gains are likely to be short-term. "Eventually the land will be unfit for even the most basic form of agriculture,' warns Hammed Naqi of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Pakistan. Refugees—around 4 million as the last county—are also cutting into forests for firewood. The hail of bombs falling on Afghanistan is making life particularly bard for the country's wildlife. Birds such as the pelican and endangered Siberian crane cross eastern Afghanistan as they follow one of the world's great migratory thoroughfares from Siberia to Pakistan and India. But the number of the birds flying across the region has dropped by a staggering 85 per cent. "Cranes are very sensitive and they do not use file route if riley see any danger," says Ashiq Ahgmad, an environmental scientist for file WWF in Peshawar, Pakistan, who has tracked the collapse of the birds' migration this winter. The rugged mountains also usually provide a safe haven for mountain leopards, gazelles, bears and Marco Polo sheep—the world's largest species. "The same terrain that allows fighters to strike and disappear back into the frills has also historically enabled wild life to survive," says Peter Zahler of the Wildlife Conservation society, based in New York. But he warns they are now under intense pressure from file bombing and invasions of refugees and fighters. For instance, some refugees are hunting rare snow leopards to buy a safe passage across the border, A single fur can fetch $2,000 on the black market, says Zahler. Only 5,000 or so snow leopards are thought to survive in central Asia, and less than 100 in Afghanistan, their numbers already decimated by extensive hunting, and smuggling into Pakistan before the conflict." Timber, falcons and medicinal plants are also being smuggled across the border. The Taliban once controlled much of this trade, but the recent power vacuum could exacerbate the problem. Bombing will also leave its mark beyond file obvious craters. Defence analysts say that while depleted uranium has been used less in Afghanistan than in file Kosovo conflict, conventional explosives will litter the country with pollutants. They contain toxic compounds such as cyclonite, a carcinogen, and rocket propellants contain perchlorates, which damage thyroid glands.

单选题Questions 1-5 Each summer, no matter how pressing my work schedule, I take off one day exclusively for my son. We call it dad-son day. This year our third stop was the amusement park, where he discovered that he was tall enough to ride one of the fastest roller coasters in the world. We blasted through face-stretching turns and loops for ninety seconds. Then, as we stepped off the ride, he shrugged and, in a distressingly calm voice, remarked that it was not as exciting as other rides he"d been on. As I listened, I began to sense something seriously out of balance. Throughout the season, I noticed similar events all around me. Parents seemed hard pressed to find new thrills for indifferent kids. Surrounded by ever-greater stimulation, their young faces were looking disappointed and bored. Facing their children"s complaints of "nothing to do". Parents were shelling out large numbers of dollars for various forms of entertainment. In many cases the money seemed to do little more than buy transient relief from the terrible moans of their bored children. This set me pondering the obvious question. "How can it be so hard for kids to find something to do when there"s never been such a range of stimulating entertainment available to them?" Why do children immersed in this much excitement seem starved for more? That was, I realized, the point. I discovered during my own reckless adolescence that what creates excitement is not going fast, but going faster. Thrills have less to do with speed than changes in speed. I"m concerned about the cumulative effect of years at these levels of feverish activity. It is no mystery to me why many teenagers appear apathetic and burned out, with a "been there, done that" air of indifference toward much of life. As increasing numbers of friends" children are prescribed medications-stimulants to deal with inattentiveness at school or anti-depressants to help with the loss of interest and joy in their lives, I question the role of kids" boredom in some of the diagnoses. My own work is focused on the chemical imbalances and biological factors related to behavioral and emotional disorders. These are complex problems. Yet I"ve been reflecting more and more on how the pace of life and the intensity of stimulation may be contributing to the rising rates of psychiatric problems among children and adolescents in our society.

单选题 Everyone seems to hate America's latest stab at immigration reform, which went before the full Senate this week. Immigrant groups think it offers little hope to low-skilled, mostly Hispanic would-be migrants. Right-wingers snarl that it is nothing but an "amnesty" for illegals. Companies, who it had been hoped would support the new compromise, hate it because it imposes bureaucratic burdens on employers. And the left is complaining because it fears it will depress low-end wages. It would be nice to be able to report that opposition across so full a spectrum is a sign that the bill is a well-crafted compromise. In fact, it may well tom out to be doomed. That would be a pity, because there are some good things in the proposal. Most important, it produces a reasonably fair solution to the problem of what to do about the 12 minion or so illegal immigrants already in America, most of them working hard at low-paid and disagreeable jobs. Deporting a population the size of Ohio's is impossible, economically illiterate and morally wrong. The new bill would make the 12 million legal, and offer them a path, though a winding one, to full citizenship. The right doesn't like this, of course, and points out that amnesties (which this really isn't, given the fines and hurdles involved) have in the past drawn fresh waves of migrants. So the other side of the bargain gives conservatives everything they could wish for in terms of razor-wired fences, surveillance drones, armed border guards and a programme that will force companies to check the legality of their workers. Such measures are probably necessary to win support and rebuild trust in the immigration system. No bill would pass without them. The bad part of the deal is what happens to would-be immigrants once all those sensors and spy-planes are in place. The bill proposes a dual system. A guest-worker programme would allow 400,000 people a year to enter the country to work for two years, after which they must go home for a year, with a six-year cap on the total time they can spend in America. The other part is a new method of granting residence permits, carrying the right to work. Such "green cards" currently go mostly to relatives of American citizens or to people sponsored by an employer. The bill would bring in a "points" system for 380,000 people a year, similar to those in use in Canada and Australia. Permits for family members would be restricted, to cover only spouses and young children. Employers would have less ability to sponsor the people they need. There are several problems. One is that extended families help build vibrant communities in a way that guest workers don't. Second, the government should not be in the business of telling companies whom they ought to him. There are ways round this, such as awarding points not for specific jobs, but still the problem is that most of the green cards will be used up by Indian software designers, Bosnian engineers or the similarly blessed. America does indeed need such folk, but it also needs legions of the less-skilled, too. That will continue to mean a large, poorly paid and constantly rotating alien underclass with little stake in American society. On May 23rd, the Senate voted to scale the guest worker programme back to 200,000. So the illegals will keep coming—except that now their journey will be still more dangerous and they will be even further beyond the law. The current bill is better than nothing; but unless it is improved, it will not solve the main problem of the illegals.

单选题Eccentric people tend to form into groups because ______.

单选题Questions 15-18

单选题I am sure the soup tastes ______ . A. well B. deliciously C. goodly D. good

单选题Years ago, when I first started building websites for newspapers, many journalists told me that they saw the Internet as the end of reliable journalism. Since anyone could publish whatever they wanted online, "real journalism" would be overwhelmed, they said. Who would need professional reporters and editors if anyone could be a reporter or an editor? I would tell them not to worry. While my personal belief is that anyone can be a reporter or editor, I also know that quality counts. And that the "viral" nature of the Internet means that when people find quality, they let other people know about it. Even nontraditional media sites online will survive only if the quality of their information is trusted. The future of online news will demand more good reporters and editors, not fewer. So I was intrigued when Newsweek recently published a story called "Revenge of the Expert". It argued that expertise would be the main component of "Web 3.0". "The wisdom of the crowds has peaked," says Jason Calacanis, founder of the Maholo "people-powered search engine" and a former AOL executive. "Web 3.0 is taking what we"ve built in Web 2.0—the wisdom of the crowds—and putting an editorial layer on it of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined." Well, yes and no. Sure, it is important for people to trust the information they find online. And as the Newsweek article argues, the need for people to find trusted information online is increasing, thus the need for more expertise. But the article fails to mention the most important feature of the world of digital information. It"s not expertise—it"s choice. In many cases the sites that people come to trust are built on nontraditional models of expertise. Look at sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com, or Slashdot.com. There, users provide the expertise on which others depend. When many users select a particular story, that story accumulates votes of confidence, which often lead other users to choose that story. The choices of the accumulated community are seen as more trustworthy than the "gatekeeper" model of traditional news and information. Sometimes such sites highlight great reporting from traditional media. But often they bring forward bits of important information that are ignored (or missed) by "experts". It"s sort of the "open source" idea of information—a million eyes looking on the Web for information is better than a few. Jay Rosen, who writes the PressThink blog, says in an e-mail that he"s seen this kind of story before, calling it a "kind of pathetic" trend reporting. "I said in 2006, when starting NewAssignment. Net, that the strongest editorial combinations will be pro-am. I still think that. Why? Because for most reporters covering a big sprawling beat, it"s still true what Dan Gillmor said: "My readers know more than I do." And it"s still the case that tapping into that knowledge is becoming more practical because of the Internet." J. D. Lasica, a social-media strategist and former editor, also says he sees no departure from the "wisdom of the crowds" model. "I"ve seen very little evidence that the sweeping cultural shifts we"ve seen in the past half dozen years show any signs of retreating," Mr. Lasica says. "Young people now rely on social networks ... to take cues from their friends on which movies to see, books to read... And didn"t "Lonely Planet Guide" explore this terrain for travel and Zagat"s for dining back in the "90s?" In many cases, traditional media is still the first choice of online users because the reporters and editors of these media outlets have created a level of trust for many people—but not for everyone. When you combine the idea of expertise with the idea of choice, you discover nontraditional information sites that become some of the Internet"s most trusted places. Take SCOTUSblog.com, written by lawyers about cases in the Supreme Court. It has become the place to go for other lawyers, reporters, and editors to find in-depth information about important cases. The Internet also allows individuals to achieve this level of trust. For instance, the Scobleizer.com blog written by Robert Scoble. Mr. Scoble, a former Microsoft employee and tech expert, is widely seen as one of the most important people to read when you want to learn what"s happening in the world of technology. He built his large audience on the fact that people trust his writing. To me, it"s the best of all possible information worlds.

单选题

单选题

单选题 Questions 19—22

单选题 The city water pipes in Rome were usually of baked clay or lead; copper was sometimes used and also hollowed stone. For the large supply conduits leading to the city the Romans used covered channels with free water surfaces, rather than pipes. Perhaps this choice was a matter of economics, for apparently they could make lead pipes up to 15 inches in diameter. While pipes can follow the profile of undulating ground, with the pressure increasing in the lower areas, channels cannot. They must slope continuously downwards, because water in channels does not normally flow uphill; and the grade must be flat, from 1 in 60 in small channels to perhaps 1 in 3,000 in large ones, to keep the water speed down to a few feet per second. Thus the main supply channels or aqueducts had long lengths of flat grade and where they crossed depressions or valleys they were carried on elevated stone bridges in the form of tiered arches. At the beginning of the Christian era there were over 30 miles of these raised aqueducts in the 250 miles of channels and tunnels bringing water to Rome. The channels were up to 6 feet wide and 5 to 8 feet high. Sometimes channels were later added on the tops of existing ones. The remains of some of these aqueducts still grace the skyline on the outskirts of Rome and elsewhere in Europe similar ruins are found. Brick and stone drains were constructed in various parts of Rome. The oldest existing one is the Cloaca Maxima which follows the course of an old stream. It dates back at least to the third century B.C. Later the drains were used for sewage, flushed by water from the public baths and fountains, as well as street storm run-off. The truly surprising aspect of the achievements of all the ancient hydraulic artisans is the lack of theoretical knowledge behind their designs. Apart from the hydrostatics of Archimedes, there was no sound understanding of the most elementary principles of fluid behaviour. Sextus Frontinus, Rome's water commissioner around A.D. 100, did not fully realize that in order to calculate the volume rate of flow in a channel it is necessary to allow for the speed of the flow as well as the area of cross-section. The Romans' flow standard was the rate at which water would flow through a bronze pipe roughly 4/3 inch in diameter and 9 inches long. When this pipe was connected to the side of a water-supply pipe or channel as a delivery outlet, it was assumed that the outflow was at the standard rate. In fact, the amount of water delivered depended not only on the cross-sectional area of the outlet pipe but also on the speed of water flowing through it and this speed depended on the pressure in the supply pipe.

单选题I don't think Jill would be a good teacher. She's got ______ patience with children. [A] plenty [B] much [C] less [D] little

单选题 {{B}}Questions 13 to 17 are based on the following news.{{/B}}

单选题

单选题Which best expresses the change since the seventeenth century in the perception people have of their relationship to their bodies?

单选题Questions 16-20 The freedom to lead different types of life is reflected in the person"s capacity set. The capacity of a person depends on a variety of factors, including personal characteristics and social arrangements. A full accounting of individual freedom must, of course, go beyond the capacities of personal living and pay attention to the person"s other objectives ( e.g. social goals not directly related to one"s own life), but human capacities constitute an important part of individual freedom. Freedom, of course, is not an unproblematic concept. For example, if we do not have the courage to choose to live in a particular way, even though we could live that way if we so choose, can it be said that we do have the freedom to live that way, i.e. the correspondent capacity? It is not any purpose here to brush under the carpet difficult questions of this-and-other-type. In so far as there are genuine ambiguities in the concept of freedom, that should be reflected in corresponding ambiguities in the characterization of capacity. This relates to a methodological point, which I have tried to defend elsewhere, that if an underlying idea has an essential ambiguity, a precise formulation of that idea must try to capture that ambiguity rather than hide or eliminate it. Comparisons of freedom raise interesting issues of evaluation. The claim is sometimes made that freedom must be valued independently of the values and preferences of the person whose freedom is being assessed, since it concerns the "range" of choice a person has--not how she values the elements in that range or what she chooses from it. I do not believe for an instant that this claim is sustainable (despite some superficial plausibility), but had it been correct, it would have been a rather momentous conclusion, driving a wedge between the evaluation of achievements and that of freedom. It would, in particular, be then possible to assess the freedom of a person independently of--or prior to--the assessment of the alternatives between which the person can choose.

单选题Advances in surveillance technology could seriously damage individual privacy unless drastic measures are taken to protect personal data, scientists have said. Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, gave warning last year that Britain was "sleepwalking" into a surveillance society. Yesterday the country's leading engineers developed the theme, fleshing out a dystopian vision that not even George Orwell could have predicted. They said that travel passes, supermarket loyalty cards and mobile phones could be used to track individuals' every move. They also predicted that CCTV (close-circuit television) footage could become available for public consumption and that terrorists could hijack the biometric chips in passports and rig them up as a trigger for explosives. The report by the Royal Academy of Engineering, Dilemmas of Privacy and Surveillance-Challenges of Technological Change, argues that the scientists developing surveillance technology should also think about measures to protect privacy. "Just as security features have been incorporated into car design, privacy-protecting features should be incorporated into the design of products and services that rely on divulging personal information," the report says. "There is a choice between a Big Brother world where individual privacy is almost extinct and a world where the data are kept by individual organizations or services and kept secret and secure." The report says that shoppers should be allowed to buy goods and services without revealing their identities to the companies that provide them. It argues that travel and supermarket loyalty cards and mobile phones are mines of personal information that should be closely scrutinized to make sure that data is not abused. Professor Nigel Gilbert, chairman of the report group, said. "In most cases, supermarket loyalty cards will have your name on. Why? What is needed in a loyalty card is for the supermarket to know what has been bought so you can get your discounts. " "Does it need to identify you? No, it just needs authentication that you've bought the goods. It is the same for Oyster cards on the Tube, some of which you have to register for. These are all apparently small things but people are being required to give away more identification information than is required." Ian Forbes, the report's coauthor, said that because footage from CCTV cameras could be digitized and potentially stored for ever, that necessitated greater scrutiny of the controlling networks. Britain has about five million CCTV cameras, one for every 12 people. The report says: "Give this potential, it cannot be guaranteed that surveillance images will remain private, or will not be altered, misused or manipulated. " The report also gives warning that biometric passports and identity cards would give fresh opportunities to fraudsters and terrorists to read remotely the data chips that they contain. It says that it could be possible to rig a bomb to go off in the presence of a certain person or someone of a particular nationality. The report proposes that the Information Commissioner should be given extended powers, and that stiffer penalties, including prison sentences, should be introduced for those who misuse personal data. The Commons Home Affairs Select Committee is expected to announce an inquiry into the growing use of surveillance.

单选题 Questions 15-18

单选题A $54m lawsuit over a pair of pinstriped trousers that went missing from a Washington, DC, cleaners was thrown out by a judge this week. It had attracted worldwide ridicule. The fact that the case was brought, not by a random loony, but by a former judge has added to the sense that something is wrong not just with America"s litigation laws, but with the kind of men and women Americans choose to sit in judgment over them. A whole series of judicial misdemeanors, ranging from the titillating to the outrageous, has emerged over the past year. Take the Florida state judge, John Sloop, who was ousted after complaints about his "rude and abusive" behavior. This included an order to strip-search and jail 11 defendants for arriving late in traffic court after being misdirected. Or the Californian judge, José Velasquez, sacked in April for a plethora of misconduct, including extending the sentences of defendants who dared question his rulings. Then there was the Albany city judge, William Carter, in New York, censored for his "utterly inexcusable" conduct after jumping down from the bench during a trial, shedding his robes and apparently challenging a defendant to a fist-fight. Another time, he suggested that the police "thump the shit out" of an allegedly disrespectful defendant. Mr. Carter wasn"t carrying a gun; many judges now do. In Florida, Charles Greene, chief criminal judge in Broward County, had to step down after describing a trial for attempted murder involving minority defendants and witnesses as "NHI" (No Humans Involved). More serious are the cases of corruption. On June 5th Gerald Garson, a former judge in Brooklyn, New York, was jailed for taking bribes to rig divorce cases. Another judge was convicted of accepting money to refer clients to a particular lawyer. Rumors of buying and selling of judgeships in the district abound. At one time, one in ten Brooklyn judges were said to be under investigation for sleaze. "To distrust the judiciary," said Honor6 de Balzac, "marks the beginning of the end of society." In Britain, judges are one of the most respected groups. But in America they tend to be held in low esteem, particularly at state level. For this many people blame low pay and the fact that judges are elected. In 39 states, some or all judges are elected for fixed terms. Federal judges, usually held in much higher esteem, are appointed on merit for life—as in Britain. Most states allow judicial candidates to raise campaign funds. Huge sums are often involved, leading to inevitable suspicions that, once on the bench, judges will pass judgments that favor their benefactors. In 2004 the two candidates in one Illinois district (with a population of just 1.3m) raised a staggering $ 9.4m between them. Some of the states with the highest levels of campaign spending—Texas, Louisiana and Alabama—are also those whose judges are most criticized. In the past, judicial candidates were banned from discussing controversial legal or political issues on the campaign trail. But in 2002 the Supreme Court ruled such bans to be unconstitutional, leading candidates to advertise freely their views on abortion and suchlike. Personal attacks have also become more common. Indeed, Sandra Day O"Connor, a former Supreme Court justice, fears that judicial elections have turned into "political prize-fights, where partisans and special interests seek to install judges who will answer to them instead of the law and the constitution." The meager salaries of judges, whether at state or federal level, do not help raise standards either. Federal judges have not had a real pay rise for 17 years; a district court judge earns $165,000 a year, about the same as a first-year associate in a top law firm. John Roberts, chief justice of the Supreme Court, earns just $ 212,000—half the salary of England"s top judge and one-fifth of the average income of a partner in the majority of America"s 100 top-grossing law firms. Around 40 judges have left the federal bench over the past five years. In his annual report to Congress in January, Mr. Roberts said that the issue of judges" pay had reached "the level of a constitutional crisis". It was threatening the judiciary"s strength and independence. In February, Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, promised legislation to fix it within the current session. The judges are still waiting. Meanwhile, state judges in New York are preparing to sue the state for their first pay rise since 1999. The battle is joined.

单选题Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.