单选题 The world seems to be going diet crazy, and yet our nation's obesity rate has shot up year after year. And, it's not only the over 20 population that has to worry about their weight anymore. Children from kindergarten to twelfth grade are also experiencing the problems of an overweight lifestyle. According to the website cosmiverse.com, 11% of adolescents are categorized as being over-weight, and another 16% are in danger of becoming overweight. This is a 60% jump from the 1980's. Some of the blame is being put on schools wanting to fit more academic classes into the children's schedule rather than waste time on physical education. This new take on education has left us with physical activity at an all-time national low, resulting in obesity and poor physical conditioning at an all-time national high. The schools have tried a few solutions; the most recent in the news has been taking soda out of schools and increasing the required time children must be active during school. Will those methods help at all? Education is important at school, but starts at home. I believe students are getting their bad habits from watching their parents and how they eat and exercise. The school system only helps to hinder the child's dietary eating. I know there are studies showing genes that determine how a child will be built. That does not explain however, why the rate continues to increase at such a rapid rate each year. It seems more likely that more and more families have both parents working, leaving their children to their own means for a meal. "Nintendo, TV, Playstation and the like," are what Physical Education teacher, Sue Arostegui, attributes the inactiveness to. "Parents are either gone or too scared with today's society to let them out and play." Classes on health need to become more regular and sports need to be encouraged. At Live Oak High School the staff does a good job of teaching how to eat and exercise to stay healthy. The freshmen study health every Wednesday in RE., and Para James teaches healthy eating and food preparation in Home Economics for the first few weeks of every school year. "Kids have no idea how many calories they are eating," said James of the overweight problems facing students. "Fast food is becoming more popular, it's easier and parents are busy. They are only setting their kids up to gain weight with that diet however." School cafeterias are also getting blamed for the students' eating habits. "Healthy eating should start at home," said L.O.H.S. cafeteria cool Brenda Myers. "Too many kids are being raised on fast food. After eating so much fast food they don't have any tastes for real home cooked food. I always have healthy foods for students, but they are less likely to eat them." Other schools do not even have the type of programs Live Oak offers and are suffering even worse consequences. Sports keep students fit and healthy. There need to be more readily available sports programs for anyone who would like to join. Many students when they feel they do not meet the standards for a team will admit defeat and drop off the team: There needs to be a program that all students will be interested in and continue through for the entire season. Schools can only do and be blamed for so much however, and it will be up to the parents to become more aware of what activities their children are participating in and how healthy they are eating. Until that happens, I foresee the obesity rate continuing on its uphill curve.

单选题Nobody much likes tourists. They have a reputation for being loud, rude and disruptive. They are blamed for everything from prostitution to environmental degradation. "They want to have a good time, they are not well informed and want a short "wow" factor," says Xavier Font, professor of tourism management at Britain"s Leeds Metropolitan University. "Many locals see tourists as stupid." Yet tourism may in fact be the true salvation of humankind"s cultural heritage. After all, it"s the main countervailing force to internationalization—that is, the global blah of TV, T shirts, tract housing, fast-food chains, business suits, malls and brand names. Internationalization has, in practice, been a process of everyone"s coming to live and act the same; the Japanese gave up their kimonos because they were considered "unmodern". But tourists are looking for something old and something different—and they"ll pay for it. The effect can be seen across the globe, rescuing traditional cities and cultures from the brink of extinction. Just five years ago the indigenous community of the Cayapas lived in little concrete houses with television sets, having moved from file banks of the Canande River in northwestern Ecuador to settle alongside the highway. They had nearly all abandoned the traditional hand-woven garb of their ancestors, and instead donned Nikes. "That"s what progress meant to them," says Pedro Armend riz, a tourism and development-planning engineer based in Quito. "It meant wearing tennis shoes and jeans, and having a TV so all the women could watch their soap operas every day." Thanks to an influx of tourists, things have recently changed for the Cayapas. With visitors coming in search of community, or ethnic, tourism—to eat, work and often even live with the indigenous people—the Cayapas are embracing the nearly forgotten culture of their ancestors. Once again, they are wearing traditional clothes, building old-style homes and using traditional agricultural techniques. "They have become a sustainable community microbusiness, with a preservationist conscience, because they have understood that their indigenous roots are what interest tourists," says Amend riz. "It makes them value their ancestral culture." The situation is similar throughout Latin America, where interest in cultural and ecological tourism has been on the rise in recent years. Tourism to Guatemala, for example, with its Mayan heritage, lush rain forests and lakes surrounded by volcanoes, has doubled in the past decade to nearly 2 million foreign visitors a year. Their dollars have kept young indigenous women interested in learning the specialized craft of weaving on the Mayans" backstrap looms, says Alejandrina Silva, head of the Guatemalan Tourism Ministry"s Cultural Heritage Office. "Indigenous artisanry forms an important part of the Guatemalan touristic product," she says. "If this were not the case, such crafts could die off and the younger generations would have to look for new trades that would allow them to survive." Indeed, the souvenir trade—often maligned for promoting kitsch—can almost single-handedly keep fading cultures alive. In the Tatra National Park in Zakopane, in southern Poland, the highlander tradition of making smoked sheep cheese—dying out among the younger generation—has earned a new lease on life thanks to tourists" desire for unforgettable souvenirs. Highlanders make the cheese, or oscypek, in theft huts, forming it by hand and smoking it over a fire. Visitors feel free to chat with the locals as they watch, have a taste of the cheese and a glass of fresh goat"s milk; most leave some money. They also snatch up the traditional clothing, wool hats, slippers and jackets—as well as sheep and goat cheese—on sale all over the city. Tourism is not just about preserving old cultures; it can also influence modem ones. Catering to tourist whims provides a quick education for fledgling entrepreneurs, from the little boys in Angkor Wat pushing postcards, to the people who run small travel agencies, bed-and-breakfasts and coffee shops. Backpackers in particular, who have created their own cities-within-cities such as Khaosan Road in Bangkok, have sparked entrepreneurs to invent entirely new businesses, including herbal spas, meditation centers and home-stay programs. For developed countries, tourism can help maintain a healthy competitive edge. Consider Japan, which until recently did not feel the need to court foreign travelers, and in the process nearly fell off the tourist map. The country ranks only 30th in the world as a tourist destination—about the same as Tunisia and Croatia. Without overseas visitors" clamoring for special services, hotels and inns rarely offer Internet access, ATM and mobile-phone networks won"t link up with the rest of the world, and design and amenities at resorts lag behind world standards. Without tourists, modern culture fails to take the next step. Of course, the biggest benefits of tourism may accrue to the tourists themselves. They go home having learned something about societies different from their own. And that, in the end, may do more good for the local cultures they visited than any amount of dollars. "When tourists from the Western world go to Third World countries, it increases the locals" pride in their own culture," says Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, a professor of tourism at Britain"s Nottingham University. "Tourism is the avenue on which we can exchange our cultures and learn from each other. Tourism brings peace." Not to mention some really unforgettable smoked sheep-cheese souvenirs.

单选题 "I delight in Buckingham Palace", said Queen Victoria, when she moved in three weeks after ascending to the throne. Today the 40-acre secluded garden contains specimen shrubs, trees and a large lake. Eight to nine thousand people visit it during the annual garden parties. It took George Ⅳ, on becoming King in 1820, and John Nash, Surveyor-general to GeorgeⅣ when he was Prince Regent, many years to turn the house into a sumptuous palace. Nash demolished the North and South wings and rebuilt them. He constructed Marble Arch as a grand entrance to the enlarged courtyard. As work continued, Nash let his costs run away with him, and Parliament complained. Joseph Hume, an English politician and reformer fighting for financial retrenchment, said, "The Crown of England does not require such splendour. Foreign countries might indulge in frippery, but England ought to pride herself on her plainness and simplicity." Nevertheless, elegance reigned. Queen Victoria was crowned in 1837. When she moved in, Buckingham Palace became, for the first time, the official London residence of Britain's sovereigns. There wasn't a room large enough for grand entertainments, so in 1853 — 1855, Queen Victoria ordered the Ballroom built. 122 feet long, 60 feet wide and 45 feet high, it is, today, used for many events such as the State Banquet, the Diplomatic Reception, and memorial concerts. This is the site of Investitures, where the Queen (who was crowned in 1952) presents the recipients of British honours with their awards. During World War Ⅱ, a chapel, converted by Queen Victoria from Nash's conservatory, was bombed. Prince Philip oversaw its rebuilding as the Queen's Gallery, home to a rotating collection of art from the Royal Collection. The Gallery, currently in the process of renovation, will reopen in 2002 for the Queen's Golden Jubilee. More than 600 rooms, including 52 Royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices and 78 bathrooms comprise the castle's assets. But the "room" best known around the world is the Balcony where the Royal family' gathers on celebratory and solemn occasions to be seen by their subjects. The Palace is more than a home for the Royals. It is the official administrative headquarters of the monarchy and contains the Offices of their staff. It is the place where all Royal ceremonies and official banquets are held. Government ministers, top civil servants and heads of state visit to carry out their duties. It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "working from home".

单选题A Black comedy by a first-time novelist with a past as colorful as his book has defied the bookies to win the ￡50,000 Man Booker prize, the most important honour in the British literary world. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre, the nom de plume of 42-year-old Mexican-Australian Peter Finlay, was the unanimous choice of the Booker judges, chaired by John Carey, who took less than an hour to decide. The novel tells the story of Vernon Gregory, a Texan teenager who is put on trial accused of a massacre at his high school. At the awards ceremony at the British Museum in London last night, Professor Carey described it as a "coruscating black comedy reflecting our alarm but also our fascination with modern America". Accepting the prize, the novelist said: "My mum is in the audience. I want to say she and the rest of my family planted the idea that I could do anything and I would just like to apologise for taking it literally." It beat a shortlist including Brick Lane, the first novel by Monica Ali which was the bookmakers" favourite and has been the biggest seller in the shops, and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, the only established author to make it to the final round of judging. Martyn Goff, the director of the Man Booker prize, said he was "absolutely amazed" at the swiftness of the decision which was made after the second shortest debate in the prize"s 35-year history. "Four of them jumped as one, and the fifth [member of the jury] was not unhappy," he said. The judges were particularly convinced by the way the author was able to create such a strong sense of America. "There was a feeling that it could only have been written by an American whereas we all know it wasn"t," he said. DBC Pierre—the initials stand for Dirty But Clean—is a reformed drug addict and gambler who was born into a wealthy family but lost virtually everything when the banks were nationalised in Mexico in 1982. Without his family money to fall back on, Finlay has admitted selling his best friend"s home and keeping the proceeds as well as working up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debts in a scheme to find gold in Mexico. Revealing how his life was often stranger than fiction, he said in a recent interview. "For nine years I was in a drug haze, on a rampage of cocaine, heroin, any shit I could get. I am not proud of what I have done and I now want to put it right." A publishing deal for the book was sealed just one hour before the first plane hit New York"s World Trade Centre on 11 September, 2001. "Ever since, I feel like there"s some dark destiny swirling around the book," he said. His financial problems are likely to become a thing of the past. A filmmaker has bought an option to make a movie of the book and as well as the ￡50,000 prize cheque, the writer, who currently lives in Ireland, is guaranteed a significant increase in sales. Sales of last year"s winner, Yann Martel"s Life of Pi , have exceeded 1 million copies. Martin Higgs, literary editor of Waterstone"s , said. "The storyline for this book is one that you would as much see played out today on the six o"clock news as read in a novel and has for this reason struck a chord with book lovers." Finlay was second favourite to win, behind Monica Ali, 35, who created a flurry of interest even before her debut novel was published when she was named one of Granta"s best young British novelists. The other shortlisted books were The Good Doctor , by Damon Galgut, Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall, and Notes on a Scandal by the former Independent on Sunday journalist Zoe Heller, 38.

单选题When Harvey Ball took a black felt-tip pen to a piece of yellow paper in 1963, he never could have realized that he was drafting the face that would launch 50 million buttons and an eventual war over copyright. Mr. Ball, a commercial artist, was simply filling a request from Joy Young of the Worcester Mutual Insurance Company to create an image for their "smile campaign" to coach employees to be more congenial in their customer relations. It seems there was a hunger for a bright grin—the original order of 100 smiley-face buttons were snatched up and an order for 10,000 more was placed at once. The Worcester Historical Museum takes this founding moment seriously. "Just as you"d want to know the biography of General Washington, we realized we didn"t know the comprehensive history of the Smiley Face," says Bill Wallace, the executive director of the historical museum where the exhibit "Smiley—An American Icon" opens to the public Oct. 6 in Worcester, Mass. Worcester, often referred to by neighboring Bostonians as "that manufacturing town off Route 90," lays claim to several other famous commercial firsts, the monkey wrench and shredded wheat among them. Smiley Face is a particularly warm spot in the city"s history. Through a careful historical analysis, Mr. Wallace says that while the Smiley Face birthplace is undisputed, it took several phases of distribution before the distinctive rounded-tipped smile with one eye slightly larger than the other proliferated in the mainstream. As the original buttons spread like drifting pollen with no copyright attached, a bank in Seattle next realized its commercial potential. Under the guidance of advertising executive David Stern, the University Federal Savings & Loan launched a very public marketing campaign in 1967 centered on the Smiley Face. It eventually distributed 150,000 buttons along with piggy banks and coin purses. Old photos of the bank show giant Smiley Face wallpaper. By 1970, Murray and Bernard Spain, brothers who owned a card shop in Philadelphia, were affixing the yellow grin to everything from key chains to cookie jars along with "Have a happy day". "In the 1970s, there was a trend toward happiness," says Wallace. "We had assassinated a president, we were in a war with Vietnam, and people were looking for [tokens of] happiness. [The Spain brothers] ran with it." The Smiley Face resurged in the 1990s. This time it was fanned by a legal dispute between Wal-Mart, who uses it to promote its low prices, and Franklin Loufrani, a Frenchman who owns a company called SmileyWorld. Mr. Loufrani says he created the Smiley Face and has trademarked it around the world. He has been distributing its image in 80 countries since 1971. Loufrani"s actions irked Ball, who felt that such a universal symbol should remain in the public domain in perpetuity. So in a pleasant proactive move, Ball declared in 1999 that the first Friday in October would be "World Smile Day" to promote general kindness and charity toward children in need. Ball died in 2001. The Worcester exhibit opens on "World Smile Day", Oct. 6. It features a plethora of Smiley Face merchandise—from the original Ball buttons to plastic purses and a toilet seat and contemporary interpretations by local artists. The exhibit is scheduled to run through Feb. 11.

单选题Questions 19-22

单选题For whom does the author probably write this passage?

单选题Why does the author mention the community of the Cayapas in Paragraph 3 and 4?

单选题 It is said that in England death is pressing, in Canada inevitable and in California optional Small wonder. Americans' life expectancy has nearly doubled over the past century. Failing hips can be replaced, clinical depression controlled, cataracts removed in a 30-minute surgical procedure. Such advances offer the aging population a quality of life that was unimaginable when I entered medicine 50 years ago. But not even a great health-care system can cure death, and our failure to confront that reality now threatens this greatness of ours. Death is normal; we are genetically programmed to disintegrate and perish, even under ideal conditions. We all understand that at some level, yet as medical consumers we treat death as a problem to be solved. Shielded by third-party payers from the cost of our care, we demand everything that can possibly be done for us, even if it's useless. The most obvious example is late-stage cancer care. Physicians—frustrated by their inability to cure the disease and fearing loss of hope in the patient—too often offer aggressive treatment far beyond what is scientifically justified. In 1950, the U.S. spent $12.7 billion on health care. In 2002, the cost will be $1,540 billion. Anyone can see this trend is unsustainable. Yet few seem willing to try to reverse it. Some scholars conclude that a government with finite resources should simply stop paying for medical care that sustains life beyond a certain age—say 83 or so. Former Colorado governor Richard Lamm has been quoted as saying that the old and infirm "have a duty to die and get out of the way", so that younger, healthier people can realize their potential. I would not go that far. Energetic people now routinely work through their 60s and beyond, and remain dazzlingly productive. At 78, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone jokingly claims to be 53. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is in her 70s, and former surgeon general C. Everett Koop chairs an Internet start-up in his 80s. These leaders are living proof that prevention works and that we can manage the health problems that come naturally with age. As a mere 68-year-old, I wish to age as productively as they have. Yet there are limits to what a society can spend in this pursuit. As a physician, I know the most costly and dramatic measures may be ineffective and painful. I also know that people in Japan and Sweden, countries that spend far less on medical care, have achieved longer, healthier lives than we have. As a nation, we may be overfunding the quest for unlikely cures while underfunding research on humbler therapies that could improve people's lives.

单选题Questions 26-30 At some time in your life you may have a strong desire to do something strange or terrible. However, chances are that you don"t act on your impulse, but let it pass instead. You know that to commit the action is wrong in some way and that other people will not accept your behavior. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the phenomenon of taboo behavior is how it can change over the years within the same society, how certain behavior and attitudes once considered taboo can become perfectly acceptable and natural at another point in time. Topics such as death, for example, were once considered so upsetting and unpleasant that it was a taboo to even talk about them. Now with the publication of important books such as On Death and Dying and Learning to Say Goodbye, people have become more aware of the importance of expressing feelings about death and, as a result, are more willing to talk about this taboo subject. One of the newest taboos in American society is the topic of fat. Unlike many other taboos, fat is a topic that Americans talk about constantly. It"s not taboo to talk about fat; it"s taboo to be fat. The "in" look is thin, not fat. In the work world, most companies prefer youthful-looking, trim executives to sell their image as well as their products to the public. The thin look is associated with youth, vigor, and success. The fat person, on the other hand, is thought of as lazy and lacking in energy, self-discipline, and self-respect. In an image-conscious society like the U. S. , thin is "in", fat is "out". It"s not surprising, then, that millions of Americans have become obsessed with staying slim and "in shape". The pursuit of a youthful physical appearance is not, however, the sole reason for America"s fascination with diet and exercise. Recent research has shown the critical importance of diet and exercise for personal health. As in most technologically developed nations, the life-style of North Americans has changed dramatically during the course of the last century. Modern machines do all the physical labor that people were once forced to do by hand. Cars and buses transport us quickly from point to point. As a result of inactivity and disuse, people"s bodies can easily become weak and vulnerable to disease. In an effort to avoid such a fate, millions of Americans are spending more of their time exercising.

单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.

单选题In the sentence "He gives short shrift to the rational decision-makers of economic models" (Para. 3), the expression "give a short shrift to" can be paraphrased as ______.

单选题Which of the following rooms is NOT described in the three extracts?

单选题We've already pushed the world oceans close to--and in some cases, past--their natural limits, according to a recently released report on the state of our oceans by the World Watch Institute. The increasing number of citizen groups, businesses and governments taking an active interest in slowing down the destruction and pollution of the ocean is encouraging, says senior researcher and author Anne Plait McGinn, citing a host of efforts already under way. (1) Unilever, which controls 20 percent of the whitefish market in Europe and US, has agreed to buy only fish caught and produced in an environmentally sustainable manner. (2) Volunteers in the Philippines, Thailand, India and Ecuador are replanting mangrove areas to repair earlier damage from shrimp faming. (3) In northern Sulawesi, citizens have cleared coral reefs of harmful invasive species. (4) The United States and Canada have each banned oil drilling on large portions of their continental shelves. On the downside, Safeguarding the Health of Oceans says that seven out of ten commercial fish species are fully or overexploited and even worse, many of their spawning grounds have been cleared to make room for shrimp ponds, golf courses and beach resorts. Habitat degradation, resulting from development, agricultural runoff, sewage pollution and destructive fishing practices has led to a tripling in the number of poisonous algae species identified by scientists, increasing fish kills, beach closures, and economic losses. The impact on the economy is significant. People obtain an average of 16 percent of their animal protein from fish, and people in developing countries are extremely dependent on reef fisheries for both food and income. Tourism accounts for a large piece of coastline economies and medicines are being found in reef ecosystems every day. Even toothpaste and ice cream depend on the gel-forming properties of brown algae. The problems facing the oceans are legion: the marine conversation community is fragmented, bans on destructive activities are routinely ignored, too many regulatory organizations have a development-first mindset and enforcement and oversight are ineffective, if not altogether lacking. Oceans need to be protected locally, nationally and internationally, according to McGinn. Right now, the United Nations General Assembly spends just one day a year covering issues that affect more than half of the planet. The report suggests that a tax of one tenth of one percent on industrial and recreational ocean activities would generate $ 500 million a year, more than five times the annual budgets the International Maritime Organization and the Fisheries Department of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. However, the most productive areas of the ocean are under national jurisdiction and 80 percent of oceanic pollution originates on land. This means that addressing global marine issues requires strong national and local policies. Problems remain far from resolved.

单选题Directions: In this section you will read several passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose ONE best answer, A. B. C. or D. to each question. 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Questions 15—18

单选题Gerald Feinberg, the Columbia University physicist, once went so far as to declare that "everything possible will eventually be accomplished." He didn"t even think it would take very long for this to happen: "I am inclined to put two hundred years as an upper limit for the accomplishment of any possibility that we can imagine today." Well, that of course left only the impossible as the one thing remaining for daring intellectual adventurers to whittle away at. Feinberg, for one, thought that they"d succeed even here. "Everything will be accomplished that does not violate known fundamental laws of science," he said, "as well as many things that do violate those laws." So in no small numbers scientists tried to do the impossible. And how understandable this was. For what does the independent and inquiring mind hate more than being told that something just can"t be done, pure and simple, by any agency at all, at any time, no matter what. Indeed, the whole concept of the impossible was something of an affront to creativity and advanced intelligence, which was why being told that something was impossible was an unparalleled stimulus for getting all sorts of people to try to accomplish it anyway, as witness all the attempts to build perpetual motion machines, antigravity generators, time-travel vehicles, and all the rest. Besides, there was always the residual possibility that the naysayers would turn out to be wrong and the yeasayers right, and that one day the latter would reappear to laugh in your face. As one cryonicist pat it, "When you die, you"re dead. When I die, I might come back. So who"s the dummy?" It was a point worth considering. How many times in the past had certain things been said to be impossible, only to have it turn out shortly thereafter that the item in question had already been done or soon would be. What greater cliche was there in the history of science than the comic litany of false it-couldn"t-be-dones; the infamous case of Auguste Comte saying in 1844 that it would never be known what the stars were made of, followed in a few years by the spectroscope being applied to starlight to reveal the stars" chemical composition; or the case of Lord Rutherford, the man who discovered the structure of the atom, saying in 1933 that dreams of controlled nuclear fission were "moonshine". And those weren"t even the worst examples. No, the huffiest of all it-couldn"t-be-done claims centered on the notion that human beings could actually fly, either at all, or across long distances, or to the moon, the stars, or wherever else. It was as if for unstated reasons human flight was something that couldn"t be allowed to happen. "The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which man shall fly long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be." That was Simon Newcomb, the Johns Hopkins University mathematician and astronomer in 1906, three years after the Wright brothers actually flew. There had been so many embarrassments of this type that about mid-century Arthur C. Clarke came out with a guideline for avoiding them, which he termed Clarke"s Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." Still, one had to admit there were lots of things left that were really and truly impossible, even if it took some ingenuity in coming up with a proper list of examples. Such as: "A camel cannot pass through the eye of a needle." (Well, unless of course it was a very large needle.) Or: "It is impossible for a door to be simultaneously open and closed." (Well, unless of course it was a revolving door.) Indeed, watertight examples of the really and truly impossible were so exceptionally hard m come by that paradigm cases turned out to be either trivial or absurd. "I know I will never play the piano like Vladimir Horowitz," offered Milton Rothman, a physicist, "no matter how hard I try." Or, from Scott Lankford, a mountaineer: "Everest on roller skates." No one would bother trying to overcome those impossibilities, but off in the distance loomed some other, more metaphysically profound specimens. They beckoned like the Mount Everests of science: antigravity generators, faster-than-light travel, antimatter propulsion, space warps, time machines. There were physicists aplenty who took a look at these peaks and decided they had to climb them.

单选题Questions 11-14

单选题Questions 1～5 I heard my train approaching. I ran up a two-story escalator and hopped on my train. I was relieved to make it onto my train, but my relief was short-lived-While catching my breath, I heard the announcement that the train would be stopped because of an accident. This was the same announcement I had heard just a week before. The number of train accidents is increasing in Japan, and it is thought that one-third of the accidents result from suicide attempts. Japan's suicide rate is one of the highest in the world. More than 30,000 Japanese people take their lives every year, even though Japan is one of the richest and the most advanced countries in the world today. Allow me to describe some factors of the sickly Japanese situation and to list some silver bullets which might cure the illness. To find the causes of today's Japanese social problems, I looked back at history and realized that the way Japan dealt with the aftermath of World War Ⅱ might have directly affected what Japanese society is today. No other country except Japan could become a world leader just 20 to 30 years after losing a major war and achieve one of the world's highest GNPs. It would have been impossible without Japanese diligence. While I am amazed at Japan's development, I suspect that Japan also lost something important during the postwar boom era. Japan is the only country that has suffered from the damage inflicted by atomic bombs. However, the nuclear attack is just a half-century-old story for most people now. It seems that Japan moved too swiftly to put this pain behind us in order to grab immediate profits in business. While Japanese society has prospered, it has focused only on short-term gain. Therefore, it has neglected the dignity of human life. Japanese seek material affluence and convenience, but in chasing these things, we have left behind richness of the mind and the heart. As a result of this, people in Japan have no dreams and hope. Our society has become a cold and lonely place, which lacks life and spirit. How should Japanese society overcome its unhealthy situation? When one does not do what one should do, he or she cannot come alive. It seems that Japan is in exactly the same situation. To make our society vigorous, Japan should carry out its duties and responsibilities. For example, it is the duty of Japan to proclaim the importance of world peace. It is the responsibility of Japan to share with the entire world the technology it has developed which might help prevent global warming. To have a true happy life, each of the people in Japan should rethink the value of life and the importance of caring for each other. These things have been neglected because Japanese have been overzealous in their quest for money and material wealth. Only when Japanese people understand what true happiness is will Japanese society grasp the importance of human life.