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.

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

单选题Right now, there's little that makes a typical American taxpayer more resentful than the huge bonuses being dispersed at Wall Street firms. The feeling that something went terribly wrong in the way the financial sector is run--and paid--is widespread. It's worth recalling that the incentive structures now governing executive pay in much of the corporate world were hailed as a miracle of human engineering a generation ago when they focused once-complacent ECOs with laser precision on steering companies toward the brightest possible futures. So now there's a lot of talk about making incentives smarter. That may improve the way companies or banks are run, but only temporarily. The inescapable flaw in incentives, as 35 years of research shows, is that they get you exactly what you pay for, but it never turns out to be what you want. The mechanics of why this happens are pretty simple. Out of necessity, incentives are often based on an index of the thing you care about--like sound corporate leadership--that is easily measured. Share price is such an index of performance. Before long, however, people whose livelihoods are based on an index will figure out how to manipulate it--which soon makes the index a much less reliable barometer. Once share price determines the pay of smart people, they'll find away to move it up without improving--and in some cases by jeopardizing--their company. Incentives don't just fail; they often backfire. Swiss economists Bruno Frey (University of Zurich) and Felix Oberholzer-Gee (Harvard Business School) have shown that when Swiss citizen sare offered a substantial cash incentive for agreeing to have a toxic waste dump in their community, their willingness to accept the facility falls by half. Uri Gneezy (U. C. San Diego's Rady School of Management) and Aldo Rustichini (University of Minnesota) observed that when Israeli day-carecenters fine parents who pick up their kids late, lateness increases. And James Heyman (University of St. Thomas) and Dan Ariely (Duke's Fuqua School of Business) showed that when people offer passers-by a token payment for help lifting a couch from a van, they are less likely to lend a hand than if they are offered nothing. What these studies show is that incentives tend to remove the moral dimension from decision-making. The day-care parents know they ought to arrive on time, but they come to view the fines as a fee for a service. Once a payoff enters the picture, the Swiss citizens and passersby ask, "What's in my best interest?" The question they ask themselves when money isn't part of the equation is quite different. "What are my responsibilities to my country and to other people?" Despite our abiding faith in incentives as a way to influence behavior in a positive way, they consistently do there verse. Some might say banking has no moral dimension to take away. Bankers have always been interested in making money, and they probably always will be, but they've traditionally been well aware of their responsibilities, too. Bankers worried about helping farmers get this year's seed into the ground. They worried about helping a new business get off to a strong start or a thriving one to expand. They worried about a couple in their 50s having enough to retire on, and about one in their30s taking on too big a mortgage. These bankers weren't saints, but they served the dual masters of profitability and community service. In case you think this style of banking belongs to a horse-and-buggy past, consider credit unionsand community development banks. Many have subprime mortgage portfolios that remain healthy to this day. In large part, that's because they approve loans they intend to keep on their books rather than securitizing and selling them to drive up revenue, which would in turn boost annual bonuses. And help bring the world economy to its knees. At the Group of 20 gathering in September, France and Germany proposed strict limits on executive pay. The U. S. Now has a pay czar, who just knocked down by half the compensation of136 executives. But the absolute amounts executives are paid may be inconsequential. Most people want to do right. They want their work to improve the lives of others. As Washington turns its sights on reforms for the financial sector, it just might consider nudging the industry's major player saway from the time-dishonored tradition of incentives and toward compensation structures that don't strip the moral dimension away from the people making big decisions.

单选题

单选题Questions 11-14

单选题[此试题无题干]

单选题In contrast to printing in South America, printing in North America ______.

单选题Directions: In this section, you will read several passages. Each passage is followed by several questions based on its content. You are to choose ANSWER BOOKLET best answer, (A), (B), (C) or (D), to each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. Questions 1-5 It is hardly necessary for me to cite all the evidence of the depressing state of literacy. These figures from the Department of Education are sufficient- 27 million Americans cannot read at all, and a further 35 million read at a level that is less than sufficient to survive in our society. But my own worry today is less that of the overwhelming problem of elemental literacy than it is of the slightly more luxurious problem of the decline in the skill even of the middle-class reader, of his unwillingness to afford those spaces of silence, those luxuries of domesticity and time and concentration, that surround the image of the classic act of reading, it has been suggested that almost 80 percent of America's literate, educated teenagers can no longer read without an accompanying noise (music) in the background or a television screen flickering at the corner of their field of perception. We know very little about the brain and how it deals with simultaneous conflicting input, but every common-sense intuition suggests we should be profoundly alarmed. This violation of concentration, silence, solitude goes to the very heart of our notion of literacy; this new form of part-reading, of part-perception against background distraction, renders impossible certain essential acts of apprehension and concentration, let alone that most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves, which is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital. Under these circumstances, the question of what future there is for the arts of reading is a real one. Ahead of us lie technical, psychic, and social transformations probably much more dramatic than those brought about by Gutenberg, the German inventor in printing. The Gutenberg revolution, as we now know it, took a long time; its effects are still being debated. The information revolution will touch every fact of composition, publication, distribution, and reading. No one in the book industry can say with any confidence what will happen to the book as we've known it.

单选题Which of the following is LEAST likely to be the author's attitude toward prison?

单选题

单选题J.K. Rowling"s first novel for adults, which treads on very different ground to her bestselling Harry Potter series, is set to become a publishing sensation when it hits bookshelves next week. Waterstones, the country"s biggest book-chain store, revealed that the comic novel, The Casual Vacancy, has received the largest number of pre-order sales this year. This number is believed to be five figured, although online pre-orders have reportedly reached well over a million already. The RRP for the paperback is ￡20 but many outlets are reducing this considerably with Waterstones pricing it at ￡10. The secrecy, as well as the excitement, around Rowling"s latest offering, has guaranteed its status as the biggest publishing event of the year. Waterstones is opening its doors an hour earlier than usual, at 8 a.m., on its official publication date next Thursday. Until then, Rowling"s publisher Little, Brown has stipulated that the books should not even appear on display. Staff will come in early to put out display copies and prepare for the crowds. Jon Howells, a spokesman for Waterstones, described it as one of the first "Super Thursdays" leading up to Christmas, not least because Jamie Oliver was also publishing his book, 15-Minute Meals, on the same day. Mr. Howells said that while he anticipated a big rush at the outset, the book would, in all likelihood, not inspire the equivalent of Pottermania. "Certainly, the anticipation for J.K. Rowling"s book has been great because it"s the first non- Harry Potter book and it is for a purely adult audience. I think it will see a fantastic level of first day and first weekend sales and after that people will come to it more steadily." "We are treating it as a very different thing from the Harry Potter books. The way readers will approach this will be different. A lot of the readers will be curious and interested in what this book can do for them. There was a huge sense of urgency with the Harry Potter books, and people wanted to read them quickly so that they would not find out the plot through other mediums, while this is a standalone story," he said. A spokeswoman for Tesco, which will also be stocking the book, said: "If the hits on the Tesco Books blog are anything to go by, we think it could be one of our bestselling books in the run-up to Christmas." The plot of the book, which revolves around the inhabitants of a small English town, has been fiercely guarded, and newspaper reviewers have been asked to sign the kind of long and stiffly worded pre-publication confidentiality contracts that a celebrity footballer might use to protect his darkest secrets. A limited number of copies will be delivered by hand to reviewers" homes today. Rowling is due to attend her only question-and-answer session in front of a live audience in London on the day of publication. The event, at the 900-seat Queen Elizabeth Hall in the Southbank Centre, sold out within 48 hours and will also be attended by the world"s media. The Southbank Centre condemned the selling of single ￡12 tickets on eBay for ￡85 each. The event, which will last just under two hours including a 30-minute Q & A with the audience, will be transmitted in a live feed on YouTube. Rowling will sign books afterwards, and audience members are limited to one copy per person. Next month she will appear at the Cheltenham Literary Festival and sign copies there. Little, Brown refused to reveal the numbers of copies that have been printed so far—but the book is expected to sell millions.

单选题Questions 1～5 According to the old Jewish stories, the world was in a sad state. The hand of man was lifted against his neighbor. People murdered and stole from each other. It was not safe for a girl to leave her home, lest she be kidnapped by the boys in the neighboring villages. Jehovah, the God of the Israelites, wanted to begin civilization again, hoping that a new generation would prove to be more obedient to his will. In those days there lived a man called Noah. He was descendant of Seth, a younger brother of Cain and Abel, who was born after the family tragedy had taken place. Noah was a good man who tried to be at peace with his conscience and with his fellowmen. If the human race had to began once more, Noah would make a very good ancestor. Jehovah therefore decided to kill all other people, but spare Noah. He came to Noah and told him to build a ship. The vessel was to be four hundred and fifty feet long and thirty feet wide and it was to have a depth of forty-three feet. So Noah and his faithful workmen cut down large cypress trees and laid the kneel and built the sides and covered them with pitch, that the hold might be dry. When the third deck had been finished, a roof was built. It was made of heavy timber, to withstand the violence of the rain that was to pour down upon this wicked earth. Then Noah and his household, his three sons and their wives, made ready for the voyage. They went into the fields and into the mountains and gathered all the animals they could find that they might have beasts for food and for sacrifices when they should return to dry land. A whole week they hunted successfully. And then the "Ark" (for so was the ship called) was full of the noises of the various creatures who did not like their cramped quarters. On the evening of the seventh day, Noah and his family went on board. Later that night, it began to rain. It rained for forty nights and forty days. At the end of this time, the whole world was covered with water, Noah and his fellow travelers in the Ark were the only living things to survive this terrible deluge. Finally, a new wind swept the clouds away. Once more the rays of the sun rested upon the turbulent waves as they had done when the world was first created. Noah opened a window on the Ark and peered out. His ship floated peacefully in the midst of an endless ocean, and no land was in sight. To see if there was dry land, Noah sent out a raven, but the bird came back. Next he sent a pigeon. Pigeons can fly longer than almost any other bird, but the poor thing could not find a single branch upon which to rest, and it also came back to Ark. He waited a week, and once more he set the pigeon free. It was gone all day, but in the evening it returned with a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak. The waters were receding. Another week went by before Noah released the pigeon for the third time. It did not return and this was a good sign. So afterward the Ark landed on the top of Mount Ararat, in the country which is now called Armenia. The next day Noah went ashore. At once he took some stones and built an altar, and then killed a number of his animals to make a sacrifice for Jehovah. And behold, the sky was bright with the colors of a mighty rainbow. It was a sign from Jehovah to his faithful servant, promising never again would he destroy the entire earth.

单选题

单选题 Sometime soon, according to animal-rights activists, a great ape will testify in an American courtroom. Speaking through a voice synthesizer, or perhaps in sign language, the lucky ape will argue that it has a fundamental right to liberty. "This is going to be a very important case." Duke University law Prof. William ReppyJr. told the New York Times. Reppy concedes that apes can talk only at the level of a human 4-year-old, so they may not be ready to discuss abstractions like oppression and freedom. Just last month, one ape did manage to say through a synthesizer, "Please buy me a hamburger." That may not sound like crucial testimony, but lawyers think that the spectacle of an ape saying anything at all in court may change a lot of minds about the status of animals as property. One problem is that apes probably won't be able to convince judges that they know right from wrong, or that they intend to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Since they are not persons, they don't even have legal standing to sue. No problem, says Steven Wise, who taught animal law for 10 years at Vermont Law School and is now teaching Harvard Law School's first course in the subject. He says lawyers should be able to use slavery-era statues that authorized legal nonpersons (slaves) to bring lawsuits. Gary Francione, who teaches animal law at Rutgers University, says that gorillas "should be declared to be persons under the constitution. " Unlike mainstream animal-welfare activists, radical animal-rights activists think that all animals are morally equal and have rights, though not necessarily the same rights as humans. So the law's denial of rights to animals is simply a matter of bias-speciesism. It's even an expression of bias to talk about protecting wildlife, since this assumes that human control and domination of other species is acceptable. These are surely far-out ideas. "Would even bacteria have rights ?" asks one exasperated law professor, Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School. For the moment, the radicals want to confine the rights discussion to apes and chimps, mostly to avoid the obvious mockery about litigious lemmings, cockroach liberation, and the issue of whether a hyena eating an antelope is committing a fights violation that should be brought before the world court in the Hague. One wag wrote a poem containing the line, "Every beast within his paws/Will clutch an order to show cause. " The news is that law schools are increasingly involved in animal issues. Any radical notion that vastly inflates the concept of rights and requires a lot more litigation is apt to take root in the law schools. ("Some lawyers say they are in the field to advance their ideology, but some note that it is an area of legal practice that could be profitable," reports the New York Times.) A dozen law schools now feature courses on animal law, and in some cases, at least, the teaching seems to be a simple extension of radical activism. The course description of next spring's "Animal Law Seminar" at Georgetown University Law Center, for instance, makes clear to students which opinions are the correct ones to have. It talks about the plight of "rightless plaintiffs" and promises to examine how and why laws "purporting to protect" animals have failed. Ideas about humane treatment of animals are indeed changing. Many of us have changed our minds about furs, zoos, slaughterhouse techniques, and at least some forms of animal experimentation. The debate about greater concern for the animal world continues. But the alliance between the radicals and the lawyers means that, once again, an issue that ought to be taken to the people and resolved by democratic means will most likely be pre-empted by judges and lawyers. Steven Wise talks of using the courts to knock down the wall between humans and apes. Once apes have rights, he says, the status of other animals can be decided by other courts and other litigation. The advantage of the litigation strategy is that there's no need to sell radical ideas to the American people. There are almost no takers for the concept of "nonhuman personhood," the view of pets as slaves, or the notion that meat eating is part of "a specter of oppression" that equally afflicts minorities, women, and animals in America. You can supersede open debate by convincing a few judges to detect a "fights" issue that functions as a political trump card. The rhetoric is high-minded, but the strategy is to force change without gaining the consent of the public. Converting every controversy into a "rights" issue is by now a knee-jerk response. Harvard Law Prof. Mary Ann Glendon, author of Rights Talk, writes about our legal culture's "lost language of obligation." Instead of casting arguments in terms of human responsibility for the natural world, rights talkers automatically spin out tortured arguments about "rights" of animals and even about the "rights" of trees and mountains. This is how "rights talk" becomes a parody of itself. Let's hope the lawyers and the law schools eventually get the joke.

单选题{{B}}Statements{{/B}} Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear several short statements. These statements will be spoken ONLY ONCE, and you will not find them written on the paper; so you must listen carefully. When you hear a statement, read the answer choices and decide which one is closest in meaning to the statement you have heard. Then write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.