峨眉山下，伏虎寺旁，有一种蝴蝶，比最美丽的蝴蝶可能还要美丽些，是峨眉山最珍贵的特产之一。 当它阖起两张翅膀的时候，像生长在树枝上的一张干枯了的树叶。谁也不去注意它，谁也不会瞧它一眼。 它收敛了它的花纹，图案，隐藏了它的粉墨、色彩，逸出了繁华的花丛，停止了它翱翔的姿态，变成了一张憔悴的，干枯了的，甚至不是枯黄的，而是枯槁的，如同死灰颜色的枯叶。 它这样伪装，是为了保护自己。但是它还是逃不脱被捕捉的命运。不仅因为它的美丽，更因为它那用来隐蔽它的美丽的枯槁与憔悴。

In early June, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—the club of the world's wealthy and almost wealthy nations—released a 208-page document perversely titled Pensions at a Glance. Inside is a rundown of how generous OECD members are to their burgeoning ranks of retirees. The US is near the bottom, with the average wage earner able to count on a government-mandated pension for just 52.4% of what he got (after taxes) in his working days—and higher-income workers even less. But the picture at the other end of the scale (dominated by Continental Europe) is misleading. Most of these governments haven't put aside money for pensions. As the ranks of retirees grow and workforces do not, countries will have to either renege on commitments or tax the hides off future workers. What the OECD data seem to suggest is that you can run a retirement plan that's fiscally sound but stingy, or you can make big promises that will eventually go sour. The US fits mostly in the former category—for all the gnashing of teeth about Social Security, its funding problems are modest by global standards. But is that really the choice? Actually, no. At least one country appears to have found a better way. In the Netherlands—"the globe's No. 1 pensions country," says influential retirement-plan consultant Keith Ambachtsheer—the average retiree can count on a pension equal to 96.8% of his working income. Ample money is set aside to fund pensions, and it is invested prudently but not timidly. Companies contribute to employees' accounts but aren't stuck with profit-killing obligations if their business shrinks or the stock market tanks. The Dutch have steered a middle way between irresponsible Continental generosity and practical Anglo-American stinginess. They have also, to lapse into pension jargon, split the difference between DB and DC plans. In a defined-benefit (DB) plan, workers are promised a retirement income, and the sponsor—usually a corporation or government—is on the hook to provide it. In a defined-contribution (DC) plan, the worker and sometimes the employer set aside money and hope it will be enough. The big problem with DB is that sponsors are prone to lowball or ignore the true cost. In the US, where corporate pensions provide a key supplement to Social Security, Congress has felt the need to pass multiple laws aimed at preventing companies from underfunding them. In response, some companies spent billions shoring up their funds; many others simply stopped offering pensions. Just since 2004, at least 66 big companies have frozen or terminated their DB plans, estimates Barclays Global Investors. Corporate DB has given way to individual DC plans like the 401 (k) and IRA, But these put too much responsibility on the shoulders of individual workers. Many don't save enough money, and those who do set aside enough earn returns that are on average much lower than those of pension funds. The Netherlands, like the US, has long relied on workplace pensions to supplement its government plan. The crucial difference is that these pensions were mandatory. Smaller employers had to band together to make a go of it, and industry-wide funds became standard. Run more as independent cooperatives than as captive corporate divisions, the Dutch funds were less prone to underfunding than their US counterparts. When they nonetheless ran into financial trouble in 2002 after the stock market crashed and interest rates sank, the country came up with a unique response. The Dutch funds are now no longer on the hook for providing a set income in retirement no matter what happens to financial markets—that is, they've gone DC—but they didn't shunt everything to individual workers. Risks are shared by all the members of a pension fund, and the money is managed by professionals. Pension consultant Ambachtsheer argues that this "collective DC" is just what the US needs. Many companies here are improving 401 (k)s to give employees more guidance, and there's talk in Washington of supplementing (not supplanting) Social Security with near mandatory retirement accounts. But even those changes would fall well short of going Dutch. Countries don't always set aside enough money to pay for the pensions they promise.

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单选题Questions 19-22

单选题 Questions 6-10 We might marvel at the progress made in every field of study, but the methods of testing a person's knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they were. It really is extraordinary that after all these years, educationists have still failed to device anything more efficient and reliable than examinations. For all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact opposite. They may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a person's true ability and aptitude. As anxiety-makers, examinations are second to none. That is because so much depends on them. They are the mark of success or failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. It doesn't matter that you weren't feeling very well, or that your mother died. Little things like that don't count: the exam goes on. No one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do. The moment a child begins school, be enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. Can we wonder at the increasing number of "drop- outs": young people who are written off as utter failures before they have even embarked on a career? Can we be surprised at the suicide rate among students? A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the student is encouraged to memorize. Examinations do not motivate a student to read widely, but to restrict his reading; they do not enable him to seek more and more knowledge, but induce cramming. They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedoms. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques which they despise. The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress. The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. Examiners are only human. They get tired and hungry; they make mistakes. Yet they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. After a judge's decision yon have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner's. There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person's true abilities. Is it cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to in the last analysis. The best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on a wall: "I were a teenage drop-out and now I are a teenage millionaire. "

单选题 {{B}}Questions 19—22{{/B}}

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

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

单选题 Despots and tyrants may have changed the course of human evolution by using their power to force hundreds of women to bear their children, says new research. It shows that the switch from hunter-gathering to farming about 8,000 - 9,000 years ago was closely followed by the emergence of emperors and elites who took control of all wealth, including access to young women. Such men set up systems to impregnate hundreds, or even thousands, of women while making sure other men were too poor or oppressed to have families. It means such men may now have hundreds of millions of descendants, a high proportion of whom may carry the genetic traits that drove their ancestors to seek power and oppress their fellow humans. "In evolutionary terms this period of human existence created an enormous selective pressure, with the guys at the top who had the least desirable traits passing on their genes to huge numbers of offspring," said Laura Betzig, an evolutionary anthropologist. She has studied the emergence of the world's first six great civilisations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Mexico and Peru. In each she found that emperors created systems to "harvest" hundreds of the prettiest young women and then systematically impregnate them. Betzig has studied the records left by the six civilisations to work out how many children were born to emperors. "In China they had it down to a science. Yangdi, the 6th-century Sui dynasty emperor, was credited by an official historian with 100,000 women in his palace at Yangzhou alone," she said. "They even had sex handbooks describing how to work out when a woman was fertile. Then they would be taken to the emperor to be impregnated. It was all organised by the state so the emperor could impregnate as many women as possible. And they had rules, like all the women had to be under 30 and all had to be attractive and symmetrical. This was the system in China for more than 2,000 years." Others relied on violence. One genetic study showed that Genghis Khan, the 13th-century Mongol warlord, who was renowned for sleeping with the most beautiful women in every territory he conquered, now has about 16m male descendants. This compares with the 800 people descended from the average man of that era. Betzig also studied primitive societies. She found that the small bands of hunter-gatherers were the most egalitarian, with men and women able to have the number of children they wanted. "This freedom is probably because they were so mobile. If their group got taken over by a big guy who tried to control resources, the others could simply leave and find somewhere else," she said. This system broke down when the world's first civilisations emerged about 8,000 years ago based on farming. All began on fertile river plains surrounded by mountains or deserts that made it difficult to leave. Such situations were perfect for the emergence of elites and emperors. In a paper published recently, Betzig has catalogued the same trend in each of the great early civilisations. Such systems arose in Britain as well, especially in the feudal era. "Lords then had sexual access to hundreds of dependent serfs ... with up to a fifth of the population 'in service'," Betzig said. She is to publish a book, The Badge of Lost Innocence, exploring why that era has ended. "The European discovery of the Americas changed everything," she said. "Along with the emergence of democracy it offered millions of people the chance to emigrate or get rid of despotic regimes. The literature of that time shows people wanted to have families of their own and for the first time in thousands of years they had that chance. "

单选题Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following interview.

单选题 {{B}}Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.{{/B}}

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单选题The number of women directors appointed to corporate boards in the United States has increased dramatically, but the ratio of female to male directors remains low. Although pressure to recruit women directors, unlike that to employ women in the general work force, does not derive from legislation, it is nevertheless real. Although small companies were the first to have women directors, large corporations currently have a higher percentage of women on their boards. When the chairs of these large corporations began recruiting women to serve on boards, they initially sought women who were chief executive officers (CEOs) of large corporations. However, such women CEOs are still rare. In addition, the ideal of six CEOs (female or male) serving on the board of each of the largest corporations is realizable only if every CEO serves on six boards. This raises the specter of director over commitment and the resultant dilution of contribution. Consequently, the chairs next sought women in business- who had the equivalent of CEO experience. However, since it is only recently that large numbers of women have begun to rise in management, the chairs began to recruit women of high achievement outside the business world. Many such women are well known for their contributions in government, education, and the nonprofit sector. The fact that the women from these sectors who were appointed were often acquaintances of the boards" chairs seems quite reasonable: chairs have always considered it important for directors to interact comfortably in the boardroom. Although many successful women from outside the business world are unknown to corporate leaders, these women are particularly qualified to serve on boards because of the changing nature of corporations. Today a company"s ability to be responsive to the concerns of the community and the environment can influence that company"s growth and survival. Women are uniquely positioned to be responsive to some of these concerns. Although conditions have changed, it should be remembered that most directors of both sexes are over fifty years old. Women of that generation were often encouraged to direct their attention toward efforts to improve the community. This fact is reflected in the career development of most of the outstandingly successful women of the generation now in their fifties, who currently serve on corporate boards: 25 percent are in education and 22 percent are in government, law, and the nonprofit sector. One organization of women directors is helping business become more responsive to the changing needs of society by raising the level of corporate awareness about social issues, such as problems with the economy, government regulation, the aging population and the environment. This organization also serves as a resource center of information on accomplished women who are potential candidates for corporate boards.

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单选题The appeal of hydrogen fuel cells has long been obvious. Because these devices use electrochemical reactions to generate electricity from hydrogen, emitting only heat and water in the process, they offer a particularly green source of power, especially for vehicles. What has not been so obvious, however, is how to make hydrogen fuel cells practical. In 2009, Steven Chu, then the U. S. Secretary of Energy, told an interviewer that in order for hydrogen fuel-cell transportation to work, "four miracles" needed to happen. First, scientists had to find an efficient and low-cost way to produce hydrogen. Second, they had to develop a safe, high-density method of storing hydrogen in automobiles. Third, an infrastructure for distributing hydrogen had to be built so that fuel-cell vehicles would have ample refueling options. Fourth, researchers had to improve the capacity of the fuel-cell systems themselves, which were not as durable, powerful, and low cost as the internal combustion engine. Chu concluded that achieving all four big breakthroughs would be unlikely. "Saints only need three miracles," he added. Accordingly, the U. S. Department of Energy dramatically cut funding for fuel cells, reducing its support for various programs to nearly a third of previous levels. For the rest of Chu"s tenure, the department awarded nearly no new grants to develop the technology at universities, national labs, or private companies. Although the department"s total expenditures on fuel cells and hydrogen had always amounted to a small fraction of overall global investment in the sector, the change in posture sent a deeply pessimistic signal worldwide. Immediately after Chu"s comments made the rounds, the hydrogen community issued a defense, contending that major progress had been made. But the damage was done. Universities stopped hiring faculty in an area perceived to be dying, top students fled to other subjects, and programs at national labs were forced to reconfigure their efforts. Established scientists saw an abrupt decrease in funding opportunities for hydrogen and refocused their research on other technologies. The overall effect was a drastic shrinking of the human-resource pipeline feeding hydrogen and fuel-cell research. All of this was not necessarily a bad thing: new technologies come along all the time, pushing aside older ones that are no longer bound for the market. In the case of hydrogen fuel cells, however, scientists really had made big breakthroughs, and the technology was finally in the process of hitting the market. Rather than redirecting limited resources to more realistic technologies, the U. S. government"s policy arguably amounted to pulling the rug out from under hydrogen and fuel-cell research and development in the United States and handing over leadership in the sector to other countries. Patents are perhaps the best indicator of how much practical progress a technology is making, and even as the U. S. government decreased its support for research into hydrogen fuel cells (and increased its support for other clean energy technologies), the number of U. S. patents related to fuel cells continued to dwarf those of other energy technologies, with the exception of solar power.

单选题Questions 19-22

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单选题We live in an age when everyone is a critic. "Criticism" is all over the Internet, in blogs and chat rooms, for everyone to access and add his two cents" worth on any subject, high or low. But if everyone is a critic, is that still criticism? Or are we heading toward the end of criticism? If all opinions are equally valid, there is no need for experts. Democracy works in life, but art is undemocratic. The result of this ultimately meaningless barrage is that more and more we are living in a profoundly- or shallowly-uncritical age. A critic, as T.S. Eliot famously observed, must be very intelligent. Now, can anybody assume that the invasion of cyberspace by opinion upon opinion is proof of great intelligence and constitutes informed criticism rather than uninformed artistic chaos? Of course, like any self-respecting critic, I have always encouraged my readers to think for themselves. They were to consider my positive or negative assessments, which I always tried to explain, a challenge to think along with me: here is my reasoning, follow it, then agree or disagree as you see fit. In an uncritical age, every pseudonymous chat-room chatterbox provides a snappy, self-confident judgment, without the process of arriving at it becoming clear to anyone, including the chatterer. Blogs, too, tend to be invitations to leap before a second look. Do the impassioned ramblings fed into a hungry blogosphere represent responses from anyone other than longheads? How has it come to this? We have all been bitten by television sound bites that transmute into Internet sound bytes, proving that brevity can also be the soul of witlessness. So thoughtlessness multiplies. Do not, however, think I advocate censorship, an altogether unacceptable form of criticism. What we need in this age of rampant uncritical criticism is the simplest and hardest thing to come by: a critical attitude. How could it be fostered? For starters, with the very thing discouraged by our print media: reading beyond the hectoring headlines and bold-type boxes embedded in reviews, providing a one-sentence summary that makes further reading unnecessary. With only slight exaggeration, we may say that words have been superseded by upward or downward pointing thumbs, self-destructively indulging a society used to instant self-gratification. Criticism is inevitably constricted by our multinational culture and by political correctness. As society grows more diverse, there are fewer and fewer universal points of reference between a critic and his or her readers. As for freedom of expression. Arthur Miller long ago complained about protests and pressures making the only safe subjects for a dramatist babies and the unemployed. My own experience is that over the years, print space for my reviews kept steadily shrinking, and the layouts themselves toadied to the whims of the graphic designer. In a jungle of oddball visuals, readers had difficulties finding my reviews. Simultaneously, our vocabulary went on a starvation diet. Where readers used to thank me for enlarging their vocabularies, more and more complaints were lodged about unwelcome trips to the dictionary, as if comparable to having to keep running to the toilet. Even my computer keeps questioning words I use, words that can be found in medium-size dictionaries. Can one give language lessons to a computer? What may be imperiled, more than criticism, is the word. I keep encountering people who think "critical" means carping or fault-finding, and nothing more. So it would seem that the critic"s pen, once mightier than the sword, has been supplanted by the ax. Yet I have always maintained that the critic has three duties, to write as well as a novelist or playwright; to be a teacher, taking off from where the classroom, always prematurely, has stopped, and to be a thinker, looking beyond his specific subject at society, history, philosophy. Reduce him to a consumer guide, run his reviews on a Web site mixed in with the next-door neighbor"s pontifications, and you condemn criticism to obsolescence. Still, one would like to think that the blog is not the enemy, and that readers seeking enlightenment could find it on the right blog— just as in the past one went looking through diverse publications for the congenial critic. But it remains up to the readers to learn how to discriminate.

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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.