单选题Visitors to St Paul's Cathedral are sometimes astonished as they walk round the space under the dome to come upon a statue which would appear to be that of a retired gladiator meditating upon a wasted life. They are still more astonished when they see under it an inscription indicating that it represents the English writer, Samuel Johnson. The statue is by Bacon, but it is not one of his best works. The figure is, as often in eighteenth-century sculpture, clothed only in a loose robe which leaves arms, legs and one shoulder bare. But the strangeness for us is not one of costume only. If we know anything of Johnson, we know that he was constantly iii all through his life; and whether we know anything of him or not we are apt to think of a literary man as a delicate, weak, nervous sort of person. Nothing can be further from that than the muscular statue. And in this matter the statue is perfectly right. And the fact which it reports is far from being unimportant. The body and the mind are inextricably interwoven in all of us, and certainly on Johnson's case the influence of the body was obvious and conspicuous. His melancholy, his constantly repeated conviction of the general unhappiness of human life, was certainly the result of his constitutional infirmities. On the other hand, his courage, and his entire indifference to pain, were partly due to his great bodily strength. Perhaps the vein of rudeness, almost of fierceness, which sometimes showed itself in his conversation, was the natural temper of an invalid and suffering giant. That at any rate is what he was. He was the victim from childhood of a disease which resembled St Vitus's Dance. He never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs; when be walked it was like the struggling walk of one in irons. All accounts agree that his strange gesticulations and contortations were painful for his friends to witness and attracted crowds of starers in the streets. But Reynolds says that he could sit still for his portrait to be taken, and that when his mind was engaged by a conversation the convulsions ceased. In any case, it is certain that neither this perpetual misery, nor his constant feat of losing his reason, nor his many grave attacks of illness, ever induced him to surrender the privileges that belonged to his physical strength. He justly thought no character so disagreeable as that of a chronic invalid, and was determined not to be one himself. He had known what it was to live on fourpence a day and scorned the life of sofa cushions and tea into which well-attended old gentlemen so easily slip.

单选题"Thank you" means that you recognize that someone has done something for you. Thus we thank people all day 1 even for the smallest, most 2 things. If a waitress brings you a 3 of coffee, you say "Thank you". When you 4 your food and get your 5 , you say "Thank you" to the 6 . If someone gives you 7 in the street, you say "Thank you". If someone 8 you to dinner, you say "Yes, thank you, I"d 9 to come." However, that"s more than 10 . Excessive expressions of gratitude 11 . Westerners extremely 12 and gives a sense of 13 thanks, a sense of formal or required Kowtowing (叩头) which does not 14 gratitude but insincerity. For example, if your advisor spends a half-hour of his time 15 you edit some letter you"ve just written, you will 16 to say "Thank you, I really 17 your time." But one or two phrases of that 18 is enough. If you go on and on 19 statements about his kindness, the person will feel not thanked but 20 and will not be anxious to help you again.

单选题There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that our brain processes information in at least two major systems. The image system appears to be associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. This hemisphere seems to be specialized to process visual and auditory imagery, spatial representation, pure melodic thought, fantasy, and the emotional components of consciousness. Imagery allows us to continue to process information when we are not actively looking at or listening to new stimuli. It reproduces the sounds or sights of the past, enriching our thoughts, dreams, or fantasies with a sense of "actuality" or context. As a coding system, imagery operates by what is called "parallel" processing, e. g. , we imagine the face of a friend in one instantaneous configuration. The lexical system is largely coordinated through the left hemisphere of the brain, and its chief functions include language and grammatical organization, abstract conceptualization and reasoning. This verbal or linguistic system functions sequentially; it takes time for a sentence to run its course so it can be understood. The lexical dimension is especially efficient for integrating diverse phenomena under one label or formula that allows extremely rapid retrieval of stored information (memories) later. Both imagery and lexical systems seem essential for the highest levels of thought. It is possible, however, that the immediacy of television precludes our more active integration of images and words. We need time to replay mentally material just witnessed and also to link pictures and sounds to word labels that make for the most efficient kind of storage and retrieval So rapidly does television material come at us that it defies the capacities of our brain to store much of it unless we actively turn our attention from the set and engage in some kind of mental rehearsal. Only in the instant "replay" of sports programming does the medium itself consciously abet the human requirement for reduplication. Contrast this with the situation of reading. You are in control of the pace. You can reread a sentence, turn back to an earlier page and take the time to piece together combinations of images and words. As you read you are also likely on occasion to drift away into more extended private images and thoughts about the material. In effect, you are engaging in a more creative act of imagination and perhaps also in the forming of new combinations of words and images. Reading seems, therefore, harder work than watching television but ultimately more rewarding because it enhances your own imaginative capacities. We're not so naive as to believe that television can be eliminated from the household, as some suggest. Rather, we see the necessity for encouraging producers to free themselves from the assumption that the rapid-paced, quick-cut format, whether directed at children or adults, is a necessity.

单选题Statistically, each of these new changes in law-enforcement has made some difference to the picture. Yet it seems probably that the factors that have really brought the crime rates down have little to do with policemen or politicians, and more to do with cycles that are beyond their control. The first of these is demographic. The fall in the crime rate has coincided with fall in the number of young men between the ages of 15 and 21, the peak age for criminal activity in any society, including America. In the same way, the rise in the crime rate that started in the early 1960s coincided with the teenage years of the baby-boomers. As the boomer generation matured, married, found jobs and shoulder mortgages, so the crime rate fell. This encouraging trend was quickly overshadowed, starting in the mid-1980s, by a new swarm of teenagers caught up in a new sort of depravity: the craze for crack cocaine. Crack brought with it much higher levels of violence and, in particular, soaring rates of handgun murders by people less than 25 years old. Yet the terror became too much, and the young began to leave crack alone. Within a few years, at least in most big cities, the drug market had stabilized and settled, even moving indoors; the tuff-wars were over, and crack itself had become passe. Studies of Brooklyn by Richard Curtis, of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, show the clear connection; around 1992, many young bloods decided to drop the dangerous life of the street in favor of steady jobs. In direct consequence, the local crime rate fell. Murder rates among Americans older than 25 had already been declining since 1980. Here, according to Alfred Blumstein, a professor of criminology at Carnegie-Mellon University, there may be even longer term social factors involved. In an age of easy divorce and more casual relationships, men and women are less likely to murder their partners: between 1976 and 1996, such murders fell by 40%. The decline in alcohol consumption, too, means that fewer bar-room brawls leave a litter of corpses on a Friday night. It seems that changing social trends also sometimes lie behind the fall in property crime. Burglars tend not to steal television sets now because almost everyone has one; their value on the street has plummeted, At the same time, the fact that people stay in watching their sets, rather than going out, deters would-be burglars. Extra garages are standard in the suburbs, to safeguard extra cars; credit cards mean that shoppers carry less cash in their pockets; people working from home, by means of computers, can keep a closer watch over their streets. Lastly, people are going to greater lengths to protect themselves and their property than they did in the past. This is partly because of the huge fear of crime that preceded the present decline, and partly because even with recent increases in the number of policemen--the ratio of police to violent crimes reported is still way below what it was in the 1960s.

单选题According to the passage, the expansion of popular journalism was linked to______ .

单选题______ is defined as the study of the relationship between language and mind. [A] Semantics [B] Pragmatics [C] Cognitive linguistics [D] Sociolinguistics

单选题How do we measure the economic return to higher education? Typically it is calculated as the difference between average wages of college graduates and those who have not graduated from college. In 1997, for example, college graduates earned an average of ＄ 40, 508 versus just ＄ 23, 970 for non-college graduates. Based on these income levels, the economic return to a college education is approximately 69 percent, the difference between the two income levels. But this simple calculation ignores the fact that college graduates tend to come from higher socioeconomic levels, are more highly motivated, and probably have higher IQs than non graduations. Although these factors influence inc0mes, they are not the result of college attendance. Therefore the result of the study is an overstatement of the returns to higher education. More sophisticated analyses adjust for these extraneous influences. For instance economists Orley Ashenfelter and Alan Krueger, estimate that each year of post-high school education results in a wage premium of between 15 and 16 percent. Their study is particularly relevant because they examined the earnings differences for identical twins with different education levels, allowing them to control for genetic and socioeconomic factors. Other research puts the wage premium for college graduates at nearly 50 per cent. Unfortunately, you can't spend a college wage premium. Income levels for the average college graduate have stagnated. After adjusting for inflation, the average income of college graduates holding full-time jobs rose by only 4. 4 per cent between 1979 and 1997, or at a minuscule annual rate of 0.2 percent. At the same time, workers with only high-school degrees saw their real income plummet by 15 percent. Bottom line: the much-ballyhooed college wage "premium" is due primarily to the fall in inflation-adjusted salaries of workers who haven't been to college. In fact, if you don't go on to graduate school or are not among the top graduates at one of the nation's elite colleges, chances are your sky-high tuition is buying you no economic advantage whatsoever. In recent decades the flood of graduates has been so great that an increasing proportion have found themselves, within a few years, working as sales clerks, cab drivers, and in other jobs that do not, require a college degree. In 1995, approximately 40 percent of people with some college education--and 10 percent of those with a college degree—worked at jobs requiring only high-school skills. That's up from 30 percent and 6 percent, respectively, in 1971.

单选题In 1967, in response to widespread public concern aroused by medical reports of asbestos-related (与石棉有关的) deaths, the National Medical Research Council organized committee of inquiry to investigate the health threats associated with the use of asbestos in the building industry. After examining evidences provided by medical researchers and building workers and management, the Council published a report which included advice for dealing with asbestosis. The report confirmed the findings of similar research in the United States and Canada. Exposure to relatively small quantities of asbestos fibers, they concluded, was directly responsible for the development of cancers, asbestosis and related diseases. Taking into account evidence provided by economists and building industry management, however, the report assumed that despite the availability of other materials, asbestos would continue to play a major role in the British building industry for many years to come because of its availability and low cost. As a result, the council gave a series of recommendations which were intended to reduce the risks to those who might be exposed to asbestos in working environment. They recommended that, where possible, asbestos-free materials should be employed. In cases where asbestos was employed it was recommended that it should be used in such a way that loose fibers were less likely to enter the air. The report recommended that special care should be taken during work in environment which contain asbestos. Workers should wear protective equipment and take special care to remove dust from the environment and clothing with the use of vacuum cleaner. The report identified five factors which determine the level of risk involved. The state and type of asbestos is critical in determining the risk factors. In addition, dust formation was found to be limited where the asbestos was used when wet rather than dry. The choice of tools was also found to affect the quantities of asbestos particles that enter the air. Machine tools produce greater quantities of dust than hand tools and, where possible, the use of the latter was recommended. A critical factor takes place in risk reduction is the adequate ventilation in the working environment. When work takes place in an enclosed space, more asbestos particles circulate and it was therefore recommended that natural or machine ventilation should be used. By closely following these advices, it was claimed that exposure can be reduced to a reasonably practical minimum.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} World leaders met recently at United Nations headquarters in New York City to discuss the environmental issues raised at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The heads of state were supposed to decide what further steps should be taken to halt the decline of Earth's life-support systems. In fact, this meeting had much the flavour of the original Earth Summit. To wit: empty promises, hollow rhetoric, bickering between rich and poor, and irrelevant initiatives. Think U. S. Congress in slow motion. Almost obscured by this torpor is the fact that there has been some remarkable progress over the past five years--real changes in the attitude of ordinary people in the Third World toward family size and a dawning realization that environmental degradation and their own well-being are intimately, and inversely, linked. Almost none of this, however, has anything to do with what the bureaucrats accomplished in Rio. Or didn't accomplish. One item on the agenda at Rio, for example, was a renewed effort to save tropical forests. (A previous UN-sponsored initiative had fallen apart when it became clear that it actually hastened deforestation.) After Rio, a UN working group came up with more than 100 recommendations that have so far gone nowhere. One proposed forestry pact would do little more than immunise wood-exporting nations against trade sanctions. An effort to draft an agreement on what to do about the climate changes caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases has fared even worse. Blocked by the Bush Administration from setting mandatory limits, the UN in 1992 called on nations to voluntarily reduce emissions to 1990 levels. Several years later, it's as if Rio had never happened. A new climate treaty is scheduled to be signed this December in Kyoto, Japan, but governments still cannot agree on limits. Meanwhile, the U.S. produces 7% more CO2 than it did in 1990, and emissions in the developing world have risen even more sharply. No one would confuse the "Rio process" with progress. While governments have dithered at a pace that could make drifting continents impatient, people have acted. Birth-rates are dropping faster than expected, not because of Rio but because poor people are deciding on their own to limit family size. Another positive development has been a growing environmental consciousness among the poor. From slum dwellers in Karachi, Pakistan, to colonists in Rondonia, Brazil, urban poor and rural peasants alike seem to realise that they pay the biggest price for pollution and deforestation. There is cause for hope as well in the growing recognition among business people that it is not in their long-term interest to fight environmental reforms. John Browne, chief executive of British Petroleum, boldly asserted in a major speech in May that the threat of climate change could no longer be ignored.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} A little Central Victorian town grabbed the headlines in Australia recently when Hollywood movie star Eric Bana premiered his latest film them. Romulus, My Father is the true story of a troubled migrant, couple bringing up their boy in a tiny dot on the map called Baringhup, just down the road from Castlemaine, in the early 1960s. Visiting the shire, you can see why it made sense to shoot a film set in the past them: Things are run down in the most attractive ways. Most of the towns were built with gold-rush money in the mid-1800s, when civic buildings reflected the newfound wealth; but most of the booms turned out to be flash-in-the-pan. A little gold-rush town like Dunolly, with less than a thousand residents, has a magnificent Victorian town hall and post office. Maryborough's huge redbrick-and-stucco train station is the most ornate thing in town (on his 1895 tour of Australia, Mark Twain described Maryborough as "a railway station with a town attached"). Passenger trains don't use this line anymore, but the building has been converted into an antiques emporium with a cafe in file old waiting room. It's not the only creative repurposing of gorgeous old buildings going on in Central Victoria. More than one old church has been turned into a B you might meet someone who's convinced that UFOs are buzzing over the fields.

单选题After 1972 workers' compensation insurance in the U. S. became more favorable to workers so that ______.

单选题Which of the statements about the teens is NOT true?

单选题{{B}}Part B{{/B}} In the following article some paragraphs have been removed. For Questions 66 ～ 70, choose the most suitable paragraph from the list A ～ F to fit into each of the numbered gaps. There is one paragraph which does not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on {{B}}ANSWER SHEET 1.{{/B}} For a child, happiness has a magical nature. I remember making hide-outs in newly-cut hay, playing cops and robbers in the woods, getting a speaking part in the school play. Of course, kids also experience lows, but their delight at such peaks of pleasure as winning a race or getting a new bike is unreserved. In the teenage years the concept of happiness. Suddenly it's conditional on such things as excitement, love. popularity and whether that zit will clear up before night. I can still feel the agony of not being invited to a party that almost everyone else was going to. But I also recall, the ecstasy of being plucked from obscurity at another event to dance with a John Travolta look-a- like.66. ______ My dictionary defines happy as "luck" or "fortunate", but I think a better definition of happiness is "the capacity for enjoyment ". The more we can appreciate what we have, the happier we are. It's easy to we please, even good health.67.______ Later, peace descended again, and my husband and I enjoyed another pleasure—intimacy. Sometimes just the knowledge that he wants can bring me joy. You never know where happiness will turn up next. When I asked friends what made them happy, some mentioned apparently insignificant moments. "I hate shopping," one friend said, "But there's a clerk who always chats and really cheers me up."68. ______ I get a thrill from driving. One day I stopped to let the school bus turn onto a side road. The driver grinned and gave me a thumbs-up sign. We were two allies in the world of mad mo- toasts. It made me smile.69. ______ Psychologists tell that to be happy we need a mixture of enjoyable leisure time and satisfying work. I doubt that my great grandmother, who raised 14 children and took in washing, had none of either. She did have a network of close friends and families, and maybe this is what fulfilled her. ff she was content with what she had, perhaps it was because she didn't expect life to be very different.70. ______ While happiness may be more complex for us, the solution is the same as ever. Happiness isn't about what comes to us—it's about how we perceive what comes to us. It's the knack of finding a positive for every negative, and viewing a setback as a challenge. It's not wishing for what we haven't had, but enjoying what we do possess. A. Another friend loves the telephone. "Every time it rings, I know someone is thinking a- bout me." B. When we think about happiness, we usually think of something extraordinary, a pinnacle of sheer delight—and those pinnacles seem to get rarer the older we get. C. In adulthood things that bring profound joy—birth, love, marriage—also bring responsibility and the risk of loss. Love may not last, sex isn't always, good, loved ones die. For adults, happiness is complicated. D. We, on the other hand, with so many choices and such pressure to succeed in every area, have changed happiness into one more thing we "gotta have". We're so self-con- scious about our "right" to it that it's making us miserable. So we' chase it and equate it with wealth and success, without noticing that the people who have those things aren't necessarily happier. E. I added up my little moments of pleasure yesterday. First there was sheer bless when I shut the last lunch box and had the house for myself. Then I spent an uninterrupted morning writing, which I love. When the kids came back home, I enjoyed their noise after the quiet of the whole day.F. We all experience moments like these. Too few of us register them as happiness.

单选题The government regulate private enterprises for the main purpose of______ .

单选题 Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following talk about school meals in the UK. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to 20.

单选题When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up. Rather than cloaking his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came right out and said he was leaving "to pursue my goal of running a company". Broadcasting his ambition was "very much my decision", McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for the first time with the board of Hartford Financial Services Group, which named him CEO and chairman on September 29. McGee says leaving without a position lined up gave him time to reflect on what kind of company he wanted to run. It also sent a clear message to the outside world about his aspirations. And McGee isn't alone. In recent weeks the No. 2 executives at Avon and American Express quit with the explanation that they were looking for a CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans in response to shareholder pressure, executives who don't get the nod also may wish to move on. A turbulent business environment also has senior managers cautious of letting vague pronouncements cloud their reputations. As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liberum Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders. The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poached. Says Korn/Ferry senior partner Dennis Carey: "I can't think of a single search I've done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first. " Those who jumped without a job haven't always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana a decade age, saying she wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commodities exchange. Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in 2005 with ambitions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institution three years later. Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading for top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad one. "The traditional rule was it's safer to stay where you are, but that's been fundamentally inverted," says one headhunter. "The people who've been hurt the worst are those who've stayed too long. /

单选题 Ever since Gregor Mendel' s famous experiments with hybrid sweet peas, it has been known that there must be unitary elements within the cells which exert control over inherited characteristics, and for a long time there was considerable speculation about what these were. These elements came to be known as genes, and although they were long treated as hypothetical constructs, a great deal of knowledge about them slowly accumulated. It came to be known, for example, that each gene had to be passed along virtually unchanged from generation to generation; that there must be many thousands of these particles in every human cell, distributed unevenly among the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes; that each gene must occupy a very definite place (locus) on its chromosome; and that each pair of homologous chromosomes had to contain homologous assortments of genes, arranged with few exceptions in precisely the same order on each member of the chromosome pail' s. A wonderfully complex and fruitful system thus emerged about an aspect of the world which no one has ever directly observed. Let us now briefly turn to some of the newly acquired insights which have greatly expanded the already impressive theory of genetics. Genes are, of course, too small to be seen even by the most powerful electron microscopes, but recent research by geneticists, microbiologists, and biochemists has rapidly advanced our information about their constitution and action. The chemical substance of which the genes and thus the chromosomes are made, is now known to be deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a giant molecule containing a double-spiral strand of material which embodies the genetic code. The chromosomes consist of long strands of DNA, which, although it is capable of transmitting vastly complex "code messages", is comprised of combinations of only four primary chemical subunits, or "code letters". This great insight into the structure and functioning of genetic material, which was first proposed by James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick in 1953, involves a new description of what genes are like. A gene is simply a specific portion of the double-spiral strand of DNA which consists of a particular combination of the code letters that spell out a particular code word. Various combinations of the four code letters, forming different code words, provide the biochemical information used in the construction of the different proteins in the cell. Many of these proteins act as enzymes. The enzymes, as has been pointed out above, are the biological catalysts which direct all the chemical or metabolic reactions that are going on continuously in all cells. These metabolic functions are, of course, the basis of all the physical growth and development of any living organism. The code is embodied in the DNA of the chromosomes and genes, but exactly how does this code deter mine the production of proteins. Obviously, the code must be transmitted to the sites at which the actual work of protein synthesis is carried out. The material which accomplishes this task is ribonucleic acid (RNA, a substance very similar to DNA and complementary to it. From the code site on the linear DNA molecule, which is the gene), RNA, the messenger, carries the code to the cellular particles out into the cytoplasm of the cell, where proteins are manufactured. This messenger RNA provides the pattern, and another type of RNA, transfer RNA, collects from within the cytoplasm the raw materials, the amino acids, from which the proteins are made. With the pattern and the materials, the proteins are formed, one step at a time. These proteins act as enzymes or biological catalysis. They exist in all living organisms and control their growth and function through the control of the chemical transformations involved in metabolism. A very large number of enzymes are present in any living creature, and the absence or malformation of any enzyme can destroy the normal sequence of metabolism of a given biochemical substance. We can thus see that genetic activity takes the form of biochemical regulation, the genes determining the formation of enzymes. In this sense, all genetic disorders are primarily metabolic defects (Garrod, 1908). A defective or changed gene will in turn produce a change in the protein with which it is associated. The only result of such a change may be a slight alteration in the function of the protein, and there may thus be little or no observable effect. If the change or defect takes place within the code message for an essential element of the protein, however, the enzyme activity of this protein may be rendered completely inactive. If this happens, the result can be grave trouble: perhaps death, serious disease, or severe mental retardation due to poisoning of the central nervous system by a metabolite that is toxic to this system. The error in enzyme synthesis may begin to be important, so that the structure of the central nervous system is faulty almost from the beginning of embryonic life, or it may become important much later in the life cycle. It is quite likely that, in the foreseeable future, many essential biochemical processes will be understood in terms of the precise genetic codes responsible for them. All of the amino acids have already yielded to such analysis; their codes have been identified. With understanding may come control and prevention, such as may be possible by administration of the lacking enzymes, dietary control of substances which the individual is unable to metabolize, or transplantation of normal tissue to the diseased individual to correct the metabolic error.

单选题 Questions 14 to 16 are based on a report that weather delay US shuttle launch. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.

单选题Research carried out in the recent opinion polls shows that

单选题Most of us are taught to pay attention to what is said—the words. Words do provide us with some information, but meanings are derived from so many other sources that it would hinder our effectiveness as a partner to a relationship to rely too heavily on words alone. Words are used to describe only a small part of the many ideas we associate with any given message. Sometimes we can gain insight into some of those associations if we listen for more than words. We don't always say what we mean or mean what we say. Sometimes our words don't mean anything except "I'm letting off some steam. I don't really want you to pay close attention to what I'm saying. Just pay attention to what I'm feeling". Mostly we mean several things at once. A person wanting to purchase a house says to the current owner, "This step has to be fixed before I'll buy. " The owner says, "It's been like that for years. " Actually, the step hasn't been like that for years, but the unspoken message is. "I don't want to fix it. We put up with it. Why can't you?" The search for a more expansive view of meaning can be developed of examining a message in terms of who said it, when it occurred, the related conditions or situations, and how it was said. When a message occurs can also reveal associated meaning. Let us assume two couples do exactly the same amount of kissing and arguing. But one couple always kisses after an argument and the other couple always argues after a kiss. The ordering of the behaviors may mean a great deal more than the frequency of the behavior. A friend's unusually docile behavior may only be understood by noting that it was preceded by situations that required an abnormal amount of assertiveness. Some responses may be directly linked to a developing pattern of responses and defy logic. For example, a person who says "No!" to a serials of charges like "You're dumb," "You're lazy," and "You're dishonest," may also say "No!" and try to justify his or her response if the next statement is "And you're good looking. " We would do well to listen for how messages are presented. The words, "It sure has been nice to have you over," can be said with emphasis and excitement or ritualistically. The phrase can be said once or repeated several times. And the meanings we associate with the phrase will change accordingly. Sometimes if we say something infrequently, it assumes more importance; sometimes, the more we say something, the less importance it assumes.