问答题Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty. That compul sion has resulted in robotics the science of conferring various human capabilities on ma chines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close. As a result, the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Indeed the quest or true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action o the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that ~orecast by decades if not centuries.

问答题3．我的看法……

问答题The recovery, of the US economy during the first quarter of this year has been so spectacular that it is creating a new set of risks for financial markets. The great new risks now facing the US economy center on monetary policy and the oil market. The current federal funds interest rate of only 1.75 percent has clearly become unsustainable in view of the economy' s resilience. The Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by at least 0.25 percentage points during the second quarter and could increase short-term interest rates to at least 3 percent before the autumn--the level they were at before September 11. Such tightening would probably cause refinancing to slump to about $ 300 billion at annual rates late this year, which would eliminate capital gains as a prop for consumer spending. Rising interest rates could also damp the rally likely to occur in the equity market as corporate profits recover. If investment spending fails to revive, the economy' s annual growth rate could slide back to the 2- 3 percent. The oil price is also a big risk, mainly because the Bush administration appears determined to attack Iraq. The probability of war could easily push the oil price back into the $ 35-- $ 40 a bar rel range for at least a few months. In effect, that would impose a big new tax on consumer spending and corporate profits. The prospect of monetary tightening and a sharp increase in the oil price suggests that late 2002 and early 2003 could be a period of great volatility for the US economy.

问答题The hardest hit of all that week were Wall Street's specialist firms, the traders who were charged with maintaining orderly markets. That task required them to purchase stocks when there were no other buyers and to make sales when other sellers disappeared. Until the end of that week, a total 52 specialist lb-ms had worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange: each had handled the shares of 20 to 30 specified Big Board companies. on Black Monday, the specialists grimly fulfilled their responsibilities, buying millions of shares as prices plunged all around them. Their losses could amount to as much as $ 50 million. Securities firms outside Wall Street also felt mortal pain. The 4,500 accounts of the New York Stock Exchange member were taken over by Rodman & Renshaw, a Chicago firm.

问答题Bungling (笨手笨脚的) space organizations apart, the only mode of travel open to microbes seems to be meteorites (流星). Most of these are small bits of junk from the asteroid (小行星) belt that have gone off course. But some are rocks that have been flung into space from the surfaces of planets as a result of those planets having been struck by even larger bits of rock—decent-sized asteroids or comets.

问答题Direction: Write a composition in the title "The Benefits of Volunteering". Your composition should be about 150 English words.

问答题团体或组织的重要性。 2．为什么团体或组织重要? 3．你的观点。

问答题反面广告可有奇效，至少对一个瑞典护工来说是如此。她曾多次尝试用较传统的方法来找一份新的工作，失败后便采用了这种新方法。 30岁的安吉拉(Angela)在地方日报《哥德堡邮报》上登出广告说：“本人需要高薪工作，且完全没有想象力，反社会，缺乏创造力，亦无一技之长。” 安吉拉对日报的《快报》网络版说，广告出来之后找她的电话此起彼伏，工作邀请纷至沓来。三天之后，她到一家名为“地图媒介”的公司进行了面试。 该公司每月付她2118美元的薪水，比她目前做老人护工所得的薪水增加了1/3还多。 《快报》没有提及她新的职位是什么。看来，哗众的确可以取宠。以后人们登征婚广告可以如是说：“本人寻求完美伴侣，一文不名，缺乏浪漫且极度不忠实。”

问答题 {{U}}The literature of the American West ranges from lowbrow entertainment to great works of fiction. The extremes are obvious enough, but the middle tends to blur. The dime-store Western never aspired to be anything but entertainment{{/U}}. James Fenimore Cooper and Willa Cather, however, used the themes of westward expansion in works clearly intended as highbrow literature. {{U}}The novels of modern writer Larry McMurtry broke new ground: He took the Western and created a great piece of fiction, without changing its fundamental genre appeal or its accessibility to the general reader{{/U}}. As an example of his retooling of the Western genre, consider McMurtry's themes. {{U}}While the Western myth is fundamentally about resettlement to new lands, McMurtry's novels combine elements of the Western myth with less traditional motifs: profound reluctance to face change, conflict between urbanization and the Western ideal, the importance of place, and the role of the land itself{{/U}}. While the traditional Western is rooted in the past, McMurtry's themes combine nostalgia for that past with a sense of emptiness in the present and hopelessness for the future. Or consider McMurtry's treatment of character. The traditional Western formula depicts mainly masculine characters and portrays them as both heroic and human. In his novels, McMurtry creates strong female characters, transmuting the conventional plot of the trials and dangers of the frontier by folding in deeper ideological insights.

问答题莫贪意外之财，莫饮过量之酒。

问答题The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. 1 If this is agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter (禁锢) that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess. After all, what laws can be laid down about books? The battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a certain day; but is Hamlet a better play than Lear? Nobody can say. Each must decide that question for himself. 2 Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions—there we have none. Then, how are we to bring order into this multitudinous chaos and get the deepest and widest pleasure from what we read? 3 It is simple enough to say that since books have classes—fiction, biography, poetry—we should separate them and take from each what it is right that each should give us. Yet few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to your author; try to become him, Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. 4 If you hang back, and reserve and criticize at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read. But if you open your mind as widely as possible, the signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other. "We have only to compare"—with those words the cat is out of the bag, an the true complexity of reading is admitted. The first process, to receive impressions with the utmost understanding, is only half the process of reading; it must be completed, if we are to get the whole pleasure from a book, by another. 5 We must pass judgment upon these multitudinous impressions; we must make of these fleeting shapes one that is hard and lasting.

问答题When I decided to quit my full time employment it never occurred to me that I might become a part of a new international trend. A lateral move that hurt my pride and blocked my professional progress prompted me to abandon my relatively high profile career although, in the manner of a disgraced government minister, I covered my exit by claiming " I wanted to spend more time with my family".

问答题It is customary for the seller and the purchaser to enter into a contract, at which time the purchaser makes a deposit on account of the purchase price.

问答题The years between 1870 and 1895 brought enormous changes to the theater in the United States as the resident company was undermined by touring groups, as New York became the only major Center of production, and as the long run replaced the repertory (库存) system. By 1870, the resident stock company was at the peak of its development in the United States. The 50 permanent companies of 1870, however, had dwindled to 20 by 1878, to 8 by 1880, to 4 by 1887, and had almost disappeared by 1900. While the causes of this change are numerous, probably the most important was the rise of the "combination" company (that is, one that travels with stars and full company): Sending out a complete production was merely a logical extension of touring by stars. By the 1840's many major actors were already taking along a small group of lesser players, for they could not be sure that local companies could supply adequate support in secondary roles. There is much disagreement about the origin of the combination company. Bouciault claimed to have initiated it around 1860 when he sent out a troupe with Colleen Bawn, but a book published in 1859 speaks of combination companies as already established. Joseph Jefferson HI also declared that he was a pioneer in the movement. In actuality, the practice probably began tentatively during the 1850's, only to be interrupted by the Civil War. It mushroomed in the 1870's, as the rapid expansion of the railway system made it increasingly feasible to transport full productions. In 1872, Lawrence Barrett took his company, but no scenery, on tour; in 1876, Rose Michel was sent out with full company, scenery, and properties. By the season of 1876～1877 there were nearly 100 combination companies on the road, and by 1886 there were 282.

问答题George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four was far more prescient than any person who grew up in the middle decades of the 20th century. It was centered on the very special technology (information technology, as we call it now) that would in fact emerge and shape the world over the next two generations. The centerof the success of the vast totalitarian empire was called the telescreen, a wall-sized panel display that could simultaneously send and receive images from each individual household to a hovering Big Brother. The telescreen was what permitted the vast centralization of social lift, for it allowed the government to banish privacy by motoring every word and deed over a massive network of wires. With at least a half century separating us from the publication of the book, we can see that while the technological predications he made were startling accurate, but the political predications were entirely wrong. As Peter Huber has argued, the personal computer, linked to the Internet, was In fact the realization of Orwell's telescreen. But it hasn't an instrument of centralization of access to information and the decentralization of politics.

问答题{{B}}Outlines:{{/B}} 1．有些人认为随着各种高水平电子课件的制作与引进，大学生基本上可以自学英语了； 2．有些人认为大学英语教师虽面临挑战，但不可或缺； 3．我对中国大学英语教学改革的看法与建议。