Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or made illegal. But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet. It has long been known that a taxi firm called AAAA cars has a big advantage over Zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phone directories. Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbott has in life over Zoe' Zysman. English names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of the alphabet. Yet a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between A and K. Thus the American president and vice-president have surnames starting with B and C respectively; and 26 of George Bush' s predecessors(including his father)had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. Even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged(Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirac, Chre tien and Koizumi). The world's three top central bankers(Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami)are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanese characters. As are the world' s five richest men(Gates, Buffett, Allen, Ellison and Albrecht). Can this merely be coincidence? One theory, dreamt up in all the spare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets in early. At the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupils alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. So shortsighted Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked the improving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. At the time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. Yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly. The humiliation continues. At university graduation ceremonies, the ABCs proudly get their awards first; by the time they reach the Zysmans most people are literally having a ZZZ . Shortlists for job interviews, election ballot papers, lists of conference speakers and attendees: all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their recipients lose interest as they plough through them.

(46) For centuries the smoking of tobacco in cigarettes, cigars, and pipes has produced controversy over possible health hazards, but only since the 1950"s has sufficient scientific evidence accumulated to make possible a thorough evaluation of the health risk. Scientific investigation of the relationship of smoking and health gained impetus after the beginning of the 20th century, then an increase in lung cancer was noted. As the use of tobacco increased, studies improved. (47) Although some gaps in knowledge still exist, the information now available is sufficient to permit making sound judgments, based on the converging lines of evidence. (48) Investigators have directed their principal consideration to cigarette smoking because the health consequences attributed to it far exceed those due to smoking cigars and pipes. The widespread popularity of cigarettes is comparatively recent in man"s use of tobacco. The smoking pattern began to change at the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, cigarettes have steadily become more popular than cigars and pipes. (49) In the United States. per capita cigarette consumption—calculated for all persons 15 years of age and older, regardless of whether they smoked—rose from 49 per year in 1900 to 3,888 in 1960. Per capita consumption of cigars, pipe tobacco, and chewing tobacco declined sharply in the same period. Data presented in 1966 indicated a sharp reduction in cigarette smoking in the United States for men under the age of 55 with the trend continuing to 1970. Further increase in cigarette consumption for women of all ages was reported in 1966 and no further increase was noted 1966 and 1970. However, in 1970 overall per capita cigarette consumption rose. By 1962 the Royal College of Physicians of London reported:" Cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer and bronchitis, and various other less common diseases. It delays healing of gastric and duodenal ulcers". Some scientists, however, expressed dissenting opinions. The most widely publicized report in the United States was issued in 1964 by the Surgeon General"s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health. (50) The principal judgment in the committee"s 150,000-word report was: "Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action". The smokers of pipes and cigars were found to incur less health risk. However, the incidence of cancer and heart disease among them was found to be greater than among nonsmokers.

The topic of thought is one area of psychology, and many observers have considered this aspect in connection with robots and computers: some of the old worries about Al (artificial intelligence) were closely linked to the question of whether" computers could think. The first massive electronic computers, capable of rapid (if often unreliable) computation and little or no creative activity, were soon named "electronic brains". A reaction to this terminology quickly followed. To put them in their place, computers were called "high-speed idiots", an effort to protect human vanity. But not everyone realized the implications of the expression: "high-speed idiot". It has not been pointed out often enough that even the human idiot is one of the most intelligent life forms on the earth. If the early computers were even that intelligent, it was already a remarkable state of affairs. One consequence from studying the possibility of computer thought was that we were forced to examine with new care the idea of thought in general. It soon became clear that we were not sure what we meant by such terms as thought and thinking. We tend to assume that human beings think, some more than others, though we often call people thoughtless or unthinking. Dreams cause a problem, partly because they usually happen outside our control. They are obviously some types of mental experience, but are they a type of thinking? And the question of nonhuman life forms adds further problems. Many of us would maintain that some of the higher animals—dogs, cats, apes, and so on—are capable of at least basic thought, but what about fish and insects? It is certainly true that the higher mammals show complex brain activity when tested with the appropriate equipment. If thinking is demonstrated by evident electrical activity in the brain, then many animal species are capable of thought. Once we have formulated clear ideas on what thought is in biological creatures, it will be easier to discuss the question of thought in artificial machines. One of the great benefits of AI research is that we are being forced to examine more closely the working of the human mind. It is already clear that machines have superior mental abilities to many life forms. No tree can play chess as well as even the simplest computer; nor can frogs repair car bodies as well as robots. It seems that, viewed in terms of intellect, the computer should be set well above plants and most animals. Only the higher" animals can compete with computers with regard to intellect.

If I had asked for directions, I wouldn' t have gotten lost.

Centuries ago, man discovered that removing moisture from food helps to preserve it, and that the easiest way to do this is to expose the food to sun and wind. In this way the North American Indians produce pemmican, the Scandinavians make stockfish and the Arabs dry dates and apricot leather. All foods contain water-cabbage and other leaf vegetables contain as much as 93% water, potatoes and other root vegetables 80%, lean meat 75% and fish anything from 80% to 60% depending on how fatty it is. If this water is removed, the activity of the bacteria that cause food to deteriorate is checked. Fruit is sun-dried in Asia Minor, Greece, Spain and other Mediterranean countries, and also in California, South Africa and Australia. The methods used vary, but in general, the fruit is spread out on trays in drying yards in the hot sun. In order to prevent darkening, pears, peaches and apricots are exposed to the fumes of burning sulfur before drying. Plums, for making prunes, and certain varieties of grapes for making raisins and currants, are dipped in an alkaline solution in order to crack the skins of the fruit slightly and remove their wax coating, so increasing the rate of drying. Nowadays most foods are dried mechanically. The conventional method of such dehydration is to put food in chambers through which hot air is blown at temperatures of about 110℃ at entry to about 43℃ at exit. This is the usual method for drying such things as vegetables, minced meat, and fish. Liquids such as milk, coffee, tea, soups and eggs may be dried by pouring them over a heated horizontal steel cylinder or by spraying them into a chamber through which a current of hot air passes. In the first case, the dried material is scraped off the roller as a thin film which is then broken up into small, though still relatively coarse flakes;" in the second process it falls to the bottom of the chamber as a fine powder. Where recognizable pieces of meat and vegetables are required, as in soup, the ingredients are dried separately and then mixed. Dried foods take up less room and weigh less than the same food packed in cans or frozen, and they do not need to be stored in special conditions. For these reasons they are invaluable to climbers, explorers and soldiers in battle, who have little storage space. They are also popular with housewives because it takes so little time to cook them. Usually it is just a case of replacing the dried-out moisture with boiling water.

During the traditional wedding ceremony, the【C1】______couple promise each other lifelong devotion. Yet, about one out of four American marriages ends in divorce. Since 1940, the divorce rate has more than doubled, and experts predict that, of all marriages that【C2】______in the 2000s, about 50% will end in divorce. The U.S. has one of the highest divorce rates in the world, perhaps 【C3】______the highest What goes wrong? The fact that divorce is so【C4】______in the United States does not mean that Americans consider marriage a casual, unimportant【C5】______. Just the opposite is【C6】______. Americans expect a great【C7】______from marriage. They seek physical, emotional, and intellectual compatibility. They want to be deeply loved and【C8】______. It is because Americans expect so much from marriage that so many get divorced. They prefer no marriage at all to a marriage without love and understanding. With typical American optimism, they end one marriage 【C9】______that the next will be happier.【C10】______no-fault divorce laws in many states, it is easier than before to get a divorce. Some American women, 【C11】______ in unhappy marriages because they don"t have the education or job【C12】______ to support themselves and their children. But most American women believe that, if 【C13】______, they can make it alone without a husband. When a couple gets divorced, the court may【C14】______the man to pay his former wife a monthly sum of money called alimony. The amount of alimony【C15】______on the husband"s income, the wife"s needs and the【C16】______of the marriage. 【C17】______, the court decides that a woman should pay her husband alimony. About 10% of American women【C18】______ their husbands. The court may decide that she must continue to 【C19】______him after the divorce. This is a rather new【C20】______in the United States.

When they were children, Terri Schiavo"s brother Bobby accidentally locked her in a suitcase. She tried so hard to get out that the suitcase jumped up and down and screamed. The scene predicted, horribly, how she would end, though by that stage she had neither walked nor talked for more than 15 years. By the time she finally died on March 31st, her body had become a box out of which she could not escape. More than that, it had become a box out of which the United States government, Congress, the president, the governor of Florida and an army of evangelical protestors and bloggers would not let her escape. Her life, whatever its quality, became the property not merely of her husband (who had the legal right to speak for her) and her parents (who had brought her up), but of the courts, the state, and thousands of self-appointed medical and psychological experts across the country. The chief difference between her case and those of Karen Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan, much earlier victims of Persistent Vegetative State (PVS), was the existence of the internet. When posted videotapes showed Mrs. Schiavo apparently smiling and communicating with those around her, doctors called these mere reflex activity, but to the layman they seemed to reveal a human being who should not be killed. On March 20th, a CAT scan of Mrs. Schiavo"s brain-the grey matter of the cerebral cortex more or lass gone, replaced by cerebrospinal fluid-was posted on a biog. By March 29th, it had brought 390 passionate and warring responses. All this outside interference could only exacerbate the real, cruel dilemmas of the case. After a heart attack in February 1990, when she was 26, Mrs. Schiavo"s brain was deprived of oxygen for five minutes and irreparably damaged. For a while, her family hoped she might be rehabilitated. Her husband Michael bought her new clothes and wheeled her round art galleries, in case her brain could respond. By 1993, he was sure it could not, and when she caught an infection he did not want her treated. Her parents disagreed, and claimed she could recover. From that point the family split, and litigation started. Each side, backed by legions of supporters, accused the other of money-grubbing and bad faith. A Florida court twice ordered Mrs. Schiavo"s feeding tube to be removed and Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida, overruled it. The final removal of the tube, on March 18th, was followed by an extraordinary scene, in the early hours of March 21st, when George Bush signed into law a bill allowing Mrs. Schiavo"s parents to appeal yet again to a federal court. But by then the courts, and two-thirds of Americans, thought that enough was enough. On March 24th the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Human beings are animals. We breathe, eat and digest, and reproduce the same life【C1】______common to all animals. In a biological laboratory, rats, monkeys, and humans seem very much the same. However, biological understanding is not enough:【C2】______itself, it can never tell us what human beings are.【C3】______to our physical equipment—the naked human body—we are not【C4】______animal. We are tropical creatures,【C5】______hairless and sensitive to cold. We are not fast and have neither claws nor sharp teeth to defend ourselves. We need a lot of food but have almost no physical equipment to help us get it. In the purely physical【C6】______, our species seems a poor【C7】______for survival. But we have survived—survived and multiplied and【C8】______the earth. Some day we will have【C9】______living on the moon, a place with neither air nor water and with temperatures that turn gases into solids. How can we have done all these things. Part of the answer is physical.【C10】______its limitations, our physical equipment has some important【C11】______. We have excellent vision and hands that can【C12】______objects with a precision unmatched by any other【C13】______. Most importantly, we have a large brain with an almost【C14】______number of neural【C15】______. We have used this physical equipment to create culture, the key to our survival and success. If we live in the Arctic, we supply the warmth our tropical bodies need【C16】______clothing, shelter, and【C17】______heat. If a million people want to live in a desert that supplies natural food for only a few hundred, we find water to grow food and【C18】______deficits by transporting supplies from distant places. Inhabitants of our eventual moon colony will bring their own food and oxygen and then create an artificial earth environment to supply necessities. With culture, we can overcome our natural limitations. It was not always【C19】______. Our distant ancestors were just animals, faced with the limits of their physical equipment. They had no【C20】______and lacked the physical capacity to use it.

The basic unit of money in the U.S. is dollar which is worth 100 cents.

Their action was more than justified.

BPart B/B

In recent decades, scientists have become increasingly aware of the part the observer【C1】______in the scientific process. In the【C2】______place, the observer can work only with his experiences, and these are【C3】______by his senses and the instruments he【C4】______to extend his senses. Ultraviolet light, electromagnetic fields, and atomic particles,【C5】______, became known to us only as we devised tools【C6】______we could observe their effects.【C7】______, our picture of the real world is always incomplete. Secondly, the observer is highly selective in choosing his【C8】______. Life is a narrative of ever new and often【C9】______events. At any given moment, an individual is bombarded with sense experiences and can,【C10】______he desires, expose himself to more. But he is really interested in or concerned with only a few of these. Other experiences are consciously or【C11】______screened out as irrelevant to the task【C12】______. For example, as we read a book, we are often surrounded by sounds and activities that we【C13】______, but by turning our attention to them we become conscious of their presence. What a scientist discovers depends,【C14】______, on what he is looking for—【C15】______the questions he is asking. Thus, academic disciplines differ in their study of human beings in large part【C16】______they ask different questions. Human beings live,【C17】______, in a house with only a few windows of tinted and curved glass,【C18】______which we see the outside world. The glass colors and distorts our observations, and its effects can be determined only with【C19】______difficulty. Scientists are increasingly aware of the【C20】______that they work with sense data, not with the world itself.

Alexandria, Virginia—particularly its well-tended Old Town section—is the sort of upscale suburb that rings most major American cities. From the array of pubs, sushi-restaurant chains and pasta joints that line its streets, you would never guess that within 20 minutes you can find some the best Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Pakistani or Bolivian food in America. Its 18th-century homes have been carefully maintained; now that the nasty, dirty business of living in them is done, they are at last free to house upscale boutiques selling ornate pepper-shakers, local wine, birthday cakes for dogs and other essentials. Yet this suburb was a city before cars existed, making it especially dense, walkable and charming. It has also turned an instrument of war into an instrument of art. The day after the armistice that ended the First World War in 1918, the United States Navy began building the US Naval Torpedo station on the waterfront across the Potomac and just downriver from the Naval Research Laboratory in south-west Washington, DG. After a brief period of production, it stored munitions between the wars. When the Second World War broke out, it built torpedoes for submarines and aircraft; when that war ended, the building was again used for storage. In 1969 Alexandria bought the site, which had grown to comprise 11 buildings, from the federal government. Five years later, after all the debris was removed and walls erected, the main building was refitted to house artists' studios. A quarter-century (and several extensive renovations) later, the artists are still there: over 160 of them sharing 82 studios, six galleries and two workshops. The Art League School and the Alexandria Archaeology Museum also share the space, bringing in thousands more aspirants and students. All of this makes the Torpedo Factory, as it is now called, a low-key, family-friendly and craft-centred alternative to the many worthy galleries across the river. The building is three-storeys tall; on the first floor the studios and galleries are laid out along a single long hall. The arrangement grows more warrenlike—and the sense of discovery concomitantly more pleasant—as you ascend. Artists work in a variety of media, including painting, fibre, printmaking, ceramics, jewellery, stained glass and photography. Don't anticipate anything game-changing or jaw-dropping here. Expect plenty of cats and cows in different media, as well as watercolours of beach houses, ersatz Abstract Expressionist paintings, stained glass made for the walls of large suburban houses and knick-knacks. All of it is skillfully done; most of it is pleasant. The photography is an exception: the Multiple Exposures Gallery is first-rate, displaying not merely beautiful pictures but inventive techniques as well. On a recent visit the gallery showcased landscapes, including an especially arresting wide-angle aerial shot of a field in Fujian after a storm. Crops glinted in the rising sun like rows of wet sapphires, the scalloped grey clouds echoing the terraced farming beneath. The Torpedo Factory's biggest draw, however (particularly for visitors with children), is not on what is sold but in the demystifying access visitors have to artists. While the galleries function traditionally, the artists work and sell out of the same studio; their raw materials and works in progress—the artistry behind the art—are all on display. Many of them are happy and eager to talk; one was soliciting the help of passers-by to complete a work (she wished to know how to say and write a certain phrase in Hebrew vernacular). A metal sculptor sat on a stool patiently working a piece of metal back and forth in his hands. The centre of his studio was filled with a huge hollow sphere made from hundreds of cylinders of perhaps anodised aluminium. It seemed we were witnessing the first step in a thousand-mile march.

Energy will be one of the defining issues of this century. One thing is clear: the era of (1)_____ oil is over. What we all do next will determine how well we meet the energy needs of the entire world in this century and (2)_____. Demand is soaring like (3)_____ before. As populations grow and economies (4)_____, millions in the developing world are enjoying the benefits of a lifestyle that (5)_____ increasing amounts of energy. In fact, some say that in 20 years the world will (6)_____ 40% more oil than it does today. At the same time, many of the world"s oil and gas fields are (7)_____ And new energy discoveries are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to (8)_____, physically, economically and even politically. When growing demand meets (9)_____ supplies, the result is more (10)_____ for the same resources. We can wait until a crisis forces us to do something. (11)_____ we can (12)_____ to working together, and start by asking the (13)_____ questions: How do we meet the energy needs of the developing world and those of industrialized nations? What role will renewables and (14)_____ energies play？What is the best way to protect our environment? How do we accelerate our conservation efforts? (15)_____ actions we take, we must look not just to next year, (16)_____ to the next 50 years. At Chevron, we believe that innovation, collaboration and conservation are the (17)_____ on which to build this new world. We cannot do this alone. Corporations, governments and every citizen of this planet must be part of the solution as (18)_____ as they are part of the problem. We (19)_____ scientists and educators, politicians and policy-makers, environmentalists, leaders of industry and each one of you to be part of (20)_____ the next era of energy.

Big decisions make me nervous. I"m okay when it comes to ordering dinner or buying a new pair of jeans, but if I"m selecting a house, a job, or even a mate, some part of me always wonders whether I"m making the best choice. It"s not that I"m a slave to perfection. It"s just that I"m simply trying to steer clear of future regrets and the anger, frustration, grief, and self-blame that accompany them and make regret such an unwelcome, energy-draining emotion. In the dark, long days of winter, it"s natural to spend time internally focused, looking back over our lives. Sifting through the past is how we find meaning, so we can enrich the days to come with greater wisdom and clarity. But sometimes this thought process turns on us, and regret takes on a life of its own, affecting our moods and health. Regret is one of the most felt but least discussed emotions. While directing a stress disorders clinic years ago, I became convinced that self-blame was one of the primary thought patterns that prevented emotional and even physical healing in my(mostly female)patients. Ruminating about how wrong or deficient you are(How could I have been so stupid? or What an idiot I am!)makes you feel small and ashamed. It pulls you out of the present and keeps you stuck in the past, destroys your peace of mind, and elevates the stress hormone Cortisol. High Cortisol levels, in turn, can undermine immunity, memory, metabolism, and even cardiac health. The first step to understanding regret in your own life is to learn how it works. Cornell University psychologist Thomas Gilovich says that regret comes in three emotional flavors: hot, wistful, and despairing. When the guy you"ve been dating turns out to be married, you"re likely to experience regret as the "hot" emotions of anger, embarrassment, and irritation. When you think about how fast your kids grew up and wish that you"d spent more time with them, your regrets will probably fall into the "wistful" category, where nostalgia and sentiment prevail. When you realize that you invested your pension with a con artist who skipped town, you may experience regret as helplessness and utter desperation. Gilovich also found that short-term regret is stronger for actions you took(you bought a fabulous pair of shoes that cost a week"s salary)than for inactions(you passed up those great shoes and wore your old ones to your best friend"s wedding). Conversely, long-term regret is stronger for actions and opportunities that you passed up(that person you didn"t date or the degree you never finished)than for actions you took.

Of all the truths that this generation of Americans hold self-evident, few are more deeply embedded in the national psyche than the maxim "It pays to go to college." Since the GI Bill transformed higher education in the aftermath of WWII, a college diploma, once a birthright of the leisured few, has become an attraction for the upwardly mobile, as integral to the American dream as the pursuit of happiness itself. The numbers tell the story: in 1950s, 43% of high-school graduates went on to pursue some form of higher education; at the same time, only 6% of Americans were college graduates. But by 1998, almost 2 to out of 3 secondary-school graduates were opting for higher education—and 21% of a much larger U.S. population had college diplomas. As Prof. Herbert London of New York University told a commencement audience last June: "the college experience has gone from a rite passage to a right of passage." However, as the class of 2004 is so painfully discovering, while a college diploma remains a requisite credential for ascending the economic ladder, it no longer guarantees the good life. Rarely since the end of the Great Depression has the job outlook for college graduates appeared so bleak: of the 1.1 million students who received their bachelor degrees last spring, fewer than 20% had lined up full-time employment by commencement. Indeed, an uncertain job market has precipitated a wave of economic fear and trembling among the young. "Many of my classmates are absolutely terrified," says one of the fortunate few who did manage to land a permanent position. "They wonder if they"ll ever find a job." Some of this recession-induced anxiety will disappear if a recovery finally begins to generate jobs at what economists consider a normal rate. But the sad fact is that for the foreseeable future, college graduates will in considerable surplus, enabling employers to require a degree even for jobs for which a college education is really unnecessary. According to Kristina Shelley of the Bureau of Labor Statistics—who bases her estimate on a "moderate projection" of current trends—30 per-cent of college graduates entering the labor t0rce between now and the year 2008 will be unemployed or will find employment in jobs for which they will be overqualified, joining what economists call the "educationally underutilized." Indeed, it may be quite a while—if ever—before those working temporarily as cocktail waitresses or taxi drivers will be able to pursue their primary, career paths. Of course waiting on tables and bustling cab fares are respectable ways to earn a living. But they are not quite what so many young Americans—and their parents—had in mind as the end product of four expensive years in college.

What can be said of the normal process of aging, from a linguistic point of view? In general (1)_____, there is a clear and (2)_____ relationship: no-one would have much difficulty (3)_____ a baby, a young child, a teenager, a middle-aged person, or a very old person from a tape recording. With children, (4)_____ is possible for specialists in language development, and people experienced (5)_____ child care, to make very detailed (6)_____ about how language correlates with age in the early years. (7)_____ is known about the patterns of linguistic change that affect older people. It is plain that our voice quality, vocabulary, and style alter (8)_____ we grow older, but research (9)_____ the nature of these changes is in its earliest stages. However. a certain amount of (10)_____ is available about the production and (11)_____ of spoken language by very old people, especially regarding the phonetic changes that take place. Speech is (12)_____ to be affected by reductions in the (13)_____ of the vocal organs. The muscles of the chest (14), the lungs become less elastic, the ribs (15)_____ mobile: as a result, respiratory efficiency at age 75 is only about half (16)_____ at age 30, and this has (17)_____ for the ability to speak loudly, rhythmically, and with good tone In addition, speech is affected by poorer movement of the soft palate and changes in the facial skeleton, especially around the mouth and jaw. There are other, more general signs of age. Speech rate slows, and fluency may be more erratic. Hearing (18)_____, especially after the early fifties. Weakening (19)_____ of memory and attention may affect the ability to comprehend complex speech patterns. But it is (20)_____ all had news: vocabulary awareness may continue to grow, as may stylistic ability—skills in narration, for example. And grammatical ability seems to be little affected.

BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B

Lotteries are a regressive tax on those who can" t do math, runs the famous old saying. "Nonsense!" retort critics. "For a dollar, one can purchase the fantasy of being wealthy beyond dreams of avarice. It is cheap at the price. " Over at Overcoming Bias, Eliezer Yudkowsky says "But isn"t that a waste of hope?" But consider exactly what this implies. It would mean that you"re occupying your valuable brain with a fantasy whose real probability is nearly zero a tiny line of likelihood which you, yourself, can do nothing to realize. The lottery balls will decide your future. The fantasy is of wealth that arrives without effort without conscientiousness, learning, charisma, or even patience. Which makes the lottery another kind of sink: a sink of emotional energy. It encourages people to invest their dreams, their hopes for a better future, into an infinitesimal probability. If not for the lottery, maybe they would fantasize about going to technical school, or opening their own business, or getting a promotion at work—things they might be able to actually do, hopes that would make them want to become stronger. Their dreaming brains might, in the 20th visualization of the pleasant fantasy, notice a way to really do it. Isn"t that what dreams and brains are for? But how can such reality-limited fare compete with the artificially sweetened prospect of instant wealth not after herding a dot com startup through to IPO, but on Tuesday? Seriously, why can"t we just say that buying lottery tickets is stupid? Human beings are stupid, from time to time - it shouldn"t be so surprising a hypothesis. Unsurprisingly, the human brain doesn"t do 64-bit floating point arithmetic, and it can"t devalue the emotional force of a pleasant anticipation by a factor of 0. 00000001 without dropping the line of reasoning entirely. Unsurprisingly, many people don"t realize that a numerical calculation of expected utility ought to override or replace their imprecise financial instincts, and instead treat the calculation as merely one argument to be balanced against their pleasant anticipations an emotionally weak argument, since it"s made up of mere squiggles on paper, instead of visions of fabulous wealth. This seems sufficient to explain the popularity of lotteries. Why do so many arguers feel impelled to defend this classic form of self-destruction? This seems rather extreme. The human brain is wired to feel many irrational desires, like love, and the yearning to produce a squalling mess of an infant that will hoover up all your available cash, plus 10%, for the foreseeable future. We don"t try to edit those out. Given that the human being is irrationally unable to discount a potential pleasure down by the exact expected probability, shouldn"t we exploit this trait in order to cheaply produce large utility gains?

You are a freshman and planning to apply for a bank loan. Write a letter to the bank to1) introduce yourself briefly,2) explain the reasons of applying for a bank loan.Write your letter with no less than 100 words. Do not sign your name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)