单选题We assumed ethics needed the seal of certainty, else it was non-rational. And certainty was to be produced by a deductive model: the correct actions were derivable from classical first principles or a hierarchically ranked pantheon of principles. This model, though, is bankrupt. I suggest we think of ethics as analogous to language usage. There are no univocal rules of grammar and style which uniquely determine the best sentence for a particular situation. Nor is language usage universalizable. Although a sentence or phrase is warranted in one case, it does not mean it is automatically appropriate in like circumstances. Nonetheless, language usage is not subjective. This should not surprise us in the least. All intellectual pursuits are relativistic in just these senses. Political science, psychology, chemistry, and physics are not certain, but they are not subjective either. As I see it, ethical inquiry proceed like this: we are taught moral principles by parents, teachers, and society at large. As we grow older we become exposed to competing views. These may lead us to reevaluate presently held beliefs. Or we may find ourselves inexplicably making certain valuations, possibly because of inherited altruistic tendencies. We may "learn the hard way" that some actions generate unacceptable consequences. Or we may reflect upon our own and others' "theories" or patterns of behavior and decide they are inconsistent. The resulting views are "tested"; we act as we think we should and evaluate the consequences of those actions on ourselves and on others. We thereby correct our mistakes in light of the test of time. Of course people make different moral judgments; of course we cannot resolve these differences by using some algorithm which is itself beyond judgement. We have no vantage point outside human experience where we can judge right and wrong, good and bad. But then we don't have a vantage point from where we can be philosophical relativists either. We are left within the real world, trying to cope with ourselves, with each other, with the world, and with our own fallibility. We do not have all the moral answers; nor do we have an algorithm to discern those answers. Neither do we possess an algorithm for determining correct language usage but that does not make us throw up our hands in despair because we can no longer communicate. If we understand ethics in this way, we can see, I think, the real value of ethical theory. Some people, talk as if ethical theories give us moral prescriptions. They think we should apply ethical principles as we. would a poultice: after diagnosing the ailment, we apply the appropriate dressing. But that is a mistake. No theory provides a set of abstract solutions to apply straightforwardly. Ethical theories are important not because they solve all moral dilemmas but because they help us notice salient features of moral problems and help us understand those problems in context.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} "I was just like you--I' thought I was {{U}}invincible{{/U}}," says Adam Blomberg, standing before 400 students in a darkened auditorium at Miami's Coral Reef Senior High School. A photo of a bloodied and unconscious teenager, a breathing tube protruding from his mouth, flashes on the wall. "That was me," he says. There's a collective gasp before the room grows silent and Blomberg,31, an anesthesiologist who trained at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, begins the story of what happened one night in February 1995. He created a presentation illustrating the dangers of behaving irresponsibly in a car, from not buckling up to speeding to driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. He tracked down photos of teen crash victims from the center's archives, then incorporated statistics and his own experience. He spoke the first time to a local Boy Scout troop and was soon giving his talk, "A Survivor's Story," at high schools around the state. The Blomberg family had reason to celebrate. Adam had fully recovered and was on his way to fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming a doctor. But in January 2000, Blomberg's 22-year-old step-brother, Michael, was killed in a crash while driving to his Atlanta home late one night. He wasn't wearing a seat belt. After the accident, Blomberg stopped telling his story to crowds, racked with guilt over his inability to reach Michael. If Blomberg had failed his own brother, he reasoned, how could he possibly make a difference to a roomful of strangers? Requests from schools continued to roll in, but he turned down every one. Then Blomberg got a call from a high school counselor. As he started into his standard excuse-lack of time—he looked across the room at a stack of thank-you notes from students who had heard him speak. He realized that kids needed to hear what he had to say. He agreed to visit the school and began contacting others on the waiting list for his talks. Blomberg leaves the school hoping he has changed someone's behavior. He recalls a letter he received from a student who heard him speak and got into a crash later that same day but was unharmed. " She told me she was wearing her seat belt because of me." Letters like this reinforce his belief that he survived the accident for a reason. "There are a lot of physicians in the world, and we all save lives," he says. "I have a special opportunity to save lives not just as a doctor but also as a human being."

单选题LAST month, America's National Law Journal told its readers that "employment lawyers are warning lovestruck co-workers to take precautions in the office before locking lips outside". The advice came too late for Harry Stonecipher. The boss of Boeing was forced to resign last weekend—for reasons that will strike many outsiders as absurd—after his board were told of an affair that the 68-year-old married man had been conducting with a female employee "who did not report directly to him", Inevitably, as the week rolled on, details of the affair rolled out. The other party was re2 ported to be Debra Peabody, who is unmarried and has worked for Boeing for 25 years. The couple were said to have first got together at Boeing's annual retreat at Palm Desert, California in January. After that much of the affair must have been conducted from a distance: Mr. Stonecipher's office is at Boeing's headquarters in Chicago; Ms Peabody runs the firm's government-relations office in Washington, DC. They exchanged e-mails, it seems, as office lovers tend to do these days, and therein probably lay Mr Stonecipher's downfall Lewis Platt, Boeing's chairman, said that Mr Stonecipher broke a company rule that says: "Employees will not engage in conduct or activity that may raise questions as to the company's honesty, impartiality, reputation or otherwise cause embarrassment to the company." Having an affair with a fellow employee is not, of itself, against company rules; causing embarrassment to Boeing is. It seems that the board judged that the contents of the lovers' e-mails would have been bad for Boeing had they been made public. Gone are the days when a board considered such matters none of its business, as Citibank's did in 1991 when its boss, John Reed, became the talk of Wail Street for having an affair with a stewardess on Citi's corporate jet. At Boeing, a whistleblower is said to have forwarded the messages to Mr Platt. In general, e-mails are encrypted and not accessible to anyone who does not know the sender's password. But many firms install software designed to search electronic communications for key words such as, "sex" and "CEO". A study last year of 840 American firms by the American Management Association found that 60% of them check external e-mails (incoming and outgoing), while 27% scrutinize internal messages between employees. Sweet nothings whispered by the water cooler may travel less far these days than electronic billets doux. Boeing is particularly sensitive to embarrassment at the moment. Mr. Stonecipher was recalled from retirement only 15 months ago, after the company's previous boss, Phil Condit, and its chief financial officer, Michael Sears, had left in the wake of a scandal involving an illegal job offer to a Pentagon official. Mr Stonecipher, a crusty former number two at Boeing, was brought back specifically to raise the company's ethical standards and to help it be seen in its main ( and affectedly puritanical) market, in Washington, DC, as squeaky clean. Verbally explicit extra-marital affairs are inconsistent with such a strategy, it seems, though they are not yet enough to bring down future kings of England. In corporate life, such affairs are hardly unusual. One survey found that one-quarter of all long-term relationships start at work; another found that over 40% of executives say they have been involved in an affair with a colleague, and that in haft of these cases one or other party was married at the time. Many a boss has married his assistant and lived happily ever after. Boeing apparently used to accept this: Mr. Condit's fourth wife was a colleague before they married.

单选题The author's attitude toward the opinion held by Card and DiNardo is one of

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on ANSWER SHEET 1. Like all the huge metropolises of the world, there are lots of diversions both outdoors and indoors in Chicago. The Art Institute of Chicago has one of the world's{{U}} (1) {{/U}}art collections, including more French Impressionist paintings than even in the Paris Louvre itself. The Field Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Science and Industry are also great historical and cultural treasure houses to{{U}} (2) {{/U}}as well as entertain children and adults{{U}} (3) {{/U}}In the Field Museum one comes{{U}} (4) {{/U}}a surprisingly big collection of Chinese exhibits from the ancient{{U}} (5) {{/U}}to the early century. The Sears Tower and the Buckingham Fountain are the pride of the Chicagoans;{{U}} (6) {{/U}}having 110 storeys is said to be the highest tower in the world and the{{U}} (7) {{/U}}is the largest fountain in the United States. Lake Michigan is for yachting in summer time,{{U}} (8) {{/U}}the highlights of Chicago life all the year round are concerts, operas and plays{{U}} (9) {{/U}}by the city's orchestra, opera houses and theatres. In summer, especially around the Independence Day, July 4th, many festivals and fairs are given outdoors, which,{{U}} (10) {{/U}}crowds and crowds of people, with their parades, fireworks,{{U}} (11) {{/U}}concerts, water-skiing and good foods. But with all its attractions and beautiful spots Chicago is also a city{{U}} (12) {{/U}}for crimes. All the dwelling houses are{{U}} (13) {{/U}}with three doors and visitors have to speak through microphone{{U}} (14) {{/U}}in the wall to the residents before they can get admitted. In the streets there are white-color telephones. When one finds oneself{{U}} (15) {{/U}}, he needs only to knock the receiver{{U}} (16) {{/U}}the hook and the next instant the police will{{U}} (17) {{/U}}. If one does not drive a car, it may well be dangerous for him or her to go out alone in the evening. At first I did not take this warning seriously.{{U}} (18) {{/U}}, my two encounters with the Black people{{U}} (19) {{/U}}dusk in the neighborhood were so unpleasant and frightening that I have{{U}} (20) {{/U}}shut myself evenings in my room, in almost all studying, imposing a curfew on myself.

单选题One of the comical moments in the early history of printing occurred in 1631, when the English printer Robert Barker produced an edition of the scriptures which became known as the "Wicked Bible." This edition contained a misprint of the seventh commandmem. One thousand copies were printed and ready for publication before someone noticed that the commandment had been changed to "Thou shalt commit adultery." Nothing much came of it. The printer was fined, the copies destroyed and the moral fiber of the nation remained intact. But what happens when the verse at issue is not merely a printer's error but an ancient interpolation into an even more ancient text? Such was the case with 1 John 5:7, the biblical proof-text for the doctrine of the Trinity. Erasmus, Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke, among others, challenged the text's authenticity. When Erasmus left the verse out of the first edition of his monumental Greek New Testament (1516), he was roundly criticized for encouraging heresies, schisms and conflicts. Erasmus's critics knew that approaching the Bible in a scholarly fashion was dangerous: even the most pious attempts at rational understanding of scripture could result in skepticism or atheism. How can one appraise the Bible critically and still maintain its authority?. In his engaging and very thorough book, David Katz explores the ways this question was addressed in England from the Reformation onward. A professor at Tel Aviv University, Katz is the author of The Jews in the History of England, 1485-1850 and a host of books and articles on early- modem skepticism and religion. In God's Last Words, Katz maintains that every era responds to the Bible differently based on shifting cultural assumptions, and he examines the "lens through which the Bible was read" in various historical moments. While Reformation leaders accepted the transparency of the Bible's message, by the late 17th century, this view could no longer be maintained, Katz states. During the 18th century the Bible came to be regarded as just another literary text--one which increasingly had to conform to contemporary standards of realism. As Darwin's theories became widely known, 19th-century readers applied an evolutionary model to the Bible and began m see it as the product of a primitive mentality very different from their own. These new ways of reading the Bible seemed to destroy its authority completely until the fundamentalist movement reasserted the old Protestant belief in the Bible's sole authority.

单选题According to the text, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone seems to be very supportive of the congestion charging scheme because of

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} During the past 15 years, the most important component of executive pay packages, and the one most responsible for the large increase in the level of such compensation, has been stock-option grants. The increased use of option grants was justified as a way to align executives' interests with shareholders'. For various tax, accounting, and regulatory reasons, stock-option grants have largely comprised "at-the-money options": fights to purchase shares at an "exercise price" equal to the company's stock price on the grant date. In such at-the-money options, the selection of the grant date for awarding options determines the options' exercise price and thus can have a significant effect on their value. Earlier research by financial economists on backdating practices focused on the extent to which the company's stock price went up abnormally after the grant date. My colleagues and I focused instead on how a grant-date's price ranked in the distribution of stock prices during the month of the grant. Studying the universe of about 19,000 at-the-money, unscheduled grants awarded to public companies' CEOs during the decade 1996-2005, we found a clear relation between the likelihood of a day's being selected as a grant date for awarding options, and the rank of the day's stock price within the price distribution of the month: a day was most likely to be chosen if the stock price was at the lowest level of the month, second most likely to be chosen if the price was at the second-lowest level, and so forth. There is an especially large incidence of "lucky grants" (defined as grants awarded on days on which the stock price was at the lowest level of the month): 12 percent of all CEO option grants were lucky grants, while only 4 percent were awarded at the highest price of the month. The passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in August 2002 required firms to report grants within two days of any award. Most firms complied with this requirement, but more than 20 percent of grants continued to be reported after a long delay. Thus, the legislation could be expected to reduce but not eliminate backdating. The patterns of CEO luck are consistent with this expectation: the percentage of grants that were lucky was a high 15 percent before enactment of the law, and declined to a lower, but still abnormally high, level of 8 percent afterwards. Altogether, we estimate that about 1,150 CEO stock-option grants owed their financially advantageous status to opportunistic timing rather than to mere luck. This practice was spread over a significant number of CEOs and firms: we estimate that about 850 CEOs (about 10 percent) and about 720 firms (about 12 percent) received or provided such lucky grants. In addition, we estimate that about 550 additional grants at the second-lowest or third-lowest price of the month owed their status to opportunistic timing. The cases that have come under scrutiny thus far have led to a widespread impression that opportunistic timing has been primarily concentrated in "new economy" firms. But while the frequency of lucky grants has been somewhat higher in such firms, more than 80 percent of the opportunistically timed grants have been awarded in other sectors. Indeed, there is a significantly higher-than-normal incidence of lucky grants in each of the economy's 12 industries.

单选题When mentioning the "umbrella effect" (Para. 2), the author is talking about

单选题According to the passage, the invention of the visible - light microscope allowed scientists to ______.

单选题Lack of meteorological and tidal research means, researchers have to depend on

单选题Which of the following is the most suitable title for the text?

单选题After a shaky start, the Martian flotilla that has arrived over the past few weeks is getting down to business. Two of the five craft in it seem to be working perfectly. Two are lost, And a fifth is sick, but undergoing treatment. The most spectacular pictures so far have been provided by Mars Empress, the European Space Agency's contribution to the fleet. On January 28th this reached its final working orbit (which takes it over both poles, and thus allows it to see the whole of Mars over the course of a few days as the planet revolves beneath it). It has, however, been sending back data since shortly after it arrived, and a few days ago its controllers released a series of beautiful photographs, including a stereo image of Valles Marineris, a huge canyon that may have been formed by flowing water. The most scientifically significant result, though, has come from Opportunity, America's second Mars rover. One of Opportunity's cameras has photographed evidence of stratification. in nearby rocks. Such stratification indicates that the rocks concerned are sedimentary. The layers could be repeated wind-blown deposits, or consist of ash from successive volcanic eruptions. But the terrestrial rocks they most resemble are ones that have formed under water. The reason everyone is getting so excited is Because there is a widespread assumption that any form of tire which might dwell on Mars would need liquid water to live--or, even if it could now subsist by extracting moisture from ice, would have needed liquid water to evolve to that stage. Mars has seen more probes launched towards it than all of the other planets put together precisely because of this hope that it might harbour life. So there is a lot riding on the answer--not least the funding of future missions. Besides its scientific significance, the success of Opportunity has also helped to distract attention from the sudden refusal of Spirit, the first American rover to arrive on Mars, to talk to its controllers. This craft had tentatively, but successfully, nosed its way off its landing platform, and was about to drill its way into a nearby rock prior to doing a spot of chemical analysis, when it went silent. However, the engineers at NASA, America's space agency, are nothing if not resourceful, and they have a good record of carrying out running repairs on spacecraft that are millions of kilometres away. In the case of Spirit, they think that one of the craft's memory chips has got cluttered up with files created On the journey to Mars. That caused another chip, which manages the first, to throw a wobbly and to keep rebooting the computer. They are currently testing this idea by loading a diagnostic program on to the computer. In addition, as a precaution, they have deleted excess files from the equivalent memory chip on Opportunity. Spirit's spirits may thus revive. As to the failures, the Japanese abandoned their fly-by craft Nozomi in December, and the British team in charge of Beagle 2, which is presumed to have landed on December 25th but from which no signal has been received, also seems to have called it quits. Still, a 40～60% success rate (depending on whether Spirit is brought back into commission) is not bad by the historical standards of missions to Mars. Now, the real science begins.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} "My own feelings went from disbelief to excitement to downright fear," says Carl Hergenrother, 23, an Arizona undergraduate who verified a large asteroid barreling toward Earth with a 230em telescope atop nearby Kitt Peak. "It was scary, because there was the possibility that we were confirming the demise of some city somewhere, or some state or small country." Well, not quite. Early last week, his celestial interloper whizzed by Earth, missing the planet by 450620 km--a hairbreadth in astronomical terms. Perhaps half a kilometer across, it was the largest object ever observed to pass that close to Earth. Duncan Steel, an Australian astronomer, has calculated that if the asteroid had struck Earth, it would have hit at some 93450 km/h. The resulting explosion, scientists estimate, would have been in the {{U}}3000-to-12000-megaton range.{{/U}} That, says astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, a pioneer asteroid and comet hunter, "is like taking all of the U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons, putting them in one pile and blowing them all up." And what if one them is found to be on a collision course with Earth? Scientists at the national laboratories at Livermore, California, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, have devised a number of ingenious plans that, given enough warning time, could protect Earth from a threatening NEO. Their defensive weapons of choice include long-distance missiles with conventional or, more likely, nuclear warheads that could be used either to nudge an asteroid into a safe orbit or blast it to smithereens. Many people-including some astronomers--are understandably nervous about putting a standby squadron of {{U}}nuclear tipped missiles{{/U}} in place. Hence the latest strategy, which in some cases would obviate the need for a nuclear defense: propelling a fusillade of {{U}}cannonball-size steel spheres{{/U}} at an approaching asteroid. In a high-velocity encounter with a speeding NEO, explains Gregory Canavan, a senior scientist at Los Alamos, "the kinetic energy of the balls would change into heat energy and blow the thing apart." Some astronomers oppose any immediate defensive preparations, citing the high costs and low odds of a large object's striking Earth in the coming decades. But at the very least, Shoemaker contends, NEO detection should be accelerated. "There's this thing cal4ed the {{U}}'giggle factor'{{/U}} in Congress," he says, "people in Congress and also at the top level in NASA still don't take it seriously. But we should move ahead. It's a matter of prudence." The world, however, still seems largely unconcerned with the danger posed by large bodies hurtling in from space, despite the spectacle two years ago of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 riddling the planet Jupiter with mammoth explosions. It remains to be seen whether last week's record near-miss has changed any minds.

单选题A growing number of intercity commuters are turning to rail from air. They take the Eurostar train, which runs hourly city center-to-city center from London to Paris or Brussels, with check-in 20 minutes before departure or just 10 minutes for first-class passengers. Eurostar Group cun-ently holds 60% of the Paris-London market, with 92% of Eurostar trains arriving on time—24 percentage points better than aircraft times. High-speed trains, which travel at 200 to 300 kilometers an hour, have cut trip times between Madrid and Seville to two hours and 15 minutes from six hours, and between Rome and Florence to one hour and 35 minutes from three hours. On short journeys, rail clearly beats air travel for market share. High-speed rail wins 80% to 90% of market share of a route if the journey is under two hours, and 50% to 60% if travel takes two to three hours. Some airlines, such as Air France, have opted to cooperate and not compete with rail on shorter routes. As of March 25, Thalys, a joint venture of the French, Belgian, Dutch and German railroads, will replace Air France's flights between Paris and Brussels with rail transport. Lutihansa AG said it would begin rail links between the Stuttgart rail station and Frankfurt airport as of March1 in a pilot project with Deutsche Bahn AG, Germany's state-owned railroad. Simon McNamara, manager of infrastructure and environment for the European Regions Airline Association, which represents 82 regional airlines, complains that air and rail cannot compete fairly unless rail subsidies stop. On average, state support represented 38% of subsidized rail companies' income in 1997. "Railways' subsidies put them at a huge competitive advantage," Mr. McNamara said. "It just isn't a level playing field. " But not everything is fast on high-speed rail. Travelers complain about tardy service in the dining cars, that cabins are shabby and there is not enough room. " The Eurostar was really cramped. We had to sit with our legs wrapped around each other," said Clive France, director of Internetics Co. , an Internet design company. "The train's decor looked tired, dated and the carpet was filthy. " Catering and decor aside, the ease and speed of Europe's high-speed trains still looks likely to convert more passengers to rail in the future. Eventually, the various national high-speed networks will link up, leaving Europe with a rapid, significantly more efficient system across the whole continent.