单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Every second, 1 hectare of the world's rainforest is destroyed. That's equivalent to two football fields. An area the size of New York City is lost every day. In a year, that adds up to 31 million hectares—more than the land area of Poland. This alarming rate of destruction has serious consequences for the environment; scientists estimate, for example, that 137 species of plant, insect or animal become extinct every day due to logging. In British Columbia, where, since 1990, thirteen rainforest valleys have been clearcut, 142 species of salmon have already become extinct, and the habitats of grizzly bears, wolves and many other creatures are threatened. Logging, however, provides jobs, profits, taxes for the government and cheap products of all kinds for consumers, so the government is reluctant to restrict or control it. Much of Canada's forestry production goes towards making pulp and paper. According to the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, Canada supplies 34% of the world's wood pulp and 49% of its newsprint paper. If these paper products could be produced in some other way, Canadian forests could be preserved. Recently, a possible alternative way of producing paper has been suggested by agriculturalists and environmentalists: a plant called hemp. Hemp has been cultivated by many cultures for thousands of years. It produces fiber which can be made into paper, fuel, oils, textiles, food, and rope. For many centuries, it was essential to the economies of many countries because it was used to make the ropes and cables used on sailing ships; colonial expansion and the establishment of a world wide trading network would not have been possible without hemp. Nowadays, ships' cables are usually made from wire or synthetic fibres, but scientists are now suggesting that the cultivation of hemp should be revived for the production of paper and pulp. According to its proponents, four times as much paper can be produced from land using hemp rather than trees, and many environmentalists believe that the large-scale cultivation of hemp could reduce the pressure on Canada's forests. However, there is a problem: hemp is illegal in many countries of the world, This plant, so useful for fiber, rope, oil, fuel and textiles, is a species of cannabis, related to the plant from which marijuana is produced. In the late 1930s, a movement to ban the drug marijuana began to gather force, resulting in the eventual banning of the cultivation not only of the plant used to produce the drug, but also of the commercial fiber-producing hemp plant. Although both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp in large quantities on their own land, any American growing the plant today would soon find himself in prison—despite the fact that marijuana cannot be produced from the hemp plant, since it contains almost no THC (the active ingredient in the drug). In recent years, two major movements for legalization have been gathering strength. One group of activists believes that ALL cannabis should be legal—both the hemp plant and the marijuana plant—and that the use of the drug marijuana should not be an offense. They argue that marijuana is not dangerous or addictive, and that it is used by large numbers of people who are not criminals but productive members of society. They also point out that marijuana is less toxic than alcohol or tobacco. The other legalization movement is concerned only with the hemp plant used to produce fiber; this group wants to make it legal to cultivate the plant and sell the fiber for paper and pulp production. This second group has had a major triumph recently: in 1997, Canada legalized the farming of hemp for fiber. For the first time since 1938, hundreds of farmers are planting this crop, and soon we can expect to see pulp and paper produced from this new source.

单选题What would happen to the U. S. economy if all its commercial banks suddenly closed their doors? Throughout most of American history, the answer would have been a disaster of epic proportions, akin to the Depression wrought by the chain-reaction bank failures in the early 1930s. But in 1993 the startling answer is that a shutdown by banks might be far from cataclysmic. Consider this: though the economic recovery is now 27 months old, not a single net new dollar has been lent to business by banks in all that time. Last week the Federal Reserve reported that the amount of loans the nation's largest banks have made to businesses fell an additional $ 2. 4 billion in the week ending June 9, to $ 274. 8 billion. Fearful that the scarcity of bank credit might sabotage the fragile economy, the White House and federal agencies are working feverishly to encourage banks to open their lending windows. In the past two weeks, government regulators have introduced steps to make it easier for banks to lend. Is the government's concern fully justified? Who really needs banks these days? Hardly anyone, it turns out. While banks once dominated business lending, today nearly 80% of all such loans come from nonbank lenders like life insurers, brokerage firms and finance companies. Banks used to be the only source of money in town. Now businesses and individuals can write checks on their insurance companies, get a loan from a pension fund, and deposit paychecks in a money-market account with a brokerage firm. "It is possible for banks to die and still have a vibrant economy," says Edward Furash, a Washington bank consultant. The irony is that the accelerating slide into irrelevance comes just as the banks racked up record profits of $ 43 billion over the past 15 months, creating the illusion that the industry is staging a comeback. But that income was not the result of smart lending decisions. Instead of earning money by financing America's recovery, the banks mainly invested their funds--on which they were paying a bargain-basement 2% or so--in risk-free Treasury bonds that yielded 7%. That left bank officers with little to do except put their feet on their desks and watch the interest roll in. Those profits may have come at a price. Not only did bankers lose many loyal customers by withholding credit, they also inadvertently opened the door to a herd of nonbank competitors, who stampeded into the lending market. "The banking industry didn't see this threat," says Furash. "They are being fat, dumb and happy. They didn't realize that banking is essential to a modern economy, but banks are not./

单选题It is implied in the text that the contracts would fail to inform the public of NASA' s new vision if

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. We do not know who first set a broken leg, or launched a seaworthy boat, or calculated the length of the year, or manured a field; but we know all about the killers and destroyers. People think a great deal of them, so much so that on all the highest pillars in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a general or a soldier. And I think most people believe that the greatest countries are those that have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them as conquerors. It is just possible they are, but they are not the most civilized. Animals fight; so do savages; hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Even being good at getting other people to fight for you and telling them how to do it most efficiently—this, after all, is what conquerors and generals have done—is not being civilized. People fight to settle quarrels. Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their disputes other than by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the other side, and then saying that that side which has killed most has won. And not only has won, but, because it has won, has been in the right. For that is what going to war means; it means saying that might is right. That is what the story of mankind has on the whole been like. Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars in history, in which millions of people were killed or mutilated. And while today it is true that people do not fight and kill each other in the streets—while, that is to say, we have got to the stage of keeping the rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life—nations and countries have not learnt to do this yet, and still behave like savages. But we must not expect too much. After all, the race of men has only just started. From the point of view of evolution, human beings are very young children indeed, babies, in fact, of a few months old. Scientists reckon that there has been life of some sort on the earth in the form of jellyfish and that kind of creature for about twelve hundred million years; but there have been men for only one million years, and there have been civilized men for about eight thousand years at the outside. These figures are difficult to grasp; so let us scale them down. Suppose that we reckon the whole past of living creatures on the earth as one hundred years; then the whole past of man works out at about one month, and during that month there have been civilizations for between seven and eight hours. So you see there has been little time to learn in, but there will be oceans of time in which to learn better. Taking man's civilized past at about seven or eight hours, we may estimate his future, that is to say, the whole period between now and when the sun grows too cold to maintain life any longer on the earth, at about one hundred thousand years. Thus mankind is only at the beginning of its civilized life, and as I say, we must not expect too much. The past of man has been on the whole a pretty beastly business, a business of fighting and bullying and gorging and grabbing and hurting. We must not expect even civilized peoples not to have done these things. All we can ask is that they will sometimes have done something else.

单选题Kapor's purpose of funding OSAF is to

单选题Euthanasia is clearly a deliberate and intentional aspect of a killing. Taking a human life, even with subtle rites and consent of the party involved is barbaric. No one can justly kill another human being. Just as it is wrong for a serial killer to murder, it is wrong for a physician to do so as well, no matter what the motive for doing so may be. Many thinkers, including almost all orthodox Catholics, believe that euthanasia is immoral. They oppose killing patients in any circumstances whatever. However, they think it is all right, in some special circumstances, to allow patients to die by withholding treatment. The American Medical Association's policy statement on mercy killing supports this traditional view. In my paper "Active and Passive Euthanasia" I argue, against the traditional view, that there is in fact no normal difference between killing and letting die--if one is permissible, then so is the other. Professor Sullivan does not dispute my argument; instead he dismisses it as irrelevant. The traditional doctrine, he says, does not appeal to or depend on the distinction between killing and letting die. Therefore, arguments against that distinction "leave the traditional position untouched." Is my argument really irrelevant? I don't see how it can be. As Sullivan himself points out, nearly everyone holds that it is sometimes meaningless to prolong the process of dying and that in those cases it is morally permissible to let a patient die even though a few more hours or days could be saved by procedures that would also increase the agonies of the dying. But if it is impossible to defend a general distinction between letting people die and acting to terminate their lives directly, then it would seem that active euthanasia also may be morally permissible. But traditionalists like professor Sullivan hold that active euthanasia--the direct killing of patients--is not morally permissible; so, if my argument is sound, their view must be mistaken. I can not agree, then, that my argument "leave the traditional position untouched." However, I shall not press this point. Instead I shall present some further arguments against the traditional position, concentrating on those elements of the position which professor Sullivan himself thinks most important. According to him, what is important is, first, that we should never intentionally terminate the life of a patient, either by action or omission, and second, that we may cease or omit treatment of a patient, knowing that this will result in death, only if the means of treatment involved are extraordinary.

单选题Vienna was one of the music centers of Europe during the classical period, and Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were all active there. As the 1 of the Holy Roman Empire (which included parts of present-day Austria, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Czech and Slovakia), it was a 2 cultural and commercial center 3 a cosmopolitan character. Its population of almost 250,000 (in 1800) made Vienna the fourth largest city in Europe. All three 4 masters were born elsewhere, but they were 5 to Vienna to study and to seek 6 . In Vienna, Haydn and Mozart became close friends and influenced each other"s musical 7 . Beethoven traveled to Vienna at sixteen to play for Mozart; at twenty-two, he returned to study with Haydn. Aristocrats from all over the Empire spent the winter in Vienna, sometimes bringing their private 8 Music was an important part of court life, and a good orchestra was a 9 of prestige. Many of the nobility were excellent musicians. Much music was heard in 10 concerts where aristocrats and wealthy commoners played 11 professional musicians. Mozart and Beethoven often earned money by performing in these intimate concerts. The nobility 12 hired servants who could 13 as musicians. An advertisement in the Vienna Gazette of 1789 14 : "Wanted, for a house of the gentry, a manservant who knows how to play the violin well." In Vienna there was also 15 music, light and popular in 16 . Small street bands of wind and string players played at garden parties or under the windows of people 17 to throw 18 money. Haydn and Mozart wrote many outdoor entertainment 19 , 20 they called divertimentos or serenades. Vienna"s great love of music and its enthusiastic demand for new works made it the chosen city of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} If you are what you eat, then you are also what you buy to eat. And mostly what people buy is scrawled onto a grocery list, those ethereal scraps of paper that record the shorthand of where we shop and how we feed ourselves. Most grocery lists end up in the garbage. But if you live in St. Louis, they might have a half-life you never imagined: as a cultural document, posted on the Internet. For the past decade, Bill Keaggy, 33, the features photo editor at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has been collecting grocery lists and since 1999 has been posting them online at www. grocerylists, org. The collection, which now numbers more than 500 lists, is strangely addictive. The lists elicit twofold curiosity-about the kind of meal the person was planning and the kind of person who would make such a meal. What was the shopper with vodka, lighters, milk and ice cream on his list planning to do with them? In what order would they be consumed? Was it a he or a she? Who had written "Tootie food, kitten chow, bird food stick, toaster scrambles, coffee drinks"? Some shoppers organize their lists by aisle; others start with dairy, go to cleaning supplies and then back to dairy before veering off to Home Depot. A few meticulous ones note the price of every item. One shopper had written in large letters on an envelope, simply, "Milk." The thin lines of ink and pencil jutting and looping across crinkled and torn pieces of paper have a purely graphic beauty. One of life's most banal duties, viewed through the curatorial lens, can somehow seem pregnant with possibility. It can even appear poetic, as in the list that reads "meat, cigs, buns, treats." One thing Keaggy discovered is that Dan Quayle is not alone-few people can spell bananas and bagels, let alone potato. One list calls for "suchi" and "strimp." "Some people pass judgment on the things they buy," Keaggy says. At the end of one list, the shopper wrote "Bud Light" and then "good beer." Another scribbled "good loaf of white bread." Some pass judgment on themselves, like the shopper who wrote "read, stay home or go somewhere, I act like my mom, go to Kentucky, underwear, lemon." People send messages to one another, too. Buried in one list is this statement: "If you buy more rice, I'll punch you." And plenty of shoppers, like the one with both ice cream and diet pills on the list, reveal their vices.

单选题Jeffrey Sachs is now devoted to

单选题In the text, the typical claim by the first-time buyers is

单选题Kimiyuki Suda should he a perfect customer for Japan's car-makers. He's a young, successful executive at an Internet-services company in Tokyo and has plenty of disposable (1) . He used to own Toyota's Hilux Surf, a sport utility vehicle. But now he uses (2) subways and trains. "It's not inconvenient at all," he says. (3) , "having a car is so 20th century." Suda reflects a worrisome (4) in Japan; the automobile is losing its emotional appeal, (5) among the young, who prefer to spend their money on the latest electronic devices. (6) mini-cars and luxury foreign brands are still popular, everything in between is (7) . Last year sales fell 6.7 percent, 7.6 percent (8) you don't count the mini-car market. There have been (9) one-year drops in other nations: sales in Germany fell 9 percent in 2007 (10) a tax increase. But experts say Japan is (11) in that sales have been decreasing steadily (12) time. Since 1990, yearly new-car sales have fallen from 7.8 million to 5.4 million units in 2007. Alarmed by this state of (13) , the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) (14) a comprehensive study of the market in 2006. It found that a (15) wealth gap, demographic changes and (16) lack of interest in cars led Japanese to hold their (17) longer, replace their cars with smaller ones (18) give up car ownership altogether. JAMA (19) a further sales decline of 1.2 percent this year. Some experts believe that if the trend continues for much longer, further consolidation in the automotive sector is (20) .

单选题The CalPERS lawsuit indicates that ______.