单选题The passage states that, before the twentieth century, which of the following was true of many employers?

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Thomas Hardy's impulses as a writer, all of which indulged in his novels, were numerous and divergent, and they did not always work together in harmony. Hardy was to some degree interested in exploring his characters' psychologies, though impelled less by curiosity than by sympathy. Occasionally he felt the impulse to comedy (in all its detached coldness) as well as the impulse to farce, but he was more often inclined to see tragedy and record it. He was also inclined to literary realism in the several senses of that phrase; He wanted to describe ordinary human beings. He wanted to speculate on their dilemmas rationally (and, unfortunately even schematically); and he wanted to record precisely the material universe. Finally, he wanted to be more than a realist. He wanted to transcend what he considered to be the banality of solely recording things exactly and to express as well his awareness of the occult and the strange. In his novels these various impulses were sacrificed to each other inevitably and often inevitably, because Hardy did not care in the way that novelists such as Flaubert or James learned, and therefore took paths of least resistance. Thus one impulse often surrendered to a fresher one and, unfortunately, instead of exacting a compromise, simply disappeared. A desire to throw over reality a light that never was might give way abruptly to the desire on the part of what we might consider a novelist scientist to record exactly and concretely the structure and texture of a flower. In this instance, the new impulse was at least an energetic one. And thus its indulgence did not result in a {{U}}relaxed{{/U}} style. But on other occasions Hardy abandoned a perilous risky and highly energizing impulse in favor of what was for him the fatally relaxing impulse to classify and schematize abstractly. When a relaxing impulse was indulged, the style--that sure index of an author's literary worth--was certain to become verbose. Hardy's weakness derived from his apparent inability to control the comings and goings of these divergent impulses and from his unwillingness to cultivate and sustain the energetic and risky ones. He submitted of first one and then another, and the spirit blew where it listed; hence the unevenness of any one of his novels. His most controlled novel, {{U}}Under the Greenwood Tree{{/U}}, prominently exhibits two different but reconcilable impulses--a desire to be a realist-historian and a desire to be a psychologist of love but the slight interlockings of plot are not enough to bind the two completely together. Thus even this book splits into two distinct parts.

单选题We are also told that Abraham Lincoln______

单选题Britain"s National Health Service (NHS) has been hailed as "a national religion" inspiring uncritical attachment. Recently though, revelations of high death rates in a number of provincial hospitals have shaken this faith. Yet as arguments rage about whose policies are to blame for failings and errors, the NHS seen from beyond Britain"s shores looks more impressive than its bad reputation at home. Many emerging economies are showing renewed interest in the system that was founded by Aneurin Bevan, a Labour politician, in 1948. Nigel Edwards, a former NHS official and health analyst with the King"s Fund, a charitable think-tank, says the main reason is its status as a "national" enterprise, providing a wide range of services to the entire population, regardless of people"s ability to pay. That aspiration unites governments as diverse as China, India, Mexico and South Africa: they are all trying to forge national health provision from piecemeal set-ups—and spending growing chunks of their GDP on the quest. Although many emerging economies also want to hang onto private insurance schemes, they relish the NHS"s emphasis on fairness towards poorer folk. Julio Frenk, a former Mexican health minister now at Harvard, praises the British approach for breaking the link between earnings and health entitlements, a problem for insurance-based systems, because premiums are often linked to wages. That solution appeals to places with large populations outside regular paid employment. "If you have to wait until they all get regular jobs," Mr. Frenk says, "you"ll wait too long." Tailoring British-inspired services to low budgets can also spark bright new ideas, with more entrepreneurial focus than is welcome at home. Niti Pall, a doctor from Birmingham, has set up a social-enterprise company with former NHS colleagues to deliver around 150 primary care practices to Indian cities, mod-elled on British GP services. Few countries want to copy say, the Care Quality Commission, which ignored hospital failures. But other British organizations are emulated. Faced with a high cost of drugs, the Chinese are studying the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which checks on the cost-efficiency of medicines and treatments. Just as the NHS influences other countries, could it learn from them? Harvard"s Mr. Frenk believes the NHS might emulate the Oportunidades, scheme of conditional cash transfers set up in Mexico in 2002 to encourage the country"s poorest people to look after their health. Britain still lacks widespread incentives for healthy living, like South Africa"s Vitality scheme, which offers discounts on wholesome foods in return for attending the gym. And as the demand for better health-care value grows, countries with tight budgets and high aspirations, from Brazil to Ethiopia and Mozambique are breaking down stiff workplace demarcations to enhance hospital productivity, a debate still largely out of bounds in Britain. The NHS"s success overseas shows that it is not as hopeless a cause as domestic doom mongers believe. But as it exports its best features, it also needs to pay more attention to the improvements of younger, less hidebound systems. The nation"s religion has much to teach—hut a lot to learn, too.

单选题 Time was, old people knew their place. Power was passed to sons and daughters, crowns placed on younger heads. Not any more. The elderly are no longer a sidelined sliver of society, but its mainstream. During the next two generations, the number of the world's people older than 60 will quadruple, rising from 606 million now to 2 billion in 2050. For the first time in human history, the elderly will outnumber children. More and more, it's not the children who are our future, it's the seniors. The graying of the globe is quite simply the "most significant population shift in history," says Ann Pawliczko of the United Nations Population Fund. And growing old doesn't mean what it used to. Better medical care has increased the average global life expectancy by two decades-to 66-in as many generations. "One hundred is the new 60," says Marty Davis, of the American Association of Retired People. In the West, technology and wealth are empowering the aged. They are an increasingly vocal political lobby and muscular consumers. The portfolio of Senioragency, Europe's only ad agency aimed at the 50-plus market, used to consist of hearing aids and insurance. Now mainstream companies like Coca-Cola and Siemens are approaching the firm. "We're used to thinking of a 60-year-old who looks like "Whistler's Mother," but we should be thinking about someone who looks like Tina Turner," says Gloria Gutman, president of the International Association of Gerontology. The rapidly shifting demographics are forcing a radical rethinking of many facets of our lives. Two billion elderly will need new systems of care and support. The growing number of old people who want to live independently will need housing, streets and cityscapes that will accommodate their slower pace. Smart technology will have to plug nursing shortages; architects and social planners will have to start catering for populations with dementia and failing eyesight or hearing. In contrast to the youth-driven culture of the last half century, the elderly will set the agenda for how the late-21st century lives. Already societies have begun facing the pension crisis, the scariest specter haunting Western treasuries. For one thing, 80 percent of the world already can't afford to retire. Even in Western Europe and the United States, say experts, the very concept of retirement may soon be viewed as a historical aberrational social curiosity from the era between World War II and the war on terror. And paying for the elderly is just a fraction of the massive upheaval underway. What's been dubbed "{{U}}the silent revolution{{/U}}" is changing everything from politics to tax structures to the width of the world's doorways (for wheelchairs).

单选题It can be learnt from the text that Georgia's Governor Roy Barnes

单选题Price may be no consideration at all when customers buy ______.

单选题Opportunities for water companies are flowing around the world because of looming shortages and decades of underinvestment. Saudi Arabia and Algeria, where water shortages have become acute, are placing billions of dollars of contracts out to bid to improve water supplies for their growing populations. The trend is expected to grow, as 40% of the world's population will suffer water shortages by 2050, according to the United Nations Development Program. Global warming is expected to exacerbate the problem. Saudi Arabia began privatizing water services after shortages sparked riots last November in Jeddah. Loay Ahmed Musallam, the deputy water minister, said the first contract to manage water supplies for Riyadh would be awarded this year. By 2010, private companies will provide water for half the population, he added. Saudi Arabia plans to invest $ 37 billion over five years to improve water pipelines. Leaks cost 1 million cubic meters of water a day--the output of seven desalination plants--the minister said. Even after putting contracts out to bid, governments still face politically sensitive decisions. In Saudi Arabia, for example, water tariffs are among the lowest in the world. Musallam said Saudis consumed twice as much water as Britons in spite of living in one of the driest parts of the globe. The government is introducing measures to encourage water conservation. Even in the US, the shortfall between actual investment and the industry's real needs is estimated to be $122 billion for waste water treatment and $100 billion for drinking water over the next 12 years, said Michael Dean of the Environmental Protection Agency. "People take for granted clean, safe, inexpensive water, but the old ways of paying for water in the US no longer meet our needs," Dean said. Water services in the US are mainly owned by municipalities, which fiercely resist privatization. Gasson says decades of underinvestment are catching up with the water industry. "Either tariffs or subsidies will have to rise. We are at an inflection point. Investment now is unavoidable," he said. David Lloyd Owen, a British consultant, estimated the investment shortfall for the global water industry at $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years. "The question is how to overcome political resistance to the involvement of the private sector," he said. "The water industry is one of the most conservative in the world. By and large, it is still run by bureaucrats and engineers," Owen said. "There is also a passionate and well-organized lobby against privatization." He sees more room for the private sector as technology for desalination and recycling come to play an increasing role in the industry. Banks are also becoming more creative in matching the financing of capital outlays in the industry with the long lives of water treatment facilities.

单选题The study of law has been recognized for centuries as a basic intellectual discipline in European universities. However, only in recent years has it become a feature of undergraduate programs in English-Canadian universities. Traditionally, legal learning has been viewed in such institutions as the special preserve of lawyers, rather than a necessary part of the intellectual equipment of an educated person. Happily, the older and more continental view of legal education is establishing itself in a number of Canadian universities and some have even begun to offer undergraduate degrees in law. If the study of law is beginning to establish itself as part and parcel of a general education, its aims and methods should appeal directly to journalism educators. Law is a discipline which encourages responsible judgment. On the one hand, it provides opportunities to analyze such ideas as justice, democracy and freedom. On the other, it links these concepts to everyday realities in a manner which is parallel to the links journalists forge on a daily basis as they cover and comment on the news. For example, notions of evidence and fact, of basic rights and public interest are at work in the process of journalistic judgment and production just as in courts of law. Sharpening judgment by absorbing and reflecting on law is a desirable component of a journalist's intellectual preparation for his or her career. But the idea that the journalist must understand the law more profoundly than an ordinary citizen turns on an understanding of the established conventions and special responsibilities of the news media. Politics or, more broadly, the functioning of the state, is a major subject for journalists. The better informed they are about the way the state works, the better their reporting will be. In fact, it is difficult to see how journalists who do not have a clear grasp of the basic features of the Canadian Constitution can do a competent job on political stories. Furthermore, the legal system and the events which occur within it are primary subjects for journalists. While the quality of legal journalism varies greatly, there is an undue reliance amongst many journalists on interpretations supplied to them by lawyers. While comment and reaction from lawyers may enhance stories, it is preferable for journalists to rely on their own notions of significance and make their own judgments. These can only come from a well- grounded understanding of the legal system.

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} More than a hundred years ago, before the Civil War, a crew of cowboys stood outside a large horse corral, With them was their boss Bradford Grimes, a cattleman, who owned a large South Texas ranch near the Gulf of Mexico. Just then, Mrs. Grimes, the cattleman's wife, came to the ranch house door and cried out, "Bradford! Bradford! Those Blacks are worth a thousand dollars apiece. One might get killed." The cowboys laughed, but they knew she was telling the truth. For they were all Black slaves. Bradford Grimes was their owner. Most of the first Black cowboys were slaves, brought by their masters from the old South. On the plantations in the South, the slaves cut cotton. On the ranches in Texas they had to learn a new trade—breaking horses and handling long-horns. Some were taught by Mexican vaqueros, some by Indiana who knew the ways of horses and cattle. Grimes was only one of hundreds of slaveowning ranchers who ran cattle in Texas. The ranchers had brought their families and slaves from Mississippi, Georgia, and other southern states. They came on horseback, on foot, and in wagons. Some ranchers settled near the Mexican border, but there they found that it was too easy for their slaves to escape. Even slaves as far north as Austin, the capital of Texas, came to think of Mexico as the promised land. As early as 1845, the year that Texas became a state, a Texas newspaper reported the escape of twenty-five Blacks. "They were mounted on some of the best horses that could be found, "the story said, "and several of them were well armed." Thousands of other Black slaves escaped in the same way. All-Black cattle crews were common throughout central and eastern Texas. There were even a few free Blacks who owned ranches before the Civil War. Aaron Ashworth was one of them, and he owned 2500 cattle, as well as some slaves of his own. He employed a White schoolmaster to tutor his children. Black cowboys helped to tame and settle a wild country.

单选题The main idea of the text is that

单选题A. fumble 13. crumple C. stumble D. stagger

单选题Which of the following best expresses the main point of Paragraph 1 ?______

单选题The author believes the real cause for the increase of divorces today is that______.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Reading the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} After Los Angeles, Atlanta may be America's most car-dependent city. Atlantans sentimentally give their cars names, compare speeding tickets and jealously guard any side street where it is possible to park. The city's roads are so well worn that the first act of the new mayor, Shirley Franklin, was to start repairing potholes. In 1998, 13 metro counties lost federal highway funds because their air-pollution levels violated the Clean Air Act. The American Highway Users Alliance ranked three Atlanta interchanges among the 18 worst {{U}}bottlenecks{{/U}} in the country. Other cities in the same fix have reorganized their highways, imposed commuter and car taxes, or expanded their public-transport systems. Atlanta does not like any of these things. Public transport is a vexed subject, too. Atlanta's metropolitan region is divided into numerous county and smaller city governments, which find it hard to work together. Railways now serve the city center and the airport, but not much else; bus stops are often near invisible poles, offering no indication of which bus might stop there, or when. Georgia's Democratic governor, Roy Barnes, who hopes for reelection in November, has other plans. To win back the federal highway money lost under the Clean Air Act, he created the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA), a 15-member board with the power to make the county governments, the city and the ten-county Atlanta Regional Commission cooperate on transport plans, whether they like it or not. Now GRTA has issued its own preliminary plan, allocating $ 4.5 billion over the next three years for a variety of schemes. The plan earmarks money to widen roads; to have an electric shuttle bus shuttle tourists among the elegant villas of Buckhead; and to create a commuter rail link between Atlanta and Macon, two hours to the south. Counties will be encouraged, with generous ten-to-one matching funds, to start express bus services. Public goodwill, however, may not stretch as far as the next plan, which is to build the Northern Arc highway for 65 miles across three counties north of the city limits. GRTA has allotted $270m for this. Supporters say it would ease the congestion on local roads; opponents think it would worsen over-development and traffic. The counties affected, and even GRTA's own board, are divided. The governor is in favor, however; and since he can appoint and fire GRTA'S members, that is probably the end of the story. Mr Barnes has a tendency to do as he wants, regardless. His arrogance on traffic matters could also lose him votes. But Mr Barnes think that Atlanta's slowing economy could do him more harm than the anti-sprawl movement.