单选题Without an oversized calendar tacked to their kitchen wall, Fern Reiss and her family could never keep track of all the meetings, appointments, home-schooling lessons, and activities that fill their busy days. "I'm not sure they make a calendar large enough for us," says Ms. Reiss of Newton, Mass. , explaining that her life revolves around "two companies, three children, a spouse, a lot of community involvement, a social life, the kids' social life, and volunteering in a soup kitchen every week." "Everybody we know is leading a frenetic life," she adds. "Ours is frenetic, too, but we're spending the bulk of our time with our kids. Even though we're having a crazy life, we're having it in the right way." Although extreme busyness is hardly a new phenomenon, the subject is getting renewed attention from researchers. "A good life has to do with life having a direction, life having a narrative with the stories we tel1 ourselves," Chuck Darrah, an anthropologist, says. "Busyness fragments all that. We're absolutely focused on getting through the next hour, the next day, the next week. It does raise questions: If not busyness, what? If we weren't so Busy, what would we be doing? If people weren't so busy, would they be a poet, a painter?" For the Reisses, part of living a good life, however busy, means including the couple's children in volunteer work and community activities. "We want the kids to see that that's a priority," she says, Between working full time as a publicist, caring for her home, spending time with her husband and extended family, and helping her grandmother three times a week, a woman .says, "I am exhaust- ed all the time." Like others, she concedes that she sets "somewhat unrealistic expectations" for what she can accomplish in a day, Being realistic is a goal Darrah encourages, saying, "We can do everything, but we can't do everything well and at the same time." He cautions that busyness can result in "poor decisions, sloppy quality, and neglect of the things and people that matter most in the long run." He advises: "Stop taking on so much, and keep in perspective what's most important to you." Darrah's own schedule re- mains full, but he insists he does not feel busy. His secret? Confining activities to things he must do and those he wants to do. He and his wife do not overschedule their children. To those with one eye on the calendar and the other on the deck, Darrah offers this advice: "Before you take anything on, ask yourself: Do you have to do this? Do you want to do this? Live with a kind of mindfulness so you don't wake up and discover that your life is a whirl of transportation and communication, and you've hollowed yourself out./

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} The church of La Placita, "the little square", formally called Nuestra Se ora Reina de Los Angeles, was founded under Spanish rule at around the same time as the pueblo bearing the same name, the future Los Angeles. Catholicism and Hispanic culture seemed inseparable there. They still largely are. Virtually all Father Estrada's parishioners are Hispanic, most of them of Mexican extraction. When Guatemalan and Salvadorean refugees showed up in the 1980s, it was natural for them, as good Catholics, to find sanctuary at La Placita, where they slept on the pews and Father Estrada gave them food. It was natural again in 2006, when the country went on an anti-immigrant binge, for many of the Latino counter-marches to start from La Placita. Latinos still come from all over southern California for baptisms and prayer, social services and a sense of community. But more and more grandmothers also come to Father Estrada with worries about children or grandchildren who have become hermanos separados, separated brothers, after defecting to an evangelical church, usually one with a Pentecostal flavour. The converts may have followed one of the evangelicals who come to La Placita to recruit, or friends whom they met at a spiritual rock concert or picnic. "I don't worry, but I find it to be challenging," says Father Estrada. Some 68% of Hispanics in America are still Catholic, according to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, and their absolute number, thanks to immigration and higher birth rates, continues to increase. But about 15% are now born-again evangelicals, who are fast gaining "market share", as Gaston Espinosa, a professor of religion at Claremont McKenna College, puts it. He estimates that about 3.9m Latino Catholics have converted, and that "for everyone who comes back to the Catholic Church, four leave it. " The main reason, he thinks, is ethnic identity. Evangelical services are not only in Spanish, as many Catholic sermons are nowadays, but are performed by Latinos rather than Irish or Polish-American priests, with the cadences, rhythms, innuendos and flow familiar from the mother country. The evangelical services tend to be livelier than Catholic liturgy and to last longer, often turning into an outing lasting the whole day. Women play greater roles, and there are fewer parishioners for each pastor than in the Catholic Church. The evangelical churches are also more "experiential", says Samuel Rodriguez, a third- generation Puerto Rican Pentecostal pastor and the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, an evangelical association. In the Catholic Church, a believer's relationship with Jesus is mediated through hierarchies and bureaucracies, he says, whereas the evangelical churches provide direct access to Jesus. The Pentecostals go one step further, with the "gifts of the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians) letting believers speak in tongues and pray for divine healing. "This is the first group in America to reconcile both the vertical and the horizontal parts of the cross," says Mr. Rodriguez. By this he means that the Latino evangelical churches emphasise not only " covenant, faith and righteousness" (the vertical part), as white evangelicals do, but also " community, public policy and social justice" (the horizontal part), as many black evangelicals, but fewer white ones, do. To Latino evangelicals it is all one thing, he says, and the social outreach the church provides goes far beyond any government programme, with pastors snatching young men away from gang life and fighting to uphold the rights of immigrants. This also means that Latino evangelicals as a political force are distinct from white evangelicals. Many of the whites have veered hard right, hating abortion and gay marriage and reliably voting Republican, though less so very recently. Latinos tend to be even more pro-life and traditional marriage than whites, says Mr. Rodriguez, but only because they know that "mom and dad in the home is the prime antidote to gangs and drugs. " That same pragmatism makes them believe in government services and the taxes that pay for them, and of course in immigrant rights. As voters, he reckons, Latino evangelicals are therefore the quintessential independents, up for grabs by either party. But it may be American Catholicism that changes the most. About a third of American Catholics are Latino now, and their share is growing. They are also different Catholics, with more than half describing themselves as " charismatics ", according to the Pew report. Charismatics remain in their traditional denomination, but believe in some aspects of Pentecostalism, such as the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially the speaking in tongues. Latino charismatics see themselves as a renewal movement within Catholicism, as it converges with other churches. And in general all churchgoing Latinos tend to see themselves as renewing Christianity in America. That makes them a powerful force as demographic changes turn America ever more Hispanic, and increasingly different from secular Europe.

单选题According to the text, the teacher shortage is something

单选题The main purpose of Paragraph 2 is to ______.

单选题According to studies cited by the National Eating Disorders Association, 42 percent of girls in first through third grade want to be thinner, 81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat, and 51 percent of 9-and 10-year-old girls feel better about themselves if they are on a diet. In many ,ways, this fixation on weight at ever earlier ages comes at an inopportune time physiologically. At a recent Hadassah meeting at the Woodlands Community Temple in White Plains, Dr. Maxcie Schneider, the director of adolescent medicine at Greenwich Hospital, and Erica Leon, a registered dietitian, spoke about early adolescence as a time when a little bit of pudginess is necessary for proper growth, and youngsters wrestle constantly with their body image. "I can't tell you how many kids I've seen who've been on the Atkins diet, or on the South Beach diet," Ms. Leon said, adding that overweight children who try diets can be at risk of developing eating disorders. After the presentation, three mothers from Hartsdale who wanted to help their children avoid such issues spoke about how their young daughters are already beginning to become weight-conscious. Anorexia is a mental illness in which the victim eats barely enough to survive, because her distorted thinking makes her think she is fat. Bulimia, a mental illness in which someone binges on large amounts of food, then purges it through vomiting or the abuse of laxatives, is on the rise, and is surfacing in younger and younger patients, mostly girls, said Judy Scheel, the director of the Center for Eating Disorder Recovery in Mount Kisco. About 90 percent of victims of eating disorders are female, and often the male victims are on teams like wrestling and crew, where they must keep their weight low for competitive reasons. Dr. Scheel believes that where girls claim the eating disorder enables them to be thin, boys typically state their goal is to achieve or maintain a muscular but thin physique. The average onset for bulimia used to be 17, but to see teenagers age 14 and 15 with bulimia is common these days, Dr. Scheel said. Other people believe the disorders have genetic or chemical components, and many people with eating disorders respond well to anti-depressants, for example. "A certain amount of education is necessary to help young people avoid becoming obsessed with their body image. Teachers need to stay outside of talking about diets," Dr. Scheel said. "It's like a parent, always talking about their next diet. You have to help a child understand that if you cat healthily and exercise, your body is going to take care of itself." And in relatively homogenous populations, like in some Westchester schools, competition runs high. "So the young people don't really see how beautiful diversity is," she said, "and they tend to all be competing for kind of the same goals./

单选题Low levels of literacy and numeracy have a damaging impact on almost every aspect of adults, according to a survey published yesterday, which offers (1) of a developing underclass. Tests and (2) with hundreds of people born in a week in 1958 graphically illustrated the (3) of educational underachievement. The effects can be seen in unemployment, family (4) , low incomes, depression and social inactivity. Those who left school at 16 with poor basic skills had been employed for up to four years less than good readers (5) they reached 37. Professor John Bynner, of City University, who carried the research, said that today’s (6) teenagers would even encounter greater problems because the supply of (7) jobs had shrunk. Almost one fifth of the 1,700 people interviewed for yesterday’s report had poor literacy and almost half (8) with innumeracy, a proportion (9) other surveys for the Basic Skills Agency. Some could not read a child’s book, and most found difficult (10) written instruction. Poor readers were twice as likely to be a low wage and four times likely to live in a household where partners worked. Women in this (11) were five times as likely to be (12) depressed, (13) both tended to feel they had no control over their lives, and to trust others (14) . Those who had low literacy and numeracy were seldom (15) in any community organization and less likely than others to (16) in a general election. There had been no (17) in the literary level of (18) reporting problems. Alan Wells, the agency’s director, said: “ The results emphasize the dangers of developing an underclass people, who were out of work, (19) depressed and often labeled themselves as (20) . There is a circle of marginalization, with the dice against these people and their families.”

单选题"A classic economic example of zero-sum boom" (Paragraph 3) connotes

单选题According to the passage, the Wi-Fi standard

单选题Few beyond California' s technology crowd recognise the name Larry Sonsini; none within its circle could fail to. For four decades he has been lawyer, adviser and friend to many prominent companies and investors. Some consider him the most powerful person in Silicon Valley. Companies beg for his law firm to represent them. The 65-year-old chairman of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and more recently, as outside counsel to Hewlett-Packard (HP), for initially defending the board's dubious investigative practices. WSG&R boasts 600 lawyers and represents around half of Silicon Valley's public companies, including Apple? Sun Microsystems and Google. Last year it ranked first in private-equity and venture-capital deals, with nearly twice as many as its closest rival. Over the past five years WSG&R has worked on over 1 000 mergers and acquisitions, collectively worth over $ 260 billion. The recent troubles cast a shadow over WSG&R's reputation. Although Mr. Sonsini is not accused of wrongdoing himself, many of his firm's clients are on the ropes. Former executives at Brocade Communications suffered criminal charges in July, Mr. Sonsini Served on Brocade's board until last year and his firm was its outside counsel. He also was on the boards of Pixar, Echelon, Lattice Semiconductor, LSI Logic and Novell all firms at which the issuing of stock options is being called into question. WSG&R dismisses the idea that Mr. Sonsini faced a conflict of interest by acting as both director and legal adviser to so many firms and says he did not advise HP in its investigation of board members. Mr. Sonsini initially said it was "well done and within legal limits". It now seems it was neither.

单选题Often, when a fashion designer dies and his life"s work is assessed, some insistent hyperbole is necessary before the death matters to anyone beyond his loyal band of ladies who spend their time dashing between luncheons and charity balls. Most modern women are not going to weep at the passing of a fashion designer whose heyday was some 30 years ago. But this time, it"s Yves Saint Laurent who has died. And no exaggeration is required to explain the impact he has had on modern fashion. In the 1960s and 70s, when he was at the height of his influence, he brought popular culture, a mannish swagger, sexual power and ethnic awareness to fashion. He gave women a wardrobe that spoke of confidence and authority. He didn"t give them armor for the boardroom as much as he gave them the sartorial equivalent of chutzpah, tough talk and bawdiness. He gave dames and broads their costumes. And most importantly, he began fashion"s steady march toward democracy. But Saint Laurent was not merely a part of fashion history, he was instrumental in writing the vast majority of it. He popularized the bohemian-chic sensibility that later went on to define the hippie aesthetic and its many artsy, grungy, hipster derivations. He welcomed so-called exotic and unorthodox influences into his work, such as the traditional prints of Africa and the folkloric costumes of Russia. He forged a relationship between fashion and the art world, most dynamically with his Mondrian dress of 1965. "Most people are lucky if they can do one thing, if they can make one major contribution," fashion historian Valerie Steele said. Saint Laurent"s contributions could fill volumes. There was something profoundly democratic in the work of one of the fashion industry"s most rarefied designers. He found inspiration in cultures that were not part of care society. And he celebrated the beauty of women who continue to struggle to find acceptance within fashion"s narrowly defined aesthetics. Those who worry about the lack of diversity in the fashion industry in 2014 can look back fondly to the 1970s, when Saint Laurent regularly used black models on his runway—not as gimmicks in a collection that had been inspired by Africa but as representations of a kind of beauty he considered as valid and as enticing as any other. Saint Laurent retired from ready-to-wear in 1998 and a few years later closed his couture house. A long line of designers have tried to reinvent his style and revive the Saint Laurent label for the 21st century. But none of them has been able to make it profitable. Sell enough handbags and the money will come. But it"s a rare feat when a designer can leave a legacy that not only changed fashion but transformed the way in which we see ourselves. It may not be enough to make a woman weep, but it certainly is enough to make her smile.

单选题According to the passage, which of the following measures is the least helpful in protecting the environment?

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Parents can easily come down with an acute case of schizophrenia from reading the contradictory reports about the state of the public schools. One sat of experts asserts that the schools are better than they have been for years. Others say that the schools are in terrible shape and are responsible for every national problem from urban poverty to the trade deficit. One group of experts looks primarily at such indicators as test scores, and they cheer what they see: all the indicators—reading scores, minimum competency test results, the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores—are up, some by substantial margins. Students are required to take more academic courses—more mathematics and science, along with greater stress on basic skills, including knowledge of computers. More than 40 state legislatures have mandated such changes. But in the eyes of another set of school reformers such changes are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive. These experts say that merely toughening requirements, without either improving the quality of instruction or, even more important, changing the way schools are organized and children are taught makes the schools worse rather than better. They challenge the nature of the test, mostly multiple choice or true or false, by which children's progress is measured; they charge that raising the test scores by drilling pupils to come up with the right answers does not improve knowledge, understanding and the capacity to think logically and independently. In addition, these critics fear that the get-tough approach to school reform will cause more of the youngsters at the bottom to give up and drop out. This, they say, may improve national scores but drain even further the nation's pool of educated people. The way to cut through the confusion is to understand the different yardsticks used by different observers. Compared with what schools used to be like "in the good old days", with lots of drill and uniform requirements, and the expectation that many youngsters who could not make it would drop out and find their way into unskilled jobs--by those yardsticks the schools have measurably improved in recent years. But by the yardsticks of those experts who believe that the old school was deficient in teaching the skills needed in the modem world, today' s schools have not become better. These educators believe that rigid new mandates may actually have made the schools worse.

单选题As summer rolls around, lawmakers in Washington are preparing to vote on a jobs bill that would include $1 billion for summer jobs for teens. Much of the urgency for the program stems from the private-sector plunge in summer jobs for teenagers over the past few years. It's no secret that the recession walloped teens' jobs as much as it did their parents. But some economists find the clamor for public jobs programs a little ironic, given last year's midrecession minimum wage increase, which may have reduced teen employment even beyond the recessionary drop. Before the minimum wage jumped to $ 7.25 an hour last summer, University of California-Irvine economist David Neumark estimated that it would lead to an additional 300 000 job losses for teens and young adults. The 2009 wage increase was set in motion in a better labor market in May 2007, when Congress voted to boost the minimum from $ 5.15 an hour to $ 7.25 an hour over the course of the next two years. It's hard to parse the jobs lost because of the recession and those lost because of the minimum wage increase--there's no direct evaluation of the impact of the wage increase yet--but it's likely that raising the wage floor contributed to the record-high teen unemployment rates, Neumark says. "Almost everyone accepts that minimum wages decrease employment or likely increase unemployment of the least-skilled," he says. Neumark advocated for delaying last year's increase. The unemployment rate for teenagers was 25.4 percent in April, compared with 9.9 percent overall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Teens generally have higher unemployment rates. In November 2007, the month before the start of the recession, the unemployment rate for the overall population was 4. 7 percent, versus 16. 2 percent for workers aged 16 to 19. Teen employment has been declining for some time. The percentage of teens with jobs has fallen from about 57 percent in 1989 to about 40 percent in 2007 (both dates reflect healthy economies). The reasons are diverse. For one thing, increased school enrollment appears to account for about a third of that decline, according to the Economic Policy Institute. "For teens, there has been a remarkable long-term shift from summer employment to summer enrollment," reports EPI economist Heidi Shierholz. One of the critical issues for job-seeking teens is the changing face of the competition, which is increasingly skilled. "Not only are they competing with each other for available positions, but they are competing with recent college graduates and job seekers who have two or more years of on-the-job experience and are willing to take almost any position that provides a steady paycheck," says John Challenger of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray Christmas.

单选题Personality is to a large extent inherent. A-type parents usually 1 A-type offspring. But the environment must also have a profound effect 2 if competition is important to the parents, it is 3 to become a major factor in the lives of their children. One place where children 4 A characteristics is school, which is, 5 its very nature, a highly competitive institution. Too many schools 6 the "win at all costs" moral standard and measure their success by sporting achievements. The current 7 for making children compete against their classmates or against the 8 produces a two-layer system, in which competitive A types seem in some way better than their B type fellows. Being too 9 to win can have dangerous consequences: remember that Pheidippides, the first marathon runner, 10 dead seconds after saying. "Rejoice, we conquer!" 11 the worst form of competition in schools is the disproportionate emphasis on examinations. There is, for example, a 12 school that allows pupils to concentrate on those things they do well. The 13 of competition by examination are somewhat questionable, but competition in the certain 14 of failure is positively harmful. 15 , it is neither practical nor desirable that all A youngsters change into B"s. The world needs types, and schools have an important duty to try to 16 a child"s personality to his possible future employment. It is top management. If the preoccupation of schools with academic work was 17 , more time might be spent teaching children surer values. Perhaps selection 18 the caring professions, especially medicine, could be made less by good grades in chemistry and more by such 19 as sensitivity and sympathy. It is surely a mistake to choose our doctors exclusively from A type stock. B"s are important and should be 20 .

单选题 Self-esteem is the collection of beliefs or feelings we have about ourselves, our "self-perceptions. " How we define ourselves influences our motivations, attitudes, and behaviors and affects our emotional adjustment. Patterns of self-esteem start very early in life. For example, a {{U}}toddler{{/U}} who reaches a milestone experiences a sense of accomplishment that bolsters self-esteem. Learning to roll over after dozens of unsuccessful attempts teaches a baby a "can-do" attitude. The concept of success following persistence starts early. As kids try, fail, try again, fail again, and then finally succeed, they develop ideas about their own capabilities. At the same time, they're creating a self-concept based on interactions with other people. This is why parental involvement is important to helping kids form accurate, healthy self-perceptions. Self-esteem fluctuates as kids grow. It's frequently changed and fine-tuned, because it is affected by a child's experiences and new perceptions. So it helps to be aware of the signs of both healthy and unhealthy self-esteem. Kids with low self-esteem may not want to try new things, and may frequently speak negatively about themselves. They tend to be overly critical of and easily disappointed in themselves. Kids with low self-esteem see temporary setbacks as permanent, intolerable conditions, and a sense of pessimism predominates. Kids with healthy self-esteem tend to enjoy interacting with others. They're comfortable in social settings and enjoy group activities as well as independent pursuits. When challenges arise, they can work toward finding solutions and voice discontent without belittling themselves or others. How can a parent help to foster healthy self-esteem in a child? Kids who don't feel safe or are abused at home will suffer immensely from low self-esteem. A child who is exposed to parents who fight and argue repeatedly may become depressed and withdrawn. Also watch for signs of abuse by others, problems in school, trouble with peers, and other factors that may affect kids' self-esteem. Deal with these issues sensitively but swiftly. And always remember to respect your kids. If you suspect your child has low self-esteem, consider doing something about it. Family and child counselors can work to uncover underlying issues that prevent a child from feeling good about him or herself. Therapy can help kids learn to view themselves and the world positively. When kids see themselves in a more realistic light, they can accept who they truly are. With a little help, every child can develop healthy self-esteem for a happier, more fulfilling life.

单选题From the second paragraph, we know that ______.