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单选题Millennials were
1
to be the next golden ticket for retailers. A 70 million consumers
2
between the ages of 18 and 34, this was the first generation of Americans to grow up with cell phones and the Web. Marketers could
3
them in numerous ways—tweets, Facebook pages—that were
4
when their boomer parents started out. " Marketers thought, "Here come the Millennials, we"re going to have an awesome time selling to them, "" says Max Lenderman, a director at ad agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky. "They were waiting for a
5
. Then comes the financial crisis, and all of a sudden the door has almost
6
in their face. "
No group was hit harder by the Great Recession than the Millennials. Their careers are
7
. They hold record levels of education debt. And an estimated 24 percent have had to move back home with parents at least once.
That"s bad news for the movie studios, clothing retailers, and home improvement chains that had hoped for better. Williams-Sonoma and Home Depot thrive on household formation— economist
8
for marrying, having kids, and buying a home—but many cash-strapped Gen Yers have put those modern rites of passage
9
hold. Twenty percent of 18-to 34-year-old respondents in a recent Pew survey said they had
10
marriage for financial reasons, while 22 percent put
11
having a baby for similar reasons.
12
this generation was always going to be a challenge.
13
into the Web"s endless information and choices, Millennials are pickier and
14
brand loyal than their parents.
15
before the recession they craved authentic products—for example, buying shoes from Toms Shoes, which donates a pair to poor children for every one it sells. The Millennial
16
is "buy less and do more, " says David Maddocks. "Boomers were about
17
, whereas this generation is about having enough. " The
18
of the recession could make Gen Y even less acquisitive.
Gen Y"s
19
could eventually hurt the luxury market, too, says Pam Danziger, president of research firm Unity Marketing. She says a 25-year-old who shops at Gap typically trades up to Nordstrom (JWN), Saks (SKS), and perhaps Tiffany (TIF) decades later. But today, Danziger says, "We have a group of people who are seeking only to live within their
20
"
单选题Time spent in a bookshop can be most enjoyable, whether you are a book-lover or merely there to buy a book as a present. You may even have entered the shop just to find shelter from a sudden shower. But the desire to pick up a book with an attractive dust-jacket is irresistible. You soon become absorbed in some book or other, and usually it is only much later that you realize that you have spent far too much time there. This opportunity to escape the realities of everyday life is, I think, the main attraction of a bookshop. There are not many places where it is possible to do this. A music shop is very much like a bookshop. You can wander round such places to your heart's content. If it is a good shop, no assistant will approach you with the inevitable greeting: "Can I help you, sir?" You needn't buy anything you don't want. In a bookshop an assistant should remain in the background until you have finished browsing. Then, and only then, are his services necessary. You have to be careful not to be attracted by the variety of books in a bookshop. It is very easy to enter the shop looking for a book on, say, ancient coins and to come out carrying a copy of the latest best-selling novel and perhaps a book about brass-rubbing -- something which had only vaguely interested you up till then. This volume on the subject, however, happened to be so well illustrated and the part of the text you read proved so interesting that you just had to buy it. This sort of thing can be very dangerous. Booksellers must be both long suffering and indulgent. There is a story which wei1 illustrates this. A medical student had to read a textbook which was far too expensive for him to buy. He couldn't obtain it from the library and the only copy he could find was in his bookshop. Every afternoon, therefore, he would go along to the shop and read a little of the book at a time. One day, however, he was dismayed to find the book missing from its usual place and about to leave when he noticed the owner of the shop beckoning to him. Expecting to be reproached, he went toward him. To his surprise, the owner pointed to the book, which was tucked away in a corner. "I put it there in case anyone was tempted to buy it," he said, and left the delighted student to continue his reading.
单选题The phrase "a break with" in the last paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.
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单选题Piaget and Keasey would not have agreed on
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单选题A steady flame in a gas burner is the result of ______.
单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}}
In the next century we'll be able to
alter our DNA radically, encoding our visions and vanities while concocting new
life-forms. When Dr. Frankenstein made his monster, he wrestled with the moral
issue of whether he should allow it to reproduce, "Had I the right, for my own
benefit, to inflict the curse upon everlasting generations?" Will such questions
require us to develop new moral philosophies? Probably not.
Instead, we'll reach again for a time-tested moral concept, one sometimes called
the Golden Rule and which Kant, the millennium's most prudent moralist, conjured
up into a categorical imperative: Do unto others as you would have them do unto
you; treat each person as an individual rather than as a means to some
end. Under this moral precept we should recoil at human cloning,
because it inevitably entails using humans as means to other humans' ends and
valuing them as copies of others we loved or as collections of body parts, not
as individuals in their own right. We should also draw a line, however fuzzy,
that would permit using genetic engineering to cure diseases and
disabilities but not to change the personal attributes that make someone an
individual (IQ, physical appearance, gender and sexuality). The
biotech age will also give us more reason to guard our personal privacy.
Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, got it wrong: rather than centralizing
power in the hands of the state, DNA technology has empowered individuals and
families. But the state will have an important role, making sure that no one,
including insurance companies, can look at our genetic data without our
permission or use it to discriminate against us. Then we can get
ready for the breakthroughs that could come at the end of the next century and
the technology is comparable to mapping our genes: plotting the 10 billion or
more neurons of our brain. With that information we might someday be able to
create artificial intelligences that think and experience consciousness in ways
that are indistinguishable from a human brain. Eventually we might be able
to replicate our own minds in a {{U}}"dry-ware"{{/U}} machine, so that we could live
on without the {{U}}"wet-ware"{{/U}} of a biological brain and body. The 20th
century's revolution in infotechnology will thereby merge with the 21st
century's revolution in biotechnology. But this is science fiction. Let's turn
the page now and get back to real science.
单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}}
Shortly after September 11th, President
Bush's father observed that just as Pearl Harbor awakened this country from the
notion that we could somehow avoid the call of duty to defend freedom in Europe
and Asia in World War Two, so, too, should this most recent surprise attack
erase the concept in some quarters that America can somehow go it alone in the
fight against terrorism or in anything else for that matter. But
America's allies have begun to wonder whether that is the lesson that has been
learned--or whether the Afghanistan campaign's apparent success shows that
unilateralism works just fine. The United States, that argument goes, is so
dominant that it can largely afford to go it alone. It is true
that no nation since Rome has loomed so large above the others, but even Rome
eventually collapsed. Only a decade ago, the conventional wisdom lamented
an America in decline. Bestseller lists featured books that described
America's fall. Japan would soon become "Number One". That view was wrong
at the time, and when I wrote "Bound to Lead" in 1989, I, like others, predicted
the continuing rise of American power. But the new conventional wisdom
that America is invincible is equally dangerous if it leads to a foreign policy
that combines unilateralism, arrogance and parochialism. A
number of advocates of "realist" international-relations theory have also
expressed concern about America's staying-power. Throughout history,
coalitions of countries have arisen to balance dominant powers, and the search
for traditional shifts in the balance of power and new state challengers is well
under way. Some see China as the new enemy; others envisage a Russia-China-India
coalition as the threat. But even if China maintains high growth rates of 6%
while the United States achieves only 2%, it will not equal the United States in
income per head until the last half of the century. Still others
see a uniting Europe as a potential federation that will challenge the United
States for primacy. But this forecast depends on a high degree of European
political unity, and a low state of transatlantic relations. Although realists
raise an important point about the leveling of power in the international arena,
their quest for new cold-war-style challengers is largely {{U}}barking up the
wrong tree{{/U}}. They are ignoring deeper changes in the distribution and nature
of power in the contemporary world. The paradox of American power in the
21st century is that the largest power since Rome cannot achieve its objectives
unilaterally in a global information age.
单选题If open-source software is supposed to be free, how does anyone selling it make any money? It's not that different from how other software companies make money. You'd think that a software company would make most of its money from, well, selling software. But you'd be wrong. For one thing, companies don't sell software, strictly speaking; they license it. The profit margin on a software license is nearly 100 percent, which is why Microsoft gushes billions of dollars every quarter. But what's the value of a license to a customer? A license doesn't deliver the code, provide the utilities to get a piece of software running, or answer the phone when something inevitably goes wrong. The value of software, in short, doesn't lie in the software alone. The value is in making sure the soft- ware does its job. Just as a traveler should look at the overall price of a vacation package instead of obsessing over the price of the plane ticket or hotel mom, a smart tech buyer won't focus on how much the license costs and ignore the support contract or the maintenance agreement. Open-source is not that different. If you want the software to work, you have to pay to ensure it will work. The open-source companies have refined the software model by selling subscriptions. They roll together support and maintenance and charge an annual fee, which is a healthy model, though not quite as wonderful as Microsoft's money-raking one. Tellingly, even Microsoft is casting an envious eye at aspects of the open-source business model. The company has been taking halting steps toward a similar subscription scheme for its software sales. Microsoft's subscription program, known as Soft- ware Assurance, provides maintenance and support together with a software license. It lets you up- grade to Microsoft's next version of the software for a predictable sum. But it also contains an implicit threat: If you don't switch to Software Assurance now, who knows how much Microsoft will charge you when you decide to upgrade? Chief information officers hate this kind of *'assurance", since they're often perfectly happy running older versions of software that are proven and stable. Microsoft, on the other hand, rakes in the software-licensing fees only when customers upgrade. Software Assurance is Microsoft's attempt to get those same licensing fees but wrap them together with the service and support needed to keep systems running. That's why Microsoft finds the open-source model so threatening: open-source companies have no vested interest in getting more licensing fees and don't have to pad their service contracts with that extra cost. In the end, the main difference between open-source and proprietary software companies may be the size of the check you have to write.
单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}}
Perhaps only a small boy trained to be
a wizard at the Hogwarts School of Magic could cast a spell so powerful as to
create the biggest book launch ever. Wherever in the World the clock strikes
midnight on June 20th, his followers will flock to get their paws on one of more
than 10m copies of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix". Bookshops will
open in the middle of the night and delivery firms are drafting in extra staff
and bigger trucks. Related toys, games, DVDs and other merchandise will be
everywhere. There will be no escaping Potter mania. Yet Mr.
Potter's world is a curious one, in which things are often not what they appear.
While an excitable media (hereby including The Economist, happy to support such
a fine example of globalization) is helping to hype the launch of J. K.
Rowling's fifth novel, about the most adventurous thing that the publishers have
organized is a reading by Ms. Rowling in London's Royal Albert Hall, to be
broadcast as a live web cast. Hollywood, which owns everything
else to do with Harry Potter, says it is doing even less. Incredible as it may
seem, the guardians of the brand say that, to protect the Potter franchise, they
are trying to maintain a low profile. Well, relatively low. Ms.
Rowling signed a contract in 1998 with Warner Brothers, part of AOL Time Warner,
giving the studio exclusive film, licensing and merchandising rights in return
for what now appears to have been a steal: some $ 500,000. Warner licenses other
firms to produce goods using Harry Potter characters or images, from which Ms.
Rowling gets a big enough cut that she is now wealthier than the queen--if you
believe Britain's Sunday Times rich list. The process is self-generating: each
book sets the stage for a film, which boosts book sales, which lifts sales of
Potter products. Globally, the first four Harry Potter books
have sold some 200m copies in 55 languages; the two movies have grossed over
$1.8 billion at the box office. This is a stunning success by
any measure, especially as Ms Rowling has long demanded that Harry Potter should
not be over-commercialized. In line with her wishes, Warner says it is being
extraordinarily careful, at least by Hollywood standards, about what it licenses
and to whom. It imposed tough conditions on Coca-Cola,. insisting that no Harry
Potter images should appear on cans, and is now in the process of making its
licensing programmed even more restrictive. Coke may soon be considered too mass
market to carry the brand at all. The deal with Warner ties much
of the merchandising to the films alone. There are no officially sanctioned
products relating to "Order of the Phoenix"; nor yet for "Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban", the film of the third book, which is due out in June 2004.
Warner agrees that Ms. Rowling's creation is a different sort of commercial
property, one with long-term potential that could be damaged by a typical
Hollywood marketing blitz, says Diane Nelson, the studio's global brand manager
for Harry Potter. It is vital, she adds, that with more to come, readers of the
books are not alienated. "The evidence from our market research is that
enthusiasm for the property by fans is not
warning."
单选题Overall, belief in climate change has declined in the American public from roughly 75 percent to 55 percent between 2008 and 2011, with a recent rebound to 62 percent in the fall of 2011, the Brookings Institution survey finds.
One noted reason for the rebound was personal experiences with warmer fall and winter temperatures.
Though this kind of weather disruption is what climate scientists predict, they hesitate to place too much emphasis on one or two unusual seasons as a trend that changes public opinion. If next winter is more normal, the public may get the wrong impression about the dangers of climate change. Better for science to be more convincing.
But there"s the
rub
. The American public is generally
illiterate
when it comes to science. And when American scientists complain about public illiteracy and
lethargy
on the vitally important subject of climate change, they also have themselves to blame.
Generally, those who know the most about climate—and other important scientific fields—are locked up in their university
ivory towers
and conference rooms, speaking a language only they can understand. And they speak mostly to each other, not to the general public, policymakers, or business people—not to those who can actually make things happen.
This is dangerous. We live in an age when scientific issues
permeate
our social, economic, and political culture. People must be educated about science and the scientific process if we are to make rational and informed decisions that affect our future.
But instead, the relative absence of academics and academic scholarship in the public discourse creates a vacuum into which uninformed, wrong, and downright destructive viewpoints get voiced and take hold.
Here"s a typical example. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh argued that "The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone... " In fact, the spill created extensive damage to wide ranging marine habitats as well as the Gulf Coast"s fishing and tourism industries. Long-term impacts are still unclear as scientists continue to
monitor
underwater plumes of dissolved oil that lie along the bottom.
The fact is that today"s scientists are indeed lost to the academy.
The failure begins with training in doctoral programs and continues through professional development where the constant immersion in academic seminars and journals serves to weaken scientists" literacy in the language of public, economic, and political discourse.
Scientists limit involvement in such "
outside activities
" because
tenure
and promotion are based primarily on publication in top-tier academic journals.
"In my view, few contemporary issues
warrant
critical analysis by problem-focused researchers more than environmental
sustainability
, and particularly climate change. Universities need to train emerging and
seasoned
scholars in the skills of communicating science to the public and policy makers. We need to develop a new generation of scholars for whom the role of public intellectual is not an
anachronism
.
Without such changes, the climate change debate devolves into a " logic schism" where the ideological extremes dominate the conversation and the space for solutions disappears into a rhetorical shouting match.
单选题
单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}}
In the dimly lit cyber-cafe at
Sciences-Po, hot-house of the French elite, no Gauloise smoke fills the air, no
dog-eared copies of Sartre lie on the tables. French students are doing what all
students do: surfing the web via Google. Now President Jacques Chirac wants to
stop this American cultural invasion by setting up a rival French search-engine.
The idea was prompted by Google's plan to put online millions of texts from
American and British university libraries. If English books are threatening to
swamp cyberspace, Mr Chirac will not stand idly by. He asked his
culture minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, and Jean-Noёl Jeanneney, head of
France' s Bibliothèque Nationale, to do the same for French text—and create a
home-grown search-engine to browse them. Why not let Google do the job? Its
French version is used for 74% of intemet searches in France. The answer is the
vulgar criteria it uses to rank results. "I do not believe", wrote Mr Donnedieu
de Vabres in Le Monde," that the only key to access our culture should be the
automatic ranking by popularity, which has been behind Google' s
success." This is not the first time Google has met French
resistance. A court has upheld a ruling against it, in a lawsuit brought by two
firms that claimed its display of rival sponsored links (Google' s chief source
of revenues) constituted trademark counterfeiting. The French state news agency,
Agence France-Presse, has also filed suit against Google for copyright
infringement. Googlephobia is spreading. Mr Jeanneney has talked
of the "risk of crushing domination by America in defining the view that future
generations have of the world. "" I have nothing in paricular against Google,
"he told L'Express, a magazine. "I simply note that this commercial cial company
is the expression of the American system, in which the law of the market is
king. " Advertising muscle and consumer demand should not triumph over good
taste and cultural sophistication. The flaws in the French plan
are obvious. If popularity cannot arbitrate, what will? Mr Jeanneney wants a
"committee of experts". He appears to be serious, though the supply of
French-speaking experts, or experts speaking any language for that matter, would
seem to be insufficient. And if advertising is not to pay, will the taxpayer?
The plan mirrors another of Mr Chirac' s pet projects: a CNNàla francaise. Over
a year ago, stung by the power of Englishspeaking television news channels in
the Iraq war, Mr Chirac promised to set up a French rival by the end of 2004.
The project is bogged down by infighting. France's desire to
combat English, on the web or the airwaves, is understandable. Protecting
France's tongue from its citizens' inclination to adopt English words is an
ancient hobby of the rifling elite. The Académie Francaise was set up in 1635 to
that end. Linguists devise translations of cyber-terms, such as arrosage (spam)
or bogue(bug). Laws limit the use of English on TV—"Super Nanny" and "Star
Academy" are current pests—and impose translations of English slogans in
advertising. Treating the invasion of English as a market failure that must be
corrected by the state may look clumsy. In France it is just business as
usual.
单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following text. Choose the best
word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C, and D on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10
points)
One of the basic characteristics of
capitalism is the private ownership of the major means of production— capital.
The ownership of large amounts of capital can bring{{U}} (1)
{{/U}}profits, as well as economic and political power. Some recent
theorists, {{U}}(2) {{/U}}, have argued that our society has moved to a
new stage of{{U}} (3) {{/U}}that they call "postindustrial" society. One
important change in such a society is that the ownership of{{U}} (4)
{{/U}}amounts of capital is no longer the only or even the most important{{U}}
(5) {{/U}}of profits and influence; knowledge as well as{{U}} (6)
{{/U}}capital brings profits and influence. There arc
many{{U}} (7) {{/U}}with the thesis above, not the least of{{U}} (8)
{{/U}}is that wealthy capitalists can buy the experts and knowledge they
need to keep their profits and influence. But this does not{{U}} (9)
{{/U}}the importance of knowledge in an advanced industrial society, as
the{{U}} (10) {{/U}}of some new industries indicates. {{U}}(11)
{{/U}}, genetic engineering and the new computer technology have{{U}}
(12) {{/U}}many new firms and made some scientists quite rich. In{{U}}
(13) {{/U}}with criticism of the postindustrial society thesis,
however, it must also be{{U}} (14) {{/U}}that those already in control
of huge amounts of capital (i. e., major corporations) soon{{U}} (15)
{{/U}}to take most profits in these industries based on new
knowledge. Moving down from the level of wealth and power, we
still find knowledge increasingly{{U}} (16) {{/U}}. Many new high-tech
jobs are being created at the upper-middle-class level, but even more new jobs
are being created in the low-skill, low-paying service{{U}} (17) {{/U}}.
Something like a caste line is emerging centered around knowledge. Individuals
who fall too far behind in the{{U}} (18) {{/U}}of knowledge at a young
age will find it almost impossible to catch up later, no matter how hard they
try. Illiteracy in the English language has been a severe{{U}} (19)
{{/U}}for many years in the United States, but we are also moving to the
point when computer illiteracy will hinder many more people and{{U}} (20)
{{/U}}them to a life of low-skill and low-paid
labor.
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单选题Drug use is rising dramatically among the nation' s youth after a decade of decline. From 1993 to 1994, marijuana use among young people (1) from 12 to 17 jumped 50 percent. One in five high school seniors (2) marijuana daily. Monitoring the Future, which (3) student drug use annually, reports that negative attitudes about drugs have declined for the fourth year in a row. (4) young people see great risk in using drugs. Mood-altering pharmaceutical drugs are (5) new popularity among young people. Ritalin, (6) as a diet pill in the 1970s and now used to (7) hyperactive children, has become a (8) drug on college campuses. A central nervous system (9) , Ritalin can cause strokes, hypertension, and seizures. Rohypnol, produced in Europe as a (10) tranquilizer, lowers inhibitions and suppresses short-term memory, which has led to some women being raped by men they are going out with. (11) taken with alcohol, its effects are greatly (12) . Rock singer Kurt Cobain collapsed from an (13) of Rohypnol and champagne a month before he committed (14) in 1994. In Florida and Texas, Rohypnol has become widely abused among teens, who see the drug as a less expensive (15) for marijuana and LSD. Alcohol and tobacco use is increasing among teenagers, (16) younger adolescents. Each year, more than one million teens become regular smokers, (17) they cannot legally purchase tobacco. By 12th grade, one in three students smokes. In 1995, one in five 14-year-olds reported smoking regularly, a 33 percent jump (18) 1991. Drinking among 14-year-olds climbed 50 percent from 1992 to 1994,and all teens reported substantial increases in (19) drinking. In 1995, one in five 10th graders reported having been drunk in the past 30 days. Two-thirds of high school seniors say they know a (20) with a drinking problem.
单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}}
George Williams, one of Scottsdale's
last remaining cowboys, has been raising horses and cattle on his 120 acres for
20 years. The cattle go to the slaughterhouse, the horses to rodeos. But Mr.
Williams is stomping mad. His problems began last year when dishonest neighbours
started to steal his cattle. Then other neighbours, most of them newcomers, took
offence at his horses roaming on their properties. Such grumbles
are common in Arizona. The most recent Department of Agriculture census shows
that 1 213 of Arizona's 8 507 farms closed down between 1997 and 2002. Many
cattlemen are moving out to remoter parts of the state. Doc Lane
is an executive at the Arizona Cattlemen's Association, a trade group. He says
Arizona's larger ranch owners are making decent profits from selling. It is the
smaller players who are the victims of rising land values, higher mortgages and
stiffer city council rules. What happens all too often is that people move in
next to a farm because they think the land pretty. But soon they start
complaining to the council. In Mr. Williams's case it was the horses that
annoyed them. Other newcomers don't like the noise, the pesticides and the smell
of manure. Locals worry about the precious, dwindling cowboy
culture. Arizona's tourism boards like to promote a steady interest in all
things about cowboy and western. Last year more British and German tourists came
than usual, and many of them were looking precisely for that. Arizona's Dude
Ranch Association fills its $ 350-a-night luxury ranches most of the year;
roughly a third of the guests are European. Many of the ranchers
themselves see all this tourism as a cheeky attempt to commercialise a real and
vanishing culture. In Prescott, estate agents promote "American Ranch-style"
homes with posters of horse riders. On the other side of the street is Whiskey
Row, a famous strip of historic cowboy bars. But in Matt's Saloon on Saturday
night, real cattlemen could not be found. Farm folk like Mr.
Knox and Mr. Williams are weighing up their options. Many will migrate to
remoter places where land is cheaper and not crowded with city people. Younger
ones take on side-jobs as contractors and are cattle-hands part-time. Older
cowboys aren't sure what to do.
