单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Any normal species would be delighted at the prospect of cloning. No more nasty surprises like sickle cell or Down syndrome--just batch after batch of high-grade and, genetically speaking, immortal offspring! But representatives of the human species are responding as if someone had proposed adding Satanism to the grade-school Curriculum. Suddenly, perfectly secular folks are throwing around words like sanctity and retrieving medieval-era arguments against the pride of science. No one has proposed burning him at the stake, but the poor fellow who induced a human embryo to double itself has virtually recanted proclaiming his reverence for human life in a voice, this magazine reported," choking with emotion." There is an element of hypocrisy to much of the anti-cloning furor, or if not hypocrisy, superstition. The fact is we are already well down the path leading to genetic manipulation of the creepiest sort. Life-forms can be patented, which means they can be bought and sold and potentially traded on the commodities markets. Human embryos are life-forms, and there is nothing to stop anyone from marketing them now, on the same shelf with the Cabbage Patch dolls. In fact, any culture that encourages in vitro fertilization has no right to complain about a market in embryos. The assumption behind the in vitro industry is that some people's genetic material is worth more than others' and deserves to be reproduced at any expense. Millions of low-income babies die every year from preventable ills like dysentery, while heroic efforts go into maintaining yuppie zygotes in test tubes at the unicellular stage. This is the dread "nightmare” of eugenics in familiar, marketplace form which involves breeding the best-paid instead of the best. Cloning technology is an almost inevitable byproduct of in vitro fertilization. Once you decide to go to the trouble of in vitro, with its potentially hazardous megadoses of hormones for the female partner and various indignities for the male, you might as well make a few backup copies of any viable embryo that's produced. And once you've got the backup organ copies, why not keep a few in the freezer, in case Junior ever needs a new kidney or cornea? The critics of cloning say we should know what we're getting into, with all its Orwellian implications. But if we decide to outlaw cloning, we should understand the implications of that. We would be saying in effect that we prefer to leave genetic destiny to the crap shooting of nature, despite sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs and all the rest, because ultimately we don't trust the market to regulate life itself. And this may be the hardest thing of all to acknowledge: that it isn't so much 21st century technology we fear, as what will happen to that technology in the hands of old-fashioned 20th century capitalism.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} On September 30th students at the University of Massachusetts threw a toga (a ceremonial gown) party. The cops showed up, uninvited. They charged the host, James Connolly, with underage drinking, making too much noise, and having a keg without a licence. For punishment, he had to put on his toga again and stand in front of the police station for an hour. Dan Markel of Florida State University reckons that such "shaming punishments" are on the rise. In 2003 a couple of teenagers who defaced a nativity scene in Ohio had to parade through town with a donkey. "The punishment must fit the crime," explained the judge, Michael Cicconetti. Several cities have aired the names of men caught soliciting prostitutes on "John TV". In 2004, a federal appeals court agreed that a mail thief could be made to stand outside a California post office wearing a sandwich board. "I stole mail," it read. "This is my punishment." In Virginia, if you fail to pay child support, you may find your car wheel-clamped: pink if you are neglecting a girl, blue for a boy. Many support shaming punishments. Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University has argued that they are a good way to express communal values. Fines, in contrast, imply that you can buy a clear conscience. And shame seems to be a powerful deterrent. Mr Cicconetti says he sees few repeat offenders. Cheerful Hobbesian types want everyone to know who the bad guys are, so that decent citizens can avoid them. Others are doubtful. According to Mr Markel, shaming punishments undermine human dignity. He suggests alternative punishments that omit the public-humiliation factor. A landlord who flouts the health code, for example, could be made to stay in one of his own slums. And it is true that there is something unpleasant about the desire to see other people humiliated. Remember the matron who objects to Hester Prynne's scarlet letter: "Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or suchlike heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever!" But voters appear to be comfortable on the high horse. Ted Poe, a former district judge from Texas, made his reputation by issuing a string of embarrassing sentences. He called this "Poetic justice." Once, he sentenced a man who stole pistols from the Lone Ranger to shovel manure in the Houston police stables. In 2004 Mr Poe was elected to the House of Representatives at his first attempt.

单选题Erroneous virtues are running out of control in our culture. I don't know how many times my 13-year-old son has told me about classmates who received ＄10 for each "A" grade on their report cards—hinting that I should do the same for him should he ever receive an A. Whenever he approaches me on this subject, I give him the same reply: forget it! This is not to say that I would never praise my son for doing well in school. But my praise is not meant to reward or elicit future achievements, but rather to express my genuine delight in the satisfaction he feels at having done his best. Doling out ＄10 sends out the message that the feeling alone isn't good enough. As a society, we seem to be on the brink of losing our internal control—the ethical boundaries that guide our actions and feelings. Instead, these ethical standards have been eclipsed by external "stuff" as a measure of our worth. We pass this obscene message on to our children. We offer them money for learning how to convert fractions to decimals. Refreshments are given as a reward for reading. In fact, in one national reading program, a party awaits the entire class if each child reads a certain number of books within a four-month period. We call these things incentives, telling ourselves that if we can just reel them in and get them hooked, then the internal rewards will follow. I recently saw a television program where unmarried, teenage mothers were featured as the participants in a program that offers a ＄10 a week "incentive" if these young women don't get pregnant again. Isn't the daily plight of being a single, teenaged mother enough to discourage them from becoming pregnant again? No, it isn't, because we as a society won't allow it to be. Nothing is permitted to succeed or fail on its own merits anymore. A staple diet of candy bars makes an ordinary apple or orange seem sour. Similarly, an endless parade of incentives corrodes our ability to feel a genuine sense of inner peace (or inner conflict). The simple virtues of honesty, kindness and integrity suffer from an image problem and are in desperate need of better publicity. One way to do this is by example. I fear that in our so-called upwardly mobile world we are on a downward spiral towards becoming morally bankrupt. We may soon render ourselves worthless inside, while desperately clinging to a shell of appearances.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Genghis Khan was not one to agonize over gender roles. He was into sex and power, and he didn't mind saying so. "The greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him." The emperor once thundered. Genghis Khan conquered two thirds of the known world during the early 13th century and he may have set an all-time record for what biologists call reproductive success. An account written 33 years after his death credited him with 20,000 descendants. Men's manners have improved markedly since Genghis Khan's day. At heart, though, we're the same animals we were 800 years ago, which is to say we are status seekers. We may talk of equality and fraternity. We may strive for classless societies. But we go right on building hierarchies, and jockeying for status within them. Can we abandon the tendency? Probably not. As scientists are now discovering, status seeking is not just a habit or a cultural tradition. It's a design feature of the male psyche--a biological drive that is rooted in the nervous system and regulated by hormones and brain chemicals. How do we know this relentless one-upmanship is a biological endowment? Anthropologists find the same pattern virtually everywhere they 10ok and so do zoologists. Male competition is fierce among crickets, crayfish and elephants, and it's ubiquitous among higher primates, for example, male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. Coincidence? Evolutionists don't think so. From their perspective, life is essentially a race to repro-duke, and natural selection is bound to favor different strategies in different organisms. In reproductive terms, they have vastly more to gain from it. A female can't flood the gene pool by commandeering extra mates; no matter how much sperm she attracts, she is unlikely to produce more than a dozen viable offspring. But as Genghis Khan's exploits make clear, males can profit enormously by out mating their peers. It's not hard to see how that dynamic, played out over millions of years, would leave modern men fretting over status. We're built from the genes that the most determined competitors passed down. Fortunately, we don't aspire to families of 800. As monogamy and contraceptives may have leveled the reproductive playfield, power has become its own psychological reward. Those who achieve high status still enjoy more sex with more partners than the rest of us, and the reason is no mystery. Researchers have consistently found that women favor signs of "earning capacity" over good looks. For sheer sex appeal, a doughy (脸色苍白的) bald guy in a Rolex will outscore a stud (非常英俊的男子) in a Burger King uniform almost every time.

单选题People in the United States in the nineteenth century were haunted by the prospect that unprecedented change in the nation's economy would bring social chaos. In the years following 1820, after several decades of relative stability, the economy entered a periodof sustained and extremely rapid growth that continued to the end of the nineteenth century. Accompanying that growth was a structural change that featured increasing economic diversification and a gradual shift in the nation's labor force from agriculture to manufacturing and other nonagricultura pursuits Although the birth rate continued to, decline from its high level of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the population roughly doubled every generation during the rest of the nineteenth century. As the population grew, its makeup also changed. Massive waves of immigration brought new ethnic groups into the country. Geographic and social mobility -- downward as well as upward -- touched almost everyone. Local studies indicate that nearly three- quarters of the population in the North and South, in the emerging cities of the Northeast, and in the restless rural counties of the West changed their residence each decade. As a consequence, historian David Donald has written, "Social atomization affected every segment of society", and it seemed to many people that "all the recognized values of orderly civilization were gradually being eroded." Rapid industrialization and increased geographic mobility in the nineteenth century had special implications for women because these changes tended to magnify social distinctions. As the roles men and women played in society became more rigidly defined, so did the roles they played in the home. In the context of extreme competitiveness and dizzying social change, the household lost many of its earlier functions and the home came to serve as a haven of tranquillity and order. As the size of families decreased, the roles of husband and wife became more clearly differentiated than ever before. In the middle class especially, men participated in the productive economy while women ruled the home and served as the custodians of civility and culture. The intimacy of marriage that was common in earlier periods was rent, and a gulf that at times seemed unbridgeable was created between husbands and wives.

单选题While more and more Americans expand their wardrobes (衣柜) with the click of a mouse, the Japanese are a step ahead, buying clothes on their cell-phones. It"s almost exactly the same as shopping on a computer, just smaller and more mobile. In Japan, cell-phone commerce is an $83 billion industry. The leader is Xavel, which launched girls walker, com the first free-of-charge cell-phone consumer entrance. Six years later, it"s the country"s most popular cell-phone, shopping site getting 100 million hits a day. Its partner, girls auction, com boasts 1.5 million members and $43 million monthly cell-phone transactions. "If I was going to do business, I was going to do it with women in their 20s and 30s," says the CEO. "I wondered why nobody thought of it, considering they are such a huge market." Another thing nobody thought of was a buy-it-as-you-see-it fashion show. In August, Xavel threw Japan"s largest fashion event to date, the Tokyo Girls Collection. (1)The 12,600 attendees and 15 million people watching the live cell-phone broadcast could purchase items on their phones as soon as they appeared on the catwalk. Shin Akamatsu launched his Joias line at the festival and received more orders than the established labels did. "We struck gold right from the beginning," says the creative director, who saw $4.2 million in sales in five months. Other brands plan to present new lines at the next event. Also catching on is Japan"s Rakuten. Cell-phone sales account for 34% of its transactions. "Cell-phone companies realized the potential, so we too started taking Cell-phone commerce seriously," says spokeswoman Kuniko Narita. "Our turnover (营业额) increased greatly." The Japanese aren"t just shopping on cell phones but also with them. A new "wallet cell-phone" functions as a credit or ID card. The handset has a computer chip similar to that found in electronic key cards. (2)Japanese girls are buying mascara (睫毛膏), mints and magazines at convenience stores simply by swiping their phones past a scanner near the cash register. So what"s next? "People have star ted buying big things," says Narita. "You can even buy a helicopter or a $ 3.2 million jewel on a cell phone."

单选题"What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?" asks an old software industry joke. Answer: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison. The boss of Oracle is hardly alone among corporate chiefs in having a reputation for being rather keen on himself. Indeed, until the bubble burst and the public turned nasty at the start of the decade, the cult of the celebrity chief executive seemed to demand bossly narcissism, as evidence that a firm was being led by an all-conquering hero. Narcissus in Greek myth met a nasty end, of course. And in recent years, boss-worship has come to be seen as bad for business. In his management besteller, Good to Great, Jim Collins argued that the truly successful bosses were not the self-proclaimed stars who adorn the covers of Forbes and Fortune, but instead self-effacing, thoughtful, monkish sorts who lead by inspiring example. A statistical answer may be at hand. For the first time, a new study, "It's All About Me", to be presented next week at the annual gathering of the American Academy of Management, offers a systematic, empirical analysis of what effect narcissistic bosses have on the firms they run. The authors, Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambriek, of Pennsylvania State University, examined narcissism in the upper echelons of 105 firms in the computer, and software industries. To do this, they had to solve a practical problem: studies of narcissism have hitherto relied on surveying individuals personally, something for which few chief executives are likely to have time or inclination. So the authors devised an index of narcissism using six publicly available indicators obtainable without the co-operation of the boss. These are: the prominence of the boss's photo in the annual report; his prominence in company press releases; the length of his "Who's Who" entry; the frequency of his use of the first person singular in interviews; and the ratios of his cash and non-cash compensation to those of the firm's second-highest paid executive. Narcissism naturally drives people to seek positions of power and influence, and because great self-esteem helps your professional advance, say the authors, chief executives will tend on average to be more narcissistic than the general population. How does that affect a firm? Messrs Chatterjee and Hambrick found that highly narcissistic bosses tended to make bigger changes in the use of important resources, such as research and development, or in spending and leverage; they carried out more and bigger mergers and acquisitions; and their results were both more extreme (more big wins or big losses) and more volatile than those of firms run by their humbler peers. For shareholders, that could be good or bad.

单选题Which of the following, according to the author, should play the leading role in the solution of environmental problems?

单选题Which of the following does the author mention as describing negative conditions in the meat- packing industry?

单选题PeopleSoft claims that the oracle's takeover of PeopleSoft

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Read 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}} The Japanese government wants women like Taeko Mizuguchi to get married and start doing something about the nation's plunging birthrate. But she's not interested. At least, not if her prospective husband is Japanese. A growing number of Japanese women are giving up on their male counterparts, and taking a gamble that looking abroad for love will bring them the qualities in a partner that seem rare at home. "They treat you like equals, and they don't hesitate to express mutual feelings of respect -- I think Western men are more adept at such things than Japanese men," says the 36-year-old Ms. Miznguchi, who works at a top trading firm. "They don't act like women are maids -- I think they view women as individuals." Underscoring that Japanese women are losing hope with the local boys, dating agencies to help snag a Western husband have sprung up in Tokyo, some with branches in the US and Europe. Such companies rigorously vet their clients, screening for education, family background, occupation, and life goals. The kind of women who sign up for such services include doctors, lawyers, and other professionals -- women who have delayed marriage to concentrate on careers and who aren't keen to give up hard won gains to become a housewife, as many Japanese men expect. A generation of women who are now entering their 30s don't want to give up single life unless prospective partners are willing to break from traditional gender roles. Government polls conducted to find out why women have put off marriage until well after 25 years of age -- known as a woman's "'best before' date" -- show that economic independence is key to the change. As most Japanese women have their own income, marriage is no longer a financial necessity and women want to find companionship in a husband. Having ruled out an old-fashioned Japanese husband, many women here think the solution is a Western man. Indeed, some seem so enthralled with the idea that they are willing to spend thousands of dollars to inspect the wares personally. To be fair, not all the blame for female angst here can be laid on Japanese men. The government has been slow to enforce equal opportunity laws, and both pay and the glass ceiling in most Japanese corporations remain low for women. Recession has hampered longer maternity leave and other family-friendly policies. As Japan's fertility rate drops to new lows, the government is anxiously drawing up plans to make it easier for young couples to raise children, through such measures as the provision of cheap public housing.