单选题The Amazon River basin boasts the largest river system on Earth and harbors an ecosystem that is tremendously complex. Early travelers from renaissance Europe were overwhelmed by their first encounters. In 1531, Francisco Pizarro overthrew the Incan empire, removing the emperor from his throne and taking for Spain the Incan imperial treasures. A decade later his younger brother ventured east from the high plateau of the Andes Mountains in pursuit of the famous cities of gold and spices thought to be hidden in the jungle forest. Going down the river the expedition soon exhausted its supplies and a small group was sent ahead to search for food. Eight months later, this group emerged at the mouth of the Amazon, having made what would prove to be the first descent of the length of the river. A missionary who accompanied the group sent a remarkable account of their adventures to the Pope, including mention of the great signal drums that sounded from village to village far in advance of their arrival, warning of the coming of the European strangers. His manuscript records seeing innumerable settlements along the river—on one day they passed more than twenty villages in succession, and some of these are said to have stretched for six miles or more. Such reports have intrigued scientists ever since, for they describe dense populations and large federations of tribes which, if verified, would be entirely at odds with modern stereotypes of hidden, thinly scattered tribes scratching out an uncertain existence. Beginning in the late seventeenth-century, the successors to the first explorers recorded and collected many of the everyday objects fashioned from wood and other organic materials that usually rot in a tropical climate. Such collections housed in European museums preserve a "window" into cultures that were soon to experience huge changes brought about by foreign diseases and cruel abuse at the hands of Europeans. Population collapse and movement along the principal rivers of the Amazon system have contributed to a veil of misunderstanding that has long covered the cultural achievements of tropical forest societies. Diffuse bands hunting deep in the forest interior eventually came to be seen as the typical tropical forest adaptation. So much so that when archaeological studies began in earnest at the mouth of the Amazon in the 1950's, scientists argued that the sophisticated culture they were discovering could not have originated in the Amazon Basin itself, but must have been derived from more advanced cultures elsewhere. They imagined the tropical forest to be an "imitation paradise" unable to support much beyond a simple hunting-and-gathering way of life. This mistaken idea has exerted a persistent influence ever since.

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Someone has calculated that by the time an American reaches the age of 40, he or she has been exposed to one million ads. Another estimate is that we have encountered more than 600, 000 ads by the time we reach the age of only 18. Now, of course, we don't remember what exactly they said or even what the product was, but a composite message gets through: that you deserve the best, that you should have it now, and that it's okay to indulge yourself, because you deserve the compliments, sex appeal, or adventure you are going to get as a result of buying this car or those cigarettes. Our consumer-based economy makes two absolutely reciprocal psychological demands on its members. On the one hand, you need the "discipline" values to ensure that people will be good workers and lead orderly, law-abiding lives. On the other hand, you need the "enjoy yourself" messages to get people to be good consumers. One author was disturbed about the "enjoy yourself" side, but acknowledged that "without a means of stimulating mass consumption, the very structure of our business enterprise would collapse." The interesting question has to do with the psychological consequences of the discrepancy between the dual messages. The "discipline" or "traditional values" theme demands that one compartment of the personality have a will strong enough to keep the individual doing unpleasant work at low wages, or to stay in an unhappy marriage, and, in general, to do things for the good of the commonwealth. The "enjoy yourself" message, on the other hand, tends to encourage a very different kind of personality-one that is self-centered, based on impulse, and is unwilling to delay rewards. As an illustration, I can't. resist reciting one of my favorite ads of all time, an ad from a psychology magazine: "I love me. I'm just a good friend to myself. And I like to do what makes me feel good. I used to sit around, putting things off till tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll drink champagne, and buy a set of pearls, and pick up that new stereo. But now I live my dreams today, not tomorrow." So what happens to us as we take in these opposing messages, as we are, in fact, torn between the opposite personality types that our society seems to require of us? Tile result is anxiety, fear, and a mysterious dread. The fear of being sucked in and dragged down by our consumer culture is real: the credit card company is not friendly when you default on your bills. And we all know that the path of pleasure-seeking and blind acquisition is a recipe for financial ruin-for most of us, anyway-and that, in American society, there isn't much of a safety net to catch you if you fall.

单选题The predominant idea of today is that

单选题For the first time in history more people live in towns than in the country. In Britain this has had a curious result. While polls show Britons rate "the countryside" alongside the royal family, Shakespeare and the National Health Service (NHS) as what makes them proudest of their country, this has limited political support. A century ago Octavia Hill launched the National Trust not to rescue stylish houses but to save "the beauty of natural places for everyone forever." It was specifically to provide city dwellers with spaces for leisure where they could experience "a refreshing air." Hill"s pressure later led to the creation of national parks and green belts. They don"t make countryside any more, and every year concrete consumes more of it. It needs constant guardianship. At the next election none of the big parties seem likely to endorse this sentiment. The Conservatives" planning reform explicitly gives rural development priority over conservation, even authorising "off-plan" building where local people might object. The concept of sustainable development has been defined as prof itable. Labour likewise wants to discontinue local planning where councils oppose development. The Liberal Democrats are silent. Only Ukip, sensing its chance, has sided with those pleading for a more considered ap proach to using green land. Its Campaign to Protect Rural England struck terror into many local Conservative parties. The sensible place to build new houses, factories and offices is where people are, in cities and towns where infrastructure is in place. The London agents Stirling Ackroyd recently identified enough sites for half a million houses in the London area alone, with no intrusion on green belt. What is true of London is even truer of the provinces. The idea that "housing crisis" equals "concreted meadows" is pure lobby talk. The issue is not the need for more house but, as always, where to put them. Under lobby pressure, George Osborne favours rural new-build against urban renovation and renewal. He favours out-of-town shopping sites against high streets. This is not a free market but a biased one. Rural towns and villages have grown and will always grow. They do so best where building sticks to their edges and respects their character. We do not ruin urban conservation areas. Why ruin rural ones? Development should be planned, not let rip. After the Netherlands, Britain is Europe"s most crowded country. Half a century of town and country planning has enabled it to retain an enviable rural coherence, while still permitting low-density urban living. There is no doubt of the alternative—the corrupted landscapes of southern Portugal, Spain or Ireland. Avoiding this rather than promoting it should unite the left and right of the political spectrum.

单选题Which of the following statements is NOT true about the Commission to Assess The Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States?______

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Horse thieves, cattle rustlers, bank robbers, train and stagecoach robbers, highwaymen, murderers, these were but some of the criminals who infested the American frontier during the 19th century. In English legend Robin Hood can be considered a bandit, but the outlaws of the Old West were far more violent men and women without any scruples when it came to taking property or life. The careers of many outlaws have been glamorized through fictional accounts of their deeds and their exploits have been the basis for many movie scripts. The era of the American outlaw lasted about 100 years roughly from 1800 to 1900．There had been lawlessness during the Colonial Era. Frontiers have always attracted misfits, failures and renegades who hope to profit by being beyond the reach of government. In the years just before the Revolutionary War, gangs of horse thieves in the back country of South Carolina were broken up by organized bands of farmers called regulators. As frontier settlement expanded rapidly after the Revolution, more opportunities for criminals opened, two common types of bandits were highwaymen and river pirates. Highwaymen accosted people who traveled on foot or horseback, while river pirates preyed upon the boat traffic on the Ohio, Mississippi, and other rivers. Some bandits engaged in both. Criminals in the West gathered momentum with the gold rushes to California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and other states. Stagecoaches and trains carrying gold and money became prime targets for bands of outlaws. Bank robberies emerged after the California Gold Rush of 1849 and as prosperity found its way to frontier towns. The first stage robbery was recorded in 1851, and the first train robbery happened in 1866. After the Civil War there was the growth of the cattle kingdom in Texas and neighboring states. Cattle rustling and horse theft turned into significant operations. Range wars bred a great amount of violence. Cattlemen fought over land and water rights, and they fought with great bitterness against sheep farmers. In Texas, range wars were fought over the use of barbed wire to fence grazing land. By the end of the 19th century, the frontier era was past. Major crime shifted to the cities. Ethnic gangs had existed in the slums for decades, preying mostly on their fellow immigrants. With the arrival of Prohibition in the 1920s, an impetus was given to the formation of organized crime as it exists today.

单选题"It is an evil influence on the youth of our country." A politician condemning video gaming? Actually, a clergyman denouncing rock and roll 50 years ago. But the sentiment could just as easily have been voiced by Hillary Clinton in the past few weeks, as she blamed video games for "a silent epidemic of media desensitisation" and "stealing the innocence of our children". The gaming furore centers on "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas", a popular and notoriously violent cops and robbers game that turned out to contain hidden sex scenes that could be unlocked using a patch downloaded from the Internet. The resulting outcry (mostly from Democratic politicians playing to the centre) caused the game' s rating in America to be changed from "mature", which means you have to be 17 to buy it, to "adults only", which means you have to be 18, but also means that big retailers such as Wal-Mart will not stock it. As a result the game has been banned in Australia; and, this autumn, America's Federal Trade Commission will investigate the complaints. That will give gaming's opponents an opportunity to vent their wrath on the industry. Skepticism of new media is a tradition with deep roots, going back at least as far as Socrates objections to written texts, outlined in Plato's Phaedrus. Socrates worried that relying on written texts, rather than the oral tradition, would "create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves." ( He also objected that a written version of a speech was no substitute for the ability to interrogate the speaker, since, when questioned, the text "always gives one unvarying answer". His objection, in short, was that books were not interactive. Perhaps Socrates would have thought more highly of video games. ) Novels were once considered too low-brow for university literature courses, but eventually the disapproving professors retired. Waltz music and dancing were condemned in the 19th century; all that twirling was thought to be "intoxicating" and "depraved", and the music was outlawed in some places. Today it is hard to imagine what the fuss was about. And rock and roll was thought to encourage violence, promiscuity and satanism but today even grannies buy Coldplay albums.

单选题What does the word education in the first paragraph most probably mean?

单选题According to the text, Amusing Ourselves to Death is a book

单选题The chances of the physical sciences being subject to great changes are the biggest because ______.

单选题The word "idiot" (Line 6, Par

单选题 All men are created equal, or so reckoned Thomas Jefferson as he drafted America's Declaration of Independence in 1776. Subsequent Americans have had reason to question the founding father. So too have people in the land from which the new nation gained its freedom. America and Britain are among the most unequal countries in the rich world and Britain, at any rate, is more unequal now than it was a generation ago. That is the conclusion of a study commissioned by Harriet Harman, the equalities minister. Class and money have always strongly affected how people do in life in Britain, with well-heeled fan, lies breeding affluent children just as the offspring of the desperately poor tend to remain poor. All that was supposed to have ceased at the end of the Second World War, with the birth of a welfare state designed to meet basic needs and promote social mobility. But despite devoting much thought and more money to improving the lot of the poor, governments have failed to boost those at the bottom of the pile as much as those at the top have boosted themselves. The new study, led by John Hills of the London School of Economics, found, for example, that the richest tenth of households received income more than four tinges that of the poorest tenth; just a generation ago, it was three times as much. Internationally, only six of the 30 members of the OECD, a club of mainly rich countries, show greater inequality. Wealth is distributed far more unequally than income, with the richest tenth in Britain holding assets worth almost 100 times those of the poorest. Although the study found that some of the widest gaps between social groups have diminished over time, deep-seated differences between haves and have-nots persist, ruining the life chances of the less fortunate. Politicians of all stripes talk up equality of opportunity, arguing that it makes for a fairer and more mobile society, and a more prosperous one. The goal of greater equality of outcomes also has its boosters. In "The Spirit Level", epidemic disease experts Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson claim that more equal societies are healthier than unequal ones, as well as happier. Not all agree, but in a country where the National Health Service accounts for almost a fifth of public spending, it is worth considering. The difficulty arises in putting these notions into practice, through severe tax increases for the middleclass and wealthy, or expanding government intervention. These have not recently been votewinning propositions, but the recession that Britain is now limping away from may have changed things.