单选题The author mentions the work of Harold Edgerton in order to provide an example of
单选题Cameron Walker learned the hard way that sharing information online can have unintended consequences. In 2005, the sophomore at Fisher College in Boston organized a student petition dedicated to getting a campus police guard fired and posted it on the popular college social network Facebook. com. Walker wrote that the guard "loves to antagonize students.., and needs to be eliminated. " It was a poor choice of words. Another student informed school officials, who logged on and interpreted the comments as threatening. Though Walker claimed he was trying only to expose the guard's demeanor, he was expelled. He's now enrolled at another college and admits he made a serious mistake. "I was a naive 21-year-old," he says. Creating a page on a social-networking site is now a cherished form of self-expression at universities around the world. Students use ad-supported services like Facebook, MySpace, TagWorld and Bebo to make friends, plan their Social lives and project their personalities. The most popular site among college students is Facebook, with more than 8 million members. A student's personal Facebook page is usually a revealing, dynamic chronicle of campus life—one clearly not meant for the eyes of parents, teachers or anyone else older than 25. But adults are taking notice. Sites like Facebook are accessible to nearly anyone willing to spend the time to gain access: teachers, school administrators, even potential employers and the police. Such online services can create the illusion of privacy where none actually exists. Facebook, in particular, was designed to emphasize privacy and intimacy. Only other users at your school (with the same college e-mail domain name), and those in networks you join, can see your home page. But determined off-campus visitors can persuade a student or alumnus to help them access the student's page. What happens when the identity you reveal to friends suddenly overwhelms the facade you present to grown-ups? The results can be awkward—or worse. Photos from drunken parties, recollections of sexual escapades, or threats—all these indiscretions, posted online, have gotten students suspended or expelled, or harmed job prospects. In a couple of decades, a presidential candidate may be called on to answer for a college misadventure that he or she impulsively detailed in a blog entry. Not all students want to temper their behavior. They point out that the Internet lets them express themselves and find like-minded souls. Still, adults aren't likely to stop prying any time soon. That means students who use Facebook and MySpace have a new burden. The Web may seem ephemeral, but what you casually post one night might just last a digital eternity. While social networking represents a powerful tool for today's students, they're advised to be prudent. Even if they have no plans to run for president someday.
单选题The phrase "make a go of it" (Paragraph 1) most probably means
单选题It is the staff of dreams and nightmares. Where Tony Blair's attempts to make Britain love the euro have fallen on deaf ears, its incarnation as notes and coins will succeed. These will be used not just in the euro area but in Britain. As the British become accustomed to the euro as a cash currency, they will warm to it—paving the way for a yes note in a referendum. The idea of euro creep appeals to both sides of the euro argument. According to the pros, as Britons become familiar with the euro, membership will start to look inevitable, so those in favor are bound to win. According to the antis, as Britons become familiar with the euro, membership will start to look inevitable, so those opposed must mobilize for the fight. Dream or nightmare, euro creep envisages the single currency worming its way first into the British economy and then into the affections of voters. British tourists will come back from their European holidays laden with euros, which they will spend not just at airports but in high street shops. So, too, will foreign visitors. As the euro becomes a parallel currency, those who make up the current two-to-one majority will change their minds. From there, it will be a short step to decide to dispense with the pound. Neil Kinnock, a European commissioner and former leader of the Labor Party, predicts that the euro will soon become Britain's second currency. Hans Eichel, the German finance minister, also says that it will become a parallel currency in countries like Switzerland and Britain. Peter Hain, the European minister who is acting as a cheerleader for membership, says the euro will become "a practical day-to-day reality and that will enable people to make a sensible decision about it.' As many as a third of Britain's biggest retailers, such as Marks and Spencer, have said they will take euros in some of their shops. BP has also announced that it will accept euros at some of its garages. But there is less to this than meet the eye. British tourists can now withdraw money from cashpoint from European holiday destinations, so they are less likely than in the past to end up with excess foreign money. Even if they do, they generally get rid of it at the end of their holidays, says David Southwell, a spokesman for the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
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单选题So what is depression? Depression is often more about anger turned (1) than it is about sadness. But it's usually (2) as sadness. Depression can (3) at all ages, from childhood to old age, and it's the United States' No. 1 (4) problem. When someone is depressed, her behavior (5) change and she loses interest in activities she (6) enjoyed (like sports, music, friendships). The sadness usually lasts every day for most of the day and for two weeks or more. What (7) depression? A (8) event can certainly bring (9) depression, but some will say it happens (10) a specific cause. So how do you know if you're just having a bad day (11) are really depressed? Depression affects your (12) , moods, behavior and even your physical health. These changes often go (13) or are labeled (14) simply a bad case of the blues. Someone who's truly (15) depression will have (16) periods of crying spells, feelings of (17) (like not being able to change your situation) and (18) (like you'll feel this way forever), irritation or agitation. A depressed person often (19) from others. Depression seldom goes away by itself, and the greatest (20) of depression is suicide. The risk of suicide increases if the depression isn't treated.
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单选题What has happened to the U. S and Britain in terms of overseas students?
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单选题Love is probably the best antidepressant there is because one of the most common sources of depression is feeling unloved. Most depressed people don't love themselves and they do not feel loved by others. They also are very self-focused, making them less attractive to others and depriving them of opportunities to learn the skills of love. There is a mythology in our culture that love just happens. As a result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to love them. But love doesn't work that way. To get love and keep love you have to go out and be active and learn a variety of specific skills. Most of us get our ideas of love from popular culture. We come to believe that love is something that sweeps us off our feet. But the pop-culture ideal of love consists of unrealistic images created for entertainment, which is one reason so many of us are set up to be depressed. It's part of our national vulnerability, like eating junk food, constantly stimulated by images of instant gratification. We think it is love when it's simply distraction and infatuation. One consequence is that when we hit real love we become upset and disappointed because there are many things that do not fit the cultural ideal. Limerance is the psychological state of deep infatuation. It feels good but rarely lasts. Limerance is that first stage of mad attraction whereby all the hormones are flowing and things feel so right. Limerance lasts, on average, six months. It can progress to love. Love mostly starts out as limerance, but limerance doesn't always evolve into love. Love is a learned skill, not something that comes from hormones or emotion particularly. Erich Fromm called it "an act of will. " If you don't learn the skills of love you virtually guarantee that you will be depressed, not only because you will not be connected enough, but because you will have many failure experiences. There are always core differences between two people, no matter how good or close you are, and if the relationship is going right those differences surface. The issue then is to identify the differences and negotiate them so that they don't distance you or kill the relationship. You do that by understanding where the other person is coming from, who that person is, and by being able to represent yourself. When the differences are known you must be able to negotiate and compromise on them until you find a common ground that works for both.
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单选题The Great Transformation is caused by
单选题The author seems to suggest that the defect in corporate power of the late 1990' s
单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each
text by choosing A, B, C or D. {{B}}Text 1{{/B}}
She was French; he was English; they
had just moved to London from Paris. When he found out about her affair, she
begged for a reconciliation. He was more ruthless: the same afternoon, he filed
for divorce in France, one of the stingiest jurisdictions in Europe for the
non-earning spouse and where adultery affects the court's ruling. Had she filed
first in England her conduct would have been irrelevant, and she would have had
a good chance of a large share of the marital assets, and even maintenance for
life. International divorce is full of such dramas and
anomalies, so the natural response of policymakers is to try to make things
simpler and more predictable. But the biggest attempt in recent years to do just
that, in a European agreement called Rome Ⅲ, has just been shelved. Instead,
several EU countries are now pressing ahead with their own harmonisation deal.
Many wonder if it will work any better. At issue is the
vexed question of which country's law applies to the break-up of a mixed
marriage. The spouses may live long-term in a third country and be temporarily
working in a fourth. The worst way to sort that out is with expensive legal
battles in multiple jurisdictions. The main principle at
present is that the first court to be approached hears the case. Introduced in
2001, this practice has worked well in preventing international legal battles,
but has made couples much more trigger-happy, because the spouse who hesitates
in order to save a troubled marriage may lose a huge amount of money. Rome III
aimed to remove the incentive to go to court quickly. Instead, courts in any EU
country would automatically apply the local law that had chiefly governed the
marriage. This approach is already in force in countries such as the
Netherlands. A couple that moved there and sought divorce having spent most of
the marriage in France, say, would find a Dutch court dividing assets and
handling child custody according to French law. That
works fine among continental European countries where legal systems, based on
Roman law, leave little role for precedent or the judge's discretion. You can
look up the rules on a website and apply them. But it is anathema in places such
as England, where the system favours a thorough (and often expensive)
investigation of the details of each case, and then lets judges decide according
to previous cases and English law. Another snag is that
what may suit middle-class expatriates in Brussels (who just happened to be the
people drafting Rome Ⅲ) may not suit, for example, a mixed marriage that has
mainly been based in a country, perhaps not even an EU member, with" a sharply
different divorce law. Swedish politicians don't like the idea that their courts
would be asked to enforce marriage laws based on, say, Islamic sharia.
The threat of vetoes from Sweden and like-minded
countries has blocked Rome Ⅲ. But a group of nine countries, led by Spain and
France, is going ahead. They are resorting to a provision in EU rules-never
before invoked-called " enhanced co-operation" This sets a precedent for a
"multi-speed'" Europe in which like-minded countries are allowed to move towards
greater integration, rather than seeking a "big-bang" binding treaty that scoops
up the willing and unwilling alike. Some countries worry that using enhanced
co-operation will create unmanageable layers of complexity, with EU law replaced
by multiple adhoc agreements. The real lesson may be that
Rome III was just too ambitious. A more modest but useful goal would be simply
to clarify the factors that determine which court hears a divorce, and then let
that court apply its own law. David Hodson, a British expert, proposes an
international deal that would start by giving greatest weight to any prenuptial
agreement, followed by long-term residency, and then take into account other
factors such as nationality. That would then make it easier to end marriages
amicably, with mediation and out-of-court agreement, rather than a race to start
the beastly business of litigation.
单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}}
The housing market has been for two
years propping up consumers' spirits while the rest of the economy lies
exhausted on the floor, still trying to struggle to its feet. According to the
National Association of Realtors, the national median existing-home price ended
the year at $164,000, up 7.1 percent from 2001. That's the strongest annual
increase since 1980. Although residential real estate activity
makes up less than 8% of total U. S. GDP, a housing market like this one can
make the difference between positive and negative growth. Most significantly,
consumer spending is 66% of GDP, and the purchase of a new home tends to have an
{{U}}"umbrella effect"{{/U}} on the homeowner's spending as he has to stock it with
a washer/ dryer, a new big-screen TV, and maybe a swing set for the
yard. The main factor in housing's continued strength is {{U}}a
classic economic example of zero-sum boom:{{/U}} the persistent weakness
everywhere else. As the 2003 recovery continues to be more forecast than
reality. Falling stock prices raised investor appeal for U. S. Treasury Bonds,
which in turn, allowed most interest rates to drift even lower. But there are
not many signs that there's a bubble ready to burst. December's
new record in housing starts, for example, was nicely matched by the new record
in new home sales. If you build it, they will buy and even if an economic pickup
starts to reduce housing's relative attractiveness, there's no reason why modest
economic growth and improved consumer mood can't help sustaining housing's
strength. "The momentum gained from low mortgage interest rates will carry
strong home sales into 2003, with an improving economy offsetting modestly
higher mortgage interest rates as the year progresses," said David Lereah, chief
economist at the National Association of Realtors. Just as
housing has taken up much of the economic slack for the past two years, both as
a comforting investment for fretting consumers and a driver of consumer spending
itself, a big bump elsewhere in the economy in 2003 could be housing's downfall.
If stocks roar back this spring, capital inflows could steal from the bond
market, pushing up long-term interest rates. Or Alan Greenspan and the Fed could
do the same to short-term rates, as a way to hit the brakes on a recovery that
is heating up too fast. In other words, if everything possible goes wrong for
housing, homeowners should have plenty to compensate them in terms bf job
security and income hikes.
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单选题Sweden has a longstanding reputation as an egalitarian country with a narrow gender gap. But a national debate about gender equality has revealed substantial dissatisfaction, with some Swedes feeling it has gone too far. Rousing controversy now is the issue of gender pedagogy, a concept that emerged in the early 2000s and typically involves challenging gender stereotypes in learning material and in avoiding treating male and female pupils in a stereotypical manner. But what has sharpened the debate in Sweden has been the argument that schools should also be gender neutral, giving children the opportunity to define themselves as neither male nor female if they wish. Kristina Henkel, a gender expert specializing in equality in schools, disputes the argument that gender pedagogy and neutrality are being foisted on Swedes. "Sweden has a long tradition of working with equality and this has had strong support among politicians, " she says, and adds that "the question of gender neutrality, or of everyone having equal rights despite their gender, has also been driven by activists at the grassroots level. " But Elise Claeson, a columnist and a former equality expert at the Swedish Confederation of Professions, disagrees. "I have long participated in debates with gender pedagogues and they act like an elite, " she says. "They tend to be well-educated, live in big cities, and have contacts in the media, and they clearly despise traditional people. " Ms. Claeson has been a vocal critic of the word "hen, " a new, gender-neutral pronoun that was recently included in the online version of the National Encyclopedia. Around the same time, Sweden's first gender-neutral children's book was published. The author, Jesper Lundqvist, uses hen throughout his book, completely avoiding han and hon, the Swedish words for him and her. Claeson believes that the word hen can be harmful to young children because, she says, it can be confusing for them to receive contradicting messages about their genders in school, at home, and in society at large. "It is important to have your gender confirmed to you as a child. This does not limit children; it makes them confident about their identity... Children ought to be allowed to mature slowly and naturally. As adults we can choose to expand and change our gender identities. " Last fall, nearly 200 teachers gathered in Stockholm to discuss how to avoid "traditional gender patterns" in schools. The conference was part of a research project run by the National Agency for Education and supported by the Delegation for Equality in Schools. "I work with these issues in Finland and Norway and it is clear to me that they have been inspired by the Swedish preschool — and school curricula, " says Ms. Henkel, the gender expert. But Henkel also insists that gender equality is a rights issue that cannot simply be left to the state to handle. Instead, she says, it requires the active involvement of citizens. "Rights are not something we receive and then don't have to fight for. This is about a redistribution of power, and for that initiative and action are needed, not just fancy legislation. /
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单选题"The impulse to excess among young Britons remains as powerful as ever, but the force that used to keep the impulse in check has all but disappeared," claimed a newspaper. Legislation that made it easier to get hold of a drink was "an Act for the increase of drunkenness and immorality", asserted a politician. The first statement comes from 2005, the second from 1830. On both occasions, the object of scorn was a parliamentary bill that promised to sweep away " antiquated" licensing laws. As liberal regulations came into force this week, Britons on both sides of the debate unwittingly followed a 19th-century script. Reformers then, as now, took a benign view of human nature. Make booze cheaper and more readily available, said the liberalisers, and drinkers would develop sensible, continental European-style ways. Nonsense, retorted the critics. Habits are hard to change; if Britons can drink easily, they will drink more. Worryingly for modern advocates of liberalisation, earlier doomsayers turned out to be right. Between 1820 and 1840, consumption of malt (which is used to make beer) increased by more than 50%. Worse, Britons developed a keener taste for what Thomas Carlyle called "liquid madness"—gin and other spirits. The backlash was fierce. Critics pointed to widespread debauchery in the more disreputable sections of the working class. They were particularly worried about the people who, in a later age, came to be known as "ladettes". An acute fear, says Virginia Berridge, who studies temperance at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was that women would pass on their sinful ways to their children. In the 19th century, temperance organisations set up their own newspapers to educate the public about the consequences of excess. That, at least, has changed: these days, the mainstream media rail against the demon drink all by themselves.
