单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} When, in 1976. John Midgley was awarded the CBE for telling readers of The Economist about the United States, he took particular delight in the fact that he went by bus from work to accept the decoration from Queen Elizabeth (who was staying in Blair House in Washington), and was in and out quick enough, drinking up a gin and tonic without a stop, to use the transfer ticket to go out to dinner. He was a print hack all his life, spending freely on fun and friends, but never bothering to make his name known or his wallet fatter, with books or broadcasting. The possessor of free intelligence, he was not on a soap-box, or concentrated on influencing the great and good, though he got their attention just the same. His job, he once said, "was to assist the reading public to understand what was going on". He conveyed his liberal view of the world with great clarity but "if you can't give [people] useful information, you can shut up." He finally did shut up, just before Christmas. Midgley, born in the working-class north of England in 1911, was in military intelligence during the Second World War, trying to work out Germany's intentions. He then turned to journalism, dodging for a time between The Economist, the (then) Manchester Guardian and the Times. as leader writer and foreign correspondent. In 1956 he landed on The Economist and, luckily for us, stayed there, until and beyond his retirement, contributing a book review days before he died. He was foreign editor for seven years, pulling foreign coverage together in (his own words) "a reasonably satisfactory manner". He was a brilliant, scary teacher to a classroom of aspiring hacks, not lazily rewriting their pathetic stories but throwing them back to be redone, with advice that bums to this day. He also. less brilliantly, sent Kim Philby, whom he had known at Cambridge, to string for the paper from Beirut. until the spy's mask fell off and he fled to the Soviet Union. In 1963. after a bit of an upheaval at The Economist, he went off to be Washington correspondent and, from then on, everything fell into place. He excelled at his job, lucidly explaining American affairs even to Americans themselves as well as to the rest of the world. He married Elizabeth. a producer at CBS, and they looked after each other with love and wit. Their house in north-west Washington was a warm and lovely meeting-place. His was a good life, the second half especially.

单选题It was inevitable that any of President George W. Bush's fans had to be very disappointed by his decision to implement high tariffs on steel imported to the U. S. The president's defense was pathetic. He argued that the steel tariffs were somehow consistent with free trade, that the domestic industry was important and struggling t and that the relief was a temporary measure to allow time for restructuring. One reason that this argument is absurd is that U. S. integrated steel companies ("Big Steel") have received various forms of government protection and subsidy for more than 30 years. Instead of encouraging the industry to restructure, the long-term protection has sustained inefficient companies and cost U. S. consumers dearly. As Anne O. Krueger, now deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said in a report on Big Steel: "The American Big Steel industry has been the champion lobbyist and seeker of protection... It provides a key and disillusioning example of the ability to lobby in Washington for measures which hurt the general public and help a very small group. Since 1950s, Big Steel has been reluctant to make the investments needed to match the new technologies introduced elsewhere. It agreed to high wages for its unionized labor force. Hence, the companies have difficulty in competing not only with more efficient producers in Asia and Europe but also with technologically advanced U.S. mini-mills, which rely on scrap metal as an input. Led by Nucor Cor. , these mills now capture about half of overall U. S. sales. The profitability of U. S. steel companies depends also on steel prices, which, despite attempts at protection by the U. S. and other governments, are determined primarily in world markets. These prices are relatively high as recently as early 2000 but have since declined with the world recession to reach the lowest dollar values of the last 20 years. Although these low prices are unfortunate for U.S. producers, they are beneficial for the overall U.S. economy. The low prices are also signal that the inefficient Big Steel companies should go out of business even faster than they have been. Instead of leaving or modernizing, the dying Big Steel industry complains that foreigners dump steels by selling at low prices. However, it is hard to see why it is bad for the overall U.S. economy if foreign producers wish to sell us their goods at low prices. After all, the extreme case of dumping is one where foreigners give us their steel for free and why would that be a bad thing?

单选题Not many 25-year-olds can reasonably claim to have changed the world. The IBM personal computer, which was launched in 1981 and celebrates its 25th birthday in August, is a rare exception. Other personal computers had been launched before; but it was the IBM PC that ended up defining the standard around which a vast new industry then coalesced. IBM, the titan of the computing World at the time, quickly lost control of its own creation, allowing others to reap the benefits. But leave aside what the PC has done for the fortunes of particular companies, and instead step back and consider what the PC has done for mankind. The PC's most obvious achievement has been to help make computers cheaper, more widely available and more useful than ever before. Before it appeared, different computers from different manufacturers were mostly incompatible with each other. The PC's architecture was not perfect, but its adoption as an industry standard made possible economies of scale in both hardware and software. This in turn reduced prices and enabled the PC to democratise computing. But although the PC has its merits, it also has its faults. Its flexibility has proved to be both a strength and a weakness: it encourages innovation, but at the cost of complexity, reliability and security. And for people in the developing world, PCs are too bulky, expensive and energy-hungry. W. hen it comes to extending the benefits of digital technology--chiefly, cheap and easy access to information to everyone on the planet, the PC may not be the best tool for the job. Look on the streets of almost any city in the world, however, and you will see people clutching tiny, pocket computers, better known as mobile phones. Already, even basic handsets have simple web-browsers, calculators and other computing functions. Mobile phones are cheaper, simpler and more reliable than PCs, and market forces--in particular, the combination of pie-paid billing plans and microcredit schemes--are already putting them into the hands of even the world's poorest people. Initiatives to spread PCs in the developing world, in contrast, rely on top-down funding from governments or aid agencies, rather than bottom-up adoption by consumers. All kinds of firms, from giants such as Google to start-ups such as CellBazaar, are working to bring the full belle, fits of the web to mobile phones. There is no question that the PC has democratised computing and-unleashed innovation, but it is the mobile phone that now seems most likely to carry the dream of the "personal computer" to its conclusion.

单选题It can be learned from the first paragraph that Internet advertising

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} The term massage therapy (also called massage, for short; massage also refers to an individual treatment session) covers a group of practices and techniques. There are over 80 types of massage therapy. In all of them, therapists press, rub, and otherwise manipulate the muscles and other soft tissues of the body, often varying pressure and movement. They most often use their hands and fingers, but may use their forearms, elbows, or feet. Typically, the intent is to relax the soft tissues, increase delivery of blood and oxygen to the massaged areas, warm them, and decrease pain. Massage therapy dates back thousands of years. References to massage have been found in ancient writings from many cultures, including those of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Japan, China, Egypt, and the Indian subcontinent. In the United States, massage therapy first became popular and was promoted for a variety of health purposes starting in the mid-1800s. In the 1930s and 1940s, however, massage fell out of favor, mostly because of scientific and technological advances in medical treatments. Interest in massage revived in the 1970s, especially among athletes. More recently, a 2002 national survey on Americans' use of CAM (published in 2004) found that 5 percent of the 31,000 participants had used massage therapy in the preceding 12 months, and 9.3 percent had ever used it. According to recent reviews, people use massage for a wide variety of health-related intents: for example, to relieve pain ( often from musculoskeletal conditions, but from other conditions as well); rehabilitate sports injuries; reduce stress; increase relaxation; address feelings of anxiety and depression; and aid general wellness. Massage therapy appears to have few serious risks if appropriate cautions are followed. A very small number of serious injuries have been reported, and they appear to have occurred mostly because cautions were not followed or a massage was given by a person who was not properly trained. Health care providers recommend that patients not have massage therapy before they consult their doctors about their own health conditions. Scientists are studying massage to understand what effects massage therapy has on patients, how it has those effects, and why. Some aspects of this are better understood than others. There are many more aspects that are not yet known or well understood scientifically. More well-designed studies are needed to understand and confirm these theories and other scientific aspects of massage.

单选题Children who generally tended to progress academically were______

单选题People often wonder why historians go to so much trouble to preserve millions of books, documents and records of the past. Why do we have libraries? What (1) are these documents and the (2) books? Why do we (3) and save the actions of men, the negotiations of statesmen and the (4) of armies? Because, sometimes, the voice of experience can (5) us to stop, look and listen. And because, sometimes, past records, (6) interpreted, can give us (7) of what to do and what not to do. If we are to create (8) peace forever, we must seek (9) origins in human experience and in the record of human (10) . From the story of the endurance, courage and (11) of men and women, we create the inspiration of youth. From stories of the Christian men, right down to Budapest's heroic men of today, history records the suffering, the self-denial, the loyalty and the heroic (12) of men. Surely from these records there can come help to mankind in our (13) and perplexities, and in our yearnings (14) peace. The (15) purpose of history is a better world. History gives a warning to those who would (16) war. History (17) inspiration to those who seek peace. (18) , history helps us learn. Yesterday's records can keep us from (19) yesterday's mistakes. And from the pieces of mosaic assembled by historians come tile great printings (20) represent the progress of mankind.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Reading 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}} Few people would defend the Victorian attitude to children, but if you were a parent in those days, at least you knew where you stood: children were to be seen and not heard. Freud and his company did away with all that and parents have been bewildered ever since. The child's happiness is all-important, the psychologists say, but what about the parents' happiness? Parents suffer continually from fear and guilt while their children gaily romp about pulling the place apart. A good "old-fashioned" spanking is out of the question: no modern child-rearing manual would permit such barbarity. The trouble is you are not allowed even to shout. Who knows what deep psychological wounds you might inflict? The poor child may never recover from the dreadful traumatic experience. So it is that parents bend over backwards to avoid giving their children complexes which a hundred years ago hadn't even been heard of. Certainly a child needs love, and a lot of it. But the excessive permissiveness of modern parents is surely doing more harm than good. Psychologists have succeeded in undermining parents' confidence in their own authority. And it hasn't taken children long to get wind of the fact. In addition to the great modern classics on child-care, there are countless articles in magazines and newspapers. With so much unsolicited advice flying about, mum and dad just don't know what to do any more. In the end, they do nothing at all. So, from early childhood, the kids are in charge and parents' lives are regulated according to the needs of their offspring. When the little dears develop into teenagers, they take complete control. Lax authority over the years makes adolescent rebellion against parents all the more violent. If the young people are going to have a party, for instance, parents are asked to leave the house. Their presence merely spoils the fun. What else can the poor parents do but obey? Children are hardy creatures (far hardier than the psychologists would have us believe) and most of them survive the harmful influence of extreme permissiveness which is the normal condition in the modern household. But a great many do not. The spread of juvenile delinquency in our own age is largely due to parental laxity. Mother, believing that little Johnny can look after himself, is not at home when he returns from school, so little Johnny roams the streets. The dividing-line between permissiveness and sheer negligence is very fine indeed. The psychologists have much to answer for. They should keep their mouths shut and let parents get on with the job. And if children are knocked about a little bit in the process, it may not really matter too much. At least this will help them to develop vigorous views of their own and give them something positive to react against. Perhaps there's some truth in the idea that children who have had a surfeit of happiness in .their childhood appear like stodgy puddings and fail .to make a success of life.

单选题The author says "the rhetoric is softening" to show that

单选题During uncertain times, people tend to look back and wonder, How did it get to this? They feel more keenly their missed opportunities and failures in judgment. Regret-the sense that things could have turned out better if only a different choice had been made--becomes pervasive. However, regret needn't be a garment rending, self-whipping emotion. Instead, it can be something to value and use. According to a recent study by Colleen Saffrey at the University of Victoria in Canada and colleagues at the University of Illinois, most people hold regret in high regard. Of all the negative emotions, regret was identified as the most valued in that it helped people make sense of life events and remedy what went wrong. Regret is hardwired into human biology, underscoring its importance in behavior. Advances in neuro-imaging show that when a person experiences regret, a part of the brain involved in both reasoning and emotion be- comes active. Neuroscience also tells us that learning probably works best when there is an intense emotional component to it, so it could be that regret bolsters our ability to learn from experience. Suggestions listed below may help you manage this emotion and turn it into a tool for growth. Beware of hindsight bias. What you should have done always seems clearer in retrospect than it was at the time. As the Danish philosopher Sφren Kierkegaard put it, "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." He might have said, "So don't be so hard on yourself." Use regrets to improve decision making and clarify values. Instead of thinking over what might have been, let what happened point the way. The regret might help you prioritize your investments in relationships, service to the community, health, and time, as well as help you set reasonable financial goals. Balance regret and risk. Instead of choosing a less risky option that you are least likely to regret, choose the one that will maximize your chance of reaching realistic goals. In fact, past experiences of regret may have given you a better appreciation of risk, which is a sign of growth. Don't worry alone, especially if you are drowning in regret, ff misery loves company, it's because perspective helps. It's good to know you're not the only "idiot" in the neighborhood. On some level, we're all idiots. They most successful people are those who have been resolute in the face of failure. If your thoughts turn mor- bid, get professional help so you can go back to striving toward your personal and career goals.