单选题The author would describe the Reisses' life as

单选题{{B}}Part C{{/B}}Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Vilhelm Hammershoi has been a well-kept secret since his death in 1916． All his best- known paintings are of household interiors that are drained of color and tell no stories. {{U}}46． His windows cannot be seen through, his doors cannot be opened and the figures produce no element{{/U}} {{U}}of vitality into the rooms.{{/U}} Hammershoi is defiantly inscrutable; the mood is melancholic and enigmatic, but the paintings are oddly compelling. Quite why, no one seems sure. Of the 71 paintings in a new exhibition in London, 21 come from his native Copenhagen, 15 from other Scandinavian collections and 20 from private collections, principally Danish. Hammershoi's focus was not as narrow as this show might suggest, but to see his nudes it is necessary to visit the Statens Museum for Kunst in Denmark. He did some fine, if bleak, landscapes too, but it was the interiors that sold in his lifetime, and he is best remembered for paintings of the sun shining through curtainless window-panes, casting shadows on carpetless floors. 47．{{U}}Anxious to transform the prosaic into the romantic, his admirers speak of a poet of light and the poetry of silence.{{/U}} Hammershoi himself was guileless. 48．{{U}}"What makes me choose a motif are the lines, what I like to call the architectural context of an image," he said in 1907.{{/U}} Light was also very important, but it was lines, he insisted, that had the greatest significance for him. His wife, Ida, makes appearances in the empty rooms, but she is usually painted from the back, with the emphasis on the bare nape of her neck. The heroic figures are white doors and windows, and tables, chairs, a piano and a sofa. No painter can have got so much pleasure from painting brown furniture. One work, titled "Interior with a Woman at a Sewing Table", is a symphony of three shades of shiny brown. Hammershoi was influenced by Vermeer and the 17th-century Dutch genre painters and by Caspar David Friedrich, a German, but there is no one like him. His work shows traces of an unexpected subversive sense of humor. 49．{{U}}Felix Kramer, the show's curator, identifies irregularities, for example, that create an almost surreal quality: a piano with two legs, table legs casting shadows in different directions, chests of drawers with no knobs or handles.{{/U}} Even some of Hammershoi's admirers wonder what it all means. 50．{{U}}Trying to pin Hammershoi down is as profitless as Waiting for Godot.{{/U}} However, the new exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts might encourage some excitement in the marketplace. The highest price made by a Hammershoi interior is ￡ 520,000 ($1 million) in 2006 and the price boom in the auction houses is passing him by. Perhaps the secret of Hammershoi has been kept a bit too well.

单选题 Business travelers used to be the cash cows of the hotel business. Armed with corporate credit cards and expense accounts, they'd happily lay down hundreds of dollars per night for the privilege of a Godiva chocolate on their pillow and a sunken whirlpool tub in their bathroom. But just as prolonged corporate belt tightening has forced road warriors to use budget airlines, more and more of them are now eschewing five-star lodging in favor of cheaper accommodations. Indeed, earlier this year the US-based National Business Travel Association released figures showing that 61 percent of corporate travel managers planned to book their people into lower-priced hotels in the coming year. Here's the good news: penny-pinching is translating into better deals at cheap and up-market hotels alike. Services at middle-market hotels are rising to accommodate a new wave of more demanding corporate customers. And luxury hotels are working harder to keep business travelers coming, offering lower rates, special packages and extra services. Even though business-travel volume is set to rise by more than 4 percent in 2004 after three dismal years, hotels will continue to be under pressure—in large part because a weak dollar is forcing American business travelers to search for value. Some of the best deals are coming from the big chains. In January Starwood Hotels announced it would upgrade its global middle-market brand, Four Points, by rolling out free high-speed wireless Internet access in all guest rooms. On the flip side, upscale brands like Inter Continental and Ritz Carlton are selling empty rooms at discount rates via online services. That has the effect of depressing luxury-room prices, because corporate travel managers can now demand that hotels match their own discount prices all the time. Inter Continental hotels in France and Germany have been hit so hard that they are actually repricing their rooms to reflect rates before the dollar began falling. Upscale hotels like Waldorf-Astoria, Sofitel are also trying to offer extra services. But beware of new, hidden fees. In an effort to make up some of their fast revenue, hotels are starting to charge corporate travelers for things that used to be free—including breakfast, banquet or meeting rooms. Aside from saving companies money, the trend in frugal business travel may give rise to a whole new market segment: the buy-to-let hotel room. Last week in London, British property developer Johnny Sandelson launched GuestInvest, a hotel in Notting Hill where users can purchase a room for ￡235,000, use it for a maximum of 52 nights a year themselves, then rent it out the rest of the time to make extra money. It seems an idea whose time has come: GuestInvest says it has already fielded hundreds of calls from business people interested in making a cheaper hotel their second home.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Yasuhisa Shizoki, a 51-year-old MP from Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), starts tapping his finger on the dismal economic chart on his coffee table. "Unless we change the decision-making process," he says bluntly, "we are not going to be able to solve this kind of problem." With the economy in such a mess, it may seem a bit of a diversion to be trying to sort out Japan's political structures as well as its economic problems. But Mr Shiozaki can hardly be accused of time-wasting. He has consistently prodded the government to take a firm hand to ailing banks, and has given warning against complacency after a recent rise in share prices. Far from being a distraction, his latest cause highlights how far Japan is from genuine economic reform. Since cowriting a report on political reform, which was released by an LDP panel last week, Mr Shiozaki has further upset the party's old guard. Its legionaries, flanked by columns of the bureaucracy, continue to hamper most attempts to overhaul the economy. Junichiro Koizumi was supposed to change all that, by going over their heads and appealing directly to the public. Yet nearly a year after becoming prime minister, Mr Koizumi has precious little to show for his efforts. His popularity is now flagging and his determination is increasingly in doubt. As hopes of immediate economic reform fade, optimists are focusing on another potential benefit of Mr Koizumi's tenure. They hope that his highly personalized style of leadership will pave the way for a permanent change in Japanese politics: towards more united and authoritative cabinets that are held directly accountable for their policies. As that happens, the thinking goes, real economic reforms will be able to follow. A leading candidate for change is the 40 year-old system--informal but religiously followed--through which the LDP machinery vets every bill before it ever gets to parliament. Most legislation starts in the LDP's party committees, which mirror the parliamentary committee structure. Proposals then go through two higher LDP bodies, which hammer out political deals to smooth their passage. Only then does the prime minister's cabinet get fully involved in approving the policy. Most issues have been decided by the LDP mandarins long before they reach this point, let alone the floor of parliament, leaving even the prime minister limited influence, and allowing precious little room for public debate and even less for accountability. As a result, progress will probably remain slow. Since they know that political reform leads to economic reform, and hence poses a threat to their interests, most of the LDP will resist any real changes. But at least a handful of insiders have now bought into one of Mr Koizumi's best slogans: "Change the LDP, change Japan."

单选题What does Stelios mean by talking about funerals?

单选题According to the author, there is a trend______.

单选题The cellphone, a device we have lived with for more than a decade, offers a good example of a popular technology's unforeseen side effects. More than one billion are (1) use around the world, and when asked, their (2) say they love their phones for the safety and convenience (3) provide. People also report that they are (4) in their use of their phones. One opinion survey (5) that "98 percent of Americans say they move away from (6) when talking on a wireless phone in public" (7) "86 percent say they 'never' or 'rarely' speak (8) wireless phones" when conducting (9) with clerks or bank tellers. Clearly, there exists a (10) between our reported cellphone behavior and our actual behavior. Cellphone users that is to say, most of us are (11) instigators and victims of this form of conversational panhandling, and it (12) a cumulatively negative effect on social space. As the sociologist Erving Gotfman observed in another (13) , there is something deeply disturbing about people who are" (14) contact" in social situations because they are blatantly refusing to (15) to the norms of their immediate environment. Placing a cellphone call in public instantly transforms the strangers around you (16) unwilling listeners who must cede to your use of the public (17) . a decidedly undemocratic effect for so democratic a technology. Listeners don't always passively (18) this situation: in recent years, people have been pepper-sprayed in movie theaters, (19) from concert halls and deliberately rammed with cars as a result of (20) behavior on their cellphones.

单选题Leave it to writer Buchwald to bring humor to hospice. Last February, the famed satirist was diagnosed with terminal kidney failure, given three weeks to live, and transferred to a hospice for a quiet goodbye. Then the unexpected happened. His kidneys almost miraculously started working again. The poisons in his blood that were supposed to carry him out in peaceful slumber(死亡) washed out of his system, leaving instead a funny bone stunned and amused by the absurdity of the situation. It's not every day that someone flunks hospice. Seasoned author that he is, Buchwald turned the irony into a book. Only 10 months ago, he was a sad, 80-year-old man with a newly amputated(切除) leg and kidneys on the fritz(发生故障). Despite his family's pleas, he entered a hospice facility, at ease with his Choice to die naturally. Most people don't know much about hospice, the place. It doesn't cure; it cares, relieving physical pain and mental anguish. Most often, cancer or cardiovascular(心血管病) disease carries hospice patients to their end, usually in weeks. But some are put on hold like Buchwald. Buchwald left after five months. In one large study, 6 percent of hospice patients improved enough to be taken off the terminal list and sent home. Buchwald was shocked when the big sleep didn't come. Before Buchwald became the hospice's superstar, he had been the poster boy for depression. But with the help of physicians and medication, he didn't drown. Laugh or cry. Facing natural death, he now offers a message many of his contemporaries need to hear. Older men, particularly those in their 80s, have the highest rate of suicide. Risk factors for them notably include health issues. In fact, suicide often comes soon after they've seen a doctor. On that point, Buchwald notes the medical dearth of smiles and laughter." Look at how often doctors and nurses walk into a patient's room all serious," he says. His prescription? They" need to go to Disney World to be trained." Laughter, of course, is the best medicine, and some studies even show humor is a biological stress reliever. As Buchwald sees it, many humorists use it as therapy to block out periods of hurt or anger. You would not know there were hurts or anger judging by his hospice time. Friends and family smothered Buchwald with love. VIPs beat a path to the hospice door. And they all came bearing food, lots of cheesecake. He thrived. After he planned his funeral, he started up writing again and found he could write wonderfully. Buchwald is now teaching all of us how to live--and to die. Yet he's quick to add," I have had such a good time at the hospice. I am going to miss it./

单选题Compared with traditional hotels, the buy-to-let hotel