单选题The great recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. And ultimately, it is likely to reshape our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years. No one tries harder than the jobless to find silver linings in this national economic disaster. Many said that unemployment, while extremely painful, had improved them in some ways: they had become less materialistic and more financially prudent; they were more aware of the struggles of others. In limited respects, perhaps the recession will leave society better off. At the very least, it has awoken us from our national fever dream of easy riches and bigger houses, and put a necessary end to an era of reckless personal spending. But for the most part, these benefits seem thin, uncertain, and far off. In The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, the economic historian Benjamin Friedman argues that both inside and outside the U.S., lengthy periods of economic stagnation or decline have almost always left society more mean-spirited and less inclusive, and have usually stopped or reversed the advance of rights and freedoms. Anti-immigrant sentiment typically increases, as does conflict between races and classes. Income inequality usually falls during a recession, but it has not shrunk in this one. Indeed, this period of economic weakness may reinforce class divides, and decrease opportunities to cross them—especially for young people. The research of Till Von Wachter, the economic at Columbia University, suggests that not all people graduating into a recession see their life chances dimmed: those with degrees from elite universities catch up fairly quickly to where they otherwise would have been if they had graduated in better times; it is the masses beneath them that are left behind. In the Internet age, it is particularly easy to see the resentment that has always been hidden within American society. More difficult, in the moment, is discerning precisely how these lean times are affecting society"s character. In many respects, the U.S. was more socially tolerant entering this recession than at any time in its history, and a variety of national polls on social conflict since then have shown mixed results. We will have to wait and see exactly how these hard times will reshape our social fabric. But they certainly will reshape it, and all the more so the longer they extend.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} It was the best of times or, depending on your political and philosophical outlook, one of the foulest and most depraved. Rebellion seemed to be leaping from city to city, continent to continent, by some fiery process of contagion. Radical students filled the streets of Mexico city, Berlin, Tokyo, Prague. In the U. S. , Chicago swirled into near anarchy as cops battled antiwar demonstrators gathered at the Democratic Convention. And everywhere from Amsterdam to Haight-Ashbury, a generation was getting high, acting up. So, clearly, it was the year from hell--a collective "dive into extensive social and personal dysfunction," as the Wall Street Journal editorialized recently. Or, depending again on your outlook, a global breakthrough for the human spirit. On this, the 25th anniversary of 1968, probably the only thing we can all agree on is that '68 marks the beginning of the "culture wars," which have divided America ever since. Both the sides of the "culture wars" of the '80s and '90s took form in the critical year of'68. The key issues are different now--abortion and gay rights, for example, as opposed to Vietnam and racism--but the underlying themes still echo the clashes of '68: Diversity vs. conformity, tradition vs. iconoclasm, self-expression vs. deference to norms. "Question authority," in other words, vs. "Father knows best." The 25th anniversary of '68 is a good time to reflect, calmly and philosophically, on these deep, underlying choices. On one hand we know that anti-authoritarianism for its own sake easily degenerates into a rude and unfocused defiance: Revolution, as Abbie Hoffman put it, "for the hell of it." Certainly '68 had its wretched excesses as well as its moments of glory: the personal tragedy of lives undone by drugs and sex, the heavy cost of riots and destruction. One might easily conclude that the ancient rules and hierarchies are there for a reason--they're worked, more or less, for untold millenniums, so there's no point in changing them now. But it's also true that what "worked" for thousands of years may not be the best way of doing things. Democracy, after all, was onee a far-out, subversive notion, condemned by kings and priests. In our own country, it took all kinds of hell-raising, including a war, to get across the simple notion that no person is morally entitled to own another. One generation's hallowed tradition--slavery, or the divine right of kings--may be another generation's object lesson in human folly. '68 was one more awkward, stumbling, half-step forward in what Dutschke called the "long march" toward human freedom. Actually, it helped inspire the worldwide feminist movement.

单选题Many people consider the wider use of biofuels a promising way of reducing the amount of surplus carbon dioxide (CO2) being pumped into the air by the world’s mechanized transport. The theory is that plants such as sugar cane, maize (corn, to Americans), oilseed rape and wheat take up CO2 during their growth, so burning fuels made from them should have no net effect on the amount of that gas in the atmosphere. Theory, though, does not always translate into practice, and just as governments have committed themselves to the greater use of biofuels, questions are being raised about how green this form of energy really is. The latest comes from the International Council for Science (ICSU) based in Paris. The ICSU report concludes that, so far, the production of biofuels has aggravated rather than ameliorated global warming. In particular, it supports some controversial findings published in 2007 by Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany. Dr. Crutzen concluded that most analyses had underestimated the importance to global warming of a gas called nitrous oxide (N2O). The amount of this gas released by farming biofuel crops such as maize and rape probably negates by itself any advantage offered by reduced emissions of CO2. Although N2O is not common in the Earth’s atmosphere, it is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and it hangs around longer. The result is that, over the course of a century, its ability to warm the planet is almost 300 times that of an equivalent mass of CO2. N2O is made by bacteria that live in soil and water and, these days, their raw material is often the nitrogen-rich fertiliser that modern farming requires. Since the 1960s the amount of fertiliser used by farmers has increased sixfold, and not all of that extra nitrogen ends up in their crops. Maize, in particular, is described by experts in the field as a “nitrogen-leaky” plant because it has shallow roots and takes up nitrogen for only a few months of the year. This would make maize (which is one of the main sources of biofuel) a particularly bad contributor to global N2O emissions. But it is not just biofuels that are to blame. The ICSU report suggests N2O emissions in general are probably more important than had been realised. Previous studies, including those by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations-appointed body of experts, may have miscalculated their significance — and according to Adrian Williams of Cranfield University, in Britain, even the IPCC’s approach suggests that the global-warming potential of most of Britain’s annual crops is dominated by N2O emissions.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Soon after his appointment as secretary-general of the United Nations in 1997, Kofi Annan lamented that he was being accused of failing to reform the world body in six weeks. "But what are you complaining about?" asked the Russian ambassador. "You've had more time than God." Ah, Mr. Annan quipped back, "but God had one big advantage. He worked alone without a General Assembly, a Security Council and [all] the committees." Recounting that anecdote to journalists in New York this week, Mr. Annan sought to explain why a draft declaration on UN reform and tackling world poverty, due to be endorsed by some 150 heads of state and government at a world summit in the city on September 14th-16th, had turned into such a pale shadow of the proposals that he himself had put forward in March. "With 191 member states", he sighed, "it's not easy to get an agreement." Most countries put the blame on the United States, in the form of its abrasive new ambassador, John Bolton, for insisting at the end of August on hundreds of last-minute amendments and a line-by-line renegotiation of a text most others had thought was almost settled. But a group of middle-income developing nations, including Pakistan, Cuba, Iran, Egypt, Syria and Venezuela, also came up with plenty of last-minute changes of their own. The risk of having no document at all, and thus nothing for the world's leaders to come to New York for, was averted only by marathon all-night and all-weekend talks. The 35-page final document is not wholly devoid of substance. It calls for the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission to supervise the reconstruction of countries after wars; the replacement of the discredited UN Commission on Human Rights by a supposedly tougher Human Rights Council; the recognition of a new "responsibility to protect" peoples from genocide and other atrocities when national authorities fail to take action, including, if necessary, by force; and an "early" reform of the Security Council. Although much pared down, all these proposals have at least survived. Others have not. Either they proved so contentious that they were omitted altogether, such as the sections on disarmament and non-proliferation and the International Criminal Court, or they were watered down to little more than empty platitudes. The important section on collective security and the use of force no longer even mentions the vexed issue of pre-emptive strikes; meanwhile the section on terrorism condemns it "in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes", but fails to provide the clear definition the Americans wanted. Both Mr. Annan and, more surprisingly, George Bush have nevertheless sought to put a good face on things, with Mr. Annan describing the summit document as "an important step forward" and Mr. Bush saying the UN had taken "the first steps" towards reform. Mr. Annan and Mr. Bolton are determined to go a lot further. It is now up to the General Assembly to flesh out the document's skeleton proposals and propose new ones. But its chances of success appear slim.

单选题Which of the following may reflect the author's opinion?

单选题Computer criminals choose accumulating fractions of pence from individual payroll accounts because

单选题According to myth, Rwanda's ancient line of kings descended from a man with secret knowledge: He could (1) ordinary rock into smooth, gleaming iron. (2) this new technology, he taught his people to make hard, durable weapons for defeating their enemies and sharp axes for cutting the forest to make fields. By the time the first Europeans arrived in the 19th century, iron had become (3) in the kingdom of Rwanda. Other traditional African societies tell stories of (4) ironworkers who descended from heaven or came from other lands. The prevalence of such legends (5) the importance of ironworking in these cultures, and archaeologists have long wondered if the arrival of iron metallurgy (6) the growth of complex early societies. Did foreigners (7) bring ironworking to Africa, or did Africans invent it themselves? Entering the Iron Age was not easy. Metalworkers had to melt ore at (8) temperatures and then repeatedly hammer and reheat the spongy metal. The traditional view is that metallurgists in Turkey were the first to melt iron ore (9) , beginning around 1800 B.C.E. Initially, they (10) the new metal for precious (11) or ritual objects. But by 1200 B.C.E., workers in the Levant were boiling out (12) amounts of iron. The metal had a major (13) on societies. Iron was a transformative metal. Iron ores are much more (14) than copper or the tin needed to make bronze. Bronze was (15) costly and largely limited (16) use in ritual objects and goods for (17) . But once cultures learned to melt iron, they could put iron tools into the hands of (18) people for clearing forests and tilling the (19) . This boosted agricultural yields, increased the numbers of villages, and (20) ever more social complexity.