单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The mythology of a culture can provide some vital insights into the beliefs and values of that culture. By using fantastic and sometimes incredible stories to create an oral tradition by which to explain the wonders of the natural world and teach lessons to younger generations, a society exposes those ideas and concepts held most important. Just as important as the final lesson to be gathered from the stories, however, are the characters and the roles they play in conveying that message. Perhaps the epitome of mythology and its use as a tool to pass on cultural values can be found in Aesop's Fables, told and retold during the era of the Greek Empire. Aesop, a slave who won the favor of the court through his imaginative and descriptive tales, almost exclusively used animals to fill the roles in his short stories. Humans, when at all present, almost always played the part of bumbling fools struggling to learn the lesson being presented. This choice of characterization allows us to see that the Greeks placed wisdom on a level slightly beyond humans, implying that deep wisdom and understanding is a universal quality sought by, rather than steanning from, human beings. Aesop's fables illustrated the central themes of humility and self-reliance, reflecting the importance of those traits in early Greek society. The folly of humans was used to contrast against the ultimate goal of attaining a higher level of understanding and awareness of truths about nature and humanity. For example, one notable fable features a fox repeatedly trying to reach a bunch of grapes on a very high vine. After failing at several attempts, the fox gives up, making up its mind that the grapes were probably sour anyway. The fable's lesson, that we often play down that which we can't achieve so as to make ourselves feel better, teaches the reader or listener in an entertaining way about one of the weaknesses of the human psyche. The mythology of other cultures and societies reveal the underlying traits of their respective cultures just as Aesop's fables did. The stories of Roman gods, Aztec ghosts and European elves all served to train ancient generations those lessons considered most important to their community, and today they offer a powerful looking glass by which to evaluate and consider the contextual environment in which those culture existed.

单选题Which of the following is NOT MENTIONED according to the passage?

单选题This passage implies that ______.

单选题By saying that “blues and jazz overlapped” ( the first sentence of the last paragraph), the author means______

单选题Raymond Arth knows he should feel better about the economy. His company hasn't returned to its pre-recession revenues selling its wares to the makers of RVs and manufactured homes, but it is making a profit again. Like too many other small-business proprietors, Arth doesn't fully trust this economic recovery. While he says he's "guardedly optimistic" about it, his actions are all about the first half of that phrase, In the Labor Department's latest snapshot of the country's job market, the private sector added 268,000 jobs in April, the largest gain in five years and the third consecutive month of solid job growth. Yet a more sobering account of where the economy might be headed—and arguably a more accurate barometer of the near-term future—is the monthly report published by the National Federation of Independent Business. After all, it's small businesses, which have created two out of every three new jobs the economy has added since the early 1990s, that historically have led the country out of recessions. And it's the owners of small businesses that the NFIB surveys each month for its Small Business Optimism Index. On that front the news is anything but good. The index is down for the second straight month. Fewer small-business owners expect conditions to improve over the next half year a drop of 18 percentage points from January. The bulk of new hiring must be happening inside larger corporations, since their smaller counterparts on Main Street say they are generally reluctant to create new jobs. That aptly sums up the sentiments of Scott Lipps, the president of the Sleep Tite Mattress Factory. Before the downturn, Lipps says, his sales were about evenly split between his medical clients (hospitals and nursing homes) and consumers buying mattresses through a factory outlet. But sales to the general public plummeted starting in 2008. "The families affected most by the economy have stopped buying," Lipps says. "And those who say 'We have to have a new mattress' are downgrading to a medium-quality mattress. " Despite a 20 percent drop in sales, Lipps and his partner tried to forestall the inevitable by putting up $ 70,000 of their own money. But in 2010 they laid off three of their 18 full-time employees. "It should have happened in 2009, but we let our hearts run the company instead of our billfolds," Lipps says. In Bartlesville, Mat Saddoris is feeling relatively more upbeat. Saddoris is the third-generation owner of United Linen, a restaurant-supply company that cut its workforce by more than 10 percent during the downturn's darkest days. Revenues are back up to pre-2008 levels, and United Linen is back to its pre-recession staffing of 135 employees. But will he take the risk of growing the company? "I talk to my customers and they're optimistic—to a point," he says. "They've all come back from the pits, if you will, and things have been getting better in the past six or seven months. " But, he says, "I don't think they're ready to announce that things have turned around. /

单选题Pfizer could avoid the loss caused by expiration of Norvasc's patents by______.

单选题The author uses the simile of fish and pond to explain that

单选题Paragraph 2 and 3 are written to

单选题The standards of planet are open to question because

单选题It can be inferred from Paragraph 4 that ______.

单选题In this text the extraordinary evolution refers to______.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} It is not just Indian software and "business-process outsourcing" firms that are benefiting from the rise of the internet. Indian modern art is also on an upward spiral, driven by the aspirations of newly rich Indians, especially those living abroad, who use the internet to spot paintings and track prices at hundreds of gallery and auction websites. Prices have risen around 20-fold since 2000, particularly for prized names such as Tyeb Mehta and F. N. Souza. There would have been "no chance" of that happening so fast without the internet, says Arun Vadehra, who runs a gallery in Delhi and is an adviser to Christie's, an international auction house. He expects worldwide sales of Indian art, worth $200million last year, to double in 2006. It is still a tiny fraction of the $ 30 billion global art market, but is sizeable for an emerging market. For newly rich often very rich-non-resident Indians, expensive art is a badge of success in a foreign land. "Who you are, and what you have, are on your walls," says Lavesh Jagasia, an art dealer in Mumbai. Indian art may also beat other forms of investment. A painting by Mr. Mehta that fetched $1.58million last September would have gone for little more than $100,000 just four years ago. And a $22million art-investment fund launched in July by Osian's, a big Indian auction house, has grown by 4.1 work by younger artists such as Surendran Nair and Shibu Natesan beat estimates by more than 70%. Sotheby's and Christie's have auctions in New York next week, each with a Tyeb Mehta that is expected to fetch more than $1 million. The real question is tee fate of other works, including some by Mr. Souza with estimates of up to $600,000. If they do well, it will demonstrate that there is strong demand and will pull up prices across the board. This looks like a market with a long way to run.

单选题 You and your parents can stop worrying-Pasteur, Edison, Darwin and lots more were far from being geniuses in their teens. History books {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}mention it, but the truth is that many of our greatest figures were {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}"beatniks" when they were teenagers. They were given to daydreaming, indecision, plain dullness, and they showed no {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}of being doctor, lawyer or Indian chief. So, young men and women, if you suffer from the same {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}, don't despair. The world was built by men and women whose parents worried that they would "never {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}} to a hill of beans." You don't hear too much about their early failure because parents prefer to cite more {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}examples. If you take piano lessons and your attitude towards practicing is {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}by laziness, your parents might {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}complain and flaunt before you the famous picture of little Mozart in his ruffled nightshirt, playing the piano at midnight in the attic. {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}the point is, your parents would not show you a picture of a certain party who never showed a {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}of interest in music during his {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}years. In fact he never showed {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}in any direction whatever. Finally put to studying law, he {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}passed his final exams. It was not until he was 22 that he suddenly became fired {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}a great passion for music, and his name was Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky. In the sciences, there have been hundreds of geniuses who aimed straight at the {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}from earliest years, and hundreds who showed no {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}at all. There were the teenage Mayo brothers, who actually {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}their father in his crude country operating room. {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}Harvey Cushing, one of the world's greatest brain surgeons, might have become a professional ballplayer if his father hadn't {{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}that he give {{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}a try.

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} John Battelle is Silicon Valley's Bob Woodward. One of the founders of Wired magazine, he has hung around Google for so long that he has come to be as close as any outsider can to actually being an insider. Certainly, Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, believe that it is safer to talk to Mr. Battelle than not to do so. The result is a highly readable account of Google's astonishing rise—the steepest in corporate history—from its origins in Stanford University to its controversial stockmarket debut and its current struggle to become a grown up company while staying true to its youthfully brash motto, "Don't be evil" Mr. Battelle makes the reader warm to Google's ruling triumvirate—their cleverness and their good intentions—and fear for their future as they take on the world. Google is one of the most interesting companies around at the moment. It has a decent shot at displacing Microsoft as the next great near-monopoly of the information age. Its ambition—to organise all the world's information, not just the information on the world wide web--is epic, and its commercial power is frightening. Beyond this, Google is interesting for the same reason that secretive dictatorships and Holly3vood celebrities are interesting—for being opaque, colourful and, simply, itself. The book disappoints only when Mr. Battelle begins trying to explain the wider relevance of internet search and its possible future development. There is a lot to say on this subject, but Mr. Battelle is hurried and overly chatty, producing laundry lists of geeky concepts without really having thought any of them through properly. This is not a fatal flaw. Read only the middle chapters, and you have a great book.

单选题 Clothes, decorations, physique, hair and facial {{U}}(1) {{/U}} give a great deal of information about us. For instance, we wear clothes to keep us warm, {{U}}(2) {{/U}} unlike animals we do not have a protective {{U}}(3) {{/U}} of hair. But for the purpose of communication, we dress {{U}}(4) {{/U}} clothes of different colours, style and material; we wear jewellery and other valuables; we use cosmetics and perfume; we {{U}}(5) {{/U}} beards and sideburns; and we smoke pipes and carry walking sticks. Strict rules govern the clothes we wear. We do not, wear football boots with a dinner-jacket, {{U}}(6) {{/U}} a boiler suit to work in an insurance office. A clerk on Wall Street will wear more formal dress than someone in a {{U}}(7) {{/U}} job in a country town. Fashionable and smart {{U}}(8) {{/U}} are associated with good qualities, and well-dressed people have been {{U}}(9) {{/U}} to get more help and cooperation from {{U}}(10) {{/U}} strangers. For example, a woman is often given more {{U}}(11) {{/U}} of help with her broken-down car when she is dressed attractively than when she is dressed less {{U}}(12) {{/U}}. Rebels consider themselves to be different from other people in society, and often {{U}}(13) {{/U}} their physical appearance to show this. In the last two decades in Britain there have been a number of {{U}}(14) {{/U}} movements with distinct uniforms. Hippies did not just wear simple clothes but dressed in a particular style that made them instantly {{U}}(15) {{/U}}. But in our modem society some people {{U}}(16) {{/U}} choose particular clothes to project the personalities. {{U}}(17) {{/U}} types wear brighter colours than more reserved people. Some people wear odd {{U}}(18) {{/U}} of clothes to express their individuality. For example, someone {{U}}(19) {{/U}} give an impression of high social status, {{U}}(20) {{/U}} origin and bad temper by wearing an expensive suit.