单选题Imagine a world in which there was suddenly no emotion--a world in which human beings could feel no love or happiness, no terror or hate. Try to imagine the consequences of such a transformation. People might not be able to stay alive: knowing neither joy nor pleasure, neither anxiety nor fear, they would be as likely to repeat acts that hurt them as acts that were beneficial. They could not learn: they could not benefit from experience because this emotionless world would lack rewards and punishments. Society would soon disappear: people would be as likely to harm one another as to provide help and support. Human relationships would not exist: in a world without friends or enemies, there could be no marriage, affection among companions, or bonds among members of groups. Society's economic underpinnings would be destroyed: since earning $10 million would be no more pleasant than earning $10, there would be no incentive to work. In fact, there would be no incentives of any kind. For as we will see, incentives imply a capacity to enjoy them. In such a world, the chances that the human species would survive are next to zero, because emotions are the basic instrument of our survival and adaptation. Emotions structure the world for us in important ways. As individuals, we categorize objects on the basis of our emotions. True we consider the length, shape, size, or texture, but an object's physical aspects are less important than what it has done or can do to us--hurt us, surprise us, anger us or make us joyful. We also use categorizations coloured by emotions in our families, communities, and overall society. Out of our emotional experiences with objects and events comes a social feeling of agreement that certain things and actions arc "good" and others are "bad", and we apply these categories to every aspect of our social life--from what foods we eat and what clothes we wear to how we keep promises and which people our group will accept. In fact, society exploits our emotional reactions and attitudes, such as loyalty, morality, pride, shame, guilt, fear and greed, in order to maintain itself. It gives high rewards to individuals when perform important tasks such as surgery, makes heroes out of individuals for unusual or dangerous achievements such flying fighter planes in a war, and Uses the legal and penal system to make people afraid to engage in antisocial acts.

单选题"Worse than useless," fumed Darrell Issa, a Republican congressman from California, on March 19th, when the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "Terrible, and getting worse," added Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic colleague who has kept a watchful eye on the INS for ten years. Committee members lined up to take swings at James Ziglar, the head of the INS. He explained, somewhat pathetically, that "outdated procedures" had kept the visa-processing wheels grinding slowly through a backlog of applications. He also had some new rules in mind to tighten up visas. Speeding up the paperwork--and getting more of it on to computers--is vital, but the September attacks have exposed the tension between the agency's two jobs: on the one hand enforcing the security of America's borders, and on the other granting privileges such as work permits to foreigners. But other people want more radical changes. James Sensenbrenner, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, wants to split the INS into two separate bodies, one dealing with border security and the other with handling benefits to immigrants. The other approach, favored in the White House, is to treat the two functions as complementary, and to give the INS even more responsibility for security. Under that plan, the INS would merge with the Customs Service, which monitors the 20m shipments of goods brought into America every year, as well as the bags carried in by some 500m visitors. The two agencies would form one large body within the Department of Justice, the current home of the INS. This would cut out some of the duplicated effort at borders, where customs officers and agents from the INS's Border Patrol often rub shoulders but do not work together. Mr Bush--who has said that the news of the visa approvals left him "plenty hot" --was expected to give his approval. The senate, however, may not be quite so keen. The Justice Department could have trouble handling such a merger, let alone taking on the considerable economic responsibilities of the Customs Service, which is currently part of the Treasury. The senate prefers yet another set of security recommendations, including links between the databases of different agencies that hold security and immigration information, and scanners at ports of entry to check biometric data recorded on immigration documents. These ideas are embodied in a bill sponsored by members of both parties, but are currently held up by Robert Byrd, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who worries that there has not been enough debate on the subject. Mr Ziglar, poor chap, may feel there Nas been more than enough.

单选题As to the punishment that children under seven are assigned to wrongdoing, Piaget suggests

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} The U. S, Supreme Court's decision Monday to let stand a ruling in an online defamation case will make it more difficult to determine correct legal jurisdictions in other Internet cases, legal experts said. By opting not to take the case, the high court effectively endorsed a lower court's decision that a Colorado company that posts ratings of health plans on the Internet could be sued for defamation in a Washington court. The lower court ruling is one of several that makes it easier for plaintiffs to sue Web site operators in their own jurisdictions, rather than where the operators maintain a physical presence. The case involved a defamation suit filed by Chehalis, Wash.-based -Northwest Healthcare Alliance against Lakewood, Colo. based Healthgrades. com. The Alliance sued in Washington federal, court after Healthgrades. com posted a negative ranking of Northwest Healthcare's home health services on the Internet. Healthgrades. com argued that it should not be subject to the jurisdiction of a court in Washington because its publishing operation is in Colorado. Observers said the fact that the Supreme Court opted not to hear the case only clouds the legal situation for Web site operators. Geoff Stewart, a partner at Jones Day in Washington, D. C. , said that the Supreme Court eventually must act on the issue, as Internet sites that rate everything from automobile dealerships to credit offers could scale back their offerings to avoid lawsuits originating numerous jurisdictions. Online publishers also might have to worry about being dragged into lawsuits in foreign courts, said Dow Lohnes & Albertson attorney Jon Hart, who has represented the Online News Association. "The much more difficult problems for U. S. media companies arise when claims are brought in foreign countries over content published in the United States," Hart said. Hart cited a recent case in which an Australian court ruled that Dow Jones must appear in a Victoria, Australia court to defend its publication of all article on the U. S. -based Wall Street Journal Web site. According to Hart, the potential chilling effect of those sorts of jurisdictional decisions is substantial. "I have not yet seen publishers holding back on what they otherwise publish because they're afraid they're going to get sued in another country, but that doesn't mean it won't happen if we see a rash of U. S. libel cases against U. S. media companies being brought in foreign countries," he said. Until the high court decides to weigh in directly on this issue, Web site operators that offer information and services to users located outside of their home states must deal with a thorny legal landscape, said John Morgan, a partner at Perkins Cole LLP and an expert in Internet law.

单选题At dawn one m0ming in early May, Sean Cosgrove is stashing piles of maps, notes and photocopied documents in his gym bag before heading for West Milford High, a rural school in northernmost New Jersey. On his 30-minute commute, the young former investment banker tries to dream up new ways of lifting the monumentally forgettable Mexican War off the textbook page and into his students' imaginations. Can he invoke the storied memories of Robert E. Lee, who cut his first military exploits on the plains of Veracuz—or will he be met with thundering responses of "Who's Lee"? Should he raise James K. Polk out of the mystic chords of memory, and hope, for a nanosecond, that the kids will care about the first U. S. president who stepped aside because he'd accomplished everything he wanted? Let's think some more. Well, there's always the Alamo. And hey, isn't that the teachers' parking lot up ahead? It's never an easy task. These big kids, in big jeans and ball caps, come to his history classes believing that history is about as useful as Latin. Most are either unaware or unimpressed that the area's iron forges once produced artillery cannon for George Washington's army. Their sense of history orbits more narrowly around last month's adventures on "Shop Rite Strip", the students' nickname for downtown West Milford, once a factory town, now a Magnet for middle class vacationers. Cosgrove looks uncommonly glum as he thumbs through a stack of exams in the teachers' lounge. "I can't believe anyone in my class could think John Brown was the governor of Massachusetts," moans Cosgrove, 28, pointing to one student's test paper. He had to be sleeping for days on end. The same morning, students in his college bound class could name only one U. S. Supreme Court justice—Clarence Thomas. All his wit, energy and beyond the textbook research can't completely reverse the students' poor preparation in history, their lack of general knowledge, their numbness to the outside world. It's the bane of history teachers at every level. When University of Vermont professor James Loewen asked his senior social science majors who fought in the Vietnam War, 22 percent answered D.P.R. korea and R.O.Korea. Don't these kids even go to the movies?

单选题According to Mr. Burrows, the apprenticeship scheme

单选题As thick-skinned elected officials go, FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter is right up there with Bill Clinton. The chief of the Zurich-based group that oversees World Cup soccer hasn't been accused of groping any interns, but that's about all he hasn't been accused of. Vote buying, mismanagement, cronyism--and that's just for starters. Yet the 66-year-old Swiss shows no sign of abandoning his campaign for a second four-year term. Blatter, a geek of dispensing FIFA'S hundreds of million in annual revenue to inspire loyalty, even stands a good chance of reelection. At least he did. Since mid-March, he has seen a credible challenger emerge in Issa Hayatou, president of the African Football Confederation. Hayatou, a 55-year-old from Cameroon, leads a group of FIFA reformers that also includes FIFA Vice-President Lennart Johansson, a Swede who lost the presidential election to Blatter in 1998. These contenders' mission: to end what they call the culture of secrecy and lack of accountability that threatens FIFA with financial disaster. Representatives of the world's 204 national soccer associations meet in Seoul on May 29, and the rebels are given a chance of unseating Blatter. But even they concede that the FIFA honcho won't be easy to dislodge. Blatter's staying power seems incredible, given the array of misdeeds attributed to him and his circle. However, there are signs that FIFA'S troubles are bigger than Blatter is saying. The insurgents have already won one victory: They persuaded the rest of the executive board to order an audit of FIFA finances. But Blatter--who claims, through a spokesman, that the accusations are a smear campaign-should not be underestimated. At least publicly, sponsors and member associations remain remarkably siient with the controversy. For example, there is no outward sign of outrage from German sports equipment maker Adidas Salomon, which is spending much of its $ 625 million marketing budget on the World Cup. "We don't expect current developments within FIFA to have a negative impact on our expectations" for the World Cup, says Michael Riehl, Adidas head of global sports marketing. The conventional wisdom is that fans don't care about FIFA politics. Says Bernd Schiphorst, president of Hertha BSC Berlin, a top-ranked German team: "I've no fear that all these discussions are going to touch the event." Still, the Olympic bribery scandals and the doping affair in the Tour de France show that sleazy dealings can stain the most venerable athletic spectacle. "For the Good of the Game" is FIFA'S official motto. The next few months should show whether it rings true.

单选题Six years later, in an about-face, the FBI admits that federal agents fired tear gas canisters capable of causing a fire at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas in 1993. But the official said the firing came several hours before the structure burst into flames, killing 80 people including the Davidians' leader, David Koresh. "In looking into this, we've come across information that shows some canisters that can be deemed pyrotechnic in nature were fired--hours before the fire started," the official said. "Devices were fired at the bunker, not at the main structure where the Davidians were camped out." The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains it did not start what turned to be a series of fiery bursts of flames that ended a 51-day standoff between branch members and the federal government. "This doesn't change the bottom line that David Koresh started the fire and the government did not," the official said. "It simply Shows that devices that could probably be flammable were used in the early morning hours." The law enforcement official said the canisters were fired not at the main structure where the Davidian members were camped out but at the nearby underground bunker. They bounced off the bunker's concrete roof and landed in an open field well, the official said. The canisters were fired at around 6 a.m. , and the fire that destroyed the wooden compound started around noon, the official said. The official also added that other tear gas canisters used by agent that day were not flammable or potentially explosive. While Coulson denied the grenades played a role in starting the fire, his statement marked the first time that any U.S. government official has publicly contradicted the government's position that federal agents used nothing on the final day of the siege at Waco that could have sparked the fire that engulfed the compound. The cause of the fiery end is a major focus of an ongoing inquiry by the Texas Rangers into the Waco siege.

单选题More than 40 million Americans between the ages of 5 and 18 attend schools throughout the United States. About 2 million school-age children are taught at home. While home schooling offers an alternative to the school environment, it has become a controversial issue. Many public school advocates take a harsh attitude toward home schoolers, perceiving their actions as the ultimate Slap in the face of public education and a damaging move for the children. Yet, public school officials realize they stand little to gain by remaining hostile to the home-school population, the hard line seem to be softening a bit. Some public schools have moved closer to tolerance, and, even in some cases, are seeking cooperation with home schoolers." We are becoming relatively tolerant of home schoolers. Let's give the kids access to public school so they'll see it's not as terrible as they've been told, and they'll want to come back," says John Marshall, an education official. Perhaps, but don't count on it, say home-school advocates. Some home schoolers oppose that public school system because they have strong convictions that their approach to education—whether fueled by religious belief or the individual child's interests and natural place—is best. Other home schoolers contend "not 80 much that the schools teach heresy, but that schools teach whatever they teach inappropriately," says Van Gallon. "These parents are highly independent and strive to take responsibility for their own lives within a society that they define as bureaucratic and inefficient." But Howard Carol, spokesman for America's largest teachers union, argues that home schooling parents are trying to hide their children from the real world. "Maybe we are going to run into people with problems, people that have a drug problem, people that have an alcohol problem, and teenage pregnancy. We have many problems that happen in our society and many of the children are victims. But shielding the children from the real mix of what happens every day is denying them something that they are going to need later in life. "Mr. Carol also questioned the competence of parents as teachers though he admitted that some home schoolers do better academically. "We want to make sure that a student is not denied the full range of curriculum experiences and appropriate materials, especially now with the new technology that is being introduced and the costs involved there." "The success of home schooling has been documented in standardized test scores administered by public school officials," says Frank Bernet, the executive director of the National Association of College Admission Councilors. "I know why they are doing it, but I wonder why they can't work with school officials and teachers to make the school what they want it to be." The response from home schoolers: "We have tried that. Now it's time to strike out on our own./

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} In the last ten years, the Internet has opened up incredible amounts of information to ordinary citizens. But using the Internet can he like walking into a library where the books are all lying on the floor in piles. While tools like Google allow some structured search, much of the data from such searches is outdated or of questionable value. Some web enthusiasts have taken up the task of organizing information through a democratic means that only the Internet allows: an encyclopedia of the people, by the people, and completely free to copy and distribute. This ‘people’s encyclopedia’ of the Web — a free site called Wikipedia — has provided a unique solution by inviting individuals to participate in the process of rationalizing and updating web content. At the heart of this movement are wikis, web sites that allow users to directly edit any web page with one click of the mouse. Wikipedia — the largest example of these collaborative efforts — is a functioning, user-contributed online encyclopedia that has become a popular and highly regarded reference in just three years of existence. The goal of Wikipedia was to create an encyclopedia that could he shared and copied freely while encouraging people to change and improve the content. Each and every article has an “Edit this page” button, allowing anyone, even anonymous passersby, to add or delete any content on the page. It seems like a recipe for disaster and chaos, but it has produced surprisingly credible content that has been evaluated and revised by the thousands of international visitors to the site. For many, it finally realizes the original concept of World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee — an online environment where people not only browse content, but freely and actively exchange information. The Wikipedia project was started by Jimmy Wales, head of Internet startup Bomis.com, after his original project for a volunteer, hut strictly controlled, free encyclopedia ran out of money and resources after two years. Editors with PhD degrees were at the helm of the project then, but it produced only a few hundred articles. Not wanting the content to languish, Wales placed the pages on a wiki website in January 2001 and invited any Internet visitors to edit or add to the collection. The site became a runaway success in the first year and gained a loyal following, generating over 20,000 articles and spawning over a dozen language translations. After two years, it had 100,000 articles, and in April 2004, it exceeded 250,000 articles in English and 600,000 articles in 50 other languages. Over 2,000 new articles are added each day across all the various languages. And according to website rankings at Alexa.com, it has become more popular than traditional online encyclopedias such as Britannica.com and is one of the top 600 most heavily visited websites on the internet.

单选题Plato asked "What is man?" and St Augustine asked "Who am I?" A new breed of criminals has a novel answer: "I am you!" Although impostors have existed for ages, the growing frequency and cost of identity theft is worrisome. Around 10m Americans are victims annually, and it is the leading consumer-fraud complaint over the past five years. The cost to businesses was almost ＄ 50 billion, and to consumers ＄ 5 billion, in 2002, the most recent year that America's Federal Trade Commission collected figures. After two recent, big privacy disasters, people and politicians are calling for action. In February, ChoicePoint, a large data-collection agency, began sending out letters warning 145,000 Americans that it had wrongly provided fraudsters with their personal details, including Social Security numbers. Around 750 people have already spotted fraudulent activity. And on February 25th, Bank of America revealed that it lost data tapes that contain personal information on over 1m government employees, including some Senators. Although accident and not illegality is suspected, all must take precautions against identity theft. Faced with such incidents, state and national lawmakers are calling for new regulations, including over companies that collect and sell personal information. As an industry, the firms—such as ChoicePoint, Acxiom, LexisNexis and Westlaw—are largely unregulated. They have also grown enormous. For example, ChoicePoint was founded in 1997 and has acquired nearly 60 firms to amass databases with 19 billion records on people. It is used by insurance firms, landlords and even police agencies. California is the only state with a law requiring companies to notify individuals when their personal information has been compromised—which made ChoicePoint reveal the fraud (albeit five months after it was noticed, and after its top two bosses exercised stock options). Legislation to make the requirement a federal law is under consideration. Moreover, lawmakers say they will propose that rules governing credit bureaus and medical companies are extended to data-collection firms. And alongside legislation, there is always litigation. Already, ChoicePoint has been sued for failing to safeguard individuals' data. Yet the legal remedies would still be far looser than in Europe, where identity theft is also a menace, though less frequent and costly. The European Data Protection Directive, implemented in 1998, gives people the right to access theft information, change inaccuracies, and deny permission for it to be shared. Moreover, it places the cost of mistakes on the companies that collect the data, not on individuals. When the law was put in force, American policymakers groaned that it was bad for business. But now they seem to be reconsidering it.

单选题Just because more men pursue careers in science and engineering does not mean they are actually better at math than women are. The 1 is that men think they are much better at math than they really are. Women, 2 , tend to accurately estimate their arithmetic prowess, says Shane Bench of Washington State University in the U. S., leader of a study in Springer"s journal Sex Roles . There is a 3 gap between the number of men and women who choose to study and follow careers in the so-called STEM 4 of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the U. S. This is true 5 women outperform their male 6 on mathematical tests in elementary school. Bench"s study examined how people"s biases and 7 experiences about their mathematical abilities make them more or less 8 to consider pursuing math-related courses and careers. Gender gaps in STEM fields are not necessarily the result of women"s 9 their abilities, but rather may be due to men"s overestimating their abilities, 10 Bench. His team also found that women who had more positive past experiences 11 mathematics tended to rate their numerical abilities higher than they really were. This 12 the value of positively reinforcing a woman"s knack for mathematics 13 at a young age. "Despite 14 that realism and objectivity are always best in 15 the self and making decisions, positive illusions about math abilities may be 16 to women pursuing math courses and careers," says Bench. "Such positive illusions could 17 to protect women"s self-esteem 18 lower-than-desired performance, leading women to 19 to pursue courses in STEM fields and ultimately 20 their skills."

单选题Insurance companies provide a service to the community by protecting it against expected and unexpected disasters. Before an insurance company will agree to 1 anything, it collects accurate figures about the 2 . It knows, for example, that the risk of a man being killed in a plane accident is less than the risk he 3 in crossing a busy road. This 4 it to quote low figures for travel insurance. Sometimes the risk may be high, as in motorracing or mountaineering. Then the company 5 a much higher price. 6 too many climbers have accidents, the price rises still further. If the majority of climbers fall off mountains, the company will 7 to insure them. An ordinary householder may wish to protect his home against fire or his 8 against burglary. A shop keeper may wish to insure against 9 . In 10 cases, the company will check its statistics and quote a premium. If it is 11 , it may refuse to quote. If it insures a shop and then receives a suspicious 12 , it will 13 the claim as a means of protecting itself against false claims. It is not unknown for a businessman in debt to burn down his own premises so that he can claim much money from his insurance company. He can be sure that the fire will be investigated most carefully. Insurance companies also 14 insurance against shipwreck or disaster in the air. Planes and ships are very expensive, so a large 15 is charged, but a 16 is given to companies with an accident-free record. Every week insurance companies receive premium 17 from customers. These payments can form a very large total 18 millions of dollars. The company does not leave the money in the bank. It 19 in property, shares, farms and even antique paintings and stamps. Its aim is to obtain the best possible return on its investment. This is not so greedy as it may seem, since this is one way by which it can deep its premiums down and continue to make a profit 20 being of service to the community.

单选题According to the passage, which of the following is TRUE?

单选题The planet's wild creatures face a new threat -- from yuppies, empty nesters, singletons and one parent families. Biologists studying the pressure on the planet's dwindling biodiversity today report on a new reason for alarm. Although the rate of growth in the human population is decreasing, the number of individual households is exploding. Even where populations have actually dwindled -- in some regions of New Zealand, for instance -- the number of individual households has increased, bemuse of divorce, career choice, smaller families and longer lifespans. Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University and colleagues from Stanford University in California re- port in Nature, in a paper published online in advance, that a greater number of individual house-holds, each containing on average fewer people, meant more pressure on natural resources. Towns and cities began to sprawl as new homes were built. Each household needed fuel to heat and light it; each household required its own plumbing, cooking and refrigeration. "In larger households, the efficiency of resource consumption will be a lot higher, because more people share things," Dr. Liu said. He and his colleagues looked at the population patterns of life in 141 countries, including 76 "hotspot" regions unusually rich in a variety of endemic wildlife. These hot spots included Australia, New Zealand, the US, Brazil, China, India, Kenya, and Italy. They found that between 1985 and 2000 in the "hotspot" parts of the globe, the annual 3.1% growth rate in the number of households was far higher than the population growth rate of 1.8%. "Had the average household' size remained at the 1985 level," the scientists report, "there would have been 155m fewer households in hotspot countries in 2000. Paradoxically, smaller households do not mean smaller homes. In Indian River county, Florida, the average area of a one-storey, single family house increased 33 % in the past three decades." Dr. Liu's work grew from the alarming discovery that the giant pandas living in China's Wolong reserve were more at risk now than they were when the reserve was first established. The local population had grown, but the total number of homes had increased more swiftly, to make greater inroads into the bamboo forests. Gretchen Daily of Stanford, one of the authors, said: "We all depend on open space and wild places, not just for peace of mind but for vital services such as crop pollination, water purification and climate stabilization. The alarming thing about this study is the finding that, if family groups continue to become smaller and smaller, we might continue losing biodiversity -- even if we get the aggregate human population size stabilised./