单选题College sports in the United States are a huge deal. Almost all major American universities have football, baseball, basketball and hockey programs, and (1) millions of dollars each year to sports. Most of them earn millions (2) as well, in television revenues, sponsorships. They also benefit (3) from the added publicity they get via their teams. Big-name universities (4) each other in the most popular sports. Football games at Michigan regularly (5) crowds of over 90, 000. Basketball's national collegiate championship game is a TV (6) on a par with any other sporting event in the United States, (7) perhaps the Super Bowl itself. At any given time during fall or winter one can (8) one's TV set and see the top athletic programs--from schools like Michigan, UCLA, Duke and Stanford-- (9) in front of packed houses and national TV audiences. The athletes themselves are (10) and provided with sch61arships. College coaches identify (11) teenagers and then go into high schools to (12) the country's best players to attend their universities. There are strict rules about (13) coaches can recruit--no recruiting calls after 9 p. m. , only one official visit to a campus--but they are often bent and sometimes (14) . Top college football programs (15) scholarships to 20 or 30 players each year, and those student-athletes, when they arrive (16) campus, receive free housing, tuition, meals, books, etc. In return, the players (17) the program in their sport. Football players at top colleges (18) two hours a day, four days a week from January to April. In summer, it's back to strength and agility training four days a week until mid-August, when camp (19) and preparation for the opening of the September-to-December season begins (20) During the season, practices last two or three hours a day from Tuesday to Friday. Saturday is game day. Mondays are an officially mandated day of rest.

单选题Until recently, the main villains of the piece had seemed to be the teachers' unions, who have opposed any sort of reform or accountability. Now they face competition from an unexpectedly destructive force: the court. Fifty years ago, it was the judges who forced the schools to desegregate through Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Now the courts have moved from broad principles to micromanagement, telling schools how much money to spend and where - right down to the correct computer or textbook. Twenty four states are currently Stuck in various court cases to do with financing school systems, and another 21 have only recently settled various suits. Most will start again soon. Only five states have avoided litigation entirely. Nothing exemplifies the power of the courts better than an 11-year-old case that is due to be settled (sort of) in New York City, the home of America's biggest school system with 1. lm students and a budget nearing $13 billion. At the end of this month, three elderly members of the New York bar serving as judicial referees are due to rule in a case brought By the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a leftish advocacy group, against the state of New York: they will decide how much more must Be spent to provide every New York City pupil with a "sound basic" education. Rare is the politician willing to argue that more money for schools is a bad thing. But are the courts doing any good? Two suspicions arise. First, judges are making a lazy assumption that more money means better schools. As the international results show, the link between "inputs" and "outputs" is vague--something well documented by, among others, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. Second, the courts are muddling an already muddled system. Over time, they have generally made it harder to get rid of disruptive pupils and bad teachers. The current case could be even worse. The courts have already said that, in order to determine the necessary spending, they may consider everything from class size to the availability of computers, textbooks and even pencils. This degree of intervention is all the more scandalous because the courts have weirdly decided to ignore another set of "inputs"--the archaic work practices of school teachers and janitors. David Schoenbrod and Ross Sandier of New York Law School reckon the demands of the court will simply undermine reform and transform an expensive failure into a more expensive one. And of course, the litigation never ends. Kentucky, for example, is still in court 16 years after the first decision. A lawsuit first filed against New Jersey for its funding of schools in 1981 was "decided" four years later--but it has returned to the court nine times since, including early this year, with each decision pushing the court deeper into the management of the state's schools. Bad iudges are even harder to boot out of school than bad pupils.

单选题Opinion polls are now beginning to show an unwilling general agreement that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment more widely. But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighbourhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centres of production and work? The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people' s work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought about may have to be reversed. This seems a discouraging thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom. Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes, Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people travelled longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and places in which they lived. Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. It became customary for the husband to go out paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the impractical goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs.

单选题Locked in a vault within the North Carolina Department of Revenue is a bit of Kafka: a government-issued stamp that is expected to remain unpurchased, but which users of illegal goods must, by law, affix to substances they are not allowed to possess. North Carolina is one of about 20 states that tax illegal drugs. The cost varies by state and weight, as does the stamps' appearance (Nebraska's, with a skull surmounting a syringe and joint, looks like Grateful Dead tribute art). Penalties for non-payment also vary, from being classed as a misdemeanour in Georgia to 200% of the tax plus $10,000 or five years in prison in Louisiana. Few, if any, drug users actually buy the stamps. Most of those sold in Kansas, for instance, go to collectors. And according to a Mobile newspaper, the director of investigations for Alabama's revenue department said the state never expected actually to sell stamps to drug users. Instead, the tax exists to further punish those arrested for possession by making them liable to penalties for tax evasion if their drugs are stampless, as they almost invariably are. And those penalties can be lucrative: over the past decade Kansas has collected $10.3m. If legislators feel that drug users get off too lightly, they could simply increase the criminal penalties, rather than creating a new class of crime that requires the involvement of another government agency. As it is, these laws are not merely complicated, but have often been found unconstitutional. In 1994 the US Supreme Court ruled that because Montana's illegal-drug tax was a second punishment for a single crime it amounted to double jeopardy. Other states' drug-tax schemes have also been challenged on constitutional grounds. In response some states have abolished or modified their schemes, usually by allowing buyers of the stamps to remain anonymous or by forbidding revenue departments from telling law enforcement when someone buys the stamps. The concept of taxing illegal drugs punitively dates back to the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. This did not ban the drug completely; it subjected anyone who dealt in it commercially to a nominal tax but a heavy array of regulations and criminal penalties for non-compliance. Bureaucracy lives on.

单选题 In America and Europe magazine publishers have a common headache: total circulation is either flat or declining slightly as people devote more time to the internet, and an ever greater share of advertising spending is going online. Magazine units are mostly a drag on growth for their parents. Time Inc, the world's biggest magazine company, has to fend off rumours that its parent, Time Warner, will sell it. People in the industry expect that Time Warner will soon sell IPC Media, its British magazine subsidiary. The business model for consumer magazines is under pressure from several directions at once, both online and off. Magazines have become more expensive to launch, and the cost of attracting and keeping new subscribers has risen. In America newsstand sales have been worryingly weak, partly because supermarkets dominate distribution and shelf-space is in short supply. The internet's popularity has hit men's titles the hardest. FHM, the flagship "lads" magazine of Emap— a British media firm, for instance, lost a quarter of its circulation in the year to June. Not long ago consumer magazines were Emap's prize asset, but slowing growth from the division contributed to the company's decision to put itself up for sale. Men's magazines are in trouble in most developed-world markets as people have quickly switched from magazines to online services. There are good reasons why magazine owners should not feel pessimistic, however. For readers, many of the pleasing characteristics of magazines—their portability and glossiness, for instance—cannot be matched online. And magazines are not losing younger readers in the way that newspapers are. According to a study by the digital arm of Ogilvy Group, appetite for magazines is largely unchanged between older "baby boomers" and young "millennials" . On the advertising side, magazines are fearing much better than newspapers, which are losing big chunks of revenue as classified advertising shifts online. Advertisers like the fact that in many genres, such as fashion, readers accept and value magazine ads and even consider them part of the product. Unfortunately, magazine publishers have been slow to get onto the internet. "Eighteen months ago the internet was something they worried about after 4pm on Friday, " says Peter Kreisky, a consultant to the media industry, "but now it's at the heart of their business model. " To their credit, however, big magazine firms are doing far more than reproducing their print products online. They offer people useful, fun services online— Lagardère's Car and Driver website, for instance, offers virtual test drives, and Better Homes and Gardens online has a 3D planning tool to help people redesign their homes.

单选题This past academic year, 146 New York City kids from 4 to 14 dutifully attended Rosalyn Chao's Mandarin class at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral Academy. Many of the students were first-generation Americans; for several, Mandarin would be their third language, after English and Spanish. Get used to this picture; around the world, more adults and kids are learning Chinese. Beijing is pouring money into new Confucius Institutes (Chinese language and culture centers), and two U.S. senators recently proposed spending $1.3 billion on Chinese-language programs over the next five years. From Ulan Bator to Chicago, it sometimes seems as if everyone is trying to learn the language now spoken by a fifth of the world's population. Their reasoning is easy to understand. China is booming, and citizens around the globe want a piece of the action. Speaking Mandarin can facilitate communication with newly wealthy Chinese tourists or smooth bilateral trade relations. In a form of intense cultural diplomacy, Beijing is also promoting its films, music, art and language as never before. Front and center are the Confucius Institutes, modeled on the British Council, Germany's Goethe Institutes or the Alliance Francaise. China's Ministry of Education is sending thousands of language instructors to foreign programs and inviting foreign students from Asia, Africa and elsewhere to study in its universities. As a result, Beijing predicts that 100 million individuals will be studying Mandarin as a second language by the end of the decade. The U.S. Department of Education announced earlier this year that it hopes to have 5 percent of all elementary, secondary and college students enrolled in Mandarin studies by 2010. The Chinese boom hasn't escaped criticism, however. For one thing, the language is hard, with more than 2,500 characters generally employed in daily writing and a complex tonal speaking system. Then there's the danger that other important languages, such as Russian or Japanese, will be neglected; for example, there are now 10 times more students learning Mandarin than Japanese in the United States. And other countries fear a growing encroachment(侵蚀) of Chinese power; some Africans have complained about Beijing's "neocolonialist(新殖民主义)" attitudes, for example, and this could breed resentment against Confucius Institutes on their soil. Yet most Mandarin students, like those at St. Pat's, aren't letting such concerns dissuade them. Mandarin represents a new way of thinking. Chao says that" we must begin preparing our students for the interconnected world." Accordingly, she has encouraged her Mandarin students to correspond with pen pals in Shanghai. Chao says that" in reading the Chinese students' letters, we learned quickly that American students are far behind their Asian counterparts." If they hope to catch up to their Chinese competitors, her students--like the growing legions of Mandarin pupils around the globe -- are going to have to study hard indeed.

单选题Many parents who welcome the idea of turning off the TV and spending more time with the family are still worried that without TV they would constantly be on call as entertainers for their children. They remember (1) of all sorts of things to do when they were kids, but their own kids seem different, less resourceful, (2) When there's nothing to do, these parents observe (3) , their kids seem unable to (4) any thing to do besides turning on the TV. One father, (5) , says "When I was a kid, we were always thinking up things to do, projects and (6) . We certainly never complained in an (7) way to our parents, 'I have nothing to do!'" He compares this with his own children today: "If someone doesn't entertain them, they'll happily sit there in front of the (8) all day." There is one word for this father's (9) : unfair. It is as if he were disappointed in them for not reading Greek though they have never studied the language. He deplores his children's (10) of inventiveness, as if the ability to play were something (11) that his children are missing. In fact, while the tendency to play is built into the human species, the actual ability to play—to imagine, to invent, to elaborate on (12) in a playful way—and the ability to gain (13) from it, these are skills that have to be learn ed and developed. Such disappointment, (14) , is not only (15) , it is also destructive. Sensing their parents' disappointment, children come to believe that they are, indeed, lacking something, and that this makes them less worthy of (16) and respect. Giving children the opportunity to develop new (17) , to enlarge their horizons and (18) he pleasures of doing things on their own is, on the other hand, a way to help children develop a (19) feeling about themselves as (20) and interesting people.

单选题Why are "Berlin to Beijing and Boston" mentioned in the last paragraph?

单选题According to the text, the public response to Mr Philips' claim is

单选题After World War Ⅱ the glorification of an ever-larger GNP formed the basis of a new materialism, which became a sacred obligation for all Japanese governments, businesses and trade unions. Anyone who mentioned the undesirable by-products of rapid economic growth was treated as a heretic. Consequently, everything possible was done to make conditions easy for the manufacturers. Few dared question the wisdom of discharging untreated waste into the nearest water body or untreated smoke into the atmosphere. This silence was maintained by union leaders as well as by most of the country's radicals; except for a few isolated voices, no one protested. An insistence on treatment of the various effluents would have necessitated expenditures on treatment equipment that in turn would have given rise to higher operating costs. Obviously, this would have meant higher prices for Japanese goods, and ultimately fewer sales and lower industrial growth and GNP. The pursuit of nothing but economic growth is illustrated by the response of the Japanese government to the American educational mission that visited Japan in 1947. After surveying Japan's educational program, the Americans suggested that the Japanese fill in their curriculum gap by creating departments in chemical and sanitary engineering. Immediately, chemical engineering departments were established in all the country's universities and technical institutions. In contrast, the recommendation to form sanitary engineering departments was more or less ignored, because they could bring no profit. By 1960, only two second-rate universities, Kyoto and Hokkaido, were interested enough to open such departments. The reluctance to divert funds from production to conservation is explanation enough for a certain degree of pollution, but the situation was made worse by the type of technology the Japanese chose to adopt for their industrial expansion. For the most part, they simply copied American industrial methods. This meant that methods originally designed for use in a country that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific with lots of air and water to use as sewage receptacles were adopted for an area a fraction of the size. Moreover, the Japanese diet was much more dependent on water as a source of fish and as an input in the irrigation of rice; consequently discharged wastes built up much more rapidly, in the food chain. (373 words)Notes: heretic 异教徒。sanitary 卫生的。for the most part 基本上。receptacle 储存地。

单选题Who is poor in America? This is a hard question to answer. Despite poverty's messiness, we've measured progress against it by a single statistic: the federal poverty line. In 2008, the poverty threshold was $ 21,834 for a four-member family with two children under 18. By 1his measure, we haven't made much progress. Except for recessions, when the poverty rate can rise to 15 percent, it's stayed in a narrow range for decades. In 2007—the peak of the last business cycle—the poverty rate was 12.5 percent; one out of eight Americans was "poor. " In 1969, another business-cycle peak, the poverty rate was 12.1 percent. But the apparent lack of progress is misleading for two reasons. First, it ignores immigration. Many immigrants are poor and low skilled. They add to the poor. From 1989 to 2007, about three quarters of the increase in the poverty population occurred among Hispanics—mostly immigrants, their children, and grandchildren. The poverty rate for blacks fell during this period, though it was still much too high (24.5 percent in 2007). Poverty "experts" don't dwell on immigration, because it implies that more restrictive policies might reduce U.S. poverty. Second, the poor's material well-being has improved. The official poverty measure obscures this by counting only pretax cash income and ignoring other sources of support. These include the earned-income tax credit (a rebate to low-income workers), food stamps, health insurance (Medicaid), and housing subsidies. Although many poor live hand to mouth, they've participated in rising living standards. In 2005, 91 percent had microwaves, 79 percent air-conditioning, and 48 percent cell phones. The existing poverty line could be improved by adding some income sources and subtracting some expenses (example: child care). Unfortunately, the administration's proposal for a "supplemental poverty measure" in 2011—to complement, not replace, the existing poverty line—goes beyond that. The new poverty number would compound public confusion. It also raises questions about whether the statistic is tailored to favor a political agenda. The "supplemental measure" ties the poverty threshold to what the poorest third of Americans spend on food, housing, clothing, and utilities. The actual threshold not yet calculated—will probably be higher than today's poverty line. Moreover, this definition has strange consequences. Suppose that all Americans doubled their income tomorrow, and suppose that their spending on food, clothing, housing, and utilities also doubled. That would seem to signify less poverty—but not by the new poverty measure. It wouldn't decline, because the poverty threshold would go up as spending went up. Many Americans would find this weird., people get richer, but "poverty" stays stuck. What produces this outcome is a different view of poverty. The present concept is an absolute one: the poverty threshold reflects the amount estimated to meet basic needs. By contrast, the new measure embraces a relative notion of poverty: people are automatically poor if they're a given distance from the top, even if their incomes are increasing.

单选题The big UK grocery retailer TESCO is testing a database which knows when you like to shop, what's on the list and how much you are likely to spend. It also knows that three-quarters of a store's total profits comes from its top 10% of customers. Data mining—the intensive analysis of statistics—is being combined with micro-marketing—the targeting of small groups of consumers—to cause big changes in the way we spend. The U. S. retailer Wal-Mart now mails out to customers personalised weekly shopping lists with prices, together with a list of little temptations for their taste, budget and stage in life. These developments may have profound effects on the way we bank as well on the way we shop. In perhaps six months a customer will be able to arrive at a supermarket, pick up a bar code reader and wander about the shop, clicking on to whatever he or she wants to buy that week. A member of staff will take the bar code reader, use it to deliver the goods from the warehouse, while the customer goes off for a coffee or to have their hair clone. A 3D body scanner will come into use within a few years. A customer who stands partially clothed in a small room for about 10 seconds, can have his physical stature mapped to an accuracy of 1 millimeter. Then he or she can shop from home, with a television remote control device, flicking through the latest catalogue of offerings from a retailer. Fancy that outfit for yourself? A click of the button, and there you are, on the television screen, wearing it. Like to see it in another color? Click. Just got to have it? Another click to call up the Internet banking connection, and you have bought and paid for it, and a courier will deliver tomorrow. The revolution does not stop there. Mr. Treleaven, an expert in artificial intelligence and so- called neural networks, can tie together your current preferences, sprinkle with a little knowledge of how you are likely to age and predict your spending patterns for the rest of your life. Is it too intrusive—an invasion of privacy? "In fact just the opposite," says Mr. Treleaven. "People welcome the chance to be given valuable assistance in some of the humdrum chores of our time, and avoid being targeted by the irritations of intrusive advertising. The store owner will become the friend who gives valuable information to you.

单选题What is following is the cause that will make the Olympic Games suspect and no longer worth watching?

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on ANSER SHEET 1. Divorce is the act by which a valid marriage is dissolved, usually freeing the parties to remarry. In regions in {{U}}(1) {{/U}}ancient {{U}}(2) {{/U}} authority still predominates, divorce may be {{U}}(3) {{/U}} and rare, especially when, as among Roman Catholics and Hindus, the religious {{U}}(4) {{/U}} views marriage {{U}}(5) {{/U}} indissoluble. Custom, {{U}}(6) {{/U}}, may make divorce a simple matter in {{U}}(7) {{/U}} societies. {{U}}(8) {{/U}} some Pueblo Indian tribes a woman could divorce her husband {{U}}(9) {{/U}} leaving his moccasins on the doorstep. The {{U}}(10) {{/U}} of individual determination and mutual {{U}}(11) {{/U}} are making divorce {{U}}(12) {{/U}} acceptable in the {{U}}(13) {{/U}} parts of the world. Among premodern societies, the rate of marital stability is difficult to {{U}}(14) {{/U}} {{U}}(15) {{/U}} the varying definitions of {{U}}(16) {{/U}} and divorce. It seems to be broadly true {{U}}(17) {{/U}} wherever divorce is a legal impossibility the wedding is a well-defined event conducted with {{U}}(18) {{/U}} formality. The {{U}}(19) {{/U}} principle does not hold true: elaborate marriage ceremonial is quite compatible with high divorce rates. Many anthropologists agree that divorce is generally more permissible in matrilineal societies {{U}}(20) {{/U}} in patrilineal ones, in which the procreative and sexual rights of the bride are often symbolically transferred to the husband with the payment of bride-price.

单选题The author's tone in the text may best be summarized as that of