单选题The history of African—Americans during the past 400 years is traditionally narrated (1) an ongoing struggle against (2) and indifference on the part of the American mainstream, and a struggle (3) as an upward movement is (4) toward ever more justice and opportunity. Technology in and of (5) is not at fault; it's much too simple to say that gunpowder or agricultural machinery or fiber optics (6) been the enemy of an (7) group of people. A certain machine is put (8) work in a certain way—the purpose (9) which it was designed. The people who design the machines are not intent on unleashing chaos; they are usually trying to (10) a task more quickly, cleanly, or cheaply, (11) the imperative of innovation and efficiency that has ruled Western civilization (12) the Renaissance. Mastery of technology is second only (13) money as the true measure of accomplishment in this country, and it is very likely that by (14) this under-representation in the technological realm, and by not questioning and examining the folkways that have (15) it, blacks are allowing. (16) to be kept out of the mainstream once again. This time, however, they will be (17) from the greatest cash engine of the twenty-first century. Inner-city blacks in particular are in danger, and the beautiful suburbs (18) ring the decay of Hartford, shed the past and learn to exist without contemplating or encountering the tragedy of the inner city. And blacks must change as well. The ways that (19) their ancestors through captivity and coming to freedom have begun to loose their utility. If blacks (20) to survive as full participants in this society, they have to understand what works now.
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单选题Tea drinking was common in China for nearly one thousand years before anyone in Europe had ever heard about tea. People in Britain were much slower in finding out what tea was like, mainly because tea was very expensive. It could not be bought in shops and even those people who could afford to have it sent from Holland did so only because it was a fashionable curiosity. Some of them were not sure how to use it. They thought it was a vegetable and tried cooking the leaves. Then they served them mixed with butter and salt. They soon discovered their mistake but many people used to spread the used tea leaves on bread and give them to their children as sandwiches. Tea remained scarce and very expensive in England until the ships of the East India Company began to bring it direct from China early in the seventeenth century. During the next few years so much tea came into the country that the price fell and many people could afford to buy it. At the same time people on the Continent were becoming more and more fond of tea. Until then tea had been drunk without milk in it, but one day a famous French lady named Madame de Sevigne decided to see what tea tasted like when milk was added. She found it so pleasant that she would never again drink it without milk, Because she was such a great lady, her friends thought they must copy everything she did, so they also drank their tea with milk in it. Slowly this habit spread until it reached England and today only very few Britons drink tea without milk. At frist, tea was usually drunk after dinner in the evening. No one ever thought of drinking tea in the afternoon until a duchess found that a cup of tea and a piece of cake at three or four o' clock stopped her getting "a sinking feeling" as she called it. She invited her friends to have this new meal with her and so, tea - time was born.
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单选题It is often observed that the aged spend much time thinking and talking about their past lives, rather than about the future. These reminiscences are not simply random or trivial memories, (1) is their purpose merely to make conversation. The old person's recollections of the past help to (2) an identity that is becoming increasingly fragile: (3) any role that brings respect or any goal that might provide (4) to the future, the individual mentions their (5) as a reminder to listeners, that here was a life (6) living. (7) , the memories form part of a continuing life (8) , in which the old person (9) the events and experiences of the years gone by and (10) on the overall meaning of his or her own almost completed life. As the life cycle (11) to its close, the aged must also learn to accept the reality of their own impending death. (12) this task is made difficult by the fact that death is almost a (13) subject in the United States. The mere discussion of death is often regarded as (14) . As adults, many of us find the topic frightening and are (15) to think about it and certainly not to talk about it (16) the presence of someone who is dying. Death has achieved this taboo (17) only in the modern industrial societies. There seems to be an important reason for our reluctance to (18) the idea of death. It is the very fact that death remains (19) our control; it is almost the only of the natural processes (20) is so.
单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}}
In 1880, Sir Joshua Waddilove, a
Victorian philanthropist, founded Provident Financial to provide affordable
loans to working-class families in and around Bradford, in northern England.
This month his company, now one of Britain's leading providers of "home credit"—
small, short-term, unsecured loans—began the nationwide rollout of Vanquis, a
credit card aimed at people that mainstream lenders shun. The card offers up to
£ 200 ($ 380) of credit, at a price: for the riskiest customers, the annual
interest rate will be 69%. Provident says that the typical
interest rate is closer to 50% and that it charges no fees for late payments or
breaching credit limits. Still, that is triple the rate on regular credit cards
and far above the 30% charged by store cards. And the Vanquis card is being
launched just when Britain's politicians and media are full of worry about
soaring consumer debt. Last month, a man took his own life after running up
debts of £ 130000 on 22 different credit cards. Credit cards for
"sub-prime" borrowers, as the industry delicately calls those with poor credit
records, are new in Britain but have been common in America for a while. Lenders
began issuing them when the prime market became saturated, prompting them to
look for new sources of profit. Even in America, the sub-prime market has plenty
of room for growth. David Robertson of the Nilson Report, a trade magazine,
reckons that outstanding sub-prime credit-card debt accounts for only 3% of the
$ 597 billion that Americans owe on plastic. The sub-prime sector grew by 7.9%
last year, compared with only 2.6% for the industry as a whole.
You might wonder, though, how companies can make money from lending to
customers they know to be bad risks—or at any rate, how they can do it
legitimately. Whereas delinquencies in the credit-card industry as a whole are
around 4%-5% , those in the sub-prime market are almost twice as high, and can
reach 15% in hard times. Obviously, issuers charge higher
interest rates to compensate them for the higher risk of not being repaid. And
all across the credit-card industry, the assessment and pricing of risks has
been getting more and more refined, thanks largely to advances in technology and
data processing. Companies also use sophisticated computer programs to track
slower payment or other signs of increased risk. Sub-prime issuers pay as much
attention to collecting debt as to managing risk; they impose extra charges,
such as application fees; and they cap their potential losses by lending only
small amounts ($ 500 is a typical credit limit). All this is
easier to describe than to do, especially when the economy slows. After the
bursting of the technology bubble in 2000, several sub-prime credit-card
providers failed. Now there are only around 100, of which nine issue credit
cards. Survivors such as Metris and Providian, two of the bigger sub-prime card
companies, have become choosier about their customers' credit
histories. As the economy recovered, so did lenders' fortunes.
Fitch, a rating agency, says that the proportion of sub-prime credit-card
borrowers who are more than 60 days in arrears (a good predictor of eventual
default) is the lowest since November 2001. But with American interest rates
rising again, some worry about another squeeze. As Fitch's Michael Dean points
out, sub-prime borrowers tend to have not just higher-rate credit cards, but
dearer auto loans and variable-rate mortgages as well. That makes a risky
business even riskier.
单选题Earlier this year, 13-year-old Shannon Sullivan was socializing in the same way as dozens of her classmates. She maintained a personalized page on a website that contained her photograph and details about what makes her unique. But then her mother found out. And now her site and those of her friends—once lovingly adorned with everything from sound bites to video clips—are fast disappearing at the insistence of their safety-minded parents. " They're not aware how easily something predatory can happen over the Internet, " says Shannon's mother, Margaret, " Maybe when they're older, in college or something, but it's just not safe before that. " Internet stalkers have killed at least four minors in the past three years, and law enforcement authorities count about 5,000 reports of attempted sexual predation over the Internet in the past year, according to Parry Arab, executive director of an Internet safety organization. Given such statistics, parents need to get over the feeling that they're invading their children's privacy by reading their blogs, Ms. Aftab says. She believes that parents must bring their judgment to bear on the content of what's posted. Others fear, however, that certain precautions could amount to swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, and could take a hefty toll on family life. The likelihood of tragedy is far greater whenever a child rides in a car or goes swimming than when he or she posts his or her name, photograph, and other personal information on the Internet, says Laurence Steinberg, an expert in adolescent psychology at Temple University. " The downside of prohibiting it is worse than the downside of allowing it, " he says. " A good parent-child relationship is based on trust. I think people do get especially worked up for some reason over the Internet. But snooping on what your child does on the Internet, to me in some ways, is no different from reading your child's diary. " Though the value of pursuing a reasonable level of safety goes undisputed in this discussion, adults differ on the value of increasing a child's freedom and privacy over time, especially in cyberspace. Aftab supports adolescent privacy with pen-and-paper diaries, for instance, because the content there is " between the child and the page, " whereas website content is " for the whole world to see. " Posting private Web content before age 16 only invites trouble, she says, yet many teens do it in a highly public bid for " attention, recognition, and affection. " Still, Steinberg says, while parents need to monitor Web usage by teens, they also should accept that they won't always know everything about a child's life, especially as children become older teens. " There are going to be lots of things that I don't know about in my child's life, and that's OK, " Steinberg says. " It's part of the development process. /
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单选题All Americans are at least vaguely (1) with the (2) of the American Indian. Cutbacks in federal programs for Indians have made their problems (3) more severe in recent years. Josephy reports," (4) 1981 it was estimated that cut, backs in federal programs for Indians totaled about $ 500 million" (5) mole than ten times the cuts affecting their (6) fellow Americans. This reduced funding is affecting almost all aspects of reservation life, (7) education. If the Indians could solve their (8) problems, solutions to many of their other problems might not be far behind. In, this paper the current status of Indian education will be described and (9) and some ways of improving this education will be proposed. Whether to (10) with the dominant American culture or to (11) Indian culture has been a longstanding issue in Indian education. The next fifty years became a period of (12) assimilation in all areas of Indian culture, but especially in religion and education (Jacoby 83r84). John Collier, a reformer who agitated . (13) Indians and their culture from the early 1920s until his death in 1968, had a different i dea. He believed that instead of effacing native culture, Indian schools (14) encourage and (15) it ( Dippie'276, 325 ). Pressure to assimilate remains a potent force today, (16) . More and more Indians are graduating from high school and college and becoming (17) for jobs in the non - Indian society." When Indians obtain the requisite skills, many of them enter the broader American society and succeed." (18) approximately 90 percent of all Indian children are educated in state public school systems (Taylor 136, 155). (19) these children compete with the members of the dominant society, however, is another (20) .
单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}}
What is time? Is it a thing to be saved
or spent or wasted, like money? Or is it something we have no control over, like
the weather? Is time the same all over the world? That's an easy question, you
say. Wherever you go, a minute is 60 seconds, an hour is 60 minutes, a day is 24
hours, and so forth. Well, maybe. But in America, time is more than that.
Americans see time as a very valuable resource. Maybe that's why they are fond
of the expression, "Time is money." Because Americans believe
time is a limited resource, they try to conserve and manage it. People in the
U.S. often attend seminars or read books on time management. It seems they all
want to organize their time better. Professionals carry around pocket
planners-some in electronic form-to keep track of appointments and deadlines.
People do all they can to squeeze more life out of their time. The early
American hero Benjamin Franklin expressed this view best: "Do you love life.'?
Then do not waste time, for that is the stuff life is made of."
To Americans, punctuality is a way of showing respect for other people's
time. Being more than 10 minutes late to an appointment usually calls for an
apology, and maybe an explanation. People who are running late often call ahead
to let others know of the delay. Of course, the less formal the situation, the
less important it is to be exactly on time. At informal get-togethers, for
example, people often arrive as much as 30 minutes past the appointed time. But
they usually don't try that at work. To outsiders, Americans
seem tied to the clock, People in other cultures value relationships more than
schedules. In these societies, people don't try to control time, but to
experience it. Many Eastern cultures, for example, view time as a cycle. The
rhythm of nature-from the passing of the seasons to the monthly cycle of the
moon- shapes their view of events. People learn to respond to their environment.
As a result, they find it easier to "go with the flow" than Americans, who like
plans to be fixed and unchangeable. Even Americans would admit
that no one can master time. Time-like money- slips all too easily through our
fingers. And time-like the weather-is very haut to predict. Nevertheless, time
is one of life's most precious gifts. And unwrapping it is half the
fun.
单选题There is growing interest m East Japan Railway Co. , one of the six companies, created out of the (1) national railway system. In an industry lacking exciting growth (2) , its plan to use real-estate assets in and around train stations (3) is drawing interest. In a plan dubbed "Station Renaissance" that it (4) in November, JR East said that it would (5) . using its commercial spaces for shops and restaurants, extending them to (6) more suitable for the information age. It wants train stations as pick-up (7) for such goods as books, flowers and groceries purchased (8) the Internet. In a country (9) urbanites depend heavily on trains (10) commuting, about 16 million people a day go to its train stations anyway, the company (11) . So, picking up purchases at train stations spare (12) extra travel and missed home deliveries. JR East already has been using its station (13) stores for this purpose, but it plans to create (14) spaces for the delivery of Internet goods. The company also plans to introduce (15) cards—known in Japan as IC cards because they use integrated (16) for hold information— (17) train tickets and commuter passes (18) the magnetic ones used today, integrating them into a single pass. This will save the company money, because (19) for IC cards are much less expensive than magnetic systems. Increased use of IC cards should also (20) the space needed for ticket vending.
单选题It can be inferred from the text that the purpose of the attack could be______.
单选题The best information par
单选题The quotation of Skinner's words(Lines 7—8, Paragraph 3) is used to show that
单选题The author does not directly state, but implies that
单选题A field is simply a social system of relations between individuals or institutions who are competing for the same stake. An example of a field may be higher education, colleges, and universities. Habitus is a set of potential dispositions, an internalized set of taken-for-granted rules that govern strategies, and social practices that individuals in some respects carry with them into any field. There is a system of unspoken rules and generally unspeakable rules. They are unspeakable because it is understood that it would be rude or socially punishable to try to talk about those rules. Or, in some cases individuals within a habitus cannot even articulate those arbitrary rules because they are unaware of them. That is, these rules may feel so natural and normalized that they seem as though they are the way things should be and always have been. An example of an unspeakable rule might be that a person should never discuss class privilege, as opposed to hard work, as contributing to the success of an individual when talking about the accomplishments of the middle class within a middle-class field. However, within a working-class field of manual laborers, this may not be a forbidden topic of discussion. Judith Butler outlined a feminist theory of embodied practice in identity formation. She stated that our sense of identities is formed through repeated daily and everyday constrained and emancipatory performative practices through our bodies. Through the process of repeated performances, ways of being in the world become sedimented, that is layered and accumulated to the extent that these practices become a part of who we are and how we perceive ourselves to be in the world. Butler's insights about performativity, the body, and identity are particularly informative of working-class identity formations that are literally embodied within the physical capacity to do manual labor. Butler's notion of performative identity gives me insight into my own identity development and the discomforts and constraints I have felt within academia, where the mind is privileged over the body in ways that almost obliterate the body. At the same time, the ideology of mind over body seems hypocritical when one examines the class distinctions made through the embedded middle-class practices, in short, the habitus, of the majority of university professors. Many first-generation college students in my classes, especially those who are from working-class backgrounds, report shock, dismay, and anger at the level of classism and racism that exists among faculty, whom they assumed to be educated and to value egalitarian principles. Many students express their frustration at not knowing the habitus of the middle class, yet feel its exclusionary, embodied power. They express even more frustration that the middle class also seems unaware of its own unspoken rules and habitus. Though they can start a conversation about race, they don't know how to talk about class in a meaningful way, one that helps their fellow students to understand the naturalized class distinctions within our culture. Class is America's dirty little secret.
单选题Last weekend, sportsmen and women of an unusually hardy disposition descended on Sherborne, a pretty Dorset town. There, they swam twice around Sherborne Castle's lake, cycled 180kin and then ran a marathon. The winners of this gruelling race--Britain's inaugural Ironman triathlon—were rewarded with a spot in a prestigious race in Hawaii, where yet more pain awaits. For a sport barely known in Britain five years ago, triathlon has grown at a sprinter's pace. This year the British Triathlon Association, the governing body, will sanction some 450 triathlons, duathlons (running and biking) and aquathlons (running and swimming). These vary from tough races aimed at endurance junkies to shorter events designed to lure newcomers. By far the most successful is the London triathlon, which, three weeks ago, brought 8 000--half of them first-timers--to the Royal Victoria Dock in east London. That made it the world's biggest. There are echoes of the jogging craze of the early 1980s. Both sports are American exports; both have grown partly thanks to television coverage. Inclusion in the Olympic and Commonwealth games has conferred credibility and state funding on triathlon. Even better, Britain's professional triathletes are doing rather well on the international circuit. There are practical reasons for the growth of the sport, too. Nick Rusling, event director of the London triathlon, points out that established events such as the London marathon and Great North Run are hugely over-subscribed (this year the marathon received 98 500 applications for 36 000 places). Triathlon offers a more reliable route to exhaustion, and a fresh challenge to athletes who are likely to cross-train anyway. The sport will not soon supplant "the great suburban Everest", as Chris Brasher, founder of the London marathon, described his event. The sport's tripartite nature means that putting on events is fiendishly complex, a fact reflected in high entry fees: competitors at last weekend's Ironman race forked out £220. Shorter events are cheaper, but participants must still provide their own bicycles and wetsuits and pay for training. Compared with the inhabitants of Newham, the London borough where this year's London triathlon was held, competitors appeared overwhelmingly white and middle class. Another drag on growth is a shortage of suitable venues in a small island--a problem exacerbated by safety fears. But that ought to be less of a hindrance in future. Two court decisions, in 2003 and earlier this year, have firmly established that the owners of large bodies of water may not be held responsible when adults injure themselves as a result of extravagant sporting actions.
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单选题 I've heard many students and professionals express a
desire to take a speed reading course so they can increase their knowledge at a
faster rate. But the information I've {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}}
{{/U}}over the last few years {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}me to
believe that "speed reading" may be less useful than most people
think. Don't push yourself to read at a(n){{U}} {{U}}
3 {{/U}} {{/U}}pace. The claim that you can read and fully {{U}}
{{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}2,000 or 3,000 words per minute is
a(n){{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}exaggeration. One researcher
proved this in a study in which irrelevant and {{U}} {{U}} 6
{{/U}} {{/U}} sentences were added to a passage of writing. The "speed
readers" who were tested didn't notice the irrelevant lines-the non-speed
readers {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}them immediately.
It was said that President Kennedy read three or four major daffy
newspapers each morning in just a few minutes. But he {{U}} {{U}}
8 {{/U}} {{/U}}obtained all the information he needed from the headlines
and topic paragraphs. I wish I could have {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}}
{{/U}}him after he completed his daily newspaper reading. I'm willing to {{U}}
{{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}he would not have known most details revealed
in the body of the articles-{{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}those in
stories he read completely. I suspect that's also true {{U}} {{U}}
12 {{/U}} {{/U}}most persons who make {{U}} {{U}} 13
{{/U}} {{/U}}to great reading speeds. I've never taken one of
the reading courses that {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}to increase
your reading pace astronomically, but I've spoken {{U}} {{U}} 15
{{/U}} {{/U}}to many persons who have. Virtually all of them felt the courses
had been helpful but, {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}, didn't make
them faster readers. My secretary used to teach a speed reading
course for the personnel department of a large utility company. She told me the
follow-up {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}indicated that employees
who attended all 12 classes showed no {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}}
{{/U}}long-term improvement in their reading speed. She did add, {{U}}
{{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}, that many company employees took the course
to enhance their promotion opportunities, and it may well have {{U}}
{{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}that purpose.
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