单选题 The love affair with business started in the 1980s
and has grown into a mighty passion backed not just by money but by glamour and
class. In 2009 the money ran out, but the mood was one of such chaos and
confusion that it was hard to tell what was going on underneath. In 2010 it will
become clear that the class and glamour are draining away from business too. It
will be the end of the affair: business will be cool no longer.
Throughout this affair the business schools played the role of cupid. First,
they made the study of business into an (almost) respectable academic
discipline. More importantly, they made it socially acceptable, something even
the classiest person could aspire to. But in 2010, for the
second year running, tens of thousands of overqualified MBAs will emerge with
nowhere exciting to go. A very few will land jobs in investment banking, but
those who want grand jobs in big companies or consultancies will be
disappointed. Increasingly they will go crawling back to their old employers to
do pretty much whatever they were doing before for pretty much the same money,
thus making them question whether it is really worth the $160,000 that a top MBA
costs. This is not going to be a little recessionary dip. It
will be a more fundamental reappraisal. The magical myth of the MBA has for some
time left the facts behind. In future, those who stump up will do so because
they want to learn the skills, not because they think they are buying entry into
a cool and exclusive club. Some good things will follow from
this. There will be fewer smart Alecs who think they know it all pouring into
companies. There has been a bear market in management bullshit since the credit
Chinch began. In 2010 the decline of the MBA will cut off the supply of bullshit
at source. Pretentious ideas about business will be in retreat. But there will
be bad things too: if fewer bright, ambitious people go into business, economies
may suffer. Instead the talent will go increasingly into the public sector, the
law, medicine-which are already bursting with bright people as it is.
While the decline of the B-schools will weaken the glamour of business in
general, the government will do its bit too with increasing regulation. In
2010,being a board director of a listed company will never have been less fun:
not only will the procedural side be more demanding, there will be even greater
public hysteria over what directors are paid. And with those at the top having
such a grim time, it is unrealistic to expect any excitement at the
bottom.
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单选题As human children are unusually dependent far an unusually long time, it's obvious that every society must provide a domestic context in which the children are brought up and educated. In present-day English, the word "family" has two meanings: firstly, the (1) group of parents and children; and secondly, a (2) of relations who might be expected to (3) at a wedding or a (4) . At the first level, my brothers and sisters and myself are all in the same (5) as children, but in different ones as parents; but at the second (6) , we're all in the same family from start to finish. As nuclear families become more (7) , families of relations become more dispersed (分散). The young mother can still talk to her Mum on the phone, but she can't ask her to (8) for a few minutes to watch the baby. Ideas about the (9) of women have been changing: wives are thought to be the (10) of their husbands rather than their (11) . But perhaps they're more (12) enslaved to their children than before. The point is that there doesn't seem to be any (13) . There is a genuine (14) between the right of the woman to be treated as a free and self-respected (15) , and the right of the child to demand care and (16) We have created for ourselves three (17) : social equality of men and women; (18) of the marriage; and lifelong love and (19) between parents and children. However, we have (20) a social system in which it's quite impossible for these factors to co-exist.
单选题Drug use is rising dramatically among the nation' s youth after a decade of decline. From 1993 to 1994, marijuana use among young people (1) from 12 to 17 jumped 50 percent. One in five high school seniors (2) marijuana daily. Monitoring the Future, which (3) student drug use annually, reports that negative attitudes about drugs have declined for the fourth year in a row. (4) young people see great risk in using drugs. Mood-altering pharmaceutical drugs are (5) new popularity among young people. Ritalin, (6) as a diet pill in the 1970s and now used to (7) hyperactive children, has become a (8) drug on college campuses. A central nervous system (9) , Ritalin can cause strokes, hypertension, and seizures. Rohypnol, produced in Europe as a (10) tranquilizer, lowers inhibitions and suppresses short-term memory, which has led to some women being raped by men they are going out with. (11) taken with alcohol, its effects are greatly (12) . Rock singer Kurt Cobain collapsed from an (13) of Rohypnol and champagne a month before he committed (14) in 1994. In Florida and Texas, Rohypnol has become widely abused among teens, who see the drug as a less expensive (15) for marijuana and LSD. Alcohol and tobacco use is increasing among teenagers, (16) younger adolescents. Each year, more than one million teens become regular smokers, (17) they cannot legally purchase tobacco. By 12th grade, one in three students smokes. In 1995, one in five 14-year-olds reported smoking regularly, a 33 percent jump (18) 1991. Drinking among 14-year-olds climbed 50 percent from 1992 to 1994,and all teens reported substantial increases in (19) drinking. In 1995, one in five 10th graders reported having been drunk in the past 30 days. Two-thirds of high school seniors say they know a (20) with a drinking problem.
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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 $ 1.58 million 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% in its first two months. Scant
attention was paid to modern Indian art until the end of the 1990s. Then wealthy
Indians, particularly those living abroad, began to take an interest. Dinesh
Vazirani, who runs Saffronart, a leading Indian auction site, says 60% of his
sales go to buyers overseas. The focus now is on six auctions
this month. Two took place in India last week; work by younger artists such as
Surendran Naif 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 the 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.
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单选题 The idea of humanoid robots is not new, of course.
They have been part of the imaginative landscape ever since Karl Capek, a Czech
Writer, first dreamed them up for his 1921 play "Rossum's Universal Robots".
(The word "robot" comes from the Czech word for drudgery, robota.) Since then,
Hollywood has produced countless variations on the theme, from the sultry False
Maria in Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece "Metropolis" to the wittering C3PO in
"Star Wars" and the ruthless assassin of "Terminator". Humanoid robots have
walked into our collective subconscious, colouring our views of the
future. But now Japan's industrial giants are spending billions
of yen to make such robots a reality. Their new humanoids represent impressive
feats of engineering: when Honda introduced Asimo, a four-foot robot that had
been in development for some 15 years, it walked so fluidly that its white,
articulated exterior seemed to conceal a human. Honda continues to make the
machine faster, friendlier and more agile. Last October, when AMmo was inducted
into the Robot Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh, it walked on to the stage and
accepted its own plaque. At two and a half feet tall, Sony's
QRIO is smaller and more to,like than Asimo. It walks, understands a small
number of voice commands, and can navigate on its own. If it falls over, it gets
up and resumes where it left off. It can even connect wirelessly to the internet
and broadcast what its camera eyes can see. In 2003, Sony demonstrated an
upgraded QRIO that could run. Honda responded last December with a version of
Asimo that runs at twice the speed. In 2004, Toyota joined the
fray with its own family of robots, called Partner, one of which is a four-foot
humanoid that plays the trumpet. Its fingers work the instrument's valves, and
it has mechanical lungs and artificial lips. Toyota hopes to offer a commercial
version of the robot by 2010. This month, 50 Partner robots will act as guides
at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. Despite their sudden
proliferation, however, humanoids are still a mechanical minority. Most of
the world's robots are faceless, footless and mute. They are bolted to the
floors of factories, stamping out car parts or welding pieces of metal, machines
making more machines. According to the United Nations, business orders for
industrial robots jumped 18% in the first half of 2004. They may soon be
outnumbered by domestic robots, such as self-navigating vacuum cleaners, lawn
mowers and window washers, which are selling fast. But neither industrial nor
domestic robots are humanoid.
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Guthrie's contiguity principle offers
practical suggestions for how to break habits. One application
of the threshold method involves the time young children spend on academic
activities. Young children have short attention spans, so the length of time
they can sustain work on one activity is limited. Most activities are scheduled
to last no longer than 30 to 40 minutes. However, at the start of the school
year, attention spans quickly wane and behavior problems often result. To apply
Guthrie's theory, a teacher might, at the start of the year, limit activities to
15 to 20 minutes. Over the next few weeks the teacher could gradually increase
the time students spend working on a single activity. The
threshold method also can be applied to teaching printing and handwriting. When
children first learn to form letters, their movements are awkward and they lack
fine motor coordination. The distances between lines on a page are purposely
wide so children can fit the letters into the space. If paper with narrow lines
is initially introduced, students' etters would spill over the borders and
students might become frustrated. Once students can form letters within
the larger borders, they can use paper with smaller borders to help them refine
their skills. The fatigue method can be applied when
disciplining disruptive students who build paper airplanes and sail them across
the room. The teacher can remove the students from the classroom, give them a
large stack of paper, and tell him to start making paper airplanes. After the
students have made several airplanes, the activity should lose its attraction
and paper will become a cue for not building airplanes. Some
students continually race around the gym when they first enter their physical
education class. To employ the fatigue method, the teacher might decide to have
these students continue to run a few more laps after the class has
begun. The incompatible response method can be used with
students who talk and misbehave in the media center. Reading is incompatible
with talking. The media center teacher might ask the students to find
interesting books and read them while in the center. Assuming that the students
find the books enjoyable, the media center will, over time, become a cue for
selecting and reading books rather than for talking with other
students. In a social studies class some students regularly fall
asleep. The teacher realized that using the board and overhead projector while
lecturing was very boring. Soon the teacher began to incorporate other elements
into each lesson, such as experiments, and debates, in an attempt to involve
students and raise their interest in the course.
单选题In some countries, societal and familial treatment of the elderly usually reflects a great degree of independence and individualism. Their financial support is often provided by social security or welfare systems which decrease dependence on their family. Additionally, older people may seek their own friends rather than become too emotionally dependent on their children. Senior citizens centers provide a means for peer-group association within one's own age groups. There are problems, however, with growing old, in the United States. Glorification of youth and indifference to the aged have left many older people alienated and alone. Some families send their older relatives to nursing homes rather than integrate them into the homes of the children or grandchildren. This separation of the elderly from the young has contributed to the isolation of an increasingly large segment of society. On the other hand, there are many older people who choose to live in retirement communities where they have the companionship of other older people and convenience of many recreational and social activities close home. The treatment of the elderly can be further understood by distinguishing between nuclear and extended family structures. In the United States the nuclear family, which consists of the father, the mother, and the children, is considered "the family". The extended family, common in other cultures, includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and children in law. The distinction between the nuclear and extended family is important because it suggests the extent of family ties and obligations. In extended families the children and parents have strong ties and obligations to relatives. It is common in these families to support older family members, to have intensive contact with relatives, and to establish communal housing. The American nuclear family usually has its own separate residence and is economically independent of other family members. Relatives are still considered "family" but are often outside the basic obligations that people have to their immediate families. When couples many, they are expected to live independently of their parents and become "heads of households" when they have children. It is not unusual in times of financial need for nuclear family members to borrow money from a bank rather than from relatives. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, then, are not directly involved in the same way as they would be in an extended family structure.
单选题According to the passage which of the following occurred prior to 1890.9
单选题What have the Handlins argued about the relationship between racial prejudice and the institution of legal slavery in the English colonies of North America?
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单选题George Bernard Shaw once wrote: "There is no love sincerer than the love of food. "That love has limits, however. In thin years, diners value their wallets over their palates. Visits to posh restaurants in America declined by 15 % between May 2008 and May this year, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. Fast-food restaurants, on the other hand, saw traffic decline only 2%. To lure eaters back, many fine restaurants have done what luxury brands hate to do: have a cut-price sale. Some offer discounts to those who dine at unpopular times, such as early in the evening or on Sunday. Restaurant Week, a twice-yearly tradition in New York City where restaurants offer discounted prix-fixed menus at lunch and dinner, was extended by six weeks this summer. This may help. The 21 Club, a fancy joint in Manhattan, usually sees its business increase by around 25%~40% during Restaurant Week, says Bryan McGuire, its general manager. Many restaurants have also turned to the Internet. Gilt and Rue La La, two popular online shopping sites that offer heavy discounts on designer clothing, have started to peddle meals at fancy restaurants too. Gilt, for example, recently sold a four-course meal at the Tribeca Grill, a restaurant owned by Robert De Niro, an actor, for $160 (36% off). Shopping sites like these attract image-conscious restaurants, because only the site's members can see that the restaurant has started to offer leaner prices. Another website, Groupon, has gained popularity among restaurants as a way to bring in new customers. The company offers a daily discount in each of the 140 American and European cities where it operates. Some 40% of its promotions are for restaurants. The deals can be generous: some offer $50-worth of food and wine for $25. The deal only goes into effect, however, if enough people buy it. So people prod their Facebook friends to join the feeding frenzy. This type of "collective buying" has caught on. Since the firm started in 2008, it has brokered the sale of more than 8.8m "groupons" and saved customers around $375m. La Condesa, a restaurant in Austin, has sold 3,000 groupons. " It brings a lot of people into the restaurant who would never have come in," says Jesse Herman, an executive. Tasty offerings abound online. OpenTable, a website, allows people to book a table without having to plead with a snooty hostess. It also makes it easier for restaurants to track customers. SeamlessWeb allows people in America and Britain to search online for nearby eateries and order their food delivered. Even swanky restaurants have started to take part, betting that some people might want to eat haute cuisine without dressing for the occasion. But SeamlessWeb takes a cut of restaurants' sales for bringing them business, so restaurants have to decide whether' it's better to stay hungry for customers or share part of their meal with someone else.
单选题It"s no surprise that Jennifer Senior"s insightful, provocative magazine cover story, "I love My Children, I Hate My Life," is arousing much chatter—nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that "the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight."
The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive—and newly single—mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual "Jennifer Aniston is pregnant" news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity morn, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.
In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing? It doesn"t seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the childless. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn"t have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.
Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like
Us Weekly
and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britney tell it, raising a kid on their "own" (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake.
It"s hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous: most adults understand that a baby is not a haircut. But it"s interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood aren"t in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small part of us hoped getting "the Rachel" might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston.
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单选题The essential function of photosynthesis in terms of plant needs is______
单选题Which of the following, according to the text, is true?
