单选题Richard Holbrooke, who died at the age of 69 after suffering a ruptured aorta, was not the most universally beloved, but was certainly one of the ablest, the most admired and the most effective of American diplomats. He is one of the few of that profession in the past 40 years who can be compared with the giants of the "founding generation" of American hegemony, such as Dean Acheson and George Kennan. Holbrooke was tough as well as exceptionally bright. He was a loyal, liberal Democrat, but also a patriot who was prepared to be ruthless in what he saw as his nation"s interest. To his friends, he was kind and charming, but he could be abrasive: no doubt that characteristic helped prevent him becoming Secretary of State on two occasions, under Bill Clinton and again when Barack Obama became president. He held almost every other important job in the international service of the US. He was ambassador to the United Nations, where he dealt with the vexed problem of America"s debts to the organization, and to Germany. He was the only person in history to be assistant Secretary of State—the key level in routine diplomacy—in two regions of the world, Europe and Asia. He distinguished himself as an investment banker, a magazine editor, a charity executive and an author, but he will be remembered most of all for his success in negotiating an end to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina at an Ohio airbase, and for his part in the American intervention in Kosovo. At the time of his death, he was Obama"s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke joined the Foreign Service, and in 1963 was sent as a civilian official to Vietnam, where he was one of a talented cohort of young men who were to become leaders in American diplomacy. Once back in Washington in 1966, Holbrooke worked for two years in the White House under Johnson, and then at the State Department, where he was a junior member of the delegation to the fruitless initial peace talks with North Vietnam in Paris. By 1972, Holbrooke was ready for a change. He became the first editor of the magazine Foreign Policy , created as a less stuffy competitor to the august Foreign Affairs . He also worked for Newsweek magazine. In 1976, he went to work for Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, who was beginning his campaign for president and badly needed some foreign policy expertise. When Carter became president, in 1977, Holbrooke became his assistant Secretary of State for Asian affairs.

单选题According to some loud chorus, the oil price in the new era will be as low as

单选题The British Post Office praises the codes as______

单选题According to the text, which of the following would most probably be one major difference in behavior between Manager X, who uses intuition to reach decisions, and Manager Y, who uses only formal decision analysis?

单选题Being good-looking is useful in so many ways. In addition to whatever personal pleasure it gives you, being attractive also helps you earn more money, f'amd a higher-earning spouse and get better deals on mortgages. Each of these facts has been demonstrated over the past 20 years by many economists and other researchers, The effects are not small: one study showed that an American worker who was among the bottom one-seventh in looks, as assessed by randomly chosen observers, earned 10 to 15 percent less per year than a similar worker whose looks were assessed in the top one-third — a lifetime difference, in a typical case, of about $ 230, 000. Most of us, regardless of our professed attitudes, prefer as customers to buy from better-looking salespeople, as jurors to listen to better-looking attorneys, as voters to be led by better-looking politicians, as students to learn from better-looking professors. This is not a matter of evil employers' refusing to hire the ugly: in our roles as workers, customers and potential lovers we are all responsible for these effects. How could we remedy this injustice? A radical solution may be needed: why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals? We actually already do offer such protections in a few places, including in some jurisdictions in California, and in the District of Columbia, where discriminatory treatment based on looks in hiring, promotions, housing and other areas is prohibited. The mechanics of legislating this kind of protection are not as difficult as you might think. Ugliness could be protected generally in the United States by small extensions of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Ugly people could be allowed to seek help from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other agencies in overcoming the effects of discrimination. You might argue that people can't be classified by their looks — that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In one study, more than half of a group of people were assessed identically by each of two observers using a five-point scale ; and very few assessments differed by more than one point. There are possible other objections. "Ugliness" is not a personal trait that many people choose to embrace; those whom we classify as protected might not be willing to admit that they are ugly. But with the chance of obtaining extra pay and promotions amounting to $ 230, 000 in lost lifetime earnings, there's a large enough incentive to do so. Bringing antidiscrimination lawsuits is also costly, and few potential plaintiffs could afford to do so. But many attorneys would be willing to organize classes of plaintiffs to overcome these costs, just as they now do in racial-discrimination and other lawsuits. Economic arguments for protecting the ugly are as strong as those for protecting some groups currently covered by legislation. So why not go ahead and expand protection to the looks-challenged? There's one legitimate concern. With increasingly tight limits on government resources, expanding rights to yet another protected group would reduce protection for groups that have commanded our legislative and other attention for over 50 years. You might reasonably disagree and argue for protecting all deserving groups. Either way, you shouldn't be surprised to see the United States heading toward this new legal frontier.

单选题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 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Where is the second centre of Hollywood film making in Europe. after London*. Paris. or perhaps Berlin? Try Prague. Last year, Hollywood spent over $200m on shooting movies, commercials and pop videos in the Czech capital. This year. all the big studios will be in town. MGM has "Hart's War" starring Bruce Willis; Disney is shooting "Black Sheep" with Anthony Hopkins; and Fox has just finished filming "From Hell", a Jack the Ripper saga starring Johnny Depp. Praguers take Tinseltown in their stride. Old ladies looked only slightly confused last month when the cobbled streets of Mala Strana, Prague's old quarter, were cleared of real snow and sprayed with a more cinematically pleasing chemical alternative for Universal's "Bourne Identity", a $50m thriller starring Matt Damon. The film's producer, Pat Crowley, reckons a day filming in Prague costs him $100.000, against $250,000 in Paris. Czech crews, he says, are professional, English-speaking and numerous. They are also a bargain—40% cheaper than similar crews in London or Los Angeles, points out Matthew Stillman. the British boss of Stillking, a Prague-based production firm. Mr. Stillman founded Stillking in 1993 after arriving in Prague with $500 and a typewriter. Today, Hollywood producers come to the company for crews, catering, lights and much more. It claims to have about half of the local film-production business and this year hopes for revenues of over $50m. The biggest draw to Prague, however, is Barrandov—one of the largest film studios in Europe, with 11 sound-stages, onsite photo labs and top-notch technicians. It was founded during Czechoslovakia's pre-war first republic by Milos Havel, an uncle of the present Czech president, Vaclav Havel. The Nazis expanded it as a production centre for propaganda flicks—the sound-stages are courtesy of Joseph Goebbels. Then came the Communists with their own propaganda and, admittedly, a few impressive homegrown directors such as Milos Forman, who began Hollywood's march to Prague by filming "Amadeus" there. But it is partly thanks to Barrandov that Prague remains some way behind London as a film centre. The studio has suffered from doubtful management and is already stretched to capacity ("You can't even get an office there," moans one producer). Its present owner, a local steel company, is keen to sell but talks with a Canadian institution have been thorny, not least because the Czech government holds a golden share. Should the Canadian deal fall through, Stillking says it would consider a bid of its own.

单选题It"s been called the Gig Economy, Freelance Nation, the Rise of the Creative Class, and the e-economy, with the "e" standing for electronic, entrepreneurial. Everywhere we look, we can see the U.S. workforce undergoing a massive change. No longer do we work at the same company for 25 years, waiting for the gold watch, expecting the benefits and security that come with full-time employment. We"re no longer simply lawyers, or photographers, or writers. Instead, we"re part-time lawyers-cum-amateur photographers who write on the side. Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients, learning to be marketing and accounting experts, and creating offices in bedrooms/coffee shops. Independent workers abound. We call them freelancers, contractors, sole proprietors, consultants, temps, and the self-employed. This transition is nothing less than a revolution. We haven"t seen a shift in the workforce so significant in almost 100 years since we transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Now, employees are leaving the traditional workplace and opting to piece together a professional life on their own. As of 2005, one-third of our workforce participated in this "freelance economy". Statistics show that number has only increased over the past six years. While the economy has unwillingly pushed some people into independent work, many have chosen it because of greater flexibility that lets them skip the dreary office environment and focus on more personally fulfilling projects. These trends will have an enormous impact on our economy and our society: We don"t actually know the true composition of the new workforce. After 2005, the government stopped counting independent workers in a meaningful and accurate way. Studies have shown that the independent workforce has grown and changed significantly since then. Jobs no longer provide the protections and security that workers used to expect. The basics such as health insurance, protection from unpaid wages, a retirement plan, and unemployment insurance are out of reach for one-third of working Americans. Independent workers are forced to seek them elsewhere, and if they can"t find or afford them, then they go without. Therefore, it"s time to build a new support system that allows for the flexible and mobile way that people are working. This new, changing workforce needs to build economic security in profoundly new ways. For the new workforce, the New Deal is irrelevant. When it was passed in the 1930s, the New Deal provided workers with important protections and benefits but those securities were built for a traditional employer-employee relationship. The New Deal has not evolved to include independent workers.

单选题Cultural responses to modernization often manifest themselves in the mass media. For example, Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, created a fictional world in which he cautioned readers that modern science and technology posed a threat to individual dignity. Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times, set in a futuristic manufacturing plant, also told the story of the dehumanizing impact of modernization and machinery. Writers and artists, in their criticisms of the modern world, often point to technology's ability to alienate people from one another, capitalism's tendency to foster greed, and government's inclination to create bureaucracies that oppress rather than help people. Among the major values of the modern period, four typically manifest themselves in the cultural environment: celebrating the individual, believing in rational order, working efficiently, and rejecting tradition. These values of the modern period were originally embodied in the printing press and later in newspapers and magazines. The print media encouraged the vision of individual writers, publishers, and readers who circulated new ideas. Whereas the premodern period was guided by strong beliefs in a natural or divine order, becoming modern meant elevating individual self-expression to a central position. Along with democratic breakthroughs, however, individualism and the Industrial Revolution triggered modern forms of hierarchy, in which certain individuals and groups achieved higher standing in the social order. For example, those who managed commercial enterprises gained more control over the economic ladder, while an intellectual class of modern experts, who mastered specialized realms of knowledge, gained increasing power over the nation's social, political, and cultural agendas. To be modern also meant to value the capacity of organized, scientific minds to solve problems efficiently. Progressive thinkers maintained that the printing press, the telegraph, and the railroad in combination with a scientific attitude would foster a new type of informed society. At the core of this society, the printed mass media, particularly newspapers, would educate the citizenry, helping to build and maintain an organized social framework. Journalists strove for the premodern ideal through a more fact-based and efficient approach to reporting. They discarded decorative writing and championed a lean look. Modern front-page news de-emphasized description, commentary, and historical context. The lead sentences that reported a presidential press conference began to look similar, whether they were on the front page in Tupelo, Mississippi, or Wahpeton, North Dakota. Just as modern architecture made many American skylines look alike, the front pages of newspapers began to resemble one another. Finally, to be modern meant to throw off the rigid rules of the past, to break with tradition. Modern journalism became captivated by timely and immediate events. As a result, the more standardized forms of front-page journalism, on the one hand, championed facts and current events while efficiently meeting deadlines. But on the other hand, modern newspapers often failed to take a historical perspective or to analyze sufficiently the ideas underlying these events.

单选题After Los Angeles, Atlanta may be America's most car-dependent city. Atlantans sentimentally give their cars names, compare speeding tickets and jealously guard any side street where it is possible to park. The city's roads are so well worn that the first act of the new mayor, Shirley Franklin, was to start repairing potholes. In 1998, 13 metro counties lost federal highway funds because their air-pollution levels violated the Clean Air Act. The American Highway Users Alliance ranked three Atlanta interchanges among the 18 worst bottlenecks in the country. Other cities in the same fix have reorganized their highways, imposed commuter and car taxes, or expanded their public-transport systems. Atlanta does not like any of these things. Public transport is a vexed subject, too. Atlanta's metropolitan region is divided into numerous county and smaller city governments, which find it hard to work together. Railways now serve the city center and the airport, but not much else; bus stops are often near invisible poles, offering no indication of which bus might stop there, or when. Georgia's Democratic governor, Roy Barnes, who hopes for reelection in November, has other plans. To win back the federal highway money lost under the Clean Air Act, he created the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA), a 15-member board with the power to make the county governments, the city and the ten-county Atlanta Regional Commission cooperate on transport plans, whether they like it or not. Now GRTA has issued its own preliminary plan, allocating $ 4.5 billion over the next three years for a variety of schemes. The plan earmarks money to widen roads; to have an electric shuttle bus shuttle tourists among the elegant villas of Buckhead; and to create a commuter rail link between Atlanta and Macon, two hours to the south. Counties will be encouraged, with generous ten-to-one matching funds, to start express bus services. Public goodwill, however, may not stretch as far as the next plan, which is to build the Northern Arc highway for 65 miles across three counties north of the city limits. GRTA has allotted $270m for this. Supporters say it would ease the congestion on local roads; opponents think it would worsen over-development and traffic. The counties affected, and even GRTA's own board, are divided. The governor is in favor, however; and since he can appoint and fire GRTA'S members, that is probably the end of the story. Mr Barnes has a tendency to do as he wants, regardless. His arrogance on traffic matters could also lose him votes. But Mr Barnes think that Atlanta's slowing economy could do him more harm than the anti-sprawl movement.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on Answer Sheet 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} St. Paul didn't like it. Moses warned his people against it. Hesiod declared it "mischievious” and "hard to get rid of it", but Oscar Wilder said, "Gossip is charming." "History is merely gossip," he wrote in one of his famous plays. "But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. ' In times past, under Jewish law, gossipmongers might be fined or flogged. The Puritans put them in stocks or ducking stools, but no punishment seemed to have the desired effect of preventing gossip, which has continued uninterrupted across the back fences of the centuries. Today, however, the much-maligned human foible is being looked at in a different light. Psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, even evolutionary biologists are concluding that gossip may not be so bad after all. Gossip is "an intrinsically valuable activity", philosophy professor Aaron Ben-Ze'ev states in a book he has edited, entitled Good Gossip. For one thing, gossip helps us acquire information that we need to know that doesn't come through ordinary channels, such as: "What was the real reason so and-so was fired from the office?" Gossip also is a form of social bonding, Dr. Ben-Ze'ev says. It is "a kind of sharing" that also "satisfies the tribal need-- namely, the need to belong to and be accepted by a unique group". What's more, the professor notes, "Gossip is enjoyable." Another gossip groupie, Dr. Ronald De Sousa, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, describes gossip basically as a form of indiscretion and a "saintly virtue", by which he means that the knowledge spread by gossip will usually end up being slightly beneficial. "It seems likely that a world in which all information were universally available would be preferable to a world where immense power resides in the control of secrets," he writes. Still, everybody knows that gossip can have its ill effects, especially on the poor wretch being gossiped about. And people should refrain from certain kinds of gossip that might be harmful, even though the ducking stool is long out of fashion. By the way, there is also an interesting strain of gossip called medical gossip, which in its best form, according to researchers Jerry M. Suls and Franklin Goodkin, can motivate people with symptoms of serious illness, but who are unaware of it, to seek medical help. So go ahead and gossip. But remember, if (as often is the case among gossipers) you should suddenly become one of the gossipees instead, it is best to employ the foolproof defense recommended by Plato, who may have learned the lesson from Socrates, who as you know was the victim of gossip spread that he was corrupting the youth of Athens: When men speak ill of thee, so live thiat nobody will believe them. Or, as Will Rogers said, "Live so that you wouldn't .be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip."

单选题In 1879, Richard Henry Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian School, a remarkable 40-year chapter in this country's failed social policy regarding Native Americans. Pratt's faith could be simply described as: "Kill the Indian, Save the Man!" to eradicate any manifestations of their native culture. When four decades of forcible education ended in 1918, it wasn't clear what Pratt's experiment had killed and what it had saved. But there was one indisputably notable legacy-- the Carlisle football team. In the early 20th century, the Carlisle Indians ascended to the pinnacle(顶点) of the collegiate game. In those years, it began to engage all the Ivy football powers on the gridiron(运动场). And from 1911 to 1913, including the season in which the legendary Jim Thorpe returned from the Olympics to score 25 touchdowns, Carlisle had a 38-3 record, including a 27-6 rout of West Point. Washington Post sportswriter Sally Jenkins has produced a fascinating new book, "The Real All Americans": The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation (Doubleday. $24.95), that examines the Carlisle legend in wonderful detail. At the turn of the century, football was exploding on the college scene, particularly at the Ivy elites, where the sons of the gentry could prepare for the rigors of leadership on the gridiron. They preferred their football brutal. Conversely, the Carlisle team was undermanned and seriously undersized. But Carlisle was blessed with gifted athletes and a wizard of a coach, Pop Warner. Because Carlisle couldn't match the brute force of its rivals, Warner created an entirely new brand of football, relying on speed, deception and guile. In that 1903 Harvard game, Carlisle used the hidden ball trick to score on the second-half kickoff. While the return man pretended to cradle the ball, another player had it tucked into a pocket sewn inside the back of his jersey and ran unmolested 103 yards for a touchdown. Carlisle developed new blocking techniques that compensated for its size disadvantage: the spiral throw that put the long pass, with its premium(优势) on speed, into the offense and a repertoire of fakes; reverses and misdirection that remain a central part of the game. It took brains to concoct the schemes and intelligence to execute them. These innovations did not go unrecognized. After Carlisle trounced Army in 1912, The New York Times hailed the conquerors from Carlisle for playing "the most perfect brand of football ever seen in America." Still, today this country celebrates football like no other sport. Jenkins does a marvelous job of making an intimate connection between our beloved, modern game and the unlikely team that, a century ago, helped make it what it is today.

单选题In War Made Easy Norman Solomon demolishes the myth of all independent American press zealously guarding sacred values of free expression. Although strictly focusing on the shameless history of media cheerleading for the principal post World War' Ⅱ American wars, invasions, and interventions, he calls into question the entire concept of the press as some kind of institutional counterforce to government and corporate power. Many of the examples compiled in this impeccably documented historical review will be familiar to readers who follow the news on the Internet. But such examples achieve flesh impact because of the way Solomon has organized and analyzed them. Each chapter is devoted to a single warhawk argument ( " America Is a Fair and Noble Superpower, " " Opposing the War Means Siding with the Enemy, " "Our Soldiers Are Heroes, Theirs Are Inhuman " ), illustrated with historical examples from conflicts in the Dominican Republic, E1 Salvador, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo, both Iraq wars, and others in which the media were almost universally enthusiastic accomplices. The book should really be subtitled " War reporting doesn't just suck, it kills. " It makes you feel like demanding a special war crimes tribunal for corporate media executives and owners who joined the roll-up to " shock and awe " as non-uniformed psywar ops. To be sure, this would raise the issue of whether or not following orders might suffice for the defense of obedient slaves such as Mary McGrory and Richard Cohen, who performed above and beyond the call of duty. " He persuaded me, " McGrory gushed the morning after Colin Powell addressed a plenary session of the United Nations on February 5,2003, declaring that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. " The cumulative effect was stunning." In the same Washington Post edition, Cohen wrote. The evidence he presented to the United Nations—some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail—had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool could conclude otherwise. Solomon demonstrates how this kind of peppy prewar warm-up degenerates into drooling and heavy breathing once the killing begins. As if observing a heavy metal computer game, the pornographers of death concentrate on the exquisite craftsmanship and visual design of the murder machines, and the magnificence of the fiery explosions they produce.