单选题The most vicious lawyers are those who

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} For the first time, George Bush has acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons around the world, where key terrorist suspects—100 in all, officials say--have been interrogated with "an alternative set of procedures". Fourteen of the suspects, including the alleged mastermind of the September 11th attacks, were transferred on Monday to the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where some will face trial for war crimes before special military commissions. Many of these men--as Mr. Bush confirmed in a televised speech at the White House on September 6th--are al-Qaeda operatives or Taliban fighters who had sought to withhold information that could "save American lives". "In these cases, it has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held secretly (and) questioned by experts," the president said. He declined to say where they had been held or why they had not simply been sent straight to Guantanamo, as some 770 other suspected terrorists have been. Mr. Bush also refused to reveal what interrogation methods had been used, saying only that, though "tough", they had been "safe and lawful and necessary". Many believe that the main purpose of the CIA's prisons was to hide from prying eyes the torture and other cruel or degrading treatment used to extract information from prisoners. But Mr. Bush insisted that America did not torture: "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorised it and I will not authorise it." The pentagon this week issued its long-awaited new Army Field Manual, forbidding all forms of torture and degrading treatment of prisoners by army personnel--though not the CIA. For the first time, it specifically bans forced nakedness, hooding, the Use of dogs, sexual humiliation and "waterboarding" (simulated drowning)--all practices that have been used at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. So why did the president decide now to reveal the CIA's secret programme? Partly, he confessed; because of the Supreme Court's recent ruling that minimum protections under the Geneva Conventions applied to all military prisoners, no matter where they were. This has put American agents at risk of prosecution for war crimes. Mr. Bush has now asked Congress to ban suspected terrorists from suing American personnel in federal courts.

单选题What is the core of Adam Smith’s economic philosophy?

单选题In the first two paragraphs, the author suggests

单选题In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a dentist to transplant nine teeth into his jaw—having extracted them from the mouths of his slaves. That"s a far different image from the cherry-tree-chopping George most people remember from their history books. But recently, many historians have begun to focus on the roles slavery played in the lives of the founding generation. They have been spurred in part by DNA evidence made available in 1998, which almost certainly proved Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one child with his slave Sally Hemings. And only over the past 30 years have scholars examined history from the bottom up. Works of several historians reveal the moral compromises made by the nation"s early leaders and the fragile nature of the country"s infancy. More significantly, they argue that many of the Founding Fathers knew slavery was wrong—and yet most did little to fight it. More than anything, the historians say, the founders were hampered by the culture of their time. While Washington and Jefferson privately expressed distaste for slavery, they also understood that it was part of the political and economic bedrock of the country they helped to create. For one thing, the South could not afford to part with its slaves. Owning slaves was "like having a large bank account," says Wiencek, author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. The southern states would not have signed the Constitution without protections for the "peculiar institution," including a clause that counted a slave as three fifths of a man for purposes of congressional representation. And the statesmen"s political lives depended on slavery. The three-fifths formula handed Jefferson his narrow victory in the presidential election of 1800 by inflating the votes of the southern states in the Electoral College. Once in office, Jefferson extended slavery with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803; the new land was carved into 13 states, including three slave states. Still, Jefferson freed Hemings"s children—though not Hemings herself or his approximately 150 other slaves. Washington, who had begun to believe that all men were created equal after observing the bravery of the black soldiers during the Revolutionary War, overcame the strong opposition of his relatives to grant his slaves their freedom in his will. Only a decade earlier, such an act would have required legislative approval in Virginia.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} "Popular art" has a number of meanings, impossible to define with any precision, which range from folklore to junk. The poles are clear enough, but the middle tends to blur. The Hollywood Western of the 1930's for example, has elements of folklore, but is closer to junk than to high art or folk art. There can be great trash, just as there is bad high art. The musicals of George Gershwin are great popular art, never aspiring to high art. Schubert and Brahms, however, used elements of popular music--folk themes--in works clearly intended as high art. The case of Verdi is a different one: he took a popular genre-bourgeois melodrama set to music (an accurate definition of nineteenth-century opera) and, without altering its fundamental nature, transmuted it into high art. This remains one of the greatest achievements in music, and one that cannot be fully appreciated without recognizing the essential trashiness of the genre. As an example of such a transmutation, consider what Verdi made of the typical political elements of nineteenth-century opera. Generally in the plots of these operas, a hero or heroine--usually portrayed only as an individual, unfettered by class--is caught between the immoral corruption of the aristocracy and the doctrinaire rigidity or secret greed of the leaders of the proletariat. Verdi transforms this naive and unlikely formulation with music of extraordinary energy and rhythmic vitality, music more subtle than it seems at first hearing. There are scenes and arias that still sound like calls to arms and were clearly understood as such when they were first performed. Such pieces lend an immediacy to the otherwise veiled political message of these operas and call up feelings beyond those of the opera itself. Or consider Verdi's treatment of character. Before Verdi, there were rarely any characters at all in musical drama, only a series of situations which allowed the singers to express a series of emotional states. Any attempt to find coherent psychological portrayal in these operas is misplaced ingenuity. The only coherence was the singer's vocal technique: when the cast changed, new arias were almost always substituted, generally adapted from other operas. Verdi's characters, on the other hand, have genuine consistency and integrity. Even if, in many casals, the consistency is that of pasteboard melodrama, the integrity of the character is achieved through the music: once he had become established. Verdi did not rewrite his music for differenf singers or countenance alterations or substitutions of somebody else's arias in one of his operas, as every eighteenth-century composer had done. When he revised an opera, it was only for dramatic economy and effectiveness.

单选题What does the sentence "The air helps purify the water" illustrate?

单选题Successful businesses tend to continue implementing the ideas that made them successful. But in a rapidly changing world, ideas often become obsolete overnight. What worked in the past won't necessarily work in the future. In order to thrive in the future, you must constantly create new ideas for every aspect of your business. In fact, you must continually generate new ideas just to keep your head above water. Businesses that aren't creative about their future may not survive. Although Bill Gates is the richest, most successful man on the planet, he did not anticipate the Internet. Now he's scrambling to catch up. If Bill Gates can miss a major aspect of his industry, it can happen to you in your industry. Your business needs to continually innovate and create its future. Gates is now constantly worried about the future of Microsoft. Here's what he said in a recent interview in U. S. News World Report: "Will we be replaced tomorrow? No. In a very short time frame, Microsoft is an incredibly strong company. But when you look to the two-to three-year time frame, I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that any technology company has a guaranteed position. Not Intel, not Microsoft, not Compaq, not Dell, take any of your favorites. And that's totally honest." You may remember that in 1985 the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls were the beat-selling toy on the market But after Coleco Industries introduced their sensational line of dolls they became complacent and didn't create any new toys worth mentioning. As a result, Coleco went bankrupt in 1988. The most successful businesses survive in the long term because they constantly reassess their situations and reinvent themselves accordingly. The 3M Company has a 15% rule: Employees are encouraged to spend 15% of their time developing new ideas on any project they desire. It's no surprise, then, that 3M has been around since 1902. Most businesses are not willing to tear apart last year's model of success and build a new one. Here's a familiar analogy to explain why they are lulled into complacency. Imagine that your business is like a pet of lobsters. To cook lobsters, you put them into a pot of warm water and gradually turn up the heat. The lobsters don't realize they're being cooked because the process is se gradual. As a result, they become complacent and die without a struggle. However, if you throw a lobster into the pot when the water is boiling, it will desperately try to escape. This lobster is not lulled by a slowly changing environment. It realizes instantly that it's in a bad environment and takes immediate action to change its status.

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In the author's view, the best remedy for coping with the hard conditions in travel in cities would be to

单选题It's all annual back-to-school routine. One morning you wave goodbye, and that (1) evening you're burning the late-night oil in sympathy. In the race to improve educational standards, (2) are throwing the books at kids. (3) elementary school students are complaining of homework (4) What's a well-meaning parent to do? As hard as (5) may he, sit back and chill, experts advise. Though you've got to get them to do it, (6) helping too much, or even examining (7) too carefully, you may keep them (8) doing it by themselves. "I wouldn't advise a parent to check every (9) assignment," says psychologist John Rosemond, author of Ending the Tough Homework. "There's a (10) of appreciation for trial and error. Let your children (11) the grade they deserve. " Many experts believe parents should gently look over the work of younger children and ask them to rethink their (12) . But "you don't want them to feel it has to be (13) ," she says. That's not to say parents should (14) homework-first, they should monitor how much homework their kids (15) . Thirty minutes a day in the early elementary years and an hour in (16) four, five, and six is standard, says Rosemond. For junior-high students it should be " (17) more than an hour and a half," and two for high school students. If your child (18) has more homework than this, you may want to check (19) other parents and then talk to the teacher about (20) assignments.