单选题Come on, my fellow white folks, we have something to confess. Out with it, friends, the biggest secret known to whites since the invention of powdered rouge: welfare is a white program. The numbers go like this: 61% of the population receiving welfare, listed as "means-tested cash assistance" by the Census Bureau, is identified as whit e, while only 33% is identified as black. These numbers notwithstanding, the Republican version of "political correctness" has given us "welfare cheat" as a new term for African American since the early days of Ronald Reagan. Our confession surely stands: white folks have been gobbling up the welfare budget while blaming someone else. But it's worse than that. If we look at Social Security, which is another form of welfare, although it is often mistaken for an individual insurance program, then whites are the ones who are crowding the trough. We receive almost twice as much per capita, for an aggregate advantage to our race of ＄10 billion a year--much more than the ＄ 3. 9 billion advantage African American gain from their disproportionate share of welfare. One sad reason: whites live an average of six years longer than African Americans, meaning that young black workers help subsidize a huge and growing "over-class" of white retirees. I do not see our confession bringing much relief. There's a reason for resentment, though it has more to do with class than with race. White people are poor too, and in numbers far exceeding any of our more generously pigmented social groups. And poverty as defined by the government is a vast underestimation of the economic terror that persists at incomes--such as ＄ 20,000 or even ＄ 40,000 and above--that we like to think of as middle class. The problem is not that welfare is too generous to blacks but that social welfare in general is too stingy to all concerned. Naturally, whites in the swelling "near poor" category resent the notion of whole races supposedly frolicking at their expense. Whites, near poor and middle class, need help too--as do the many African Americans. So we white folks have a choice. We can keep pretending that welfare is black program and a scheme for transferring our earnings to the pockets of shiftless, dark-skinned people. Or we can clear our throats, blush prettily and admit that we are hurting too--for cash assistance when we're down and out, for health insurance, for college aid and all the rest. Racial scapegoating has its charms, I will admit: the surge of righteous anger, even the fun--for those inclined--of wearing sheets and burning crosses. But there are better, nobler sources of white pride, it seems to me. Remember this: only we can truly, deeply blush.

单选题The new package of measures is inevitably a complicated one due to ______.

单选题According to the text, scholars and students are great travelers because

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{{U}} (1) {{/U}}millions of dollars each year to sports. Most of them earn millions{{U}} (2) {{/U}}as well, in television revenues, sponsorships. They also benefit{{U}} (3) {{/U}}from the added publicity they get via their teams. Big-name universities{{U}} (4) {{/U}}each other in the most popular sports. Football games at Michigan regularly{{U}} (5) {{/U}}crowds of over 90, 000. Basketball's national collegiate championship game is a TV{{U}} (6) {{/U}}on a par with any other sporting event in the United States,{{U}} (7) {{/U}}perhaps the Super Bowl itself. At any given time during fall or winter one can{{U}} (8) {{/U}}one's TV set and see the top athletic programs--from schools like Michigan, UCLA, Duke and Stanford--{{U}} (9) {{/U}}in front of packed houses and national TV audiences. The athletes themselves are{{U}} (10) {{/U}}and provided with sch61arships. College coaches identify{{U}} (11) {{/U}}teenagers and then go into high schools to{{U}} (12) {{/U}}the country's best players to attend their universities. There are strict rules about{{U}} (13) {{/U}}coaches can recruit--no recruiting calls after 9 p. m. , only one official visit to a campus--but they are often bent and sometimes{{U}} (14) {{/U}}. Top college football programs{{U}} (15) {{/U}}scholarships to 20 or 30 players each year, and those student-athletes, when they arrive{{U}} (16) {{/U}}campus, receive free housing, tuition, meals, books, etc. In return, the players{{U}} (17) {{/U}}the program in their sport. Football players at top colleges{{U}} (18) {{/U}}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{{U}} (19) {{/U}}and preparation for the opening of the September-to-December season begins{{U}} (20) {{/U}}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Which of the following is closest in meaning to the sentence "It was shooting blind.., to look for evidence of life..."

单选题The word "snazzy" ( Line 5, Paragraph 3) probably means

单选题It is called softwood, but these days it is producing nothing but hard feelings. Softwood is used to build houses stuff that in skilled hands changes from a pile of wood into a recognizable home in mere days. In the United States, about 10% of such softwood comes from Canada. But on March 2rid the Department of Commerce announced that it would slap a tariff of around 9% on Canadian softwood. The Americans contend that Canada is subsidizing its timer industry, and dumping wood on to its neighbor for sale at prices that do not cover its production cost. The Canadians hotly deny this, and the two sides are volleying expertise at each other." They've hired their experts and we've hired ours." says John Allan, president of the British Columbia Lumber Trade council. In Canada the provincial governments own forests, and each province is given considerable freedom in pricing its "stumpage", as standing trees are oddly called. American critics say the Canadians all but give away those uncut trees. John Perez-Garcia, a professor of forestry at the University of Washington in Seattle, estimates that Canadian logging companies pay as much as 40 % less for standing trees than they would if the market set the price. Not so, retort the Canadians. Dan Evans, manager of log exports for British Columbia's government, points out that stumpage fees cover only a small portion of what it costs a Canadian company to send lumber across the border. These companies, he says, have to build their own roads, reforest logged lands, and pay the cost of planning their sales. "We feel we price our timber competitively." It is worth noting that for years American companies were themselves accused of receiving subsidies; stumpage prices for trees cut down on federal land were long criticized as too low. Then they were quiet on the subject. But now that most American produced lumber comes from private forests, government subsidies are anathema. In Seattle, Robb Dunn, president of a chain of ten lumber stores, says his customers will just have to put up with higher prices. Some reckon the tariff will increase new-home prices by as much as $13, 000. That may be a bit high, although lumber prices have gone up lately, they are still below the peak reached last summer. And rising interest rates may slow the American housing market, cutting demand. The two sides hope to continue talks. One way out might be an agreement under which Canada taxes its lumber companies until it reforms its pricing policies to American's satisfaction. But Mr. Allan, for one, is not optimistic. The United states, he says, has not negotiated in good faith: "Its government just can't get a grip in its timber industry, which is too powerful./

单选题In recent years, there has been an increasing awareness of the inadequacies of the judicial system in the United States. Costs are staggering both for the taxpayers and the litigants—and the litigants, or parties, have to wait sometimes many years before having their day in court. Many suggestions have been made concerning methods of ameliorating the situation, but as in most branches of government, changes come slowly. One suggestion that has been made in order to maximize the efficiency of the system is to allow districts that have an overabundance of pending cases to borrow judges from other districts that do not have such a backlog. Another suggestion is to use pretrial conferences, in which thejudge meets in his chambers with the litigants and their attorneys in order to narrow the issues, limit the witnesses, and provide for a more orderly trial. The theory behind pretrial conferences is that judges will spend leas time on each case and parties will more readily settle before trial when they realize the adequacy of their claims and their opponents' evidence. Unfortunately, at least one study has shown that pretrial conferences actually use more judicial time than they save, rarely result in pretrial settlements, and actually result in higher damage settlements. Many states have now established another method, small-claims courts, in which cases over small sums of money can be disposed of with considerable dispatch. Such proceedings cost the litigants almost nothing. In California, for example, the parties must appear before the judge without the assistance of counsel. The proceedings are quite informal and there is no pleading—the litigants need to make only a one-sentence statement of their claim. By going to this type of court, the plaintiff waives any right to a jury trial and the right to appeal the decision. In coming years, we can expect to see more and more innovations in the continuing effort to remedy a situation which must be remedied if the citizens who have valid claims are going to be able to have their day in court.

单选题One of the many theories about alcoholism is the learning and reinforcement theory, which explains alcoholism by considering alcohol drinking as a reflex response to some stimulus and as a way to reduce an inner drive state such as fear or anxiety. Characterizing life situations in terms of approach and avoidance, this theory holds that persons tend to be drawn to pleasant situations or repelled by unpleasant ones. In the latter case, alcohol drinking is said to reduce the tension or feelings of unpleasantness and to replace them with the feeling of pleasure generally observed in most persons after they have consumed one or more drinks. Some experimental evidence tends to show that alcohol reduces fear in an approach-avoidance situation. Conger trained one group of rats to approach a food goal and trained another group to avoid electric shock. After an injection of alcohol the pull away from the shock was measurably weaker, while the pull toward food was unchanged. The obvious troubles experienced by alcoholic persons appear to contradict the learning theory in the explanation of alcoholism. The discomfort, pain, and punishment they experience should presumably discourage the alcoholics from drinking. The fact that alcoholic persons continue to drink in the face of family discord, loss of job, and illness is explained by the proximity of the drive of reduction to the consumption of alcohol; that is, alcohol has the immediate effect of reducing tension while the unpleasant consequences of drunken behavior came only later. The learning pattern, therefore, favors the establishment and repetition of the resort to alcohol. In fact, the anxieties and feelings of guilt caused by the consequences of excessive alcohol drinking may themselves become the signal for another time of alcohol abuse. The way in which the desire for another drink could be caused by anxiety is explained by the process of stimulus generalization : conditions or events securing at the time of reinforcement tend to acquire all the features of stimuli. When alcohol is consumed in association with a state of anxiety or fear, the emotional state itself takes on the properties of a stimulus, thus triggering another time of drinking.The role of punishment is becoming increasingly important in explaining a cause of alcoholism based on the principles of learning theory, While punishment may serve to suppress a response, experiments have shown that in some cases it can serve as a reward and reinforce the behavior. Thus if the alcoholic person has learned to drink under conditions of both reward and punishment, either type of condition may trigger renewed drinking.

单选题Which of the following would most seriously undermine the validity of the model of El Nifio mentioned?

单选题The word "diffuses" in Para. 3 is closest in meaning to ______.

单选题 To function well in the world, people need a good sense of where their body is in space and how it's postured. This "position sense" helps us coordinate high-fives, boot a soccer ball or pick up the remote. But that doesn't seem to mean that our brains have an accurate sense of our body's precise proportions. A new study found that people tend to have rather inaccurate mental models of their own hands. When asked to estimate where the fingertips and knuckles of their hidden hands were, study volunteers were way off. But they were all incorrect in the same directions, guessing that their hands were both shorter and wider than they actually were. The findings come from a study led by Matthew Longo of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. "Our results show dramatic distortions of hand shape, which were highly consistent across participants," Longo said in a prepared statement. He and his co-author, Patrick Haggard, had subjects place their left hand on a platform (using different orientations in different groups), which was then covered with a board to obscure the hand. The subjects were asked to use their free right hand point with a baton to the location of each knuckle and fingertip of their left hand. The process was filmed and compared to before and after pictures of the hand. On average, the volunteers judged their hands to be 27.9 percent shorter and 69 percent wider than they were measure to be. Underestimation of each finger length, from the thumb to the little finger, increased by about 7 percent in each finger, rendering the little finger quite a bit littler that it really was. This trend "mirrors similar grades of decreasing tactile acuteness," the authors pointed out, and the results seem to back up models of the human body constructed from the amount of sensory cortex dedicated to various body parts. In these models the hands and face are disproportionately large in comparison to most of the body. But Longo and Haggard are still not sure why the brain has such a distorted perception of our hand proportions. Longo speculated that these disproportions might occur in other parts of the body as well. "These findings may well be relevant to psychiatric conditions involving body image such as anorexia nervosa, as there may be a general bias toward perceiving the body to be wider than it is," Longo said. "Our healthy participants had a basically accurate visual image of their own body, but the brain's model of the hand underling position sense was highly distorted. This distorted perception could come to dominate in some people, leading to distortions of body image."

单选题In America, how many people are homeless parents?

单选题What is the attitude of the minority of commissioners towards the re-regulation of Europe's job market?

单选题The state-funded child care and maternity policies in Sweden