If you think Japan"s hard-drinking business culture is as dead as the Sony Betamax, think again.【C1】______ Not only are company-sponsored drinking marathons back, so too are subsidized dorms for single employees as well as corporate outings such as hot-spring retreats and annual visits to the company founder"s ancestral grave. "We realized that workplace communication was becoming nonexistent," explains human-resources manager Shinji Matsuyama, whose company, Alps Electric, spent several million dollars last year to bring together about 3,000 workers for its first company-wide undokai, or mini-Olympics, in 14 years. According to Matsuyama, the shared experience of playing dodge ball and skipping rope "helped unite people under a common goal." It"s that sense of team spirit and togetherness that many Japanese corporations are trying to revive. A generation ago, college grads entered companies en masse, lived together, drank together, quite often married each other, and retired together. This close-knit corporate culture, which was virtually national labor policy, was widely credited for Japan"s rapid economic rise. But it all ended when the country went into economic recession in the 1990s.【C2】______ "The Japanese equated globalism with not just the American way of business, but with rejecting their past," says Jun Ishida, CEO of Tokyo-based business consultancy Will PM. "No more drinking sessions, no more company events. Suddenly it was about the individual out for himself and only himself." But as the economy rebounded in the past several years, many executives began to wonder if they had gone too far. Trying to rebuild company loyalty and decrease turnover, major companies including Canon, Kintetsu and Fujitsu have in recent years altered or scrapped their performance-based pay and restored seniority as a determinant of salaries. Meanwhile, trading house Mitsui last year reopened five dorms for single employees—a program that costs the company nearly $1 million a year.【C3】______ Despite the cramped conditions and shared bathrooms, 24-year-old Miki Masegi moved from her parents" house in central Tokyo to live with 105 female co-workers. Though her commuting time doubled, she says the move was worth it. "It really helps to have people around that you can talk to about your problems," Masegi says. 【C4】______ One worker revealed how 9/11 changed his career outlook; another talked about how she drew strength from a gay classmate who came out in college. Company president Shigeru Ota says the presentations are designed to "create a new type of family company by sharing life history... delight, anger, sorrow and pleasure." Despite such experiments, Japanese companies may find it hard to restore the glory days of Japan Inc.【C5】______ Indeed, during Noboru Koyama"s Saturday-night drinking session, employee Eri Shimoda confides that his co-workers "feel like family." Yet most of those who attended the party also say that, warm and fuzzy sentiment aside, they plan to leave the cleaning company within a few years. "Work is just work," says one of them. No amount of free sake, it seems, can convince today"s young salarymen that their loyalty can be purchased on the company tab. A. Introducing dog-eat-dog values into corporate cultures that continue to prize the organization over the individual generated worker dissatisfaction. B. Companies are trying to foster friendship and loyalty in other ways as well. Every new employee of Tokyo p.r. firm Bilcom, for example, must spend a weekend making a three-minute digital slide show sharing their most moving personal experiences. C. After more than a decade of frugality(not to mention restraint)during Japan"s lengthy economic recession, many Japanese companies are thriving today—and they"re reviving some of the business customs that were hallmarks of Japan Inc. during the booming 1980s. D. That"s because today, one in three Japanese works part-time; younger employees in particular tend to value mobility over the security of lifetime employment E. However, unlike the elder generation, workers today are very dissatisfied with companies" efforts to restore loyalty and friendship. F. Threatened by cheap labor and more efficient business models, Japanese companies began adopting American management concepts such as merit-based pay and competition among employees. G. Employees have responded enthusiastically.

There is no grammatical rule that does not have exceptions.

A pair of dice, rolled again and again, will eventually produce two sixes. Similarly, the virus that causes influenza is constantly changing at random and, one day, will mutate in a way that will enable it to infect billions of people, and to kill millions. Many experts now believe a global outbreak of pandemic flu is overdue, and that the next one could be as bad as the one in 1918, which killed somewhere between 25m and 50m people. Today however, advances in medicine offer real hope that another such outbreak can be contained—if governments start preparing now. New research published this week suggests that a relatively small stockpile of an antiviral drug—as little as 3m doses—could be enough to limit sharply a flu pandemic if the drugs were deployed quickly to people in the area surrounding the initial outbreak. The drug"s manufacturer, Roche, is talking to the World Health Organisation about donating such a stockpile. This is good news. But much more needs to be done, especially with a nasty strain of avian flu spreading in Asia which could mutate into a threat to humans. Since the SARS outbreak in 2003 a few countries have developed plans in preparation for similar episodes. But progress has been shamefully patchy, and there is still far too little international coordination. A global stockpile of drugs alone would not be much use without an adequate system of surveillance to identify early cases and a way of delivering treatment quickly, If an outbreak occurred in a border region, for example, a swift response would most likely depend on prior agreements between different countries about quarantine and containment. Reaching such agreements is rarely easy, but that makes the task all the more urgent, Rich countries tend to be better prepared than poor ones, but this should be no consolation to them. Flu does not respect borders. It is in everyone"s interest to make sure that developing countries, especially in Asia, are also well prepared. Many may bridle at interference from outside. But if richer nations were willing to donate anti-viral drugs and guarantee a supply of any vaccine that becomes available, poorer nations might be willing to reach agreements over surveillance and preparedness. Simply sorting out a few details now will have lives (and recriminations) later. Will there be enough ventilators, makes and drugs? Where will people be treated if the hospitals overflow? Will food be delivered as normal? Too many countries have no answers to these questions.

Conventional wisdom says trees are good for the environment. They absorb carbon dioxide—a greenhouse gas—from the atmosphere and store it as carbon while releasing oxygen. The roots of trees have been thought to trap sediments and nutrients in the soil, keeping nearby rivers free flowing. Trees have also been credited with steadying the flow of these rivers, keeping it relatively constant through wet and dry seasons, thus preventing both drought and flooding. Pernicious nonsense, conclude two pieces of research published this week. The first, a four-year international study led by researchers at the University of Newcastle, in Britain, and the Free University of Amsterdam, identifies several myths about the link between forests and water. For example, in arid and semi-arid areas, trees consume far more water than they trap. And it is not the trees that catch sediment and nutrients, and steady the flow of the rivers, but the fact that the soil has not been compressed. The World Commission on Water estimates that the demand for water will increase by around 50% in the next 30 years. Moreover, around 4 billion people—one half of the world"s population—will live in conditions of severe water stress, meaning they will not have enough water for drinking and washing to stay healthy, by 2025. The government of South Africa has been taking a tough approach to trees since it became the first to treat water as a basic human right in 1998. In a scheme praised by the hydrologists, the state penalizes forestry companies for preventing this water reaching rivers and underground aquifers. In India, large tree-planting schemes not only lose valuable water but dim the true problem identified by the hydrologists: the unregulated removal of water from aquifers to irrigate crops. Farmers need no permit to drill a borehole and, as most farmers receive free electricity, there is little economic control on the volume of water pumped. So a report of Britain"s Department for International Development concludes that there is no scientific evidence that forests increase or stabilize water flow in arid or semi-arid areas. It recommends that, if water shortages are a problem, governments should impose limits on forest plantation. The second piece of research looked at how long the forests of the Amazon basin cling on to carbon. Growing trees consume carbon dioxide and it was thought that only when the tree died, perhaps hundreds of years later, would the carbon be returned to the atmosphere. No such luck. In a paper published in Nature this week, a team of American and Brazilian scientists found that trees were silently returning the carbon after just five years. Before taking an axe to trees, however, consider the merits of the tropical rainforests.

A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in identically the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as sacred texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual circumstances of the time and the individual child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better. A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or arousing his sadistic impulses. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often guilty of cruelty than those who had not. Aggressive, destructive, sadistic impulses every child has and, on the whole, their symbolic verbal discharge seen is to be rather a safety valve than an incitement to overt action. As to fears, there are, I think, well-authenticated cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy stories. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of the fear faced and mastered. There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc., do not exist; and that, instead of indulging his fantasies in fairy tales, the child should be taught how to adapt to reality by studying history and mechanics. I find such people, I must confess, so unsympathetic and peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a broomstick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their enchanted girl-friend. No fairy story ever claimed to be a description of the external world and no sane child has ever believed that it was.

(46) Today, there"s scarcely an aspect of our life that isn"t being upended by the torrent of information available on the hundreds of millions of sites crowding the Internet, not to mention its ability to keep us in constant touch with each other via electronic mail. "If the automobile and aerospace technology had exploded at the same pace as computer and information technology," says Microsoft, "a new car would cost about $2 and go 600 miles on a thimble of gas. And you could buy a Boeing 747 for the cost of a pizza." Probably the biggest payoff, however, is the billions of dollars the Internet is saving companies in producing goods and serving the needs of their customers. (47) Nothing like it has been seen since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when power-driven machines began producing more in a day than men could turn out in nearly a year. All the time spent online has left many young infotech workers without much time for life-or love-offline. (48) The U.S. free enterprise system, which reaches a frenzy in Silicon Valley, has recognized that the local love boat is taking on water and is rushing in to save the day. Dating services are approaching overload. Seminars and love doctors are teaching these rich, busy young singles how to find and capture their heart"s desire in this romantic wasteland. And dot-com facilitators such as Matchmaker. com are struggling to bring the sexes together online. One reality that losers in this love bazaar must face is that they weren"t picked because they were out of shape. But not to worry since the Cyber Age has the answer to this one, too. Computerized fitness programs with audio, visual, and cyber personal trainers are ready to turn your home and treadmill into your own personal health club. Turn on it. comes "One-On-One Training" audio workouts and you can bend and stretch to your favorite music. (49) Its "Adventure" series video workouts will automatically adjust the speed and incline of your iFit-compatible treadmill as you gaze into your TV screen and experience the "beautiful rock formations of Utah"s Red Rock" or "the tropical paradise of Hawaii". (50) Americans spend more on entertainment than on clothing or health care. and the convergence of computers and telecommunications is generating new ways to amuse ourselves undreamed of until now. The Internet is a land of endless amusements, and among the wildest is the Sims-simulations. These are about creating, managing, and controlling the lives of tiny computerized people.

A recent history of the Chicago meat-packing industry and its workers examines how the industry grew from its appearance in the 1830"s through the early 1890"s. Meat-packers, the author argues, had good wages, working conditions, and prospects from advancement within the packinghouses and did not cooperate with labor agitators since labor relations were so harmonious. Because the history maintains that conditions were above standard for the year, the frequency of labor disputes, especially in the mid-1880"s, is not accounted for the work ignores the fact that the 1880"s were crucial years in American labor history, and that the packinghouse workers" efforts were part of the national movement for labor reform. In fact, other historical sources for the late nineteenth century record deteriorating housing and high disease and infant mortality rates in the industrial community, due to low wages and unhealthy working conditions. Additional data from the University of Chicago suggest that the packinghouses were dangerous places to work. The government investigation commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt which eventually led to the adoption of the 1906 Meat Inspection Act found the packing-houses unsanitary, while social workers observed that most of the workers were poorly paid and over-worked. The history may be too optimistic because most of its data date from the 1880"s at the latest, and the information provided from that decade is insufficiently analyzed. Conditions actually declined in the 1880"s, and continued to decline after the 18g0"s, due to a reorganization of the packing process and a massive influx of unskilled workers. The deterioration in worker status, partly a result of the new availability of unskilled and hence cheap labor, is not discussed. Though a detailed account of work in the packinghouses is attempted, the author fails to distinguish between the wages and conditions of skilled workers and for those unskilled laborers who comprised the majority of the industry"s workers from the lgg0"s on. While conditions for the former were arguably tolerable due to the strategic importance of skilled workers in the complicated slaughtering, cutting, and packing process (though worker complaints about the rate and conditions of work were frequent), pay and conditions for the latter were wretched. The author"s misinterpretation of the origins of the feelings the meat-packers had for their industrial neighborhood may account for the history"s faulty generalizations. The pride and contentment the author remarks upon were, arguably, less the products of the industrial world of the packers—the giant yards and the intricate plants—than of the unity and vibrancy of the ethnic cultures that formed a viable community on Chicago"s South Side. Indeed the strength of this community succeeded in generating a social movement that effectively confronted the problems of the industry that provided its livelihood.

The best solution is to stop pretending that people"s personal information, such as Social Security account numbers and birth dates, constitutes a universal secret password. The phrase "universal secret" is an oxymoron. For online business transactions, the consumer must be allowed to use a password of his own creation and have procedures in place for changing these passwords in case of suspected compromise. Any Computer Science student worth his salt will tell you not to use your Social Security account number or birth date as a password. Why allow financial institutions and government agencies to do something in your stead that you"re advised not to do for yourself? There"s also an answer to the problem of criminals fraudulently opening new accounts: states should pass laws that make institutions verify a person"s residence before establishing any form of new credit. As things stand now, criminals can often contact financial institutions via the phone or the Internet, pretend to be you by knowing a few pieces of your personal data, and establish a credit line. Financial institutions should be required to "physically contact" customers to establish identification. Obviously, this could be done through having potential customers come in for face-to-face meetings, but it could also be done via the use of mail, perhaps certified. There are constitutionally allowable measures that can be enacted at the federal level to reduce ID fraud. Federal politicians, in a like manner to state ones, should consider submitting bills calling for all federal agencies to immediately cease using Social Security account numbers and birth dates as universal passwords. Congress should also take steps to employ only the most rigorously scrupulous employees, eliminating hiring practices that include non-job-relevant hiring preferences and to hire employees based only on job-relevant criteria, such as their ability to do the job and their loyalty to the United States of America. Congress should also take steps to enforce our immigration laws by deporting all illegal immigrants— especially those who have worked their way into our information infrastructure. If they" re dishonest enough to be here in violation of our immigration laws, they"re probably a high risk for doing something dishonest with American citizens" personal data. Congress also needs to review the impact of our current immigration laws that allow large numbers of foreigners, even some from terrorist-exporting nations, to come into our country legally via such programs as H1 and L1 and become part of our information infrastructure. Without appropriate action, ID fraud as we know it today may become a mere steppingstone on a course to even greater abuses of consumers by large companies that are politically well-connected.

BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

Where there is a will, there is a way.

Mom was right stand up straight, brush your hair and quit running around. Those rules may have seemed annoying, but it turns out they make all the difference in the way people perceive you. Actions don"t just speak louder than words—they can completely drown them out. And slouching or moving too fast through the office can make you look like an underling, according to body language experts. There"s much more that your body can convey. In fact, 55% of what you communicate is said through your body language and facial expression, according to one study. Knowing how to send the right message can help you succeed in work and in love. To be seen as powerful and confident on the job, the rules are clear: Always stand up straight and offer a solid handshake. Also, walk fast hut not too fast. Slow walkers appear to be less ambitious, while those who walk too speedily arc clearly subordinates, says Kevin Hogan, author of The Secret Language of Business. Those who walk with efficiency look like leaders. Both sexes can soften up a little when they leave the workplace. In an amorous setting, men can round their posture and should bend a little, so that their eyes meet their dates" at the same level. Eye contact is key to showing another person that you"re listening, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. Train your eyes on the other person"s "golden triangle", the area between the eyes and the tip of the nose. But avoid staring directly into someone"s pupils—it can come off as creepy. In both business and pleasure, first impressions are crucial. For a first meeting, the best way to get on a person"s good side is to literally stand on their right-hand side. "If a guy comes up and talks to a girl on her left side, he"s already lost the battle," says Hogan. Because of the way the brain works, over 90% of the population those who are right handed—view people who stand on their right more favorably than those who stand on their left. A great way to build up another person"s comfort is to mimic his or her movements. If your date takes a sip of wine, do the same several seconds later. If your boss crosses her legs, cross yours too. Mirroring is something "we instinctively do when we are attracted; we just don"t notice," says Gregory Hartley, author of Get People to Do What You Want. But whether we"re doing it unconsciously or on purpose, it will have the same effect.

Most economists in the United States seem excited by the spell of the free market. Consequently, nothing seems good or normal that does not accord with the requirements of the free market. A price that is determined by the seller or, for that matter, established by anyone other than the aggregate of consumers seems harmful. Accordingly, it requires a major act of will to think of price-fixing (the determination of prices by the seller) as both "normal" and having a valuable economic function. In fact, price-fixing is normal in all industrialized societies because the industrial system itself provides, as an effortless consequence of its own development, the price-fixing that it requires. Modern industrial planning requires and rewards great size. Hence, a comparatively small number of large firms will be competing for the same group of consumers. That each large firm will act with consideration of its own needs and thus avoid selling its products for more than its competitors charge is commonly recognized by advocates of free-market economic theories. But each large firm will also act with full consideration of the needs that it has in common with the other large firms competing for the same customers. Each large firm will thus avoid significant price-cutting, because price-cutting would be prejudicial to the common interest in a stable demand for products. Most economists do not see price-fixing when it occurs because they expect it to be brought about by a number of explicit agreements among large firms; it is not. Moreover, those economists who argue that allowing the free market to operate without interference is the most efficient method of establishing prices have not considered the economies of non-socialist countries other than the United States. These economies employ intentional price-fixing, usually in an overt fashion. Formal price-fixing by cartel and informal price-fixing by agreements covering the members of an industry are commonplace. Were there something peculiarly efficient about the free market and inefficient about price-fixing, the countries that have avoided the first and used the second would have suffered drastically in their economic development. There is no indication that they have. Socialist industry also works within a framework of controlled prices. In" the early 1970"s, the Soviet Union began to give firms and industries some of the flexibility in adjusting prices that a more informal evolution has accorded the capitalist system. Economists in the Unites States have hailed the change as a return to the free market. But Soviet firms are no more subject to prices established by a free market over which they exercise little influence than are capitalist firms; rather, Soviet firms have been given the power to fix prices.Notes: spell魔力;一阵。aggregate总体

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、D、E、F、G……) to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are several extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. (10 points) One morning, a few years ago, Harvard President Nell Rudenstine overslept. (41)______. Only after a three-month sabbatical—during which he read essayist Lewis Thomas, listened to Ravel and walked with his wife on a Caribbean beach—was he able to return to his post. That week, his picture was on the cover of Newsweek magazine beside the banner head line "Exhausted!" In the relentless busyness of modem life, we have lost the rhythm between action and rest. I speak with people in business and education, doctors and day-care workers, shopkeepers and social workers, parents and teachers, nurses and lawyers, students and therapists, community activist and cooks. Remarkably, there is a universal refrain, "I am so busy". The more our life speeds up, the more we feel weary, overwhelmed and lost. (42)______. Instead, the whole experience of being alive begins to melt into one enormous obligation. It becomes the standard greeting everywhere, "I am so busy." We say this to one another with no small degree of pride. The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others. To be unavailable to our friends and family, to be unable to find time for the sunset (or even to know that the sun has set at all), to whiz through our obligations without time for a single mindful breath—this has become the model of a successful life. Because we do not rest, we lose our way. We lose the nourishment that gives us succor. We miss the quiet that gives us wisdom. Poisoned by the hypnotic belief that good things come only through tireless effort, we never truly rest. This is not the world we dreamed of when we were young. How did we get so terribly rushed in a world saturated with work and responsibility, yet somehow bereft of joy and delight? We have forgotten the Sabbath. (43)______. It is time to be nourished and refreshed as we let our work, our chores and our important projects lie fallow, trusting that there are larger forces at work taking care of the world when we are at rest. If certain plant species do not lie dormant during winter, the plant begins to die off. (44)______. So "Remember the Sabbath" is more than simply a lifestyle suggestion. It is a commandment, an ethical precept as serious as prohibitions against killing, stealing, and lying. Sabbath is more than the absence of work. Many of us, in our desperate drive to be successful and care for our many responsibilities, feel terrible guilt when we take time to rest. But the Sabbath has proven its wisdom over the ages. Many of us still recall when not long ago, shops and offices where closed on Sundays. Those quiet Sunday afternoons are embedded in our cultural memory. Much of modem life is specifically designed to seduce our attention away from rest. When we are in the world with our eyes wide open, the Seductions are insatiable. (45)______. For those of us with children, there are endless soccer practices, baseball games, homework, laundry, housecleaning, errands. Every responsibility, every stimulus competes for our attention: Buy me. Do me. Watch me. Try me. Drink me. It is as if we have inadvertently stumbled into some horrific wonderland.A. Rest is not just a psychological convenience; it is a biological necessity.B. After years of non-stop toil in an atmosphere that rewarded frantic overwork, Rudenstine collapsed.C. Hundreds of channels of cable and satellite television; phones with multiple lines and call-waiting, begging us to talk to more than one person at a time; mail, e-mail and overnight mail, fax machines; billboards; magazines; newspapers; radio.D. Sometimes you can have a rest on Sundays. But your heart and soul is no longer quiet.E. Sabbath is the time that consecrated to enjoy and celebrate what is beautiful and good-time to light candles, sing songs, worship, tell stories, bless our children and loved ones, give thanks, share meals, nap, walk and even make love.F. Once upon a time. Sabbath is our heaven. We often walk in the green parks with friends or have a picnic lunch with the family. Listening to the birds on the tree makes me feel peaceful. But whatever happened to Sunday now?G. Today our life and work rarely feel light, pleasant, or healing.

As a young mother, every morning at 4 : 30 a. m. Kimberly Moore would drop off her young child at her mother-in-law"s home before reporting to work at McDonald"s. After a full day at the fast-food chain, according to the Tallahassee Democrat, she got her books together and went to class, first at Tallahassee Community College and then at Florida State University. A single mother, she eventually earned her MBA. Keeping her nose to the grindstone, she rose through the ranks of the business world in Florida, eventually earning the title of Chief Executive Officer of Workforce Plus, a large employment firm. Starting with little more than her own initiative and drive to succeed, she reached the pinnacle of the business world, making hers an inspiring story of self-made success, a story of a woman living the American dream. As inspiring as Kimberly Moore"s story is, the really amazing thing about it is that it is only a small part of the incredible tapestry of success that is the American dream. Generations of Americans have believed that in America they can work hard to make a better life for themselves than their parents had before them. And every day Americans head out the door to jobs where, through dedication and perseverance, they work harder, longer, and more productively than the citizens of any other nation. Why do they do it? Why do Americans like Kimberly Moore work long hours for low pay only to leave work and put in countless additional hours pursuing education? Why do small investors struggle to find a few dollars here and there in order to invest in some possibly risky venture? The short answer—for the money—misses the essential point: Americans do these things, they work harder and longer, because the wealth they earn serves a greater purpose. To the parent who comes home from a hard day at the factory or office, the son playing basketball in the driveway or the daughter riding her new bicycle on the sidewalk provides reason for any amount of labor, any amount of sacrifice. Americans work for many reasons, but prominent among them is the unwavering desire to provide a good life, and maybe a better life than they themselves had known, to their children. It happens frequently and spectacularly in America, because Americans are uniquely free.

The historian Frederick J. Turner wrote in the 1890"s that the agrarian discontent that had been developing steadily in the United States since about 1870 had been precipitated by the closing of the internal frontier that is, the depletion of available new land needed for further expansion of the American farming system. Actually, however, new lands were taken up for farming in the United States throughout and beyond the nineteenth century. (46) In the 1890"s, when agrarian discontent had become most acute, 1,100,000 new farms were settled, which was 500,000 more than had been settled during the previous decade. After 1890, under the terms of the Homestead Act and its successors, more new land was taken up for farming than had been taken up for this purpose in the United States up until that time. (47) It is true that agricultural practices had become sufficiently advanced to make it possible to increase the profitability of farming by utilizing even these relatively barren lands. The emphasis given by both scholars and statesmen to the presumed disappearance of the American frontier helped to obscure the great importance of changes in the conditions and consequences of international trade that occurred during the second half of the nineteenth century. (48) By about 1870 improvements in agricultural technology made possible the full exploitation of areas that were most suitable for extensive farming on a mechanized basis. Huge tracts of land were being settled and farmed in Argentina, Australia, Canada, and in the American West, and these areas were joined with one another and with the countries of Europe into an interdependent market system. (49) As a consequence, agrarian depressions no longer were local or national in scope, and they struck several nations whose internal frontiers had not vanished or were not about to vanish. Between the early 1870"s and the 1890"s, the mounting agrarian discontent in American paralleled the almost uninterrupted decline in the prices of American agricultural products on foreign markets. (50) Those staple-growing farmers in the United States who exhibited the greatest discontent were those who had become most dependent on foreign markets for the sale of their products. Insofar as American had been deterred from taking up new land for farming, it was because market conditions had made this period a perilous time in which to do so.

On a weekday night this January, thousands of flag-waving youths packed Olaya Street, Riyadh"s main shopping strip, to cheer a memorable Saudi victory in the GCC Cup football final. One car, rock music blaring from its stereo, squealed to a stop, blocking an intersection. The passengers leapt out, clambered on to the roof and danced wildly in front of the honking crowd. Having paralyzed the traffic across half the city, they sped off before the police could catch them. Such public occasion was once unthinkable in the rigid conformist kingdom, but now young people there and in other Gulf states are increasingly willing to challenge authority. That does not make them rebels: respect for elders, for religious duty and for maintaining family bonds remain pre-eminent values, and premarital sex is generally out of the question. Yet demography is beginning to put pressure on ultra-conservative norms. After all, 60% of the Gulf"s native population is under the age of 25. With many more of its citizens in school than in the workforce, the region faces at least a generation of rocketing demand for employment. In every single GCC country the native workforce will double by 2020. In Saudi Arabia it will grow from 3.3m now to over 8m. The task of managing this surge would be daunting enough for any society, but is particularly forbidding in this region, for several reasons. The first is that the Gulf suffers from a lopsided labor structure. This goes back to the 1970s, when ballooning oil incomes allowed governments to import millions of foreign workers and to dispense cozy jobs to the locals. The result is a two-tier workforce, with outsiders working mostly in the private sector and natives monopolizing the state bureaucracy. Private firms are as productive as any. But within the government, claims one study, workers are worth only a quarter of what they get paid. Similarly, in the education sector, 30 years spent keeping pace with soaring student numbers has taken a heavy toll on standards. The Saudi school system, for instance, today has to cope with 5m students, eight times more than in 1970. And many Gulf countries adapted their curricula from Egyptian models that are now thoroughly discredited. They continue to favor rote learning of "facts" intended to instill patriotism or religious values. Even worse, the system as a whole discourages intellectual curiosity. It channels students into acquiring prestige degrees rather than gaining marketable skills. Of the 120,000 graduates that Saudi universities produced between 1995 and 1999, only 10,000 had studied technical subjects such as architecture or engineering. They accounted for only 2% of the total number of Saudis entering the job market.

When it comes to eating smart for your heart, stop thinking about short-term fixes and simplify life with a straightforward approach that will serve you well for years to come. Smart eating goes beyond analyzing every bite you lift 【B1】______ your mouth. "In the past we used to believe that 【B2】______ amounts of individual nutrients were the 【B3】______ to good health," Linda Van Horn, chair of the American Heart Association's Nutrition Committee. "But now we have a 【B4】______ understanding of healthy eating and the kinds of food necessary to 【B5】______ not only heart disease but disease 【B6】______ general," she adds. Scientists now 【B7】______ on the broader picture of the balance of food eaten 【B8】______ several days or a week【B9】______than on the number of milligrams of this or that【B10】______at each meal. Fruits, vegetables and whole grains, for example, provide nutrients and plant-based compounds【B11】______for good health. "The more we learn, the more【B12】______we are by the wealth of essential substances they【B13】______," Van Horn continues, "and how they【B14】______with each other to keep us healthy." You'll automatically be【B15】______the right heart-healthy track if vegetables, fruits and whole grains make【B16】______three quarters of the food on your dinner plate.【B17】______in the remaining one quarter with lean meat or chicken, fish or eggs. The foods you choose to eat as well as those you choose to【B18】______clearly contribute to your well-being. Without a【B19】______, each of the small decisions you make in this realm can make a big【B20】______on your health in the years to come.

How men first learned to invent words is unknown; in other words, the origin of language is a mystery. All we really know is that men,【B1】______animals, somehow invented certain【B2】______to express thoughts and feelings, actions and things,【B3】______they could communicate with each other; and that later they agreed 【B4】_______ certain signs, called letters, which could be 【B5】_______ to represent those sounds, and which could be 【B6】_______ down. Those sounds, whether spoken, 【B7】_______ written in letters, we call words. The power of words, then, lies in their【B8】______—the things they bring up before our minds. Words become 【B9】_______ with meaning for us by experience;【B10】______the longer we live, the more certain words【B11】______the happy and sad events of our past to us; and the more we read and【B12】______, the more the number of words that mean something to us【B13】______. Great writers are those who not only have great thoughts but also express these thoughts in words which appeal【B14】______to our minds and emotions. This【B15】______and telling use of words is what we call【B16】______style. Above all, the real poet is a master of【B17】______. He can convey his meaning in words which sing like music, and which【B18】______their position and association can【B19】______men to tears. We should, therefore, learn to choose our words carefully and use them accurately, or they will【B20】______our speech or writing silly and vulgar.

Last November, engineers in the healthcare division of GE unveiled something called the "Light-Speed VCT", a scanner that can create a startlingly good three-dimensional image of a beating heart. This spring Staples, an American office-supplies retailer, will stock its shelves with a gadget called a "wordlock", a padlock that uses words instead of numbers. The connection? In each case, the firm"s customers have played a big part in designing the product. How does innovation happen? The familiar story involves scientist in academic institutes and R&D labs. But lately, corporate practice has begun to challenge this old-fashioned notion. Open-source software development is already well-known. Less so is the fact that Bell, an American bicycle-helmet maker, has collected hundreds of ideas for new products from its customers, and is putting several of them into production. Not only is the customer king: now he is market-research head, R&D chief and product-development manager, too. This is not all new. Researchers have demonstrated the importance of past user contributions to the evolution of everything from sporting equipment to construction materials and scientific instruments. But the rise of online communities, together with the development of powerful and easy-to-use design tools, seems to be boosting the phenomenon, as well as bringing it to the attention of a wider audience, says Eric Von Hippel of MIT. "User innovation has always been around", he says. "The difference is that people can no longer deny that it is happening". Harnessing customer innovation requires different methods, says Mr. Von Hippel. Instead of taking the temperature of a representative sample of customers, firms must identify the few special customers who innovate. GE"s healthcare division calls them "luminaries". They tend to be well-published doctors and research scientists from leading medical institutions, says GE, which brings up to 25 luminaries together at regular medical advisory board sessions to discuss the evolution of GE"s technology. GE"s products then emerge from collaboration with these groups. At the heart of most thinking about innovation is the belief that people expect to be paid for their creative work: hence the need to protect and reward the creation of intellectual property. One really exciting thing about user-led innovation is that customers seem willing to donate their creativity freely, says Mr. Von Hippel. This may be because it is their only practical option: patents are costly to get and often provide only weak protection. Some people may value the enhanced reputation and network effects of freely revealing their work more than any money they could make by patenting it. Either way, some firms are starting to believe that there really is such a thing as a free lunch.