For decades, ferry boats crossed the cold waters of Michigan"s Straits of Mackinac, shuttling people and vehicles between the two halves of the split-up state. Since the 1880s, Michigan residents dreamed of a bridge that would span the 4-mile gap between Mackinaw City and St. Ignace, an area that limited tourism in Mackinac Island and disturbed commerce in the remote Upper Peninsula. Because construction would be hard, with high winds and harsh winters, some engineers suggested a floating tunnel or a series of small bridges instead. But, by the 1940s, with lines for ferry boats sometimes stretching for 16 miles, the idea of one continuous span won out. And what a span it turned out to be. Five miles long, the "Mighty Mac," which opened to traffic on Nov. 1, 1957, was to become the world"s longest suspension bridge between cable anchorages. Even today, it remains the longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere and the third-longest bridge in the world. Designed by engineer David B. Steinman, the bridge was built in just three years, on time and on budget. That was a remarkable feat in itself. But the challenges were so great—33 of the bridge"s 34 pieces had to be built under water—that five workers perished during construction. One man died diving, one fell in a caisson while welding, another drowned, and two fell from a catwalk. The bridge has seen many tragedies since. On Sept. 10, 1978, three National Guard officers in a private plane got lost in a thick fog and crashed into the cables of the north tower. In 1989, a woman was killed when gale force winds—and her excessive speed—lifted her 1987 Yugo into the air, sending it 150 feet into the water. And in 1997, a sport utility vehicle took the plunge. Although authorities believed the latter incident to have been a suicide, the bridge does not attract jumpers the way, for instance, the Golden Gate does. In 1977, Lawrence Rubin of the Mackinac Bridge Authority shared his theory on the lack of leapers with the Detroit News: "People who commit suicide like attention. But it"s peaceful here... you could jump off this bridge, and it might take years before anybody found out." The bridge authority acknowledges that the prospect of such excitement may be overwhelming for some, which is why it offers free escorts for gephyrobiacs—people with a fear of crossing bridges. Each year, hundreds of drivers take advantage of the service.

You are a postgraduate student and are going to graduate with a master degree in computer science soon. You find from Beijing Youth Daily that there is a vacancy for engineer. Write a letter of application based on the following outline: 1) introduction about yourself; 2) your education and work experience that qualify you for the job; 3) other necessary information. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Wang Dong" instead. You do not need to write the address.

【F1】 The majority of successful senior managers do not closely follow the classical rational model of first clarifying goals, assessing the problem, formulating options, estimating likelihoods of success, making a decision, and only then taking action to implement the decision. 【F2】 Rather, in their day-by-day tactical maneuvers, these senior executives rely on what is vaguely termed intuition to manage a network of interrelated problems that require them to deal with ambiguity, inconsistency, novelty, and surprise; and to integrate action into the process of thinking. Generations of writers on management have recognized that some practicing managers rely heavily on intuition. In general, however, such writers display a poor grasp of what intuition is. Some see it as the opposite of rationality; others view it as an excuse for capriciousness. Isenberg"s recent research on the cognitive processes of senior managers reveals that managers" intuition is neither of these. Rather, senior managers use intuition in at least five distinct ways. First, they intuitively sense when a problem exists. Second, managers rely on intuition to perform well-learned behavior patterns rapidly. This intuition is not arbitrary or irrational, but is based on years of painstaking practice and hands-on experience that build skills. A third function of intuition is to synthesize isolated bits of data and practice into an integrated picture, often in an Aha! experience. Fourth, some managers use intuition as a check on the results of more rational analysis.【F3】 Most senior executives are familiar with the formal decision analysis models and tools, and those who use such systematic methods for reaching decisions are occasionally leery of solutions suggested by these methods which run counter to their sense of the correct course of action. Finally, managers can use intuition to bypass in-depth analysis and move rapidly to engender a plausible solution. Used in this way, intuition is an almost instantaneous cognitive process in which a manager recognizes familiar patterns. One of the implications of the intuitive style of executive management is that thinking is inseparable from acting. Since managers often know what is right before they can analyze and explain it, they frequently act first and explain later.【F4】 Analysis is inextricably tied to action in thinking-acting cycles, in which managers develop thoughts about their companies and organizations not by analyzing a problematic situation and then acting, but by acting and analyzing in close concert. 【F5】 Given the great uncertainty of many of the management issues that they face, senior managers often instigate a course of action simply to learn more about an issue. They then use the results of the action to develop a more complete understanding of the issue. One implication of thinking-acting cycles is that action is often part of defining the problem, not just of implementing the solution.

Studythefollowingdrawingcarefullyandwriteanessayinwhichyoushould1)describethedrawing,2)interpretitsmeaning,and3)giveyourcommentonit.Youshouldwriteabout160-200wordsneatly.

A classic series of experiments to determine the effects of overpopulation on communities of rats was conducted by a psychologist, John Calhoun. In each experiment, an equal number of male and female adult rats were placed in an enclosure. The rat populations were allowed to increase. Calhoun knew from experience approximately how many rats could live in the enclosures without experiencing stress due to over crowding. He allowed the population to increase to approximately twice this number. Then he stabilized the population by removing offspring that were not dependent on their mothers. At the end of the experiments, Calhoun was able to conclude that overcrowding causes a break down in the normal social relationships among rats, a kind of social disease. The rats in the experiments did not follow the same patterns of behavior as rats would in a community without overcrowding. The females in the rat population were the most seriously affected by the high population density. For example, mothers sometimes abandoned their pups, and, without their mothers" care, the pups died. The experiments verified that in overpopulated communities, mother rats do not-behave normally. Their behavior may be considered diseased, pathological. The dominant males in the rat population were the least affected by overpopulation. Each of these strong males claimed an area of the enclosure as his own. Therefore, these individuals did not experience the overcrowding in the same way as the other rats did. However, dominant males did behave pathologically at times. Their antisocial behavior consisted of attacks on weaker male, female, and immature rats. This deviant behaviour showed that even though the dominant males had enough living space, they too were affected by the general overcrowding. Nondominant males in the experimental rat communities also exhibited deviant social behavior. Some withdrew completely, avoiding contact with other rats. Other nondominant males were hyperactive, chasing other rats and fighting each other. The behaviour of the rat population has parallels in human behavior. People in densely populated areas exhibit deviant behavior similar to that of the rats in Calhoun"s experiments. In large urban areas, such as New York City, London, and Cairo, there are abandoned children. There are cruel, powerful individuals, both men and women. There are also people who withdraw and people who become hyperactive. Is the principal cause of these disorders overpopulation? Calhoun"s experiments suggest that it might be. In any case, social scientists and city planners have been influenced by the results of this series of experiments.

LoveHimorHisMoney?Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

Darwin is basically right, though only to some extent that species and individuals compete, fight, kill and survival belongs to the fittest. This is one of the most important mechanisms by which life evolves and maintains its quality. As the human society builds upon and is an extension of the ecosystem, does it mean that for the human society to work well, man must apply this mechanism to her/his society also; say, let those who are not skillful enough to land a job starve to death? We may be enlightened with respect to this question through the examination of evolution in an ecosystem in comparison to the human history. Taking the maritime swamp land as an example, the mangrove species Kandelia candle competes successfully over other mangrove species and dominate the area chiefly through the evolution of droppers that other species do not have. The seeds of Kandelia candle grow into seedlings inside the droppers before leaving their mother plant body and when the droppers still hang on the branches of their mother plant. The dropper"s shape is like a pen, with a sharp and heavier lower end. So when it ripens, it drops and inserts itself together with the seedling into the mud below as a result, and the seedling can get hold of the ground, start to tap the much fresher water under the mud surface. This adaptive evolution of droppers enables Kandelia candle to have a much greater successful rate. Seeds of other mangrove species just find it difficult to locate a suitable site for them to grow. When it is the industrial society that dominates a place, it always exploits resources from the land, drains out nutrients from the soil and plays environmental havoc to the place as a result of stupid human intelligence and selfish human manipulation. But when the mangrove dominates a mudflat, millions of Nature evolved complex mechanisms come together with it. It taps water, minerals from the mud and then let them to combine with carbon dioxide in the air to form the building materials of its plant body first through the process of photosynthesis and then through the synthesis of various organic matters. The effect ends up providing much better and more diverse living environment for more land, water and air species to dwell in, even for other competing mangrove species. When different races of man compete to dominate the earth, the end result is completely opposite in sense. One of the means they evolve are more and more powerful weapons, some, of the human races also evolve droppers, but those droppers are droppers of nuclear bombs, which are all life destructive when used. Animals never burn up a forest, or practice fighting skills twelve hours a day in order to defeat their competitors; they just let Nature cut out the weaker or less fortunate portion of their species, or that their species simply cannot survive in the first place. On the contrary, man can work round the clock, and exhaust all natural resources just to defeat their enemies, whether military or commercial, as we can all see in our modern societies. Such practice" generates quite grave problems: First, it pushes human activities into a very narrow goal of defeating their enemies militarily as well as economically. Second, all the available time, energy and resources of an individual as well as the society are exhausted by the competition, very little is left to other activities, so nearly all men suffer very much in the process and countless new problems besiege modern societies. Third, as all participants input as much time, energy and resources as can be exploited by them, most of these inputs are wasted. Such effort creates a lot of waste and exhausts all resources as a result. We should also view how man should conform to Nature in such a way that man has to compete for survival. In fact this is Nature"s way of telling man how to act. If only man could listen to this internal guidance, both man and the ecosystem could live much happier. So, making the human Society Darwinist is not conforming to Nature, but living in peace both militarily and economically with other man is.

Most of us think we know the kind of kid who becomes a killer, and most of the time we"re right. Boys (1)_____ about 85% of all youth homicides, and in those cases about 90% (2)_____ a pattern in which the line from bad parenting and bad (3)_____ to murder is usually clear. Their lives start with abuse, neglect and (4)_____ deprivation at home. Add the effects of racism, poverty, the drug and gang cultures, and it is not (5)_____ that in a violent society like ours, (6)_____ children become deadly teens. (7)_____ what about the other 10% of kids who kill: the boys who have (8)_____ parents and are not poor? Are their parents to blame when these kids become (9)_____? Most children do fine while young enough to be (10)_____ by loving parents, but change as adolescents subjected to peer competition, bullying and rejection, (11)_____ in big high schools. The "normal" culture of adolescence today contains elements that are so nasty that it becomes hard for parents to (12)_____ between what in a teenager"s talk, dress and taste in music, films and video games indicates (13)_____ trouble and what is simply a (14)_____ of the times. Most kids who have multiple body piercing, or listen to Marilyn Manson, or play the video games are normal kids caught in a toxic (15)_____ Intelligent kids with good social skills can be quite skillful at hiding who they really are from their parents. They may do this to (16)_____ punishment, to escape being identified as "crazy", or to protect the parents they love from being (17)_____ or worried. Anyway, how many parents are (18)_____ of thinking the worst of their son—(19)_____, that he harbors murders fantasies, or that he could (20)_____ so far as acting them out.

If you are interested in job creation—and who isn't this days? —you should talk to someone like Morris Panner. In 1999, Panner and some others started a Boston software company called Ope-nAir. By 2008 they sold it for $31 million. The firm had then grown to about 50 workers. It turns out that entrepreneurship (essentially, the funding of new companies) is crucial to the job creation. Of course, Panner' s success is often a slog. What' s the frustrating and perplexing about the present job dearth is that the US economy has long been a phenomenal employment machine. Here is a record: 83 million jobs are added from 1960 to 2007, with only six year of declines. Conventional analysis blames today's poor performance on weak demand. Because people aren't buying, businesses aren't hiring. Though true, this omits the vital role of entrepreneurship. In any given year, employment may reflect the ups and downs of the business cycle. But over longer periods, almost all job growth comes from new businesses. The reason: the high death rate of exiting firms. Even successful firms succumb to threats: new competitions and technology; mature market; the death of flinders; shifting consumers' tastes; poor management and unprofitability. A company founded today has an 80% chance of disappearing over the next quarter century, reports a study by Dane Stangler and Paul Kedrosky of the Kauffman Foundation. True, some blue-chips firms endure. Four fifth of the Fortune 500 were founded before 1970. But they are exception, and many blue chips have died. The debate over whether small or big firms create more jobs is misleading. The real distinction is between new and old. American workers are roughly split between firms with fewer or more than 500 employees. In healthy times, older companies of all sizes do create a lot of jobs. But they also lose jobs, as some businesses shrink or vanish. On balance, job creation and destruction cancel. All the network increases occur among startups, finds a study of the 1992—2005 period by economists John Haltiwanger of university of Maryland and Ron Jarmin and Javier Miranda of the Census Bureau. To be sure, entrepreneurship has a downside: booms and busts. Remember the dotcom "bubble", but more damaging are widespread popular misconceptions about what it isn't the engine of job adding. Although the entrepreneurial instinct seems powerful and American ambition and creative, venture capital for startups is scarce and that political leaders seem largely oblivious to burdensome government policies. This needs to be addressed. Entrepreneurship won't instantly cure American job deficit, but without, there will be no strong recovery.

In 2004 a few dozen members of Congress asked the Federal Communications Commission whether the government could define and regulate "excessively violent programming that is harmful to children" without violating the First Amendment. Last month, after thinking about it for three years, the FCC had an answer; Sure. Go ahead. Emboldened by the FCC report, Sen. Jay Rockefeller plans to introduce legislation aimed at regulating TV violence any day now. If he takes the same approach he did in a 2005 bill he sponsored, he will knock the ball back to the FCC, asking it to define excessively violent programming and adopt measures to protect children from it. There"s a reason no one is keen to define excessively violent programming. Anyone who tries will face insoluble practical and constitutional problems. Because opinions about what is appropriate for children vary widely, any definition of excessively violent programming would be attacked as too narrow, too broad, or both. Some critics say TV violence encourages imitation; others worry that it causes anxiety by making the world seem dangerous. The most troubling violence, some say, is the "explicit" and "graphic" kind, because it"s both disturbing and desensitizing. Others worry about the "sanitized" and "glamorized" kind, which separates violence from its real-world consequences. I"d say CSI, Schindler" s List, and History Channel war documentaries are not appropriate for small children. Does that mean such programming should be banished to late-night hours, a solution the FCC proposes? If not, what use is "time channeling"? If so, it"s hard to see why news shows covering crime and war, or sports such as football and boxing, should be exempt. For those who worry about imitation of sanitized violence, even children"s cartoons are not appropriate for children. Should Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles be shown only between 10 p. m. and 6 a. m. ? Another FCC suggestion, forcing cable and satellite companies to offer channels "a la carte," is even less promising. Blocking entire channels is a clumsy way to shield kids from inappropriate material. In any case, cable and satellite subscribers already have this ability, the FCC is just saying they shouldn"t have to pay for the channels they decide to block. The effectiveness of these rules will be an important question when courts address their constitutionality, since content-based speech regulation generally can be justified only if it"s the least restrictive means of serving a compelling government interest. No restriction on violent entertainment has ever met this test. As the First Amendment lawyer Robert Corn-Revere notes, regulations that take the context of violence into account would be scrutinized especially closely, because the government would be targeting speech based on viewpoint as well as subject. " Any attempt to regulate televised violence would face insurmountable First Amendment barriers," he concludes.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

This room is three times larger than that one.

[A]Studythefollowingcartooncarefullyandwriteanessayinnolessthan150words.[B]YouressaymustbewrittenclearlyonANSWERSHEET2.(15points)[C]Youressayshouldmeettherequirementsbelow:1.Writeoutthemessagesconveyedbythecartoon.2.Giveyourcomments.

The Lakers" forward Kobe Bryant has scored 50 or more points in four straight games, second in the NBA only to Wilt Chamberlain"s seven. He also now is tied with Michael Jordan for second with four behind Chamberlain"s 32 in most 60-point games. "He"s doing something I"ve never seen", Lakers coach Phil Jackson said in an e-mail Saturday. "This has been historic". He should know because he coached Jordan and played against Chamberlain. Bryant is not going to win the MVP award, which likely will go to Dirk Nowitzki or Steve Nash. But his scoring brilliance again seems to answer the question of who"s the best player in the league and it also provides more evidence in the similarity of Bryant and Jordan in their talent and approach to the game. In any ease, Bryant is the player now firmly holding that mythical torch of greatness, sporting celebrity and creativity that Jordan once took from Julius "Dr. J" Erring. "Kobe has the verdant green light to hoist it up until he cools down", Jackson said. "Wonders never cease in this game". Certainly, Bryant has been wonderful in the four games, averaging 56.3 points with two games of at least 60. Moreover, he hardly has been selfish or working outside the offense because most of his field goals have come on long jumpers, including 17 of 33 on three-pointers. Bryant is shooting 54 percent. "It"s phenomenal. It"s incredible", Jackson told Los Angeles reporters. "He"s shooting [outside] more than Michael was. Michael was probably doing more post-up, more penetration, more at-the-basket kind of stuff. But Kobe"s doing a whole range of things. I think his shooting has just been remarkable, the way he is raising up over people and knocking the ball down". It"s still a long way off, but because he started in the NBA when he was 18, Bryant, 28, can pass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the league"s all-time scorer if he can stay healthy and average 25 points until he is 38. "The best part of it all is that we"re winning", Bryant said. "The second is that this generation of players who might not have ever heard of the Elgin [Baylors] or Wilts [and their] greatness will now take notice so the legacy of their brilliance will live on. "As far as myself, I can"t explain it. All is in slow motion all the time. I don"t know why or how, but it"s trippy". That"s probably what Chamberlain said during his record run.

Energy will be one of the defining issues of this century. One thing is clear: the era of (1)_____ Oil is over. What we all do next will determine how well we meet the energy needs of the entire world in this century and (2)_____.Demand is soaring like (3)_____ before. As populations grow and economies (4)_____, millions in the developing world are enjoying the benefits of a lifestyle that (5)_____ increasing amounts of energy. In fact, some say that in 20 years the world will (6)_____ 40% more oil than it does today. At the same time, many of the world"s oil and gas fields are (7)_____. And new energy discoveries are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to (8)_____, physically, economically and even politically. When growing demand meets (9)_____ supplies, the result is more (10)_____ for the same resources. We can wait until a crisis forces us to do something. (11)_____ we can (12)_____ to working together, and start by asking the (13)_____ questions: How do we meet the energy needs of the developing world and those of industrialized nations? What role will renewables and (14)_____ energies play? What is the best way to protect our environment? How do we accelerate our conservation efforts? (15)_____ actions we take, we must look not just to next year, (16)_____ to the next 50 years. At Chevron, we believe that innovation, collaboration and conservation are the (17)_____ on which to build this new world. We cannot do this alone. Corporations, governments and every citizen of this planet must be part of the solution as (18)_____ as they are part of the problem. We (19)_____ scientists and educators, politicians and policy-makers, environmentalists, leaders of industry and each one of you to be part of (20)_____ the next era of energy.

BPart B/B

Write a letter to your friend Tom who posted you a Japanese dictionary from Japan on your birthday. Express your appreciation. You should include the details you think necessary. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

The Democratic Party is the party of longest continuous existence.

"What"s tile difference between God and Larry Ellison?" asks an old software industry joke. Answer God doesn"t think he"s Larry Ellison. The boss of Oracle is hardly alone among corporate chiefs in having a reputation for being rather keen on himself. Indeed, until the bubble burst and the public turned nasty at the start of the decade, the worship of the celebrity chief executive seemed to demand bossly narcissism, as evidence that a firm was being led by an all-conquering hero. Narcissus met a nasty end, of course. And in recent years, boss-worship has come to be seen as bad for business. In his management bestseller, "Good to Great", Jim Collins argued that the truly successful bosses were not the self-proclaimed stars who adorn the covers of Forbes and Fortune, but instead self-effacing, thoughtful sorts who lead by inspiring example. A statistical answer may be at hand. For the first time, a new study, "It"s All About Me", to be presented next week at the annual gathering of the American Academy of Management, offers a systematic, empirical analysis of what effect narcissistic bosses have on the firms they run. The authors, Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick, of Pennsylvania State University, examined narcissism in the upper rank of 105 firms in the computer and software industries. To do this, they had to solve a practical problem: studies of narcissism have relied on surveying individuals personally, something for which few chief executives are likely to have time or inclination. So the authors devised an index of narcissism using six publicly available indicators obtainable without the co-operation of the boss. These are: the prominence of the boss"s photo in the annual report; his prominence in company press releases; the length of his "Who"s Who" entry; the frequency of his use of the first person singular in interviews; and the ratios of his cash and non-cash compensation to those of the firm"s second-highest paid executive. Narcissism naturally drives people to seek positions of power and influence, and because great self-esteem helps your professional advance, say the authors, chief executives will tend on average to be more narcissistic than the general population. Messrs Chatterjee and Hambrick found that highly narcissistic bosses tended to make bigger changes in the use of important resources, such as research and development, or in spending; they carried out more and bigger mergers and acquisitions; and their results were both more extreme(more big wins or big losses)and more unstable than those of firms run by their humbler peers.