单选题Today, the computer has taken up appliance status in more than 42 percent of households across the United States. And these computers are increasingly biting wired to the Internet. Online access was up more than 50 percent in just the past year. Now, more than one quarter of all U.S. households can surf in cyberspace. Mostly, this explosive growth has occurred democratically. The online penetration and computer ownership increases extend across all the demographic levels — by race, geography, income, and education. We view these trends as favorable without the slightest question because we clearly see computer technology as empowering. In fact, personal growth and a prosperous U.S. economy are considered to be the long-range rewards of individual and collective technological power. Now for the not-so-good news. The government's analysis spells out so-called digital divide. That is, the digital explosion is not booming at the same pace for everyone. Yes, it is true that we are all plugged in to a much greater degree than any of us have been in the past. But some of us are more plugged in than others and are getting plugged in far more rapidly. And this gap is widening even as the pace of the information age accelerates through society. Computer ownership and Internet access are highly classified along lines of wealth, race, education, and geography. The data indicates that computer ownership and online access are growing more rapidly among the most prosperous and well educated: essentially, wealthy white people with high school and college diplomas and who are part of stable, two-parent households. The highest income bracket households, those earning more than $ 75,000 annually, are 20 times as likely to have access to the Internet as households at the lowest income levels, under $10,000 annually. The computer-penetration rate at the high-income level is an amazing 76.56 percent, compared with 8 percent at the bottom end of the scale. Technology access differs widely by educational level. College graduates are 16 times as likely to be Internet surfers at home as are those with only elementary-school education. If you look at the differences between these groups in rural areas, the gap widens to a twenty-six-fold advantage for the college-educated. From the time of the last study, the information-access gap grew by 29 percent between the highest and lowest income groups, and by 25 percent between the highest and lowest education levels. In the long run, participation in the information age may not be a zero sum game, where if some groups win, others must lose. Eventually, as the technology matures we are likely to see penetration levels approach all groups equally. This was true for telephone access and television ownership, but eventually can be cold comfort in an era when tomorrow is rapidly different from today and unrecognizable compared with yesterday.

单选题Machiavelli cautions the prince not to Urelinquish/U power under passing duress.

单选题The consumer ______ in recent years has led to an explosion of shopping center development in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Canton. A. boom B. volume C. summit D. pressure

单选题By education, I mean the influence of the environment upon the individual to produce a permanent change in the habits of behavior, of thought and of attitude．It is in being thus susceptible to the environment that man differs from the animals, and the higher animals from the lower．The lower animals are influenced by the environment but not in the direction of changing their habits．Their instinctive responses are few and fixed by heredity．When transferred to an unnatural situation, such an animal is led astray by its instincts．Thus the "ant-lion"whose instinct implies it to bore into loose sand by pushing backwards with abdomen, goes backwards on a plate of glass as soon as danger threatens, and endeavors, with the utmost exertions to bore into it．It knows no other mode of flight, "or if such a lonely animal is engaged upon a chain of actions and is interrupted, it either goes on vainly with the remaining actions(as useless as cultivating an unsown field)or dies in helpless inactivity"． Thus a net-making spider which digs a burrow and rims it with a bastion of gravel and bits of wood, when removed from a half finished home, will not begin again, though it will continue another burrow, even one made with a pencil． Advance in the scale of evolution along such lines as these could only be made by the emergence of creatures with more and more complicated instincts．Such beings we know in the ants and spiders．But another line of advance was destined to open out a much more far-reaching possibility of which we do not see the end perhaps even in man．Habits, instead of being born ready-made(when they are called instincts and not habits at all), were left more and more to the formative influence of the environment, of which the most important factor was the parent who nOW cared for the young animal during a period of infancy in which vaguer instincts than those of the insects were molded to suit surroundings which might be considerably changed without harm． This means, one might at first imagine, that gradually heredity becomes less and environment more important．But this is hardly the truth and certainly not the whole truth．For although fixed automatic responses like those of the insect-like creatures are no longer inherited, although selection for purification of that sort is no longer going on, yet selection for educability is very definitely still of importance．The ability to acquire habits can be conceivably inherited just as much as can definite responses to narrow situations．Besides, since a mechanism--is now,for the first time, created by which the individual(in contradiction to the species)can be fitted to the environment, the latter becomes, in another sense, less not more important．And finally,less not the higher animals who possess the power of changing their environment by engineering feats and the like, a power possessed to some extent even by the beaver,and preeminently by man．Environment and heredity are in no case exclusive but always—supplementary factors．

单选题The ______ of the occasion was spoiled when she fell down the steps. A. privacy B. dignity C. morality D. secrecy

单选题I shall tell him the truth, ______.

单选题The mother was_____with grief when she heard that her child was dead.

单选题Although crowded cities seem to be a ______ of our crowded world, only 10 percent of the world' s people live in cities as large as Madrid or larger.

单选题{{B}}Passage 3{{/B}} Ask an American schoolchild what he or she is learning in school these days and you might even get a reply, provided you ask it in Spanish. But don't bother, here's the answer. Americans nowadays are not learning any of the things that we learned in our day, like reading and writing. Apparently these are considered fusty old subjects, invented by white males to oppress women and minorities. What are they learning? In a Vermont college town I found the answer sitting in a toy store book rack, next to typical kids' books like "Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy is 'Dysfunctional'". It's a teacher's guide called "Happy To Be Me", subtitled "Building Self-Esteem". Self-esteem as it turns out, is a big subject in American classrooms. Many American schools see building it as important as teaching reading and writing. They call it "whole language" teaching, borrowing terminology from the granola people to compete in the education marketplace. No one ever spent a moment building my self-esteem when I was in school. In fact, from the day I first stepped inside a classroom my self-esteem was one big demolition site. All that mattered was "the subject", be it geography, history, or mathematics. I was praised when I remembered that "near", "fit", "friendly", "pleasing", "like" and their opposites took the dative case in Latin. I was reviled when I forgot what a cosine was good for. Generally, I lived my school years beneath a torrent of castigation so consistent I eventually ceased to hear it, as people who live near the sea eventually stop hearing the waves. Schools have changed. Reviling is out, for one thing. More important, subjects have changed. Whereas I learned English, modern kids learn something called "language skills". Whereas I learned writing, modern kids learn something called "communication". Communication, the book tells us, is seven per cent words, twenty three per cent facial expression, twenty per cent tone of voice, and fifty per cent body language. So this column, with its carefully chosen words, would earn at most a grade of seven per cent. That is, if the school even gave out something as oppressive and demanding as grades. The result is that, in place of English classes, American children are getting a course in "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Consider the new attitude toward journal writing: I remember one high school English class when we were required to keep a journal. The idea was to emulate those great writers who confided in dimes, searching their soul and honing their critical thinking on paper. "Happy To Be Me" states that journals are a great way for students to get in touch with their feelings. Tell students they can write one sentence or a whole page. Reassure them that no one, not even you, will read what they write. After the unit, hopefully all students will be feeling good about themselves and will want to share some of their entries with the class. There was a time when no self-respecting book for English teachers would use "great" or "hopefully" that way. Moreover, back then the purpose of English courses (an antique term for "Unit") was not to help students "feel good about themselves". Which is good, because all that reviling didn't make me feel particularly good about anything .

单选题The federal court has been putting pressure on the state to adhere to the population caps in the decree.

单选题Her remarks______a complete disregard for human rights.(2002年清华大学考博试题)

单选题The word "interim" most probably means ______.

单选题On weekends, people are queuing in the supermarket to______for there are only a few cashes.

单选题Rite of Passage is a good novel by any standards; ______, it should rank high on any list of science fiction. A. consistently B. consequently C. invariably D. fortunately

单选题When a person dies, his debts must be paid before his______can be distributed. (2004年中国人民大学考博试题)

单选题{{B}}Passage 5{{/B}} Although I know that many of you think the opposite, most human beings have a high level of intelligence, a good memory and can solve problems easily. They live longer and therefore tend to be much more aware of past and future than we are. They communicate by a set of sounds which carry meaning from the order in which they are placed, and which vary from territory to territory, so that some humans find difficulty in communicating with others according to where they come from--if they have been raised in different country and have not had special training. Humans have also invented a set of marks on paper which they use to represent these sounds and which you may often see them concentrating on. In these two ways they have developed their eyes and ears to a higher level of interpretation than ourselves, but in doing so they have lost the ability to gather much of the information which we continually do both from these and our other senses. Most dogs are able to interpret at least part of the vocabulary (voice meanings) of humans, and some of us have learned to recognize some of the pattern of marks which they use to record them on paper so that humans at a different time and in a different place can understand their messages, but it would put our other abilities into danger if we ourselves developed these skills very far. Fortunately, most humans are able to understand a similar amount of our communicatory sounds and behaviour. Try going up to a human, sitting down in front of him and raising a front paw in a gesture. He will almost certainly take it and give it a shake, because it is a greeting gesture for humans, too. He will think you are behaving like a human--and nothing seems to please humans more. Careful, there is a danger here! You are not a human. You are a dog--and if you are going to be happy you should never forget it. You need to live as a dog. It is all very well changing yourself slightly-to fit in with a human pack, but if you deny your true nature you are going to end up a mad dog and, humans will think, a bad dog. There is always a reason for any animal choosing to live with an animal of a different sort, but all too often we have no choice. We have to live with humans. But humans have consciously decided that they want us with them, although not necessarily for the reason that they believe. They may want you as a watchdog to keep burglars away. They may have some idea that looking after you will teach their pups a sense of responsibility. Or they may simply be in desperate need of companionship, of something to love.

单选题He had either to leave the country immediately or to surrender himself to the Nazi authorities, and had no other ______. A. alternative B. hope C. resource D. approach