单选题 The early retirement of experienced workers is seriously harming the US economy, according to a new report from the Hudson Institute, a public policy research organization. Currently, many older experienced workers retire at an early age. According to the recently issued statistics, 79 percent of qualified workers begin collecting retirement benefits at age 62; if that trend continues, there will be a labor shortage that will hinder the economic growth in the twenty-first century. Older Americans constitute an increasing proportion of the population, according to the US Census Bureau, and the population of those over age 65 will grow by 60% between 2001 and 2020. During the same period, the group aged 18 to 44 will increase by only 4%. Keeping older skilled workers employed, even part time, would increase US economic output and strengthen the tax base; but without significant policy reforms, massive early retirement among baby boomers seems more likely. Retirement at age 62 is an economically rational decision today. Social Security and Medicaid earnings limits and tax penalties subject our most experienced workers to marginal tax rates as high as 67%. Social Security formulas encourage early retirement. Although incomes usually rise with additional years of work, any pay increases after the 35-year mark result in higher social Security taxes but only small increases in benefits. Hudson Institute researchers believe that federal tax and benefit policies are at fault and reforms are urgently needed, but they disagree with the popular proposal that much older Americans will have to work because Social Security will not support them and that baby boomers are not saving enough for retirement. According to the increase in 401 (k) and Keogh retirement plans, the ongoing stock market on Wall Street, and the likelihood of large inheritances, there is evidence that baby boomers will reach age 65 with greater financial assets than previous generations. The Hudson institute advocates reforming government policies that now discourage work and savings, especially for older worker. Among the report's recommendations: Tax half of all Social Security benefits. regardless of other income; provide 8% larger benefits for each year beyond 65; and permit workers nearing retirement to negotiate compensation packages that may include a lower salary but with greater healthcare benefits. However, it may take real and fruitful planning to find the right solution to the early retirement of older experienced workers; any measures taken must be allowed to prolong the serviceability of older experienced workers.

单选题The ______ meanings of the individual words do not help define all expression like "Drop in any time."

单选题History was being catalogued here, the missed opportunities, blunders , and outright mistakes.

单选题Which of the following would the author most probably agree to as to describing American culture?

单选题Most of us find the forgetting easier, but maybe we should work on the forgiving part. "Holding on to hurts and nursing grudges wear you down physically and emotionally," says Stanford University psychologist Fred Luskin, author of Forgive for Good. "Forgiving someone can be a powerful antidote." In a recent study, Charlotte, assistant/associate professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan; and this colleagues asked 71 volunteers to remember a past hurt. Tests recorded the highest blood pressure, heart rate and muscle tension—the same responses that occur when people are angry. Research has linked anger and heart disease. When the volunteers were asked to imagine empathizing, even forgiving those who had wronged them, they remained calm by comparison. What's more, forgiveness can be learned, insists Luskin, director of the Stanford Forgive- ness Project, "We teach people to rewrite their story in their minds, to change from victim to he- m. If the hurt is from a spouse's infidelity, we might encourage them to think of themselves not only as a person who was cheated on, but as the person who tried to keep the marriage together. Two years ago, Luskin tested his method on 5 Northern Irish women whose sons had been murdered. After undergoing a week of forgiveness training, the women's sense of hurt, measured using psychological tests, had fallen by more than half. They were also much less likely to feel depressed and angry. "Forgiving isn't about forgetting what happened," says Luskin. "It is about breaking free of the person who wronged us." The early signs that forgiving improves overall health are promising: A survey of 1,423 adults by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research in 2001 found that people who had forgiven someone in their past also reported being in better health than those who hadn't. However, while 75% said they were sure God had forgiven them for past mistakes, only52% had been able to find it in their hearts to forgive others. Forgiveness; it seems, is still divine.

单选题The police had decided not to proceed with a prosecution against Irwin, ______ that it was highly unlikely that any jury in the land would wish to punish him for doing this mercy killing.

单选题The two articles arouse suspicion. The theory? The novel? Since there is no such thing as the novel, how can there be a single theory? Or is the editor some soil of monist? Blinkered hedgehog in wild fox country? The jacket identifies in wild fox country? The jacket identifies Mr. Halperin as "Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at the University of Southern California. " This is true academic weight. "He is also the author of The Language of Meditation. Four Studies in Nineteenth-Century Fiction and Egoism and Self-Discovery in the Victorian Novel. " Well, meditation if not language is big in Southern California, where many an avocado tree shades its smogbound Zen master, while the Victorian novel continues to be a growth industry in Academe. Eagerly, one turns to Professor Halperin's "A Critical Introduction" to nineteen essays by as many professors of English Professor Halperin has not an easy way with our rich language. Nevertheless, one opens his book in the hope that the prose of "some of the most distinguished critics of our time" will be better than his own. American professors of English have never had an easy time with French theoreticians of the novel (close scrutiny of the quotation from Barthes reveals that it was taken from an English not an American translation) . Nevertheless, despite various hedges like "may inevitably," Professor Halperin has recklessly enrolled himself in the school of Paris (class of 56) . As a result, he believes that the autonomous novel "is not created as a conscious representation of anything outside itself. " Aside from the presumption of pretending to know what any writer has in mind (is he inevitably but not consciously describing or mimicking the real world?), it is native to assume that a man-made novel can ever resemble a meteor fallen from outer space, a perfectly autonomous artifact whose raison detre is "with the relationships among the various structural elements within the work of fiction itself" rather than "between reader and text. " Apparently the novel is no longer what James conceived it, a story told, in Professor Halperin's happy phrase, from "the limited perspective of a single sentient consciousness. " And so, in dubious battle, unconscious sentiencies clash in the English departments of the West with insentient consciousnesses. In general, Professor Halperin's novel-theorists have nothing very urgent or interesting to say about literature. Why then do they write when they have nothing to say? Because the ambitious teacher can only rise in the academic bureaucracy by writing at complicated length about writing that has already been much written about. The result of all this bookchat cannot interest anyone who knows literature while those who would like to learn something about books can only be mystified and discouraged by these commentaries. Certainly it is no accident that the number of students taking English courses has been in decline for some years. But that is beside the point. What matters is that the efforts of the teachers now under review add up to at least a half millennium of academic tenure. Rebirth of the novel? That seems unlikely. The University-novel tends to be stillborn, suitable only for classroom biopsy. The Public-novel continues to be written but the audience for it is reading anything at all difficult and unrewarding. Ambitious novelists are poignantly aware of the general decline in what Professor Halperin would call "reading skills" . Much of Mr. Donald Barthelme's means to be ironic. Of course he knows his book is not very interesting to read, but then life is not very interesting to live either. Hopefully, as Professor Halperin would say, the book will self-destruct once it has been ritually praised wherever English is taught but not learned. Comprehension Questions.

单选题A number of black youths have complained of being by ____ the police.

单选题 Amitai Etzioni is not surprised by the latest headings about scheming corporate crooks(骗子). As a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School in 1989 ,he ended his work there disgusted with his students' overwhelming lust for money. "They're taught that profit is all that matters," he says. "Many schools don't even offer ethics (伦理学) courses at all." Etzioni expressed his frustration about the interests of his graduate students. "By and large. I clearly had not found a way to help classes full of MBAS see that there is more to life than money, power, fame and self-interest," he wrote at the time. Today he still takes the blame for not educating these "business-leaders-to-he". "I really feel like I failed them, "he says. "If I was a better teacher maybe I could have reached them." Etzioni was a respected ethics expert when he arrived at Harvard. He hoped his work at the university would give him insight into how questions of morality could he applied to places where serf-interest flourished. What he found wash't encouraging. Those would-be executives had, says Etzioni, little interest in concepts of ethics and morality in the boardroom--and their professor was met with blank stares when he urged his students to see business in new and different ways. Etzioni sees the experience at Harvard as an eye-opening one and says there's much about business schools that he'd like to change. "A lot of the faculty teaching business tire bad news themselves. "Etzioni says. From offering classes that teach students how to legally manipulate contracts, to reinforcing the notion of profit over community interests, Etzioni has seen a lot that's left him shaking his head. And because of what he's seen taught in business schools, he's not surprised by the latest rash of corporate scandals. "In many ways things have got a lot worse at business schools. I suspect. "says Etzioni. Etzioni is still teaching the sociology of right and wrong and still calling for ethical business leadership. "People with poor motives will always exist," he says. "Sometimes environments constrain those people and sometimes environments give those people opportunity. "Etzioni says the booming economy of the last decade enabled those individuals with poor motives to get rich before getting in trouble. His hope now: that the cries for reform will provide more fertile soil for his longstanding messages about business ethics.

单选题 Comparisons were drawn between the development of television in the 20th century and the diffusion of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. Yet much had happened{{U}} (21) {{/U}}. As was discussed before, it was not{{U}} (22) {{/U}}the 19th century that the newspaper became the dominant pre-electronic{{U}} (23) {{/U}}, following in the wake of the pamphlet and the book and in the{{U}} (24) {{/U}}of the periodical. It was during the same time that the communications revolution{{U}} (25) {{/U}}up, beginning with transport, the railway, and leading{{U}} (26) {{/U}}through the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and motion pictures{{U}} (27) {{/U}}the 20th-century world of the motor car and the air plane. Not everyone sees that process in{{U}} (28) {{/U}}. It is important to do so. It is generally recognized,{{U}} (29) {{/U}}, that the introduction of the computer in the early 20th century,{{U}} (30) {{/U}}by the invention of the integrated circuit during the 1960s, radically changed the process,{{U}} (31) {{/U}}its impact on the media was not immediately{{U}} (32) {{/U}}. As time were by, computers became smaller and more powerful, and they became "personal" too. as well as{{U}} (33) {{/U}}, with display becoming sharper and storage{{U}} (34) {{/U}}increasing. They were thought of, like people,{{U}} (35) {{/U}}generations, with the distance between generations much smaller. It was within the computer age that the term "information society" began to be widely used to describe the context within which we now live.

单选题Young people's social environment has a ______ effect on their academic progress. [A] gross [B] solid [C] profound [D] complete

单选题Poseidon sat at his desk, doing figures. The administration of all the waters gave him endless work. He could have had assistants, as many--and he did have very many--but since he took his job very seriously, he would in the end go over all the figures and calculations himself, and thus his assistants were of little help to him. It cannot be said that he enjoyed his work: he did it only because it had been assigned to him; in fact, he had already filed many petitions foras he put it--more cheerful work, but every time the offer of something different was made to him it would turn out that nothing suited him quite as well as his present position. And anyhow it was quite difficult to find something different for him. After all, it was impossible to assign him to a particular sea; aside from the fact that even then the work with figures would not become less but only pettier, the great Poseidon could in any case occupy only an executive position. And when a job away from the water was offered to him he would get sick at the very prospect, his divine breathing would become troubled and his brazen chest began to tremble. Besides, his complaints were not really taken seriously; when one of the mighty is vexatious the appearance of an effort must be made to placate him, even when the case is most hopeless. In actuality a shift of posts was unthinkable for Poseidon--he had been appointed God of the Sea in the beginning, and that he had to remain. What irritated him most-- and it was this that was chiefly responsible for his dissatisfaction with his job--was to hear of the conceptions formed about him: how he was always riding about through the tides with his trident. When all the while he sat here in the depths of the world--ocean, doing figures uninterruptedly, with now and then a trip to Jupiter as the only break in the monotony--a trip, moreover, from which he usually returned in a rage. Thus he had hardly seen the sea--had seen it but quickly in the course of hurried trips to Olympus, and he had never actually traveled around it. He was in the habit of saying that what he was waiting for was the fall of the world; then, probably, a quiet moment would be granted in which, just before the end and having checked the last row of figures, he would be able to make a quick little tour. Poseidon became bored with the sea. He let fall his trident. Silently he sat on the rocky coast and a gull, dazed by his presence, described wavering circles around his head.

单选题A substantial hike in the top rate of income tax would not solve this problem but merely aggravate the nation"s already waning support.

单选题Nursing at Beth Israel Hospital produces the best patient care possible. If we are to solve the nursing shortage, hospital administration and doctors everywhere would do well to follow Beth Israel's example. At Beth Israel each patient is assigned to a primary nurse who vistits at length with the patient and constructs a full-scale health account that covers everything from his medical history to his emotional state. Then she writes a care plan centered on the patient's illness but which also includes everything else that is necessary. The primary nurse stays with the patient through his hospitalization, keeping track with his progress and seeking further advice from his doctor. If a patient at Beth Israel is not responding to treatment, it is not uncommon for his nurse to propose another approach to his doctor. What the doctor at Beth Israel has in the primary nurse is a true colleague. Nursing at Beth Israel also involves a decentralized nursing administration: every floor, every unit is a self-contained organization. There are nurse-managers instead of head nurses; in addition to their medical duties they do all their own hiring and dismissing, employee advising, and they make salary recommendations. Each unit's nurses decide among themselves who will work what shifts and when. Beth Israel's nurse-in-chief ranks as an equal with other vice president of the hospital. She also is a member of the Medial Executive Committee, which in most hospitals includes only doctors.

单选题The toy maker produces a ______ copy of the space station, exact in every detail. A. minimal B. minimum C. miniature D. minor

单选题Surveys show that______less sleep than we think,______too much sleep could even harm our health.(北京大学2005年试题)