解释题Logic is far from being a dry, pedantic discipline.

解释题She looked a mess, to tell you the truth, a real slattern, dressed any old how.

解释题On certain levels of the American race, indeed, there seems to be a positive libido for the ugly.

解释题People with brown skins are next door to invisible.

复合题Could the bad old days of economic decline be about to return? Since OPEC agreed to supply-cuts in March, the price of crude oil has jumped to almost $26 a barrel, up from less than $10 last December. This near-tripling of oil prices calls up scary memories of the 1973 oil shock, when prices quadrupled, and 1979-80, when they also almost tripled. Both previous shocks resulted in double-digit inflation and global economic decline. So where are the headlines warning of gloom and doom this time?The oil price was given another push up this week when Iraq suspended oil exports. Strengthening economic growth, at the same time as winter grips the northern hemisphere, could push the price higher still in the short term.Yet there are good reasons to expect the economic consequences now to be less severe than in the 1970s. In most countries the cost of crude oil now accounts for a smaller share of the price of petrol than it did in the 1970s. In Europe, taxes account for up to four-fifths of the retail price, so even quite big changes in the price of crude have a more muted effect on pump prices than in the past.Rich economies are also less dependent on oil than they were, and so less sensitive to swings in the oil price. Energy conservation, a shift to other fuels and a decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries have reduced oil consumption. Software, consultancy and mobile telephones use far less oil than steel or car production. For each dollar of GDP (in constant prices) rich economies now use nearly 50% less oil than in 1973. The OECD estimates in its latest Economic Outlook that, if oil prices averaged $22 a barrel for a full year, compared with $13 in 1998, this would increase the oil import bill in rich economies by only 0.25-0.5% of GDP. That is less than one-quarter of the income loss in 1974 or 1980. On the other hand, oil-importing emerging economies—to which heavy industry has shifted—have become more energy-intensive, and so could be more seriously squeezed.One more reason not to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that, unlike the rises in the 1970s, it has not occurred against the background of general commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the world is only just emerging from economic decline. The Economist’s commodity price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices jumped by 70%, and in 1979 by almost 30%.

复合题The idea that some groups of people may be more intelligent than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name. But Gregory Cochran is【A1】______ to say it anyway. He is that【A2】______ bird, a scientist who works independently 【A3】______ any institution. He helped popularize the idea that some diseases not 【A4】______ thought to have a bacterial cause were actually infections, which aroused much controversy when it was first suggested.【A5】______ he, however, might tremble at the【A6】______ of what he is about to do. Together with another two scientists, he is publishing a paper which not only 【A7】______ that one group of humanity is more intelligent than the others, but explains the process that has brought this about. The group in 【A8】______ are a particular people originated from central Europe. The process is natural selection.This group generally do well in IQ test, 【A9】______ 12-15 points above the 【A10】______ value of 100, and have contributed【A11】______ to the intellectual and cultural life of the West, as the【A12】______ of their elites, including several world-renowned scientists, 【A13】______. They also suffer more often than most people from a number of nasty genetic diseases, such as breast cancer. These facts,【A14】______, have previously been thought unrelated. The former has been 【A15】______ to social effects, such as a strong tradition of【A16】______ education. The latter was seen as a (an) 【A17】______ of genetic isolation. Dr. Cochran suggests that the intelligence and diseases are intimately 【A18】______. His argument is that the unusual history of these people has【A19】______ them to unique evolutionary pressures that have resulted in this 【A20】_____ state of affairs.

复合题Imagine waking up and finding the value of your assets has been halved. No, you’re not an investor in one of those hedge funds that failed completely. With the dollar slumping to a 26-year low against the pound, already-expensive London has become quite unaffordable. A coffee at Starbucks, just as unavoidable in England as it is in the United States, runs about $8.The once all-powerful dollar isn’t doing a Titanic against just the pound. It is sitting at a record low against the euro and at a 30-year low against the Canadian dollar. Even the Argentine peso and Brazilian real are thriving against the dollar.The weak dollar is a source of humiliation (屈辱)， for a nation’ s self-esteem rests in part on the strength of its currency. It’s also a potential economic problem, since a declining dollar makes imported food more expensive and exerts upward pressure on interest rates. And yet there are substantial sectors of the vast U.S. economy—from giant companies like Coca-Cola to mom-and-pop restaurant operators in Miami—for which the weak dollar is most excellent news.Many Europeans may view the U. S. as an arrogant superpower that has become hostile to foreigners. But nothing makes people think more warmly of the U. S. than a weak dollar. Through April, the total number of visitors from abroad was up 6.8 percent from last year. Should the trend continue, the number of tourists this year will finally top the 2000 peak? Many Europeans now apparently view the U. S. the way many Americans view Mexico-as a cheap place to vacation, shop and party, all while ignoring the fact that the poorer locals can’t afford to join the merrymaking.The money tourists spend helps decrease our chronic trade deficit. So do exports, which thanks in part to the weak dollar, soared 11 percent between May 2006 and May 2007. For first five months of 2007, the trade deficit actually fell 7 percent from 2006.If you own shares in large American corporations, you’re a winner in the weak-dollar gamble. Last week Coca- Cola’s stick bubbled to a five-year high after it reported a fantastic quarter. Foreign sales accounted for 65 percent of Coke’s beverage (饮料) business. Other American companies profiting from this trend include McDonald’s and IBM.American tourists, however, shouldn’t expect any relief soon. The dollar lost strength the way many marriages break up-slowly, and then all at once. And currencies don’t turn on a dime. So if you want to avoid the pain inflicted by the increasingly pathetic dollar, cancel that summer vacation to England and look to New England. There, the dollar is still treated with a little respect.

复合题In many businesses, computers have largely replaced paperwork, because they are fast, flexible, and do not make mistakes. As one banker said, “Unlike humans, computers never have a bad day.” And they are honest. Many banks advertise that their transactions are “untouched by human hands” and therefore safe from human temptation. Obviously, computers have no reason to steal money. But they also have no conscience, and the growing number of computer crimes shows they can be used to steal.Computer criminals don’t use guns. And even if they are caught, it is hard to punish them because there are no witness and often no evidence. A computer cannot remember who used it: it simply does what it is told. The head teller at a New York bank used a computer to steal more than one and a half billion dollars in just four years. No one noticed this theft (盗窃) because he moved the money from one account to another. Each time a customer he had robbed questioned the balance in his account, the teller claimed a computer error, then replaced the missing money from someone else’s account. This man was caught only because he was a gambler. When the police broke up an illegal gambling operation, his name was in the records.Some employees use the computer’s power to get revenge (报复) on their employers they consider unfair. Recently, a large insurance company fired its computer-tape librarian for reasons that involved her personal rather than her professional life. She was given thirty days’ notice. In those thirty days, she erased all the firm’s computerized records.Most computer criminals have been minor employees. Now police wonder if this is “the tip of the iceberg” As one official says, “I have the feeling that there is more crime out there than we are catching. What we are seeing now is all so poorly done. I wonder what the real experts are doing—the ones who know how a computer works.”

复合题The Supreme Court’s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering.Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of “double effect,” a centuries-old moral principle holding that an action having two effects—a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen—is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect.Doctors have used that principle in recent years to justify using high doses of morphine to control terminally ill patients’ pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient.Nancy Dubler, director of Montefiore Medical Center, contends that the principle will shield doctors who “until now have very, very strongly insisted that they could not give patients sufficient mediation to control their pain if that might hasten death.”George Annas, chair of the health law department at Boston University, maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. “It’s like surgery,” he says. “We don’t call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn’t intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you’re a physician, you can risk your patient’s suicide as long as you don’t intend their suicide.”On another level, many in the medical community acknowledge that the assisted-suicide debate has been fueled in part by the despair of patients for whom modern medicine has prolonged the physical agony of dying.Just three weeks before the Court’s ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the undertreatment of pain and the aggressive use of “ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying” as the twin problems of end-of-life care.The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a Medicare billing code for hospital-based care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life.Annas says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiatives translate into better care. “Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering,” to the extent that it constitutes “systematic patient abuse.” He says medical licensing boards “must make it clear... that painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in 1icense suspension.”

语法与词汇a lexical gap

语法与词汇scamper

语法与词汇consolidate

语法与词汇Dismissive as a Pharisee, he regarded as moonlings all those less practical ones.

语法与词汇An estimated 500 million people around the world — watching a live television broadcast — saw Armstrong step onto the powdery lunar surface and say: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

语法与词汇The bell _____ that the class is over.

语法与词汇whet

语法与词汇falling action

语法与词汇verbosity

语法与词汇predatory

语法与词汇Each workday, the workers followed the same schedules and rarely _____ from this routine.