单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} For centuries the most valuable of African resources for Europeans were the slaves, but these could be obtained at coastal ports, without any need for going deep inland. Slavery had been an established institution in Africa. Prisoners of war had been enslaved, as were also debtors and individuals guilty of serious crimes. But these slaves usually were treated as part of the family. They had clearly defined rights, and their slave status was not necessarily inherited. Therefore it is commonly argued that Africa's traditional slavery was mild compared to the trans-Atlantic slave trade organized by the Europeans. This argument, however, can be carried too far. In the most recent study of this subject, some scholars warned against the. illusion that " cruel and dehumanizing enslavement was a monopoly of the West. Slavery in its extreme forms, including the taking of life, was common to both Africa and the West. The fact that African slavery had different origins and consequences should not lead us to deny what it was -- the exploitation and control of human beings. "Neither can it be denied that the wholesale shipment of Africans to the slave plantations of the Americas was made possible by the participation of African chiefs who rounded up their fellow Africans and sold them as a handsome profit to European ship captains waiting along the coasts. Granting all this, the fact remains that the trans-Atlantic slave trade conducted by the Europeans was entirely different in quantity and quality from the traditional type of slavery that had existed within Africa. From the beginning the European variety was primarily an economic institution rather than social, as it had been in Africa. Western slave traders and slave owners were acted on by purely economic considerations, and were quite ready to work their slaves to death if it was more profitable to do so than to treat them more mercifully. This inhumanity was reinforced by racism when the Europeans became involved in the African slave trade on a large scale. Perhaps as a subconscious rationalization they gradually came to look down on Negroes as inherently inferior, and therefore destined to serve their white masters. Rationalization also may have been involved in the Europeans' use of religion to justify the traffic in human beings. It was argued, for instance, that enslavement assured the conversion of the African evil-believing religions to the true faith as well as to civilization.

单选题 A break through in the provision of energy from the sun for the European Economic Community (EEC) could be brought forward by up to two decades, if a modest increase could be provided in the EEC's research effort in this field, according to the senior EEC scientists engaged in experiments in solar energy at EEC's scientific laboratories at Lspra, near Milan. The senior West German scientist in charge of the Community's solar energy programme, Mr. Joachim Gretz, told journalists that at present levels of research spending it was most unlikely that solar energy would provide as much as three per cent of the Community's energy requirements even after the year 2000. But he said that with a modest increase in the present sums devoted by the EEC to this work it was possible that the breakthrough could be achieved by the end of the next decade. Mr. Gretz calculates that if solar energy only provided three percent of the EEC's needs, this could still produce a saving of about a billion pounds in the present bill for imported energy each year. And he believes that with the possibility of utilizing more advanced technology in this field it might be possible to satisfy a much bigger share of the Community's future energy needs. At present the EEC spends about $2.6 millions a year on solar research at Lspra, one of the EEC's official joint research centres, and another $3 million a year in indirect research with universities and other independent bodies.

单选题It is evident that, in speculating about twisting effects, Nodland and Ralslon focused mainly on______.

单选题When a pen is partly in a glass of water, it looks as if it ______. A. breaks B. has broken C. were broken D. had been broken

单选题 Questions 14—16 are based on the following monologue about Marco Polo's life as a traveller.

单选题Internet advertising is booming. The industry has gone from $ 9.6 billion in revenue in 2001 to $ 27 billion this year, according to Piper J affray, an investment bank. And it is still early days. The internet accounts for only 5% of total spending on advertising, but that figure is expected to reach at least 20% in the next few years. The single largest category within this flourishing industry, accounting for nearly half of all spending, is "pay-per-click' advertising, which is used by firms both large and small to promote their wares. It works like this. Advertisers bid on keywords that they believe potential customers will be interested in. This enables Internet firms such as Google, the market leader, and Yahoo!, its smaller rival, to display advertisements alongside the results of Internet searches. Somebody searching for a particular type of wine, for example, might see advertisements from wine merchants. Google, Yahoo! and other firms also place ads on affiliates' websites--so wine merchants' advertisements might also appear on a wine-appreciation site. The advertiser pays only when a consumer clicks on an ad; the owner of the website where the ad was displayed then receives a small commission. The benefits of the pay-per-click approach over traditional advertising are obvious. Since advertisers pay only to reach the small subset who actually respond to an advertisement, the quality of the leads generated is very high, and advertisers are prepared to pay accordingly. The price per click varies from $ 0.10 to as much as $ 30, depending on the keyword, though the average is around $ 0.50. But as pay-per-click advertising has grown into a huge industry, concern has mounted over so-called "click fraud"--bogus clicks that do not come from genuinely interested customers. It takes two main forms. If you click repeatedly on the advertisements on your own website, or get other people or machines to do so on your behalf, you can generate a stream of bogus commissions. Click fraud can also be used by one company against another: clicking on a rival firm's advertisements can saddle it with a huge bill. Bogus clicks are thought to account for around 10% of all click traffic, though nobody knows for sure. Bill Gross, the entrepreneur who pioneered the pay-per-click model back in 1998, was aware of the problem even then. He installed a three-layered defence system: a filter to weed out clicks from known fraudsters at the outset, statisticians and software to spot suspicious click patterns, and co-operation with advertisers to enable them to analyse the leads generated and sound the alarm if necessary. But generally the industry adopted a rather cavalier attitude to click fraud. Eric Schmidt, the boss of Google, caused uproar a few months ago when he seemed to suggest that the "perfect economic solution" to click fraud was to "let it happen". He was responding to a theoretical question during a debate at Stanford University, but his response reinforced the perception that Google had higher priorities than addressing the problem. Such a flippant attitude has not gone down well with advertisers, who are up in arms about the problem. Some have even resorted to legal action. Google reached a settlement in March with Lane's Gifts and Collectibles, a gift shop based in Arkansas, and agreed to offer refunds to advertisers who claim they have been charged for bogus clicks. Such refunds are capped at $ 90m, however, so many observers think Google got off lightly. And in June Yahoo! promised to intensify its efforts to fight click fraud as part of a settlement with CheckMate, a fraud-detection firm. As well as offering refunds for clicks determined to be fraudulent, Yahoo! agreed to appoint a "traffic-quality advocate" to voice advertisers' concerns within the company. In the wake of these legal challenges, Google and Yahoo! recently joined a working group at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), which will establish standards for pay-per-click advertising, including the introduction of industry-funded auditing and certification, by the middle of 2009. "I believe Google and Yahoo! are now taking the issue very seriously," says David Jones, chief executive of Euro RSCG, an advertising company. But Rishad Tobaccowala, head of innovation at Publicis, one of the world's biggest advertising groups, says it is too early to say whether the measures being taken against click fraud will be Enough to satisfy advertisers.

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单选题According to the passage, it was believed that Chechen separatists was to be blamed for the horror events because______.

单选题As time goes on, how to do good critical thinking is increasingly marginalized or even left out. of the modem educational process. Critical thinking involves a mental process that is highly disciplined and therefore requires most practitioners to be trained in it. This training is best begun in the formative years, and it is best taught by energetic, motivated teachers who continually challenge, and debate, and demand increasingly rigorous thinking of their young students. However, as in all things, it is never too late to begin. Critical thinking is the process of evaluating and analyzing a proposition or an argument that has been offered to the thinker, for criticism, as being true. There follows a process of reasoning, evaluation of the offered evidence, and reflection, always begun from a point of skepticism. A proper critique of the offered argument involves more than direct observation. Besides reasoning, cognition and experience, proper critical thinking also involves intellectual values that go beyond the specific argument or object being critically examined. These intellectual values involve objective truth. Objective truth is that truth which comes from somewhere outside of our minds. Subjective truth is that truth which comes from within us; that which we feel, or sense, or believe to be true. Objective truth stands alone, and does not depend upon us to remain true; it's completely independent of the mind of man. No matter what we think about it, how we think about it, or even if we think about it, objective truth remains objective truth, unchanged, and impervious. Objective truth must always be taken into consideration in order to do good critical thinking. There are different forms of objective truth, ranging from solid to ephemeral. In the "hard science" fields, such as mathematics, physics and chemistry, the most recognized objective truths involve proven mathematical formulae, or recognized scientific laws, or widely recognized and as yet unrefuted scientific theories. These "hard" objective truths are taken by the critical thinker to be axioms or givens, and thus, useful tools to help in the critical thinking process. The process thereby builds upon a foundation of previously proven truth. No matter how technically advanced we ever become, we are all, individually and collectively, called to think about things. It is our human nature.

单选题Many foreigners who have not visited Britain call all the inhabitants English, for they are used to thinking of the British Isles as England. (21) , the British Isles contain a variety of peoples, and only the people of England call themselves English. The others (22) to themselves as Welsh, Scottish, or Irish, (23) the ease may be; they are often slightly annoyed (24) being classified as "English". Even in England there are many (25) in regional character and speech. The chief (26) is between southern England and northern England. South of a (27) going from Bristol to London, people speak the type of English usually learnt by foreign students, (28) there are local variations. Further north regional speech is usually " (29) " than that of southern Britain. Northerners are (30) to claim that they work harder than Southerners, and are more (31) . They are open-hearted and hospitable; foreigners often find that they make friends with them (32) . Northerners generally have hearty (33) . the visitor to Lancashire or Yorkshire, for instance, may look forward to receiving generous (34) at meal times. In accent and character the people of the Midlands (35) a gradual change from southern to the northern type of Englishman. In Scotland the sound (36) by the letter "R" is generally a strong sound, and "R' often pronounced in words in which it would be (37) in southern English. The Scots said to be a serious, cautious, thrifty people, (38) inventive and somewhat mystical. the Celtic peoples of Britain (the Welsh, the Irish, the Scots) are frequently (39) being more "fiery" than the English. They are (40) a race that is quite distinct from English.

单选题In 1840, the signing of ______ made New Zealand a British colony. [A] the Treaty of Waitangi [B] the New Zealand Constitution Act [C] the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act [D] the ANZUS Treaty

单选题 Questions 17—20 are based on the following dialogue.

单选题 Questions 17—20 are based on the following news story. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17—20.

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