单选题Man's puzzlement and preoccupation with time both derive ultimately from his unique relationship to it. All animals exist in time and are changed by it; only man can control it. Like Proust, the French author whose experiences became his literary capital, man can recapture the past. He can also summon up things to come, displaying imagination and foresight alone with memory. It really can be argued, that memory and foresightedness are the essence of intelligence: that man's ability to manipulate time, to employ both past and future as guides to present action, is what makes him human. To be sure, many animals can react to time after a fashion A rat can learn to press a lever that will, after a delay of some 25 seconds, reward it with a bit of food. But if the delay stretches beyond 30 seconds, the animal is stumped. It can no longer associate the reward so "far" in the future with the present lever-pressing. Monkeys, more smart than rats, are better able to deal with time. If one of them is allowed to see food being hidden under one of two cups, it can pick out the right cup even after 90 seconds have passed. But after that time interval, the monkey's hunt for the food is no Better than chance predicts. With the apes, man's nearest cousins, "time sense" takes a big step forward. Even under laboratory conditions, quite different from those they encounter in the wild, apes somemnes show remarkable ability to manipulate the present to obtain a future goal. A chimpanzee, for example, can learn to stack two boxes, one on the other, as a platform from which it can reach a hanging banana. Chimpanzees, indeed, carry their ability to deal with the future to the threshold of human capacity: they can make tools. And it is by the making of tools— physical tools as crude as a stone chopper, mental tools as subtle as a mathematical equation—that man characteristically prepares for future contingencies. Chimpanzees in the wild have been seen to strip a twig of its leaves to make a probe for extracting termites from their hole. Significantly, however, the ape does not make his tool before setting out on a termite hunt, but only when it actually sees the insects or their nest. Here, as with the banana and the crates, the ape can cope only with a future that is immediate and visible — and thus halfway into the present

单选题This passage was most probably written ______.

单选题The word "exalted" in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to______.

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单选题{{B}}Passage 1{{/B}} In a breath-taking turn of events, Asia's economies have gone from miracle to meltdown in a matter of weeks. Many forecasters who recently predicted GDP growth of 6% in South Korea and southeast Asia for 1998 are suddenly projecting zero or even negative growth. In tine often short-sighted world of international finance, a new conventional wisdom is quickly forming: that inept policy-making is dragging down Asian economies, and that only the tough austerity medicine of the International Monetary Fund, plus a good stiff recession, will bring the region's economies back to track. In recent years, foreign and domestic investors in East Asia got a touch of what U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has famously termed irrational exuberance. Spurred by years of high economic growth in Asia, these investors poured billions of dollars of loans into the region, financing many worthwhile investments but also an unsustainable real estate boom. This over-investment need not have caused a crisis. A healthy reaction would involve a gradual cutback in foreign lending, a gradual weakening of Asia's overvalued currencies and gradual shift of investments from over-inflated property sectors back to longterm export-oriented projects. Most short-term booms are brought down to earth without extreme crisis, and such an adjustment was the most likely scenario until the summer in 1997. In the event, Asia experienced a financial meltdown. A gradual withdrawal of funds from Thailand suddenly became a stampede. Thailand's government dallied in responding to the overheating long after it had become apparent, and as a result squandered Thailand's foreign exchange reserves in a misguided attempt to defend the overvalued bat. The stampede came when foreign creditors realized that Thailand had more short-term foreign debts than the remaining short-term foreign reserves. A "rational" panic began. Each investor started to dump assets simply to get out of Thailand ahead of other investors. The chain reaction of nervous withdrawals led to a meltdown that now includes most of East Asia. Confidence has been so drained that Asia's positive "fundamentals"--historically high rates of growth, savings and exports--are being overlooked. Economies rely on confidence, and what they most need to fear is, indeed, fear itself.

单选题American Jazz Jazz is a gift to the world from the American blacks. It is rooted in the music that the black slaves sang as they picked cotton in Alabama, or heaped up the earth on the levees along the Mississippi River. This strange rhythmic chanting, with its African harmonies, was encouraged by the white masters, who knew that it helped to get the work done. In the 1790s the Methodists, a Protestant sect, began to convert the slaves to Christianity, so that during the 19th century most of the blacks became Protestants of one denomination or another. Led by their own black ministers, they worshipped in their own black churches—or out in the open air. Music played an essential part in the service. Before long they had Africanized the music of the Christian hymnbooks. It was the feelings of the slaves in 1865 which finally brought black musicians into the world of entertainment, making music a way of earning a living. In the great port of New Orleans, bands of self-taught black trumpeters, clarinetists, drummers, pianists, found work of another kind. New Orleans was a colorful, pleasure-loving, cosmopolitan city, and a flourishing "red light" district had grown up there. This improvised music, with its exciting syncopated rhythms, its "African" harmonies, its expression of emotion and mood, became known as jazz. In 1917 the "red light" district of New Orleans was shut down. The USA had entered World War Ⅰ and the US Navy was afraid of the effect of the "houses" might have on its sailors. Black musicians lost their jobs. But not for long! Many of them left New Orleans—and jazz exploded into the world outside. Many went north up the Mississippi to Chicago, where a large black population was already living on the South side. Jazz musicians thrived in the "speakeasies". Some of the most famous jazz players began their careers in Chicago. The trumpeters, Joe "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong, both came from New Orleans and matured in Chicago. Louis Armstrong did more to promote jazz than any other single musician. Jazz later reached Broadway, where it became big business. In the 1920s jazz became a craze. After the honors and tensions of World War Ⅰ, people wanted to have fun. The strong, exciting rhythms of jazz set everyone dancing. White dance bands played loud and feverish music in the dance halls and fashionable restaurants. But soon this ceased to be true jazz; it was jazz adapted to suit the needs of the dances. But the original jazz has never died, and there is a great interest in it today. There are jazz concerts and jazz festivals all over the world. In New Orleans, black bands, white bands and mixed bands still play in the jazz halls of the old quarter. New Orleans is devoted to the preservation of jazz. One of the favorite haunts of jazz lovers in New Orleans is called Preservation Hall, a scruffy little room whose walls are decorated with faded prints and photos of the great players of the past.

单选题What does the saying "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" really mean?

单选题During the Second World War, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill met at ______. A. Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam B. Teheran and Yalta C. Yalta, Potsdam and Berlin D. Teheran and Potsdam

单选题 {{I}} Questions 14--16 are based on the following dialogue. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14--16.{{/I}}

单选题I think this problem is different ______ that one. A. to B. for C. from

单选题It can be inferred that Americans being approached too closely by Middle Easterners would most probably______.

单选题What do we learn from the sentence "it is too powerful a weapon to be allowed to flourish in totalitarian regimes?"

单选题H. J. Rand's prediction about the year 2000 shows that ______.

单选题 Questions 14 ～ 16 are based on the following talk on library rules. You now have 15 seconds to rend Questions 14 ～ 16.

单选题 Questions 17-20 are based on the following passage. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17-20.