单选题Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. We do not know who first set a broken leg, or launched a seaworthy boat, or calculated the length of the year, or manured a field; but we know all about the killers and destroyers. People think a great deal of them, so much so that on all the highest pillars in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a general or a soldier. And I think most people believe that the greatest countries are those that have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them as conquerors. It is just possible they are, but they are not the most civilized. Animals fight; so do savages; hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Even being good at getting other people to fight for you and telling them how to do it most efficiently—this, after all, is what conquerors and generals have done—is not being civilized. People fight to settle quarrels.' Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their disputes other than by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the other side, and then saying that that side which has killed most has worn And not only has won, but, because it has won, has been in the right. For that is what going to war means; it means saying that might is right. That is what the story of mankind has on the whole been like. Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars in history, in which millions of people were killed or mutilated. And while today it is true that people do not fight and kill each other in the streets—while, that is to say, we have got to the stage of keeping the rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life—nations and countries have not learnt to do this yet, and still behave like savages. But we must not expect too much. After all, the race of men has only just started. From the point of view of evolution, human beings are very young children indeed, babies, in fact, of a few months old. Scientists reckon that there has been life of some sort on the earth in the form of jellyfish and that kind of creature for about twelve hundred million years; but there have been men for only one million years, and there have been civilized men for about eight thousand years at the outside. These figures are difficult to grasp; so let us scale them down. Suppose that we reckon the whole past of living creatures on the earth as one hundred years; then the whole past of man works out at about one month, and during that month there have been civilizations for between seven and eight hours. So you see there has been little time to learn in, but there will be oceans of time in which to learn better. Taking man's civilized past at about seven or eight hours, we may estimate his future, that is to say, the whole period between now and when the sun grows too cold to maintain life any longer on the earth, at about one hundred thousand years. Thus mankind is only at the beginning of its civilized life, and as I say, we must not expect too much. The past of man has been on the whole a pretty beastly business, a business of fighting and bullying and gorging and grabbing and hurting. We must not expect even civilized peoples not to have done these things. All we can ask is that they will sometimes have done something else.

单选题It isn't said in the passage that L-GG can be used to ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} New claims for unemployment insurance dipped last week, suggesting that companies are laying off fewer workers as the budding economic recovery unfolds. The Labor Department reported on Thursday that for the work week ending April 27, new claims for jobless benefits went down by a seasonally adjusted 10,000 to 418,000, the lowest level since March 23．In another report, orders to U. S. factories rose for the fourth straight month, a solid 0.4 percent rise in March. The figure was largely boosted by stronger demand for unendurable goods, such as food, clothes, paper products and chemicals. Total unendurable goods were up 1.6 percent in March, the biggest increase in two years. Orders also rose for some manufactured goods, including metals, construction machinery, household appliances and defense equipment. The report reinforces the view that the nation's manufacturers-which sharply cut production and saw hundreds of thousands of jobs evaporate during the recession-are on the comeback trail. Stocks were rising again on Thursday. In the first half-four of trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 43 points and the Nasdaq index was up 14 points. In the jobless-claims report, even with the decline, a government analyst said, the level was inflated as a result of a technical fluke. The distortion is coming from a requirement that laid-off workers seeking to take advantage of a federal extension for benefits must summit new claims. Congress recently passed legislation signed into law by President Bush that provided a 13-week extension of jobless benefits. The fluck has clouded the layoffs picture for several weeks. But the government analyst said the refilling requirement is having much less of an effect on the claims numbers than in previous weeks. The more stable four-week moving average of new claims, which smoothes out weekly fluctuation, also fell last week to 435750, the lowest level since the beginning of April. But the number of workers continuing to receive unemployment benefits rose to 3.8 million for the work week ending April 20, evidence that people who are out of work are having trouble finding new jobs. Economists predict that job growth won't be strong enough in the coming months to prevent the nation's unemployment rate-now at 5.7 percent-from rising. Many economists are forecasting a rise in April's jobless rate to 5.8 percent and estimating that businesses added around 55,000 jobs during the month. The government will release the April employment report on Friday. Even as the economy bounces back from recession, some economists expect the jobless rate will peak to just over 6 percent by June. That is because companies will be reluctant to quickly hire back laid-off workers until they are assured the recovery is here to stay. Given the fledging rebound, many economists expect the Federal Reserve to leave short-term interest rates-now at 40-year lows-unchanged when it meets on May 7．The Fed adjusted interest rates 11 times in a row last year to rescue the economy from recession, which began in May 2001.

单选题The most vicious lawyers are those who

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} For the first time, George Bush has acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons around the world, where key terrorist suspects—100 in all, officials say--have been interrogated with "an alternative set of procedures". Fourteen of the suspects, including the alleged mastermind of the September 11th attacks, were transferred on Monday to the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where some will face trial for war crimes before special military commissions. Many of these men--as Mr. Bush confirmed in a televised speech at the White House on September 6th--are al-Qaeda operatives or Taliban fighters who had sought to withhold information that could "save American lives". "In these cases, it has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held secretly (and) questioned by experts," the president said. He declined to say where they had been held or why they had not simply been sent straight to Guantanamo, as some 770 other suspected terrorists have been. Mr. Bush also refused to reveal what interrogation methods had been used, saying only that, though "tough", they had been "safe and lawful and necessary". Many believe that the main purpose of the CIA's prisons was to hide from prying eyes the torture and other cruel or degrading treatment used to extract information from prisoners. But Mr. Bush insisted that America did not torture: "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorised it and I will not authorise it." The pentagon this week issued its long-awaited new Army Field Manual, forbidding all forms of torture and degrading treatment of prisoners by army personnel--though not the CIA. For the first time, it specifically bans forced nakedness, hooding, the Use of dogs, sexual humiliation and "waterboarding" (simulated drowning)--all practices that have been used at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. So why did the president decide now to reveal the CIA's secret programme? Partly, he confessed; because of the Supreme Court's recent ruling that minimum protections under the Geneva Conventions applied to all military prisoners, no matter where they were. This has put American agents at risk of prosecution for war crimes. Mr. Bush has now asked Congress to ban suspected terrorists from suing American personnel in federal courts.

单选题What is the core of Adam Smith’s economic philosophy?

单选题In the first two paragraphs, the author suggests

单选题In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a dentist to transplant nine teeth into his jaw—having extracted them from the mouths of his slaves. That"s a far different image from the cherry-tree-chopping George most people remember from their history books. But recently, many historians have begun to focus on the roles slavery played in the lives of the founding generation. They have been spurred in part by DNA evidence made available in 1998, which almost certainly proved Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one child with his slave Sally Hemings. And only over the past 30 years have scholars examined history from the bottom up. Works of several historians reveal the moral compromises made by the nation"s early leaders and the fragile nature of the country"s infancy. More significantly, they argue that many of the Founding Fathers knew slavery was wrong—and yet most did little to fight it. More than anything, the historians say, the founders were hampered by the culture of their time. While Washington and Jefferson privately expressed distaste for slavery, they also understood that it was part of the political and economic bedrock of the country they helped to create. For one thing, the South could not afford to part with its slaves. Owning slaves was "like having a large bank account," says Wiencek, author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. The southern states would not have signed the Constitution without protections for the "peculiar institution," including a clause that counted a slave as three fifths of a man for purposes of congressional representation. And the statesmen"s political lives depended on slavery. The three-fifths formula handed Jefferson his narrow victory in the presidential election of 1800 by inflating the votes of the southern states in the Electoral College. Once in office, Jefferson extended slavery with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803; the new land was carved into 13 states, including three slave states. Still, Jefferson freed Hemings"s children—though not Hemings herself or his approximately 150 other slaves. Washington, who had begun to believe that all men were created equal after observing the bravery of the black soldiers during the Revolutionary War, overcame the strong opposition of his relatives to grant his slaves their freedom in his will. Only a decade earlier, such an act would have required legislative approval in Virginia.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} "Popular art" has a number of meanings, impossible to define with any precision, which range from folklore to junk. The poles are clear enough, but the middle tends to blur. The Hollywood Western of the 1930's for example, has elements of folklore, but is closer to junk than to high art or folk art. There can be great trash, just as there is bad high art. The musicals of George Gershwin are great popular art, never aspiring to high art. Schubert and Brahms, however, used elements of popular music--folk themes--in works clearly intended as high art. The case of Verdi is a different one: he took a popular genre-bourgeois melodrama set to music (an accurate definition of nineteenth-century opera) and, without altering its fundamental nature, transmuted it into high art. This remains one of the greatest achievements in music, and one that cannot be fully appreciated without recognizing the essential trashiness of the genre. As an example of such a transmutation, consider what Verdi made of the typical political elements of nineteenth-century opera. Generally in the plots of these operas, a hero or heroine--usually portrayed only as an individual, unfettered by class--is caught between the immoral corruption of the aristocracy and the doctrinaire rigidity or secret greed of the leaders of the proletariat. Verdi transforms this naive and unlikely formulation with music of extraordinary energy and rhythmic vitality, music more subtle than it seems at first hearing. There are scenes and arias that still sound like calls to arms and were clearly understood as such when they were first performed. Such pieces lend an immediacy to the otherwise veiled political message of these operas and call up feelings beyond those of the opera itself. Or consider Verdi's treatment of character. Before Verdi, there were rarely any characters at all in musical drama, only a series of situations which allowed the singers to express a series of emotional states. Any attempt to find coherent psychological portrayal in these operas is misplaced ingenuity. The only coherence was the singer's vocal technique: when the cast changed, new arias were almost always substituted, generally adapted from other operas. Verdi's characters, on the other hand, have genuine consistency and integrity. Even if, in many casals, the consistency is that of pasteboard melodrama, the integrity of the character is achieved through the music: once he had become established. Verdi did not rewrite his music for differenf singers or countenance alterations or substitutions of somebody else's arias in one of his operas, as every eighteenth-century composer had done. When he revised an opera, it was only for dramatic economy and effectiveness.

单选题What does the sentence "The air helps purify the water" illustrate?

单选题Successful businesses tend to continue implementing the ideas that made them successful. But in a rapidly changing world, ideas often become obsolete overnight. What worked in the past won't necessarily work in the future. In order to thrive in the future, you must constantly create new ideas for every aspect of your business. In fact, you must continually generate new ideas just to keep your head above water. Businesses that aren't creative about their future may not survive. Although Bill Gates is the richest, most successful man on the planet, he did not anticipate the Internet. Now he's scrambling to catch up. If Bill Gates can miss a major aspect of his industry, it can happen to you in your industry. Your business needs to continually innovate and create its future. Gates is now constantly worried about the future of Microsoft. Here's what he said in a recent interview in U. S. News World Report: "Will we be replaced tomorrow? No. In a very short time frame, Microsoft is an incredibly strong company. But when you look to the two-to three-year time frame, I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that any technology company has a guaranteed position. Not Intel, not Microsoft, not Compaq, not Dell, take any of your favorites. And that's totally honest." You may remember that in 1985 the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls were the beat-selling toy on the market But after Coleco Industries introduced their sensational line of dolls they became complacent and didn't create any new toys worth mentioning. As a result, Coleco went bankrupt in 1988. The most successful businesses survive in the long term because they constantly reassess their situations and reinvent themselves accordingly. The 3M Company has a 15% rule: Employees are encouraged to spend 15% of their time developing new ideas on any project they desire. It's no surprise, then, that 3M has been around since 1902. Most businesses are not willing to tear apart last year's model of success and build a new one. Here's a familiar analogy to explain why they are lulled into complacency. Imagine that your business is like a pet of lobsters. To cook lobsters, you put them into a pot of warm water and gradually turn up the heat. The lobsters don't realize they're being cooked because the process is se gradual. As a result, they become complacent and die without a struggle. However, if you throw a lobster into the pot when the water is boiling, it will desperately try to escape. This lobster is not lulled by a slowly changing environment. It realizes instantly that it's in a bad environment and takes immediate action to change its status.