单选题Which of the following statements is NOT true about the Commission to Assess The Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States?______

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Horse thieves, cattle rustlers, bank robbers, train and stagecoach robbers, highwaymen, murderers, these were but some of the criminals who infested the American frontier during the 19th century. In English legend Robin Hood can be considered a bandit, but the outlaws of the Old West were far more violent men and women without any scruples when it came to taking property or life. The careers of many outlaws have been glamorized through fictional accounts of their deeds and their exploits have been the basis for many movie scripts. The era of the American outlaw lasted about 100 years roughly from 1800 to 1900．There had been lawlessness during the Colonial Era. Frontiers have always attracted misfits, failures and renegades who hope to profit by being beyond the reach of government. In the years just before the Revolutionary War, gangs of horse thieves in the back country of South Carolina were broken up by organized bands of farmers called regulators. As frontier settlement expanded rapidly after the Revolution, more opportunities for criminals opened, two common types of bandits were highwaymen and river pirates. Highwaymen accosted people who traveled on foot or horseback, while river pirates preyed upon the boat traffic on the Ohio, Mississippi, and other rivers. Some bandits engaged in both. Criminals in the West gathered momentum with the gold rushes to California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and other states. Stagecoaches and trains carrying gold and money became prime targets for bands of outlaws. Bank robberies emerged after the California Gold Rush of 1849 and as prosperity found its way to frontier towns. The first stage robbery was recorded in 1851, and the first train robbery happened in 1866. After the Civil War there was the growth of the cattle kingdom in Texas and neighboring states. Cattle rustling and horse theft turned into significant operations. Range wars bred a great amount of violence. Cattlemen fought over land and water rights, and they fought with great bitterness against sheep farmers. In Texas, range wars were fought over the use of barbed wire to fence grazing land. By the end of the 19th century, the frontier era was past. Major crime shifted to the cities. Ethnic gangs had existed in the slums for decades, preying mostly on their fellow immigrants. With the arrival of Prohibition in the 1920s, an impetus was given to the formation of organized crime as it exists today.

单选题"It is an evil influence on the youth of our country." A politician condemning video gaming? Actually, a clergyman denouncing rock and roll 50 years ago. But the sentiment could just as easily have been voiced by Hillary Clinton in the past few weeks, as she blamed video games for "a silent epidemic of media desensitisation" and "stealing the innocence of our children". The gaming furore centers on "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas", a popular and notoriously violent cops and robbers game that turned out to contain hidden sex scenes that could be unlocked using a patch downloaded from the Internet. The resulting outcry (mostly from Democratic politicians playing to the centre) caused the game' s rating in America to be changed from "mature", which means you have to be 17 to buy it, to "adults only", which means you have to be 18, but also means that big retailers such as Wal-Mart will not stock it. As a result the game has been banned in Australia; and, this autumn, America's Federal Trade Commission will investigate the complaints. That will give gaming's opponents an opportunity to vent their wrath on the industry. Skepticism of new media is a tradition with deep roots, going back at least as far as Socrates objections to written texts, outlined in Plato's Phaedrus. Socrates worried that relying on written texts, rather than the oral tradition, would "create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves." ( He also objected that a written version of a speech was no substitute for the ability to interrogate the speaker, since, when questioned, the text "always gives one unvarying answer". His objection, in short, was that books were not interactive. Perhaps Socrates would have thought more highly of video games. ) Novels were once considered too low-brow for university literature courses, but eventually the disapproving professors retired. Waltz music and dancing were condemned in the 19th century; all that twirling was thought to be "intoxicating" and "depraved", and the music was outlawed in some places. Today it is hard to imagine what the fuss was about. And rock and roll was thought to encourage violence, promiscuity and satanism but today even grannies buy Coldplay albums.

单选题What does the word education in the first paragraph most probably mean?

单选题According to the text, Amusing Ourselves to Death is a book

单选题The chances of the physical sciences being subject to great changes are the biggest because ______.

单选题The word "idiot" (Line 6, Par

单选题 All men are created equal, or so reckoned Thomas Jefferson as he drafted America's Declaration of Independence in 1776. Subsequent Americans have had reason to question the founding father. So too have people in the land from which the new nation gained its freedom. America and Britain are among the most unequal countries in the rich world and Britain, at any rate, is more unequal now than it was a generation ago. That is the conclusion of a study commissioned by Harriet Harman, the equalities minister. Class and money have always strongly affected how people do in life in Britain, with well-heeled fan, lies breeding affluent children just as the offspring of the desperately poor tend to remain poor. All that was supposed to have ceased at the end of the Second World War, with the birth of a welfare state designed to meet basic needs and promote social mobility. But despite devoting much thought and more money to improving the lot of the poor, governments have failed to boost those at the bottom of the pile as much as those at the top have boosted themselves. The new study, led by John Hills of the London School of Economics, found, for example, that the richest tenth of households received income more than four tinges that of the poorest tenth; just a generation ago, it was three times as much. Internationally, only six of the 30 members of the OECD, a club of mainly rich countries, show greater inequality. Wealth is distributed far more unequally than income, with the richest tenth in Britain holding assets worth almost 100 times those of the poorest. Although the study found that some of the widest gaps between social groups have diminished over time, deep-seated differences between haves and have-nots persist, ruining the life chances of the less fortunate. Politicians of all stripes talk up equality of opportunity, arguing that it makes for a fairer and more mobile society, and a more prosperous one. The goal of greater equality of outcomes also has its boosters. In "The Spirit Level", epidemic disease experts Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson claim that more equal societies are healthier than unequal ones, as well as happier. Not all agree, but in a country where the National Health Service accounts for almost a fifth of public spending, it is worth considering. The difficulty arises in putting these notions into practice, through severe tax increases for the middleclass and wealthy, or expanding government intervention. These have not recently been votewinning propositions, but the recession that Britain is now limping away from may have changed things.

单选题After the terrorist attacks in America last September, terrorist risk became the pariah of perils. The airline industry was most directly affected by the attacks, and it was the first to find that no one wanted to insure terrorist risk. Insurance companies immediately increased premiums and cut cover for airlines' third-party terror and war liabilities to $ 50m per airline, per "event". Under pressure from airlines, the American government and the members of the European Union agreed to become insurers of last resort for airlines' war and terrorist liabilities, for a limited period. These government guarantees are due to expire at the end of the month. The American government has already agreed to extend its guarantee for another 60 days. The EU's transport ministers are meeting next week in Brussels to decide what to do. Insurers and reinsurers are keen for the commercial market to resume the provision of all airline insurance as soon as possible. No wonder: The premiums for such cover have inevitably increased considerably. However, in the case of terrorism, and especially of terrorism in the skies, a number of special factors arise. Some are purely practical: a disaster as sudden and unforeseen as the attacks on the World Trade Center has had destructive effects on the insurance industry. The maximum cover for third-party terrorist risk available in the primary aviation market is now $ 50m, and that is not nearly enough cover risks that are perceived to be much higher since September 11th. Even if the market could offer sufficient cover, another catastrophe on such a scale would be more than the market could cope with. In addition, a rare and devastating risk of a political nature is arguably one that it is right for governments to cover, at least in part. In the wake of attacks by Irish terrorists the British government has recognized this point by agreeing to back a mutual fund to cover risks to property from terrorist attack. In the case of the airlines, the appropriate answer is some form of mutual scheme with government backing. In fact, under the code-name "Equitime", representatives of airlines, insurers and the American government are setting up an insurance vehicle to be financed by airlines and reinsured by the government. Governments would guarantee the fund's excess. risk, but their role would diminish as the fund grew. Setting something up will take time. So, to bridge the gap, governments will have to remain insurer of last resort for airlines' war and terrorist risk for some time to come.

单选题The recovery of demand for microchips is______.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} In 2007 a French food company wanted to buy a family-owned firm in India. The patriarch was 72, and the French firm wanted to send someone of similar experience to talk to him. But because of its youthful corporate culture-most people are hustled out of the door in their mid 40s-it had no one to send. In the end, through Experconnect, an employment agency in Paris which places retired people, it found a 58-year-old former head of a European consumer-goods firm, and sent him out to Mumbai. France has a poor record when it comes to keeping older people in the workforce. The retirement age is 60, not 65 as in most developed countries. In 2005 only 37.8% of people aged 55-64 had jobs, versus 56.8% in Britain and 44.9% in Germany. The main reason is that in the 1980s, when there was high unemployment, the government promoted early retirement. That entrenched the idea that older workers were less productive, says Caroline Young, Experconnect's founder. Now companies are worried about losing their most skilled workers, especially as the baby boom generation nears retirement. Areva, a nuclear-power group, recently launched a scheme to address the needs of older employees, and plans to use about 100 retired people a year through Experconnect. Because nuclear power was unpopular for decades, Areva stopped training engineers, so that much of its expertise lies with its oldest staff. Now it is taking much more interest in them. "We have to bring about a revolution in opinion," says Jean Cassingena, its human-resources strategist. Unlike other recruitment agencies, Experconnect keeps its workers on its own books, so they can carry on drawing their pensions. They tend to work part-time on one-off projects. Engineers and people with high levels of technical skill are most in demand in France, says Ms Young, as younger people increasingly choose to go into fields such as marketing. Thales, a defence and aerospace firm, is using a former radar expert, for instance, and Louis Berger France, an engineering firm, often uses retired engineers to manage big infrastructure projects. Softer industries also make use of Experconnect. Danone, a food firm, hires people for one-off management roles. "Older people have seen it all and they are level-headed," says Thomas Kunz, its head of beverages. The beauty industry is short of toxicologists to determine whether new lotions are safe, and one firm has just taken on a 75-year-old. Two famous French luxury-goods companies plan to use retired workers in their handbag divisions. One wants to safeguard its knowledge of fine leathers and sewing; the other wants to apply expertise from the aerospace industry to make new kinds of materials for handbags. Despite an impressive handful of high-profile clients, Experconnect has found it difficult to convince French companies that older workers can be valuable. It has 2,700 retired people on its books, and has so far placed just 50 of them on "missions". Old prejudices, as they say, die hard.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Freedom is one of the most difficult things to define, yet wars are fought to secure it. Pres. George W. Bush wants freedom for the entire world, but the question remains whether some might not want it and, if they do, cannot handle it. Many desire to be "free of their freedom," for the latter requires assuming responsibility for one's actions. It is easier to have others choose for us. Freedom has many meanings arid applications. There is political freedom, involving the ability to choose one's own form of government, hold elections, etc. Professors are concerned with academic freedom, namely to teach and publish in accord with their scholarly findings. These, though, are secondary meanings and presumably are grounded in something fundamental to the nature of humans. This is called moral freedom—but there's the rub of it. Is such freedom an illusion? One cannot ignore Sigmund Freud's massive unconscious as a factor in why we act the way we do. Moreover, psychological literature suggests" obsessive-compulsive" acts as more commonplace than we realize. Alcoholics and drug addicts are told they cannot help themselves; instead, they need others to help them break their habit. Let's face it, we seem to be evolving into a "no fault" society in which freedom is an empty term. It certainly is easy to rationalize that this or that action really was not free, as one can say we are the product of our genes, passions, and culture. But Jean-Paul Sartre disagreed that freedom is an illusion, claiming instead that it is the very essence of man. Freedom is a human's distinguishing mark. Essentially, a human is no-thing, and therein lies his freedom. Although freedom may not be an illusion, in many cases it is illusory. Is it true to say piously (虔诚地) that the cure for any ills in democracy is more democracy, i.e. freedom? The Patriot Act certainly raises many hackles as an infringement (侵犯) on freedom; trading civil liberties for security—part of a seemingly continuing trend in society. How strong is the argument that if we are not free, then laws and prohibitions make no sense? Does knowledge, a seemingly necessary component involved in free acts, restrict or enlarge our freedom? The Socratic position is that, if one really knew what was right, one would do what was right. Moslems maintain that it is the "will of Allah" that governs all things and we only can hope to conform to it. This is not entirely foreign to Christian theology. The problem of predestination is a formidable one challenging freedom, maintaining as it does that, even before creation. Like most dilemmas posed by philosophy, perhaps it should be taken with reserve: "All arguments," concluded 19th-century philosopher and psychologist William James, "are against freedom; all experience is for it."

单选题The medium for integrating media is______.