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单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}}
"Making money is a dirty game," says
the Institute of Economic Affairs. summing up the attitude of British novelists
towards business. The IEA. a free market think-tank, has just published a
collection of essays (The Representation of Business in English Literature) by
five academics chronicling the hostility of the country's men and women of
letters to the sordid business of making money. The implication is that
Britain's economic performance Is retarded by an anti-industrial
culture. Rather than blaming rebellious workers and incompetent
managers for Britain's economic worries. then, we can put George Orwell and
Martin Amis in the dock instead. From Dickens's Scrooge to Amis's John Self in
his 1980s novel Money, novelists have conjured up a rogue's gallery of mean.
greedy, amoral money-men that has alienated their impressionable readers from
the noble pursuit of capitalism. The argument has been well made
before, most famously in 1981 by Martin Wiener. an American academic, in his
English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit. Lady Thatcher was an
admirer of Mr. Wiener's. and she led a crusade to revive the "entrepreneurial
culture" which the liberal elite had allegedly trampled underfoot. The present
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, sounds as though he agrees with her.
At a recent speech to the Confederation of British Industry, he declared that it
should be the duty of every teacher in the country to "communicate the virtues
of business and enterprise". Certainly, most novelists are
hostile to capitalism, but this refrain risks scapegoating writers for failings
for which they are not to blame. Britain's culture is no more anti-business than
that of other countries. The Romantic Movement. which started as a reaction
against the industrial revolution of the 21st century, was born and flourished
in Germany, but has not stopped the Germans from being Europe's most successful
entreprcneurs and industrialists. Even the Americans are guilty
of blackening business's name. SMERSH and SPECTRE went our with the cold war,
James Bond now takes on international media magnates rather than Rosa Kleb. His
films such as Erin Brockovich have pitched downtrodden, moral heroes against the
evil of faceless corporatism. Yet none of this seems to have dented America's
lust for free enterprise. The irony is that the novel flourished
as an art form only after, and as a result of. the creation of the new
commercial classes of Victorian England, just as the modem Hollywood film can
exist only in an era of mass consumerism. Perhaps the moral is that capitalist
societies consume literature and film to let off steam rather than to change the
world.
单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following four
texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your
answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. {{B}}Text 1{{/B}}
A factory that makes uranium fuel for
nuclear reactors had a spill so bad it kept the plant closed for seven months
last year and became one of only three events in all of 2006 serious enough for
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to include in an annual report to Congress.
After an investigation, the commission changed the terms of the factory's
license and said the public had 20 days to request a hearing on the
changes. But no member of the public ever did. In fact, no
member of the public could find out about the changes. The document describing
them, including the notice of hearing rights for anyone who felt adversely
affected, was stamped "official use only," meaning that it was not publicly
accessible. The agency would not even have told Congress which
factory was involved were it not for the efforts of Gregory B. Jaczko, one of
the five commissioners. Mr. Jaczko identified the company, Nuclear Fuel Services
of Erwin, Tenn., in a memorandum that became part of the public record. His
memorandum said other public documents would allow an informed person to deduce
that the factory belonged to Nuclear Fuel Services. Such secrecy
by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now coming under attack by influential
members of Congress. These lawmakers argue that the agency is withholding
numerous documents about nuclear facilities in the name of national security,
but that many with-held documents are not sensitive. The lawmakers say the
agency must rebalance its penchant for secrecy with the public's right to
participate in the licensing process and its right to know about potential
hazards. The agency, the congressmen said, "has removed hundreds of innocuous
documents relating to the N.F.S. plant from public view." With a
resurgence of nuclear plant construction expected after a 30-year hiatus, agency
officials say frequently that they are trying to strike a balance between
winning public confidence by regulating openly and protecting sensitive
information. A commission spokesman, Scott Burnell, said the "official use only"
designation was under review. As laid out by the commission's
report to Congress and other sources, the event at the Nuclear Fuel Service
factory was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid dribbling under a
door and into a hallway. Workers had previously described a yellow liquid in a
"glove box," a sealed container with gloves built into the sides to allow a
technician to manipulate objects inside, but managers had decided it was
ordinary uranium. In fact, it was highly enriched uranium that had been declared
surplus from the weapons inventory of the Energy Department and sent to the
plant to be diluted to a strength appropriate for a civilian reactor. If the
material had gone critical, "it is likely that at least one worker would have
received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death," the
commission said. Generally, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
does describe nuclear incidents and changes in licenses. But in 2004, according
to the committee's letter, the Office of Naval Reators, part of the Energy
Department, reached an agreement with the commission that any correspondence
with Nuclear Fuel Services would be marked "official use
only."
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 won. 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Cyberspace, data superhighways, multi media—for those who have seen the future, the linking of computers, television and telephones will change our lives forever. Yet for all the talk of a forthcoming technological utopia, little attention has been given to the implications of these developments for the poor. As with all new high technology, while the West concerns itself with the "how", the question of "for whom" is put aside once again.
Economists are only now realizing the full extent to which the communications revolution has affected the world economy. Information technology allows the extension of trade across geographical and industrial boundaries, and transnational corporations take full advantage of it. Terms of trade, exchange and interest rates and money movements are more important than the production of goods. The electronic economy made possible by information technology allows the haves to increase their control on global markets—with destructive impact on the have-nots.
For them the result is instability. Developing countries which rely on the production of a small range of goods for export are made to feel like small parts in the international economic machine. As "futures" are traded on computer screens, developing countries simply have less and less control of their destinies.
So what are the options for regaining control? One alternative is for developing countries to buy in the latest computers and telecommunications themselves—so-called "development communications" modernization. Yet this leads to long-term dependency and perhaps permanent constraints on developing countries" economies.
Communications technology is generally exported from the U.S., Europe or Japan; the patents, skills and ability to manufacture remain in the hands of a few industrialized countries. It is also expensive, and imported products and services must therefore be bought on credit—credit usually provided by the very countries whose companies stand to gain.
Furthermore, when new technology is introduced there is often too low a level of expertise to exploit it for native development. This means that while local elites, foreign communities and subsidiaries of transnational corporations may benefit, those whose lives depend on access to the information are denied it.
单选题An important factor of leadership is attraction. This does not mean attractiveness in the ordinary sense, for that is a born quality (1) our control. The leader has, nevertheless, to be a magnet; a central figure towards whom people are (2) . Magnetism in that sense depends, first of all, (3) being seen. There is a type of authority which can be (4) from behind closed doors, but that is not leadership. (5) there is movement and action, the true leader is in the forefront and may seem, indeed, to be everywhere at once. He has to become a legend; the (6) for anecdotes, whether true or (7) ; character. One of the simplest devices is to be absent (8) the occasion when the leader might be (9) to be there, enough in itself to start a rumor about the vital business (10) has detained him. To (11) up for this, he can appeal when least expected, giving rise to another story about the interest he can display (12) things which other folks might (13) as trivial. With this gift for (14) curiosity the leader always combines a reluctance to talk about himself. His interest is (15) in other people; he questions them and encourages them to talk and then remembers all (16) is relevant. He never leaves a party (17) he has mentally field a minimum dossier (档案) on (18) present, ensuring that he knows (19) to say when he meets them again. He is not artificially extrovert but he would usually rather listen (20) talk. Others realize gradually that his importance needs no proof.
单选题According to the passage, troubles on the road are primarily caused by______
单选题One reason that many colleges adopt the website is to______.
单选题Chances are your friends are more popular than you are. It is a basic feature of social networks that has been known about for some time. Consider both an enthusias- tic cocktail party hostess with hundreds of acquaintances and an ill-tempered guy, who may have one or two friends. Statistically speaking, the average person is much more likely to know the hostess simply because she has so many more friends. This, in essence, is what is called the "friendship paradox": the friends of any random individual are likely to be more central to the social web than the individual himself. Now researchers think this seemingly depressing fact can be made to work as an early warning system to detect outbreaks of contagious diseases. By studying the friends of a randomly selected group of individuals, epidemic disease experts can isolate those people who are more connected to one another and are therefore more likely to catch diseases like the flu early. This could allow health authorities to spot outbreaks weeks in advance of current surveillance methods. In a report which has been submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nicholas Christakis from Harvard University and James Fowler from the University of California, San Diego put the friendship paradox to good use. In a trial carried out last autumn, they monitored the spread of both seasonal flu and H1N1, popularly known as swine flu, through students and their friends at Harvard University, and found that their social links were indeed causing them to get infected sooner. As this result came with the benefit of hindsight, the researchers tried to come up with a real-time measure that could potentially provide an early warning sign of an outbreak as it began to spread. Currently, the methods used to assess an infection by America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lag an outbreak by a week or two. Google's Flu Trends is at best contemporaneous with an outbreak. Dr. Christakis and Dr. Fowler suggest that a hybrid method might be developed in which the search inquiries of a group of highly connected (ie, pop- ular) individuals could be scanned for signs of the flu. Although the technique has so far only been demonstrated for the flu and in the social surroundings of a university, the researchers nevertheless think that it could help predict other infectious diseases and do so on a larger scale. Nor should it be difficult to implement. Public-health officials already conduct random sampling, so getting the participants to name a few friends too should not be onerous. When it comes to infectious diseases, your friends really do say a lot about you.
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单选题The first person who used the word "bold faced" is
单选题What is the relationship of paragraph 4 and 5 to paragraph 3?
单选题We can assert that ______.
单选题The writer wants to tell us that ______.
单选题How does the author think of himself?
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单选题The passage may be taken from a
单选题Withmedicine,theboonofbiotechnologyhasbeenobvious.Peoplereadilyacceptitwhentheyseehowbetterdrugsandclearerdiagnosesimprovetheirlives.Whyisitdifferentwhenbiotechisappliedtoagriculture?Theansweristhattheclearestgainsfromthecurrentcropofgeneticallymodified(GM)plantsgonottoconsumersbuttoproducers.Indeed,thatwaswhattheirdevelopersintended:anappealtofarmersofferedthepurveyorsofGMtechnologythebesthopeofaspeedyreturn.Forconsumers,especiallyintherichworld,thebenefitsofsuper-yieldingsoybeansarelessclear:theworld,byandlarge,alreadyhastoomuchfoodinitsstores;developingcountriesprincipallylackmoney,notfoodassuch.Yetcompaniesstillpitchtheirproductsasacureformalnutritioneventhoughlittlethattheyaredoingcanjustifysuchanobleclaim.Inhypingthetechnologyastheonlyanswertoeverythingfrompestcontroltoworldhunger,theindustryhasfedthepopularviewthatitsproductsareunsafe,unnecessaryandbadfortheenvironment.OfthetwomainchargesagainstGMcrops,byfartheweakeristhattheyareunsafetoeat.Criticsassertthatgeneticengineeringintroducesintofoodgenesthatarenotpresentnaturally,cannotbeintroducedthroughconventionalbreedingandmayhaveunknownhealtheffectsthatshouldbeinvestigatedbeforethefoodissoldtothepublic.GMcropssuchasthemaizeandsoybeansthatnowblanketAmericacertainlydifferfromtheirgardenvarietyneighbours.ButthereisabroadscientificconsensusthatthepresentgenerationofGMfoodsissafe.Evenso,thisdoeslittletoreassureconsumers.Foodfrightssuchas"madcow"diseaseandrevelationsofcancer-causingdioxin(二英)inBelgianfoodhavesorelyunderminedtheirconfidenceinscientificpronouncementsandregulatoryauthoritiesalike.GMfoodhavelittlefutureinEuropeuntilthisfaithcanberestored.ThesecondbigworryaboutGMfoodisthatitmayharmtheenvironment.Theproducersarguethattheengineeredtraits—suchasresistancetocertainbrandsofherbicideortypesofinsectsandvirus—actuallydoecologicalgoodbyreducingchemicaluseandimprovingyieldssothatlesslandneedstogoundertheplough.Opponentsretortthatanysuchbenefitsarefaroutweighedbythedamagesuchcropsmightdo.Theyworrythatpesticide-resistantgenesmayspreadfromplantsthatshouldbesavedtoweedsthathavetobekilled.Theyfearalossofbiodiversity.Theyfretthatthein-builtresistancetobugsthatsomeGMcropswillhavemaypoisoninsectssuchasMonarchbutterfly,andallowother,nastierbugstodevelopanaturalresistanceandthrive.Manyofthefearsarebasedonresultsfromlimitedexperiments,ofteninthelaboratory.Theonlywaytodiscoverwhethertheywillariseinreallife,orwhethertheywillbeanymoredamagingthansimilarrisksposedbyconventionalcropsandfarmingpractice,istodomoreresearchinthefield.BanningtheexperimentalgrowthofGMplantsassomeprotesterswantsimplydeprivesscientistsoftheirmostfruitfullaboratory.
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单选题Since the industrial revolution, government, society, and industry have attempted to channel technological progress in useful directions. Whether it is the printing press, the cotton gin the automobile or the Internet, technological innovations often have profound economic and social effects. To harness the benefits and minimize the more harmful effects of new technologies, modern governments use four basic approaches: specific direction, market incentives, criminal prohibition, and behavior modification. Specific direction starts with governments identifying one or more key factors in the R&D phase. Then, using a variety of means ranging from administrative regulation to outright state ownership, the government seeks to control the implementation of the technology. Market incentives are the deliberate manipulation of the market by the government to control how a particularly technology is distributed and used. For example, some governments impose taxes to cover the hidden costs associated with the use of a particular technology. For example, raising gasoline taxes to pay for highway improvements. Other methods include the granting of subsidies to private researchers or the strengthening of intellectual property laws to give added incentives to developers. Criminal prohibition usually takes place when strong opposition exists to a particular technology or field of research. In recent years, most developed countries have enacted legislation to ban the cloning of human beings. Other examples are the enforcement of clean air regulations that force power plants to emit fewer greenhouse gasses. Finally, behavior modification includes the use of the media, advertising, and government and corporate leadership to encourage a particular society to use a technology in a beneficial way. For example, while there is limited government regulation of the Internet, websites are encouraged to install safeguards to prevent children from viewing inappropriate material. A recent national advertising campaign recently boosted the percentage of New York residents who recycled by almost 25%. Such campaigns do not use direct government regulation, but instead appeal to the user's sense of civic duty or social responsibility. Of all new technologies, perhaps none has changed the landscape and character of American life more than the automobile. Yet, the costs of this technology are not always reflected in the price of Using the technology. For example, it costs an oil company $ 0.89 per gallon of gas produced. This same liter is sold to U. S. consumers at about $1.20 per gallon. Yet while this price reflects the cost of production plus a profit for the oil company it does not reflect the actual cost of using the technology. For that, we must factor in the environmental costs associated with air pollution (increased health care, environmental degradation) and the political costs (dependence on foreign oil, energy shortages). In short, in order to be effective, all of these strategies for channeling technology to benefit society must incorporate all the costs associated with usage.
