单选题Which of the following statement can NOT be drawn from the information given in par
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单选题It can be inferred from the text about the Native American inhabitants of Ungava Bay that they
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单选题The word "nudge" in the first sentence of paragraph six means ______.
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单选题Managers must become proficient cross-cultural communicators if they wish to succeed in today's global environment. Culture consists of the values, attitudes, and (1) in a given group of most of the people most of the time. (2) communication is communication in a management (3) to achieve a (4) result (writing a memo, interviewing an applicant, running a meeting, preparing a presentation). If you are working in a different culture, you may have to reconsider your communication (5) and evaluate its (6) . A realistic (7) in one culture may not be so in another. One way to (8) what might be realistic is to analyze (9) psychologists call the "locus of control." People in some cultures (10) believe in " (11) control" over destiny—that is, that people can control events themselves. People in other cultures believe in "external control" over destiny—that is, events are (12) and uncontrollable. What (13) an appropriate time frame in one culture may not be achievable in another. It all depends on the culture's (14) of time. In some cultures, timetables are exact and (15) . Examples of such cultures include Germany and Switzerland. Other cultures have more relative and (16) attitudes toward time; one may be kept waiting; projects may (17) more slowly. Examples here are Latin and African countries. An (18) in Cameroon tells of a meeting scheduled for 9:00 a.m. in Yaounde. People began to arrive at 1:00 p.m. (19) , however, when the last person (20) at 2:00 p.m., the other Cameroonians admonished him for being later.
单选题The author's comment on the government can be interpreted as
单选题The researchers have conducted an experiment to prove that people will act in emergencies when ______.
单选题More and more residences, businesses, and even government agencies are using telephone answering machines to take messages or give information or instructions. Sometimes these machines give (1) instructions, or play messages that are difficult to understand. If you (2) telephone calls, you need to be ready to respond if you get a (3) . The most common machine is the (4) used in residence. If you call a home (5) there is a telephone answering machine in operation you (6) hear several rings and then a recorded message (7) usually says something (8) this: "Hello. We can't come to the (9) right now. If you want us to call you back, please leave your name and number after the beep." Then you will hear a "beep," (10) is a brief, high-pitched (11) . Alter the beep, you can say who you are, whom you want to speak to, and what number the person should call to (12) you, or you can leave a (13) . Some telephone answering machines (14) for only 20 or 30 seconds after the beep, so you must respond quickly. Some large businesses and government agencies are using telephone answering machines to provide information on (15) about which they receive a large volume of (16) . Using these systems (17) you to have a touch-tone phone (a phone with buttons rather than a rotary dial). The voice on the machine will tell your to push a certain button on your telephone if you want in-formation on Topic A, another button for Topic B, and so on. You listen (18) you hear the topic you want to learn about, and then you push the (19) button. After making your (20) , you will hear a recorded message on the topic.
单选题Saudi Arabia, the oil industry's swing producer, has become its flip-flopper. In February, it persuaded OPEC to cut its total production quotas by lm barrels per day (bpd), to 23.5m, as a precaution against an oil-price crash this spring. That fear has since been replaced by its opposite. The price of West Texas crude hit $40 last week, its highest since the eve of the first Iraq war, prompting concerns that higher oil prices could sap the vigour of America's recovery and compound the frailty of Europe's. On Monday May 10th, Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia's energy minister, called on OPEC to raise quotas, by at least 1. 5m bpd, at its next meeting on June 3rd. Thus far, the high oil price has been largely a consequence of good things, such as a strengthening world economy, rather than a cause of bad things, such as faster inflation or slower growth. China's burgeoning economy guzzled about 6m bpd in the first quarter of this year, 15% more than a year ago, according to Goldman Sachs. Demand was also strong in the rest of Asia, excluding Japan, growing by 5.2% to 8. 1m bpd. As the year progresses, the seasonal rhythms of America's drivers will dictate prices, at least of the lighter, sweeter crudes. Americans take to the roads en masse in the summer, and speculators are driving up the oil price now in anticipation of peak demand in a few months' time. Until recently, the rise in the dollar price of oil was offset outside America and China by the fall in the dollar itself. But the currency has regained some ground in recent weeks, and the oil price has continued to rise. Even so, talk of another oil price shock is premature. The price of oil, adjusted for inflation, is only half what it was in December 1979, and the United States now uses half as much energy per dollar of output as it did in the early 1970s. But if oil cannot shock the world economy quite as it used to, it can still give it "a good kick", warns Goldman Sachs. If average oil prices for the year come in 10% higher than it forecast, it reckons GDP growth in the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations will be reduced by 0.3%, or $70 billion. The Americans are certainly taking the issue seriously. John Snow, their treasury secretary, called OPEC's February decision "regrettable", and the rise in prices since then "not helpful". Washington pays close heed to the man at the petrol pump, who has seen the average price of a gallon of unleaded petrol rise by 39 cents in the past year. And the Saudis, some mutter, pay close heed to Washington. Besides, the high oil price may have filled Saudi coffers, but it has also affronted Saudi pride. Mr. al-Naimi thinks the high price is due to fears that supply might be disrupted in the future. These fears, he says, are "unwarranted". But the hulking machinery in the Arabian desert that keeps oil flowing round the world presents an inviting target to terrorists should they tire of bombing embassies and nightclubs. (ha May 1st, gunmen killed six people in a Saudi office of ABB Lummus Global, an American oil contractor. Such incidents add to the risk premium factored into the oil price, a premium that the Saudis take as a vote of no confidence in their kingdom and its ability to guarantee the supply of oil in the face of terrorist threats.
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单选题Which of the following ideas might probably be preferred by Malcolm Muggeridge?
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单选题Brown, Smith and Robinson are
单选题 At the Museum of Sex in New York City,
artificial-intelligence researcher David Levy projected a mock image on a screen
of a smiling bride in a wedding dress holding hands with a short robot groom.
"Why not marry a robot? Look at this happy couple," he said to a laughing
crowd. When Levy was then asked whether anyone who would want
to marry a robot was deceived, his face grew serious. "If the alternative
is that you are lonely and sad and miserable, is it not better to find a robot
that claims to love you and acts like it loves you?" Levy responded. "Does
it really matter, if you're a happier person?" In his 2007 book, Love and Sex
with Robots, Levy contends that sex, love and even marriage between humans and
robots are coming soon and, perhaps, are even desirable. "I know some people
think the idea is totally peculiar," he says. "But I am totally convinced it's
inevitable." The 62-year-old London native has not reached this
conclusion on a whim. Levy's academic love affair with computing began in his
last year of university, during the vacuum-tube era. That is when he broadened
his horizons beyond his passion for chess. "Back then people wrote chess
programs to simulate human thought processes," he recalls. He later became
engrossed in writing programs to carry on intelligent conversations with people,
and then he explored the way humans interact with computers, a topic for which
he earned his doctorate last year from the University of Maastricht in the
Netherlands. Over the decades, Levy notes, interactions between
humans and robots have become increasingly personal. Whereas robots initially
found work, say, building cars in a factory, they have now moved into the home
in the form of Roomba the robotic vacuum cleaner and digital pets such as
Tamagotchis and the Sony Aibo. Science-fiction fans have
witnessed plenty of action between humans and characters portraying artificial
life-forms, such as with Data from the Star Trek franchise or the Cylons from
the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. And Levy is betting that a lot of people
will fall in love with such devices. Programmers can tailor the
machines to match a person's interests or render them some what
disagreeable to create a desirable level of friction in a relationship. "It's
not that people will fall in love with an algorithm but that people will fall in
love with a convincing simulation of a human being, and convincing simulations
can have a remarkable effect on people," he says.
单选题 Ten years ago, I got a call from a reporter at a
big-city daily paper. "I'm writing a story on communication skills," she said.
"Are communication skills important in business?" I assumed I had misheard her
question, and after she repeated it for me I still didn't know how to respond.
Are communication skills important? "Er, they are very important," I managed to
squeak out. My brain said: Are breathing skills important? The reporter
explained: "The people I've spoken with so far have been mixed on the
subject." Ten years ago, we were trapped even deeper in the Age
of Left-Brain Business. We were way into Six Sigma and ISO 9000 and spreadsheets
and regulations and policies. We thought we could line-item budget our way to
greatness, create shareholder value by tracking our employees' every keystroke,
and employ a dress-code policy to win in the marketplace. And lots of us
believed that order and uniformity could save the world-the business world,
anyway. We had to go pretty far down that path before we caught onto the limits
of process, technology, and linear thinking. The right brain is
coming back into style in the business world, and {{U}}not a moment too soon{{/U}}.
Smart salespeople say, "We've got compelling story that meshes with our
customer's values and history." Strong leaders say, "We're creating a context
for our team members that weaves their passions into ours." Consultants get big
money for providing perspective on the "user experience." That's not a linear,
analytical process. These days, we're talking about emotion again, and context
and meaning. Thank goodness we are. I was about to choke on the
death-by-spreadsheet diet, and I wasn't the only one. Job
seekers get great jobs today by avoiding the Black Hole of Keyword-Searching
Algorithms and going straight to a human decision-maker to share a story that
links the job seeker's powerful history with the decision-maker's present pain.
Leadership teams spend their off-site weekends talking about not the next 400
strategic initiatives on somebody's list but rather a story-type road map to
keep the troops philosophically on board while they take the next
hill. The right brain's return is coming just at the right
time, when employees are sick of not only their jobs but also the cynical,
hypocritical, and obsessively left-brain behaviors they see all around them in
corporate life. Smart employers will grab this opportunity to lose the
three-inch-thick policy manuals and enforcement mentality. There's no leverage
in those, no spark, and no aha. We've seen where the left- brain mentality has
gotten us: to the land of spreadsheets, with PowerPoints and burned-out shells
where our workforce used to be.
单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}}
President Bush has once again started
speaking out for comprehensive immigration reform, and a draft plan to rally
Republican senators on the issue is circulating just as Congressional hearings
on the issue approach. Members of Congress recognize that voters are looking for
real reform that rests on resolute, effective enforcement of our immigration
laws. The only serious legislative proposal on the table offers
such enforcement, because it focuses on making employers accountable for their
hiring practices. To that end, the bill incorporates lessons learned from the
largest immigration enforcement operation ever undertaken. Last December,
Department of Homeland Security agents descended on meat processing plants run
by Swirl & Company in six states, arresting more than 1,200 unauthorized
workers. The arrests were astonishing because Swift participates
in Basic Pilot, a voluntary Department of Homeland Security program that allows
employers to electronically verify the work eligibility of newly hired workers
against department and Social Security databases. The program is seen as the
precursor for a verification system that would become mandatory with
comprehensive immigration reform. Since Swirl was using the department's system,
how did it end up with illegal workers? The Basic Pilot program
has a fatal flaw, which is that it requires only electronic verification of
employment qualification. An effective program should also insist on
tamper-proof identification documents for job-seekers, incorporating biometrics
like digital photographs and fingerprints to prove identity. Only then would it
be possible to establish not only that job applicants are authorized to work,
but also that they are who they say they are. Otherwise, valid Social Security
numbers can be presented to employers, and Basic Pilot will verify them, but the
numbers may not belong to the workers who present them. To
insist on secure documents with biometric identifiers is not a call for a
national ID. Green cards, temporary work permits and passports are secure and
reliable for hiring purposes. Adding Social Security cards to this list,
establishing a single standard for their security features, and replacing old
cards over a designated period would resolve the problem on a national
scale. Only then would employers be able to comply reliably with
verification requirements as the basis for sound enforcement and, by extension,
border control. Legal immigrants and American citizens could prove their
identities and qualifications to work without facing discrimination based on
appearance or language. Scarce enforcement resources could be spent on
apprehending real criminals and addressing national security threats. And a new
system of enforcement would at last have a chance to win back public confidence
in the nation's immigration policies. After more than 20 years of failed
efforts, Congress must not bake half a loaf. Secure biometric Social Security
cards are an essential ingredient in any comprehensive immigration
reform.
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