单选题Oil prices, an economic scourge in decades past, have soared to record levels in recent years. But the fallout often seemed negligible: Americans kept spending; employment kept growing; factories, construction crews and retail stores stayed busy. Now, however, the economy may be starting to sputter as damage from the weak housing market drags down growth. If payrolls drop significantly, will high-price crude oil begin to cause pain in a way that it hasn"t in nearly three decades? Many economists do not think so, maintaining that if the United States entered a recession, the price of oil would quickly drop. "The United States is the single largest oil-consuming nation in the world," said Stephen P. A. Brown, director of energy economics at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. "A slowdown here ought to bring the price of oil down." That view is by no means unanimous. The global economy has been growing rapidly, and oil consumption overseas keeps rising. A few economists say it is possible that even if the American economy weakens, demand abroad will be strong enough to keep oil prices high. "Our relative importance in the global markets is diminishing," said Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York. "An American economic slowdown", he said, "won"t have a visible impact on high oil demand and it won"t have a visible impact on high oil prices." If that view proves to be right, the United States could conceivably find itself in a situation reminiscent of the 1970s, with weak economic growth and high-price oil taking a double bite out of consumers" pocketbooks. The situation is murky in part because there is little historical precedent for understanding today"s oil market. Less than a decade ago, oil fell below $11 a barrel. Oil at $50 was a distant prospect, and the prevailing wisdom was that a run-up of that extent would do serious economic damage. But as the global economy boomed, oil blew past $50 late in 2004, then past $60 in mid- 2005. Many Americans complained about the rising price of gasoline, but the economy shrugged off pump prices that would exceed $3 a gallon, and kept growing. On Sept. 20, crude oil for next-month delivery settled at a record price of $83.32 a barrel and has stayed above $80 most days since, ending yesterday at $81.44, up $1.50 from Wednesday. (Adjusted for inflation, the record high for oil was nearly $102 a barrel early in 1980, after the Iranian revolution, but that price level did not last long.) Part of the reason that costly oil has not done too much damage, it seems clear, is that the economy has become less sensitive to energy prices than it was in the 1970s.

单选题Like a lot of carless New Yorkers, I am generally confused by bursts of populist outrage over high gas prices. But I have always assumed that the anger is genuine. But amid the recent mania over prices hitting $4 a gallon, I decided to figure out whether this fury is economically rational. So I took a look at data from the Census Bureau, which conducts a quarterly survey of American spending habits. During these last few years of historically high oil prices, Americans spent about $40 a week, or $2,000 a year, on gas. That"s around 5 percent of our overall spending. It"s less than half of what we spend on restaurants and entertainment. High gas prices must be forcing Americans to cut back in other ways, right? That"s what the economist Lutz Kilian at the University of Michigan wondered. He looked at personal spending habits during periods of high energy prices and discovered that "somewhat surprisingly, there is no significant decline in total expenditures on recreation," which was one place they expected to find frugality. In other words, Americans may protest loudly, but their economic behavior indicates a remarkable indifference to the price of oil. While sustained high gas prices would certainly produce some turmoil, so would potential spikes in countless other globally traded commodities. But there"s a reason populist outcries don"t start around soybean prices or magnesium spikes. Oil is the only volatile commodity that most Americans deal with directly: we are buffered from most other price swings by our relative wealth. Unlike people in poor countries, consumers here don"t generally buy raw commodity foods; we buy our meals processed or prepared. With most goods, the commodity price has even less impact on cost. "When people buy a phone," Kilian says, "they don"t buy the copper that makes the wiring." With gas, though, hurtling prices are unavoidable. Every day, U. S. drivers pay a price determined by forces all over the world that are hard to understand and harder for the United States to control. Even if we invested in better refineries and exploited every possible energy source, from the Keystone pipeline to the Alaskan wilderness, the impact could be minimal. It could eventually lower prices at the pump—but only if nothing else affects them, like OPEC lowering its production to drive prices back up again. The price of oil is, of course, affected by hundreds of interrelated factors. Many analysts I"ve spoken with suggest that oil prices should fall fairly soon. This will be welcome news to the less-fortunate American families who are not impervious to the price at the pump and to anyone who claims to be pinching pennies because of gas. But as unpopular as it may sound, the best possible future for most Americans may involve much higher gas prices. As billions of people, throughout the world, enter the middle class in the coming decades, there will be an enormous increase in the demand for gas. This, along with rising environmental considerations, is likely to send the prices far higher than they are today.

单选题Tinkering again with enforcement of the No Child Left Behind education law, the government plans to let some states fundamentally change how they measure yearly student progress. In an experiment that"s been months in the making, up to 10 states will be allowed to measure not just how students are performing, but how that performance is changing over time. Currently, schools are judged based only on how today"s students compare to last year"s students in math and reading such as fourth-graders in 2005 vs.fourth-graders in 2004. Many state leaders don"t like the current system of comparing two different years of kids because it doesn"t recognize changes in the population or growth by individual students. Frustrated states have been pleading for permission to measure growth by students, which may make it easier for schools to meet their goals and avoid penalties. Other recent changes have dealt with testing, teacher quality and students with disabilities. Yet student progress is the cornerstone of the law. How it is measured has big implications. Schools that receive federal poverty aid but don"t make "adequate yearly progress" for at least two years face mounting penalties, from allowing students to transfer and providing tutoring to poor children to eventual restructuring of the school and its staff. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said it makes sense to give schools credit for progress that students make. The states that win approval for the new flexibility, however, must do more than show growth. They still will have to get all children up to par in reading and math by 2014, as the law requires, and show consistent gains along the way. The Education Department has not chosen the 10 states that will be part of the experiment. In practical terms, many states won"t qualify because they don"t have the kind of data systems to track individual students across grades. And others may not find the change helpful. To start, states that gain approval to measure student growth will also be required to chart progress the old way, comparing this year"s students with last year"s. The Education Department wants to see that data to help determine whether charting growth is a fair, accurate measure. Patricia Sullivan, director of the independent Center on Education Policy, praised federal leaders for showing flexibility and clearly outlining what states must do to get it. A growth model could benefit not just struggling students but also gifted ones who may be challenged again to show their own yearly progress, beyond the school"s standard benchmark. "This is clearly what states have been asking for," Sullivan said. "It"s so discouraging for teachers when students make tremendous gains but don"t get the credit because they don"t get all the way over the bar."

单选题It is easier to negotiate initial salary requirement because once you are inside, the organizational constraints influence wage increases. One thing, however, is certain: your chances of getting the raise you feel you deserve are less if you don"t at least ask for it. Men tend to ask for more, and they get more, and this holds true with other resources, not just pay increases. Consider Beth"s story: I did not get what I wanted when I did not ask for it. We had cubicle offices and window offices. I sat in the cubicles with several male colleagues. One by one they were moved into window offices, while I remained in the cubicles. Several males who were hired after me also went to offices. One in particular told me he was next in line for an office and that it had been part of his negotiations for the job. I guess they thought me content to stay in the cubicles since I did not voice my opinion either way. It would be nice if we all received automatic pay increases equal to our merit, but "nice" isn"t a quality attributed to most organizations. If you feel you deserve a significant raise in pay, you"ll probably have to ask for it. Performance is your best bargaining chip when you are seeking a raise. You must be able to demonstrate that you deserve a raise. Timing is also a good bargaining chip. If you can give your boss something he or she needs (a new client or a sizable contract, for example) just before merit pay decisions are being made, you are more likely to get the raise you want. Use information as a bargaining chip too. Find out what you are worth on the open market. What will someone else pay for your services? Go into the negotiations prepared to place your chips on the table at the appropriate time and prepared to use communication style to guide the direction of the interaction.

单选题The old saying of never forgetting a pretty face might be untrue as psychologists believe beautiful people are less likely to be recognized. A new study suggests that attractiveness can actually prevent the recognition of faces, unless a pretty face is particularly distinctive. German psychologists think the recognition of pretty faces is distorted by emotions. Scientists at the University of Jena, Germany, discovered that photos of unattractive people were more easily remembered than pretty ones when they showed them to a group of people. Researchers Holger Wiese, Carolin Altmann and Stefan Schweinberger from the university, wrote in their study: "We could show that the test subjects were more likely to remember unattractive faces than attractive ones, when the latter didn"t have any particularly noticeable traits." For the study, which was published in science magazine Neuropsychologia , the psychologists showed photos of faces to test subjects. Half of the faces were considered to be more attractive and the other half as less attractive, but all of them were being thought of as similarly distinctive looking. The test subjects were shown the faces for just a few seconds to memorize them and were shown them again during the test so that they could decide if they recognized them or not. The scientists were surprised by the result. "Until now we assumed that it was generally easier to memorize faces which are being perceived as attractive, just because we prefer looking at beautiful faces," Dr. Wiese said. But the study showed that such a connection cannot be easily sustained. He assumes that remembering pretty faces is distorted by emotional influences, which enhance the sense of recognition at a later time. The researchers" idea is backed up by evidence from EEG-recordings which show the brain"s electric activity, which the scientists used during their experiment. The study also revealed that in the case of attractive faces, considerably more false positive results were detected. In other words, people thought they recognized a face without having seen it before. "We obviously tend to believe that we recognize a face just because we find it attractive." Dr. Wiese said.

单选题In 1981 Kenji Urada, a Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot"s powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot. This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behaviour was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science fiction writer. The laws appeared in I, Robot, a book of short stories published in 1950 that inspired a recent Hollywood film. But decades later the laws, designed to prevent robots from harming people either through action or inaction, remain in the realm of fiction. Indeed, despite the introduction of improved safety mechanisms, robots have claimed many more victims since 1981. With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. Inspired by the Pugwash Conferences—an international group of scientists, academics and activists founded in 1957 to campaign for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons—the new group of robo-ethicists met earlier this year in Genoa, Italy, and announced their initial findings in March at the meeting. Should robots that are strong enough or heavy enough to crush people be allowed into homes? Is "system malfunction" a justifiable defence for a robotic fighter plane that violates the Geneva Convention and mistakenly fires on innocent civilians? These questions may seem esoteric but in the next few years they will become increasingly relevant. According to the UN Economic Commission for Europe"s World Robotics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly outstripping their industrial counterparts. By the end of 2003 there were more than 600,000 robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers. In light of all this, it is crucial that we start to think about safety and ethical guidelines now. Regulating the behaviour of robots is going to become more difficult in the future, since they will increasingly have self learning mechanisms built into them, says Gianmarco Veruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, Italy. As a result, their behaviour will become impossible to predict fully, since they will not be behaving in predefined ways but will learn new behaviour as they go.

单选题Who is poor in America? This is a hard question to answer. Despite poverty"s messiness, we"ve measured progress against it by a single statistic: the federal poverty line. In 2008, the poverty threshold was $21,834 for a four-member family with two children under 18. By this measure, we haven"t made much progress. Except for recessions, when the poverty rate can rise to 15 percent, it"s stayed in a narrow range for decades. In 2007—the peak of the last business cycle--the poverty rate was 12.5 percent; one out of eight Americans was "poor." In 1969, another business-cycle peak, the poverty rate was 12.1 percent. But the apparent lack of progress is misleading for two reasons. First, it ignores immigration. Many immigrants are poor and low skilled. They add to the poor. From 1989 to 2007, about three quarters of the increase in the poverty population occurred among Hispanics—mostly immigrants, their children, and grandchildren. The poverty rate for blacks fell during this period, though it was still much too high (24.5 percent in 2007). Poverty "experts" don"t dwell on immigration, because it implies that more restrictive policies might reduce U.S. poverty. Second, the poor"s material well-being has improved. The official poverty measure obscures this by counting only pretax cash income and ignoring other sources of support. These include the earned-income tax credit (a rebate to low-income workers), food stamps, health insurance (Medicaid), and housing subsidies. Although many poor live hand to mouth, they"ve participated in rising living standards. In 2005, 91 percent had microwaves, 79 percent air-conditioning, and 48 percent cell phones. The existing poverty line could be improved by adding some income sources and subtracting some expenses (example: child care). Unfortunately, the administration"s proposal for a "supplemental poverty measure" in 2011—to complement, not replace, the existing poverty line—goes beyond that. The new poverty number would compound public confusion. It also raises questions about whether the statistic is tailored to favor a political agenda. The "supplemental measure" ties the poverty threshold to what the poorest third of Americans spend on food, housing, clothing, and utilities. The actual threshold--not yet calculated—will probably be higher than today"s poverty line. Moreover, this definition has strange consequences. Suppose that all Americans doubled their income tomorrow, and suppose that their spending on food, clothing, housing, and utilities also doubled. That would seem to signify less poverty—but not by the new poverty measure. It wouldn"t decline, because the poverty threshold would go up as spending went up. Many Americans would find this weird: people get richer, but "poverty" stays stuck. What produces this outcome is a different view of poverty. The present concept is an absolute one: the poverty threshold reflects the amount estimated to meet basic needs. By contrast, the new measure embraces a relative notion of poverty: people are automatically poor if they"re a given distance from the top, even if their incomes are increasing.

单选题The usual distinctions between "basic research," "applied research," and "development," used for many years in the formal government statistics kept by the National Science Foundation are, unfortunately, insufficient for discussions of policy for government investment in technical activities. Indeed, definitions are the source of much of the confusion over the appropriate role for government in the national scientific and technical enterprise. One cannot distinguish in any meaningful way "basic" from "applied research" by observing what a scientist is doing. "Applied research" should not be used to mean "purposeful and demonstrably useful basic research," and one should be wary of the use of the term in government statistics. In corporate research laboratories, such as the T.J. Watson Research Laboratories of IBM, all of the work is referred to simply as "research." There is no need to attempt a distinction between "basic" and "applied" research. All of the company"s research investments are motivated by corporate interests. All of the research has a purpose. All of it is conducted under highly creative conditions. None of it is so "pure" that there are no expectations of value from the research investment. We should reserve the words "applied research" for those narrowly defined tasks in which limited time and resources are devoted to a specific problem for an identified user who gets all the benefit and should pay all the costs. To make this view of applied research clear in this discussion, I use the words "problem-solving research" instead. Narrow problem-solving and development are activities initiated by someone who wishes to apply research methods purposefully to exploit an identified opportunity or solve a problem. They involve the application of technical resources to achieve an identified goal for a specified beneficiary, usually the investor in the work. It is a reasonable assumption that those who engage in such activities expect to benefit from them, and to benefit by a sufficient margin over the cost to accommodate the technical risk that is ever-present in research. The investor in problem-solving may be a government agency, but is more likely to be a private firm. In most cases that firm would be expected to be able to appropriate sufficient benefits to need no government subsidy to take those risks. Public investment in the creation of new technology (technological development, whether by research or as a product of problem-solving) is a critical link between societal goals and the scientific research that is pursued by virtue of society"s commitment to those goals. Thus the desire for technology is an important—perhaps the most important—source of demand for science.

单选题The world economy has been growing at its fastest for a generation. Money, goods and ideas move around the globe more freely. So why all the complaints? The problem is that workers in rich countries are not getting a fair share. Their share of income has been shrinking for the past quarter of a century. The new order may be just great for capitalists, but not for those who toil by hand or brain. In its semi-annual World Economic Outlook, the IMF examines how trade, technology and immigration have stitched the world"s labor markets together at an astonishing rate, leaving rich-country workers unsure of where they stand. Globalization is not the only possible reason why labor"s share has shrunk. New technologies have probably taken a few degrees off the workers" slice too. Several countries have also fiddled with labor-market regulation, pushing the wage share one way or the other. The IMF has made perhaps the bravest attempt so far to weigh these competing explanations. It finds that both technological change and the globalization of labor markets have depressed labor"s share. Technological change had the biggest effect in Europe and Japan. In Anglo-Saxon countries (America, Australia, Britain and Canada) it was much smaller. In America, indeed, technology seems to have raised labor"s share. The fund thinks this may reflect America"s lead in using information technology. When a country first exploits IT, labor"s share of the national cake goes down. As time goes by, though, workers adjust and learn. Once their skills match the technology better, their productivity and their share go up. The effects of labor globalization were most evident in Anglo-Saxon and small European countries. However, it has touched different places in different ways. In Europe the effects of offshoring (shifting production, especially of intermediate goods and some services, abroad) and immigration have been more marked than in the Anglo-Saxon world; in Japan they have scarcely registered. The labor-intensive goods that rich countries import have fallen in price, pressing down on the workers" share. But this has been broadly offset by price falls in the capital-intensive goods they export. In Japan these prices fell by enough to yield an overall net gain in the labor share. Although globalization has reduced labor"s share of the pie, it has made the whole pie bigger, raising output and productivity and lowering the prices of traded goods and services. Concludes the fund trade has helped, largely by making imports cheaper. Labor is getting some of the extra growth due to globalization. However, that is unlikely to silence the complaints. Many people believe that most workers have not gained much from globalization at all. The perception remains, especially in the United States, that people who already have plenty have enjoyed the bulk of the extra prosperity.

单选题Killing oneself has been legal in Britain since 1961, but it is a serious crime to help someone else to die. Anyone who "aids, assists, counsels or procures" a suicide out of compassion or something more sinister—risks up to 14 years in prison. It is a risk that many are willing to take. About 120 Britons have committed suicide at Dignitas, a Zurich suicide clinic that takes advantage of liberal Swiss laws, and many have had relatives or friends with them for moral or practical support. None of these companions has been charged with a crime. But such cases are not unknown. Since April 2005, 16 people have been prosecuted for assisting suicide in England and Wales, and some of them have gone on to be convicted. The uncertainty as to whether helpers will be prosecuted heaps agony on those who already face the appalling decision whether to end their lives. Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis, asked prosecutors last year to clarify whether her husband would be charged if he went with her to Zurich. When they declined, she appealed to the House of Lords, which ruled in her favour in July. On September 23rd the director of public prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer, duly published guidelines to enlighten her and the thousands like her. Mr Starmer listed 16 factors that would weigh in favour of prosecution and 13 against. Helpers are less likely to be prosecuted if they were close friends or relatives; if the person who died was severely ill physically; if he had a "settled" wish to die; and so on. Charges are more likely if the victim was under 18 or mentally ill, or if the suspect stood to gain from his death (though, campaigners note, this is often the case because helpers tend to be spouses or offspring). A British version of Dignitas is ruled out. serial assisters can expect to be prosecuted, as can members of groups whose main purpose is facilitating suicide. One consequence of leaving the matter to lawyers, rather than getting a bill through Parliament, is that the guidelines are framed in broader terms than a new law would have been. Earlier this year Lord Falconer and others proposed an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill that would have legalised assisting suicide overseas in cases of terminal illness. It was voted down by peers who considered it dangerously radical. The new guidelines, though they do not make assisting suicide legal, apply at home as well as abroad and cover suicide by the seriously as welt as the terminally ill. It remains to be seen whether the rules will satisfy the demand for reform or will trigger more change. It seems too important an issue for people not to have their say.

单选题Governments typically use two tools to encourage citizens to engage in civic behavior like paying their taxes, driving safely or recycling their garbage: exhortation and fines. These efforts are often ineffective. As every successful parent learns, one way to encourage good behavior, from room-cleaning to tooth-brushing, is to make it fun. Not surprisingly, the same principle applies to adults. In this spirit, the Swedish division of Volkswagen has sponsored an initiative they call The Fun Theory. Their first project is to get people to use a set of stairs rather than the escalator that ran alongside it. By transforming the stairs into a piano-style keyboard such that walking on the steps produced notes, they made using the stairs fun, and they found that stair use increased by 66 percent. The musical stairs idea is more amusing than practical, so The Fun Theory sponsored a contest to generate other ideas. The winning entry suggested offering both positive and negative reinforcement to encourage safe driving. Specifically, a camera would measure the speed of passing cars. Speeders would be issued fines but some of the fine revenues would be distributed via lottery to drivers who were observed obeying the speed limit. A short test of the idea offered promising results. This example illustrates an important behavioral point: many people love lotteries. In using lotteries to motivate it is important to get the details right. Participants are likely to find a lottery more enticing if they find out that they would have won. The Dutch government uses this principle very effectively. One of its state lotteries is based on postal codes. If your postal code is announced as the winner, you know that you would have won had you only bought a ticket. The idea is to play on people"s feelings of regret. Lotteries are just one way to provide positive reinforcement. Their power comes from the fact that the chance of winning the prize is overvalued. Of course you can simply pay people for doing the right thing, but if the payment is small, it could well backfire. (If the total non-speeding-prize money had been divided up evenly among all those who drove within speed limit, I estimate that the price paid would have been about 25 cents per driver. Would anyone bother for that?) An alternative to lotteries is a frequent-flyer-type reward program, where the points can be redeemed for something fun. A free goodie can be a better inducement than cash since it offers that rarest of commodities, a guilt-free pleasure. This sort of reward system has been successfully used in England to encourage recycling. In the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead outside of London, citizens could sign up for a rewards program in which they earned points depending on the weight of the material they recycled. The points were good for discounts at merchants in the area. Recycling increased by 35 percent. The moral here is simple. If governments want to encourage good citizenship, they should try making the desired behavior more fun.

单选题Some futurologists have assumed that the vast upsurge of women in the workforce may portend a rejection of marriage. Many women, according to this hypothesis, would rather work than marry. The converse of this concern is that the prospects of becoming a multi-paycheck household could encourage marriages. In the past, only the earnings and financial prospects of the man counted in the marriage decision. Now, however, the earning ability of a woman can make her more attractive as a marriage partner. Data show that economic downturns tend to postpone marriage because the parties cannot afford to establish a family or are concerned about rainy days ahead. As the economy rebounds, the number of marriages also rises. Coincident with the increase in women working outside the home is the increase in divorce rates. Yet, it may be wrong to jump to any simple cause-and-effect conclusions. The impact of a wife"s work on divorce is no less cloudy than its impact on marriage decisions. The realization that she can be a good provider may increase the chances that a working wife will choose divorce over an unsatisfactory marriage. But the reverse is equally plausible. Tensions grounded in financial problems often play a key role in ending a marriage. Given high unemployment, inflationary problems, and slow growth in real earnings, a working wife can increase household income and relieve some of these pressing financial burdens. By raising a family"s standard of living, a working wife may strengthen her family"s financial and emotional stability. Psychological factors also should be considered. For example, a wife blocked from a career outside the home may feel caged in the house. She may view her only choice as seeking a divorce. On the other hand, if she can find fulfillment through work outside the home, work and marriage can go together to create a stronger and more stable union. Also, a major part of women"s inequality in marriage has been due to the fact that, in most cases, men have remained the main breadwinners. With higher earning capacity and status occupations outside of the home comes the capacity to exercise power within file family. A working wife may rob a husband of being the master of the house. Depending upon how the couple reacts to these new conditions, it could create a stronger equal partnership or it could create new insecurities.

单选题A country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself; in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel. And a nation that once prized education—that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children—is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead. We"re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions—essential services that have been provided for generations—are no longer affordable. And it"s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn"t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases. And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn"t cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children. But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and "centrist" Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade. In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation"s foundations to crumble—literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education—they"re choosing the latter. It"s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run. In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major burden on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment. And what about the economy"s future? Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we"re going backward. How did we get to this point? It"s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can"t do anything right. So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we"ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.

单选题If you know exactly what you want, the best route to a job is to get specialized training. A recent survey shows that companies like the graduates in such fields as business and health care who can go to work immediately with very little on-the-job training. That"s especially true of booming fields that are challenging for workers. At Cornell"s School of Hotel Administration, for example, bachelor"s degree graduates get an average of four or five job offers with salaries ranging from the high teens to the low 20s and plenty of chances for rapid advancement. Large companies, especially, like a background of formal education coupled with work experience. But in the long run, too much specialization doesn"t pay off. Business, which has been flooded with MBAs, no longer considers the degree an automatic stamp of approval. The MBA may open doors and command a higher salary initially, but the impact of a degree washes out after five years. As further evidence of the erosion of corporate faith in specialized degrees, Michigan State"s Scheetz cites a pattern in corporate hiring practices. Although companies tend to take on specialists as new hires, they often seek out generalists for middle and upper-level management. "They want someone who isn"t constrained by nuts and bolts to look at the big picture," says Scheetz. This sounds suspiciously like a formal statement that you approve of the liberal-arts graduate. Time and again labor-market analysts mention a need for talents that liberal-arts majors are assumed to have: writing and communication skills, organizational skills, open-mindedness and adapt-ability, and the ability to analyze and solve problems. David Birch claims he does not hire anybody with an MBA or an engineering degree. "I hire only liberal-arts people because they have a less-than-canned way of doing things," says Birch. Liberal-arts means an academically thorough and strict program that includes literature, history, mathematics, economics, science, human behavior—plus a computer course or two. With that under your belt, you can feel free to specialize. "A liberal-arts degree coupled with an MBA or some other technical training is a very good combination in the marketplace," says Scheetz.

单选题Supporters of the biotech industry have accused an American scientist of misconduct after she testified to the New Zealand government that a genetically modified (GM) bacterium could cause serious damage if released. The New Zealand Life Sciences Network, an association of pro-GM scientists and organizations, says the view expressed by Elaine Ingham, a soil biologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, was exaggerated and irresponsible. It has asked her university to discipline her. But Ingham stands by her comments and says the complaints are an attempt to silence her. "They"re trying to cause trouble with my university and get me fired," Ingham told New Scientist . The controversy began on 1 February, when Ingham testified before New Zealand"s Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, which will determine how to regulate GM organisms. Ingham claimed that a GM version of a common soil bacterium could spread and destroy plants if released into the wild. Other researchers had previously modified the bacterium to produce alcohol from organic waste. But Ingham says that when she put it in soil with wheat plants, all of the plants died within a week. "We would lose terrestrial plants... this is an organism that is potentially deadly to the continued survival of human beings," she told the commission. She added that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) canceled its approval for field tests using the organism once she had told them about her research in 1999. But last week the New Zealand Life Sciences Network accused Ingham of "presenting inaccurate, careless and exaggerated information" and "generating speculative doomsday scenarios that are not scientifically supportable". They say that her study doesn"t even show that the bacteria would survive in the wild, much less kill massive numbers of plants. What"s more, the network says that contrary to Ingham"s claims, the EPA was never asked to consider the organism for field trials. The EPA has not commented on the dispute. But an e-mail to the network from Janet Anderson, director of the EPA"s bio-pesticides division, says "there is no record of a review and/or clearance to field test" the organism. Ingham says EPA officials had told her that the organism was approved for field tests, but says she has few details. It"s also not clear whether the organism, first engineered by a German institute for biotechnology, is still in use. Whether Ingham is right or wrong, her supporters say opponents are trying unfairly to silence her. "I think her concerns should be taken seriously, she shouldn"t be harassed in this way," says Ann Clarke, a plant biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada who also testified before the commission. "It"s an attempt to silence the opposition."

单选题American movies and music have done very well in some countries like Sweden and less well in others like India. This may sound like a simple difference in human tastes, but decisions to consume culture have an economic aspect. Loyalties to cultural goods and services—be it heavy metal music or the opera—are about social networking and choosing an identity and an aspiration. That is, we use culture to connect with other people and to define ourselves; both are, to some extent, economic decisions. The continuing and indeed growing relevance of local economic connections suggests that cultural imperialism will not prove to be the dominant trend. Local culture commands loyalty when people are involved in networks of status and caste, and they pursue religious and communal markers of identity. Those individuals use local cultural products to signal their place in hierarchies. Today, economic growth is booming in countries where American popular culture does not dominate, namely India and China. Population growth is strong in many Islamic countries, which typically prefer local music and get their news from sources like the satellite broadcaster A1 Jazeera. The combination of these trends means that American entertainment, for largely economic reasons, will lose relative standing in the global marketplace. In fact, Western culture often creates its own rivals by bringing creative technologies like the recording studio or the printing press to foreign lands. American popular culture tends to be popular when people interact with others from around the world and seek markers of global identity. My stepdaughter spent last summer studying French in Nice, with students from many other countries. They ate and hung out at McDonald"s, a name and symbol they all share, even though it was not everyone"s favorite meal. Globalization is most likely to damage local culture in regions like Scandinavia that are lightly populated, not very hierarchical and looking for new global cultural symbols. But the rest of the world"s population is in countries--China and India, of course, but also Brazil, Mexico, Egypt and Indonesia— that do not fit that description. "American" cultural products rely increasing on non-American talent and international symbols and settings. "Babel", which won this year"s Golden Globe for best drama, has a Mexican director, and is set in Morocco, Japan and Mexico, mostly with non-English dialogue. Culture is not a zero-sum game, so the greater reach of one culture does not necessarily mean diminished stature for others. In the broad sweep of history, many different traditions have grown together and flourished. American popular culture will continue to make money, but the 21st century will bring a broad melange of influences, with no clear world cultural leader.

单选题If past is prologue, then it ought to be possible to draw some modest conclusions about the future from the wealth of data about America"s present. Wilt the rate continue to fall? Will single-person households actually submerge the traditional family? All projections, of course, must be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. Nonetheless, the urge to make sense of what lies ahead is inescapable. After the 1980 census, the Census Bureau decided for the first time to venture some forecasts of its own for the decades to come. Working from what America already knows about itself, the bureau"s experts and other demographers offer an irresistible, if clouded, crystal ball among their visions. According to the census projections, female life expectancy will increase from 78.3 years in 1981 to 81.3 in the year 2005. The life expectancy of American men will grow from 70.7 for babies born in 1981 to 73.3 years in 2005. And by the year 2050, women will have a life expectancy of 83.6 years and men of at least 75.1. Annual population growth will slow to almost nothing by 2050. In fact, the Census Bureau predicts that the rate of natural increase will be negative after 2035; only continuing immigration will keep it growing after that. The total population will be 268 million in 2000 and 309 million—an all-time high—in 2050. After that, it will start to decline. The American population will grow steadily older. From 11.4 percent in 1981, the proportion of the population that is 65 and over will grow to 13.1 percent in 2000 and 21.7 percent in 2050. The percentage of the population that lives beyond the age of 85 will more than quintuple over the same period. Meanwhile the median age—30.3 in 1981—will rise to 36.3 by 2000 and 41.6 50 years later. When it comes to the quality of life, more predictors are fairly cautious. John Hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherlin observes that "as we enter the 1980s, the pace of change appears to have slowed." For the next few decades, he predicts, there may be only modest swings in the marriage, birth and divorce rates—giving society time to adjust to the new patterns that have formed in recent years. "We are in a plateau in our family patterns that will likely last for a while," Cherlin maintains. Crime expert Alfred Blumstein, who foresees a drop in crime over the coming decade, predicts that the Northeast and Midwest, with stable but aging populations, will see the falloff first; for the South and Southwest, with their large proportions of younger people, the improvement will come less quickly.

单选题Discussion of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States has focused on two factors: social standing and the loss of national culture. In general, excessive stress is placed on one factor or the other, depending on whether the commentator is North American or Puerto Rican. Many North American social scientists, such as Oscar Handlin, Joseph Fitzpatrick, and Oscar Lewis, consider Puerto Ricans as the most recent in a long line of ethnic entrants to occupy the lowest rung on the social ladder. Such a "sociodemographic" approach tends to regard assimilation as a benign process, taking for granted increased economic advantage and inevitable cultural integration, in a supposedly egalitarian context. However, this approach fails to take into account the colonial nature of the Puerto Rican case, with this group, unlike their European predecessors, coming from a nation politically subordinated to the United States. Even the "radical" critiques of this mainstream research model, such as the critique developed in Divided Society, attach the issue of ethnic assimilation too mechanically to factors of economic and social mobility and are thus unable to illuminate the cultural subordination of Puerto Ricans as a colonial minority. In contrast, the "colonialist" approach of island-based writers, such as Eduardo Seda Bonilla, Manuel Maldonado Denis, and Luis Nieves Falcon, tends to view assimilation as the forced loss of national culture in an unequal contest with imposed foreign values. There is, of course, a strong tradition of cultural accommodation among other Puerto Rican thinkers. The writings of Eugenio Fernandez Mendez clearly exemplify this tradition, and many supporters of Puerto Rico"s commonwealth status share the same universalizing orientation. But the Puerto Rican intellectuals who have written most about the assimilation process in the United States all advance cultural nationalist views, advocating the preservation of minority cultural distinctions and rejecting what they see as the subjugation of colonial nationalities. This cultural and political emphasis is appropriate, but the colonialist thinkers misdirect it, overlooking the class relations at work in both Puerto Rican and North American history. They pose the clash of national cultures as an absolute polarity, with each culture understood as static and undifferentiated. Yet both the Puerto Rican and North American traditions have been subject to constant challenge from cultural forces within their own societies, forces that may move toward each other in ways that cannot be written off as mere "assimilation." Consider, for example, the indigenous and Afro-Caribbean traditions in Puerto Rican culture and how they influence and are influenced by other Caribbean cultures and Black cultures in the United States. The elements of coercion and inequality, so central to cultural contact according to the colonialist framework play no role in this kind of convergence of racially and ethnically different elements of the same social class.

单选题 Shopping has always been something of an impulsive activity, in which objects that catch our fancy while strolling are immediately bought on a whim. Advertisers and sellers have taken advantage of this fact, carefully positioning inexpensive but attractive items on paths that we are most likely to cross, hoping that our human nature will lead to a greater profit for them. With the dawn of the Internet and its exploding use across the world, the same tactics apply. Advertisers now place "banners", links to commercial web sites decorated with attractive pictures designed to catch our eyes while browsing the webs, on key web sites with heavy traffic. They pay top dollar for the right, thus creating profits for the hosting web site as well. These actions are performed in the hopes that during the course of our casual and leisurely web surfing, we'll click on that banner that sparks our interest and thus, in theory, buy the products advertised. Initial results have been positive. Web sites report a huge inflow of cash, both from the advertisers who tempt customers in with the banners and the hosting web sites, which are paid for allowing the banners to be put in place. As trust and confidence in Internet buying increases and information security is heightened with new technology, the volume of buying is increasing, leading to even greater profits. The current situation, however, is not quite as optimistic. Just as magazine readers tend to unconsciously ignore advertisements in their favorite periodicals, web browsers are beginning to allow banners to slip their notice as well. Internet users respond to the flood of banners by viewing them as annoyances, a negative image that is hurting sales, since users are now less reluctant to click on those banners, preferring not to support the system that puts them in place. If Internet advertising is to continue to be a viable and profitable business practice, new methods will need to be considered to reinvigorate the industry. With the recent depression in the technology sector and slowing economy, even new practices may not {{U}}do the trick{{/U}}. As consumers are saving more and frequenting traditional real estate businesses over their Internet counterparts, the fate of Internet business is called into question. The coming years will be the only reliable indication of whether shopping on the worldwide web is the wave of the future or simply an impulsive activity whose whim has passed.

单选题Americans are supposed to be mobile and even pushy. Saul Bellow"s Augie March declares, "I am an American... first to knock, first admitted." In "The Grapes of Wrath," young Tom Joad loads up his car with pork snacks and relatives, and the family flees the Oklahoma for California. Along the way, Grandma dies, but the Joads keep going. But sometime in the past 30 years, someone has hit the brakes and Americans—particularly young Americans—have become risk-averse and sedentary. The likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s, according to calculations based on Census Bureau data. The stuck-at-home mentality hits college-educated Americans as well as those without high school degrees. Even bicycle sales are lower now than they were in 2000. Today"s generation is literally going nowhere. An increasing number of teenagers are not even bothering to get their driver"s licenses. Back in the early 1980s, 80 percent of 18-year-olds proudly strutted out of the D. M. V. with new licenses, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan"s Transportation Research Institute. By 2008—even before the Great Recession—that number had dropped to 65 percent. Though it"s easy to blame the high cost of cars or gasoline, Comerica Bank"s Automobile Affordability Index shows that it takes fewer weeks of work income to buy a car today than in the early 1980s, and inflation-adjusted gasoline prices didn"t get out of line until a few years ago. Perhaps young people are too happy at home checking Facebook. In a study of 15 countries, Michael Sivak, a professor at the University of Michigan"s Transportation Research Institute, found that when young people spent more time on the Internet, they delayed getting their driver"s licenses. "More time on Facebook probably means less time on the road," he said. That may mean safer roads, but it also means a bumpier, less vibrant economy. Generation Y has become Generation Why Bother. The Great Recession and the still weak economy make the trend toward risk aversion worse. Children raised during recessions ultimately take fewer risks with their investments and their jobs. Even when the recession passes, they don"t strive as hard to find new jobs, and they hang on to lousy jobs longer. Research by the economist Lisa B. Kahn of the Yale School of Management shows that those who graduated from college during a poor economy experienced a relative wage loss even 15 years after entering the work force. In the mid-"70s, back when every high school kid longed for his driver"s license and a chance to hit the road and find freedom, Bruce Springsteen wrote his brilliant, exciting album "Born to Run." A generation later, as kids began to hunker down, Mr. Springsteen wrote his depressing "The Ghost of Tom Joad." We need to reward and encourage forward movement, not slouching. That may sound harsh, but do we really want to turn into a country where young Americans can"t even recognize the courage of Tom Joad?