单选题Financial consultants acknowledge that the value of common stock is inherently changeable.

单选题Like so many things of value, truth is not always easy to come by. What we regard as true shapes our beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Yet we can believe things that have no basis in fact. People are capable of embracing horrific precepts that seem incredible in retrospect. In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler had millions of followers who accepted his delusions about racial superiority. As Voltaire put it long before Hitler's time, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. " We are surrounded by illusions, some created deliberately. They may be subtle or may affect us profoundly. Some illusions, such as films and novels, we seek out and appreciate. Others can make us miserable and even kill us. We need to know if particular foods that taste perfectly fine can hurt us in the short term (as with Salmonella contamination) or in the long term (cholesterol), whether a prevalent virus is so dangerous that we should avoid public places, and what problems a political candidate may cause or resolve if elected. Gaining insights about the truth often is a challenge, and misconceptions can be difficult to recognize. We often believe stories because they are the ones available. Most people would identify Thomas Edison as the inventor of the incandescent light bulb. Although Edison perfected a commercially successful design, he was preceded in the experimentation by British inventors Frederick de Moleyns and Joseph Swan, and by American J. W. Starr. The biggest enemies of truth are: people whose job is to sell us incomplete versions of the available facts, our willingness to believe what we want and the simple absence of accurate information. Companies advertising products on television do not describe the advantages of their competitors' products any more than a man asking a woman to marry him encourages her to date other men before making up her mind. It is a social reality that people encourage one another to make important decisions with limited facts. Technology has simplified and complicated the fact-gathering process. The Internet allows us to check facts more easily, but it also disburses misinformation. Similarly, a belief that videos and photos necessarily represent reality ignores how easily they can be digitally altered. Unquestioning reliance on such forms of media makes us more susceptible to manipulators: those who want to deceive can dazzle us with a modern version of smoke and mirrors.

单选题In many cultures people who were thought to have the ability to ______ dreams were likely to be highly respected.

单选题In a materialistic and ______ society people's interest seems to be focused solely on monetary pursuit. A. adaptive B. addictive C. acquisitive D. arrogant

单选题The process by means of which human beings arbitrarily make certain things stand for other things may be called the symbolic process. Everywhere we turn, we see the symbolic process at work. There are 1 things men do or want to do, possess or want to possess, that have not a symbolic value. Almost all fashionable clothes are 2 symbolic, so is food. We 3 our furniture to serve 4 visible symbols of our taste, wealth, and social position. We often choose our houses 5 the basis of a feeling that it "looks well" to have a "good address". We trade perfectly good cars in for 6 models not always to get better transportation, but to give 7 to the community that we can 8 it. Such complicated and apparently 9 behavior leads philosophers to ask over and over again, "why can"t human beings 10 simply and naturally?" Often the complexity of human life makes us look enviously at the relative 11 of such lives as dogs and cats. Simply, the fact that symbolic process makes complexity possible is no 12 for wanting to 13 to a cat-and-dog existence. A better solution is to understand the symbolic process 14 instead of being its slaves we become, to some degree at least, its 15 .

单选题This style of writing, incidentally, is Usuggestive/U of what is called the "newsreel technique" of John Dos Passos.

单选题 Stratford-on-Avon, as we all know, has only one industry--William Shakespeare--but there are two distinctly separate and increasingly hostile branches. There is the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), which presents superb productions of the plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre on the Avon. And there are the townsfolk who largely live off the tourists who come, not to see the plays, but to look at Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Shakespeare's birthplace and the other sights. The worthy residents of Stratford doubt that the theatre adds a penny to their revenue. They frankly dislike the RSC's actors ,them with their long hair and beards and sandals and noisiness. It's all deliciously ironic when you consider that Shakespeare, who earns their living, was himself an actor(with a beard)and did his share of noise-making. The tourist streams are not entirely separate. The sightseers who come by bus-and often take in Warwick Castle and Blenheim Palace on the side--don't usually see the plays, and some of them are even surprised to find a theatre in Stratford. However, the playgoers do manage a little sightseeing along with their playgoing. It is the playgoers, the RSC contends, who bring in much of the town's revenue because they spend the night(some of them four or five nights)pouring cash into the hotels and restaurants. The sightseers can take in everything and get out of town by nightfall.. The townsfolk don't see it this way and local council does not contribute directly to the subsidy of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stratford cries poor traditionally. Nevertheless every hotel in town seems to be adding a new wing or cocktail lounge. Hilton is building its own hotel there, which you may be sure will be decorated with Hamlet Hamburger Bars, the Lear Lounge, the Banquo Banqueting Room, and so forth, and will be very expensive. Anyway, the townsfolk can't understand why the Royal Shakespeare Company needs a subsidy. (The theatre has broken attendance records for three years in a row. Last year its 1,431 seats were 94 per cent occupied all year long and this year they'll do better.) The reason, of course, is that costs have rocketed and ticket prices have stayed low. It would be a shame to raise prices too much because it would drive away the young people who are Stratford's most attractive clientele. They come entirely for the plays, not the sights. They all seem to look alike (though they come from all over)--lean, pointed, dedicated faces, wearing jeans and sandals, eating their buns and bedding down for the night on the flagstones outside the theatre to buy the 20 seats and 80 standing-room tickets held for the sleepers and sold to them when the box of rice opens at 10:30am.

单选题It can be inferred that Richard ll's reign was ______.

单选题Skippers must make a report to customs either in person or by telephone, if they have any duty-free goods on board, or are carrying prohibited goods including animals ______ their port of departure.

单选题One suggested method of containing the fires was presented by Cary Colaizzi of the engineering firm Goodson, which has developed a heat-resistant grout(a thin mortar used to fill cracks and crevices), which is designed to be pumped into the coal fire to cut off the oxygen supply.(中国社会科学院2006年试题)

单选题Christmas is coming. It's just round the______.

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

单选题Next time you have a problem, think about how you can improve the situation instead of ______ all the negative aspects.

单选题As the city has become increasingly ______ and polluted, there has been a growing realization that certain action urgently needed.

单选题I know nothing about Persian art; that's quite outside my______.

单选题For each blank in the following passage, choose the best answer from the four choices given below. Mark the corresponding letter of your choice with a single bar across the square brackets on your Machine-scoring Answer Sheet. America's Federal Reserve cut interest rates by another quarter-point, to 3.75 %. Wall Street, which had been{{U}} 21 {{/U}}for a sixth half-point cut, was disappointed. The Dow fell by 2%{{U}} 22 {{/U}}the week. The past week's economic statistics gave mixed signals. Exports dropped by 2% in both March and April, largely{{U}} 23 {{/U}}a decline in high-tech investment{{U}} 24 {{/U}};the merchandise-trade{{U}} 25 {{/U}}widened to $ 458 billion in the 12 months{{U}} 26 {{/U}}April.{{U}} 27 {{/U}},the Conference Board's index of consumer confidence was higher than{{U}} 28 {{/U}}in June. Concerns{{U}} 29 {{/U}}inflation in the Euro area{{U}} 30 {{/U}}. Preliminary data{{U}} 31 {{/U}}that German consumer price inflation fell to 3. 1% in the year to June, from 3.5 % in May; wage growth{{U}} 32 {{/U}}to 1.4% in April, a real pay cut of 1.5%. Some economists fear that Germany is on the{{U}} 33 {{/U}}of recession. The IFO index of business confidence dropped more{{U}} 34 {{/U}}than expected in May, and the institute has cut its forecast of GDP{{U}} 35 {{/U}}this year to only 1.2% ,well below the German government's forecast of 2%.

单选题Adam Smith, writing in the 1770s, was the first person to see the importance of the division of labor and to explain part of its advantages. He gives as an example the process by which pins were made in England. "One man draws out the wire; another strengthens it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top to prepare it to receive the head. To make the head requires two or three operations. To put it on is a separate operation, to polish the pins is another. And the important business of making pins is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen operations, which in some factories are all performed by different people, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them." Ten men, Smith said, in this way, turned out twelve pounds of pins a day or about 4,800 pins per worker. But if all of them had worked separately and independently without division of labor, none of them could have made twenty pins in a day and perhaps not even one. There can be no doubt that division of labor is an efficient way of organizing work. Fewer people can make more pins. Adam Smith saw this but he also took it for granted that division of labor is in itself responsible for economic growth and development and that it accounts for the difference between expanding economies and those that stand still. But division of labor adds nothing new; it only enables people to produce more of what they already have.

单选题In the long run a government will always encroach upon freedom to the extent to which it has the power to do so. This is almost a natural law of politics, since, whatever the intentions of the men who exercise political power, the sheer momentum of government leads to a constant pressure upon the liberties of the citizen. But in many countries society has responded by throwing up its own defenses in the shape of social classes or organized corporations which, enjoying economic power and popular support, have been able to set limits to the scope of action of the executive. Such, for example, in England was the origin of all our liberties--won from government by the stand first of the feudal nobility, then of churches and political parties, and latterly of trade unions, commercial organizations, and the societies for promoting various causes. Even in European lands which were arbitrarily ruled, the powers of the monarchy, though absolute in theory, were in their exercise. checked in a similar fashion. Indeed the fascist dictatorships of today are the first truly tyrannical governments which western Europe has known for centuries, and they have been rendered possible only because on coming to power they destroyed all forms of social organization which were in any way rivals to the state.

单选题It was their______decision to leave their country, and as a result, they lost their citizenship.(2003年中国社会科学院考博试题)

单选题Racket, din clamor, noise, whatever you want to call it, unwanted sound is America"s most widespread nuisance. But noise is more than just a nuisance. It constitutes a real and present danger to people"s health. Day and night, at home, at work, and at play, noise can produce serious physical and psychological stress. No one is immune to this stress. Though we seem to adjust to noise by ignoring it, the ear, in fact, never closes and the body still responds—sometimes with extreme tension, as to a strange sound in the night. The annoyance we feel when faced with noise is the most common outward symptom of the stress building up inside us. Indeed, because irritability is so apparent, legislators have made public annoyance the basis of many noise abatement programs. The more subtle and more serious health hazards associated with stress caused by noise traditionally have been given much less attention. Nevertheless, when we are annoyed or made irritable by noise, we should consider these symptoms fair warning that other thing may be happening to us, some of which may be damaging to our health. Of many health hazards to noise, hearing loss is the most clearly observable and measurable by health professionals. The other hazards are harder to pin down. For many of us, there may be a risk that exposure to the stress of noise increases susceptibility to disease and infection. The more susceptible among us may experience noise as a complicating factor in heart problems and other diseases. Noise that causes annoyance and irritability in health persons may have serious consequences for these already ill in mind or body. Noise affects us throughout our lives. For example, there are indications of effects on the unborn child when mothers are exposed to industrial and environmental noise. During infancy and childhood, youngsters exposed to high noise levels may have trouble falling asleep and obtaining necessary amounts of rest. Why, then, is there not greater alarm about these dangers? Perhaps it is because the link between noise and many disabilities or diseases has not yet been conclusively demonstrated. Perhaps it is because we tend to dismiss annoyance as a price to pay for living in the modern world. It may also be because we still think of hearing loss as only an occupational hazard.