单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} Within hours of appearing on television to announce the end of conscription, President Jacques Chirac moved quickly to prevent any dissent from within the military establishment. Addressing more than 500 military staff officers at the military academy in Paris yesterday, Mr Chirac said clearly that he "expected" their loyalty in the work of rebuilding France's national defense. He understood their "legitimate concerns, questions and emotions" at the reforms, but added: "You must understand that there is not and never has been any rigid model for French defense. Military service has been compulsory for less than a century. Realism required that our armed forces should now be professional." The President's decision to abolish conscription over a period of six years removes a rite of passage for young Frenchmen that has existed since the Revolution, even though obligatory national service only became law in 1905. As recently as 1993, an opinion poll showed that more than 60% of French people said they feared the abolition of conscription could endanger national security. A poll conducted this month, however, showed that 70% of those asked favored ending of practice, and on the streets and in offices yesterday, the response to Mr. Chirac's announcement was generally positive. Among people who completed their 10-month period of national service in the last few years or were contemplating the prospect, there was almost universal approval, tempered by a sense that something hard to define—mixing with people from other backgrounds, a formative experience, a process that encouraged national or social cohesion—might be lost. Patrick, who spent his year in the French city of Valance assigning and collecting uniforms, and is now a computer manager, said he was in tears for his first week, and hated most of his time. He thought it was "useless" as a form of military training— "I only fired a rifle twice" —but, in retrospect, useful for learning how to get on with people and instilling patriotism. As many as 25% of those liable for military service in France somehow avoid it—the percentage is probably much greater in the more educated and higher social classes. According to Geoffroy, a 26-year-old reporter, who spent his time in the navy with the information office in central Paris, the injustice is a good reason for abolishing it. People with money or connections, he said, can get well-paid assignments abroad. "It's not fair: some do it, some don't." Several expressed support for the idea of a new socially-oriented voluntary service that would be open to both men and women. But the idea seemed less popular among women. At present, women have the option of voluntary military service and a small number choose to take it.

单选题If prompt measures are taken, we are sure that illiteracy in this region can be ______ in no time.

单选题As the pressure______the liquid rock is forced up through channels in the resistant rock to the earth's surface.(2003年南开大学考博试题)

单选题Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in the World War Ⅱ and later laid the roots for the CIA was fascinated with information. Donovan believed in using whatever tools came to hand in the "great game" of espionage—spying as a "profession". These days the Net, which has already remade pastimes as buying books and sending mail, is reshaping Donovan"s vocation as well. The last revolution isn"t simply a matter of gentlemen reading other gentlemen"s e-mail. That kind of electronic spying has been going on for decades. In the past three or four years, the World Wide Web has given birth to a whole industry of point-and-click spying. The spooks call it "open source intelligence", and as the Net grows, it is becoming increasingly influential. In 1995 the CIA held a contest to see who could compile the most data about Burundi. The winner, by a large margin, was a tiny Virginia company called Open-Source Solutions, whose clear advantage was its mastery of the electronic world. Among the firms making the biggest splash in the new world is Straitford, Inc., a private intelligence-analysis firm based in Austin, Texas. Straitford makes money by selling the results of spying (covering nations from Chile to Russia) to corporations like energy-services firm McDermott International. Many of its predictions are available online at www.straitford.com. Straiford president George Friedman says he sees the online world as a kind of mutually reinforcing tool for both information collection and distribution, a spymaster"s dream. Last week his firm was busy vacuuming up data bits from the far corners of the world and predicting a crisis in Ukraine. "As soon as that report runs, we"ll suddenly get 500 new internet sign-ups from Ukraine," says Friedman, a former political science professor. "And we"ll hear back from some of them." Open-source spying does have its risks, of course, since it can be difficult to tell good information from bad. That"s where Straitford earns its keep. Friedman relies on a lean staff with twenty in Austin. Several of his staff members have military- intelligence backgrounds. He sees the firm"s outsider status as the key to its success. Straitford"s briefs don"t sound like the usual Washington back-and-forthing, whereby agencies avoid dramatic declarations on the chance they might be wrong. Straitford, says Friedman, takes pride in its independent voice.

单选题You may have seen this when you tried to open a new bank or credit card account and you were presented with some multiple choice questions asking you to verify where you got your ______ or car loan. A. complication B. revenue C. mortgage D. chasm

单选题Huxley is ______ optimistic for the future of either man or plant on this planet.

单选题We can ______their body language correctly only if we have the knowledge of their customs and conventions.

单选题______ recent brain and behavioral research, Dr. Goleman wrote a fascinating book entitled "Emotional Intelligence."

单选题13 Monkeys are excellent climbers, and most are ______ tree dwellers. A. often B. primarily C. rarely D. savagely

单选题There is an old saying in English which goes, "Never Uput off/U until tomorrow What you can do today."

单选题Benjamin Radford, managing editor of The Skeptical Inquirer magazine, offers hundreds of examples of deceptive practices in journalism, advertising, political activism, public relations, and charity appeals. The real danger to the public, he insists, comes not from outright lies about events or individuals, because in most cases facts can ultimately be proven and mistakes corrected. But the emotional power of images, sound bites, and slogans can exert deep and lasting influence on our opinions and behavior as consumers, voters, and citizens. The detailed coverage of violent crimes dominating local TV news shows seldom includes any larger context. The cumulative impression left in the minds of viewers is that violent crime is rampant and on the rise. As a result, many people live in fear and many more support the idea of ever-larger police forces, tougher laws, and bigger prisons without considering the actual crime rates in their community or across the nation. Dramatic incidents like the sniper attacks in the Washington, D. C. , area in the fall of 2002 receive so much media attention that, again, the actual numbers of people affected and the likelihood of such attacks being repeated anywhere else become wildly exaggerated in people's minds. In the media-fueled emotional state following such spectacular disasters, the effort and expense of turning schools into locked fortresses or putting cameras on every street to monitor suspicious individuals can seem insignificant compared to the hope of keeping our children safe from harm. Yet truly effective measures require clear thinking and clearly worded policies that citizens—not only lawyers and politicians—can understand. Too often the long-term future implications of new anticrime laws and policies are not even considered in the rush to feel safer by taking rapid and visible action. Misleading practices by advertisers are another subject of public concern. Governments have long limited ads for alcohol and tobacco products and examined claims by drug companies, carmakers, food suppliers, and toy manufacturers to protect the public health. But advertising uses emotional appeals to shift the viewer's focus away from facts. Viewers who do not take the trouble to distinguish between provable claims and pleasant but meaningless word play end up buying "the sizzle, not the steak" and often paying high.

单选题Passengers are offered money to ______ their seats when planes are overbooked.

单选题When the A concentration of calcium in the blood is B too low, the parathyroid glands C began to D secrete the hormone parathormone.

单选题Mercury orbits the Sun in 88 Earth days at an average speed of 48 kilometres per second, allowing it to overtake Earth every 116 Earth days.

单选题The national compulsory education provides them ______ to economic progress.

单选题Give the lack of fit between gifted students and their schools, it is not surprising that such students often have little good to say about their school experience. In one study of 400 adults who had achieved distinction in all areas of life, researchers found that three-fifths of these individuals either did badly in school or were unhappy in school. Few MacArthur Prize fellows, winners of the MacArthur Award for creative accomplishment, had good things to say about their precollege schooling if they had not been placed in advanced programs. Anecdotal (名人轶事) reports support this. Pablo Picasso, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Oliver Goldsmith, and William Butler Yeats all disliked school. So did Winston Churchill, who almost failed out of Harrow, an elite British school. About Oliver Goldsmith, one of his teachers remarked, "Never was so dull a boy." Often these children realize that they know more than their teachers, and their teachers often feel that these children are arrogant, inattentive, or unmotivated. Some of these gifted people may have done poorly in school because their gifts were not scholastic. Maybe we can account for Picasso in this way. But most fared poorly in school not because they lacked ability but because they found school unchallenging and consequently lost interest. Yeats described the lack of fit between his mind and school: "Because I had found it difficult to attend to anything less interesting than my own thoughts, I was difficult to teach." As noted earlier, gifted children of all kinds tend to be strong-willed nonconformists. Nonconformity and stubbornness (and Yeats" level of arrogance and self-absorption) are likely to lead to conflicts with teachers. When highly gifted students in any domain talk about what was important to the development of their abilities, they are far more likely to mention their families than their schools or teachers. A writing prodigy (神童) studied by David Feldman and Lynn Goldsmith was taught far more about writing by his journalist, father than his English teacher. High-IQ children, in Australia studied by Miraca Gross had much more positive feelings about their families than their schools. About half of the mathematicians studied by Benjamin Bloom had little good to say about school. They all did well in school and took honors classes when available, and some skipped grades.

单选题Some of Winifred Holtby"s friend wanted to see this biography published soon after her death in order to catch a supposed topical market and to forestall the appearance of half-informed studies. For those who loved her, I fully realize how painful and exasperating it has been to wait for a complete account of life, based upon adequate knowledge and that growth of understanding which only years of close friendship can bring. My apologies are due to them for the many explanations offered of the simple fact that I did not write this book earlier because I did not want to. I knew that, if I wrote quickly, I should very soon repent of what I had written. It would have been easy enough, on the strength of memory and a superficial glance through a mass of papers which Winifred left me, to construct a readable record of her life within a few months of her death anyone accustomed to writing books could produce such a volume; and she had not been a week in her grave before a number of publishers—though not my own—had invited me to do so. From the standpoint of sales such a course would doubtless have benefited my interests as well as theirs, but I cannot believe that it would have assisted Winifred"s reputation. A hasty portrait may be good journalism, but almost without exception it is bad biography. The chief essential of biography is truth, and truth is seldom served by hurried studies however topical and efficient. In practice, such work usually proves to be short-lived to precisely the degree that it is topical. The closer one person has been to another, the greater the need for time to elapse in order that the bitterness of loss and the arbitrary selections of memory may be modified by perspective and detachment, by the thorough investigation of available material, and most of all by the quiet process of unhurried reflection. Even within the past few months, many facts of Winifred"s life and character have become clear to me. I can therefore only plead for understanding and forgiveness when I say that I could not have produced a truthful study of the best friend whom life has given me in the months directly following her death.

单选题Societies from the primitive to (the highly civilizing) (have used) food, their (most essential) resource, in social bonding celebrations (of all kinds) and in sacred rituals.A. the highly civilizingB. have usedC. most essentialD. of all kinds