单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} In most American cities, the tent for a one-bedroom apartment was $250 or more per month in recent years. In some smaller cities such as Louisville, Kentucky or Jacksonville, Florida the rent was less, but in larger cities it was more. For example, if you lived in Los Angeles, you had to pay $400 or more to rent a one-bedroom apartment, and the same apartment rented for $625 and up in Chicago. The most expensive rents in the U. S. were in New York City, where you had to pay at least $700 a month to rent a one-bedroom apartment in most parts of the city. Renters and city planners are worried about the high cost of renting apartments. Many cities now have rent-control laws to keep the cost of renting low. These laws help low-income families who cannot pay high rents. Rent control in the United States began in 1943 when the government imposed rent controls on all American cities to help workers and the families of soldiers during World War II. After the war, only one city—New York—continued these World War II controls. Recently, more and more cities have returned to rent controls. At the beginning of the 1980s, nearly one fifth of the people in the United States lived in cities with rent-control laws. Many cities have rent-control laws, but why are rents so high? Builders and landlords blame rent controls for the high rents. Rents are high because there are not enough apartments to rent, and they blame rent controls for the shortage of apartments. Builders want more money to build more apartment buildings, and landlords want more money to repair their old apartment buildings. But they cannot increase rents to get this money because of the rent-control laws. As a result, landlords are not repairing their old apartments, and builders are not building new apartment buildings to replace the old apartment buildings. Builders are building apartments for high-income families, not low-income families, so low-income families must live in old apartments that are in disrepair. Builders and landlords claim that rent-control laws really hurt low-income families. Many renters disagree with them. They say that rent control is not the problem. Even without rent controls, builders and landlords will continue to ignore low-income housing because they can make more money from high-income housing. The only answer, they claim, is more rent controls and government help for low-income housing.

单选题Forget what Virginia Woolf said about what a writer needs—a room of one's own. The writer she has in mind wasn't at work on a novel in cyberspace, one with multiple hypertexts , animated graphics and downloads of trance, charming music. For that you also need graphic interfaces, Real Player and maybe even a computer laboratory at Brown University. That was where Mark Amerika—his legally adopted name; don't ask him about his birth name—composed much of his novel Grammatron. But Grammatron isn't just a story. It's an online narrative(grammatron. com)that uses the capabilities of cyberspace to tie the conventional story line into complicated knots. In the four years it took to produce—it was completed in 1997—each new advance in computer software became another potential story device. "I became sort of dependent on the industry," jokes Amerika, who is also the author of two novels printed on paper. "That's unusual for a writer, because if you just write on paper the 'technology' is pretty stable. " Nothing about Grammatron is stable. At its center, if there is one, is Abe Golam, the inventor of nanograph a quasi-mystical computer code that some unmystical corporations are itching to acquire. For much of the story, Abe wanders through Prague-23, a virtual "city" in cyberspace where visitors indulge in fantasy encounters and virtual sex, which can get fairly graphic. The reader wanders too, because most of Grammatron'?, 1,000-plus text screens contain several passages in hypertext. To reach the next screen just double-click. But each of those hypertexts is a trapdoor that can plunge you down a different pathway of the story. Choose one and you drop into a corporate-strategy memo. Choose another and there's a XXX-rated sexual rant. The story you read is in some sense file story you make. Amerika teaches digital art at the University of Colorado, where his students develop works that straddle the lines between art, film and literature. "I tell them not to get caught up in mere plot," he says. Some avant-garde writers—Julio Cortazar, Italo Calvino—have also experimented with novels that wander out of their author's control. "But what makes the Net so exciting," says Amerika, "is that you can add sound, randomly generated links, 3-D modeling, animation. " That room of one's own is turning into a fun house.

单选题In the city election, Jill was the only ______.

单选题They use ________ sales tactics to defeat their major competitor.

单选题In 1998 consumers could purchase virtually anything over the Internet. Books, compact discs, and even stocks were available from World Wide Web sites that seemed to spring up almost dally. A few years earlier, some people had predicted that consumers accustomed to shopping in stores would be reluctant to buy things that they could not see or touch in person. For a growing number of time-starved consumers, however, shopping from their home computer was proved to be a convenient alternative to driving to the store. A research estimated that in 1998 US consumers would purchase $ 7.3 billion of goods over the Internet, double the 1997 total. Finding a bargain was getting easier owing to the rise of online auctions and Web sites that did comparison shopping on the Internet for the best deal. For all the consumer interest, retailing in cyberspace was still a largely unprofitable business, however. Internet pioneer Amazon. com, which began selling books in 1995 and liter branched into recorded music and videos, posted revenue of $ 153.7 million in the third quarter, up from $ 37.9 million in the same period of 1997. Overall, however, the company's loss widened to $ 45.2 million from $ 9.6 million, and analysis did not expect the company to turn a profit until 2001. Despite the great loss, Amazon. com had a stock market value of many billions, reflecting investors' optimism about the future of the industry Internet retailing appealed to investors because it provided an efficient means for reaching millions of consumers without having the cost of operating conventional stores with their armies of salespeople. Selling online carried its own risks, however. With so many companies competing for consumers' attention, price competition was intense and profit margins thin or nonexistent. one video retailer sold the hit movie Titanic for $ 9. 99, undercutting (削价) the $ 19.99 suggested retail price and losing about $ 6 on each copy sold. With Internet retailing still in its initial stage, companies seemed willing to absorb such losses in an attempt to establish a dominant market position.

单选题In this part you are asked to choose the best word for each blank in the passage. Write your answers on the answer sheet. After yuppies and dinkies, a new creature from adland stalks the block. The NYLON, an acronym linking New York and London, is a refinement of those more familiar categories such as jet- setters and cosmocrats (cosmopolitan aristocrats...do keep up). Marketing professionals have noted that{{U}} 1 {{/U}}the demise of Concorde, a new class of high-earner increasingly{{U}} 2 {{/U}}his or her time shuttling{{U}} 3 {{/U}}the twin capitals of globalization. And NYLONS prefer their home comforts{{U}} 4 {{/U}}tap in both cities. Despite the impressive{{U}}5 {{/U}}of air miles, they are not adventurous people. As{{U}} 6 {{/U}}from Tom Wolfe's Masters of the Universe of the 1980s, NYLONS have done more than well{{U}}7 {{/U}}the long boom and new economy of the last ten years. They are DJs, chefs, games designers, Internet entrepreneurs, fashionistas, publishers and even a(n){{U}} 8 {{/U}}band of journalists and writers. They are self-consciously trendy and some are even able to{{U}} 9 {{/U}}houses in both cities. Others will put up{{U}} 10 {{/U}}a house in one, and a view{{U}} 11 {{/U}}a room in the{{U}} 12 {{/U}}. of course, their horizons do{{U}} 13 {{/U}}beyond just New York and London. For many, Los Angeles is an important shopping mall. More significantly for adland, NYLONS provide some useful marketing savings. Campaigns no longer have to differ very much in the two cities,{{U}} 14 {{/U}} NYLONS bring them ever closer together. The restaurants are the same, with Nobu now in London and Conran in New York. Many plays{{U}} 15 {{/U}}in both cities at the same time, and DJs shuttle between the two,{{U}} 16 {{/U}}the same garage to the same people in{{U}} 17 {{/U}}clubs. Time Out and Wallpaper are the magazines of{{U}} 18 {{/U}}. All this is fine for NYLONS. But not so much{{U}} 19 {{/U}}for everybody else watching Notting Hill turn{{U}} 20 {{/U}}a pale imitation of Greenwich Village.

单选题According to the passage, the Roosevelt administration wanted agricultural legislation with all of the following characteristics EXCEPT ______.

单选题He kept telling us about his operation in the most {{U}}graphic{{/U}} detail.

单选题While we plan our railway buildings with a life span of 100 years, we also know that a quake measuring over seven on the Richter scale might ______ once in 120 years, though we never expect it to happen so soon. A. appear B. develop C. erupt D. emerge

单选题Napoleon was ______at the battle of Waterloo in 1815.

单选题The American Revolution had no medieval legal institutions to___or to root out, apart from monarchy.(北京大学2011年试题)

单选题Industrial production managers coordinate the resources and activities required to produce millions of goods every year in the United Sates. Although their duties vary from plant to plant, industrial production managers share many of the same major responsibilities. These responsibilities include production scheduling, staffing, procurement and maintenance of equipment, quality control, inventory control, and the coordination of production activities with those of other departments. The primary mission of industrial production managers is planning the production schedule within budgetary limitations and time constraints. They do this by analyzing the plant's personnel and capital resources to select the best way of meeting the production quota. Industrial production managers determine, often using mathematical formulas, which machines will be used, whether new machines need to be purchased, whether overtime or extra shifts are necessary, and what the sequence of production will be. They monitor the production nm to make sure that Ft stays on schedule and correct any problems that may arise. Industrial production managers also must monitor product standards. When quality drops below the established standard, they must determine why standards are not being maintained and how to improve the product. If the problem relates to the quality of work performed in the plant, the manager may implement better training programs, reorganize the manufacturing process, or institute employee suggestion or involvement programs. If the cause is substandard materials, the manager works with the purchasing department to improve the quality of the product's components. Because the work of many departments is interrelated, managers work closely with heads of other departments such as sales, procurement, and logistics to plan and implement company goals, policies, and procedures. For example, the production manager works with the procurement department to ensure that plant inventories are maintained at their optimal level. This is vital to a firm's operation because maintaining the inventory of materials necessary for production ties up the firm's financial resources, yet insufficient quantities cause delays in production. A breakdown in communications between the production manager and the purchasing department can cause slowdown and a failure to meet production schedules. Just-in-time production techniques have reduced inventory levels, making constant communication among the manager, suppliers, and purchasing departments even more important. Computers play an integral part in this coordination. They also are used to provide up-to-date information on inventory, the status of work in progress, and quality standards. Production managers usually report to the plant manager or the vice president for manufacturing, and may act as liaison between executives and first-line supervisors. In many plants, one production manager is responsible for all aspects of production. In large plants with several operations-there are managers in charge of each operation, such as machining, assembly, or finishing.

单选题If you come to Tokyo, I can put you ______ in an apartment near my company.

单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} Hurricanes are violent storms that cause millions of dollars in property damage and take many lives. They can be extremely dangerous, and too often people underestimate their fury. Hurricanes normally originate as a small area of thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean west of the Cape Verde Islands during August or September. For several days the area of the storm increases and the air pressure falls slowly. A center of low pressure forms, and winds begin to whirl around it. It is blown westward, increasing in size and strength. Hurricane hunters then fly out to the storm in order to determine its size and intensity and to track its direction. They drop instruments for recording temperature, air pressure, and humidity (湿度), into the storm. They also look at the size of waves on the ocean, the clouds, and the eye of the storm. The eye is a region of relative calm and clear skies in the center of the hurricane. People often lose their lives by leaving shelter when the eye has arrived, only to be caught in tremendous winds again when the eye has passed. Once the forecasters have determined that it is likely the hurricane will reach shore, they issue a hurricane watch for a large, general area that may be in the path of the storm. Later, when the probable point of landfall is clearer, they will issue a hurricane warning for a somewhat more limited area. People in these areas are wise to stock up on nonperishable foods, flash light and radio batteries, candles, and other items they may need if electricity and water are not available after the storm. They should also try to hurricane-proof their houses by bringing in light-weight furniture and other items from outside and covering windows. People living in low- lying areas are wise to evacuate their houses because of the storm surge, which is a large rush of water that may come ashore with the storm. Hurricanes generally lose power slowly while traveling over land, but many move out to sea, gather up force again, and return to land. As they move toward the north, they generally lose their identity as hurricanes.

单选题Students of the great society, looking at mankind in the long perspective of history, have frequently been disposed to seek an explanation of existing cultural differences among races and peoples in some single dominating cause or condition. One school of thought has found that explanation in climate and in the physical environment. Another school has sought an explanation of divergent cultures in the innate qualities of races biologically inherited. These two theories have this in common, namely, that they both conceive civilization and society to be the result of evolutionary processes—processes by which man has acquired new inheritable traits—rather than processes by which new relations have been established between men. In contrast to both of these, there is the catastrophic theory of civilization. From this point of view, climate and innate racial traits, important as they may have been in the evolution of races, have been of only minor influence in creating existing cultural differences. In fact, races and cultures, so far from being in any sense identical—or even the products of similar conditions and forces—are perhaps to be set over against one another as contrast effects, the results of antagonistic tendencies, so that civilization may be said to flourish at the expense of racial differences rather than to be conserved by them. At any rate, if it is true that races are the products of isolation and inbreeding, it is just as certain that civilization, on the other hand, is a consequence of contact and communication. The forces which have been decisive in the history of mankind are those which have brought men together in fruitful competition, conflict, and cooperation. Among the most important of these influences have been—according to what I have called the catastrophic theory of progress-migration and the incidental collisions, conflicts, and fusions of people and culture which they have occasioned. "Every advance in culture," says Bucher, in his Industrial Evolution, "commences, so to speak, with a new period of wandering," and in support of this thesis he points out that the earlier forms of trade were migratory, that the first industries to free themselves from the household husbandry and become independent occupations were carried on itinerantly. "The great founders of religion, the earliest poets and philosophers, the musicians and actors of past epochs, are all great wanderers. Even today, do not the inventor, the preacher of a new doctrine, and the virtuoso travel from place to place in search of adherents and admirers—notwithstanding the immense recent development in the means of communicating information?" The influences on migrations have not been limited, of course, by the changes which they have effected in existing cultures. In the long run, they have determined the racial characteristics of historical peoples. "The whole teaching of ethnology," as Griffith Taylor remarks, "Show that peoples of mixed race are the rule and not the exceptions. " Every nation, upon examination, turns out to have been a more or less successful melting-pot. To this constant sifting of races and peoples, human geographers have given the title "the historical movement," because, as Miss Semple says, "it underlies most written history and constitutes the major part of unwritten history, especially that of savage and nomadic tribes. " Changes in race do inevitably follow changes in culture. The movements and mingling of peoples which bring rapid, sudden, and often catastrophic changes in customs and habits are followed, in the course of time, as a result of interbreeding, by corresponding modifications in temperament and physique. There has probably never been an instance where races have lived together in the intimate contacts which a common economy enforces in which racial contiguity has not produced racial hybrids. However, changes in racial characteristics and in cultural traits proceed at very different rates, and it is notorious that cultural changes are not consolidated and transmitted biologically. Comprehension Questions.

单选题During the 19th century, Jews in most European countries achieved some equality of status with non-Jews. Nonetheless, at times Jews were harassed by anti-Semitic groups. A. opposed B. exploited C. despised D. annoyed

单选题Frank stormed into the room and ______ the door, but it wasn't that easy to close the door on what Jack had said. A. slashed B. slammed C. slipped D. slapped

单选题In the summer of 999, Leif Erikson voyaged to Norway and spent the following winter with King Olaf Tryggvason. Substantially the same account is given by both the Saga of Eric the Red and the Flat Island Book. The latter says nothing about Leif's return voyage to Greenland, but according to the former it was during this return voyage that Leif discovered America. The Flat Island Book, however, tells of another and earlier landfall by Biarni, the son of a prominent man named Heriulf, and makes that the inspiration for the voyage to the new land by Leif. In brief, like Leif, Biarni and his companion sight three countries in succession before reaching Greenland, and to come upon each new land takes 1 "doegr" more than the last until Biarni comes to land directly in front of his father's house in the lastmentioned country. This narrative has been rejected by most later writers, and they may be justified. Possibly, Biarni was a companion of Leif when he voyaged from Norway to Greenland via America, or it may be that the entire tale is but a garbled account of that voyage and Biarni another name for Leif. It should be noted, however, that the stories of Leif's visit to King Olaf and Biarni's to that king's predecessor are in the same narrative in the Flat Island Book, so there is less likelihood of duplication than if they were from different sources. Also, Biarni landed on none of the lands he passed, but Leif apparently landed on one, for he brought back specimens of wheat, vines, and timber. Nor is there any good reason to believe that the first land visited by Biarni was Wineland. The first land was "level and covered with woods", and "there were small hillocks upon it". Of forests, later writers do not emphasize them particularly in connection with Wineland, though they are often noted incidentally. And of hills, the Saga says of Wineland only that "wherever there was hilly ground, there were vines". Additionally, if the two narratives were taken from the same source we should expect a closer resemblance of Helluland. The Saga says of it. "They found there hellus (large flat stones)." According to the Biarni narrative, however, "this land was high and mountainous." The intervals of 1, 2, 3, and 4 "doegr" in both narratives are suggestive, but mythic formulas of this kind may be introduced into narratives without altogether destroying their historicity. It is also held against the Biarni narrative that its hero is made to come upon the coast of Greenland exactly in front of his father's home. But it should be recalled that Heriufsness lay below two high mountains which served as landmarks for navigators. I would give up Biarni more readily were it not that the story of Leif's voyage contained in the supposedly more reliable Saga is almost as amazing. But Leif's voyage across the entire width of the North Atlantic is said to be "probable" because it is incorporated into the narrative of a preferred authority, while Biarni's is "improbable" or even "impossible" because the document containing it has been condemned.

单选题The mother______her daughter on how to behave at the ball.

单选题According to the British courts, after their return to society, the two adults will be ______.