单选题He would have paid ______ for his fridge had the salesman insisted
because he really needed it.
A. as much twice
B. twice as much
C. as twice
D. two times
单选题Courageous people think quickly and act without ______.
单选题Indeed it is not too much to______that fully to appreciate the spirit of any one of these great epics of the world, the student must possess some acquaintance with its co-ordinate ones.
单选题I always have my bedroom______tidy and clean.
单选题Passage 3 The science of linguistics has helped to reconstruct the long road the ancestors of modern day Indians traveled in North America. At the time of the discovery of the New World, line explorers found a babel of tongues. In North and South America more languages were spoken—about 2, 200 of them—than all of Europe and Asia at that time. Despite what some early explorers and European scholars believed, there never was such a language as "American Indian"—meaning, presumably, one common language with only local dialects. Rather than one common language that linked the Indians of North America, about 550 distinct languages were spoken, and nearly every language comprised numerous dialects. A second misconception was that a language had to be written to rank as a full-fledged language. In North America, a truly written language developed only in Mexico, yet most Indian groups were able to communicate a rich unwritten tradition of poetry, oratory, and drama.
单选题He was always ill for a time, but he managed to______.
单选题The snow leopard is a class-one endangered species, ______is the giant panda.
单选题New and bizarre crimes have come into being with the advent of computer technology. Organized crime has been directly involved; the new technology offers it unlimited opportunities, such as data crimes, theft of services, property-related crimes, industrial sabotage, politically related sabotage, vandalism, crimes against the individual and financially related crime. Theft of data, or data crime, has attracted the interest of organized criminal syndicates. This is usually the theft or copying of valuable computer program. An international market already exists for computerized data, and specialized fences are said to be playing a key role in this rapidly expanding criminal market. Buyers for stolen programs may range from a firm's competitors to foreign nations. A competitor sabotages a company's computer system to destroy or cripple the firm's operational ability, thus neutralizing its competitive capability either in the private or the government sector. This computer sabotage may also be tied to an attempt by affluent investors to acquire the victim firm. With the growing reliance by firms on computers for their recordkeeping and daily operations, sabotage of their computers can result in internal havoc, after which the group interested in acquiring the firm can easily buy it at a substantially lower price. Criminal groups could also resort to sabotage if the company is a competitor of a business owned or controlled by organized crime. Politically motivated sabotage is on the increase; political extremist groups have sprouted on every continent. Sophisticated computer technology arms these groups with awesome powers and opens technologically advanced nations to their attack. Several attempts have already been made to destroy computer facility at an air force base. A university computer facility involved in national defence work suffered more than $ 2 million in damages as a result of a bombing. Computer vulnerability has been amply documented. One congressional study concluded that neither government nor private computer systems are adequately protected against sabotage. Organized criminal syndicates have shown their willingness to work with politically motivated groups. Investigators have uncovered evidence of cooperation between criminal groups and foreign governments in narcotics. Criminal groups have taken attempts in assassinating political leaders. Computers are used in hospital life-support system, in laboratories, and in major surgery. Criminals could easily turn these computers into tools of devastation. By sabotaging the computer of a life-support system, criminals could kill an individual as easily as they had used a gun. By manipulating a computer, they could guide awesome tools of terror against large urban centers. Cities and nations could become hostages. Homicide could take a new form. The computer may become the hit man of the twentieth century. The computer opens vast areas of crime to organized criminal groups, both national and international. It calls on them to pool their resources and increase their cooperative efforts, because many of these crimes are too complex for one group to handle, especially those requiting a vast network of fences. Although criminals have adapted to computer technology, law enforcement has not. Many still think in terms of traditional criminology.
单选题After a slow sales start early in the year, mobile homes have been gaining favor as ______ to increasingly expensive conventional housing.
单选题Traditional research has confronted only Mexican and United States interpretations of Mexican-American culture. Now we must also examine the culture as we Mexican Americans have experi-enced it, passing from a sovereign people compatriots with newly arriving settlers to, finally a conquered people—a charter minority on our own land. When the Spanish first came to Mexico, they intermarried with and absorbed the culture of the indigenous Indians. This policy of colonization through acculturation was continued when Mexico acquired Texas in the early 1800" s and brought the indigenous Indians into Mexican life and government. In the 1820" s United State citizens migrated to Texas, attracted by land suitable for cotton. As their numbers became more substantial, their policy of acquiring land by subduing native populations began to dominate. The two ideologies clashed repeatedly, culmination in a military conflict that led to victory for the United States. Thus, suddenly derived of our parent culture, we had to evolve uniquely Mexican-Mexican modes of thought and action in order to survive.
单选题 Sake wa ten no biroku, goes the Japanese saying: Sake is
heaven's reward. For more than a thousand years, the Japanese have relished the
delicacy of their fermented rice brew and built their social lives around it. On
ceremonial occasions they break open a cedar cask, and the exchange of ritual
sake toasts seals wedding vows. In a less formal tradition, workers ease the
day's stress at red lantern-lighted watering holes that collectively offer
thousands of variations of the beverage. Says Tokyo management consultant
Masataka Takada: "Sitting at the bar, sipping sake sake side by side with a
colleague lets the conversation flow." At least that is how it
used to be. Nowadays fewer and fewer drinkers seem to agree with Takada. A
growing preference for just 15% of Japan's alcohol market, while beer makes up
70%; as recently as 1970 sake had a 30% share. That trend plus high land and
labor costs are pushing smaller sake brewers out of business. Among the 2,
000 companies still brewing, about half are losing money. For
the Koyama Brewery, the sake crisis threatens a family business that began in
1885. The sole remaining sake producer in the city of Tokyo, it is tucked into
four ancient vine-covered warehouses near a local highway and sits over an
abundant underground water supply. A large ball made of cedar needles, once a
sign to the public that the year's brew was ready, now hangs year round near the
company entrance next to a sake vending machine. Fourth-generation President
Kozo Koyama is struggling to combine mechanization and tradition in a bid to
survive. From the winter months of October through April, five
kurabito, or brewers, and their toji, or leader, hole themselves up in the
Koyama warehouses. Farmers from the Niigata prefecture, north of Tokyo, they
work in the breweries while snow covers their rice paddies. From large
paper sacks, the kurabito pour out special large-grained varieties of rice that
have been polished down to 70% or less of their original size to get rid of fat
and increase solubility. They wash and steam the rice, mix it with yeast, malted
rice and water pumped up from 13 m. underground. The pasty white mixture is left
to gurgle and ferment in 8,000-L green vats for 25 days, after which the brew is
pressed, filtered and pasteurized. The toil, Isaburo Koyama (no relation
to the founding family), free-tunes the process, deciding when to stir the brew
and how much to adjust its fermentation temperature. During and
after World War Ⅱ, sake makers mixed their brew with large amounts of alcohol to
increase volume. That proved popular, but it dulled the subtle aroma of
various regional flavors of sake and killed conoisseurship. Desensitized by the
alcohol- reeking concoctions, many Japanese knew little beyond the genetic term
sake and its traditional container, the 1.8 L brown glass bottle called an
issho-bin. When producers realized they were brewing up a
calamity, many decided to revive sake's distinct tastes, further polishing the
constituent rice to bring out a fruity aroma and adding alcohol only to adjust
the flavor. The process became costlier, but sake could now be marketed as a
higher-grade drink. The industry then came up with promotional campaigns
to make sake more fashionable, such as serving it chilled like white wine or
offering limited editions. Sleeker, smaller bottles or convenient paper
cartons are replacing the issho-bin. Qualifications have even been established
for sake sommeliers to guide gourmet drinkers through the 5,000 available
brands. In the past few years, these image efforts have started to pay off. The
designer brews currently make up close to 20% of the sake market.
To improve their return, some firms have turned to computers.
Gekkeikan, Japan's largest brewer, with about 6% of the market, make nine-tenths
of its sake with machinery using "fuzzy logic" chips rather than the experienced
judgment of a toji."Our technology will even improve on tradition," says Yukio
Matsumoto, deputy director of the Tokyo branch. Gekkeikan and other large
producers also brew sake in the U.S. for the local market; they can
capitalize on rice that is about one-fifth as expensive as that at home. But so
far, none have announced plans to export from their California breweries back to
Japan, partly for fear of antagonizing the powerful rice lobby.
Though he has sought to be more efficient and now manufactures a variety of
upscale brews, Kozo Koyama doesn't think his brewery will be among the lucky
survivors. He complains that real estate taxes take away 8% of his revenues and
fears that in a tight labor market it will be difficult to find an eventual
replacement for his long time toji, now 69."I can't continue in the city even if
I want to," say Koyama. In a conflict that he views as prophetic, his neighbors
last year complained about the leaves falling from the towering trees that grace
the small plot of ground at the brewery dedicated to sake gods; Koyama was
forced to clip the trees. Such a lack of respect does not augur well for an
embattled tradition, however heavenly.
单选题They are an odd couple. She is as tall______he is short, and he is as fat______she is thin. But they are both______happy as they are old.
单选题The number of the people who ______ cars ______ increasing.
单选题He plays tennis to the ______ of all other sports.
A. eradication
B. exclusion
C. extension
D. inclusion
单选题Nowadays, a cellphone service is available to everyone, everywhere. Probably thousands of people have already been using it, but I just discovered it, so I"m going to claim it and also name it: Fake Foning.
The technology has been working well for me at the office, but there are infinite applications. In fact in any public space.
Say you work at a big university with lots of talky faculty members buzzing about. Now, say you need to use the restroom. The trip down the hall will take approximately one hour, because a person can"t walk into those talky people without getting pulled aside for a question, a bit of gossip, a new read on a certain line of
Paradise Lost
.
So, a cellphone. Any cellphone. Just pick it up. Don"t dial. Just hold that phone to your face and start talking. Walk confidently down the hall engaged in fake conversation, making sure to tailor both the topic and content to the person standing before you whom you are trying to evade.
For standard colleague avoidance, I suggest fake chatting about fake business: "Yes, I"m m glad you called, because we really need to think about the details. What"s that? Yes, I read Page 12, but if you look at the bottom of 4, I think you can see the problem begins right there."
Be animated. Be engaged in your fake fone conversation. Make eye contact with the people passing, nod to them, gesture keen interest in talking to them at a later time, point to your phone, shrug and move on.
Shoppers should consider fake foning anytime they spot a talky neighbor in the produce department pinching unripe peaches. Without your phone at your face, you"d be in for a 20-minute speech on how terrible the world is.
One important caution about fake foning. The other day I was fake foning my way past a colleague, and he was actually following me to get my attention. I knew he wanted to ask about a project I had not yet finished. I was trying to buy myself some time, so I continued lake foning with my doctor. "So I don"t need the operation? Oh, doctor, that is the best news."
And then: Brrrrrmg! Brrrrrmg! Brrrrrmg! My phone started ringing, right there while it was planted on my face. My colleague looked at me, and I at him, and naturally I gasped. "What is the matter with this thing? said, pulling the phone away to look at it, and then putting it back to my ear.
"Hello? Are you still there?"
Oops.
单选题The flood waters began to abate as soon as the rain ceased.
单选题The noise was so faint that you had to ______ your ears to hear it.
单选题The exhibition's importance lies in its ______: curators have
gathered a diverse array of significant works from many different museums.
A. homogeneity
B. sophistry
C. scope
D. farsightedness
单选题The fragrances of many natural substances come from oils, ______ these oils may be used in manufacturing perfumes.
单选题The party, ______I was the guest of honor, was extremely enjoyable.