单选题In the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome thunder was believed to be a manifestation of the {{U}}wrath{{/U}} of the gods. A. anger B. spirit C. voice D. power

单选题Because he wore a queer collection of clothes and talked to himself, his neighbours considered him ______.

单选题Over the centuries, various theories have been ______ to explain the origin of alphabetic writing.

单选题The scientist could hardly find sufficient grounds ______ his arguments in favor of the new theory.

单选题______ mechanical device has ever been invented that can satisfactorily replace teasel flower heads for raising the nap on cloth.

单选题There seems to be no ______ the reading public's thirst for books about the 1960s: indeed, the normal level of interest has ______ recently because of a spate of popular television documentaries. A. quenching ... moderated B. whetting ... mushroomed C. slaking ... increased D. ignoring ... transformed

单选题Passage One There is substantial evidence that by 1926, with the publication of The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes had broken with two well-established traditions in African American literature. In The Weary Blues, Hughes chose to modify the traditions that decreed that African American literature must promote racial acceptance and integration, and that, in order to do so, it must reflect an understanding and mastery of Western European literary techniques and styles. Necessarily excluded by this decree, linguistically and thematically, was the vast amount of secular folk material in the oral tradition that had been created by Black people in the years of slavery and after. It might be pointed out that even the spirituals or "sorrow songs" of the slaves-as distinct from their secular songs and stories-had been Europeanized to make them acceptable within these African American traditions after the Civil War. In 1862 northern White writers had commented favorably on the unique and provocative melodies of these "sorrow songs" when they first heard them sung by slaves in the Carolina sea islands. But by 1916, ten years before the publication of The Weary Blues, Hurry T. Burleigh, the Black baritone soloist at New York's ultrafashionable Saint George's Episcopal Church, had published Jubilee Songs of the United States, with every spiritual arranged so that a concert singer could sing it "in the manner of an art song." Clearly, the artistic work of Black people could be used to promote racial acceptance and integration only on the condition that it became Europeanize. Even more than his rebellion against this restrictive tradition in African American art, Hughes's expression of the vibrant folk culture of Black people established his writing as a landmark in the history of African American literature. Most of his folk poems have the distinctive marks of this folk culture's oral tradition : they contain many instances of naming and enumeration, considerable hyperbole and understatement, and a strong infusion of street-talk rhyming. There is a deceptive veil of artlessness in these poems. Hughes prided himself on being an impromptu and impressionistic writer of poetry. His, he insisted, was not an artfully constructed poetry. Yet an analysis of his dramatic monologues and other poems reveals that his poetry was carefully and artfully crafte. In his folk poetry we find features common to all folk literature, such as dramatic ellipsis, narrative compression, rhythmic repetition, and monosyllabic emphasis. The peculiar mixture of irony and humor we find in his writing is a distinguishing feature of his folk poetry. Together, these aspects, of Hughes's writing helped to modify the previous restrictions on the techniques and subject matter of Black writers and consequently to broaden the linguistic and thematic range of African American literature.

单选题Billie Holiday's reputation as a great jazz-blues singer rests on her ability ______emotional depth to her songs.

单选题Central park of New York is in places grassless and filled with trash, no longer ______yet lively with the noise and vivacity of people.

单选题In Hong Kong's huge Ocean Terminal shopping complex Prudential has opened a shop alongside ______ fashion brands such as Prada and Ralph Lauren.

单选题One purpose of the conferences was to foster a dialogue between opposing sides in the arms race, and the speakers often included scientists and government officials in charge of the unclear arms programs in their own countries.

单选题Orioles are {{U}}arboreal{{/U}} birds, and when they descend to the ground, it is mainly together nest materials A. territorial B. tree-dwelling C. consummate D. grumpy

单选题Below 600 feet ocean waters range from dimly lit to completely dark.

单选题At first glance the patriarchy appears to be thriving. More than 90% of presidents and prime ministers are male, as are nearly all big corporate bosses. Men dominate finance, technology, films, sports, music and even stand-up comedy. In much of the world they still enjoy social and legal privileges simply because they have a Y chromosome. So it might seem odd to worry about the plight of men. Yet there is plenty of cause for concern. Men cluster at the bottom as well as the top. They are far more likely than women to be jailed, estranged from their children, or to kill themselves. They earn fewer university degrees than women. Boys in the developed world are 50% more likely to flunk basic maths, reading and science entirely. One group in particular is suffering. Poorly educated men in rich countries have had difficulty coping with the enormous changes in the labor market and the home over the past half-century. As technology and trade have devalued brawn, less-educated men have struggled to find a role in the workplace. Women, on the other hand, are surging into expanding sectors such as health care and education, helped by their superior skills. As education has become more important, boys have also fallen behind girls in school (except at the very top ) . Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And men without work find it hard to attract a permanent mate. The result, for low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no prospects. Those on the political left tend to focus on economics. Shrinking job opportunities for men, they say, are entrenching poverty and destroying families. In America pay for men with only a high-school certificate fell by 21% in real terms between 1979 and 2013; for women with similar qualifications it rose by 3%. Around a fifth of working-age American men with only a high-school diploma have no job. Those on the right worry about the collapse of the family. The vast majority of women would prefer to have a partner who does his bit both financially and domestically. But they would rather do without one than team up with a layabout, which may be all that is on offer: American men without jobs spend only half as much time on housework and caring for others as do women in the same situation, and much more time watching television. Hence the unravelling of working-class families. The two-parent family, still the norm among the elite, is vanishing among the poor. In rich countries the proportion of births outside marriage has trebled since 1980, to 33%. In some areas where traditional manufacturing has collapsed, it has reached 70% or more. Children raised in broken homes learn less at school, are more likely to drop out and earn less later on than children from intact ones. They are also not very good at forming stable families of their own. These two sides often talk past each other. But their explanations are not contradictory: both economics and social change are to blame, and the two causes reinforce each other. Moreover, these problems are likely to get worse. Technology will disrupt more industries, creating benefits for society but rendering workers who fail to update their skills redundant. The OECD, a think-tank, predicts that the absolute number of single-parent households will continue to rise in nearly all rich countries. Boys who grow up without fathers are more likely to have trouble forming lasting relationships, creating a cycle of male dysfunction.

单选题It will further help the church in Asia, Africa and Latin America a new pope emerges from those areas.

单选题All visitors are requested to ______ with the regulations.

单选题About a dozen years ago my wife and I planted a hedge of twenty-seven arborvitae trees along the border of our backyard, which, although our house sits on nineteen acres of fields and woods, is also the back border of our property. A sloping hayfield with a realtor"s dream of panoramic views lies directly behind us. So the hedge was our attempt to secure privacy for the future. The nurseryman who sold us the shrubs assured us they were the best species for our purpose and climate. I measured and marked the planting sites, called in "Chink" Norris (whose possibly racist nickname I"ve not looked into any more than I have the nurseryman"s credentials) to come with his small back-hoe and dig the holes. As advised, I faithfully watered and fertilized each tree throughout the holes. As advised, I faithfully watered and fertilized each tree throughout the first year, with results that were everything I"d been promised: dense, hardy, and luxuriant, a towering bulwark of green. Thus began an episode of great vexation and buffoonery in my life, known and (I have no doubt) merrily recounted in local circles as the tale of "Garret and his trees" , or as my wife puts it, "Garret and the deer. " It so happens that we live next to one of the county"s most extensive " deer yard" , those areas of canopied woods to which the deer retire in winter, making networks of deeply furrowed tracks and foraging as best they can until there"s a declared winner in the yearly race between spring and starvation. It also happens that deer find arborvitae a delicacy, related to the cedar that they also love, but thicker and more succulent. By the second winter they"d found and attacked my trees. I fought back, not with a vengeance—I stopped short of that—but with something close to obsession. I erected fence structures that made our backyard look like a scene from the Somme. I played recordings of wolves howling, recordings of me howling. I fired pistol shots at random hours of the night. I hung or sprinkled repellents of blood meal, urine, (mine) , and deodorant soap. Hearing that deer were repelled by the scent of human hair, I asked some hair dressers to set aside their sweepings in a bag with, as the saying goes, my name on it. As any warden will tell you, if deer are hungry enough they will get through anything, which this year included an electric fence hooked to a charger supposedly powerful enough to deter an elephant. So the farmer who"d helped me rig it up assured me. What he did not tell me, because he did not know, was that the insulating snowpack would prevent an animal from completing the circuit with the ground. In came the deer like a school of piranhas. This was shortly after a man from Connecticut purchased the hayfield behind our house for a price few of my neighbors could afforded and none of them could believe and set about measuring the foundations of a house.

单选题Passage One When the television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines, or newspapers—nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, or anything else to distract you and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, Mayhem, more violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western goodmen, private eyes, Gangsters, still more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials that stream and cajole and offend. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it. Is there no room on television to teach, to inform, to uplift, to stretch, to enlarge the capacities of our children? Is there no room for programs to deepen the children's understanding of children in other lands? Is there no room for a children's news show explaining something about the world for them at their level of understanding? Is there no room for reading the great literature of the past, teaching them the great traditions of freedom? There are some fine children's shows, but they are drowned out in the massive doses of cartoons, violence, and more violence. Must these be your trademarks? Search your conscience and see whether yon cannot offer more to your young beneficiaries whose future you guard so many hours each and every day. There are many people in this great country, and you must serve all of us. You will get no argument from me if you say that, given a choice between a Western and a symphony, more people will watch the Western. I like Westerns and private eyes, too—but a steady diet for the whole country is obviously not in the public interest. We all know that people would more often prefer to be entertained than stimulated or informed. But your obligations are not satisfied if you look only to popularity as a test of what to broadcast. Yon are not only in show business: you are free to communicate ideas as well as to give relaxation. You must provide a wide range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives. It is not enough to cater to the nation's whims—you must also serve the nation's needs. The people own the air. They own it as much in prime evening time as they do at six o'clock in the morning. For every hour that the people give you—you own them something. I intend to see that your debt is paid with service.

单选题Looking back upon the whole process, we have every reason to ______ our success to Mary who suggested the right method at the beginning.

单选题It is widely believed that the pull of gravity on a falling raindrop changes ______ round shape into a teardrop shape.