Despite these praiseworthy efforts, only the ______ of the iceberg has been noticeably affected.

Intellectual Property Rights

拜金主义

It is necessary that he ______ the assignment without delay.

Orioles are arboreal birds, and when they descend to the ground, it is mainly together nest materials

He didn't hear the news

第三产业

That was not the first time he ______ us. I think it's high time we ______ strong actions against him.

polysystem

IOC

数字鸿沟

skopos theory

The eighteenth-century British thinker Edmund Burke made the following observation about the benefits of opposition: 'He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.' In your view, to what extent can we benefit from opposition to our ideas, or desires. Write an essay of about 400 words that defends challenges, or qualifies Burke's statement about the benefits of opposition. You should present your argument with reasons and examples.

In the old days, it was all done with cakes. For Marcel Proust, it was a visit to Mother's for tea and madeleines that provided the access to 'the vast structure of recollection' that was to become his masterpiece on memory and nostalgia, 'Remembrance of Past Things.' These days, it's not necessary to evoke the past: you can't move without tripping over it. In an age zooming forward technologically, why all the backward glances? The Oxford English Dictionary's first definition of nostalgia reads: 'acute longing for familiar surroundings; severe homesickness.' With the speed of computers doubling every 18 months, and the net doubling in size in about half that, no wonder we're aching for familiar surroundings. Since the cornerstone of the Information Age is change, anything enduring becomes precious. ' People are looking for something authentic,' says McLaren. Trouble is, nostalgia has succumbed to trends in marketing, demographics and technology.'Nostalgia ain't what it used to be,' says Michael J. Wolf, senior partner at Booz-Allen Hamilton in New York.'These are the new good old days.' Baby boomers form the core of the nostalgia market. The boomers, defined by American demographers as those born between 1946 and 1964, are living long and prosperous lives. In both Europe and America, they remain the Holy Grail for admen, and their past has become everyone's present. In a study on 'entertainment imprinting,' two American marketing professors, Robert Schindler and Morris Holbrook, asked people ranging in age from 16 to 86 which popular music from the past they liked best. People's favorite songs, they found, tended to be those that were popular when they were about 24, with their affection for pop songs diminishing on either side of that age. Doubtless Microsoft knows about entertainment imprinting, or at least nostalgia. The company hawks its latest Explorer to the strains of Simon and Garfunkel's 'Homeward Bound,' just as it launched Windows 98 to the tune of 'Start Me up' by the Rolling Stones. Boomers remember both tunes from their 20s. If boomers are one market that values memories, exiles are another. According to the International Organization of Migration, more than 150 million people live today in a country other than the one where they were born—double the number that did so in 1965. This mass movement has sources as dire as tyranny and as luxurious as the freedoms of an EU passport. But exiles and refugees share one thing: homes left behind. Type in 'nostalgia' on the search engine Google, and one of the first sites that pop up is the nostalgia page of The Iranian, an online site for Iran's exiles, most of whom fled after 1978's Islamic revolution. Perhaps the savviest exploitation of nostalgia has been the secondhand-book site alibris, corn, which features stories of clients' rediscovering long-lost books on it. One John Mason Mings writes of the glories of finding a book with information on 'Kickapoo Joy Juice,' ad dreaded medicine of his youth. A Pennsylvanian waxes over alibris's recovery of his first-grade primer 'Down cherry Street.' The Net doesn't merely facilitate nostalgia—it promotes it. Web-based auction houses have helped jump-start markets for vintage items, form marbles to Apple Macintoshes. Cutting-edge technology, designed to be transient, has even bred its own instanostalgia. Last year a $666 Apple I went for $18,000 to a British collector at a San Francisco auction. 'Historic! Microsoft Multiplan for Macintosh' crows one item on eBay's vintage Apple section. Surf to The Net Nostalgia Quiz to puzzle over questions like 'In the old days, Altavista used to have which one of these URLs?' Those who don't remember their history are condemned to repeat it. Or so entertainment moguls hope, as they market '70s TV hits like 'Charlie's Angels' and 'Scooby Doo,' to a generation that can't remember them the first time round. If you've missed a Puff Daddy track or a 'Sopranos' episode, panic not. The megahits of today are destined to be the golden oldies of 2020, says Christopher Nurko of the branding consultant FutureBrand. 'I guarantee you, Madonna's music will be used to sell everything,' he says.'God help me, I hope it's not selling insurance.' It could be. When we traffic in the past, nothing's sacred.

In addition to urge to conform which we generate ourselves, there is the external pressure of the various formal and informal groups we belong to, the pressure to back their ideas and attitudes and to imitate their actions. Thus our urge to conform receives continuing, even daily reinforcement. To be sure, the intensity of the reinforcement, like the strength of the urge and the ability and inclination to withstand it, differs widely among individuals. Yet some pressure is present for everyone. And in one way or another, to some extent, everyone yields to it. It is possible that a new member of a temperance group might object the group's rigid insistence that all drinking of alcoholic beverages is wrong. He might even speak out, reminding them that occasional, moderate drinking is not harmful, that even the Bible speaks approvingly of it. But the group may quickly let him know that such ideas are unwelcome in their presence. Every time he forgets this, he will be made to feel uncomfortable. In time, if he values their companionship he will avoid expressing that point of view. He may even keep himself from thinking. This kind of pressure, whether spoken or unspoken, can be generated by any group, regardless of how liberal or conservative, formal or casual it may be. Friday night poker clubs, churches, political parties, committees, fraternities, unions. The teenage gang that steals automobile accessories may seem to have no taboos. But let one uneasy member remark that he is beginning to feel guilty about his crimes and their wrath will descend on him. Similarly, in high school and college, the crowd a student travels with has certain (usually unstated) expectations for its members. If they drink or smoke, they will often make the member who does not do so feel that he doesn't fully belong. If a member does not share their views on sex, drugs, studying, cheating, or any other subject of importance to them, they will communicate their displeasure. The way they communicate, of course, may be more or less direct. They may tell him he'd better conform 'or else'. They may launch a teasing campaign against him. Or they may be even less obvious and leave him out of their activities for a few days until he asks what is wrong or decides for himself and resolves to behave more like them. The urge to conform on occasion conflicts with the tendency to resist change. If the group we are in advocates an idea or action that is new and strange to us, we can be torn between seeking their acceptance and maintaining the security of familiar ideas and behavior. In such cases, the way we turn will depend on which tendency is stronger in us or which value we are more committed to. More often, —however, the two tendencies do not conflict but reinforce each other. For we tend to associate with those whose attitudes and actions are similar to our own.

Because modern scientist find the ancient Greek view of the cosmos outdated and irrelevant, they now perceive it as only of ______ interest.

hedge fund

civil society

If pride in a good name keeps families and neighborhoods straight, a sense of shame is the ______ side of that coin.

There are few more sobering online activities than entering data into college-tuition calculators and gasping as the Web spits back a six-figure sum, But economists say families about to go into debt to fund four years of partying, as well as studying, can console themselves with the knowledge that college is an investment that, unlike many bank stocks, should yield huge dividends. A 2008 study by two Harvard economists notes that the 'labor-market premium to skilr ' —or the amount college graduates earned that's greater than what high-school graduates earned—decreased for much of the 20th century, but has come back with a vengeance since the 1980s. In 2005, the typical full-time year-round U.S. worker with a four-year college degree earned $ 50,900, 62% more than the $ 31,500 earned by a worker with only a high-school diploma. There's no question that going to college is a smart economic choice. But a look at the strange variations in tuition reveals that the choice about which college to attend doesn't come down merely to dollars and cents. Does going to Columbia University (tuition, room and board $ 49,260 in 2007-2008) yield a 40% greater return than attending the University of Colorado at Boulder as an out-of-state student( $ 35,542)? Probably not. Does being an out-of-state student at the University of Colorado at Boulder yield twice the amount of income as being an in-state students( $17,380) there? Not likely. No, in this consumerist age, most buyers aren't evaluating college as an investment, but rather as a consumer product—like a car or clothes or a house. And with such purchases, price is only one of many crucial factors to consider. As with automobiles, consumers in today's college marketplace have vast choices, and people search for the one that gives them the most comfort and satisfaction in line with their budgets. This accounts for the willingness of people to pay more for different types of experiences(such as attending a private liberal-arts college or going to an out-of-state public school that has a great marine-biology program). And just as two auto purchasers might spend an equal amount of money on very different cars, college students(or, more accurately, their parents)often show a willingness to pay essentially the same price for vastly different products. So which is it?