单选题 Questions 21～25 Any request in the United Kingdom to remove a disabled person's ability to reproduce should be treated with great caution. The news that 15-year-old Katie Thorpe, who has severe cerebral palsy, may have a womb removal operation at her mother's request should be a cause of great concern for disabled people. This case raises profound legal and ethical dilemmas. Legally Katie should be assumed to be capable of making a decision and, if necessary, supported to do so before anyone else can decide what is or is not in her "best interests". Ethically we have to remember that right through the 20th century many countries in Europe and beyond legislated positively in favor of sterilising disabled people, often without their knowledge—let alone their consent. As Judge Holmes famously put it in a landmark case in the United States less than a century ago, "three generations of imbeciles are enough". With the shadow of this recent history still over us, we should exercise utmost caution before sanctioning decisions to remove any disabled woman's reproductive right. The most effective path through both the legal and ethical dilemmas has to be to encourage self-determination on the part of disabled people such as Katie. Of course, the rights and needs of careers need to be taken into account as well, but it is imperative that this is never at the expense of the disabled person's own views. The reason that this case has caused so much controversy is that, on initial inspection, it appears that an assumption is being made about what is best for a disabled person without attempting to understand the desires of the individual who will be ultimately affected by the decision. Unfortunately, assumptions that limit disabled people's lives are prevalent in our society, and the medical profession is not immune. I have come across cases where disabled people who personally believe they enjoy a good quality of life, have been told by doctors that they assume they would not want to be resuscitated in the event of respiratory failure. When the individuals tell the doctors that they would, of course, want to be resuscitated, they have been met with nothing but a puzzled look. Not only does the UK disability network Radar advocate that all disabled people should be the authors of their own destiny, but that they should have the appropriate support in place to enable them to achieve their hopes and ambitions. This does not just mean going to the shops, or having a rewarding job, but it also means a right to relationships and to family life, which means ensuring self-determination is a key aspect of everyone's existence. These are the rights that non-disabled people take for granted, and they must be afforded to all if we are to live in an equal society. We know that with the right support in place, true independent living is not only possible, but desirable both from a social and an economic perspective. Once we can live the lives that we want to live, we can encourage other disabled people to do the same. We all have ambitions, and we should all be enabled to fulfill them and inspire others. Before we can achieve this, we must have the mechanisms in place to ensure that people like Katie, and all others who cannot easily express their needs and desires, are fully represented in the legal system and our society as a whole. Life can be very difficult for parents who are also careers for their severely disabled children. But that does not mean that they always know what is in the best interests of their children. For all children, independence from their parents can be a hard-won right. For disabled young people, they may need support throughout their lives to achieve this.

单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.

单选题A.Itworksfasterthanthehumanbrain.B.Itseldommakeserrors.C.Itcansolvecomplicatedproblems.D.Itcan"think"withoutinformationfedintoit.

单选题It can be inferred form the passage that ______.

单选题 Most big corporations were once run by individual capitalists: by one shareholder with enough stock to dominate the board of directors and to dictate policy, a shareholder who was usually also the chief executive officer. Owning a majority or controlling interest, these capitalists did not have to concentrate on reshuffling assets to fight off raids from financial vikings. They were free to make a living by producing new products or by producing old products more cheaply. Just as important, they were locked into their roles. They could not very well sell out for a quick profit—dumping large stock holdings on the market would have simply depressed the stock's price and cost them their jobs as captains of industry. So instead they sought to enhance their personal wealth by investing—by improving the long-run efficiency and productivity of the company. Today, with very few exceptions, the stock of large U. S. corporations is held by financial institutions such as pension funds, foundations, or mutual funds—not by individual shareholders. And these financial institutions cannot legally become real capitalists who control what they own. How much they can invest in any one company is limited by law, as is how actively they can intervene in company decision making. These shareholders and corporate managers have a very different agenda than dominant capitalists do, and therein lies the problem. They do not have the clout to change business decisions, corporate strategy, or incumbent managers with their voting power. They can enhance their wealth only by buying and selling shares based on what they think is going to happen to short-term profits. Minority shareholders have no choice but to be short-term traders. And since shareholders are by necessity interested only in short-term trading, it is not surprising that managers' compensation is based not on long-term performance, but on current profits or sales. Managerial compensation packages are completely congruent with the short-run perspective of short run shareholders. Neither the manager nor the shareholder expects to be around very long. And neither has an incentive to watch out for the long term growth of the company. We need to give managers and shareholders an incentive to nurture long-term corporate growth—in other words, to work as hard at enhancing productivity and output as they now work at improving short-term profitability.

单选题 {{B}}Questions 15-18{{/B}}

单选题Ifthewomanhastoaskforasickleave,whoshouldsheturnto?[A]Herdepartmentmanager.[B]Thepersonneldepartment.[C]Thedirectoroftheworkshop.

单选题Sometime soon, according to animal-rights activists, a great ape will testify in an American courtroom. Speaking through a voice synthesizer, or perhaps in sign language, the lucky ape will argue that it has a fundamental right to liberty. "This is going to be a very important case." Duke University law Prof. William ReppyJr. told the New York Times. Reppy concedes that apes can talk only at the level of a human 4-year-old, so they may not be ready to discuss abstractions like oppression and freedom. Just last month, one ape did manage to say through a synthesizer, "Please buy me a hamburger." That may not sound like crucial testimony, but lawyers think that the spectacle of an ape saying anything at all in court may change a lot of minds about the status of animals as property. One problem is that apes probably won"t be able to convince judges that they know right from wrong, or that they intend to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Since they are not persons, they don"t even have legal standing to sue. No problem, says Steven Wise, who taught animal law for 10 years at Vermont Law School and is now teaching Harvard Law School"s first course in the subject. He says lawyers should be able to use slavery-era statues that authorized legal nonpersons (slaves) to bring lawsuits. Gary Francione, who teaches animal law at Rutgers University, says that gorillas "should be declared to be persons under the constitution. " Unlike mainstream animal-welfare activists, radical animal-rights activists think that all animals are morally equal and have rights, though not necessarily the same rights as humans. So the law"s denial of rights to animals is simply a matter of bias-speciesism. It"s even an expression of bias to talk about protecting wildlife, since this assumes that human control and domination of other species is acceptable. These are surely far-out ideas. "Would even bacteria have rights ?" asks one exasperated law professor, Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School. For the moment, the radicals want to confine the rights discussion to apes and chimps, mostly to avoid the obvious mockery about litigious lemmings, cockroach liberation, and the issue of whether a hyena eating an antelope is committing a fights violation that should be brought before the world court in the Hague. One wag wrote a poem containing the line, "Every beast within his paws/Will clutch an order to show cause. " The news is that law schools are increasingly involved in animal issues. Any radical notion that vastly inflates the concept of rights and requires a lot more litigation is apt to take root in the law schools. ("Some lawyers say they are in the field to advance their ideology, but some note that it is an area of legal practice that could be profitable," reports the New York Times.) A dozen law schools now feature courses on animal law, and in some cases, at least, the teaching seems to be a simple extension of radical activism. The course description of next spring"s "Animal Law Seminar" at Georgetown University Law Center, for instance, makes clear to students which opinions are the correct ones to have. It talks about the plight of "rightless plaintiffs" and promises to examine how and why laws "purporting to protect" animals have failed. Ideas about humane treatment of animals are indeed changing. Many of us have changed our minds about furs, zoos, slaughterhouse techniques, and at least some forms of animal experimentation. The debate about greater concern for the animal world continues. But the alliance between the radicals and the lawyers means that, once again, an issue that ought to be taken to the people and resolved by democratic means will most likely be pre-empted by judges and lawyers. Steven Wise talks of using the courts to knock down the wall between humans and apes. Once apes have rights, he says, the status of other animals can be decided by other courts and other litigation. The advantage of the litigation strategy is that there"s no need to sell radical ideas to the American people. There are almost no takers for the concept of "nonhuman personhood," the view of pets as slaves, or the notion that meat eating is part of "a specter of oppression" that equally afflicts minorities, women, and animals in America. You can supersede open debate by convincing a few judges to detect a "fights" issue that functions as a political trump card. The rhetoric is high-minded, but the strategy is to force change without gaining the consent of the public. Converting every controversy into a "rights" issue is by now a knee-jerk response. Harvard Law Prof. Mary Ann Glendon, author of Rights Talk, writes about our legal culture"s "lost language of obligation." Instead of casting arguments in terms of human responsibility for the natural world, rights talkers automatically spin out tortured arguments about "rights" of animals and even about the "rights" of trees and mountains. This is how "rights talk" becomes a parody of itself. Let"s hope the lawyers and the law schools eventually get the joke.

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单选题 The Microsoft antitrust trial inched close to a final ruling from U. S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson on Tuesday, as the software vendor fried a brief refuting his contention that the company has a monopoly in PC operating systems. Microsoft also claimed that U. S. government prosecutors have not satisfied the burden of proof for any of their antitrust claims. Microsoft made the arguments in its proposed conclusions of law—a document of more than 100 pages—fried with the court Tuesday stating the company's interpretation of how antitrust law should be applied to Jackson's findings of fact. The software giant said having an extremely popular product—Windows—does not make it a monopolist. In his findings of fact issued November 5, 1999, Jackson said Microsoft "enjoys a monopoly" in the personal computer market. A month later the government and 19 U. S. states alleged in their proposed conclusions of law that Microsoft engaged in illegal "monopoly maintenance" to protect and extend Windows' dominance and then tried to monopolize the Internet browser market. Microsoft refuted all those claims in its brief Tuesday, citing numerous cases and court findings over the past 30 years. The company said the case law demonstrates that it did not engage in anticompetitive conduct that contributed significantly to the maintenance of a monopoly. Microsoft also cited the June 1998 Appeals Court ruling that called the union of Windows and Internet Explorer "a genuine integration" The brief comes one week after reports began circulating that the government is preparing to propose the breakup of Microsoft into two or three parts. It restates many of Microsoft's defenses, claiming that the integration of Web browsing software into Windows benefited millions of consumers and that the software vendor did not prevent users from obtaining Netscape Navigator. Jackson's findings of fact expressly found that "many—if not most—consumers can be said to benefit from Microsoft's provisions of Web browsing functionality with its Windows operating system at no additional charge," the document says. The brief further states that the findings of fact did not say that Microsoft acted with a specific intent to obtain monopoly power in the market for Web browsers. "The Court instead found that Microsoft attempted to increase Internet Explorer's usage share to such a level as would prevent Netscape Navigator… from becoming the 'standard' Web browsing software," the Microsoft brief said. While the government argues that Microsoft's actions may have made it more difficult for Netscape to use certain channels of distribution, Microsoft's filing cites numerous cases that demonstrate that its actions were within the bounds of competition defined by the law. Microsoft also rejects the government's claim that its licensing agreements illegally prevent computer manufacturers from modifying the first screen that a user sees when Windows launches, saying the license merely restate rights that Microsoft enjoys under federal copyright law. The two sides in the trial, which began in October 1998, can now submit rebuttals to each other's conclusions of law. Oral arguments are scheduled for February 22, and a ruling is expected in the spring.

单选题I dislike going to the dentist as he uses the ______on my teeth. A. pick B. probe C. bore D. drill

单选题According to the passage, which of the following research will Republican Senator Sam Brownback support?

单选题 {{B}}Questions 15—18{{/B}}

单选题The farmers and bad debts have become synonymous. Little wonder then that a bank that carries a third of all loans to America"s farmers is in trouble. But when that bank"s total debt is $ 60 billion, more than half the size of Brazil"s, and its losses over the past two years, at $ 4.8 billion, exceed anything in American banking history, the problem becomes political as well as financial. Congress began this week to discuss a bill to rescue the Farm Credit System. The Farm Credit System is not strictly a bank. It is a peculiar animal, a federation of 37 banks (three in each of 12 regions and one to sell bonds to Wall Street) containing 387 lending associations, owned by the farmers who borrow from them. It was set up by the federal government in the early years of the century to give farmers an alternative source of credit to the banks, but has long ago paid off any federal debts and so, in theory, is now independent. The system got into trouble by lending too readily in farming"s good times, the 1970s, as land prices rose and farm profits grew. Total farm debt quadrupled between 1970 and 1984. Farmers flocked to the Farm Credit System because its interest rates, based on a moving average, lagged behind those of the market. But the falling profits and falling land prices of the early 1980s coincided with raising interest rates, putting many farmers in difficulty. When interest rates began to fall, the moving average responded slowly, so many farmers found themselves paying well above market rates for their loans. They promptly refinanced them with other banks. Even as its bad debts grew (they are now $ 7 billion), the Farm Credit System"s loans shrank, from over $ 80 billion to about $ 50 billion today. In May the system went to Congress and asked for $ 6 billion to see it through its present crisis. Although the worst losses are past, at least two of the banks in the system will have run out of capital altogether by the end of the year. Congress has reacted some impatience, for this was the third request for help in three years, though admittedly the first two had not been for money. In 1985 the Farm Credit System was allowed to share a capital between its banks, so that its rich members could bail out its poor ones. In 1986 it asked to be allowed to fiddle its accounts so as to defer losses. Congress, to its shame, agreed. The first measure helped little, because the shareholders of the richer banks sued to stop their money being used to help the poorer. The second measure simply stored up trouble for the future. Now the system needs dollars soon. This time, however, Congress has demanded changes in the way the system is run. Mr. Charles Stenholm, a Democrat from Texas, wants to fuse the 37 banks into seven and devolve the lending and rate-setting powers to the 387 local lending associations, thus cutting out some of the bureaucratic overlaps (accounts are audited three times, for example). The shareholders would almost certainly sue. But the threat has concentrated the minds of the system"s directors, who have produced a plan for cutting the system"s 12 districts to six with one bank in each. The bill before the House of Representatives (the Senate is still working on its version) would, in return for such changes, put in place a federally controlled organization that would seek money to stave off bankruptcy, as necessary. It would also throw commercial banks a present by creating a secondary market in farm mortgages, nicknamed Farmer Mac; this would, in effect, pass on some of the benefits of a bail-out to the private banks. Representative John Dingell of Michigan threatened to fight this on the floor of the House and rolled out some big guns, including the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Mr. Alan Greenspan, and his predecessor, Mr. Paul Volcker, to try to stop it. The secondary market would enable the banks to take away the system"s best loans, they said, leaving it shakier than before. To avoid a fight, House leaders postponed a discussion of this clause until October 6th. In fact, it is farm creditors rather than farmers who are more in trouble. Net farm income has risen from $12. 7 billion in 1983 to over $ 44 billion this year; farm debt has fallen from $ 202 billion to $163 billion. Land values have steadied, as has the suicide rate among farmers. Subsidies are flowing strongly, at a rate of $ 26 billion a year.

单选题Americans have become addicted to superlatives. We seem to need our regular "hyperbole fixes" as if to validate our own existence. This national syndrome becomes most egregious during the run- up to the "Super Bowl," a football game that more often than not turns out to be the "ho-hum" bowl. But to the attuned ear, this pumped-up hype routinely infects most of our conversations. This exaggeration is not the exclusive province of the magpies of sports talk. In a broader sense, some of these embellishments carry with them a subtle but undeniable element of dishonesty. The news media is perhaps most culpable in promoting our obsession with overstatement. Consider last November's midterm elections. Television's political pundits portrayed the results as a "landslide victory" for Republicans and a rejection of President Obama. While it's true that the GOP picked up 63 seats, the "massive win" becomes a slim plurality when you crunch the numbers. Michael McDonald, a professor of politics at Virginia's George Mason University, found that only 41 percent of eligible voters even bothered to vote in the so-called GOP landslide. And within that 41 percent, the margin of victory for House Republicans in the national popular vote was about 7 percent. Still, the media acted as though America had become a tea party nation. In reality, more Americans identify as Democrats (31 percent) than Republicans (29 percent), according to a recent Gallup survey. Distortions like this tend to be at their most shameful during triumphs and tragedies, precisely when facts and events should be able to stand on their own without being propped up by the banalities of those paid to read a TV teleprompter. I recall during CNN's live coverage of Pope John Paul Ⅱ's funeral in 2005, one of my colleagues gushed in her impromptu on-air eulogy that the late pontiff was "the pope of the whole world!" Such silly media pronouncements are so common that few of us even notice them as they float off into the ether. Yet such hyperbole is not just pompous; it also reveals considerable ignorance. My former colleague' s remark marginalized not just the billion or so Protestants and Eastern Orthodox adherents who don' t follow orders from Rome but also the 4 billion Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and others who don't consider the pontiff worthy of such adulation and veneration. Perhaps just as embarrassing amid this verbal extravagance was the failure to note the significant Catholic dissent over his legacy. Many Roman Catholic clerics, including Jesuits, had been quite critical of John Paul Ⅱ; some were privately relieved his time at the helm was up. "Great" and "awesome" are other examples of overused words that have become almost meaningless. Earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornados bearing down on you are awesome. Bone- crunching NFL football tackles and films like "Avatar" are not. "Awesome" is so overused it can now be rendered to mean "rather ordinary. " "Tragedy" has become another nearly meaningless word. It used to be reserved for events of mass casualties and deep suffering. Now it's applied to stories ranging from lost puppies to quarterly earnings reports. The adage (attributed to Stalin) comes to mind: "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. " The real tragedy is the demise of intelligent self-expression, a consequence of our shriveling vocabularies. Well may we cringe listening to contemporary blather, especially superlatives like "unbelievable," which should properly be used to describe politicians. Sometimes this national obsession with superlatives does a genuine disservice. Wherever did we get the idea that everyone who serves in the military is a hero? Heroism demands an act of valor. A retired US Navy captain I know put it best: "Heroes are selfless warriors who risk their lives and often give their lives so others may live. There are plenty of warriors and wannabes, but very few genuine heroes. " If Americans insist on anointing themselves with superlatives, they should at least strive to imitate the British, who are the true masters of exaggeration. The late historian Barbara Tuchman was spot on: "No nation has ever produced a military history of such verbal nobility as the British'". There is no shrinking from superlatives.... Everyone is splendid: soldiers are staunch, commanders cool, the fighting magnificent. " Years later Ms. Tuchman told me nothing she ever wrote received such an overwhelmingly favorable response as that passage. But rather than imitating British hyperbole, Americans would do well to master the art of understatement and dry wit, the other speaking technique at which the British excel. In the film "A Hard Day's Night," John Lennon was asked by an inquiring reporter about his impressions of the United States. "How did you find America?" Lennon was asked. "Turn left at Greenland," he replied.

单选题You really have to get very old before you realize you're old. I'm in my middle fifties and I don't feel out {{U}}(34) {{/U}}. However, sometimes I look back at my childhood and {{U}}(35) {{/U}} things to the way life is {{U}}(36) {{/U}} today's kids. Some things have certainly changed. One {{U}}(37) {{/U}} of change is television. Some changes have been {{U}}(38) {{/U}}. Some changes, on the other {{U}}(39) {{/U}}, have been setbacks. {{U}} (40) {{/U}} I started school, most people didn't have a television; TV was just beginning to get {{U}}(41) {{/U}}. My father decided to go all {{U}}(42) {{/U}} and buy a 16-inch black and white Motorola {{U}}(43) {{/U}}. I still remember {{U}}(44) {{/U}} the Lone Ranger save people from the {{U}}(45) {{/U}} guys on that awesome electronic {{U}}(46) {{/U}}. That was exciting! Now, televisions have {{U}}(47) {{/U}} pictures in full color. The pictures are {{U}}(48) {{/U}} and the sound is much more {{U}}(49) {{/U}}. The variety and {{U}}(50) {{/U}} of programming has increased greatly. There are hundreds of {{U}}(51) {{/U}} and more shows than one person could ever watch. There's also a lot of {{U}}(52) {{/U}}, stuff that most parents don't want their kids {{U}}(53) {{/U}} to. Overall, we have more choices, and that is good.

单选题Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following interview.

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单选题There has been much hullabaloo about corporate accounting scams in America, yet perhaps the biggest accounting oversight of all time remains hidden in governments" own national figures. GDP per head is the most commonly used measure of a country"s success, yet it is badly flawed as a guide to a nation"s economic well-being. A new study in the OECD"s 2006 Going for Growth report considers some alternatives. Economists spend much time discussing how to boost GDP growth. The OECD itself drew attention this week to the widening gap between America"s and Europe"s GDP per head. Yet a nation"s well-being depends on many factors ignored by GDP, such as leisure time, income inequality and the quality of the environment. GDP was developed primarily as a planning tool to guide the huge production effort of the Second World War. It was never intended to be the definitive yardstick of economic welfare. Would another indicator change the ranking of countries or their relative performance over time? GDP is not even the best gauge of the monetary aspects of living standards. It measures the value of goods and services produced by the residents of a country. But some of the income earned in Britain, say, is paid to non-residents, while residents receive income from abroad. Adding net income from abroad to GDP gives us gross national income (GNI, also known as gross national product), which is more relevant for the prosperity of a nation. Most countries" rank by GNI per head is similar to that by GDP. One exception is Ireland: its GDP per head is one of the highest in the OECD, but because of large net outflows of investment income, its GNI per head is merely around the OECD average. Its average GNI growth rate over the past decade has also been about one percentage point less than on a GDP basis. Another flaw is that GDP makes no allowance for the depreciation of the capital stock. Subtracting this from GNI leaves net national income (NNI), which is probably the best national account measure of welfare. Awkwardly, the numbers are harder to come by, making it difficult to compare across countries and over time. But even NNI is an imperfect measure of people"s welfare: it excludes the value of such important things as leisure, inequality and the environment. GDP should ideally be reduced to take account of pollution and the using-up of non-renewable resources, but no standard accounts that can do this are yet available. On the other hand, the OECD has made a brave attempt to adjust GDP for the distribution of income. To most observers, a country where a few families enjoy huge wealth but most live in abject poverty would have a lower level of well-being than one with the same GDP but less poverty. A dollar of income is, in effect, worth more in the hands of the poor, though just how much more depends on attitudes towards inequality. The OECD"s calculations suggest if people strongly dislike inequality, the gap between America and most other rich countries, which have a more equal distribution of income, should be greatly reduced. By this measure, adjusted income per head is higher in France than in America. Inequality has also risen in recent years in most countries. Assuming again a strong aversion to inequality, average adjusted income per head grew by only 0.6% a year in OECD countries between 1985 and 2002, against 1.4% for GDP per head. But such estimates are sensitive to big value judgments. If, instead, people care little about inequality, then the adjustment will be much smaller. Longer holidays and shorter working hours increase an individual"s well-being, yet conventional national accounts completely overlook such benefits. America is one of the world"s richest countries, yet its workers toil longer hours than those elsewhere. As a result, adjusting GDP for leisure also narrows the gap between America and Europe. So far, neither the adjustment for inequality nor that for leisure alone overturns America"s economic superiority. However, if both adjustments were made, then on certain assumptions, the gap between the United States and several European countries could vanish. This does not mean that Europe can afford to abandon economic reforms. Leisure time is valuable, but it will not pay for future pensions. Nevertheless, the OECD is to be congratulated for being the first mainstream organization to challenge the conventional GDP numbers. Its task now is to encourage governments to start producing more relevant statistics.